Lady of Horses

by Judith Tarr

There had been no tribes within a day’s ride, but as winter drew in, Sparrow found signs that one of them was camped not so far away. Some of its hunters took a doe from a herd that she had been watching. She followed their track for a while, but her courage failed. She turned back. She did not want to meet these people, though they might be like her: small, dark, headstrong.

  oOo

  The chill rain of autumn fell on her as she rode toward Old Woman’s camp. It was not yet edged with ice as it would be later, but summer’s warmth was long gone from it. She was glad of the coat she was wearing, that she had made and Keen made beautiful, and of the bit of fire that she had thought to bring with her in a pot.

  Dark would fall far too soon for her to return tonight. She would camp in a place she had marked before, a hollow in a hillside like a shallow cave, where there was room enough for her and for the mare. She had water to drink, a brace of rabbits to eat. She was not at all displeased to be kept by the storm from going—not home, no. Back to the camp.

  The mare might have been glad, too. She was in foal, not hugely as yet but she was as aware as Keen was of the life growing in her. Mares in foal, like some women with child, had no use whatever for males—and the stallion vexed her sometimes as thoroughly as Old Woman vexed Sparrow.

  The cave was warm once Sparrow had lit a fire in it, and fragrant with the scent of roasting rabbit. The mare grazed for a while in the rain, then came in to be dry. Sparrow rubbed the rain out of her pale coat with the goatskin that had lain over the mare’s back, spread the goatskin by the fire to dry, and fed the mare an apple from her bag. The mare would have been delighted to eat all that Sparrow had brought, but Sparrow pushed her questing nose away. “No, you don’t! Those are for me.”

  The mare snorted in disgust, but forbore to press harder.

  Sparrow ate her dinner and one of her apples, gave the mare another and put the rest away for the morning. The night was wet and cold, hut she was as warm as she needed to be, out of the wind, with a fire and the mare and a full belly. She was content.

  But something was niggling at her. She lay down to sleep on heaped grass, with the mare nibbling the edges, but sleep eluded her.

  Empty yourself. Old Woman’s voice, soft as wind in branches. Be a reed in the wind. Be the word, but never the god who speaks it.

  Somehow, in this place, that made her think of Walker: his pride, his cruel spirit. His conviction beyond any doubt in his heart that despite lack of either gifts or vision, he was a shaman.

  What was he doing without her? Was he inventing visions? How long would he succeed in that before he trapped himself in the web of his own lies?

  Perhaps a very long time. Walker was clever. He knew how to make men listen to him. He was very, very skilled in forming alliances and playing on the trust—and mistrust—of princes.

  Walker was full of so many things. Pride, insolence, surety of his own right to rule. All that he lacked was magic—the thing that made a shaman.

  What was magic, then? Was that what Old Woman meant? Not emptiness, but emptying. Clearing the spirit. Letting it be like water in the sun: transparent, yet full of light.

  Sparrow did not want Old Woman to make sense. But if she gave way to temper and to her dislike of that odd creature, she was no better than her brother.

  Of the two, she much preferred Old Woman. Old Woman might be mad, and she was certainly strange, but she was a shaman in truth. She was so full of magic, she had emptied herself clean away.

  Sparrow sat up, hugging her knees. She was shivering, though the fire burned well and the mare’s warmth was close by her. That was fear. Fear of what she had just understood.

  She could not let go of her self. That self, proud and stubborn and headstrong though it was, was all that she had ever had, until the mare. If she let it go, what was left?

  The mare sighed vastly and groaned and folded her legs, till she lay down beside the fire. She seemed so much smaller then, curled like a foal, with her nose tucked in her tail. And yet she was all that she had ever been, living goddess, queen of horses, powerful and holy.

  Sparrow was no less terrified for knowing that. She gave herself into the mare’s charge every time she mounted and rode. The mare had brought her here, had brought the stallion, had set in motion things that were barely even begun. War—it would be war, not before winter, but certainly before summer came again. The tribes would cross the river in search of the lost king.

  The mare willed it. She kept the stallion by her when she could have sent him back. She wanted this war, for reasons that Sparrow did not understand.

  Sparrow was thinking too much, circling wildly, shying from the thing in the center. The emptiness. The singing silence.

  If she touched it, she would be changed. How much or how little, she did not know.

  She had done no less in answering the mare’s call, This was ordained; had been since she was born. She could run away from it, but it would follow her. She could refuse it, but it would force itself upon her. She had no more will in this than a young stallion in the taming. She was caught, bound. The more she fought, the tighter her bonds became.

  Empty yourself. So she did when her spirit flew free of her body; but something must fly free from the spirit itself. Self. Awareness. Resistance.

  Be.

  Simply be.

  Clear water in a pool. Still, untroubled. Empty, and yet full of light.

  White light. Light like the moon, the mare’s light. Pure stillness, and pure essence. Knowledge beyond knowledge. Knowing as horses knew, deep in the bone, and not all on the surface as humans were.

  Not working magic. Being magic. Becoming the visions, living them, reflecting them as water reflects the sky.

  What she had seen before as shadows and fragments came clear, distinct, manifold and beautiful as the embroideries of her coat. They were the embroideries, thick over back and breast and sleeves, running along the hems, dancing among the fastenings. Keen, no shaman and yet as empty of self as shaman ever need be, had given living substance to all of Sparrow’s foreseeings.

  Wonder was a pure thing, untainted with self. So was love for that quiet woman, so unassuming and so modest, who had come so far and stayed with such contentment. She was the gods’ vessel, too, Earth Mother’s child, as Sparrow belonged to Horse Goddess.

  Consciousness grew out of this, knowledge as deep as the blood, set strong in the bone. Sparrow lay curled tight against the mare’s back, wrapped in her warmth, comforted by her smell, which was part sweet grass and part horsehide and part living earth.

  The mare slept as horses sleep, brief but very deep. Sparrow slid effortlessly into her dream. It was a simple dream, a horse dream: moonlight on snow and swift hooves flying, keen air in the lungs and keen joy in the heart, and no end to it ever, until she woke to the living world again.

  34

  Old Woman did not mock Sparrow with what should have been self-evident far sooner if Sparrow had been less intent on her own pride and her lack of manners. But neither was she inclined to praise Sparrow for what was, as she pointed out, the simplest and most essential beginning of true power.

  “Shamans are shadows dancing on a tent-wall,” she said. “They awe people with their tricks. But true power has nothing to do with chants and spells. True power is.”

  “I’ll never understand it,” Sparrow said.

  “No need to understand,” said Old Woman. “Just be.”

  That was the hardest thing for Sparrow to do. Keen did it as she breathed, that simply, that easily. Sparrow was a restless creature, always up, always about, always doing this or that. To stop doing, to sit, to let be, was an art beyond her skill.

  “So learn,” said Old Woman, no more sympathetic than she had ever been.

  Old Woman never taught lessons as such, nor did she undertake to teach Sparrow spells or rituals. As far as Sparrow could tell, her teaching consisted chiefly of exasperating her pupil into discovering certain things for herself. It was a strangely erra
tic method, nothing at all like the Grandmother’s meticulous and daily lessons.

  “You had those as a child,” Old Woman said when Sparrow taxed her with it. “I won’t call you a shaman yet, but you’re rather more than a child.”

  “But how will I know when I’m a shaman?”

  “You’ll know.”

  Sparrow went away as frustrated as always. What she had discovered in the cave, she had thought would reveal everything; but when she woke fully, she was much the same as before. She understood a little more, that was all. She saw somewhat more clearly. She had learned to read the signs embroidered on her coat and Keen’s, though what they meant was still for the most part dark to her.

  One day between autumn and winter, the last truly warm day, Old Woman stopped Sparrow as she prepared to go out hunting. “Not today,” she said.

  Sparrow considered disobedience, but she was too curious. Old Woman had a pot in her hand, and a bundle.

  “Strip,” she said.

  Sparrow stared at her.

  “Take off your clothes,” Old Woman said.

  Sparrow’s jaw set. Whatever this was, she wanted nothing of it.

  Old Woman sighed in sorely taxed patience. She did not do anything, say anything, but before Sparrow knew what was happening, she was taking off her tunic and leggings and standing naked in the sun. It was warm, but not as warm as that. She shivered.

  Old Woman took no notice. She led Sparrow to her favored place outside the shelter, where she had spread a finely tanned hide. At first Sparrow thought it was cowhide, but the shape was subtly different.

  When she lay on it, she knew. It was horsehide. She shuddered in her skin. Foolish—but she was enough of the People to know that only kings sat on horsehide, or lay on it as she was doing.

  For an instant, with that sacred thing pressed against her bare skin, she was the horse, the fine grey mare whose hide this had been.

  Pain brought her back to herself. The pot was dye, deep blue. The bundle held needles. Old Woman had pricked Sparrow’s breast and set a drop of blue dye there.

  Sparrow still had no power to resist. She lay, gritting her teeth until they ached, while Old Woman pricked swirling signs in her skin. They wound around her breasts and down her belly, spiraling above the thick black hair of her sex.

  With the pain, as it went on, came not outrage but the same strange sensation that she had known in the cave—but greater. These signs, each one marked in tiny drops of blood, were like the opening of eyes to see. Breasts that in their time would swell with the milk of life, belly that would grow great with children, dark tangle of curls that guarded the opening of the womb—where a man would go, and set the seed that would grow into a living creature.

  Old Woman took most of the day about it, working tirelessly, exactly, never wavering, never wandering astray. Sparrow surprised herself by sleeping a little, but mostly she lay in a kind of dream, open to the sun and the wind and the voice of Mother Earth beneath her.

  As the sun sank low, Old Woman pricked the last intricate spiral. Sparrow’s body stung, and yet it was not so much pain as a tingling, an awareness of something new, something powerful.

  She could move at last. She sat up gingerly, trying not to touch skin on skin. Old Woman put away the needles and lidded the pot, stood up and walked away without a word.

  Sparrow had expected that. In any case she was not particularly minded to talk to anyone. She felt strange. She looked strange.

  She still did not feel like a shaman. Only the painful beginning of one.

  oOo

  Sparrow rode out the morning after Old Woman set the shaman-marks on her, put on her coat with flinching care, took the mare and went away. Old Woman did not seem dismayed, nor did the stallion, who was grazing high up on the hill.

  He lifted his head and called to the mare. The mare ignored him. He went back to cropping the sunburned grass.

  “She’ll be gone a while,” Old Woman said. “And so will we. Come, child. We’re going walking.”

  “Would you rather ride?” Keen asked, mindful of Old Woman’s long labor the day before. She looked tired this morning, Keen thought; thin and a little transparent, though her voice was as strong as ever.

  Old Woman shook her head. “We’ll walk. Unless you’re too tired?”

  Keen almost laughed. Her belly was swelling, she could swear, from moment to moment, but she was as strong as she had ever been. She put on her coat, for the wind was brisk, and plaited her hair tightly, and took up the basket that Old Woman had filled with an interesting assortment of things. Old Woman had her own burden: a filled waterskin and a smaller basket, the contents of which Keen did not see.

  So laden, in bright sun but, with wind, far colder than it had been the day before, they walked out of the camp. They followed the stream that watered the foot of the hill, until it led to a larger river, and then one still larger. This guided them for a goodly distance.

  It was somewhat past noon when Keen saw what they must be going to: the smoke of campfires, and sounds so familiar her heart ached. Cattle lowing, a horse’s whinny, human voices both deep and shrill.

  There was a camp in the bend of the river, tents and branch shelters spread across a broad level. The herds grazed up and down the river, spotted cattle and flocks of goats, and not far from the camp itself, a herd of horses.

  Keen regarded them in astonishment. There were duns and blacks and bays, but most of them were greys, like the royal herd of the People. Just like: sturdy, solid-footed horses with surprisingly elegant heads, and eyes that would meet hers if they caught her staring. Their stallion was the largest horse she had ever seen, a great white creature like a mountain of cloud.

  She was glad then that they had left the king stallion at home with the goats. Royal he might be, but he was young, and by no means ready to challenge a stallion of such size and strength.

  oOo

  As they approached the camp itself, children came as children would in every camp, shouting greetings, calling to their elders that there were visitors—or so she supposed; she did not understand their language. They were small dark people as she had expected, with black curly hair and bright black eyes. Their elders were much the same, the women plump and full-breasted, with broad hips; the tallest men not even as tall as Keen, but thrice as broad, with heavy shoulders and thick black curly beards.

  They all stared at her. To them she must have looked like a young birch-tree, tall and narrow and pale.

  A woman strode toward them from among the rest, not the tallest or the broadest but easily the most imposing. Her greeting was in trader-tongue, her smile warm, welcoming Keen as well as Old Woman to the camp of the Grey Horse People.

  It seemed she was, of all things, a king. A king who was a woman. Remarkable. Her tent was not particularly large; this was not a rich tribe. But it was comfortable and its appointments were of good quality, and the food and drink she offered were excellent. Children served them, dark-haired boys and bold-eyed girls, looking as if they were sore tempted to giggle when Keen looked at them. She must seem very strange, with her yellow hair and her blue eyes. One or two of them managed to touch her hair, trying to be unobtrusive, but she could hardly be unaware of them.

  They made her smile. She had missed seeing children; how much, she had not known until she came here. Indeed it was like rain on dry land to see people again, even strangers with dark eyes and round brown faces. They all looked like Sparrow, after all.

  Old Woman and the king spoke in trader-tongue, out of courtesy, Keen was sure. It seemed mostly to be talk of small things, the doings of the tribe, the weather, the state of the hunting. Keen ate roast venison and stewed roots and bread finer than any she had had before, and drank warm milk laced with honey, and listened in a kind of white contentment.

  The tent’s front was rolled up to let the light in and let people passing by see who sat with the king. Many people did pass, too, with open curiosity.

  One came in, a young wom
an who sat and dipped from the pot and joined in the conversation as if she had every right to do that. Her name was Rain, Keen gathered. She was close kin to the king, and of high position—a shaman, or something like it. Keen was fascinated to notice that she was with child, round and rich like the moon, but she walked about as freely as a man, and made no effort to conceal herself in a tent.

  Not long after Rain came, a man joined them. Like Rain, he acted as if he belonged there. He was young, perhaps no older than Rain, though it was not easy at first to tell: his beard was thick, and made him seem a man of some years. But his eyes were youthful, and the cheeks above the black curls. Keen tried to see the face under them, the broad cheeks and square jaw. It was Rain’s face, strengthened into a man’s, she decided: not outrageously beautiful but distinctly good to look on, and warmed by those bright dark eyes.

  He had caught her staring. She flushed and looked away, but she could not help herself: she glanced quickly back. He was smiling at her. There was no mockery in it, only warmth.

  All sense and courtesy would have bidden her lower her eyes and keep them there, but his smile was irresistible. She had returned it before she thought.

  He left the others, who went on talking as if he had not done anything remarkable, and came to sit beside her. She could not shift away without seeming terribly rude.

  He at least did not press too close. A man of the People, seeing such a bold stare as hers, would have been either terribly offended or unsuitably attracted; and she had not meant to do it at all.

  He certainly was not offended. He did not try to rape her where she sat, or to kiss her, either; in fact he offered nothing improper except his presence.

  “A fair day to you,” he said in a lovely deep voice. It turned the trader-tongue to rolling music.

  “And to you,” she murmured, almost too late for politeness. Her cheeks were hot. Except for Wolfcub and her father, and Walker after he chose her for his wife, she had spoken to few men, and never in such circumstances. Would he be thinking that she was a wild woman, free for the taking?