Lady of Horses Read online

  The child in Keen’s arms had hushed her crying and lay quiet, paddling aimlessly as babies do. She was much too young, and yet she seemed to be watching the stranger shamans present what must be a petition to the great shaman of the People.

  No one acknowledged Keen’s presence. She was only a woman, standing with her eyes downcast as was proper, holding a newborn baby—a mere and unwelcome girlchild, everyone could see.

  She knew some of the signs; it helped in speaking with women of distant tribes in the summer gathering, and in trading for this or that when the traders came through on their wanderings. There was trouble far to the east: a sickness in the herds, a weakness among the young men, and the hunting was poor. It was a curse, they thought, or the ill-will of a god, but none of them had power to alter it.

  Drinks-the-Wind heard them out. When they were finished, he signed to them, briefly but courteously: “I will consider this. Go, rest, be at ease. My wives will see that you have whatever you desire.”

  The strangers left with good enough will, and perhaps some hope that the shaman’s wives would be both beautiful and accommodating. Keen, who knew Drinks-the-Wind’s chief wife all too well, expected that they would be disappointed. Mallard guarded her husband’s honor zealously, and with it the honor—and the obedience—of his other wives. Older wives, gracious of manners but plain of face, would attend the strangers, and the younger and fairer women would be kept discreetly apart.

  Then at last Keen was suffered to be noticed. Drinks-the-Wind looked on her as kindly as he ever could with his fierce pale eyes like a falcon’s. She bent her head and let him see what she carried. “Here is the daughter White Bird bore you,” she said. “She asks that you give her life, and make her your own.” Which was not the truth, but this was ritual.

  Drinks-the-Wind looked at his daughter. Keen thought she heard him sigh faintly. Then, somewhat to her surprise, he took the small drowsy body from her arms and lifted it up to the eye of the sun. “A strong child,” he said, “and good to look on. Let her be Whitethorn, of the White Stone People.”

  So did he give his daughter life and make her a child of the People. Keen left gratefully, carrying the child, who was now named Whitethorn, back to her less than grateful mother.

  “I don’t want it,” White Bird said over and over. “Don’t make me take it. Let me be!”

  It was as if she had gone mad. The older wives sighed and muttered among themselves, remembering other new mothers who had been strange; but none quite as strange as this. Old Mallard sent Keen away, to Keen’s relief.

  Keen walked slowly from the birthing-lodge, back to her own tent on the camp’s edge. Her heart was troubled. To bear a child and not want it, even if it was a girl—how could any woman, even White Bird, do such a thing?

  There were tasks to be done: hides to scrape and cure for clothing, for shoes, for mending the tent; seeds of the wild grasses to grind into flour for bread; herbs to gather and dry, some for eating and healing, and some for Walker’s magics. The boys who hunted for the youngest shaman had brought a brace of fat ducks to pluck and clean and roast on a spit, and one, shyly, brought a grass basket full of berries, first of the summer, which he had gathered, he said, just for her.

  All that she had to do, because Walker had as yet no other wives, and had taken no captive to share his wife’s labors. Keen had never minded. It was a haven of sorts, an escape from the memory of White Bird’s strangeness.

  oOo

  Sometimes Walker did not come back to his tent till very late, or if he was working magic or courting a vision, he might not come back at all. Still Keen prepared dinner for him, roasted the ducks with some of the herbs that she had gathered, and filled them with the berries.

  Maybe the scent brought him back, the rich fragrance of roasting duck, the pungency of herbs, the delectable sweetness of the ripe red berries. He came walking off the steppe in the evening, with the last light of the sun turning his hair to ruddy gold.

  Keen, crouched by the fire, caught her breath at the beauty of him. He walked as light as a red deer, as proud as a stallion.

  And he was hers. He smiled as he saw her.

  They were modest, he and she. She lowered her eyes as a good wife should, and offered him the dinner that she had made for him. He sat politely and ate it, every bite, savoring the rich fat and the sweet marrow of the bones. Then he urged her to take a portion, and pressed till she gave in.

  She was hungry, but not for that. She ate it because it was proper, and because it filled her stomach. It was good, she supposed. She barely noticed. Her eyes were full of his face in the firelight, the long clean planes of it, the beard so fair it hid little, even if he had not cut it short. It was all she could do not to lean forward and kiss him, out in the open where anyone could see.

  Waiting made it sweeter. She had learned that since she married him. He had taught her. It was a shaman’s gift, maybe. Certainly it was not common to young men—and young, unquestionably, he still was.

  She went first into the tent. With beating heart and breath coming quick, she prepared their bed, sweetening it with herbs and the petals of flowers.

  He might not come. Sometimes he did not. He might go back among the men, or return to the steppe in search of dreams.

  But tonight he came almost too soon after her to be proper. She had just taken off her long tunic and slipped her hair from its braid. As she drew it over her shoulder and began to comb it out, he lifted the tentflap and stooped beneath it.

  He paused just within the flap, straightening slowly. The flame flickering in its bowl of fat, the lamp that she had lit to see by, flared and brightened at his coming, just as her spirit did.

  He dropped his tunic without ceremony. His body was lean, no softness in it. He was not scarred as so many men were, from war, from the hunt, from quarrels when there were no wars to fight or beasts to kill. He was all smooth but for the marks that proclaimed him a shaman: over the heart, on his belly, above his manly parts. Later maybe she would trace the curves and swirls of them, to feed his power and give him strong dreams.

  He swept her up, comb and half-unplaited hair and all, and kissed her till her eyes went dark. She wrapped arms and legs about him and took him into herself, even as he stood there. He buried his face in the hollow of her shoulder, laughing softly. “O beautiful,” he said. “O marvelous.”

  He lowered her into the heaped furs and the sweetness of herbs. She held him within her, drawing him deep, rocking gently, then with greater urgency. His body was hot against hers. His scent was musk and smoke and wild grass. He was strong in her, and hard, filling her almost to pain.

  She gasped at the gush of his seed like fire in her. Gods, she prayed. Gods, spirits, Mother Earth, let this be a child. Give me a child!

  His weight sank onto her, crushing her breasts. She could not breathe. And yet she clung to him, holding him inside, until he slackened and shrank and slipped out for all she could do.

  He was asleep suddenly, as men could do after they had taken a woman. Keen slipped from beneath him, struggling a little, gulping air.

  Her breasts ached. She stroked the ache out of them, and that other ache out of her lower parts, finishing what he had begun; putting the seal on the gate, as the old women would say.

  He slept. She finished plaiting her hair, languidly, watching his face in the lamplight. It was much younger in sleep, all the arrogance smoothed away, the face of a boy, a child. But the body was a man’s, and the long limp thing that lay in its nest of hair, below the blue swirls and interlacings that sealed his power as a shaman.

  Keen smiled to herself. Some of the women whispered that Drinks-the-Wind had patterns of power limned on his rod itself; but none of his wives would confirm it. Some things, she supposed, were a mystery, and should remain so.

  4

  Walker needed a vision.

  He was a shaman. Someday, and soon, he would be the shaman, the chief prophet and true ruler of the People. But first he had to ha
ve visions, proof that his power was greater than his father’s had ever been.

  It was his curse and the gods’ jest that instead of a spirit-guide, some beast or bird, stone or tree or eddy of the river, he was given his visions through the least regarded of his sisters. And she was not a willing guide. Sometimes he had to threaten her before she would speak.

  In the winter just gone by, he had made a long fast. He had emptied himself till his spirit was as pure as light through clear water, and begged the gods for a new guide. They had answered him nothing at all, until he went back to the camp, drifting light as a feather, and come face to face with her. And there was the gods’ answer. This was his guide. He would have no other.

  Now he needed a vision. His father had not had a great seeing in more summers than most could remember; but Walker had been counting. Nine. Nine summers. Little visions, small foretellings, Drinks-the-Wind had had; and he was famously wise. No one seemed to notice that the great prophecies had gone away from him.

  They had gone away. And in the way of the gods, they would come back—must come back to the one who by blood and breeding was the old shaman’s heir.

  The gods had made that clear, just as they had made it clear that any vision Walker had must come through his sister. He could feel the time running out. This summer was the ninth-year feast, the great gathering of tribes, when kings were made and shamans chosen, and the great sacrifices were offered up to the gods of earth and sky. To that feast, Walker must bring more than his simple self. He must have a prophecy.

  He tracked his sister to one of her lairs, an eddy of the river where sometimes the young men came to swim and play. There was no one there on this day of bright and singing spring, except the one he had come hunting for.

  She sat on a stone, seeming no more than a stone herself, in her worn rag of a tunic, with her feet bare and her hair escaping its plait. She was no guide for a shaman to boast of, but she was all he had. He had to make the best of it.

  He could tell that she was aware of him: her shoulders stiffened just perceptibly. But she did not acknowledge him. She was an odd, wild, ill-mannered creature, and no one seemed inclined to teach her proper womanly decorum.

  Someday Walker meant to, but not now. Not this moment. He needed a vision.

  “No,” she said.

  He must have spoken the words aloud, for she was answering him, still with her face turned away from him, staring out over the sunlit water.

  “I will not give you a vision,” she said.

  “Of course you will,” said Walker, softening his voice as much as he could, though he would dearly have loved to slap her. “You have visions. I feel them in you. Give them to me.”

  “No.”

  He seized her arm and pulled her about. She came without resistance. There was no fear in her face. “You must,” he said through gritted teeth, “give me what is mine.”

  “I have nothing to give you.”

  “You must!” he cried. “I must have a vision. I—need—” He stopped before he betrayed himself. “I must have a vision,” he repeated.

  “Invent one,” Sparrow said, so insolently that he struck her. She cowered under the blow, but her eyes had no submission in them.

  He stood breathing hard, glaring down at her. She had grown more defiant rather than less, the older she grew. Now even force could not shift her.

  That much, her eyes told him. She was wise to his threats, and aware of his fear: that if he harmed her, the visions would go away.

  It was time he found a husband for her. Someone strong, and not to be swayed by a woman’s wiles. A man who would curb her tongue and teach her proper obedience.

  As for inventing a prophecy . . . he shuddered to think of it. That was blasphemy. A shaman’s power was in the truth, though he might veil it in mystery for the people’s sake.

  She crouched at his feet, small huddled body, wide defiant eyes. He could sense no yielding in her.

  In a passion of rage and frustration, he flung up his hand. He would beat her till she bled; till she cried for mercy. She gave him no choice. He must have his vision.

  A shriek rent the air, a scream of pure rage. Walker whipped about with hammering heart.

  There was nothing there. The eddy was quiet, the sun unsullied.

  A horse, he thought, now that he could think again. A mare, driving off an importunate stallion. One of the herds must have come down to the river, out of sight round the bend of the eddy.

  His heart slowed. His mind cleared. He turned back to his sister.

  She was gone. The eddy was empty of her. Nor was she to be found anywhere among the People, though he looked hard and long. She had vanished from the camp, or hidden so deep in it that she escaped him utterly.

  oOo

  On the morning when the shamans from the east consented at last to leave the warmth and the good hunting of the People’s camp and return to their cold and distant country, Walker pondered his need and his sister’s intransigence. Drinks-the-Wind had given the easterners what they seemed to reckon wisdom, but Walker barely saw even sense in it. The elder shaman bade them fast and pray, and perform a ritual of cleansing over the herds, and make certain that all the hunters performed the proper rites both before and after a hunt. That would appease the gods, the old man said, and bring back the game. Then they would be strong again.

  Which might be true, but any man of sense could have advised such a thing. They had not needed a full moon’s journey to be told of it.

  Drinks-the-Wind had grown old. And the king himself was no longer young. Walker saw him as he set the strangers on their way. His stallion had grown thin in the winter, and the back that had been so strong was beginning to sway. The man on that back had the same look to him of age beginning to conquer his strength.

  And this was a ninth year.

  Walker left the camp without speaking to anyone. He needed solitude to hear the gods’ voices most clearly. But as he climbed the long hill above the river, a whooping crowd of young fools thundered past on half-wild horses, with a pack of hunting-dogs baying before them. Linden the prince rode hunting with his friends and followers. Some had great hopes: they carried boar-spears.

  Most of them veered wide round Walker. They were afraid of him, though they might have chosen to call it hearty respect for the shaman’s power.

  But Linden paused. His stallion was very beautiful, deep red, but its mane and tail were the same winter gold as Linden’s own long plaits; and it made a great show of fire and fierceness, though Walker, who had seen it in the herds, knew that it was not the best regarded of the stallions. It was too inclined to defer to the mares.

  Deference need not be an ill thing, if it was properly judged. Walker reflected on that as he smiled up at the man on the horse’s back. Linden smiled down a little uncertainly, but with a lift of the chin that spoke of proper princely pride.

  “Good morning, prince of the White Stone People,” Walker said civilly.

  “Good morning,” Linden said, without granting Walker a title. “We’re going hunting. Shall we bring you back a fat deer?”

  “Bring me back a tender piglet,” Walker said, “fresh from its mother’s teat.”

  Linden looked as if he did not quite dare to laugh. “That’s tender meat indeed,” he said, “and not easy to get hold of.”

  “Yes,” Walker said.

  “Would you like the sow’s milk to cook it in?”

  “That would be a dangerous thing,” Walker said, “to milk a wild sow.”

  “So it would,” said Linden. He laughed then, light and a little wild. “You’ll dine on piglet tonight, seer. My word on it.”

  Walker inclined his head. Linden wheeled his showy beast about, laughed again and sent him thundering after the others.

  oOo

  Walker stood on the hilltop. His eyes followed the young men as they galloped off northward, but his mind flew far above them, looking down on them with cold falcon-eyes. They were little men, every one,
and their prince was hardly greater than they.

  And yet that was a very pretty creature, sitting on the back of his pretty stallion. He moved well, spoke well. He was hunter enough for the purpose. He was much too thick of wit to know fear in battle, though he had little judgment, either.

  It was a ninth year, and the king was old. His son was young, very young, and not the most clever of men.

  It came to Walker out of the sun, in the whisper of the wind. Shamans had always ruled the kingmaking—that was so from the dawn time. And yet, in the long ago, the king had been king for but a year, served his purpose, led the young men in battle and in the hunt, mated with the royal women. Then when his year ended, so too did he.

  There had been the great sacrifice then, the Stallion offered up to the gods—but he had had a rider, always. The king of stallions and the king of men had gone together before the gods, taking with them the People’s prayers and their petitions, and all their tribute.

  Then there had come a year of war that stretched into two, then three; and the king in that time was a great leader of men. The shamans had suffered him to live until the war was over. By then the People were accustomed to him, and he was strong among them. The shamans bowed to his power, even till the ninth year, when at last they mustered the strength of will to offer him in sacrifice.

  That had begun the decline. Now a king ruled as long as he pleased, or as long as he kept his strength. He chose the time when he would die, and the shamans submitted to his will.

  It was time, Walker thought, to return to the old ways. The king was growing old. His son was strong in body but weak in will. Any man of wit could play him like a flute.

  Walker turned his face to the blue heaven. The sun stroked his cheeks with warm fingers. He spread his arms and wheeled slowly, as the stars wheeled at night and the sun by day. The wind caressed him, sweeter than any woman’s touch.

  After all, he had had his vision. It had not come in dream through his sister, nor in trance, nor after a great working. And yet it was real.