The Forest of Forever by Thomas Burnett Swann Read Free Book Online Page B

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 number of drones; in all of that number, she was lucky to find a single male