Lady of Horses (61 page)

She swept him into her embrace, clasped him tight, covered
him with kisses. His tears were salt, his hair sweet, its scent so blessedly
familiar that she wept.

His outcry had stopped. Summer always had been less inclined
to cry if she was there. He knew his mother, Rain had liked to say, even as she
gave him the breast that he was clamoring for.

Keen sank down where she was, not caring if women had to
scramble out of the way, and cradled him in her lap. He was staring at her,
wide blue eyes beneath a crown of yellow curls.

She found a smile for him. He smiled back, a broad reckless
grin. There was none of Walker’s close-mouthed caution in this child. He was as
brilliantly easy a creature as Linden. That grin was strikingly like Linden’s,
sun-bright and utterly free of care or fear.

“Thank the gods you came!”

Keen looked up startled. Blossom had pulled away from
Willow’s embrace, and found her wits again, too.

“I was beside myself,” she said. “In he came, no warning, no
greeting, just dropped this thing in my lap and ordered me to look after it.
And no reason why, either. What did he do, steal it from you? Is it his?”

“Yes,” said Keen. It seemed answer enough. Whatever she had
expected, it was not this perfect self-righteousness—though it made her want to
laugh till her sides ached. Oh, what a match for Walker this woman had been!

She had killed him. She was clean now, the blood washed
away. She had no more remorse than a warrior after a battle, and no more
concern for the rights or wrongs of it, either.

Blossom’s eyes rested on the child in Keen’s arms. He was
fed: he had the look. The woman from whom Keen had taken him was one of those
who seemed to be always bearing or nursing, and often both at once. Her belly
was swollen, her breasts full even after Summer had drunk his fill.

Blossom made a sound, drawing Keen’s attention back to her.
“You will take it away, won’t you? It bellows like a bull. I can’t sleep for
the racket it makes.”

“I will take him,” Keen said. “You need have no fear as to
that.”

“Good, then go,” said Blossom. “I want to sleep. I need to
sleep. My head aches. Oh, it aches so terribly!”

Keen had not thought much past finding Summer. If she had,
she would have supposed that it would take her hours, perhaps into daylight, to
find him. Then she would go back to Cloud in the southern camp, and whatever
followed would be no affair of hers.

He had been in the first place she came to, cast there with
so little regard for his life or comfort that if Walker had been alive, Keen
would have happily gutted him all over again. She wanted desperately to take
her child away from it. But it was night still, and Summer would not take
kindly to the river crossing.

Willow seemed to see her trouble. “Come,” she said, “I’ll
take you to my husband’s tent. Aurochs is there. He’ll look after you.”

“You can’t leave me!” Blossom shrilled. “You have to stay
here!”

“I do not,” said Willow. “Come, child.”

But Keen paused. “This is a dead man’s son. A dead shaman—however
discredited he may be. What if—”

Willow would not let her finish. “Aurochs can protect him.
Come.”

Keen went, because she could think of nothing better to do.
Blossom tried to follow, but Willow restrained her firmly, handed her to the
burliest of the women, and bade them guard her till morning. Only one came with
them: the silent and sleepy-eyed nurse, whom Summer would need again before
long.

Aurochs was asleep, but he woke quickly enough at his wife’s
touch. Nor did he need overmuch explanation. “I’ll send a man to watch her,” he
said of Blossom—“and the more fool I for not doing it sooner.”

“Yes, you are a fool,” Willow said without sympathy. “I’ve
had my fill of her, myself. If you don’t terribly mind, I’m going to sleep—and,
child, so should you. We’ll keep the baby between us. No one will touch him or
take him away.”

Keen sighed. The fist that had been clenched inside her was
opening slowly. She was suddenly, profoundly exhausted. She barely noticed
where she was taken, except that it was deep within Aurochs’ tent, surrounded
by his women, and Aurochs himself stood watch without.

Then, with Summer in her arms, she could rest. It mattered
little what came after, if only he was safe, and she could be sure of it.

The shamans of the plains came late in the morning, but
come they did, crossing the river in a sour-faced company and entering the Grey
Horse camp with the air of men who stooped far below their proper station. That
a woman forced it upon them, none of them was likely to forget.

Sparrow was her father’s heir, and her station therefore was
far above theirs. It must gripe them sorely to look at her among these
outlandish people, and know that she was stronger than any of them.

After she sent the shamans’ messenger away, she had
tormented herself with doubts and fears. If she had judged wrongly, not only
she would suffer for it. Shamans’ curses were never to be taken lightly.

As she watched that small company of men on horses ride up
out of the river, her spirit eased a little. Most of them were old. All had
some deformity or some strangeness of face or form. Many carried in them the
light of the spirit that she had always been able to see, and that Walker had
never had.

None could match her strength. What she did as she breathed,
simply by emptying herself of thought, they had to win by great workings of
magic, invocations of gods and spirits, raisings of sacred smoke, even
sacrifices of blood.

Her spirit was washed in the blood of two great shamans. The
life of a third had been given in her name. She needed no sacrifice. She needed
simply to be.

She received them in simple state, dressed in the fashion of
the Grey Horse. Kestrel’s brows had climbed when she came out of the tent, but
he had mercifully kept silent. No one else remarked on it. All the women here
were in leggings and nothing else, this time of year.

Sparrow had never flaunted herself so. She had to fight the
urge to cover her breasts, even as fine as Kestrel averred they were. She
wanted—needed—the shamans to see all that she was: woman, and bearing, and
marked richly with the signs of a shaman. Where the other women wore necklaces
or collars of bone or beads or stone, she wore only Old Woman’s stone in a cage
of woven thongs, white deerhide clasping the black starstone.

It was easier if she thought of herself as clothed in power.
That, after all, was what she wanted the shamans to see. She lifted her chin
and squared her shoulders. The child shifted inside her as if in sympathy.

oOo

Cloud welcomed the shamans as they entered the camp, saw
that they dismounted and their horses were tended, and offered them a
greeting-cup full of the berry wine of his people. They were not displeased to
be so greeted: he was a man, and it was known that he was a prince.

When they had drunk from the cup, though warily and only
after he had drunk himself, he led them into the circle of tents. Sparrow
waited there under a canopy, seated on a white horsehide as if she had been a
king.

She was not going to be gentle with them. She could not
afford to be. She let them stand in front of her, with the sun beating down on
bald or greying heads. When after a stretching while she spoke, it was not to
invite them to sit in the shade. She said, “You summoned me in the night. Why?”

“Surely you know why,” said a tall man with a face marred by
a wide blood-red stain—Red Deer shaman, as she recalled. His lip curled
slightly, though his tone was polite enough.

She tilted her head. “I prefer that you tell me,” she said.

“Such were the sleights your brother made use of,” said Red
Deer shaman, “and so deceived us all.”

Sparrow’s brows rose. “Even you, sir? You have eyes; you
could see. And yet he deceived you.”

Red Deer shaman lowered those eyes she spoke of, but not in
submission. There was anger beneath the smoothness as he said, “Some of us are
so powerful that we can conceal it utterly, and seem as nothing in the spirit.
So we reckoned him. And his visions were true.”

“Indeed they were,” she said. “They were mine.”

He might have thought to sneer at that, but when he looked
up to speak, she let him see all of what she was. He flung up his hand with a
cry.

She smiled, a stretching of lips over teeth. “Did you
think,” she asked him, “that what you saw before was the whole of it? I, too,
can hide. I, too, can pretend, if there is need. For years I hid and pretended
and let my brother steal my visions. What could I do, after all? I was only a
woman. I could never be a shaman.”

“Nor can you be one now,” said Red Deer shaman. “Not among us.”

“No?” Sparrow shrugged slightly. “Maybe not. Maybe I’m meant
to be more. Priestess, servant of the gods. Horse Goddess’ chosen.”

“A woman cannot be—” one of the lesser shamans began.

It was not Red Deer shaman who silenced him. Tall Grass
shaman had let the other speak for them all. He looked terribly weary, worn
down with the duties that she had laid on him, and with grief, too: for it was
his daughter who had killed the false shaman, and his ally and son-in-law whom
she had killed.

Now he spoke, slowly but clearly, and more strongly as he
went on. “Woman rode the mare long before man rode the stallion.”

Some of his fellows gasped: shock or surprise, or outrage at
his speaking so publicly of a mystery? Sparrow thought perhaps the last.

“Horse is a goddess, and not a god. So it has been known to
us from the dawn time. But to speak of it before all the people, to confess it
to those who knew nothing of the mystery, and nothing of the truth—”

“—must be done,” Sparrow said. “The lies have gone on long
enough. A man took the horse away from a woman, and earned Horse Goddess’
wrath, though that was terribly slow to rise. Then a man took the visions from
a woman, stole the power that was hers, that the goddess had given her; and
that roused her ire far more swiftly. Horse Goddess is not pleased with the
people of the plains. That they worship her children, she reckons right and
proper. But how they choose to do it, and what they have done to her chosen—that,
she likes not at all.”

“Are you demanding,” said Red Deer shaman, “that we lift the
ban on the women? What will follow? Women riding to war? Women claiming to be
kings?”

“Why not?” said Sparrow, though it was hardly wise.

“Surely,” Tall Grass shaman said, “all that will not be
necessary. No warriors; no kings. But if women could ride the mares, or mount
children on them, think, brother, how much swifter the marches would be, and
how much easier to defend against raiders.”

“Women riding!” Red Deer shaman looked as if he had
swallowed a live coal.

“You will settle that,” Sparrow said levelly, “in as little
time and with as much plain sense as possible. So the goddess bids you. You
will begin today. You will do it now.”

They were not so easily dismissed. “There is still another
matter,” Tall Grass shaman said. “Your brother—”

“He lies still above ground?” Sparrow could not call herself
surprised. Angry, yes. “You did not entrust him to Earth Mother as soon as the
sun fell? Did his spirit walk? Whom did he beset, then? Whom did he drive mad?”

“No—no one.” That was a young shaman, strikingly young for
that company, and pleasant to look at, too, but for a twisted arm. He seemed
startled that he had spoken, but once he began, he gathered courage to go on.
“Lady, my brothers and I, we watched over him all night long. His spirit hid
inside his body and pretended that it was alive. That was why—that’s what—we
couldn’t bury him. Because, you see. He wouldn’t leave.”

Sparrow believed him. She had not foreseen it, but much of
what Walker did had skirted the edges of visions.

She glanced at Tall Grass shaman. He nodded, though she had
not needed him to assure her that the boy spoke truth. “We performed the rite
of opening and the rite of freeing. He only held the tighter to the bars of his
body. We called on the dark gods to fetch their own. They bade us do it
ourselves. If the dead will not go, the gods have no concern with them.”

“And that,” said Sparrow, “was why you sent to me in the
night. To do what you could not.”

“He was your brother,” said Red Deer shaman. “He stole your
visions. We thought that that might be holding him.”

“That, or fear of the punishments waiting for him.” Sparrow
sighed. “Very well. I’ll do what I can. But first, tell me. What have you done
with his wife?”

They glanced at one another. “Done?” said Tall Grass shaman.
“We hardly had time to—”

“You are in great disarray,” Sparrow said almost gently.

She rose. The mare had come and was waiting, none too
patient to be kept standing about in the sun. Sparrow smiled at that, stroked
her lovely head and smoothed her mane and mounted her. The others had to
scramble to find their horses and follow.

oOo

Walker lay where Blossom had felled him. There was a
bull’s hide over him now, and the roof of a tent, and a circle of shamans to
keep away the curious. Those were many as Sparrow rode into the broken circle;
she felt their eyes on her like a hundred small groping hands.

She put aside the thought, slid from the mare’s back beside
the still shape under the spotted hide. She stood for a moment, steadying
herself on the earth. The sun clamored at her, all bright male strength.

She had to put that aside, too; go quiet inside.

Then she could see. He was there, yes. He coiled inside the
broken body like a worm in a shell, dreaming that he dreamed; that he had
entered the mystical dark of the shaman, and awaited the visions that would
lead him anew to the light.

The strength of will that held him there, the sheer
selfishness of his spirit, roused her almost to awe. Nothing in his world
existed but through him. Even death could not conquer him. The body would
crumble about him, but he would endure, certain to the end of time that he
would wake and be alive again.