by Judith Tarr
He was the king of the horsemen, Skyfather’s own. Day vanquished night. The sun made the moon grow pale. No woman was ever strong enough to stand against a man.
Mika was shuddering with terror. Only Agni’s strong grip kept him from wheeling and bolting.
“What is this?” Agni demanded in a whisper.
Mika could not answer. It was Taditi who said, “They’re calling on the moon to make them strong.”
“To destroy us?”
Taditi’s face was hidden in shadow, but her voice was as dry as it had ever been when he was being an idiot child. “These people don’t think like men.”
“Then what are they doing?”
“Facing what they have to face,” Taditi said. “They’ve accepted you. It can’t be easy to be conquered.”
Agni wanted to fling doubt in her face, but his eye was drawn inexorably toward the dance of the women. One had swayed and circled to the center, one whose belly was as round as the moon. Her hair was dark in the pallid light, but a different darkness than the rest. She spread her arms wide and let her head fall back.
Her skin was as white as the moon’s own face. Her breasts were like milk. She was more beautiful than he had ever known, and unreachably remote.
He began to understand Mika’s terror. But he was neither child nor male of this country. With fear came the hot flare of anger. His sister had turned traitor to her tribe and people. And now he saw her standing as a person of power among the enemy.
His mind willed to stride forward, to seize her, to carry her off where she belonged. But his body was frozen where it stood. Under the sun he could have done it. Under the moon he had no such power.
Nonetheless the moon could not drive him away, nor could the sight of so many women dancing the moon’s glory. He did not believe that it could strike him blind, or that he would go mad. He was stronger than that.
He watched it through to its end, till the long skein unwound itself and the dancers wandered apart. They did not speak to one another. They simply went away, as if they had done all that they intended, and saw no need for idle chatter.
Sarama did not come to Agni, or anywhere near him. But he was barred from going after her.
He recognized the woman who stood in his way. She was the perfect shape of one of their goddess-images, great breasts, great curving hips, great swell of thighs. But unlike the images, her face was no blank immortal mask. This was vivid life, scowling at him, looking on him with little liking and less admiration. She planted her fists on those ample hips and spat words at him.
Mika was gone, vanished. There was no one to tell Agni what those words meant. But he could well guess, from her expression and the way she spoke them. She was not at all pleased that he had intruded on the women’s magic.
He did not even think before he did the thing he had always done with angry women: relaxed, lounged a bit, put on his most winning smile.
It won nothing from her. She cursed him with a glance, turned on her heel and stalked away through the dappling of moonlight.
She was, he thought, rather amazingly beautiful. His taste had always run to the very slender and the very fair. She was as far from either as it was possible to be. And yet she set his blood to singing.
He sighed faintly. That she despised him, he had no doubt at all.
He was not accustomed to being despised. Hated, yes; his own brother hated him. But women had always doted on him.
These women had no earthly use for him. He learned quickly—almost before the sun was up—what it was to be king in Three Birds. People did as he asked, waited on him as they must judge proper, but there was no warmth in it. No one sought him out. No one came to him as one comes to a king. That they left to the tribesmen.
oOo
He refused to be dismayed. He would wait them out. The Mother had left her house to him and gone to live elsewhere—not far at all, he discovered, and in the same circle of the city. Some of her servants had stayed behind. But not, rather to his relief, the one he disliked so cordially. Not the man who shared Sarama’s bed.
Nor Sarama, either, for the matter of that. Agni met her coming out of the house that the Mother had taken, the second morning after he came to Three Birds. She was dressed to ride, with her hair in a plait, as modest as if she had never danced bare-breasted in the moonlight.
She could hardly fail to notice him, since he blocked her path. When she stepped sideways, he stepped with her. She sighed audibly and stood still. “What do you want?” she demanded.
“Is that all you’ll give me?” he shot back. “A cold glance and a hard word?”
She arched a brow in the way she had had since she was old enough to find him exasperating. “You come as a conqueror. Should I be falling at your feet? Are you asking that I be grateful?”
“Ah,” he said. “You were not happy that the Mother surrendered to us.”
“I was not happy,” she said with quivering calm. “We were going to drive you back.”
“I might have argued that,” he said.
“I’m sure,” said Sarama.
This time when she stepped around him, he let her. He turned with her and walked beside her.
She did not run away from him, but neither did she match her steps to his. She did as she pleased. He could follow or not, as it pleased him.
He chose to follow. “Maybe,” he said after a while, “the Mother acknowledges that Skyfather is stronger than her Lady.”
“He may think he is,” said Sarama.
“He made me king here,” Agni said.
“The Mother allows you to be king here.” She looked as if she would be stopping there, but after a moment she could not resist adding, “She is a mother. So is the Lady. Won’t a mother choose to indulge her child, if she sees fit?”
“I never knew you despised us,” Agni said.
She shot him a glance of pure annoyance. “I don’t despise you.”
“You hate me, then. Why? Because I came here?”
“I am angry with you,” she said, biting off the words. “Why? What possessed you? You had a whole tribe to be king of, back among the White Horse people. Or wouldn’t the old man die soon enough for you?”
Agni could not fault her for saying such things. She did not know. And yet each word was pain, like the stabbing of thorns in tender flesh.
He did his best to hide the pain, to speak levelly, even lightly. “The old man is dead. He died in the winter.”
That took her aback. She was too angry, still, to be gentle. “So you left the tribe to its own devices and went chasing a traveller’s tale?”
“As you did?” He caught her glance and held it. “Listen to me, and listen well. I know you forbade me to follow you. But I was driven out, and when men stopped driving me, the gods took up the goad.”
“Driven out?” There: he had her attention at last, and some of her old fierceness on his behalf. “What did they do to you?”
“They accused me of a thing I never did. Of taking a woman by force, and getting her with child, and being her death.”
He held his breath. Her face had grown terrible. If she believed the lie, if she condemned him, he did not know what he would do. Fall on his spear, maybe.
She said, soft and very precise as she did when she was purely, sheerly angry, “Whoever believed that of you was a perfect idiot.”
“Yama believed it,” Agni said.
“Yama is king?”
He nodded. The taste in his mouth was bitter.
There was a pause. They had walked out past the last circle of the city and come to the rings of fields about it. She slowed, plucked a stalk of wheat that was taller and thicker and richer than any wild grain that Agni had seen, and stripped it of its grains. She chewed on them, frowning at the air.
“So,” she said at last. “He did it to you, to seize your inheritance. Or his mother did. I doubt he’s clever enough to do up his own trousers, let alone plot to destroy a prince.”
“His
mother,” said Agni. And made himself say the rest: “And one of his wives.”
She did not ask which one. For that small mercy Agni was grateful. “They drove you out. And you did the only thing you could think of, which was to come running to me.”
“That was not what I did at all.”
She planted fists on hips and thrust out her chin. “You did, too.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
He did not know which of them burst out laughing first. She fell on him as she had always done, bore him back and down, and sat on him till he cried for mercy. She did not let him up then, either, but grinned down at him with all her old wickedness.
He reared up, overpowered her, rolled through the green wheat.
They fetched up against a pair of feet. Sturdy feet, solidly planted on the rich earth.
Agni looked up. Danu stared down.
Agni grinned and bounded to his feet and held out his hand. Sarama took it with no evidence of embarrassment and let him pull her to her feet. They stood hand in hand like scapegrace children, but Agni was determined to be no more discomfited than Sarama.
She at least had stopped fixing him with the cold stare that had so dismayed him. It was much as it had been when they were younger, the two of them against the world, and none to come between them.
But this man was the father of her child. It could not be the same, nor could it be as simple.
Sarama slipped her hand out of Agni’s grip even as he slackened it, and said to Danu in the language of the tribes, “Good morning, man of Three Birds.”
“Good morning, woman of the horsemen,” Danu said in a rather acceptable accent. “And man of the horsemen,” he added after a pause.
Agni inclined his head. He would be civil for his sister’s sake.
Sarama saw: her eye glinted sidelong. “We’re going to ride,” she said. “Will you come?”
Danu nodded. Agni almost laughed. It was obvious what he was doing: protecting his woman from the interloper. Did he think that they had been doing more than playing like pups in a litter? Was he perhaps jealous of his woman’s own brother?
Maybe he had cause, though it was not as he might think. No lover could be what Agni was to Sarama: twinborn, brother and blood kin.
But neither could Agni be to her what this man was. Agni glowered at Danu, who glowered obligingly back.
“Stop that,” she said, setting her body between them. “I’ll not have you fighting over me, now or later. Will you swear to that?”
Agni did not want to. Nor, patently, did Danu. But she made them swear. It did not increase the amity between them, but it forced a truce.
oOo
Danu could ride as he could speak the tongue of the tribes: not exceptionally well, not as one who has done it from childhood, but well enough for use. Well enough indeed to ride the Mare, who by law and custom should carry none but Sarama.
Agni did not have to suffer that. He sent one of the boys to the remounts and had him bring back something suitable: a big-bodied gelding, rather plain but sturdy and sound. “My gift to you,” Agni said, he hoped without irony.
Danu accepted the horse with fair grace. The colt—his colt—was much less pleased. When Danu mounted the gelding, the colt lunged at the beast, jealous to the bone and making no pretense about it.
Danu was openly astonished. It was Sarama who headed off the angry colt, setting the Mare between and bidding him remember his place. He veered off with ears flat back, casting baleful glances at the horse who dared to carry his man.
“Now you see,” Agni said rather dryly, “why some of us use our remounts less often than we should.”
“I don’t ride him,” Danu said. “Sarama says not to, till he’s older.”
“He doesn’t understand that,” Agni said. “The Mare he endures, because she’s a mare, and the Mare.”
“This is going to be difficult,” Danu said.
“He’ll resign himself to it.” Sarama cut off what else either of them would have said. “Here, try your gelding’s paces. Yes, just as I taught you with the Mare. A little harder, there; he’s not as soft to the touch as she is. Yes, yes. Just so.”
Agni followed on Mitani, watching the two of them. They did not act like lovers: no clinging to one another, no languishing glances. And yet there was no denying the shape of her, or the care she took with the Mare, sitting lightly, venturing nothing outrageous. Her pupil could not have done it in any case, but that would not have stopped Sarama.
So much was different. And yet so much was the same. Sarama had not forgiven Agni for coming here—but she seemed to have decided to accept it. There was, after all, no changing it.
70
Agni did not want to leave Sarama alone with her lover, but a boy came running with somewhat that Agni must do, and there was no evading it. That led to something else, and then to something else again, the cares of kingship catching and holding him till well after sunset.
He went to bed alone as before. As before, the women were all elsewhere—but tonight they were in their own houses. He had expressly forbidden his men to seek them out. If they sought out this man or that—well, and what man was strong enough, or fool enough, to resist?
No one had sought him out. The Mother had made it rather clear by her distance that she had no such ambitions. The younger women seemed less than enthralled with him. Nor had he been drawn to any one of them.
He caught himself thinking unaccountably of the Mother’s heir, the one whose name was Tilia. If this had been a conquered tribe, Agni would have taken her to wife. That was custom for a conqueror, to take the conquered chieftain’s eldest daughter, and others of his daughters too if he were so inclined. With that marriage, that joining of his blood to theirs, he became fully and completely king of the tribe.
And suppose, Agni thought, that he did this. That he married the Mother’s heir. The people would have to accept him then. Would they not? They could hardly ignore him if he stood beside their own ruler.
He lay on his back in the darkened room, listening to the sounds of people sleeping about him: Patir’s soft snore, Mika’s toss and murmur, Taditi’s slightly rough breathing. He could marry that sullen, beautiful woman. Oh yes, he could do that. There was nothing in marriage that required a woman to love her husband, only to honor and obey him. Even that one could be taught to do as much, surely.
His blood quickened at the thought of her in his bed—in this bed, a warm and ample armful. She might not come willingly, but she would stay because she wished to. He had a gift for that; in solitude, to himself, he could admit it.
He went to sleep greatly pleased with himself, and dreamed of her—glaring at him and bidding him begone, but she had no power to banish him. Only Skyfather had that.
It was, he decided, a good enough omen. He carried it with him into waking, and set out at once to find the Mother.
oOo
She sat on the step of the house that she had taken, in a circle of children, instructing them in something that held them rapt. They were not, Agni was interested to note, all or even mostly female. Small boys had teaching, too, it seemed, just as the girls did. It was very different from the tribes.
Agni had been learning a little of these people’s language—by accident, almost, as Tillu and later Mika spoke for him, and he, standing idly by, began to listen for the words, to try to match them to the ones that he had spoken. It was a scattered, ill-matched collection he had, but sometimes it made a little sense.
The Mother was speaking simple words, words that children could understand. Agni found he could fit them together as often as not. They were stories, teaching-tales: why the thunder rolled, and what made the rain.
Skyfather had no part in it here. It was all the Lady, and the winds who were her servants, and the rain that waited on her pleasure.
He was noticed; there was no way he could not be. But the Mother did not pause for him, nor did the children cease their listening. He crouc
hed on his heels just outside of the circle, and listened to the stories.
They grew easier for a while; then his head began to ache. It was difficult, making sense of words in a language that he barely knew.
The Mother ended her teaching soon after he tired of it. The children were greatly disappointed, but she was adamant. “That’s enough for today,” she said. “Now go, show your mothers how you’ve learned to serve the Lady.”
They left then, with many glances back. All but Agni. He had not brought anyone with him who could speak the language. He began to think that he had done a foolish thing.
The Mother said, “Come here.”
A woman did not command a man; it was not done. And yet Agni obeyed her, because it pleased him. He settled on one knee beside her, searching her face as she searched his.
She seemed to like what she saw: her eyes glinted a little. She was not as old as Taditi, though she was still old enough to be his mother. He could see her daughter Tilia in her, but rather more of her son, the beauty blurred and thickened by age but still perceptible.
What she saw in him he could not tell. Strangeness, maybe. A likeness to his sister—whether that was good or ill.
He could see no hatred in her. She did not have the look of a conquered creature.
And yet she had given him this city. She must know what she had done, and at least begin to understand it.
She let him know by signs that she wanted him to help her up. He did it for courtesy, as he would with an aunt or a grandmother. Her grip was warm and surprisingly strong, but soft, as if she did not know or care to know her strength.
In that she was like all her people. She walked, and he walked with her.
It was clear soon enough that she was taking him toward the temple. She did not take him into it—rather to his disappointment; no man ever walked there, that much he had been assured of. But there had never been a king in this city before, either.
She led him past that carved and painted marvel, rounding the curve of the city and turning outward from it. He had not been in that part before. It was as like the rest as one part of the wood was like another, painted wooden houses, sturdy dark-haired people, few dogs and no horses, and all the cattle were out in the fields.