by Marc Secchia
“Optimal gas pressure, speed gun jammer armed, control stabilisers locked in place, wind tunnel emulator warmed up – hold on to your false teeth, kids!”
Luciano, aka her mad grandfather, punched the accelerator, drawing a deep, rising howl from the engine as though it were a jet turbine gathering speed. A puff of blue smoke blasted out of the massive, multiple exhaust outlets. Zaranna howled in concert with the car as they thundered over the top of Wynberg hill, attaining a ridiculous velocity around the dangerous left-hand bend at the top near Silverhurst Estate, before the road flattened out as the M5 headed straight toward Muizenberg. Cue even greater acceleration. All she could hear was the full-throated roaring of the engine, exactly as she imagined an angry Dragon might sound, and all she knew was the rush of wind in her hair and the weight of acceleration pressing into her stomach.
Alex suddenly cried out, “Mind the dip! Car!”
A Red Citroen rushed toward them so fast, Zaranna thought they must be heading the wrong way down the highway, but they were not. It was merely the relative speed. At the last second Whiz flipped the steering slightly, and the Dodge – well, dodged – sweeping past the car ahead like a scared cat leaping sideways in terror. They careened down the hard shoulder, blowing past a line of cars so fast that the wind pummelled her ears with a rapid whup-whup-whup sound.
The Dodge Viper thumped into the dip and bounced. It kept right on flying. Suddenly, there was an eerie silence.
“Sonic shielding,” said Gramps, turning to grin at Alex, hands deliberately clasped behind his head as though he were suntanning beside a pool. “What do you think? Two hundred and forty miles per hour – faster than your two-wheeled toy. By the way, we just flew over the speed gun. And the police. Who saw nothing.”
Alex looked a little green around the gills, Zara thought uncharitably. Jealousy? Or … how odd. Who cared about that?
She screamed, “Only the coolest grandfather ever!”
“Keep it down, you shrill washerwoman.” Whiz prodded his ears. “Enclosed space, you know.”
After that, the drive over Silvermine Mountain to Noordhoek, to her grandfather’s stud farm abutting the beach, was a relaxing breeze.
* * * *
When Zaranna woke, the girl was already awake. She had dragged herself to the poolside and was washing her wounded knee. She wore coils of brassy metal twisted through several holes in her ears, a nose ring on the left side, and had several piercings on her tongue that glinted slightly as she wet her lips in concentration. A long, thick braid hung over her left shoulder, wet and freshly braided in what appeared to be a complex five- or seven-stranded design, like a sailor’s splice. She had set aside her thin leather gloves, each of which had a seven-pointed star tooled apparently in metal on the back of the hand. The gloves looked very well used. And the skin of her leg had turned a definite shade of blue in keeping with the water, while her hands were green – chameleon? Trendy.
What did one say to greet an Equinox Human? Another minor gap in Jesafion’s teachings.
“Uh … hey. I’m Zaranna.”
“You forced your magic on me.”
Zara bristled at her tone. “Yes, I tried to turn you into a pony-rat, but evidently failed.”
“Equine magic is Earthen Fires evil,” stated the girl.
“I could have left you for the kites to eat.”
“I can take care of myself.”
My goodness, she must have taken etiquette lessons from Jesafion! Why was everyone on Equinox so jolly ungrateful? “Do you have a name, or just the stinky attitude?” she inquired sweetly.
To her surprise, a flash of a grin quirked the girl’s lips. In her rapid-fire, clipped accent, she said, “I thought Horses and Pegasi were far too mighty to treat Humans as anything more than the mud on their hooves. What were you meaning to do, enslave me?”
“Oh, you’d make a fine slave,” she snorted.
“I’d make a – what? Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious,” said Zaranna, deciding that goading the girl promised the best results. Besides, it was fun. “I’ll need you to pick my hooves, run me a warm bubble bath every evening and show me the way to Azoron’s Gorge so that I can enslave the rest of your people. Honestly, I’m the equine tyrant of a thousand Vales, and what I really dream of is having my own personal tribe of Humans to brush my mane and feed me ripe, juicy plums. I’ll demand a bed of only the freshest grasses, which must be changed daily, and you will be required to worship every inch of ground my hooves touch, crying, ‘O mighty Plains Horse’ until your voice goes all croaky, like a spiny swamp toad.”
The girl’s face was a picture as Zaranna embroidered her lie – first her jaw dropped, then she covered her mouth in apparent horror, then the green eyes began to twinkle and a guffaw escaped through her fingers.
“Sanu,” said the girl, with a saucy wink. “Outland Human, Kesuu’s Tribe.”
“Pleased to carry you away from the Obsidian Pentacle, Sanu,” said Zaranna, trying a saucy wink of her own but succeeding only in looking like she had grit stuck in her eye. “Fetch you a berry? Peel you a few Nicoseed clusters? Lick your wounds clean again?”
Well, maybe not the last.
“You … tended me? Carried me on your –” her voice cracked “– back?”
She tried to shrug. What of it? If she wanted thanks, that response was enough. “Here, I’ll get you a bite to eat, and then we should carry on, if you think you can make it. The Hooded Wizard has sent Tayburrl Darkwolf to blood his new Darkwolf Clan troops on a group of Humans out near Azoron’s Gorge. I assume that means your people?”
Now, the girl’s eyes displayed unguarded fright. “How by the blackest hellfires did you learn that, Zaranna?”
“I was spying, like you.”
A guess, but a perfect ‘o’ of shock confirmed her hypothesis. “I was not –”
“Honestly, Sanu. Gryphon wound on the leg? Fallen from a height? What did you do, irritate them enough that they tried to see how high you’d bounce?”
Sanu hung her head. “Right.”
Zara saw she had tied a headscarf over her black hair, pirate-style, with a knot at the nape of the neck. She leaned over the pool, filling her gourd carefully from near the surface. The Plains Horse moved off, plucked a few berries and seeds for her plucky, supposed slave-to-be, and deposited them by her side.
Sanu said, “I can’t accept these. Kesuu’s Tribe refuses charity.”
“Uh, they … aren’t a gift?” said Zaranna.
“This is payment for services to be bargained for?”
She did not understand the nuances of that reply. But she could guess from the context, couldn’t she? Zara ventured, “I require a capable guide to direct me to Azoron’s Gorge. Someone local, who knows the lay of the land, who can help me travel fast. Do you know such a person?”
“No.”
“No?” Zaranna gave the girl her best Peter-the-Spy Inscrutable look. “Okay … help me here, Sanu. I’m not exactly familiar with your customs.”
Sanu made a strange sign with her right hand, almost as if she were blessing the ground. “This girl I know cannot travel fast enough, for she is wounded.”
“This girl would rather be left behind?”
“Saving her people is the paramount need.”
Her voice did not even shake as she proposed to sacrifice herself. Impressive.
What to say? Zaranna racked her brains.
“This Plains Horse I happen to know would rather not leave a certain Human ingrate behind, having gone to the trouble of hauling her sorry backside all the way down the mountain yesterday,” said the Horse, with an inward grin. Gracious, she was developing quite the Irish Terrier snap-and-snarl routine. “Saving this girl’s people is very high on her extensive to-do list, along with defying the malevolent Hooded Wizard and conveying a strategically vital message to Sentalia Vale.” Skipping a few dozen other problems which might be more or less urgent. “Getting lost in an endless moun
tain maze on the way to saving said Outland Humans would therefore be rather disappointing. And likely to result in the Horse filling a few Darkwolf Clan bellies. Even more disappointing.”
“The girl would therefore brief this … did you say Plains Horse? You’re a ways from home.”
“You have no idea,” Zaranna deadpanned. Well, neither did she. Moving swiftly on … “This Human should eat the food the nice Horse provided for her.”
“Sealing the bargain?”
“If you say so, my dear.”
The girl stiffened immediately. “If you wish to know, in my culture that is disgustingly familiar.”
Wow. Cactus Girl. “So, Sanu, what do you do for fun out here?”
“Fun? We survive. I’m a hunter, trapper, tracker and all-round survivalist. It’s a hard existence in the Outland, a way of life a quadruped from a shielded Vale is unlikely to ever understand,” said Sanu, with a toss of her head and an uncompromising jut of her definite jaw. “We Humans know these Obsidian Highlands better than any creature. That’s how we can live out here. So I had a little tangle with a Gryphon. I’m alive, aren’t I? Thanks to you.”
She said the last grudgingly, as though she expected Zara to take advantage of this obligation. Perhaps she should. Unfortunately, being manipulative did not run in her nature.
Cropping the delightfully crunchy, sweet grass to afford herself a moment to think, she covertly watched Sanu. Yes. A slight pursing of her lips. The Plains Horse said, “I’m sure you’ll find a way to repay me one day, Sanu.”
There. Her sensitive horse ears picked up a telling sigh.
Sanu ate swiftly and sparingly, and then tried to stand, saying, “We should travel before the heat of the day sets in. Come.”
She could put no weight on the leg, but she hobbled a few steps before collapsing with a cry.
“Hop aboard.”
“I couldn’t …”
“Great Sky-Fires, or whatever you Outland lot say, you’re as stubborn as an obsidian boulder forged in a ruddy volcano,” Zaranna huffed. “Get on. That’s an order. Haven’t you ever travelled horseback before?”
“No.”
Well, she did remember Illume being rather startled at her mention of Humans riding horses on Earth, but that was just his usual testiness. She said, “If saving your people truly means what you say it means, Sanu, then … listen. Listen, I said! I don’t often give free rides. This is essential. You can salve your conscience or stupid pride or whatever drives you – you can’t walk one minute on that knee and you and I both know it. So can we cut through the idiocy and do what is necessary?”
Perhaps that speech earned her a hint of gratitude, perhaps not. Zara knelt, letting the girl clamber very gingerly onto her back.
“Settled?” Sanu gave a noncommittal grunt. “Good. Sing out which way to go. You’re the expert in these mountains. I’m just the transportation, but beware, I bite if I’m riled and that little Gryphon scratch is nothing compared to what I’ll do to you if you keep being so cantankerous.”
For the first time, the girl laughed freely. The music of life and freedom, Zaranna thought, trotting forward eagerly.
Sanu leaned over her neck, sounding quite breathless. “So, Plains Horse, what exactly were you doing in the Obsidian Pentacle? And how, by the spirits of our ancestors, do you plan to travel through Azoron’s Gorge?”
As they travelled that day, resting through the afternoon’s brutal heat radiating from iron skies before pressing on through the early evening, Zaranna began to tell Sanu a little of her story. The girl was a good listener, when she was not falling asleep on her ride’s back, which was three times in the morning stretch alone. The Gryphons must have tried to hack her knee off. The Horse snorted crossly. She’d had it up to the eyeballs with this land and damaged knees! When she thought Sanu was sleeping, Zara sneaked in a touch of magic to ease her pain. What she didn’t know … was that not living a lie? Should she help Sanu against her will? Grit the teeth. Trot on.
Five times, Zaranna hid from Dragons flying high overhead, searching the mountains, but these Obsidian Highlands could have hid a hundred armies without any of them having a hope of running into another. Precipitous ravines, blind canyons, cracked overhangs and caves were plentiful. Food and fresh water, far less so. Scavengers, ugly bottle-green lizards and lazy adders were the main residents, except for the caves which Sanu ordered her to avoid, period. Fear of Earthen Fires? Or something worse?
That evening, Zaranna taught Sanu how to pick her hooves with her long daggers. The pile of metal and stones that emerged was eye-opening.
“Perfect job for a slave,” Zara suggested slyly.
Sanu, who at seventeen was a year older than Zaranna, sucked in a ragged breath. “You walked all this way, on all this? I don’t … understand. You should bathe these feet – uh, hooves. Allow me.” Holding the horse’s hooves as she had been taught, Sanu dribbled a little precious water from her gourd onto the frog and cleaned the hoof with her own mouth-veil. “Next.”
Oh, goodness. She almost cried. To be cleansed with that all-important mouth-veil, which apparently kept evil odours and influences at bay … unbelievable. Why would a Plains Horse sacrifice for a lowly Human – a creature lowlier than the low, an outcast, the dregs of Equinox society? Sanu’s gesture touched her more deeply than Zaranna expected. She wanted to confess, ‘I’m Human, too! I know how this feels!’ But she could not. The Dreaming must be kept secret, and what did she truly know of Sanu’s people and their struggles? All she had heard pointed to a miserable fight for survival.
“Perhaps I think you’re worth it,” she whispered.
Sanu’s lower lip quivered. “Earthen Fires, if only all Equines were as mad as you,” she whispered back. In the faint starlight, Zaranna saw a tear glistening on the point of her nose.
* * * *
Four more days they travelled swift and true through the tangled wilderness of the Obsidian Highlands. Sanu’s peerless knowledge afforded them rapid progress. Apparently impassable cliffs would suddenly yield a crack they could slip through, a towering overhang hid a short tunnel to a neighbouring gorge, and she knew the precise location of the few safe water sources in this bleak, blasted landscape. On the fourth evening they took shelter early in a shallow, sandy cave, as massive purple-black thunderheads piled up over the south-western horizon and a brisk wind began to moan amongst the rocks. Zaranna looked on with interest as Sanu made her preparations. No magic, eh? Then what was this?
She drew protective symbols on the floor and walls of their small cave, including pentagrams, crescent moons, flying Pegasi and what she called Sky-Fire sigils, almost like a child’s depiction of the sun with rays radiating from it, except that these looked more like chain lightning, or … well, Zaranna was not sure, exactly. Sanu’s artwork had a strikingly bold simplicity about it, very different to her own preferred style, but her gift was clear.
She said, “You’ve a real talent for art, Sanu.”
“What would a Horse know about art?”
An attitude nothing but a firm kick in the backside would cure. “Do you think I’m just an animal with no appreciation of beauty or form?”
“Ah … not entirely.” Sanu rapidly sketched a line of calligraphic runes above her sigils. “Sorry – listen, I need to get these finished before the storm comes in. Bear with me. I’m not always a walking razor dagger.”
Magic. An actual apology from Her Waspishness? Could life get any better?
That said, the girl had a disturbing fascination with daggers. And warfare. Beating up, tricking and stealing from other Human Tribes seemed to be a favourite pastime. Zaranna had never met anyone who could describe with palpable relish exactly how to slip a dagger beneath someone’s ribs and twist it upward to pierce the heart, or which pressure points had the nastiest effects on one’s victims. And she hated the Pegasi. Hated them.
That put Zaranna’s mission to help a captive Pegasus Prince firmly on Sanu’s most-loathed list.
Their small shelter faced east, but even so, as the storm whistled up, Zaranna had a first-rate view of the clouds and asteroid belt being swallowed by the racing clouds. She had never seen a storm front sweep in as if a tidal wave of blackness rushed across the sky. Even before the stars disappeared, the wind’s rising howl made conversation impossible; darkness descended so thick and deep, it smothered the land like a thick blanket on a summer’s night. She had expected cold. Not this rushing, glutinous nightfall accompanied by heat prickling up her back, now a foreboding building so swiftly it was as if she stood beneath a heated waterfall.
Then, the horses of hell broke loose.
With a series of deafening screams, the wildest of Storm-Pegasi struck the land with their flashing hooves, and the earth shook. The skies split with peals of thunder. Lightning forked into a million glowing steeds skittering amongst the rocks, flashing by so fast that the eye could barely follow except as streaks retrospectively etched across the retinae, living and dying in the blink of an eye. Flame burst from the points of impact. Zaranna gasped for breath. Such magic! Such wild power! All the hills and gullies their hideout overlooked were a sea of white flame – the Sky-Fires descended to earth. Again and again the lightning steeds struck, coruscating and intertwining and giving birth and dying within the millisecond beats of her awareness, and there arose a glorious, terrifying melody like all the trumpets of heaven given voice at once, so that the earth and sky reverberated in one unimaginable symphony, and before this awesome display of wild beauty, she realised, all life must hide beneath rocks or flee in mindless terror, lest it be consumed utterly.
And the Pegasi cast the undesirables of Vales society out to live amongst this?
That night, as the storm raged without pause yet seemed unable to penetrate Sanu’s protective wards, the Human girl and the girl-Horse huddled together at the back of their shelter, unable to sleep. Yes, the magic protecting the Vales was a miracle – but what price did creatures pay to live beneath the mastery of the Pegasi Clans?
