by Judith Tarr
“You have it,” said Linden.
“Now? Will you do it now? Say the words. Do what’s needed.”
“But that needs nine days. And—”
“We can take nine days,” Cloud said. “We can hold a festival. A great marriage, and an alliance. The end of a world—the world that Walker would have made.”
“What is this world we make?” Keen asked.
“Anything we choose,” Cloud answered over the head of her son that Walker had made—but Cloud had been more truly a father to the child than Walker could ever be. “Anything at all.”
65
They went about it properly after all, because the women, led by Willow, raised a great objection to preparing a wedding feast on a moment’s notice. The morrow would be soon enough, Willow declared as she swept Keen away into the seclusion proper to a bride.
Cloud was greatly amused—and Keen’s father undertook to be, once he was found and informed of what his king had done with his daughter.
He was aging sadly; he had grown deaf. But he still had a wonderful roar of a laugh. “Widowed a day and she’s found herself a prince? There’s my girl!”
Cloud he seemed to like rather well, for a foreigner. No one quite ventured to remind him of what it meant that Keen was binding herself to a foreign king’s heir. The woman went with her husband, wherever he happened to be.
oOo
Tonight the bride was hidden among the women. The bridegroom found himself celebrated among the men, a nightlong carouse that struck him as strange. “There are no women,” he said to Kestrel. “It’s only men.”
Kestrel was corrupted. He was missing lighter voices, too, and beardless faces, and sweet rounded bodies caressed by the firelight. One body in particular . . .
“Do you think,” Cloud asked him, “that your people would object terribly if I disappeared before middle night and found my way to my lady? She’s put on a brave face, but what that man did to her—it left scars.”
“You’ll not be let near her till tomorrow,” Kestrel said.
Cloud’s face darkened. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s custom.” Kestrel spoke again quickly, because Cloud looked ready to leap up and charge like a bull through the crowd of revelers. “My mother is with her. Whatever comfort she needs, whatever healing she will accept, Willow will give her. Sometimes,” Kestrel said carefully, “it’s not a man a woman needs to talk to. Even the man who holds her heart.”
“Because it was a man who wounded her?”
Kestrel nodded.
Cloud’s brows drew together. “Is she kept away from all men? Or only from me?”
“Well,” Kestrel said, “men who are her kin can—”
“You are her kin,” Cloud said. “She’s in your mother’s tent. Will you go? Will you speak to her for me?”
“I shouldn’t—”
“Speak to your mother, then. Let her carry the message.”
Kestrel sighed. Cloud was clearly determined, and Kestrel, if he was honest with himself, was in no mood to linger over kumiss and bawdy songs. Time was when he would have gone hunting to get away from it, but he was a king’s companion and a shaman’s lover. He had to stay in the camp at least until Keen was well and truly married.
oOo
The world was a quiet place away from the king’s circle, a vault of stars over the camp, a whisper of wind. Willow’s tent—there; Kestrel was corrupted again, calling it his mother’s rather than his father’s—showed a gleam of light within.
He had heard that the women could carouse as long and hard as the men. But this was a quiet gathering, and small: Willow, Sparrow, one or two of his father’s lesser wives, and, most oddly, White Bird.
She had put aside her mad wild look and returned to the seeming of a proper wife. But the eyes she turned on Kestrel were as strange as ever. Not quite shaman’s eyes, but not simple mortal woman’s either.
Keen sat in the middle of them with Summer asleep beside her. Her face was unexpectedly serene. It brightened at Kestrel’s coming; her smile had no shadow in it.
“Are you well?” he asked her.
She nodded. “It’s over, you see,” she said. “He can’t touch me ever again.”
Kestrel glanced at his mother. She shrugged slightly. It would be as the gods willed, her expression said.
Keen seemed much calmer than Kestrel could remember—gods, since she was a child. “Cloud sent me,” he said. “He’d come himself, if he could.”
“He would,” Keen said. Her smile deepened and warmed. “Is he terribly worried?”
“He won’t be, once I take word back to him,” Kestrel said.
“My poor love.” Keen shook her head. “I scared him, I know. I was so cold inside. But now that one is dead and I have Summer back, all the cold is gone. When we join hands tomorrow, I’ll have to take care, or the sun will have a rival.”
“You’re happy,” Kestrel said.
It blazed in her. It made her laugh. “Oh! Is that what it is? I keep wanting to sing.”
“Happiness,” said Kestrel. He stooped and kissed her forehead. “For Cloud,” he said, “who will give you more and better tomorrow. And for me—” He took her hands in his and kissed them, and held them briefly to his heart. “I’m glad to see you glad.”
oOo
Sparrow went with him back to the king’s circle, and waited in the shadows while he delivered Keen’s message. Cloud’s joy was as great as Keen’s. It made him all the more eager for the morrow; but he was a strong man. He could wait.
Kestrel did not need to be strong, nor did he need to wait, either. He walked with Sparrow toward the river, close enough to feel her warmth, but not touching. Not yet. When they had come to the bank, in the rustle of reeds and the lapping of water he said, “I don’t suppose you want to make it proper, too.”
“No,” said Sparrow. She stooped and dipped a handful of water and drank.
“Why?” he asked. “Because a wife stays with her husband?”
“Because I can’t stay, and if you want to—”
“I told you,” he said. “Wherever you go, I go.”
“You’d leave the People for me?”
“I already did.”
“Do you really want a wife?”
“I want you,” he said. “Whatever you call yourself, whatever you are to the world. If you won’t be a wife, then I’ll have you as a lover, or mistress, or priestess and king. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but you.”
She turned suddenly and wrapped her arms about him, pressing close. He could feel the shape of the child in her, protesting mildly at the sudden narrowing of its world. “I could live without you,” she said, muffled against his chest, “but I would much rather not.”
“I,” he said, “have forgotten how to live apart from you.”
She raised her head. “That’s not sensible.”
“No,” he said.
“You’re a hunter. You can’t be living constantly in my shadow. You certainly can’t—”
He silenced her with a finger on her lips. “I’m not that besotted. I’ll run off often enough, no fear of that. But I’ll always come back.”
“Promise.”
“By my heart. By this child between us.”
“Your daughter,” she said.
His heart leaped like a stag. “It is? Truly? You see it?”
“I see her,” Sparrow said. “She looks like you.”
“Ah, poor child.”
“She’ll be beautiful when she’s grown.”
“Maybe. But the getting there . . .”
“Oh, hush,” said Sparrow, half in exasperation, half in unwilling amusement.
“Well then; what shall I name her? It should be something lovely, but not too soft. Maybe—”
“I shall name her,” Sparrow said. “You may name the sons.”
“Sons? There will be—”
“If you’re willing to help me make them.”
“Sons?” Kestrel coul
d not stop repeating it. “And—daughters?”
He had not known there was tension in her until he felt it ease. She sighed against him. “You don’t mind,” she said. “That the firstborn is—”
“You expected me to mind?”
“Men are strange,” she said. “Even you. And when it comes to sons, you can be impossible.”
“A man shouldn’t want sons?”
“A man should want daughters, too. Except he seldom does.”
“Your father wanted you.”
“He did, didn’t he?” She let him go, turning slowly, face to the stars. “This one is a shaman, too, or more than a shaman. Priestess; Horse Goddess’ servant. And the next one a hunter. And the one after that—”
Kestrel stopped her with a kiss. “I shall be delighted to help you make any and all of them. But tonight, if you please, we’ll keep for ourselves. And tomorrow . . .”
“Tomorrow Grey Horse and White Stone unite in marriage.” Sparrow smiled. “They don’t know yet what that will do. Women riding horses—that’s only the beginning.”
“A good beginning.”
“Very good indeed.” Her smile widened. “Oh, the things I see!”
“Will you be letting Linden keep the stallion?”
“The stallion chose him,” Sparrow said. “But the royal herd—that, we take back with us, as Keen’s marriage-gift.”
Kestrel’s breath hissed between his teeth. “You’ll ask for that? That’s almost worse than taking the kingship from the People!”
“Almost,” she said. “We won’t take them all. We’ll leave a mare or two. And the stallion. Linden will be content with that. The rest will learn to be. It’s only mares, after all, and an excess of fillies.”
“Only mares.” Kestrel shook his head. “Someday, my love, the men of the People will wake and see what you’ve done to them.”
“I’ll wait eagerly for that,” she said.
With a sudden movement she stripped off her shaman’s tunic, standing naked in starlight. The shaman-marks on her breasts and belly seemed to stir like living things. She stretched, whirled about, danced along the riverbank.
Kestrel caught her sudden wild mood, the joy that was in her, the dizzy gladness. He shed his own garments and laughed for the pleasure of the night wind on his bare skin. When she leaped into the water and struck off swimming, he was hard on her heels.
They played like otters, tumbling, laughing, till Kestrel swallowed a gulletful of water and came up gasping. He scrambled toward the shore, found purchase for his feet, and paused to breathe.
She floated into his arms. She had always swum more easily than he, as if water were her element. Truly, she did look like an otter, with her wide dark eyes and her round mischievous face. He, he supposed, looked like a bedraggled falcon, all wet feathers and dampened dignity, and water dripping from his long arched nose.
She did not seem to find him unpleasant to look at, though her eyes danced upon him. “Beloved,” she said, “it’s a long life we’ll have together, and laughter enough to brighten a world.”
“That is true seeing?”
She kissed him so long and so well that he almost forgot what he had asked. But in the end she answered him. “Pure truth,” she said, “in the goddess’ name.”
Copyright & Credits
LADY OF HORSES
The Epona Sequence, Vol. 2
Judith Tarr
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-383-6
Copyright © 2000 Judith Tarr
First published: Forge, 2000
Production Team: Cover Design, Pati Nagle; Proofreader, Mary Anne Mohanraj; Ebook Formatter, Vonda N. McIntyre
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Digital version: 20140405vnm
www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
P.O. Box 1624, Cedar Crest, NM 87008-1624
About the Author
Judith Tarr holds a PhD in Medieval Studies from Yale. She is the author of over three dozen novels and many works of short fiction. She has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and has won the Crawford Award for The Isle of Glass and its sequels. She lives near Tucson, Arizona, where she raises and trains Lipizzan horses.
Other Titles by Judith Tarr
Novels
Ars Magica
Alamut
The Dagger and the Cross
Living in Threes
Lord of the Two Lands
A Wind in Cairo
His Majesty’s Elephant
Series
The Epona Sequence
White Mare’s Daughter
Lady of Horses
Avaryan Rising
The Hall of the Mountain King
The Lady of Han-Gilen
A Fall of Princes
Avaryan Resplendent
Arrows of the Sun
Spear of Heaven
Tides of Darkness
The Hound and the Falcon
The Isle of Glass
The Golden Horn
The Hounds of God
Nonfiction
Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting it Right
BVC Anthologies
Beyond Grimm
Breaking Waves
Brewing Fine Fiction
Ways to Trash Your Writing Career
Dragon Lords and Warrior Women
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy
The Shadow Conspiracy II
About Book View Café
Book View Café is a professional authors’ publishing cooperative offering DRM-free ebooks in multiple formats to readers around the world. With authors in a variety of genres including mystery, romance, fantasy, and science fiction, Book View Café has something for everyone.
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Book View Café authors include New York Times and USA Today bestsellers, Nebula, Hugo, and Philip K. Dick Award winners, World Fantasy and Rita Award nominees, and winners and nominees of many other publishing awards.
www.bookviewcafe.com
White Mare’s Daughter
The Epona Sequence, Book 1
Sample Chapter
Judith Tarr
www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
January 28, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61138-356-0
Copyright © 1998 Judith Tarr
THE SEEKER
I: HORSE GODDESS’ SERVANT
1
From far away she heard them, echoing across the steppe: the drums beating, swift as a frightened heart. The voices were too far, too thin to carry above the shrilling of the wind, and yet in her belly she knew them, deep voices and high, strong and wild.
Blood and fire! Blood and fire! Fire and water and stone and blood!
They had made the year-sacrifice, one of many that they would make in the gathering of the tribes. On this day, from the rhythm of the drums, it would be the Bull. Yesterday, the Hound; tomorrow, the Stallion, with his proud neck red like blood.
She laid a hand on the Mare’s neck. In the rolling of years it would be white, like milk. Now it was the grey of the rain that had fallen in the morning, shot with dapples like flecks of snow. The Mare snorted lightly and tossed her head. She could smell the stallions. It was her season, the strong one that waxed with the moon in spring, and would wax and wane slowly with each moon all the summer long,
and in winter sleep.
She snorted again and pawed, impatient to be going. Her rider eased a little on the broad grey back, freeing her to spring forward. The wind tangled in thick grey mane and silver tail; caught the long thick braid that hung to the rider’s buttocks and sent it streaming out behind. The pounding of hooves blotted out the drumbeats. They raced the wind then, swift over the new grass, into the westering sun.
oOo
The gathering of the people spread wide in a hollow of the steppe, where a river ran through a cutting that deepened with the years. Winter’s storms brought down the banks nonetheless, and the herds of horses and cattle made broad paths to the water.
The herds were the girdle that bound the camp. The center, the soft body, divided into circles of camps, each with the staff and banner of its tribe: black horsetail, red horsetail, spotted bull’s hide, white bull’s horns, and three whole handfuls of others; and in the center, in the king-place, the white mare’s tail catching the strong wind of spring.
Agni was on his way to the king’s circle, but taking his time about it. The dancing, that had begun where the hill of sacrifice rose dark with blood, had wound away toward the river. He had been part of it when it began, before the king’s summons brought him back in toward the white horsetail. His father was entertaining the chiefs of tribe and clan in the feast of the Bull, and had called on Agni to stand at his right hand. Rumor had it among the tribes that the old man was going to name an heir at last; and he had called for Agni, the avowed favorite of all his sons.
Agni was sensible of the honor, and of what it meant—how could he not be? But he dearly loved the dance, and the delights that came with it. He was none too eager to forsake it for the dull dignity of the elders in their circle.
As he made his somewhat desultory way past the tents in the center, a hiss brought him about. Someone had lifted the back of a tent. A white hand beckoned from beneath, and a slender arm heavy with ornaments: carved bone and stone, beads strung on leather, and one woven of horsehair that he knew very well.