His boat had begun to slow when he had stopped
UGGS Clearance poling. Now the stern began to swing gradually out to the middle of the watercourse, turning him sideways so that he faced the bank-or rather, what would have been the bank if this were a dryland river. Here in the Wran it was only a tangle of clustered mangroves whose roots held in just enough sand for the colony of trees to grow and prosper. Tiamak made a resigned noise and pushed his pole back into the water once more, straightening the boat and prodding it forward through a thick clump of lilies which clutched at his passing hull like the fingers of
UGGS Clearance drowning swimmers. It was several more days to Kwanitupul, and that was if the storm he was praying for did not bring heavy winds in its train, winds which might uproot trees and make this part of the Wran an unpassable snarl of roots and trunks and broken branches.
He Who Always Steps on Sand, he amended his prayer, let a cooling but gentle storm come soon!
His heart felt unutterably heavy. How could he choose between two such awful possibilities? He could go as far as Kwanitupul before choosing whether to stay there in accordance with Morgenes' wishes or to go on to Nabban
UGG Boots Clearance as Older Mogahib and the rest had ordered. He tried to soothe himself with that idea, but wondered if such thinking was not in fact just like allowing a wound to fester, when instead he should grit his teeth and clean it out so the healing could start?
Tiamak thought of his mother, who had spent most of her life on her knees, tending the cookfire, grinding grain in the pestle, working every day from the darkness before dawn until it was time to crawl into the hammock at night. He had little respect for the village elders, but now he felt a sudden
UGG Boots Clearance fear that his mother's spirit might be watching him. She would never understand her son turning his back on his people for the sake of strangers. She would want him to go to Nabban. Serve his own folk first, then take care of his personal honor, that was what his mother would say.
Thinking of her made it seem very clear. He was a Wrannaman first: nothing would change that. He must go to Nabban. Morgenes, that kind old man, would understand his reasons. Afterward, after he had finished his duties to his people, he would go back to Kwanitupul as his drylander friends
UGGS clearance had asked.
The decision lifted part of the load of worry from Tiamak's shoulders. He decided he might as well stop soon and scare up something for a noon meal. He reached down and tested his fishing line, tied to the back of the flatboat. It seemed light; as he pulled it up he saw to his disgust that the bait had been eaten again, but whatever had dined at his expense had not waited around to pay respects. At least the hook was still there. Metal hooks were painfully expensive items-he had paid for this one with an entire day of work as
Jordan Heels an interpreter in the market at Kwanitupul. The next month at market he had found the parchment with Nisses' name on it, and had paid a full day's wages for that as well. Two expensive purchases, but the fishook had indeed proved much sturdier than the ones he whittled of bone, which usually broke on the first snag. The Nisses parchment-he patted protectively at the oilskin bag lying at his feet-if he was correct about its origins, was a gem beyond price. Not bad work for two days' marketing.