Swan, oh Swan.
My heart pounded, slowed, raced onwards. My boots paced past the leg of a couch piled with cushions and bolsters. I skirted a great wooden chair carved with stags’ heads and twining antlers; I rounded a table inlaid with sheets of coloured Italian glass. I ran my hand over the wall hangings depicting hunting scenes and the coronation of the king; foreign princes waited to give him a tribute of horses. They were smaller than our Persian horses, I thought, staring at them for a moment, noting their short legs, their height in comparison to the chariot they pulled, four abreast. Then I paced on again.
Swan!
Night crept in the doorway, lay down over the pomegranate trees. The light of oil lamps fluttered over the black and golden tiles. My head spun with fatigue and fear, and time stretched out endlessly, a sea where I was adrift; alone and lost without my white star, my white mare. I clutched dizzily at my shoulders, my arms hugging myself.
‘Kallisto?’ Arash strode in, his bodyguards at his heels. His head was high, his back stiff and straight in a robe embroidered with semi-precious stones. Light winked on the gilt scabbard of his dagger slung on a belt with a golden clasp. His beard seemed darker in the flickering light.
I flew at him. ‘Where’s my mare?’
‘Calm yourself. Be seated on the couch.’
I ignored him. ‘Where’s Swan? Tell me! You have no right to take her.’
‘His Magnificence, King of Ershi, Crown Jewel in the Golden Valley, has need of her,’ he said smoothly. He folded himself elegantly on to a couch and took a dried fig from the tray that the servant woman held out. I spun around in my restless pacing.
‘His Magnificence, the king?’
‘We are at war with the rabble from the east. All over the city, our magi are sacrificing to the Great Holy One, to Ahura Mazda, creator of every good thing, keeper of the light. What greater sacrifice, dear Kallisto, than a white mare without blemish? Imagine her, clad in her costly caparisons, led to the altar flame by the priests of the king’s temple in the palace courtyard! Such a sweet smoke would arise to heaven, don’t you think? Surely then the king and his cavalry would win the support of Aruha Mazda, and we would win this war.’
I stumbled against the table, knocking over the bowl from which I’d eaten soup. The thin ceramic, fired to a high temperature, shattered at my feet, sending fragments flying in every direction. I tried to speak. My voice was lost. I clutched at my throat with both hands, and stared at Arash in stricken silence.
‘You understand, don’t you?’ he asked at last. ‘You and I, Kallisto, can give the king what he needs most at this moment. We can bring great honour to him, and obtain great blessings from the Supreme Being. Perhaps we can bring victory to the city, and we can find favour. All I need to accomplish this is Swan.’
My throat pulsed beneath my clutching hands. My voice broke free in a shriek. ‘She is not yours to take, or to give!’
‘But she is. She is part of your bride-wealth, listed by name in your marriage contract. So she is mine to take, and mine to give to the Most Revered King so that he might sacrifice her. I will speak to the magi tomorrow and make the arrangements. You do not have to trouble yourself with the details.’
‘She is not yours to take!’ I shouted, my voice breaking into sobs. ‘You cannot do this!’
‘But I already have, and when your father returns from the Levant he will give you to me in marriage, and you will have to obey my wishes. In the meantime, Swan is housed in safety until the sacrificial ceremony.’ He gave me a mocking smile and continued, ‘You know what your nomad friends say? If you have two days more to live, take a wife and a horse. If you have only one day left, take a horse. Who knows how many days we have left to live in this war? So, I have taken a horse.’
He jumped to his feet as I rushed at him with my fists up and dodged me, shouting for his bodyguards. Although Jaison had taught me to wrestle, and although I could shoot an arrow through a straw man at fifty paces from a galloping horse, I could not fight off three men grabbing my arms from behind. Although I struggled until I thought my blood would explode from my head and my heart burst from my ribcage, I was steered out of the door and lifted on to Grasshopper. She lurched forward, snorting, as men hauled on her reins. At the front gate, someone smacked her across the quarters with a whip. She surged out into the street, already galloping as I fumbled for the reins and braced myself for a downhill plunge under dark trees. The high walls around opulent homes threw the crashing echo of hoof beats back at us, and the face of the half-moon lifted clear of the palace and shone down, pale as a white mare.
At home, it was the slave girl with the blue eyes who took Grasshopper’s reins, who led her away into the rustling barley straw to feed her and stroke her into calmness. It was Marjan who guided me upstairs with her hand pressed hard in the small of my back, who kneeled on the rug to yank off my boots and push me on to my bed, throwing the covers over me. All night, while the moon rode the sky, I tossed and moaned, fighting with demons of fear and grief the way my mother fought in the room down the hall.
Chapter 10
‘But perhaps this is the Great One’s will,’ Lila said, sitting on the end of my bed with her brows creased in a worried frown. Her long fingers smoothed the damask coverlet edged with fox fur, and her earrings glinted in the morning light. ‘You know that a horse sacrifice is the most powerful one of all. And that a white horse without blemish is the greatest offering one can make.’
I nodded, my face swollen with crying.
‘The army of the Middle Kingdom is ravaging the valley, laying waste to all the crops. And Ahura Mazda has commanded that we till the land and make it fruitful. It is the forces of Angra, the evil one, that make the land barren. And the evil one has brought the drought to us. All of the horses in this city will die if we don’t get water soon. Perhaps you can stop this from happening if you give up Swan.’
I wiped my nose across the back of my hand, smelling the sweat in my tunic sleeve. I tried to think about all the horses milling restlessly within the confines of the city walls, growing thinner, hungrier, thirstier. I tried to visualise all their foals, tugging at dried teats, flapping their fuzzy tails in agitation as their bellies shrank and pinched.
All I could see was Swan’s face, her pools of eyes.
A fresh sob broke from me. My throat was raw with crying. Lila moved closer and put her arm around me. ‘Maybe giving up Swan will win you a place with the great angels,’ she whispered.
I moaned. ‘I just want – I want Swan free and safe, I want her resting beneath the poplar trees in my mother’s pastures. I just – want her!’
Lila stroked my tangled hair. The slave girl, bought yesterday from the oil seller, hunched on the red and black rug at the foot of my bed and sneaked glances at me. Perhaps she had slept there all night; I hadn’t even noticed her until now.
Something tugged at my mind, like a fish nibbling at bait. I tried and tried to catch that slippery thought but it kept darting away. It was a memory of something that Arash had said last night in the reception hall. Suddenly, it flashed into my mind, hooked, bright and shining.
‘This is not about Swan, or about saving the city!’ I exclaimed. ‘This is not about pleasing Ahura Mazda, or about right thinking. This is about Arash’s desire for power in the royal court.’
‘We can find favour,’ he had said in his voice like beads of honey. I knew, suddenly and with firm conviction, that this was what Arash wanted. He didn’t care about saving the horses walled in Ershi. He wasn’t concerned about appealing to Ahura Mazda, Creator of All, so that the tide of war would turn and sweep the enemy from the valley, or so that Angra’s demon of drought would be chased away by Anahita’s four grey mares, Wind, Rain, Clouds, Sleet.
‘It is favour that he wants,’ I said, staring into Lila’s eyes. ‘He wants to win his way back into the king’s favour because his father is in disgrace. Arash is clever and ambitious, your mother has said so. And now he thinks that
giving Swan as a gift to the king will ensure his own rise to power within the court. He thinks that Swan’s sacrifice will wipe out the stain of his father’s drunken wager. I am sure of it!’
I kicked my feet free of the coverlet and strode to the window, almost tripping over the slave girl’s legs.
‘I must go to Arash again and demand Swan’s return! My father is still master of this house and Arash has no right to take Swan before I am married to him!’
‘I don’t know,’ Lila said with a sigh. ‘Perhaps Arash is only doing what he thinks your father would have done if he was at home. Perhaps offering up your most precious thing is what is required. My father says that the people of Ershi must fight hard to ward off the evil forces, and to struggle against them. Perhaps Swan is a weapon in this battle between angels and demons …’
I turned on my heel. ‘She is my mare, she is my protector and my totem; Berta said so! No one can give her except me, and I do not choose this sacrifice!’
I stared out of the window, trembling with doubt and anger. I waited for the sky to break open, for a thunderbolt to strike me dead for my rebellion, my selfishness, but the sky remained a clear, tender blue above the rooftops of the city. A gentle breeze wafted through the apricot trees, carrying with it the muted roar of battle. Did I hold the power to turn aside the destruction of the valley? Perhaps it for this very reason that Swan had been born in the summer of my birth, a foal so beautiful that people cried out in delight as she drifted through the flowers like a white petal, a swan’s feather. I clenched my fists against the pain of these memories.
Swan!
‘Perhaps the angels are trusting you to make this wise decision,’ Lila said.
‘Swan trusts me! Swan needs me to save her! And Arash has done this household an injustice.’
Lila rubbed her forehead, perplexed and troubled. She knew, as well as I did, that falsehood and injustice were part of the evil Angra’s great Lie. If Arash was part of this, how could my sacrifice of Swan set the balance right?
Beneath my window, the cotton awnings – becoming faded in the bright light – flapped gently in the breeze. The slave girl scratched at a scab on her arm.
‘The white horse comes from heaven,’ she whispered, her head bent over her knees. ‘It is your protector. So it is believed in my father’s tribe.’
I stared at the knobs of her spine and the sallow skin on the back of her neck. ‘What is your name?’ I asked her.
The knobs on her spine moved as she shrugged. ‘In this city I have been called Sayeh.’
I knew she would not tell me her true name, her tribal name. ‘Ask Marjan for some salve for your sores,’ I said.
‘Even if Arash’s thinking is not true, your own could be,’ Lila persisted. ‘Even if Arash wishes to win favour, you yourself could still give up Swan to help in this fight against the evil one and his dark forces.’
‘I do not choose to give her,’ I said stubbornly. Lila stared consideringly at the set of my jaw. She had known me all my life.
‘Poor Swan,’ she mumbled, for she had known Swan for as long as she could remember too. We had often ridden on Swan together, our four legs hanging over her satin sides, our faces filled with wind as she stood in the irrigation ditch behind the valley stables, drinking long draughts of mountain water. Once, Lila had come off over Swan’s shoulders at a gallop and Swan had stopped so fast that she scored long lines in the dirt, and she had bent her neck down and breathed gently on Lila’s face until she broke into laughter despite the bruises on her chest.
Now Lila’s eyes brimmed suddenly with tears. For a long moment our gazes locked together.
‘You cannot go to Arash looking like this,’ she said finally with another sigh. ‘You are not doing this the right way. You must go to him wearing your finest clothes, and your jewels, and with your hair combed, and you must speak softly and prettily to him. You must beseech and cajole him. I’ll help you get ready.’
She swept across to the wall niche, hung with a covering of embroidered fabric, and began to look through my clothes. ‘Nothing but tunics smelling of horses,’ she complained, but then she found a tunic and trousers so new that I had never worn them yet. My father had bought them from a trader returning from India through the high passes of the Hindu Kush, and they were made of lightest silk, that magical fabric guarded by the kingdom far to our east. We had no trade routes to the east for silk, and could obtain it only when it was sold into India first. No one knew how silk was made, whether it came from an exotic plant or the hair of some fabulous, foreign animal. It was a fabric so light, so liquid, that it lay upon the skin like water or like summer air.
‘This is what you will wear,’ Lila decided, holding the clothing up and inspecting it, running its folds admiringly through her hands. The silk was dyed palest green, like the green of new leaves unfurling to hide the singing birds, when the apple trees blossom. The collar, front and hem of the tunic were embroidered with silver thread, and sewn with hundreds of tiny blue beads and with white pearls, forming a pattern of vines and stars.
‘Prepare your mistress a bowl of warm water, and a cloth,’ Lila said to the slave child.
‘There isn’t enough water to wash –’ I protested, but Lila clapped her hands together gracefully, and Sayeh hurried from the room. ‘You cannot go to beg for Swan smelling like drains,’ she said. ‘You must wash your hair too. And you must beg and not demand.’
By the time that I had gone downstairs and washed in the bath room, Sayeh and Fardad had fed the mares a portion of millet each, and the girl was running a curry comb over Thunder’s grey dappled sides, sweeping it in gentle circles.
‘She must go and wash too,’ Lila commanded. ‘You cannot go riding around alone – it doesn’t look right – and you must take her with you to Arash.’
The sun was already high in the sky before everything was arranged to Lila’s satisfaction and I climbed upwards through the city again, riding on Nomad and with Sayeh following behind, seated obediently on the household mule.
‘Slaves must walk!’ Lila had exclaimed in shock when Sayeh led the mule, curry combed to a high gloss, from the stable.
‘My mother will not allow me to keep a slave,’ I had reminded Lila. ‘So I have given this girl her freedom, and she is to be my body servant. You know that my servant left this spring to marry a camel driver. Sayeh will replace her.’
Nomad’s hoof beats, and the hoof beats of the mule, fell muffled and dull in the dusty streets. They echoed from the fire temple’s pale pillars that had gleamed in the moonlight last night like birch trees. My headlong rush on Grasshopper seemed like something that had happened a long time ago; now, it was like the confused memory of a frightening dream. I had felt filled with burning courage then, and an anger that lifted me up the side of Ershi’s hill towards the palace complex as a wind lifts an eagle aloft towards the highest crags. Today, in the glaring light, I felt drained and emptied of everything but fear, despite my pale green finery, my swinging earrings and necklaces of silver and lapis lazuli that Lila had lifted from my jewel casket, and the forehead jewellery that trembled over my eyebrows as I rode along. Lila had combed my hair, curling my ringlets around her fingers, and given me jasmine perfume to rub on my neck, and had spent far too long dabbing cosmetics on to my face.
‘Look!’ she had cried finally, holding up a bronze mirror. My face had floated in its dull sheen, the face of a beautiful stranger, coloured, jewelled, and with huge blue eyes filled with trepidation.
Now the smell of my perfume mingled sickeningly with the stench of the dry drains, and a lizard scuttled from beneath Nomad’s hooves into a crack in a high wall. The closer we approached to the house of the disgraced Royal Falconer, the worse I felt. Everything seemed to float around me, and I was turning into a mirage, a shimmer of fear. What would I say when I came to the gate? Could I make my voice clear and high like Lila’s as I asked for entrance to the reception hall, and could I make it sweet and soft when I begged
Arash for Swan’s life? And what would I say, what words could I use? Shyness seized me, like a stray dog seizing a hen. I cannot do this, I thought, but I must.
For Swan.
I glanced back over my shoulder; Sayeh had washed in my leftover water, and Marjan had cut the tangles from her hair and combed it out straight, and found an outgrown tunic of mine, faded but clean, for her to wear. She rode the mule without thinking about it, her body flexible and loose, although when she stood on the ground and was spoken to, she was as stiff as a twig. I saw her lean forward and fondle one of the mule’s great ears with its pale fringing of long hair.
We were almost there now. I wiped my sweating palms on my thighs, and then gripped Nomad’s reins more firmly. Her mane had been shaved off to reveal the splendid arch of her neckline, and her jewelled neck collar glinted in the light as she paced towards the high arch of the first courtyard.
Two guards stepped in front of us, and I saw, as I reined my mare to a halt, that they were not the same men who had witnessed my humiliation the previous night. For a long moment we stared at each other, my tongue frozen against the roof of my mouth.
‘I wish to speak …’ My voice was a sigh of summer wind against the stuccoed walls. Heat flooded my face and the jewels trembled on my forehead. I cleared my throat and took a deep breath in.
‘I wish to speak with the honourable Arash, your master’s son,’ I said more loudly.
The men shook their heads, their long black beards scratching across their tunics. ‘He rode out on a sortie at dawn with the heavy cavalry. He is encamped in the hippodrome and will not return to this house tonight.’
I stared at them; were they lying? Should I ask them about Swan? What could I possibly say that would make them disloyal to their master?
‘You are s-sure he is not here?’ I asked at last, and they stared back at me impassively, sternly.
‘He is encamped in the hippodrome,’ one repeated.
The Horse Road Page 12