Lady of Horses

Home > Other > Lady of Horses > Page 42
Lady of Horses Page 42

by Judith Tarr


  Then she would come to him, and remember at last that she belonged to him. If the Grey Horse prince tried to stop her then, he would die.

  Walker paused on the riverbank and made water into the stream. Aurochs’ eyes were on him, tireless in their fixity. He smiled sweetly at the hunter and wandered along the bank, with no intention of escaping, but not minded to stay put, either.

  Aurochs simply followed like the two-legged hound he was. Walker toyed with the thought of disposing of him. But that would cause a great deal of fuss. Time enough later, when all was won.

  Some distance upstream, under a tree with fronds that trailed in the water, Sparrow sat with her own guardian hound—waiting for him. Walker regarded her in something close to contentment. “So,” he said. “You have visions for me.”

  “Crowds and hordes of them,” she said.

  He smiled. She was almost good to look on, sitting there in her mockery of a shaman’s robe, with her hair escaping as always from its plait.

  He had noticed before this that she was either growing plump or growing a child; from the way her hound hovered, and the way she carried herself, it was clear which it was. He would enjoy exacting the punishment for that, come the time. But for now he chose not to speak of it.

  It was a pity, too, that they were both so well guarded. Two of them, brother and sister, a shaman’s children, on the day of the new moon, could have raised great power in their coupling—power that Walker could well use.

  He would have to settle for mere words. He sat a little distance from her on a bank of grass and flowers, and let his smile widen. “You’ve been making good use of my visions,” he said.

  “They were never yours,” she said: so tiresome, and so untrue.

  “You play shaman very well,” he said.

  “Because I am one.”

  “There is more to a shaman than visions,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Truly, he thought, she had grown insolent among these southern women. “My visions,” he said. “Give them to me.”

  She smiled, the first time that he could recall that she had ever smiled at him. It made the small hairs rise on the back of his neck.

  From a bag that had lain half-hidden in the grass, she took a cup. It was a skull-cup, somewhat small but very rich, beautifully and magically ornamented. His fingers twitched toward it. This, they knew, was a thing of great power.

  She filled it with water from the stream, holding it without awe, as if it had been a plain cup of wood or clay. She brought it back to him, still smiling, and set it in his waiting hands.

  He bowed under the weight of it. The pain—the crushing burden—

  Her hand passed before his face. He could see again. The cup was a cup, cool and round in his hands, brimming with water. Some of it had spilled. It was cold.

  “Look into the cup,” she said.

  “What, scrying like a crone by a campfire?”

  “Look,” she said, unruffled by his contempt. “See.”

  He looked, not to obey her but to prove that it was folly.

  The cup was full of fire.

  It was water—water, cold within the white bone.

  Cold fire. And in it, such things—such visions—

  They were too many. They were too fast. They were too terrible. He could not look away from them. They seared through his eyes into his spirit.

  Blood and fire, fire and water, stone and blood. A black knife raised against a starlit sky. Blood springing, glistening black in firelight. Kings and princes, warriors, armies riding.

  And horses. White horses. A white mare in the heart of the moon.

  “Enough.”

  Her voice, as cold as the moon. His eyes lifted of themselves. He gasped.

  She was full of light. It filled her to brimming and overflowed. The touch of it was pain so terrible he could not even cry out.

  “Now you have visions,” she said in that cold, still voice. She took the cup from his slack fingers, bowed over it, poured the water out upon the grass. Then she put the cup away, rose and left him to his shock and waxing terror.

  He mastered himself. He was a shaman of a line of shamans that went back to the dawn time. His power was great and would be greater still. And now he had visions.

  Visions . . .

  He staggered to his feet. Aurochs made no move to help him. The hunter’s arms were folded, his eyes flat. If Walker had ever doubted that this was his enemy, he would have known it now.

  Tonight, Walker thought. He had power such as he had not known a man could have. And all his enemies would know the force of it.

  oOo

  “Do you think that was wise?”

  Sparrow stumbled. Kestrel caught her, pulling her into his arms. She let him hold her. She had been strong enough when she faced her brother, but now that she had left him, she could feel the weakness in her knees. “Horse Goddess wanted it,” she said.

  “Horse Goddess is going to get you killed.”

  “Hush.” She could feel the anger in him, but greater than that was fear. Fear for her; fear of her brother. She tried to reassure him.

  “He still is no shaman, no matter what he thinks. These visions will confuse him.”

  “They don’t confuse you?”

  “They’re mine,” she said. “They’re part of me.”

  He lifted her suddenly, carrying her in his arms. She folded her own arms about his neck and let her head rest on his shoulder. Pride did not matter here; if people thought her weak, that was not an ill thing. Particularly if Walker thought it.

  “I’m afraid for you,” he said.

  “I suppose you should be. It’s not going to be an easy night.”

  “If you will let me—”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve told you what to do.”

  “But to stand by—to—”

  “You will do it,” she said, putting the force of command in it; but then and perhaps not so wisely she softened. “My love, my beautiful one, this is the gods’ will. Be as strong as you know how to be, and help me. Do what I ask.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He did not believe her. But he set his lips and left off arguing.

  She kissed his shoulder and sighed. “Oh gods,” she said. “I love you.”

  oOo

  It was summer in the world, but Keen’s heart was cold and bitter winter. When she looked at her son whom she—she, not his father—had named Summer, and at her lover, with whom she had broken the laws of the People so often and in such gladness, she warmed a very little. But Walker had taken away her joy. His hands on her, his eyes that had no love in them, only the certainty that he owned her—she had washed and washed, scrubbed herself till she was raw, but she could not scour away the memory.

  Cloud tried to comfort her. His touch was balm for her wounds, but it could not take the pain away. She had tried to lie with him; but when he took her in his arms, she gasped as if she were drowning, and struggled frantically to escape.

  He, blessed man, had let her go. And such pain in his face, such love and such deep anger against the one who had done this to her: oh, by the gods, she did not deserve him.

  She wanted Walker dead. It was a terrible thing, an unholy thing, but it was the truth. If he died, she would be happy. Even if she died for it—it would free the world of him.

  Tonight, she thought, it would be settled. Sparrow had said so. And Sparrow saw what no one else could see.

  58

  There was indeed a sacred place, as Sparrow had known from Old Woman’s teaching. It was a hill crowned with a thin ring of trees, and a great thing of power within: a black stone sunk deep in the hilltop, heavy and cold and throbbing with potency. The black stone in Old Woman’s belongings, Sparrow had come to understand, was such a stone. It had fallen from the sky, it was said; it was the burnt cinder of a star.

  Sparrow wore Old Woman’s piece of it in a bag about her neck. It hung between her breasts, he
avier than anything so small should be. The mother stone called to it, drawing Sparrow with it.

  They came to the hill somewhat before sundown. Sparrow bade them make camp at the hill’s foot, where a spring bubbled from beneath a rock and poured into a broad shallow pool. From there it ran in a stream down to a greater stream. There was water in plenty for the horses, and grazing, and space to pitch tents.

  The scouts found them there as the campfires flared in the sun’s sinking. They had the word that Sparrow had been waiting for: Walker’s allies were camped down the stream and over a low ridge. A Red Deer warrior had crept out of the camp as it was being made, and been seen entering the outland camp.

  Sparrow nodded, satisfied. “Good. It’s ready, then. Come full dark, we’ll ascend the hill.”

  “All of us?” Rain asked. “No guards? No one to look after the horses?”

  “Every one of us,” Sparrow said. “It’s not horse-stealing these raiders have in mind tonight.”

  Rain bowed to that. She was headstrong and inclined to argue, but only in lesser matters. In greater ones, she knew when to keep still. She was a good shaman, Sparrow thought, and would be better as she grew past her youthful impatience.

  Everything was as ready as it could be. Those with the stomach for it, and those innocent of what Sparrow expected to pass come nightfall, ate a quick daymeal while the sunset poured blood across the horizon.

  Drinks-the-Wind ate well and drank an imposing quantity of kumiss. He was the lightest of heart of any of them. He told tales and even sang, and kept the warband and the Red Deer riders well entertained.

  In the twilight he managed to leave them for a while on pretext of a full bladder. After he had relieved himself he came upon Sparrow sitting a little apart.

  She had just sent Kestrel to keep watch on Linden. Drinks-the-Wind watched him go with an appreciative eye. “That’s a handsome young stallion,” he said.

  “I do think so,” said Sparrow.

  “But you won’t marry him.”

  “No.”

  “Would he like you to?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. He seems content.”

  “You’re fortunate.” The old man laid his hand on her head, briefly: a father’s blessing. “I regret now that I took so little notice of you. There are things I could have taught you. Paths I could have smoothed under your feet.”

  “I needed the roughness,” she said, “and the lack of regard. If you had singled me out, I would have been too much preoccupied in dealing with envy. People would have noticed if I was missing—and I often was, out among the horses.”

  “That is so,” he conceded. “I still wish . . .”

  “Don’t,” she said. “The gods chose me for what I was. I bear you no ill-will.”

  He raised his brows. “What, none?”

  “None at all.” That was the truth. “The Grandmother did everything that you should have done, and in comfortable obscurity. Old Woman did the rest. In between, the horses raised me.”

  “You had no need of me at all.”

  She could hardly deny it.

  He sighed. “I matter to you now. Don’t I?”

  “You always did.”

  His glance was dubious.

  She laid a hand briefly atop his where it rested on his knee: a daughter’s blessing. “If you need forgiveness, you have it. If not . . . it’s yours regardless.”

  He looked long at her, and steadily, as if he would remember every line of her face. Then he nodded as if one of them had spoken, rose and went away.

  oOo

  She sighed and rose herself. It was time. The mare was waiting for her—the mare tonight, not the stallion, who stood aside in proper deference. Sparrow mounted her.

  That was the signal for the rest. She heard but paid no heed to the muted tumult of people gathering to follow. They were not to ride up the hill—there was no room for so many horses. She was the only one mounted, apart from Drinks-the-Wind on the old white mare who was, as it happened, the young mare’s grandmother.

  Walker was not allowed to approach the horses. He objected, but not for long: he saw soon enough that if he tarried he would be left behind. He strode angrily afoot, shouldering his way through the gathering, till they grew wise and left his path open. Sparrow could feel his temper behind her, like a spearpoint aimed at her shoulder-blades.

  She rode up the hill. The black stone was calling, heavy with the moon’s dark, dragging at the daughter-stone between her breasts. The stars were brilliant. Her eyes were a shaman’s eyes; they saw as clearly as in daylight, though their sight was different, greyer, no color in them; everything was tinged with shadow.

  Drinks-the-Wind had drawn ahead of her. She was aware of that; of Walker drawing closer behind, though his breath came short on the slope; of the people trailing in back of him, and below, in the dark, Walker’s allies approaching the camp. They would discover soon enough that it was empty, and ride up the hill.

  It was all as inevitable as the wheeling of stars overhead. She breathed deep and held it for a few heartbeats, then let it go. All her worries, her weariness, the concerns of the world, poured out with it. She was empty as Old Woman had taught her to be, open to any wind of power that blew.

  Drinks-the-Wind was even emptier than she. He was a shell, a shadow. All that was in him was joy.

  oOo

  They ascended the last steep slope and came out on the broad round level. The stone was set in it like an eye in a vast face, a black orb staring up to heaven. Sparrow slid from the mare’s back, staggering as her feet struck earth. It was humming underfoot, singing upward through her bones.

  The mare took no notice of it. Once Drinks-the-Wind had dismounted from his own mare’s back, the two white mares wandered together toward the stone. They grazed as they went, concerned as horses always were with true matters of consequence: grass, the herd, contentment. But the goddess in the younger mare was awake, focused on the stone with a deep calm, a white stillness.

  That focus held Sparrow in place. People were ascending as she had done, clambering up, panting, straggling in a circle.

  Walker was not the first among them. When he did come, he had a look of serious discontent. He had fallen; his hands and knees were bruised. The gods were not choosing to be kind.

  He was the more dangerous for it. His people were closing in behind.

  For what she must do, she must be focused; she could not let her spirit wander or fret or be distracted. Her own people knew what they were to do. She had to trust them—and pray that nothing went amiss.

  She turned her eyes and mind on the circle’s center. Drinks-the-Wind had gone to it as if drawn by a hand, and knelt by the black stone. His eyes were wide, his face empty of expression.

  The stone had him. If his spirit was not to be taken into it, she must move, and quickly.

  It was as it had been with Old Woman—as it would be in her turn, when her time had come. The great sacrifice, the willing surrender of life in the gods’ name. What Old Woman had done at midwinter, now in the new moon of midsummer the elder shaman of the northern tribes offered to do.

  Two such sacrifices within one turning of the year was a great thing, a thing of power, a thing that could shift the world. Sparrow did not know what its long outcome would be. That was for the gods. She only knew that if she did it now, and Walker did not prevent her, the world would change. Horse Goddess would not only walk in it. She would rule.

  If Sparrow failed, these people of the Grey Horse would die. And so would she. Walker’s people would overrun them all. True power would dwindle, fade. The gods would become but masks for petty men, shadows through whom such men played out their games of earthly glory.

  It was a sad grey world she saw on that path, and Walker a great lord in it. She drew the black blade against it, the knife that had been tempered in Old Woman’s blood. Drinks-the-Wind, kneeling at her feet, looked up at her and smiled.

  A weight struck her from behind. It had a vo
ice, crying out: “Stop! By the gods, stop! That’s your own father!”

  Walker’s voice. Walker’s body hurled against hers, grappling for the knife.

  Sparrow had been too slow, too little watchful. She fell hard beneath him, gasping and twisting, desperate to protect the baby in her belly.

  He flew free of her. She lay for a moment in shock, till she saw the two shapes tangled, pale hair and dark, but who the dark one was, she could not tell.

  Nor should she tarry for it. She groped in the trampled grass. The knife—goddess, where was the knife?

  There. She gripped its blade first, gasped at the sudden sting of pain, found hilt and gripped it as she stumbled to her feet. Her whole body hurt.

  She must not feel pain. She must be empty, open, for the power to come in.

  Drinks-the-Wind had not moved. He waited on fate and time and the gods. His spirit was slipping free, powerless to resist the call of the stone.

  She had no grace, no dignity, but the knife was sharp and her hand, after all, was steady. It struck straight and true, full to the heart. The last sound he made, his last utterance in the world, was a sudden, sweet ripple of laughter.

  It was a sound of pure joy. It poured strength into her. It held her up as she freed his blood to flow over the stone, and took his head to raise in tribute to the gods.

  All about her, the world burst into a torrent of sound: the roar of battle, sudden and deafening. Men grappled with men, and men with women. She saw Kestrel locked in combat with a tall fair boy, and Aurochs set upon by two men dressed in the fashion of the Cliff Lion warriors. Walker’s army had come, swarming up the hill, overwhelming the people on the summit. Their mingled war-cries shook the sky.

  A new sound pierced it, high enough and strong enough to split a man’s skull: a scream of rage.

  The mare stood on the black stone, balanced on the smooth rounded surface as no hooved creature should have been able to do. She loosed another peal, loud enough to shatter the sky. And again, a third, terrible in its strength.

  Then she smote the stone. The sound it made had never been heard in the world before: a clear, ringing clang.

 

‹ Prev