Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (15 page)

“Very good,” she says, turning to Gift. “But my horses won’t tolerate being cooped up. At least not at first. Put them in the outdoor pens, two to each. Let them get used to being in a new place before you put them in the cave.”

Gift seems reluctant but he looks to Orion, who nods firmly. “If that’s the way the human wants it,” Gift says in a snide tone, “that’s the way it will be.”

While Malora has been inspecting the stable, the herd has straggled and spread out on the hillside, some wandering down into the shadow of the city wall. It is as if their steadily clicking, pulling, munching teeth have become attached to the grass.

Twanian wranglers go to round them up, but Malora says, “Give them more time. I don’t think they’ve ever had grass this green and juicy.”

Gift clenches his fists, waiting for Malora to say when the horses have had enough. Then Malora and the Twanian wranglers lead the horses, two by two, to their little paddocks, while Malora introduces each of them by name. There are buckets for feed and water in every pen. “You’ll have to double up on the buckets so they won’t fight. Put the buckets at opposite ends of the enclosure.

“If Lightning gets out, don’t worry,” she goes on. “She can untie knots, so I’m sure latches won’t hold her if she wants at that grass. Raven’s a prankster. And Stormy has a temper, but only if you come at her too fast.…”

Orion reads the worry in her voice. “I think the boys and girls will be fine here, don’t you?” he says.

Malora nods uncertainly.

“I think it’s time we left the Twani to get to know the horses on their own, don’t you?” he asks.

Malora nods again, reluctant still.

She remembers something else. She catches Gift’s eye. “Oh, yes, and you might think it’s a good idea to keep the stallions away from the mares, but it’s not. Mares have a calming effect on stallions. Let them mingle now and then. You know the ones who get along. You saw how they grouped themselves in the camps.”

Gift nods. “I did.”

“Right,” Malora says, looking around.

Orion catches her eye. “Right?” he says, eyebrows raised.

“Right,” she says again with a resigned sigh.

While Orion looks on, Malora goes around saying good night to the herd, stroking their necks and untangling their forelocks and rubbing her nose with theirs. She saves Lightning for last. “Keep an eye on the boys and girls,” she whispers to the big mare. “I’m leaving you in charge.” But all Lightning cares about right now is her feed.

As Malora walks away, she feels as if she has forgotten something, and then she realizes what it is: it’s the horses! This is the first time she will be separated from them—from many, since they were born; from others, since she rescued them. She feels a squeezing sensation in her chest. She will be on the top of the mountain and they will be at the foot, and that, as Orion would say, is the way of it. Without Lightning beneath her, her two legs feel stubby and insubstantial as Orion walks her back toward the gate. They round the bend and are blinded temporarily by the rays of the lowering sun.
West calls out to them from the high front seat of a long, many-wheeled wagon loaded with smooth, square stones. West sits beside the driver, another Twan. The wagon is hitched to a team of six horses as big as the Furies but stockier, with huge, shaggy hooves.

“Such giants!” Malora exclaims as she walks among the horses, scratching ears, stroking noses.

“Beltanian draft horses,” Orion explains. “They do the heavy hauling in Mount Kheiron.”

The lorry driver alights and pulls a ramp down from the rear of the wagon. “For Your Excellence’s convenience in boarding,” he says.

“Come, Malora!” Orion says. “I want to show you the city before it’s dark.”

Malora pulls herself away from the team and follows Orion up the ramp into the back of the lorry.

The Twan slides the ramp into the wagon and then climbs into the front seat next to West. He clicks his tongue. Malora and Orion hang on to the slatted wooden side of the lorry as, heads bobbing, the team begins its plodding uphill progress, dragging stones and passengers.

“Where is this Twan’s centaur?” Malora asks, gesturing to their driver.

“Not every Twan has a centaur. There are more Twani than there are Highlanders. Many of the Twani simply have jobs and, in that way, satisfy their sense of obligation. This is the market,” Orion explains. “It is quite the plainest, most businesslike section of our city.”

Surrounded on three sides by vaulted stone arches and
colonnades, it doesn’t look plain to Malora. It looks like the central square of the Settlement, only grander.

“Who built this?” she asks.

“This part of Mount Kheiron dates from the olden days,” Orion says. “The People—the Grandparents—built it.”

Malora nods, pleased that she recognized it.

Flatlanders, packing up their wares, stop as the lorry passes and stare up at Malora, fear and wonderment mingled in their eyes. The lorry rolls on, and Malora takes in the sights. Buildings tower on all sides, sparkling in the last rays of the sun. The buildings are covered with countless tiny gems that form pictures: of centaurs and animals, of mountains and pools and waterfalls and flowers and trees and birds and insects and suns and moons. Malora is entranced by the sparkling images.

“We call these mosaics,” Orion explains. “It is an ancient art that uses materials placed together to create a unified whole. The materials used are stone, gems, mirrors, glass, even shells from far-off Kahiro.”

Malora notices that there are mosaics and paintings on nearly every structure in sight, towers and arches alike. Almost nothing looks like a humble home. It is a city made up almost entirely of palaces, and everything she sees, every pillar and every post, is decorated. When it isn’t portraits or scenes, it is patterns: leaves and feathers and fish scales and stripes and rainbows and colorful spiraling patterns like those she sees when she closes her eyes and presses her fingers to her eyelids, which she feels like doing right now.

“My eyes hurt!” she says with a helpless little laugh.

“That’s not surprising,” Orion says. “You are accustomed to seeing the world stripped to its primal essence. I’ve been in the bush long enough that I can understand a little of how you must feel right now, blinded by all this. Surrounded as you have been by natural beauty, this must seem almost garish by comparison.”

“If you mean it’s ugly, no,” she says. “It’s beautiful. Is all of this beauty the work of centaur hands?”

“It is,” he says proudly.

Malora’s eyes dart about. Even the paving stones beneath the lorry’s iron wheels have been glazed or individually painted with intricate designs. “I don’t know where to look,” she says.

“Yes,” he says thoughtfully. “I see what you’re saying. Out in the bush, one’s eyes do, in fact, know where to look, because nature doesn’t overplay her own hand. It occurs to me for the first time that there might be something just a little arrogant about our need to express ourselves on every available surface. It’s as if we were attempting to outdo nature rather than pay tribute to it.”

Malora has no idea what he’s talking about. All she knows is that it will take her days, maybe years, to visit each mosaic and really look at it. Impervious to all this glorious workmanship, West has fallen fast asleep, head resting on the driver’s shoulder. When the hill can get no steeper, the driver swings the wagon into a sharp turn and proceeds down a street that is level but bumpy and narrow and hugs the mountainside.

“We’re on a service road,” Orion says. “Rest your eyes.”

Malora is astonished to see that even the backs of the
buildings are decorated, less lavishly perhaps but still amply adorned.

The lorry finally grinds to a halt before a blue-and-white canopy that calls to mind the centaurs’ tents. They have arrived at the House of Silvermane. Two Twani in blue-and-white tunics push themselves away from a blue-striped pillar.

“There she is, all right,” one of them says, gawking up at Malora.

“There she is, indeed,” the other one says.

“Allow me to present Rain and Lemon, keepers of the rear gates. Rain and Lemon, this is Malora Ironbound.”

Malora nods to them, smiling. Just this morning, she saw her first lemons, ripening in a grove on their way into Mount Kheiron. Malora is guessing which Twan is Lemon by his halo of yellow hair.

Lemon tears his eyes away from Malora to say, “Welcome home, Your Fine Excellence. Rounded up more than just horses on your expedition, didn’t you now?”

“Is the Apex at home?” Orion asks.

“Yes, Your Young Excellence,” says Rain, licking a hand and lifting it to wash the hair on his head, which is sleek and white. “He and Herself have just returned from a jubilation of the Hand.”

“Whose?” he asks.

Rain pauses in his washing to think. “Your cousin Brea has achieved recognition for painting.”

“Would you like us to request an audience?” Lemon asks.

“I can take care of that myself, thank you.” Orion clatters down the ramp and reaches up to shake West gently awake.

Rain and Lemon stare up at West’s face in fascination. “So the rumors must be true,” they whisper to each other.

West stirs and wakens. He slips down from the lorry bench and shakes himself vigorously awake. “Come along, master, let’s get you bathed,” he says.

“I can see to myself tonight, West,” Orion says, turning to Rain and Lemon. “I’d like you to take West in hand and make sure his wounds are healing properly.”

“We clean our own wounds,” Rain says, with a flick of his pink tongue.

“Nevertheless,” Orion says, “I’d like to look after him this night. He has had a challenging time in the bush.”

“Don’t worry about me, master,” West says. “Rain is right. I can see to myself.”

“As can I this evening. Do this for me, West,” Orion says.

West blinks once very slowly. The long hairs of his eyebrows twitch. “As you say, master.”

As Lemon and Rain drape their arms around his shoulders, West begins to tell his story: “It was a sweltering night in the bush, deep in the heart of lion country.…” The Twani guards disappear with West into a small side door as they listen avidly to his tale.

“Very distractible, those two.” Orion says to Malora with a grin. “And that’s why they are on the
back
door and not on the
front
. Come, please.”

Malora follows him beneath the awning and through a set of wide double doors painted blue with ivory handles. She stares hard at the door as it opens, trying to figure out how it works. In the Settlement, animal skins on screens served as doors.

The floors inside the house are paved in polished amber. She is conscious of how dirty her feet are as they pad alongside Orion down the gleaming, golden hallway.

“This is very grand,” she whispers, leery of her voice echoing off the walls.

“This?” He laughs. “This is only the servants’ quarters. Up front it’s
much
grander.”

At the end of the hallway is another door, this one green with simpler handles. “I can’t wait to see the look on Honus’s face,” he says as he knocks.

“Come!” a mild voice calls out from within.

Orion positions Malora to the side of the door and mimes for her to keep silent. He peers around the door, and she puts her eye to the chink. Inside the room, he sees a small man with a pointed beard and curly brown hair through which two small horns protrude. He is seated in a plush chair, and his legs, encased in brown leather, are crossed at his furry ankles. His feet, she sees, are delicately cloven like a goat’s. This, then, is the faun called Honus, half goat, half human being, the so-called cloven-hoofed polymath.

Honus is speaking to someone beyond the range of her vision. “We’ll continue this later, my dear,” he says, and then his eyes shift to Orion.

“Back from the bush at last, are we?” He removes a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. There is a pair much like these in the Grandparents’ Box in the Hall of the People. The table next to Honus is a chaos of books and quills and scrolls, all items Malora has also seen in the box. She presses closer to the crack in the door and sees more books than she can count crammed onto shelves lining the walls. Mixed in with the
books are rocks and crystals and skulls and other objects of great mystery, jeweled statues of birds and lizards and monkeys. Honus must be a powerful Otherian to be trusted to flaunt such treasures.

“Come in, my boy,” Honus says, “and tell us all about it.”

“Yes, do!” A small graceful centaur ambles into view. She has a round, beautiful face with eyes the same startling splash of blue as Orion’s and a pronounced dimple in her little chin. Her soft, pale blue wrap, pinned at her shoulder with a jeweled butterfly brooch, is filmy and swirls around her compact equine form like mist. Her shiny black curls escape from an oddly shaped cap that has a design of purple flowers on it. She throws her arms around Orion and cries in a musical voice, “Welcome home, Orrie, dearest! We missed you!” Then she backs off, her little nose twitching. “Orion Silvermane, shame on you, of all centaurs. You smell like a horse! And look at you! What happened? You look like you’ve been mauled by lions.”

“I was, actually,” he says with a modest smile.

“No!” she gasps.

Orion shrugs. “Well, West was, at least. And I was witness.”

“It sounds to me as if you have had yourself quite an adventure,” Honus says with an eyebrow raised. His face is dominated by a broad, smooth forehead that looks exactly as Orion described it to Malora during one of their talks in the bush: “the vault containing most of the knowledge and intelligence in Mount Kheiron.”

“Do please stay to sup and tell us all about it,” the keeper of the vault says.

“
After
you’ve gone to your rooms and showered,” Zephele stipulates, arms akimbo, tapping a hoof in its bright red boot.

“First, I have something special to show you,” Orion says.

Zephele claps her hands together. “A souvenir of the bush? Oh, bliss! What is it? Rocks? Feathers? Bones? Some cunning fossil specimen to add to our darling Honus’s collection?”

Orion reaches out and reels in Malora from her hiding place behind the door. “Her name,” Orion says proudly, “is Malora Ironbound. I found her running with the wild horses in those self-same red-rocked mountains. She’s half wild herself and very brave. She saved West from the predations of a lion.” He turns to Malora. “Malora, this is my sister, Zephele. And our teacher, Honus. Both of whom you have heard me speak.”