Looking at the buffalo, the grasslion decided she was disgusting. Her fur was clotted with the dried mud she rolled in to keep off the flies. Grass mush dripped from her mouth. Her eyes were big and watery and contented. “I can dig,” the grasslion said. “I can dig better than you can.”
“Well then, who would eat the grass to exactly the right height for stalking rabbits?” said the buffalo.
Looking at the buffalo, the grasslion decided she was ugly. Her horns sat up on her head like an ugly hat. Her fur hung to her knees like dead grass. Her hooves looked like gray turds that when broken open have maggots inside them. “I can stalk rabbits in grass of any height,” he said.
“Well then, who will sing to the stars with you, to please the ears of the gods?” said the buffalo.
The grasslion looked at the buffalo and decided she was ridiculous. Her legs were short and her body fat. Her mouth was wide and her tail had a puff of hair on its tip. It was difficult to imagine that anything she did could please the gods. “My voice is so much sweeter than yours,” said the lion. “Maybe the gods would like me better without you bellowing beside me.”
“Well then,” said the buffalo. “If you don’t want to be my friend that’s fine with me. But I have to warn you that if you try to eat me, it’s me who will eat you in the end.” And she got up and walked away.
So now the grasslion had to dig his own water hole and chase the rabbits in high grass and sing all by himself and all this made him angry. And he watched the silver buffalo from afar and thought about how much meat was on her bones, and how it would keep him fat and contented for many days. And finally he was in such a fever of anger and bloodlust that he went sneaking up on the buffalo in the tall grass, and jumped onto her back, and dug his claws in.
Now, the buffalo set to work trying to get that lion off her back. She jumped and twisted and kicked, but she couldn’t dislodge the lion, who kept ripping away with his claws until he had opened up her back like a shirt. Suddenly the buffalo’s skin fell off, and out of the buffalo hide stepped a man. He shook his head as if he were waking up from a long sleep, and then he took a look at the lion, who certainly was feeling somewhat surprised. “Oh, it’s you, trying to eat me,” the man said. “Well, I have to warn you that it’s me who will eat you in the end.”
The lion was annoyed at the man’s arrogance. “We’ll see who eats and who is eaten,” he cried, and jumped onto the man’s back and dug in with his claws.
The man didn’t like having the lion on his back any more than the silver buffalo had. He yelled and he rolled on the ground and he tried to hit the lion with a rock, but the lion hung on, ripping with his claws, until the man’s skin had opened up like a shirt.
Suddenly, his skin fell away, and out stepped a big yellow hare. That hare yawned and scratched her chin, and then she noticed the lion standing there, so surprised he didn’t even try to lift a paw and grab her. “Oh, it’s you trying to eat me,” she said. “Well, I have to warn you that it’s me who will eat you in the end.” And then the hare took off, kicking her yellow feet in the air, taking great bounds over the high grass. The lion chased her, of course, all up and down the length of the grassy plain, from the ocean in the east to the mountains in the west, from the forest in the north to the wasteland in the south. At last, the hare was so tired she fell down gasping, and the lion fell down right on top of her, with his red tongue hanging out of his mouth. “I’ve got you now,” he gasped, and ripped with his claws until the hare’s back opened up like a shirt.
Inside the hare’s skin was a pool of darkness, and then that pool began to move, to uncoil, and out slid a fat black snake with a flickering tongue. The lion lay exhausted, panting and weak from the long chase, looking into the hard black eyes of the black snake. “You warned me that you would eat me in the end,” said the grasslion.
“Oh yes, I almost forgot,” said the snake. And he opened his mouth, bigger and bigger, until his mouth was as big as the lion, and he swallowed the lion whole.
And that’s why the grasslions never hunt the buffalo.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The sun rises and falls like a ball tossed from a hand, and Zanja na‘ Tarwein walks steadily across barren mountaintops. The owl floats ahead of her, a feather-down guide lit faintly by a sun that is always in twilight. As long as she can see, Zanja follows the owl. When it is dark, she squats down wherever she is, and takes a handful of twigs and dried grass that she has managed to gather among the rocks, and with it builds a fire no bigger than the palm of her hand.
Over her shoulder she has carried all day a fire-blackened tin pot with a length of rope tied to its handles for a shoulder strap. She also carries a wooden box that once was decorated with pastoral scenes, but from which most of the paint now has been scraped off. Although in her day’s journeys she sees nothing but stones, when she stops walking she can always find a pool of water within a few steps of her fire: a pool just big enough to fill her pot. And as the water heats, she takes out of the wooden box a porcelain tea set and a tin of tea that is neither full nor empty. By the time the twigs burn to ashes, the water boils. She steeps a pot of tea and drinks it while looking at the stars.
These stars are unfamiliar: not unremembered, but entirely different from night to night. Yet the landscape across which she travels by day remains the same: rocky mountaintops that give her no glimpse at all of what lies beyond them. Nothing distinguishes this landscape. She cannot even be certain that the sun rises in the same place every dawn. She is following the owl, who is leading the way to the Land of the Dead.
By the time the teapot is empty, it is sunrise. She packs the tea set and slings her burdens over her shoulders. She spots the owl, flying in the distance. Again, she follows.
The day’s bread was in the oven. With the storm shutters open, Garland could watch the tentative dawn of early winter: its stark, crisp shadows, black on white, the rising glimmer of the snow. He could see the ravens on the porch rail, impatient for their cornbread, bickering like children over perches in the sun. Garland had awakened to a kitchen hung with snowshoes—Karis, apparently unable to sleep again, had done her insomniac’s work here.
The kitchen door clicked open and he turned, surprised. Medric, who he last had seen wrapped in Emil’s arms in the attic room the three of them shared, stumbled in: only half dressed, spectacles askew, fingers still ink-stained from the previous night’s work on his manuscript. “Brrr!” He squinted at the pale light reflecting in from the snow.
“It’s called a sunrise,” said Garland. “What are you doing up so early? After Karis was awake all night? Trading places with her?”
“Gods! No!” Medric shuddered. “It was a dream.”
Medric didn’t drink tea or spirits and didn’t eat butter or sugar or meat or cheese, and so was a thin wisp of a man who felt the cold quite keenly. Garland distractedly considered what to feed him at what was for Medric a wretched hour. Hot milk. “I suppose you don’t take honey?”
Medric shook his head mournfully. “I’d like to stay sane. Or not get any madder than I am.”
“Honey causes madness?” Every day in this household was another amazement. Garland warmed the milk, determined to do it slowly so the milk would sweeten on its own.
Medric rubbed his eyes, mumbled crankily, and then burst out, “You know her!”
“Who?”
“The one I dreamed of. I never met her, so youmust have, in Watfield. Otherwise, I couldn’t have dreamed of her.”
“A soldier? I knew them all, five years ago. What did this dream woman like to eat?”
Garland had asked his question flippantly, but Medric replied promptly, “Cheese, with an apple and a glass of wine.”
“And a couple of butter biscuits, I hope.”
Medric shrugged. Clearly, he was a man who saw no reason to think about food.
“With tastes like that, she’s probably an officer.” Garland stirred the milk steadily, peacefully, letting his memories rise: sergeants, capt
ains, lieutenants, commanders. The higher the position, the older the person who held it, generally. “How old? Thirty? Fifty?”
Medric grumbled something, pulling himself out of his daze. “She’s energetic, not so beat up as most veterans get. But she’s not young. A lucky fighter.”
Garland was remembering his last day in Watfield garrison. Summoned to the general’s quarters, he found himself confronted by a very angry, very large man who gestured dismissively at the untouched plate on his table: beef in gravy with mushrooms and vegetables covered by a crisp pastry. Garland had been worrying all evening that he had used too much rosemary in the gravy, which is a mistake impossible to recover from, and surely that was what the general wanted to complain about. “Do you call this soldier’s fare?” the general had roared when Garland came in.
Garland could vividly recall what at the time he had scarcely noticed: that the other plates on the table were scraped clean, that the woman who sat at Cadmar’s right had looked sharply away when the general uttered his unimaginable, unacceptable command that from now on Garland was to cook badly. What had she been hiding from Garland—or from Cadmar—when she looked so swiftly away? Embarrassment? Contempt? Garland wanted to describe her to Medric now, but he could not think of what distinguished her in appearance from any other Sainnite. There were some things the soldiers had said about her, though, and he repeated them, struggling to remember. “She learned the names and history of every single person in her command. If they went hungry or cold or wet, so did she. She always hauled her own load.”
“I think I like her,” Medric said. “Whoever she is.”
“The lieutenant-general, Clement.”
“The lieutenant-general?”Medric sat upright, blinking. “She hauls her own load?”
“I’m just telling you what I heard when she first arrived.” Garland tasted the foaming milk. Not sweet yet.
“I understand the general is a bloody fool,” said Medric.
“That certainly is true.”
“Then how did he get himself a competent lieutenant?”
“She’d been his lieutenant an awfully long time. Every promotion for him was a promotion for her.”
“It was torturefor her.” Medric’s spectacles were reflecting the fire again. Garland felt a shudder. Karis might exercise her talent invisibly, or at least in a way that almost seemed ordinary, but this peculiar man could not pull off that trick. “They came over on the boat together, from Sainna,” he said. “She was a child. She thought he was a perfect soldier. She learned better—but she couldn’t escape him. He remained her superior. His rise controlled hers. But, finally, she managed to escape him and for a few years they both were commanders, equals. And then the old general died.”
Medric was only half articulating. In the twilight region between sleep and wakefulness, he opened his mouth and through speaking understood what he had no business knowing.
Medric opened his eyes. “Am I making your skin crawl yet?”
“Yes,” Garland said, and let out his breath. “The milk is ready, I think.”
“You’re being very helpful, you know.”
“Helpful for what? Why do you want to understand her like this?”
“To intrude on her, you mean? Oh, don’t deny it—I know it seems unsavory. But how else are we to win this war, except by knowing the enemy better than they know us?”
Garland poured two mugs of milk, gave one to Medric, and then flavored his own with honey and spices, the scent of which made Medric look distinctly rueful. “The enemy,” Garland repeated. “You mean our fathers’ people.”
“Oh, I’m a traitor no matter who I mean by ‘enemy,’” said Medric lightly. “And so are you. You might let me have just a tiny bit of that cinnamon.”
Garland grated some cinnamon into Medric’s milk. The young seer’s eyes closed as he breathed in the smell. He said, still sniffing, No one in this house has ever asked me to be unprincipled, though. And they won’t ask it of you, either.“
“Unless I’m asked to murder Karis’s wife,” said Garland recklessly.
Medric’s spectacles had steamed up as he held his nose over the mug. He took them off, rubbed his eyes, and said with terrible sadness, “Etnil and I—we are always exactly parallel to each other, and we couldn’t step on each other’s toes if we tried. But Karis and Zanja, they had to fight their way into that dance of theirs. Gods— it was exciting to watch.” He put his spectacles back on, found them still steamy, and irritably took them off again. “I won’t deny that Zanja’s murder was barbarous, heartless, and cruel,” he said. “But don’t call it unprincipled. Norina loved her for her discipline. I loved her quickness. Emil, well, he just loved her. Killing Zanja was a triumph of principle over passion. It may have been the most principled act of my life. I certainly hope I’m never asked to do such a thing again.”
After a moment, Medric added gloomily, “I’m better at being silly in Shaftalese.” He sipped his milk, and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “How did you do that?
“It just takes patience.”
“I’ll never be able to do it, then.”
They sat a long time without talking. The smell of baking bread began to suffuse the kitchen. The ravens on the rail outside cried hoarse curses at each other. Medric said, “This milk is making me sleepy.”
“It’s supposed to. What wasthe dream that woke you up?”
“I dreamed that the lieutenant-general was making love with a Shaftali cow farmer.”
“Huh!” said Garland after a long silence. “Are you sure?”
“I may be an addle-pate, but when a couple of people take off their clothes and tangle in a bed like that, it’s difficult to mistake what it is they’re doing.”
“What does your dream mean, though?”
Medric put on his spectacles, found them clear, and blinked at Garland quite sleepily. “She’s loyal to her people, isn’t she? Not confused, like us?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but shook his head sympathetically. “She doesn’t even realize what’s happened to her yet.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Clement noticed Gilly on horseback at the garden’s edge, watching her and Captain Herme put the reluctant soldiers through their drills—familiar drills, except that they were done in deep snow, wearing snow shoes. The soldiers floundered and lost their tempers. After Clement had dismissed them, she went to stand at Gilly’s stirrup. He said, “I really do admire your persistence. But what idiocy!”
Herme’s company trailed ignominiously off the field, most of them dangling their snow shoes distastefully from their hands. They would return to the work of building themselves a barracks, and no doubt they would complain about her all afternoon.
She said, “So you too believe that Sainnites are naturally unable to cope with snow? Just like Shaftali are naturally incapable of fighting?”
“No. I am a man of facts.”
“Fact is, those soldiers would die rather than learn something new.”
“Fact is, like anyone, they’d rather be incapable than incompetent.”
“It’s hard to blame them, when observers call them idiotic. Well, it doesn’t matter. I need for them to learn to walk and fight on snow. And I outrank them.”
“You outrank almost everyone, from sheer endurance.”
“At least you have no illusions about my native abilities.” She grinned up at him. The unflappable, sure-footed horse pushed her gently, and she scratched his forehead as well as could be done in heavy gloves.
Gilly added, with a trace of genuine concern, “Oh, but the soldiers do hate you today.”
“Everyone hates me, lately. But not you, for some reason.”
“Make me wear snow shoes and I’ll hate you too.”
“What areyou doing here?”
“The storyteller’s coming to hear some stories, and I’ll be supervising, as usual. Come with me.”
“Any particular reason?”
“None at all.” Under her suspicious e
xamination, his face remained bland as his horse’s, though much uglier.
“Give me a moment to undo these bindings,” she said.
Since her return to Watfield, Clement had frequently glimpsed the storyteller, whose red silk clothing could hardly be missed in a world of white snow, gray slush, and even grayer woolen uniforms. And in the bitter evening cold, while walking past the refectory, Clement had sometimes heard the storyteller’s voice. Perhaps a few words, so crisply articulated they hardly seemed words at all, but notes of music, might linger in Clement’s ear. More often, she heard at a distance the roar of soldier’s voices, and the pounding of their hands and feet, which signaled another story told and now owed.
Walking at Gilly’s stirrup, Clement commented, “I don’t know that I’d want to spend so much time in that woman’s company as you’ve been spending. See that icicle?” She pointed at an extraordinary one that dangled from the eaves of an unfinished building. “That’s her. Not human at all.”
Gilly gazed at the icicle. “But her stories don’t make us cold,” he said.
The storyteller was waiting in the guard shed, huddled with the soldiers around the brazier, watching a game of cards. The soldiers started guiltily as Clement looked in the door, and leapt to their feet in a tangle of salutes. “Lieutenant-General,” said the captain. “Gilly was late, and we thought the storyteller shouldn’t be left standing in the snow.”
Clement said mildly, “You shouldn’t have let her in.” In fact, the discipline of the gate guard was not her concern, and the soldiers were probably confident that she wouldn’t report them.
The storyteller greeted her with cool courtesy, and as coolly said to Gilly on his horse, “Good day, Lucky Man.”
“Good day, storyteller. I trust you are well.”
“I am. You owe me ten stories.”
“You will be paid.” Gilly added, as they started down the street, “I have a question for you. Do you ever repeat a story?”
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