White Mare's Daughter Read online

  Weddings were grand occasions among the people, rich with gifts and feasting. Strangers would come from far away to partake of a great lord’s bounty, bringing songs and tales and sometimes a marvel. When Yama took his first wife, Agni remembered, a traveller had had a wondrous thing, a knife made of smooth shining stuff’ both softer and keener than stone, which he called copper. He had not given it to anyone though many sought to trick him out of it, nor offered it as a wedding gift, which had been reckoned rude.

  But Agni rather thought he understood. This copper could take an edge that would draw blood from air, and bore a sheen on it like sunset on water, red and golden and faintly green. He would not have given such a thing away, either, though he be thought mean for it, and less than princely.

  There were no such wonders at this wedding, though someone was showing off a mare born all white and not, he swore, greyed as the children of the Mare were. And indeed she was a strange thing to look at, her coat pure blank white, her skin pink beneath it and not the black of the Mare, and her eyes blank and icy blue.

  Those eyes had a demon in them, people said. Maybe so; but there was none in the mare. She was a placid thing, inured to stares and exclamations and strangers’ hands running over her.

  oOo

  Agni found Sarama not in the crowd about the white mare, where he might have expected, but hovering on the edge of a taleteller’s circle. This was nothing so wondrous as a horse born white; simply a man in travelworn clothes, one eye blinded in an ancient knife-fight, with a strikingly clear voice for one so apparently ravaged by age and wandering.

  “Yes,” he was saying as Agni came up beside Sarama, “I traveled toward the setting sun with the people of the Black Mare and the people of the Red Bull and many another people, westward and westward, till I found the Golden Aurochs that some had told me were long vanished into the grass. But they were very much alive, and they were riding westward, seized by the desire of their king and drawn by tales of wonder—just as I had been, who came from so far to find them. They were camped by the edge of a great and terrible place, a forest of trees such as none of you has ever seen, trees so tall they touched the sky. Beyond those, their wise men knew, was treasure; but they had failed of their courage, and would not venture the trees.

  “But I was only one man, and men have called me mad before. I said my prayers to Skyfather and to Earth Mother and to Horse Goddess, too, and sang myself a beast to carry fodder for my horse, and rode into the dark place. Oh, it was dark, my children! Dark as night, full of whispers and rustlings and the flutter of wings. And there was no sky to see, no stars to light my way, and hardly the sun by day. Yet the gods guided me, sent game to my bow, kept my horses on a path as straight as it might be, till I came to the light again.

  “It was a beautiful thing, my children, beautiful and purely strange. For there was the grass that grows in the world I knew, and a great river that was still, after all, a river; and the sun over them, and rain when the gods willed it, and night with moon and stars. But all on that plain of the river, as far as eye and mind could perceive, were the habitations of men.

  “And such men! Men, my children, who live in tents built of earth and wood and stone, that never move, but stand fast from life to life. Cattle they know, and goats, and sheep, but of horses they know nothing. They walk where they must go, or float like logs on the river, nor think to mount one of their cattle—strange people, fools one might think, but such treasures as they amass, such wonders as they make, how could they indeed be witless? They clothe themselves in all the colors of earth and water and sky, and surround themselves with the work of their hands, wonderful things of wood and stone and pottery, and a thing that some call metal, and when it is red they call it copper, and when it shines like the sun they call it gold. This is a rarity, and a sign of great wealth, but is neither a wonder nor a thing to remark on there, no more than their garments or their pots or the music they make with pierced reeds, that sounds like the voices of the gods.

  “But strangest of all, and most remarkable, my children, is that no man rules there. No, not one. Their kings are women, my children. Yes, it is true! Women rule them. Women walk boldly, with faces unveiled, and speak as freely as men, and men not only listen; they bow their heads and obey.”

  But for the respect every civilized person owed a teller of tales, he would have been drowned out then by a tide of disbelief. As it was, people murmured and nudged one another, and someone laughed, almost loud enough to overwhelm his voice. He jabbed his chin at that one, not at all dismayed, and nodded broadly. “Oh, you laugh, do you, little man? So did I, long and loud, in my disbelief. And yet it was true. They know nothing of Skyfather. Earth Mother only they know, whom they call Lady of the Birds, and they worship her in every dwelling, in every place in which they gather. Men, too; men there submit in all things to the women, nor carry weapons, nor know the arts of war, except to drive off the wolves from their flocks. And that, my children, the women also do, strong tall creatures whose hands are hard and whose hearts are implacable.

  “Still,” he said, and there he sighed as if at a memory, “not all of them are as men, or as stones, either. They are free of themselves; aye, very free. Nor do they scorn a half-blind traveller, if he come mounted on a beast they reckon impossible, and bearing gifts from far places. My knife they had little use for save for cutting meat, but my bow they loved, for they had nothing like it. It would wage great war among the wolves, they said. I gave it to them. How was I to refuse? My horse I would not give, nor dared they ask for her; but when she foaled, they kept her colt. It was tribute, they said, to the Lady of the Birds. I thought that they might sacrifice him, but they kept him, the daughters of the she-king of that place, and made a little king of him, feeding him the choicest grasses and garlanding him with flowers.”

  There was more to his tale—a great deal more, from the look and sound of him—but Sarama, it seemed, had heard enough. She wandered off as if in a dream, and Agni followed.

  When she stopped, she had left the tents and found her way to the horselines, though not as far as the Mare. Agni did not know what stopped her there. Probably nothing but the turning of her thoughts, and perhaps the sight of a mare with a new colt at its side. He had been born in the night from the look of him, tiny and spindly and down on his pasterns but bright-eyed, curious, coming to investigate the strangers while his mother grazed nearby. She was an old mare, a mare who had borne many foals; she was far too wise to guard her child against the goddess’ children, though she favored them with a long glance before she bent to her grazing.

  Sarama knelt in the grass, making herself smaller so that the foal might not take fright and flee. But he was a brave one, a mouse-colored creature who would, Agni judged, be black when he was grown. He approached her boldly, neck outstretched, ears pricked, tiny nostrils flared, till he touched her with his nose. She knelt motionless except for her hand, which came up slowly to stroke the soft newborn fur of his neck. He snorted and shied a little, but he came back. By degrees and with a bit of snorting and rapid retreating, he suffered her to stroke him from ears to tail, lift his feet one by one, breathe into his nostrils and, Agni had no doubt, lay the goddess’ blessing on him.

  It was nothing that Agni himself had not done, and yet he watched, fascinated. Sarama was Horse Goddess’ servant. She spoke for the goddess to the people, on those rare occasions when the goddess might choose to speak. Not all those people, he could see, walked on two legs.

  Sarama let the colt go. He went direct to his mother and nursed hungrily.

  Sarama straightened. She was smiling. “That one will be a hunter’s mount,” she said. “He’s small but very brave, and he’ll be strong and sure on his feet.”

  “Maybe I’ll lay claim to him,” Agni said.

  She slid her eyes at him. “You? No. Your horse is waiting for you.” Her chin tilted northward, away from the camp. “There. You’ll leave soon.”

  She was not asking. She was te
lling. From anyone else he might have resented it, but Sarama was Sarama. “And you?” he asked her. “Will you stay and wait for me?”

  “I’m not your wife,” she said. It was quick, and no thought in it, he did not think; she softened face and voice when she spoke again. “You know I go where the goddess bids me.”

  “I thought the goddess bade you come home, now that Old Woman is gone.”

  “To do what? Sit in a tent? Wear a veil? Be someone’s wife?”

  Agni did not see why she should be so angry. He certainly had said nothing to merit it. He chose to be calm, to say mildly, “Old Woman sat in the king’s council and spoke when the goddess moved her to speak. Sometimes she staved for a whole round of seasons. Isn’t that what you came to do?”

  “I came to show the king the cup of her skull,” Sarama said, soft and too still. He read grief in it, and more of that inexplicable anger. Sarama was always angry at something. It seemed to be her nature—as it was with young mares, never a quiet moment, ears flat and teeth bared and hind feet restless always.

  Stallions learned to avoid the mares when they were in such a mood, but Agni was a man. Men did not run away from women, even women in a temper. “So where will you go?” he asked. “Back to the goddess’ hill?”

  “No,” said Sarama, again too quickly. “There’s too much memory there.”

  “So you’ll stay with us,” he said. “Heal. Speak for the goddess when she asks. The people will be glad to have you back. They’ve been too long without Horse Goddess’ word on them. Not all the foals are as fine as this one. Too many are born weak or dead, and those that live are too often flawed.”

  Sarama tossed her head in annoyance. “What, don’t you so-wise men know how to breed horses? I saw the stallion who’s been covering so many of the mares. Am I the only one who can see how poor a beast he is? His front legs are crooked and his hindlegs too straight. He’s pretty, to be sure, with that sun-colored coat, but there’s nothing worth keeping beneath it. It doesn’t take the goddess to tell you to keep the hide and be rid of the horse, and find another sire for the herd.”

  “I said much the same,” Agni told her, “and the men bade me mind my business. You could speak with honest authority.”

  “I’ll speak,” she said, “but I’m not staying here.”

  “So? Where will you go?”

  “West,” said Sarama. “Toward the setting sun. To the country in which women rule, and men bow their heads and obey.”

  5

  Sarama had not truly known what she would say until she said it. That she could not stay—yes, she had known that, had known it since Yama accosted her and made her too keenly aware of her position among the people. Old Woman had had great power, that had kept the men at bay. Sarama was too young yet; and she had been born into a strong clan.

  Too strong, Old Woman had said. It had thought to master Horse Goddess through Sarama’s mother. She had died in the battle. Sarama might not live, either, or live in captivity.

  Then who would serve the goddess? Who would ride and love and tend the Mare? Not a man. The Mare would never suffer that. But the men might imagine that she would.

  Sarama was not the people’s servant. She had had to learn that. The goddess was her own self. The people of the White Horse were hers by virtue of their sign and symbol, but her servant did not belong to them. Just so did Sarama belong to the Mare, but the Mare did not belong to Sarama.

  Now came the sign that Sarama had been waiting for, the words of a traveller who might be mad or a liar. Agni said as much, as she had expected him to do.

  Agni was her brother and she loved him, and he often understood her, but he was a man. In the end he thought as a man thinks, of owning and mastering. Even when men prayed, they bargained: this for that, prayer and worship in return for success in the hunt, perhaps, or strong healthy sons, or power among the people. They did not simply lay themselves open to the gods, to be done with as the gods willed.

  The goddess had willed that she hear the tale of the sunset people. A land of women who were kings—yet a land that knew no horses.

  Sarama’s heart beat faster at the thought of it. Surely these people would welcome her, and the Mare whom she served, whose lot in this place would be only to fade and vanish among the herds. Men never saw how the mares ruled, nor cared. They could only see the stallions’ noise and vaunting.

  Agni’s voice startled her. She was halfway to the sunset already. “You can’t go. What if you die on the road? You’re the last of the Mare’s people. What will she do without you?”

  “Better than she would do here,” Sarama said. “I met our eldest brother yesterday. He informed me that when he is king, I shall learn to be a proper woman. Our time is over, he meant me to understand. His time—the Stallion’s time—is long since begun.”

  Agni’s face flushed; his fists clenched. “And who says that Yama will be king?”

  “Yama means to make sure of it,” she said. “You have to go away—unless you win your horse, you can’t claim authority over the White Horse people. Yama won his a good while since.”

  “Oh yes,” Agni growled. “And it’s said he did it less than honorably, too, by trapping a herd in a barren valley and starving it into submission—and the stallion died rather than submit; so he came home with a yearling colt. For certain the poor thing didn’t last out the year, in such state as it was when he brought it in.”

  “Still, he won it,” Sarama said. “The winning is all that matters. And he’ll be here with the people while you wander far and long, hunting an honorable prey.”

  Agni did not look as if she had surprised him, except with her perception of things as they were. He must have thought her ignorant, or innocent at least, as far from the people as she had lived for so long. He said, “I have friends here. They’ll be on watch. Our father will be alive when I come back, alive and in possession of the kingship. Then what will happen, will happen.”

  “Pray that it be so,” said Sarama.

  oOo

  Muriadni’s wedding was as wild as one could ask, even as wearied as people were by three days of festival and sacrifice. Agni whirled back into it from his conversation with Sarama, seized a cup as it went past and found it full of kumiss, drank it down and went in search of another. They had put the bride away once the marriage-words were spoken, hidden her in her tent as was proper, but the young women were still out and about, dancing their ring-dances and teasing the men with the flash of slim ankles and the clatter of their little finger-drums.

  One pair of bright eyes called to him from a fall of shadow. They were not Rudira’s, no, never; Rudira was a married woman. She must keep to her husband’s tent. She would expect him there—but later. Not so early, not yet.

  These were very fine eyes, as green almost as grass. She who owned them wore the devices of the Red Deer people, and splendidly too, as if she were a chieftain’s daughter. Her tunic was rich with beadwork. She glittered with gauds, brow and throat, cars and wrists and ankles. She might have been the bride herself, save that the hair unbound beneath the headdress with its disks of carved and painted bone, proclaimed her both unwed and unbetrothed.

  She was hunting a husband, then, and from a covert, as it were. Agni was not hunting a wife—oh, no; not for a long while yet. Still they were enchanting, those eyes, even if they were not Rudira’s, and he was warm with kumiss. What harm after all in honest worship of the gods? This at least was no man’s wife, least of all his brother’s.

  She saw the light in his eye. The dance whirled him into her reach. He did not recall stretching out his arm, and yet she was caught in the curve of it, rich with the warm scent of woman.

  She could not suffer that, not and be proper; indeed she must gasp in outrage and whirl out of his grasp. But not before she had whispered in his ear, “Out behind the tents. Come!”

  He had to keep his face blank as the game required, and join in the dance for a while longer, then drink from the cup that was hand
ed him, exchange a pleasantry with someone whom he forgot as soon as he was done. Only then might he begin to wander away.

  oOo

  The sun had set a little while since. The sky was wild with stars. The moon was waxing, a bright half-moon. Agni with his hunter’s eyes needed no aid of torch or firelight to find his way out past the tents, out where the wind blew untrammeled across the world of grass. It was soft tonight, soft and cool, no winter in it.

  She was waiting for him in the place that everyone knew, a hollow just far enough from the camp that no one could hear what one did there, and yet close in if there should be a raid—if there had been a war, which this year, by the gods’ grace, there was not. She had spread her mantle on grass well beaten down by assignations before theirs, and arranged herself on it in all her finery. She had even—wise lady—brought a skin of kumiss and a pair of cups.

  There was nothing either modest or shy about her. No dove’s voice, either. Hers was clear and perhaps a little sharp, though he could tell she strove to soften it. “Good evening, my lord,” she said, “and welcome.”

  “Well come indeed,” said Agni. He was looming over her. He dropped to one knee, to bring their heads more level. Even in the dimness her eyes were bright. Fevered, he would have said; but was it not a fever, after all, that ran in the blood?

  She let fall her veil. He was not greatly disappointed. Her features were like her voice, a little sharp, but well-shaped. She was not a beauty, not as Rudira was. Neither was she ugly.

  Once her face was bared, her eyes seemed to grow shy. They lowered. “Am I ill to look at, my lord?”

  “No,” said Agni. “Oh, no. Not in the least.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “the rest of me will suit you better.”

  He drew breath, to protest perhaps; but the swiftness of her movement startled him into silence. She was on her feet, looming as he had loomed a moment before. She took off her garments one by one.

  It was a dance, meant to warm a man if he were not warmed to burning already. She danced it well, and yet she did not linger. As each garment fell, more of her revealed itself under the moon. Indeed she was fair, deep of breast, broad of hip, with strong round thighs: made for bearing sons.