Sagaria

by John Dahlgren

  The ceaseless pounding of the rain, the monotonous lurching of the carriage through the mud, the soothing sound of Flip and Perima snoring gently in counterpoint…

  He was woken by a drop of water landing on his nose. The view outside the window was brighter, even though he could see from the shadows that the sun was low in the sky. The carriage had come to a halt; the whole vehicle creaked as Sir Tombin shifted on the driving seat and then clambered down. Perima was stirring as well. At some stage while they’d all been sleeping, she stretched out at full length along the seat opposite him, resting her head on her outflung arm; the sack she’d used as a pillow had fallen on the floor. Her face was slightly flushed, as if her dreams had been very strenuous. When she opened her eyes she was looking straight at Sagandran.

  “Hello there,” she said quietly before a final yawn overcame her. She covered it up with the back of her free hand. “Any idea where we are?”

  “None at all.”

  Sir Tombin opened the door. “There’s no sense carrying on further tonight,” he told them. “The rain’s stopped for the time being, but the road ahead of us is awash – a river, it is. I’ve pulled the carriage as far off the road as I’m able. We’ll camp as best we can for the night, and hope the flood clears by morning. I’ll start a fire so that perhaps we can dry out a little. We’ll sleep in the carriage tonight.”

  In fact, getting a fire going proved impossible, as every twig and branch they found was saturated with water. Sagandran suggested that they break up the barrel Perima had hidden in and use it as fuel, but Sir Tombin vetoed the idea.

  “When you’ve traveled as much as I have, young man, you learn never to waste resources. I cannot for the life of me imagine at the moment what use an empty barrel might be to us, but it’s a resource nevertheless. We’ll keep it.”

  Sir Tombin unfastened the horse from the shafts of the carriage and led it off toward a nearby clump of trees so that it would have shelter for the night. Sagandran followed, gathering some grass to feed the animal. The empty barrel was put to its very first use; Sagandran fetched some water in it from an overflowing stream some fifty or sixty yards away and staggered back under the huge weight to dump it down in front of the horse. For its part, the horse seemed startled that anyone should be troubling to look after it. The neigh it gave in response to Sagandran’s attentions was friendly but, at the same time, inquisitive.

  Sagandran patted the beast’s flanks as it bent its head to drink noisily from the barrel. When he’d first seen the creature this morning he’d assumed it was an indeterminate brown-gray. Now he looked more closely and found that what he’d assumed to be the horse’s natural coat was, in fact, an accumulation of ingrained mud – weeks’, if not months’, worth. This animal had been seriously neglected. He picked away a few of the layers, and discovered white hair beneath.

  Sagandran ran back to the carriage and fetched an empty sack. He dunked it in the water barrel and began scrubbing with it at the horse’s neck. The rain had softened some of the muddy crust, making his task easier. The animal kept trying to nuzzle its nose into his armpit, which slowed progress a little and made him giggle. The mane was the worst. Packed tightly with dirt, it was a complete tangle, and after a few frustrating minutes of fighting with the knots he decided it was a job that would have to wait for another day. He moved along the horse’s flanks and when he next looked back toward its head, he saw that Perima had come up unnoticed and was picking at the knots with her long, slim, brown, swift-moving fingers.

  The sun had almost set by the time they finished. The underside of the horse was still filthy, but the rest of it was substantially cleaner than either Sagandran or Perima.

  “He’s a beauty,” she said appreciatively. “At least, he was a beauty once and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be again.”

  The horse seemed to agree, for he now stood much more proudly, tossing his head so that his long, wet mane slapped around. He was a gorgeous white all over except for a few pale gray-brown markings … and except for a hatchwork on either shoulder of what appeared to be long, deep scars.

  Sagandran whistled. It looked as if the king’s stable hands hadn’t just neglected this animal; they’d treated it cruelly. He wondered why. Perima was obviously sharing similar thoughts, for when he glanced at her he saw tears of fury in her eyes. No dormouse now. It made him glad he wasn’t a dragon.

  Sir Tombin had climbed a small hill behind their camping site, with Flip on his shoulder, to see if they could get a better idea of the state of the countryside around. He came splashing down the hillside and approached them.

  “Well, I’d never have—” he began.

  “Look at this,” interrupted Sagandran, gesturing toward the horse’s scars. “What do you think?”

  Sir Tombin came closer and bent over for a better look. Once again, he gave a little whistle through his teeth.

  “I don’t like the look of that at all, Sagandran, Perima. The wounds are long healed and this fine fellow is in no danger from them, but someone has treated him very savagely. Very savagely indeed. Unless …”

  “Unless what?” said Perima. Her face had turned bright red. She looked as if she wanted desperately to find someone she could hit out at.

  “The patterns of the scars,” said Sir Tombin in a reasonable tone. He traced a webbed hand along them. “They are very regular. Almost as if they had a meaning, as if someone had made them deliberately, marking the horse for a reason I cannot at this moment fathom.”

  “Like a tattoo or something?” demanded Sagandran hotly.

  “That’s the idea,” agreed Sir Tombin.

  “Or a brand, like cowboys put on their cattle? The Lazy Q – that sort of thing?”

  “Ah, you’ve lost me there, young Sagandran. What are these ‘cowboys’ you speak of? Are they lazy when they stand in line?” Sir Tombin’s friendly smile as he glanced in Sagandran’s direction was baffled.

  Sagandran ignored the questions, waving them aside. “What I meant was, has someone marked this animal to show he belongs to them? Put their name on him, so to speak?”

  “Yes, I should think so,” said Sir Tombin blandly.

  “But that’s wicked,” Perima stamped her foot. Mud splattered. Paying it no mind, she advanced toward the horse. Almost pushing Sir Tombin aside, she put her arm around the animal’s proud neck and pressed her face against its cheek, muffling her voice. “Who’d be so vile as to treat an animal that way?”

  “Your father’s ostlers, perhaps,” replied Sir Tombin, his voice still mild. “Someone else. Who knows? The practice is not uncommon, however much it is to be despised; but I do not recognize it as your father’s marque.”

  Stepping around Perima, he looked into the horse’s face. “This is a very special beast, I think. Aren’t you, you fine one?”

  The horse snickered its assent.

  “You can tell how special he is just by his eyes,” added Sir Tombin, almost as if he were speaking to himself and the horse alone. Then he raised his voice a little. “A creature so splendid as this should have a name, you know. We can’t just keep calling him ‘horse.’ What do you say, Perima?”

  Perima stood back. “I can’t give him a name.”

  “Whyever not, my dear?”

  “I … I don’t feel I’m entitled to.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because I’m sure it was my father’s people who treated him so ill. It’s the sort of cruelty my father wouldn’t even think twice about.”

  “But your father’s crimes aren’t yours.”

  Sir Tombin reached out a reassuring hand toward her. She shook her head violently and turned away.

  “I don’t have the right to give this horse a name. All I can do instead is beg him for forgiveness.”

  The stallion nickered quietly.

  “See?” said Sir Tombin. “He forgives you.”

  Perima still refused to turn back. She put her face in her hands.

  Sir
Tombin eyed her for a few moments in silence, then shrugged. “Sagandran?” he said at last.

  Sagandran had been watching Perima as well, and felt reluctant to intervene because he could see how passionately she felt, but he moved closer now.

  “Will you let me name you?”

  The horse made an odd little noise that Sagandran interpreted as a negative. For a moment he was disconcerted, then he remembered something Grandpa Melwin had often said. It was as if he could hear the old man’s voice in his ears now – as if Grandpa Melwin were standing right next to him. “No one can give an animal a name,” Grandpa said. “What you must do is observe the animal carefully as you get to know it, and sooner or later you and the animal will discover its true name together.”

  Its true name. That was the idea Grandpa had been trying to convey to Sagandran.

  He peered deep into the horse’s fathomless brown eye, looking for some meaning among the flecks of color he saw. There were indeed meanings there, he was sure, but he couldn’t decipher them. He stretched out his hand to toy with the forelock on the horse’s head. The horse lowered its gaze.

  That was when the horse’s true name came to him. He could have waited weeks before discovering it, but the animal wanted him to know sooner than that.

  “You’re called Snowmane, aren’t you, my friend?” he whispered.

  The horse’s ears flicked. Yes.

  Sagandran stepped back a pace. “His name is Snowmane,” he announced.

  Perima still refused to look in their direction. Her shoulders were shaking. Sagandran wondered why it had taken him so stupidly long to realize that she was crying but didn’t want the rest of them to know. He wanted to go to her, put his arm around her and reassure her that she was among friends, but at the same time he knew this might be the worst thing he could do. Instead, he just cleared his throat.

  “Snowmane,” said Sir Tombin with brusque cheerfulness, observing this little interplay. “And a very fine name it is too.”

  “Does he like small creatures?” asked Flip.

  “I’m sure he does,” said Sir Tombin. “Now let’s go and see what we can find for our suppers.”

  The Frogly Knight squelched off toward the carriage.

  “Perima?” said Sagandran experimentally once they’d gone.

  She spun to face him, lowering her hands. Her cheeks were wet.

  “Snowmane, I’m so sorry!” she wailed.

  The horse slowly swung his head around to regard her. What it was she saw in Snowmane’s face Sagandran couldn’t tell for sure, but he could guess. The horse was forgiving her.

  This time, Perima didn’t mind that Sagandran could see her crying.

  “There is an old road through the high hills we could take,” said Sir Tombin the following morning as Sagandran and Perima were stretching their stiff muscles (Perima attempting to do so with a modicum of elegance). “It’s been so long since it was used that perchance King Fungfari’s searchers will not know of it.”

  He stretched a muscle or two of his own. Only Flip had enjoyed a good night’s sleep in the cramped confines of the carriage. Sir Tombin had insisted on sleeping on the floor between the two bench seats. During his many periods of wakefulness, Sagandran wondered if Sir Tombin hadn’t been wise rather than noble in his insistence. The seat Sagandran was stretched out on was lumpy in all the wrong places, no matter how he twisted his body around to try to conform to the bumps. Even the floor must surely have been more comfortable. He’d heard Perima shifting often as well, and known that she was going through the same torments. She had found the bench acceptable enough when she’d dozed off during the afternoon; she must have been more exhausted than Sagandran thought.

  The rain started to fall steadily again and made Sagandran’s muscles feel even sorer and more inflexible than they already were.

  “Is it breakfast time yet?” demanded Flip, who’d been infuriatingly bright and jolly ever since waking the rest of them.

  “Hush, small companion,” said Sir Tombin, a rare note of testiness creeping into his words. “In a little while. There are more important matters to capture our attention just now.”

  “This road you mention,” said Sagandran, rotating his wrist gingerly, “is it a secret?” His mind filled with images of smugglers carrying contraband across wild, mountainous countryside.

  “Not so much secret, I say,” replied Sir Tombin, “as forgotten. I wouldn’t know of it myself were it not for an old friend of mine happening to live on it not too many miles from here in the Loristo Valley. He chose to dwell there precisely because the road has been forgotten, and he wished for the world to forget him as well.”

  “What sort of friend?” inquired Flip brightly.

  “He was a well-regarded mage in his youth – a magic-user. By the time I met him, he’d decided to withdraw from the world and become a recluse.” The Frogly Knight sighed. “He was one of the wizards I asked to try and lift the witch’s curse from me, but even he couldn’t succeed in doing that, alas. We became firm friends, however, and whenever I find myself straying within reach of the Loristo Valley, I call by to see how he’s getting along. No one else ever does, which is the way old Samzing likes it.”

  “A mage,” said Sagandran eagerly. “Wow! Like Gandalf, you mean?”

  “I don’t know of this Gandalf of yours, nor of any other Earthworld mages,” said Sir Tombin with just a hint of reproof, “but I suspect the resemblance to your acquaintance is not strong. Samzing is a little, well, eccentric. Peculiar. How can I put this?”

  “Nuts,” said Perima, her nose pressed against the opposite window as she tried to see if Snowmane was all right.

  “Ah, that’s a little—”

  “Bats,” she amended. “Crackers. Bonkers.”

  “You are so harsh, young lady,” lamented Sir Tombin, picking up Flip and popping the door open on his side of the carriage. “It grieves me. Suffice to say, Samzing and a fruitcake share quite a lot in common.”

  He dropped out into the world with an ominous splash, leaving Sagandran and Perima on their own.

  “He’s right, you know,” said Sagandran. His rotten night had left him in a critical mood. “You can be pretty nasty and heartless when you want to be. Sir Tombin obviously cares quite a lot about this Samzing. You didn’t have to be so offensive.”

  Perima whipped her head around to stare at him. “Sagandran of Earthworld,” she hissed. “Yesterday you saw me at my weakest. You’ve managed to work your way into my heart; I don’t mind admitting it. I don’t want to throw you back out again, but I’ll not let you see me being weak again. This is a tough world you’ve found yourself in – at least, the part of it that is Mattani, for all I sometimes joke about it. You saw my father. To you, he’s probably a figure of fun, someone to laugh at, with all his petty meanness and spite. Yes, you’re right to see him as an object of derision, because that’s what he deserves. But at the same time, you’ve got to realize that he quite literally holds the power of life and death over everyone who’s unfortunate enough to live in his horrible little rathole of a kingdom. Weakness and compassion aren’t useful attributes to have if you come from the court of the high and mighty King Fungfari. They’re liabilities. They can be fatal. People have lost their heads because they’ve shown too much of a capacity for kindness or sorrow. Because I’m not just an ordinary Mattanian, but a Princess of the Blood Royal, it’s even more dangerous for me than for just about anyone else to show any weakness. Weakness is a luxury I may not permit myself.” Her voice was caustic. Her eyes were shiny with barely repressed tears – barely repressed but nonetheless repressed, and firmly so.

  “Which means, Sagandran, that most times I try to stop myself from feeling too much. You’ve made this a lot more difficult for me, because I like you far more than I ever intended to let myself like anyone, ever. I don’t want to lose that, however dangerous it might be for me, and I don’t want to lose you either, but I also have to maintain my defenses. So if sometimes I make
cruel jokes, that’s because if I didn’t, I’d be letting you see that I cared. Yes, I could tell how fond Sir Tombin is of his friend, and I knew how horrid I was being. But that’s my armor, don’t you see? It’s the only armor I have and I’m keeping it. You don’t have to like it if you don’t want to. You don’t have to like me, either, if you don’t want to.”

  She shut her mouth tightly and, pushing forcefully past him, followed Sir Tombin out into the rain.

  Sagandran felt as if he ought to have something clever to call after her, but he didn’t. His head was spinning from what she’d said. He pottered around inside the carriage for a few more minutes, tidying things that didn’t need tidying. When finally he stuck his head out the door, he could see Perima standing next to Snowmane, talking earnestly to the horse. Maybe she could say things to Snowmane that she couldn’t say as easily to the rest of them, not even to Sagandran. Or maybe Sagandran was the hardest of all for her. She’d said Sagandran had worked his way into her heart. Maybe that made it even more difficult for Perima to say what she really felt. It dawned on him that one definition of strength might be the ability to show weakness. Perima wasn’t that strong.

  Yet.

  And neither, come to think of it, was he.

  The rain eased a little.

  Whistling with assumed nonchalance, as if the things Perima had said just bounced off him, he opened the carriage door and climbed down into the mud and went to see if Sir Tombin required any assistance.

  “I’ll say this about the old road,” declared Flip, “it may be drier than the highway, but it’s a whole heck of a lot bumpier.”

  As if to acknowledge his words, the carriage hit a rock and leaped a full yard in the air before landing with a crash. Sagandran grabbed his little friend in midair to stop him from shooting off into the bushes that pressed close to the road on either side.