Authors: Gillian Andrews
Six felt the rays of the sun beating down on his face and knew himself to be lucky. Just the feel of Diva’s hand in his made him happy. And here he was, a no-name from Kwaide, cantering across the most beautiful planet in the whole system, enjoying a true holiday with all the people he cared for most. He looked up at the towering Xianthes, coming slowly closer in front of them, and then back at Raven, who was now on her best behaviour behind him, cantering on her own, although Ledin was keeping a keen eye on her. His daughter was a hoyden at heart, he knew. She was so much like her mother that sometimes he felt he was talking to a younger Diva.
He looked sideways at his wife and gave her hand a small squeeze. “Are you happy?”
She understood immediately. “Yes! I never thought I would be, did you? When they operated on me on Valhai, when they took all my genetic material, it was as if the future was a solid iron wall in front of me; something too heavy to even contemplate. I could never have imagined having a day like this. This is a day of sunlight and hazy clouds, one of those perfect days you usually have only as a child.”
Six shook his head. “I never had a day like this as a child.”
“No. You wouldn’t. I’m sorry, I was forgetting.”
“For me, this is a magical day, one I never thought I would live.”
“I know what you mean. It is like flying above the land; there is something intoxicating in the air; a day to remember.”
“Yes. You do understand.” The movement of the two canths suddenly put them out of step, making them drop hands, but they smiled sideways at each other, and Diva felt a fizz in her heart. It was as if the air sparked between them, leaving them breathless and dazzled.
“I love you,” she said, quietly.
“I love you too.”
Diva pulled her canth in, letting it dance on the spot. “Race you to that Eletheian tree!” she shouted. “Bet you can’t catch up!” Her mount gave a buck with a back kick that would have unseated a lesser rider, but which Diva hardly seemed to notice.
Six picked up his hands. “You have to be kidding. My canth could beat yours with a twenty furlong start. I’m on!”
Diva’s eyes flashed. “Then let’s go!” She urged her mount into a full stretched gallop.
Ledin watched Six’s canth give a tremendous leap after Diva’s and put a restraining hand out on Raven’s reins.
“I want to gallop too!” she grumbled.
“Yes, but let’s give your parents a few moments to themselves.”
Raven pulled a face and then thought better of it. She had to make herself a better person; she would never get any colour if she kept this up. She marshaled her features into some semblance of decorum and nodded.
Six and Diva thundered along the Great Plain. They could hardly remember when they first set foot on Xiantha, when they had hired a vaniven cart to take them to the Donor Headquarters, before they had heard of, or seen a canth. Now all that seemed to have vanished into a distant past, one which could be taken out and dusted if necessary, but which was hidden by a patina of time.
They were both feeling euphoric as they enjoyed the flat-out stride of their canths. They hadn’t had a good gallop like this together in months.
Six edged his canth closer to hers. She was still a fraction in the lead, but he thought he could catch her all the same. Not that it was important to win. This was a race that was all about the running, not the arriving.
Their eyes flashed with enjoyment and they were young children again. It was just them, the thudding of the canths’ hooves in the dust, and a moment of elation.
At last they reached the tree, pounding up to it in a dead heat – whether by chance or by choice neither of them was sure. They pulled up with a scattering of loose top sand, and then threw themselves off their canths, and made their way under the shady tree, leaving the canths to forage, and rest.
Six sat with his back to the tree, munching on the stalk of a mellowbell he had found surviving in the shade.
“Told you I would beat you!” he said.
She pushed him. “You wish!” She flopped down beside him.
He put an arm around her and pulled her towards him, tucking her under his shoulder. “You are a bad influence.”
“I know.” She sounded pleased with herself.
“It is hard to believe we are parents, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “No kidding!”
“Raven is like you.”
“Yes.”
“Any regrets?”
“None at all.”
He chewed on the stalk. “Good.”
They settled down to wait, in companionable silence.
IT DIDN’T TAKE long for the others to join them, and they all arrived together at the canth farm. The man who spoke to canths was waiting, his own bay canth saddled up and ready.
Grace brought the magsled to a halt, and she and Temar tumbled out after Bennel and Tallen, happy to stretch their legs. Tallen moved quickly over to Raven to help her down from her canth. She would benefit from a short break, too, he thought. It could not be easy staying in the saddle, not at her age.
Raven let herself fall into Tallen’s waiting arms. “You see?” she asked him excitedly. “’Aven ride good!”
“You ride very well, young one. One day you will be as good as your mother!”
Raven looked across at her magnificent mother, who was sitting quite happily in the saddle while making her canth plunge. Her mouth dropped open. It was the first sign she had had that one day she might grow like her mother. The concept was puzzling, but she couldn’t think of anybody she would rather be like. She gazed at her mother, eyebrows furrowed.
Six grinned at Diva. “She has your eyebrows! They snap together when she’s cross, just like yours do!”
Diva’s eyebrows instantly formed the referred-to shape. “Mine don’t do that!”
But Six was pointing at her face and laughing too much to reply. Diva tossed her head.
The canth keeper ignored them, congratulating Tallen on his recovery. He asked him about any possible permanent damage, and the Namuri was reassuring him, when the canth keeper held up one hand in surprise. Two large canths had come up to the gates of their respective corrals. The Xianthan opened them slowly, his face showing confusion.
“That is strange. Look at their stance – they only do that when there is to be a joining,” he explained.
Grace had already guessed what was happening, and clapped her mangled hands together in delight. “Bennel and Tallen!” she said.
The two Coriolans exchanged incredulous looks. “Us?” said Tallen. “But we don’t deserve … we are nobody.”
“The canths clearly don’t think so!” Grace told them both severely. “Don’t forget; they got to know you both during the trip to Kintara. This is great!”
Bennel stared in amazement at the tall chestnut canth that had placed its muzzle gently against his arm and lowered its head to him. He stretched up to scratch its forehead, just where it had a small white star, and it rubbed its nose against him and blew air into the palm of his hand. He gazed into the intelligent eyes with awe.
“Me?” he muttered. “A canth has really chosen me? But I am just a companion.”
Diva looked in Six’s direction. She could feel his thoughts. He might just as well have spoken them aloud. She put them into words herself. “You are not ‘just’ anything, Bennel. The canths obviously think you have much colour.”
The man still shook his head, so moved that he couldn’t speak.
Tallen was not so modest. He gave a small shout of pleased surprise and then sprang up onto his pinto’s back. “I have a canth!” he proclaimed into the air. “He chose me! He chose a Namuri!”
Then the boy grinned widely at them all and cantered wildly around the top circular paddock, rider and canth in total agreement that such a day deserved to be acknowledged with energy. The canth even gave a buck which nearly unseated its rider, but Tallen received it with a cry of glee, staying on his mount effortlessly despite his still-recuperating leg. He might have been born in the saddle. Diva thought of the sight of her small daughter leading a crippled boy out of the marshes only a month earlier, and felt her heart swell; the Namuri deserved this. He deserved some joy in his life.
THEY REACHED THE Lost Valley after a few more hours. The magsled which had brought Grace and Temar was already parked near a small clearing, next to a portable tent they had put up for changing and for shade. The others made their way over.
“We are the only ones here today,” Grace told them.
“We are?” Six sounded surprised. “How come?”
“Well, actually, because of you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. Apparently, since one of us is an ambassador, the whole place has had to be closed down.”
“No! —That makes me feel just like an Elder. I do hate being an ambassador.”
“By the way,” said Ledin. “I forgot to tell you, Kwaide has decided to make the position permanent and extend it to the whole of the Almagest system.”
Six was horrified. “You’re joking! They know I loathe the job. Why would they do that?”
“Because Arcan told them that under the conditions of the treaty he can’t and won’t transport anybody else all over the system.”
Grace nodded. “It does make sense, Six. I mean, it would be a bit compromising to have anybody else sent over from Kwaide. They wouldn’t know about the canths, or the lost animas, or anything.”
Six gave a grunt. “This is all Ledin’s fault. Why doesn’t he give up the orbital station and live full-time here on Xiantha? Then
he
could do the job.”
Ledin grinned. “Because you do it so much better than I could? All the Xianthans know you are a
Valhai
, which gives you instant respect and colour. I would have to work at it so much harder than you.”
“You just wanted to get out of it.”
“No. Putting up with Tartalus’s visits through the orbital station is worse, believe me.”
“Is he still going backwards and forwards?”
“Once a month. Never fails. I don’t know quite what he is doing down there in the areas around Benefice, but I am fairly sure I wouldn’t like it.”
“So am I. One day we should take the time to find out just what his ambassadorship entails.”
“You’re right. We should.”
Six sighed. “Oh well, if Arcan has decided it is to be me, I suppose there is nothing else left to say. But I don’t want the Xianthans told they can’t come in today just because I am here. I don’t want to be that sort of person. Can’t you change the instructions, Man who speaks to canths?”
The Xianthan nodded. “I can try, if you are sure.”
He got back into the magsled and disappeared in the direction of the canths. Sometime later they saw that he had been successful, for the area began to fill up with visitors, although these were careful to leave quite a big circle around the ambassador’s party.
“As if we had the Cesan plague,” said Diva. “Still, at least they have been allowed in.”
“Now we can find this bottomless pool they all talk about.” Six unsaddled his canth, and freed it, where it immediately began to graze on a small patch of grass which was clearly tended to especially for canths. The other equines followed suit.
Ledin found himself joining the others, who had all stripped down to the simple bathing costumes which the Xianthans used. He plucked Temar out of the tent and lifted him up easily onto his shoulders. They made their way along to the edge of the clearing and peered over.
“Sacras!” Ledin opened his eyes wide and clutched at the chubby legs dangling to either side of his neck.
“That looks a long way down!” said Six, in awe, coming up behind him.
Ledin gave a silent whistle. “A long, long way down!”
The baby stared, looked frightened and grabbed hold of Ledin’s hair.
They were all so surprised that they simply stood there, staring, and didn’t even hear the others come up.
Diva found herself gazing down into the bottomless pool in silence, too.
There was a small drop to the surface of the water, of only about one metre. But the pool was not called bottomless for no reason. It must have been perhaps forty or fifty metres in diameter, a hole in the crust of the Lost Valley which sparkled with wonderfully clear water. Through the transparent water, the sides of the pool were visible. They consisted in cliffs of solid rock, which seemed to plunge down right to the centre of the planet, a vertiginous drop which plummeted vertically away from them below their feet. The sensation of great height was overwhelming, dizzying. The cliffs fell away beneath them as far as the eye could see, their sides partially streaked by green vegetation. At the surface the water was clearer and you could see how the shiny moss became gradually darker and darker as you looked further down, but in the centre the pool’s depth made the water appear completely black; there was no sign of it ever ending.
“Lumina!” said Six. “I wonder what made that?”
The canth keeper had come back up. “It was originally a large vertical cavern, in prehistoric times, but the roof caved in after the collision with Valhai, and then it flooded in the last glacial age.”
“How far down does it go?” asked Six, intrigued.
“No-one knows. Immersions have been made up to two hundred metres, and no end was seen.” The canth keeper waved a hand. “The water is not static, however; it seems to be continually refreshed by small springs and filtration, which is why we can swim safely in it.”
Grace was impressed. “I didn’t think there was much water up here near the Xianthes.”
“There isn’t; it is mostly way underground, except for the Emerald Lake, but this is the Lost Valley, so much lower than the rest of the surrounding land that there are three or four areas of surface-lying water.”
“What do we do?” asked Raven, impatient.
“Well, Raven of Xiantha, you jump in.”
“Jump in?” Raven peered warily over the edge again and gave a shiver. “Deep. Don’t want to.”
“You know how to swim. The water will keep you buoyant.”
Raven squinted again. “Not going to jump. Big drop. Will fall.”