The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)

by Llywelyn, Morgan

  Driving ice crystals could blind livestock unless sufficient precautions were taken. When the sky turned a particular dead-white color, Epona watched as the herders wrapped the heads of the most valuable horses with cloth to protect them. When the storm had passed, they found the cloth shredded and many horses had bleeding faces.

  The Scythians had spent many generations surviving in this brutal climate. Now that she lived among them, their women taught Epona how to dress for warmth, how to cover her face, how to build a tent for her man by constructing a round lattice-work frame of wood, then lashing felt rugs securely to this support with hair ropes capable of resisting the wind.

  The wind that was like a member of the tribe, always to be considered on the Sea of Grass.

  It was not surprising the nomads looked with awe at a woman who seemed able to summon such a force.

  Epona began, for the first time in her life, to resent the weather, although she knew it was only an aspect of the earth mother and not a being bent on thwarting her personally, But it forced her to spend most of her time in the wagon—trapped in the wagon, that was how she thought of it—denied the freedom of the horse’s back and the beckoning grassland. In a large, snug lodge, filled with family and the cheer of the fire spirit, the Kelt had spent many long winters without discomfort, but that was far different from the cramped, dark wagon she now occupied.

  “Why can’t I at least have Ro-An come and share this tent with me?” she asked Kazhak. “Other women share space; none of them have to live alone, as I do.”

  “Who would live with a magic person?” Kazhak replied. He did not want any of his other women in the tent with Epona; that would lessen her status in the eyes of the shamans, it would make her appear to be no different from the others. “Go, visit with other women,” he advised Epona. “But sleep in this place alone except for Kazhak.”

  “Then, how soon can I ride again? When can I take my horse and …”

  “It is winter. You cannot ride out alone; storms come too fast, is not safe.”

  “They tell you I called the storm,” she reminded him. “Do you think it would hurt me?”

  “Is one thing to call something; is another to control it. Could be, you would be safe, but Kazhak does not want to take chance.”

  Having seen ice storms, Epona did not think she would be safe, either, but she at least wanted the freedom of choice. If he had told her she might ride when she pleased, she would probably have stayed safely in the encampment until spring. Since he refused to allow her to go out, she could think of little else.

  Feeling the rebellion in her, Kazhak took the brown gelding out of the encampment and turned him loose with the main herd.

  “He was my horse!” Epona protested.

  “Was Basl’s horse,” Kazhak corrected her, “as long as Basl lived. Basl is dead, horse belongs to Kolaxais again. No woman owns horse. How can woman own property?”

  Another argument was simmering, ready to boil over. No matter how much she tried to explain, Kazhak would never understand, and eventually he would lose patience with her and the bonds of their friendship would be severely strained. She did not want to jeopardize that relationship. It was all she had.

  Until she had begun spending time in the company of the Scythian women, Epona had never known the meaning of loneliness. Now, surrounded by people with whom she had nothing in common, she learned the painful depths of that emotion. She could talk to the women, learn from them, see the same faces and hear the same voices day after day, and yet they never became friends. Even Ro-An would never be close to her in spirit. If she tried too hard to reach out to them they withdrew behind their veils, reminded of the ancient suspicion of the nomad for the outsider. If Epona displayed any overt signs of friendship to one, she later learned that the woman suffered for it at the hands of the others. Bored wives, their lives consisting of endless drudgery or unrelieved isolation, they could be savage to one another.

  “I would like to have some work of my own to do,” Epona suggested to Kazhak. “None of the women’s chores are allowed me. I know how to set up a tent, but I have no opportunity to do it. I cannot cook, I am given no materials to sew with, what am I supposed to do?”

  “You should be glad Kazhak has so many women to tend your needs,” he replied. “You live easier than favorite wife of Kolaxais. Everyone notice. Shamans notice, you are very different from other women.”

  Epona clenched her useless hands into futile fists. “I am tired of being different!” she complained. But he did not listen.

  He saw how the shamans avoided walking too close to Epona’s tent. He himself was once more welcomed to the tent of the han, though not as cordially as in times past. At least he was not reminded of the men and horses he had lost, or the paucity of loot he had brought back for his prince. He heard many compliments given the Kelti swords, and murmured admiration expressed for the Kelti woman. The special woman. As long as Tsaygas and Mitkezh were wary of Epona, Kazhak held a weapon that no one challenged.

  It was not his intention to overthrow the practice of shamanism on the Sea of Grass; such a suggestion would have horrified him. Though Kazhak himself had lost faith in the shamans he was still emotionally bound by the traditions of his race; it would never have occurred to him to try to introduce a new religion. If Tsaygas and Mitkezh had not attempted such a blatant usurpation of the authority of Kolaxais, issuing new orders in his name without even consulting the old han, demanding the prince’s share of warrior loot as a reward for their ceaseless war with demons, Kazhak would never have interfered.

  All his life he had enjoyed the unfettered existence of the horse, giving little thought either to magic or to the dynastic power struggles common among the Scyth. As the favorite son of Kolaxais, he took it for granted that he would be the prince’s heir, the next han of the tribe. Meanwhile, life had been a cup to be drained with gusto. If he had experienced periods of deep melancholy they were only a part of life, as shadows were the children of Tabiti, the sun. Kazhak had lived his life in the sun and expected the concomitant shadows. He was mortal and would die; everything he might care for would die, so he had let himself care deeply for nothing. He had matched the climate cruelty for cruelty, indifference for indifference, taking what he wanted while life lasted and never thinking beyond tomorrow.

  Then he had seen Kolaxais grow weak and ill, and the shamans fall on him to pick his bones before he was even dead.

  That was the real reason Kazhak had been so anxious to take his band of comrades and ride away from the Sea of Grass: He could not bear to watch what was happening to Kolaxais and, through him, to the tribe. Daily Kazhak had seen the power of the shamans increase; daily the tribe became more and more afraid of the spirit world with which the magic men threatened them, until the people cowered in their tents and wagons, frightened by every small incident that might be interpreted as an unfavorable omen.

  Yet Kazhak had never thought to challenge the shamans. Who could challenge shamans?

  Until he saw the strength of Kelti magic. Until he knew Epona.

  But she was a difficult weapon with sharp edges, and he was not certain how to handle her. Still, because of her, the shamans were treating him with grudging respect and were being careful not to provoke him.

  If they ever suspected Epona had no magic powers both her life and Kazhak’s would be forfeit, the Scythian realized fully. But she was magic. She was that thing called drui.

  And more than that—she had shared with him the brotherhood of the eyes.

  Against his will, Kazhak had come to care for the yellow-haired woman. And perhaps that was the greatest jeopardy of all. Now he must be willing to die for her, as he would have died for a brother; to die for a creature as alien to him as the wind and the fire.

  Meanwhile he must keep her safe in spite of herself, and let her unknown powers tug at the shamans, a weapon of intimidation only, a weapon Kazhak did not know how to use.

  The winter dragged on and on. The countles
s horses in the great herd lost flesh until a man could sink his knuckles between their ribs, and many of the older ones died, but no one suggested Epona try to cure them. They died at night, in the cold, and their frozen carcasses were found by the herders in the morning, obviously past even the strongest magic.

  There was nothing for Epona to do at all.

  She attempted to amuse herself by talking with the Scythian women, questioning them about the ways of the nomads. Talia, Kazhak’s senior wife, was at first suspicious of such questions, but Epona soon learned that the older woman felt reassured by the ignorance of others. When Epona deliberately displayed a childlike lack of knowledge about the most rudimentary aspects of life on the steppe, Talia was willing to enlighten her.

  The senior wife was even willing to tell Epona what she knew of shamanistic ritual, a subject that interested Epona more than she was willing to show to the other woman. If Kazhak meant to put her on the balance scale against the shamans, she must learn all she could about them for her own defense.

  “The taltos is the magic spirit,” Talia explained to her. “Is inherited. Is either white taltos, good, or black taltos, bad. No one can say which spirit he will get. Black taltos puts curses on people, looks at them with evil eye, does many bad things. Only white taltos can fight him, keep off harm.”

  Though she said nothing, Epona was secretly shocked. How could magic—the understanding and use of the forces of life—be black, be evil? The druii taught that it was to be used only for the maintenance and nurturing of life.

  Talia continued, “Taltos is not welcome gift. Shamans are always tortured by illness before they are willing to accept their shamanism and begin to practice. The body or the mind must be very sick, very weak, before taltos can emerge and take over.”

  “Aside from fighting the black taltos, what magic do the white shamans do?” Epona wanted to know.

  “They keep away sickness. They predict the future.”

  “Epona has seen them do a thing with stones,” she said, and told Talia about Tsaygas and his little pile of pebbles.

  Talia shook her head in agreement. “Shamans do many things that cannot be explained. Much magic,” she said, a tinge of awe in her voice. “Beat drums and fall into taltos sleep, very special sleep, and in that way shamans can swallow live coals, or run knives through body and never bleed. Much magic.”

  “But what purpose do such things serve?” Epona inquired.

  “Purpose? Is no purpose, is magic.”

  “The shamans do not explain the reason for the rituals?” Epona felt the gulf widen between herself and the Scythians. Among the Kelti it was important to educate the people in dealings with the spirit world, so they might understand the forces that guided their lives and behave correctly, with proper respect.

  I did not show proper respect, Epona thought suddenly, with a stab of pain.

  “Shamans explain nothing,” Talia was saying.

  “Then what have you observed when you attended the ceremonies and the sacrifices? Surely that has given you some knowledge …”

  Talia interrupted, “No no! Women never attend magic ceremonies; is only for men.”

  Epona was horrified. These women were denied the privilege of access to the spirits! Such an interdiction was one of the gravest punishments the Kelti tribal council could call down on a member of the people who committed a serious crime.

  “How do you know what the shamans do, if you are never allowed to participate in the rituals?” she asked Talia.

  A sly spirit peeked briefly through Talia’s dark eyes, then ducked back out of sight again. “Children are curious, is it so? Hide, peek through tent flaps, carry tales.” She giggled behind her veil. “Talia was child once. Epona also. You remember how it was.”

  Epona could not help smiling. “Epona remembers.” But I would not have gone to the magic house and peeked through Kernunnos’ door, she thought to herself.

  “I have seen sticks the shamans carry,” she told Talia, “sticks of carved wood with a hoof at the bottom, like a horse’s foot. Do you know what purpose those serve, at least?”

  Talia shook her head. “Oh yes. On shaman-sticks, the priests can fly. It is so,” she assured Epona, seeing the disbelief in her eyes. “Everyone knows they use shaman-sticks to fly to the land of the demons where they fight them, keep them away from us. Sticks are horses with special magic.”

  “What sort of demons?”

  “Demons that cause us to sicken, to die. Without white taltos to protect us, the spotted guest would come to kill us all.” Upon saying these words, Talia made a sign in the air with her hands and drew her veil completely over her head.

  “What is the spotted guest?” Epona asked, but the mere mention of it seemed to have reduced the older woman to such a nervous state that all further discussion was impossible.

  The spotted guest must be terrible indeed. If the shamans actually did protect the tribe from it, their power was greater than Epona had realized. She must be very careful.

  That night when Kazhak came to her tent, Epona asked him about the spotted guest. His reaction was not as extreme as Talia’s but he was obviously uncomfortable with the subject. “Is demon, walks on face and body, leaves red footprints. Whole body burns with fire. Men, women, children, all die when spotted guest comes.”

  Epona was horrified. “Does no one survive?”

  “Few. Very few. But always wear spots on face, deep holes to show where demon walked.”

  “Talia says that the shamans protect you from the spotted guest.”

  “Tribe has not been attacked by that particular demon for long time,” Kazhak replied. “Maybe shamans protect. Maybe demon busy elsewhere. Is known fact, he attacks all peoples.”

  “Not in the Blue Mountains,” Epona said. “There is no spotted guest in the Blue Mountains.”

  Kazhak’s face shone as if a lighted candle had been placed inside his skull. “Is it so? Kelti can protect against spotted guest completely?”

  Why did the spirit within not warn me before I spoke? she asked herself ruefully. “I have never seen the sickness you describe,” she told Kazhak, “and I know nothing about protections against it.”

  “But you do not have it. You said. Must be magic your people do, you can do, better than shamans …” He was growing more excited with every word, as if he would grab her by the arm and drag her to the tent of the shamans this very moment, claiming this superlative and decisive power for her.

  “I cannot cure the spotted guest sickness,” she insisted. “If it attacked me I would die just like the rest of you.”

  Kazhak glowered at her. “Do not say that. Do not ever say what you cannot do. Tell no one what you cannot do. You understand?”

  She lowered her eyes before the expression in his. “I understand.”

  Her curiosity unquenched, Epona continued to ask questions about the shamans, but she was careful not to talk too long to any one woman. From Ro-An she learned that when a shaman died, he was not buried in a wooden house but “in the air,” his body placed on a platform raised on poles above the earth, so he could continue to fly as he had once flown on his stick horse.

  From a squat elderly woman with blackened teeth, Vilma, a discarded wife of Kolaxais, allowed to live on sufferance with the other old women of the tribe, Epona learned that the shamans also took wives. “They only take women from shaman families,” Vilma explained, “women who will bear shaman children.”

  “But those women practice no magic themselves?”

  Vilma looked shocked and drew her veil across her ruined teeth. She stared at Epona without answering.

  Ari-Ki, the woman of Aksinya, contributed another nugget of knowledge about the personal lives of the shamans. “Among the people of the horse,” she told Epona, “if woman does not belong to a man and take his body into hers by her twentieth name-day she will never be able to give birth without difficulty. When woman goes past her twentieth name-day and is not chosen by a man shamans can have he
r for slave.”

  Epona had already learned that bought slaves such as the Hellenes enjoyed were unknown on the Sea of Grass, and that nobles sometimes took people of their own tribe into slavery to serve them—such as Kolaxais’ little cupbearer, a hazeleyed boy with a merry laugh. But she was somehow shocked to hear of shamans enslaving their own race.

  I would not have been a slave in the magic house, she thought. I would have had honor equal to that of the gutuiters, or perhaps Kernunnos himself. If. If. My mother traded me, but not into slavery.

  It was apparent the shamans had considerable power, not the least of it being the strength of fear they held over the heads of the nomads. With each passing day, Epona felt more certain that Kazhak’s faith in her was misplaced. Her gifts were so small, so undeveloped; her ignorance was so vast. Soon the shamans would see through her as Uiska saw through opaque water, and know she could not threaten them. Then they would feel free to do whatever they liked to old Kolaxais, and to Kazhak, who had tried to defy them with only the poor strength of a foolish Kelti girl.

  The shamans would be unforgiving. She would die friendless, in a place not known to the spirits of her people, and there would be no proper transition ritual. Anything might happen to her, afterward.

  She lay sleepless at night and sipped the bitter cup of fear. The hairs of the bearskin cloak tickled the side of her face; the never-subsiding odors of felt and leather and rancid fat filled her nostrils. Outside her tent, the tiny fire she kept alive with scavenged charcoal and dried dung stood watch.

  The Scythians around her slept, and dreamed, and in their dreams they saw strange sights.

  Sometimes they saw a huge silver wolf that came again and again to the encampment, its lips drawn back from its fangs and its eyes glowing with hunger.

  Chapter 25

  In its own time, and with reluctance, winter loosened its grip on the Sea of Grass. The days grew longer. The women began talking among themselves of the coming spring, when rain would bestow a fleeting lushness to the arid steppe. Then the community of nomads would pack up its tents and disperse, each family taking an assigned portion of the sheep and goats, cattle and horse, in search of good grazing. They would not be reunited as a tribe until the next winter, when they must come together for the annual great sacrifice, the Taylga, and give an accounting to the han. All the livestock belonged to Kolaxais; all young animals born during the spring and summer, all booty taken by parties of warriors, was ultimately his.