Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (16 page)

Malora is embarrassed by Orion’s introduction. “Except that I am
not
half wild,” she says with what she hopes is a very civilized smile.

Honus strokes his pointy little beard and says, “Of course not. You are something much more valuable. You are the survivor, the living artifact of a bygone age. I believe that I am looking at a genuine
Homo sapiens
who, with her first utterance, offers proof that my theory was correct all along, young Silvermanes. Centaurs did indeed adapt the tongue of the People during the years before the Great Massacre!”

Orion turns to Malora. “Didn’t I tell you that his head is replete with brainy theories?”

Malora nods slowly, understanding too that Orion and, to a lesser degree, his sister have copied the inflections of their
tutor. She looks down upon the faun, who is a head shorter than she is. “You are the cloven-hoofed polymath,” she says, then, turning to Zephele, “and you are the centaur maiden who likes to do things for yourself. Where is Sunshine?”

Zephele blushes. “She is off washing all of my brushes for the third time this week. Did you keep
nothing
secret from the Otherian?” She punches her brother’s arm affectionately and smiles, her dimple deepening in her chin.

Malora finds herself enchanted by this female centaur and envious of the relationship between the siblings. Her envy is offset by the feeling that these two, whether out of natural kindness or curiosity to learn more about her, are offering her a place in their sibling circle.

Orion says, “Oh, Zephie, I daresay you’ll have a few secrets of your own to reveal to Malora, once you get to know her.”

Zephele’s pretty face flushes anew. “Oh, my Hands! Can she really stay with us, Orrie? I hope so! What will everyone say when they see her? They’ll surely want one of their own. Are there more where she comes from? What is that she’s wearing? Is it fur? Was it once alive? It looks filthy and crawling with bugs. Didn’t any of my dandy cousins even
think
to offer you one of their wraps? Oh, you must let me dress you! I know just how to do it! And your hair! It’s a beautiful color, and I know it will look gorgeous once it’s clean. But if you have to stuff it up into a cap, I’ll just die. Let’s get you into a hot bath. Honus happens to have the only bathing tub in all of Mount Kheiron, don’t you, Honus? Honus won’t mind if you use his tub, will you, darling Honus? I promise I’ll have Sunshine scrub it clean, for she’s sure to leave a rather large
and grubby ring in it. Half the dirt of the bush, from the looks of her, plus twigs and burs and ticks and who knows what other hideous crawling organisms are in that thatch. If Father doesn’t let her stay, I shall be very vexed with the old grumble guts.” Zephele stops speaking only because she has run out of breath.

Malora turns to Orion with a worried look. Until now, she has assumed that there will be no question that she will be allowed to stay. Avoiding meeting her eyes, Orion says, “I must deliver her to them without delay.”

Zephele wags her head. “But won’t they be adversely influenced by her stunning lack of hygiene?”

“I think it will be more than her cleanliness that will determine their decision,” Orion says.

“That’s all right,” Malora says helpfully. “I bathed in the river only yesterday.”

Zephele shudders. “In the Upper Neelah? Oh, but you mustn’t. Our eldest brother was eaten by a hippo, you know. He went down to the river to bathe one hot day, they say, and no one ever saw him again. They found his wrap downriver, bloodied and torn. So you must stay out of the river. Promise me that you will.”

“As Orion knows,” Malora says, “I have been bathing in hippo waters my whole life and I am still alive.”

“You’re right, Orrie!” Zephele says to Orion, her eyes glittering. “She
is
half wild.”

“And that’s why I’m going to need you,” Orion says to Honus, “to take her under your tutelage and civilize her.”

“I will endeavor to do my best,” Honus says. Malora thinks he looks pleased at the prospect. “But I suspect it is
we
who have much to learn from
her
. Nevertheless, I am happy to offer her my hospitality and my humble pedagogical skills.”

“Thank you, Honus. I knew I could count on you.”

With a modest lift of his narrow shoulders, Honus says, “ ‘If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.’ ”

Orion pauses at the door. “Francis Bacon?” he says.

Honus beams with pride. “That’s my boy!”

Orion steers Malora out of the room and leaves her standing in the hall. “Wait just a minute,” he tells her as he returns to the room. She hears them speaking in lowered voices and wonders what it is they can’t say in front of her. Orion is back soon enough with an apologetic smile, steering her down the long golden hall away from Honus’s room. Malora would have preferred to stay and curl up to sleep in a corner. All these crowds, all this noise, all this excitement has made her suddenly very sleepy. She likes the talk, but it would be nice if the centaurs stopped talking now and then. Her ears feel hot, as if wild dogs have been licking them.

“I hope my parents have not already retired to their evening meal,” Orion says. “My father doesn’t give audiences while he’s eating. He says it gives him the colic.”

“What if they don’t let me stay?” Malora asks gloomily, fatigue making her drag her feet.

“They’ll let you stay,” he says with confidence. “My father wants to win the Golden Horse that badly.”

“The Golden Horse?” Malora has heard mention of this.

“It is a prize,” Orion says carefully. “No Highlander has won the Golden Horse in forty years. Medon desperately wants to win, particularly against a barley farmer, a Flatlander named Anders Thunderheart, who runs the championship stable. He raises Athabanshees who are maddeningly fleet-footed.”

“Ah, yes, the Athabanshees!” Malora says, remembering the lady centaur on the road to Mount Kheiron. Talk of horses perks her up.

“There are five racing stables run by Highlanders and five run by Flatlanders, and they all compete every year for the Golden Horse.”

“When is this competition?” Malora asks.

“In three months’ time,” Orion says. “On Founders’ Day.”

“If it is a prize your father wants, then I think I can ask my horses to run to win.”

“That’s just it,” Orion says, with a guilty hunch of his shoulders. “My father will most likely not want you involved. You see, he lured Gift away from the Thunderheart Stable. Gift has a reputation for training winners.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” Malora asks.

“Because I know you think ill of Gift,” Orion says.

Anger seizes hold of Malora as Orion pushes open the door in front of them. He nudges her gently through it, and she gasps, her anger forgotten.

“This is the lower gallery,” Orion says. “For receiving. The upper gallery is the jubilation floor.”

The lower gallery is a long room without furniture. Its soaring vaulted ceilings seem to drip with gold. There are gold-framed paintings of centaurs romping through fields of wildflowers. And above the heads of the centaurs flitting through the puffy clouds is something new: a flock of fat little pink babies with white wings.

“What are they?” she asks, pointing.

“They are putti,” Orion says.

“Putti!” she exclaims. “Do they live here, too?”

He laughs. “No, they are imaginary beings.”

“Really?”

“They are figments of the imagination of the artist whose Hand wrought them,” he says.

“I see. They are just stories,” she says, looking to him for confirmation.

“Yes,” he says, “stories told in pictures.”

Malora cranes at them and wonders why the artist wasted so much effort, when to enjoy the work properly one would have to lie down flat on the floor. From the center of each golden vault, bunches of green and purple and golden grapes dangle down. Candles twinkle among the grapes, making colored lights dance on the walls.

“What are they made of?” she asks, pointing at the grapes.

Orion says, “Colored glass. Our glassblowers are quite
clever. They symbolize the grapes on the vines of the Silvermane Vineyard, the source of the house’s wealth.”

On the walls, green- and blue-tinted water spouts from the mouths of leaping fishes carved from blue and pink stone. Malora sniffs. The air is delicately scented.

“The very finest rose water,” Orion says, splashing his fingers in the fountain, “distilled by me at my lady mother’s request.”

Beneath Malora’s dirty feet, there are pictures on the floor made from a multitude of tiny sparkling tiles, pictures of wreaths and vines bearing fruits and vegetables so tantalizing she wants to bend down and pick them.

“Do you ever stumble and fall on your face just looking?” she asks, her voice echoing off the walls, as if they had entered into a magical cavern. “It’s glorious!” she adds, lowering her voice to a whisper to avoid the echo.

“I’m glad you like it,” he whispers back. “Come along.”

At the end of the hallway, a Twan dozes against a massive set of doors, painted white and blue with golden handles in the likeness of lions’ claws.

“This is Ash,” Orion explains. “He is my father’s Twan, and my mother’s, too, since his mate Bella died of tick-bite fever. Ash, say hello to Malora.”

Nearly as round as he is tall, Ash has a face as wrinkled as a dried nut, and fine white hair that stands up around his head as if permanently lightning-struck.

“Ash is the oldest living Twan,” Orion says.

The ancient one peers up at Malora through a little round glass he wears on a black string around his neck. One dark eye bulges at her through the magnified glass as he murmurs,
“They say the Ka have taken to counterfeiting People for their houses of ill repute.”

“What is counterfeiting?” Malora asks.

“They fix up the female Ka, the SheKa, to look like humans,” Ash explains, continuing to examine her. “But she looks genuine to me.”

Malora stares back at him, challenging him to address her directly and not through Orion.

The Twan drops the glass from his eye and says to Orion, “Take my advice, my young buck, and guard your pet closely. Highlanders will be suspicious, and Flatlanders will resent her for living in luxury under this roof. What’s more, if word carries beyond our boundaries, we will be besieged by Otherians looking to get their hands on—” Ash freezes, having switched his focus to Orion. He fumbles for the glass and brings it to his eye once again. “What in the name of the Blessed Centaur’s Hand happened to
you
?”

“You see the results of four weeks in the bush,” Orion says with a grin. He turns and lifts his hand to knock on the door, three swift knocks in a row, pause, then a fourth. On the other side, a voice bellows, “It’s about time!”

A softer, female voice, says, “Enter, dearest one!”

Orion squares his shoulders and gives Malora a look of mock severity. She meets his eyes and says, “I’ll try not to frighten them.”

He smiles, eyes twinkling at some secret joke as, holding her hand, he leads her into the room.

For a moment, Malora thinks one of the People is marching forward to meet her on the arm of yet another handsome dark-haired centaur. Fatigue drains away as she prepares to
greet these on-comers with enthusiasm. Then she stops short, realizing that she is looking at her own reflection and Orion’s in a vast, crystal-clear mirror that covers an entire wall. She looks to the wall on her right and is met by another vast, crystal-clear mirror and herself and Orion in profile. She swivels her head and sees that all four walls are covered in mirrors. She is surrounded on four sides … by herself!

“Is this some sort of trick?” she whispers to Orion.

“Not really. It used to be a ballroom,” he whispers back.

Try as she might, Malora cannot take her eyes off her many reflections. There is no way to escape them. She has seen herself only in very small, very speckled shards of mirror in the Settlement, in the wavering surfaces of pools and rivers and puddles, in the centaur’s hand mirror by lantern light, but she has never taken in the sight of her entire body. Is this dark-skinned, rangy girl with broad shoulders and the tangle of russet hair really her? She looks like a smaller, more feminine version of her father, with her mother’s sharp chin and high cheekbones.

Orion rouses her with a whisper: “I know nothing is more fascinating to you at this moment than your magnificent reflection, but try to remember why we’re here.”

He takes her by the shoulders and directs her attention toward what has to be the world’s biggest centaur, big enough to blot out both her reflection and Orion’s. His horse half makes Sky look like a pony. And his human half, with its bulging biceps and barrel chest, is bigger than any of the People, including Malora’s father, who had been a giant of a man. Size alone would make this centaur the leader. Malora
resists the impulse to fall to her knees and bow. But he isn’t a king, as Orion has explained to her. He is the Apex,
chosen
by the centaurs to lead them.

“Malora Ironbound,” Orion says, “permit me to present you to Medon Silvermane, the Apex of Kheiron, and his consort, the Lady Hylonome, Herself.”

Malora cannot tear her eyes away from the sight of this splendid centaur. He is as gray as a bull elephant, flanks and hair and beard, with bristly gray brows that stand out in an unruly array above his fierce gray eyes. He is clad in a silvery woven wrap that is cinched at the waist with a silver-buckled belt, slung with a small pouch made of silver mesh. Two lone spots of color in his cheeks are as pink as the ostrich quill he clutches in his fist. She mutters to Orion through bared teeth, “You didn’t tell me your father was a
god
.”

Orion whispers, “The God of Paperwork, you mean.”

The Apex presides over a table on which towering stacks of paper vie with piles of scrolls. To judge by the flush in his cheeks and the fierce look in his eyes, he does not especially enjoy this work. Malora makes herself return his gaze until finally she seeks refuge in the sanctuary of Herself.