His Majesty's Elephant by Judith Tarr Page A

short, nearly throwing Rowan over her head, staring hard at a shadow among the treetrunks. It separated itself from a horde of its fellows and became a figure Rowan knew too well.
    â€œHow did you get here?” she snapped at him. “On a devil’s back?”
    â€œYou could say that,” said Kerrec mildly. A grey and wrinkled snake slithered out from behind him, with a wall of grey behind that, and a pale gleam of tusks.
    Rowan’s jaw had dropped. She shut her mouth with a snap, more angry than ever. “You stole my father’s Elephant!”
    â€œHe was going to steal himself,” Kerrec said. “I went with him to see where he was going. He’s invisible in the dark, did you know? And as quiet as a cat.”
    â€œWitchcraft,” said Rowan.
    Galla snorted as the Elephant moved out into the road, towering over them all. Rowan could feel her trying to decide if she should bolt. A firm rein and a steady leg calmed her down, at least enough to go on with.
    Kerrec took no notice of the negotiations. “Excuses or no excuses, you’re turning tail and running away.”
    Rowan scraped together what dignity she could. Screaming at people never helped, not when they were looking at her with one eyebrow up and daring her to do something worth sneering at. “Is it any business of yours what I do or where I go?”
    â€œAbbess Gisela left Cologne this morning,” Kerrec said. “She’s going back to her abbey at Chelles. You’d have to hurry to catch her—she took the road south of here.”
    â€œI could have you,” Rowan said very deliberately, “tried as a witch and burned in the public square.”
    â€œGo ahead and do it,” Kerrec said. His voice was perfectly calm. “I won’t even denounce you. Think of living with that for the rest of your life.”
    Galla had gone still. “Move aside,” Rowan said. Her voice was thin and tight. “Let me go.”
    Kerrec tilted a hand as if to indicate that he was not in her way. The Elephant was another matter. He had turned himself to bar the road, casually, as if he had nothing more on his mind than a trunkful of fresh green branches.
    He was as high and solid as a wall, with an eye that rolled back at her and somehow managed to shame her utterly.
    â€œI can’t stay,” she said. It was more of a whine than she wanted it to be. “I can’t help. Except to pray.”
    The Elephant’s eye closed as if in scorn. He broke off a great hanging branch with a crack that made Rowan jump near out of her skin, but Galla never moved. With gentleness that was terrible next to that proof of his strength, he plucked the leaves from the branch and chewed them slowly, meditatively, and with every evidence of enjoyment.
    Rowan could try to break through the trees and circle around him, but he could uproot them and come straight at her. She could abandon Galla and run right under him, and then he would catch her with a swoop of his trunk. He was leaving her no way to go but back to Aachen: back to fear, and to duty that she did not want.
    If she had been on the ground, she would have stamped her foot. “Who do you think you are? Let me go!”
    â€œMaybe he thinks that he protects your father,” Kerrec said.
    â€œBut what can I do?” she cried.
    â€œI don’t know, I’m sure,” said Kerrec dryly, “but Abul Abbas seems to think you’re good for something.”
    â€œWhat? To peer into pools and tell you what you see?”
    â€œThat’s what frightens you, isn’t it?” he said. “You’re more than you thought you were. You can’t think of anything to do but run away from it.”
    Rowan flung herself down from Galla’s back. She had just enough wits left to keep a grip on the reins, or she would have launched herself into him, kicking and spitting. “Maybe I’m the danger to my father. Have you