A Gathering of Wings (6 page)

“He will not be happy with my request,” Malora whispers to Orion.

“Don’t worry, Malora. He’s been in an exceedingly good mood lately,” Orion says.

Even so, Malora can tell that Orion is as nervous as she is. Beneath his white silk wrap, he exudes a body odor more horse than man. Unease, she has found, brings out the horse in a centaur.

At the head of the line, at the far end of the hallway, a Twan dozes against a towering set of doors painted white and blue with golden, claw-shaped handles.

“Good morning, Ash,” Orion says gently.

The Apex’s attendant and the oldest living Twan in Mount Kheiron, Ash rattles the sleep from his head and fumbles for the little round glass he wears on a black string around his neck. Lifting it to his eye and peering up at Orion, Ash’s neat pink lips lift into a little bow of pleasure. “Why, if it isn’t young Master Orrie!” He turns the glass toward Malora. “And the Victorious One! To what do we owe this double honor?”

“We’d like a moment with the Apex, if we may,” Orion says, speaking in a low voice so as not to be overheard by the centaurs at his back.

Ash, who is slightly deaf, repeats this request in a loud, clear voice—“A moment with the Apex?”—and sets off a cascade of grumbling up and down the line.

“Just a brief moment with my parents is all I require,” Orion says, darting an apologetic look at the crowd. “I’m afraid it’s something of an emergency.” He adds in a raised voice, “The Victorious One is in need of his help.”

The grumbling breaks off abruptly, and the centaurs are just beginning to crowd around Malora to offer her Maxes along with their services when the doors swing open. Two
centaurs emerge, one Highlander and one Flatlander, laughing and clasping hands. Malora only hopes that her visit with the Apex will end on a note as amicable as this.

“Go right in,” Ash tells Orion and Malora.

They slip through the doors, the murmured well wishes of the crowd following them.

Malora is no longer distracted by her reflection in the mirrors covering all four walls of what once was a jubilation room where centaurs danced. Now it is the room where the Apex conducts the business of state. The Apex is standing before the low stone table that overflows with tablets and scrolls and a rack of ostrich-feather quills. His horse half is bigger than Sky and his human half bigger than her father, who was a giant among the men in the Settlement. Medon is as allover gray as a bull elephant, his gray brows standing out in an unruly thatch above his fierce gray eyes. The Apex is generally a scowler, but today he has nothing but smiles for Malora, as does his diminutive wife, the Lady Hylonome, known to one and all simply as Herself. As is their custom, both the Apex and Herself are wrapped in subdued hues.

“Daughter!” Herself cries, and holds out her arms to Malora. Her ladyship has silver-gray hair that fans out like fine feathers beneath her brown cap, and eyes of a careworn gray-blue. She envelops Malora briefly in her thin arms, then bestows a kiss on each of her eyelids and her forehead. Holding Malora at arms’ length, she says, “You are looking exceptionally fit and well. Ironwork obviously agrees with you, my child.”

“Thank you, Lady Hylonome, I am grateful to be learning my Hand. It makes me happier than I can say,” Malora
says. She turns to the Apex and adds shyly, “Just as Medon has found happiness in his role as the Great Unifier, so am I happy in the forge.”

“You’ve hurt your hand,” the Apex says, frowning down at the bandage.

“It is nothing,” Malora says.
It’s a manifestation of elephant dung
, she wants to add, but instead tosses out the first white lie of many. “A small accident in the forge. Brion bandaged it rather excessively.”

“As well he should. See that you take care,” Medon says gravely. “The forge is a dangerous place. Fire and iron combined pose formidable dangers. What can I do for you, Daughter? Son?”

Malora turns to look at Orion. Now that they have their audience, where, she wonders, do they begin?

Orion clears his throat. “Malora would like—that is, Malora and I need very urgently—to take a trip to Kahiro, and beg your leave to do so.”

Medon’s eyebrows poke out from his brow in perplexity. “This strikes me as a singularly ill-conceived idea, my son,” he says. “Compared to Kahiro, the blacksmith’s forge is as safe as a Twanian nursery.”

Malora is grateful to see that if the Apex is not enthusiastic about their plan, neither is he angry.

Herself says, “We had so hoped that you would be happy in your new home and no longer feel the need to wander.”

Suddenly mortified that she did not begin the visit with thanks to both of them, Malora says, “The house is all I could ever want. It’s so very beautiful. I will be very happy there, I know, and I am ever so grateful to you both. But I have recently
learned something that threatens to undermine my happiness, and I have no choice but to act upon it. In order to do so, I must make a trip to Kahiro. You see, sir, one of the Peacekeepers—”

“Dock,” Orion puts in.

“Yes, Dugal Highdock has returned from Kahiro recently with word that my horse, Sky—”

“The splendid blue-eyed stallion that was the leader of your herd?” Medon interjects, his gray eyes suddenly keen.

“The very same,” Malora says, relieved at his obvious interest. “The word in Kahiro is that Sky is being held captive.”

“Where and by whom?” Medon’s eyebrows lower ominously.

“That’s just it, sir,” Orion says. “We’re not sure exactly where or by whom, which is why we need to go to Kahiro because, as everyone knows, everything you need you can find in the marketplace of Kahiro … including
information
!”

Malora squeezes Orion’s hand in gratitude.

The Apex’s eyes narrow. “Let me see if I understand this. The two of you wish leave to go to Kahiro?”

Malora and Orion, sweaty hands interlaced, nod earnestly.

The Apex throws back his head and releases a roar of wordless command so powerful, Malora imagines her heavy braid being blown back. “Ash!” the Apex lets out with his next roar.

Ash pushes open the door and stands on the threshold, blinking in the aftermath of the Apex’s summons. “You roared, Your Fierceness?”

“Yes, I roared. I can still roar now and then, can’t I? Find
and fetch me Neal Featherhoof. He’s lurking about somewhere, visiting with Honus, I believe. Bring me Honus, too, while you’re at it. We are going to need both of them.”

“Yes, Your Fierceness,” Ash says as he bows his way out of the room and shuts the door.

“I will permit you to go to Kahiro on two conditions,” Medon says, holding up two meaty fingers. “One: Neal Featherhoof, and a detail of the Peacekeepers, will go with you to and from the Kingdom of the Ka. And two: Honus must find a way for you, Daughter, to go amongst the hibes of that city
undetected
.”

Malora blurts out, “But I don’t need—”

“I WILL SAY WHAT YOU NEED!” the Apex thunders, and Malora quickly bobs her head in agreement.

Herself places a hand on her husband’s biceps. Medon, heaving a deep breath, nods slowly and continues in a more modulated tone: “The last of the People on this earth must be preserved at all costs.”

The doors swing open again, admitting a centaur with a golden hide and Honus the faun. Honus remains standing by the door, but the centaur ambles into the room on long ginger-colored legs. With hooves that are feathered with tufts of pale gold, Neal Featherhoof is possibly the only centaur Malora knows whose name fits him. He must be off-duty today, she guesses, because he is not wearing the red and white wrap of the Peacekeepers with the gold band around his neck that reminds her unpleasantly of the collars Neal has buckled onto his hunting dogs. Malora much prefers Neal out of uniform: wrapped in ragged impala skin that covers only his hindmost quarters and, on his human half, an equally ragged
buckskin vest. His scarred arms and his chest are roped with muscle. From the rawhide thong around his neck dangles the claw of a lion he slew with nothing more than the long-handled dagger called the Bushman’s Friend.

“Did you need me, sir?” Featherhoof asks the Apex and then, as if just noticing the two other visitors, says casually, “Oh, hello, Orrie. Hello, pet. What brings you here?”

Medon says, “You are to outfit and provide an immediate escort for an expedition to Kahiro. Malora and Orion wish to go in search of the stallion Sky, whose whereabouts, they seem to feel, will be revealed to them in the marketplace at Kahiro.”

Neal winces and says to Malora, “Pet, I must say, we all know you are as brave as our Apex here is wise, and I know that this horse holds a special place in your heart, but you’ve had better ideas. Kahiro is really no place for the likes of you.”

Malora feels her face heating up. The Dream Wound throbs. “Why do you all keep saying that?” she says. “I am more than capable of taking care of myself.”

“In the bush, I’ll grant you,” Neal says. “But in the Kingdom of the Ka there are dangers you have never dreamed of.”

Something about the way Neal says this—the unusual note of gravity perhaps—makes Malora swallow her retort. The Hall of Mirrors falls into an uncomfortable silence that is finally broken by Honus.

“I think I might have a solution,” he says, “that will permit Malora to enter Kahiro and yet keep her safe.”

Malora and the four centaurs listen as Honus explains his solution. The others are struck by its cleverness, while Malora finds it bizarre and utterly incomprehensible.

“All will become clear,” Honus says to her when he sees the baffled expression on her face.

Malora nods uncertainly. So long as she can go in search of Sky, she will put up with any amount of foolishness.

Orion and Neal depart immediately to make arrangements. Honus and Malora have their own errand to run.

“My dear, I owe you an apology,” Honus says as they set out for Longshanks’s shop, Malora striding, Honus tripping along on his cloven hooves.

“For making me wear some foolish disguise?” Malora says. “I will trust you when you all say it is for my own good. Kahiro is a dangerous place, as Neal says. It’s best that I blend in and not call attention to myself.”

“Clearly I have done an incomplete job of explaining to you how things are in the greater world outside Mount Kheiron,” Honus says as they walk. “I never imagined you would ever be leaving Mount Kheiron and, even if you did, that you would be doing so this soon. I thought there would be ample time to explain, to educate and prepare you.”

“I understand that the other hibes hate and fear the People as much as the centaurs once did,” Malora says.

“It’s not as simple as that,” Honus says. “The Massacre of Kamaria represented the People’s last-known stand. But before that, there were hundreds, even thousands of years of war waged between the hibes and the People.”

Malora knew this, too, but it always surprises her to hear of it. “Why did the hibes hate the People so? What did we ever do to them to deserve such hatred?” she asks.

“You created them,” Honus says.

Malora stops walking and turns to stare at him. “I don’t understand,” she says softly. “I didn’t do any such thing.”

“
You
didn’t, specifically, but thousands of years ago, the Scienticians did, and the Scienticians were People,” Honus says, “at the very height of their scientific powers.”

“I still don’t understand,” Malora says. “How did they do this?”

Honus heaves his shoulders. “With science … and perhaps some amount of magic. No one knows. For the longest time, the hibes believed they were creatures of nature, like the beasts of the bush, the birds of the air, and the fish in the streams and the sea. But when the information leaked into the world that we were unnatural species,
scientific
creations—bizarre
synthetic combinations of human and animal—they turned upon the People, their creators, and set out to destroy them. They did an excellent job of it, too, I might add. The People were herded together into camps, where many of them died of starvation and disease. At least your tribe, the Kamarians, died free. Just as you and your parents lived free in the Settlement.”

Malora feels torn asunder. “Why did my parents never tell me …?”

“Parents want to protect their children, much as we here in Mount Kheiron want to protect you,” Honus says.

Part of Malora wants to forge ahead and prepare for her journey to find Sky, while another part of her wants time to stop so she can hunker down with Honus and learn more.

“After the People had virtually perished from the earth, the hibes began to believe, for reasons I will save for another time, that what they had done—systematically destroying the People—was a fundamentally bad thing. They began to repent and to revere the memory of the People, their artifacts, their relics, their likeness, and the very brilliance that had enabled the People to create the hibes in the first place. The People, in death, were worshipped as martyrs, as gods. The centaurs alone—perhaps because they live in such isolation—never subscribed to this religion. They had their own rather more secular god in Kheiron. But the hibes of many of the other nations, those who throng the streets of Kahiro, almost all worship in the Church of the Latter Day Scienticians. If they were ever to lay eyes on a genuine, living, breathing human being, who is to say what they would do? Either kill you
with kindness or attempt to preserve you as a living relic in their temple. In either case, it would be a most unhappy fate for you. And that, my dear, is why we in Mount Kheiron know we must guard the secret of your existence and, when we bring you out into the world beyond Mount Kheiron, give you a most convincing disguise.”

Malora, who has previously only been humoring Honus and the centaurs by going along with this plan, is, by the time they reach Cylas’s shop, heartily in favor of it. Something new to fear, a bitter voice inside her head says.

“You will be happy to know that your order is nearly ready,” Cylas says when he sees her coming through the door.

“Thank you, Cylas,” Malora says. “But we are here on other business.”