Lady of Horses

by Judith Tarr

  Walker regarded his father in ungrudging admiration. “I see I underestimated you,” he said.

  “You do have that flaw in your character,” said Drinks the-Wind. “Now that that other of my daughters is gone, and your visions with her, what will you be doing about it?”

  Walker had not been expecting that. It struck the wind from his breast and left him gaping, bereft for a moment of words.

  When at last he could speak, his voice was thin and somewhat strangled. “The king’s men will bring her back. How far can she go, after all?”

  “That,” said Drinks-the-Wind, “might be farther than you can imagine. You should consider it, youngling. If she is not brought back within a day, or two at the most, I won’t be able to hold back the tribes.”

  “But I will,” said Walker. “Tomorrow the king will take a tentful of wives. And I will take the daughter of the Tall Grass shaman. That will absorb the people for a while, even without a horse-thief to punish.”

  Drinks-the-Wind nodded. “Yes. Yes, that’s not an ill thought. But after that, if there’s no king stallion, and no thief—you had better find our king another horse.”

  “Surely the herds will do that,” said Walker. “The royal mares will gain a stallion, even as our king gains wives.”

  “No,” said Drinks-the-Wind. “The mares have driven off several already. Most strange, that is: who ever heard of mares refusing a stallion? But so they have.”

  “One will persist,” Walker said. “One will win them.”

  “Maybe so,” said Drinks-the-Wind, “and maybe not. These are not horses as we know horses. These are something else. Horse Goddess’ children. Her spirit is in them.”

  “They are still horses,” said Walker. “And mares need a stallion.”

  “O son of my loins,” Drinks-the-Wind said, “believe me when I say this. If your sister goes where my heart tells me she will go, and does what my spirit fears she will do there, you will need me sorely—if for nothing else than that I am not blind to the gods’ light.”

  “Nor am I blind,” Walker began.

  Drinks-the-Wind cut him off. “Without her eyes, you are. Do you think I don’t know what she is and what you are? If she had been a man, you would be a hunter and warrior of no particular distinction, with no hope in the world of calling yourself a shaman. Because the gods chose to mock us all by giving their visions to a girlchild, you stole those visions, and I allowed it—because, as we agree, I am a fool.”

  “They are my visions,” Walker said. “She is but the messenger. And she will be brought back.”

  Drinks-the-Wind regarded him in a kind of surprise. “Why,” he said, “you believe that. Or you’ve convinced yourself that you do.” He sighed heavily. “Ah gods. It would have been restful to drink your poison; I would have been glad to see my battle-brother again. But I am not to go yet. I will grant you your semblance of power, youngling, and feed it as I may, for the People’s sake. But have a care. If you tire of me too soon, there will be no one to give you visions. She will not, never again.”

  “I will keep her alive,” Walker said. “There will have to be the appearance of a sacrifice. We can’t avoid that. But after she seems to die, I’ll keep her hidden. I’ll not blind my eyes that see the gods, however valueless the body in which they reside.”

  “I rather think,” said Drinks-the-Wind as if to himself, “that you may be mad. Alas for my People! But you are what the gods have given them. Far be it from me to question the gods’ purpose.”

  Walker was sore tempted to slit his throat as he sat babbling of follies. But he had spoken the truth, as unpleasant as it was to contemplate. Until Sparrow was brought back, Walker would have no visions. He would use Drinks-the-Wind as the old man bade him—warily always, alert for signs of a trap, but he would hardly waste the gift.

  “Need commands,” Walker said. “I accept your offer. Until my sister returns.”

  “If she returns,” said Drinks-the-Wind; but Walker chose to take no notice.

  42

  Linden the king took to wife a royal daughter from each of the greater tribes—and from Cliff Lion, which would not help but vaunt itself even in defeat, twin daughters. And while he enjoyed the nine days’ riot of his wedding, Walker took the daughter of the Tall Grass shaman, spoke the words with her before her father and her tribe, and took her into his tent.

  It was by no means the pleasantly austere place it had been while Keen was his only wife. Blossom had filled it with her belongings—enough to weigh down three oxen, and a flock of servants who would not go away even when Walker took his new wife to bed. Walker was coldly, grimly angry at Keen; she would die when he found her, at his own hand. But he could still remember what a quiet and undemanding presence she had been.

  Blossom was neither. She proved, rather to his surprise, to be a maiden. She seemed also and by some miracle to have been prevented from discovering what every woman of the People learned as a child, how a man was made and what he did with a woman.

  He wedded her in the daylight as was proper, led her into his tent and left her there in the care of her mother and her servants while he presided over the wedding feast. When, not overly long after sunset, he went in to her, he found the outer room full of giggling maidservants. She was in the inner room, watched over by her mother.

  Walker knew a moment’s horror. Was he to take this woman while her mother watched?

  It seemed that even that queen of meddlers would not go so far. She simpered—not an art in which she had any skill—and laid her daughter’s hand in his and said, “Be gentle to my flower, my lord. Love her. Cherish her as she deserves.”

  Walker inclined his head. The woman hung about for a moment that stretched interminably, but when he did not speak, at length she retreated.

  Perhaps she reckoned to hover beyond the curtain, listening avidly to the proceedings. But Walker was in no mood for that. He left his bride where she sat, strode to the curtain and swept it aside. “Out,” he said in the voice he had learned as a shaman. “Begone!”

  The maids fled. The mother might have lingered, but his glare was too terrible even for her fortitude. She made herself scarce.

  The tent was blessedly empty. Walker left the curtain as it was and turned back toward his bride. She stared at him as if he had grown fangs.

  He smiled at her, a smile as carefully cultivated as his voice. It soothed her somewhat.

  She was beautiful. More beautiful than Keen, maybe. Certainly more vivid, with her fire-red hair and her green eyes. Keen was gold and blue, with skin like milk. Blossom’s was cream.

  She was richer in the body, too, her breasts full and round, her hips wide, her thighs—visible through the thin robe that she wore—as ample as he had seen among their slender people. She would be a lusty armful, he had thought when he first was permitted to see her. It was for that that he had chosen her over several of her sisters.

  His body was delighted at the prospect. He let fall his shaman’s robe and approached her, still smiling. He was beautiful in his maleness, and substantial, too. My bull, Keen had been used to call him. My stallion.

  Blossom shrieked. He recoiled, crouched, spun, searching shadows for the thing that had so horrified her.

  There was nothing. Her shrieking stopped. Her finger stabbed at him. “That—that—”

  His rod. She was pointing to his rod. Her screeching had shocked it into hiding.

  She was breathing hard, glaring at it. “What is that?”

  “By the gods,” Walker said, too startled to measure his words. “Haven’t you ever seen a man before?”

  “You are a man,” she snapped. “That is an abomination. Is that your deformity? Is that why they made you a shaman?”

  Walker rocked back on his heels. Gods. She meant what she said. She honestly did not know. “Tell me,” he said to her. “Did anyone teach you what would be expected of you here?”

  She drew herself up. “Of course they did! A man comes in to his wife. Th
ey kiss. He rubs her here.” She pointed to her lap. “He sets a baby in her. Then he goes away and lets her be.”

  “Did they tell you how he sets the baby in her?”

  She shrugged. Her expression was sullen. “I suppose he keeps it in a bag. Or a box. You’re a shaman—you do it by magic, don’t you? I hope it won’t hurt. I do so hate things that hurt.”

  Walker was truly, honestly amazed. This idiot’s father had boasted to him that she was pristine, untouched, unsullied by any man—but he had never expected her to be utterly ignorant of the ways of men and women.

  “My dear,” he said, “this that horrified you—this is where the baby is. It’s very, very small. It has to grow. Will you trust me? Will you try to be understanding when I do what I must do?”

  She narrowed her eyes. She was not so beautiful now. In fact she looked distressingly like her mother. “Will it hurt?” she asked—that question again.

  “At first,” he admitted, “a little. But after that, not at all. And the gods give you a gift in return for your bravery.”

  Those narrowed eyes gleamed. “What kind of gift?”

  “A wonderful gift. A glorious gift.”

  “Is it a necklace? I want a necklace. I liked the armlets you gave me for a bride-gift, but I do so love necklaces.”

  “I will give you a necklace,” Walker said with careful patience. “The gods will give you something different. Wait, and you’ll see.”

  “I hate to wait,” she said. But then, magnanimously: “I suppose I shall have to. Get to it, then. And try not to hurt me!”

  Walker had seldom been less inclined to get to it—and the more so when she realized that he was going to take off her tunic. She clutched it and beat off his hands.

  “No! No, you won’t! Let me be!”

  She was adamant. It was all he could do to lift the skirt enough for the purpose; then she did not see why she should open her thighs. “A maiden of breeding does not—”

  “But you are not a maiden now,” he said, struggling for calm. “You are a wife.”

  And not likely to be one in truth, if she did not stop getting in his way.

  She screeched, of course, when he breached the gate. She clawed and fought, and kicked him painfully in the hip. He wrestled her down, took her hard and fast, and never mind the slow ascents of pleasure. Anything, he thought, to get it over.

  His release when it came was quick, a handful of spasms and it was done. She had stilled, at least, lying limp beneath him. She could be taking no pleasure from it: she was dry, and she was clenched—he had to thrust hard to open her at all.

  She did not move when he lifted his weight from her. Her face was set. There was blood on her thighs and on his manly parts.

  She had not seen that yet. Her eyes were small and hard. “Where is my gift from the gods?”

  “That,” he said, “you have to earn.”

  “I did earn it. It hurt.”

  He shook his head. “Pain is not the price. Pain is the test. When the pain goes away, you win the gift.”

  “That’s not fair. I want it now!”

  “You don’t know how to win it,” he said.

  “So teach me.”

  “Not tonight,” he said. He was tired of her—suddenly and profoundly.

  “But I want my gift!”

  He slapped her, to her lasting shock. In the silence that gained him, he took up his robe and left her.

  oOo

  He slept that night on the plain not far from the horses. First however he bathed in the river, wading out into the starlit water, scouring away the blood and the smell of her, and as much of the memory as he could. Then, clean and naked, he walked till he found a place that suited him, spread his robe for a blanket and lay in the sweet-scented grass.

  He dreamed of Keen. In his dream she was her sweetest self, so modest and so seeming shy, but passionate in her loving. She had been a maiden, too, but she had known what a man was and what he did; she took great joy in learning the ways of it.

  Blossom did not know joy in anything a man did with a woman. In the morning he sent White Bird to her—for surely that of all women could teach her both the art and the pleasure. But when he came to her at night, she clung grimly to her garments, and recoiled from his ardor. “It’s disgusting,” she said. “It hurts.”

  “Did my father’s wife teach you nothing?” he demanded.

  She shrugged. He had come to know and loathe that shrug. “She rubbed me there. That didn’t hurt, and after a while it was rather nice, but I don’t see how you can do it with that. It’s ugly. I don’t like it when it goes inside me. I don’t like the way you kiss me, either. Your beard scratches. When she kissed me, her lips were soft, and her skin was lovely. Your skin isn’t like that at all.”

  “That,” he said low in his throat, “is because I am a man.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said. “She said I had to let you kiss me and do that with me, because that is what a wife does. But I don’t want to.”

  “What you want matters very little,” he said.

  “I want the gods’ gift.”

  “That,” he said with no little satisfaction, “is only given if you want a man, if you hunger for him, if you love the sight and smell and feel of his body. If when he comes to you, you open to him, and accept him, and give him of your heart. Then the gods give their gift. And only then.”

  “Then,” said that astonishing creature, “I don’t want it. I’ll take a necklace instead.”

  “Not without the gods’ gift,” he said.

  oOo

  He had no desire for her after that. He slept again under the stars, and again dreamed of Keen; and when he woke, he had spent his seed in the earth. He hoped Mother Earth was glad of it; for indeed, that wife of his would never be.

  43

  A man learned to endure what he must, if it gained him the ends he looked for. Blossom had brought with her the strength of the Tall Grass People. Between that and the alliances that Walker had forged for Linden, the tribes were mollified, for a while. Many of their young men went out hunting the thieves who had stolen the king of stallions, which quieted the gathering considerably, and let the older men set about making marriages and confirming alliances and making use of what remained of the gathering.

  The king was still without a stallion. And, as Drinks-the-Wind had foretold, the royal herd refused all comers. Stallions who came with war in mind were given war indeed. The mares would have none of them. All were in foal and in no mood to suffer the rule of a stranger.

  Walker pondered long and hard. Cliff Lion’s example might be worth following: to declare that the gods had chosen another herd and another stallion to lead the herds of the People. But to succeed in that, he would have to remove the royal herd. All the mares looked to those, and where the grey mares went, the others followed.

  He could arrange another theft. There were men who would do it, for the game or in the gods’ name; and if any of them threatened betrayal, Walker would assure that he did not come back from a hunt, or that he died in his tent of something that he ate.

  But in that, he reckoned without Drinks-the-Wind. The elder shaman made no effort to take Walker’s place beside the king, or to reclaim the office of chief of shamans. Yet neither he nor Walker could prevent the king from seeking him out.

  Linden emerged from his nine days’ seclusion with his brides, by no means as lazy or as sated as Walker had meant for him to be. He was well satisfied, but that satisfaction had only sharpened his anger at the women who had stolen his stallion.

  Especially since no one, not one of all the hunters who had gone out, had found any sign of the thieves. They spoke of sudden storms, unexpected floods, and attacks by wild beasts—“As if,” they said in the gathering, “the gods were driving us back.”

  Linden sneered at that, without even Walker to prompt him. “Cowards,” he said. “You gave up too soon.”

  But when he went in search of advice, he went to Drinks-t
he-Wind. It was happenstance, perhaps. Walker was laboring among the tribes, speaking softly to kings who again were losing patience, and expecting that Linden, like a good fool, would tup his wives or hunt with his companions or find himself a horse from among the unbroken stallions. All of which he would eventually do, but first he sought the elder shaman in his tent.

  He stayed there, Walker was told, for most of a morning. When he came out, he went straight to the herds and inspected the young stallions, and chose one as pretty as one might expect: a lovely golden dun with glossy black mane and tail, and each leg perfectly black to knee or hock, and no white hair on him anywhere. Linden devoted the rest of the day to the horse, and the next day, too, taking his time about it, as if he had been advised to do just that.

  oOo

  While Linden was so occupied, Walker in his turn visited his father. Drinks-the-Wind received him politely, ordered his wives to wait on the guest, and in no way conducted himself as if he had anything to fear. But Walker took note that he was received not as a beloved son but as a guest of rank. Drinks-the-Wind was letting him know, subtly but clearly, that he had set aside the bond of blood kin.

  It hurt. Walker was surprised at that. Drinks-the-Wind was an old fool and a weak one, but he was still Walker’s father. That Walker had been undertaking to dispose of him, and would again when he no longer had need of such visions as the old man might have left in him, stood apart from the fact of their kinship.

  But not, it seemed, to Drinks-the-Wind. He observed every courtesy with excruciating exactness, until Walker had had enough. “What did you say to the king?” he demanded abruptly.

  Drinks-the-Wind raised his brows. “Why, did you think I would break my word?”

  “The king went to you,” Walker said. “Tell me why.”

  “Perhaps,” said Drinks the Wind, “because he needed wisdom, and you were elsewhere.”