Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (20 page)

“It was a very small asp,” Malora says, the talk making her self-conscious.

Orion rears back from his bowl. “And what would you have done had it been a much younger lion and a far longer snake?” he asks, one black eyebrow cocked.

Malora shrugs and admits, “The same thing.”

“My point exactly,” he says to the others. “She’s simply the most fearless creature on two legs or four.”

After the soup, West comes along with what he calls pood. It is as red as berries and escapes the smaller spoon Malora attempts to scoop it into. She is chasing the pood all around the bowl when Orion asks, “And how have things been here in Mount Kheiron?”

“
Achingly
boring,” Zephele says with a languid stretch. “We’ve been preparing for the Midsummer Jubilation.”

“What will this year’s theme be?” Orion asks.

“Death by Boredom,” Zephele says with a sigh. “Actually, I’m desperately in need of inspiration. Perhaps now that the cousins are back, they will help me.”

“Come, come, Zephie, my dear,” Honus says. “How can you say you have been bored, when you have been reading one of the great tragedies,
Romeo and Juliet
?”

Zephele rolls her eyes. “Those two lovers were so completely
pinheaded
, I find it difficult to summon even the slightest bit of sympathy for them. And that nurse! What an impossible busybody! Not to mention that friar person—well, anyone who fell for his line of talk deserved to be turned out. If William Shakespeare were alive today, do you know what I’d do? I’d demand that he write his play over so that Romeo and Juliet ignored everybody’s advice and lived happily ever after.”

“It wouldn’t be much of a tragedy if that happened,” Honus points out with a wry smile.

“Then let it be a comedy!” Zephele says righteously. “How much more entertaining are Shakespeare’s comedies! Give me the antics of
Twelfth Night
any day over that miserable, bloody
Titus Andronicus
.”

“And what news of the Peacekeepers?” Orion asks.

“They returned late last night,” Honus says. “Neal Featherhoof came here this morning to confer.”

“So
that’s
why you sent me out on that silly errand,” Zephele says, eyes narrowed, hoof tapping.

Honus’s face is grave. “This must not leave this room, as Featherhoof has yet to report to the Apex, but Neal tells me that a band of wild centaurs is rumored to be menacing the trade routes to Kahiro.”

Malora’s head snaps up from her pood.
Wild centaurs
?

“How thrilling!” Zephele says with a shiver.

“They have been attacking Dromadi trade caravans en route from the west to Kahiro,” Honus says. “They’ve lost three caravans in less than nine weeks.”

“Were there any survivors?” Orion asks.

“Neal says none, ever,” Honus replies.

Zephele says in an undertone, “How beastly. I wonder if they were after my essence of wild jasmine?”

“Zephie, don’t be shallow,” Orion tells her. Turning back to Honus, he says, “If there are no survivors, how do we know that wild centaurs are to blame?”

“The culprits left clear hoof marks in the sand,” Honus says.

“I wonder …” Malora abandons her pood and speaks
up. “Could they be hoof marks left by men riding on horseback instead of centaurs?”

They all stare at her in puzzlement.

“The tracks of horses and those of centaurs are identical. Perhaps instead of wild centaurs, they are the tracks of People mounted on horseback,” Malora says, looking around with growing excitement.

“But then that would mean the People were nothing more than common marauders and murderers,” Zephele says doubtfully. “And wouldn’t that be worse than no People at all—apart from your delightful self, of course.”

Malora’s excitement deflates. “You are right, I suppose.”

Honus says, “Your theory is possible, Malora … but not probable. The fact is that I have heard no tales of People on horseback, and many of wild centaurs, for as long as I can remember. Usually, where there are tales, there is some germ of truth.”

Malora, thinking how true this was in the case of the Leatherwings, lets her hopes fade completely.

“Will Neal and the others have to battle the wild centaurs?” Zephele asks, looking worried.

“That remains to be seen,” Honus says. “Neal carries a formal request from the Empress of the Ka. She proposes an army made up of the five nations most affected, which, in addition to us and the Ka, would be the Suideans, the Pantherians, and the Dromadi. Formal requests have gone out to the leaders of all the nations. We will see how the Apex responds.”

“He’ll just invoke Edicts Three and Five and Fourteen,” Zephele says gloomily.

“But he has never been faced with a crisis of quite these proportions,” Honus says. “In his teachings, Kheiron says that there are conditions under which some Edicts can be contravened, and I believe foreign attack is one of them.”

“But we haven’t been attacked,” Orion points out.

“It may be just a matter of time,” Honus says.

“What is so terrible about wild centaurs?” Malora asks.

“Wild centaurs are, quite simply, our father’s worst nightmare,” Orion says, and an uncomfortable silence falls upon the table.

Into this silence, Malora prompts, “Because …?”

“Because,” Orion explains patiently, “wild centaurs are a reminder of what we once were, of what it has taken us centuries to evolve away from.”

Malora is about to probe further when West brushes up against her back and says, “Can I tempt you, miss?”

He is holding a gilt-edged plate. On the plate is a cake, yellow and dense and easy to eat. “Yes!” she says.

“A second pood!” Zephele says, looking impressed. “I’m sure we have you to thank for this, Malora!”

After West has cleared away the plates and bowls, Honus all but chases off Orion and Zephele and West. Once they have gone, he leans against the door and lets out a short bark of laughter that startles Malora. “Forgive me,” he says. “I dearly love the Silvermanes, but they would stay and talk all night if I didn’t shoo them off to bed. Now, shall we two Otherians take our tea on the terrace?”

Honus goes to the hearth and pours the fragrant wild-flower tea, which West left to brew. Whole blossoms dance about in the cups, which he hands to Malora. Holding a long
stick to the fire, he leads the way with a lantern in one hand and the flaming stick in the other, through a set of arched doors. Outside, there is a wide stone terrace with a low balustrade that runs along the side of the house. Along the wall is a narrow couch and a lower, deeper, cushioned one suitable for centaurs, as well as several small tables holding stacks of books. On the far end of the terrace, where the light from the lantern doesn’t reach, Malora can make out small trees and leafy plants growing out of big pots.

Honus leans against the balustrade and holds the lit stick to the bowl of a clay pipe, which reminds Malora of the one her father used to light after the evening meal. She sets down his teacup within his reach and, cradling hers, leans her elbows on the balustrade and looks down at the view.

“Medon and Herself have the view to the west, of the vineyard and the rose houses. We face east into the farmlands and the Hills of Melea,” Honus says, extinguishing the flaming stick with dampened fingers and puffing to get his pipe going. “From the jubilation gallery, at the very top of the house, one has a view in all directions for as far as the eye can see. It’s breathtaking.”

“You can see your enemies approaching from all sides,” says Malora.

Honus gives her a sharply appraising look. “Yes, well, one hopes we’ll never have to be doing any of
that
.”

The scene below is peaceful. The rooftops of the city spill like neat, sharp stacks of stone down the mountainside toward the Flatlands. The lights from the scattered farmhouses twinkle in the darkness. Malora can see the great white road that led her here, and the Lower Neelah, like a
long silver snake, slithering off toward the north. A second, narrower river glints farther to the east.

Honus says, “I’d like you to take my bedchamber.”

“No, please,” Malora says. She still feels bad for having displaced Orion from his tent. Not wanting to do the same thing to Honus, she points to the bench behind them. “I am happy to sleep on that.”

“That is where
I
sleep. The bedchamber the Apex made for me is sumptuous, but I don’t ever use it.”

“Sumptuous.”
She rolls the new word on her tongue. “Does that mean comfortable?” she asks.

“More than comfortable. Luxurious,” he says.

“Luxurious?”
She echoes this second strange new word.

Honus smiles kindly. “A state of which you obviously know very little.
Luxurious
means deliciously comfortable, dazzlingly beautiful, and richly appointed, like most things in Mount Kheiron. Don’t worry, you’ll soon be taking it for granted like the rest of us. So I beg of you, please take my room. Otherwise, it will, sadly, go on standing empty.”

“There’s no sense in letting it go to waste.” Malora stares at Honus’s face in profile, at his sharp nose and pointy beard lit up by the flame from the pipe. Honus’s horns are beautiful, so different from the horns of wild animals, which are dirty and scuffed and battle-scarred. His horns are blunt and stubby. She wonders if he buffs them to give them the rich brown luster of the combs the People made from tortoise-shells. Turning around, she stares back into the big room, where Honus’s books and treasures give a rich and inviting glow.

He follows her look. “Aladdin’s cave,” he murmurs.

“What is Aladdin’s cave?” she asks.

“A place of vast riches, from a story in one of these books.”

“Like Puss in Boots,” she says.

Honus smiles. “Yes, very like.”

“Zephele tells me that you have read all of these books,” Malora says.

“Not nearly, fortunately,” Honus says. “I have much to look forward to.”

“They smell musty and old to me.”

“They
are
musty and old,” Honus replies. “But that can’t be helped. It is what is inside of the books that remains remarkably fresh.”

“Why don’t you have any
new
books?” Malora asks.

“An excellent question,” he says. “Writing books and making books—and
reading
books, for that matter—never really caught on as Hands. We haven’t the trees. We haven’t the demand. We have neither the craft nor the curiosity nor the passion to acquire it.”

“Then who made all these?” she asks.

“The People,” he says. “But even the People, in the long years of their decline, had ceased to make books. They read from machines, so these books here were old even in the People’s time.”

Malora remembers what Zephele said about the centaurs stealing the People’s books. “Can you tell me about the Massacre?”

Honus draws deeply on his pipe. “Not a very pleasant bedtime story, but you are entitled to know.” After a short silence, he begins: “Many hundreds of years ago, this mountain
was occupied by a tribe of the People known as the Kamar. The Kamar were a beacon of civilization in a brutal world comprised mostly of warring hibes. There were the Ka to the north, the Suideans to the west, the Dromadi to the east, the Pantherians and the Capricornias far, far to the south.

“Today, most of the hibes have evolved into relatively high civilizations, but in those days they were all wild and dead set against one another. The wildest of all were the centaurs. Calling themselves the Sons and Daughters of Ixion, they traveled in packs, frequently attacking the People in the outlying settlements. But after they attacked the city of Kamaria itself, during the wedding of the daughter of a high nobleman, the People declared war on the centaurs. They had sticks that shot fire and other deadly weapons of war, and many of the centaurs perished in the series of battles that followed. The People drove the centaurs across the plains to the Hills of Melea in the east. Other centaurs scattered to live in the northern Downs. In Melea, there dwelled a scholarly hermit, a centaur named Kheiron. No one knows how he came by his knowledge. Some say he was touched by the gods. Others say he had studied at the knees of the last Scienticians. Kheiron gave the centaurs sanctuary and set about civilizing them. He taught them to read, and then he taught them philosophy and medicine, mathematics and architecture, and all the arts and crafts of the Hand. He issued the Edicts, and bit by bit, the centaurs underwent the process of civilization. They stopped eating meat and forswore the drinking of spirits.”

“What are spirits?” Malora asked.

“Powerful distillations of grapes or grains or yams that
addle the mind and inflame the blood,” Honus said. “Medon produces spirits in the Silvermane Vineyard but only to trade with Otherian nations. Spirits are our number one export, which makes Silvermane the wealthiest house in Mount Kheiron. Anyway, the centaurs, thus reformed, began to live a life of study and reflection, but also of industry and purpose.

“Meanwhile, without the benefit of Kheiron’s influence, the centaurs who had fled to the Downs maintained their lawless ways. One day, this savage band swept southward and laid waste to Kamaria, killing, raping, plundering, and then fleeing with sacks of riches. In Melea, Kheiron got word of the slaughter of the Kamars. He bade the Melean centaurs to go to Kamaria to minister to the wounded and help them rebuild their ravaged homeland. But the surviving Kamars mistook the centaurs of Melea for a raiding party from the north returning to finish them off. The centaurs, helpless to explain their purpose in being there, fought out of self-defense and with great determination and ferocity. Many innocent centaurs died in the battle, but the People, the fire of their sticks somehow having been extinguished, suffered greater losses. Your very existence, however, suggests that a small band of People must have escaped the Massacre and fled south.”

“What happened to the centaurs?” Malora asks.

“The surviving centaurs buried the People down on the flats. Since the mountain was now abandoned, the centaurs moved in and made it their home. They renamed it Mount Kheiron in honor of their patron and savior, and the centaurs rebuilt a mighty nation-state on the ruins of Kamaria. The centaurs continue to abide by the Edicts of Kheiron. Up until now, they have lived in peace and prosperity.”