“What’s an
elephant?” That was Ahrizael, like my crown prince, a bit younger than
Ahrimiar. He had a huge glass of
blueberry juice in one hand and a deep fried cebolla, dropping crumbs, in the
other.
“A tribe of
creatures… not human… from so far west you couldn’t see their lands if you
stood on a promontory and stared through a seeing glass…” Ahrimaz turned aside
to Yolend who was closest. “Do you have seeing glasses?” Upon her shrug he
turned back to the little boy. “… and
stared as hard as you could, you’d not see it.
Elephants have a hand in the middle of their faces, on the end of a long,
long grey nose, and two long, long teeth on either side of their mouths,
pointing up, not down, like war cats.
Two of their ruler’s youngsters came with a Rigan ship to visit our
lands and I really, really wanted to keep them.”
“Why didn’t
you?”
“Well, they
were young, right? And their ruler
wanted them back. The Rigan captain
assured me that these two were small.
They grow big enough to reach the chandelier up there without trying
hard. I didn’t want to start a war with
creatures that big.” Ahrizael’s eyes
grew very round, trying to imagine a creature that big wanting to fight. “So one of them… his name was Jagunjagun,
gave me a ride on his neck, around Innéthel.
It was…” he paused, then shrugged.
“…amazing.” He bit into his pie,
finishing it up in three bites.
“He
still writes to me, or did, now and then.
Not in Innéan, but in picture inks that they press onto a dried-leaf
paper.”
Pel was
staring at him suspiciously. “Elephants.”
“I swear, it’s as I said. Though it could have been the monkey-man who
came with them who spoke ten languages who might have been translating for
them, who – in truth might be the intelligence behind them – writing. Personally I thought there were about as
smart as Sure here.” Ahrimaz offered his gravy-sticky hand to the dog to be
licked clean. “Their 'translator' was so dark that he
makes Yhom and Imaryans look sickly pale.”
“It sounds
terribly un-aggressive for you,” Yolend said and leaned on one elbow to sip her
wine. “Especially if they couldn’t get
word back to their people.”
“I thought of
it. I considered keeping them and
sending word that they’d died.”
“Why didn’t
you?”
“I… don’t
recall.” Ahrimaz stared down into his juice. The older of the two elephants had been
injured by some crazy hill people bowing to neither Cylak or Inné, and even his
physician hadn’t been able to help. “I sat with Jagunjagun’s friend
while they were in Inné… actually heading for Riga-Dham to take ship and go
home.” Didara had been bigger than
Jagunjagun and had laid down in the emptied stable, on the straw, with a groan
and a rumble that had shaken him to his hands and knees. He’d known, somehow, that she was grateful
for the place to rest and he’d sat, ignoring politics, ignoring everything but
sitting in the crook of her foot, just under her chin, staring into her
enormous eye with eyelashes as long as his fingers as she’d wept in relief, and
then later in pain.
“My physician,
Etienne, assisted Didara, while they were in Inné,” For all the good it did. There
had been one spearhead missed and that ultimately killed her. Jagunjagun wept on me when she died. He sipped his juice, breathed in more of
the smoke from the censer though it didn’t seem to be able to touch real
grief. “Then I wished them well and
waved them home.”
“Interesting. We should send expeditions to the Elephant’s
Countries.”
“You’d find a
lot of interesting things,” Ahrimaz said, thinking of Didara’s gilded skeleton
standing in the central hall of the House of Gold, and was surprised that he felt warmth welling out of his eyes. “I don’t want to bleed—“ and saw a single
clear tear on his hand. He set his cup down with a click and threw his hands
over his eyes.
At last. True tears. For an alien creature lost and dead far
from home. “It’s all right, Ahrimaz. We
will think no less of you.” That was the
old man speaking and that undid him completely.
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