Mercedes Lackey - Fiddler Fair (anthology)

She called to Pika without even thinking his name, and the middle-aged pony separated himself from a knot of his friends and ambled to her side. He rubbed his chestnut nose against her vest and tickled her cheek with his whiskers. His thoughts were full of the hope of apples.

No apples, greedy pig! Do you like this place? Would you want to stay?

He stopped teasing her and stood considering, breeze blowing wisps of mane and forelock into his eyes and sunlight picking out the white hairs on his nose. She scratched behind his ears, letting him take his own time about it.

The grass is good, he said, finally. The Gaje horses are not ill-treated. And my bones ache on cold winter mornings, lately. A warm stable would be ­pleasant.

The blacksmith has a small son— she let him see the picture she had stolen from the qajo’s mind, of a blond-haired, sturdily built bundle of energy. The gajo seems kind.

The horses here like him, came the surprising answer. He fits the shoe to the hoof, not the hoof to the shoe. I think I will stay. Do not sell me cheaply.

If Chali could have laughed aloud, she would have. Pika had been Romano’s in the rearing—and he shared more than a little with that canny trader. I will tell Romano—not that I need to. And don’t forget, prala, if you are unhappy—

Ha! the pony snorted with contempt. If I am unhappy, I shall not leave so much as a hair behind me!

Chali fished a breadcrust out of her pocket and gave it to him, then strolled in the direction of Romano’s vurdon. When this kumpania had found itself gifted with dook, with more draban than they ever dreamed existed, it had not surprised them that they could speak with their horses; Lowara Rom had practically been able to do that before. But draban had granted them advantages they had never dared hope for—

Lowara had been good at horsestealing; now only the Horseclans could better them at it. All they needed to do was to sell one of their four-legged brothers into the hands of the one they wished to . . . relieve of the burdens of wealth. All the Lowara horses knew how to lift latches, unbar gates, or find the weak spot in any fence. And Lowara horses were as glib at persuasion as any of their two-legged friends. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the Lowara would return to the kumpania trailing a string of converts.

And if the kumpania came across horses that were being mistreated . . .

Chali’s jaw tightened. That was what had set the Chosen at their throats.

She remembered that day and night, remembered it far too well. Remembered the pain of the galled beasts that had nearly driven her insane; remembered how she and Toby had gone to act as decoys while her mother and father freed the animals from their stifling barn.

Remembered the anger and fear, the terror in the night, and the madness of the poor horse that had been literally goaded into running her and Toby down.

It was just as well that she had been comatose when the “Chosen of God” had burned her parents at the stake—that might well have driven her completely mad.

That anger made her sight mist with red, and she fought it down, lest she broadcast it to the herd. When she had it under control again, she scuffed her way slowly through the dusty, flattened grass, willing it out of her and into the ground. She was so intent on controlling herself that it was not until she had come within touching distance of Romano’s brightly-painted vurdon that she dared to look up from the earth.

Romano had an audience of children, all gathered about him where he sat on the tail of his wooden wagon. She tucked up against the worn side of it, and waited in the shade without drawing attention to herself, for he was telling them the story of the Evil Days.

“So old Simza, the drabarni, she spoke to the rom baro of her fear, and a little of what she had seen. Giorgi was her son, and he had dook enough that he believed her.”

“Why shouldn’t he have believed her?” tiny Ami wanted to know.

“Because in those days draban was weak, and even the o phral did not always believe in it. We were different, even among Rom. We were one of the smallest and least of kumpania then; one of the last to leave the old ways—perhaps that is why Simza saw what she saw. Perhaps the steel carriages the Rom had taken to, and the stone buildings they lived in, would not let draban through.”

“Steel carriages? Rom chal, how would such a thing move? What horse could pull it?” That was Tomy, skeptical as always.

“I do not know—I only know that the memories were passed from Simza to Yanni, to Tibo, to Melalo, and so on down to me. If you would see, look.”

As he had to Chali when she was small, as he did to every child, Romano the Storyteller opened his mind to the children, and they saw, with their dook, the dim visions of what had been. And wondered.

“Well, though there were those who laughed at him, and others of his own kumpania that left to join those who would keep to the cities of the Gaje, there were enough of them convinced to hold to the kumpania. They gave over their Gaje ways and ­returned to the old wooden vurdon, pulled by horses, practicing their old trades of horsebreeding and metal work, staying strictly away from the cities. And the irony is that it was the Gaje who made this possible, for they had become mad with fascination for the ancient days and had begun creating festivals than the Yanfi kumpania followed about.”

Again came the dim sights—half-remembered music, laughter, people in wilder garments than ever the Rom sported.

“Like now?” asked one of the girls. “Like markets and trade-days?”

“No, not like now; these were special things, just for amusement, not really for trade. I am not certain I understand it; they were all a little mad in those times. Well, then the Evil Days came . . .”

Fire, and red death; thunder and fear—more people than Chali had ever seen alive, fleeing mindlessly the wreckage of their cities and their lives.

“But the kumpania was safely traveling out in the countryside, with nothing needed that they could not make themselves. Some others of the Rom remembered us and lived to reach us; Kald­erash, mostly.”

“And we were safe from Gaje and their mad ways?”

“When have the Rom ever been safe?” he scoffed. “No, if anything, we were in more danger yet. The Gaje wanted our horses, our vurdon, and Gaje law was not there to protect us. And there was disease, terrible disease that killed more folk than the Night of Fire had. One sickly gajo could have killed us all. No, we hid at first, traveling only by night and keeping off the roads, living where man had fled or died out.”

These memories were clearer, perhaps because they were so much closer to the way the kumpania lived now. Hard years, though, and fear-filled—until the Rom learned again the weapons they had forgotten. The bow. The knife. And learned to use weapons they had never known like the sharp hooves of their four-legged brothers.

“We lived that way until the old weapons were all exhausted. Then it was safe to travel openly, and to trade; we began traveling as we do now—and now life is easier. For true God made the Gaje to live so that we might borrow from them what we need. And that is the tale.”

Chali watched with her dook as Romano reached out with his mind to all the children seated about him; and found what he had been looking for. Chali felt his exultation; of all the children to whom Romano had given his memories and his stories, there was one in whose mind the memories were still as clear as they were when they had come from Romano’s. Tomy had the draban of the Storyteller; Romano had found his successor.