Lady of Horses

by Judith Tarr

  LADY OF HORSES

  The Epona Sequence, Vol. 2

  Judith Tarr

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  April 29, 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-383-6

  Copyright © 2000 Judith Tarr

  “[The first ride on the back of a horse] probably occurred very shortly after the horse was domesticated, around 4000 B.C…. I think some kid—some brave, thrill-seeking adolescent—climbed aboard a docile mare who was accustomed to humans. All it took was one successful ride, and everyone wanted to do it.”

  —Prof. David W. Anthony

  Institute for Ancient Equestrian Studies

  EQUUS 248 (June, 1998), p. 110

  PRELUDE:

  THE MORNING OF THE WORLD

  In the grandfathers’ time, when few yet living had been born, the People worshipped the horse, and served him, and took the gifts that he gave them: his meat, his hide, the milk of his mares. But he had not yet granted to men the greatest gift of all: the gift of riding on his back, and racing the wind.

  There was in that time among the People a prince of great beauty and strength, a child of kings, a god among men. He was the greatest of the hunters, the best of the dancers. No one was swifter of foot than he, or mightier in battle. Even before the beard had sprouted on his cheeks, he had led the young men of the People in war against their enemies, and taken skulls beyond count, so that every one of his women had a cup from which to drink, and all of his father’s women, and even a handful of his younger brothers. When the People gathered to dance their deeds and to sing their prowess, he danced foremost, and his voice rose above them all, chanting his glory.

  One day in the morning of the world, this prince walked out among the herds of horses. Such a thing only a man grown and proven could do, for horses were sacred, beloved of the gods. They were tended by priests and acolytes, warded with great magics. The prince was a priest of the horse god, but of the second order, as a prince must be—for he cannot both serve the horse god in all things, and rule the People.

  He was thinking on this as he walked, while the mares grazed and the foals played in the fields of grass. The Stallion who ruled them, the great king of horses, stood on his hill as he liked to do, with the wind streaming in his mane, and watched over them all.

  Men, even priests, even princes, did not trouble the Stallion in his eminence. The Stallion in his turn took little notice of men, as was fitting; for he was greater than them all.

  But on this day in the dawn time, in this bright morning of spring, the Stallion came down from his hill. He walked among his mares and his children, who gave way before his presence. He approached the prince.

  The prince had paused at the Stallion’s coming. No fear troubled him; he was a great warrior, a lord of the People. And yet he knew the welling of awe.

  The Stallion stood before him. And he spoke as gods speak, in a voice like wind in the grass, like thunder on the steppe—the thunder of the herds over which he was king. “A gift I give,” he said, “by the gods whose kin I am. Rise up, O man. Mount on my back.”

  The prince was a great man and proud, but even he was not so proud as to dare what the Stallion commanded. He spoke as humbly as a prince may, as a man before a god: “O lord of horses, how can I do that? I am but a man, and mortal. How can I mount on your back?”

  “Mount on my back,” said the Stallion. “Taste the wind. Take my gift and be glad.”

  Then the prince knew that the gift was freely given, of the Stallion’s own will. And he did as he was bidden. He mounted on the Stallion’s back. He tasted the wind. He became, for that while, like a god—and that was the Stallion’s will, and his gift, and his great good pleasure.

  Then the Stallion bade him choose companions, the greatest warriors and hunters of the People, its lords and princes, and offer them the gift in turn. “But have a care,” said the Stallion, “that you choose only the best to be men, and never demean yourselves with lesser creatures; and let every man sit astride a stallion, but for boys keep the geldings. And let no woman at all, whatever her rank, trespass here where only men may go. This command I lay on you, and this gift I give: to be lords of the wind, and rulers of the world.”

  And so it was. The prince, who had been a lord of men, was now also a lord of horses, swift as wind in the grass, and more terrible than ever in battle. And his people prospered and grew, and spread far across the steppe. Every tribe that they met, they conquered, for they were swifter far than any man afoot, and could travel farther, and fight harder, and never succumb to weariness.

  And the world changed; and men changed with it, borne on the backs of horses.

  oOo

  The Grandmother told the tale as she was dying, told it as it had been told in the gatherings of the tribe since time out of mind—since, in fact, she was a girl.

  “For I remember,” she said. “I remember that prince. He was my brother.”

  Sparrow knew that. Everyone knew it, though most chose to forget. The Grandmother was only the Grandmother, ancient and shrunken and, most thought, either mute or close to it. She never spoke where people could hear. Except to Sparrow. To her, who was her daughter’s daughter’s son’s daughter, she had long told stories, wonderful stories, stories of the morning of the world.

  Now that she was dying, she seemed little more than a voice and a spate of stories. Sparrow could not make her stop. She would barely sip water or the mare’s milk that was the best sustenance of the People. She would not eat at all. She lived on the words she spoke.

  “That story,” she said as the sun sank low into evening, when the winter had closed in and the cold come down, and the earth lay deep in snow, “you know better than any. All you children do. It’s the one story you live by—how the prince rode the Stallion, and made his men lords of horses.

  “And that story is a lie.”

  Sparrow had been warming a cup of mare’s milk over the fire in the Grandmother’s tent, cherishing that warmth, for the cold was bitter. At first the words meant little. But as they sank in, she started, and nearly spilled the milk.

  She mastered herself, careful of the cup, turning, holding herself steady. The Grandmother lay swaddled in furs, a tiny, shriveled creature—not even as large as Sparrow, who had nine summers. The life burned low in her. All that there was, was gathered in her eyes. Those were large still in their web of wrinkles, clear grey like rain, bearing in them all the memory of what she had been: great lady and great beauty, prince’s sister, wife and mother of shamans.

  “That story is a lie,” she said in her whisper of a voice. “Oh, not that he was a great warrior and all the rest of it—that is true enough. But the Stallion never came to him and offered the great gift, the gift of the wind. That gift he took. He stole it, if you would know the truth. He seized it from the one to whom it was truly given.”

  Sparrow was not exactly horrified. The Grandmother had told her such truths before—hard truths, truths that laid bare the myths and deceits that men laid like veils over the world. But this one—this was the greatest of the myths, the one that surely must be true.

  “There was a gift,” the Grandmother said, “and it was freely given. But not to any man. It was given to a woman. And it was never a stallion who gave it. The men dream that stallions rule the herds; but anyone with eyes can see that stallions give way before the mares.”

  Sparrow knelt in front of the Grandmother, cradling the warm cup. The Grandmother let herself be fed a sip, then two; but no more. She was too full of words, and her life was too short. She could not waste it in drinking mare’s milk.

  “It was a mare who gave the gift,” the Grandmother said. “A queen of mares, ruler of the herds, to be sure; and when she gave i
t, she was great with foal. One morning when the priests were far away, not long before she foaled, she offered the gift to a small and headstrong girlchild. She let the child clamber onto her broad warm back, and carried her about as she grazed. It was a quiet giving, with no words in it; but what need have horses ever had of words? Horses speak with their bodies. And she said, as clear as a voice in the air, ‘Come, child. Mount on my back. Sit at the summit of the world.’”

  Sparrow, in the furs beside the Grandmother, understood what she had been meant to understand. “You. The child was you.”

  The Grandmother nodded just visibly, a bare inclination of the head. “Yes. It was I. I rode the mare before my brother ever rode the Stallion. I rode her till she foaled, and after. And when she was strong again, she carried me far and fast, as a horse can—she gave me truly the gift of the wind.

  “Then one day as I rode the mare, when I had grown arrogant with safety and forgotten to be cautious, one of the priests caught me. That priest, of course, was my brother: the prince who would be a legend. He was gentler to me than one of the others would have been—for what I had done was a terrible thing, a great sacrilege. I, a female, had sat on the back of a horse. To be sure, it was only a mare, but I had done it. And worse: I had done it over and over, for the whole of that long bright summer. I had not only been given the gift, I had taken it with both hands.

  “There was nothing for it, my brother thought, but to take that gift from me. To claim it as his own. To become a legend, and to cause my part in it to be forgotten—for if the rest of the priests had known what I had done, they would have buried me under the earth. Nor would they have troubled to take my life first.”

  Sparrow shuddered. Priests still did that to people who had done terrible things, things too appalling for any lesser punishment.

  “So you see,” the Grandmother said a little wryly and not too bitterly, “how my brother took a truth that was less than endurable, and made it into a legend.”

  “It’s still a lie,” Sparrow said.

  The Grandmother sighed, a bare whisper of breath. “Sometimes lies have to be. Men especially—they need them. Just as they need to believe that the stallion is the lord of the herd. Their spirits have little strength to bear the truth.”

  “That’s not fair,” Sparrow said.

  “You are young,” the Grandmother said. “Now go. Let me rest.”

  Sparrow intended to obey, but not before she had seen the Grandmother wrapped as warmly as possible, and fed a trickle of milk. The Grandmother was failing: she did not try to fend Sparrow off. Already her body was growing cold, though her spirit lived in it still, like an ember in a heap of ash.

  She wanted to die in peace. Sparrow meant to let her; but it was hard to leave, harder than she had thought it would be. The Grandmother had been mother to her when her own mother died, had raised her when no one else would, and taught her most of what she knew. Sparrow had learned things from her that women were never supposed to know: arts and magics, prayers, powers over the world and its creatures.

  A woman could not be a shaman. It was forbidden. And yet the Grandmother was a shaman, and perhaps more. To most of the People she was only the Grandmother, the eldest of the tribe, granted no such power or presence as the elders of the men were given, and accorded respect only insofar as she was let live when she could have been left on the steppe to die. And she had permitted it, because, she said, it was better to be ignored than to let the men know how much more power she had than any of them.

  “You, too,” she said now, as Sparrow steeled herself to go. “You have power. You are like me. The gods speak to you.”

  “No,” Sparrow said. “No. They never do that.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” said the Grandmother. Her voice was remote, as if she spoke already from the far side of the sky. “I knew when you were born, what you would grow to be. You are of my blood, child. You are the gods’ own.”

  “The gods don’t speak to women,” Sparrow said.

  “The gods speak to whomever they choose.” The Grandmother sighed, almost too faint to be heard. “Ah, child. They will test you—torment you. Have a care to be strong. And remember. Men cannot bear the weight of the truth. If you must lay it on them, do it gently; or veil it in a lie.”

  “And if I won’t do that?”

  “Then the gods defend you,” the Grandmother said.

  Sparrow left her then, for she could see that there was little life left, and no strength to bear anyone’s presence but her own. When she came back, the Grandmother would be dead.

  She grieved, walking out into the bitter cold and the advancing dark. And yet she was glad.

  The Grandmother would wake on the other side of the sky. There she would be young again and beautiful, and strong as she had been when she was a girl. And if the gods were kind, and certainly if they were just, she would stand born anew, and a shape of light and swiftness would come upon her: a shape that was the mare whose gift she had received, but had been forced to give up. It would all be given back to her, all that the prince had taken.

  Then she would mount, singing for the joy that was in her. And the mare would turn, wheeling as the stars wheel, and bear her away, riding swifter than wind over the undying grass.

  PART ONE:

  WALKER BETWEEN THE WORLDS

  1

  Walker was making magic. It was only a small magic, a matter of fire and breath and a green plover’s feather, and yet he set his soul in it, as if it had been a great working before the tribe.

  Keen lay in the tumbled sleeping-furs and watched. He had forgotten her, as he had forgotten everything else but the magic he was making. She did not mind. She had given him the strength to do this thing, whatever it was—she seldom asked. Her body in its deep places, the fire in her spirit, had fed his, till he rose and left her, and went to rouse the fire and work his spell.

  Whatever he did, she loved to watch him. Walker was a young man, far too young, some said, for a shaman; and yet he was the prophet of the tribe, the speaker to the gods who rode on the wind, the Walker Between the Worlds. He was beautiful, too, in the way of the People: slender and tall, fair-haired and grey-eyed, his face carved as clean as the edge of a fine flint blade. When the young men danced, he danced in front of them all, and all the women envied Keen, because her husband was both graceful and strong.

  Keen hugged herself amid the furs, clasping her arms tight about her breasts and running her hands down her belly. One came to rest there; the other slipped between her legs where she still throbbed gently from their loving. Maybe this time, if the gods were kind—maybe they had made a child.

  She smiled, thinking of it; letting herself slip into a dream of a bright-haired infant, a son for his father, with Walker’s beauty and grace, and his gift of magic.

  From the middle of the dream, she almost convinced herself that he would be born; that he would exist. That she could reach in the furs beside her and touch him, and show him what his father did, finishing his spell, letting the feather fall spiraling into the fire and vanish in a flare and a brief, pungent stench.

  Walker lingered for a while after his spell was done, crouching in the fading firelight. The shadows stroked the long lines of his back; they clasped his lean hard buttocks as, only a little while before, Keen’s own hands had done.

  When he rose, he took her somewhat by surprise. She lay still.

  He took no notice of her. He was smiling, a faint, edged smile. Whatever the working had been intended for, it seemed he was satisfied.

  She was ready to take him back to bed again and to do the other thing, too, that he loved to do after his workings as before; but he ignored her. He pulled on the long tunic of pale doeskin that was his right as shaman, and plaited his thick pale-yellow hair, weaving into it another feather of the plover; and then he went out, leaving her alone in the dimness of the tent, with nothing to keep her company but the dying fire and the lingering stink of burnt feather.

  oOo<
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  Sparrow did not see Walker come out of the tent he shared with Keen, but she knew that he was out and about, just as a sparrow knows when the hawk has left his nest. The camp was different when Walker was abroad in it. People walked softer where he was, and watched their tongues. Everyone was afraid of the Walker Between the Worlds.

  Sparrow was not afraid of him. But neither did she exert herself to attract his notice. She was on her way to fetch water from the river, a task not particularly urgent but demonstrably useful—not least for that it freed her from her father’s tent.

  The wives were at their feuds again, White Bird taunting the others with her beauty and her wealth and the son who, she was certain, was swelling her belly. The rest, who had given the old man mostly daughters, were inclined to be bitter about it. And when the wives were bitter, the daughters were most likely to suffer.

  Sparrow, eldest and least regarded of those daughters, kept her head down and her shoulders bent as she trudged through the camp. Her back was still sore from the blow she had caught before she left the tent, when she strayed unwisely in reach of an angry wife.

  She would straighten it when she came to the river, down among the reeds where no one could see, or care that he saw. Maybe she would bathe, too. Maybe she would swim. Maybe even she would visit the horses—though that would require great caution and no little store of luck.

  She had to be careful while she was still in the camp, not to walk too swift or too light, or look too glad of her errand. People must see nothing but the brown shadow, the shaman’s ill-regarded daughter, the little dark changeling among the tall fair tribesmen.

  She had almost escaped—was almost free of the camp, and ready to slip away through the reeds and sedges of the river—but she had outwitted herself. She had strayed too close to the camp’s edge where Walker’s tent was.

  Walker did not always see her. Only when he chose to. Only when he had a use for her.