Grass (41 page)

As for Rigo, while hours passed, he seethed, barely able to contain his frustration at Marjorie's passing slowly, slowly away to someplace where he might never find her.

When Marjorie and the others arrived at Klive, Marjorie rode directly to the Kennel Gate. It was the closest place she knew to the first surface, one of the two familiar approaches to the mansion. Above the first surface was the terrace, and fronting on the terrace were the reception rooms. She was halfway across the terrace before someone saw her and moved swiftly to intercept her. Sylvan.

"Marjorie!" His voice was a muffled shout of dismay. "What are you doing here?"

"I've come to find out what I can about Stella." She confronted him, arms folded, half angry, half pleading.

He took her arm, pulled her away from the windows. "You Yrariers do believe in courting danger. For the love of whatever you hold dear, Marjorie, come away from the doors. Let's go down into the garden." He turned away, still pulling at her, and she followed him, somewhat unwillingly and too late. The stentorian bellow startled them both. Stavenger had come out the doors and stood towering at the top of the steps, face purple with fury.

"What are you doing here?
Fragras
! I'm speaking to you!"

His fists were clenched as though he intended to strike her. Her own frustration and fury rose to meet his, all in a moment. She drew herself up, one hand forward, the index finger pointing him out.

"You," she screamed. "You unholy monster!" Her voice hung on the air like a smell.

He shuddered and drew back, more surprised by her attack than he would have been by any other tactic. He was not accustomed to either defiance or reproach, and he had been so far from sensible thought that it took him time to puzzle out that he had intended to attack her.

"You despoiler of children!" she cried. "You barbarian! Where was it you saw my daughter last?" She moved up toward him, waving the finger as though it had a cutting edge, like a sword.

"I never saw her," he snarled. "I didn't look."

"How can a Master not observe his Hunt?" she cried. "Are you so enslaved to your mounts that you're insensible?"

His face became even darker, his neck swelled, his eyes bulged as he howled inarticulately and came toward her like a juggernaut. Sylvan caught her from behind and dragged her away.

"Move!" he hissed at her, a long, frightened exhalation. "He'll kill you if he gets the chance!"

He pulled her down the steps, away down the Hounds' Way and through the Kennel Gate, then shut the heavy gate behind her. Through it she could still hear Stavenger's wordless bellows of fury.

Sylvan leaned against the gate, his face pale. "I knew you'd want to know. I found out for you. I asked Shevlok and some of the others. They don't notice much during a Hunt, quite frankly, but it was Darenfeld's Coppice, the same as Dimity, the same as Janetta. That's the last place anyone saw her."

"Show me!" she demanded, leaping up into Don Quixote's saddle. "Now!"

"Marjorie – "

"Now! You can ride Irish Lass. She's smaller than those monstrosities you're used to riding." Then, seeing him looking vacantly at the big horse, "Put your left foot in the stirrup, that metal thing there. Grasp the saddle and pull yourself up; she's not going to put her leg out for you. Now, take the reins, as I have mine. Don't bother doing anything with them. She'll follow us. Now, show me where!"

He gestured off to the left and they all rode in that direction, gaining only a little distance before they heard the gate bang open and looked back to see Stavenger howling after them. The riders looked resolutely forward as they entered the taller grasses which soon hid them from view.

Sylvan sat very quietly on the horse, occasionally reaching forward with his feet as though to find the toe spaces he was accustomed to on his Hippae mounts.

"Sit up," Marjorie instructed him tersely. "She has no barbs to skewer you with. Lean forward. Pet her. She likes it." He did so, slowly, almost fearfully, relaxing gradually.

"A different kind of beast, eh?" queried Brother Mainoa. "Though I am very sore from this unaccustomed position, I am not afraid."

"No," Sylvan agreed abstractedly. "No. But then, one really isn't afraid while on the Hunt, either." He stared around himself, as though seeking landmarks. "There." He pointed ahead of them, a little to the right. "That's the Ocean Garden. Normally we'd ride on the other side, but we can get where we're going around this way." He gestured, showing Marjorie the way, and she rode ahead, letting him call directions to her as they went.

"Why was your father in a rage?" Tony asked. "Because of your father. When they returned last night, from the Hunt, Roderigo demanded that they help him search for your sister. It isn't done. When someone vanishes, everyone pretends not to notice. No one searches. No one demands help from others. Father – my father – couldn't keep his temper. He's been wild, ever since yesterday. Seeing you set him off, and then when your mother accused him … " Sylvan's eyes opened widely, and he stroked his throat. "How can I … ?"

"No Hippae around," murmured Brother Mainoa. "Not just now. I think our … well, our guides have frightened them off. Or perhaps they have gone for reinforcements."

"Guides?"

"Do not speak of it. Perhaps we will, in time, but now is not the time. We do not want to think cheese with hunger all around us."

Sylvan went back to massaging his throat and staring incredulously about himself .Only after they had gone some miles through the grasses did he settle down, though he still managed to disconcert Marjorie from time to time by standing upright on Irish Lass's back. "I have to get up here to see," he explained, waving toward a distance the others could not perceive. "There, off there, is the ridge that leads to the copse."

They turned in the indicated direction and moved on, gaining a lower limb of the ridge and following it as it wound its lengthy way onto the height. From there they could look down into a valley dotted with copses. Sylvan pointed to the largest of them "Darenfeld's," he said.

"Why Darenfeld?" asked Rillibee/Lourai. "There are no bons by that name."

"There were," Sylvan replied. "There were eleven families originally. The Darenfeld estancia and all the family perished in a grass fire several generations ago. Others had been burned out before."

"A grass fire?" Marjorie wondered. "We've seen no fires since we've been here."

"You haven't been here in summer." He gazed out toward the horizon. "There is almost no rain in the summer, but there is lightning. The fires come like great waves, eating the grass, sending smoke boiling up into the clouds. Sometimes there are fires in the spring, but they are small ones because the grass is still fresh and full of moisture – "

"And a summer fire burned the Darenfeld estancia?"

"It was before they had grass gardens," Brother Mainoa remarked. "We at the Friary have designed the gardens to stop the flames. There are areas and aisles of low turfs which smolder but do not burn. They break the fire so that it goes around rather than through. We have done the same thing at the Friary, to protect it, and at Opal Hill and the other estancias. The great gardens of Klive were not planted merely for their beauty."

"True." Sylvan nodded. "None of the bons would have gone to the trouble merely for beauty."

Marjorie urged Don Quixote toward the copse below them. It loomed dark and mysterious among the soft-hued grasses, the more so the closer they came. Small pools sucked at the horses' feet. Great trunks went up into gloomy shade, gnarled roots kneed up to brace their monstrous bulk, their lower branches as huge as ordinary trees. Rillibee leaned toward the copse as though toward a lover.

"Now what?" asked Tony. "The hunt came here and left here. We should find a path trampled into the grasses where many Hippae went. Then we should find another, where one Hippae went."

"If it went," said Brother Mainoa. "Though this is called a copse, it is in fact a small forest. What would you say, Sylvan? Half a mile or more through?"

Sylvan shook his head. "Estimating distances is not something we do much of, I'm afraid. On the Hunt, it doesn't matter. We measure Hunts in hours, not in miles or kilometers or stadia, as they do on Repentance."

"From the ridge it looked to be half a mile," Father James agreed. "Enough territory in here to hide any number of Hippae."

"If we do not find a trail leading out," said Marjorie wildly, "then we will search within, among the trees." She appealed to each of them in turn, seeking agreement. Brother Mainoa sat very still upon his horse. His expression was alert, as though he heard something she could not hear. "Brother Mainoa?" she asked. "Brother?"

His eyebrows went up, and he smiled at her. "Of course. Of course. Let us first look for a trail."

The way the Hunt had come was easy to find. The way the Hunt had gone was equally easy. Crushed grasses testified to the fact that more than one Hunt had come this way recently. Some stems were completely dried, others were newly broken and still leaking moisture. Brother Mainoa rode down this broad trail and then pulled Blue Star to a halt as he pointed off to the left. All of them could see the narrow trail which wound into the grass. Father James picked a stem of broken grass and handed it to Marjorie. It was still moist. "So," she said. "So."

"If a Hippae has her," Tony said in a carefully emotionless voice, "how are we to get her?"

"Hide," she said. "Wait until it leaves her alone. Steal her back."

"I wish we had weapons," Father James said.

"So do I," she admitted. "But we don't."

He shook his head, only slightly. "Let us hope we find only one of the beasts opposing us."

Rigo boiled the morning away, waiting while Sebastian reassembled the aircar, a longer process than had been anticipated. The new parts, though appropriately numbered, were not a precise fit. Sebastian took them to his own shop in the village, as he put it, "to shave them down a bit."

By midafternoon the first car had been put together and tested. Driven by Sebastian, with Persun Pollut along for whatever assistance he might offer, Rigo set out for Klive. The trip took slightly more than an hour, across the southern tip of the swamp forest with the clutter of Commons off to their left. They landed in the gravel court beyond the first surface and crossed that surface on their way to the terrace of Klive.

"Your Excellency," a little voice cried from behind the balustrade. "Your Excellency!"

Rigo turned, surprised to see one of the bon Damfels daughters beckoning to him. He moved toward her, impatiently, wanting to go on into Klive to see whether Marjorie was there.

"They've gone," the girl said. "Roderigo Yrarier, your wife and son and the Green Brothers, they've gone."

"Gone where?" he blurted. "Where?"

She shook her head, tears suddenly starting down her cheeks. "You mustn't go up there. Father, the Obermun, is in a rage. He will kill you. He has half killed Emmy already. Your wife came to ask where your daughter had been lost. Sylvan told her. He found out from Shevlok, and he told your wife. Sylvan went with them. Father had been screaming since then. Emmy tried to calm him and he beat her – "

A bellow from the house above them sent the girl fleeing along the side of the house. Rigo stopped, put one foot on the step before him, and felt himself pulled firmly away. Sebastian had one arm and Persun the other, and they seemed determined to drag him away from Klive, by brute force if necessary.

"Don't go up there, sir. He will not listen to reason. Listen to him. He sounds like a bull!"

"Listen to Pollut, sir. He will not give you any help, not now. You must wait. Wait until he is calmer. Wait until you can speak with someone else."

"At the Hunt," Sebastian suggested. "Tomorrow. At the bon Laupmon Hunt." They dragged Rigo away, he resisting them but not protesting, as though some part of him realized the sense of what they said even though his body was unwilling to agree.

The horses followed the trail in single file, their riders at first alert for any sound, then gradually, as mile succeeded mile, growing slack and distracted. Mainoa and Lourai were preoccupied with pain, aching joints and throbbing buttocks. Marjorie was thinking of Rigo, and Sylvan of Marjorie. Father James was praying that he had not done the wrong thing, and Tony was thinking of a girl he had not seen for a very long time. The slap of the grass blades on their bodies had become hypnotic. Even Marjorie, usually alert to the nuances of horse behavior, did not notice that the horses were acting very much as Don Quixote had acted when she had ridden him away from the Hippae cavern. Ears alertly forward, they moved as though they were headed home. As though someone spoke to them. The riders did not comment upon this. With the sun on their backs, they rode, unspeaking, the only noise the sound of the horses' hooves.

The world spun the sun to the center of the sky and then downward once more. The light was on their faces. They had stopped once or twice to drink and relieve themselves, but the trail winding enigmatically ahead of them had enticed them to keep the stops brief. The first howl came from behind them, far off to the right.

Marjorie stiffened. She had heard the sound before, and it meant terror.

"Hippae," said Sylvan in a hopeless voice. "Do they know we are here?"

"Not yet," said Brother Mainoa.

"How do you know?" Marjorie demanded.

"You came to me for help, Lady Westriding, and I'm giving you help. How or why isn't something we can talk of yet. I tell you truthfully that the Hippae do not yet know we are here. They will know, shortly, but not yet. I would suggest we move more rapidly."

Tony sat up, kneeing El Dia Octavo into a canter. He rattled away down the narrow trail, the others following. Brothers Mainoa and Lourai were hanging onto their saddles, grunting with effort. "Push down with your feet," Marjorie cried. "Sit straight. It's no more difficult than a rocking chair."

Brother Mainoa pushed down with his feet and continued to hang on. After a time the rocking motion became predictable and his body adapted to it. Rillibee/Lourai was quicker. He found the motion exhilarating. Grass heads slapped him in the face and he grinned widely, seeds in his teeth.