the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  "Maybe he was afraid we'd get sick again." Arang bit into the yellow flower and made a face. "Ugh, this stuff is horrible."

  "But he told the village mother back on the River of Smoke that once you had the fever you could never get it again." She looked at the plants and frowned. "No, I think it's more than that. I think he knows something we don't. Perhaps something he discovered after he left us."

  Arang tore off a bit of the mintlike plant and put it in his mouth. "This one's much better. It would make a great tea."

  "You shouldn't eat that," she warned. "Who knows what it does besides cure the fever? Medicine plants are nothing to play with."

  Arang obediently spat out the leaf. "I'm sorry. You're right. It was a dumb thing to do. At least there's a lot of the stuff."

  She grew thoughtful. He was right. There was indeed a lot of both kinds of plants. Why had Stavan taken time to collect so many seeds when he was supposed to be hurrying to reach his tribe before winter set in? Did he think she was going to need so many herbs? She certainly hoped not. Perhaps she hadn't read his message correctly.

  Time passed and the days grew hotter. The yellow flowers and mint were no more than a week harvested and hung in the temple storehouse to dry when more messengers came from the north. These were no farmers from the edge of the world but envoys from the city of Shambah. There were two of them, one a frail man of perhaps seventeen and the other a boy a year or so younger than Arang. They were dressed in holy adornments and the fine linen robes Shambah was famous for, but there was nothing festive about their appearance. They walked slowly, supporting one another, and their faces were pale, pitted with little round scars that looked like water dripped on dust.

  "They look sick," Arang whispered to Marrah as the envoys passed by on their way to the center of the city, but he was wrong: these were the well ones.

  The envoys climbed onto the public platform and claimed the right to speak by touching the lips of a small statue of Batal. "Greetings to the people of Shara from the people of Shambah," the boy called to the crowd who had gathered around the platform. It was very unusual for a boy to be an envoy, and he was nervous. His voice was wispy and weak like an old woman's. "I'm Nacah, grandson of the priestess queen Aimbah and son of her youngest daughter, Dashlah. This is my aita's brother, Cyen." He swallowed hard and bit his lower lip anxiously. "I know I'm supposed to make a long speech about how glad Cyen and I are to be here, but I can't. We're happy to be in Shara, really we are, but I wasn't trained to be an envoy. No one ever taught me how to do it. I was just the only one of my grandmother's family well enough to travel, and, as you can see, Cyen and I have both been sick. I don't think either of us is really well yet. On the way down the coast Cyen threw up a dozen times." He came to a full stop and turned bright red. "I'm sorry. I'm making a mess of this."

  Motioning for people not to laugh, Lalah stepped out of the crowd, put the tips of her fingers together, and saluted the child with as much respect as if he'd been an old man. "Welcome to Shara, grandson of Aimbah. By the grace of the Goddess, I'm the mother of this city. Don't worry about being polite; just tell us what we can do for you."

  The boy swallowed hard and bowed back. "We need your help, Mother," he said, and then he began to cry, an unheard-of thing for an envoy to do, but he was very young and very scared. "My mother's dead and my grandmother's dying. Everyone in Shambah's getting sick, and hardly anyone except Cyen and me has gotten well. We think we must have done something terrible to bring such a curse on our city, but our priestesses can't figure out why the Goddess is punishing us so."

  "There, there," Lalah said, "just take your time, child. Of course you're upset. This sounds terrible. Cry all you want, and when you've cried your fill, tell us more."

  The boy sniffed, wiped away his tears, and looked hopefully at her. "It's terrible, dear Mother. The worst of it is that we were warned but we didn't listen. Last fall two farmers from a village way north of us came to my grandmother and told her that there'd been a prophecy that really bad things were going to happen, and when they did we should send someone to Shara to ask for the priestess Marrah. We didn't pay much attention to them at the time. A lot of those northern farmers smoke the hemp that grows wild in the grasslands and they have visions all the time, but then this great sickness came." He began to cry again. "Is there a priestess here named Marrah?"

  "Marrah," Lalah called. "Come forward."

  Marrah stepped out of the crowd.

  "This is the great priestess?" the man called Cyen cried. "Oh, this is terrible. She's much too young. We need an old wise woman, a great healer, a — "

  "Marrah is my granddaughter," Lalah said firmly, putting her arm around Marrah's waist. "She's walked across the world and seen more things than you ever will. She's a skilled healer and I'd trust her with my life."

  On any other occasion Marrah would have been embarrassed to hear her grandmother praise her so highly in public, but she was too worried. She looked at the boy and the young man. She'd seen scars like the ones on their faces; she had several on her own chest, and Arang had one on his right arm. They were the marks of redberry fever.

  "You say everyone in Shambah is sick?" Lalah continued, turning back to the boy, who was shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other.

  He nodded unhappily. "Everyone, dear mother."

  "How many would that be, ten? A hundred?"

  "Great Goddess!" Cyen cried. He stretched out his arms to Lalah, Marrah, and the people of Shara. "Don't you understand? The whole city's dying! The Towers of Silence were full weeks ago, and there aren't enough well people left to build new ones. Children are crying for milk from mothers who have gone back to the Goddess; dogs roam the streets looking for food; the weeds are taking over the fields because nobody's well enough to chop them out."

  He went on and on, describing one horror after another. The crowd fell silent, and people exchanged sympathetic glances. The young man from Shambah was overwrought and exaggerating. What he was saying couldn't possibly be true. There had been serious epidemics a few generations ago, but everyone knew there was no such thing as a sickness that could sweep through an entire city.

  Only Marrah understood his despair. She knew now what Stavan had seen to make him stop on his way to the Sea of Grass to gather that packet of seeds.

  Five days later, when the two young envoys returned to Shambah, Marrah went with them. Knowing the prophecy, Lalah and the Council of Elders had been reluctant to give her permission, but she had insisted.

  "Let me go north," she had begged. "I have the cure, and what's more, I've had the fever. I can treat the sick without getting sick myself." She had looked around the council room at the thirteen men and women who, with Lalah, governed Shara. She was related to half of them, and all were older and wiser than she was by many years. "Dearest mothers and uncles, the people of Shambah have come to us begging help in the name of the Goddess. How can we let them die without sending it? I admit I'm afraid the prophecy Batal gave to my mother will be fulfilled, but what kind of priestess would I be if I let fear keep me from my duty?"

  She argued for a long time in the same vein, and finally, when they saw she was absolutely determined to go, the council consented.

  The journey to Shambah got off to a good start. They left in a raspa, with fair weather and fine winds blowing them north. The boat was crewed by three women. Like most work teams, they were related — two aunts and a niece — all skilled sailors who knew how to catch every breeze, and although none of them had been as far north as Shambah, they were confident they could steer clear of the sandbars that plagued the coast above the mouth of the River of Smoke. But despite the crew's easy way with the sails, Cyen and Nacah were both nervous at the prospect of another sea voyage.

  "With this crew we're not going to have any problems," Marrah promised them. "The Goddess Herself is blessing us, and we'll be in Shambah in no time."

  She spoke too soon. Not long afterward, the first problem po
pped up — quite literally. It was Arang. Determined not to be left behind, he'd stowed away under a pile of hides.

  Marrah was furious. "How could you do something so irresponsible?" she yelled as soon as she saw his head, and she would have run over to him and jerked him to his feet only the boat would have tipped.

  Arang sat up, sneezed, brushed the dust out of his eyes, and grinned a maddeningly endearing grin. "Hello," he said to Cyen and Nacah and the startled crew of the raspa.

  "Who's this?" Akoah asked. She was the youngest of the three sailors, sixteen or so, with arms tanned the color of doeskin and wide innocent eyes that seemed never to have looked on anything but blue skies and clear water.

  "It's my fool of a brother," Marrah snapped. "And don't bother introducing yourself because you aren't going to have time to get to know him. He's going back to Shara."

  But Arang wasn't to be put off so easily. "I'm not letting you go to Shambah all by yourself," he insisted, climbing out from under the pile of hides and helping himself to a handful of figs and a drink of water. "I've had the fever too, you know, and I can nurse those sick people as well as you can. We came all the way from Xori to Shara together, and if there are adventures to be had, I want to have them too. Besides, maybe we'll run into Stavan."

  "This is a mission of mercy," she yelled, "not a pleasure trip. I'm putting you ashore at the next port, and you're going straight back to Shara."

  "I won't." Arang tossed the fig stems in the water, folded his arms across his chest, and looked at Nacah. "I'm older than he is, and if he can be an envoy, I can be a healer, or an apprentice healer, or whatever you want to call me. I'm almost a man now, and if you put me ashore I'll get on another boat and follow you to Shambah. Face it, you're stuck with me."

  "We'll see about that," Marrah said grimly. But she knew she was powerless. If Arang was determined to follow her to Shambah, there wasn't much she could do to stop him.

  That day and the next she barely spoke to him, but either he didn't care or he was good at pretending. She never carried out her threat to put him ashore, and by the third day she knew, and Arang knew, that she was taking him to Shambah.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Although Shambah was the largest city on the northwest coast of the Sweetwater Sea, it was considerably smaller than Shara and considerably less convenient. Built on the eastern shore of a shallow, salty lagoon, its hundred or so mother houses were cut off from open water by a wide bar of silt that forced traders to leave their boats behind and carry everything on their backs the last stretch of the way. It had little to offer: only linen, which was traded as far south as the mouth of the River of Smoke, and salt, which was hauled into the interior. Still, it was a pretty town, and as Marrah and Arang traveled toward it, the two young envoys entertained them by describing their home in loving detail.

  The houses of Shambah, they told Marrah, weren't set in snake coils, like those of Shara, but built partly underground so they were warm in winter and cool in summer. The roofs were dome-shaped, made of mud and willow twigs plastered over with white clay. Each roof had been painted with a different flower so at first sight the city looked like a garden.

  "Shambah's the old word for butterfly," Cyen explained."We worship the butterfly as Her messenger so we grow flowers everywhere, especially the purple, white, and yellow ones the butterflies love. Our trading families have brought us plants from all over. Sometimes it's hard to keep the delicate ones alive, especially when the cold winds blow down from the north, but we cover them with straw when the frosts come. Of course there are winters when nearly everything freezes, but the honeysuckle and blue delphiniums have been beautiful this year." He smiled. "My mother always says you can smell the flowers of Shambah before you can see the city itself."

  But what they smelled when they drew near Shambah wasn't flowers but smoke. Arang was the first to see it, rising up like a thin black thread some distance ahead of them.

  "What's that?" he asked.

  Marrah shaded her eyes and looked. "A forest fire," she told him, but even as she spoke she knew the smoke was the wrong color to come from burning wood.

  They sailed closer, and with each passing moment it became more obvious that the smoke was coming from the direction of Shambah. "Perhaps they're burning barley stubble," Nacah murmured, but even he was old enough to know the barley hadn't been harvested yet. Cyen said nothing. He sat in the bow of the boat, staring at the smoke, clasping and unclasping his hands.

  "My mother was alive when I left," he said once to no one in particular. Marrah started to reassure him that no doubt his mother was still alive and waiting for him, but the look he gave her stopped her in mid-sentence. Arang sat down beside her and put his arm around her, and they watched the smoke getting thicker. It looked like a ribbon now, furled by the same wind that was blowing them toward shore.

  "What could it be?" he whispered.

  Marrah could only think of one thing the people of Shambah could be burning with such a fire, but it was no thought for Arang's ears. She drew him closer. "We'll find out soon enough."

  The wind held, bringing them in sight of the sandbar that blocked the entrance to the lagoon. Afraid to risk the boat in shallow water, the sailors anchored some distance offshore, and everyone strapped carrying baskets on their backs, took off their sandals, and waded to dry land. The wind was shifting; a few puffs of black smoke blew in their direction, making their eyes sting. Marrah took a breath and coughed.

  "It smells terrible," Arang complained, pinching his nose shut. Something did smell terrible, and it wasn't just the smoke. There was another smell, altogether foul, that came to them every time the wind blew seaward.

  As they made their way along the bank of the lagoon toward the city, it was very quiet. Not a bird sang, not a dog barked. If people had still been dying from the fever, Marrah would have expected to hear laments and funeral drums. The stillness was eerie. She wondered if the cattle and pigs had caught the fever too. Maybe everything in the city was already dead and they'd come for no reason. She looked at the two young envoys. Their faces were unreadable, but she could imagine what they must be feeling. As they hurried forward, no one spoke.

  Soon they came to a field of barley that had been flattened as if a strong wind or a great herd of cattle had passed over it.

  Cyen stopped. He looked stunned and puzzled. He turned to Nacah. "Have you ever heard of it hailing this time of year, cousin?" Nacah shook his head, and the two of them stood for a moment like people caught in a nightmare. Marrah knelt and inspected the mud at the edge of the field. It was all churned up, and there were hoof-prints everywhere. They looked more or less like the kind of marks a herd of cattle might leave, which would account for the trampled crops, but they were different somehow: smaller and deeper.

  She felt her mouth go dry. Smoke and trampled fields and what else? Would they find the dogs of the city with their throats slit? Would Shambah be empty? She remembered the two farmers who had come from the north last winter and her own vision of the beastmen riding west, burning everything in their path. These prints could be the mark of horses, and they were fresh.

  She stood up quickly and looked around, but there were no beast-men in sight, only smoke, trampled grain, a row of trees. "We have to go back to the boat immediately," she said. She pointed to the hoof-prints and tried to explain, but only Arang understood. The rest of them just looked at her as if she were speaking an unknown language.

  "Beastmen?" Cyen exchanged a bewildered glance with Nacah. "What are beastmen?" He was respectful but perplexed. "We can't go back to the boat. At least Nacah and I can't. We have to go on to Shambah. It isn't far. Look at that smoke. Maybe some of the houses caught fire and everyone's too sick to put it out. We have to help. My mother's there, and my aita, my sisters, my — "

  "Listen to me!" Marrah cried. "You're in danger. We're all in danger!"

  "Calm down." The captain of the raspa placed her hands on Marrah's shoulders. She was a burly, bar
rel-chested woman of about forty, the kind of sailor who was afraid of nothing on land or water. "What's all this talk of danger? All we have here is a field of spoiled barley and maybe a big fire."

  Marrah was angry at the insinuation that she was a coward, but this was no time to argue. She removed the captain's hands and stepped back. "Please listen to me: if we keep walking in this direction, something terrible's going to happen to us." She described the beastmen again and pointed to the tracks, but everyone except Arang was convinced they'd been made by cows.

  The two envoys and the three sailors continued on toward the column of black smoke, leaving Marrah and Arang standing beside the ruined field. Now what? Should they try to make it back to the boat? There seemed to be a good chance they could sail to safety, but that would mean leaving the others stranded and at the mercy of whatever lay ahead. She couldn't abandon them, and when she asked Arang he felt the same.

  "Maybe we'll be safer if we all stick together," he said. Marrah didn't think so, but what choice did they have? Breaking into a run, they hurried after the others.

  And so they saw Shambah, not the Shambah of blue delphiniums, honeysuckle, and white-domed mother houses that Cyen had described, but a city on fire. Making their way through a thicket of bulrushes and sweet flag, they came on a scene of devastation. Yellow flames licked the air, crackling as they consumed everything in their path. Here and there, Marrah could see what was left of a roof, blackened and cracked like an eggshell, but most of the mother houses had already collapsed under the heat. Where the butterfly gardens of Shambah had been, there were only ashes, and where its temples had stood, there were only charred beams, shards of pottery, loom weights, and the remains of kilns.