A Gathering of Wings (12 page)

“No!” says Zephele, clapping a hand to her mouth.

“Really?” Malora asks.

Neal nods. “Apparently rumor has evolved into hard fact since my last trip.”

Honus nods. “It appears that someone survived the most recent raid and offered a vivid account. The raiders of the caravans are, indeed, centaurs, of an altogether different nature than those of Mount Kheiron.”

Zephele says in a dazed voice, “So it’s all true!”

“A savage lot they are, the Dromad tells us,” Honus says. “They are said to go about naked, their bodies elaborately painted, their flesh pierced with bones, stones, rings, shells. They’ll lay claim to any cargo they find, but it’s horses that interest them the most.”

“Interesting,” Malora says, “that they have something in common with the centaurs of Mount Kheiron.”

Rather than finding comfort in Malora’s words, her companions seem exceedingly uneasy. Malora continues, “Who knows? Perhaps you have even more in common than horses.” She gazes at them provocatively but sees this comment has only made them even more uncomfortable.

“You don’t understand, Malora,” says Zephele. “When word gets back to Mount Kheiron, the Apex will have to volunteer Peacekeepers for the escort. Especially if the wild centaurs are targeting horses. We all know how soft Father is on horses. Before we know it he’ll have us all up in arms. And once the Fourteenth Edict falls, anything could happen! Our wonderful, peaceful way of life is in dire peril!”

“Calm yourself, Zeph,” says Orion.

“I agree with Orrie,” says Neal. “There’s no need to anticipate. If I know the Apex, he will uphold his policy of
noninvolvement. So long as the wild centaurs leave the civilized ones in peace …” He stops and strokes his chin, adding with a bemused smile, “Odd, I’ve always thought of
myself
as being the wild centaur.…”

“
And
with good reason,” Zephele says.

“So do we think it likely,” Malora says carefully, “that the wild centaurs have captured Sky?”

“It’s only a theory,” Honus says. “We don’t know for certain.”

Malora warms to the theory. “In my dream, Sky was in a place of sandy bluffs. Didn’t you once tell me that a tribe of warlike centaurs broke with the centaurs of Mount Kheiron and settled in the Downs? Downs is another word for dunes, is it not?”

“True enough, but surely they haven’t been able to stay hidden all this time,” says Orion.

“I don’t know,” says Neal, flicking the tip of his beard. “The Downs would offer the perfect stronghold.”

“We will go into the Downs,” Malora says. “I’ll go get Lightning.”

“Not so fast, pet,” Neal says, stopping her with a hand. “Those sinkholes I warned you about? The Downs are riddled with them. No one who has ever gone in there has come out alive.”

“Except, apparently, an entire tribe of wild centaurs,” Malora says.

“That doesn’t mean you will,” Neal says, “with all due respect to your skills.”

“I have an excellent idea,” says Orion. “Instead of dashing off into a maze of sinkholes—into which Lightning would
surely sink, even if you managed to scramble free—and taking on the entire wild centaur tribe, let’s adhere to our original plan. Let’s first visit Shrouk and see what she has to tell us.”

“I agree with Orrie,” says Neal. “Let’s avoid the Downs if at all possible. They say horses and centaurs are particularly prone to fall into the sinkholes.”

“Not
wild
centaurs,” Malora points out again.

“All right, I’ll admit it! There are wilder centaurs than me. And they know the safe routes through the Downs,” Neal says.

“The Flatlander makes sense,” Zephele says. “Let us please eschew the Downs. I, for one, detest getting sand in my hair.”

Neal bows to Zephele. “For this reason alone, my lady, we will stay well clear.”

Everything in Malora cries out to head immediately for the Downs. But the idea of drowning in sand fills her with dread. Sand in her mouth. Sand in her eyes and ears. Desperately clawing away at it as she slides farther down into the airless, endless darkness. “All right. Shrouk it is,” she says.

As one, the others heave a sigh of relief.

They proceed to the gate, which is raised. Its heavy iron bars, closely set, hang overhead, ending in a row of spikes. This gate is as unlike the welcoming entrance to Mount Kheiron, Malora thinks, as a Twan is from a lion.

“They lower the gate at night,” Honus says, “to keep out wild animals.”

Neal removes a sheaf of parchment from his pouch and hands one sheet to each of them. Malora examines hers. It looks like a miniature flag, with the Eye of Kheiron stamped in bold red and black ink on a field of blue.

“Keep track of your pass at all times,” Neal says to the group. “Put it somewhere safe, where no pickpockets can pluck it from you. These passes, which are called Eyes, offer proof of both your Kheironite citizenship and your authorization by the Apex to travel abroad. It will permit you to pass through these gates, and you will be asked to show it again when you claim your room at the inn. If you lose your Eye, the guards will not allow you to leave.”

Zephele hugs her elbows and looks up at the stone parapet. “Imagine! Spending the rest of one’s days walled up in here!”

“What do you bet she takes one look at the marketplace and
begs
never to leave?” Neal says to Orion in an undertone.

“I heard that, impertinent lout!” Zephele calls out.

There are six armed guards standing along the gateway. The nearest one swivels his head when he hears Zephele, giving her a hard stare.

“Oh, I didn’t mean you,” she says. “I was speaking to
that
lout.” She points limply to Neal.

The head swivels away, indifferent. The Ka are haughtier than Highlanders, Malora thinks. Even Zephele, the haughtiest of the haughty, is intimidated. But Malora isn’t intimidated so much as she is fascinated. These Ka are clad in shiny loincloths and hoods striped bright green and blue. They have long, taut leg muscles and smooth, hairless skin that holds the faintest tinge of green.

Honus walks up to one of them and speaks in a voice that sounds as if he were gargling water. The Ka gargles back at him briskly. They speak at length, after which the Ka nods and holds out his hand toward the rest of them, wiggling long spatulate fingers that are webbed at their base.

“He is requesting to see our Eyes,” Honus says.

One by one, they file past the guard and place their Eyes in the palm of his hand. The guard examines each of their papers before handing them back. When he is finished, he waves them through the gates. Malora marvels at the long, slender arm moving as gracefully as the tendril of an underwater plant.

No one notices or even checks their many weapons as they pass beneath the gates into the city. Malora adjusts her eyes to the dimness, for the city wall to the west blocks out the lowering rays of the sun and mitigates the desert glare. In here, the white sand has been trampled to gray beneath the feet of a crowd so vast Malora catches her breath. It is like wading into a powerful river of hibes, as frightening as it is exhilarating. The current sweeps down into a deep bowl filled with low, simple block buildings all tightly packed in on top of one another. The northern wall opens in the center in a soaring arch that faces out to the sea. At least that’s what Malora thinks it is, because all she sees is billowing mist through which she can make out the bobbing masts of the sailing ships docked beneath the arch.

“Shall we dive in?” Neal says with a crooked grin. “Look lively and stay close to me.”

Malora counts five roads running down into the bowl. The middle one, the widest, leads directly to the arch and, for all its width, the buildings on either side join overhead and give the impression of a tunnel rather than a thoroughfare. The tunnel is so packed, it looks as if the heads of the walking pedestrians are bobbing in place. Neal ducks into the road west of the main one, which is narrow but every bit as
crowded. The buildings on either side have arched windows and doors covered with curtains of colorful glass beads. It is as if the buildings here have been dipped in vats of colorful dye: indigo, magenta, turquoise, yellow. Malora notices that the wooden shutters, porches, and doors stand out in the mist, painted bright blue.

“Why blue?” Malora asks Honus, pointing to a shutter in passing.

“The color is said to fend off evil spirits,” he says, “but I believe that it discourages the biting bugs that swarm at low tide.”

“Keep a brisk pace and don’t speak to anyone outside the group,” Neal calls out to them.

Honus turns to Malora and says, “Your stride is perfect.”

She nods, pleased to hear this. It ought to be good. She practiced it enough on the last days of their trek, dismounting every so often and walking on the balls of her feet with her body tilted forward, leading with her chin, bottom sticking out behind her, imitating Honus’s cloven-hooved trot.

The variety and number of hibes make Malora’s head spin. Honus holds Malora’s elbow in a fatherly fashion and steers her along while Zephele clings to her other arm. By force of habit, they fall into the same formation they followed in the bush: Neal and Orion leading the way, followed by Honus and Zephele and Malora, then the Twani wheeling the handcart, with Dock bringing up the rear, glaring, gripping his bullwhip in threatening fashion.

“I like the open road,” Dock says through gritted teeth, “but I dread the destination. I hate this place.”

How could anybody hate this? Malora wonders. There is
so much to look at. Ka are by far the most plentiful hibe, followed by Dromadi, and then sprinkled throughout are all manner of others. She sees squat, husky bipeds that seem human at first glance but on closer inspection have snouts flanked by short tusks and ears tufted with coarse fur.

“Suideans,” Honus says in passing.

Malora nods. “The pig-faced smelters from the Hills of Melea,” as Brion described them.

She sees bipeds with hooves like Honus’s but with heavy horns that curl around their ears.

“Capricornias,” Honus says. “We fauns are lucky to have our much smaller horns. I’m told the Capricornias suffer chronic neck aches, owing to the weight on their skulls of those great hulking sheep horns.”

Malora thinks her eyes are playing tricks on her when she first sees a large striped cat padding along with a human face, followed moments later by a group of cats walking on two legs. The latter are more muscle-bound versions of the Twani but with a far fiercer demeanor. Both the males and females wear beaded leather strings with small triangles covering their private parts, the females letting their three tiers of breasts swing free. Their hair is long, dark golden streaked with brown, with all manner of beads and bones and bells worked into its weave. Their beaded belts and shoulder slings bristle with daggers and knives and spears. To Malora, they seem far more human than the Ka, but it is a profoundly
wild
humanity. She wonders what draws her more to them, their wildness or their humanity.

“The catlike quads are Aleurs,” Honus explains. “Very rare, I’m told, because the biped cats wiped them out centuries
ago. The bipeds are Pantherians. They hail from the far southeast, where the jungles run down to the sea and there are more wild animals than anywhere else in the known world. The Pantherians are masters of their domain and superb hunters. They still spurn the Aleurs, but they let the few survivors live.”

Ahead of them, Neal takes a sharp turn. They follow him around the corner, where a small crowd of ragged creatures sets upon them, chattering and jabbering.

“Tads,” Honus says.

“What?” Malora shouts over the din.

“Juvenile Ka!” Honus replies. “These are beggars. Unlike their wealthier counterparts, their parents abandon them early. Steel yourselves, ladies. They’re very persistent.”

The tads are male and female, their faces grubby and their loincloths soiled.

“Meester, meester!” they say to Honus. “I show you da sea! Twenny nubs, I show you all!”

“Goat laydee! Goat laydee!” With a start, Malora realizes they are addressing her. They hang from the hem of her tunic and tug at her hair. Fearing that her horns will slip, Malora clamps one hand over the tortoiseshell band and shoos them away with the other.

They cheerfully persist. “You want camel saddle? I give you da best price!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t own a camel,” Malora explains.

“No matter how they may tug at the strings of your heart, just shake your head vigorously and say no,” Honus says, demonstrating his technique to tads on all sides. “Do not engage in dialogue.”

They are everywhere, bantering, cajoling, arguing, cheerfully undiscouraged by the traveling party’s repeated head shaking. Even when Dock rushes at them with his whip, they slap each other and point to the scowling Dock as if the old centaur were putting on a performance for their amusement.

One of them jumps in front of Malora, hands clasped beneath his chin. “Mees! Mees! I show you relics of the Scienteeeshan! Only two nubs, pleeeeeease, Mees!”

“No thank you,” Malora says, laughing at the earnest expression on his face. She finds their antics funny and touching, but Zephele is clearly distressed.

“Make them go away!” she begs. They cling to Zephele’s horse half, stretching her khaki wrap and peeling her boots down to the hoof.

Malora brushes them off Zephele like burrs, including the one who is swinging from her tail as if it were a bell pull.

“Go away!” Malora says. “Don’t bother her. Where she comes from, she is a noble lady.” Malora lifts her black-and-white rope and gets them to back off, as she would a small band of unruly horses. Eventually they fade into the shadows and lie crouching in wait for the next new arrivals.

In spite of the crowds and the noise, the briny air is shot through with moisture, giving everything a pale, dreamy look, dulling the edge of Malora’s alertness. Zephele, on the other hand, looks frantic. Orion takes his sister’s arm firmly in his.

“Poor Zeph. Drowning in a sea of Otherians. You’ll get used to it,” he tells her.

“Of course I will!” Zephele says, with ragged determination. “It’s just that I feel sorry for the poor little things. They obviously have nothing.”