Claudia J Edwards - [Forest King 02]

by Horsewoman in Godsland (UC) (epub)

  Adelinda and Len were unaware of the stirrings and happenings in the Vale. They spent the day discussing and polishing their play. They were hardly able to do more; their “healthy” diet of raw greens and water was already beginning to have its effect, especially on Len, who had been too thin to begin with. They felt lethargic and headachy. But when An-Shai came in the evening to ask if they were ready, they nearly were.

  “I think it would be fair for you to show us how to get into this ‘overmind’ and let us practice manipulating it a bit before you join us. After all, we are two beginners going up against two experienced experts,” said Adelinda.

  An-Shai looked at her suspiciously, but he could not deny that it was a fair request. “Very well,” he said reluctantly. “Don’t get lost in there or drive yourselves mad.” He went out and came back in a few minutes with a small flask and two tiny cups.

  “Take just this much, no more, of this liquor. It will wear off in about fifteen minutes—real time; the subjective time can be as long as you want. You can get out just by willing yourself out.”

  “Does that apply when we’re in your scenario?” asked Len shrewdly.

  “Not if I choose that it should not. I am the stronger will and I can keep you within the overmind if I choose, or drive you so deep into it that you will never find your way out.” He went haughtily away.

  “I wonder if he’s as strong as he’d like us to think,” mused Adelinda. “Or is all that just a bluff?”

  “I guess we’ll find out. Here’s your cup.”

  “Better lie down. It hits you hard.” They chose to lie side by side on the floor, holding hands, in hope that the physical contact in the real world would facilitate contact in the overmind. Swallowing the bitter fluid, they felt the same wrenching and nausea that Adelinda had felt when she inhaled the smoke.

  The overmind, unformed by any will, was a gray, nebulous place, with neither direction nor gravity. There were no features fon the eye to light upon, so that they could not tell if their vision extended inches or into infinity. The warm contact of their hands was the only identifiable sensation; they could not even see their own physical forms. Len felt a force of will stirring in the substance with which they were surrounded, and saw a flower forming in the mist before him, a yellow evening primrose, blooming in the midst of nothingness. The bush upon which the flower grew formed. Len, interested, exerted his will; the mountain meadow in which the flower grew began to sketch itself in. Adelinda added a babbling mountain stream. Len put in some stately pines and a breeze to stir them, filling the air with their resinous scent and the soughing of their needles. A herd of deer walked across the meadow, unafraid.

  Adelinda laughed in delight. “This is easy!” she said. Apparently it took little effort to keep an illusion going once it was started; they found that they could turn their attention to other creations and the older ones simply stayed where they were put. Details did not fill themselves in without one of them thinking of them, though; beyond the ragged wall of pines was the undifferentiated gray of the overmind, and there was no sun, just the shadowless gray light Adelinda had noticed before.

  Leaving their meadow to take care of itself, the two turned their attention to providing themselves with bodies. If Len’s was taller and sturdier than his real one, Adelinda’s was younger and more delicate, and neither of them commented on the little improvements each had made in his or her own appearance, nor on the splendid clothing in which they dressed themselves.

  “Let’s try a game of wills,” suggested Adelinda. “I’ll build something and you try to tear it down.”

  “All right.”

  Adelinda built a lovely little cabin nestled under one of the huge pines, with flowers and an arbor shading the wide front porch, a friendly little house where one might be glad to go visiting. “All right. I’m ready,” she said, concentrating fiercely.

  “It’s so pretty, it seems a shame,” said Len. But he ruthlessly blasted the arbor out of existence with a bolt of lightning. It flickered for a moment, then re-formed itself. Muttering, Len summoned forth a voracious herd of cattle that surged over the garden, devouring flowers and vines, and whimsically munching on the porch railing and the cabin itself. Adelinda tried to banish the cattle into nonexistence, but found that she could not. Frowning, she created a pack of fierce dogs that snapped at the heels of the destroyers and drove them away, leaving a sad shambles. She hastily re-created the garden, mending the bites in the railing and walls, and added an orchard of fruit trees and berry brambles.

  Len countered with a horde of birds. Linnets and sparrows stripped the fruit from the trees and the berries from the brambles. Woodpeckers drilled holes in every exposed bit of wood. Towhees flicked in and out of the broken window-panes. Swallows built muddy nests under the rafters. Jays dropped trash down the chimney and through the holes in the roof. Quail ran twittering back and forth across the porch, leaving their droppings scattered.

  An enormous flock of hawks and owls descended upon the marauding birds, bearing many off in their claws and scattering the rest, while an army of cats pounced upon the unfortunate birds that thought to take cover on the ground from the aerial attack. The birds routed, a corps of brisk and busy housemaids appeared from within, sweeping and cleaning, while carpenters mended the holes in the roof and glaziers replaced the broken windowpanes. These were Len’s contribution; he had tired of being the aggressor.

  Adelinda fell in with the exchanged roles willingly enough and began to search for ways to pull down the cheerful little cabin, by now furbished up and painted and with a flourishing vegetable garden at one side. While she was thinking, a great horse-drawn van pulled up at the door and began'to unload shiny new furniture, an oak dining table and chairs, sofas, comfortable easy chairs, big four-poster beds, bright curtains that the housemaids put up at the windows as fast as they could be carried in, colorful wool rugs, chinaware, boxes and boxes of books—a myriad of things, all shiny new and all designed for comfort and convenience.

  Adelinda was completely enchanted and forgot that she was supposed to be destroying the charming little home, as Len had intended she should. She added a roomy stable, its loft full to bursting of the very best hay, and a rustic rail fence around most of the meadow, in which grazed two magnificent riding horses, a driving team of pretty bays, and— significantly—an assortment of gentle ponies. In the carriage house she put a simple surrey, new and shiny, well-sprung and comfortable, with two padded seats and a crimson dash panel. As an afterthought, she lengthened the carriage house and put in a silver-painted sleigh with thick, warm lap robes folded on the seat.

  The two of them went on adding comforts and refinements to their creation, now wandering through the cozy rooms, now the spacious yards, calling each other to come and look at some especially delightful little addition.

  It was with reluctance that Adelinda and Len abandoned their creation and willed themselves back into the real world. “It seems to be easier to create new things to counteract the old ones than to just destroy what someone else has created,” said Adelinda. “Last night, I should have created an army of man-rat killers or a nice cool fountain when An-Shai made me think I was thirsty.”

  “Would he have let you? I found it pretty easy to keep you from destroying the cabin after I took over creating it.”

  Their discussion was interrupted by An-Shai’s entrance. “Well, are you ready now?” he asked coldly.

  “I think so, Your Grace. We’ll have to ask you to play along with us until we have made our point, though. If you intend to make a battle of skill in controlling the overmind, we concede that you know how to do that better than we do.”

  An-Shai looked as if he had bitten into a lemon, but agreed. For them to concede would destroy any chance of a victory in this contest.

  The bitter taste of the liquor was still in his mouth when he found himself being kicked in the rump. “Come on, old fellow, time to get up,” someone said. “Here’s your breakfast.” There
was a rustle and a rattle.

  An-Shai scrambled to his hooves and looked around. He was in a stall deeply bedded in straw. Clean grain of a type thdt the bishop in him did not recognize and a generous bundle of sweet-smelling hay was in a manger before him. If the bishop didn’t know what to do with the fodder, the horse in him certainly did. He found himself devouring the stuff avidly.

  He had hardly rooted out the last grain from the comer of the box when the man who had kicked him returned, clipped a rope onto the halter he wore, and cross-tied him in the aisle of the bam. An-Shai the horse accepted this calmly, as something to which he was accustomed; An-Shai the bishop was indignant to find his gray coat being groomed from nose to tail, brushed, wiped, his hooves cleaned out, and his mane and tail combed. Blankets and a saddle were slapped onto his back, the girth yanked so tight around his middle that he could hardly breathe; he gave an angry squeal of protest and the man attending him laughed and slapped him on the rump. Before he had quite gotten his breath back, a thumb was jammed into the comer of his mouth. Involuntarily, he opened it; a cold, hard iron bit was thrust in and the bridle deftly fastened to hold it there. Then he was left standing in the aisle of the bam for what seemed to be hours. Cross-tied as he was, he could see very little, even though the vision of this strange new body covered a much wider arc than his human vision. If he swiveled his ears back, he could hear other horses being groomed, too, but all of them were returned to their stalls and the generous portions of hay that awaited them.

  At long last something happened. A different man, a tall blond who looked a lot like Adelinda, came and slapped him familiarly on the neck. An-Shai the horse accepted this as a gesture of affection. This new man unsnapped him from the cross-ties and led him out of the bam into dazzling sunshine. “Give him a good workout, Felim,” said a familiar voice, and Adelinda appeared to walk with them to a fenced-in arena. “He looks antsy to me.”

  “With all the good feed he can stuff in his face and a workout every day, he ought to be feeling good,” Felim answered. He put the reins over An-Shai’s head and stepped onto him. The next few minutes were the most exhausting the bishop had ever spent. He was forced to run at full speed, then slide to an abmpt stop for no reason he could see, made to spin to the right and to the left until he was dizzy, hauled around in intricate patterns by the bit in his mouth until his gums were sore. Just when he thought he had figured out the patterns the man wanted, and to try to do them without the punishing pressure on the bit, the patterns were changed. “He’s anticipating on you again,” called Adelinda from her perch on the fence. “Put him on the bit more.”

  An-Shai found himself squeezed uncomfortably around the ribs. Since An-Shai the horse took this as a signal to leap forward, he did so. But this time the reins were not slackened. He found himself crashing into the bit with bruising force on his already tender gums as he tried to extend his head. There was nowhere to go but up; he found himself prancing along with great effort, neck bent until all he could see was the ground in front of him, legs pumping ridiculously high. His weight was thrown uncomfortably back onto his hind legs, which were obviously designed more for propulsion than weight carrying. “Very nice collection!” called Adelinda.

  An-Shai had had about enough of this. When the pressure let up and the reins were slackened, he stopped, intending to go to the gate and demand to be let out. To his surprise, the light switch his rider was carrying descended on his unprotected flank with stinging force, and again. He wheeled about, only to have his mouth painfully jabbed again, straightening him out. He lost his temper utterly. Squealing in rage, he reared into the air, spun around, and bucked with all his might. Whipping about again, he prepared to bite the recumbent form of his erstwhile rider, but there was no recumbent form to be seen, and the whip slashed his flank again as one of the reins was suddenly yanked tight. His limber long neck was wrenched around, and he staggered dizzily in a circle while the whip fell again and again. When the pull on the rein was slackened, he found that he was glad enough to do just as his rider wished. When he was lathered with sweat and his legs were trembling with fatigue, he was ridden through the gate and up to the bam.

  Felim stepped off. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe he hasn’t got the temperament to be a games horse. He was really resisting me today. Maybe I ought to sell him and use the chestnut mare.”

  “The best ones always show a little spirit, Felim. Give him a chance. You’ve still got two weeks before the games.” “That’s true.” He tossed the reins to the waiting groom. “Walk him good. He’s in a sweat.” The brother and sister walked off together.

  The next few days were a combination of deadly boredom for twenty-three hours a day and horribly hard work for the other hour. An-Shai was given the very best of feed, which his equine palate relished, bedded knee-deep in straw, groomed to an inch, and generally pampered. The other horses in the stable seemed complacent enough, but horses have very little conversation and for a creature of An-Shai’s active temperament, the confinement was excruciating.

  When a diversion occurred, he was more than ready to enjoy it. A new horse was brought into the stable* a ragged black with a tangled mane and tail. He was brought into the stable by Felim and the head groom, and a struggle it was even for two; the beast kicked and bucked and squealed and reared, lashing out with his forehooves until it seemed he must trample the men. But they always seemed to know where he intended to strike and be somewhere else, even if only by inches. At last, with much sweat and swearing they managed to maneuver the wild creature into a stall and slam the door behind him. A tattoo of thuds followed as the animal tried to kick the walls down, but though the whole building shuddered, the stalls were soundly built and withstood the assault.

  Adelinda had been an interested spectator, from a safe distance. With the horse safely secured, she came forward. “Boy, he’s a wild one,” she commented admiringly. “But he’s a beauty. Do you think you can break him?”

  “Seven years old and never had a rope on him,” said Felim proudly. “The really wild ones make the best racers. They’ve got the will to dominance we’ve mostly bred out of our horses. He can be broke. I’ll use the lake. He can buck and kick all1 he wants to and all he’ll do is wear himself out. Then it’ll be just time and patience and he’ll be eating out of my hand.”

  “He’s certainly worth the effort. But don’t neglect old An-Shai here,” his sister said, scratching the horse deliciously behind the right ear. “The games are coming up.” “Oh, he’s conditioned. Ride him for me tomorrow, will you, sis? I want to work this black fellow.”

  An-Shai huffed indignantly. Was he going to have to put up with the indignity of being ridden by a woman? And Adelinda, of all women?

  “I think he’s jealous,” Adelinda laughed. “You’d better ride him yourself. No point messing him up this close to the games.”

  “Oh, all right,” grouched Felim.

  An-Shai was in fact exercised diligently if absentmindedly by Felim for the next few days. Then he was given a day of rest. Realizing that something was in the wind from the change in routine and the general excitement, he was nearly beside himself the following day when he was taken out and saddled with a brightly polished saddle and a colorful saddle blanket.

  He found that he enjoyed the games. It was quite the most exciting thing that had ever happened to either An-Shai the bishop or An-Shai the horse, and he strained every nerve and muscle to win every event. Felim was the cool head of the two, and his skilled riding gave the horse the steadiness he needed. An-Shai saw the buntings, the brightly decorated booths, the yelling crowds, and the hundreds of other horses only peripherally. Every ounce of his concentration was needed within the arena, and though they didn’t win every event, they came away that evening with a respectable number of shell-shaped winner’s tokens clipped on An-Shai’s bridle.

  He had never been so exhausted in his life, but still he managed a little caper of pride as he was led back to his stall. An-Shai the bo
y had always been bookish rather than athletic, and he was surprised to find how satisfying a mere physical accomplishment could be. “Look at that!” said Felim fondly. “He’s still full of ginger. You were right about him, Adelinda. He is a good games horse.”

  That night An-Shai was aroused from a contented doze to find that the stable was afire at the far end. Felim and Adelinda and all the stablehands were dashing about excitedly, and it seemed for a moment that the whole structure might go up in flames. The head groom ran down the aisle, opening the doors of the stalls and shooing the horses out into the arena, safely away from the fire. The gate was closed behind them so that the excited animals wouldn’t dash back into the burning building or scatter to the four winds, but it was a useless precaution.

  The new black racer, only half broken as yet, with the smell of the wild winds still in his nostrils, sensed freedom. Either not seeing the railings on the far side of the arena or just not caring, he threw up his head with a shrill neigh and thundered across the enclosure. He hit the railing going full speed, smashing into it and going down, floundering. The rest of the horses, spooked by all the excitement, followed him without knowing why, pouring through the gap in a rush and galloping off into the darkness. The black regained his feet and was soon in the lead. He really would have made a great racer; he went past An-Shai as though he were still standing. On and on through the night they dashed. One by one the other horses lagged and then dropped out of that mad, glorious flight, but An-Shai was in superb condition. In a straightaway race of under two miles, the black could have left him eating his dust, but over the long haul, An-Shai could run the fleet black into the ground, and so it proved.

  By the morning, the black was reduced to an exhausted shuffle and An-Shai was leading the way. They had dropped out of the mountains into the desert wastes where the feral horses roamed, and looking about him, An-Shai could see only themselves of all the stampeding herd. The black came to a weary halt, and taking advantage of his opportunity, An-Shai scraped himself a dust bath with a forehoof and rolled and rolled. It felt so good! He had never been allowed to roll; the groom, understandably perhaps, preferred not to have his charge’s laboriously polished coat begrimed. An-Shai felt as if he were rolling away the itches of years. When he finally rose to his hooves and shook off the excess dust, the black was grazing among the sparse vegetation, picking wiry gray grasses almost blade by blade from among less appetizing plants. An-Shai thought for a moment of the grain and sweet hay in his manger, and almost regretted it, but the grass was sustaining, and it felt good to be able to eat when he chose and move as he liked.