Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (13 page)

The lion rumbles querulously, his mouth full, and shakes West back and forth like a doll.

“Don’t you dare make me skewer you!” Malora growls at a pitch to match the lion’s. She takes two paces closer and draws the stick over one shoulder, sighting the beast’s head down its length.

The lion’s jaws open wide, spilling West onto the ground. West rolls away from the lion, then goes on rolling, under his own power, toward Malora’s feet.

Malora keeps the spear trained on the lion’s head. As if daring him to move, she heaves up the spear and jams it spike-first into the ground. With little more gentleness than the lion showed, she shakes West by the scruff and empties him out of his tunic. Wadding up the garment, she tosses it at the lion’s head.

“There, Grandfather,” she says. “Take your prize and go. Consider yourself lucky I didn’t run your bony old carcass through with this fence rail.”

The lion catches up the tunic in his teeth, gives it a sound shaking, and then pads off into the night with it.

West lies whimpering.

Malora catches sight of Orion through the tent’s mesh. Shrugging as if what she has just done were nothing, she flashes him a smile that is full of sisterly tenderness and says, “Run like an impala, get eaten like an impala.”

Lanterns swinging, the centaurs pour out of their tents. It is the middle of the night and yet they seem wide-awake as they clap and cheer and chatter among themselves. While the Twani bear West off to see to his wounds, the centaurs crowd around Malora.

“You were magnificent!” Theon tells her, his gray eyes brimming.

“Truly valorous!” Mather says.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Devan crows.

“Wait till they hear about this back home!” Theon says.

“Did you see how she faced down the lion?” Marsh says to Elmon.

“I will remember it for the rest of my days,” vows Elmon to Marsh.

“We will tell our children,” says March.

Theon bows before Malora. “Take my tent, please. You have earned it with your brave act tonight.”

Malora laughs lightly. “I don’t want your tent. And I really wasn’t all that brave.”

Mather protests, “You are too modest!”

Malora says, “I am just being honest. The lion was
old
.”

Theon rolls his eyes. “The lion was
ferocious
. Did you not hear his growl? Did you not smell his feral stench? And what about West’s poor ravaged face!”

“He had just enough teeth in his head to bite a Twan, but he never could have choked down a whole centaur,” Malora says.

The others all speak at once, begging, with all due respect, to differ with her.

“I am afraid you will just have to accept the fact that you are our heroine,” Orion says in her ear. “And I must insist that you sleep in
my
tent tonight. I will stay with Theon.”

“He will, indeed!” says Theon, as if sharing a tent with his brother were a rare honor.

“But I don’t
want
to sleep in your tent,” Malora tells Orion. “I’d rather stay with the boys and girls.” Then she looks at the gathering of centaurs. They appear so eager, so thrilled, so touchingly grateful—and so very much more friendly than they have been—that she hates to disappoint. “All right,” she concedes, “just for tonight.”

At first, Malora finds the bed in Orion’s tent so comfortable it is difficult to fall asleep. She wants to stay awake so she can revel in it like a horse wriggling on its back in a fine dust wallow. The mattress is big and soft, and her body sinks into it and hangs suspended. The blanket covering her is as soft as down and sweetly scented, smelling faintly of roses. In the lantern light, the Twani keep darting in to set small gifts
on the blanket for her: tiny bags of dried fruit and a square of deliciously moist cake with nuts in it; small bouquets of khaki flowers tied with ribbon; and a cup of tea that tastes the way dew-drenched wildflowers smell at dawn.

Gorged on cake and quenched by tea, Malora eventually drifts off and sleeps more deeply than in recent memory, awakening to the morning sunlight beating down upon the blue-and-white tent over her head. Her first thought is, How in the world will I be able to go back to sleeping on the ground with the horses? She stretches. She notices that there is a small pale blue crystal flask on the camp table next to the bed. She reaches over and lifts the stopper, bringing it to her nose and inhaling deeply.

Her mind fills with a picture of a much younger Orion. He is laughing and playing a game using black-and-white stones with a much younger Theon. They are arguing in a good-natured fashion. A third centaur with wild black curly hair charges into the room and seems to be shouting something at them, something Malora cannot hear. Orion, his face white, says something, a retort perhaps. More angered still, the wild-haired centaur fastens his beefy hands around Orion’s throat and starts to squeeze. Orion’s face turns red, the blue veins in his forehead bulging, and he crumples to the floor while Theon beats the larger centaur on the back with his fists. The large centaur laughs at him while Theon weeps. It is all Malora can do not to weep along with him. Her heart aches for the two little centaur boys.

With a small sob, Malora quickly replaces the stopper and returns the crystal flask to the table. Moments later, West ducks into the tent. He is carrying a tray.

West falls still. He seems to be staring hard at something invisible in the tent. “Are you all right?” he asks at length. The lion has left a double ridge of red teeth marks running beneath his eyes from cheek to cheek.

“I’m fine,” Malora says, though she is anything but. “Are you all right?”

West nods slowly. “I am.”

West’s quality of stillness calms Malora and chases away the disturbing picture. “West, what is in this blue flask?”

“That would be Orion’s Heart, the master’s personal scent. You really do look pale, miss. Perhaps you are having a delayed reaction to that grim encounter with the lion?”

“The old snaggletooth was nothing,” she says.

“You may see it that way,” West says gravely. “But to you I owe my life. Please eat and fortify yourself. I gave you extra berries and a large dollop of honey.”

Malora sits up in bed and takes the tray onto her lap. While West looks on, she digs in with her spoon. The mush is sweet and the berries are tart, and the combination is delicious. She thinks of the dried kudu meat Sky ran off with in his saddlebags and says, “Do the centaurs ever eat meat, or do their flat teeth prevent them?”

“Their teeth are filed straight across as soon as their adult set grows in,” West says.

Malora puts down her spoon and stares at him. “Filed? Who does the filing?”

“The household Twani. It is a simple matter, and it doesn’t hurt. Mind you, I wouldn’t want anyone doing it to me,” he says, flashing his own two sharp rows of fangs.

“Why do they do it?” Malora asks.

West shrugs and licks the back of his hand, then runs it quickly over the scruff of his neck. “To make their faces look handsome and comely, I suppose. But probably to keep them from eating meat. Eating meat is against at least two of the Edicts … don’t ask me which ones.”

The Edicts again. But it makes sense, Malora supposes. If you don’t hunt animals, you certainly don’t need weapons to kill them or sharp teeth to chew them. “Why is eating meat against the Edicts?” she asks.

“It has to do with Kheiron the Wise’s dictates,” West says. “He believed the eating of red meat incited bloodlust in the centaurs, causing them to go on the rampage and be a public menace.”

“A menace to the People?” Malora asks.

“And to other hibes. They raped and plundered and slaughtered indiscriminately, from what I’m told. Hard to believe, looking at them now, but they say it once was true.”

“Do the Twani not eat meat as well?” Malora asks.

“Oh, we eat whatever’s at hand,” West says vaguely, staring at the air above Malora’s head.

She fixes him with a suspicious look. “Grains and berries?” She knows of no cat, including those in the Settlement, that does not have a penchant for catching and killing prey.

He smiles slyly and says, “Even Puss in Boots indulged in the occasional mouse.”

Malora grins. “Orion told you.”

“Orion tells me most things,” West says. “The Twani are furtive in our hunting practices, out of respect for the centaurs.”

“And their Edicts,” Malora puts in.

“Their Edicts and their squeamishness,” he says. “Although I’m not sure mice and rats and the occasional fat moth constitute a violation. Eat up, Miss Malora. You overslept, and it’s time we were packing up.”

Malora cocks an ear, suddenly aware of the sound of the camp being dismantled around her. “It’s this bed,” she says. “It’s far too comfortable. I could lie in it all day and not mind a bit.”

“You’ll get used to it in time. There’s nothing
but
comfort to be had in Mount Kheiron, the Home of Beauty and Enlightenment. And I am afraid you must get used to me as well, because now that I owe my life to you, West will be at your elbow, serving your every need.”

“Please don’t,” says Malora. She finds the notion of being served by anyone highly unsettling.

West looks momentarily taken aback, almost wounded.

“Really,” she says as gently as she can. “That arrangement would not make me comfortable. It’s not you. It’s just that I’m used to taking care of myself.”

“I will do my best to refrain from attending to your needs,” he says carefully. “But it will be difficult. We are compelled to serve those to whom we owe our lives.”

“So I hear,” Malora says with a sigh. “Why don’t we leave it that you will go on serving Orion, and I’ll just ask you for the occasional favor.”

“Very good,” West says. “But the favors will have to be substantial.”

“I hope one day that you will let me get you a hat with a
wide brim and a big, feathered plume—like the one Puss in Boots wore,” Malora says with a smile.

“That, miss, would be a very big favor, indeed.”

Two days later, the centaurs all ride with Malora as she leads the horses on the last leg of the journey. The Silvermane cousins are proud and eager to point out to her the signs that the bush is giving way to their homeland. There are now squat stone farmhouses rising up on both sides of the road. There are neatly fenced-in pastures holding sheep and goats and cows, and lushly cultivated fields that make the small patches of garden scratched out by the People in the Settlement seem by comparison shabby and barren.

Orion points to a field covered with a hazy carpet of delicate blue flowers and says, “That’s flax.” He reaches out, plucks a stalk, and hands it to her. “We harvest it and make our scent cloths from it, among other things.”

Malora nods, twirling the big blue flower between her fingers.

“We’re coming down onto the floodplains now,” Orion explains. “Mount Kheiron is surrounded by floodplains.”

“The Flatlands,” she says.

“Just so,” he says. They trot through fields tidily divided into a patchwork of squares, each square planted with a different crop. Some of the squares are rich black dirt. Others are blooming with flowers with big fat blossoms. “Anytime now,” he tells her, “we’ll be seeing Mount Kheiron.”

Malora keeps her eyes trained on the horizon and feels a nervous fluttering in her stomach. Why so nervous? she asks
herself, and wonders whether the three nights she slept in Orion’s tent have already begun to make her soft. The road takes them through a grove of silver-trunked trees as stunted-looking as any in the bush.

“Olive trees,” Orion says. “They say the oldest groves were planted by your ancestors. The Grandparents, as I believe you say.”

“Planted by the People?” she says, peering about as if to see their ghosts flitting through the gnarled trunks, twisted branches, and silvery-green leaves. How much more comfortable life must have been for the People here. There is a kind of justice in her returning to claim these comforts as her own.

“We eat the olives and make oil from them,” Orion explains. “I use the oil in my distillery, too.”

Malora nods absently. There is a rich look to the earth here, as if the dirt itself were edible, like the crumbs from the moist cakes West brings her every night before bed. The olive groves give way to orchards, their branches festooned with great white and yellow blossoms. In the shade of the trees, fat sleek goats and fluffy sheep browse.

“Oranges and lemons will grow where these blossoms now are,” Orion says, breaking off a sprig and presenting it to her.

Malora sniffs the fragrant petals. The scent is heady. She turns around to find the horses chewing on the branches. “Stop it!” she scolds.

The horses stare at her blandly, chewing the blossoms, their quivering lips reaching out to pull off more. Then she turns around to find Lightning doing the same. She cuffs her
on the side of the head, and Lightning stops with an irate stomp.

“These boys and girls have very bad manners,” she says.

“That’s all right,” Orion says easily. “I’m sure the blossoms taste delicious. The cheese made from the milk of the sheep and goats who browse here is faintly perfumed. Nothing in the world tastes so good, except perhaps for the oranges when they come in, which are very nearly as big as your head.”

Malora doesn’t know what an orange is but recognizes it by name as being one of his ingredients. “Do you make your scents from these same oranges?” she asks.

“No, those groves are closer to Mount Kheiron. The oranges there are small and very sweet, but too oily and riddled with bitter pits to eat.”

It is midafternoon when Orion points to the ridge of a nearby field and says, “There it is, the Home of Beauty and Enlightenment.”

“Isn’t it beautiful!” Marsh says.

“And bathed in enlightenment!” Elmon concurs.

“How I missed all this!” Mather says.

Malora sits back, and Lightning rocks to a halt beneath her. She takes it all in. It is like a city out of a dream, materializing out of thin air, mysterious and shimmering with promise. If the Settlement had cowered beneath the mountain ledge, Mount Kheiron boasts its existence to the world. As if it had been crafted entirely by hand, it rises up above the Flatlands, teeming with multicolored roofs stacked one on top of the other, bristling with arches and spires and
statues and towers, with a great dome at its summit shining like a competing sun. She sees the figures of centaurs and Twani going up and down steep roads, like termites swarming in a mound made of gold dust. A golden aura rises from it. The whole mountain hums with excitement, with activity, with life.