Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (14 page)

“That golden dome is the temple of Kheiron,” Orion says. “The House of Silvermane, my home, is just down the Mane Way from it.”

“Ah!” is all Malora can manage to say. Her glance drops to the high stone wall ringing the base of the mountain, gapping only at the river, where a row of colorful roofs crowds the riverbank. “What is that?” She points.

“That’s the Port of Kheiron,” he says. “From there, the Lower River Neelah flows northward to the Kingdom of the Ka and its great port city, Kahiro, which is even more splendid and exotic than Mount Kheiron.”

That there exist even more splendid and exotic kingdoms than this one fills Malora with a sense of infinite possibilities. How happy Thora would be, to know that her daughter has all this stretching out before her.

“Can we go to Kahiro someday?” she asks.

Malora’s question seems to delight Orion. “You sound like my sister. She has never left Mount Kheiron. Perhaps one day my parents will permit her to travel, and then you can go along to guard her from the fearsome predators along the way. But in the meantime, you’ll just have to settle for poor shabby little Mount Kheiron.”

They proceed onward, their steps hastening toward the mountain of the Highlander centaurs. The stone farmhouses
of the Flatlanders grow more plentiful and more colorful, with roofs painted bright blue and decorated with bold pictures of clouds and suns, moons and stars, birds and butterflies and flowers. Teams of horses, driven by centaurs, harrow the fields or haul wagonloads of crops. These centaurs are different from the princely ones who are her companions. Their human halves are clad in plain, tattered, sleeveless shirts, and their horse halves are covered with what look like backward aprons with ragged fringe that conceals their private parts. “Flatlanders?” Malora asks.

“Flatlanders,” all the centaurs confirm in a happy chorus.

“Good old Flatlanders,” says Elmon.

“I’m even happy to see
them
,” Mather says.

“Yes, it’s good to leave the bush behind us,” says Theon.

The Flatlanders tip their ragged straw hats as the noble party passes. They place their right hands over their hearts and then raise their hands, palms out. The Highlanders respond in kind. When the Flatlanders smile, Malora sees that their mouths have their sharp incisors intact, like hers. She wonders if, correspondingly, they eat meat. She hasn’t eaten any meat since the night before joining the centaurs, and she has been craving it.

She catches her first sight of women centaurs among the crowd. They are more finely built than the males, and their heads are wrapped in colorful cloth.

“No caps?” Malora asks Orion.

“Flatlander females are not obligated, but many are modest enough to cover their hair in public,” Orion explains.

One of the Flatlander women calls out lustily, “Congratulations, Your Lordships! Mighty handsome horses you got
there! But they don’t look fast enough to beat our Athabanshees.”

“What’s an Athabanshee?” Malora asks Orion.

“A very fast breed of horse,” Orion says. “Faster, some say, than Furies.”

Malora calls out to the female centaur, “Bring me your fleetest Athabanshee and I’ll beat it fair and square mounted on any of these Furies.”

The centaur woman cries out when she sees Malora and buries her face in her hands.

Orion gives Malora a stern look. “What did we discuss?”

Malora replies in a small voice, “The need for me not to call undue attention to myself when I am among the centaurs.”

“Because …,” he prompts her.

“Because the centaurs might be fearful of me at first.”

Again, he prompts: “Because …”

“They’ve never seen one of the People before.”

“They may fear you, just as you feared us when you first laid eyes on us in the flooded canyon.”

When she first saw the centaurs, she felt not a jot of fear. She was delighted, for they were the Perfect Beings. But it is obvious that centaurs don’t feel the same way about her.

A little boy and girl centaur, their horse halves as small and leggy as colts, trot alongside their party. The girl calls out to Orion, “What happened to that lady centaur?”

“Did a lion gnaw off her wrong end?” the boy asks.

Far from finding her a Perfect Being, the centaurs see her as a mauled centaur!

Orion tells them, “She has no wrong end. She’s not a centaur at all. She’s one of the People.”

Their eyes darken with fear and their little faces turn ashen, and they stumble off to tell their parents.

Malora watches the parents receive the children’s report with expressions of fear. The males sweep off their hats and work the brims with nervous fingers. The children then gallop forward and tell the centaurs waiting ahead. Malora can literally see the word travel up the line. It isn’t long before the roads are thronged with spectators waiting to catch sight of Malora. She isn’t used to this many eyes focused on her. The kernel of nervousness inside her begins to swell. Lightning, sensing this, starts to dance beneath her.

Orion, also sensing her unease, says, “Don’t worry. It’s just that they can’t believe their eyes. They’ll get used to the idea of you in time. If Theon and my cousins can do it, the rest of them can.”

But the crowd’s reaction to her seems more substantial than a simple fear of the unknown and the different. “I can’t possibly be all that frightening to them.”

“You’re not,” Orion says, “but the stories that have been passed down to us are.”

“What kinds of stories?” Malora asks.

“Stories of People with magical boxes and transforming potions and powerful sticks of fire,” Orion says.

However powerful those boxes and potions and sticks of fire might have been, Malora reflects sadly, they weren’t sufficient to keep the centaurs from slaughtering nearly every last one of the People. Shouldn’t such a victory have made
the centaurs fearless and confident instead of cowering and fearful? But then she remembers how she has felt in the past, sitting beside the fire on a night after she has killed something big and splendid, like a lion or an eland. She never felt fearless or proud. She felt terrified and humbled by her act. It is terrifying to take a life. Perhaps the terror of killing hundreds—maybe thousands—of the People lies dormant in the hearts of these centaurs, and seeing Malora brings it back to life.

The smaller road soon shunts them into a larger road that is paved with white stone. This white road leads to Mount Kheiron. The horses’ hooves
clip-clop
along the white stones. More Flatlanders gather on the grassy verges.

Orion teases her. “You needn’t think they have gathered just to gape at you. It’s market day.”

But Malora isn’t fooled. The centaurs have indeed gathered to gape at her as the party passes. Their handcarts and wagons carry bags and wooden crates, coils of rope and skeins of thread, pots and pans, bolts of cloth, and heaps of tanned hides.

“And this,” says Orion, “is the Great Gate of Kheiron.”

Up ahead, springing from a high stone wall, looms an elaborate gate. Atop the gate is a golden arch engraved with a picture of a massive, noble-headed centaur standing on a raised hill holding a tablet, with other, smaller centaurs crowded around him.

“That’s our Wise Patron, the first Apex, Kheiron of Melea,” Orion explains. “Here you see him delivering the Edicts to the Melean refugees.”

The centaurean refugees, their legs folded beneath them,
crouch like children at the feet of the mighty Kheiron. Above the gate, a vast square of cloth tied to a pole ripples and snaps in the breeze. The picture embroidered on the cloth shows a big golden hand on a field of blue, with a red-and-black eye staring out of the palm.

“It’s our nation’s symbol,” Orion explains. “On the flag is the Hand of Kheiron, with his Ever-Watchful Eye on its palm.”

Malora has never heard of a flag, but the sight of the eye on the hand makes her slightly uneasy, like staring down an aggressive stallion or a really rude mare. She looks away.

Their procession halts next to a house painted the same blue as the flag. It is big enough to fit one centaur, who clambers out the door at their approach. Hand over heart, he then raises his palm to them. Theon, doing the same, advances and confers with the gatekeeper, who, draped in white and red, appears to be wearing a version of the flag.

Orion goes on explaining to Malora: “We have been authorized by my parents to bring wild horses within municipal limits. There are five stables at the foot of the mountain belonging to five of the first families, so presenting wild horses at the gate is not unusual.”

Malora levels a look at him. “These horses aren’t wild,” she says. “They stop and start on command, walk, trot, canter, and gallop. They move away from the pressure of my hand or my foot. I can make the best of them move with no more than the force of my glance. These horses are not wild … any more than I am wild.”

“Of course not,” Orion says, bowing. “I beg your pardon.”

The Twani pile their clubs and crossbows by the gate.

“Have you any concealed weapons on you?” the guard asks, staring pointedly at Malora.

Malora leans down to Orion and asks, “How is it the guard can keep a weapon but none of the rest of us can?” There is a spear propped up by the gatehouse door, encrusted with gems and feathers and other trinkets.

“That’s largely decorative. He’s a bureaucrat. I’d be surprised if he even knows how to use it.”

Malora, straightening, stares at the guard.

The guard stares back. “So this is the human being,” he says.

“Yes, and she’s ours,” Theon says merrily.

“Actually, she’s
mine
,” Orion calls out.

Malora mutters under her breath, “I’m nobody’s but my own.”

Hearing this, Orion catches her eye and frowns. “I’m sorry, but you can be no such thing. You are an Otherian. You must be sponsored and monitored at all times.” Orion says to the guard, “I will vouch for this Otherian. I will be delivering her directly to the Apex.”

Monitored at all times
. The words ringing in her head, Malora considers swinging Lightning around and leading the herd galloping away from this place. Lightning paws the ground as if to say, “Make up your mind.”

A steady jumble of noise pours down off Mount Kheiron, more cacophonous than anything Malora has ever heard. She feels she could easily leave all this behind and return to the familiarity of the plains. Then she thinks of the pleasures she has discovered in the past few days. The mattress that cradles her body, the delicious meals served to her on a tray, the lively companionship of centaurs and Twani, the conversations with Orion and West. And finally, she hears Thora’s voice in her head: “Better to be an Otherian, sponsored and monitored, than a lone human wandering forever in the wild.”

Orion, at her elbow, says, “Malora, are you ready to take the horses to the stable?”

Malora sees that the other centaurs and both wagons have already passed through the gate and are disappearing up a cobbled road, into the shadows of the towering buildings. She wants to see up close what is on this mountain. But first, she knows she must tend to the horses. They are bunched up, noses to tails, alert, ears swiveling every which way. “I’m ready,” she tells him.

West stays at the gate to see if he can hail what he calls a lorry to give them a ride up the mountain after their business at the stable is finished. Malora and Orion follow Gift along a dirt road that banks around the base of the mountain and then begins to ramp upward. Over the next rise, the mouth of an enormous cave yawns before them.

Malora pulls up short, the herd skittering to a halt behind her. “What is this place?” she asks.

Orion says, “This is the Silvermane Stable.”

Malora stares at him in disbelief. “The Silvermane Stable, the finest equine facility in all of Mount Kheiron, is a cave?” She dismounts and holds up one finger to signal Lightning to stay.

Lightning snorts and stomps but remains in place, as do the rest of the herd, who drop their heads and graze on the bright green grass carpeting the mountain on the downhill side of the dusty road. Malora follows Gift.

Outside the mouth of the cave there are at least forty empty railed enclosures, big enough to hold one horse each. Malora ventures into the cave, where it is much cooler and smells sweetly of hay. Gift makes a hissing sound, and Twanian wranglers, dozing in the shadows, leap to their feet and brush the hay dust off their tunics. Torches on the wall
burn brightly, illuminating a series of delicate one-seated, two-wheeled vehicles hanging from the ceiling.

To one side, the cave is honeycombed with sturdy wooden stalls. The cave echoes with the sound of horses banging their buckets against the stalls as they nose their feed, their eyes shifting only briefly to Malora before they return to eating. There are horses here that look like none she has ever seen: horses with gracefully curved necks and manes that cascade down their backs in a riot of curls, bull-necked horses with crestlike manes like the stiff bristles of brushes, and some that are nearly as big as Sky but with long, knobby, gangling legs. They all look healthy, well fed, and groomed.

On the other side of the cave, harnesses, cleaned and oiled, hang on pegs. A series of deep stone troughs hold crystal-clear water, with not so much as a stick of hay or a dead fly floating in it. There are no flies anywhere that Malora can see or hear. Aron slaved to keep the Settlement stable clean, but it had still been plagued by stinging flies that left itchy red bumps the size of a barn swallow’s eggs. At the sound of a horse releasing a load of droppings, a Twan rushes to the stall and rakes them up. This stable holds at least fifty horses and is cleaner and altogether better organized than Jayke’s. Although it is a cave, it is a surprisingly pleasant one. Her herd will take time to settle in, of course, but eventually, they will be content here. They will be well cared for, well fed, and protected from predators. And if they have to work in exchange for such luxurious room and board, it seems fair. Best of all, they are behind the high city walls and Malora won’t have to worry about them every day, all day, day after day.