AFTER RICHON HAD disappeared into the alehouse, Chala found herself drawn toward a horse and hound tied together at a post on the other side of the street. It seemed a strange pairing.
She walked closer, then bent down to put a hand out to the hound, and the hound licked her hand dutifully, but did not so much as bark at her, though she was a stranger.
Was it simply well trained?
There was something very restrained in all its motions. Chala had never seen a hound, even a tame one, that looked around so little or seemed to have so little sense of play.
She found a stick on the ground and threw it.
The hound did not even follow the falling stick with its eyes.
She drew closer and sniffed the hound. It was not—right. There was a very flowery human perfume lingering on the hound’s fur, the residue of a recent bath, but she was not sure that was all.
She let a hand run across the hound’s back.
It was dark brown with white on its belly, as were many of the hounds in the forests to the south even in her own time.
She looked around herself to make sure there were no humans nearby, then barked an inquiry in the language of the hounds. “Meat?” she asked, thinking that any hound would perk up at that word.
But this hound turned to her with a blank expression and then turned back.
So, it was a tame hound, one that had given up its own language for the language of humans.
She put out her hand again, let it be licked, and said, “Good boy,” in the language of humans.
But the hound had no more response to this than it had to her speaking in the language of the wild hounds. Nor could it be deaf, because it had looked toward her on her first approach.
What was wrong with it, then?
She gave it a piece of the journey cake that Richon had bought several villages past.
The hound licked the cake from her hand and then hung its head once more.
Chala turned to look at the horse.
There was something in its stance that reminded her of the hound.
Horses were animals that did not give up their own language, even once they were tamed by humans. She had never tried to speak in the language of horses before, but she trusted her new magic and tried it. She stroked the horse’s dappled gray and white neck while saying—she hoped—“Cool weather, good rest.”
She looked up at the horse afterward to see its reaction. Would it think she was a complete fool for speaking so haltingly?
But the horse did not look at her at all. It was as if she had said nothing.
Chala tried it again.
And then she tried other words. She offered the horse a piece of the journey cake, but the horse did nothing until she held the cake out in her hands and toward its nose. Then it turned toward the food and nibbled at it.
The perfumed scent from the hound had spread to the horse, or perhaps they had been washed together. But there was another scent. Chala was sure of that. She put one hand on the horse and one on the hound and concentrated.
As soon as she realized the truth, she leaped away from both of them, cold fear twisting around her spine.
The unmagic.
It had infected them both, though it was not as virulent as the variety in the forest, and left both animals living—after a fashion. They were more than domesticated, as humans had been doing with animals for centuries. These animals had been stripped of any sense of their own lives. They had no will of their own. They were not even animals anymore, but lumps of clay that moved when told to by a human.
It made her sick.
At that moment a man came out of one of the houses and nodded to her. He stood on legs that bowed, as if he spent most of his life on horses, and he had a well-trimmed beard and mustache.
He nodded to the horse, smiling widely. “The gentlest horse you ever saw, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Very gentle,” Chala admitted.
“And the best-trained hound to be found anywhere.” He clapped his hands and the hound lay down obediently, all four legs tucked under him, head bowed as if before a king.
“Do you have need for one or the other—perhaps both? My lady, I assure you that you have come to the best animal tamer in the kingdom.” His smile never wavered.
Chala stared openmouthed at him. He thought what he was doing was taming? Did he not see the difference himself? He had the unmagic in him, and he used it and called it taming. What a fool he was.
But a dangerous fool!
“Or perhaps you have a horse of your own that is too much for you? Won’t come when it’s called or bites your men and other horses in the stables? Ruins equipment and has a nasty temper? I have dealt with all of those and they are no problem for me.”
Chala stayed where she was, listening for any information the man could give her about what he did and where he had learned it—or from whom. With every word, she became more sickened. The man was proud of how he had transformed these animals into stones that moved. He thought humans would want animals this way, and Chala realized he must be right. He would not still be in business if there were not some humans who wanted this.
Did they not taste the unmagic? Or did they not care?
The man patted the dappled horse’s back. “You would not recognize this horse from the one that I bought two months ago from a merchant going north. He tried to ride him and was ready to shoot the beast, but I came along and offered a few copper pieces. He was glad to take them and warned me I’d be wasting my feed if I kept her alive. But it worked well enough for both of us, didn’t it, Sweet?”
Why could humans not accept that there would always be some animals that could not be tamed, because they would not accept the exchange of one language for another or give up the forest for a human pasture?
“Could you explain what you do?” asked Chala, pretending interest. “It seems such a wonder for you to change a horse so radically in just a few months. A horse whose character has already been determined in a young life. Is it your strength alone?”
The man lifted a gloved hand to Chala. “It’s in this,” he said.
“What?”
He took off the black leather glove and Chala held it to her nose.
There it was—the smell of the unmagic. The smell that was underneath the perfume on the hound and the horse. The smell that she’d had too much of in the first moment she’d noticed it. And this man smiled at it!
“Where did you get this?” Chala asked carefully.
The man seemed eager enough to talk. “It came to me when I was a young boy. Lucky thing, too, for my parents were poor farmers and I would have had to live on their farm for the rest of my days, growing plants and hunting in the forest for meat. They did not even have animals to raise until I began to take them from the forest with me.”
Chala shivered, but forced herself to go on with the charade. She spoke casually. “I met a man who was like you once, from the south. He had the same ability to gentle animals. He had a certain striping around his nose.”
“Oh?” said the man, his smile faltering.
Was it possible the cat man was in this time, as well? If so, Chala did not know how to find him.
“So, shall I sell this animal to you? One gold coin?” the man asked, his smile pasted on once more.
“No,” said Chala, shaking her head. She had magic but did not know if she could help a horse changed like this. It was not at all the same as helping Crown. What would be left of this horse if the unmagic were stripped from it?
“A silver coin, then,” said the man, interpreting Chala’s reluctance as an invitation to bargain. When she did not answer immediately, he nodded to the hound. “I will give you this hound as well. It’s as fine and gentle as the horse, I assure you. Fetches and follows commands without a word, and it won’t even whine when you eat and it goes hungry.”
Chala’s heart ached at this description, and she had to turn her head and walk away.
Still, the man called after her.
“Five copper pieces, then. Or you can come with me and I’ll show you some others. I have plenty to choose from. I only brought these because a man here wished to see them, though now he says he has already bought others.”
It was all Chala could do to walk away. She vowed that this man and the unmagic here would be dealt with later, after the battle.