The Company of Glass

by Tricia Sullivan

  The horse had no saddle, and the rider was dressed in leather softened of long wear. She was a wiry, small woman several years younger than Tarquin, with unkempt dark hair that had been tied back but most of it escaped anyway. She had brought the horse to a halt using only her legs, and now moved with the animal as if welded to its back. She looked him over with an expression on her thin face that was amused but not happy, if this were possible. The horse danced in place, but she contrived to hold the spear steady. Tarquin took a step back.

  ‘You are trespassing,’ she said in a Pharician accent. ‘This is my place, and you have not been invited.’

  ‘I’m lost. I mean no harm. Can you tell me where I am?’ Her accent confused him: the landscape looked like some remote part of Snake Country, but her voice belonged to Jundun or maybe even farther south.

  ‘Where are you trying to go?’ She answered his question with another, suspiciously.

  ‘Jai Khalar.’ He didn’t sound very sure of it: how could he plan where he wanted to go when he didn’t know where he was to begin with?

  She laughed. ‘You aren’t lost. You’re mad. Well.’ She pointed with the spear through the trees, where a small footpath cut through the underbrush. ‘There is a quicker way back to the river if you follow that path. It’s a nice day for a swim, so you won’t have wasted your time completely. Now, if you cross the river and go back down the end of the valley the way you’ve come, and cross the mountains avoiding the Assimilators and the roaming Slave bands and the lions, after several days you will come to Fivesisters Lake, and thence it is only a few hundred miles to Jai Khalar.’

  ‘What? On foot?’ he said in despair.

  She gave a derisive toss of her head, but beneath her cavalier manner he detected a hint of fear when she said, ‘Who sent you here? How did you find us?’

  ‘No one sent me,’ he responded hastily. ‘I told you, I’m lost.’

  ‘You’ve been lost for a long time, then – unless you have wings that you can fly across from Fivesisters Lake, which is the nearest settlement.’

  He sagged, thinking of the distance to Jai Khalar.

  ‘What Clan are you?’ she asked. ‘You wear no signs, but you speak like one of Ysse’s army.’

  ‘I was Seahawk Clan. But that was a long time ago. It doesn’t matter any more. Let us just say that I find myself here, and my life means little to me if I am as far from Jai Khalar, and Jai Pendu, as you say. For by the time I get back there, it will be too late for me to redeem my errors.’

  ‘Look,’ she said flatly, and turned the horse. The mare began to walk again, and Tarquin strode by her side along the path that led through the wood. ‘We both know you are here to bargain for my horses, so spare me the long and colourful stories of your adventures.’

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘It’s a time of war,’ she said. ‘I cannot take them back over the mountains to my homeland, and I will not trade them away to strangers who will only use them in battle. I will not trade them to their deaths.’

  ‘I’m not a horse trader,’ he managed to get out. ‘I’m lost. Still, one of your animals would be of great use to me, if only to carry me far away from Everien.’

  She looked down her nose at him. ‘You have not looked once at the horse I ride,’ she said. ‘That alone prevents me from giving you a mount.’

  ‘I’m no expert on horses,’ he conceded, now giving a cursory glance over the chestnut mare and concluding she was a fine animal, although she had an unusual face and exceptionally sharp hooves. ‘Tell me how it is that a Pharician such as yourself ends up high in the Everien Range, breeding horses.’

  ‘It is a long story. But I am not the only Pharician trainer you will find in your country. Among your Clans there are none who know the magic of the horse. Horses are not Clan animals, and your people have no gift with them.’

  ‘And your people do? Since when do Pharicians have Clan animals? You are all too busy being civilized and building your empire to appreciate the animal ways.’

  ‘How little you understand! The Animal Magic is older than all of us, and it is not unique to Everien. We may not have the Knowledge in Pharice, but we too have the Animal clans – or did at one time. Their ways are all but buried now in the common culture, but traces can be found still, especially among the horse tribes of the desert.’

  ‘Your people.’ He realized that her origins should have been obvious from the first moment he laid eyes on her. She was a desert nomad, now far from home and apparently alone.

  They had emerged on the other side of the wood, where there were several roughly constructed buildings and a pond fed by the river. Beyond the trampled earth of the yard, goats and chickens roamed nearby; the horses were scattered farther, some of them chasing each other or rolling in the high grass.

  She gestured to the field scornfully. It easily filled three hundred acres.

  ‘It is like teaching them to dance on a dinner plate. In my country, the plains stretch for miles on miles. I would have these horses running day in and day out to condition their muscles. They would run without food or water, on pure spirit, and they would fight like whirlwinds. So I would teach them. But we are closeted here. I was not able to take them across the mountains to Pharice while the danger from Sekk is so high. I would not risk the journey. So we must cope with this confinement.’

  ‘They seem fit enough to me,’ Tarquin said, squinting to see the young animals scattered around the field.

  ‘They are passable. But they have not awakened their true country which lies within them. The fires of the desert lie in ashes. They will run if driven, fight if challenged; but it is not their passion. They are asleep. All except Ice, their sire. He knows what it means to run and never stop. He can eat the wind and polish the sky with his mane.’

  ‘You can’t mean the same Ice of legend. Not the Pharician demon-horse, the one who ran races in the Deer Country thirty years ago?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘But … how old would he be now?’

  ‘Age does not run the same for Ice as it does for us,’ she said. ‘What are you called?’

  ‘Tarquin,’ he answered shortly. She gave no indication that the name was familiar, and he was relieved.

  ‘I am Keras.’

  ‘Which one is Ice?’ Tarquin was trying to remember clearly the grey he had seen at the races, so many years ago. If he were still alive, Ice would be as old as Tarquin by now; he was surprised to hear Keras talk of the horse in the present tense.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said cagily. ‘I must ask you to go now. I have much to do, and whatever you may have heard, my horses are not for sale.’

  ‘Not so fast.’ He stepped in front of the chestnut mare, who rolled her eyes at him; he realized she was thinking about having a go at him. ‘I just got here. There are no other people for miles. Perhaps I could help you, lend you my back for labour. And surely we might exchange news. You might like to know that Everien is at war with Pharice.’

  Her eyes sparked, but she quickly concealed her reaction. ‘War? I have no interest in it. I have had enough of fighting even in my own country. I’ve seen too many of my horses abused and killed in war, and for what? They don’t need men. We need them, but they don’t need us. You can see this. Ice and his bloodline live quite happily away from people.’

  ‘Yet you said you taught these animals to fight.’ He was still watching her mount warily.

  ‘To protect the herd. That’s all.’

  ‘Protecting the herd is what I do,’ Tarquin said. ‘The Sekk are the wolves in the hills. They steal people from the villages and send them back, Enslaved, to slaughter their own kind.’

  ‘We don’t need your protection.’

  ‘How hard you are, Keras.’

  ‘And you as well,’ she retorted. ‘You think that everything in the world belongs to you in your time of need, just because you are a warrior.’

  ‘If I’m to lay down my life for the land, for your life, for their li
ves, then yes – I do think I have a right to ask for a horse.’

  ‘I told you. I haven’t asked for your protection. I doubt you could offer it, anyway. I will keep my own, and trust to my wits to survive.’

  ‘And what about your homeland? What about Pharice? Did you know it is on the brink of being overrun by Sekk?’

  Her expression sharpened. ‘You lie.’

  He drew breath to release his rapidly fraying temper and then changed his mind about arguing. He let his shoulders sag. He had no appetite for an argument with this woman. He had already done battle with a Sekk today, and this piece of Pharician girl-talent who thought she was so fierce was really just an ignorant bit of fluff who would be blown to death by the winds of the Knowledge that were sweeping the world this midsummer. Yet she obstructed him.

  ‘I do not lie, Keras,’ he sighed. ‘Put the spear away and come down off the horse, and I will give you news of what is happening elsewhere than in your high valley.’

  She eyed him for a moment. Then she said, ‘Go over to the house and wait for me. We will sit down and talk, if that’s what you really want – like the civilized people of Pharice.’

  She accompanied this remark with a shrewish little smile, and then twitched her legs against the horse and was off. Tarquin followed more slowly. It was tempting to just make off with one of the animals in the field, but with his luck they would probably all attack him. The mare was a strange one: he had never seen such a predaceous-looking equine and wouldn’t have believed it possible for the species.

  The steading was primitive and simple. He fell asleep in the shade of its wall; when he woke up, the sun had moved into his eyes and Keras had watered the mare and was brushing mud off her legs. The horse swivelled her head to look at Tarquin and he read a certain intelligence there that he had never before associated with horses. He didn’t think this one liked him much, though. She turned away dismissively, and Keras said, ‘Tell me why you think Pharice is in danger.’

  So he told her. He described the army in detail; told her what he knew of the recent intrigues in Hezene’s court; added in some information of his own that had come his way in his travels to convince her that he knew what he was talking about. While he talked, he followed Keras about as she collected eggs, threw down hay for the goats, cleaned her saddle. She began grooming her horse in earnest. Downplaying the role of Night and the Company, he added, ‘Pharice is likely to try to cross the Floating Lands, just as that fool Istar is doing. I used to think it was impossible to get across those islands, but now I’m not so sure. Certainly I fear what Istar may do if she is unlucky enough to find herself in Jai Pendu with the Sekk bringing an army of twenty thousand there.’

  ‘Twenty thousand Pharicians?’

  ‘Not all of them, but more than half are your countrymen. They are under the sway of a Sekk and the Glass it wields.’

  ‘Who’s Istar?’ Her question startled him; he had forgotten she was there.

  ‘Her father’s daughter, I’m afraid.’ He sighed. ‘Yes, that is my real fear.’

  There was a long silence, ended when Keras abruptly chucked the brush into a tack box and slapped the horse’s rump. The mare shot off into the grass. She moved beautifully, Tarquin thought, and wished that his problem could be solved so easily, by the use of a fast horse. He was simply too far away.

  ‘It is a hard thing to suffer, this failure. If only I could have got to Jai Khalar, I would begin to rally the populace to leave Everien entirely. I would not allow Ajiko to hold the people to the land. Better that they should flee and live as you do.’

  Keras began to stroll away from the buildings and into the open grassland. The shadows had grown long and blurry with gathering cloud. ‘You are a strange manner of thing,’ she remarked calmly, plucking a stem of grass and placing it between her lips. ‘Listening to you now, there is even less reason for me to risk one of my horses on you. I suspect you are quite out of your mind.’

  Tarquin didn’t say anything to this. His words sounded vague and ill-conceived in his own ears, so how could he blame Keras for not cooperating? He wouldn’t give himself a horse either, if he were her.

  ‘Tell me about Ice at least. He is still alive, you say?’

  She softened then, as he’d guessed she would. She walked a little way into the field and called the horse. Two heads came up, observed her, and returned to their grazing. Tarquin smiled. So the mysterious Ice didn’t even know his name. Maybe Keras was all talk after all.

  Then Ice came over a rise and Tarquin’s spine snapped erect. He was lost for breath or thought.

  It was hard to believe this was the same animal he had seen as a child. He remembered that horse being fast, and he remembered the unusual colour: but the sight before him now was astonishing. The horse fixed his gaze on Keras and moved easily towards her. Everything about him was motion and light, like a storm tide in sunset when the water goes white with its own force, and whiter still where the light shines through it.

  ‘He moves like a song,’ Tarquin breathed.

  ‘He moves like the wind demons in my country,’ said Keras, ‘when the sky draws the sands up into the blue and drags the earth itself behind it. The majala, we call them. The white winds. Ice is no name for him.’

  Ice did not seem to approach; he merely arrived, his flanks dry, unwinded. His eyes were blue. The horse sidled up to Keras, side-stepped her, lowered his head, danced away again. Her head did not even reach the animal’s withers, so she looked like a child; but Tarquin had no eyes for her. He was studying the stallion’s conformation. Ice was leaner than a warhorse, with slender legs and a narrower chest – beautiful to see, but not built to carry an armoured man over any distance. A hothouse flower, Tarquin feared, dismayed by so much beauty. The animal looked as if he’d been dipped in ink: black where his hooves touched the ground, which darkness faded until above the hocks it became a silver grey, and finally alabaster on the body. Mane and tail were also white, flown like flags from the arches of the horse’s body. Ice picked up his fetlocks prettily in an excess of enthusiasm, pawing the ground and snorting as he played with Keras. She was laughing.

  ‘Want to see him run?’ she said.

  ‘I think I just have,’ Tarquin answered, letting amazement heat his tone.

  ‘No you haven’t. Watch this.’ She vaulted on to Ice’s back and they shot away before he could blink. The horse took the perimeter of the field, leaving a trail of flying earth. Tarquin could just descry Keras stretched out along his neck and bit his lip with fear for her; the horse could barely be seen at all. His legs were a blur. All too soon they arrived again from the other direction, Ice trotting easily, barely breathing harder and sweating not at all – and Keras winded, red-faced, exultant.

  ‘How do you ride such a thing?’ he queried in amazement.

  She gave him the first genuine smile she had yet shown. ‘A horse is a mechanical creature. He operates on his gaits, and when you can feel his rhythm, you can direct it.’

  She wrapped her arms around Ice’s neck in an excess of affection.

  ‘You should have seen Nemelir, my teacher. He was a ghost. He could get so deep inside the horse, the horse would think it was Nemelir.’

  ‘But how do you make them fight?’

  ‘Ah. As I said, that is the Animal Magic. No one writes of such things. How is it that Seers of your Clan can fly, Tarquin?’

  ‘I have no Clan,’ he corrected defensively.

  ‘Let’s not split hairs. How can they fly?’

  ‘They can’t fly, actually,’ Tarquin said, exasperated. ‘They can read the birds. That’s all.’

  ‘Well. Our horses can read us. But as I say, those secrets are carefully guarded, and I don’t claim to have mastered them. Whereas Nemelir—’

  ‘Yes, yes, Nemelir. But he’s not here and I have need of such a horse as this.’ He was excited. With luck, he might make it to Jai Khalar before all was ruined.

  ‘Ice is no one’s to give. He belongs to the herd
. He is too precious to risk. And I doubt you could ride him.’

  ‘Try me.’

  She dismissed the suggestion with a wave and a laugh. ‘It is out of the question. Look at yourself, Tarquin the Free. You are all but dead on your feet.’ By the time he’d realized she had deduced his identity without being told, she had dismounted and the horse was gone; and he realized she was right – he was too tired to be good for anything. He trailed after her as she returned to the steading.

  Keras had converted a section of the barn to a home. There was a stove, a table littered with pots of liniment and broken saddle leathers and unwashed dishes, and in the corner, a straw pallet covered by a horse blanket that looked more or less clean.

  ‘I am a very lazy cook. I have only flatbread which is days old,’ she said, scrubbing vegetables in a bucket. She added gruffly, ‘You can have some to take with you when you go; I’ll make more for myself.’

  ‘I would thank you. But you know I want a horse. Does my situation move you not at all?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ She glanced at him over her shoulder, brushing the unruly mass of hair away from her face. She had decent, clean lines, he thought: like her horses, a little savage, but interesting. It was a pity about her temperament; he supposed she had been too long alone, unaware that he was coming across much the same to her. ‘My horses are like children to me. You are dreaming if you expect me to give one to you. And to have the balls to ask for Ice!’ She chuckled. ‘It’s like asking to be given the moon down from the sky. It just isn’t going to happen.’

  He sighed and ripped off a section of bread. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m tired. I’ve had enough of losing, whether by inches or by miles. Maybe I should just give up. It is peaceful out here, isn’t it? But it must be terrible in winter.’

  ‘We don’t stay here in winter,’ she said in a clipped voice. He didn’t ask where they went instead; he didn’t feel like being rebuffed for his curiosity.

  ‘Do you have anything to drink?’ he said instead, and the plaintive tone in his voice must have elicited some sympathy from her, for she laughed and passed him a bottle.