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A Fantasy Trilogy Written by Gary Raab



Prince Kit and his centaur uncle, Relkot stumble across three white centaur children; the sole surviving members of the mysterious Ivory herd. Read the first chapter of this trilogy free before purchasing as a browser readable e-book on CD-ROM from Antelope Publishing. Price $24.95

Chapter Two

For a moment Kit just looked at Relkot, then he gave a deep, shuddering sigh and closed his eyes. The golden centaur started to reach out to take the boy in his arms but then he realized what he was doing and held back. Kit just sat there for a time with his eyes closed. His four, half-bare legs dangled down over the crumbling, dank side of the great log, his two front hands rested lightly on his thighs and his rear two hands braced himself to keep from sliding to the ground. Then finally he opened his eyes and gazed at Relkot with his large, dark brown eyes.

"I don't feel any different," he declared. He looked away and kicked his heels absently against the log before once more turning his large, dark eyes back to the centaur standing patiently before him with the rushing water of the stream washing unnoticed around his fetlocks. "Shouldn't it - I mean, I know I'll never be the king of the wolves," Kit said, "that still goes to whoever killed my dad. But shouldn't I at least know?"

Relkot shrugged and spread his hands helplessly. "Hey, you're the expert on these things, kid, not me! But are you really sure... Your dad worked for years to change the succession so that it wouldn't just be males fighting over the pack. Even the wizards stepped in to help him, so the wolves wouldn't be victims of whoever just happened to be the strongest male at any given moment and they could live like normal, civilized people. The whole plan was to make sure that the succession would automatically pass down to you, no matter what happened to him." He scratched thoughtfully at his bare, muscular lower right ribs. "I can't believe they all failed." He leaned forward and peered intently into Kit's face. "Are you SURE you don't feel anything?"

Kit shook his head in despair. "No, Uncle Relkot! No! Oh, I can feel- I mean, something's going on, all right. The whole pack mind is all stirred up." He shifted uncomfortably on the log beneath him. "You know how my dad made me learn how to link into it, so I could be able to know what was going on anywhere any of our wolves might be wandering... It seems like I spent half my life probing around in the spirit of the pack," he said with a hint of adolescent bitterness, but then he looked up to Relkot and gave a sheepish grin. "Okay, maybe I should have studied harder," he admitted. "But it's all so dull, most of the time. I mean, what are the wolves doing, anyway? Just running around hunting for smells in the forest and sometimes out on the plains, fighting among themselves and - well, breeding," he added with a faint flush. "It's just all so boring! It's not like any of them have a thought in their furry heads, you know. Mostly they're just dumb!"

Relkot gave him a disapproving look. "Oh come on, kid!" he chided. "You know that's not true. There are plenty of smart wolves out there. Smart as any humans, and almost as smart as a centaur!" he flashed a grin just to let the boy know he was joking.

"Well, okay, maybe so," Kit admitted. "But still, that pack-mind is - I just don't want to spend all my time listening to what other people are doing! I want to go out and do stuff myself!"

Relkot smiled. "You get that from your mother's side of the family," he told him. "We centaurs aren't much for the intellectual side of things. But anyway, you must have picked up something! Can't you - you know, look into the minds of the wolves around here and see what's happening to your dad, and to Hyperborea?"

Kit shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. Give me a couple of days with lots of peace and quiet and I might be able to do something, but mostly - well, for one thing, there's a time delay to it. For some reason we can't be aware of what the other wolves are doing right while they're doing it. It's like remembering what they did yesterday. My dad says that's to make sure we can't spy on each other. Like every citizen has his privacy to live his own life, at least for awhile." He grinned impishly, his natural good humor returning for just a moment. "Of course once they've done something, they have to accept the fact that everybody's gonna know about it the next morning, but in the meantime, we're free to do what we want without anybody snooping to stop us."

Relkot nodded thoughtfully. "I never heard that before," he admitted. "I just thought the soul of the pack was like, you know, just there all the time, like you were all one big person."

"Well, we're not," Kit told him firmly. "We wolves are individuals, too, just like everybody else! I might know more of what happened tomorrow, but that's tomorrow. And it's not all that clear-cut, anyway. My dad always said the pack mind was like a dictionary filled with all the right words put in there by every single wolf, but not like there are any sentences." He shrugged his four shoulders. "You know how he talks sometimes. But it's just not possible to spy on every single wolf in the pack, even if they want us to.

"All I can say is, if my dad's dead, his magic powers didn't pass down to me. I can still link into the pack spirit, sure, but all us wolves can do that. Anything else-" He shrugged helplessly.

Relkot stepped restlessly backward a few paces like a nervous racehorse before catching himself and moving back toward the young multilimbed boy. "Well, I guess we'll just have to go by that, then," he said. "I don't know if - well, to be honest, my prince, I don't know if your father is dead or not. I'd almost think, if his powers haven't passed down to you, that he must be alive."

Kit's heart leapt and he peered up hopefully into Relkot's long, narrow face. "Really?" he asked. "Then - then we have to find him!" he said desperately. "Maybe those awful Prokurans have him locked up somewhere!"

Relkot shook his head. "I'm sorry, my prince," he said sadly. "I'd give my life for your father, you know that. But he ordered me to take you to your grandfather, even made me take an oath to carry out his commands, and I just have to -"

"But we can't just leave him there!" Kit wailed. "He's my dad, Uncle Relkot! We can't just run off on him!"

Relkot sighed. "Now look, Kit," he said gravely. "I took an oath to your father. I have to fulfill it, whether I want to or not. I don't know if the kingship of the wolves has passed down to you or not, but unless all the wizards of the alliance have failed, it's going to descend to you sooner or later. You know how much power there is in that position. Not just the magic the king of the wolves can draw on, but the fact that he can count on the allegiance of every wolf on the Infinite Plains, if he has to.

"You don't remember what is was like before your dad became king of the wolves, back when the evil wizard of Hyperborea controlled the pack, but believe me, it was hell, out here on the plains! Not even the centaurs dared go anywhere alone, with the wild wolf packs running around everywhere bringing down everybody they ran across. And that was in summer! In winter it was so bad the centaur herds had to leave the plains altogether and go hide on the shores of the Ik, beyond the western mountains. It was about as bad as anything can be."

"I know that!" Kit protested. "I remember my history lessons."

"Okay, if you know it then you can understand why it's so important to get you safely out of here," the golden centaur persisted. "Your dad always said in a few more generations the wolves would be just as civilized as everybody else and they wouldn't need the iron hand of a king to keep them in line, but right now, the only thing that stands between us all and the Dark Ages when I was a kid is you! Well, you and your dad, but we don't know where he is, so that means it's all up to you.

"You have to stay alive, not just for yourself like some scared little kid who runs away from a fight, but to save the Infinite Plains from anarchy. As long as you're alive, you can keep the wolf pack in the alliance, but if anything happens to you... Hey, did you think being a prince was all just wearing nice clothes and everybody being polite to you?" he asked with a grin. But then he was once more serious. "It means a lot of responsibility, too, and sacrifices, when you're called on to make them. Right now the sacrifice is to turn tail and head for the south, where the centaurs can take care of you. Even if you have to leave your dad behind to whatever fate the gods have in store for him."

Kit's lower lip jutted out dangerously. "What kind of king would I be, if I put my own safety ahead of somebody else's?" he asked defiantly.

Relkot spread his hands. "How many other little boys and girls will lose their moms and dads, if you go back and try to rescue your own father?" he asked.

Kit kicked at the log and wouldn't meet Relkot's eyes.

"Look, my prince," the centaur said after a pause, "I know you want to be a big hero and chop the Prokuran army to bits with your swords, but sometimes that's just not possible. Sometimes you have to use a little strategy to accomplish the same ends. And right now our strategy is to get our tails off to the southlands as fast as we can to tell your granddad what's happened, here. It's the only chance your dad has at all."

Kit looked at him suspiciously. "You don't really believe he's still alive, do you?" he accused.

"I don't KNOW, Kit!" Relkot said. "All I know is, alive or not, we can't rescue him by ourselves. Only an army can defeat an army, and the only army we can count on for sure is the Rathan centaurs. Now if you're through arguing...." He twisted his remarkably supple human torso and dug into a canvas sack tied to his equine flanks. "I managed to salvage some food," he said, pulling out a dry, dirty loaf of bread and some indefinable bones with a few shreds of boiled meat still hanging to them. "Let's eat now, while we can, and then get going. Once we get far enough south we should be able to scrounge off the land."

Kit took one of the nearly-bare bones and made the mistake of sniffing at it before he took a bite. His nose wrinkled with distaste. "Back in my father's palace we wouldn't feed this kind of garbage to the rats," he muttered.

"Just look at it like an adventure," Relkot grinned. "It's no worse than some of the camp cooking we've had to eat on hunting trips, is it? Remember your Uncle Seqhuk's offal stew?"

Kit grimaced and took a tentative bite of the meat, then chewed with a stubborn grimness that made Relkot hide a smile. But then the boy lowered the bone and looked at the centaur accusingly. "You're eating too, aren't you?" he demanded.

Relkot shrugged. "I ate while I was out scrounging," he lied. Kit shook his head. "I'm not eating if you're not eating," he said stubbornly.

"Now look, my prince -"

"Nope!" Kit said. "Share and share alike! Just like on our hunting trips, remember?"

Relkot sighed. "Yes, my prince," he surrendered. He took one of the rancid bones and began to chew on it so ostentatiously that Kit broke into a fit of giggles. His high-pitched, childlike laughter echoed through the dark forest like a brilliant counterpoint to the gentle tinkling of the clear, narrow stream beneath Relkot's hooves.

Read Chapter One

Antelope Publishing E-Books come on CD-ROM and are designed to be viewed off-line on a web browser. They contain all the text and graphics enjoyed on the web. The CD-ROM trilogy Centaurs of Ivory and Gold will contain two complete sets of books, one book with music enhancement, and one book without sound, for times when you wish a quieter read.

Antelope Publishing
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Centaurs of Ivory and Gold a Trilogy
By Gary Raab
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