When Marjorie and the others arrived at Klive, Marjorie rode directly to the Kennel Gate. It was the closest place she knew to the first surface, one of the two familiar approaches to the mansion. Above the first surface was the terrace, and fronting on the terrace were the reception rooms. She was halfway across the terrace before someone saw her and moved swiftly to intercept her. Sylvan.
“Marjorie!” His voice was a muffled shout of dismay. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to find out what I can about Stella.” She confronted him, arms folded, half angry, half pleading.
He took her arm, pulled her away from the windows. “You Yrariers do believe in courting danger. For the love of whatever you hold dear, Marjorie, come away from the doors. Let’s go down into the garden.” He turned away, still pulling at her, and she followed him, somewhat unwillingly and too late. The stentorian bellow startled them both. Stavenger had come out the doors and stood towering at the top of the steps, face purple with fury.
“What are you doing here? Fragras! I’m speaking to you!”
His fists were clenched as though he intended to strike her. Her own frustration and fury rose to meet his, all in a moment. She drew herself up, one hand forward, the index finger pointing him out.
“You,” she screamed. “You unholy monster!” Her voice hung on the air like a smell.
He shuddered and drew back, more surprised by her attack than he would have been by any other tactic. He was not accustomed to either defiance or reproach, and he had been so far from sensible thought that it took him time to puzzle out that he had intended to attack her.
“You despoiler of children!” she cried. “You barbarian! Where was it you saw my daughter last?” She moved up toward him, waving the finger as though it had a cutting edge, like a sword.
“I never saw her,” he snarled. “I didn’t look.”
“How can a Master not observe his Hunt?” she cried. “Are you so enslaved to your mounts that you’re insensible?”
His face became even darker, his neck swelled, his eyes bulged as he howled inarticulately and came toward her like a juggernaut. Sylvan caught her from behind and dragged her away.
“Move!” he hissed at her, a long, frightened exhalation. “He’ll kill you if he gets the chance!”
He pulled her down the steps, away down the Hounds’ Way and through the Kennel Gate, then shut the heavy gate behind her. Through it she could still hear Stavenger’s wordless bellows of fury.
Sylvan leaned against the gate, his face pale. “I knew you’d want to know. I found out for you. I asked Shevlok and some of the others. They don’t notice much during a Hunt, quite frankly, but it was Darenfeld’s Coppice, the same as Dimity, the same as Janetta. That’s the last place anyone saw her.”
“Show me!” she demanded, leaping up into Don Quixote’s saddle. “Now!”
“Marjorie—”
“Now! You can ride Irish Lass. She’s smaller than those monstrosities you’re used to riding.” Then, seeing him looking vacantly at the big horse, “Put your left foot in the stirrup, that metal thing there. Grasp the saddle and pull yourself up; she’s not going to put her leg out for you. Now, take the reins, as I have mine. Don’t bother doing anything with them. She’ll follow us. Now, show me where!”
He gestured off to the left and they all rode in that direction, gaining only a little distance before they heard the gate bang open and looked back to see Stavenger howling after them. The riders looked resolutely forward as they entered the taller grasses which soon hid them from view.
Sylvan sat very quietly on the horse, occasionally reaching forward with his feet as though to find the toe spaces he was accustomed to on his Hippae mounts.
“Sit up,” Marjorie instructed him tersely. “She has no barbs to skewer you with. Lean forward. Pet her. She likes it.” He did so, slowly, almost fearfully, relaxing gradually.
“A different kind of beast, eh?” queried Brother Mainoa. “Though I am very sore from this unaccustomed position, I am not afraid.”
“No,” Sylvan agreed abstractedly. “No. But then, one really isn’t afraid while on the Hunt, either.” He stared around himself, as though seeking landmarks. “There.” He pointed ahead of them, a little to the right. “That’s the Ocean Garden. Normally we’d ride on the other side, but we can get where we’re going around this way.” He gestured, showing Marjorie the way, and she rode ahead, letting him call directions to her as they went.
“Why was your father in a rage?” Tony asked. “Because of your father. When they returned last night, from the Hunt, Roderigo demanded that they help him search for your sister. It isn’t done. When someone vanishes, everyone pretends not to notice. No one searches. No one demands help from others. Father — my father — couldn’t keep his temper. He’s been wild, ever since yesterday. Seeing you set him off, and then when your mother accused him…” Sylvan’s eyes opened widely, and he stroked his throat. “How can I…?”
“No Hippae around,” murmured Brother Mainoa. “Not just now. I think our… well, our guides have frightened them off. Or perhaps they have gone for reinforcements.”
“Guides?”
“Do not speak of it. Perhaps we will, in time, but now is not the time. We do not want to think cheese with hunger all around us.”
Sylvan went back to massaging his throat and staring incredulously about himself. Only after they had gone some miles through the grasses did he settle down, though he still managed to disconcert Marjorie from time to time by standing upright on Irish Lass’s back. “I have to get up here to see,” he explained, waving toward a distance the others could not perceive. “There, off there, is the ridge that leads to the copse.”
They turned in the indicated direction and moved on, gaining a lower limb of the ridge and following it as it wound its lengthy way onto the height. From there they could look down into a valley dotted with copses. Sylvan pointed to the largest of them “Darenfeld’s,” he said.
“Why Darenfeld?” asked Rillibee/Lourai. “There are no bons by that name.”
“There were,” Sylvan replied. “There were eleven families originally. The Darenfeld estancia and all the family perished in a grass fire several generations ago. Others had been burned out before,”
“A grass fire?” Marjorie wondered. “We’ve seen no fires since we’ve been here.”
“You haven’t been here in summer.” He gazed out toward the horizon. “There is almost no rain in the summer, but there is lightning. The fires come like great waves, eating the grass, sending smoke boiling up into the clouds. Sometimes there are fires in the spring, but they are small ones because the grass is still fresh and full of moisture—”
“And a summer fire burned the Darenfeld estancia?”
“It was before they had grass gardens,” Brother Mainoa remarked. “We at the Friary have designed the gardens to stop the flames. There are areas and aisles of low turfs which smolder but do not burn. They break the fire so that it goes around rather than through. We have done the same thing at the Friary, to protect it, and at Opal Hill and the other estancias. The great gardens of Klive were not planted merely for their beauty.”
“True.” Sylvan nodded. “None of the bons would have gone to the trouble merely for beauty.”
Marjorie urged Don Quixote toward the copse below them. It loomed dark and mysterious among the soft-hued grasses, the more so the closer they came. Small pools sucked at the horses’ feet. Great trunks went up into gloomy shade, gnarled roots kneed up to brace their monstrous bulk, their lower branches as huge as ordinary trees. Rillibee leaned toward the copse as though toward a lover.
“Now what?” asked Tony. “The hunt came here and left here. We should find a path trampled into the grasses where many Hippae went. Then we should find another, where one Hippae went.”
“If it went,” said Brother Mainoa. “Though this is called a copse, it is in fact a small forest. What would you say, Sylvan? Half a mile or more through?”
Sylvan shook his head. “Estimating distances is not something we do much of, I’m afraid. On the Hunt, it doesn’t matter. We measure Hunts in hours, not in miles or kilometers or stadia, as they do on Repentance.”
“From the ridge it looked to be half a mile,” Father James agreed. “Enough territory in here to hide any number of Hippae.”
“If we do not find a trail leading out,” said Marjorie wildly, “then we will search within, among the trees.” She appealed to each of them in turn, seeking agreement. Brother Mainoa sat very still upon his horse. His expression was alert, as though he heard something she could not hear. “Brother Mainoa?” she asked. “Brother?”
His eyebrows went up, and he smiled at her. “Of course. Of course. Let us first look for a trail,”
The way the Hunt had come was easy to find. The way the Hunt had gone was equally easy. Crushed grasses testified to the fact that more than one Hunt had come this way recently. Some stems were completely dried, others were newly broken and still leaking moisture. Brother Mainoa rode down this broad trail and then pulled Blue Star to a halt as he pointed off to the left. All of them could see the narrow trail which wound into the grass. Father James picked a stem of broken grass and handed it to Marjorie. It was still moist. “So,” she said. “So.”
“If a Hippae has her,” Tony said in a carefully emotionless voice, “how are we to get her?”
“Hide,” she said. “Wait until it leaves her alone. Steal her back.”
“I wish we had weapons,” Father James said.
“So do I,” she admitted. “But we don’t.”
He shook his head, only slightly. “Let us hope we find only one of the beasts opposing us.”
Rigo boiled the morning away, waiting while Sebastian reassembled the aircar, a longer process than had been anticipated. The new parts, though appropriately numbered, were not a precise fit. Sebastian took them to his own shop in the village, as he put it, “to shave them down a bit.”
By midafternoon the first car had been put together and tested. Driven by Sebastian, with Persun Pollut along for whatever assistance he might offer, Rigo set out for Klive. The trip took slightly more than an hour, across the southern tip of the swamp forest with the clutter of Commons off to their left. They landed in the gravel court beyond the first surface and crossed that surface on their way to the terrace of Klive.
“Your Excellency,” a little voice cried from behind the balustrade. “Your Excellency!”
Rigo turned, surprised to see one of the bon Damfels daughters beckoning to him. He moved toward her, impatiently, wanting to go on into Klive to see whether Marjorie was there.
“They’ve gone,” the girl said. “Roderigo Yrarier, your wife and son and the Green Brothers, they’ve gone.”
“Gone where?” he blurted. “Where?”
She shook her head, tears suddenly starting down her cheeks. “You mustn’t go up there. Father, the Obermun, is in a rage. He will kill you. He has half killed Emmy already. Your wife came to ask where your daughter had been lost. Sylvan told her. He found out from Shevlok, and he told your wife. Sylvan went with them. Father had been screaming since then. Emmy tried to calm him and he beat her—”
A bellow from the house above them sent the girl fleeing along the side of the house. Rigo stopped, put one foot on the step before him, and felt himself pulled firmly away. Sebastian had one arm and Persun the other, and they seemed determined to drag him away from Klive, by brute force if necessary.
“Don’t go up there, sir. He will not listen to reason. Listen to him. He sounds like a bull!”
“Listen to Pollut, sir. He will not give you any help, not now. You must wait. Wait until he is calmer. Wait until you can speak with someone else.”
“At the Hunt,” Sebastian suggested. “Tomorrow. At the bon Laupmon Hunt.” They dragged Rigo away, he resisting them but not protesting, as though some part of him realized the sense of what they said even though his body was unwilling to agree.
The horses followed the trail in single file, their riders at first alert for any sound, then gradually, as mile succeeded mile, growing slack and distracted. Mainoa and Lourai were preoccupied with pain, aching joints and throbbing buttocks. Marjorie was thinking of Rigo, and Sylvan of Marjorie. Father James was praying that he had not done the wrong thing, and Tony was thinking of a girl he had not seen for a very long time. The slap of the grass blades on their bodies had become hypnotic. Even Marjorie, usually alert to the nuances of horse behavior, did not notice that the horses were acting very much as Don Quixote had acted when she had ridden him away from the Hippae cavern. Ears alertly forward, they moved as though they were headed home. As though someone spoke to them. The riders did not comment upon this. With the sun on their backs, they rode, unspeaking, the only noise the sound of the horses’ hooves.
The world spun the sun to the center of the sky and then downward once more. The light was on their faces. They had stopped once or twice to drink and relieve themselves, but the trail winding enigmatically ahead of them had enticed them to keep the stops brief. The first howl came from behind them, far off to the right.
Marjorie stiffened. She had heard the sound before, and it meant terror.
“Hippae,” said Sylvan in a hopeless voice. “Do they know we are here?”
“Not yet,” said Brother Mainoa.
“How do you know?” Marjorie demanded.
“You came to me for help, Lady Westriding, and I’m giving you help. How or why isn’t something we can talk of yet. I tell you truthfully that the Hippae do not yet know we are here. They will know, shortly, but not yet. I would suggest we move more rapidly.”
Tony sat up, kneeing El Dia Octavo into a canter. He rattled away down the narrow trail, the others following. Brothers Mainoa and Lourai were hanging onto their saddles, grunting with effort. “Push down with your feet,” Marjorie cried. “Sit straight. It’s no more difficult than a rocking chair.”
Brother Mainoa pushed down with his feet and continued to hang on. After a time the rocking motion became predictable and his body adapted to it. Rillibee/Lourai was quicker. He found the motion exhilarating. Grass heads slapped him in the face and he grinned widely, seeds in his teeth.
More howls from behind them, to both right and left.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Marjorie demanded over her shoulder.
“Swamp forest,” Mainoa said, grunting, “just ahead.”
He had no sooner said it than they came through the last of the tall grasses to see the forest at a considerable distance ahead and below them, stretching to the limits of sight in either direction. The trail they had been following ran toward the forest like an arrow flight, one aimed at a rocky knob which raised itself above the level of the distant trees. The bowl of grasses before them came only slightly above the horses’ bellies.
“Can the horses run faster?” Mainoa called plaintively. “If they can, we should.”
Don Quixote and El Dia Octavo had made the same decision or had been informed of it — at the same moment. They waited for no signal from their riders but sped down the slope, tails streaming behind them, ears flattened. The mares plunged after them, Irish Lass thundering away at the rear. For Mainoa it was as though he rode a nightmare. Though he knew he would fall, he did not. Though he knew he could not stay on, he did. The horse beneath him seemed determined to keep him in the saddle, and through all his panic he perceived that fact even as he heard the howls rising from the height they had just left. He could not risk looking back to see how close the Hippae were.
Sylvan could. Over the drumming of the hooves he heard the wild screaming from the ridge. He spun half around on the broad back, holding tight to one of the vast panniers Irish Lass carried. A dozen enormous beasts pranced upon the height. Around their feet a great pack of hounds leapt and yammered. As though in response to some signal that Sylvan had not seen, the whole Hunt of them plunged down the slope after the fleeing horses. Not silently, as when they hunted foxen, but clamoring as with one shrill ear-shattering voice.
He turned. The other horses were ahead of him, far ahead of him. This great beast was not as fleet as the others. He lay forward on her neck and whispered to her. “Do the best you can, my lady. I think otherwise, both you and I will be meat for them.” He turned to watch the pursuit. One huge violet-mottled Hippae led the charge, mouth wide, nostrils flared. It seemed to stumble in the grass, then again. It fell, eyes rolled back. A ripple in the grass fled to one side.
Behind the fallen monster the others slowed, prancing uncertainly. “Go,” called Sylvan to his mount. “Go, lady. As best you can.”
Irish Lass heard him and went. The distance between her and the other horses had grown. She did her best to decrease it, but it became wider yet.
Again the Hippae howled pursuit. Again the foremost among them tripped and fell. Again a ripple in the grass fled away, out of their path.
El Dia Octavo had reached the forest. Don Quixote was just behind him Millefiori was next Then Blue Star and Her Majesty. The riders had dismounted and were waiting for Sylvan.
Beside Sylvan a hound ran even with Irish Lass, its head darting through the grasses, teeth bared to strike at the running legs of the horse. Beyond the hound the grass quivered and something made of shining barbs snatched the hound away. Sylvan had not seen what it was, but he heard the hound screaming. Seemingly, so did the rest of the pack. The sound of their howling fell farther behind him. The great horse grunted beneath him. Her hide was wet and sleek. Foam flew from her mouth. “Good Lass,” he whispered. “Good Lass.”
And then, at last, he was there among the others. He turned once more to see the grass behind him alive with ripples. Something was moving there. Something the Hippae-hound pack was aware of, for it stood away, circling, screaming defiance but coming no nearer.
Irish Lass stood with her head dragging.
“Ah, Lass, Lass,” Marjorie was saying. “Poor girl. You’re not built for it, are you Lass, but so brave! Such a wonderful girl.” She led the mare in a tight circle as she talked. Gradually, Lass’s head came up.
“Where now?” asked Tony. “We don’t dare ride in there.” He gestured toward the trees, where water glimmered among the dark foliage.
“Yes,” said Brother Mainoa. “In there. Following me.”
“Have you been in there before?”
“No.”
“Well, then…”
“I haven’t been out in the grasses on a horse before either. But we are here. The immediate threat is past. We were guided. Protected.”
“By?”
“I won’t tell you until your knowing can’t endanger us. Those things” — he thrust a hand in the direction of the Hippae — “can read your thoughts. We have to get into the forest. The barrier between us and them is more pretense than real. If we stay here too long, the Hippae may realize that.”
Tony looked at his mother, as though for permission. Father James was already mounting once more. With a sigh, Brother Mainoa heaved himself up, struggling to get his leg across the horse. Brother Lourai helped him. Sylvan was still atop Irish Lass.
“Go,” Marjorie said.
Blue Star moved into the shallow water, picking her way among towering trunks and through thickets of reedlike growths. The others followed. The mare took a winding path, turning abruptly to take new directions. “Follow her closely,” Brother Mainoa called hoarsely. “She is avoiding dangerous places” So they went, a slow, splashing game of follow the leader, with Blue Star following who-knew-what.
When they had come into the swamp far enough that they could no longer see the prairies, Blue Star stopped her twisting path and led them straight along a shallow channel between two impenetrable walls of trees. This watery aisle seemed to go on for miles. At last a gap appeared in the endless line, and the mare struggled up a shallow bank and onto solid ground. “An island?” Marjorie asked.
“Safety,” Brother Mainoa said, sighing and half sliding, half falling off his horse and lying where he fell. “How? Safety?”
“The Hippae will not come in here. Nor the hounds.” He spoke from the ground, staring up through the trees to far-off glimmers of sunlight, like spangles. Like gems. His eyes would not stay open. “One did,” she contradicted. “We saw the trail.”
“Only as far as the swamp,” he acknowledged. “And then, I think, perhaps it went along the side…” His mouth fell open and a little sound came out. A snore.
“He’s old.” Rillibee said to them defiantly, as though they had accused the old man of some impropriety. “He falls asleep like that a lot.”
Sylvan had dismounted. “What do I do for her?” He asked Marjorie as he stroked the mare.
“Rub her down with something,” Marjorie said. “A clump of grass, a fistful of leaves, anything. If we’re going to stay here awhile, take the saddle off.”
“We can’t go on until he wakes up,” said Tony, indicating the supine form of Brother Mainoa.
“We can’t go on until the horses rest a little anyhow,” Marjorie sighed. “They had quite a workout. About a day and a half a night of steady walking plus a mad run. Don’t let her have much water,” she cautioned Sylvan. “Walk her until she’s cool, then let her have water.”
“Otherwise what?” Sylvan asked. “Would it kill her?”
“It could make her sick,” Tony answered him, looking up as Mainoa had done before he fell asleep. Sun spangles, very high. Something else up there, too. Something high that blocked the sun. Tony pointed. “What’s up there?”
Sylvan turned to look. “Where?”
“Right up in the top of this tree, running over to that other one…”
“This island is quite sizable,” said Father James, rejoining the group from among the trees “There’s a grassy clearing through these trees. Enough pasture there for the horses to have a good feed.”
Rillibee/Lourai pulled the saddles from Blue Star and Her Majesty and stacked them against the root buttresses of a tree. “The sun is low. It’ll be dark before long. Too dark to ride.”
“How long will Brother Mainoa sleep?”
Lourai shrugged. “As long as he needs to. He’s been up since the middle of the night, on a horse most of that time. I told you, he’s an old man.”
Marjorie nodded. “All right, then. If he rests, we will all rest. Tony?”
The boy pointed upward. “We were just trying to figure out—”
“Figure out whether there’s any firewood, while it’s still light. Sylvan, please help him. We need enough wood to last all night. Father, if you’ll find the clearest water possible and fill this bucket—”
“What about me?” Brother Lourai asked.
“You and I will be chief cooks,” she said, burrowing in the capacious baskets Irish Lass had carried. “When we have eaten we will talk about what we do next.”
Tony and Sylvan wandered toward the nearest thicket, Tony taking out his laser knife. When he used it to cut an armload of dried brush, Sylvan exclaimed, “What’s that?”
Tony gave it to him, explaining.
“Is this something new?” Sylvan asked.
“Of course not. They’ve been around forever.”
“I’ve never seen one before,” Sylvan marveled. “I wonder why.”
“Probably because they wouldn’t let you,” Tony said. “It would make a handy weapon.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” Sylvan said, turning the device over and over in his hand. He sighed, gave it back to Tony, and turned his attention to carrying wood. Still, he thought of the knife with wonder. Why hadn’t he known about such things?
Brother Mainoa awoke about the time the food was ready, quite willing to interrupt his rest to join them for supper When they had eaten, when the utensils were cleaned and put back in the panniers, they sat around the fire, waiting.
Marjorie said, “Well, Brother Mainoa. So, we are here.”
He nodded.
“Are we any closer to Stella than when we set out?”
“The trail led along the swamp-forest,” he said. “Outside it, unfortunately. We could not have stayed there.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Perhaps If the Hippae have gone. Tonight we would be unable to see anything.”
She sighed.
Tony said, “Mother, it’s just as well. The horses couldn’t have gone much farther.”
Marjorie was still looking at Brother Mainoa “You know something,” she said. “You obviously know much more than you have told us.”
He shrugged. “What I know, or think I know, is not something I can share with you, yet. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“Will you decide?” she asked with a percipient glare.
“No,” he admitted. “No, the decision won’t be mine.”
“What does it — they — want? To look us over?”
He nodded.
Tony asked, “What are the two of you talking about?”
“Yes, Marjorie. What are you — ?” Sylvan asked.
Father James gave Marjorie a percipient glance and said, “Let it alone, Sylvan. Tony. For now. Perhaps Brother Mainoa has already presumed upon his acquaintance with… well, the powers that be.”
Mainoa smiled. “A way of saying it, Father. If you can bear it, Lady Westriding, I would suggest that we rest. Sleep, if possible. We are quite safe here.”
Safety was not what Marjorie wanted, if she had been in danger of her life, at least she would have felt she was doing something. To sleep in safety meant that she was slacking while Stella was in danger, but there was no argument she could make. It was already too dark to find a trail. She rose from her place beside the fire and made her way among the trees to the grassy area where the horses grazed. There she sought the comfort from them which she did not receive from those in her company. It was only when she leaned against Quixote’s side that she realized how desperately tired she was.
Behind her the others made their beds near the fire. Tony put his mother’s bed to one side, screened from the others by low brush, where she would have some privacy. When she returned, he pointed it out to her, and she went to it, grateful for his help. Silence came then, broken by Mainoa’s low, purring snores, the cries of peepers distant upon the prairie, and the cries of other less familiar things in the swamp around them.
Marjorie had thought she would lie sleepless. Instead, sleep came upon her like a black tide, inexorably. She went down into it, dreamless and quiet. Time passed, with her unconscious of it. The hand that was laid upon her arm did not wake her until it shook her slightly.
“Ma’am.” said Rillibee Chime. “I’m hearing something.
She sat up. “What time is it?”
“Midnight, more or less. Listen, Lady. It’s sounds that woke me. People, maybe?”
She held her breath. After a moment she heard it — them — the sounds of voices, wafted to them on a light wind which had come up while she slept. A conversation. No words she could understand, but unmistakably the sound of people talking.
“Where?” she breathed.
He put his hand on her cheek and pushed so that her head turned. As she faced in another direction, she heard them more clearly. “Light,” she whispered.
He already had it in his hand, a torch which shed a dim circle before their feet. He handed her another, and they walked among the trees, through the meadow where the horses grazed with a sound of steady munching, beyond the meadow into the trees once more. Rillibee pointed up. It was true. The sounds came from above them.
She was no longer sure they were people. The sound was too sibilant for human people. And yet…
“Like the sounds in the Arbai village,” she said.
He nodded, peering above him. “I’m going up,” he said.
She caught at him. “You won’t be able to see!”
He shook his head. “I’ll feel, then. Don’t wait for me. Go back to the others.”
“You’ll fall!”
He laughed. “Me? Oh, Lady, at the Friary they call me Willy Climb. I have the fingers of a tree frog and the toes of a lizard. I have stickum on my knees and the hooves of a mountain goat. I can no more fall than an ape can fall when it creeps among the vines. Go back to the others, Lady,” and he was away, his torch slung about his neck, the light dwindling up the great trunk of the tree as he swarmed up it like a monkey.
When the circle of light had dwindled to nothing, she went back the way she had come, certain now that she would not sleep again. Yet when she lay down upon her bed she found sleep waiting for her. She had time only to wonder briefly what Brother Lourai would find among the branches before she was deeply asleep once more.
At the Friary, Elder Brother Fuasoi was sitting late at his desk, angrily turning the pages of a book. Yavi Foosh sat disconsolately on a chair nearby, yawning, trying to keep from nodding off.
“No sign of Mainoa or Lourai, then?” Fuasoi asked for perhaps the tenth time.
“No, Elder Brother.”
“And they didn’t mention to anyone where they were going?”
“There wasn’t anybody there to mention to, Elder Brother. Mainoa and Lourai were all alone at the ruins. The library crew had changed shifts three days ago. Shoethai and me didn’t take the replacement men back until this evening. When we got there, Shoethai and me went to tell Mainoa, but he was gone. Him and Lourai. We looked all through the ruins, Elder Brother.” He sighed, much put upon. He had told the story four times.
“And you found this book where?”
“Shoethai found it, Elder Brother. On Brother Mainoa’s worktable. He thought — since they were gone — there might be something written down somewhere. The book was the only writing Shoethai found. He brought it straight here to you.”
Fuasoi glared at the book, obviously a new one, with only a few pages written in. Oh, indeed there was something written down. All in Brother Mainoa’s own hand. Conjecture about the plague. Wonderment that it hadn’t infected Grass. Conjecture about the Moldies, and whether there might not be some on Grass. And if so, what they might be up to. Interest in the people at Opal Hill, and what they were doing, which was working to thwart the work of the Moldies. Working for Sanctity to stop the plague. To find whatever had kept Grass free of it up until now.
He swore, slamming the book shut. Mere chance had kept Grass free of the plague until now! Mere chance. The virus hadn’t come here until now because… because it was remote. Because it simply hadn’t, yet. There couldn’t be anything on Grass that stopped it.
But… but if there were, no one could be allowed to learn of it. If they learned of it, they might stop the plague elsewhere. Mainoa and those from Opal Hill would have to be stopped. “Elder Brother?” Yavi murmured. “Yes,” he snarled.
“Could I be excused now? I’ve been here for a very long time.”
“Go,” he growled. “Go, for God’s sake, and send Shoethai here.”
“Shoethai, Elder Brother?” Shoethai had been dismissed an hour ago.
“Are you deaf? I said Shoethai.” Not that Shoethai would be of any help, but at least he would listen to Fuasoi talk.
Shoethai surprised his fellow Moldy by having an idea.
“You should send Highbones after them,” the misshapen Brother suggested. “Highbones and Ropeknots and Steeplehands and the two Bridges.”
“Who the devil are you talking about?” Fuasoi blurted.
Shoethai flushed. “The climbers. Those are some of the names they call themselves. Highbones is Brother Flumzee.”
“Why should I send climbers?”
“Because they hate Brother Lourai. Because he climbed better than any of them. Because some of the younger brothers called him Willy Climb.”
“Willy Climb?”
“That’s the name they gave him. It’s a better name than Highbones, even. When they made him climb the towers and he outclimbed them all. He got up and got down again without being caught. But High-bones had a bet he would die upon the towers, so Highbones hates him.”
“It would depend, wouldn’t it?”
“On what, Elder Brother?”
“On where Mainoa is.”
Shoethai shrugged, his gargoyle face twisting into a hideous grin. “Doesn’t matter so long as he’s with Brother Lourai. If he’s at Commons, Highbones would kill him there. If he’s at one of the estancias, Highbones would kill him If he’s out in the grasses…”
Highbones had been one of Shoethai’s most diligent persecutors. Shoethai loved the idea of Highbones out in the grasses, where the Hippae were, and the hounds.
Elder Brother Fuasoi put the book in the drawer of his desk as he mumbled to himself. “If Mainoa is out in the grasses, we needn’t worry about him. No. no. The first thing to do is find out where he went. And the most likely place is Opal Hill. I’ll try that first.”
Elder Brother Fuasoi reached Persun Pollut. Persun Pollut, with a caution which was natural to him, said that he believed Brothers Mainoa and Lourai might have gone away with Lady Westriding and some other persons but he did not know where,
Shoethai mumbled, “The daughter of that house vanished during the Hunt yesterday. Everyone is talking about it. She vanished somewhere near the bon Damfels estancia. Perhaps they went there.”
Elder Brother Fuasoi regarded his assistant with unusual interest as he keyed the tell-me once more Who would have thought that Shoethai had any interest in Grassian gossip? At Klive he reached a subordinate family member who verified that “some people from Opal Hill” had come to Klive and had gone again. “Out in the grasses,” the voice said with a breathless hint of laughter, as though hysteria waited backstage for its entrance cue. “Out in the grasses, to Darenfeld’s Coppice.”
“If they went in the grasses,” Shoethai mumbled, “there will be a trail” He sighed with pleasure. “Send Highbones and the others to follow them.”
“On foot?”
“No, no,” Shoethai amended thoughtfully. “In an aircar. To find the trail in an aircar.” He thought about aircars. It would be easy to fix an aircar so that it would fly quite a long way and then fall. “I’ll get one ready for them.”
“Who did you say?”
“Brother Flumzee. Brother Niayop. Brother Sushlee. Brothers Thissayim and Lillamool. Highbones, Steeplehands, Ropeknots, Long Bridge, and Little Bridge.”
Bones, Ropes, Steep, Long, and Little — who had tortured Shoethai too many times to be forgiven. Who didn’t need to wait for the plague because they hadn’t deserved the New Creation anyhow.
“Have they hurt you?” Elder Brother asked, suddenly aware of the flame burning at the back of Shoethai’s one good eye.
Shoethai frowned and picked at a scab on his cheek, licking the blood from his finger with every evidence of relish. “Oh, no, Elder Brother. It’s just that they’re always bragging about who they’ll do in next.” He said nothing more about the aircar. Maybe it would be better not to let Elder Brother know he was going to fix it. That way, when Bones and the others didn’t come back, nobody would know it was Shoethai’s doing.
Yavi Foosh had left Elder Brother Fuasoi’s office only to report directly to that of Elder Brother Jhamlees Zoe, where he waited for half an hour to see his superior.
“What’s Fuasoi up to now?” Jhamlees wanted to know.
“Shoethai found a book Brother Mainoa had been writing, and he brought it back to Fuasoi. And now Fuasoi’s all in a uproar about it.”
“What’s in the book?”
“I don’t know, Elder Brother. Shoethai found it, and he wouldn’t let me see it.”
“He should have brought it to me!”
“Sure he should, Elder Brother, but he didn’t. I even told him he should bring it to you. But Elder Fuasoi’s his bosom friend, so that’s where he took it.”
“I think I’ll walk on down there and see what’s going on.” Elder Brother Jhamlees rose from his chair and strode down the hall. Yavi Foosh stayed a sensible distance behind. He didn’t want to be identified as Jhamlees’ man, the way Shoethai was identified as Fuasoi’s man. Once that happened, people didn’t let you alone.
The door to the office was open. The room itself was empty. Jhamlees stared at the emptiness a moment, then went in and pulled out the drawer in the desk. “This it?” he asked, waving the book as he beckoned Yavi closer.
Yavi nodded. “That looks like it.”
“You won’t say anything about this?”
Yavi shook his head. Of course he wouldn’t say anything about it. Jhamlees Zoe could take all the books in the world, and Yavi wouldn’t say a word.
Rillibee moved upward along the trunk of a giant tree, his feet finding a path in the twine of a woody vine, in the ascent of a forking branch. Branch led to branch, vine to vine, a barkway opened before him. He fumbled with the light, trading it from hand to hand as he climbed, once or twice holding it in his mouth when he needed both hands for holding on. As he came up into the first levels of foliage, however, he began to see the forest around him. The leaves glowed, some of them, or creatures upon them glowed in soft fluorescence: green puddles swam at the base of branches, yellow lines delineated twigs, blue dots gleamed from indigo masses. Branches cut darkly across these shining nebulae, these glowing galaxies, and he climbed on structures of solid shadow among moving effulgences.
A small wind came through the trees, bearing a cloud of winged pink blossoms. When the wind died, they perched all together, turning a sapling into flame. Larger wings the color and scent of melons beat slowly from trunk to trunk, the creatures at rest assuming the shape of cups in which golden light pulsed to attract other fliers, darts of violet and a blue so pale it was almost white.
“Joshua,” Rillibee whispered. “You’d have loved this. Miriam, you… you’d have loved this.”
“Heaven,” said the parrot from the top of a tree “Died and gone to heaven.”
Leaves brushed his face, exuding resinous sweetness. A hard knob of fruit knocked against his arm. He picked it, smelled of it, bit into it. Crisp, sweet-sour, the juice ran into his mouth and was followed by a tingling, almost as though the fruits themselves were effervescent.
The sounds he had heard on the ground were all around him in the trees. Voices. One laughing. One speaking, as though telling a long story to an eager audience, interrupting itself with little side chains of sound. “You’re not going to believe this, but…”
“So then, what do you think happened?” If Rillibee closed his eyes, he could see the speaker, cheerfully telling a tale, leaning across a tavern table.
He moved slowly through the branches. The sound faded behind him. He turned and moved toward it once more, caressing the branches with his fingers, loving them with his feet. The voices were off there somewhere among the glowing trees. He would find them eventually.
There was something else to find as well. The girl. Stella. He had set her name beside the other names in his litany. She was to belong to him, to Rillibee Chime. Though her family was wealthy and important, still she would belong to him. Though she herself would disdain him, still…
“Heaven,” whispered the parrot above him,
So he climbed in the night hours. At dawn he found the voices when the sun slanted into their city through leaves of heartbreak gold.
Marjorie woke to birdsong and the music of water. It took her a few moments to remember where she was and a little longer to remember the interruption in the night. When she did, she looked about for Brother Lourai. not finding him but meeting Mainoa’s eyes.
“He hasn’t come back,” the old man said.
“You knew he’d gone off……”
“I knew he woke you and you both went off. But you came back.”
“He went up there.” She gestured at the high spangle of sun among the boughs. “He told me they call him Willy Climb and that he’d be all right.”
Mainoa nodded. “Yes. He will be all right. He’s like you. When things get very difficult, he thinks of dying from time to time, but he’s too curious about what may happen next.”
She flushed, wondering how he knew so much about her. It was true. She was curious about what would happen next. As though something awaited her, personally. Some opportunity…
Father James returned from the nearest pool with a full bucket of water, looking alert and rested. “I haven’t slept that well in weeks,” he said. “I had the oddest dreams.”
“Yes,” said Brother Mainoa again. “I think we all did. Something here invaded our dreams.”
Marjorie stood up and looked about her, suddenly concerned.
“No, no.” The old man rose in slow motion, grasping knobby ex-cresences on the nearest tree to lift himself up. “Nothing inimical, Marjorie. They, too, are curious.”
“They?”
“Those I think we will meet today, later. After Brother Lourai returns.”
“Hasn’t he some other name?” Tony asked.
“Brother Lourai? Oh, yes. As a boy he was Rillibee. Rillibee Chime. You think he doesn’t look like a brother?”
“Tony is thinking that he doesn’t look like the Sanctified we know,” Marjorie offered. “His eyes are too big. His face too lean and intelligent. His mouth too sensitive. I always think of the Sanctified as thick, enthusiastic people with simple thoughts and a great need for answers. Old Catholics are supposed to be slender and ascetic-looking, with huge, philosophical eyes. These are stereotypes, and I’m sometimes ashamed of my thoughts, but they persist, even when I look into a mirror. You don’t look like a Sanctified either, Brother. But I suppose you’ve used the name Mainoa for too long to give it up.” She turned away in order not to see Father James’ amused and evaluating gaze.
“Far too long,” Mainoa said in agreement, laughing. “But do use Rillibee’s own name, it means much to him. He will appreciate that.”
“We’ll go out and try to pick up the trail today,” Marjorie said. Mainoa amended her statement. “It may not be possible to do so for a day or two.”
She turned on him, exasperated and frustrated, ready to scream at the delay. Father James laid a hand on her arm.
“Patience, Marjorie. Don’t be obsessive. Let it go a little.”
“I know, Father But I keep thinking what may be happening to her.”
Father James had been thinking of that, too. His mind dwelt all too frequently on certain monstrousnesses he had heard of in the confessional, on certain perversions and horrors he had read of that he could never have imagined for himself. Why these memories were associated in his mind with the Hippae he did not know, but they were. He set the evil thoughts aside. “We will find her, Marjorie. Trust Brother Mainoa.”
She desisted, willing herself to trust Brother Mainoa, since there was no one else to trust.
They ate cold rations. They washed themselves in a placid pond, one of those which encircled the island. Marjorie and Tony examined the horses, looking closely at their hooves, their legs. Despite the wild run of yesterday, the animals seemed to be uninjured. Though she did her best to remain calm, Marjorie felt herself ready to explode from impatience before they heard the call from above.
Rillibee swarmed down a great vine-draped tree like an ape. “I got turned around,” he said. “The trees look different in the light, and it took me a while to find my way back.”
“Did you find them?” she asked. “The voices?”
“I found their city,” Rillibee answered. “You have to come see it.”
“We have to go the other way” — she pointed — “to find the trail…”
“Up,” he insisted. “I think we should.”
“Up,” agreed Brother Mainoa. “If we can.”
“One of the things that took me so long was finding a trail the horses can follow,” Rillibee said. “That way.” He pointed deeper into the swamp. “Then we’ll climb.”
“Why?” Marjorie cried. “Stella isn’t in there…”
“The trail is out there among the grasses, Marjorie,” Brother Mainoa said. “But that’s not necessarily the way. While you were still asleep, Tony and I went to the edge of the forest. The Hippae are still there. There is no way we can go out that way just now.”
“But why?” she gestured upward, fighting tears. “I don’t want to go sightseeing, for the love of God.”
“Perhaps it is for the love of God we should go,” Father James said. “Do you know what’s up there, Brother Mainoa?”
“I suspect.” he replied. “I suspect what is up there. I have suspected since the report came from Semling.”
“What is it?”
“I think it is the last Arbai city,” he said. “The very last.”
He would tell them nothing more. He said he didn’t know. When they asked Rillibee, he said only that they would see for themselves. He led them as they rode across shallow pools, down aisles of trees. Sometimes he stopped and simply looked at the trees while they waited. Once he dismounted and put his hands on a tree, leaning against it as though it had been a friend. Sylvan started to say something during one of these pauses, but Brother Mainoa laid a hand on his shoulder to silence him. They crossed small islands, coming at last to a very large one with a hill at its center.
On a flat pedestal of stone stood a twisted monument much like that in the plaza of the Arbai city.
“Arbai?” Marjorie whispered, staring at it, unbelieving. Despite what Brother Mainoa had said, she had not let herself believe him.
Rillibee pointed upward along a flank of the hill where a trail wound toward a precipitous cliff edge.
“That’s how I came down,” he said. “Leave the horses. They’ll be all right here.”
They dismounted, trying to do it quietly so they would not interrupt the voices above them. People were talking. Singing. Telling stories to the accompaniment of muted laughter. Rillibee led them up the trail. At the cliff edge a bridge led between fantastically carved posts across a gulf of air into the trees — a bridge made of grass and vines and splits of wood, intricate and closely woven as an ornamental basket. The railings were laced into designs of leaves and fruit. The floor was plaited in swirls of color, solid as pavement. Two hundred feet in the air they walked behind Rillibee into the shadow of the trees.
There were dwellings — gazebos and cupolas, tented roofs and conical spires, woven walls and latticed windows — hung like fruit in the branches of the trees, opening upon wicker-work alleys and suspended lattice streets. Aloft were sun-dappled pergolas, shaded kiosks, intricate cages, all joined to those below by spider stairs. Lacework houses hung in the high branches like oriole’s nests.
There were inhabitants calling from windows, talking from rooms above and below, conversing as they moved along the roadways, their voices growing louder as they came near, dwindling away as they passed Shadowy forms met along the railings. A group leapt from a doorway into the play of light from the applauding leaves. They were graceful, only slightly reptilian. Their eyes lit with laughter, their hands extended to one another as though to say, “Welcome.”
But there was no one there No one at all.
A pair of lovers leaned on the railing of the bridge, arms entwined. Rillibee walked through them, his face spattered with their faces, his body with their bodies, and they reassembled behind him, still staring into one another’s glowing eyes.
“Ghosts,” breathed Tony. “Mother…”
“No,” she said, tears on her cheeks at the sight of the lovers. “Holos, Tony. They left them here. The projectors must be somewhere in the trees.”
“They gave them to one another,” Mainoa said. “Toward the end. When there were fewer and fewer of them. To keep the last survivors company.”
“How do you know?”
“I was told,” he said, “just now. And it fits in with other things I have learned since we had lunch together that day at Opal Hill.”
“The language…” Marjorie turned to him, eyes wide.
“The language, yes.”
“I was so eager to get away, to find Stella, I never thought to ask—”
“The great machines at Semling have chewed on the problem, chewed and swallowed and spat it out again. The machines can translate the books of the Arbai. Some. Oh, half, let us say. Half they can read. The other half they can guess at. The clue was there in the vines on the doors. Where we had never thought to look.”
“And the carved doors themselves?”
“They can read those as well.”
“What do they say?”
Brother Mainoa shook his head, trying to laugh, the laugh becoming a cough which bent him double. “They say the Arbai died as they lived, true to their philosophy.”
“Here?”
“There on the plain they died quickly. Here in the trees they died slowly. Their philosophy prevented their killing any intelligent thing. In their city on the plain, the Hippae had slaughtered their kinfolk. Those who lived in this summer city among the trees could not go back to live there safely. They did not wish to die. So they lived out one last summer here, and when winter came they slowly died here, knowing that in all the universe they were the last of their people.”
“How long ago?”
“Centuries. Grassian centuries.”
She looked around her at the woven buildings and shook her head.
“Not possible These structures would not last. The trees would grow; eventually they would die and fall. These woven roadways would rot away.”
“Not if they were renewed, hour by hour, day by day. Not if they were mended.”
“By whom?”
“Yes, Marjorie, by whom? We all wonder, don’t we. Yes. I think we will meet them very soon.”
Rillibee led them along the woven streets. Before them the way widened, expanding into a broad platform with rococo railings and spiraled pillars supporting a wide witch’s hat of a roof.
The town square, Marjorie thought. The village green. The meeting hall, open to the air, to the wind and the sound of birds. All around it shadowy figures walked and danced and saluted one another, shadows so thickly cast that for a moment the humans thought the mighty figure padding toward them from across the platform was another shadow. When they saw that it was not, they drew together, Tony reaching for the knife he carried.
“No,” said Brother Mainoa, putting his hand on the boy’s arm. “No.” He walked forward to see what he had so often longed to see with his eyes instead of his mind. “No. He won’t hurt us.”
They saw an expanse of trembling skin over eyes they could not quite see. Fangs, or something like fangs, in a gleam of blued ivory. Flaring wings of hair, doubly flaring violet auroras, like spurts of cold lightning.
Brother Mainoa murmured, head down, as though he addressed a hierarch, “We are honored.”
The being crouched. It gave the impression of nodding. Paws curled — no — hands curled upon the braided walkway. Hands which seemed for an instant to have three fingers and opposed, furry thumbs. Behind maned shoulders lay an armored expanse of mottled hide and callused plates, seen only for an instant, or perhaps not seen at all. It was an impression only, gone too quickly to define. They could not describe it except to say it was not like anything else, not like any earth creature, not like any Grassian creature except itself. The proportions were wrong. The legs were not the usual thing one thought of as legs.
Brother Mainoa confronted this mirage with an expression of awed interest, blinking rapidly, as they all were, trying to clear their vision. “Perceiving you for the first time has made me wonder what evolutionary tangle led to the development of this ferocious aspect,” he murmured, eyes down.
Great orbs may have widened. Perhaps a long, curved talon extruded from a half-furred, half-scaled finger and pointed toward Brother Mainoa’s throat.
Brother smiled as though at a joke. “I cannot believe you mean that You don’t need any of it against me. You don’t need much of it against mankind unless they choose to use heavy weaponry against you, and if they did, all your armor wouldn’t help much. Men are expert killers, if nothing else.”
Eyes narrowed, possibly, and Brother Mainoa seized his head in both hands. The others fell to their knees, holding their heads, except for Sylvan, who started forward, anger and fear combining to make him reckless.
“Whoa. Whoa.” Mainoa drew himself erect, gasping. “I wish they wouldn’t do that.” Now he knew what evolutionary tangle had led to this armour. There had been an enemy once, a huge, inexorable creature. Brother Mainoa had received an excellent picture of it rampaging about, devouring both Hippae and hounds. His head ached from the assault.
“Extinct?” he asked, receiving a feeling of agreement. “Did you kill them?”
They received an impression of perplexity, then sureness. No. The Arbai had killed them. The armored monsters had not been intelligent things. They had been only walking appetites. The Arbai had done away with them to protect the Hippae. Since that time, there had been many, many Hippae.
Brother Mainoa sat down on the walkway, suddenly lost in weariness. “This being is my friend,” he said to the other humans. “He and I have been talking for some time.” Now that he had almost seen the creature, he felt weak with anxiety over all the times he had talked with it, unseen. If he had seen, would he have said — ? No. If he had seen, he could not have said anything. One could talk to gods and angels only so long as they did not look like gods and angels, he thought. In order to approach them, we must think of them as like ourselves, and one could not think of the foxen as like oneself.…
“Foxen,” Tony breathed. He was still on his knees with the others.
“Foxen,” Mainoa agreed. “He or they managed to keep the Hippae at bay long enough for us to get here. He and a few of his friends wanted us to come here, where they could get a good look at us.”
“Does he know where Stella…” Marjorie pleaded. She had the impression of a vast head turned in her direction. She shuddered as she said, “I see. Of course. Yes.” Sylvan said, “Marjorie?”
“I can hear him,” she cried. “Sylvan, I can hear him. Can’t you?” He shook his head, casting a suspicious glance at the place he thought the foxen was. “No. I hear nothing.”
“You have been a hunter too long,” Mainoa said. “You have been deafened by the Hippae.”
“Is he speaking?” asked Sylvan.
Rillibee nodded. “It’s somewhat like speech. Pictures. Some words.” He rose to his feet, utterly immune to further wonder. The trees were wonder enough for one man. He needed nothing else. He did not want to talk to foxen. He, like Marjorie, wanted to find Stella. “What does he say about your daughter?” Sylvan asked. “That others of his kind are looking for her,” Marjorie replied. “That they will tell us when they find her.”
“There are many things they want to tell us, to ask us,” Brother Mainoa said wearily, longing for and yet dreading that converse. “Many things.”
“I’ll go back down and unsaddle the horses,” said Rillibee. If they weren’t going to hunt for Stella, then he wanted to be by himself, to cling to the trunk of a huge tree and let the feel and smell of it sink into him. In the darkness, they had looked like the spirits of trees. In the light, they looked like themselves. Joshua would have given his soul for trees like these. On all of Terra there were no trees like these. Trees, all around him, like a blessing. He turned to go back the way they had come.
Sylvan followed him. “I’ll help you,” he said. “I’m no good here.” Ungraciously, Rillibee nodded. The others did not even see them go.
In his suite high in the bon Damfels estancia, Shevlok bon Damfels reclined on a window seat and sipped at a half-empty glass of wine. Dawn stood at the edge of the world. Through the open window he could see the huddled houses of the village, tied to the sky by the smoke rising from their chimneys. Dead calm. The morning had not yet been broken by sound. Even the peepers were silent at this hour.
A case of bottles stood open beside him, half of them empty. On the tumbled bed the Goosegirl slept. She had not left the bed for days. She had slept sometimes. Sometimes she had lain unmoving beneath him while he stroked her, whispered to her, made love to her. Her body had reacted to his manipulations. Her skin had flushed, her nipples had hardened, her crotch had grown moist and welcoming. Beyond that, she had given no evidence that she felt anything at all. Her eyes had stayed open, fixed somewhere in the middle distance, watching something Shevlok could not see.
Once, only once in the midst of his lovemaking, he thought he had seen a spark in her eye, the tiniest spark, as though some notion had fled across her mind too swiftly to be caught. Now she slept while Shevlok drank. He had been drinking since he had first brought her there.
She was to have been his Obermum. She was to have ruled the family with him, when Stavenger died. She was fitting. More than that, he had loved her passionately, Janetta had been everything he had wanted.
But the thing on the bed was not Janetta, not anymore.
He was trying to decide whether he should keep her or not.
Someone rapped at the door, and then, without waiting for an invitation, came in.
“You did do it!” It was Amethyste, peering across the dim room at the girl sprawled on the bed. “Shevlok, what were you thinking of?”
“Thought she’d know me,” Shevlok mumbled, the words sounding sticky and ill-defined coming from lips numbed by the wine. “She didn’t. Didn’t know me.”
“How long has she—”
He shook his head. “Awhile.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
“Dunno.”
“Everyone says someone took her. From her mother’s servant. You did that?”
Shevlok gestured, hand tipping one way then the other, conveying that yes, he had, probably.
“Then you’d better give her back. Take her back to bon Maukerden village. Send word so they’ll be looking for her.”
“Better dead,” Shevlok said with surprising clarity. “She’d be better dead.”
“No,” Amy cried. “No, Shevlok! Suppose it was Dimity. Pretend it’s Dimity.”
“Better dead,” Shevlok persisted. “If it was Dimity, she’d be better dead.”
“How can you say that!”
He rose, took his sister’s arm roughly, and dragged her to the bed. “Look at her, Amy! Look at her.” He stripped the blanket away to show the girl who lay there naked, face up. With a hard thumb he pulled back the girl’s eyelid, “Janetta’s eyes were like water over stones. They sparkled with sun. Look at this one! This one’s eyes are like the pools that collect in the cellars in spring when the snow melts. No sun in them. Nothing normal swims there. Nothing good lives there.”
Amy jerked her arm away. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“When I look in these eyes, all I see is dark going down and down into bottomless muck where there’s something squirming that’s maimed and horrid. She’s been short-circuited. They’ve done something inside her She can’t feel anything anymore. She doesn’t know anyone anymore.”
“Give her back, Shevlok. I know there’s nothing there anymore—”
“Oh, there’s still something there. Something dreadful and perverse. Something they could use…” He gasped with sudden pain. “Damn them.”
His sister laughed bitterly, rubbing her bruised arm. “Damn them. Shevlok? Damn them? You’re one of them. You agreed. You all went along. You and Father and Uncle Figor all knew what the Hippae did to girls, but you still made me ride, me and Emmy and Dimity.”
He shook his head like a baffled bull. “I didn’t know what the Hippae did.”
“My God, Shevlok, what did you think happened when girls disappeared? When they vanished? What did you think!”
“I never thought they did that,” he insisted. “Never thought they did that.”
“You never thought!” she shrieked at him. “Right! You never thought. It wasn’t you, so you never thought. Oh, damn you, Shevlok. Don’t go blaming the Hippae for getting her like that. You did it. You and Father and Figor and all you damn riders…”
“Not… not my fault.”
“If this hadn’t happened, you’d have married Janetta and had children and made them go hunting, too,” she accused him. “You’d have seen your daughters vanish and your sons get their arms bitten off, but you wouldn’t have stopped!”
“I don’t know. I might have. I don’t know.”
“Are you going to bon Laupmon’s to the Hunt today?”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
“You see! You know what happens, but you’ll still go. And some bon Laupmon girl or some bon Haunser girl will disappear, but that won’t matter because you’re not in love with them.” She wiped her face with her fingers, then pointed to the sleeping girl “What will happen to her?”
“I’ve got a woman from the village to come feed her, wash her, play with her, like a kitten.”
“If you’re going to Hunt, and Father goes…”
He shook himself, looking at her for the first time, trying to smile. He was fond of her, and of Emeraude. He kept trying to remember that. He was fond of her and Emeraude and Sylvan, and of his mother. “I heard about Emmy. You want an aircar, don’t you. To take Emmy in to Commons. Is she bad?”
“She’s as bad as Father could do before we pulled him off her. She won’t die, if that’s what you mean. Not if I can get her away from here. Her, and me.”
“Take her. then.”
“Father told the servants not to obey me. He didn’t tell them not to obey you.”
“I’ll tell old Murfon. After Father’s gone to bon Laupmon’s, Murfon will take you. I’ll tell him to pick you up from the village. Don’t let anyone see you.”
“Shall I take her, too?” Amy gestured toward the sprawled girl on the disordered bed.
Shevlok staggered to his feet and went to look down at the sleeping figure. He sobbed once, a sound that held more anger than grief. “You might as well. If you leave her here, I’ll kill her,”