Lady of Horses (20 page)

Mallard, like Keen, was accustomed to Sparrow’s oddities,
but she did not indulge them as Keen did. “Hush, child, and get you to the
river. We need water for the stewpots.”

No one listened. But Drinks-the-Wind was awake, and by
chance his eye had fallen on her. It was alert enough, though very tired.
Sparrow let it draw her until she stood over him.

She seldom came so close to her father. His wives and
favored daughters waited on him in the tent. She was little better than a
servant. Sometimes she wondered if he even remembered who she was.

He did seem to know her now, or at least to recognize her
for one of the women who belonged to him. “I heard you,” he said. “What makes
you think someone is doing this to me?”

“You were strong enough,” said Sparrow, “until the king of
stallions died. Do you trust everything you eat and drink? Are you certain no
one has laid a wishing on you?”

He did not look as if she had frightened him. Neither, she
thought, did he believe her. “You are a suspicious creature,” he said.

I saw the old king
fall.
But she could not say that. She had seen what the silvermaned
stallion did—and that was no natural eruption. Something had stung him. She
would wager it was not a bee; that it was a work of man’s hands. A man. Walker.

She could not say so. No more could she prove it. She only
knew in her heart.

Aloud she said, “Things change when the king changes. What
if the new king were to take the old king’s wives? Wouldn’t that serve the
tribe better than burying them in a tomb?”

“They serve the king,” Drinks-the-Wind said, much as Keen
had, and with the same blind innocence.

Strange to see that in a shaman. But age had crept up on
him. His power was waning. She could feel it seeping out of him like slow
tears.

“They serve the king,” Sparrow agreed. “Why not the young
king, then? Why not give the old one carven images, with magic on them to make
them live among the gods?”

Those of Drinks-the-Wind’s wives who stood about gave way to
various displays of horror. But none of them would speak in his presence, not
without his leave.

There was no anger in the eyes that fixed on Sparrow’s face,
as if Drinks-the-Wind needed to remind himself of what she looked like. There
was no understanding, either. A man saying such things, a shaman, would have
been heeded. He would have been granted the strength of his vision. But Sparrow
was a woman, and of no account.

“You are an interesting child,” Drinks-the-Wind said a little
faintly. He was tired. She watched sleep creep up on him, with White Bird to
guide it: holding his head in her lap, stroking his brow and his hollowed
cheeks. White Bird did not find Sparrow interesting. Indeed, from the glances
she cast, she would rather have said appalling.

oOo

Sparrow left without waiting to be dismissed, not caring
where she went, either, or how she came there. She was not in despair over the
king’s wives—not truly. But the rest of it, her father’s weariness, the old
king’s fall, Walker’s smile that he had not perhaps meant anyone to see, those
were all things that she could not well shrug away. Walker had made a king. And
he had done it without any of Sparrow’s visions.

Someone else might have imagined fondly that he had found
the gift at last. But Sparrow knew he had not. Her bones could tell. Walker was
as blind as ever to magic. All the visions he had, she had given him. There was
nothing in her now, no word or sign of a kingmaking. And yet Walker was making
a king.

Drinks-the-Wind would not listen to Sparrow. The other
shamans would laugh at her, if they allowed her near them at all. But there was
one who knew what she was. One who would hear what she had to say.

She had not wanted to do this. She would have avoided it if
she could. The rest of the world could do little to her, to harm her or to
touch her spirit. But Walker—Walker had stolen her visions.

It should not matter what men did, even to the king’s women.
None of them was a friend. None had ever shown Sparrow a kindness, or
acknowledged her existence at all. They were like Linden: beautiful, remote,
and unconcerned with the existence of the shaman’s ill- favored daughter.

Still this was a thing that Sparrow had in mind to do. It
was goddess-born, she supposed. Most of what she did and said these days came
from some aspect of the mare. She was not a slave or a blind voice—she was
still herself, clear down to the bone—but the mare’s presence in her heart made
her do things, say things, that she would never have ventured before. This was
what it was to be a priest, she thought, though a woman could no more be a
priest than she could be a shaman.

This gathering, this sacred place, this ninth-year feast and
imminence of the great sacrifice, made Horse Goddess’ presence all the
stronger. It burned in Sparrow’s spirit. It possessed her and gave her courage,
so that she could seek out the one she both feared and despised.

Walker had gone to the secret place, to the old king’s tomb.
Sparrow was not supposed to know where it was or what it was; but she did not
care just now for men’s laws. Horse Goddess was in her, driving her.

No one could go into the tomb with Linden. He must endure
the ordeal alone. But the shaman stood guard at the entrance, that door into
the dark, warded with a standing stone. Cold breathed out of it, the chill of
death, old roots and old stone and darkness that had ruled since the dawn of
the world.

Sparrow shuddered at the sight and the sense of it. She
hated to think of Linden shut up in that terrible place: sun-bright, lighthearted
Linden with his ready smile and his easy manner. He was no great marvel of wit.
He had no notable strength of will. All there was to him was beauty and a kind
of sweetness, and a child’s love of pretty things.

“You should never have made him be king,” Sparrow said to
Walker.

He started half out of his skin—deeply and profoundly
satisfying to watch. She had not made any great effort to be quiet as she came,
but he was sitting in the shadow of the doorway, eyes shut, asleep or close to
it. Sparrow doubted that he had been gathering his powers or dreaming deep
dreams. He only did that, or pretended to, where he thought anyone could see.

She had been rather surprised to find him alone. Other
shamans should have been there, and priests of the Stallion. But there was only
Walker.

He scrambled up at the sound of her voice, startled, taken
off balance, so that for a moment she could see the man beneath the masks he
wore. He was a small man, shallow of spirit, but subtle—yes, he was that—and
deep in malice.

That helped her to say what she had come to say. “This was
not well done of you,” she said.

He recovered quickly enough, when all was considered. He
stood to his full height as he always did, to dwarf her in spirit as well as in
body. But her spirit was riding on the mare, high as the stars and almost as
fearless. She met his glare full on, as she never had before—and that, too,
took him aback.

Maybe he spoke more quickly than he should, then, and with
less thought. “You think I did all this?”

“I know you did. What was it? A dart in the stallion’s
rump?”

Walker flushed. She had never seen him do that before. It
was gratifying. “The gods did it,” he said.

“By your hand,” she said. “And now that poor boy is buried
in the earth. What if he comes forth mad, or dies of terror?”

“Linden?” Walker laughed, a sharp sound, short and
mirthless. “It takes intelligence to go mad in the dark. That, and imagination.
He has neither. He’s lying there, I can assure you, in a fair passion of
boredom, or sleeping the days away, waiting till I bring him out.”

“Will you give him a vision if that’s so? Tell him what to
say to the elders and the shamans?”

“If such is laid on me,” Walker said.

Sparrow drew a breath, careful not to let him see it. “I
have one for you, and maybe for him, too. But I’ll not give it to you unless
you promise me something.”

She had never done that before; never set a price on her
visions. He had simply taken them, or she had simply refused to let them be
taken. This surprised him, but he was steady now, on ground he knew well. He
looked her in the eyes and said, “You will give it to me. You have no choice.”

“But I do,” said Sparrow. He was trying to ensorcel her,
fixing her with that cold pale stare, flat as a snake’s. But there was no power
in it. “I’ll bargain with you, brother. My vision in return for a favor.”

He bridled. “What favor could you ask of me?”

“This,” she said. “Give the king’s wives to Linden. Send
carved images into the grave with him, enchanted to come alive in the gods’
country and be his servants there.”

Walker gaped. Then he burst into laughter—genuine this time,
and incredulous. “You want me to— What in the world made you think of that?”

“Visions,” she said. Which was true, in its way.

“Preposterous,” said Walker.

“Are you saying you cannot do it? You lack the power?”

“I lack nothing!” he shot back before he could have thought.

“Then it’s a simple thing, a matter of no effort. Do it and
I’ll give you a vision for the new king.”

“It is not simple,” he said. “It is—” He broke off. His eyes
narrowed. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? You want to be the king’s wife.”

She felt the heat rush to her cheeks. She did not blush as
her fairer-skinned kin did, but the burning was no less for that. “I have no
desire to be his wife,” she said. “This is the price of the vision. The gods
have said so.”

“The gods, is it?” Walker did not believe her, but neither,
from his expression, did he dare to disbelieve. “They’re not asking an easy
thing, with but a day to do it. All the priests and shamans, the elders, the
kings, the people, will be outraged.”

“Are you not the greatest shaman of them all? Have you no
power to do this one and only thing?”

She had him. He could resist for a little longer, but she
had pricked his pride. All at once, with very ill grace, he surrendered. “I’ll
do what I can. Now give me the vision.”

“Swear that you will do it,” she said. “Swear on the
standing stone.”

That made him stiffen. But he laid his hand on the stone and
swore before the gods to pay the price that she demanded.

Then she gave him what she had come to give. “Here is my
vision,” she said. “I see the place of the stallion’s taming. I see the king
fall, and the young king rise. He mounts on the back of the stallion and
springs into the sky. The stars dance about him. The night wind sings of his
glory. Daughters of the gods bow before him and give him gifts of flowers, cups
of sunlight, and sweet honeycomb. ‘Live,’ they bid him. ‘Live a thousand
years.’”

Walker’s eyes had closed as she spoke, as if her words took
shape in his mind. Great joy dawned in his face. Just as she had expected—as
she had bargained for.

She did not tell him the rest of it. That was hers. How the
white mare came and took the stallion away, and the gods’ daughters followed.
Then the stars went out one by one, except for the last, the greatest, nigh as
bright and nigh as large as the moon.

It was the white mare again, wrapped in light. Her shadow
fell over Linden. In it he shrank and diminished till he was no larger than a
child. Then the mare gave birth to a new flock of stars, more even than had
been before, and brighter, crowding the sky.

Sparrow had given her brother a promise of the young king’s
glory. The rest—how Horse Goddess would humble him—she kept to herself. It was
a mystery, both high and sacred. Walker would only sully it.

Walker was content. She left him rapt in contemplation of
the vision, slipped away and was gone before he roused to her absence.

The old king could not be laid in his tomb until the young
king had come out into the light. For three days the men of the White Stone had
prepared the tomb out on the plain, raising it high with heaped stones and
facing it toward the sunrise.

Now it was done, all but the laying of the body in it. They
waited, all the people, for the young king to come.

oOo

Wolfcub had come back from the hunt to find a message
waiting for him. The young king asked—did not command; asked—that the
boarslayer be his companion at the kingmaking.

There were nine of them for a ninth year, picked men of the
People, all young, all strong, all tested in battle. The rest were as Wolfcub
would have expected, Linden’s followers from his childhood.

Wolfcub wondered who had been rejected and would plague him
with resentment later. But he did not speak of that. His father’s pride, his
mother’s pleasure in the honor paid him—however dry the wit with which she said
so—kept him silent.

He could be glad. Yes, he could. To rise up in the morning
before it was full light, and know what the day would make him: a king’s
companion. To put on the weapons that had come with the message, the beautiful
new coat with its embroideries of shells and beads, the leggings of white
doeskin as soft as a woman’s cheek. To have his hair plaited with feathers and
stones, his sparse young beard cut to be less ragged, and signs of power
painted on his cheeks and brow—it was wonderful. It was splendid.

That was the word his mother used of him.
Splendid
. She stood back in the flock of
the lesser wives. They were all staring, and the youngest were giggling behind their
hands. He flushed at that, fought down an urge to scrape off the paint and shed
the coat and run away from their mockery.

But they were not mocking him. Not even his mother, whose
tongue could flay a bull’s hide. Her smile was pure pleasure. “Child,” she
said, “you’ve grown up well.”

“Beautiful,” said one of the others. He did not look to see
who it was. He was too preoccupied with the thing that had struck him, that he
had not seen before. His mother was so small. Or—was he grown so tall?