by Judith Tarr
“I probably would,” Sparrow said willingly. She had filled a basket already and was beginning on the other. Her mood was odd, almost too bright. She even hummed to herself as she worked—and Sparrow never did that.
Keen eyed her narrowly. “You’re up to something.”
Sparrow’s expression was pure innocence. “I am not.”
“You can’t go in there,” Keen said with a flash of alarm. “You can’t convince the king’s wives to rebel. The priests would kill you, if the rest of the men didn’t find you first.”
“What makes you think I would do that?”
“I know you,” Keen said. And she did; she was afraid, suddenly, for this odd creature whom she called friend. “Just because you can—because of the mare—doesn’t mean—”
“I fail to see,” said Sparrow, “why the new king can’t take the old king’s wives. Surely they’ll serve him better alive, bearing sons to his heir, than dead and buried in his tomb.”
“They go with him,” Keen said, a little breathless with the shock of Sparrow’s daring. “They serve him on his journey into the sky. They wait on him when he becomes a god-ancestor.”
“Such a life,” said Sparrow. “Condemned to servitude forever.”
“The gods have ordained—” Keen began.
But Sparrow was not listening. Sparrow was lost in her world again, the world that, Keen often thought, touched on this one even less than the shadow-plain did. Sparrow did not see as other people saw. She had her mother’s eyes. Stranger-eyes, witch-eyes.
Keen gathered sweet red berries in silence, apart from Sparrow as from the other women. They had heard nothing of what passed between Sparrow and Keen. They were laughing, singing, trading jests and gossip as Keen had known how to do once. Before she went into the women’s house. Before she was lost on the shadow-plain.
She made an effort. She laughed at a jest. She widened her eyes at a scandal. No one rebuked her for the pretense. To them she was as she had always been.
It was comforting, almost. It made her forget Sparrow for a while. Then when she remembered, the place beside her was empty. Sparrow and her brimming baskets were gone.
oOo
Sparrow was sorry that she had shocked Keen. Keen had known her all their lives, and yet was still distressingly easy to discomfort. When she turned away from Sparrow to indulge in the others’ silliness, Sparrow sighed a little, but without anger. No one thought as she thought; that she had understood long ago.
No one but a man. Sparrow considered that as she brought her baskets back to her father’s tent. Tomorrow the king would go to his tomb, and a dozen women with him. None of them deserved to be shut up in the dark without escape, to die of hunger and thirst, for it was forbidden to shed the blood of women in a holy place.
Men never questioned that. Of course they would not. They would reckon it more than fair that twelve women died to provide one man with a harem in the gods’ country.
Still, what could she do? No one would listen to her. Wolfcub might, if she could find him—he was hunting, most likely, as all the young men were, bringing down game for the cookpots—but he was too young to have much voice among the men, even with his new title of boarslayer.
She might have given it up, not happily but perforce, if when she came to her father’s tent her father had not been there. That was unexpected. He had been keeping vigil over the king’s body, and would, she had thought, till the king went to his burial. But there was Drinks-the-Wind, sitting in front of his tent, refusing food and drink but accepting a few moments’ rest with his head in White Bird’s lap.
“He was taken ill,” Mallard said when Sparrow emptied her baskets into the much larger basket that would, when the women had all come back, be full of sweet berries. “Some of the men carried him here. He’ll go back, he insists, as soon as he’s permitted.”
Sparrow considered him from this safe distance. He was pale but he did not look terribly ill. “Do you think someone slipped him something?”
She had not known she spoke aloud till Mallard’s brows went up. “Do you? Why would someone do that?”
Sparrow shrugged. “There’s a new king now. This was the old one’s friend. Someone might think the old king should have a shaman to keep him company among the gods, along with his wives.”
Mallard, like Keen, was accustomed to Sparrow’s oddities, but she did not indulge them as Keen did. “Hush, child, and get you to the river. We need water for the stewpots.”
No one listened. But Drinks-the-Wind was awake, and by chance his eye had fallen on her. It was alert enough, though very tired. Sparrow let it draw her until she stood over him.
She seldom came so close to her father. His wives and favored daughters waited on him in the tent. She was little better than a servant. Sometimes she wondered if he even remembered who she was.
He did seem to know her now, or at least to recognize her for one of the women who belonged to him. “I heard you,” he said. “What makes you think someone is doing this to me?”
“You were strong enough,” said Sparrow, “until the king of stallions died. Do you trust everything you eat and drink? Are you certain no one has laid a wishing on you?”
He did not look as if she had frightened him. Neither, she thought, did he believe her. “You are a suspicious creature,” he said.
I saw the old king fall. But she could not say that. She had seen what the silvermaned stallion did—and that was no natural eruption. Something had stung him. She would wager it was not a bee; that it was a work of man’s hands. A man. Walker.
She could not say so. No more could she prove it. She only knew in her heart.
Aloud she said, “Things change when the king changes. What if the new king were to take the old king’s wives? Wouldn’t that serve the tribe better than burying them in a tomb?”
“They serve the king,” Drinks-the-Wind said, much as Keen had, and with the same blind innocence.
Strange to see that in a shaman. But age had crept up on him. His power was waning. She could feel it seeping out of him like slow tears.
“They serve the king,” Sparrow agreed. “Why not the young king, then? Why not give the old one carven images, with magic on them to make them live among the gods?”
Those of Drinks-the-Wind’s wives who stood about gave way to various displays of horror. But none of them would speak in his presence, not without his leave.
There was no anger in the eyes that fixed on Sparrow’s face, as if Drinks-the-Wind needed to remind himself of what she looked like. There was no understanding, either. A man saying such things, a shaman, would have been heeded. He would have been granted the strength of his vision. But Sparrow was a woman, and of no account.
“You are an interesting child,” Drinks-the-Wind said a little faintly. He was tired. She watched sleep creep up on him, with White Bird to guide it: holding his head in her lap, stroking his brow and his hollowed cheeks. White Bird did not find Sparrow interesting. Indeed, from the glances she cast, she would rather have said appalling.
oOo
Sparrow left without waiting to be dismissed, not caring where she went, either, or how she came there. She was not in despair over the king’s wives—not truly. But the rest of it, her father’s weariness, the old king’s fall, Walker’s smile that he had not perhaps meant anyone to see, those were all things that she could not well shrug away. Walker had made a king. And he had done it without any of Sparrow’s visions.
Someone else might have imagined fondly that he had found the gift at last. But Sparrow knew he had not. Her bones could tell. Walker was as blind as ever to magic. All the visions he had, she had given him. There was nothing in her now, no word or sign of a kingmaking. And yet Walker was making a king.
19
Drinks-the-Wind would not listen to Sparrow. The other shamans would laugh at her, if they allowed her near them at all. But there was one who knew what she was. One who would hear what she had to say.
She had
not wanted to do this. She would have avoided it if she could. The rest of the world could do little to her, to harm her or to touch her spirit. But Walker—Walker had stolen her visions.
It should not matter what men did, even to the king’s women. None of them was a friend. None had ever shown Sparrow a kindness, or acknowledged her existence at all. They were like Linden: beautiful, remote, and unconcerned with the existence of the shaman’s ill- favored daughter.
Still this was a thing that Sparrow had in mind to do. It was goddess-born, she supposed. Most of what she did and said these days came from some aspect of the mare. She was not a slave or a blind voice—she was still herself, clear down to the bone—but the mare’s presence in her heart made her do things, say things, that she would never have ventured before. This was what it was to be a priest, she thought, though a woman could no more be a priest than she could be a shaman.
This gathering, this sacred place, this ninth-year feast and imminence of the great sacrifice, made Horse Goddess’ presence all the stronger. It burned in Sparrow’s spirit. It possessed her and gave her courage, so that she could seek out the one she both feared and despised.
Walker had gone to the secret place, to the old king’s tomb. Sparrow was not supposed to know where it was or what it was; but she did not care just now for men’s laws. Horse Goddess was in her, driving her.
No one could go into the tomb with Linden. He must endure the ordeal alone. But the shaman stood guard at the entrance, that door into the dark, warded with a standing stone. Cold breathed out of it, the chill of death, old roots and old stone and darkness that had ruled since the dawn of the world.
Sparrow shuddered at the sight and the sense of it. She hated to think of Linden shut up in that terrible place: sun-bright, lighthearted Linden with his ready smile and his easy manner. He was no great marvel of wit. He had no notable strength of will. All there was to him was beauty and a kind of sweetness, and a child’s love of pretty things.
“You should never have made him be king,” Sparrow said to Walker.
He started half out of his skin—deeply and profoundly satisfying to watch. She had not made any great effort to be quiet as she came, but he was sitting in the shadow of the doorway, eyes shut, asleep or close to it. Sparrow doubted that he had been gathering his powers or dreaming deep dreams. He only did that, or pretended to, where he thought anyone could see.
She had been rather surprised to find him alone. Other shamans should have been there, and priests of the Stallion. But there was only Walker.
He scrambled up at the sound of her voice, startled, taken off balance, so that for a moment she could see the man beneath the masks he wore. He was a small man, shallow of spirit, but subtle—yes, he was that—and deep in malice.
That helped her to say what she had come to say. “This was not well done of you,” she said.
He recovered quickly enough, when all was considered. He stood to his full height as he always did, to dwarf her in spirit as well as in body. But her spirit was riding on the mare, high as the stars and almost as fearless. She met his glare full on, as she never had before—and that, too, took him aback.
Maybe he spoke more quickly than he should, then, and with less thought. “You think I did all this?”
“I know you did. What was it? A dart in the stallion’s rump?”
Walker flushed. She had never seen him do that before. It was gratifying. “The gods did it,” he said.
“By your hand,” she said. “And now that poor boy is buried in the earth. What if he comes forth mad, or dies of terror?”
“Linden?” Walker laughed, a sharp sound, short and mirthless. “It takes intelligence to go mad in the dark. That, and imagination. He has neither. He’s lying there, I can assure you, in a fair passion of boredom, or sleeping the days away, waiting till I bring him out.”
“Will you give him a vision if that’s so? Tell him what to say to the elders and the shamans?”
“If such is laid on me,” Walker said.
Sparrow drew a breath, careful not to let him see it. “I have one for you, and maybe for him, too. But I’ll not give it to you unless you promise me something.”
She had never done that before; never set a price on her visions. He had simply taken them, or she had simply refused to let them be taken. This surprised him, but he was steady now, on ground he knew well. He looked her in the eyes and said, “You will give it to me. You have no choice.”
“But I do,” said Sparrow. He was trying to ensorcel her, fixing her with that cold pale stare, flat as a snake’s. But there was no power in it. “I’ll bargain with you, brother. My vision in return for a favor.”
He bridled. “What favor could you ask of me?”
“This,” she said. “Give the king’s wives to Linden. Send carved images into the grave with him, enchanted to come alive in the gods’ country and be his servants there.”
Walker gaped. Then he burst into laughter—genuine this time, and incredulous. “You want me to— What in the world made you think of that?”
“Visions,” she said. Which was true, in its way.
“Preposterous,” said Walker.
“Are you saying you cannot do it? You lack the power?”
“I lack nothing!” he shot back before he could have thought.
“Then it’s a simple thing, a matter of no effort. Do it and I’ll give you a vision for the new king.”
“It is not simple,” he said. “It is—” He broke off. His eyes narrowed. “There’s more to it, isn’t there? You want to be the king’s wife.”
She felt the heat rush to her cheeks. She did not blush as her fairer-skinned kin did, but the burning was no less for that. “I have no desire to be his wife,” she said. “This is the price of the vision. The gods have said so.”
“The gods, is it?” Walker did not believe her, but neither, from his expression, did he dare to disbelieve. “They’re not asking an easy thing, with but a day to do it. All the priests and shamans, the elders, the kings, the people, will be outraged.”
“Are you not the greatest shaman of them all? Have you no power to do this one and only thing?”
She had him. He could resist for a little longer, but she had pricked his pride. All at once, with very ill grace, he surrendered. “I’ll do what I can. Now give me the vision.”
“Swear that you will do it,” she said. “Swear on the standing stone.”
That made him stiffen. But he laid his hand on the stone and swore before the gods to pay the price that she demanded.
Then she gave him what she had come to give. “Here is my vision,” she said. “I see the place of the stallion’s taming. I see the king fall, and the young king rise. He mounts on the back of the stallion and springs into the sky. The stars dance about him. The night wind sings of his glory. Daughters of the gods bow before him and give him gifts of flowers, cups of sunlight, and sweet honeycomb. ‘Live,’ they bid him. ‘Live a thousand years.’”
Walker’s eyes had closed as she spoke, as if her words took shape in his mind. Great joy dawned in his face. Just as she had expected—as she had bargained for.
She did not tell him the rest of it. That was hers. How the white mare came and took the stallion away, and the gods’ daughters followed. Then the stars went out one by one, except for the last, the greatest, nigh as bright and nigh as large as the moon.
It was the white mare again, wrapped in light. Her shadow fell over Linden. In it he shrank and diminished till he was no larger than a child. Then the mare gave birth to a new flock of stars, more even than had been before, and brighter, crowding the sky.
Sparrow had given her brother a promise of the young king’s glory. The rest—how Horse Goddess would humble him—she kept to herself. It was a mystery, both high and sacred. Walker would only sully it.
Walker was content. She left him rapt in contemplation of the vision, slipped away and was gone before he roused to her absence.
20
&
nbsp; The old king could not be laid in his tomb until the young king had come out into the light. For three days the men of the White Stone had prepared the tomb out on the plain, raising it high with heaped stones and facing it toward the sunrise.
Now it was done, all but the laying of the body in it. They waited, all the people, for the young king to come.
oOo
Wolfcub had come back from the hunt to find a message waiting for him. The young king asked—did not command; asked—that the boarslayer be his companion at the kingmaking.
There were nine of them for a ninth year, picked men of the People, all young, all strong, all tested in battle. The rest were as Wolfcub would have expected, Linden’s followers from his childhood.
Wolfcub wondered who had been rejected and would plague him with resentment later. But he did not speak of that. His father’s pride, his mother’s pleasure in the honor paid him—however dry the wit with which she said so—kept him silent.
He could be glad. Yes, he could. To rise up in the morning before it was full light, and know what the day would make him: a king’s companion. To put on the weapons that had come with the message, the beautiful new coat with its embroideries of shells and beads, the leggings of white doeskin as soft as a woman’s cheek. To have his hair plaited with feathers and stones, his sparse young beard cut to be less ragged, and signs of power painted on his cheeks and brow—it was wonderful. It was splendid.
That was the word his mother used of him. Splendid. She stood back in the flock of the lesser wives. They were all staring, and the youngest were giggling behind their hands. He flushed at that, fought down an urge to scrape off the paint and shed the coat and run away from their mockery.
But they were not mocking him. Not even his mother, whose tongue could flay a bull’s hide. Her smile was pure pleasure. “Child,” she said, “you’ve grown up well.”
