White Mare's Daughter Read online

  Agni considered various forms of obeisance, settled for the inclination of the head that he had seen his sister use. It seemed his father knew it: that was a smile lurking under the beard. He sat on his heels with none of the stiffness that one might expect, took up one of the arrows as yet unfletched, began deftly to cut and fit the grey dove-feathers to the readied shaft.

  It was strange, Agni thought, and perhaps intended; but the king was alone. He was dressed like any man of the tribes, no mark on him that he was king. The many who saw him only seated in state with his tall crown on his head might never have known him as he was now, crouched companionably with the prince, performing a task that any mortal hunter could do.

  He was good at it, too. Agni wondered if he practiced when he was shut up in kingly solitude, making and fletching arrows that he would never use, simply for the occupation they gave his hands.

  Agni wanted to be king. But not for a long while yet. Not till he was old himself, and weary of the hunt and the raid, and ready to sit on a well-tanned horsehide and wear a tall heavy crown and be father to the gathering of the tribes.

  They worked in silence. Agni was quicker but the king was surer, his skill honed with years and patience. When the last pair of arrows had gained their wings, the king said, “Your sister is going away.”

  Agni nodded.

  “She has never been here,” the king said. “Never in spirit. She was always with the Old Woman, being servant to the goddess. Odd that it matters now, how far she will go, and where.”

  “She wants to bring Horse Goddess to people who never knew her,” Agni said.

  “So she told me,” said the king. He paused. “And where will you go, my son?”

  So, thought Agni. That was his trouble. “I have to hunt my horse,” he said, “or never be reckoned a man.”

  “Indeed. And will you hunt westward?”

  “There are no free horses in the west, Father,” Agni said.

  The king sighed. “No. There are not. You would do well to hunt north; there’s a herd, an old one, that some say descends from stock that bred the Mare. For all that any of us knows, the Mare herself came from it.”

  Agni bit his tongue. The Mare came from such a herd, he had no doubt; but not the one his father spoke of. There was a band that ran the steppe near the goddess’ hill, a band of greys, with here and there a black or a bay.

  But he could not speak of that. It was a mystery. He only knew it because he had crept out there when he was supposed to be hunting, and he had found the herd and known it for what it was.

  He might have died for that, but he was twinborn with Sarama. The stallion did not fall on him with battering hooves, nor did the Elder Mare leave him broken in the grass. She chased him off as she might a stranger of her own kind, a yearling colt who had gone prying into things that were not fit for him to know.

  He had never told anyone of that. He did not tell the king now—no, though this was his father and his king. He said, “Yes, perhaps it could be, that the Mare knew that herd. I’ll go hunting there, though it’s a stallion I’ll be hunting.”

  “That is well,” the king said. “And yet—I could wish that there were horses in the west.”

  “Pray I find my stallion quickly,” said Agni, “and I’ll go after her, if it will please you, and see that she’s safe.”

  The king’s face lit, but then it darkened. “No,” he said. “No. She’d hate us both for that. Horse Goddess will protect her. Hasn’t she always been so guarded?”

  “Always,” Agni agreed.

  They sighed together, the old man and the young. Agni feared for his sister, and yet it warmed him, to see that his father shared his fear. If prayers could guard her, she would go warded as if with an army.

  He laughed inside himself. She would never believe it, nor welcome it either. She was too fiercely her own creature, like a boy who must always be proving himself a man. Small enough wonder, that, since she was what she was; but she should trust in the goddess. She had more power than perhaps she knew, and more influence among the tribes.

  Someday she would know it. Then Agni would be king, and would have to contend with her. He almost dreaded it—and he was almost glad of it.

  If Yama seized the kingship instead . . .

  As if he had spoken the thought aloud, the king said, “Your brother Yama is an ambitious man.”

  Agni’s hands clenched into fists. “Yes,” he said. “He says—he is the eldest.”

  “Some say that the eldest born should inherit, and not the firstborn of a man’s kingship.” The king’s eyes glinted. “And you? Do you say as much?”

  “I say,” said Agni, “that in our tribe a man may choose his heir. In other tribes, the law may differ.”

  “In, for example, the tribe from which Yama took his wife?”

  Agni did not know why his heart had begun to beat so hard. No one knew what he did with Rudira. That was their secret, between the two of them. No one had ever seen them, or caught them, or guessed—

  He mastered himself. He was calm. He said coolly, “Which, Father? He has several.”

  “I think you know,” said the king.

  Agni held tight to his expression of innocence. “If I do, then I don’t know I know it.”

  “Liar,” the king said mildly. “Some say she’s a witch, did you know that? Perala’s white-haired daughter, with her skin the color of bone, and her eyes of winter ice. When he came looking for a husband for her, he asked for you.”

  Agni’s breath hissed between his teeth. “He did not!” he burst out, and not wisely either.

  “Oh, indeed he did,” said the king. “But I refused. You were too young, I said; truthfully enough. I offered him my eldest in your place.”

  Agni sat where he had been sitting for the past hour and more. He could not breathe. Just so it had been when he was thrown from his pony, when he was young and uncertain of his balance. The wind struck out of him. No air, no breath, no life. And no thought either, except an echoing emptiness. Words rushed to fill it. “Why? Why did you do that?”

  “Because,” said the king, “she was not good enough for you. Not for your first wife. For a second or a third wife, for the likes of Yama—for that, she served well enough.”

  “There may be more to her than you think,” Agni said, almost too low for the other to hear.

  But the king heard it. He laughed: light and free and surprisingly young. “She is a beauty, isn’t she? Beauty can make up for much. But intelligence and wit—those are rarer.”

  “Rarest of all,” said Agni, “is the woman like a creature of fire.”

  “Not so rare,” the king said, “or even so wonderful, in the cold light of day. It’s not the wildfire that makes a chief of wives. That’s for the lesser wives, or for the women one takes on a whim.”

  “Not always,” Agni muttered.

  The king fixed him with a keen and all too piercing stare. “You are young,” he said, “and your blood is hot. Have a care how you let it burn.”

  Agni had no answer for that. Evidently the king expected none. He rose, stretching as a young man stretches, no stiffness of age. “Look to yourself,” he said, “and be prudent. Few wars are more bitter than the war of brother against brother.”

  “If there is war,” Agni said, “it will not be I who start it.”

  “No?” asked the king. “Perhaps you already have.”

  While Agni sat mute, the king left him, walking back straight and tall to his tent. Only when he was near to it, as he came in sight of a circle of hangers-on, did his head bow, his shoulders droop, his firm steps shorten to a shuffle.

  Senile, was he? Weak and wandering, had Yama said? Yama would be most dismayed to discover his error. Nor did Agni have any doubt that he would. The king had as much as promised to make sure of it.

  It would please Agni greatly to see his brother discomfited as he himself had been. By the gods, how had the king known? Unless Rudira—

  And if not Rudira, t
hen who? Who else could know? Would that one betray him to Yama as to the king?

  The world was a dangerous place. Agni had known it when first he met his brother’s youngest wife, when their eyes had met and he had felt the fire wake in her; and known, quite simply, that he would have this woman. Honor, prudence, even life be damned. He would have her.

  7

  Sarama left without ceremony, packed up her few belongings and saddled the Mare and rode away. But her leaving did not go unregarded. When she sought the Mare, she found another beast there also, a thick-legged sturdy gelding, and a laden pack with him. Her father’s gift, and his blessing.

  It was strange to know so late that her father had some care for her existence. It warmed her a little, more than the sun could account for.

  Agni was not there to see her go. No one was. Only the two horses amid the many, and the wind and the sky.

  She slipped the bridle over the Mare’s ears and smoothed the heavy forelock, and fastened the girth tight, binding the saddle-fleece to the broad dappled back. The Mare lipped her palm. Sarama had brought her a small dainty from the king’s tent, a bit of honey sweet.

  She took it greedily but did not protest when Sarama sprang onto her back. The steppe called her as it called Sarama, luring her away from the rising sun.

  They left without regret. The Mare had no herd here. If there had been a stallion, he was forgotten in the passing of her season. Sarama had not even that. Only her brother.

  Well. She had left without speaking to anyone, packed up and simply gone. Yet if her father had known that she would be going now, surely Agni—

  Foolishness. They had no need of words, they two, least of all words of farewell.

  She tightened her grip on the packhorse’s lead and urged the Mare to a quicker pace. It was a long, long way to the sunset country; the sooner she was set on it, the quicker she would come there.

  oOo

  The camp of the tribes sank swiftly behind her, vanishing into the sea of grass. She followed the line of the sun, at first behind and then before her. By that and by subtle changes in the land, the lift of a hill, the curve of a valley, she knew her way. When night came, the stars would guide her.

  She fell into an easy rhythm of travel, a rhythm that she had learned long ago under the Old Woman’s tutelage: sitting easy on the Mare’s back, letting the long smooth strides carry her through the ripple of grass. She could drowse so, if she had need, or ride in a half-dream, resting her spirit while her body was carried onward. Then she was the Mare, and the Mare was herself, running light, skimming the earth with her hooves.

  The wind was in her nostrils, streaming in her mane. The myriad scents of the world flowed through it. They told her stories, whole cycles of sagas. She could lose herself in them, give herself up to them.

  oOo

  The Mare snorted. Her head lifted. She was walking just then, resting from an exuberant gallop. The wind brought her a tale that made her prick her ears and call out.

  A call rang in reply. The Mare rounded the curve of a hill, ears pricked forward, dragging the packhorse behind her—he was not as sure as she was, that this was anything he wanted to see.

  And there they all were, a swirling, whooping crowd of them, the young men of the White Horse, with Agni in their midst, whooping the loudest of anyone. A few had won their stallions. Most had yet to do it, and rode their geldings with a grand insouciance.

  Sarama laughed to see them, laughed till the tears ran. It was not mockery. It was joy. Her brother had always known how best to surprise her—and this was wonderful.

  They had made a camp on the steppe, a hunting camp: stone-lined square of firepit, tethered or hobbled horses, cloaks spread to mark each man’s place and his weapons and his belongings. To this and in her honor they had added a spit on which turned a fine young buck, prize of someone’s hunting; and there was kumiss, and a skin of sweet berry wine.

  Sarama burned to be going, but she could not refuse such courtesy. Not when they sat her in the chieftain’s place, plied her with cups of wine and kumiss, and fed her morsels of venison wrapped in flat bread that they had made of wild grain and baked on stones in the fire.

  She ate till she could hold no more, remembered almost too late a politeness of the men’s side, belched enormously to signify her pleasure in the feast. They cheered her every move.

  In the camp, she thought somewhat wryly, they had barely acknowledged her presence.

  Her eye found her brother. Agni had been sitting beside her, but had got up to fetch another skin of kumiss. It was for him they did this, because she was his sister. The worship they accorded her was in part for the goddess, but in much greater part for their prince.

  They would make a fine warband, come the day, puppies though they were now. Those overlong legs and great clumping feet and patchy beards would not persist forever. One day soon, these would be men, good men, men whom a king might delight to call his own.

  She had not drawn a circle or cast the bones, nor done anything to call up the spirit, but it had entered her nonetheless. The goddess’ closeness opened the door to the lesser power.

  Her body had gone numb as the spirit took it, raising it to its feet, standing till the laughter and shouting stopped. All the kumiss-blurred eyes had caught and held. That was the spirit, too, possessing them, a little, through the gate of their drunkenness.

  When she had silence, she took it to herself for a while, cherishing it. Then she let it go. She said, “I thank you, men of the White Horse, for the honor you show me. Now I go—but where I go, I bid you not follow.”

  She glanced at Agni as she spoke. He was clearer-headed than the others, watching her fixedly, as if to remember every line of her.

  “Do not follow me,” she said again. “Your place, your world, is here. If I can come back I will. Never come looking for me. If you must hunt men, for men are great prey—hunt east and south and north. Shut your eyes to the west. What is there belongs to another. If you presume to reach for it, you may win a victory. For a while. But in the end the west will conquer.”

  “In the end,” said Agni, his voice soft and slow, “the west will be conquered. You look too close, sister. Look far, and see how it must be.”

  Sarama frowned. So. Her spirit had a rival, did it? And speaking through her brother, too. She had not known that Agni had the gift. As far as she had ever known, Agni was a prince, a leader of men, a tamer of horses—but of the things that Sarama did and understood, he knew nothing.

  She should have looked closer when she was with the tribe, to see what in truth her brother was. He made her a gift of it now, a gift of defiance. “I see,” she said to him, “how far you look. Ages, my brother. Years out of count. I speak of now. I speak of what will happen to you, to your living self, if you do what you more than half think to do. Were I marching against these people with intent to conquer, I would welcome your army. Yet I am not. I am following where my goddess leads. She has not called you, nor given you leave to go.”

  “I am not her servant,” Agni said, “though I honor her as she deserves.”

  “You will stay,” she said. “You will be king when our father is dead. That is the fate laid out for you. Mine is another entirely.”

  “Maybe,” Agni said. He shrugged, sighed. She saw how the spirit ran out of him as if drained from a cup. It was not defeated, she was not fool enough to think that. It had simply said all that it wished to say.

  The spirit in her was inclined to linger. But she was not. She bowed to her brother and then to them all, a slow sweep of the body. She smiled, because after all they had meant well, and they were a fine pack of hunting hounds.

  “You have given me a great gift,” she said: “such a leavetaking as even a king might envy. I’ll take it with me into the sunset country. And if anyone asks what courtesies the young men of the White Horse know, I can tell them an honest truth: that you are courteous and most kind. These virtues will serve you well.”

  She
feared for a moment that Agni might press her to take them with her after all, but he refrained. She was proud of him for that.

  “Go with the gods, sister,” he said, “and come home safe again.”

  Neither would know after, which of them began it; only that they embraced and kissed each other on both cheeks, as close kin might do. Agni did not at once let her go. He held her in a fierce grip, strong enough almost for pain. “Come back,” he said. “Please. Say that you’ll come back.”

  She could not say it. But she could say, “Wherever I am, whatever I grow to be, I’ll always remember you. Tarry well, brother. Be king for me.”

  “I do intend to,” he said.

  She laughed at that, with a catch in it, which they all pretended not to hear. “The gods love a man who knows his mind,” she said. She kissed him once again, for luck, and slipped out of his grasp.

  Even after she had reclaimed her horses and sought again the westward way, he stood where she had left him, with his friends about him. He looked like a king: a very young one, but surer of his strength than anyone knew, least of all himself.

  The gods would protect him as they chose. She turned her back on him and her face toward the westward horizon. There she must go. There she would go, of her own and the goddess’ will.

  II: LADY OF THE BIRDS

  8

  Every morning the Mother went out, soft-footed in the dawn, and sang the sun into the sky. For all the years of his life the sound of her voice had roused Danu from sleep, that high sweet singing, calling the light back into the world. When he was small he had thought that no one was alive or aware till the Mother sang; that the night was a vast emptiness shot with dreams, and only she could make the world real again, or give life to the people in it.

  Now that he was a man, he knew that he had seen true—but that it was also true that people could lie awake in the dark, beset with this fret or that, and wait for the long night to end and the sun to come back. The sun would do that no matter what the Mother did. She was a great witch and priestess, and magic was the air she breathed; but the sun was a god, and greater than she.