Palli nodded and trotted over to cradle the big stone mortar in her lap. She wrestled contentedly with the pestle as Shiunan-ashui talked on. “We make the best perfumes in Arinna. It was my perfume that got me married to King Shokorru. His envoy said that I smelled better than any of the other ladies in the Silver City. Now, your father will choose your husband, but you should still try to please him.”
Palli looked up at Shiunan-ashui with guileless eyes. “But won’t I marry the one who wakes me from sleep, Aunt Ashui?”
Ashui threw up her hands. “There, Perakha! You see what comes of filling the child’s head with prophecies! Keep grinding, little one.”
Palli ground on, but with a frown on her face. How could Aunt Ashui, whom she loved so much, say something different from what Mother said? Why would Tsalat never talk about Palli’s naming day or her wedding day at all?
She needed to go and talk to someone wise, Palli thought. She would go to the Ladytemple. Surely the priests would know what was true. So, once Aunt Ashui had gone to her nap and Mother was busy weaving, Palli carefully put away the mortar and pestle and crept out of the Palace of Women.
Her father’s dogs found her at once. They were thin and brown and tall, bred for hunting lions. “Palli!” they barked. “Palli! Palli!”
“Shh,” she told them, rubbing the tallest’s furry head. “I’m going to the temple.”
She let them walk with her to the temple precinct. “Now, stay here,” she told them gravely. “You can’t come in.” Palli wasn’t really supposed to go into the temple either; some of the gods were cross about that sort of thing.
The biggest dog gave a great snuff, raising his head high. Snuff! Snuff! “Lion!” he barked. “Lion! Lion!”
“Hawk! Hawk!” barked another dog, leaping onto the first dog’s back then sliding off again.
“Shh! Stop that,” Palli scolded. “What is it?” She looked up.
Crouched on top of the wall, gazing hungrily down into the temple’s sheep pen, was a woman. Her skin was black as night, her slitted eyes as golden as the skin of a temple statue. Her cloak hugged her back like a pair of folded wings.
Palli did not know of any reason to be afraid of the golden-eyed woman. “Health to you,” she said politely.
The woman’s head jerked up, and she stared at the little girl. “Did you speak to me?” she rasped.
Palli could see that the woman looked very tired. Gray splotches like bruises mottled her skin. “Yes. I’m Palli,” she said. “Are you all right?”
“The storm—it blew me so far,” the woman muttered to herself. She narrowed her eyes and clicked her teeth together. “I am very hungry and thirsty too.”
“Oh!” said the little princess. “Won’t you come with me? My mother will give you something to eat and a place to stay for the night. You don’t need to be frightened. My mother is not at all frightening.”
“I don’t need to be frightened?” said the woman, amused. “I suppose you aren’t frightened of me.”
“Oh, no,” said Palli.
“I have flown all the way from the Double Mountain,” the dark-faced woman said, looking carefully at Palli’s face. “I am a child of the Storm-Makers.”
“It’s pleasant to meet you,” Palli answered politely, although she didn’t know what a Storm-Maker might be. “Will you come?”
“I will not come under any roof, little Palli.”
“Oh.” Palli thought about this. “Then I must bring you something here!” She ran into the temple and over to the washing well. Keeping an eye out for any disapproving priests, she hauled up a bucket of water and carried it quickly to the wall. She lifted it as high as she could. “Can you reach it?”
The woman blinked at her doubtfully then leaped down from the wall as lightly as any cat. She leaned over the bucket while Palli held it and lapped up the water with her tongue. Palli giggled.
When the woman was satisfied, Palli ran the bucket back to the well. Upon returning, she asked, “What do you want to eat? Would you like some bread?”
The golden-eyed woman made a disgusted face. “The Storm-Makers do not eat bread,” she said in a grand voice.
“What do they eat?” Palli asked curiously.
The woman’s mouth twitched. “We eat meat.”
This was something of a problem. Palli was not sure where to get meat. She was sure that she should not take it off any of the temple altars. “Cooked?”
“If necessary I will eat it cooked,” said her odd visitor, looking nauseated at the very idea.
“Oh! That’s why you were looking at the sheep,” Palli realized. “Why didn’t you take one?”
“That would be stealing. Storm-Makers do not steal.”
Palli had not thought of this. “My father is the king. If I give you a sheep, is it still stealing?” she asked.
“Do you give me a sheep?”
“Yes,” Palli said, making up her mind. Feeding a person was a more important use for a sheep than feeding a bunch of gods that didn’t answer. “Take one.”
The woman sighed. “You have given me food and water. I owe you a favor, little Palli.” She fixed Palli with one golden eye. “Call my name, and I will help you. Call Dirigga.”
“Dirigga,” Palli repeated.
The woman gave her cloak a shake. In the instant before it was still, it changed into a pair of wings. The woman blinked, and before her lashes opened, her face was the face of a black cat. She lunged into the air, and her body was the body of an eagle. “Don’t forget!” she called to Palli, then swooped forward. The sheep in the pen burst into a chorus of indignant bleating, but there was nowhere for them to go. Dirigga swooped low, catching a sheep in her great claws, and powered up into the sky.
Palli stared after her wistfully. How wonderful, to be able to fly!
“What’s all this racket?” cried Thaiyu, running out of the nearest temple entrance. “Child, what are you doing in here? This is not a place for children or women! Shoo!” Flapping his hands like birds’ wings, he chased Palli out of the temple precinct.
“Lion! Hawk!” barked the dogs as she ran out.
“What wise dogs!” she praised them. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Thaiyu hauling a woven barrier across the doorway. She didn’t think he would want to answer questions about her prophecy now, so she trotted away to throw sticks for the dogs until Aunt Ashui came looking for her and dragged the dusty little princess back to the Palace of Women.
Before dawn on her thirteenth birthday, Palli woke. Picking up her slippers, she crept out of the room where she slept with her mother and slid out a broad window, avoiding the guard who sat snoring on his seat outside the door. She shook out her slippers carefully—one could never be too wary of scorpions—and paced slowly to the sea cliff. She did not see the several guards posted outside of her father’s palace, who stood leaning against the warm stone walls; nor did they see her, a slim gray figure with a silent tread.
Palli tasted salt in her mouth and knelt, feeling a hint of spray on her bare arms. Below, the waves battered their heads against the cliffs.
“I’m not afraid,” she whispered to the ocean. “I’m not afraid of you.” She wondered if the high priest had been thrown from this very spot. She wondered if he was still down there in the mists. Watching them. Waiting for his curse to come true.
“Sleep? Is that really all I have to do?” she asked the sky. It brightened; the rim of the sun rose above the horizon. Palli held her breath and watched carefully.
A line of gold stretched across the water. It broadened, not like oil spreading but like a door opening. Then . . . the waves stopped. The wind fell. There was only the golden road across a glass-like, silent sea.
Palli held her breath. Just when her pulse began to pound in her ears, the wind rose again; the waves took up their pounding. And the golden road flickered and vanished into the haze of sunrise.
The Road to Far Horizon. Palli could hear Tsalat saying the words, her lips curving into
a mysterious smile. If Palli needed to do something more than sleep—if she needed to know more—she would take that road. But she would not take that road against the wishes of the god who had sent the prophet on her name day.
She bent low, her arms wrapped around her, so low that her forehead pressed against cold stone. Screwing up her eyes so no light could get in, she whispered, “God Who Answers, if you want me to go, let Mother be the first person to speak to me this morning.” Palli always asked for something, sometimes one thing, sometimes another; but whatever she suggested never happened.
She supposed she should stop asking. But what if the God Who Answers only answered some of the time? What if he didn’t pay attention to little girls? Her mother said that the god was the great king over skies and earth; and kings, as Palli knew, were busy people, not interested in the doings of women and children. So she came out once or twice a week and prayed her prayer.
“O small princess, is that you?” asked the familiar voice of the watchtower guard. “You might get sick, lying there in the cold, Lady avert it!”
“I’m not cold, thank you,” Palli said primly, standing up. The watchman shifted uneasily under her eyes, which were as large and serene as her mother’s. “I will go now.”
She went, but she did not go in. Instead, she trotted along the cliff, behind the palace and the Ladytemple and the clusters of small houses, until she came to the ramparts that protected the city. She climbed up over them and down again on the other side.
She meant to go and look at the ships in the harbor. They were so interesting—bringing all sorts of things from everywhere. The king of the Black Land had sent three ships and a good deal of gold to Shokorru; the ships had gotten to Gubla, but the gold had not. “Pirates,” Aunt Ashui had told Palli, along with some bloodcurdling details that she wished she hadn’t heard. “There are so many more pirates these days,” Aunt Ashui complained. “Where are they all coming from, I ask you?” Then Tsalat said that the-king-her-father was considering whether to send logs to the Black Land in spite of the lack of gold.
Palli wondered if you could take a ship on the Road to Far Horizon.
“Mama!” came a high-pitched cry. “Ma-a-ma!”
It sounded like a young animal. Palli turned away from the shore and ran inland, past more clusters of houses and a group of young women gathered at a well. Soon she reached the barley field.
“Ma-a-ma!”
“Where are you?” Palli called breathlessly. The coarse stalks of the barley beat against her legs, but she ignored them.
“Mama!”
There it was, half hidden by the barley. It looked like a baby donkey, except its ears were smaller and its coat was soft and fine. It was a pale reddish brown all over, except for a great spot of white on its chin. “Oh, don’t cry!” Palli told it. “I’ll help you find your mama.”
It gave a startled snort and tried to lurch away, small nostrils flaring.
“Are you a little horse?” Palli asked in a confiding tone. “Have you come from the chariot house east of the city?”
He blinked large brown eyes at her then reached forward to poke his nose into her skirts. “Poor colt!” Palli said, stroking his soft neck. “Where—Oh, you’re trapped!” His hoof was stuck in a small round hole. The princess ran her hand carefully down his leg. “I’ll get you out.”
A flicker of dark movement in the barley made her look up. A shiny black snake eyed the little horse maliciously. Barely opening its mouth, it hissed, “Myy hhole!” and writhed, filling the air with a sweet, sinister smell.
“Ma-a-ma!” screamed the colt, trying to rear. Palli pulled him tight against her side, her face white.
“Go away for a little while,” the princess said in a tight voice. “Go away for a little while, and we’ll be gone when you come back.”
The snake tilted its head to one side; light glinted off its fangs. “That’ss myy hhole!”
“We don’t want to spoil your hole,” Palli told it, trying to keep her voice from shaking. It was best not to let the snake know that she was frightened, that she knew what sort of snake it was. From its nasty expression, she suspected it could tell anyway. “Go away!”
“Ssss,” it sneered, and glided forward toward the colt.
Palli stamped heavily on the ground. “If you bite him, I’ll stomp you!” She slid around in front of the little horse. He whuffled miserably into her back.
“Yyou firsst,” the snake promised, coiling to strike. It did so slowly—to give her time to be frightened, Palli knew.
The wind shifted. In an instant it changed from a breeze to a blast. There was a shrill, angry whistle, like a gale rushing through a sea cave, and the snake was whirled up and flung high into the air, flung so high and so far that Palli couldn’t see where it came down.
“Mama,” the colt whickered happily.
The wind turned, swirling around them; the barley danced. As the chaff rose, Palli could almost see the shape of a mare, her mane like a river of air flowing behind her.
“Thank you,” whispered the wind-mare. “You saved my child.”
Palli shook her head. “I couldn’t stop the snake.”
“You gave me time.” The wind-mare snorted, making the dust dance. “Who are you? It has been long since any two-legged creature looked me in the eye.”
“Palli,” said Palli. “But who are you?” In her mind she searched through Tsalat’s stories for a horse made of air, and didn’t find one.
“I am the Mother of All Horses.” A soft puff like a breath touched Palli’s cheek. “If ever you need my help or the help of my children, call for me, child of beauty.”
“Oh! His foot,” Palli realized, bending down. Carefully she twisted the little hoof free.
“Pa-alli,” the colt nickered, ears pricked. Palli smiled sweetly at him.
Then he and the wind-mare galloped away to the east, the mare racing around and around her colt so that he hardly touched the ground. Palli waved farewell then turned to walk home.
I wonder if the snake will ever come back to its hole. She shivered. She did not want to see it again. If the mother mare had not come, it would have killed her. Then neither the curse nor the prophet’s words could have come true.
Palli shivered again and wondered whether the angry God of Serpents or the wise God Who Answers had been the one in charge of what had just happened to her.
As she climbed lightly back over the barricades, ignoring the stares of the shieldmen, she thought, It must have been the God Who Answers who sent the mare. The God of Serpents wouldn’t want me to die till my sixteenth birthday. He wouldn’t have let a snake attack me in the first place.
It was odd, how much you appreciated being ignored by some gods, Palli thought. You sacrificed goat after goat, supposedly so that the gods would give you nice things, but most of the time you just wanted to keep them from doing something dreadful to you.
Chapter 3
KING SHOKORRU SAT ON his throne with his royal spear in his hand. If he clutched it a little too tightly, no one was close enough to see; and if he listened more to the sounds floating in through the window than to the words of his counselors, no one could tell it from his face. If the warrior king was afraid, he hid it even from himself.
The time for Kashap’s curse to be fulfilled was drawing near.
The man who had been speaking to him stepped back with a deep bow, and another stepped forward. “My king, mighty spearman, wild bull, one comes to you with a message from your brother, the king of Pirulat. Will you hear his message?”
When the wind was right, Shokorru could hear the sounds from the northern harbor. At the moment he heard nothing; either nothing was happening there or the wind was in the wrong quarter.
“My king?” The young man stepped forward, tugging insistently on the sleeve of the messenger, pulling him forward. “My king, my father, will you hear?”
Shokorru took a sudden breath, and his eyes focused on the young man’s face. Etlu-kashi
d had been Shokorru’s shield-bearer in his last campaign; he was a strong fighter, a good companion. And he was Shokorru’s chosen heir-by-marriage. “Open your lips,” said the king.
Etlu-kashid pushed the envoy forward. The man’s face was gray under the brown of his skin. He bowed, clasping his hands tightly together. “King of battle, warlike shepherd,” he faltered. “This is the message of your brother, the king of Pirulat, fair Pirulat.”
This was a very short introduction, so short that it was almost rude. The men of Gubla frowned and muttered to each other as the messenger went on. “Thus says the king: In days of old, my father, the king of Pirulat, loved you, and you loved my father. Now I tell you that the monuments he built are being destroyed and the walls he built are being broken. Now I send this message to you and say, send troops. The navy of Gubla is famed through all the lands; the spear-carriers of Gubla are mightier than the spear-carriers of the east; the archers of Gubla are finer than the archers of the south. The harbor of Pirulat, my city, is blockaded by these cursed sons of the islands, who spring up in our waters like poisonous snakes. How can I send you tin and silver with these raiders before my gates? Send troops quickly, O my brother, and we will divide the spoil.” He ground to a halt, swaying slightly.
“Is there no more?” Shokorru snapped after a moment. His finger joints ached from his grip on his spear.
“Mighty king, only the earnest good will of your younger brother—”
Shokorru lunged to his feet and slammed the butt of his spear against the floor. The envoy gasped and stumbled back, trembling before the rage in the king’s face.
“Take him out! Take him out!” Shokorru roared. “Am I to be troubled with the actions of every pirate and islander who comes to these shores? Take him out!” As the messenger was hurried away, the king sat down again with a thud.
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