Read Into the Thinking Kingdoms Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #FIC009000
Into the Thinking Kingdoms (8 page)
“We are in no danger.” It glanced briefly and unafraid at the watching, unblinking Ahlitah. “There are predators, but we hold together and none no matter how hungry will chance an attack on so great a gathering. There is more than enough to eat, plentiful in variety and nourishment.” It smiled slightly, the one facial cast horses with their expressive lips can effect even better than humans. “And of course, there is plenty of water. But we cannot escape the marshes. Past and present and future, we are all trapped here.
“In our collective anger and frustration, we long ago vowed that for so long as we cannot cross out from this place, none shall cross through. It is a way of expressing our solidarity, our herd-self. Our horseness. You, too, will have to turn around and go back.”
“Be reasonable.” Feeling a little less endangered, a little bolder, Simna waded out into the water to stand beside his friend. “We mean you no harm, and we’re not responsible for your situation here.”
“I would be reasonable,” declared the Argentus earnestly, “but before I can be reasonable I must be horse. Solidarity is the essence of the herd.”
“All of you have at one time or another passed this way, and all of you became trapped here. You say that what you do best is run, yet you cannot run free of this dank, clinging slough.” Ehomba’s chin rested in his free hand. Watching him, Simna was certain he could actually hear the herdsman think. “It must be wearying to have to run always in water. Perhaps if you had a better, firmer surface you could run easier, run faster.” Looking up from his meditation, he locked eyes with the empathetic Argentus. “You might even find a way to run out of this marsh.”
“Unfounded speculation is the progenitor of disappointment,” the horse that not yet was murmured dolefully.
“I agree, but without speculation there is no consequence.”
Simna’s spirits soared as he saw Ehomba silently swing his unprepossessing pack off his shoulders. “Now tell me, Sorcerer-not, what wonder are you intending to pluck from that raggedy bag? A rainbow bridge to span the marshland? A roll of string that will uncoil to become a road?” He looked on eagerly. Feigning disinterest, Ahlitah could not keep himself from similarly glancing over to see what the unassuming herdsman was up to.
“I command nothing like that.” As he searched the pack’s interior, Ehomba gave his hopeful friend a disapproving look. “You expect too much of a few simple villagers.”
“If I do,” Simna responded without taking his eyes off the paradoxical pack, “it’s because I have seen firsthand what the efforts of a few simple villagers have wrought.”
“Then you may be disappointed.” The herdsman finally withdrew his hand from the depths of the pack. “All I have is this.” He held up a tiny, yellow-brown, five-armed starfish no more than a couple of inches across.
Simna’s expression darkened uncertainly. “It looks like a starfish.”
“That is what it is. A memory from the shores of my home. The little sack of pebbles in my pocket I packed myself, but before I left I did not see everything my family and friends packed for me. I came across this many days ago.”
“It’s—a starfish.” Leaning forward, Simna sniffed slightly. “Still smells of tidepool and surge.” He was quite baffled. “Of what use is it except to remind you of the ocean? Are you going to wave it beneath that stallion’s nose in the hopes it will drive him mad for salt water, and he will break free of whatever mysterious bond holds him here and lead the entire herd to the shores of the nearest sea?”
“What a wild notion.” Ehomba contemplated the tiny, slim-limbed echinoderm. Its splayed arms did not cover his palm. “Something like that is quite impossible. I am surprised, Simna. I thought you were a rational person and not one to give consideration to such bizarre fancies.”
“Hoy! Me? Now
I’m
the one with the bizarre fancies?” Mightily affronted, he stabbed an accusing finger at the inconsequential sand dweller. “Then what do you propose to do with that scrap of insignificant sea life? Give it to the tomorrow horse to eat in hopes it will make him think of the sea?”
I’m
the one with the bizarre fancies?” Mightily affronted, he stabbed an accusing finger at the inconsequential sand dweller. “Then what do you propose to do with that scrap of insignificant sea life? Give it to the tomorrow horse to eat in hopes it will make him think of the sea?”
“Now you are being truly silly,” Ehomba chided him. “Starfish are not edible.” Whereupon he turned to his left, drew back his arm, and hurled the tiny five-armed invertebrate as far as he could.
A mystified Simna watched it fly, its minuscule arms spinning around the central knot of its hard, dry body. Ahlitah tracked it too, and the Argentus traced its path through the oppressive humidity with an air of superior detachment. The starfish descended in a smooth arc and struck the sluggish water with a tiny plop. It promptly sank out of sight.
Simna stared. Ahlitah stared. The Argentus looked away. And then, it looked back.
Something was happening to the marsh where the starfish had vanished.
A cool boiling began to roil the surface. In the absence of geothermal activity, something else was causing the fen water to bubble and froth. The herd stirred and a flurry of whinnies punctuated the air like a chorus of woodwinds embarking on some mad composer’s allegro equus.
Simna edged closer to the nearest tree. Slight of diameter as it was, it still offered the best protection on the island. “Watch out, bruther. If they break and panic . . .”
But there was no stampede. A shriller, sharper neighing rose above the mixed chorale. Responding to the recognizably superior among themselves, the herd looked to the Argentus for direction. It trotted back and forth between the front ranks and the island shore, calming its nervous precursors. Together with the travelers, the massed animals held their ground, and watched, and listened.
The frothing, fermenting water where the starfish had sunk turned cloudy, then dark with mud. The seething subsurface disturbance began to spread, not in widening concentric circles as might have been expected, but in perfectly straight lines. Five of them, shooting outward from an effervescent nexus, each aligning itself with an arm of the no-longer-visible starfish. As the streaks of bubbling mud rushed away from their source, they expanded until each was five, ten, then twenty feet wide. One raced right past the island, passing between the herd and the sand.
As quickly as it had begun, the boiling and bubbling began to recede. It left behind a residue of uplifted muck and marsh bottom. With the recession of activity, this began to congeal and solidify, leaving behind a wide, solid pathway. Five of them, each corresponding to an arm of the starfish. They rose only an inch or two above the surface of the water. Ehomba hoped it would be enough.
“You have been running too long in water.” He indicated the improbable dirt roads. “Try running on that. You might even see a way to run back to where you belong.”
Tentatively, the Argentus stepped up onto the raised causeway. Ehomba held his breath, but the stiffened mud did not collapse beneath the horse’s weight, did not slump and separate back into a slurry of soil and water. Experimentally, the Argentus turned a slow circle. It pawed at the surface with a front hoof. When finally it turned back to face the travelers, Ehomba could see that it was crying silently.
“I did not know horses could cry,” he observed.
“I can talk. Why should I not be able to cry? I don’t know how to thank you. We don’t know how to thank you.”
“Do not give thanks yet,” Ehomba warned it. “You are still here, in the middle of these marshes. First see if the paths let you go free. When you are no longer here, then you can thank me.” The herdsman smiled. “However far away you may be, I will hear you.”
“I believe that you will.” Turning, the Argentus reared back on its hind legs and pawed the air, a sharply whinnying shaft of silver standing on hooves like bullion, mane shining in the hazy sunshine. Thousands of ears pricked forward to listen. Once more the herd began to stir, but it was a different furor than before, the agitation that arises from expectation instead of apprehension.
Hesitantly at first, then with increasing boldness, small groups began to break away from the main body. The paints and the heavy horses led the way down one of the five temporary roads. Trotting soon gave way to an energetic canter, and then to a joyous, exuberant, massed gallop. The thunder of thousands of hooves shook the marsh, making the waterlogged surface of the island tremble with the rumble of the herd’s departure.
Hipparions and eohippuses led the hairier dawn horses off in another direction, choosing a different road, as indeed they must. Their run led them not only out of the imprisoning marshes, but out of the present context. In this world some of them would remain, but in all others they would find themselves running back through time as well as meadow and field.
Eight-legged sleipnirs and narwhal-horned unicorns churned newly made dust from still a third path. Winged horses shadowed their run, gliding low and easy above the path to freedom. All manner and variety of imaginary and imagined siblings filled out this most remarkable gathering of all. There were horses with glowing red eyes and fire breathing from their nostrils, horses with armored skin, and horses the size of hippos. Several of these supported the merhorses, who with their webbed front feet and piscine hind ends could not gallop in company with their cousins.
Two more roads still lay open and unused. Trotting forward, the Argentus came right up to the travelers. The thunder raised by the partitioned herd in its flight to freedom was already beginning to fade. A silvery muzzle nuzzled Ehomba’s face and neck. Even so close, Simna was unable to tell if the animal’s skin was fashioned of flesh or the most finely wrought silver imaginable.
Ehomba put a hand on the horse’s snout and rubbed gently. Zebras responded to a similar touch and the Argentus was no different. Superior it might be, perhaps even more intelligent than the humans, but it reacted with a pleased snuffle and snort nonetheless.
Then it backed off, turned, and climbed up onto one of the two roads not yet taken. With a last flurry of flashing mane and sterling tail, it trotted off down the empty roadway—alone.
Birdsong returned hesitantly to the marsh, then in full avian cry. The hidden mutterings and querulous cheeps of the bog again filled the now still air. From a nearby copse of high reeds a covey of green herons unfolded grandly into the sky. The marshland was returning to normal.
In the distance in several directions, the dust raised by thousands of departing hooves was beginning to settle. The edges of the roads were already starting to crumble, the momentarily consolidated marsh bottom slowly ebbing under the patient infusion of water from beneath and both sides. Shouldering his pack, Ehomba started forward.
“Hurry up. We need to make use of the road while it is still walkable.”
Uncertain in mind but knowing better than to linger when the herdsman said to move, Simna grabbed his own pack and splashed through the shallows after his friend. Ahlitah followed at a leisurely pace.
The swordsman glanced back at the island. “What about the boat?”
Ehomba had crossed the road the Argentus had taken. That path was not for them. It led to the future, and he had business in the present. He splashed energetically through the shallows toward the next road. Simna trailed behind, working to catch up. The litah kept pace effortlessly, save for when it paused to shake water from one submerged foot or the other.
“If we hurry and make time before the road comes apart completely, we will not need the boat,” Ehomba informed his companion. “It means that we may have to run for a while, but we should be able to get out of these lowlands before evening.” As he climbed up onto the second roadbed he glanced back in the direction of the island. “I hope the old ape finds his boat. As soon as people discover that the way through the marshland is no longer blocked by mad horses, they will begin exploring. I have a feeling he will be among the first to do so.” He started northward along the dry, flat surface. “I do not feel bad about not returning it. More important matters draw us onward, and in any case, you overpaid him significantly.”
“I thought you didn’t pay attention to such things.” Simna trotted along fluidly next to his friend, marsh water trailing down his lower legs to drain out between his toes. As they ran, both sides of the road continued to crumble slowly but steadily into the turbid water. Ahlitah would run on ahead, then sit down to lick and dry his feet as the two humans passed him, then rise up and pass them in turn once again. He persevered with this procedure until his feet and lower legs were once more dry enough to pacify his vanity.
“Five roads arose from the five arms of the starfish,” Simna was murmuring aloud. “One for the horses of now, one for the horses of the imagination, one for those that live both in the past and the present, and one for the horses of the future.”
“And this fifth road, not for horses, but for us,” Ehomba finished for him.
The swordsman nodded. “What if you had been carrying only a four-armed starfish?”
Ehomba glanced down at him as he ran. “Then we would be back in that unadorned, slow boat, leaning hard on poles and hoping that the herd left nothing behind that would keep us from traveling in this direction. But this is better.”
“Yes,” agreed Simna, running easily along the center of the disintegrating roadway, “this is better. Tell me something—how does a nonsorcerer raise five roads from the middle of a waterlogged marsh with the aid only of a dried-out starfish?”
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