KIRITH, third fragment
Kay hesitated, as Gadge had, while Tam muttered disapprovingly in the background about filling children’s heads with notions that did them no good. “Would you not have him warned, then?” said Kay with an odd vehemence; Tam shook her head, but as yes or not the boy could not tell.
Kay spoke nervously, as Gadge had not, but she did tell him a little more. Kelar was something the royals had, sol and sola, and sometimes other City folk. The Algiav may or may not have it, but the Algiav saw visions, and were all mad. There were other people, something like the Algiav, who lived in other bits of Damar, who may or may not have it as well, on the same terms as the Algiav, that is, whether they did or not, they were mad. Farm folk did not have it, and if they did it would, in some way not specified, but presumably having to do with their going mad too, disagree with them.
This was at least as infuriating as it was informative, and it made the boy careless. The next time he was foolish enough to bring the question up while Bar was within hearing, whereupon he was sent to his room without supper, and Tam crossed her arms firmly over her stomach as if she were keeping something in, or out, and Jafe and Seler, who habitually wore slightly absent smiles, looked tense and unhappy; and everyone but Bar and Gadge made the warding sign.
Even Gadge did not lay his will against Bar’s idly, although Gadge was the elder and, the boy knew, had once stood in the old king’s army, and as a result had a different attitude toward things of the king than did the rest of the family. The boy didn’t dare breach Bar’s warning never to say the word kelar again, even to Gadge. This was horribly frustrating, and he often thought himself a coward for it; but he was young, and hungry all the time, and disliked above all things being obliged to miss a meal.
Alel never said the dreaded word again in the boy’s hearing. Gadge did occasionally mention it when it came up in his stories–most often perhaps in stories about the mage Luthe, who lived somewhere in the eastern Hills, and who sounded like kelar was the least of his powers–but only once did he stop for further explanations, probably in response to the expression on the boy’s face.
“Listen,” he said. “Kelar isn’t for folk like us. Bar’s right that far. Kelar’s like picking up fire in your bare hands. Leave it to the kings and mages. Leave it. I know that sounds hard, and I remember what it was like, hearing the stories for the first time, when I was a boy like you. First time I ever told a lot of ‘em over was to Bar, who was that much younger’n me, and he listened like you do . . . oh yes,” he said, to the boy’s look of astonishment. “Bar. Our grandmother used to tell us . . .” But Gadge stopped abruptly. “And I’d stop trying to learn the warding sign if I were you. It’ll only go on making your hand hurt.”
The boy attempted to resign himself.
There were, over months and then years, a growing number of stories about the wild Algiav girl, Kirith. There were ones about how she disrupted every classroom she was put in, for the dlor demanded its students to study philosophy as well as haghiliariar, the correct relationship between a horse and its human. Disruption by its nature was always of some interest to the boy, although there were no classrooms on the farm. The most spectacular story, and the boy’s favourite, was of how she’d stolen the soghur’s favourite horse one night, to settle a bet with several of the older ftha. And of how, when she wasn’t caught in the act, she’d polished the tack as if for a parade, conspicuous even in that world of flawlessly clean tack, and threaded ribboned plaits in the favourite horse’s mane and tail.
This was even more conspicuous when coupled with the horse’s unnatural weariness when he was taken out for exercise the following day; whereupon a search was made, and questions were asked, and hoofprints found where she had leaped him over a wall that no horse should be asked to leap over, particularly in the dark, and a story was eventually heard of a public house, two villages beyond Herth, and half a night’s hard riding for the swiftest ghiliah, where someone wearing the dlor second-year badge had spent a goodly span of time cooling a particularly magnificent bay horse, rubbing him down, walking him, checking his legs for heat or swelling, giving him a little water and a little hay and a little more water before disappearing in the small hours of the morning. The incident had stuck in the publican’s mind, because he knew a little about horses himself, and it had occurred to him to wonder what a mere second-year was doing with such a flower of the ghiliah.
The boy told himself this story at night sometimes, when he couldn’t get to sleep. He imagined the wind in his own face, strong as a storm from its speed, as the soghur’s favourite horse galloped, the landscape hurtling past, full of shadows and mysteries. The fastest he’d ever been was probably on his own two feet, running; the big plough horses never got above a walk if they could help it, and the farm’s cart-horse believed that a discreet jog was the most that was ever desirable.
He thought of the silky mane against his hands–he supposed that a soghur’s favourite horse would have a silky mane, not like the farm horses’ manes which were about as soft as straw, and not good straw either, but the harsh prickly stuff with a lot of thick stems in it–and the heaving of the great deep breaths, the red nostril and dark eye he would catch glimpses of, the sharp sure thud of hoofs.
He also wondered what it would be like, to be the member of a community which might be expected to send messengers carrying urgent news secretly in the nighttime; that the reason such a horse and rider should stay in the mind of a publican was not because they were there at all, but only because the rider was not wearing the right token.
“They didn’t throw her out for that,” said Alel, “because they could find no hair lying wrong, no scratch on the soghur’s horse; that, and because the publican was so sure about what good care the rider had taken, and how she had ordered nothing for herself.”
“No money to spare,” said Seler lugubriously. “She’s had her wages stopped from the time she threw a bucket of water over the head of one of the fourth-years–and a second-year barely gets anything you could call a wage to begin with.”
“Stopping her wages for that wasn’t fair,” said Alel. “The fourth-year had –”
”Alel, the boy,” said Kay.
The boy sighed. Some of the stories (especially the rule-breaking ones) he could figure out himself, even when the adults stopped in the middle of the exciting part. But this one was beyond him.
But he could tell that they all (except Bar, who was interested only in farming) wanted both to like and not to like her. She made them uncomfortable, but she pulled at their thoughts. He began to imagine her: she would be very tall and very beautiful, and have a lot of black hair, and fire in her eyes, and any horse she rode would dance and neigh for the splendour of having her on its back.
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