A Gathering of Wings

Malora sits up, her chest heaving, her hand clamped over her mouth, muffling a scream. Her rapid breathing gradually slows. She lowers her hand and looks slowly about her. She is in her cot, in her tent, next to the paddocks, in Mount Kheiron. Outside, she can hear the horses chomping on grass and, beyond that, the steady, reassuring susurration of the river flowing past. There are no voices screaming to “feed her to the Beast.” No thumping spears. No glowing eyes. She inhales, taking in the safe odors of horse and field and settling dew.

“It’s only a Night Demon,” she whispers to herself, as once upon a time in the Settlement her mother reassured her. She flops back on the sweat-soaked mattress, where sleep reclaims her almost immediately.

It is only the next morning, on her way to work, that Malora remembers the Night Demon, stealing across her thoughts. It has visited her so many times lately that recalling it no longer has the power to stop her cold. Her teacher,
Honus the faun, has a theory that her dreams are part of her heightened instinct for self-preservation. As the last of the People, she must draw upon every tool she has, including dreams. “Dreams contain vital information if only we can learn to decode them,” Honus says. She has learned to decode words, but how is she to read this dream?

“Who goes there?” a voice calls out from the gatehouse, followed by a rattling of hooves.

“It’s Malora!” she calls out, thinking that they must have put someone new on the gate. Farin Whitewithers, the usual night-duty guard, not only expects her to pass through at this time, he also has a cup of wildflower tea waiting for her.

The centaur guard stumbles through the door and swings his lantern, blinding her. “Malora Victorious?” he asks, his voice filled with a stupefied wonder.

“Yes,” Malora tells him, shielding her eyes. “Mind the light.”

Vision restored, she sees that the sentry’s canine teeth are sharp—he is a Flatlander. Although she comes through these gates twice daily on her way to and from the blacksmith’s shop, this is the first time she has seen a Flatlander at the gates. Until three months ago, Flatlanders were not permitted to guard the gates or to sit in Mount Kheiron’s lawmaking body, any more than Highlanders were permitted to serve on the Peacekeeping Force. Ever since Malora won the Golden Horse for the House of Silvermane, Medon Silvermane—the Apex of Mount Kheiron—has begun to make good on his Founders’ Day promise to bring about equality between his Highlander and Flatlander subjects. And ever since Malora
won the Golden Horse, she has been the object of the centaurs’ adoration.

Now her gaze rises to the top of the gate, where she sees, mounted for all to admire and claim for their own, the Golden Horse trophy she won on the day that started it all.

“And how is the Noble Champion?” the sentry inquires shyly.

Malora responds with a question of her own. “What is your name?”

Bowing, he replies, “Margus Piedhocks, at your service.”

Malora smiles. Margus’s hocks are no more pied than Farin’s withers are white or the noble centaurean families of the Mane Way possess actual manes. Centaurean names are colorful without being descriptive. “Well, Margus Piedhocks,” she tells him, “Max the Noble Champion couldn’t be happier. He has his own paddock in which he enjoys the spoils of victory.”

“I am glad to hear it, Malora Victorious,” Margus says. “Give him this token of my admiration, will you?”

Piedhocks hands her a chewy green candy in the shape of a spearmint leaf. When Malora let it be known that Max favored the taste of spearmint, the confectioners of Mount Kheiron began to produce “the Max.” Centaurs now give her these sweets whenever they see her. Slipping the candy into the pouch at her belt, she says, “Good day to you, Margus Piedhocks,” as she passes beneath the gates into Mount Kheiron.

“And the same to you, although it still looks like the nighttime to me!” he calls after her.

Margus is right, Malora thinks. Except for the dawn light
quivering on the eastern horizon, the stars still pack the sky. Through mist fragrant with ripening oranges and new-mown hay, Malora makes her way up the series of ramping streets that lead to Brion’s shop on the third ring road. The windows and archways are all darkened. Her boots make no sound on the dew-slick cobblestones, boots that wrap around her calf and fasten on the side with a leather loop held by a single silver button.

Arriving at the big stone box with wooden doors and a crude chimney coming out the top, Malora hauls open the creaking door. She loves the smell of the blacksmith shop, smoke and metal and sweat, almost as much as the smell of a stable, horse and dung and hay. She reaches over to the hook on the wall, takes down her black leather apron, and ties it on. Now that Malora knows her way around, Brion has taken to sleeping late and leaves the opening of the shop to her.

The floor of the shop is covered with a deep carpet of fine gray sand. Malora pads across to the potbellied stove, what Brion calls the red-hot beating heart of the smithy. She lays her palm against the side of the forge, which still holds the heat from yesterday’s fire. On the hearth, wrapped in burlap, is her special project.

Whistling softly, she packs wood shavings into the cavity just above the firepot, hearing Brion’s voice in her head: “Not too tight. Fire’s a living thing, Daughter. It’s got to have air to breathe.” She uses the firebrand to kindle the shavings. Once the fire has caught, she lays some sticks of oak on top of that. The oak is dense and holds the heat. When the fire grows bigger, she rakes the coke over it and works the wooden paddles
of the bellows. The coke begins to glow red. She sprinkles water from the slag tub onto the edges of the coke to keep the heat from spreading.

Blacksmithing is Malora’s Hand. At the age of twelve, every centaur chooses a Hand. The Hand, according to Kheiron the Wise—the patron of centaurs—is what sets the centaur apart from the beasts. Malora, not being a centaur, wasn’t allowed a Hand when she came to Mount Kheiron at fifteen. She won the right to learn the Hand of her choice on the same day she won the Golden Horse.

Now Brion Swiftstride is teaching her the Hand of smithing. She has grown fond of him and wants to learn all she can from him, but she enjoys these times when she is alone. This is when she feels the presence of her ancestor, who—she was convinced from the moment she first visited here—worked at this very forge. She imagines that this is exactly how he started his workday, back in the time when this city was still home to the People, before the Massacre of Kamaria, when the centaurs killed off the humans and took over the city.

Malora puts on her leather gauntlets. When they were brand-new, they were stiff, fitting awkwardly over her hands and arms. Over the months the sweat of her body has broken them down into a supple and protective second skin.

“Good morning, Daughter.”

Out of the cloud of hissing steam, a bristly face emerges, and Brion’s familiar horse body lumbers into view as he comes around the pot to stand over her shoulder. Brion Swiftstride is dressed for work, his dappled hindquarters swaddled in a scorched leather wrap, his burly chest covered by an apron
just like hers. He is gauntleted to his elbows and wears a hat whose brim has been gnawed away to the crown by flames.

“How goes the little knife?” he asks.

Malora says, “Brittle, I think.”

“Time to temper it, then.”

She lifts the knife out of the tub and then buries it, blade-first, on the outer edges of the fire, where there is more ash than coal.

Brion says, “Let it sit.”

While the blade heats slowly, Brion and Malora move about the shop, getting ready for the day’s work. While Malora assembles the tools they will need—chisels and punches and sets and hammers—Brion chooses stock from the pile of iron rods stacked in a wooden crib in one corner, their raw material. They get the iron from the pig-faced smelter in the Hills of Melea. The Suidean hibe, half man and half boar, are miners and smelters by trade.