Syrill rolled his eyes. “Another thing about Danda-lay,” he said to Corry. “They call everyone by the same name here. You can’t hardly figure out who they’re speaking to.”
The servant sighed. “He saw you come in, Syrill.”
Syrill ground his teeth. “Alright, I’m coming. Corry, I’ll be in the meeting hall almost directly below this room. We came through on the way here. You can’t miss it: long wood table, tapestries include the love affair of the nymph and the dragon prince.”
Corry gave Syrill a twisted smile. “You never quit, do you?”
“I bet you remember the room now.”
“I remember it.”
For several minutes after he left, Corry stood at the window, listening to the throb of the waterfall. He could see shelts and animals coming and going in the courtyard. He saw soil in some of the carts and surmised that it had to be imported. I’ll bet none of the sewage goes to waste here, either. It was not a pleasant thought before dinner. Traffic picked up as the sun rose towards noon. Corry spotted several centaurs strolling around the pool. He had not been wearing his sword, but now he got it out and put it on. He’d seen other shelts wearing dress swords. Surely no one would look twice at his.
Noon came and went, but still Syrill did not return. Corry’s stomach growled. He wondered why the meeting was taking so long. Late afternoon shadows had begun to stretch across the plaza when he heard voices on the stairs. That doesn’t sound like Syrill. Suddenly the door flew open, and Corry saw two tiger cubs—youngsters whose heads came only to his waist.
Their chattering voices stopped abruptly. The cub in front was white with black stripes and blue eyes. The other was a more traditional orange and black with green eyes. “I told you I saw someone come up!” hissed the orange cub. He turned and fled.
“Tolomy!” the white cub called after him. She glanced at Corry, then bounded from the room.
“Wait!” called Corry. “Who are you?” He trotted down the steps in pursuit of the cubs. After several flights, he stopped hearing their voices, and by the time he reached the hall where the servant had brought him up, he was forced to admit he had lost them.
Corry sat down on the cool stone step to recover his breath. He was lightheaded, having eaten nothing since breakfast. Along the hallway to his left, he could see massive wooden doors—the entrance to the room of questionable tapestries. He could smell food somewhere nearby. Will they never finish that meeting?
At that moment, the doors opened.
Chapter 9. A Meeting of the Inner Council
We’ve introduced the players each
Although it’s yet to be seen
Which will prove to be the pawns
And which will be the kings
—faun nursery rhyme
Her eyes were slitted, like his sister’s. Slitted eyes had grown rare among the slaves, and Char liked to watch them grow round when she was excited. She had been a house slave and lacked the calluses and dead expressions of those from the mines.
Being with her reminded Char of the time before—of his first family. He couldn’t remember his mother, but he could remember his littermates. They’d been four—two male and two female—playing in the sun by day, sleeping all in a heap at night. Then the fauns had taken away the smallest, and they had been three. Soon after, the largest of the litter had been taken as well. Char was sure he’d gone to the quarry, and the thought still made him shudder. The biggest quarry slaves turned the heavy windlass that ground the stone used in the construction of the great houses. They grew so strong and dangerous that the fauns blinded them and kept them chained to their poles day and night. They did not live long. Char hoped that his brother had not grown big enough to turn the windlass.
He felt fortunate to have been chosen for the gem mines—hard work, but not crushing. More importantly, the slaves were both male and female, and he and his remaining sister were kept together. Last fall, some of the males had tried to breed her, but she had fought, and he had fought with her. Once the cycle started, she would be forced to bare two to three litters per year until her body collapsed. Breeding females didn’t live much longer than the windlass slaves.
Daren’s choice of mates for him was different, though. She was considerably older than he and yet had born no litters, which Char thought remarkable. In the dark, when her eyes were round and bright, she would whisper to him things that made his heart race. She talked of shelts other than swamp fauns and other than slaves. She had seen one once, though her mistress had beaten her for it. She had watched at the door while the stranger stood in the library and talked to her lord. “The stranger’s leg-fur was the color of cream and very curly. His hair was golden and his skin fair.”
There were other shelts too, she said. Once she’d seen huge hoof prints in the dirt yard—a solid hoof like a burro, but many times bigger. “I heard their deep voices, but we were locked in our kennels, so I couldn’t see. I know this: they were not swamp fauns. They were other, and they were free. We are other, too, Char. What the fauns do to us is wrong.”
Char had never considered whether his condition was wrong. Today was better than yesterday, or it was worse. But the duties of house slaves had not been so backbreaking, had included more talk, had given her time to think. She was called Crimson, for the deep red of her hair and the red-gold of her fur.
Gradually Char stopped wondering who was listening at the door, stopped leaping up at every sound. Their jailers came and went at predictable times. They were even provided with good food and a few simple games—cards and a board with pieces. Crimson knew the games and taught him how to play.
Char had heard of a wedding and vaguely recalled that it had something to do with a union of swamp faun houses and generally meant that the gem mines would be inspected and a great many slaves beaten. Crimson had a different idea about weddings. She’d seen more of the details in a house where her lord and lady took no more notice of her than of a dog. Except, of course, when she was alone with the lord. “He taught me things I did not think I wanted to learn,” she told Char, “but it was not so bad. At least I did not grow old in my fourteenth year with bearing litters. My lord even made me happy sometimes, when it pleased him.”
She made him stand with her and braided their tails together with a piece of ribbon and made a great show of drinking from the same cup of water that she said was their wedding wine. But once he’d decided to take her, Char cared nothing about swamp faun ceremonies. He made the show to please her and then became so nervous that he tangled the ribbon in their tails. Crimson giggled while he tried to unravel the mess. That calmed him a little. Then she pounced, sent them tumbling across the floor, and he forgot about the ribbon.
When she began to grow round with young, Char felt a surge of pride and protectiveness. At times he thought he could almost forgive Daren for murdering his sister. He was right. She would not have survived the summer. And he gave me Crimson.
And then a day came when the guards entered at an uncommon hour. Char and Crimson were playing a card game. They’d been talking and stopped in mid-sentence.
Daren came in behind the guards. Char’s stomach rose at the sight of him, though he’d thought he was through hating. Daren looked around serenely. He glanced at his kennel master, who’d come in last. “A lovely arrangement. You say we’ve got half a dozen like this?”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“Build a dozen more. I’ve already got some dams in mind, and my chief overseer has at least two sires on his list.”
His eyes fell on Crimson, sitting with her eyes downcast at the little table. Daren strolled over and placed one hand on her round belly. He glanced at Char. “Well, done. If these whelps have your courage and her temper, I’ll be pleased.”
He glanced at his guards. “Take him to block seventeen.”
Char gaped. “B-but, my lord! Why are you—? I have done as you asked!”
Daren took two steps and stood nose to nose with him. “Indeed.” The
n he hit Char so hard across the side of the head that his ear rang. Daren hissed into the other ear. “Did you think that I would ever allow a slave to draw a sword on me and die in his bed? Brave you may be, but still a fool, more so to think I’d forget. Now go join your sister.”
The guards dragged Char from the hut. Over their shoulders, he glimpsed Crimson’s pale face, heard her scream his name. He thrashed, roared, bit, but they had him secure, and as they loaded him onto the wagon a paralysis descended. Daren knew all the time what he planned to do with me. From the moment he whipped me on the plank road. He didn’t think I had enough to lose then, so he gave me something. Just so he could take it away.
Colors seemed to drain from the world. Even smells had less meaning. I am already dead, he thought. The earth is already forgetting me. His children would never know him, perhaps never know Crimson. How many generations will Daren want between his soldier slaves and me? His offspring would be bred and then discarded, and probably theirs and theirs after.
Much later, as the wagon was passing through the ugly iron gates of block seventeen, as the gray buildings appeared like poison mushrooms from the swamp, as he caught the first smells of blood and death, Char thought of something else. A shelt who has nothing left to lose has nothing left to fear.
* * * *
Corry stood back and watched the council members stream past. The first had to be Shadock. The king was tall for a faun, broad-shouldered, with dark hair only faintly grizzled. He must have been as old as Meuril, but he wore his years better. His clothes were ornate—a cape of purple samite lined with wolf fur over a light wool robe, white and slashed with purple silk. A dress sword in a jeweled scabbard hung from a silver belt at his waist, and a slender crown of white gold encircled his temples. His family came behind him. The crown prince looked very like his father, except that his hair was still ink black, and his cheeks full and smooth. Two girls and five more boys followed.
Chance came last. Among all the royal children, he was the only golden head. Corry knew the fact must contribute to the rumors about his pedigree. Most cliff fauns were fair-haired. Dark hair ran mainly in a few noble houses.
Queen Istra, however, was also golden. She walked behind the last of her children, talking to a cliff faun Corry did not recognize. Istra was beautiful in a faded sort of way. She had Chance’s pallor and also his defiant tilt of the chin.
Meuril looked plain in his blue and green robes. He was talking to Shadock. Capricia trailed a little behind Chance. She looked tired, Corry thought, but beautiful in fur-trimmed cream silk with dagged sleeves so long they nearly swept the floor. Her hair fell down her back in a cascade of cinnamon curls. Syrill was walking with her and talking earnestly, his green plumed hat his only nod to Danda-lay’s fashions.
Corry saw a dark fauness walking with Capricia and Syrill and decided she must be Sharon-zool, the swamp faun queen. She had smooth, straight black hair, cut short to her chin in the swamp faun fashion, just visible under an ornate headpiece that Corry recognized from books as the swamp faun badge of royalty. It looked more helmet than crown—iridescent scales, said to be dragon skin, that lay smooth against her head and cascaded down to her shoulders. They caught the light with every turn of her head. Her clothes were white leather worked with scales of lapis lazuli that matched the turquoise and green of her crown, and she wore breeches rather than a dress according to swamp faun custom.
The centaurs came behind, dwarfing the fauns. Corry knew their king at once. Targon walked with the fluid movements of a deer in spite of his bulk. His fur was blood red—almost the color of the centaur flag. His bobbed, glossy black tail swished restlessly. On his human torso, he wore only a short black cape with red trim and elaborately embroidered high collar, which covered only part of his heavily muscled belly and chest. His human hair was the same color as his tail—black with no trace of gray. He had sharp, deeply intelligent green eyes and a neatly trimmed goatee. Corry noticed that he wore a coiled battle whip as shelts might wear a sword.
Lexis was talking to Targon, and for once he looked small, his head coming only to the centaur’s horse shoulders. Other cats walked behind him, all of whom Corry recognized: Ounce the snow leopard, Nolfee the black leopard, Liliana the lioness, Loop the lynx, and Cleo the ocelot. They were the same council members who’d fled with Lexis to Meuril in the dead of night to broker a treaty, and they’d been frequently in and out of the wood faun court since then. A number of other fauns milled around the edges of the party, each wearing chains of office.
Corry’s eyes kept returning to Targon. Something about him is familiar. He looked nothing like the centaur Corry had left in the Otherwhere, but still... The almost-human head turned, and Corry ducked back into the shadow of the staircase. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t want to be seen. He breathed a sigh of relief as Targon moved into the next room.
“Corry!” Syrill had spotted him. “You must be starving!”
Over his shoulder, Corry saw a palace guard leaving the meeting hall. It was Jubal.
Chapter 10. Furs and Filinians
A Filinian throne may be inherited, but Filinian loyalty never is.
—Demitri Alainya to his heir
Liliana the lioness swerved into a passage and set off at a brisk trot, the noise of the other councilors fading rapidly behind her.
“Lily.”
She turned. The ocelot had followed her. Cleo’s eyes were green-gold and they filled her exquisitely marked face. The eyes looked soft and shy, but the voice had claws. “Where are you going?”
Liliana’s lip curled. “Attend to your own affairs, slant-eyes, and let me attend to mine.”
Cleo’s voice dropped to a hiss. “If your affairs threaten my life, I will most certainly attend to them!”
“Have a care, Cleo,” rumbled the lioness.
“No, you have a care. Listen to me: he won’t do it, not if you let it be. We can all live. Do you hear me? Let it be. Otherwise, you will get us killed!”
Liliana took a step towards her, stiff-legged, lips pulled up in a noiseless snarl. “You stuttering mouse-catcher, I was gutting deer when you were still kneading your mother’s belly, so don’t talk to me about killing! We’re dead right now unless we act.”
Cleo backed off a pace. “Lexis is not Demitri.”
“Pough!” Liliana spat. “You know nothing. He’s his father’s cub, and his father had impeccable timing. This festival is it. Have you seen the way Syrill looks at him? The war debts aren’t paid. You can wait to be spent like a cowry if you like; I won’t.”
They parted growling. Cleo was nonplussed as she emerged again in the foyer by the council chamber to see a palace guard. She glared at him, half inclined to ask how much he’d heard, then thought better of it and trotted away.
Jubal watched her, frowning.
* * * *
“This,” said Syrill as he and Corry stood on a wide, stone-paved walk, “is Chance’s famous statue, commissioned in honor of his promotional ceremony after fighting bravely with us in the cat wars. I think it was the first and only time Shadock paid him any attention.”
Corry looked at the statue—a life-size image of Chance in full battle dress, atop a stag. “They’ve repaired it, of course,” continued Syrill, “but you can still see the line where the wolflings gelded the buck and took off the antlers.” Syrill laughed. “I doubt they even knew who Chance was at the time, but he’s made sure they know since.”
Corry and Syrill were strolling on the Sky Walk—a scenic broadway along the very brink of the cliff. A waist-high wall ran along the edge, fashioned from the same warm, rose-colored stone as the pavement. Syrill had wanted to catch the sunset before dinner. Other shelts and animals came and went around them, enjoying the view or selling things to those who were.
A cliff faun child, one of a number of urchins, sidled up to them. He was dressed in a ragged tunic that might have once been yellow. He held a stringed instrument that looked like a cross between a banjo an
d a violin. “Would sirs like a song?” He noticed Chance’s statue and added, “Perhaps the Lay of the Prince’s Magical Gallows?”
Corry shook his head. He had heard the Lay of the Prince’s Magical Gallows in more versions than he could remember. The song had grown popular in Laven-lay, where minstrels were less careful to veil their references to Chance. The most recent version Corry had heard made the observation that “princes with small towers are like to build high gallows” and finished with the cunning remark that, “like a certain statue in Danda-lay town, the prince’s tall gallows came tumbling down.” The statue, of course, had never fallen, but everyone knew what part of it had.
“We’ve heard that one a few times,” said Syrill.
Corry could tell Syrill was about to send him on his way, but he felt sorry for the child. “What’s popular in Danda-lay?” he asked. “Something we wouldn’t have heard in Laven-lay.”
The young minstrel-hopeful considered. Corry doubted he’d ever been anywhere near Laven-lay. “The Unicorn Maid and the Monster?” he hazarded.
Syrill rolled his eyes. “Yes, there’s one from my childhood. They only sing it cliff-side to frighten children away from the swamp. It’s classic, though. Sing away, kid.”
“Very good, sirs.” He settled himself at the foot of the statue and began.
In the dark of the moon in a time long ago—
“I was wanting to ask you something,” said Corry. “While I was sitting in our room, two cubs came running up the stairs.”
“Cubs?” Syrill bristled. “As in, feline cubs?”
—a maiden rare, with eyes of gold and silver hair—
“Yes, and they—”
“In my room?”
“Syrill, just listen to me. They didn’t know the room was occupied. They ran when they saw me.”
“They’d have run a deal faster if I’d been there!”
The Prophet of Panamindorah - Complete Trilogy Page 15