Exile's Return by Raymond E. Feist Read Free Book Online

trousers were starting to fit too loosely around the waist. He had let his neatly-trimmed beard grow, lacking a razor, mirror, or scissors. Every morning, before washing his face in the water bucket, he caught a glimpse of his reflection and barely recognized himself—sunburned, his dark beard now filling in, and his face thinner. He had been here less than two weeks—what would he look like after a month? Kaspar didn’t want to think about it; he intended to learn as much as he could from these people and then leave, for his future was not farming, no matter what else fate might hold in store for him. Still, he wondered how Jojanna would fare once he left them.
    Jorgen had tried to help Kaspar, but as he was only eight years old, he was often drawn away by boyish interests. His regular chores involved milking the cow who had lost her calf, feeding the chickens, inspecting fences, and other small tasks a small boy was competent enough to perform.
    Jojanna had taken up as much of her husband’s work as she was capable of, but a lot of it was just not possible. While she was as hard a worker as Kaspar had ever met, even she couldn’t manage to be in two places at the same time. Still, he marveled at how industrious she was; rising before dawn and retiring hours after the sun set, to ensure that the farm would be maintained just as her husband had left it.
    Kaspar had hundreds of tenant-farmers on his estates, and had never once given thought to their toils, always taking their efforts for granted. Now he appreciated their lives to a significant degree. Jojanna and Jorgen lived very well in comparison to most Olaskon farmers, for they owned their land, a small herd, and produced saleable crops; but when Kaspar compared their situation to his old way of life, he realized they lived in near-poverty. How much poorer were the farmers of his own nation?
    His nation, he thought bitterly. His birthright had been taken from him and he would have it back or die in the attempt.
    Jorgen returned with the axe and Kaspar set to chopping the tree into smaller sections.
    After a while the boy said, “Why don’t you split it?”
    “What?”
    Jorgen grinned. “I’ll show you.” He ran back to the shed and returned with a wedge of metal. He stuck the narrow end of the wedge into a notch and held it. “Hit it with the back of the axe,” he told Kaspar.
    Kaspar glanced at the axe and saw that the heel was heavy and flat, almost a hammer. He reversed his hold on the handle and swung down, driving the wedge into the wood. Jorgen pulled his hand away with a laugh and shook his hand. “It always makes my fingers sting!”
    Kaspar gave the wedge three powerful blows and then, with a satisfying cracking sound, the bole split down the middle. Muttering, he observed, “You learn something new every day, if you just stop to pay attention.”
    The boy looked at him with a confused expression and said, “What?”
    Kaspar realized he had spoken his native Olaskon, so he repeated it, as best he could, in the local language and the boy nodded.
    Next, Kaspar set to breaking up the rest of the bole and then chopping the remaining split rails into firewood. He found the repetitive effort strangely relaxing.
    Lately, he had been troubled by dreams, odd vignettes and strange feelings. Small glimpses of things barely remembered, but disturbing. The oddest aspect of these dreams were the details which had escaped his notice in real life. It was as if he was watching himself, seeing himself for the first time in various settings. The images would jump from a court dinner, with his sister sitting at his side, to a conversation with a prisoner in one of the dungeons under his citadel, and then to a memory of something that happened when he was alone. What was most disturbing was how he felt when he awoke, it felt as if he had just relived those moments, but this time the emotions were not consistent with how he remembered them before the dream.
    The third