Sheri Tepper - Grass

“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?”