A Gathering of Wings (33 page)

Orion bangs the shaft against the glass floor, knocking the sand out. He peers with one eye down the barrel. Then he inserts three darts into his belt. He kisses the fourth before he loads it into the blowgun.

“Aim for the heart,” Neal says.

“If only I knew where that was,” Orion says ruefully.

“On its goat side,” Honus says, frowning. “Or is it its lion side?”

“I shall aim for any part that looks tender,” Orion says.

“We’re counting on you,” Neal says.

“Worse luck for all of you,” Orion says with a sad smile. “Nevertheless, I shall endeavor not to disappoint. On the whole, I think I preferred answering the Sphinx,” he adds.

Neal says, “Give me hand-to-hand combat any day.”

“Hand to
paw
,” Orion says.

“Or is it
claw
?” Honus ponders.

Malora finds their banter oddly comforting, and is glad that Orion seems to as well. There is a kind of foolish bravado in it, and she thinks that she has never loved them all more than she does at this moment.

“She howls first, then almost right away shoots the flame,” Malora says. “Try to get your shot in
after
the howl but
before
the flame.”

“Sound advice.” Orion hands the blowgun to Honus and walks a few paces. He shakes out his arms from shoulders to hands, and then shakes out his hands. “They’ve got the right idea,” he says, indicating Sky and Baby, who have discovered a few hardy blades of dune grass poking up through a crack in the glass beneath a shaft of sunlight. “Would that I could be as easily calmed.”

Malora notices that his hands seem steady enough. If someone had told her when she first met him that this gentle centaur would one day be fending off Leatherwings and Beasts from Below, she would have told them they were crazy. But Orion appears ready and willing to defend them all.

Orion holds out his hands. Honus lays the blowgun across them. Now it is Orion who is ready to court death, she thinks while she watches, much as Lume watched her all those times.

Blowgun in hand, Orion ventures slowly around the corner. The others move along behind him. Orion steps out into the open. Rounding the corner, Malora’s heart begins to race at the renewed sight of the monster. She can only imagine how Orion feels.

Orion creeps forward, one careful step at a time, the blowgun at his side. The Chimera cranes her head, slowly capturing Orion in the scope of her eerie spoked eyes. Malora can see Orion working to make his breath steady and even. It is much harder, she reflects, thinking of Lume, to watch someone do something dangerous than to do it yourself. The tawny chest puffs up with air and the monster opens her mouth wide.
First the howl, then the flame
. She sees a row of short, sharp teeth with two long fangs in front, like a viper. Her forked tongue snakes out between the fangs. If it were Malora’s shot to make, that’s where she would aim.

“Do it
now
, Orion,” she whispers. She realizes that she is holding Honus’s hand so tightly that it must hurt. She eases up but almost immediately renews the pressure.

Orion raises the blowgun to his lips and sights down the long red tunnel of the creature’s throat, right between the two fangs. The monster lets loose with the howl. The fire, Malora knows, will soon follow. Orion inhales deeply and empties his lungs in one powerful burst as the dart shoots out of the end of the barrel and flies directly into the creature’s open maw.

The howl is cut short as the monster gags on the dart. She rises up on her tail, reeling in agony. Malora’s heart twists with pity. Then pity vanishes as the monster seems to recover herself. She puffs up her chest and opens her mouth, revealing blood-stained fangs. This time, the howl is tinged with pain and outrage. Malora watches Orion wait in helpless dread for the monster to let loose the deadly gout of flame. The next moment, the creature’s head bursts into flames. Orion staggers backward, away from the heat.

Malora, Neal, and Honus leap up and down, pounding
each other’s backs and shoulders and cheering hoarsely. Orion looks back at them with a shy smile before taking one last, thoroughly impressed look at the damage he has done with one little dart.

The creature has collapsed. The air stinks of singed fur. A broadening puddle of gore seeps from her mouth, burning like oil.

They surround Orion. Even Sky and Baby abandon the grass to see what the fuss is all about.

“Sharp shot, Orrie!” says Neal.

“Got it the first time!” Honus adds.

“Orion Victorious!” Malora says proudly, removing the blowgun from his trembling hand. “The title is now yours.”

Orion is drenched with sweat. He exhales, then turns to Honus. “All right. Now I’d like to know why you were so sure the wax-tipped dart would do the trick. That was a very small dart and a very big beast.”

Honus smiles. “I think you all know the answer to that question.”

“I know!” says Malora.

Then all three of them say it in unison: “You read it in a book!”

They laugh. It is as much a release of tension as it is a response to the joke.

“Guilty as charged,” Honus says. “Didn’t I tell you that having a book-learner along for this expedition would come in handy?”

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Neal says, “but if we get out of here alive, I intend to make an effort to read more books.”

The glass walls gradually run to dull rock, ramping steadily upward as the footing softens to sand. Malora takes this for a sign that they are nearing Ixion. Up ahead two torches burn. The torches’ handles are gold, inlaid with gems, and they are set on either side of an arched doorway framed in elaborately carved wood.

She peers down a stone-lined passageway lit by more torches. Honus peers around her. “This must be it,” he says. “The entrance to the labyrinth.”

She removes one of the torches from the wall and shines it on the floor. “The Beast’s droppings,” she says.

“His footprints, too,” Neal says. “He’s a monster.” He bends over and holds a hand over the droppings. “They’re still warm. These tracks are fresh.”

“Maybe they’ll lead us to the treasure,” Malora says.

“And to the Beast as well,” Honus says.

Malora remembers lying bound in the paddock and the
explosion of sand when the Beast came up to claim the sacrifice. She reaches down into her boot and removes her knife. The Sphinx was terrifying, the Chimera even more so, but it is the Minotaur who comes to claim the sacrifices. Terrified as she is, she has a personal grudge against this monster.

Neal draws his sword. The corridor is narrow and they proceed along it single file, Malora leading the way with Honus, Orion, and Neal following, Sky and Baby bringing up the rear.

The corridor has been bored through solid rock. Each turn in the maze branches out, offering the travelers another choice and often three. But Malora trusts that the Beast whose tracks they follow knows the way. She can smell him now: a dark, rank odor.

“The passage is getting narrower,” Orion says uneasily. “I don’t like it.”

“Shhh!” Honus says.

Above the rankness, Malora smells something sweet and spicy and familiar. Could it be wild jasmine? Then Malora hears a new sound. She stops and turns around. “Which one of you is making that noise?”

“What noise?” Orion says.

“I’m not making any noise,” Neal says.

Malora puts her finger to her lips and points to the corridor behind them. Sky and Baby squeeze past the two centaurs and Honus and go to stand behind Malora. When the shuffling of their hooves settles, they all listen, their eyes bright in the torchlight. It is a rustling, snorting sound, and it is coming from somewhere behind them in the labyrinth.

“We’re being followed,” Malora whispers.

She eases past Sky and Baby and continues to lead the way, moving more quickly now, burrowing deeper into the labyrinth.

After countless twists and turns, first Malora, then Sky and Baby, come tumbling out of the corridor into a space that feels so wide open that for a brief instant Malora thinks they have arrived aboveground. Then she cranes her neck and sees that there is still a ceiling of rock above them. In the center of the space, a heap of debris rises up at least four times higher than their heads. It seems to be glowing from within. As she approaches it, she sees that it is a mountain made entirely out of treasure: a gaudy tangle of jewelry and coins and crowns and breastplates and mirrors, and more precious gems than in all the marketplace stalls of Kahiro.

The others pile out of the tunnel and, one by one, gasp in amazement. Sky and the zebra bend their heads to nose around in it, looking for something edible.

The rest of them walk around it in speechless wonder. Malora is so dazzled that it takes a moment for her to register the voice calling out to her. “Yoo-hoo! Malora, dear! It’s me! Up here!”

They all look up. She is waving to them from atop the mountain of treasure. Wearing a golden crown, she is bedecked with necklaces, bracelets, bangles, and rings.

“Zephele!” they cry out.

“I’ll be right down,” she says breathlessly as she comes scrambling down off the mountaintop, setting off a small, tinkling avalanche of treasures. Arms outstretched to them, jingling and sparkling, she says, “You came! You came to rescue
me. I told my host you’d come—and here you are, big as life.”

Tucking away their weapons, the travelers crowd around her, taking turns hugging her, except for Neal, who holds himself back.

“Little Sister, thank
Kheiron
you’re all right!” says Orion.

“Did they sacrifice you to the Beast from Below?” Malora asks. “Is that how you got down here?”

“Oh, goodness me, no,” Zephele says, clapping a hand over her heart. “I got up in the middle of the night to use the convenience. Duna told me I was to wake her up if ever I needed to go in the night.”

“Duna?” Malora says.

“My bronca host. She’s lovely, but I fear she had far too much ferna at the bonfire feast. The wild centaurs
love
their feasts. I doubt I could have roused her even had I rung a gong over her head. So I went by myself, and that’s when the Sweet Beast waylaid me on the path.”

“Sweet Beast?”
Orion asks.

“That’s what I call him. The wild centaurs call him the Beast from Below, but what sort of name is that? Call someone a low-down Beast and without a doubt he will behave like one. So far, my Sweet Beast is behaving like quite the gentleman. I told him you’d eventually come for me. How clever of you to have tracked me down. Tell me how you did it!”

“It’s a long story,” Orion says.

Zephele looks tantalized by the prospect of hearing every word of it. She tugs fastidiously at her white wrap, which is soiled, and snugs a white kid shawl around her shoulders.
Leave it to Zephele, Malora thinks, to appear radiant and fashionable even as a prisoner.

“I see you admiring my dragonfly,” she says, pointing to the embroidery work on the shawl. “Aren’t the thread dyes gorgeous? Wild centaur work. I did the needlework myself while I was with the herd.”

“With the herd?”
Orion asks.

“The wild centaurs think of themselves as a herd. Isn’t that cunning? And—prepare yourself, Orrie—their leader is none other than our apparently not-at-all-dead brother, Athen. But call him Athen at your own peril. His name is Archon now, thank you very much. He’s a bit of a grumbleguts, like our father, but he has his softer-hearted moments. The wild centaurs are quite frolicsome in their way. They have races and bonfires by the sea, and they even ride the waves. I have tried it myself! Imagine, Malora, me, swimming in the sea! I think my brother quite expected me to remain with the wild centaurs for the rest of my life.…” She stops and nods at something that just occurred to her. “Not that I would ever dream of doing so, but there is a quality of freedom they enjoy here that we in Mount Kheiron would find difficult to grasp.”

“Freedom?” Neal speaks up in a surly tone of voice. “Free to plunder and murder.”

Zephele sighs. “Ah, that is altogether too true. Still, it’s all rather
complicated
.”

“But you yourself are unharmed,” Neal says.

Zephele cocks a hand on her hip. Her eyes flash. “Why don’t you come a little closer and see for yourself, Flatlander.”

The others fall away as Neal approaches her, examining
her with hungry eyes. “I see a few scratches, but you seem perfectly fit, I am very glad to see.”

“Just how glad are you, Master Featherhoof?” Zephele asks, raising an eyebrow.

Neal breaks down and sweeps her up in his arms. “Oh, my dear girl,” he says into her hair. “I have never been so glad of anything in my life than I am to see you.”

Malora and the others turn discreetly away as the two embrace and whisper back and forth. Sky, feeling no such constraint, trots up and nuzzles Zephele’s neck.

“Sky!” she cries, pulling away from Neal, blotting away the tears with the edge of her kid shawl. “You came back for me, too! What a brave horse you are! And who is your little friend?”

“That’s Baby,” Neal says.

“Come here and let me hug you, too, you adorable little striped darling!” Zephele says.

Baby cowers behind Sky’s front leg.

“Baby’s shy,” Orion explains. “She wandered away from her herd, and Sky adopted her.”

“Oh, Sky!” Zephele says, stroking the stallion’s nose. “Your heart is as soft as your nose.”

“Sky does have a big heart,” Neal says. “But he also has a rather substantial set of wings, we’ve recently discovered.”

“Is that a fact?” She laughs shortly. “Mather told me he did, but I thought he was just being silly and superstitious. You were holding out on us, Sky. And speaking of holding out, Malora Thora-Jayke, why didn’t you tell me we had so many kith and kin amongst the wild centaurs?”

“I thought it would be too painful for you to know,” Malora says.

Zephele frowns. “What am I? A delicate rose? This rose has thorns, I’ll have you know.” Zephele throws up her arms, her jewels rattling as she bursts into a wide smile. “But all’s forgiven now that I’m rescued!”