The Lohvian Cycle I

Chapter five

Chapter five“Get your tongue up behind your teeth, cabbage! No, no — shut your black-fanged winespout! If you stick your tongue out again I’ll bite it off!”

“Th — th—” I mumbled.

“It’s not th you great fambly! It’s t — t — t!”

Some people would welcome the preliminaries to Mevancy biting their tongue off. That was my incongruous thought. The tent Leotes had placed at her disposal had belonged to a stromni who had died of blood-poisoning some way back east. The tent was comfortable, well-furnished and pleasant. I sat on a figured rug and drooled, trying to learn to speak all over again as I had done at my mother’s knee all those years ago four hundred light years from Kregen.

Although I had no personal stake in the people who had been taken by the bandits, I was pleased that Leotes had