White Mare's Daughter Page 17

  Danu walked the city’s rim, round the outermost circle of houses, where the trees ended and open fields began. The barns there were full, the byres waiting for the cattle.

  On the southward side, not far from the bend of the river, someone had built and then abandoned a house of wood and wattle over fitted stone. There were two parts to it, the open stone space below and two rooms above, walled and floored in wood. The roof was thatch and somewhat rotted. The walls were sturdy, and the door was only a little broken.

  Better yet, whoever had built the house had raised a pen behind, for goats perhaps, or a cow; and from that a long meadow ran down to the river. It would, with time and a little effort, be a comfortable place to winter in, the horse below and he above. And Catin, maybe. If she wished.

  He had not thought yet what she would say to his leaving the Mother’s house. Still the horse was his charge, and he could not keep it in the city’s heart. Either he went away to the winter pasture and returned seldom if at all, or he claimed this place and kept the horse in it, and himself perforce, since someone must tend the beast and see that he was fed.

  He approached the house with respect, but with no expectation that anyone would be living in it. Its mother had died, Danu had heard in the city, and her daughters found homes elsewhere. Her son had lived there for a while, till a woman from Woodsedge chose him to raise her children for her.

  The spirit-knot was still on the door, worn and frayed with weather: protecting the house and its memories, and putting dark things to flight. Danu brushed it with his fingers, taking to himself somewhat of its blessing as he passed beneath the lintel.

  It was as he had been told, a broad open space of a fine size to keep a horse in; and the ceiling surprisingly high overhead. It was musty with disuse, but no evil lay on it, nor had anything fouled it.

  A ladder led up the far wall to an opening in the ceiling. Danu climbed into a room that might have been pleasant once, and could be again. It was lower than the room below, but still high enough to stand erect, with a stone hearth that bore a memory of fire. It was divided in two, inner room and outer, the inner smaller, with a platform in it, and the remnants of a bed.

  Danu nodded to himself. It would do. The more so for that, in the inner room, he found a chest, and in it an array of pots for cooking and for storing wine and food, and other oddments that would serve well for the keeping of a house. It was better than he had expected, by far.

  He walked back lightly to the Mother’s house, traversing the city’s circles that had become familiar since summer’s beginning; even the trees that defined and shaped them, and made it difficult at first to understand how the city was made. People called to him, and waved or smiled when he passed.

  He paused to watch a weaver at her loom; to glimpse the potters in a lesser temple, making vessels for the Lady’s rites. He surprised himself with contentment. Three Birds this was not, but he had a place here.

  He came round rather indirectly to the Mother’s house, past the temple and the grove that were the city’s heart. As he drew near it he heard an odd thing. It sounded like the murmuring of a crowd of people.

  In truth, but for the weaver and the potters, he had seen few enough in the streets. He had thought little of it. The day after the harvest had ended, after a festival that had kept everyone awake until dawn, of course there would be fewer people about than usual.

  But not, perhaps, so few.

  The murmur drew closer. Danu halted by the temple, craning to hear. He was aware of the walls rising above him, the peaked gable with its carved faces: Lady of the Trees with her crown of leaves, Lady of the Deer with a fawn in her arms. The door was shut, as it should be; the elders would have finished their rite and gone away, and left the temple to its solitude.

  Someone was coming down the eastward way. The murmur followed.

  Danu’s ear caught a sound that made his eyes widen. Hooves on packed earth, round hollow hooves. Had the colt come in from the winter pasture by himself?

  That was not his dun colt, this creature walking toward the Lady’s temple. It was a horse most certainly, but larger, taller, older, dappled silver and white, like the moon on new snow. On its back, half-fallen over its neck, rode a stranger. He could see no face, only garments of worn and dusty leather, and a plait of hair the color of rich red earth.

  So it was true. One could ride a horse, if the horse were large enough.

  This horse had a look to it, a light in the dark eye, a sheen on it that made the people of Larchwood murmur in awe. This was the Lady’s creature. There could be no doubt of it.

  It halted before the temple—as it happened, full in front of Danu, who lacked will to remove himself. The rider sighed and slid. With no thought at all, he reached and caught the body as it fell, sinking under the weight of it, until his knees stiffened.

  It was lighter than he had expected. Not a man’s body at all, though quite as tall as one.

  He stood with the woman in his arms and not the least conception of what to do next. The horse nudged his shoulder with its nose, snorted and pawed.

  It was imperious, that one. He understood it well enough. Move! it bade him. Look after this my servant.

  He could think of nothing better to do than to carry the stranger-woman to the Mother’s house. The horse followed, and the people behind.

  They had fallen silent, perhaps in horror at his presumption. But he had to do something. He had to hope that this was enough; that it would satisfy the Lady.

  The horse could not follow him into the Mother’s house, but it hovered near the door. Danu laid the stranger in the gathering-room, on the heap of rugs that made a nest to lie on in the evenings.

  It was a woman indeed, though thin and wiry like a man. Her face was all bladed planes: sharp cheekbones, sharp curved nose, sharp chin. Her breasts were small, all but invisible under her leather coat, and her hips narrow like a boy’s.

  She was too peculiar to be ugly, but he could hardly call her beautiful. Interesting, that was the word.

  He debated undressing her, searching for wounds, for some cause for her unconsciousness, but he could not bring himself to touch her clothing. That was clean enough, to be sure—and somewhat to his surprise; she was no more redolent than anyone should be who had been travelling as far as she must have done. Still he would not take on himself the burden of tending her, not without the Mother’s word.

  He grimaced. What had he done after all but take it on himself, by bringing her here? This was not his house. He had no authority to bring a stranger to it.

  He looked up without surprise into the Mother’s face, and Catin’s behind, in a crowd of elders and their daughters. They must have been close on his heels.

  He kept his head up, though he spoke humbly. “Mother. Honored aunts.”

  The Mother inclined her head to him. The elders were less courteous, more intent on the stranger.

  “This is another of the savages,” one said. She sounded angry. “How did she pass the towns and cities, if she came from the wood? How did she escape the watchers? We should have been warned!”

  “Maybe she came from somewhere else,” said one of the daughters.

  The elders hissed at her. “Where else could she have come from?” demanded the one who had spoken first. “A horse brought her. There are no horses anywhere but in the east.”

  “The Lady brought her.” Danu was astonished to hear himself speak, still humbly but with a firmness that he could never have mustered while his wits were about him. “She belongs to the Lady.”

  “So she does,” said the Mother, forestalling the rush of protests. She came to stand beside Danu, looking down at the woman. Her face was calm, but her eyes were somber. “So this is the beginning of it,” she said. “So soon. I had hoped . . .”

  She stopped, shook her head. “No matter. Danu, Catin, see to her. The rest of you, go. When the time comes, I’ll summon you.”

  This Mother seldom wielded her authority. Danu might h
ave thought her weak, if he had not seen how well the city ran itself. Now he saw the strength in her, the will to command, that she used so seldom; but its very rarity made it stronger.

  They all obeyed, even Catin who could be sullen and resentful of any will but her own. For her Mother she would bow her head and submit.

  oOo

  The two of them tended the stranger, undressed her and bathed her and made a bed for her in an inner room. There was nothing to do then but watch over her. Danu left Catin to it under the Mother’s eye and went out past the clusters of silent people, to find the horse still standing by the door. No one approached it, or tried.

  “It attacks when we come near,” said a child who crouched in a doorway down the street, nursing an impressive bruise.

  Danu nodded. The horse eyed him. Its ears were back, a mean look, like a dog that growled at an intruder. Horses did not growl, but they could wrinkle their lips and bare big yellow teeth.

  “Come,” Danu said, as if a horse could understand the speech of the people. “Be at ease. She is well, but she would be better if you would look after yourself.”

  The horse’s ears flicked at the sound of his voice. He could not tell if it understood him. He ventured a step closer.

  The horse did not lunge at him. He ventured another. Its ears flattened. He halted.

  “I can,” he said, “find you a place to rest, water to drink, grass and comfort. If you will permit me.”

  The horse turned its head away from him and presented its broad rump. It was, he noted rather wildly, larger than the colt. Very much larger.

  He backed away carefully. Some of the children were watching him. He caught the eye of the eldest. “Water,” he said, “in a bucket, and all the grass you can cut from the river-meadow. Can you fetch those for me?”

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. She nodded. In a moment she had the younger children running to do Danu’s bidding, and quickly, too.

  Danu had them set the water—three pails of it, no less—in the space between houses, and spread the cut grass beside it. The horse watched with interest, though its ears flattened again if it caught anyone’s eye on it.

  When the children had retreated, leaving the space untenanted, it ventured forward warily. It sniffed the water, snorted, lipped at it but did not drink. The grass met with great approval: it fell to willingly, and hungrily too.

  Danu watched it for a while. It wore a harness about the head, like a finished version of the knotted rope that Catin had shown him to use with the colt; and there was a fleece strapped to its back, a shaped thing, with an arrangement of pouches and bags bound to or hanging over it. The horse might be glad to be freed of that.

  It glared at him when he came close, but did not threaten him as it had before. The fresh-cut grass distracted it well. He moved in boldly then, slipped off the headstall and the reins, found and unfastened the knotted strap that held the fleece about the horse’s middle. The hair beneath was dark and matted with sweat. He rubbed it carefully, then more strongly as the horse forbore to object.

  It was not so fierce a horse after all. The colt was trickier, with his penchant for nipping when one least expected it. This one was particular about its hindquarters, but loved to be rubbed and scratched along its back and nape and under its belly.

  In the course of those explorations he discovered a thing: it was not an it but a she. It was made differently than the colt, such a difference as made a female thing.

  No wonder then that she was so imperious in her manners. Danu bowed to her as to a Mother or a Mother’s heir. “Lady,” he said.

  She ignored him, as a woman might. He left her to her dinner and went to see if her rider had roused.

  22

  Sarama had been ill. It was winter, she remembered, and she had fallen victim to a demon off the steppe, a small fiery demon that filled her lungs with spite and made her cough, and vexed her sorely with fever. Old Woman brewed potions for it, kept her warm when she shivered and cooled her with snow when she burned, and nursed her till she was well again.

  But if that was memory, and therefore distant, how could it be happening again? Where were the cold stone walls and the wuther of wind in the eaves?

  Here were warmer walls, walls of wood, and sounds as of voices from both near and far. The scents were all strange. No smoke pungent with the dried dung of cattle and horses. No cold cleanness of snow. She did not know what she smelled: some sweetness, some pungency, and one that was familiar after all, the ripeness of a privy.

  She opened her eyes. Wooden walls, yes, and carved beams above her, so strange that for a while she could only stare. She was lying on softness, covered in the prickly warmth of woven wool. The room was small but well lit, with a window open to sunlight.

  Before she thought, she was on her feet, clinging to the windowledge, yearning toward the sky. Walls closed it in and branches tried to bar it, but it was there, just out of reach.

  A sound startled her. She wheeled.

  The room was dim after the dazzle of sunlight. A shape stood in it, a dark looming figure.

  It was human. She heard it breathe. Heard it speak. A low voice, a man’s, with a lilt at the end as if he asked a question.

  She remembered then: the steppe, the journey, the wood; the people in the wood, with their strange tongue; and after that a blur of walls and faces, road and trees and river, and an urgency that had brought her to one place, a place in which the goddess wished her to be.

  This place. Unless she had wandered astray, or lost her way in the fever.

  The man spoke again. His words were no more comprehensible than they had been before. She could see him clearly enough now as he entered the shaft of sunlight. He was not of the same kin or kind as the forest people. His hair was as dark as theirs, his skin only a little fairer, but he was taller, as tall as she, and though broader far than Sarama, never as broad as they. Nor was his face so heavy, his bones so thick. His eyes were large and dark under level black brows, his nose blunt and straight, his mouth full, unsmiling, framed in close-cut curly beard. He made her think of a young bull, even to the slight lowering of his head as she stared, and the hunching of his wide shoulders.

  She was, she realized, as nearly naked as made no matter. To reach the bed and the coverlet she must pass him—this stranger. This man. And he made no move. He simply stood.

  He must be the master here, or the master’s son. He was dressed more richly than she could have imagined, in weavings of rich fabrics and wonderful colors, red and blue and green and gold. There were bright stones in his ears, and on his arm a wonder: a curve of sunlight given substance, bright gleaming marvel. Could that, indeed, be the thing called gold?

  She shut her eyes against the lure of it, and called her wits to order. A prince, yes. A lord of these people—no women kings after all; no gentle rulers. Only men, as always, as the men’s gods had ordained.

  This prince, if such he was, was pitifully slow to seize the advantage. A tribesman would have had her on the bed long before now, and been doing his best to prove himself her master.

  She glanced from side to side. The window was too small to admit her body, even as slender as she was. The door was behind the man. There was no other way to go, no weapon, no escape.

  The man moved. She tensed, but he backed away from her. He bent to the chest that stood beside the door, rummaged in it, grunted as if in satisfaction. He pulled out something soft and finely woven in stripes the color of summer leaves and of new cream. He held it out to her, bowing slightly over it, a gesture that might have been—respect?

  Maybe they knew Horse Goddess, too. When she did not take the thing that he offered, he stepped closer, too quick to flee, and set it firmly in her hands.

  It was a garment, of course, long and loose. She put it on rather defiantly. It fell to her ankles, which was well. Its sleeves were longer than they should be: perhaps it had been made for a man, even for this man. But it fit well enough.

  She scowled at
him lest he think that he had bought her with the gift. She had covered herself, that was all.

  He met her scowl with a bland look, turned and called over his shoulder. Commanding his servants, she had no doubt; and in short order they came running, dark-eyed young creatures of ambiguous sex, carrying plates and bottles and bowls. They spread a feast on the lid of the chest, with many glances at Sarama, but nothing that she would have reckoned an impertinence.

  One of the last brought something that she was very glad of, but that she could hardly use under the man’s unwavering stare: a chamberpot. Yet again he seemed to understand, though she had spoken no word. He turned his back and leaned on the doorframe, comfortably and thoroughly blocking it, but unable at all to see what she did.

  She relieved herself as best she could, as a prisoner might. Even when she was done and had arranged her new gown again, the broad back did not move. She regarded it for a while, then shrugged and investigated the cups and platters.

  She recognized very little of what they carried. Meat, yes. Mutton, but roasted with herbs that gave it a green and pungent flavor, not unpleasant but a little too odd for comfort. Fruit cut and mixed together and drizzled with honey. Something cooked together, roots and greens as they seemed. And bread whiter and finer than she had seen, whose people made flour from the seeds of the wild grasses, but never flour as fine as this. The jar with it was filled with something sweet and strong—mead, or wine mixed with honey—but there was a jar of water, too, cold and sweet, and a jar of goat’s milk.

  If this was bribery, then she would take it, and pay such price as she might. She had not eaten so since she left the steppe. She ate carefully, wary as one should be after fasting, tasting only, and not gorging lest she cast it up again.

  The man had turned back while she ate, and stood still leaning on the doorframe, watching her. He began to puzzle her. His stance was pure young male, and he was not a weedy or a weak one either, but she could find nothing dangerous in his expression.