the Year the Horses came

by Mary Mackey

  Below Shemsheme, according to all accounts, the river was much the same. Broad and lazy, it wandered across a great flat plain, with currents so slow that a bit of straw tossed out of a boat hardly seemed to move. At last it turned north and then east, splitting into smaller channels and threading its way through a reed-filled delta before it emptied into the Sweetwater Sea. But at Shemsheme itself, the river became a wild thing. Roaring and boiling as it plunged between the Goddess's knees, it kicked up waves taller than a grown man.

  "You'll be dashed against the cliffs," the villagers assured Marrah when she told them where they were headed. "And if by some miracle you survive the wreck of your boat, the whirlpools will drag you down. If you're really determined to go all the way to the Sweetwater Sea, get out and walk around Shemsheme. We know some traders say they're willing to try to shoot the rapids, but they're crazy. Don't listen to them."

  But the traders who were guiding Marrah's party had no intention of risking their cargo. As soon as they came to the jagged cliffs that marked the entrance to Shemsheme, they ordered everyone out of the boats. For the next five days they all hiked overland, lugging the dugouts up trails not fit for a goat. Sometimes they saw white-tailed eagles perched above them, but no matter how far they climbed they could always hear the voice of the river.

  Gradually the tumult grew fainter. On the final night of the portage, they walked down the slope and camped at the base of the cliffs on a narrow strip of white gravel, waking to fair weather the next morning. Putting the boats back in, they spent the whole day gliding through the gorge, until at last the wild river burst out onto a broad plain and became tame again.

  That evening, as Marrah, Stavan, and Arang sat around the camp-fire, they agreed that the most dangerous part of the trip was over. Soon they would reach the Sweetwater Sea, and from there, according to Sabalah's Song, it would only be four or five days to Shara.

  As they congratulated each other on a job well done, they looked out at the river. It seemed almost yellow in the dusk, like a great flower petal covered with pollen. On the far shore, a flock of geese swam slowly toward the reeds where they would sleep until morning.

  Arang put his head in Marrah's lap and yawned. "I'm glad there aren't any more rapids. They looked really nasty, and even though we were so far above them I was a little scared."

  "I was a little scared too," Marrah admitted, "but don't worry; from here on there's nothing to be afraid of."

  Later she would wonder if one of the evil spirits Stavan believed in had heard her and taken offense.

  Several days passed as they drifted downriver at a leisurely pace, stopping often to rest and swim. Then, without warning, something completely unexpected happened. It started out as nothing: just a sick woman who wouldn't talk.

  The day was unusually hot and still, and the traders who had taken them around Shemsheme were singing a new song, but otherwise nothing remarkable was going on. The river hardly seemed to have a current at this point, and although the villages along its banks looked a little larger than the villages upriver, they were more compact.

  There seemed to be no stone houses downstream from Shemsheme. Everything in sight was built of split logs and wicker, daubed with clay and painted with gaudy black and yellow designs that on closer inspection usually proved to be bees. There were thousands of bees, none bigger than a fingertip, painted so they appeared to be swarming up the walls, clustering over the doors, and hanging from the edges of the smoke holes. Here and there, some mother family with an artistic bent had added a few flowers with green stems and big red petals or a splash of golden-colored stuff that looked like honey. Every time they came to a settlement, Marrah imagined for a moment that some potter had left a pile of clay hives out to cure in the sun. The biggest hive of all was always the temple; often you could see its round windows and peaked roof before you could see anything else.

  The name of this land where the Bee Goddess was worshiped was Kaza. The Kazans were friendly people who gathered on the river-bank to wave at passing boats. Sometimes half a dozen of the older boys and girls would swim out to them and ask the traders for news, speaking in broken Old Language with a soft, lilting accent that was almost like a lisp. But this particular afternoon, the boys and girls who swam out to the boats had a different request. They were small dark-haired children with graceful arms and legs, so quick in the water they could outrace the fish, but unlike the other children Marrah had seen since they left Shemsheme, they didn't laugh and joke as they approached. Instead they came up solemnly, swimming with long, quick strokes until they were close enough to be heard.

  "Is the great priestess Marrah of Xori with you?" the oldest girl called.

  Surprised to hear herself referred to as a "great priestess," Marrah started to protest, but the traders were too quick for her.

  "We carry Marrah of Xori, daughter of Sabalah," one of them cried. "We're taking her and her brother to Shara. And a giant too. One with a young face and old hair."

  "Then you're the traders we've been looking for," the girl said, swimming closer. She treaded water and looked at the two boats for a moment until she spotted Marrah. "Good Mother Marrah," she cried, "our Council of Elders begs you to come ashore and grace our village with your presence."

  "Me?" Marrah knew she was no one's mother. The girl was paying her entirely too much honor. "I'm happy to come, but why should your village council want me?"

  "Good Mother, the sister of my aunt's partner has a strange sickness, and the traders who came past last week told us you have great healing powers."

  Marrah was amazed that news could travel so fast downriver and upset that it had been so inaccurate. She began to explain that she had no extraordinary powers and then realized this was no conversation to have with someone treading water. "I'll come," she called.

  "Bless you, good Mother," the children cried, and turning, they swam toward shore, leaving Marrah embarrassed and more than a little confused.

  "I wonder what gave them the idea that I have special healing powers," she said to Stavan as they paddled after the children. Stavan shrugged and shook his head.

  "Bless you, good Mother." Arang giggled. "Oh, Marrah, you're in for it!"

  "Stop that right now," she ordered. "It's not nice to make fun of people when they're being polite."

  The village was smaller than most, a cluster of not more than fifteen houses separated by two main streets and a wooden fence designed to keep cattle from wandering in uninvited. The Council of Elders met Marrah as she stepped off the boat. Bowing to her, they offered her a bowl of honey mixed with a strange sort of thickened milk.

  "Welcome, good Mother," they said. Ignoring Arang's snickers, Marrah accepted the bowl with both hands and drank from it, doing her best not to make a face. The thick milk was sour despite the honey, but since it was hardly likely that they would have offered her something spoiled, it had to be a local delicacy.

  "Thank you," she said, handing the bowl back to the woman who had given it to her. She looked at the elders: there were half a dozen of them, all white-haired, men and women dressed in spotless linen as if they were about to participate in some important festival. They'd clearly put on their best clothes to welcome her. How was she going to tell them they'd made a mistake?

  The oldest woman put the tips of her fingers together, bowed to Marrah a second time, and launched into a formal greeting. It was clear from the way the others immediately fell silent that she was the village mother. "O great healer," she said, "beloved of the Goddess, we of the village of Sebol — "

  "Please," Marrah protested. "I'm sorry, excuse me, but you do me too much honor. I'm not a great healer."

  The village mother stopped in mid-sentence, obviously surprised to have been interrupted. "What did you say?" Marrah repeated that she had no special healing talents. A murmur of disbelief rose from the villagers who understood this exchange. "You don't?" the village mother said.

  "No." Marrah shook her head, wishing she could
sink into the ground. Behind her, she could feel Stavan and Arang struggling to keep straight faces. "I've had some training as a healer from my mother, but I still have a lot to learn."

  "Are you being modest?"

  "I'm afraid not."

  The old woman clicked her tongue and shook her head. "Well, this is a pretty mess. Here we thought you'd heal Nurga. You're sure you don't have magic powers? After all, you're the daughter of a priestess of Shara, aren't you? Shara's famous all up and down the river. Why, my mother's third cousin went there once many years ago, and when he came back he told us you had a sacred hot spring that could cure anything. Shara's waters make the blind see and the deaf hear, he said, and its priestesses are all great healers."

  "I've never been to Shara."

  "Surely you're joking?"

  "No, it's true my mother's from Shara, but she left before I was born. I was brought up in the West Beyond the West, in a village called Xori on the shore of the Sea of Gray Waves."

  "Sixteen curses!" the village mother exclaimed. "Then you probably don't even know one healing plant from another in this part of the world. You're going to be no use to Nurga at all." The elders muttered among themselves, clearly disappointed, and some of them gave Marrah disapproving looks as if she had deceived them on purpose, but the village mother was more sensible. "Well, I suppose it's not your fault we took you for a great healer. That's what we get for listening to the gossip the traders pass off as news. Here comes Nurga now, poor thing."

  There was a stir at the back of the crowd. People moved aside, and two women came forward carrying a sick woman between them. She was perhaps seventeen, ordinary looking, with dark eyes and neatly combed hair that had been braided and tied back with a leather thong. Her feet were bare, and she was dressed in the sort of linen shift the sick sometimes wore when they came to a temple to pray for a healing, but it was clear she hadn't put it on herself, because Marrah could see at once that she wasn't in the world in the ordinary sense. She sat rigidly with her eyes wide open, looking neither to right nor left, as if frozen. Only when she passed Stavan did something flicker in the depths of her eyes, a flame of pure terror so quickly extinguished that Marrah thought she might have imagined it.

  The women placed the sick woman down on a clean straw mat, arranged her arms and legs, bowed, and withdrew into the crowd.

  "This is Nurga." The village mother sighed and brushed a wisp of hair off the woman's forehead. "A year ago she was as happy and lively as any young woman in the village. She was a trader who worked with her aunt, her brother, and her partner, my oldest grandson, Erdin. The four of them used to go down the River of Smoke to bring back shells or north to get salt and the powdered gold we use to decorate our pottery. Last spring they went north. We expected them back by the end of the summer, but they never showed up."

  The village mother caressed Nurga again, but Nurga didn't seem to notice. "We waited all winter, worrying and wondering what had happened to them. Two weeks ago, Nurga came back alone, or rather what was left of her came back. She staggered through the gate one morning so covered with dirt she hardly looked human, and she hasn't said a word to anyone since. She hardly eats, and at night she screams in her sleep as if she's having nightmares. We've all been beside ourselves worrying about Erdin and the others, but when we ask her where they are, she looks right through us. At first we thought she must have witnessed some terrible accident that deprived her of her senses, but yesterday her mother noticed something that makes us think she has some strange kind of sickness."

  She sighed. "I suppose as long as you're here you might as well take a look at it. After all, you've come a long way, and even if you aren't a great healer maybe you can tell us if you've seen anything like it before."

  She gently inserted her finger between Nurga's lips; Nurga opened her mouth, but other than that she gave no sign that she knew any of them were there. "You see those white spots on her tongue and throat?"

  Marrah bent over to have a look. Putting her finger on Nurga's tongue, she pressed it down so she could see her throat. The tongue and the entire inside of the sick woman's mouth were indeed covered with small white spots that looked like blisters.

  "Ever see anything like them before?"

  Marrah was forced to admit that she hadn't. The village mother looked disappointed. "How about this?" Picking up Nurga's braid, she exposed her neck and pointed to several small red spots that looked like insect bites.

  "Fleas?" Marrah guessed.

  "We don't think so. It isn't the season, and besides she has these things all over her. They came all at once like a rash."

  "Perhaps it is a rash. Have you tried bathing her in chamomile tea?"

  "Great Goddess!" the village mother said sharply. "What kind of fools do you take us for? Of course we bathed her in chamomile and pennyroyal and all the other usual things, including river mud, which usually sucks the itching out of the most stubborn rash, but none of them did a bit of good, and — " The expression on Marrah's face brought her to a stop. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. You're our guest. We dragged you off the river because we thought you could heal Nurga, and even though it's obvious you can't, I don't have any right to blame you." She put the tips of her fingers together and bowed. "Forgive me." Tears came to her eyes. "It's just that I love this girl like my own daughter, and I hoped you'd be able to help her."

  "Excuse me," Stavan interrupted in halting Old Language.

  They both turned, surprised to hear him speak.

  "Spots" — he pointed — "small ones. Sea of Grass get."

  The village mother wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked at Stavan as if she had just noticed him for the first time. "What's he saying? What's all this about spots and seas of grass?"

  Stavan gave up trying to make himself understood in Old Language. Lapsing into Shambah, he asked Marrah to translate. "Please tell her that the rash on that woman's neck looks like the kind of rash children get when they have ashishna."

  "Ashishna?" The word was Hansi. Stavan translated.

  "It means 'redberry fever'; it's usually not very serious. Sometimes the little ones get pretty sick, but after the rash breaks out, they're usually well in three or four days. I had it myself when I was a boy." He pointed to a small pockmark on his arm. "Once you have it, you never get it again."

  Redberry fever, a sweet name for something unpleasant, but not too dangerous. Marrah told the village mother the good news and was rewarded with the first smile of the morning.

  "Bless the giant!" she exclaimed, and the crowd murmured in agreement. "Ask him how his people cure this fever of red berries."

  But there Stavan was no help. It seemed there was some kind of mint that grew along riverbanks in the Sea of Grass that the women of his people made into a tea and fed to sick children, and also a bitter yellow flower, but he hadn't seen any such plants on the way downriver.

  "He means well," Marrah told the disappointed village mother, "but he's even less of a healer than I am. Still, he keeps telling me to reassure you that redberry fever usually doesn't need to be cured. It cures itself."

  That proved to be the best they could offer, although they went on talking for some time and the villagers even brought out samples of mint and yellow flowers for Stavan to look at. Finally the village mother gave up.

  As they got back into the boats and pushed off into the main current, everyone was unusually quiet. Soon they rounded a bend and the village of Sebol disappeared.

  That night as they sat beside the river eating cheese and bread the villagers had given them, Stavan said something that Marrah remembered when it was much too late. "You know," he said, "there was something else wrong with that woman." When Marrah asked him what he meant, he hesitated. Finally he spoke. "It wasn't just ashishna she had, if she did have ashishna. You don't stop speaking and eating when you have the fever. She had a look on her face I've seen before."

  "Where?" Marrah asked.

  Stavan claimed not to remembe
r, but for the first time she had the feeling he was intentionally keeping something from her. That night as she lay beside him, she wondered what it was and why he didn't want her to know. I'll ask him again, she thought, but when she turned to him, she found he was already asleep. By the next morning, she had forgotten her suspicions.

  A few days later something happened to drive all other thoughts from her mind. The trouble began as most troubles do, in so small a way that at the time it seemed like nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

  "I have a headache," Arang complained. It was hot and sultry. They had stopped for their midday meal as usual, but everyone seemed out of sorts, especially Marrah, who had a stuffed-up nose and the beginnings of a sore throat. The standard remedy for headaches was to warm a large jar of water and soak your hands in it, but Marrah didn't feel up to trying to persuade the traders to empty out one of their wine jars, so she made Arang a cup of broth instead, chopping the dried meat into small pieces and boiling it with a handful of wild greens and a pinch of salt.

  The traders who had taken them around Shemsheme had passed them along to a new group who were going all the way to the Sweetwater Sea. The new traders weren't nearly as friendly or as much fun as the old ones. They never sang or stood up in the boats to wave to the passing villagers, and when they bathed in the river they did so solemnly without splashing or laughing. There were four: a mother, her two eldest daughters, and a man who was either a partner of one of the daughters or their first cousin, Marrah was never really sure which. They came from a small village well to the north of the River of Smoke, and they spoke a strange dialect only they could understand, lapsing into broken Old Language only when there was no other way they could make themselves understood. Mostly they communicated by gestures, waving at Stavan and Marrah when they wanted them to paddle, pointing when they wanted them to head toward shore, dropping an armful of firewood at their feet when they thought it was time for dinner. Somehow Marrah, Stavan, and Arang had become the keepers of the camp, and although Marrah knew this was only fair, it had begun to annoy her that the traders obviously expected their guests to cook, clean up, and tend the fires. Worse yet, they had an odd custom of not eating from a common pot. Instead they ladled their food into special clay cups they carried tied to their belts, and went off to eat in privacy, which Marrah found positively rude.