Talon of the Silver Hawk by Raymond E. Feist Read Free Book Online

was mainly the hybrid of Low Keshian and the King’s Tongue, developed by years of trading along the border of those two vast nations.
    Still, Talon had an ear for language, he discovered, and quickly picked up the speech from the constantly cheerful girl.
    She was five years his senior, and had come to Kendrick’s in a circuitous manner if her story was to be believed. She claimed to have been the serving girl to a Princess of Roldem, who had been en route to a state-arranged marriage with a noble in the court of the Prince of Aranor. Depending on his full understanding of her language and the frequency with which the story changed, she had been abducted by either pirates or bandits and sold into slavery, from which she had been freed by a kind benefactor or escaped. In any event, the girl from the distant island nation across the Sea of Kingdoms had found her way to Kendrick’s, where she had been a serving girl for the last two years.
    She was constantly happy, always quick with a joke, and very pretty. And Talon was becoming quickly infatuated with her.
    He still ached inside at the thought of Eye of the Blue-Winged Teal, lying dead somewhere with the rest of her family. Left unburied for the carrion eaters. He shoved the image aside as he lugged the huge wicker basket he carried on his back.
    Lela seemed to think his being assigned to her freed her from the need to make several trips to the stream to clean the clothing. So she had found a basket four feet in height and had rigged a harness so he could lug it up the hill on his back. Taking the clothing down to the stream was the easy part of the morning; carrying the sopping-wet garments back up to the inn was the difficult part.
    â€œCaleb says you’re a good hunter.’’
    Talon hesitated a moment, as he had to think about the words before he answered. “I’ve hunted my life for all.’’
    She corrected his sentence structure, and he repeated what she had said. “I’ve hunted for all my life.’’
    Talon felt frustration inside as Lela prattled on; half ofwhat she said was lost on him and the other half was mostly gossip from the kitchen, about people he had barely glimpsed. He listened hard, but much of what she said was still lost on him.
    He felt lost in a lot of ways. He was still sleeping in the barn, though alone, as Pasko had vanished on some errand for Robert. He saw only a little of Robert, glimpsed through a window of the inn or as he was crossing from the rear of the inn to the privy. Occasionally, the man who had saved his life would pause and exchange a few idle pleasantries with Talon, speaking in either the Common Tongue or in Roldemish. When he spoke the latter, he also would reply only if Talon spoke in that language.
    Talon was still not allowed inside the inn. He didn’t think that strange; as an outsider, he wouldn’t have expected to be admitted to an Orosini lodge, but these were not the Orosini. As he was a servant now, he assumed his sleeping in the barn to be a servant’s lot. There was so much about these people he didn’t understand.
    He found himself tired a lot. He didn’t understand why; he was a young man, usually energetic and happy, but since he came to Kendrick’s, he battled black moods and nearly overwhelming sadness on a daily basis. If he was set to a task by Robert or Pasko, or in the company of Caleb or Lela, he found his mind turning away from the darker musing he was prey to when he was left alone. He wished for his grandfather’s wisdom on this, yet thinking about his family plunged him deeper into the morbid introspection that caused him to feel trapped within a black place from which there was no escape.
    The Orosini were an open people among themselves, talking about their thoughts and feelings easily, even among those not of the immediate family, yet they appeared stolid, even taciturn, to outsiders. Gregariouseven by the standards of his