A Gathering of Wings (27 page)

The whites of Medon’s eyes redden suddenly. “First my son and now my daughter! This is a
catastrophe
!”

No one disagrees.

Orion says, “I’m sure Athen won’t harm our sister.” He says this with so little confidence that he adds, “They took her as ransom … or as retaliation. Surely, she is worth more to them alive than dead.”

“Orion is right,” Neal says, only half convinced.

“I’ve gone into the Downs once,” Malora says. “I can do it again. I’ll go after them and get Zephele back safely. I promise.”

“
I
will get her back,” Neal says. “You have done quite enough damage as it is.”

“I will return the horses,” Malora says stubbornly. “I love Zephele, too, and I will do anything that’s necessary to get her back.” Except give them Sky, she adds silently. Never Sky. “I want to help. I
need
to help.”

“I don’t want or need your help,” Neal says in clipped tones.

Malora winces.

“Nonsense, Featherhoof!” the Apex thunders. “Don’t be proud! You need her help. The two of you: head north immediately and bring me back my daughter.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Neal says, “the trail leaving Mount Kheiron does not lead north to the Downs. It seems to lead south.”

“South?” everyone echoes.

“When I went upriver I found only tracks leading
to
Mount Kheiron; none
away
. I also came upon a clay pit in the riverbank, where I found evidence of a scrum.”

“What is a scrum?” Orion asks.

“A mess of hoofprints in the wet clay. It looks as if the wild centaurs stopped there to use the clay,” Neal says.

“To cover their tattoos!
That’s
how they got into Mount Kheiron. They passed as native!” Honus says.

“But why kill Farin Whitewithers?” Neal cocks his head, then answers his own question: “Oh, yes. I see now. Whitewithers caught them leaving with Zephele and threatened to give them away.”

Malora shakes her head sadly. Poor, foolish Farin Whitewithers was altogether too fond of ringing that bell. He paid dearly for that fondness.

“The clay helped them, but now it will help me,” Neal says. “With clay on their hooves, they will be easier to track.”

“But why would they go south?” Honus says.

“Who cares
why
?” Medon blusters. “Follow the trail wherever it leads! They have a day’s lead on you. Don’t waste another moment. I can and will resign myself to the idea of Athen choosing such a life. But the thought of my
daughter among those heathens … And to think that she and I had harsh words the other day. If anything happens to her …”

“There there, Father,” Herself says, taking Medon’s big head onto her shoulder and stroking it. “We will get our girl back. Somehow or other, Neal and Malora will find her and bring her home to us, you’ll see.”

The others have left the Hall of Mirrors, but Malora and Sky remain.

The Apex says to Herself, “I am not surprised to learn this. From the day he was born, Athen was a wild one. Oh, he had a dark, dark soul.”

“You never gave him a chance!” Herself cries out.

“We gave him a dozen chances every single day,” the Apex says softly. “And he squandered them all.”

Medon’s eyes find Malora. “As you can see, in matters that concern Athen, my wife has a blind spot.”

“He was my first child!” she wails. “My beautiful! My beloved! I adored him. I still do.”

“And what of your
youngest
child!” the Apex rumbles. “Athen has a dark soul, whereas Zephele … radiates warmth and light!”

“I promise you I will find her and bring her back …,” Malora says. All she can think is that if she hadn’t taken those horses, Zephele would still be safely in Mount Kheiron. Sunshine’s death, Farin’s death, Zephele’s abduction, it is all, every bit of it, on her head.

As if she has read Malora’s thoughts, Herself reaches out and rests a small, cool hand on Malora’s shoulder. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Daughter,” she says soothingly. “You did
what you thought was best. You can’t have known that your actions would have such consequences.”

Malora might not have known, but she should have. She should have calculated the risk of more than just her own neck—and those of the horses. She should have come away only with Sky. Sky is hers, just as she is Sky’s. But these other horses were not hers to take. She is a thief and a liar and she doesn’t deserve the friendship of these kind centaurs. “I will find her and bring her back,” she says in a voice that frays at the edges. “I will do that, I promise.”

As she is leaving the Hall of Mirrors, Herself calls out after her, “If you see Athen, please tell him I never stopped loving him.”

“I will,” she says.

“Do not hurt him,” Herself adds, “I beg of you.”

Malora nearly laughs, the reverse being far more likely the case.

Orion is waiting for her outside the door.

“Don’t!” Malora says, covering his mouth with her hand. “Don’t tell me this is not my fault.”

Orion smiles sadly and clasps her hand. “I wasn’t going to. I was going to wish you good luck. And to tell you that Neal will forgive you, in time. He’s just lashing out.”

Malora says, “I don’t deserve his forgiveness, but thank you for your good wishes. We will need them.”

He holds her head and presses his forehead to hers.

“We will get her back,” he says.

She nods.

“Do not underestimate my brother,” Orion says, pulling away and walking with her down the hall.

This time Malora does laugh, bitterly. “Believe me, I don’t,” she says.

Neal waits for her under the portico, scuffing one hoof against the marble floor.

“We need to stop at Brion’s shop,” Malora says.

“There’s no time,” he says.

“There’s time for this,” she says.

Reluctantly, Neal follows her there. The bundle of skins lies on the hearth. Unwrapping it, she holds it out to Neal. Neal stares down at the hacking, whacking sword in its sheath. He takes it from her, unsheathes it, and holds it up to the light from the doorway. “I thank you for this,” he says grudgingly.

By the time they set out on the white road winding south, there is little daylight left. They walk along the river in silence. Malora does the tracking, following the clay-rimed hoofprints of what appear to be three adult male centaurs and a smaller set they assume belongs to Zephele. Malora wants to say to Neal that if they overtake their quarry, they will need a plan of action, but Neal’s silence brooks no invasion. His way of preparing to meet the wild centaurs is to practice with the new sword. As he walks, he tests its heft, wielding it in a weaving motion with two hands, cleaving the air before him as if it were teeming with wild centaurs, their lopped heads rolling underfoot. By dusk, Sky has gotten used to the whooshing sound the blade makes and no longer twitches or balks when it whistles past his ears. Her own weapon, the spear, is in her saddlebag, but she has no need to practice. She is ready.

When Malora can no longer see the prints clearly, she raises a hand to signal a halt. They camp in a grove of orange
trees. Sky wanders off to find something more appetizing to browse. Neal continues to work with the sword in darkness. Malora eats by herself as she watches him in the dying light, slicing through the bright orange blossoms without mercy. Later, he comes to lie down with his head on the other side of Sky’s saddle. The crowns of their heads are almost touching, and yet they seem a great distance apart tonight.

As she breathes in the tangy fragrance of the grove, Malora remembers when she rode through here with Orion and the Silvermane cousins as she approached Mount Kheiron for the first time. She can tell that Neal is still awake. “How long?” she asks.

“How long?” he repeats. She notices that his voice has lost its hard edge. He sounds unutterably weary.

“How long are you going to stay angry with me?” she asks.

Neal sighs. “Zephele thought you’d done the right thing, taking those horses.”

She knows this, but she waits to find out where Neal is going with this.

“She wouldn’t want me to be angry with you,” he says. “In fact, she would disapprove heartily.”

“But you’re angry with me anyway,” Malora says.

“Oh, the truth is that I’m angry with
myself
,” he says. “You just happened to get in the way. She also would not want us to give the horses back, so put that out of your mind. We will get her back, but we won’t horse-trade for her.”

Silence falls again, but it is less awkward now.

After a while, he says, “Shrouk had a prophecy for me, too, you know.”

“Oh?” Malora says, smiling up at the sky. “And you actually believe whatever steaming pile of elephant dung she had to offer?”

“After you had your session with her, I went in to fill my flasks. I thought she was asleep, but she was wide awake and waiting for me. She asked me if I wanted a reading. I told her exactly what I thought of her readings, but she said I’d want to hear
this
one. It was a prophecy of love, not death. She told me—are you ready to hear this?—that I would fall in love with and wed the daughter of the Apex.”

Malora smiles. “That’s nice.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Neal asks. “Aren’t you shocked?”

“Not at all. You have no idea how overjoyed Zephele would be to hear that prophecy,” Malora says.

“You’re lying! She’d be
outraged
! A Highborn lady marrying a Flatlander!”

“You’re wrong, Neal,” Malora says. “She is in love with you, too. As far as I can tell.”

Neal rolls to a sit-up. “Really?”

“Really,” Malora says.

He lets this sink in. A smile spreads slowly across his face. “Well then, in that case,” he says, “here’s to the windbag’s prophecy, and to rescuing the bride.” She hears the hiss of the brown liquid shooting into his open mouth, then sees the zebra-skin flask swing toward her. It is a gesture of fellowship she hates to resist, but resist it she will.

“No thanks,” she says. “I have sworn off gaffey.”

In the morning, they move through the olive groves, then on through rolling fields of flax. By midday, they have passed
out of Mount Kheiron and into the bush. The day turns overcast and humid. The smell of rotten meat hangs in the air. She looks over at Neal. Neal nods warily. He smells it, too. They are so busy scanning the bushes for predators that they almost miss the spot where the tracks veer away from the river and head in a westerly direction.

“I wonder what drew them away from the river?” Neal asks as they leave the river behind and the air grows thicker and more noxious.

“They may be circling back and heading to Ixion on a path to the west of Mount Kheiron. Or else …” Malora squints into the distance.

“What?” Neal asks.

“There are ruins in the foothills about a day’s ride from here. Perhaps they have holed up there and will send someone out with a demand to exchange Zephele for the horses,” Malora says. “If that is their purpose.”

“Let’s hope that it is,” Neal says. “They must know we’d empty every stable in Mount Kheiron to get her back. Even if we won’t,” he adds hastily.

It seems that the tracks do lead to the ruins. Nearly halfway there, Malora feels Sky’s back muscles go rigid. He starts to shimmy and balk. She bangs her heels into his ribs to keep him moving forward apace with Neal.

“What’s the matter with him?” Neal asks.

“I don’t know,” Malora says. Then to Sky, “What’s wrong, boy? It’s too early to stop. We’ve got to keep going. We’ve got to find Zephele.”

Her legs tire of kicking him and she saws at the bit instead. Sky’s mouth foams, and he backs up six paces for every
two going forward. Malora wonders whether he has eaten a plant that might have sickened him, but Sky knows better.

They come to a large, round concavity in the earth. It looks like a vast abandoned elephant wallow from which the water has evaporated. But these are not elephant tracks that she sees printed in the hardened cake of mud. They are the same centaur tracks they have been following. Hooves have churned up the earth, which is dark red in places. This, Malora concludes with a sickening thudding of her heart, is what they have both been smelling: blood turning rancid in the sun’s heat. Sky starts to trot around the bowl, as if trapped by an invisible fence. He pauses now and then to give off a foal-like whinny.

Neal stands in the middle of the bowl and scans the ground, then looks up and warily follows Sky with his eyes.

Sky rears, his hooves churning the air. Malora hangs on, waiting until all four hooves are back on the ground. Then she slips off his back before she is dumped off.

“Calm down, big boy. It’s all right,” she says. But it is far from all right, she thinks. She continues to speak to him in a low, soothing voice.

Muttering, Sky gradually settles down, his ears flicking forward as he listens to her instead of his fears.

“Good boy,” Malora says softly. Then to Neal, “They were here.”

“I know,” Neal says. “But what happened here?”

Malora hands Neal Sky’s reins. “Hold on tight. He may spook and bolt.”

Neal nods and takes the reins, making calming sounds to Sky.

“
He
knows what happened here,” Malora says. She walks in slow circles examining the churned-up ground.

Finally, she returns to Neal and Sky. “It’s the Leatherwings,” she says. “Leatherwings attacked the centaurs here.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” he asks.

Malora nods slowly, not wanting it to be true.

Neal looks around, his mouth a grim line. “But wouldn’t the Leatherwings leave tracks?” he asks.

“They don’t touch down,” Malora says. “They swoop and pluck up their prey.” And in her head, Lume’s words echo: “They are ground-huggers and blood-suckers.”

In stunned silence, they stare up at the sky, hoping something will appear that will contradict this heart-shattering conclusion. Gradually, they both become aware of the sound of pounding hoofbeats drawing closer. They look toward the river and see Orion galloping toward them, flanked by two of the Peacekeepers. Orion’s white wrap is mired with dust, and his black curls are plastered to his forehead with sweat. Has he run all the way from Mount Kheiron? Malora wonders.