The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)

by Llywelyn, Morgan

  On thisday he existed in agony, feeling what was to come.

  “Everything is changing,” he groaned aloud, his red-rimmed eyes glassy. “All that truly matters will be lost. Now we know so much; our place in thislife is secure, and we are in total harmony with the spirits. But we will rush to the new; we will abandon the pattern and lose our way. Aaaiii! for the people of the Kelti!”

  Without feeling pain, he thrust his hands into his lodgefire and lifted out hot ashes to rub into his scalp and face, moaning in grief.

  When the sun reached its midpoint in the heavens and Epona still had not returned, Rigantona got tired of waiting for her. But a casual inquiry could not locate her. Rigantona’s temper soured.

  The day passed and the night of the full moon approached. If Epona did not appear and go willingly to the druii, they would come for her. And how was Rigantona to explain?

  At last, with a dry mouth and a painful drumbeat in her temples that she could not ask the gutuiters to cure, Rigantona went to the magic house herself to face what must be faced. She was Kelti, after all.

  Acrid smoke issued from the priest’s lodge. The black birds hooted at her. From the magic house came a rattling sound, like gourds filled with pebbles, and she could hear the druii chanting.

  It took an act of will to force herself to enter.

  The atmosphere was close and stifling hot from the big fire raging in the firepit. The air stank. For some reason, she recalled the words Epona had related, the words of the Scythian leader: “Living men should be under open sky.”

  Why was she thinking of that now?

  A chant ended; the druii paused to sip water from the hydria and bring more wood for the fire. Kernunnos came to Rigantona, who was standing close to the door.

  “Have you brought your daughter?” he asked, his voice hissing through his teeth.

  There was no lying to one of the druii. “I cannot find her. No one has seen her in the village since early this morning, and I am very worried about her.”

  Kernunnos thrust his face into hers. “She has run away again, is that what you are telling me? That girl exhausts my patience, Rigantona. She is reckless and impulsive and I fear she squanders her gifts. She will be difficult to train to the priesthood because you have failed as a mother; you have not raised her to be sufficiently obedient.”

  Rigantona bristled. “I raised her to be strong and brave and unafraid of hard work. I did not know she was drui and would need other qualities.”

  “You should have realized there was always the possibility, woman! You are a fool, and I blame you for letting her slip through your fingers now. But she cannot go so far that I will be unable to find her, Rigantona.” He smiled unpleasantly.

  “I will leave you to it, then,” the woman said, anxious to be out of the lodge.

  His fingers closed on her shoulder, clawing the flesh. “Why so soon? Perhaps you could contribute to the magic, since your daughter is not available to us.”

  She went rigid. “My children are waiting for me, Kernunnos. I am needed elsewhere …”

  “Your children are taking care of themselves. No man is waiting for you, Rigantona. Your bedshelf is cold.

  “You have grown old and stringy, woman. You would be good food for a bear, but I think that is the only embrace that would welcome you now. Would you be willing to go as sacrifice to the Shaggy Man, Rigantona? With such a sacrifice I could make very strong magic.” He leered at her, enjoying the fear in her eyes.

  She pulled free of him and stumbled through the doorway. She heard his laugh behind her, blending into the cawing of the black birds.

  When Rigantona had gone Kernunnos seemed to shrink within himself. Epona’s defection was just one more bad omen. Could it be the spirits were displeased with him and he had failed to perceive it?

  No, it could not be. A shapechanger must never begin to doubt himself, or his abilities would melt away like snow in spring. Everything could still be mended; he would find Epona and bring her back; he would counteract the influence of the horse people; he would care for the tribe.

  At his order the chanting began anew.

  Kernunnos crouched beside the lodgefire and reached out with his mind, searching for the essence of Epona. He thought he caught a thread of her, a glimpse, a sniff, and then she was gone, moving away from him with astonishing speed, moving even beyond the reach of hand and arm. Beyond the reach of everything but magic.

  The shapechanger’s lips curled back from his pointed eyeteeth. “I will bring her back,” he vowed. “We cannot afford to lose her. What was promised me is mine.”

  PART TWO

  THE SEA OF GRASS

  Chapter 14

  The hooves of the Scythian horses pounded the stony earth the way Goibban’s hammer pounded the star metal. At first Epona merely lay like a sack of meal across the gray stallion’s withers, content to be carried away, pleased to have taken charge of her own life.

  That pleasure lasted only as long as she could ignore the increasing discomfort of her position. Each step the horse took jolted the breath out of her. Its bony withers threatened to slice through her torso and her midsection quickly became one vast bruise. She squirmed, seeking relief, but Kazhak’s hand slammed down on her back.

  “Be still,” he commanded. “You bother horse.”

  He might put her down and leave her in the road, humiliatingly rejected again, her last chance at escaping the magic house lost due to her own weakness. She clenched her teeth and resolved to endure.

  The horses followed the narrow trail single file, their feet occasionally slipping on the stones. In spite of her intentions, Epona could not help trying to make small adjustments to spare herself the increasing agony of her position. She managed to support some of her weight on her doubled arms but Kazhak immediately slapped her back a second time. “Listen, woman,” he told her. “No move! We go fast, get clear of bad place.”

  She had thought she was as anxious to leave as the Scythians, yet she resented hearing her birthland dismissed as a “bad place.” The thriving village, the beautiful Blue Mountains … not long ago she had thought she would never leave at all. How could this ignorant savage malign them so? She tried to twist around and look up at him, but this time his doubled fist clipped her smartly on the jaw and the earth spun away into some otherworld.

  When she recovered consciousness the horses were no longer galloping as fast as possible on the mountainous footing, but had dropped back to a trot, an unbearably rough and jolting gait in which the gray stallion took the full concussion of his weight on his front legs, right up through his shoulders and into Epona’s body.

  She gasped in pain. She was being jarred until her bones threatened to come through her flesh; surely she already had a skull full of jelly and a belly full of blood. Even breathing was agony. How could the horses appear to float along so airily and yet feel like this?

  She raised her head to snatch a quick glimpse of the passing landscape and realized she must have been unconscious for at least a rainbow’s lifespan, for they were already quite a distance from the village. A groan was wrung from her at almost every step the horse took and Kazhak signaled to his men to pull up. He allowed Epona to slide limply down the horse’s shoulder and onto the ground, where she vomited.

  The Scythian dismounted and squatted beside her. He watched in silence as she retched, cuddling her bruised body with her arms, then he got up and walked a few paces away. He squatted to urinate in the manner of men accustomed to open plains.

  His men waited on their horses, paying no attention to Epona. She had nothing to do with them, she was less to them than a burr in a horse’s tail. She was a woman.

  When she could draw a deep, shaky breath again, Kazhak came back for her. “We go now,” he said. “It gets better,” he added as a small comfort. He vaulted easily onto the gray stallion in spite of his injury and then moved one leg forward, indicating to Epona that she could swing up behind him and ride astride, holding onto him.r />
  It would surely be more comfortable. It also seemed physically impossible to her at that moment.

  She stood, half bent over, her arms around her midsection. “How?” she asked him.

  He looked impatient, his mouth quirking in his dark beard. “Jump. Or stay.”

  She jumped.

  The first time she got no higher than Kazhak’s knee and her clutching fingers slipped helplessly off the haunches of the gray. Kazhak snorted with contempt. “Jump!” he commanded once more.

  This time she succeeded in catching hold of Kazhak’s belt, next to his bow and arrow case. Her legs kicked wildly and she heaved her weight upward, trying to ignore her bruises. Kazhak made no effort to help her. If she could not get on the horse he would take that as a sign that he was making a mistake and he would leave her.

  After a frantic, painful struggle she found herself straddling the horse’s haunches. The gray moved forward abruptly and she clamped her arms around Kazhak’s middle—and his injured ribs. The Scythian uttered an angry epithet in his own language, but she understood what he meant well enough. She released him quickly and hooked her fingers in his belt instead.

  Kazhak kicked the horse and it lifted into an easy canter.

  Sitting upright was a little easier, though the gray’s rump sloped beneath her and every stride made Epona feel she was in danger of sliding off. Kazhak let her squirm around without comment, allowing her to find her own way to ride now. Only once did he caution her: “Do not kick horse,” when her legs inadvertently clamped on the stallion’s sensitive flanks and the horse responded with a leap that nearly unseated her.

  There was a rhythm to the canter. Up, forward, down; up, forward, down. It soon became pleasant. The broad warm rump felt good beneath her. The pounding was diminished, cushioned by the horse’s muscles and the springiness of his hindquarter joints, but Epona still had an aching belly and a sore jaw where Kazhak had hit her.

  Her discomfort seemed unimportant as she realized the distance they had already come. The ridden horse was a marvel, diminishing space.

  The sun was high overhead, flooding the mountains with clear light.

  They rode on and on. Time passed; she could tell by the angle of the sun and the way the shadows changed. Still they rode; climbing, descending, making their way through steep terrain. The light became less clear, more golden. It seemed they had been riding forever. Usually the horses were forced to walk, with occasional opportunities for an ambling trot. There were few stretches where the footing was safe enough for canter, and the canter never speeded up into a gallop. They had only galloped until they were clear of the vicinity of the village. The changes in pace refreshed Epona briefly, as they did the horses, but eventually she passed the point of exhaustion and still the Scythians rode on. And on and on.

  The light melted into blue shadows. Surely, she thought, the men would stop soon and make camp. She was desperately thirsty and began thinking of the filled waterbags. “When will we camp?” she asked Kazhak. “If not soon, can we stop for a drink now anyway?”

  “You want water already?” he asked in surprise.

  “We haven’t had any all day,” she protested. Her voice was a dry whisper blowing on the wind.

  “Is so,” he agreed, and rode on.

  “I am thirsty!”

  “Gets better,” he commented over his shoulder, but he did not reach for a waterbag.

  The horses speeded up their trot on a stretch of trail between two peaks. Epona was bouncing as well as miserable with thirst. Beside her, the other men rode with impassive faces turned toward the east.

  “Aren’t you ever going to stop?” she gasped into Kazhak’s shoulder. “Don’t you get tired? Don’t you get thirsty?”

  “Kazhak is Scyth. Is foolish drink too much; you will learn. Wasteful.”

  “But there is plenty of water all around us, you wouldn’t be wasting it. We can refill the waterskins anywhere. See, over there?” She risked her precarious balance to remove one hand from Kazhak’s belt and point to a narrow waterfall tumbling down the face of dark rocks, a silver thread sparkling and inviting.

  Kazhak and his men trotted their horses past the water, oblivious.

  “Ignore thirst,” he advised Epona. “Then it loses power over you. On Sea of Grass is many times long distance to water, you drink only what you need. You learn: need and want not the same.”

  She could not believe he was serious. What sort of people would deny themselves water when it was readily available? Water was all around them, cascading off the rocks, squeezed from the earth by the pressure of its own weight. It collected in moss-rimmed pools, it rushed down to the rivers, it beckoned and tantalized everywhere. More water than anyone could ever drink. And the Scythians insisted on saving it.

  Moisture her body could not spare was leaking out of her eyes and nose. She sniffled. Hearing her, Kazhak growled, “Kazhak heard Kelti had much courage. But you weak as milk. Kazhak give you away, sell you as slave to the Thracians.”

  From the same well that held her tears, anger rose. It held her sore bones together and lifted her aching chin. “I won’t drink until you do,” she told him, forcing the words out of her dry mouth. “I won’t drink until after you do.”

  Kazhak chuckled. “Is so. You woman; women drink after horses, after men. You drink last.”

  They rode on.

  A cold wind sprang up in the wake of the setting sun and Epona was thankful for her bearskin cloak. She had layered her favorite clothing on her body; that was all the property she brought with her. Behind her she left the riches of the Kelti, the things you can count and carry.

  The rising moon was an artisan, sheathing the rock surfaces with silver. The main trail turned southward and the Scythians abandoned it, continuing to travel east, picking their way along a narrow thread of animal tracks, walking their horses in the gathering darkness.

  Epona looked up. Night of the full moon.

  There would be chanting in the magic house thisnight, and blue smoke would hang heavy on the air. Kernunnos would be angry, but the horses, the wonderful horses, had saved her from him. The lovely swift horses had surely taken her beyond even the shapechanger’s reach by now.

  She rode in a daze, no longer concentrating on her pain, not thinking about her parched and thickened tongue. There was only the horse and the night and the moon, the warmth beneath her buttocks, the hard leather of Kazhak’s belt, the rhythm of the animal. The rhythm …

  It stopped. She felt irrational anger. As long as nothing changed she was learning to endure, to float free, somehow separate from her physical discomfort, but the slightest change restored her to a sore and aching body.

  “Camp here,” Kazhak announced. “Get off.”

  She tried, but her body refused to obey her. Her legs had been pulled apart for a whole day with the horse between them, and they were in revolt. It took more strength than she had known she possessed to slide one of them back, over the horse’s tail. When she relinquished her hold on Kazhak she tumbled to the earth. Her feet did not feel the solid ground; her legs were nerveless and buckled beneath her. She found herself sitting in a heap almost under the gray stallion, who turned his head and looked at her with visible surprise.

  Kazhak laughed, a warm rich sound rumbling up from his belly. “First time ride,” he commented, vastly amused. He did not offer to help her up, just left her to scramble to her feet as best she could while keeping a wary eye on the stallion. The horse flared his nostrils and blew softly at her but did not offer to kick, and her gratitude went out to him.

  The Scythians had chosen a small grove of pines for a campsite. The earth was deeply cushioned with fragrant needles, and the area was well back from the minimal trail they had been following. But the Scythians did not appear to be concerned about roads and trails; they consulted together, pointing to the stars, and seemed satisfied with their location and progress.

  Before doing anything else they removed their saddles and packs from the
horses, and the animals immediately lay down and rolled, scratching their backs with grunts of satisfaction, legs flailing in the air. Then Dasadas gave each horse a drink from one of the waterskins before passing the container to the other Scythians.

  Epona crouched alone, wrapped in her bearskin and her exhaustion, watching them through dull eyes.

  When all of the men had drunk—sparingly—they relinquished the waterskin to her. It seemed she had not even taken enough to dampen her parched throat before Kazhak took it away from her. He said sternly, “Do not bloat belly with too much water at one time.”

  She hated him.

  They built no fire. Aksinya took dried meat from his pack and apportioned it among the men. They ate, talking together in monosyllables and ignoring Epona. When they had had all they wanted, Kazhak held up a piece of stringy-looking dark meat and motioned to Epona. “You eat now, is it so?”

  She glared at him. She could not imagine being hungry. Her entire body was one big bruise, much too sore for such a complicated muscular effort as chewing and swallowing. But she knew she had to eat; she would need the strength. She tried to stand up and walk over to him. To her embarrassment, she could only walk spraddle-legged, like a newborn calf, and he laughed again.

  The other men paid no attention to her, and for once she was glad.

  The meat was dry and tasteless. She chewed it with a mouth devoid of saliva and almost choked when she tried to swallow, but she managed to choke some of the stuff down.