The Prophet of Panamindorah, Book 1 Fauns and Filinians

  “Jubal!” exclaimed Syrill. “So they’ve put you on gate duty today?”

  Jubal smiled. Like Chance, he had golden curly hair falling to his shoulders. However, Corry could see no other resemblance. Although all cliff fauns had paler skin than wood fauns, Jubal could have been called dark beside Chance, and he had a natural, easy charm that could not be less like the stiff angry prince.

  Jubal put his hand on Syrill’s shoulder in greeting. “This year’s feast has drawn unusually large crowds. Can you believe all the shelts? And the cats! Maybe it’s just the rebound from the war years when we couldn’t have any cats.”

  Syrill snorted. “I suppose letting in the rabble does enlarge the crowd. A question of quantity over quality.”

  Jubal burst out laughing. “Forgive me! I forgot that I’m not supposed to say the word cat around General Syrill. A thousand pardons, your honor.”

  For all he appreciated the sentiment, Corry was surprised that Syrill didn’t fly into a rage. Instead, he almost chuckled. “Corellian, I don’t think you’ve been formally introduced to this troublemaker. Jubal is from my hometown. I remember him chasing Blix out of his bean sprouts before Blix grew his first set of antlers.”

  “I remember chasing you out of my little sister’s bedroom,” rejoined Jubal, “before you got your first—”

  “And then,” interrupted Syrill with a cough, “Jubal went to seek his fortune in the big cities and so did I.”

  Jubal shook his head at Syrill. He turned to Corry. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Corellian. I saw you at the Raider hanging fiasco, and of course I’ve heard of you. Welcome to Danda-lay.” He indicated the tunnel, and Corry and Syrill led their deer inside.

  The tunnel walls were polished so smooth that Corry thought water must have been the original architect. Lanterns lined the passage. Corry also noticed what looked like trapdoors in the walls. Instead of handles, a wooden paddle protruded from each. “What are those?”

  “Water gates,” answered Syrill. “If Danda-lay is ever attacked, the river is their ultimate protection. They can open the sluice gates to this channel and another on the opposite side of the Tiber-wan.” He pointed to the paddles. “These are designed to catch the pull of the river and open. They connect to underground portions of the Tiber-wan and would supplement the initial burst, making it very difficult for a would-be attacker to dam the river from above. Danda-lay is designed to withstand almost endless siege.”

  The passage had begun to wind and slope steeply downward. Corry began to hear, and also to feel, a dull rumble through the stone. The sound grew louder, until Syrill had to shout to be heard. Finally Corry saw a speck of daylight ahead. The row of lanterns ended. A fresh breeze mingled with a fine spray of water hit Corry in the face as he reached the threshold of the tunnel.

  Huge stone steps fell away at their feet, curving left. The sluice itself went on into an enormous pool. Above their heads, the waterfall plummeted into this reservoir, sending up a constant spray and thunder. Looking out towards the cliff’s edge, Corry saw the tallest buildings he’d yet encountered in Panamindorah—heaps of elaborately ordered masonry, homes built upon homes and carved from other homes, all agleam with polished rock and precious stones. To his right, stood what must be the palace—a series of even more elaborate buildings carved into the cliff face and curving in a half circle around the waterfall’s pool. A wide radius of smooth rock around the pool separated it and the palace area from the city and reminded Corry of a much grander version of Laven-lay’s parade ground.

  Syrill was shouting in his ear. “Danda-lay was originally built on a natural shelf of the cliff,” he bawled, “but as you can see, it’s outgrown itself. Some of it is inside the cliff now, and other parts have just piled up.”

  Corry nodded. Statues of fauns, cliff sheep, deer, cats, centaurs, and unrecognizable creatures crouched or reared from the walls and parapets. Gemstones glittered in their eyes. Everywhere he looked, Corry saw the purple flag of Danda-lay with its white flower. As they descended the steps, he noticed something else in the wide plaza between the pool and the entrance to the main street: a Monument. As they drew closer, Corry couldn’t help but stare at it. The enormous pair of wings gleamed golden, beaded with moisture from the falls. They can’t light it, of course, in the spray, but as he drew nearer, he saw that the wings shielded a flame on the city side, apparently fed by a supply of oil from the base of the statue.

  Syrill stopped beside the Monument. The wings towered fully thrice the height of Blix’s antlers. “It’s huge,” Corry said, now far enough from the falls to speak in a normal voice.

  “Largest in Panamindorah,” said Syrill. “Very old, too. The scholars claim that it predates the Wizard Wars, but it still has a part in the festival.”

  “Oh?”

  “They douse it with oil and light it on the final day,” said Syrill. “Very pretty. They say in ancient times, the prophet used to light the fire. Now the king does it.”

  “Prophet?” asked Corry. He’d never read about this.

  “Yes, the prophet of Panamindorah. In the time of Gabalon, they say the prophet went bad, and we haven’t had one since.”

  “So this ceremony predates Gabalon?” Corry was more attentive now.

  “Oh, yes,” said Syrill. “Very ancient, Lupricasia.”

  He glanced at Corry’s doe, who was fidgeting and rolling her eyes. “Forest-bred deer don’t like this city much. Perhaps we should put them in the palace gardens before going out.”

  “Our deer have quarters in the palace?” asked Corry in surprise.

  “As do we,” chuckled Syrill. “Where did you expect I’d stay? Shadock provides accommodations for all the royal officials.”

  The palace at Danda-lay made Laven-lay’s castle look like a glorified hill-fort. After they had left the deer in a small but beautiful garden, a servant led them through a maze of halls, chambers, and courtyards. The palace had been built up and built upon and enlarged and enhanced until it was practically a city unto itself. Washers, cooks, tailors, smiths, butlers, and maids came and went in a steady stream, carrying supplies and messages and talking loudly to each other with a general air of festivity. Corry was dazzled by one carved ceiling after another, some of them overlaid with gold and silver and mother of pearl. Plush draperies and intricately woven tapestries adorned room after room and hall after hall. Fine wool and goat-hair rugs covered the dressed stone floors. Statues lined many of the courtyards and council rooms. Some of them made Corry blush. Syrill noticed this and amused himself with a running commentary.

  “And this statue depicts the fabled hero, Clarion the centaur, who took an enchantress to wife. She made love to him in the form of a—”

  “Syrill, I can see,” snapped Corry.

  “Not if you keep looking at the floor. I thought you were a shelt for the arts, Corellian.”

  “I’d rather visit the library,” he mumbled.

  Finally they left the busiest part of the castle and started up a tower stair. The servant stopped at a door on one landing. Corry caught the faint odors of sandalwood and cedar. “Your room, sir,” he said to Syrill. “We’ve supplied two beds as you requested. We’d house your guest separately, but accommodations are tight during the festival.”

  “I’m sure this will do,” said Syrill with a wave of his hand. The apartment was not nearly so flashy or large as the one in the Unsoos, but Corry suspected the pictures on the walls were priceless antiques, and the gold edging on the wash basin was probably not paint. A glance out a window told Corry that they were high in the air, a little to one side of the waterfall, allowing them a view over the roofs of the city to the far away desert.

  The servant cleared his voice. “Sir is wanted in Council this morning. King Meuril asked me to remind you.”

  “Oh.” Syrill frowned.

  “That’s alright.” Corry was still looking out the window. “Just point me towards the library.”

  “It’s confusing. You’ll
need a guide.” Syrill tossed the servant a coin. “I’m not in yet.”

  The servant tossed it back. “King Meuril begs me to remind sir that he will have sir’s ears if he is not at the meeting.”

  Syrill rolled his eyes. “Another thing about Danda-lay,” he said to Corry. “They call everyone by the same name here. You can’t hardly figure out who they’re speaking to.”

  The servant sighed. “He saw you come in, Syrill.”

  Syrill ground his teeth. “Alright, I’m coming. Corry, I’ll be in the meeting hall almost directly below this room. We came through on the way here. You can’t miss it: long wood table, tapestries include the love affair of the nymph and the dragon prince.”

  Corry gave Syrill a twisted smile. “You never quit, do you?”

  “I bet you remember the room now.”

  “I remember it.”

  For several minutes after he left, Corry stood at the window, listening to the throb of the waterfall. He could see shelts and animals coming and going in the courtyard. He saw soil in some of the carts and surmised that it had to be imported. I’ll bet none of the sewage goes to waste here, either. It was not a pleasant thought before dinner. Traffic picked up as the sun rose towards noon. Corry spotted several centaurs strolling around the pool. He had not been wearing his sword, but now he got it out and put it on. He’d seen other shelts wearing dress swords. Surely no one would look twice at his.

  Noon came and went, but still Syrill did not return. Corry’s stomach growled. He wondered why the meeting was taking so long. Late afternoon shadows had begun to stretch across the plaza when he heard voices on the stairs. That doesn’t sound like Syrill. Suddenly the door flew open, and Corry saw two tiger cubs—youngsters whose heads came only to his waist.

  Their chattering voices stopped abruptly. The cub in front was white with black stripes and blue eyes. The other was a more traditional orange and black with green eyes. “I told you I saw someone come up!” hissed the orange cub. He turned and fled.

  “Tolomy!” the white cub called after him. She glanced at Corry, then bounded from the room.

  “Wait!” called Corry. “Who are you?” He trotted down the steps in pursuit of the cubs. After several flights, he stopped hearing their voices, and by the time he reached the hall where the servant had brought him up, he was forced to admit he had lost them.

  Corry sat down on the cool stone step to recover his breath. He was lightheaded, having eaten nothing since breakfast. Along the hallway to his left, he could see massive wooden doors—the entrance to the room of questionable tapestries. He could smell food somewhere nearby. Will they never finish that meeting?

  At that moment, the doors opened.

  Chapter 9. A Meeting of the Inner Council

  We’ve introduced the players each

  Although it’s yet to be seen

  Which will prove to be the pawns

  And which will be the kings

  —faun nursery rhyme

  Her eyes were slitted, like his sister’s. Slitted eyes had grown rare among the slaves, and Char liked to watch them grow round when she was excited. She had been a house slave and lacked the calluses and dead expressions of those from the mines.

  Being with her reminded Char of the time before—of his first family. He couldn’t remember his mother, but he could remember his littermates. They’d been four—two male and two female—playing in the sun by day, sleeping all in a heap at night. Then the fauns had taken away the smallest, and they had been three. Soon after, the largest of the litter had been taken as well. Char was sure he’d gone to the quarry, and the thought still made him shudder. The biggest quarry slaves turned the heavy windlass that ground the stone used in the construction of the great houses. They grew so strong and dangerous that the fauns blinded them and kept them chained to their poles day and night. They did not live long. Char hoped that his brother had not grown big enough to turn the windlass.

  He felt fortunate to have been chosen for the gem mines—hard work, but not crushing. More importantly, the slaves were both male and female, and he and his remaining sister were kept together. Last fall, some of the males had tried to breed her, but she had fought, and he had fought with her. Once the cycle started, she would be forced to bare two to three litters per year until her body collapsed. Breeding females didn’t live much longer than the windlass slaves.

  Daren’s choice of mates for him was different, though. She was considerably older than he and yet had born no litters, which Char thought remarkable. In the dark, when her eyes were round and bright, she would whisper to him things that made his heart race. She talked of shelts other than swamp fauns and other than slaves. She had seen one once, though her mistress had beaten her for it. She had watched at the door while the stranger stood in the library and talked to her lord. “The stranger’s leg-fur was the color of cream and very curly. His hair was golden and his skin fair.”

  There were other shelts too, she said. Once she’d seen huge hoof prints in the dirt yard—a solid hoof like a burro, but many times bigger. “I heard their deep voices, but we were locked in our kennels, so I couldn’t see. I know this: they were not swamp fauns. They were other, and they were free. We are other, too, Char. What the fauns do to us is wrong.”

  Char had never considered whether his condition was wrong. Today was better than yesterday, or it was worse. But the duties of house slaves had not been so backbreaking, had included more talk, had given her time to think. She was called Crimson, for the deep red of her hair and the red-gold of her fur.

  Gradually Char stopped wondering who was listening at the door, stopped leaping up at every sound. Their jailers came and went at predictable times. They were even provided with good food and a few simple games—cards and a board with pieces. Crimson knew the games and taught him how to play.

  Char had heard of a wedding and vaguely recalled that it had something to do with a union of swamp faun houses and generally meant that the gem mines would be inspected and a great many slaves beaten. Crimson had a different idea about weddings. She’d seen more of the details in a house where her lord and lady took no more notice of her than of a dog. Except, of course, when she was alone with the lord. “He taught me things I did not think I wanted to learn,” she told Char, “but it was not so bad. At least I did not grow old in my fourteenth year with bearing litters. My lord even made me happy sometimes, when it pleased him.”

  She made him stand with her and braided their tails together with a piece of ribbon and made a great show of drinking from the same cup of water that she said was their wedding wine. But once he’d decided to take her, Char cared nothing about swamp faun ceremonies. He made the show to please her and then became so nervous that he tangled the ribbon in their tails. Crimson giggled while he tried to unravel the mess. That calmed him a little. Then she pounced, sent them tumbling across the floor, and he forgot about the ribbon.

  When she began to grow round with young, Char felt a surge of pride and protectiveness. At times he thought he could almost forgive Daren for murdering his sister. He was right. She would not have survived the summer. And he gave me Crimson.

  And then a day came when the guards entered at an uncommon hour. Char and Crimson were playing a card game. They’d been talking and stopped in mid-sentence.

  Daren came in behind the guards. Char’s stomach rose at the sight of him, though he’d thought he was through hating. Daren looked around serenely. He glanced at his kennel master, who’d come in last. “A lovely arrangement. You say we’ve got half a dozen like this?”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  “Build a dozen more. I’ve already got some dams in mind, and my chief overseer has at least two sires on his list.”

  His eyes fell on Crimson, sitting with her eyes downcast at the little table. Daren strolled over and placed one hand on her round belly. He glanced at Char. “Well, done. If these whelps have your courage and her temper, I’ll be pleased.”

  He glanced at his guar
ds. “Take him to block seventeen.”

  Char gaped. “B-but, my lord! Why are you—? I have done as you asked!”

  Daren took two steps and stood nose to nose with him. “Indeed.” Then he hit Char so hard across the side of the head that his ear rang. Daren hissed into the other ear. “Did you think that I would ever allow a slave to draw a sword on me and die in his bed? Brave you may be, but still a fool, more so to think I’d forget. Now go join your sister.”

  The guards dragged Char from the hut. Over their shoulders, he glimpsed Crimson’s pale face, heard her scream his name. He thrashed, roared, bit, but they had him secure, and as they loaded him onto the wagon a paralysis descended. Daren knew all the time what he planned to do with me. From the moment he whipped me on the plank road. He didn’t think I had enough to lose then, so he gave me something. Just so he could take it away.

  Colors seemed to drain from the world. Even smells had less meaning. I am already dead, he thought. The earth is already forgetting me. His children would never know him, perhaps never know Crimson. How many generations will Daren want between his soldier slaves and me? His offspring would be bred and then discarded, and probably theirs and theirs after.

  Much later, as the wagon was passing through the ugly iron gates of block seventeen, as the gray buildings appeared like poison mushrooms from the swamp, as he caught the first smells of blood and death, Char thought of something else. A shelt who has nothing left to lose has nothing left to fear.

  * * * *

  Corry stood back and watched the council members stream past. The first had to be Shadock. The king was tall for a faun, broad-shouldered, with dark hair only faintly grizzled. He must have been as old as Meuril, but he wore his years better. His clothes were ornate—a cape of purple samite lined with wolf fur over a light wool robe, white and slashed with purple silk. A dress sword in a jeweled scabbard hung from a silver belt at his waist, and a slender crown of white gold encircled his temples. His family came behind him. The crown prince looked very like his father, except that his hair was still ink black, and his cheeks full and smooth. Two girls and five more boys followed.