The Lion of Farside

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The Emperor's Animal Park had a foot of wet granular snow on the ground, but the morning was calm and sunny, and before noon already somewhat above freezing. A trickle of citizens strolled through the gate, many of them couples with one or more children hopping ahead.

One couple entered the park hand in hand. The woman was more warmly dressed than most, to humor her husband; with her talent, she'd have been comfortable with no coat at all. But she was pregnant, and he'd never been a father before.

Besides, she'd reasoned, it's best not to draw attention. Her husband had serious enemies, and among all of Duinarog's nearly sixty thousand people, there'd hardly be a hundred redheads other than herself. So she wore a fur cap well down over her ears.

There was no map on display, nor any directional signs. One simply walked the path until the large loop was completed; then you'd seen it all. But Cyncaidh had been there before, and knew what he wanted to show her first, so he turned left; that would take them first past animals of other regions. Briefly they stood watching the small herd of pronghorn, Cyncaidh telling her briefly about them, for he'd read the Animal Park booklet years earlier, and as a boy, other books on animals, and had excellent recall. Varia found the pronghorns uninteresting. It seemed to her that running, they'd be beautiful, but here they simply stood in the sun chewing their cuds, their auras reflecting placid contentment.

Beyond the pronghorns were wapiti. The bulls had shed their antlers, but a cast-off pair had been mounted on a post, their spread approaching five feet. She thought she'd like to see wapiti in the wild someday, but didn't expect to. Next they came to the plains bison, with Cyncaidh describing the hunting tactics of the nomads. They sounded to Varia rather like descriptions she'd read of the Plains Indians on Farside. How marvelous it would be, she thought, to ride with them.

Next were the much larger long-horned bison. This was an animal of the near-arctic, with its broad mosaic of tundra, stunted forest, and bogs. These animals truly impressed her. One old bull had horns as wide as a man's outspread arms, and at the hump it stood as tall as Raien. She guessed its weight at two tons-more than Will's team of big Belgians, the gelding and mare combined. According to Raien, these animals didn't form great herds, but wandered in bands of two or three dozen, grazing on grasses and sedges, browsing the low shrubs. She wondered how they'd been brought here. As calves, she decided.

She also wondered what could possibly prey on them-and then found out, for they came next to the lions. She'd seen lions before, the African Panthera leo, when she and Will visited the zoo in Indianapolis. And clearly these were lions, though their winter fur-white tinged faintly with pink-was thicker than the African, and the males wore ruffs instead of manes. She hadn't imagined lions existing on this continent. And what lions!, the males much larger than the African. The Cloister school hadn't mentioned lions of any sort, while on Farside, the long-extinct American lion, Panthera atrox, she'd never heard of.

Probably the Cloister's teachers hadn't known of lions, she told herself. But surely someone there had known of Duinarog, and the Northern, Middle, and Imperial Seas, yet they hadn't been mentioned either. At the Cloister, the world virtually ended at the Big River. The Marches, and the Western and Eastern Empires which lay north of them, were spoken of only in political terms. It occurred to her that Sarkia didn't want her people to know wonder or feel curiosity, and certainly not to be honestly informed. Everything was seen in terms of her own explanations, ambitions, and hatreds.

The dire wolves were next, conspicuously larger than timber wolves, and more strongly built. They hunted the plains bison, Raien told her. After the dire wolves they saw tundra caribou, and shaggy musk oxen no larger than ponies. Next were animals from nearer climes. Moose: tall, gangling, and nearly black. She'd seen them wild near Aaerodh Manor; they'd looked better there. In the next enclosure were timber wolves, looking lazy and bored, which was hardly surprising. She liked them better than she had the dire wolves; they seemed less-less dire.

And ah! Northern jaguars, particularly beautiful in their winter coats. Physically they were much less impressive than the lions-two hundred pounds she guessed, three at most-but regal, even here in the zoo. It was partly their auras. She smiled at Raien, whom she knew had a special love for these cats. And wished they were still at Aaerodh Manor, where she would have learned to run on skis, and they'd have gone stalking together. How fulfilling it would be to see these wonderful ice-blue creatures crossing a frozen lake, or padding along some moose trail in a cedar swamp. Now the odds seemed poor that she ever would. They planned to go back for a few weeks each summer, circumstances permitting, but she didn't expect to live there year-round, ever. For being the Emperor's Chief Counselor meant he'd probably be chosen Emperor when Paedrigh declined.

Raien didn't covet the throne for itself, but for what he could do as Emperor: Continue and perhaps even complete the reforms and other projects he and Paedrigh had plotted and planned, back when Paedrigh had been Chief Counselor, and Raien his military adviser. Notably the end of ducal armies large enough to threaten the imperial peace; the end of slavery; and the beginnings of peace with the rest of the continent.

All to be accomplished in the face of factionalized and discordant politics, as reflected in the Imperial Council.

Braighn IV had reformed the slave laws, and Paedrigh had modified them further, but slaves were still subject to abuses, particularly the girls and women. Abuses that degraded the abusers as well, Raien had told her-nobles and gentry who took advantage of their position, and justified it by insisting that slaves had no souls.

There was a faction, an important political party, based on the concept that the ylver had a natural right to rule and dominate "humans," whom they looked at as an only quasi-sapient species. The same party upheld fiercely the rights of slaveholders, though many slaves were descended from ylvin prisoners of ducal wars long past. Almost always they were conspicuously only part ylvin. It had become awkward to justify ylvin slaves, thus they'd been deliberately crossbred with human slaves. The more they looked like ordinary humans, the easier it was to rationalize their slavery.

Raien had pointed out what the books she'd read had slighted-that there were few if any ylver without some non-ylvin ancestry. To speak of half-ylver was a simplification. A half-ylf was someone who had enough human ancestry-especially recent human ancestry-that it showed plainly. The race of ylver, he said, was a blend, with a preponderance of ylvin ancestry.

Legend had it there'd been mixing even before the ylver came here across the Eastern Ocean. For example, red hair among ylver was supposed to be a sign of ancient mixing with the mythical Voitusotar, who were said to live in a land of fog and ice and sorcery. Mothers and nurses still sometimes told children the Voitusotar would get them if they weren't good, though such threats were frowned on these days. Interestingly, red hair tended generally to be admired, perhaps because the Voitusotar had been feared. Though that admiration didn't extend to those of the Sisterhood.

While Varia had let her mind wander, they'd passed the lesser cats-bobcat and lynx-the foxes, and the gracefully tireless mustelines. Raien, aware of her preoccupation, had discontinued his monologues on wildlife. Finally the loop took them past paddocks with farm animals, which after twenty years of farm life, hardly excited Varia. At the end they each put a gold piece in the donations box, and she squeezed her husband's hand affectionately. He was more than just an idealist with intelligence, talent, will and political power. He was a good and decent person.

And he'd be an excellent father, as he was a husband and lover.

PART 5: War 34: Invasion