Lady of Horses

by Judith Tarr

  The mare was moving quickly, but Wolfcub came on at the gallop. She made no effort to increase her pace, nor did Sparrow urge her on. Wolfcub caught them just below the summit of a long hill, veered around them and pounded to a halt.

  The mare stopped perforce. Sparrow’s face was a pale blur in starlight, but he could sense no fear in her. “Truly,” she said, “I do need to be more careful.”

  “You’ll be killed for this,” Wolfcub said. He was breathing hard, and not only because he had been riding at the gallop.

  “I suppose I shall,” Sparrow said serenely. “But not tonight, or you’d have killed me before you said a word.”

  That was true. Wolfcub was none too pleased to acknowledge it. “Why?” he demanded.

  Sparrow did not answer. She rode past him to the hilltop, eluding him as easily as if he had been a breath of wind. He had his bow and his spear, for guarding the horses. He could, indeed should, have felled her as she rode away from him. She made no effort to protect her back, nor seemed to care that he was behind her.

  He sent the dun after her. This time he could not catch the mare so easily, though she seemed to move without haste. He could only ride beside her in the wake of her silence.

  “Tell me why,” he said as they crested the hill and started down the other side.

  “Keen,” Sparrow said, startling him—he had expected no answer, and certainly not that one.

  As he gaped, Sparrow sighed, audible over the thudding of hooves. “Keen is not with the People. No one’s seen her since we left the spring camp.”

  Wolfcub did not want to be diverted from the fact of her transgression against the great law of the People. And yet there was no avoiding what she had said. “Keen is missing? But how—”

  “Who would notice, if her husband didn’t?”

  That was bitterly true. Still, Wolfcub came back to the other thing, the terrible thing. “You can’t be doing this. You can’t—”

  “I am doing it.” Sparrow’s voice was completely immovable. “I’ll find her, if she’s to be found. You go back. Watch Linden. Make sure Walker doesn’t do something we’ll all be sorry for.”

  “You trust me to go back? What if I bring the whole wrath of the People upon you?”

  “You won’t,” she said with maddening certainty. “Now go. I’ll bring Keen back. No one need ever know how I did it.”

  “I’ll know.”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t do that. I can’t. You go back. I’ll fetch her, and we’ll all be safe.”

  “Keen knows.”

  His mouth opened, then shut with a snap.

  “I can’t keep watch over Linden,” she said with audible patience. “You can. What I can do, I am doing. Who taught me to hunt, after all? Who but you? Now go!”

  He could not obey her. He would not. But his stallion was another matter. He stopped short as if he had struck a wall. Wolfcub, caught off guard, somersaulted over his head.

  When the stars had stopped whirling overhead, Sparrow was long gone, and the white mare with her. Wolfcub snarled at his traitor of a horse. The dun did not look even faintly contrite. Nor would he go forward at all, for anything Wolfcub could do. He would go back, and happily, stretching into a long easy gallop, back to the herds and the herdsmen and a secret that Wolfcub would have given heart’s blood not to keep.

  15

  Keen had never been alone before. Not truly—not all alone in the world, far from kin and friends. It was strange. It was frightening, but she refused to give in to fear.

  On the third day the lion found her track. Lions of the plain were not given to stalking the children of men, unless they were old or mad or terribly hungry, but a woman alone, unarmed, afoot, was tempting quarry.

  Keen saw it first as she paused at the summit of a long hill, stopping to breathe and to strain her eyes, knowing she would see nothing, but hoping rather foolishly that she could see the dust of the People’s passing. But they were long gone. It was when she turned back, slumping in despair, that she saw the tawny shape in the grass.

  It made no effort to conceal itself. It sat at its evident ease, watching her. It was not hungry, not just then, or she would never have known it was there till it fell upon her. It was curious, maybe. It wanted to see where she was going and what she would do, lone frail creature that she was.

  Keen was going to die. This was the shape of her death.

  She was oddly calm, contemplating it. It helped that she was so empty; the wind blew through her, and sang in the bones of her skull. This must be what shamans knew, who fasted and purged themselves so that they might walk between the worlds. But she was very much in the world, this and no other. She saw no spirits, heard no voices in the wind. Unless the lion was a spirit—which could well be. Else why was it letting her live?

  When she had rested, she went on. The lion followed, keeping its distance.

  She never forgot that it was there, but she kept her eyes fixed ahead of her. She would not glance fearfully back. When it attacked, if it attacked, she would not turn to face it. She would let it bring her down as it did the gazelle, headlong and all at once. There would be less pain then, and less terror.

  All that day she walked in the track of the People, and the lion walked in the track that she left. She began to believe that it was a spirit, or a god’s messenger. Though what it came to tell her, she could not imagine. Maybe she would know when it killed her.

  She walked for a while after the sun had set, not because she was afraid, but because her feet were in the habit of walking. She was as light as air. Maybe the lion would not need to bring her down: maybe her spirit would slip free of its own accord and leave her body for the lion to eat. Maybe that was what it waited for.

  Starlight bathed her. Moonlight washed over her. She did not know if she slept. Maybe she had no need of sleep.

  Out of the moonlight, over the silvered grass, came a white shape. Keen saw it with utter lack of surprise. She was in the gods’ country now, surely, on the far side of the sky. And there was Horse Goddess with her servant riding on her back there as in the lesser world, come to take Keen home.

  Keen held out her arms. As she had on that night outside of the spring camp, Sparrow drew her up to the mare’s back.

  Keen did not cling so tightly now. She was dead. What harm could come to her? She rode almost at ease away from the lion, toward the moon and the tracks of the stars.

  oOo

  When the People broke camp in the morning, Sparrow was not among them. Wolfcub had slept somewhat in the night, once he was relieved of his place in the guard. He was fresh enough come daylight, in body, though his heart was deeply troubled.

  He had decided before he slept to let be; to make himself forget what he had seen, and to hope that Sparrow came back safe and with Keen, equally safe, beside her—afoot, and not riding on the white mare. But once he was awake and had broken his fast and mounted to ride, he kept his stallion to a walk as the People moved on past.

  Some of the men called greetings. No one seemed curious. The women he avoided, and they avoided him, for he was mounted on a horse.

  But the gods were not content to let him be. Just as the last of the People passed, as he prepared to turn back through the ashes of the camp, one whom he should have been watching for came up beside him.

  Walker the shaman had not spoken to him since he slew the boar; indeed had never had much use for him, as young as he was and as little use as he seemed to be. But a boarslayer was a different creature than a mere lone hunter.

  “A fair morning to you,” Walker said with what many might have taken for good cheer. But Wolfcub saw how cold his eyes were. “Will you go hunting, then, and bring us back a fine kill for the pot?”

  “I might,” Wolfcub said, making no great effort to be pleasant. “Why? Do you want another boar?”

  Walker laughed. It was a lovely sound. No doubt he practiced it in secret. “Are you minded to slay one?”

&n
bsp; “Not likely,” said Wolfcub.

  “That’s wise,” Walker said. He rode forward. His horse was a handsome creature but evil-tempered, as he himself was. It jostled Wolfcub’s stallion—by accident, maybe; or maybe not.

  When the flurry had settled, Wolfcub was riding beside Walker, and there was no sensible way to escape. Walker went on as if there had been no interruption. “Boarslaying is a mighty thing and a great honor, but it’s best done sparingly.”

  “I would be the last one to contest that,” Wolfcub said.

  Walker smiled. “They say you have a level head and few pretensions. And yet you slew a boar.”

  “I did what was necessary,” Wolfcub said. “And now, if you will pardon me, I must go hunting.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Walker magnanimously. “Yes, go, go.”

  As if, thought Wolfcub, he thought anyone needed his leave to go where he would. Wolfcub escaped, a little desperately perhaps, but very glad to be free of that presence.

  oOo

  Out of wariness, or perhaps even fear, he let Walker see him go off eastward, and not south where he wanted to go. Then, again warily, before he went out of sight, he turned north. Only when he was far from the march and well out of its view did he turn back southward. Foolish maybe, if the shaman had the eyes of a raven or a falcon and could see where he went; but surely Walker would not trouble with that.

  Wolfcub hunted, chiefly because the gods set prey in his path: a brace of fat geese. With a soft grey body slung on either side of his horse’s withers, Wolfcub continued southward for a good while.

  He was not at all displeased to be away from the People so soon after he had come back. They all said he was odd in his predilection for solitude. Odd or no, he preferred to be alone.

  He followed the beaten track, the grass trampled down and scattered here and there with the refuse of a tribe on the march. Somewhat before noon he came to last night’s camp. Nothing stirred there but a flock of birds squabbling over the People’s leavings, and a thin and mangy jackal that slunk off with its tail between its legs.

  He found them soon after that: Sparrow afoot, Keen on the mare’s back, walking doggedly northward. Sparrow was as she always was, compact and complete within herself. Keen looked as if she had come back from the dead.

  They paused as Wolfcub drew near. He had a greeting ready, as calmly casual as Sparrow’s expression while she waited, but he never uttered it. Keen sighed just as he came level, and slid bonelessly to the ground.

  Wolfcub sprang from his stallion’s back. Sparrow was there already, cradling Keen’s head in her lap. “She won’t eat,” Sparrow said. “She’s ill—she lost a baby back there, I think; she won’t say. Her spirit keeps trying to wander away from her body.”

  “Ai,” said Wolfcub: a soft sound of dismay. Sparrow’s eye caught his. It was dark and steady. In it he found what he needed to do.

  They did it together. They settled Keen as best they could, built a fire, plucked and cleaned the geese and spitted them and set them over the fire, and heated water in Wolfcub’s traveling-pot. Sparrow cast herbs in it, that she took from Keen, who did not revive to challenge her.

  While the geese roasted and the water boiled, Wolfcub sat with Sparrow and stared at Keen. “Will she die?” he asked.

  Sparrow lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “The gods know. She lost too much blood. Then she walked so far before I found her. She had meat with her, and a little bread. She hadn’t touched it. She’s spirit-lost, I think.”

  Wolfcub shivered. Sparrow could be calm about it—she was a shaman’s daughter. But such things were strange to him, and frightening.

  Sparrow touched his hand. It was a rarity, and it made him shiver in a very different way: one that she seemed unaware of. She never had seen him as he saw her. He was like a brother, he supposed, male but not a man—not someone she looked on with desire. Whereas he, when he looked at her . . .

  He reined himself in, sternly. Her hand still rested on his. “I can try,” she said, “to bring her back.”

  “That’s shaman’s work,” he said, too hastily. He was not thinking. He was trying very hard not to think of her touch, or the way her dark lashes brushed her cheeks when she blinked, or the sweet round shape of her in the shabby deerskin tunic.

  She bridled at his words, withdrawing her hand, half-turning away. “Yes. I should wait, shouldn’t I? Till we can bring her back to the People. So that a shaman can find her spirit where it’s wandered, and bring it back to her body.”

  Of course she should. But as Keen lay by the fire, white as milk, thinner and frailer than he could ever remember her being, Wolfcub knew what Sparrow surely knew. She might not live so long.

  “You can do it,” Wolfcub said. “Can’t you?”

  “A woman cannot be a shaman,” Sparrow said, stiff and cold.

  Wolfcub snorted. “Oh, come. When did that ever stop you?”

  She was angry, but she must remember as well as he the games they had played when they were children: games in which she did things that the Grandmother taught her, which he had learned afterward were shaman-things, things of magic and power. Such things as she still did, but without telling him. Riding the white mare. Hunting and finding Keen where no one else had thought or known to go.

  “If I do this,” she said abruptly, taking him by surprise, “you have to help me. Hold my hands. Keep part of me in the world. Can you do that?”

  He nodded. His spirit was a little lost itself, maybe, here on the wide plain under a cloud-tossed sky. The white mare stood near, grazing quietly, and the ugly little stallion not far from her. What that meant—what it said of Sparrow—Wolfcub could not tell yet. He was not sure he wanted to.

  They were out of the world in their way, far from the People. Sparrow turned back toward him and took his hands in her warm firm ones. He was always surprised to find her so solid and so strong for a woman. “Watch over me,” she said. And with that, she went away.

  oOo

  Sparrow had been thinking since soon after she found Keen that she would have to do this—this thing that shamans did. Keen’s pallor, her remoteness, the way her soul wandered, frightened Sparrow; and more so as she understood what it meant. She had tried to speed the pace, to bring Keen back to the People, to Drinks-the-Wind who knew best how to bring back a lost spirit, but Keen could not travel so quickly. Her body was too fragile.

  Wolfcub’s coming was Horse Goddess’ own gift, and utterly like him. He would never know, because Sparrow would not tell him, how glad she was to see him and how welcome his presence was. She would have been happier not to burden him with the secret of the mare, but that was betrayed already, and had been when she left to find Keen. Horse Goddess wanted it. She made that clear.

  Now Sparrow sat opposite him in the savory odor of roasting geese, hand linked to hand. He was quiet and strong, clear-eyed and very still, just as she needed him to be. His familiar face, the peak of ruddy brown hair on his forehead, the way his brows arched over his grey eyes, held her to the world as strongly as his hands, as the soft hiss of his breathing, as the warmth of his body and its familiar musky scent.

  But she had to walk where spirits walked, or Keen would go away and not come back. Balanced between his hands’ strength and his eyes’ clarity, she stepped—outward.

  The Grandmother had taught her this long ago. She had thought it a great game then to slip in and out of the body’s bindings; to ride the wind at night or to soar on falcon’s wings by daylight. After the Grandmother died, when her courses came, it became terribly, wonderfully easy to slip free, particularly when the moon’s blood flowed.

  But she had clung to the flesh of late, out of wariness and for fear that someone would catch her in it. Then the mare had claimed her, and that took all the soul and spirit she had, and left none for spirit-walking.

  It was still easy. So simple, like the release of a breath: gathering the threads of her spirit, winding them into a shape like a bird or a spear, and casting it fort
h. For a little while she hovered in the air between the two bodies, one empty, one bright with living presence.

  As she paused there, her eye drifted toward the one who lay beyond, the pale shell wrapped in something other than sleep. A thin thread of spirit coiled within it, but it was no more solid than spidersilk.

  She touched it. It uncoiled, shrinking away from her. She sank down into the shadows inside it.

  This country she knew. It was like the world without, a wide and rolling plain threaded with rivers and vaulted with sky. It edges were dark, the deep shade of forests. Far away on its horizon rose the jagged teeth of mountains. But where the living world was green and gold, blue and white, grey and brown and red, this was all grey, like rain, or like pale shadows.

  The sky boiled with clouds. Things flew there, shapes like her own, like birds, like insects, like arrows shot from the bow. Those were spirits, the Grandmother had told her. So too was the land alive with creatures, guides and servants, shamans on journeys, witches, sorcerers. Some were dead, but most were the living, or spirits bound to earth or air. The dead, the great ones, the ancestors and the gods, lived in their own country beyond the horizon. Sparrow had walked there, too, but today she would not do that; not, please the gods, while Keen’s body clung to life.

  Amid so vast a country, so full of beings coming to and going, small wonder Keen was lost. She was no shaman, nor greatly gifted in matters of the spirit. And yet somehow, when the thing that had not been a child yet slipped out of her, too much of her had gone with it. Her spirit had tried to follow, and been caught in this country between, this grey and shadowed place.

  Sparrow had kept a grip on the thread that was Keen’s life. Now she followed it, as thin and nigh invisible as it was. She traced it through the shadowed country, across the featureless plain beneath the starless sky. It stretched almost too taut—as if it would break.