"Avram Davidson - Bumberboom" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

Bumberboom
by Avram Davidson
This story copyright 1966 by Avram Davidson. Reprinted by permission of the estate of Avram
Davidson. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you
for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


Along the narrow road, marked a few times with cairns of whitewashed stones, a young man came by
with a careful look and a deliberate gait and a something in his budget which went drip-a-drip red. The
land showed gardens and fenced fields and flowering fruit trees. The bleating of sheep sounded faintly.
The young man's somewhat large mouth became somewhat smaller as he reflected how well such a land
might yield... and as he wondered who might hold the yield of it.
Around the road's bend he came upon a small house of wood with an old man peering from the door
with weepy eyes that gave a sudden start on seeing who it was whose feet-sounds on the road had
brought him from his fusty bed. And his scrannel legs shook.
"Fortune for you, senior," the young man said, showing his empty palms. "I do but seek a chance and
place to build a fire to broil the pair of leverets which fortune has sent my way for breakfast."
The old man shook his head and stubble beard. "Leverets, my young, should not be seared on a
naked fire. Leverets should be stewed gently in a proper pot with carrots, onions, and a leek and a leaf
of laurel, to say the least."
With a sigh and a smile and a shrug, the young man said, "You speak as much to the wit as would my
own father, who (I will conceal nothing) is High Man to the Hereditor of Land Qanaras, a land not totally
without Fortune's favor, though not the puissant realm it was before the Great Gene Shift. Woe!-- and
my own name, it is Mallian, son Hazelip."
The old man nodded and bobbled his throat. "This place, to which I make you free, though poor in all
but such mere things as pot and fire and garden herbs-- this place, I say, is mine. Ronan, it is called, and I
am by salutary custom called only 'Ronan's.' To be sure, I have another name, but in view of my age and
ill health you will excuse my not pronouncing it, lest some ill-disposed person overhear and use the
knowledge to work a malevolence upon me... Yonder is the well at which you may fill the pot. So. So.
And who can be ignorant-- ahem-hum-hem-- of the past and present fame of Land Qanaras, that diligent
and canny country in which doubtless flourishes a mastery of medicine of geography, medicine of art and
craft, and medicine of magic as well as other forms of healing; who? Enough, enough. Water, my young.
The leverets are already dead and need not be drowned."
The stew of young hares was sweet and savory, and Ronan's put his crusts to soak in the juice,
remarking that they would do him well for his noonmeal. "Ah ahah!" he said, with a pleasurable
eructation. "How much better are hares in the pot with carrots than in the garden with them! And what
brings you here, my young," he sought for a fragment of flesh caught by a rotting tush, "to the small
enclave which is this Section, not properly termable a Land, and under the beneficent protection of
Themselves, the Kings of the Dwerfs; what? eh? um ahum..." He rolled his rufous and watery eyes swiftly
to his guest, then ostentatiously away.
Mallian gave a start, and his hand twitched towards his sling and pouch, none of which totally escaped
rheumy old Ronan's, for all his silly miming. "I should have known!" Mallian growled, bringing his thick
brown brows together in a scowl. "Those cairns of whited stones... It is a Bandy sign, isn't it?"
Now how the old senior rolled his watery eyes up and down and shook his head! "We make no use of
that pejorative expression, my young! We do not call Them 'Bandies,' No! We call Them, the Kings of
the Dwerfs, so." He winked, pouching up one cheek, squeezing out a tear. "And we are grateful for Their