Guardians Of The Keep

CHAPTER 35

My riding lessons went much better after that night. No matter how hard Fengara worked us, Firebreather and I got through it. He would carry me through roaring walls of fire and choking dust storms; he would jump over fences and burning scrub and chasms that made my stomach churn. All I had to do was call him by name and talk to him about oats and grass, and his powerful muscles and strong heart would do anything I required of him.

Whenever I went to the stable, I would see the Leiran boy, hauling carts of hay, oiling harness, or shoveling out the stalls. I took no notice of him. It was better that way.

Fengara noticed the change. “You’ve made a great deal of progress these past weeks, young Lord. I’d come to think you hopeless. What made the difference?”

“Practice,” I said. “I just needed the practice and better teaching. You’ve done me good service, Fengara, and I thank you for it.”

On the next day, I had a new riding master. He was a squat, vicious man of few words, quite different from the sharp-tongued Fengara.

“Where’s Fengara?” I asked him.

“She was of no more use to you, my lord.”

“Is she dead?”

“I could not say. Have you been riding this animal for long?”

“Perhaps six weeks.”

“It seems attached to you.”

“No. Fengara was getting lazy. Not challenging us enough.”

That day I didn’t talk to Firebreather about grass or oats, nor did I call him anything but Zigget. I whipped him and spurred him hard. I fixed my thoughts on the horse and how vicious he was, while thinking of a question for the Lords at the same time. They didn’t answer. But as soon as I let go of my concentration and thought of the question, they were with me instantly as before. I practiced all day.

By sunset Firebreather was wild-eyed and frothing at his mouth in terror.

“I want a different horse tomorrow,” I said to the head groom. “This one is impossible.” The new riding master nodded in approval.

That night as I left the stables, a voice called after me from the shadows by the mule shed. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you treat him like that after all he did for you these past weeks? You made him scared again.”

“It would do everyone good to be scared of me. Don’t forget it.”

The Leiran boy watched, hard-eyed, as I crossed the stableyard.

A few weeks later, after working late with my wretched new horse and my vile riding master, I wandered down to Firebreather’s box. I liked to be in the stables at night. Only a single lamp was left hanging, and only the soft noises of the horses disturbed the quiet. You could almost forget you were in Zhev’Na. I looked carefully about to make sure the Leiran boy wasn’t lurking in the shadows anywhere.

“Here, Firebreather. I’ve got oats for you. Come here, and I’ll tell you about the hills of Comigor, if I can remember. You’d like it there.” I sat on the gate, fed him oats from my hand, and told him of the grassy heath where I had ridden when I was little and weak.

“I thought you’d show up here some time.”

“Curse all Drudges, do you follow me?”

He was peeking down through the beams of the loft and caused a considerable avalanche of hay when he jumped down to the stable floor. I dropped off the gate and turned to leave. “I warned you,” I said.

“You thought they’d kill him like they did the Zhid horsemaster, didn’t you?”

“Why would I think that?” I wrenched the gate latch.

“They kill everyone who gets close to you.”

I didn’t want to hear it. Not out loud. “That’s ridiculous. You’re an ignorant Drudge. What do you know about anything?”

“I know a lot of things. I see a lot of things. Maybe I see and know more than you do.”

“It’s better to be ignorant.”

“Maybe that’s true. I wouldn’t trade places with you. You’re no better off than me, except maybe you get more to eat.”

I pulled open the gate, but I didn’t go through it. “Did they really kill Fengara?”

“She came in every morning to train horses new in from the farms. She was mean, but she could magic ‘em until she had ’em doing what she wanted. That morning there was somebody watching her. She was working a big bay. Doing fine until the watcher raised up his hand. Then the horse turned on her, and she couldn’t move to get out of his way. He trampled her flat. The watcher laughed when he walked away.”

“What did he look like?”

“Fellow looked like a desert rat, hard and bony. Black hair cut real short, black beard, dressed fine with rubies on his belt.”

Darzid. I kept one part of my mind fixed tight on the stable and the desert, so he wouldn’t hear what I was thinking.

“Why do you do the things they want?”

“I have no choice. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I understand you quit riding Firebreather so they wouldn’t kill him. And you warned me off. At first I thought you’d come to be just like them, that they’d made you evil, too, but they haven’t done it yet. Not if you gave up Firebreather to save his life. You don’t have to be what they want.”

I hit him then, so hard it knocked him to the straw and made his mouth bleed. “You are stupid, ignorant, and insolent, and if you don’t watch yourself, I’ll cut out your tongue.” I grabbed his filthy shirt and shook him. “You don’t know anything at all. I have been evil since the day I was born. If my father had known what I was, he would have slit my throat, and if my mother had known it, she would have had me burned alive and drunk wine while they did it. I’ve killed people, and I’ve lashed them until they cried for mercy, and I’ve left men in the desert until they turned black and begged for water. I’ve had a slave killed just to heal my bruises. I am a friend of the Lords of Zhev’Na, and I’m going to become one of them, because that’s what I was born to be. And nothing an ignorant servant says can make any difference at all.”

I felt the Lords stirring… curious… but I kept them shut out. “Leave me alone!” I walked a long way before going back to my house.

It was many weeks until I saw the Leiran boy again-or, rather, I saw him almost every day, but in public places where I could pretend he didn’t exist. I didn’t want to think about him or about Firebreather. Keeping things private from the Lords wasn’t easy. And mostly I wanted what the Lords taught me.

I worked harder every day at my training. I told Darzid I wanted a new master of hand combat, that I had learned all that the current one could teach me, and that only because he outweighed me by three times could he get any advantage at all. The new master taught me how to fight with knives and axes and other small weapons. I got better sparring partners and damaged several of them, so that I guessed they would die. But I learned that if they were good enough, the Zhid would send a surgeon to bandage them up. The better ones were very valuable. I would be a warrior, the best there ever was. Then we would see how the world might be ordered.

One afternoon as I walked into the stables, I saw a Zhid warrior taking a whip to one of the stable hands. “Perhaps a few lashes will improve your hearing,” he was saying. “At least they might improve my disposition.” He laid on another stroke and another. The groom was curled up in the corner of a stall with his hands over his face, but I recognized the ragged breeches and dirty bare feet. He was cut and bleeding all over.

“What’s he done?”

“Young Lord!” The warrior bowed. “This insolent fool ignored my command to wipe the muck off of my boots. He acted as if he didn’t understand what boots were.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t. He’s probably never worn any, and I’ve noticed he’s a particularly ignorant boy,” I said. “Can’t put two sensible words together.”

“I’ve a mind to string him up and lay the flesh off of him to strengthen my arm. He’s no good for anything else.”

“I think he could serve a better purpose, more suited to his calling,” I said. “That horse Zigget is a vicious beast. Look at the walls of his stall and you’ll see; I’m worried he’ll damage his legs kicking holes in them. Maybe he needs something softer to kick. String up this boy in Zigget’s stall for a night. It will either bring some sense into his head, or remove his head where we don’t have to worry about it any more.”

The warrior took the Leiran boy to Firebreather’s box and tied him to the wall as I watched. The Leiran boy was woozy from his beating and bleeding from the lashes. Firebreather snorted and tossed his head.

“I’ll come scrape what’s left off the walls in the morning, young Lord.”

“Perhaps I’ll come to watch. Make sure my horse doesn’t have indigestion.”

The warrior closed the gate behind us, and we walked away laughing.

You find an interesting way to amuse yourself, my young Lord, whispered Ziddari in my head.

“The warriors enjoy such things. I don’t like it myself.” I had to say that. The Lords could read me so easily that it was hard to lie to them.

Shall we amuse ourselves in other ways tonight? asked Notole, as I went to collect my horse.

“No. No lessons tonight. I’ll be riding late, and then I’m going to bed. You’ve had all you’re going to get out of me today.”

As you wish. Tomorrow, then.

For two hours I practiced tight maneuvers, a tedious and boring exercise. At sunset I told the horsemaster that I was going to ride into the desert for a while to cool off. I did so, forcing myself to be patient and not return before all the grooms were asleep. He’d be all right. If he woke up, he could calm Firebreather easily. If he woke up…

When I got back to the stable, I heard a terrible racket from Firebreather’s stall. I shoved my horse into a vacant box, grabbed the lamp from its hook, and threw open the gate. Firebreather had done a thorough job of destroying the walls of the horse box. Though his head was drooping and his eyes swollen half shut, the Leiran boy was murmuring, “Once more. Another lick, and he’ll bring you oats when he comes. Oats for Firebreather. Another nice wallop. Good. It’ll make you strong. Don’t let him down.” The hooves never touched the boy.

“Are you having fun?”

His head lifted a bit. “A barrel of it.”

He drained half the contents of my waterskin. Then I untied the ropes that held him to the rear wall and helped him down to the straw, taking a quick inventory of the bloody stripes on his arms and legs. “I’m not going to clean you up. None of this looks too serious.”

“Crackin‘ uncomfortable though.” He stretched out and groaned.

“Why did you disobey a warrior? Of all the idiotic things. Would it have killed you to wipe the fellow’s boots? You’ve done worse. You love horse muck.”

He grinned, which, with his face all purple and swollen, looked pretty horrible. “Damn. Was it his boots? I couldn’t figure it out. Thought he was telling me to wipe the shit off his door.”

“You didn’t know the word for boots? You mean I was right?”

“Is that a rock in your stew or what?”

I hadn’t laughed in so long I’d almost forgotten how, but we both took off with that, until he rolled onto his side holding his ribs, and said, “Oh, damn, you’ve got to stop. Yell at me or something. This hurts too much.”

“Here. I should have thought. Show me where it hurts the most.”

He pointed to a tender, swollen bruise on his left side below the ribs, and I traced my finger around it to make it numb. I did the same to a couple of other places that looked particularly bad. “This won’t fix them, only stop the hurting for a while.”

“It’s a deal better. Are you… are you coming to be a Healer, then?” He said it almost with reverence.

The thought nauseated me. “No. I could never do that.”

“Whenever you need to go, just put me back on the wall. Firebreather will take care of me.”

“Nobody’s expecting me tonight. I arranged it.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“You won’t. Do you want something to eat? I’ve got some things in my cloak.”

“I’d eat your boots if I knew the word for it.”

That set us laughing again, and it was a while until I could pull the bread and cheese from the pocket of my cloak, along with a flask of cavet that I heated up with sorcery.

After he had spent a few moments demolishing the food and drinking the cavet, he eased himself against the wall, and said, “So what do you do here besides take horse lessons from the Zhid?”

“I learn sword fighting and hand combat and sorcery.”

“I know you’re good at wrestling. Never thought I’d have a nub shorter’n me put me down so quick. Are you good at the other things, too?”

“I’m getting better. Swordsmanship-that’s the hardest. I improved really fast when I first came here, but not so much lately. I don’t think I’ll ever be as good at it as I want.”

“Why is it so important?”

“I’ve debts to pay. Debts of honor.”

“Maybe I don’t understand debts of honor-being who I am and all. It would be an education if you’d tell me.”

It was like ripping a hole in your waterskin. No matter how small the hole, everything got out eventually. I started just to tell him about my life debt to the Lords, but ended up telling him everything while we sat in that horse box- about how my whole life had been a lie and a betrayal, that no one had been who they said they were, and how it was all the fault of one man. I dumped everything on an ignorant stable Drudge who had never owned a pair of boots.

He was quiet for a long time after I was done, then shook his head slowly. “Blazes… that is the damnedest story. I’ve got to think on it a while before I can even know what to think. Some of it’s clear enough, but some… Why did you think this wicked prince that was really your da killed your nurse? I didn’t see that.”

“It was obvious. It’s why Seri brought him to Comigor, to take her revenge on Lucy and Papa. And it was his knife that did it. I saw it.”

“But that was in your dream you saw his knife. I’ve seen horses fly in dreams.”

I didn’t like him questioning me. “Your head’s in a muddle. I don’t expect you to understand. And I don’t know why I babbled all of this to someone who doesn’t know the word for boots.”

“It’s true. I don’t got half your brains, and what brain I’ve got is full of horse muck.”

“You must be about horses like I am about sword fighting. You’d like to be the best at it, wouldn’t you? At training them and knowing about them. I’ll bet you’d like to run a stable of the best horses there were anywhere.”

He screwed his swollen face into a frown. “I never told nobody that. You didn’t go picking at my head, did you?”

“No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I appreciate that. Gives me the crawlies to think on it.”

About that time a faint buzz in my head told me it was second watch, about two hours before dawn. “Do you want to sleep for a while? I should go soon, and once I do, it’ll be harder for you.”

“No need. I can sleep anywhere. It’s an advantage when you’re born low. Go ahead and put me back.”

I tied him back up to the wall, trying to duplicate the way the warrior had fixed him. “I can’t come in the morning, you know,” I said.

“It’s all right. It was a better night than I expected.” He was asleep before I shut the gate.

It had been foolish for me to do what I’d done, but I felt a little better than I had in a while. When I went to the stable the next afternoon for my riding lesson, I wandered past Firebreather’s stall. The boy wasn’t there anymore. Two days passed before I saw him again, mucking out a stall, still bruised and scratched, but otherwise looking no worse for the experience. I looked right through him, and he didn’t turn his head.