was not too frightened to eat.
The demon understood anger, but its memory was very short.
It was like the wind: changeable. But its fascination for her went on and on,
and made it as solid as it could be, almost solid enough to touch.
Other demons came and went. There were different kinds. The
ones with feathers were actually not common. Most had a great quantity of horns
and teeth and claws, and scales and tails and leathery wings, and always the
yellow eyes. The ones that drank blood looked at the men and the seneldi and
thought hunger, but Kimeri’s demon warned them off with growls and
teeth-gnashings.
It was not the largest demon and certainly not the most
terrible to look at, but the others seemed to listen to it. Maybe, she thought,
it was like her: royal born.
When her mother actually let her have a senel to ride all by
herself, the demon came to sit on her crupper. The bay gelding did not like
that at all. Kimeri calmed it down, shaking for fear her mother would think it
was too much for her and make her ride like a baby again, the way the demon
wanted to ride.
It was a good senel, sweet-tempered and quiet, just not
prepared to carry a thing that had substance but no weight, and looked so odd
besides. Once she had explained, it pinned its ears and fretted but gave in,
and put up with the demon. The demon helped by being quiet and not moving
around too much, except when it forgot and stood up on the senel’s rump and
made faces at demons that peered down from the sides of mountains.
It was a very happy demon, riding behind Kimeri, being
invisible to everybody else. Sometimes she thought Vanyi might know it was
there, but Vanyi said nothing. Kimeri was careful not to talk to it aloud, and
when she talked to it in her head to make sure nobody else could listen. It
took a little thinking to manage that, but it was not hard once she began.
At first the demon never thought in words, but the longer
they went on, the clearer the demon’s thoughts became, until they were having
conversations, long hours of them, as the senel climbed up and climbed down and
scrambled from mountaintop to mountaintop along the roof of the world. Demons
had been there always, like the rocks and the snow and the sky—
“From forever,” the demon said. It liked the thought of
forever, played often with it, turned it around in its head like a bright and
shining toy. “Forever and ever and ever. We fly in the air, we swim through the
earth, we dance on the waters that come out of the dark. We are here always.
Always.”
“Do you go anywhere else?” Kimeri asked it once in her head,
after they had ridden through a valley with a waterfall. The demon had shown
her how it danced on water. She had set out to try it, too, but her mother had
caught her just as she began, and scolded her for getting wet, and made her
change all her clothes, even the ones that were dry. “Do you only live in the
mountains?”
“Where else is there to live?” the demon asked.
“Why,” said Kimeri, “everywhere. There’s a whole world
beyond the mountains.”
“The mountains are the world,” the demon said.
“No,” said Kimeri patiently. “The mountains are the roof of
the world. The world is much larger than they are. There’s the plain out past
them, and the ocean, and more mountains, though not so high, and more plains,
and rivers, and forests, and home, where I come from.”
“You come from the mountains,” the demon said. “You come
from the thick places—the low mountains, the ones on the edge of the world,
where air is heavy and easy to ride on.”
“That’s not the edge of the world,” Kimeri said. “That’s
only the edge of the mountains.”
“The edge of the world,” the demon said.
It was a stubborn demon. She tried to show it home, the
palace, the plain and the forest, even the Gate. But it insisted that home was
the mountains, and the palace was like the palace in the place she was going
to, which the demon thought
The demon understood anger, but its memory was very short.
It was like the wind: changeable. But its fascination for her went on and on,
and made it as solid as it could be, almost solid enough to touch.
Other demons came and went. There were different kinds. The
ones with feathers were actually not common. Most had a great quantity of horns
and teeth and claws, and scales and tails and leathery wings, and always the
yellow eyes. The ones that drank blood looked at the men and the seneldi and
thought hunger, but Kimeri’s demon warned them off with growls and
teeth-gnashings.
It was not the largest demon and certainly not the most
terrible to look at, but the others seemed to listen to it. Maybe, she thought,
it was like her: royal born.
When her mother actually let her have a senel to ride all by
herself, the demon came to sit on her crupper. The bay gelding did not like
that at all. Kimeri calmed it down, shaking for fear her mother would think it
was too much for her and make her ride like a baby again, the way the demon
wanted to ride.
It was a good senel, sweet-tempered and quiet, just not
prepared to carry a thing that had substance but no weight, and looked so odd
besides. Once she had explained, it pinned its ears and fretted but gave in,
and put up with the demon. The demon helped by being quiet and not moving
around too much, except when it forgot and stood up on the senel’s rump and
made faces at demons that peered down from the sides of mountains.
It was a very happy demon, riding behind Kimeri, being
invisible to everybody else. Sometimes she thought Vanyi might know it was
there, but Vanyi said nothing. Kimeri was careful not to talk to it aloud, and
when she talked to it in her head to make sure nobody else could listen. It
took a little thinking to manage that, but it was not hard once she began.
At first the demon never thought in words, but the longer
they went on, the clearer the demon’s thoughts became, until they were having
conversations, long hours of them, as the senel climbed up and climbed down and
scrambled from mountaintop to mountaintop along the roof of the world. Demons
had been there always, like the rocks and the snow and the sky—
“From forever,” the demon said. It liked the thought of
forever, played often with it, turned it around in its head like a bright and
shining toy. “Forever and ever and ever. We fly in the air, we swim through the
earth, we dance on the waters that come out of the dark. We are here always.
Always.”
“Do you go anywhere else?” Kimeri asked it once in her head,
after they had ridden through a valley with a waterfall. The demon had shown
her how it danced on water. She had set out to try it, too, but her mother had
caught her just as she began, and scolded her for getting wet, and made her
change all her clothes, even the ones that were dry. “Do you only live in the
mountains?”
“Where else is there to live?” the demon asked.
“Why,” said Kimeri, “everywhere. There’s a whole world
beyond the mountains.”
“The mountains are the world,” the demon said.
“No,” said Kimeri patiently. “The mountains are the roof of
the world. The world is much larger than they are. There’s the plain out past
them, and the ocean, and more mountains, though not so high, and more plains,
and rivers, and forests, and home, where I come from.”
“You come from the mountains,” the demon said. “You come
from the thick places—the low mountains, the ones on the edge of the world,
where air is heavy and easy to ride on.”
“That’s not the edge of the world,” Kimeri said. “That’s
only the edge of the mountains.”
“The edge of the world,” the demon said.
It was a stubborn demon. She tried to show it home, the
palace, the plain and the forest, even the Gate. But it insisted that home was
the mountains, and the palace was like the palace in the place she was going
to, which the demon thought
Similar Books
