Lady of Horses (11 page)

oOo

On the night of the new moon, at last, Walker stayed away.
His time was the dark of the moon, as Drinks-the-Wind’s was the full; he worked
his greatest magics then, and performed his strongest rites. And, more to the
point, he fasted and denied himself his wife’s body, the better to receive the
gods’ messages.

Keen did not like to be as glad as she was that he would not
come to her for three days; perhaps longer if his visions were particularly
strong. Time was when she hated every night they were apart, and yearned for
him, and barely slept in her cold and solitary bed. But he had been odd of
late, abstracted, short-tempered; he was inclined to take her and spend himself
in her and turn away before she began to be satisfied.

Maybe the rite and the visions would calm his spirit and
restore the husband she loved. And while they did that, she would see for
herself what took Sparrow away from her father’s tent every night.

Keen had to lie in wait, which she was better at than some
of the men might have liked to know: she and Sparrow and Wolfcub had played at
being hunters when they were small, and Keen remembered. She settled herself in
shadows not far from the elder shaman’s tent, so placed that she could see both
the front and the back of it. The camp quieted about her. Some of the men were
celebrating a successful hunt, noisily, off by the young men’s place, but here
was dark. The camp dogs sniffed about her for a while; she held still, and they
went away. Nothing else troubled her but the small things that bit in the
night; and she had rubbed herself with a salve that kept most of them away.

She waited long, so long that she was sure, after all,
Sparrow would not go out. Her legs were cramped with sitting, and her back had
begun to ache. The night chill crept into her bones.

Still she waited. Patience, Wolfcub had taught her, was a
hunter’s best virtue. “And just when you think the quarry will never come, it
does. Then be ready, or it will escape.”

At first she was barely aware of the flicker in back of the
tent, but she was alert; she fixed on it. A shadow had crept out from beneath
the painted leather wall, moving so swift and so soft that it was all but
imperceptible. But Keen had sharp eyes in the dark.

She eased to her feet, taking great care not to groan or
stumble, and followed the shadow.

It was quiet and it was quick, but it was not particularly
wary. Maybe many nights’ safety had lulled it. It never looked back, nor seemed
to know that someone followed in its track.

It went straight out of the camp, over the long hill and out
by a way Keen knew well enough. The herds were there, north of the camp and
spreading along a lesser river that flowed to the great one: goats closest,
then cattle, and out beyond them, ranging farthest, the horses. In this, the
dark of the moon, the priests would be among the stallions, celebrating rites
that no woman might see or speak of, but all the women knew of them.

But the priests were not among the mares, and it was to the
mares that the shadow went. Far in among them, fearless and unmolested, to the
farthest of them all. To the king-herd, the god-herd, the herd that belonged to
the great lord of stallions himself.

Keen should not have followed, but by then her feet were
bound to the track, and her spirit was fixed on the shadow that was, that must
be, Sparrow. The horses moved about her, quiet, unalarmed, though a mare snorted
warning when she passed too close to a sleeping foal.

Keen had never gone among the horses before. Some of the
girl-children did it, she had heard, but she had always thought that was
boasting. Anyone who profaned the horses so could not but be marked by it.
Child and woman, she had kept the proper distance, never going closer than she
needed in order to gather dung for the fire, and keeping out of the way when
the young men rode whooping through the camp, or a horse escaped and ran among
the women and children.

Now she was close enough to touch the sacred hides if she
dared, threading her way through big soft-breathing bodies. Their warmth was
clearly perceptible. Their smell was sharply familiar. Men brought it back with
them from the herds, pungent and rather pleasant.

She was not afraid. She was past that. No lightning fell
from the sky. No priest leaped out of the shadows to strike her down for her
transgression.

She had lost her quarry. But her spirit knew where it had
gone. Starlight and night wind told her, and a surety in her bones.

The white mares, the strange ones, glimmered under the
stars. Their dark children moved among them, grazing or dozing or lying in the
grass.

One shadow was smaller than the rest, and moved differently.
She saw it clear against a pale and shining shape, then caught her breath: it
was on the horse, sitting on its back, turning its face to the stars. The white
horse neither reared nor bolted in rage. It stood very still. Its head was up.
It was watching Keen.

There was nowhere to hide. The horses had drawn away as if
to expose her. She stood alone on the hilltop.

The white horse approached her. Sparrow sat on its back,
easy as one of the men, which told Keen that this was far from the first time
she had ridden the horse. Her face was a pale blur, its expression unreadable.

Then Sparrow did a strange thing. She held out a hand. Keen
took it without thinking. The horse moved. Sparrow pulled. Keen had to do
something or fall under the horse’s hooves.

When the flurry was over, Keen sat, breathing hard, with
aching ribs and hammering heart, behind Sparrow on the back of the—mare?

Mare. Of course it would be. The stallions were all away
with the priests. She was broad and warm and terribly alive. And Keen was
sitting on her, clinging for dear life to Sparrow’s middle.

Sparrow pried her grip loose, but let her hold on less
strangling-tight. The slight tensing in her body was all the warning Keen had
before the mare began to move.

Later Keen would wonder if that forbidden ride had been,
after all, a dream. A woman could dream of riding, though she could never do
it, and though she must never tell the men. But to do it—that was beyond any
woman’s reach or daring.

It was as impossible as it was true. She was flying over the
grass on the thin edge of panic, with Sparrow in front of her, as calm as if
she did this every night—which surely was the truth. Neither of them had spoken
a word, nor had the mare made a sound.

It was a terrible thing they did, a forbidden thing, a
violation. It was beautiful. It was glorious.

Keen could not leap from the mare’s back: she did not dare.
That made her a coward, but so be it. Women did not have to be brave as men
did. They merely had to be wives, and be obedient, and break no laws. It should
not have been difficult. Except that she was here, and breaking one of the
great laws of the People, because her friend had done it before her.

oOo

They did not ride long by the stars’ turning, though to
Keen it was forever. They stopped apart from the herds, with no other horse to
be seen, and no human thing, only the steppe and the stars.

Keen slipped helplessly from the mare’s back. Her knees
buckled. She fell and lay in the grass. She was dizzy and sick. Her heart beat
so hard, she must surely die.

And yet after a while she succumbed to a desperate calm. The
mare stood over her. Sparrow sat on the white back, gazing down. Keen could not
meet those shadowed eyes. “You should have taken a lover,” she said, “as
everyone thinks you’ve done. It’s far less deadly than this.”

“Will you tell them?”

“No!” The word had been startled out of Keen, but once it
was spoken she did not try to call it back. “No, I won’t. But someone will find
out. I can’t be the only one who’s curious.”

“You’re the only one who cares enough to follow.”

“I’m the first who’s cared to follow.” Keen sat up shakily.
Her thighs ached and burned. The earth wanted to surge and swell like a horse’s
back. “Why?”

Sparrow did not play at stupidity. She answered the question
as Keen had meant it. “I was given the gift.”

“By the mare?”

Sparrow nodded.

“But—”

“Do you know,” Sparrow asked, “who first rode a horse? Do
you really know? The Grandmother told me before she died. It wasn’t the prince.
It was a woman—a girl. The Grandmother. The gift was hers first. Her brother
took it from her. Now,” said Sparrow, “Horse Goddess gives it again.”

Keen shivered. The nature, even the gender of the divinity
who dwelt among the horses was a mystery, a secret for the priests to keep. And
maybe, she caught herself thinking, they kept it so because they did not want
the women to know that it was a goddess, not a god. Female—a mare—not a male.

Keen did not want to think of it—to believe it, or
understand it. Sparrow was fevered; she was trembling. And the words she spoke . . .

“When the priests find out what you have done,” Keen said,
“you’ll pay a terrible price.” Sparrow’s face was set against her, dark eyes
hard. Keen regarded it in a kind of despair. Still, she had to say it. “If you
stop now, come back, live quietly and stay away from the horses, no one will
know. I’ll make sure no one finds out.”

Of course Sparrow answered, “I can’t do that. The gift is
given. This time I won’t let it be taken away.”

“You may not have a choice.”

“I never did,” said Sparrow. She stroked the mare’s neck.
The mare slanted a narrow ear back at her and made a soft sound, not quite a
snort. Sparrow smiled at it.

That smile struck Keen’s heart. It was a smile of pure love,
and pure, blank implacability. “Yes, you chose me. No one can undo the
choosing.”

“The priests will do it,” Keen said, “and the shamans.”

“They can try.” Sparrow slid from the mare’s back. She stood
above Keen, crowned with stars. “They are not the only ones who exact prices.
Nor are they the rulers of this world. The gods will have what is theirs,
regardless of what men may say.”

“You’re mad,” Keen whispered.

“I may be,” Sparrow said. “But if I am, so is this mare. And
so is Horse Goddess.” She held out her hand. “Come, up. Let’s go home.”

Keen let herself be pulled to her feet. Mercifully, Sparrow
did not force her onto the mare’s back. They walked instead, a remarkably
little distance—for, however long they had ridden, they had come back just over
the hill from the camp.

The mare followed as far as the hill, but as they climbed
it, she wheeled and snorted and leaped into a gallop. She was returning to her
herd, Keen thought, as the women returned to theirs.

The earth was empty of magic. The sky was silent. Even the
voice of the wind was still.

Walker sat on a far hilltop, naked to the sky, empty with
fasting. He was all open, all bare to the gods, but the gods had nothing to say
to him. Not even a bird flew, to offer him an omen.

He had sat on that hilltop for a hand of days past the time
of the new moon. He had sung till his voice was gone, danced till his feet were
raw. He had called on the spirits one by one and each by name: the spirits of
earth and air, the ghosts of his ancestors, the great ones who walked in
darkness and the greater ones who walked in the light. Not one had answered his
call.

Such silences had befallen him before. The spirits did as
they pleased, and magic was not a tamed thing. And yet, like Sparrow’s recent
refusal to give him her visions, this had a tang of malice in it. They knew
what he needed. They were not inclined to give it.

One more full moon. Then, in the moon’s dark, the ninth year
began. The People would gather some days’ journey south of this camp. They
would sing and dance and worship the gods, make marriages, make alliances,
and—if it went as he hoped—make a king.

For that, he needed a vision, an omen. The source of his
visions would give him nothing. Now, it seemed, the source of his omens was
equally contrary.

A small, small part of him whispered that perhaps the
silence was his answer. But he would not accept that. He was the great shaman,
the prophet, the seer of the People. He would have his omen. He would have his
vision, too. He would have everything. This was a test, that was all. He would
pass that test, and his power would be all the greater for it.

He rose. Naked but for the sacred signs painted in ocher on
brow and breast, and the amulets plaited into his hair and wound about his neck
and arms and middle, he walked where his feet led him. They took him over the
hill and down a narrow valley to a broad flat plain.

It was full of horses. The herds had moved while he kept his
vigil, shifting east and somewhat north. They would advance soon, he knew,
toward the great grazing grounds where all the herds gathered in summer, the
plain as wide as a world and well-watered with rivers both great and small.

The herds knew it was time. Did they also know it was a
ninth year? Walker’s feet took him to a hill that overlooked the plain, and let
him sit there as he had sat on that other hill.

The herds grazed below him. They kept to their own clans and
tribes, with spaces between. The stallions paced, wary, defending their bands
of mares.

There were a great number of foals this year, many and many
small gamboling shapes amid the larger, quieter ones. Last year’s foals, the
yearlings with their rough coats and big bellies and raw half-grown look,
prowled the edges, much set upon by both the mares and the roving bands of
young stallions.

Walker saw the priests among the horses, naked men wearing
the skulls and maned hides of stallions. The rite had begun, then, the
invocation of the king stallion, bidding him lead them to the summer gathering.

It was silent as yet, the men standing or crouching on the
edges of the herds, watching as Walker watched. They would be looking to see if
the king would give them a sign.