It was said among the bon Damfels that whenever the Hunt was hosted by the bon Damfels estancia the weather was perfect. The family took credit for this personally, though it could as properly have been ascribed to the Hunt rotation, which brought the Hunt to the bon Damfels early in the fall. The weather was usually perfect at that time of the year. And early in the spring, of course, when the rotation brought the Hunt back again.
Stavenger, Obermun bon Damfels, had once been informed by a dignitary from Semling — one who fancied himself an authority on a wide variety of irrelevant topics — that historically speaking, riding to the hounds was a winter sport.
Stavenger’s reply was completely typical of himself and of the Grassian aristocracy in general. “Here on Grass,” he had said, “we do it properly. In spring and fall.”
The visitor had had better sense than to comment further upon the sport as practiced on Grass. He had taken copious notes, however, and after returning to Semling he had written a scholarly monograph contrasting Grassian and historic customs regarding blood sports. Of the dozen copies printed, only one survived, buried in the files of the Department of Comparative Anthropology, University of Semling at Semling Prime.
That had been half a long lifetime ago. By now the author had almost forgotten about the subject, and Stavenger bon Damfels had never thought of it again. What foreigners did or said was both incomprehensible and contemptible so far as Stavenger was concerned, and no one should have allowed the fellow to observe the Hunt in the first place. This was the bon Damfels’ entire opinion on the matter.
The bon Damfels estancia was called Klive after a revered ancestor on the maternal side. It was said among the bon Damfels that the gardens had been written of as one of the seventy wonders of the allwhere. Snipopean — the great Snipopean — had written so, and his book was in the library of the estancia, that vast and towering hall smelling of leather and paper and the chemicals the librarians used to prevent the one from parting company with the other. No one among the current bon Damfels had read the account or could have found the book among all those volumes, most of them unopened since they had been delivered. Why should they read of the grass gardens of Klive when those gardens were all around them?
It was in that part of all grass gardens known as the first surface that the Hunt always assembled. As host, Stavenger bon Damfels was Master of the Hunt. Before this first Hunt of the fall season — as before the first Hunt of each spring and fall — he had picked three members of the vast and ramified family as Huntsman and first and second whippers-in. To the Huntsman he had entrusted the bon Damfels horn, an elaborately curled and engraved instrument capable only of muted though silvery sounds. To the whippers-in he had given the whips — tiny, fragile things one had to take care not to break, ornaments really, like medals for valor, having no utilitarian purpose whatsoever. No one would have dared to use a whip on a hound or a mount; and as for sounding a horn near a mount’s ear or even within hearing except for the ritual summons and when the Hunt had ended, no one would have thought of it. No one asked how it had been done elsewhere all that time ago or even currently. Quite frankly, no one of the bons cared in the least how it was done elsewhere. Elsewhere, so far as the bons were concerned, had stopped existing when their ancestors had left it.
On this first day of the fall hunt, Diamante bon Damfels, Stavenger’s youngest daughter, stood among those slowly gathering on the first surface, all murmurous and sleepy-eyed, as though they had lain wakeful in the night listening for a sound that had not come. Among the still figures of the hunters, servant women from the nearby village skimmed, seemingly legless under the long white bells of their skirts, hair hidden beneath the complicated folds of their brightly embroidered headdresses, bearing bright trays covered with glasses no larger than thimbles.
Close between Emeraude and Amethyste (called Emmy and Amy by the family and “the Mistresses bon Damfels” by everyone else), Dimity was polished and brushed to a fare-thee-well, immaculately turned out in her hunting garb, and with a headache already from hair drawn back severely to fit beneath the round black cap. The older girls had red lapels on their coats, showing they had ridden long enough to become members of the Hunt. Dimity’s collar was black, as black as the shadows lying at the back of her eyes, shadows her sisters saw well enough but pretended not to notice. One couldn’t indulge oneself. One couldn’t allow malingering or cowardice in oneself or in members of the family.
“Don’t worry,” drawled Emeraude, the best advice she could offer. “You’ll get your Hunt colors very soon. Just remember what the riding master told you.” At the comer of her jaw a little muscle leapt and leapt again, like a shackled frog.
Dimity shivered, the shadows writhing, not wanting to say and yet unable to keep from saying, “Emmy, Mummy said I didn’t have to…”
Amethyste laughed, a tiny shiver of unamusement, emotionless as glass. “Well of course you don’t have to, silly. None of us had to. Even Sylvan and Shevlok didn’t have to.”
Sylvan bon Damfels, hearing his name, turned to look across the first surface at his sisters, his face darkening perceptibly as he saw that Dimity was with the older girls. With a word of excuse to his companions, he turned to come swiftly over the circle of pale gray turf, skirting the scarlet and amber fountain grasses at its center. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, glaring at the girl. “The riding master told Mummy…”
“You’re not nearly ready. Not nearly!” This was Sylvan, who spoke his mind even when it was unpopular — some said because it was unpopular — somewhat enjoying the attention this attracted, though if challenged he would have denied it. To Sylvan truth was truth and all else was black heresy, though on occasion he had the very human difficulty of deciding which was which.
“Oh, Sylvan,” Amethyste said, pouting prettily and pursing lips she had been told were fruitlike in their ripeness. “Don’t be so harsh. If it were up to you. nobody but you would ever ride.”
He snarled at her. “Amy, if it were up to me, nobody would ride, including me. What is Mother thinking of?”
“It was Daddy,” Dimity offered. “He thought it would be nice if I got my colors soon. I’m already older than Amy and Emmy were.” She glanced across the first surface to the place where Stavenger stood watching her broodingly from among the elder Huntsmen, his lean and bony figure motionless, the great hook of his nose hanging over his lipless mouth.
Sylvan laid his hand on her shoulder. “For heaven’s sake, Dim, why didn’t you just tell him you aren’t ready?”
“I couldn’t do that, Syl. Daddy asked the riding master, and the riding master told him I’m as ready as I ever will be.”
“He didn’t mean—”
“I know what he meant, for heaven’s sake. I’m not stupid. He meant I’m not very good and that I’m not going to get any better.”
“You’re not that bad,” Emeraude soothed. “I was lots worse.”
“You were lots worse when you were a child.” Sylvan agreed. “But by the time you were Dim’s age, you were lots better. So were the rest of us. But that doesn’t mean Dim has to—”
“Will everybody just quit telling me I don’t have to?” Dimity cried now, the tears spilling down her cheeks. “Half my family says I don’t have to and the other half says I’m ready now.”
Sylvan was stopped in mid-bellow, stopped and stilled and turned suddenly soft. He loved her, this littlest one. It was he who had first called her Dimity, he who had held her when she had had the colic, who had carried her against his shoulder and patted her while he strode up and down the corridors of Klive, the thirteen-year-old boy cuddling the infant and yearning over her, Now the twenty-eight-year-old yearned no less over the fifteen-year-old girl, seeing the infant still. “What do you want to do?” he asked tenderly, reaching out to touch the moist little forehead under the brim of the black cap. With her hair scraped back and tightly bound she looked like a scared little boy. “What do you want to do, Dim?”
“I’m hungry and I’m thirsty and I’m tired. I want to go back in the house and have breakfast and study my language lesson for this week,” she cried through gritted teeth. “I want to go to a summer ball and flirt with Jason bon Haunser. I want to take a nice hot bath and then sit in the rosegrass-court and watch the flick birds.”
“Well then,” he started to say, his words cut off by the sound of the Huntsman’s horn from beside the Kennel Gate. Ta-wa, ta-wa. softly-so-softly, to alert the riders without offending the hounds. “The hounds,” he whispered, turning away. “God, Dim, you’ve left it too late.”
He stumbled away from them, suddenly quiet. All around them conversations ceased, silence fell. Faces became blank and empty. Eyes became fixed. Dimity looked around her at all the others ready to ride to the hounds, and shivered. Her father’s eyes slid across her like a cold wind, not seeing her at all. Even Emmy and Amy had become remote and untouchable. Only Sylvan, staring at her from his place among his companions, seemed to see her, see her and grieve over her as he had so many times.
Now the riders arranged themselves on the first surface in a subtle order, longtime riders at the west side of the circle, younger riders at the east. The servants had skimmed away at the sound of the horn, so many white blossoms blowing across the gray grass. Dimity was left standing almost by herself at the east edge of the turf, looking across it to the path where the wall of the estancia was pierced by a massive gate. “Watch the Kennel Gate,” she admonished herself unnecessarily. “Watch the Kennel Gate.”
Everyone watched the Kennel Gate as it opened slowly and the hounds came through, couple on couple of them, ears dangling, tongues lolling between strong ivory teeth, tails straight behind them. They moved down the Hounds’ Way, a broad path of low, patterned velvetgrass which circled the first surface and ran westward through the Hunt Gate in the opposite wall and out into the wider gardens. As each pair of hounds approached the first surface, one hound went left, the other right, two files of them circling the hunters, watching the hunters, examining them with red, steaming hot-coal eyes before the files met one another to stalk on toward the Hunt Gate, paired as before.
Dimity felt the heat of their eyes like a blow. She looked down at her hands, gripping one another, white at the knuckles, and tried to think of nothing at all.
As the last couple joined one another and the hunters moved to follow, Sylvan left his place and ran to whisper in her ear, “You can just stay here, Dim. No one will even look back. No one will know until later. Just stay here.”
Dimity shook her head. Her face was very white, her eyes huge and dark and full of a fear she was only for the first time admitting to herself, but she would not let herself stay. Shaking his head, Sylvan ran to regain his place. Slowly, reluctantly, her feet took her after him as the hunters followed the hounds through the Hunt Gate. From beyond the wall came the sound of hooves upon the sod. The mounts were waiting.
From the balcony outside her bedroom window, Rowena, the Obermum bon Damfels, let her troubled gaze settle on the back of her youngest daughter’s head. Above the high, white circle of her hunting tie, Dimity’s neck looked thin and defenseless. She’s a little budling, Rowena thought, remembering pictures of nodding blossoms in the fairy books she had read as a child. “Snowdrops,” she recited to herself. “Fringed tulips. Bluebells. And peonies.” She had once had a whole book about the glamorous and terrible fairies who lived in flowers. She wondered where the book was now. Gone, probably. One of those “foreign” things Stavenger was forever inveighing against As though a few fairy tales could hurt anything.
“Dimity looks so tiny,” said the maidservant, Salla. “So tiny. So young. Trailing along there behind them all…” Salla had cared for all the children when they were babies. Dimity, being youngest, had stayed a baby longer than the others.
“She’s as old as Amethyste was when she rode for the first time. She’s older than Emmy was.” Try though she might, Rowena could not keep her voice from sounding defensive “She’s not that young.”
“But her eyes, mistress,” Salla murmured. “Like a little girl. She doesn’t understand about this Hunt business. None of it. None of it at all.”
“Of course she understands.” Rowena had to assert this, had to believe it. That’s what all the training was for; to be sure that the young riders understood. It was all perfectly manageable, provided one had proper training first. “She understands,” Rowena repeated stubbornly, placing herself before the mirror, fiddling with the arrangement of her thick, dark hair. Her own gray eyes stared back at her accusingly, and she pinched her lips into an unlovely line.
“Doesn’t,” said Salla as stubbornly, quickly turning away to avoid the slap Rowena might have given her if she could have done it without moving. “She’s like you, mistress. Not made for it.”
Rowena tired of looking at herself and chose to change her ground. “Her father says she must!”
Salla did not contradict this. There would have been no point. “She’s not made for it. No more than you were. And he doesn’t make you.”
Oh, but he did, Rowena thought, remembering pain. Made me do so many things I didn’t want to. Let me quit riding, yes, but only when I was pregnant with the seven children he made me have when I only wanted one or two. Made me ride right up until the time I got old, with lines around my eyes. Made me bring the children up to the Hunt, when I didn’t want to. Made them all like him, all the way he is — except Sylvan. No matter what Stavenger does, Sylvan stays Sylvan. Not that Syl lets on what he really thinks. Sylvan just roars about everything. Clever Syl, to hide his true beliefs among all that bluster. And Dimity stays Dimity as well, of course — but poor Dim — Dim couldn’t hide anything. Would she be able to hide her feelings this morning?
Rowena went back to the balcony and craned her neck to look over the top of the wall. She could see the movements of the waiting mounts, tossing heads, switching tails. She could hear the clicking of hooves, the hruffing sound of a breath suddenly expelled. It was too quiet. Always too quiet when the riders mounted. She had always felt there should be talk, people calling to one another, greeting one another. There should be… something. Something besides this silence.
Outside the Hunt Gate the hounds circled and the mounts waited, shifting impatiently from foot to foot, tails lashing, necks arching as they pawed the ground, all quietly as in a dream where things move but make no sound. The air was warm with their steamy breath, full of the haylike smell of them, the sweaty stench. Stavenger’s mount came forward first, as was proper, and then others, one by one, coming for the Huntsman and for the whippers-in, and then for the riders of the field, the oldest riders first. Dimity stood behind Emeraude and Amethyste, shivering slightly as first one, then the other vaulted up onto the backs of waiting mounts. Soon she was the only one left unmounted. Then, just as she decided that there was no mount for her, that she could slip back through the gate, the mount was there before her, within reach of her hand.
It stared at her as it extended a front leg and crouched slightly so that she could put one foot on the brindled leg, grasp the reins, and leap upward, all as she had done time after time on the simulator, no different except for the smell and the heaving breath which spread the vast ribs between her legs, wider than the machine had ever done. Her toes hunted desperately for the notches between the third and fourth rib that should be there, finding them at last far forward of where she thought they should be. She slipped the pointed toes of her boots in, locking herself on. Then it was only a matter of hanging onto the reins and keeping her spurs dug in and her legs tight while the great creature beneath her turned high on its rear legs to follow the others away, west. She had worn her padded breeches for hours on the simulator, so they were properly broken in. She had had nothing to drink since early the previous evening and nothing to eat since noon yesterday. She wished fleetingly that Sylvan could ride beside her, but he was far ahead. Emeraude and Amethyste were lost in the welter. She could see Stavenger’s red coat, the line of his back as straight as a stem of polegrass. There was no turning back now. It was almost a relief to know that she couldn’t do anything but what she was doing. Nothing else at all, not until the Hunt returned. At last there was sound, a drumming of feet which filled all the space there was to hold it, a resonant thunder coming up from the ground beneath them.
From her balcony above them, Rowena heard the sound and put her hands over her ears until it faded into silence. Gradually the small sounds of insect and bird and grass peeper, which had ceased when the hounds arrived, began once more.
“Too young,” brooded Salla. “Oh, mistress.”
Rowena did not slap her maidservant but turned to her with tears in her eyes instead. “I know,” she said. She turned to see the end of the line of riders as it fled away down the garden trail toward the west.
Riding out. she said to herself. Riding out And they’ll ride back again.
Back again. Saying it over and over like a litany. Back again.
“She’ll be back,” said Salla. “She’ll be back, wanting a nice hot bath.” Then both of them stood staring into the west, not seeing anything there except the grass.
Down the wide hallway from Rowena’s suite of rooms, in the mostly unused library of Klive, certain nonhunting members of the aristocracy had assembled to consider a matter of continuing irritation to them all. Second leader at Klive was Stavenger’s younger brother, Figor. Some years ago, following one of the many hunting accidents which occurred every season, Figor had stopped riding to the hounds. This left him free during hunting seasons to take upon himself many of the responsibilities of the estancia while Stavenger was otherwise engaged. Today Figor met with Eric bon Haunser, Gerold bon Laupmon, and Gustave bon Smaerlok. Gustave was the Obermun bon Smaerlok, head of the Smaerlok family still, despite his disability; but both Eric bon Haunser and Gerold bon Laupmon were younger siblings of the family leaders, men who were also hunting today.
The quartet assembled around a large square table in one corner of the dimly lit room, passing among themselves the document which had occasioned their meeting. It was a brief document, headed with the cursive arabesques which spelled out the names and attributes of Sanctity, laden with seals and ribbons and signed by the Hierarch himself. This same group of aristocrats had responded to similar documents in both the remote and recent past, and Gustave bon Smaerlok betrayed considerable impatience at having to do so yet again.
“This office of Sanctity is becoming importunate,” the Obermun said now from the wheeled half-person he had occupied for the last twenty years. “Dimoth bon Maukerden says so. I asked him and he went into a rage over this business. And Yalph bon Bindersen. I asked him, too. Haven’t had a chance to get over to bon Tanlig’s place yet, but Dimoth and Yalph and I are agreed that whatever this Sanctity wants, it has nothing to do with us, and we won’t have their damned fragras here. Our people came to Grass to get away from Sanctity — now let Sanctity stay away from us. It’s enough we let them stay on digging up the Arbai city, enough that those Green Brothers make mud pies with their little shovels up there in the north. Let elsewhere stay elsewhere and Grass stay Grass. So we all agree. Let’s tell them so, once and for all. It’s Hunt season, for heaven’s sake. We haven’t time for all this nonsense.” Though Gustave no longer rode, he was an avid follower of the Hunt, watching the pursuit from a silent, propeller-driven balloon-car whenever the weather would allow.
“Easy, Gustave,” murmured Figor, the fingers of his right hand massaging his left arm at the point where the flesh and the prosthesis joined, feeling the pain pulse beneath his fingers, a constant accompaniment to existence, even after two years. It made him irritable, and he guarded against expressing the irritation, knowing it arose from the body rather than the mind. “We don’t need to make an open revolt out of it. No need to rub Sanctity’s fur the wrong way.”
“Revolt!” the older man bellowed. “Since when does this fragras Sanctity rule on Grass?” Though the word fragras meant simply “foreign,” he used it as it was usually used on Grass, as the ultimate insult.
“Shhh.” Figor made allowances for Gustave. Gustave was in pain also and was undoubtedly made irritable thereby. “I didn’t mean that kind of revolt, and you know it. Even though we have no religious allegiance to Sanctity, we pay it lip service for other things. Sanctity is headquartered upon Terra. We acknowledge Terra as the center of diplomatic intercourse. Maintainer of our cultural heritage. Eternal cradle of mankind. Blah and blah.” He sighed, massaging again. Gustave snorted but did not interrupt as Figor went on. “Many take our history seriously, Gustave. Even we don’t entirely ignore it. We use the old language during conferences; we teach Terran to our children. We don’t all use the same language in our estancias, but we consider speaking Terran among ourselves the mark of cultured men, no? We calculate our age in Sanctity years, still. Most of our food crops are Terran crops from our ancestors’ time. Why run afoul of Sanctity — and all those who might come roaring to her defense — when we don’t need to?”
“You want their damn what-are-they here? Prodding and poking. You want their nasty little researchers upsetting things?”
There was a moment’s silence while they considered things that might be upset. At this time of the year only the Hunt could be upset, for it was the only important thing going on. During the winter, of course, no one went anywhere, and during the summer months it was too hot to travel except at night, when the summer balls were held. Still, “research” had an awkward sound to it. People asking questions. People demanding answers to things.
“We don’t have to let them upset anything,” Figor said doubtfully.
“They’ve told us why they want to come. There’s some plague or other and Sanctity’s setting up missions here and there, looking for a cure.” He rubbed his arm again, scowling.
“But why here?” blurted Gerold bon Laupmon.
“Why not here as well as anywhere? Sanctity knows little or nothing about Grass and it’s grasping at straws.”
They considered this for a time. It was true that Sanctity knew little or nothing about Grass except what it could learn from the Green Brothers. Foreigners came and went in Commoner Town, allowed to stay there only so long as it took to get the next ship out and not allowed to come into the grass country at all. Semling had tried to maintain an embassy on Grass, unsuccessfully. Now there was no diplomatic contact with “elsewhere.” Though the word was often used to mean Sanctity or Terra, it was also used in a more general sense: Grass was Grass; what was not Grass was elsewhere.
Eric broke the silence. “Last time Sanctity said something about someone having come here with the disease and departed without it.” He rose awkwardly on his artificial legs, wishing he could so easily depart, without his disability.
“Foolishness,” Gustave barked. “They couldn’t even tell us who it was, or when. Some crewman, they said. Off a ship. What ship, they didn’t know. It was only a rumor. Maybe this plague doesn’t even exist,” he growled. “Maybe it’s all an excuse to start proselytizing us, snipping at us with their little punches, taking tissue samples for their damned banks.” Even though the bon Smaerloks had come to Grass long ago, the family history was replete with accounts of the religious tyranny they had fled from.
“No.” said Figor. “I believe the plague exists. We’ve heard of it from other sources. And they’re upset about it, which is understandable. They’re running about doing this and that, not to much purpose. Well, they will find a cure for their plague. Give them time. One thing you can say for Sanctity, it does find answers eventually. So why not give them time to find the answer somewhere else, without saying no and without upsetting ourselves? We’ll tell this Hierarch we don’t take kindly to being studied, blah and blah, right of cultural privacy — he’ll have to accept that, since it’s one of the covenants Sanctity agreed to at the time of dispersion — but we’ll say we’re sensible people, willing to talk about it, so why not send us an ambassador to discuss the matter.” Figor made an expansive gesture. “Then we can discuss and discuss for a few years until the question becomes moot.”
“Until they all die?” Gerold bon Laupmon asked — meaning, Figor supposed, everyone of human origin not upon Grass.
Figor sighed. One was never certain with Gerold that he quite understood what was going on. “No. Until they find a cure. Which they will.”
Gustave snorted. “I’ll give that to the Sanctified, Gerold. They’re clever.” He said it in the tone of one who did not think much of cleverness.
There was a pause while they considered it Eric bon Haunser urged at last, “It has the advantage of making us look perfectly reasonable.”
Gustave snorted again. “To who? Who is it looking at us? Who has the right?” He pounded on the arm of his chair, scowling, turning red in the face. Ever since the accident which had cut short Gustave’s riding career, he had been irascible and difficult, and Figor moved to calm him.
“Anyone can, Gustave, whether they have the right or not. Anyone can look. Anyone can have an opinion, whether we want them to or not. And if we should ever want something from Sanctity, we’d be in a good position to ask that the favor be returned.”
Eric nodded, seeing that Gustave was about to object. “Maybe we’ll never want anything, Gustave. Probably we won’t. But if we did, by chance, we’d be in a good position. Aren’t you the one who always tells us not to give up an advantage until we have to?”
The older man simmered. “Then we have to be polite to whoever they send — bow, scrape, pretend he’s our equal, some fool, some off-planeter, some foreigner”
“Well, yes. Since the ambassador will be from Sanctity, he’ll probably be Terran, Gustave. Surely we could suffer that for a time. As I mentioned, most of us speak diplomatic.”
“And this fragras will have a silly wife and a dozen bratlings, probably. And servants. And secretaries and aides. All asking questions.”
“Put them someplace remote, where they can’t ask many. Put them at Opal Hill.” Eric named the site of the former Semling embassy with some relish, repeating it. “Opal Hill.”
“Opal Hill, hah! Farther than nowhere! All the way across the swamp-forest to the southwest. That’s why the people from Semling left. It gets lonely at Opal Hill.”
“So, the man from Sanctity will get lonely and leave as well. But that will be his fault, not ours. Agreed? Yes?”
Evidently they were agreed. Figor waited for a time to see if anyone had any second thoughts or if Gustave was going to explode again, then rang for wine before leading his guests down into the grass gardens. Now, in early fall, the gardens were at their best, the feathery seed heads moving like dancers to the beat of the southern wind. Even Gustave would mellow after an hour in the gardens. Come to think of it, Opal Hill had very nice gardens as well, young but well designed. The Sanctified penitents expiating their sins here on Grass by digging up ruins and designing gardens — the ones who called themselves the Green Brothers — had spent considerable care upon the Opal Hill gardens. Nothing had disturbed the gardens since the people from Semling had left. Perhaps this ambassador person could be interested in gardening. Or his wife, if he had a wife. Or the dozen bratlings.
Afar from Klive, deep among the grasses, Dimity bon Damfels tried to exorcise the pain in her legs and back. Even after all those hours on the simulator, all the pain she had experienced there, this was different. This was intrusive, hateful, intimate.
“When you think the pain is unbearable,” the riding instructor had said, “you can review the track of the Hunt in your mind. Distract yourself. Above all, do not think of the pain itself.”
So she distracted herself, reviewing how they had come. They had ridden out along the Trail of Greens and Blues where the patterned turf along the path went from deepest indigo through all shades of turquoise and sapphire to dark forest green and bright emerald, upward to the ridge where tall plumes of aquamarine watergrass undulated in ceaseless waves. Beyond the ridge the watergrass filled a shallow basin dotted with islands of sandgrass, the whole making such a marvelously lifelike seascape that it was called the Ocean Garden. Dimity had once seen a picture of a real ocean when she went with Rowena to Commoner Town to pick up some imported fabric. It had been hanging on the fabric merchant’s wall, a picture of a sea on Sanctity. She remembered saying at the time how much the imaged expanse of water looked like grass. Someone had laughed at this, saying it was the grass that looked like water. How would one know which looked like which? In fact, they looked like one another, were like one another, except that one could drown in water.
Musing on this, Dimity surprised herself with the thought that one might almost drown in grass as well. One might wish to drown. Her left knee was in agony. Little trails of fire crept from the knee upward toward her groin. Distract yourself, she repeated mentally. Distract yourself.
At the end of the Trail of Greens and Blues, the hounds had run silently into Thirty-shadows Forest, where giant black stems, thick as her body, grew tall, clucking hollowly far above as they collided in the small wind. Here velvet turfs were planted in mosslike clusters around hillocks of stonegrass, and here the mounts had followed as the trail led upward toward the Ruby Highlands.
On the Highlands the vistas were of amber and peach, apricot and rose, with veins of deepest red threaded through the paler colors to climax in bursts of skyrocketing bloodgrass, and here the trail turned aside from the gardens to run off into the untended gramineae of the surrounding veldt. It was tallgrass veldt, with nothing to see but the stems rushing by as her mount forced his way through, nothing to hear but the rustle of the plumy seed heads, nothing to think of but steeling herself against the blows of the blades, keeping her head down so those blows fell on the padded cap and not on her face.
Still, she could tell from the sun that they were running north, and Dimity concentrated upon this. The seven remaining estancias were separated from one another by at least an hour’s air travel, and yet they occupied only a small part of the surface of Grass. What did she know about the land north of the Damfels estancia? There wasn’t another estancia there. The nearest estancia was that of the bon Laupmons, but it was a great distance to the southeast. Directly east were the bon Haunsers. The Friary of the Green Brothers was north, but some ways east of the bon Damfels estancia. There were no other estancias to the north, no villages, nothing except more prairie and a long, shallow valley where there were many copses. “Many copses means many foxes,” she quoted silently to herself. Undoubtedly they were riding toward the valley.
The pain was suddenly there again, moving in her other leg “Better than distraction,” the riding master had said, “is to let yourself fall into the rhythm of the ride and think of nothing.” She tried not fighting the pain, not distracting herself, just going with it. “Above all, do not disturb the mount or attract the attention of the hounds.” She would not attract their attention. She would just let it go, let it go, not thinking about anything.
On the simulator Dimity had never managed to think of nothing, and she was surprised to find how much easier it was here. Almost as though something was working inside her mind to wipe it clean. An eraser. Rub, rub, rub. She started to shake her head in annoyance, not liking the feel of it, remembering only just in time that one must not move, really must not move. The intrusion in her mind scraped at her. Deliberately, she went back to distraction, thinking of her newest ball gown, reviewing every flounce, each embroidered leaf and blossom, and after a time the hurtful feeling inside her head departed. “Ride,” she said silently to herself. “Ride, ride, ride.” The repetition took the place of the emptiness, driving out the ball gown, and she simply held on, moving as the mount moved, shutting her eyes, not seeing anything else. Her backbone was a fused column of agony. Her throat was dry. She wanted desperately to scream, and fighting down the scream took all her strength.
Until suddenly they crested a long ridge and stopped. Her eyes popped open, almost against her will, and she looked down into the valley before them. It was not unlike the Ocean Garden, except that these waves were of tall grass in shades of amber and dun while the islands were actual trees, copses of trees, the only kinds of trees that existed on Grass. Swamp trees, growing wherever springs of water came to the surface. Fox trees. Haven for the toothed devils. Where they lived. Where they hid, when they weren’t slinking among the grasses, killing the foals.
“Never say ‘foals’ where the mounts can hear you,” the riding master had said. “That is our word. We merely assume there are foals, though we have never seen any, so don’t say it. In fact, never say anything where the mounts can hear you.”
So she was silent now, as all the riders were, their speculations kept entirely to themselves. Dimity saw the faces of the other riders, pale with concentration, unselfconsciously quiet. Dimity would not have believed Emeraude could be this quiet if she had not seen it. Mummy probably couldn’t believe it at all. And Shevlok! How often did one see Shevlok without an imported cigar in his mouth — only the best Shame tobacco would do for Shevlok — or his mouth open telling someone something. Except when Father was around, of course. When Stavenger was around, Shevlok was notable for sitting in corners and not attracting attention to himself, notable, one might say, for self-effacement.
As this Hunt was notable for quiet. Silent as the earth-closets in midwinter, when no one else was there and the frost lay deep. Dimity concentrated on breathing quietly. The eraser feeling was in her head again, and she fought it off, thinking about what she would have for dinner when the Hunt was over. Grass-hen fried in oil with imported spices on it. A fruit salad. No. Too early for fresh fruit. A dried fruit pie. And then they were off, down into the valley toward one of the dark copses, Dimity reminding herself what the riding master had had to say about that. “The trees are extraordinary,” he had said. “It will be difficult not to gasp or exclaim. You will do neither, of course. You will keep your mouth shut-You will not crane your neck or stare about or shift your weight.” Besides, she had seen them on the simulator screens, a thousand hours’ worth of them.
So she kept her mouth shut and her face front as the black towers loomed around her, their leafy burden shutting out the sky, the world suddenly full of the sound of water and of hooves moving in water, the squish and slide of it, the smell of it filling her nostrils in a way quite different from the smell of rain. This was not merely damp but sodden, a dank, fecund smell. Dimity opened her mouth very quietly and breathed through it, getting herself accustomed to the smell which made her want to sneeze or cough or gasp-She felt the signal for the hounds, felt it without understanding it until the hounds lunged away, scattering outward in all directions, noses to earth. The sound of their scuffling scramble faded. There were historic words to go with this, the riding master had said. “Into covert", her mind said. “Into covert, my lads.” As though anyone would really dare say “my lads,” to hounds!
Somewhere a grass peeper shrilled and shrilled again, an arrhythmic pulse within the grove, repeating until it was almost but not quite a pattern, then silencing until she thought it had stopped, only to return once more. She caught a glimpse of a peeper out of the corner of her eye, white and wriggly, squirming among the grass roots.
A hound bayed, a deep, bellowing aroo which made her heart falter as it went on and on. Then another joined, half a tone above, the sound of the two like a knife in her ears. Then all the pack, the tones of the voices lost in a vast cacophony, aroo and aroo, unmelodious and dissonant. The mounts screamed in answer and lunged deeper into the wood. They had found the fox, started the fox, would pursue the fox. Dimity shut her eyes and held on once more, biting her tongue, biting her cheeks, anything to stay conscious and upright, anything at all. A thought came to her.
This is Darenfeld’s Coppice, her mind told her. Darenfeld’s Coppice which lay, once upon a time, within the bounds of Darenfeld’s estancia. You are riding to hounds in Darenfeld’s Coppice, where your friend Janetta bon Maukerden died. Dimity’s mouth opened to shout, and her mind told her mouth to close itself once more. You will be still about it, she told herself. No one really said Janetta died here. No one said that. No one said anything except her name and then whispering, “Darenfeld’s Coppice.” And when Dimity asked, they said shush, shush, don’t say, don’t ask.
They know more than you do, she told herself. You can’t tell them anything they don’t know already.
The hounds were baying as they raced away, and the mount beneath her was dashing after them. She stayed on, eyes shut once more. It was all she could do to hold on. To stay where she was. Not to fall off. To be silent. To bear the pain. To go on with the Hunt.
The Hunt does go on. Time passes. The fox runs for hours. The riders pursue it for hours. Dimity forgets who she is or where she is. There is no yesterday, nor any tomorrow. There is only an everlasting now, full of the pound of feet on the turf, the rustle of grasses as they push their way through, the scream of the fox far ahead, the bay of the hounds. Hours gone. Days, perhaps. Perhaps they have ridden for days. She would not know.
There is nothing to mark the passage of time. Thirst, yes. Hunger, yes. Weariness, yes. Pain, yes. All of these have been there since early in the morning: burning thirst, gnawing hunger, aching bones, deep-set as a disease. Her mouth cannot be drier than it is, her stomach emptier. She cannot hurt more than she hurts. And now, at last, she gives up fighting against it. It will last forever. The thing in her head wipes out any concern about that. Nothing measures time. No before. No after. Nothing, nothing. Until the mount beneath her slows and stops and she unwillingly leaves the agonized daze she has fallen into and opens her eyes.
They are standing at the edge of another copse, moving slowly into it, into a grove, into the dusky cathedral shade of the trees. High above them the foliage opens to allow the sun to pierce the gloom in long radiant spears. One of them lights Stavenger where he stands upon his mount with the harpoon in his hands, ready to throw. From the tree branches above comes a scream of rage, then Stavenger’s arm whips out and the line streaks behind the harpoon like a thread of purest gold. A horrible scream again, this time of agony.
A hound leaps high to seize the line in his teeth. Other hounds as well. They have it. They are pulling the fox out of the tree, still howling, still screaming, never silent for an instant. Something huge and dark with glistening eyes and mighty fangs falls among them, and then there is only the sound of screaming mixed with the sound of teeth.
Dimity closes her eyes again, too late not to see the dark blood fountaining among the struggling bodies, and feels… feels a welling of pleasure so deeply intimate it makes her flush and draw her breath in, makes her legs quiver where they bestride the body beneath her, makes her whole body rock in a spasm of ecstatic sensation.
All around her other eyes are closed, other bodies quiver. Except for Sylvan. Sylvan sits erect, eyes fixed on the bloody tumult before him, teeth bared in a silent rage of defiance, his face quite blank. He can see Dimity from where he is, see her body thrashing, her eyes closed. In order not to see it, he turns his face away.
Dimity did not open her eyes again until they had come all the way back to Klive and had left the Dark Forest to enter upon the Trail of Greens and Blues, There the pain became too much to bear silently and she moaned without thinking, only a tiny sound. One of the hounds looked back at her, a great, violet-mottled hound, its eyes like flames. There was blood on it, blood all over it, its own blood or the blood of the fox. She was conscious in that moment that those same eyes had looked at her again and again during the hunt, that those same eyes had looked at her even when the fox fell from the tree into the middle of the pack, when she felt… that.
She looked down at her hands clenched upon the reins and did not raise her head again.
When they arrived at the Hunt Gate, she could not dismount by herself. Sylvan had to help her. He was at her side so quickly that she thought no one noticed how weak she was. No one but that same hound, his red eyes gleaming in the gathering dusk. Then he went away, all the hounds went away, the mounts went away, and the Huntsman sounded his horn softly at the gate, crying, “The Hunt is over. We have returned. Let us come in.”
From the balcony, Rowena heard the muted horn call. It meant the creatures were gone and humans waited to be attended to. She leaned across the balustrade, hands clutching one another, mouth open, as a servant opened the Kennel Gate from inside and the weary hunters straggled through: the Master and the members of the Hunt in their red coats, the women in their black, their padded breeches making them look wide and froglike in the gloom. White breeches were sweat-stained now, and the pristine purity of the hunt ties had been sullied by dust and by chaff from the tall grasses. Male servants waited with goblets of water and bits of grilled meat on skewers. Baths were waiting, had been waiting for some hours, steaming from the heat of their own little furnaces, and the hunters, hands full of meat and drink, scattered toward their various rooms. Gasping, ready to cry out at last from the fear she had fought during the long day, Rowena sought among the riders until she found the slight figure of Diamante leaning on Sylvan’s arm. Then the tears spilled over and she sought a voice she had almost lost in the conviction that Dimity had not returned.
“Dimity.” Rowena leaned across the rail, not wishing to be overheard by Stavenger or one of the other aristocratic old guard. When the girl looked up, Rowena beckoned, and Sylvan nodded toward a side door. Within a few minutes Dimity was in her mother’s room and Salla was greeting her with an exclamation of disgust.
“Dirty! Oh, you’re filthy, girl-i Filthy. Like a migerer mole creature. Covered all over. Take that coat off, and that tie. I’ll get your robe and you can take off the rest of this filthy stuff.”
“I’m dirty but I’m all right, Salla,” said the girl, moon-pale, pushing weakly at Salla’s busy hands.
“Dimity?”
“Mother.”
“Give Salla your clothes, dear. Here, I’ll help you with your boots.” There was a brief, grunting interlude as the high black boots were tugged off. “You can have your bath in here while you tell me about the Hunt.” She moved through the luxurious bedroom, beckoning, opening the door into the mosaic-tiled bath, where water had been already drawn and kept steaming by its own fires. “You can use my bath oil. You always liked that when you were tiny. Are you sore?”
Dimity tried to smile in response, failed. It was all she could do to keep her hands from shaking as she stripped her underclothes away, letting them fall in a pile on the bathroom floor. Only after she was neck deep in steaming water did Rowena say again, “Tell me about it.”
The girl murmured, “I don’t know. Nothing happened.” The water was soaking away the pain. It hurt to move, and yet in the warm soothe of the water it had become almost pleasure to feel that ache, that deep, abiding agony of the bones. “Nothing happened.”
Rowena stamped her foot, very softly, eyes bright with tears. “Did you have any trouble mounting?”
“No. Not really.”
“Had you… had you seen the mount before?”
Dimity opened her eyes, suddenly aware, looking at her mother directly. “The mount? I think it’s one I’ve seen before, grazing maybe, out near the shortgrass field where Syl and I used to play.” Perhaps this meant something. She searched her mother’s face, but Rowena only nodded. When Rowena had first ridden, her mount, too, had been one she had seen watching her when she was a child. “Where did you go?”
“I think we drew a copse in Darenfeld’s… in the valley.” Rowena nodded again, remembering dark trees towering, shutting out the sky, the ground covered with small flowering mosses, a noise of running water under the mosses, under the roots. Remembering Dimity’s friend, Shevlok’s lover, Janetta… “Did you start a fox?”
“Yes.” She shut her eyes, unwilling to say more. She didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted to forget it. Next time she would give in to the pain right away. Next time she wouldn’t fight it Through slitted lids she saw Rowena’s face, still questioning, still demanding, wanting more. Sighing, Dimity said, “The hounds went in. Pretty soon they were all baying, and we went racing off. I seem to remember the hounds lost him three or four times, but they got him each time again. Maybe I only made that up. He just ran and ran forever, that’s all. And then the hounds treed him away north somewhere.”
“Did you kill?”
“Stavenger did. Daddy. I mean, the Master did. He only had to throw once. I couldn’t see where the harpoon stuck, but they pulled the fox out of the tree and the hounds got him.” She flushed then, deeply, the blood rising into her face in an unmistakable tide as she remembered what had followed.
Rowena saw the flush, interpreted it correctly, and turned aside in order not to confront what she saw there. Shame. Embarrassment. Mortified pudicity. Rowena sought for something, anything to say other than… other than this. It had happened to her, too. It had always happened. She had never mentioned it to another soul. She had not known until now whether it was her guilty secret or a secret shared. “You didn’t really see the fox, then.”
“I couldn’t see anything except a blob in the tree. Then eyes, and teeth, and then it was all over.”
“Ah.” Rowena sighed, the tears now streaming, laughing at herself and her fears, shamed for Dimity’s shame but relieved just the same. “Mother! I’m all right. It’s all right.”
Rowena nodded, dabbing at her eyes. Of all the things that might have gone wrong, none had. Dimity had mounted, had ridden, hadn’t fallen off, hadn’t been attacked by the fox, hadn’t done anything to upset the hounds.
“Mother.” Softly, moved by the tears, offering something.
“Yes, Dimity-”
“There was this one hound that kept watching me, all the time we were coming back. A kind of purplish mottled one. He just kept looking at me and looking at me. Every time I looked down, there he was.”
“You didn’t stare!”
“Of course not. I know better. I didn’t even seem to notice, not that the hound could see. I just thought it was funny, that’s all.”
Rowena argued with herself. Say too little? Say too much? Say nothing? “Hounds are peculiar that way. Sometimes they watch us. Sometimes they don’t look at us. Sometimes they seem to be amused by us. You know.”
“I don’t, really.”
“Well, they need us, Dimity. They can’t climb, so they can’t kill the fox unless we bring him down.”
“They only need one man for that, somebody with a strong arm to throw the harpoon.”
“Oh, I think there’s more to it than that. The hounds seem to enjoy the Hunt. The ritual of it.”
“When we were riding back, I kept wondering how it ever got started. I know they ride to the hounds on Terra, back before Sanctity, before we left. That was in my history book, with pictures of the horses and dogs and the little furry thing — nothing like our fox at all. I couldn’t figure out why they should have wanted to kill it, even. With our foxen, killing it is the only thing to do. But why do it this way?”
“One of the first settlers made friends with a young mount and learned to ride him, that’s all there is to it,” Rowena answered. “The settler taught some friends, and the young mount brought along some more of its kind, and gradually we had a Hunt again.”
“And the hounds?”
“I don’t know. My grandfather told me once that they were simply there one day, that’s all. As though they knew we needed them to have a proper Hunt. They always show up on the proper day at the proper place, just like the mounts do…”
“If we call them hounds when they aren’t really hounds, how come we don’t call the mounts horses?” Dimity asked, lying back until her head was half submerged, contented now to say nothing much, to talk, perhaps to have her mother wash her back.
Rowena was startled. “Oh, I don’t think the Hippae would like that, not at all.”
“But they don’t mind being called mounts?”
“But my dear, we never call them even that where they can hear us. You know that. We never call them anything at all where they can hear us.”
“It makes your head feel funny,” said Dimity. “Doesn’t it?”
“What?” asked Rowena, suddenly on her feet. “What does?”
“Hunting. Doesn’t it make your head feel funny?”
Rowena said in a preoccupied tone, “It has a kind of hypnotic effect. It would really be rather boring otherwise.” She put a folded towel within Dimity’s reach, then left the room, closing the door behind her to keep the steamy warmth within.
One of the hounds watching Dimity? She bit her lip, frowned, acquired a suddenly haunted expression. She would have to speak to Sylvan about that. Right now he would be closeted with Figor about that Sanctity business, but perhaps he had noticed something. No one else would have noticed anything, but perhaps Sylvan had. Or perhaps it had all been in Dimity’s mind. Weariness and hours of pain could do that.
Still it would be an odd thing to imagine. The hounds had killed, so they should have been in a good mood. There was no reason for one of them to have watched Dimity. There was no reason for Dimity even to have imagined it. Surely no one had ever said anything to her, about Janetta… about that side of things.
She would speak to Sylvan about it. As soon as she could. As soon as this silly matter of the scientific mission was decided and everyone could think about something else.
Grass.
Millions of square miles of prairie, with villages and estancias, with hunters and the hunted, where the wind walks and the stars shine on stalk and seed plume and where the sluglike peepers cry from the roots all day and all night, except when certain things call deep in the star-specked dark to make a stunning, eerie silence fall.
North, almost at the place where the shortgrass country begins, are the ruins of a city of the Arbai, not unlike the many other cities of the Arbai found among the settled worlds, except that here on Grass the inhabitants died of violence. Among the ruins the Green Brothers are intermittently occupied, digging trenches, listing artifacts, making copies of the volumes in the Arbai library. The Brothers are penitents, it is said, though no one else on Grass knows or cares what they are penitent about.
A little north of the dig, in the sprawling, vaulted Friary, other Green Brothers keep busy in their gardens, busy with their pigs and chickens, busy sky-crawling, busy walking out into grasses to preach to the Hippae perhaps, or to the foxen, who knows? All of them, too, are penitents, cast out of Sanctity to this far, lonely place. They were here, unwillingly, when the aristocrats arrived. Some of them lament that they will still be here, as unwillingly, when the aristocrats have gone.
And finally there is the port, and Commoner Town, both of them set down in the one place on Grass where little grass grows, a high, stone-based ridge surrounded by swamp forest — a long, slender ellipse, a hundred square miles or so given over to shipping and warehouses and hydroponic farms, to quarries and meadows and mines and all the other clutter and cacophony of human life and human business. Commoner Town, where strangers can come and go without bothering anyone, where foreigners can do their incomprehensible and, as the bon Damfels do say, contemptible business.
And there is the port, where fat ships fall, squatting on their fiery tails as they arrive from Shame and Semling and the planet most call Sanctity until they are reminded that it is really named Terra, the first home of man. Men and women are on Grass in many guises: transients and merchants and craftsmen and ships’ crews and preachers needing hotels and warehouses, shops and brothels and churches. Children, too, with their playing fields, and teachers with their schools. Occasionally a small group of adventurous children or bored transients will leave the port or town behind them and walk the mile or two down the long slope to the place where the ground flattens out in marshy meadow. There is a kind of springiness in the mossy growth there, a resilient dampness at first, which, if they go on, rapidly turns to the kind of sogginess one might expect after days of rain. Walkers can get a bit farther on that ground, feeling their feet squelch deeply into it, though most draw back in fear that it will quake and give way, as indeed it does in a little space, becoming so boggy that stubborn explorers have to leap from tussock to tussock over braided streams gleaming in oily lights. There are huge blue-leafed clume trees in this bog, and flowers blooming like pale candles, and powder-winged moths the size and color of parrots and smelling of incense, and there are huge homely frogs whose forebears came with the first settlers long ago.
So much one can see on a casual walk from Commoner Town — so much, but no more, because just beyond the clume trees the bog deepens and the tussocks become jungly islets separated by twined rivers of dark water full of twisted roots and things that go squirming into the slime with ominous plopping sounds. There the trees have bluer leaves, and they grow taller the farther one goes, shutting out the light. To go on into the forest one would need a boat, a shallow skiff or punt with a long pole to push against the murky depths below, or maybe a paddle to dip silently into that smooth dark water, propelling one along the labyrinthine leafy halls.
Not that it hasn’t been done. Some few heedless men have built themselves vessels of greater or lesser water-worthiness to carry them exploring; some few foolhardy commoner boys and maybe a girl or two have made themselves boats to slip between the great buttressed trunks of the trees and the reaching tentacles of vine and take themselves farther into the glimmering shadows of the swamp forest. Not many. There might have been more, except that of those who went in, a good many never came out. Grown men from off-planet have tried it, too, doughty men and strong, but they have been lost just as the boys and girls were lost.
And those who did come out again? What could they say about it except that it was wet and dark and full of things slithering and that it got wetter and darker and more slithery yet the farther one went? In fact, they have said very little. It is almost as though they could not remember what they might have seen, there in the dank depths of the swamp forest. As though they had gone in and come out again by accident, while sleeping, having seen or heard nothing at all.
And, after all, who cares? Who has any need to go in there? Nothing comes out of the mire and the viny trees to do anyone harm, and nothing has been seen in the swamp that anyone wants. From above, the great trees look like the restless billows of a miles-wide gray-green sea. From afar, they are a wall shutting Commoner Town inside and keeping the restless energies of its tradesmen and craftsmen from erupting. From inside, they are a wall against the inexorable grasses, keeping them at bay. North, south, east, and west, all sides of the town are closed off by the swamp forest. No road in, no road out, and the depths of the forest inviolable, the depths of its trees and waters unknown and unseen, though so wide and ramified that — even though no one has ever seen anything of the kind — everyone in Commoner Town believes there is a something there that will emerge, someday, to the astonishment of them all.