by Grass(Lit)
"But why must you!"
"Because they will not tell me anything until they trust me, and they will not trust me until I share their... their rituals!"
She was silent, grieving, not showing it on her face. There was malice here upon Grass, malice directed at them, at the foreigners. If Rigo rode, he would ride into that malice as into quicksand. "You won't change your mind." It was not a question but a statement, and he did not know how hopelessly she said it, all the love she thought she owed him hanging on the answer. "You won't change your mind, Rigo."
"No." In a tone that meant he would not discuss it. "No."
An awkward machine, the riding machine. Awkward and heavy, but little more ponderous than the riding master, Hector Paine, with his dour face and ominous expression and black garb, as though he were in mourning for all those he had taught how to die.
Rigo had picked an unused room in the winter quarter to use as a riding salon, and he came there with Stella, she very busy playing Daddy's little girl. There Rigo heard with disbelief that he would be expected to start his lessons at four hours per day. Stella did not seem to hear, did not seem to be paying attention. She was stroking the riding machine, humming to herself, not seeming to notice anything much.
The black-clad instructor was emphatic. "In the morning, an hour exercise, then an hour ride. Again later in the day. By the end of the week, perhaps we can manage three hours, then four. We work up to twelve hours at a time, every other day."
"My God, man!"
Stella felt the blunted barbs on the neck of the gleaming simulacrum, ran her finger around the loop of the reins where they hung on the lowest barb.
"Did you think it was easy, sir? Hunts often last for ten or eleven hours. Sometimes they go on longer."
"That leaves little time for anything else!"
"To those who Hunt, Your Excellency, there is nothing else. I thought you would have noticed that." There was nothing sneering in the man's voice, but Rigo gave him a sharp look. Stella had drifted away to a corner where she sat down behind some piled furniture, being inconspicuous, being unnoticed, eyes avid.
"You were available on short notice," Rigo snarled.
"I am available because Gustave bon Smaerlok told me to be available."
"He hopes to find me incapable, eh?"
"He would be gratified if you proved unable, I think. I speak only from impression, not from anything he has said."
"And have you agreed to report to him?"
"Only to tell him when I believe you are capable of riding in a Hunt. I will tell you this, Your Excellency. With the young ones, we begin before they are two years old-what would that be in your terms? Ten or eleven years of age? While they are still children we begin working every other day, every week, every period, throughout the seasons, perhaps for a year. A Grassian year. More than six of yours."
Rigo did not answer. For the first time he began to realize that he might not have long enough to ride to the hounds. Not if it took him as long as the children....
Well, then he could not let it take as long. Focusing all his attention, he listened to what the riding master had to say.
In the corner, hidden behind the screen of displaced chairs and sofas, Stella listened too, focused no less intently on what the riding master had to say.
She had danced with Sylvan bon Damfels.
Only for a little time: enough time to know that everything she wanted was there, in his skin, behind those eyes, dwelling in that voice, in the touch of those hands.
When she came here she had thought she would never forget Elaine, never forget the friend she had left behind. Now there was no room, not even in memory, for anyone but Sylvan. When he had smiled at her on the dance floor, she had realized that she had been thinking of him since she had seen him first, at the bon Damfels Hunt. She had seen Sylvan then, in his riding clothes, seen him mount, seen him ride. On the dance floor, as her body moved with his, she had remembered each time she had seen him, each time he had spoken to her, her passionate heart demanding, as it always did, more. More. More of Sylvan bon Damfels. She would ride with Sylvan bon Damfels as she was dancing with Sylvan bon Damfels, as she could imagine-oh, imagine doing other things with Sylvan bon Damfels.
He had looked into her eyes.
He had told her she was lovely.
Behind the furniture she exulted, glad for the first time that she was here, on Grass. Ears pricked for every word the riding master was telling her father, she sucked in the information and remembered it all. She was determined that she, too, would learn. Quickly. More quickly than anyone had ever learned.
The same aircar which had brought the riding master to Opal Hill had also brought James and Jandra Jellico, who waited in Marjorie's study for Rowena's arrival.
Rowena, when she came at last, brought Sylvan with her.
"Tell us everything you can," Sylvan asked the Jellicos, his voice gentle. "I know neither of you did anything reprehensible, so just tell us everything you can."
Marjorie and Tony sat to one side, listening. No one suggested they should not be present. If they had, Marjorie had already decided she would listen outside the door.
There was so little to tell, and yet they spun it into an hour's telling, each little thing said ten times over.
"One thing you got to remember," Jelly told Sylvan. "lust because Ducky Johns' in the business she is, that's no reason to think she isn't honest. She's as honest as anybody. And I believe she found this Janetta right where she said she did, on her own back porch under her clothesline."
"But how?" cried Rowena, for perhaps the tenth time.
Jelly took a deep breath. He was tired of evasion, tired of euphemism, tired of bowing to the well-known eccentricity of the bons. He decided to tell the hard truth and see what this bon woman made of it. "Ma'am, last anybody saw of her, she was riding one of those beasts. Now anybody with any wits at all is going to suppose, wherever she ended up, that beast took her there or sent her there. And that's what I think."
So there it was. Oh, there it was, lying before them, the sound and look of it, a barbed and violent monster, a Hippae, drawn into it at last, told off by name, the aspect of the whole thing that none of the bons had mentioned, that none of the bons would speak of or allow others to talk of. The Hippae. The Hippae took the girl, or one of them did, everyone knew that. They, the Hippae, did something to her, did anyone doubt? They hid her. They kept her. Then she showed up again. Who knows why? Who knows how? Marjorie felt the questions bubbling and kept silent, kept her hand on Tony's as she felt him, too, quivering with questions unanswered, unasked. The bons had blamed the Yrariers rather than the Hippae. Even now, Rowena did not respond. Why?
The Jellicos made their farewells and went out. Rowena wept, clinging to Sylvan. He fixed Marjorie with a stern face, forbidding her to speak. She cast her eyes down, feeling his will upon her as though he had touched her with his hands.
"Mama, would you like to lie down for a moment?" he asked Rowena.
She nodded, awash with tears.
"Tony, take her, will you?" asked Marjorie, wanting him to take the woman away, wanting to be left alone with Sylvan, in order to ask...
"A moment," Rowena said.
Marjorie nodded.
"Lady Westriding... Marjorie. A time may come when I can offer you help as you have offered me. If my life hangs on it, I will still help you." She laid her tear-wet hand on Marjorie's and went out with Tony, leaving her son behind.
"Don't," he said when they were alone, seeing the question in her face. "I don't know."
She could not hold the words in. "But you live here! You're familiar with the beasts."
"Shhh," he said, looking over his shoulder, running his finger inside a collar suddenly too tight. "Don't say beasts. Don't say animals. Don't say that. Not even to yourself. Don't think it." He gripped his throat as though something there was choking him.
"What do you say?"
"Hippae. Mounts," he gargled.
"And not even that where they might hear. Nothing where they might hear." He gagged, begging for air.
She stared into his face, seeing the beads of sweat standing out upon his forehead, seeing him struggle to hold his face quiet. "What is it?"
The struggle grew more intense. He could not answer her.
"Shhh," she said, taking his hands into her own. "Don't talk. Just think. Is it something... is it something they do to you?"
A nod, the merest hint of a nod.
"Something they do... to your brain? To your mind?"
A flicker of eyelid, tiny. If she had not learned to read almost invisible twitches, she would not have seen it.
"Is it..." She thought coldly of what she had seen at the bon Damfels estancia. "Is it a kind of blanking out?"
He blinked, breathing deeply.
"A compulsion?"
He sighed, letting go. His head sagged.
"A compulsion to ride, but an inability to think about riding, an inability to talk about riding." She said it to herself, not to him, knowing it was true, and he looked at her out of shining eyes. Tears?
"Which," she continued, watching him closely, "must be more intense the more frequently you ride." She knew she was right. "You managed to speak to us once right after a Hunt...."
"They had gone," he gargled, panting. "After a long Hunt, they go away. Today they are here, all around Opal Hill, nearby!"
"During the winter, the compulsion almost leaves you?" she asked. "And during the summer? But in spring and fall, you are possessed by it? Those of you who ride?"
He only looked at her, knowing she needed no confirmation.
"What do they do when winter ends? To bring you into line? Do they gather around your estancias? In their dozens? Their hundreds?" He did not deny it. "They gather and press upon you, insisting upon the Hunt. There must also be some pressure to make the children ride. Some compulsion there, as well?"
"Dimity," he said with a sigh.
"Your little sister."
"My little sister."
"Your father..."
"Has ridden for years, Master of the Hunt, for years, like Gustave...."
"So," she said, thinking she must tell Rigo. Must somehow make him understand.
"I'll take Mama home," he whispered, his face clearing.
"How have you withstood them?" her voice was as low as his. "Why have they not bitten off your arm or leg? Isn't that what they do when one of you tries to stand fast?"
He did not answer. He did not need to answer. She could puzzle it out for herself. It was not that he withstood them while he was riding. If he had done so, he would have vanished or been punished for it. Oh, no, when he rode he was one of them, like all the rest. The secret was that he recovered quickly when the ride was over. Quickly enough to say some things, to hint some things.
"You warned us that time," she said, reaching out to him. "I know how hard for you it must have been."
He took her hand and laid it along his cheek. Only that. But it was thus that Rigo saw them.
Sylvan excused himself, bowed, and went away to find Rowena. "A pleasant tete-a-tete." Rigo smiled fiercely. She was too preoccupied to notice the quality of that smile. "Rigo, you must not ride."
"Oh, and why is that?"
"Sylvan says-"
"Oh, I think it matters very little what Sylvan says." She looked at him uncertainly. "It matters a great deal. Rigo, the Hippae are not merely animals. They... they do something to their riders. Something to their brains."
"Clever Sylvan to have thought up such a tale."
"Do you think he invented it? Don't be silly. It's obvious. It's been obvious to me since we saw the first Hunt, Rigo."
"Oh?"
"And since last night. For the love of God, Rigo. Didn't it strike you as odd that no one blamed the Hippae? Here's this girl who disappeared during a Hunt, and no one blames the Hippae she was riding on?"
"If you disappeared during a Hunt, my dear, and turned up later as a courtesan in some petty principality, should I blame your horse?" He gave her a wintry glance, then left her there, staring after him, trying desperately to figure out what had happened.
9
In the Friary of the Green Brothers, nights sat gently upon the sills. The great, night-freezing cry which haunted the southern latitudes was seldom heard here, though whole choruses of grublike peepers filled the dark hours with dulcet sound. Days were spent in labor, nights in sleep. Brothers, so it was said, had once spent their time in study, but little study was needed here. All the questions had been reduced to doctrine; all the doctrine had been simplified to catechism; all the catechism had been learned long ago. Besides, what would the penitents do with more knowledge? They had no use for it here. The Friary sat upon shortgrass prairie, though there were tall grasses not far away. Every year in mid to late summer the Brothers went out to cut down quantities of strong, thick grass stems that grew to the height of seven or eight tall men. Other Brothers remained behind them at the Friary, digging deep and narrow trenches, in parallel pairs, outlining the new halls which would be needed during the Grassian year. Though penitents grew old and penitents died, the number of Brothers kept growing. Seemingly it was becoming a more frequent happening for acolytes of Sanctity to fly apart, like fragile wheels, spun too fast.
When the great grasses had been sawn through and tied in bundles, they were dragged back to the Friary and upended side by side in the waiting trenches. The top of each bundle was pulled over and tied partway down the bundle in the opposite ditch until the whole double line had been bowed into a vaulted hall which would be roofed with thatch, its openings walled with panels of woven grass. Within this lofty space the Brothers would build whatever kind of rooms were needed: a new chapel or kitchen or another set of cells.
So space was enclosed, said the historians of the order, long ago on another world by people who lived among tall grasses. The historians did not say what such people did in the winter. During winters on Grass, the Brothers retired below to a cramped underground monastery where they suffered through a lengthy season of sequestered and jam-packed irascibility. Winters drove more than a few of them past the pale of sanity. A sick wildness lurked among the brethren -skulking, endemic, more often erupting among the younger than among the aged. The old felt themselves past hope, but the young had hope continually frustrated and as continually strained against their frustration in strange and dangerous ways.
In the summer Friary, there was room enough for frustration to find an out. The narrow halls sprawled this way and that among the low grasses, some making vaulted cloisters around enclosed gardens, some with doors opening upon wide vegetable plots, some giving upon farmyards where chickens scratched or pigs grunted contentedly in their pens. If it had not been for the towers, the Friary could have been a tumulus left by a great tunneling mole, the round-topped halls dried to very much the color of the native soil.
But there were towers-towers everywhere. Demented with boredom, young Brothers had been erecting these grass-stalk steeples for decades. At first they were mere tapering masts, no taller than fifteen men, or twenty, topped by plumy seed-head finials. Later more elaborate three- and five-legged monstrosities had climbed into a cloud-streaked sky, almost beyond the sight or belief of those on the ground-always more towers, and more.
Over the wide courtyards lacy needles soared, their joints securely tied with tough ropes of wiregrass. Rearing upward at each juncture of the reed-vaulted halls, spidery pinnacles pierced the clouds Filigree masts rose above the kitchens and gardens. Outside the precincts of the Friary, forests of spicules like those of some lacework sea urchin thrust into the Grassian sky in myriad gothic spires. From any place within or around the Friary, one could not look up without seeing them, fantastically high and ridiculously fragile, the steeples of the climbers.
Upon these structure young Brothers, shrunk by distance into the stature and compass of spiders, had crawled and swung among the clouds, trailing their slender
ropes behind them, connecting all the towers with bridges which seemed no wider than a finger, scarcely stronger than a hair. Up ladders thin and wavery as web silk they climbed to the high platforms to keep watch. At first they had watched for hounds, or for grazers. Then they watched for golden angels like those on the towers of Sanctity, so said some of them, disillusioned with watching when no one ever saw anything interesting. Lately they had made a sport of seeing indescribable things, or so they said, and Elder Brother Laeroa had all he could do to keep them out of the hands of Doctrine. Jhamlees Zoe would have relished a good disciplinary session or even a trial for heresy. Those in the Office of Acceptable Doctrine were, after all, as bored as everyone else.