“Four street crossings and three bridges.”
“See? I’ll be back in no time. Don’t let him go without me!” she said to me and Gudit and Sosta and perhaps to the horse, and she ran off to the back of the house, Shetar loping along with her.
Orrec walked to the gateway of the court and stood there straight and stiff, his back turned to us all. I felt sorry for him.
“Stands to reason,” Gudit said. “Murderous snakes they are in that Palace what they call it. Our Council House it was. Get over there, you!” The tall red horse looked at him with mild reproach and moved politely to the left.
“What a beauty you are,” I said to the horse, for he was. I patted his neck. “Brandy?”
“Branty,” Orrec said, coming back to us with an air of dignified defeat that you could see went right to Sosta’s heart.
“Ohhh,” she said to Orrec, and then trying to cover it up, “oh, can I, can I get you a…” but she couldn’t think of anything to get him.
“He’s a good old fellow,” Orrec said, taking up Branty’s reins. He made as if to mount, but Gudit said, “Hold on, wait a minute, have to look to the cinch here,” getting between him and the horse and throwing the stirrup up over the saddle.
Orrec gave up, and stood as patiently as the horse. “Have you had him a long time?” I asked, trying to make conversation and feeling as foolish as Sosta.
“He’s well over twenty. Time he had a rest from travelling. And Star as well,” He smiled a little sadly. “We left the Uplands together—Branty and me, Star and Gry, And Coaly. Our dog. A good dog. Gry trained her.”
That got Gudit started off on the followhounds that used to live at Galvamand and he was still talking about them when Gry reappeared. She wore breeches and a rough tunic. Men in Ansul wear their hair long, tied back, so she had merely combed out her braid and put on a worn black velvet cap. She had somehow darkened or roughened her chin. She had become a fellow of twenty-five or so, quick-eyed, shy, and sullen. “So, are we ready?” she said, and her soft, burry voice had changed, too, becoming hoarse.
Sosta was staring at her, rapt. “Who are your” she asked.
Gry rolled her eyes and said, “Chy the lion tamer. So, Orrec?”
He gazed at her, shrugged, laughed a little, and swung up onto the horse. “Come on, then!” he said and set right off not looking back. She and the lion followed behind him. She looked back at me as they passed through the gate, and winked.
“But where did he come from?” Sosta asked.
“Merciful Ennu go with them, that nest of murderous rats and snakes they’re going to,” Gudit said hollowly, shuffling into the stable.
I went in to look after the gods and the ancestors and find out what Ista needed from the market.
♦ 6 ♦
Gudit told me that a messenger had come that morning from the Council House, which the Alds called the Palace of the Gand, to say Orrec Caspro was to wait upon the Gand before midday. Not saying please or why or anything, of course. So they went, and so we waited. It was late enough when they came back that I’d had plenty of time to worry. I was out sitting on the edge of the dry basin of the Oracle Fountain in front of the house when I saw them coming along our street from the south, Orrec afoot leading the horse, Chy the lion tamer beside him, and the lion padding along behind with a bored expression. I ran to meet them. “It went well, it went well,” Orrec said, and Chysaid, “Well enough.”
Gudit was at the stableyard gate to take Branty—having horses in the stable was such joyto him he wouldn’t let anybody else look after them for a moment—and Chysaid to me, “Come up with us.” In the Master’s room, though she hadn’t yetchanged her clothes or washed her face, she became Gryagain. I asked if they were hungry, but they said no, the Gand had given them food and drink. “Did they let youunder the roof?” I asked. “Did they let Shetar in?” I didn’t want to be curious about anything the Alds did, but I was. Nobody I knew had ever been inside the Council House or the barracks or seen how the Gand and the Alds lived there, for all of Council Hill was always guarded and swarming with soldiers.
“Tell Memer about it while I get out of these clothes,” Grysaid, and Orrec told me, making a tale of it; he couldn’t help it.
The Alds had set up tents as well as barracks, tents of the fashion they use travelling in their deserts. The tent in Council Square was high and very large, as large as a big house, all of red cloth with golden trimming and banners. It appeared, said Orrec, that the Gand actually governed from this tent rather than from the Council House, at least now that the rains had ceased. The tent would be sumptuously furnished, and would have movable, carved screens making rooms of a kind within it—Orrec had been made welcome in such great tents in his travels in Asudar. But here he was not brought under even that cloth roof. He was invited to sit on a light folding stool on a carpet not far from the open doorway of the tent.
Branty had been taken to the stables by a groom who handled him as if he were made of glass. The lion tamer and the lion stood some yards behind Orrec, with Ald officers guarding them. They, like Orrec, were offered paper parasols to protect them from the sun. “I got one on account of Shetar,” Gry called to us from the dressing room. “They respect lions. But they’ll throw away the parasols, because we used them and were unclean.”
They were offered refreshments at once, and a bowl of water was brought for Shetar. After they had waited about half an hour, the Gand emerged from the tent with a retinue of courtiers and officers. He greeted Orrec most graciously, calling him prince of poets and welcoming him to Asudar,
“Asudar!” I burst out. “This is Ansul!” Then I apologised for interrupting.
“Where the Ald is is the desert,” Orrec said mildly; I don’t know whether they were his own words or an Ald saying.
The Gand Ioratth, he said, was a man of sixty or more, splendidly dressed in robes of linen inwoven with gold thread in the fashion of Asudar, with the wide, peaked hat that only Ald noblemen can wear. His manners were affable and his talk was shrewd and lively. He sat with Orrec and conversed about poetry: at first they spoke of the great epics of Asudar, but he also wanted to know about what he called the western makers. His interest was real, his questions intelligent. He invited Orrec to come regularly to the Palace to recite from his own work and that of other makers. It would, he said, give him and his court much pleasure and instruction. He spoke as one prince to another, inviting, not ordering.
Some of the courtiers and officers joined in the conversation after a while, and like the Gand showed a thorough knowledge of their own epics and a curiosity, even a hunger, to hear poetry and story. They complimented Orrec, saying he was a fountain in the desert to them.
Others were less friendly. The Gands son, Iddor, kept noticeably apart, paying no attention to the talk about poetry, standing inside the open tent with a group of priests and officers and chatting with them, until they grew so noisy that the Gand silenced them with a reproof After that Iddor scowled and said nothing.
The Gand asked that the lion be brought to him, so Chy obliged, and Shetar did her useful trick, as Orrec called it: facing the Gand, she stretched out her front paws and bowed her head down between them, as cats do when they stretch—“doing obeisance.” This pleased everybody very much, and Shetar had to do it several times, which was fine with her, since she got a small treat each time, even though it was her fasting day. Iddor came forward and wanted to play with her, dangling his feathered cap, which she ignored, and asking how strong she was, did she kill live prey, had she bitten people, had she killed a man, and so on. Chy the lion tamer answered all his questions respectfully, and had Shetar do obeisance to him. But Shetar yawned at him after doing a rather perfunctory bow.