White Mare's Daughter Page 16

  There were, to be sure, no horses. Unless those were hidden in the wood and all signs concealed from her, then that much of the tale was true. This country knew nothing of Horse Goddess’ children.

  Sarama was not a prisoner here. She could descend the ladder made of a cut treetrunk with well-placed branches, and walk where she pleased. Children followed her as children loved to do, because she was something new to run after and stare at.

  She could walk if she wished right out of the village, back to the wood again.

  At the thought of walking in that green darkness, away from the sun, her body shuddered. She had to stop, cling to the piling that upheld a house, gasp till she could breathe again. The flock of children crept in close, staring and whispering. Their curiosity roused her somewhat. She pushed herself erect and made herself walk onward, round the camp to the place from which she had begun.

  The revel was still going on, the revellers delighted to see her, calling to her in their incomprehensible language, offering hands to pull her up onto the platform. She set her heels when they would have pulled her inside. They laughed with no sign of offense, and brought the revel to her since she would not give up the sky.

  20

  Words were of no use, but the people of the wood spoke well enough by signs and smiles, inclinations of head and hand, and sounds that, though not words, had meaning enough. From them Sarama gathered that her kind was known to them; that the Mare was known, and looked on with reverence. As to how they knew without words to convey such things, they smiled and pointed to their breasts and bellies, and thence to the trees that ringed their village about. Their gods, they seemed to say. Their gods told them.

  Her own goddess granted her the mercy of rest, for a little while. But after the day of sun and two days of cold driving rain, when the sun came back again, she saw how the trees had gone all golden. The day was warm, but the night had been cold, a sharp bite of chill when she went out late to relieve herself.

  She gathered her belongings. The house in which she had slept, which she thought might belong to the elder of the clan—if an elder could be a woman—was unwontedly empty, but there were people enough out and about.

  The Mare, as always, had an entourage of the curious, the young and not so young. They watched as Sarama picked out her feet, combed mane and tail with deft fingers, and readied her to ride. Someone had bathed her this morning; she was damp and gleaming, and there was a garland of flowers about her neck, golden and red, the colors of autumn.

  Courtesy of the steppe would have sent Sarama to the king to bid farewell, but there was no king here. She wavered, not ready to mount, yet desperate to be away.

  As she stood there, a small flurry brought her about. The old woman whose guest she had been walked toward her in a shifting crowd of people. They were dancing, almost, handlinked or alone, weaving in and out, laughing when they tangled.

  The elder wore a crown of flowers. She smiled as she approached Sarama, spread her gnarled hands, bent with unexpected grace. One of the young girls with her danced forward, balancing a bowl in lifted hands.

  It was goat’s milk, again: their drink of parting, it seemed, as well as of greeting. The milk of greeting had been unadorned. The milk of parting was sweet with honey. Sarama drank it down, while the people smiled and nodded, and some of the girls giggled, and the boys scowled and thrust out their chests at one another.

  The elder herself took the bowl from Sarama’s hands, bowed over it and passed it to the girl who waited to take it. Then she took Sarama’s hands in strong dry fingers, turned them palms up and looked hard and long at each. She seemed to read something there as a scryer might in a clear pool, or a priest in the stars.

  A sigh escaped her. She looked bright-eyed into Sarama’s face, and said something in that guttural language which Sarama could not understand. It was a prayer, her manner said, or a blessing.

  Sarama bowed to her in turn. For lack of greater inspiration, she said what her people would say on departing for a journey. “May the gods keep you,” she said. “May Horse Goddess hold you in the palm of her hand.”

  The old woman nodded and smiled. She could no more have understood Sarama than Sarama had understood her, but blessings were much the same wherever one was.

  oOo

  In mutual amity, with smiles and nods and gestures of farewell, the people of the village sent Sarama on her way. Some followed her, as she might have expected; trailing after her far into the wood.

  They helped her more than they could ever have known. While they were with her, she could turn her mind away from the wood, from the dimness that closed about her, from the dearth of sunlight that had driven her so close to mad before. It would do so again. She could feel the madness hovering.

  These people held it at bay. Inevitably they fell behind, but some few remained with her, and one pair of sturdy young creatures, as like as brother and sister, seemed to have appointed themselves her guardians. They strode just behind the Mare when the track was narrow, beside her when it widened. One carried a bow, one a bone-tipped spear. They did not speak, to her or to one another.

  When, near evening, Sarama looked about for a place to camp, the woman slipped ahead. The Mare seemed content to follow her.

  She led them to a clearing. A spring bubbled in it. A tree bent over the spring, heavy with fruit.

  The woman had vanished. The man settled by a ring of stones, a fire-ring of evident antiquity, and set to kindling a fire. After a while, as the light faded from the sky, the woman came back with a young deer over her shoulders. They dined on venison roasted over the fire with herbs from the clearing, and ripe sweet fruit, some roasted with the deer, some fresh from the tree.

  Sarama did not know what she had done to earn this guardianship. Perhaps, as with Gauan’s people, it was the Mare. Whatever the cause, she was grateful.

  She should perhaps be apprehensive; should wait to be waylaid, robbed and beaten and left for dead. But not here. Not these people.

  If she was a fool, then so be it. If these guides led her astray, Horse Goddess would set her on the right path. She must trust in the goddess. Always; unshakably. Or there was no trust in the world.

  oOo

  Her guides, guardians, whatever they reckoned themselves, continued with Sarama. They made no effort to divert her from her course, except when it turned aside from true west; as too often it did in the dark tangle of the wood. But they knew, perhaps in their bones, which way was true. So did she know on the steppe, from the angle of sun or star, or from the lie of the land when rain or mist or snow obscured the sky.

  These guides were a gift. They hunted the wood, fished the rivers. They made her eat when she would have simply slept, and rest when she would have gone on too long or too far. Because of them she rode safe and strong, and stronger as she went on, though she would never be wholly herself until she stood under sky again, unshadowed with trees.

  She had thought them brother and sister, but that, it seemed, was only her eye that had not learned to tell one broad heavy-jawed face from another. In the nights she heard them together, sounds that she could hardly mistake.

  That too was a comfort, warm and real and unmistakably human: all that the wood was not, nor for her could ever be. She wanted only to be out of it. If she could—if there was ever an end to it.

  That was her great fear. That the trees went on and on. That there was no country of the west, no plain well watered with rivers, no great gathering of people who had never known the horse. That she would journey westward until she died, and never find aught but an endless tangle of trees.

  oOo

  On the day when she knew that even for Horse Goddess, even for her soul’s sake, she could not go on, on the day when she had determined that if the wood did not end by evening, she would give up her service and turn back eastward, the trees opened before her. That was nothing to astonish her. There had been clearings enough with her guides’ help, even a village of people like them, who w
elcomed her as those others had, and showed no fear of the stranger.

  But this light was brighter than any she remembered. It was evening light, red-golden, bathing the trees with a sheen as of copper, or of blood. Shadows of the trees stretched long behind her.

  Her guides, always so silent, were murmuring to one another. She heard no fear in it; yet there was a kind of excitement, as if they had come on something new.

  They had fallen behind her, rarity enough that she might have remarked on it. But she was too intent on the light. The Mare’s head was up, her ears pricked.

  The trees thinned. And then, all at once, they ended. A few stragglers wandered down a long hillside. Grass grew there, sere with summer’s ending. A wide rolling country opened before her, so wide that she reeled, caught unawares after the stifling closeness of the forest.

  Just as she willed to venture forward, the Mare essayed a step. Her nostrils were wide, her head high, drinking this new and wonderful air.

  She was well away from the loom of the wood before Sarama felt any lack. Sarama turned to look over her shoulder. Her guides stood in the shadow of the trees, visible only to eyes that knew to find them. They did not move.

  Sarama opened her mouth to call to them, but shut it with the words unuttered. So it always was with spirits of a place. They were bound to it. They could not leave it.

  Perhaps she was a spirit of the steppe, a creature of sky and of open spaces. She could feel her heart grow wide, her soul unfurl. She could not make herself turn back, even if the Mare would have allowed it. Her thanks must go unspoken.

  She lifted a hand. One of the woodfolk lifted a weapon in return: the bow, from the curve of it.

  She blinked, or shifted slightly. When she looked again, her guides were gone.

  oOo

  It was night under the trees. Here under the sky, the light lingered.

  Sarama rode on in it, keeping the westward way. Somewhere on the hills in front of her, or in the hollows between, were habitations of men. If the traveller had spoken true. If he had not lied, or stretched the truth to breaking.

  He had not spoken of the forest people; but perhaps he had not known of them. They were secret, and shy, though welcoming to one who had fallen into their midst. He might have passed through the wood without ever finding one of their villages.

  But that he had found this country, she could hardly doubt. There it was before her, plains and rivers, and on the plains and beside the rivers, shapes that might have been crags, or heaps of stones, or dwellings of human people.

  The Mare carried her through the waning light. The Mare was not weary, nor afraid of the night. Sarama, who must confess to both, lacked will to hold her back.

  This she had come for. This she must face. Whatever it was. Whatever the goddess wanted of her. Was she not the goddess’ servant?

  IV: STRANGER IN THE GODDESS’ COUNTRY

  21

  In Larchwood in the autumn, when they brought in the harvest, the young men danced for the goddess’ glory—and for their own, too, while the women watched. After days of grueling labor, oftentimes against the threat of rain, when the barns were full and the winter’s comfort secured, they bathed all together in the river, put on their best finery, plaited flowers and leaves and ears of wheat or barley in their hair, and came out in firelight to dance the harvest-dance.

  In Three Birds it was much the same. Danu had left the horse-colt in the autumn pasture with the goats, entrusted him to the herders’ care, and come down to the city to help with bringing in the harvest. On this last night, with every muscle groaning and his body yearning to fall into a bed somewhere and sleep till spring, he found himself as he always had before, armlinked with the rest of the bone-weary men.

  The drums beat strength into him. The pipes sent the blood coursing swifter through his veins. The singing—clear voices of women, deep voices of men—lifted him up.

  The Lady’s song was different here, but its rhythms were close enough. Her praises changed little from city to city. She was the great one, the Mother, life-giver, creator. She woke the earth in the spring, taught it to burgeon in the summer, made the harvest rich with autumn’s coming; and when, with winter, the earth slept, she watched over it, guardian and protector, till spring should come again.

  This starlit night, Danu felt her presence, the warmth of her smile. Or perhaps it was only the light of the great fire, the harvest-fire, built of chaff and of dry shocks from the fields, and blessed with its share of fruits and grains from the harvest.

  He beat the earth with his feet. He leaped high above it, as high as the sky. He danced the circle-dance with these strangers who were never his kin, who from day to day and moon-phase to moon-phase had become familiar. Tonight he was one of them.

  The circle spun, sunwise, goddess-wise, setting the seal on the harvest. With a roar of drums it broke, the parts of it scattering, only to bind together into a new whole. In this one women too took part, young women naked but for the Lady’s garment, the skirt of woven cords that concealed nothing; that flaunted their beauty for any eye to see.

  The night was chill beyond the circle, an autumn chill with the bite of winter in it. But here by the fire, in the whirl of the dance, it was as warm as summer.

  Danu found himself dancing face to face with one he knew very well, Catin with her long hair unbound and her breasts gleaming. Her skirt was the color of blood, bright scarlet, cords whirling as she spun. Her teeth flashed white. She was laughing, somber Catin whose smiles were rare and precious things.

  She linked hands behind his neck and bore him with her, dancing the sacred circle, round and round the fire. Somewhere he lost his tunic—so had they all, all the men, and trousers, too, cast aside, forgotten.

  They unwound in a skein then, the spiral dance, the dance that wrought the world. Out and then in, in and then out, and fire in the heart of it, roaring up to heaven.

  oOo

  Danu fell out of it onto yielding softness. Later he would see that it was a haystack, one of many that ringed the dancing-field. It seemed, just then, made solely for him to rest in, and Catin laughing on top of him, wet wriggling body, dizzying scent of woman. She mounted him as he lay there, with urgency that had not a little of the Lady in it.

  He was glad to worship the Lady so, and in such a semblance. Catin was strong tonight, stronger than mortal woman, and in her strength she made him, for a little while, more than mortal man.

  But even gods could tire. Twice again the Lady roused him, but the third time, even her power was not enough. Catin sighed and shook her head and smiled, and kissed him on the lips, and went away.

  Danu lay for a while, dreaming of sleep. But the hay was rough on his bare skin, itched and stung the tender parts of him. He staggered up.

  The cistern for watering cattle stood not too far away, almost farther than he wanted to walk, and across a cold stretch of night air, too. Nonetheless he did it, and bathed in the icy water, which woke him rather too well. He did not know where his clothes had gone.

  It did not matter. The great fire had died down. A few shadowy figures danced still. The rest had sunk to the beaten grass, or found haystacks of their own, the better to worship the Lady. Catin was in one of them, no doubt, with a stronger man than he.

  He was not going to think about that, or let it trouble him. Walking as swiftly as aches and weariness would bear, warming himself with speed, he sought, not the Mother’s house, but the autumn pasture.

  The herdsmen’s hut was warm. They had had their own festival here, and given their own gifts to the Lady. They greeted Danu without surprise. Nati left after a little while to keep watch over the herd.

  Danu wrapped himself in a fleece and followed. Sleep was close, but not so close yet.

  The colt was asleep, curled up in a huddle of similarly sleeping goats. He did not wake for Danu’s coming, though his ear flicked: aware perhaps, but unwary.

  Danu thought of making his bed in the midst of them, colt and go
ats both, but the herdsmen’s hut tempted him. He chose a place between, a mound of grass untenanted by goats. Wrapped in the fleece, with the stars to bless his head, he slept as he had not slept since this year began. No dreams tormented him. His sleep was peace, there on the hillside, and he woke to the grey light of dawn, woke smiling, though it was a while before he knew why.

  oOo

  Danu came to the Mother’s house as she lifted the sunrise song from the summit of the temple. He had seen her there as he walked into the city, a dark still shape on the roofpeak.

  Catin was not in the room that, sometimes, she shared with Danu. He had not truly expected that she would be. The stab of disappointment surprised him, and made him ashamed.

  He folded the fleece that had kept him warm all night, and laid it by the bed. Later he would take it back to its proper place. He dressed in his own clothing, combed and braided his hair, and made himself fit to face the day.

  Today the elders would shut themselves in the temple for a rite more secret and more holy than that in which he had shared yesterday. They would set the seal on the season and bless the altar in the inner temple, and make it all secure for the coming of winter.

  He had his own securing to do, the finding and strengthening of a place for the colt. The goats would go to the winter pasture, but that was far away, farther than he could easily walk from the city. He should be close to it. He did not know exactly why, only that he must.

  It must be a good place, a warm place, but with room about it for a young thing to run. He would have to supply it with fodder as people did with cattle too greatly valued to trust to the mercy of snow and cold, wolves and hunger. It would be good, he thought, to wheedle a goat or two out of Nati and Lati, to keep the horse company.

  It would take all the time he had, maybe, from now till the snow flew, to find and ready the place. He had one or two in mind.

  Not the Lady’s grove. Danu had decided that from the beginning. The colt would grow stunted if he returned there. He should have sky unwalled in trees, and space to stretch his long legs.