Lady of Horses (56 page)

“I needed the roughness,” she said, “and the lack of regard.
If you had singled me out, I would have been too much preoccupied in dealing
with envy. People would have noticed if I was missing—and I often was, out
among the horses.”

“That is so,” he conceded. “I still wish . . .”

“Don’t,” she said. “The gods chose me for what I was. I bear
you no ill-will.”

He raised his brows. “What, none?”

“None at all.” That was the truth. “The Grandmother did
everything that you should have done, and in comfortable obscurity. Old Woman
did the rest. In between, the horses raised me.”

“You had no need of me at all.”

She could hardly deny it.

He sighed. “I matter to you now. Don’t I?”

“You always did.”

His glance was dubious.

She laid a hand briefly atop his where it rested on his
knee: a daughter’s blessing. “If you need forgiveness, you have it. If not . . .
it’s yours regardless.”

He looked long at her, and steadily, as if he would remember
every line of her face. Then he nodded as if one of them had spoken, rose and
went away.

oOo

She sighed and rose herself. It was time. The mare was
waiting for her—the mare tonight, not the stallion, who stood aside in proper
deference. Sparrow mounted her.

That was the signal for the rest. She heard but paid no heed
to the muted tumult of people gathering to follow. They were not to ride up the
hill—there was no room for so many horses. She was the only one mounted, apart
from Drinks-the-Wind on the old white mare who was, as it happened, the young
mare’s grandmother.

Walker was not allowed to approach the horses. He objected,
but not for long: he saw soon enough that if he tarried he would be left
behind. He strode angrily afoot, shouldering his way through the gathering,
till they grew wise and left his path open. Sparrow could feel his temper
behind her, like a spearpoint aimed at her shoulder-blades.

She rode up the hill. The black stone was calling, heavy
with the moon’s dark, dragging at the daughter-stone between her breasts. The
stars were brilliant. Her eyes were a shaman’s eyes; they saw as clearly as in
daylight, though their sight was different, greyer, no color in them;
everything was tinged with shadow.

Drinks-the-Wind had drawn ahead of her. She was aware of
that; of Walker drawing closer behind, though his breath came short on the
slope; of the people trailing in back of him, and below, in the dark, Walker’s
allies approaching the camp. They would discover soon enough that it was empty,
and ride up the hill.

It was all as inevitable as the wheeling of stars overhead.
She breathed deep and held it for a few heartbeats, then let it go. All her
worries, her weariness, the concerns of the world, poured out with it. She was
empty as Old Woman had taught her to be, open to any wind of power that blew.

Drinks-the-Wind was even emptier than she. He was a shell, a
shadow. All that was in him was joy.

oOo

They ascended the last steep slope and came out on the
broad round level. The stone was set in it like an eye in a vast face, a black
orb staring up to heaven. Sparrow slid from the mare’s back, staggering as her
feet struck earth. It was humming underfoot, singing upward through her bones.

The mare took no notice of it. Once Drinks-the-Wind had
dismounted from his own mare’s back, the two white mares wandered together
toward the stone. They grazed as they went, concerned as horses always were
with true matters of consequence: grass, the herd, contentment. But the goddess
in the younger mare was awake, focused on the stone with a deep calm, a white
stillness.

That focus held Sparrow in place. People were ascending as
she had done, clambering up, panting, straggling in a circle.

Walker was not the first among them. When he did come, he
had a look of serious discontent. He had fallen; his hands and knees were
bruised. The gods were not choosing to be kind.

He was the more dangerous for it. His people were closing in
behind.

For what she must do, she must be focused; she could not let
her spirit wander or fret or be distracted. Her own people knew what they were
to do. She had to trust them—and pray that nothing went amiss.

She turned her eyes and mind on the circle’s center. Drinks-the-Wind
had gone to it as if drawn by a hand, and knelt by the black stone. His eyes
were wide, his face empty of expression.

The stone had him. If his spirit was not to be taken into
it, she must move, and quickly.

It was as it had been with Old Woman—as it would be in her
turn, when her time had come. The great sacrifice, the willing surrender of
life in the gods’ name. What Old Woman had done at midwinter, now in the new
moon of midsummer the elder shaman of the northern tribes offered to do.

Two such sacrifices within one turning of the year was a
great thing, a thing of power, a thing that could shift the world. Sparrow did
not know what its long outcome would be. That was for the gods. She only knew
that if she did it now, and Walker did not prevent her, the world would change.
Horse Goddess would not only walk in it. She would rule.

If Sparrow failed, these people of the Grey Horse would die.
And so would she. Walker’s people would overrun them all. True power would
dwindle, fade. The gods would become but masks for petty men, shadows through
whom such men played out their games of earthly glory.

It was a sad grey world she saw on that path, and Walker a
great lord in it. She drew the black blade against it, the knife that had been
tempered in Old Woman’s blood. Drinks-the-Wind, kneeling at her feet, looked up
at her and smiled.

A weight struck her from behind. It had a voice, crying out:
“Stop! By the gods, stop! That’s your own father!”

Walker’s voice. Walker’s body hurled against hers, grappling
for the knife.

Sparrow had been too slow, too little watchful. She fell
hard beneath him, gasping and twisting, desperate to protect the baby in her
belly.

He flew free of her. She lay for a moment in shock, till she
saw the two shapes tangled, pale hair and dark, but who the dark one was, she
could not tell.

Nor should she tarry for it. She groped in the trampled
grass. The knife—goddess, where was the knife?

There. She gripped its blade first, gasped at the sudden
sting of pain, found hilt and gripped it as she stumbled to her feet. Her whole
body hurt.

She must not feel pain. She must be empty, open, for the
power to come in.

Drinks-the-Wind had not moved. He waited on fate and time
and the gods. His spirit was slipping free, powerless to resist the call of the
stone.

She had no grace, no dignity, but the knife was sharp and
her hand, after all, was steady. It struck straight and true, full to the
heart. The last sound he made, his last utterance in the world, was a sudden,
sweet ripple of laughter.

It was a sound of pure joy. It poured strength into her. It
held her up as she freed his blood to flow over the stone, and took his head to
raise in tribute to the gods.

All about her, the world burst into a torrent of sound: the
roar of battle, sudden and deafening. Men grappled with men, and men with
women. She saw Kestrel locked in combat with a tall fair boy, and Aurochs set
upon by two men dressed in the fashion of the Cliff Lion warriors. Walker’s
army had come, swarming up the hill, overwhelming the people on the summit.
Their mingled war-cries shook the sky.

A new sound pierced it, high enough and strong enough to
split a man’s skull: a scream of rage.

The mare stood on the black stone, balanced on the smooth
rounded surface as no hooved creature should have been able to do. She loosed
another peal, loud enough to shatter the sky. And again, a third, terrible in
its strength.

Then she smote the stone. The sound it made had never been
heard in the world before: a clear, ringing clang.

It echoed impossibly. It shook men from their feet. It cast
down the men of Cliff Lion and Dun Cow who had come to see a king-killing and
been moved by a shaman-killing to attack the people who were there before them.

Walker kept his feet. Whoever had freed Sparrow from him was
gone. He had a second figure by the throat: Linden, white-faced and helpless,
frozen in fear of the black blade that rested, oh so lightly, on the great vein
of his neck. Sparrow, with shaman’s eyes, could see the life pulsing in it,
rapid as a bird’s.

“Brother,” Sparrow said, clear and cold—words that did not
belong to her at all, but were spoken through her—“if it’s kingmaking you would
be doing, your hand cannot be the one that takes his life. Where is your new
king, then? What’s become of him?”

“Here.” Kestrel said it in something like sorrow, standing
over a crumpled shape. As people stared at the black blood on the pale hair, he
sighed. “He came at me while I was driving your brother away from you. I struck
before I thought. I only meant to stun.”

“Pity he wasn’t king already,” said Rain behind him. “His
kingship would have been the briefest in the world—and you would have won it.”

Kestrel shuddered. “Gods forbid,” he said.

“No matter.” Walker snapped the words, drawing their eyes
back to him. “In this country, a shaman can be a king. Why not in the north as
well?”

“In this country also,” said Sparrow, “a woman can be a
shaman. And your power is a lie.”

“All the power I need,” he said, “is in my hands.”

“If you kill him, the gods will curse you.”

“Empty threats,” he said.

All the while she held him with words, shadows stalked him,
softer than wind in the grass.

One leaped. He whipped about. His knife bit deep. The figure
fell.

Linden was free. Another of the shadows thrust him aside and
sprang on Walker.

Linden reeled toward Sparrow. His weight drove her backward,
spinning out of the battle, till they stumbled and fell beside the black stone.
He was alive and unhurt, breathing in gasps.

The stone’s power was so strong that Sparrow could barely
see. She crawled toward it, pulling herself up onto it.

Her bones felt as heavy as the world. But the stone, for all
its cold darkness, had fire in its heart. She called it up into her bones and
drew it into the stone about her neck. When both stone and bones were burning
with a terrible beauty, she set it free.

Kestrel was one of those who stalked Walker, but it was
another who sprang first—and suffered for it. As small as it was, and quick, he
thought it might be Rain; Cloud he saw circling, and Aurochs crouched low and
closing in when Rain fell.

He grappled with Walker. The knife dropped. Kestrel swept it
up before Walker could win it back.

Then the fire came down. The stars descended in tongues of
flame. Walker’s allies had come armed with spears, that now blazed up like
torches.

The spears’ bearers recoiled. The spears stood erect with no
hand holding them, a ring of fire. It blazed as bright almost as daylight, but
redder, as if tinged with blood.

Rain was down, Cloud crouched over her. Walker twisted free
of Aurochs’ grip, wheeled and bolted straight through the ring of spears.

Fire licked at him, but he darted away from it. It caught
the end of his long white-gold plait. He ran on, trailing fire and smoke and a
pungent stench.

Kestrel sprang in pursuit. But his way was blocked, and not
only by Walker’s allies. His own people were standing stunned, staring at the
fire from heaven and at the figure who stood on the black stone. Sparrow was a
flame herself, fire licking from her fingertips, from her lips, from the crown
of her head. It streamed down her body like water. It poured back into the
stone.

Kestrel too was caught by the sight of her—briefly, but long
enough. When he looked again, Walker was gone. He had vanished into the night.

oOo

In that rain of fire, the battle ended. There were wounded:
tribe had fought with tribe before the fire came down. And there were dead, two
figures lying crumpled near the stone.

One was a man whom Kestrel vaguely recalled, a man of the
White Stone People—not of Red Deer or Cliff Lion—whose name had been Ash. He
was prettier than Linden, and if possible less quick of wit. Kestrel had been
astonished when he learned what life he had taken, not even meaning it,
thinking only to defend himself.
That
was
Walker’s year-king?

The other who had died was Rain. Cloud tried still, as if
possessed, to bring her back to life, but her throat was cut across.

She had died as Ash had, in a backwards stroke without
particular intent. Drinks-the-Wind, as great a shaman as he was, had not been
enough to sate the gods. They had been terribly hungry, and thirsty for blood.

Now surely they were sated. They had had a great sacrifice,
the greatest since the dawn time: two shamans and a man who was to have been
king, felled beside the black stone that fell out of the sky.

oOo

Walker’s allies, deserted by their shaman and bereft of
their would-be king, with their spears burning down now and crumbling to ash,
were easy enough to subdue and take captive. Kestrel saw to it, and Linden
recovering from his confusion. Fear and the imminence of death had affected him
strangely: he was, if not swifter of wit, then certainly clearer of mind.

He called his men together with such an air of command that
Red Deer came, too, and even some of the Cliff Lion and Dun Cow warriors. Those
would not lay hands on their own tribesmen, but they stood back and did not
interfere while the rest were taken and bound and led down off the hilltop.
Grey Horse followed, bearing the dead; all but the old shaman. Sparrow stayed
behind to see to him, a duty that only she could perform, as both daughter and
priestess.