Lady of Horses (62 page)

It was a perfect fate for the Walker Between the Worlds.
Even in death he would live a lie, and persist in self-deception.

“Will you free him?”

Sparrow started slightly, staring for a while without
recognition at Tall Grass shaman. The old man could see as clearly as she.

“He seems perfectly content,” she said.

“Yes,” said the Tall Grass shaman.

He let the moment stretch, and the meaning of the word with
it. Contentment for such a creature as Walker had been. If she freed him, she
sent him to long torment.

Justice would dictate that she free him. Mercy . . .
the gods were not merciful. Nor had Sparrow thought she could be. And yet as
she knelt on one knee, staring at what was left of her brother whom she had
hated so long and so fiercely, she could only think of the sun beating on her
shoulders, the breeze playing about her, the living world that she had and he
would never have again. Darkness and silence, crumbling slowly into Earth
Mother’s arms. No name, no memory; no hope of cleansing, or of rare rebirth.

She straightened. “Bury him,” she said. “Heap the earth high
over his bones. Make it a warning and a reminder to all who would claim the
name of shaman. Unless they claim true, this too will they become. To this will
they go.”

The shamans took the bull’s hide and what it had concealed,
and carried it away to be laid in a secret place. Sparrow stayed where she was.
She was still disconcerted when people did as she bade them, even in Horse
Goddess’ name. Whether the goddess had spoken through her just now, or whether
it had been her own troubled spirit, she did not know.

She looked up into Linden’s face. She had not heard him
come.

He held out his hand. She took it and let him draw her up.
His eyes on her were openly appreciative. “It’s very immodest,” he said, “but I
think I like it.”

She caught herself blushing.

He smiled. “Come,” he said. “The priests will close the
circle and end it. You come and let me play the king for you. There are so many
things I’ve thought of, so many things I want to do. And with you—”

“I’m not staying,” she said.

He stared.

“I’m going,” she said. “When the Grey Horse goes, I go.
They’re my people now.”

“But you’re of our People!” Linden protested. “What will we
do for a shaman?”

“Tall Grass shaman belongs to you,” she said. “Did you
forget? Command him to find one for you. A true one, an honest man and a loyal
child of the gods. There is one whom he might consider: a tall boy of the Dun
Cow, with a withered arm. You’d like that one, I think. He’s young but he’s strong,
and he has the courage to speak when no one else will.”

She hoped that Linden was listening. If not, she would send
the message to Tall Grass shaman herself.

Linden shook his head, not at what she had said, but that
she had said it at all. “You have to stay. You’re strong. We need you.”

“Grey Horse has lost a shaman, too,” Sparrow said. “It needs
me—and it won’t mind that I’m not a man. That will matter, my lord. Not to you,
maybe; but to everyone else.”

“Then it will change,” Linden said firmly.

She shook her head. “Not in this age of the world. What I
can do, I have done. The ban on women with the horses—that is ended. You can
see to it. But a woman who is a shaman? No. That’s too much. They’ll accept me
as Horse Goddess’ priestess, and as Drinks-the-Wind’s daughter. While I’m out
of their reckoning and out of their tribe, and come only at intervals—for great
rites or visions, for gatherings or festivals—I’m bearable. But as a shaman,
living among them, working magic for them, they need someone whose manhood they
can be sure of.”

Linden was beginning to see, though he did not want to. He
scowled formidably. “You just don’t want to stay.”

“If I only had to think of you,” she said, “I would.”

He shook his head, obstinate. She tugged lightly at one of
his plaits, which in truth was a great insolence, and coaxed him with a smile.

He was not to be cajoled. “Who will advise me, then? Who
will help me to be wise? Because you know Kestrel will go wherever you go.”

“His father won’t,” Sparrow said. “He belongs to the People,
he and his senior wife. They can help you as we children never could.”

Linden gave way slowly, with great reluctance. But she had
an answer for his every argument, and he was not a man for wars of words.

He flung up his hands. “Very well. Very well! You’ll never
do what I tell you, I know that. But if I ask—will you stay a little while?
Will you at least help me make sense of this gathering, and send the tribes to
their lands?”

“That,” she said, “I can do.”

“Then come and begin,” he said.

oOo

Linden’s first beginning was the judgment of Walker’s
slayer. It should have been a matter for shamans, but the shamans had
surrendered the task to the king.

“I cannot judge,” Tall Grass shaman said as chief of them.
“This is my daughter. I cannot condemn her.”

Linden was not visibly delighted at the prospect, either.
But he had the woman brought to him as he sat on his royal horsehide with his
companions about him and the elders of all the tribes gathered in a great
circle.

The women were there, too, standing back, making no
spectacle of themselves, but unquestionably present. He made no move to dismiss
them, though he was clearly aware of them: his eyes kept wandering toward them.

Blossom had taken time to make herself presentable as befit
a woman of wealth and standing, even a widow without kin to acknowledge her.
The light of day well suited her bold beauty. She moderated her voice as much
as she could, bowing before the king and murmuring politeness.

Kestrel wondered uncharitably if she had had instruction. He
had heard a great deal of Walker’s second wife, and heard no little from her,
either, while he was with the People. Her voice carried far, particularly when
she was hectoring her husband.

She conducted herself in no respect as a woman who repents
the murder of her husband. She faced the king squarely, without the wanton edge
that another woman might have offered; if she was affected at all by his fine
male beauty, she concealed it well.

“Woman of the Tall Grass,” Linden said, “bound in marriage
to the White Stone People, by your own hand your husband fell. Will you defend
that action?”

“It needs no defense,” she said. “You were there. You saw
what he was. How could I have done other than I did?”

People murmured at that. Linden frowned. “A woman cannot
kill her husband. It’s against the gods’ law.”

“But I did,” she said. “He needed killing, for the things he
had done. No one else would do it. Therefore I did.”

“A woman cannot—” Linden began.

“My lord,” said someone from the circle’s edge. “May I
speak?”

Keen was standing there with Summer in her arms. Kestrel had
not even known she was on this side of the river—had thought her in the Grey
Horse camp, left behind and grieving for her child and, maybe, her fallen
husband.

Yet she was here, head high, speaking out before the king as
the Keen of a year past would never have dreamed of doing. She was magnificent
in her golden beauty, cradling her golden child.

Linden seemed as dazzled as the rest. “You may speak,” he
said somewhat belatedly. “Certainly you may.”

Keen inclined her head to him. “My lord, may I enter the
circle, then?”

Linden beckoned. She entered slowly, stepping with care as
if the earth might buckle underfoot. She stopped at a little distance from
Linden, not far from Blossom.

Blossom looked her up and down. “So. Are you here to make
these men see reason? Did our husband not deserve killing?”

“He deserved it richly,” Keen said. “But men keep the
killing for themselves. They need trials and defenses, or battles in proper
order. They are not happy that you, a woman and his wife, performed the
execution.”

“Indeed we are not,” Linden said. “For if every woman could
put her husband to death so readily, there would be few men left.”

“That is true,” Blossom said. “But now it’s done, you should
thank me. It’s spared you the trouble of doing it yourself.”

Linden shook his head at that. Keen spoke before he could
muddle matters further.

“You have to be judged. There isn’t any choice—not in the
world as it is. They’re going to want to put you to death. As a lesson, you
see. So that other wives know better than to kill their husbands. Even husbands
who deserve it.”

Blossom’s head came up. Her nostrils flared. “Death? Put me
to death? But why?”

“Justice,” said Keen.

“Justice,” said Blossom, “was that man dead at my feet. You
knew what he was. Do you know what he did to me? Do you?”

“I know,” said Keen.

This, Kestrel noticed, was doing odd things to those who
listened. Their anger was changing. They were beginning to whisper among
themselves.
Mad
, they said.
The woman is mad
.

“I am not! ” said Blossom, whose ears were too keen for her
own good. “The rest of you are lacking in sense and reason. Does any one of you
truly believe that that man should have been permitted to live?”

“Only a king or a shaman,” said Linden, “or the elders in
council, should have determined that.” He spoke sorrowfully, but he did not
waver. “We can’t have wives passing judgment on their husbands. No matter how
just that judgment may be. You are condemned to death, woman of the Tall Grass
People. It will be gentle. That I swear to you. You will know no pain.”

“You can’t do that,” said Blossom.

“I am the king,” said Linden. “I can do whatever is best for
the People.”

“But this is not—”

Linden beckoned. Two of his companions came forward, took
her gently but firmly by the arms, and began to lead her from the circle.

She twisted. They held on tighter. She began to shriek.

It sounded stark mad. But Kestrel, watching her, was put
most in mind of a small and deeply spoiled child. She did not believe that she
could die, or indeed that she could suffer any harm. She had always won her way
before by the perfection of her intransigence.

Now she had no escape, but she did not know it. Curlew, who
was one of those who held her captive, clapped a hand over her mouth. Bullcalf,
the other, followed it swiftly with his belt, gagging her with it. That
silenced her as much with shock as with the stopping of her mouth. They began
again to carry her away.

This time it was Sparrow who stopped them. She spoke to
Linden, not pleading, simply speaking calmly. “Is there no other way?”

“None that I can see,” he answered.

“Not even exile?”

“No,” he said. “If she lives, then other women will imagine
that they can escape, too.”

“Exile is not an easy sentence,” Sparrow said.

“No, it is not. Separated from the tribe, from all that she
ever knew—how would she live? What would she do? No, lady. Death is kinder.
She’ll be taken to a quiet place and given a potion to drink—one of her
husband’s, I suppose. He always did brew the best poisons. Then she’ll sleep,
and never wake.”

Sparrow looked as if she might have resisted further, but
Linden’s eyes were unyielding. She bowed her head and was silent. This after
all was the same mercy she had given Walker. It was fair, in its fashion: that
he should be trapped forever in his body, and Blossom should be set free.

oOo

No one else spoke as Blossom was carried off to her
sentence. The silence persisted after she had gone. Its breaking came from
outside: a murmur that resolved into the sound of hooves on earth, and took
shape as a company of riders making its way through the camp toward the king’s
circle.

Linden rose. His face forgot to be somber. He opened his
arms wide in welcome.

Cloud opened his own arms from the back of his grey
stallion, riding to the circle’s edge and springing down. Linden was there,
pulling him into a glad embrace, drawing him inward, setting him down on the
royal horsehide.

It was done altogether without thought, and it shocked the
elders and the lesser kings. Cloud was not even yet a king, still less a king
of the plains; yet he was set as an equal beside the king of kings.

Nor did he refuse that equality. Cloud had no arrogance, but
he knew what he was, and what he was worth.

He inclined his head to the lords of the plains. He smiled
at the king’s companions. His smile warmed on Kestrel. When it fell on Keen,
who was still in the circle, rocking Summer who had begun to fuss, it went
wonderfully soft.

Summer stretched arms toward him, straining, proclaiming at
the top of his ample lungs where he wished to go. Keen had little choice but to
set him in Cloud’s lap. There he subsided to a contented gurgle.

When she would have withdrawn, Cloud caught her hand.
“Stay,” he said.

She blushed and shook her head. “I can’t—”

He would not let her go. “My lord,” he said to Linden, “it’s
not our custom, but since we are here, and since she is of your people, I’m
minded to ask . . . would you give me leave to court this
woman?”

“Court?” Linden asked.

“Approach her,” Cloud said, “and persuade her to make a
marriage with me.”

Linden’s eyes were wide. “You want to marry her?”

“Shouldn’t I?”

“But I didn’t think you—”

“Sometimes we do,” Cloud said. “She has to agree. If I have
your leave—her king can do that, yes? Or should I ask her father?”

“The king can do that,” Linden said. “But—”

“Then will you?”

“Why are you asking me? You took her long ago. Why does it
matter now?”

“It matters to her,” Cloud said.

Linden turned his baffled blue gaze on Keen. “Has he spoken
to you of this?”

Keen shook her head. She seemed stunned.