“Where did she go?” The implication had not yet reached him.
“For a walk. But she didn’t come home. And that was before breakfast.”
Kora was known to be fond of solitary walks, but even when she ventured to the compound of the Centaurs, she never spent more than a morning away from her tree.
In a word, Kora was lost.
Eunostos felt as if he had plunged into a stream of melting snow. First he was numb; then the cold went through him like splinters of ice.
“Did you look for her?”
“Yes. And the Centaurs. All afternoon. All we found was a shred of cloth from her gown. And hoofmarks. Eunostos, I think the Panisci have her.”
The news of Kora’s disappearance reverberated through the forest. She had no enemies, so we thought, and we-her fellow Dryads, the Centaurs, even the little Bears of Artemis-were shamed and frightened by our failure to find her. Myrrha was inconsolable. Moschus brought her beer. The Bears of Artemis brought her pails of blackberries. I brought her a smoked goose and a loaf of bread. She greeted all of us with the same blank expression. She moved with a slow, shambling gait and spoke in monosyllables or disconnected phrases.
And what about Eunostos? She did not know where he had gone when he fled from her house; she hardly remembered his going. Others were a little more helpful. The evening of Kora’s disappearance, a Bear Girl had seen him cross the meadow of yellow gagea.
“It was like there were bees after him,” she said. “He didn’t even speak to me. And he’s usually so friendly.” A Paniscus who, like most of his self-centered race, seemed unconcerned about Kora, thought that he remembered seeing Eunostos head for the hills which climbed toward Mt. Ida. On the other hand, he mused, it was dark and he might have seen a Centaur boy.
Needless to say, I went in search of him myself as soon as I had seen that Myrrha was in good hands. Misled by the Paniscus, I lost the whole morning in the foothills of Mt. Ida. But in the afternoon, I tracked his hoofprints to the limestone ridge which shuts most of our country from the outer world of the Cretans. There, in the darkest and most inaccessible cave, I found him huddled so tightly that you would have thought him a bear cub instead of a six- foot Minotaur. “Eunostos.”
Silence. Then, as if from the end of a beaver’s warren, the slow, reassuring words. “Yes, Aunt Zoe.”
“But my dear, you’ve had an accident.”
“It was the Panisci.”
“But how did you get here?”
“I don’t remember. I must have wandered here after they beat me up.”
“Well, now you’re coming home with me!”
He had been roughhoused from hoof to tail-not exactly mauled, you understand, not quite crippled, but scratched, clawed, bitten, and butted in a fashion which indicated a pack of cowardly Panisci. It was all that I could do to push him up my ladder and guide him to a couch, where he sank to his haunches and dropped his head into his hands. I was barely able to keep him from toppling onto the floor.
“My poor calf,” I cried, brushing the mane from his eyes and baring a large gash across his forehead. “What have they done to you?”
“I went looking for Kora. I thought the Panisci had her.” He coughed and shuddered. “You know how they’ve lechered after her.”
“And-?”
“They didn’t have her, but Phlebas-he’s the cross-eyed one-said he wished they did. He knew what to do with her even if I didn’t. I rammed him in the belly until he admitted that they had had her but had sold her to one of the Bee queens. Then his friends jumped me. I could have handled three or four. But six at the same time! After that, I don’t remember a thing till you found me in the cave.”
“Wait till Chiron hears about this,” I muttered angrily. “The Thriae will wish they had never blown this way. Have you any idea which queen?”
“Not really. But the one who spied on Kora and me was wearing a tiger-colored tunic. Will that help?”
“It may help a great deal. Each of them seems to have her special color. But no more talking now, Eunostos. You’re no good to Kora like this.” I managed to stretch his long frame onto the couch. His hooves stuck over the end, but I supported them with a stool. I bathed his face with a cloth dipped in rose water and raised his head on a pillow.
“Drink,” I said, and he sipped a few drops of potion concocted from basil, tansy, and marjoram. “It will ease your pain.” It was also a sedative; it would sooth him into a healing sleep.
His tail twitched less nervously and finally subsided into a gentle swish. His eyelids drooped. The last thing he said to me was, “I’m going after that queen.” Then he fell asleep.
I knew, however, that no sooner had he regained his strength than he would go charging down my ladder and after the Thriae, who would hardly receive him with open wings. There was one solution. I would go to her hive ahead of him. Utilizing my feminine wiles, I would learn the truth about Kora. Why the queen had bought her from the Panisci. What I could do to release or rescue her without at the same time endangering her life. If I failed in my mission, I would hasten to Chiron and ask him to summon a conclave of Beasts for immediate action. Not only would he recover Kora, we would drive those devious Bee-Folk from our forest. Chiron was old and trusting and he had not confronted a real menace since the War with the Wolves in my own girlhood. Being a Centaur, he was especially trusting when it came to women. But he was also fair and he knew that I would not make false accusations.
I knelt beside the couch where Eunostos slept. “My dear, my dear,” I whispered. I will find your girl for you. Trust your old Aunt Zoe.”
CHAPTER V
I knew that there were six hives of Thriae in the forest, each in its own style, each with its own queen, workers, and drones. The Bears of Artemis, who miss little in spite of their shyness, directed me to the hive of Saffron, the queen with the tiger-striped tunic. A drone was leaning against a tree and grinning up at me in a bold and suggestive fashion. He looked as if he possessed the imagination but not the energy to be a rogue. He would rather violate twenty women in his mind than pursue one in the flesh.
“Dear girl, he said. “I see you’ve come bearing gifts. Acorns is it, and what’s this, a baked partridge? How quaint. Are they for me? My name is Sunlord.” There was almost a feminine coquetry in his tone.
Clad in a loincloth brief enough to embarrass even a Cretan, he was smooth and brown and soft, with gauzy wings banded in black and gold. His slanted eyes were as gold as the bands on his wings, and I recalled that the Thriae had originally come from the land of the slant-eyed Yellow Men. They had been expelled by the natives for thievery and kidnapping, but not, it would seem, until there had been some mingling of races. There was no question that he was handsome, but so are banded serpents and the tigers which the roving Centaurs have fought in the jungles of the remote East.
“They’re for your queen,” I said with some asperity. “I’ve come to welcome her to the Country of the Beasts. Will you show me to her?”
Languidly he lifted a hand bejeweled with opals and malachites and pointed over his shoulder. I noticed that he wore anklets of golden bells, which tinkled when he uncrossed his ankles.
“Straight ahead. You can’t miss her. She’s the one with the bosom.”
Apparently enervated by our conversation, he settled back against the tree and pretended to close his eyes. Still, I saw that he was carefully watching me.
A pretty fellow, I thought, but in spite of his naughty looks as sexless as a tadpole. Kora would come to no harm from the likes of him; and the other drones who lounged among the trees or nestled in the grass looked no less depraved but no more energetic. A Babylonian king who wished to people his court with eunuchs would find them ready-made in these soft males. I understood why the queen in her nuptial flight must be accompanied by a
