by Judith Tarr
The women had hidden when the young men came in, and so many of them, too; all but Taditi. It was she who called forth some few of them and bade them fetch food and drink for their sons and brothers.
Some ate, drank, and left. Too many lingered.
And more came: the kin, the elders, men of the tribe hearing word of the king’s fall, come to see him in his infirmity.
Such a thing should never have happened. People said it none too quietly as they came and went, and the king lay helpless, mute, powerless to speak in his own defense. If he had gone to the knife as some had urged him, if he had allowed himself to be sacrificed while he still had somewhat of his youthful strength, this ignominy would never have befallen him.
“It’s a bad omen for the tribe,” the elders muttered among themselves. “A king smitten down in the black heart of winter, and not to death but to a kind of death-in-life. It bodes ill for the time ahead of us.”
Worse omen, Agni thought, to speak of it, to wake terror in hearts already much afraid. And none of them, not one, had the least care for the man who lay trapped in the prison of his body. Only for the king, and for what his fall would mean to the tribe.
Agni took the gaunt cold hand in his, the one that perhaps could still feel, and warmed it as best he could. “Father,” he said, “fight this. Be strong. Your people have need of you.”
And well he knew it, too, Agni saw in his eyes.
He could do nothing. Not one thing. The gods had seen to that.
45
The king did not die that night, or any of the nights thereafter. He clung to life though it must be a bitter burden, speechless, helpless, half of him withering away even as his people watched.
Agni never left his side; and not only because it so evidently galled his brother Yama. If the king died, he wanted to be there. If the king lived, he wanted to be part of the cause of it.
He did what he could. He rubbed life into motionless limbs. He lifted that dead weight and banked it in folded hides so that it could receive guests. He prayed with a fierce intensity, storming the gods in their ancient fastnesses, demanding that they listen. “We need him. We can’t lose him. Give him back to us!”
They would not answer. Gods never would, in Agni’s experience. Unless they were Horse Goddess; and she was no kin of theirs, or friend, either.
oOo
Of a bitterly cold night, when by some trick of fate there was none but Agni to keep vigil over his father—Agni and Taditi, who had fallen asleep where she sat—a shadow slipped through the shadows of the tent and wafted sweetness over him. He gasped and nearly cried out, but a white hand silenced him. Rudira wrapped arms about him and clung, shivering with cold or perhaps with fear.
Without his willing it, his arms closed the embrace. She stroked herself against him. She was wrapped in leather and furs, he in coat and warm mantle, for even here the air was chill; and yet he felt the heat of her flesh as if they had both been naked.
“I missed you,” she breathed in his ear. “Oh, gods, I missed you.”
With a mighty effort he gathered himself together, got a grip on her arms, and thrust her away. “No,” he said, fierce and low. “We can’t do this. Not here!”
“Why not here?” she demanded, and none too softly, either. “Who’s to see? Who’ll care?”
“Everyone!” Agni stepped back out of her reach, though she could easily have leaped into his arms. “Now go, before someone catches you. You can’t be found here.”
“Nobody’s coming,” she said. “He is busy with Indra. Fat cow. He loves her because she worships the ground he spits on.”
“Father can hear you,” Agni said.
“He cannot,” said Rudira without a glance at the still form under its coverlet. “Soon he will not. They’ve decided it, you know. Since he won’t go as he was supposed to, they’ll see that he does it regardless.”
Agni’s back went stiff. “How? What will they do?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Something in his potions. A knife under the ribs. Maybe even a sacrifice, if enough of the priests agree to it. They’re all saying that it’s past time; that he has to go, or the tribe will suffer.”
“That’s king-killing,” Agni said.
“That’s the law, they say.”
“How do you know this? Who has been talking?”
“My husband,” she said, calm beside his intensity, as if it did not matter to her. And yet it must, if it had driven her to come here. “Some of his friends. A priest or two. A few of the elders. They meet in our tent, and they talk all day and into the night. They think it’s time to make an end.”
“The gods make an end,” Agni said. “Men may only do so on the festivals that the gods have ordained. Not in their own time, of their own choosing. That is murder.”
“They say it’s not,” said Rudira in her voice that was like a child’s, breathy and light. “They say the gods are agreeing to it. And they say . . .” She paused as if the words were too much to utter, but in the end she spoke them. “They say that if you try to stop them, they’ll do whatever they have to, to get you out of the way.”
Agni was not surprised. Nor was he afraid. He had expected such a thing from the moment when he saw the king fallen. “If they kill me,” he said, “the gods themselves will judge.”
“I’ll die if you die,” she said. “You mustn’t. Promise me you won’t.”
Agni dared not laugh, or he would offend her. “I’ll do my best,” he said.
She seemed to be satisfied. But she would not leave and have done. Short of carrying her out bodily and dropping her in the snow, he could not think what to do.
She slipped his guard, back into his arms again, searing him with kisses. Not for the first time—and that was not an easy thing to admit—he caught himself wishing that she had been a gentler creature. That she had not been such a white fire of a woman; so dangerous, and so irresistible.
Tonight, in this place, he could resist her. Though his father slept, or lay in a black dream that passed for sleep; though Taditi slept the sleep of the dead—nevertheless their presence gave Agni the strength to stand against her. He put her aside as gently as he could, but with immovable firmness.
“Not here,” he said, “and not now. Go. I’ll come to you when I may. I promise.”
Her face went hard and still. “You won’t come,” she said. “You’re tired of me.”
“I am not,” said Agni, “and I won’t quarrel here. Go, quickly, while it’s still safe.”
“If I go,” she said, “I won’t come back.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said.
Her eyes were terrible, her rage as great perhaps as the king’s; as if Agni had betrayed her as the king’s body had betrayed him.
And yet he hardened his heart. For her sake he did it, even more than for his own. She could not be caught here, least of all in Agni’s arms.
He saw how she willed him to relent. But he would not. She whirled in a passion of temper and ran, back the way she had come.
The air in her wake held a scent of thunder. Agni found that he had forgotten to breathe. He sucked in air till it dizzied him. His body was hot, but his rod was shrunken and cold, as if she had laid a curse on it.
Fear stabbed, that she truly had done such a thing. He thrust it away. She was in a temper, that was all, because he had never denied her before, never refused to give her what she wanted. She would wake to sense soon enough; would see that he had done it for her sake, and out of respect for the king’s presence.
oOo
In the morning Patir came into the tent where Agni sat, where the king lay unchanging. He came every day, if only for a few moments, to sit with Agni and to share with him some of the gossip of the camp. He and Rahim and certain others of Agni’s old friends were his eyes and ears in the tribe, and his voice too, in that they said the things he would have said if he could have left his father’s side.
This morning Patir’s expression, usually so c
heerful, was somber. Nor did he chatter on as he most often did. He was silent, standing by the king’s bed, looking down at him.
“Tell me,” Agni said.
Patir hunched his shoulders as if they pained him, then relaxed them slowly. “They say he’s dead,” he said, “and rotting, but the cold preserves him. The cold, and his kin who won’t admit that he’s gone.”
“My father is alive,” Agni said. “Look at his eyes. He hears us. Father, listen to him! He’s talking madness.”
The king’s eyes did not shift. They had dulled as the days passed, the rage diminished, the fierce edge blunted. There was life in them still, but it flickered low.
“It’s being said,” said Patir, “that it’s time to end it. That there should be a second sacrifice to the Black Bull; that he should go in what dignity is left him, and not wither till there’s no telling if he’s alive or dead.”
“Who says such a thing?” Agni demanded. “Who?”
“I think,” said Patir, “that you should see and hear for yourself.”
“You know I can’t leave here,” said Agni.
“I’ll watch over him,” Patir said.
Agni eyed him narrowly. This was the friend of his childhood, his yearmate, his kinsman. And he was mistrusting even this one; wondering if this was the plot, if he was to be betrayed and his father murdered for a few moments’ folly.
Patir met his stare steadily, with clear-eyed innocence. Agni drew a breath, sharp enough to hurt. “Well enough then,” he said. “Mind you don’t move till I come back.”
“Not a muscle,” said Patir.
oOo
Agni did not like to admit it, but when he left that space in which he had lived, eaten, slept for more days than he liked to count, he was glad. When he saw the sky again, he wanted to whirl in a wild dance.
But he did not. He walked calmly through a camp that was much as it always was.
It was quieter, perhaps. Somber. Troubled by the illness of its king. But children still played, boys still galloped their ponies hither and yon, and men gathered in circles to play at knucklebones or to share a skin of kumiss, and to talk.
There was always talk. Talk was the sinew that knit the tribe. Chatter of this, chatter of that. Nothing to the purpose, this deep in the winter.
While the king was indisposed, the elders did what must be done, which was not much in this season. A dispute or two, perhaps; an exchange of gifts between families whose children would wed in the spring gathering.
It was all very peaceful. And yet, as Agni walked through the camp, his hackles began to rise. There were no daggers drawn, no voices raised. If there were factions, they were the same as always: the boys, the young men, the priests, the elders, Yama’s pack of malcontents and Agni’s friends and kin.
Those last managed one way and another to join him as he walked, till there was a fair gathering of them.
That had not been Agni’s intention. He could hardly hear secrets if he went escorted by a small army of men. Indeed he did hear words spoken, but of the prince and his pride, and the king’s sickness, and other, lesser things.
Nevertheless from what he heard he gathered enough to understand why Patir had sent him out. This waiting time could not endure. Something must break, and soon.
Only the king could break it, by letting go or by rising from his sickness. Certain gatherings of people fell silent when Agni passed—a suspicious silence. He suspected that they had been speaking of this. That they contended among themselves that if the king would not die of his own accord, he should be sent to the gods by the will of the tribe.
Even the elders went suddenly still in Agni’s presence. They sat in their circle, wrapped in their bearskins, and glowered at nothing in particular. Such was power, Agni thought: to impose silence on those incorrigible talkers.
He came as to a haven, to Rahim’s father’s tent. Rahim was tending the fire in front of it, and a pack of his brothers with him. They greeted Agni with loud delight.
Rahim peered at him, searching his face; then nodded and sighed as if in relief. “Ah. It’s you. I thought you’d turned into a woman, you’ve been shut up so long.”
“You sent Patir,” Agni said.
Rahim shrugged. “He sent himself. But maybe I allowed as how that wouldn’t be an ill thing.”
Agni squatted beside his friend. One of the brothers handed him a leg of wild goose, fresh-roasted and crackling with fat. Agni bit into it hungrily.
“What have they been feeding you?” Rahim asked him. “You look fair peaked.”
“I haven’t been hungry,” Agni said between bites of goose.
“You should eat,” said Rahim. “A man fights better if he’s well fed.”
“I heard,” said Agni, “that it’s the lean and hungry man who’s more dangerous.”
“Maybe he’s crankier,” said Rahim, “but he’s weaker, too. Eat. Rakti, fetch him something to drink.”
Agni gnawed the last of the meat off the bone, cracked it and sucked the marrow. When there was nothing left to glean from it, he tossed it to a waiting dog and met Rahim’s glance. “Now tell me. Where’s the war?”
“Here,” said Rahim.
Agni raised a brow. The others drew in closer, he noticed; maybe to listen, maybe to guard the circle. Maybe both.
“Tell me,” he said.
Rahim took his time about it. He waited for his brother to bring the skin of kumiss and the cup, to fill the cup, to hand it to Agni, who drank a sip of the fiery stuff and made as if to fling the rest in Rahim’s face.
Rahim grinned, not at all repentant. But when he spoke, he was as somber as he could ever be. “Word’s passing round the camp. The elders are divided on it, but enough of them have agreed, that they’re going to do it regardless of the rest. They’re going to make another sacrifice in the dark of the moon. They’ll kill the black bull. And they’ll send the king to the gods on his back.”
Agni nodded slowly. He was not surprised or greatly shocked. “So. It’s three days to the dark of the moon. What if I forbid them?”
“You know well,” Rahim said, “they’ll laugh in your face. You may be the king’s son, but you’re not king yet. There are many who say you never will be. They’re wanting an older man, and not a raw boy who’s just won his stallion. Who, they say, has been standing in the way of the king’s departure for the gods’ country.”
“How am I doing that?”
“Who knows?” said Rahim. “Casting spells, maybe. Making bargains with the gods below.”
Agni snorted. “I’m no sorcerer,” he said, “and they’re fools if they think so.”
“They do recall,” Rahim said, “that your mother was one of the Mare’s people, and that your sister is the Mare’s own servant. They think you may partake of some of that power—especially since you came back from the long hunt with a stallion of such quality, with Horse Goddess’ mark on his forehead.”
“That,” said Agni with a touch of temper, “should be all to the good. A king should stand above other men, and so should his horse.”
“Surely,” said Rahim, and the others nodded. “But some are saying that too strong or strange a stallion is maybe an ill thing.”
“Yama,” Agni said. He spat. “Surely; and he couldn’t come home with anything better than a poor yearling, and that one dead lame in a year.”
“People want to believe him,” Rahim said. “It’s the small spirits, the envious and the puny-minded—but there are an amazing number of them. Some are elders. It’s only age that makes them elders, after all; not any kind of wisdom.”
“Why, shame!” said Agni. “Age is wisdom.”
“And we’re all fools,” Rahim said.
Agni prodded at the fire, stirring up a tongue of flame. “I think . . .’ he said. “I think I should ask my father. Whether he wants to live; or whether he prefers to die.”
“I think he’ll want to die,” Rahim said. He said it a little gingerly, as if he expected Agni to r
ise up in rage.
Agni watched the fire’s dance. Diviners could see portents in the lick and leap of flames. He was no diviner. Still he could see beyond the fire to his father’s face, that dreadful half-alive, half-melted thing. If it had been Agni . . . Agni would have preferred to die.
“I have to ask,” he said. He stood. “I do have to ask.”
Rahim nodded. “And when—if he finds a way to say yes?”
“Then that is his will,” said Agni.
oOo
Patir had not left the king’s side since he sent Agni away. He greeted Agni calmly, but Agni thought he saw a faint, wild flicker in Patir’s eyes: more than a hint of gladness to be freed from the duty he had taken on himself.
He did not leave at once—did not flee. He lingered, and Rahim who had followed Agni back to the king’s tent, and a handful of the others. Their eyes were on Agni.
Agni knelt by his father’s bed. It was only, he told himself, that he had been away; that he had looked on other, untwisted faces. The king was no more frail, if no less.
And yet the shadow on him was deeper. Maybe, thought Agni, he would cheat the priests, and die before the dark of the moon.
Agni bent and whispered in the king’s ear. “Father. Father, listen. In three days it’s dark of the moon. They’ll sacrifice the black bull then, and send you with him. But if you will it—if it’s your will to live—I’ll stand against them. I’ll defend you.”
The king did not move. No light dawned in his eyes. He lay as he had since he fell.
Agni sank back on his heels. A great weariness was on him, sudden and crushingly heavy. As if, he thought—as if the burden of the king’s life had fallen on him.
The elders had taken it on themselves, but the weight and force of it had come to Agni. Which was only fitting. Agni was the son, the heir. It was his to choose, and his to ordain; because the king himself could not speak.
“Patir,” Agni said. Even to himself he sounded faint and far away. “Go to the elders. Tell them to make the sacrifice. But tell them . . . the king may take his own way into the gods’ country.”
Patir nodded. There was something about the way he did it, as if he bent his head to a king. He took the others with him, all but Rahim, who had curled comfortably on a heap of furs, and Rahim’s brother Rakti.