The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)

by Llywelyn, Morgan

  From everywhere and nowhere came the voice of Kernunnos, solemnly chanting the names of the bird spirits.

  Two more women joined Tena beside the fire. The gutuiters danced, weaving back and forth in an intricate pattern. They were as graceful as flickering flames, swaying, skipping, spinning in the firelight. Three women …

  Or was it four?

  Sometimes it looked like four. Yes … no … Kazhak leaned forward. There were definitely four figures involved in the dance now, but one of them did not seem to be human. It was tall, wraith-thin, glimmering as pale as frost, moving its boneless body as sinuously as a weasel.

  A white weasel.

  It turned and looked out at them with a weasel’s cunning face, its vicious teeth bared, the little ears flat against its head.

  Kazhak fumbled for his knife hilt.

  The women closed around the figure and the name of the weasel spirit was chanted in high, inhuman voices.

  The gutuiters whirled away and the weasel was gone. In its place was a solitary figure, as broad as it was tall, a furred shape with glinting yellow eyes and sharply pointed ears. It darted forward on slender legs and snapped savagely at one of Taranis’ hounds, which had wandered too close to the feasting fire, its dim mind fixed on meat.

  The dog yipped and tumbled onto its back in the classic posture of canine submission, but the thing bearing down on it did not acknowledge the gesture. Too late, the dog realized its mistake and scrambled to its feet, trying to run. The giant silver wolf seized it before it had gone more than a few steps and slung it to the ground. The dog screamed but there was no help for it; before any of the spectators could move the wolf had torn its throat open and was lapping at the blood with feverish thirst.

  Taranis jumped to his feet, but the wolf raised its head and looked at him, and he sat back down. The huge animal very deliberately finished its meal of the hot, pulsing life leaving the dog’s body, then turned from its victim and trotted back into the billowing smoke.

  A fog was closing over the village. The air glistened mistily. Shapes became blurred, sounds muffled. Kazhak regretted having left his battle sword in the guest lodge as a bow to protocol. He looked around for his men but could not pick them out of the crowd.

  Something came dancing toward him through the mist and the smoke, a tall, quasi-human figure, and the face of Kernunnos flickered briefly before his eyes. The Scythian shook his head to clear it. There was no one in front of him, only the fire.

  The voices of the Kelti were joining in the chant the druii had begun, calling on the birds of the air and the fish in the waters, praising the fruit of the trees and the grain in the fields. The people rocked their bodies back and forth as they chanted, moving with one rhythm, one will, following the pattern, linked in ecstasy. Kelti. Part of the whole.

  The smoke roiled and billowed around them and shapes swirled within it, shapes only dimly defined. The thing that might have been Kernunnos moved among them, assuming one form and then another. He had fur, he had feathers, he had the liquid eyes of the doe and the broad flat snout of the badger.

  Kazhak became aware of the beating of a drum that seemed to lead his own heartbeat as it led the dancers, slowing down, speeding up. The music of the lyre, the thin piping of the reeds. Bronze rattles. Kazhak had heard rattles before, the shamans of the horse people used them. This was not reality then, but magic? Or was the magic reality? It was hard to think, with the chanting and the smoke.

  The bronze rattles sounded continually, their monotonous undertone of menace rising and falling with the rhythms of the dance. A wolf howled. A cat screamed. A fox barked. A tall man with burning eyes and blood on his lips danced and chanted, and the spirits looked out of his face.

  Shapechanger.

  Chapter 11

  Sometime during the night, in the smoke, as part of the dancing, Kernunnos had stood for a moment at Epona’s shoulder. She had not seen him but it was not necessary. His voice, cold as the voice of an insect using human words, reverberated through her skull.

  “Nextnight the moon will be almost full,” it reminded her. “The night after that you enter the magic house, Epona. Once something has been given to me it is mine. It would have been better for you if you had come to me of your own free will, but either way, you will come at the appointed time. To the magic house, Epona.”

  She sat walled in by horror but no one noticed. All around her were free people; the Kelti who prided themselves on their freedom and would surrender it to no man; the Scythians who rode the wind and shaped their lives as they chose. But she would be trapped in the magic house, her individuality stripped from her and made subservient to the will of the spirits. The time would come when she would dance at the feasting fire with the gutuiters, or … something voiceless was speaking to her, telling her. She crossed her arms over her diaphragm and leaned forward, listening.

  He will make you a shapechanger, said the silent voice of the spirit within.

  Some would have welcomed the opportunity, but Epona rejected it with every fiber of her being. She got to her feet unnoticed by the feasters and left the banquet. The red eyes of the fire watched her go but told no one. The white eyes of the stars saw her leave but did not care.

  Epona walked as far as the edge of the sacred grove and stood alone, listening to the trees breathing. Untrained though she was, she made an effort to reach out with her spirit and feel the pattern as it applied to her, hoping to find a tear in it she might slip through.

  When the feasting fire was only a bed of glowing coals, and the last feasters, exhausted by too much wine and food and emotion, had staggered off to their own lodges, Kazhak lay beneath the stars, in front of the guest house. He rested his head on the neck of his gray stallion and tried to untangle his thoughts. The memory of smoke clouded them, reminding him of the fumes of the hemp burned on the Sea of Grass. There were times when it was pleasant to float on such fumes, but not here, in the land of the Kelti, where any loss of the sharp edges of reality might be dangerous. These people were not what they seemed.

  The Kelti eluded understanding. They were reputed to be great warriors, which a Scythian could understand very well, but now that he had walked in their tracks and eaten their food he realized that was only one aspect of their nature. They seemed to live in several worlds at once, the here and now and some other places, other worlds only dimly glimpsed. On the Sea of Grass the shamans claimed such places were the haunts of demons, realms to be feared, the dark and terrifying other face of life to which all were ultimately doomed. Yet the Kelti spoke familiarly of the dead as of temporarily absent friends; he had heard them do it around the feasting fire, casually inviting the spirits of their ancestors to enjoy the feast.

  The shamans claimed that only their own powers protected the living from the uniform malevolence of the dead. The Kelti did not consider death to have any reality at all, and certainly gave no impression of fearing it. Sitting at the banquet, Kazhak had listened with growing bafflement to the conversations of those around him, the conversations that so often included allusions to forces more complex and powerful than any recognized by the shamans of the steppes. He had seen the shapechanger work his magic—if it was magic—and he had noticed how the people included aspects of an incredibly rich and unseen spirit world in every facet of their own lives.

  Yet aside from those called druii, they were not priests, but ordinary men and women, flesh and blood. Men and women who seemed to know something that he, Kazhak, did not, something that allowed them to gaze on the horrifying shapechanger, one face melting into another, with calm acceptance.

  Their reality was like none Kazhak knew. They appeared to have powers beyond his understanding, and even as he scoffed at them he was deeply impressed, and equally wary of the Kelti. They carried their dreams in their eyes—like that yellow-haired girl. He did not know how to deal with such people.

  As a Scythian, Kazhak was accustomed to moving through life with an indifference to the natural order. The r
ootless wanderers on the Sea of Grass strove for no balance and searched for no harmony with their environment. When one resource was exhausted, they simply moved elsewhere. Only headlong motion and acquisition interested them. Their raped and pillaged victims had no claim on them and ceased to exist for them as they receded on the horizon. The land itself was not part of them, merely the surface they galloped upon. They did not care if its power was greater than theirs; they would ignore it until the tribute was exacted, and then they would go down without regret, into the wooden houses in the earth.

  Such a way of life had proved stronger than those who stood against it. Farmers, villagers, townspeople, bound to their place and their possessions, had been helpless when attacked by warriors who had no respect for either. Life for the Scythians was brutal and easy.

  But these Kelti were different from the various peoples the nomads had previously encountered. Even in his befuddled state, Kazhak felt the differences. They had something beyond property, something that could not be slung across a horse and carried away, to serve as a brief entertainment and then be tossed aside when something newer was found. It would be interesting to take a piece of that—whatever it was—back to the Sea of Grass; take the valuable part that gave the Kelti their strength and prosperity, and leave behind the inexplicable, the swirling mists, and the man who turned into an animal.

  It would be like taking the head of a good warrior and leaving his dangerous sword arm behind. But could the two be separated, in the case of the Kelti?

  Kazhak wrestled with his thoughts, trying to pin them down, striving to see what was real and obtainable and what was illusion, or menace. Reality slipped like fog through his fingers, and he fell asleep at last to endure fitful dreams seen through clouds of smoke, distorting things that were distorted enough already. In his dreams he caught glimpses of the eyes of the shapechanger, watching him, and he heard the priest drum and the incessant bronze rattles.

  The next morning all the Scythians were edgy. His men made it plain to Kazhak that they were more than ready to leave. Their numbers were too few to take the iron swords by force; they would, indeed, have to leave all the gold for them, and that would need to be explained in the future. But accounting was many days away. For now …

  “Just make trade and go,” urged Dasadas.

  But Kazhak had an unfulfilled commitment. He had observed that these Kelti were obsessed with honor and the keeping of their pledges, and perhaps that was one source of their good fortune. An oath taken on one’s father’s hearth was binding to the death among his own people. He felt obligated to show these Kelti that the Scythians had an honor to equal theirs. He could not match their shapechanger with his magic, but he could show the men of the Kelti a different kind of power, that of the superior hunter. Were not the bows and arrows of the Scythians more deadly even than the spears of the Assyrians?

  “Kazhak promised you stag, Kazhak bring you stag,” he announced to Taranis when the chief appeared with his council at the trading circle, ready to discuss the exchange of gold.

  Taranis had spent a difficult night. He had taken the decapitated head back to his lodge to avoid offending his guest, but Sirona had refused to share his bedshelf as long as the thing was under their rooftree. “Put it in a box,” she told him, “or give it to your hounds, but get it out of my house.”

  “I can’t do that. What kind of man dishonors the gift of another? Besides, who knows what strength the thing may have? It is said the Scythians are invincible in battle; heads like this may be their secret, talismans of great power. It would be foolish to discard something like that.”

  Sirona folded her arms across her breasts. “That head or me,” she told him.

  On his way to the trading circle in the morning, Kazhak noticed the head fastened on a peg beside the chief’s door—on the outside of his lodge.

  When Kazhak announced at the trading circle that he would hunt and kill a stag for his hosts, a cheer was raised. This was another of those splendid gestures that could be told and retold later, around the lodgefires. Poel might make a song about it.

  Taranis, however, was taken aback. He had come prepared to do serious trading. Hunting was not a priority just then; there was plenty of meat still, in spite of the feast. He was upset to see that Kazhak seemed disinterested in trade. He urged the Scythian to return his thoughts to the matter at hand. “We will hunt later,” he said, dismissing the subject.

  Kazhak did not dismiss it in his own thoughts.

  At the request of the chieftain, Goibban and his apprentices brought a selection of swords wrapped in oiled wool, and Taranis proudly displayed these to the Scythians, ignoring Goibban’s scowl of disapproval over the transaction.

  Kazhak picked up a sword, hefted it in his hands, passed it to Dasadas for examination, and said, “Good. Kazhak go get stag now, then we give you gold and go, is it so?”

  It was the most casual trading deal Taranis had ever heard, and he was scandalized. He was all prepared for serious negotiations, equipped with his little bronze Hellene scale and his shrewd business sense. Now none of that seemed necessary.

  Goibban was insulted. Though he disliked selling weapons to outsiders, he was angered at the Scythians for treating his work so lightly. His best efforts lay at their feet; splendid blades, already honed to a sharp edge, set in heavy bronze hilts lacking only the ivory inlay to be as fine as that buried with Toutorix. And those savages barely glanced at them! Only the one called Aksinya, a bandy-legged, slightly potbellied man with eyes like polished stones, even bothered to hold one of the swords long enough to brandish it a few times. Then Kazhak said something to him in their own language and he dropped the sword in the dirt.

  “Do not appear so eager,” Kazhak had told him sternly. “They will think we have not seen weapons as good as this before.” They had not, but it was better if the Kelti did not know this.

  Kazhak turned to Taranis. “You go with Kazhak now, hunt stag?” he asked, one friend to another. He was looking forward to hunting with the chief of the Kelti, so an impression of Scythian strength might be left behind when they departed.

  “I have to consult with the elders of the tribe,” Taranis told him. He loved hunting, but he was not anxious to go on an unplanned expedition with the Scythian. What if he got no deer himself; how would that look? He motioned to Dunatis and a few others and they formed their own small circle, discussing this latest development.

  Kernunnos joined them. His eyes were glinting with malice. “Those Scythians plan tricks,” he warned. “They are not Kelti; not honorable. They will get you away from the village and kill you, perhaps, then attack us when we are without a chief.”

  The elders agreed to the wisdom of his words. Licking his thin lips, Kernunnos suggested, “Send someone else with him, Taranis. Send … Okelos, son of Rigantona. He is your near-kin; let him represent you.”

  “I do not want to lose face with the Scythians,” Taranis said, uncertainly.

  “You will not lose face, I give you my word. But it is imperative we teach those horse riders a lesson so they will have too much respect—too much fear—of our abilities, to ever come here again and attack us in strength. Hear me, Taranis: This is more important than trading a few swords for a bag of gold.”

  “What about the swords?” Goibban interjected, having a considerable stake in this.

  “Perhaps the Scythians will be too upset to think about the swords. They might even leave all that heavy gold behind them so they can travel faster; I expect they will soon be in a great hurry to leave this valley.”

  Taranis shook his head. “We could not let them abandon their gold to us without giving them a fair exchange. That is theft, and we do not steal.”

  “It does not matter, I tell you!” Kernunnos cried, his voice rising. “Gold and swords are not important; they only have value for a brief time, in thisworld. The important thing here is to intimidate the horse riders. If something happened to their leader, for example, do you not think
that would make them fearful and anxious to leave?”

  Taranis lowered his deep voice still further. “I do not like what you suggest, shapechanger. Do you propose to do harm to Kazhak, a guest? That goes against our most cherished traditions. The guest in the house is sacred.”

  Kernunnos replied, “I will not touch Kazhak or any of his men, either with my hand or with weapons. I give you my word.”

  There were other ways to do harm, especially if you were drui, and Taranis was very much aware of them. Still, if the Scythians could be frightened into departing without their gold—a richer hoard than any Toutorix had recently acquired—and the Kelti could truthfully say no man had raised his hand against them … Taranis ran his fingers through his beard and thought.

  “We must be very careful how we act here,” he told the priest. “If there is any suspicion of deliberate malice on our part, those who have traded with us before might begin avoiding the Blue Mountains. Then what would we do for flax and wheat … and wine?”

  Someone had gone to fetch Okelos, whose name Kernunnos had interjected into the discussion. He arrived in time to hear only the last few words, but he already had an opinion to voice. “If we had horses that would allow us to sit on them, and were as fast as the Scythian animals, we could go and get what we need. We would no longer be dependent on the goods others bring in to us. With our swords and horses for riding we could go anywhere, take anything. For the good of the tribe,” he added hastily, aware of the eyes of the elders upon him.

  Kernunnos addressed Taranis directly, chief priest to lord of the tribe. This was a solemn moment; many issues hung in the balance. If the influence of these Scythians was not destroyed now, soon it would infect all the tribe, not just the young hotheads like Okelos. Expendable Okelos. The pattern would be changed forever, pulled into a new shape even Kernunnos could not manage.

  “I speak to you from the spirits,” Kernunnos intoned, his voice seeming to echo from some deep cavern. The Kelti tensed, recognizing drui magic. “Do as I say now, Taranis. Send the leader of the Scythians after the stag; tell him of the mighty one living in the highest patch of meadowland, at the end of the trail to the sheep pasturage.