The Shining Wyrm

6.iii

It is quite interesting to actually hear the voices of the attendants of Shialtza. Their voices are soft and rasping. More breath than timbre. They do not hum, but whistle and although beautiful to hear this makes their Kolkor very difficult to follow.

To be honest they make do with more gestures of the hand, raising of fingers for counts and nods or shakes of the head then words in dealings with my father.

Still it is a poor traveling merchant that would let a lack of language stop trade and good exchange!

With at least our side of the language understood by the attendants of Shialtza and assurance they do have the authority of the god wyrm to agree on price the work goes well and fast!

I can only assume that Shialtza informed his attendants after our departure more deeply of his exact interests because several items we had not mentioned yesterday drew surprisingly great prices.

Some were understandable minor wonders and mechanical spheres. Which although always a solid bet to fetch good prices in foreign lands away from the greatest sea still were purchased with a shocking bounty of pure gold talyn by the attendants!

Of other surprising interest were seeds of common crops we had expected to parcel out along our journey for room and board among farmers when richer clients were unavailable.

For this too the attendants paid well ten times over the usual price!

The generosity of our new host was inspiring some concern from father and he had after the third bag of simple wheat grain was offered a patriarch’s ransom in gold insisted that he could not as an honest merchant accept such a bounty.

That had seemed to confuse the robed and veiled attendant we bartered with but after some nods and sibilant whistles between him and his fellows it was settled and they agreed to the far more reasonable price in Denari weighting.

Although Father had me use a scale to find the equivalent as very few of the silver that Shialtza apparently had was in the form of a familiar coin.

It was a surprising bounty for a mostly untaken path to the far east.

The wealth in metal was by father’s reckoning going to triple at the least when we exchanged it for good elf worked silk and foreign spices and then returned home with the spoils.

We probably would need to purchase more beasts for the caravan and any adventurous mercenaries with sufficient wanderlust to see to our safety on the road back to handle the weight alone.

I wonder if the god wyrm Shialtza has as much a love of silk as he does trinkets?

-Excerpt from the travel log Pythra of Veracules