Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (6 page)

She hears nothing but the ticking of the red dust blowing against the canyon walls. If anything, the canyon is hotter than the plains, a vast red oven rippling with heat. It is time for the evening meal and yet there are none of the familiar welcoming smells of stew.

Malora slips off Sky’s back and leaves the horses to graze on a small patch of grass that has grown in the middle of the road, itself an indication that something is wrong. As she walks down the empty road, she tries to tell herself that the People must have left and gone somewhere cooler, but in her heart she knows different. She sees shards of pots lying scattered about. The Settlement cats, gone feral, stare at her from the shadows and snarl. Then, against the canyon walls, she sees something that pulls her up short.

There are mounds of ruined flesh banked in the shadow of the canyon: long, jagged bones and desiccated black leather. She veers off the road to take a closer look, her heart
hammering in her breast. At closer range, she sees that each pile of Leatherwing bones is matched with a set of human ones.

“What happened here?” she says aloud, her voice bouncing off the canyon wall, sounding small and lost.

Had the People battled the Leatherwings, she wonders, and both sides somehow perished in the struggle? She takes a stick and walks along, poking at the piles but uncovering no spears, no bows, no arrows, no knives, no clubs, no weapons of any description. Just stacks and stacks of bones, both Leatherwing and human, the latter with clothed flesh still clinging to them. Why, she asks herself, did no one bury the human dead or, at the very least, drag the Leatherwing corpses out onto the plains for the scavengers to dispense with? And, given that the Settlement seems deserted, why have no scavengers ventured inside the gates to get at the remains?

Backing away from the bones, she heads to the main square and finds the rest of them near the Hall of the People, in a neat circle. As was the case with the other remains, the dried sinew and flesh are still attaching bone to bone, with the rock-red clothing clinging to their shrunken forms.

She walks slowly around the outside of the circle and stops when she comes to the bright malachite stone that is sunken into the chest of one of the bodies. She bends down and gently untangles the leather thong from the ribs, placing it around her neck. Then she sits down with her mother’s skull cradled in her lap.

She looks around and blinks. The air sparkles like mica with her unshed tears. In the middle of the circle, her eyes
settle on the object that holds the answer to all her questions. It is Thora’s red stone mortar and pestle. In the hollow of the pestle lies a large pile of small black seeds: the deadly poisonous russet bush willow.

Thora’s plan comes to Malora as clearly as if Thora herself had whispered it in her ear with her last breath. Thora had known that the People were ultimately helpless to save themselves from the Leatherwings. And so, as Aron had done before her, Thora offered herself up—along with everyone else. But this was no simple sacrifice. Thora had poisoned the People so that the Leatherwings, having tasted their deadly flesh, would perish along with them.

No dead Leatherwings lie in the vicinity of Thora’s circle. Either all the Leatherwings had already been poisoned or the survivors had flown away. In either case, it seems that Thora and these others have needlessly sacrificed themselves.

And then it dawns upon Malora: Thora acted to protect her. Her mother had known all along that Malora would, sooner or later, in spite of her promise, return. And when she did, Thora wanted to make sure that Malora was safe from the Leatherwings.

Malora is tempted to tip the contents of the mortar into her mouth, to lie down here and let the poison take her and the sun slowly sear the flesh from her bones along with all the others. But this, she knows, she cannot do. If she did, Thora’s spirit would never rest and the Grandparents would renounce her.

Gently, Malora sets down her mother’s skull and goes to the stable to get Aron’s shovel. Her mending shoulder aches as she digs, breaking into the old grave. When the grave is
laid bare, Malora drags the remaining bodies over to the hole and rolls them on top of the others, taking cold comfort from the knowledge that at least now her parents lie together.

But where, Malora wonders as the tears begin to fall, does that leave her?

Orion Silvermane feels as if he is trapped in a fever dream. The Ironbound Mountains are aptly named, he thinks, for their towering red rocks radiate a forgelike heat from which there seems to be no escape, not even in the dead of night. Orion is hopeful that today will be their last in this infernal place, for after three weeks of hunting and tracking, it seems they have finally found what they have come here for: a herd of Ironbound Furies.

Orion watches as the herd of horses comes thundering across the high plains, like black ink spreading across red parchment. Bringing up the rear, the Twani march in a ragged line, pounding their drums to hasten the herd onward. Diminutive and short-legged, their fine coating of body hair rimed in red dust and bristling with tension, another line of the Twani stands off to the side with polished squares of metal that reflect the sun into the horses’ eyes, steering them into captivity.

At seventeen, Orion is the youngest son of the noble House of Silvermane. He, too, has completed what he has set out to do on this expedition. The others might be here courting adventure in the bush and hunting horses, but he has come in search of flowers and wood and resin and twigs to add to his alchemical cupboard. The specimens he has gathered over the last weeks are packed away in a trunk, some suspended in jars of water, others wrapped in oilcloth. He hopes they will survive the journey home. The sooner they finish with this business and are on their way, the better.

Directly below him, the wrangler in chief, a Twan known as Gift, leans out from a rocky cliff dangling a long pole with a loop tied to the end of it. Just behind him are Orion’s elder brother, Theon, and their cousins, other youthful members of the House of Silvermane. They stand in a circle, bright squares of cloth saturated in scent pressed to their noses. Above the cloths, their eyes are weary and bloodshot, and their skin is burned from the sun. They want to finish with this and head home as much as he does. They are all here at the behest of Medon, Orion and Theon’s father, the Apex of Kheiron.

It is Medon who wants the horses. Not just any horses will do. They have to be fast horses, racehorses, capable of winning trophies and showering the House of Silvermane in glory, ending the Highlanders’ forty-year losing streak. Horse racing has always struck Orion as a foolish endeavor, but it is not Orion’s place to question, at least out loud, his father’s obsessions and amusements. And it is not as if the Apex’s interests do not reflect those of the centaurs he leads, both Highlanders and Flatlanders.

Orion’s Twan reaches up and, with a small broom, whisks the red dust off his master’s shoulders. He is called West, an approximation of his Twanian name, which means “where the sun sets.”

“Thank you, West,” Orion says, grinning, “futile though the gesture may be.”

Like the other centaurs, Orion holds a cloth to his nose. The fabric has been saturated in a mixture of juniper berry, rose oil, and neroli. It is his own mixture: the juniper braces him, the rose oil soothes him, and the neroli masks the musk of his sweat. Beneath the simple cotton wrap that passes over one shoulder and modestly drapes his horse half, perspiration trickles off his flanks in an unending stream.

Below, Gift backs away from the edge of the cliff, cursing and holding the empty loop aloft.

“Not again!” Orion says with a disappointed sigh. Will they never return home? Over the fragrance of the cloth pressed to his nose, Orion swears he can smell his own flesh simmering.

“He’s a demon, that blue-eyed one,” West murmurs, stifling a wide yawn behind his short-fingered hand, shaking his head vigorously to stay awake.

“My father will not take it well if we fail,” Orion says.

Just then, the centaurs below cry out and point.

“There he is!”

“Do you see him?”

The centaurs draw nearer to the edge of the bluff. They are all fascinated by what they take to be the herd’s leader. One of the Twani has gotten close enough to see that the lead stallion actually has blue eyes. This exotic, monumentally
proportioned specimen has made the hunt for horses—after days of tedious tracking and standing around in the sweltering heat—lively and very nearly as entertaining as the sport of racing them.

“If they fail, I don’t see your father settling for a brace of Lapithian nags,” West says.

“He’ll never win the Golden Horse that way. The Apex wants
Furies
,” Orion says. “What do you suppose will happen now?”

“They’ll keep at it. They’ve got to catch Blue Eyes. Once they do that, the rest of the herd will follow along.”

“If they don’t, we’ll be purchasing horseflesh off the traders in the market at Kahiro,” Orion says.

“You know what they say about the market at Kahiro,” West says. “Anything you want, you can get.”

“Except Furies,” Orion says.

“True enough,” West concurs. “No one’s ever seen a Fury in the market at Kahiro.” West pauses, then adds, “You know what I think?”

Orion turns to look at West. West stares back at him with his huge feline eyes, the pupils contracted to black pinpoints against the bright sunlight. He blinks slowly and raises his shiny pink palms. “Perhaps the Furies are uncatchable.”

“Perhaps,” Orion says as he returns his gaze to the scene below. “But let us hope not.”

This particular breed of horse seems to be limited to this remote segment of the bush, the high plains bordering the Ironbound Mountains. The herd comes about, as if undergoing a tidal shift. Orion catches sight of something that makes the hairs on the back of his neck go up.

“Look!” he says, pointing to the horses as they move in a red cloud of dust down below.

West says, “An impressive sight, all right.”

“No!” Orion shouts, jabbing his finger at the heart of the herd. “Can’t you see her?”

It is a vision from out of a dream—running with the horses, Orion sees a lithe and powerful female centaur with long, streaming red hair and dusky red skin, a creature who seems to have sprung full-bodied from the rocks of the Ironbounds.

“All I see is black horses kicking up red dust,” West says, cracking a wide yawn.

Orion has already lost sight of her. Perhaps she was only a product of his heat-stricken brain.

The centaurs below have trotted over to Gift to discuss their next strategy. “They won’t be trying that again,” West mutters. “Blue Eyes is on to them.”

As if taunting them, the stallion leads the herd only a short distance away to a patch of cloud grass. He dips his great black head to tear at the grass, and the others follow suit, their heads all dropped in the same direction, facing away and directly into the wind, their long tails twitching to the same mysterious, internal, uniquely equine rhythm.

Orion scans the grazing herd for the creature of his vision, but the dust is everywhere and the sun and his own sweat conspire to blind him.

Gift drops to all fours—as Twani do when they need to move fast—and pounces down the rocky escarpment onto the plain. Regaining his full height, Gift begins strutting about, bellowing orders. All around him, the other Twani
spring into action and start to gather sticks and branches and logs, dragging and rolling them toward the canyon.

From the promontory, Orion has a clear view of the mouth of the canyon and the narrow corridor leading into it, bounded on both sides by high walls of red rock.

In the commotion, unnoticed by the horses, a lone Twan slinks through the high grass toward the far side of the herd.

“What’s that Twan over there up to?” Orion asks.

“He’s doing what he has to do to ensure a successful outcome,” West says, his small lips pursed with disapproval. “That’s a box canyon at our backs. There’s only one way out of it. The wranglers will drive the herd into the canyon, bottle them up, and stick a plug in its neck.”

“What good will trapping the horses in the canyon do?” Orion asks.

“Not much good for the horses, that’s for sure,” West says with a barely suppressed snarl. His sharp pink tongue darts out to lick the hair on the back of his hand, which he then uses to wash his face, a compulsive habit as much as it is an attempt to clean off the red dust.

The single Twan comes slinking back and joins the others just as the grass on the far side of the herd goes up in flames, soon forming a fiery wall that the wind banks toward the herd. The horses lift their heads, ears pinned, winding in circles, squealing. Then they head in the only safe direction, toward the canyon. Orion can spot neither the blue-eyed stallion nor the red-haired centaur maiden anywhere in the desperate surge away from the fire.

The other centaurs gather to watch the horses gallop past. When the tail of the last horse disappears into the canyon,
the centaurs lower the scent cloths from their faces and burst into cheers and rowdy applause.

Below, the Twani set about inserting the cork, quickly wedging brush and branches into the mouth of the canyon, piling it so high that not even the most desperate horse would be able to clear it.

“And now,” West says grimly, “we wait.”

Almost immediately, Orion hears the restless snorting and muttering of the horses echoing in the canyon behind them. He imagines them milling about, in search of a way out, baffled but still hopeful, raring to be on their wild way.

“The floor of the canyon is littered with boulders. The walls go straight up, but that won’t keep them from trying to climb out of there,” West says bitterly.

“Won’t they hurt themselves?” Orion asks. “What good will wounded horses be to my father?”

“Some of them will break their legs and necks, for sure. Others will be trampled to death. But eventually, the fight will go out of them. Then the ones still alive will be meek as a centaurean maiden’s prayer and ready to race their hearts out for the Apex’s glory.”