Honor Crowned by Michael G. Southwick

forgive him.  He doesn’t mean any harm.  He’s a bit slow and doesn’t think right.  His mother usually looks after him and I’m afraid I lost track of him.  Come now, Cort, let’s leave the Prince to his tasks.”
    The woman took Cort by the arm and started leading him away.
    Cort looked back at the map.  “Iss wong,” he said as he was led away.
    Jorem recognized the man’s affliction.  He’d heard of it and even read accounts of it before.  It was rare, and even rarer for someone with the condition to live as long as this man had.  Some called it God-cursed; others thought it to be an injury from birth.  One man who’d made a study of it said he believed these people actually thought on a higher level than the rest.  Their minds worked perfectly well, they just had difficulty communicating with those who couldn’t think as they did.
    “Iss wong,” Jorem thought as he looked at the map.  The lines were still there, just shifted a little from their original positions.  “Why move them such small distances?”   Jorem glanced back at the old woman leading Cort away.  Could there be a good reason for Cort’s actions?
    “Slow.”   Pentrothe’s grating whisper echoed in Jorem’s memories.  “Do not confuse slow with unintelligent.  Some of the greatest minds in history were considered slow at some point.  Yet without their contributions, we would likely be no better off than the beasts of the wild.  Take wisdom where you find it lest it be lost to you.”
    “Wait.”  Jorem’s voice echoed across the nearly vacant room.
    The old woman hesitated, uncertain whether Jorem spoke to her or not.  Jorem walked briskly over to them.  Once at Cort’s side, Jorem gently laid a hand on his shoulder to draw his attention.  Cort turned to him with the same distant expression.
    Jorem pointed back at the map.  “Show me, please.”
    Cort brightened as though he’d been invited to play a game.  Together, the three of them walked back to the map hanging on the wall.  Jorem pointed to the line Cort had moved.  “Why here?”
    “Deys ditses.  Is bettew to do where dey was.”  Cort’s slurred words made it difficult to understand him, but something told Jorem this was important.  “My dog bewied his bones out dewe.  Dogs is smawt.  Dig whewe is soft.  Whew da ditses wew.”
    Cort turned back to the map, erased another line and drew a new one a little bit away from the one he’d just erased.  The old woman looked as though she thought Jorem had lost his mind.  Jorem closed his eyes and let Cort’s words repeat over and over in his mind.
    Dogs and bones he’d caught.  Dogs bury bones.  That made sense.  Swapping r’s for w’s or l’s wasn’t so unusual.  Many children had the same speech problem.  So dogs dig where it’s soft.  So maybe only some parts of the ground in the open area are soft.  But how would you know where?
    What are ditses and how would they affect the hardness of the ground?  When he asked Cort what a dits was, all he got was a look of exasperation. The old woman was no help at all in deciphering Cort’s words.
    “Reason it out,” Jorem told himself.  What makes the ground soft?  Water was the first thing to come to mind, but that didn’t make sense.  If there was water out there, it would be fairly obvious.  Plowing would soften the first couple of hand spans, but not much more.  Digging would do it, but who would dig straight lines across…?
    “Ditches!” Jorem exclaimed.
    Cort just looked at him as if to say ‘Duh, it’s about time!’
    “There used to be ditches across the field for watering the crops.”  Now Jorem was getting excited.  This information could save a great deal of work.
    “How do you know where the ditches were?” Jorem asked.
    “Thin da books,” Cort replied as though this were an incredibly obvious thing.  “Aw da books of aw da times is in da book woom.”
    “Of course they are!” Jorem grinned.  “And