What would become of Camery?
He felt so sick for her. He could only look at her and look as she stared down at him. It started to rain again in hard little needles, as the warriors began to mount up.
Blaggen jerked Teb around, took him by his collar and the seat of his pants, and flung him into the saddle of a big bay gelding, then tied Teb’s hands behind him and laced his feet together under the horse’s belly.
The gelding’s halter was tied to the horn of Blaggen’s saddle. Blaggen mounted, and his horse snorted and lunged, jerking Teb’s mount and sending him humping along behind the black’s rump, nearly unseating Teb. He felt clumsy with his hands tied behind him and no reins to hold to help him know the horse’s intentions and communicate his own.
All around him jackals began to crowd in among the horses and mounting men, and some of the horses snorted at them and reared. The hump-shouldered, low-bellied jackals paid no attention to the soldiers’ commands, but only snarled insolently. Teb began to watch the frightened horses, for they were new and young, and unused to the winged jackals. New horses—where had they come from? He stared around at the mounted men until he spied a thatch of red beard and red hair all running together in a great mane. Garit! Garit was back. He had brought the trained colts from the coast, two- and three-year-olds, still young and skittish, but ready to be ridden. Teb watched Garit dismount in fury and lash at the jackals with a heavy strap.
Sivich shouted with anger and spurred his horse at Garit. “Put down your strap. I command the jackals.”
“Get them away, then. They’re frightening the colts.”
“Settle your colts! What kind of training are they getting if they can’t abide the palace guard?”
Garit took two rearing young horses by the reins, ignoring the efforts of their riders, and held them gently and firmly as he stared up at Sivich. “They are young and afraid. I will not have them ruined. They need to get used to the jackals slowly, not have the stinking things crowding them at first sight. The smell alone is enough to drive a horse mad. Get them away or I will have every colt back in the stables, and you can ride the damned jackals.”
Sivich looked as if he would come right off his horse and take sword to Garit. Teb held his breath. There was a long silence as the two stared at each other. Then Sivich backed off, glowering, and motioned to Blaggen. “Send the jackals across the courtyard. Bring only three with us, to guard the boy. And keep them away from the precious babies.” His voice was clipped with fury, and Teb was amazed that he had let Garit boss him.
Well, but there was no one else in Tirror who could serve as horsemaster with half the skill and knowledge of Garit. Sivich knew quite well that if he wanted reliable mounts, he could not afford to lose Garit. Sivich spat, kicked his horse around savagely as an insult to Garit, and galloped to the head of the troops. As he started out through the gate, the rain softened to a fine mist, dimming the courtyard and clinging to the horses’ manes. Teb turned to look back at the tower. Camery had not moved. He wished with all his soul he could speak to her.
He wished he could have left a written message with Desma, to be hidden in Camery’s food tray, but even had he had the chance, he could not read or write, could put little more than his own name to paper.
His mother had started to teach him, before she went away. He supposed she had thought Camery would continue the teaching, but neither had felt much like lessons. And then suddenly it was too late.
Had his mother meant to return to them? Her last words to them were so strange. She had talked, not about herself and her journey or if she meant to come back, but only about how it would be to be grown up one day and have to make decisions they didn’t like. She had shown them a small sphere the size of a plum, made of gold threads that wound through it crossing and recrossing in an endless and complicated trail. She had said that was what life was like, all paths crossing and linked. Teb didn’t understand. She had said the sphere stood for the old civilization that once had reigned on Tirror, when all creatures, human and speaking animal, all individual beings, trod paths linked to other lives in a harmony that did not exist anymore. Teb didn’t understand her words with any kind of reason, though he felt a deep sense of something true in them. She had said the sphere stood for something more, too, but did not tell them what. She said they would know one day. She had worn it on a golden chain when she went away.
As the horses moved up the hills in the rain, Teb looked back once more at the receding palace, then hunched down, shivering, and lost himself in a dream of the old days, that time his mother called the age of brightness. There had been many small busy cities then—most lay in ruins now. They had been rich with little shops and small industries. All manner of craftsmen and husbandrymen and farmers had worked happily side by side, trading back and forth in a rich and complicated bartering. His mother said it was a time when all humans and speaking animals were filled with the joy of being alive, of being themselves in some special way that Teb could grasp only as a feeling of excitement.
In that time, because of the harmony she spoke of, children could often gather the strains of a simple magic together in their crafting—to create, for instance, sails made of butterfly wings to carry a feather-light boat along the rough rivers. Or to create special places—a bedchamber woven of spider gauze and dew of new leaves. Children apprenticed as they chose, to craftsman or hunter or farmer. And if the finest in the craft was a speaking animal—which was often the case with hunting—then, of course, the child would apprentice to him and go to live among the foxes or wolves or great cats. In the mountains, the dwarfs and animals mined together for silver and gold. In the valleys of snow, the unicorns worked side by side with men to find and gather the candlemaking berries and to harvest the skeins of silk from giant snow spiders, the unicorns winding the silk on their horns so the men could spin and weave cloth.
There had been more traveling in the old times, happy journeys when craftsmen of all kinds made long, leisurely trips to exchange goods and ideas with those in other countries. Many children went on such journeys, groups of them stopping at night at the temples that stood on all the traveled routes welcoming animal and human, giving shelter.
Governing had been done by council in all the small city-nations, these coming together in larger groups when there was need to vote on issues that affected many countries. The few wars that occurred had been with the far northern peoples, wars fought bravely—speaking animals and humans side by side. His mother had said it was the northern tribes of Habek and Zembethen that had brought evil into the land, turning their good magic awry with their own greed until it produced only evil. They had changed the weather so the crops would not grow in the south; they had taken children into slavery and the speaking animals to perform in circuses. It was their greed and growing evil that had at last rent a hole in the fabric of the world, and had allowed the dark to enter. Because of the changes they had wrought, the small, individual freeholds had vanished, and many of the bigger, impersonal kingdoms were ruled by jealous despots. Now, more folk worked for others or in the service of kings, doing as they were bid rather than as they themselves chose. His mother seemed filled with anger for the loss of that earlier time and would pace sometimes when she talked of it, as if by her very energy, she could bring back some of its magic.
He remembered his mother best in the walled garden, for it was there the children could be alone with her away from her duties in the palace. She wore red often, and he could see her in his mind sitting before the bright flowers of the flame tree. They often had tea there, with seedcakes and fruit. It was here she would sometimes sing to them songs that filled them with wonder, songs that seemed more than songs, that made scenes from the past come vividly alive. After she sang, though, she was quieter and seemed sad. Sometimes she seemed to Teb as if she did not quite belong—to the palace, or even to them as a family. Her other great pleasure was when she rode out across the hills on one of Garit’s new skittish colts, a pleasure she looked forward to eagerly when training began in the spring. At those times, the children’s own ponies would trail behind her snorting mount as she directed, and she would seem gone in a wildness and freedom where they could never follow. Something seemed to call to her then, and when they returned to the palace, Teb’s father would kiss her as if she had been away a long time, as if he saw something wild in her that was reluctant to return at all.