In the Night Garden

“Yes, my lord, I believe it is.”

“I’m sorry; who am I meant to be?” I asked, nonplussed. Killing is meant to be in the dark, in the quiet, and there I was in a room that could not be brighter if its foundation had been sunk in the sun itself, and what’s worse, expected.

Sorrel scratched himself at the forelock with an expression of boredom on his moon-broad face. “Omir told me you were coming, the man who would replace me…”

BEFORE MY GRANDFATHER WENT OUT TO PASTURE, it was decided by those much wiser than I that the Eight Kingdoms, as varied in their folk as a field of ten thousand blades of grass, could not be governed by men and women. They were fit for country gentry, certainly, counting things up and doling things out, but how could they be trusted to speak and act for us, the second nation, the nation of monsters?

Obviously, they could not.

Centaurs seemed a likely choice, standing as we do between the bed and the stable, between men and beasts, between the wild and the world. It was thought providential that our massive hearts, necessary to serve such massive bodies, had eight chambers, one for each Kingdom. And so it was that for many lifetimes, Centaurs ruled—some badly as untrained stallions, some well as sweet-natured geldings. That is the way with rulers; we were never immune. But watching the Kings of men before us, we learned that passing the crown to sons and daughters was as foolish as feeding seaweed to a wolf. We decided our rulers in a way more suited to our strengths: with a race.

The morning was crisp and apple-strewn the autumn that I took my place at the starting line. My rival was Dapple, a tall, handsome gray whose chest was so broad I could not have put my arms around it if they could stretch to twice their usual length. I was a little worried—fast as I was, I was not the strongest of my herd, and my chest looked sickly next to this muscled block of breath and bone.

“It is a perfect day for a race,” Dapple boomed approvingly, pawing the earth with pearl-bright hooves. “I hope you mean to make a real contest of it; I should not like to be Queen just because you had caught a sniffle.” She beamed at me, a winning smile framed by heaps of silver hair. Despite our position, I liked her. She smelled good, like birch leaves and alfalfa and quick-running streams.

The rules were these: Those who had the wish to rule would present themselves at the starting line—and few enough did this, as Centaurs are a reticent folk who generally keep to themselves and scoff at the trappings of power, another reason we were deemed suitable for it—and each of them fastened to a plow. Another plow would be set beside them, and whatever local magician or soothsayer had been chosen for it would enchant the blade to draw itself. The horse who could beat the undrawn plow and the competing beasts would take the crown: Those who could best furrow the earth and make it flourish were those who should help its people to flourish as well.

There were only two of us the autumn morning when I stood beside Dapple and tried my legs at a reign. Each time a race was held, fewer of us turned up at the starting line. In the end, Centaurs prefer the pasture and play and mounting and rolling in grass. But I was not reticent, nor did I scoff at power. I was not the wisest horse ever to whistle through the wind, but I was hungry—in those days, I was so hungry. The crown seemed to sing and whisper and wheedle from its height, slung onto the branch of a tree at the far en

d of the field. It shone, and sparkled, and sighed that it wished only to rest on my head. I liked it, too; it smelled only of itself, and that was good enough for me.

My thoughts were interrupted as the crowd began to murmur and stamp its hooves in confusion. The trial’s Wizard had come into the field with his plow sparkling like a young colt’s eyes in the sun, long red robes flashing and flapping in the brisk morning.

He had no collar.

He was ageless and high-nosed, clearly schooled with chairs and pencils, well clothed and well shod—but there was no collar. We did not know how to look at him, how to address him, how he fit with us.

He took all of our glances in his stride and set to rubbing his gleaming plow with powders and oils, murmuring to it like a favorite dog, brushing it with his long, thick-knuckled fingers. When he was finished it did not gleam, but dripped and clouded with baleful colors, ochre and oxblood and onyx. He invited me from my starting position to check his work, as if it were a particularly complex arithmetic problem. I trotted over, meaning to sniff as quickly as I could at the noxious fluids and declare it well done. I was still a simple horse—what did I know about magic, besides how bad it smelled?

But once I was bent over the plow, swishing my tail at flies and scratching the back of my head in what I imagined was a very knowledgeable manner, he turned his pinched face and dark eyes up to me through the share and the shin and whispered, so quietly I thought it was a bee buzzing in my ear, so quietly that he could be sure no one heard him but me.

“I can give you what you want.”

“What?” I said, too loudly. Dapple looked over at me through a crowd of impertinent young colts who were trying to measure her height and breadth. Her bared chest was smooth and puffed as she pranced, her proud breasts sheened in gray. She snorted and raised a silvery eyebrow. I coughed theatrically and grinned at her through my sniffle—she laughed, and her laugh was as big and broad as her chest, a laugh fit to burst barrels.

“I can give you what you want: this race, the crown,” came the voice again, softer than flies in a yearling’s tail. “You’re fast enough to beat the plow—that’s certain as rain in winter. But you’ll never beat her. Look at those shoulders, like spotted boulders they are! She’s a better horse than you, a better runner; she’d probably make a better monarch. But she won’t give me what I want; I can see that in her withers, her hooves, the fall of her hair, the set of her jaw. She’s one of the ones who think virtue can sit easily on a throne. But you, you know how the world really rides, I can tell.”

“What is it you want?” This time I was soft as mice in the brush, staring studiously at the workmanship of the plow.

“Why, you, my dear Sorrel! You are precious among creatures, you must know that.” He pretended to tighten the joints and brushed a sweaty lock of hair from his face.

“I wasn’t particularly aware, no,” I answered.

“You are halfway between man and animal—that makes you ideally suited to my interests. Let me pursue my art in peace and without interference. Assist me in the smallest ways from time to time and I will win this race for you.”

I thought as quickly as a rabbit with a fox after him. “You have no collar.”

He clenched his jaw. “No. I was freed from it by good fortune; I have reveled in its lack. Slavery is a sin.”

I thought as quickly as I am able. It was a good bargain, but if I knew anything I knew that it would end up being more than he claimed. I wiped the sweat from my hands on my coat. “If I am King, and I have a Wizard in my employ, it would only be correct that he be bound to me, that he be my doulios. Otherwise, how am I to trust him? What is to keep him from cutting me to pieces on the smallest whim? Virtue does not sit easily on the throne, you say? Well, then, sin may have a comfortable rest there.”

The Wizard grimaced, and I could see his teeth grind beneath leather-thick skin. He looked up to the sky imploringly, and down at his hands, which opened and closed as though his palms were pricked by the tip of a brand. For a moment, I thought the man would actually weep. But he did not. His shoulders shuddered under his crimson robes, which seemed suddenly less bright and cheerful. He put his fingers, almost absentmindedly, to his neck, stroking the pale, clammy skin.

“Yes,” he rasped, “fine. Yes. I will put the collar on again if you will give yourself to me. It will be worth it, to have you. We will give ourselves to each other.”

I tapped the dirt with my hoof. “What… what will you do to her? It will not be too terrible, will it?”

In less time than a mayfly takes to flap its wings, the sorrow was gone from his eyes, replaced by an uncut stallion’s ravenous glee. “Not too terrible, no. I will burst her heart in her chest, one chamber at a time.”