Lady of Horses

by Judith Tarr

  “And that,” said Sparrow, “was why you sent to me in the night. To do what you could not.”

  “He was your brother,” said Red Deer shaman. “He stole your visions. We thought that that might be holding him.”

  “That, or fear of the punishments waiting for him.” Sparrow sighed. “Very well. I’ll do what I can. But first, tell me. What have you done with his wife?”

  They glanced at one another. “Done?” said Tall Grass shaman. “We hardly had time to—”

  “You are in great disarray,” Sparrow said almost gently.

  She rose. The mare had come and was waiting, none too patient to be kept standing about in the sun. Sparrow smiled at that, stroked her lovely head and smoothed her mane and mounted her. The others had to scramble to find their horses and follow.

  oOo

  Walker lay where Blossom had felled him. There was a bull’s hide over him now, and the roof of a tent, and a circle of shamans to keep away the curious. Those were many as Sparrow rode into the broken circle; she felt their eyes on her like a hundred small groping hands.

  She put aside the thought, slid from the mare’s back beside the still shape under the spotted hide. She stood for a moment, steadying herself on the earth. The sun clamored at her, all bright male strength.

  She had to put that aside, too; go quiet inside.

  Then she could see. He was there, yes. He coiled inside the broken body like a worm in a shell, dreaming that he dreamed; that he had entered the mystical dark of the shaman, and awaited the visions that would lead him anew to the light.

  The strength of will that held him there, the sheer selfishness of his spirit, roused her almost to awe. Nothing in his world existed but through him. Even death could not conquer him. The body would crumble about him, but he would endure, certain to the end of time that he would wake and be alive again.

  It was a perfect fate for the Walker Between the Worlds. Even in death he would live a lie, and persist in self-deception.

  “Will you free him?”

  Sparrow started slightly, staring for a while without recognition at Tall Grass shaman. The old man could see as clearly as she.

  “He seems perfectly content,” she said.

  “Yes,” said the Tall Grass shaman.

  He let the moment stretch, and the meaning of the word with it. Contentment for such a creature as Walker had been. If she freed him, she sent him to long torment.

  Justice would dictate that she free him. Mercy . . . the gods were not merciful. Nor had Sparrow thought she could be. And yet as she knelt on one knee, staring at what was left of her brother whom she had hated so long and so fiercely, she could only think of the sun beating on her shoulders, the breeze playing about her, the living world that she had and he would never have again. Darkness and silence, crumbling slowly into Earth Mother’s arms. No name, no memory; no hope of cleansing, or of rare rebirth.

  She straightened. “Bury him,” she said. “Heap the earth high over his bones. Make it a warning and a reminder to all who would claim the name of shaman. Unless they claim true, this too will they become. To this will they go.”

  64

  The shamans took the bull’s hide and what it had concealed, and carried it away to be laid in a secret place. Sparrow stayed where she was. She was still disconcerted when people did as she bade them, even in Horse Goddess’ name. Whether the goddess had spoken through her just now, or whether it had been her own troubled spirit, she did not know.

  She looked up into Linden’s face. She had not heard him come.

  He held out his hand. She took it and let him draw her up. His eyes on her were openly appreciative. “It’s very immodest,” he said, “but I think I like it.”

  She caught herself blushing.

  He smiled. “Come,” he said. “The priests will close the circle and end it. You come and let me play the king for you. There are so many things I’ve thought of, so many things I want to do. And with you—”

  “I’m not staying,” she said.

  He stared.

  “I’m going,” she said. “When the Grey Horse goes, I go. They’re my people now.”

  “But you’re of our People!” Linden protested. “What will we do for a shaman?”

  “Tall Grass shaman belongs to you,” she said. “Did you forget? Command him to find one for you. A true one, an honest man and a loyal child of the gods. There is one whom he might consider: a tall boy of the Dun Cow, with a withered arm. You’d like that one, I think. He’s young but he’s strong, and he has the courage to speak when no one else will.”

  She hoped that Linden was listening. If not, she would send the message to Tall Grass shaman herself.

  Linden shook his head, not at what she had said, but that she had said it at all. “You have to stay. You’re strong. We need you.”

  “Grey Horse has lost a shaman, too,” Sparrow said. “It needs me—and it won’t mind that I’m not a man. That will matter, my lord. Not to you, maybe; but to everyone else.”

  “Then it will change,” Linden said firmly.

  She shook her head. “Not in this age of the world. What I can do, I have done. The ban on women with the horses—that is ended. You can see to it. But a woman who is a shaman? No. That’s too much. They’ll accept me as Horse Goddess’ priestess, and as Drinks-the-Wind’s daughter. While I’m out of their reckoning and out of their tribe, and come only at intervals—for great rites or visions, for gatherings or festivals—I’m bearable. But as a shaman, living among them, working magic for them, they need someone whose manhood they can be sure of.”

  Linden was beginning to see, though he did not want to. He scowled formidably. “You just don’t want to stay.”

  “If I only had to think of you,” she said, “I would.”

  He shook his head, obstinate. She tugged lightly at one of his plaits, which in truth was a great insolence, and coaxed him with a smile.

  He was not to be cajoled. “Who will advise me, then? Who will help me to be wise? Because you know Kestrel will go wherever you go.”

  “His father won’t,” Sparrow said. “He belongs to the People, he and his senior wife. They can help you as we children never could.”

  Linden gave way slowly, with great reluctance. But she had an answer for his every argument, and he was not a man for wars of words.

  He flung up his hands. “Very well. Very well! You’ll never do what I tell you, I know that. But if I ask—will you stay a little while? Will you at least help me make sense of this gathering, and send the tribes to their lands?”

  “That,” she said, “I can do.”

  “Then come and begin,” he said.

  oOo

  Linden’s first beginning was the judgment of Walker’s slayer. It should have been a matter for shamans, but the shamans had surrendered the task to the king.

  “I cannot judge,” Tall Grass shaman said as chief of them. “This is my daughter. I cannot condemn her.”

  Linden was not visibly delighted at the prospect, either. But he had the woman brought to him as he sat on his royal horsehide with his companions about him and the elders of all the tribes gathered in a great circle.

  The women were there, too, standing back, making no spectacle of themselves, but unquestionably present. He made no move to dismiss them, though he was clearly aware of them: his eyes kept wandering toward them.

  Blossom had taken time to make herself presentable as befit a woman of wealth and standing, even a widow without kin to acknowledge her. The light of day well suited her bold beauty. She moderated her voice as much as she could, bowing before the king and murmuring politeness.

  Kestrel wondered uncharitably if she had had instruction. He had heard a great deal of Walker’s second wife, and heard no little from her, either, while he was with the People. Her voice carried far, particularly when she was hectoring her husband.

  She conducted herself in no respect as a woman who repents the murder of her husband. She faced the king squarel
y, without the wanton edge that another woman might have offered; if she was affected at all by his fine male beauty, she concealed it well.

  “Woman of the Tall Grass,” Linden said, “bound in marriage to the White Stone People, by your own hand your husband fell. Will you defend that action?”

  “It needs no defense,” she said. “You were there. You saw what he was. How could I have done other than I did?”

  People murmured at that. Linden frowned. “A woman cannot kill her husband. It’s against the gods’ law.”

  “But I did,” she said. “He needed killing, for the things he had done. No one else would do it. Therefore I did.”

  “A woman cannot—” Linden began.

  “My lord,” said someone from the circle’s edge. “May I speak?”

  Keen was standing there with Summer in her arms. Kestrel had not even known she was on this side of the river—had thought her in the Grey Horse camp, left behind and grieving for her child and, maybe, her fallen husband.

  Yet she was here, head high, speaking out before the king as the Keen of a year past would never have dreamed of doing. She was magnificent in her golden beauty, cradling her golden child.

  Linden seemed as dazzled as the rest. “You may speak,” he said somewhat belatedly. “Certainly you may.”

  Keen inclined her head to him. “My lord, may I enter the circle, then?”

  Linden beckoned. She entered slowly, stepping with care as if the earth might buckle underfoot. She stopped at a little distance from Linden, not far from Blossom.

  Blossom looked her up and down. “So. Are you here to make these men see reason? Did our husband not deserve killing?”

  “He deserved it richly,” Keen said. “But men keep the killing for themselves. They need trials and defenses, or battles in proper order. They are not happy that you, a woman and his wife, performed the execution.”

  “Indeed we are not,” Linden said. “For if every woman could put her husband to death so readily, there would be few men left.”

  “That is true,” Blossom said. “But now it’s done, you should thank me. It’s spared you the trouble of doing it yourself.”

  Linden shook his head at that. Keen spoke before he could muddle matters further.

  “You have to be judged. There isn’t any choice—not in the world as it is. They’re going to want to put you to death. As a lesson, you see. So that other wives know better than to kill their husbands. Even husbands who deserve it.”

  Blossom’s head came up. Her nostrils flared. “Death? Put me to death? But why?”

  “Justice,” said Keen.

  “Justice,” said Blossom, “was that man dead at my feet. You knew what he was. Do you know what he did to me? Do you?”

  “I know,” said Keen.

  This, Kestrel noticed, was doing odd things to those who listened. Their anger was changing. They were beginning to whisper among themselves. Mad, they said. The woman is mad.

  “I am not! ” said Blossom, whose ears were too keen for her own good. “The rest of you are lacking in sense and reason. Does any one of you truly believe that that man should have been permitted to live?”

  “Only a king or a shaman,” said Linden, “or the elders in council, should have determined that.” He spoke sorrowfully, but he did not waver. “We can’t have wives passing judgment on their husbands. No matter how just that judgment may be. You are condemned to death, woman of the Tall Grass People. It will be gentle. That I swear to you. You will know no pain.”

  “You can’t do that,” said Blossom.

  “I am the king,” said Linden. “I can do whatever is best for the People.”

  “But this is not—”

  Linden beckoned. Two of his companions came forward, took her gently but firmly by the arms, and began to lead her from the circle.

  She twisted. They held on tighter. She began to shriek.

  It sounded stark mad. But Kestrel, watching her, was put most in mind of a small and deeply spoiled child. She did not believe that she could die, or indeed that she could suffer any harm. She had always won her way before by the perfection of her intransigence.

  Now she had no escape, but she did not know it. Curlew, who was one of those who held her captive, clapped a hand over her mouth. Bullcalf, the other, followed it swiftly with his belt, gagging her with it. That silenced her as much with shock as with the stopping of her mouth. They began again to carry her away.

  This time it was Sparrow who stopped them. She spoke to Linden, not pleading, simply speaking calmly. “Is there no other way?”

  “None that I can see,” he answered.

  “Not even exile?”

  “No,” he said. “If she lives, then other women will imagine that they can escape, too.”

  “Exile is not an easy sentence,” Sparrow said.

  “No, it is not. Separated from the tribe, from all that she ever knew—how would she live? What would she do? No, lady. Death is kinder. She’ll be taken to a quiet place and given a potion to drink—one of her husband’s, I suppose. He always did brew the best poisons. Then she’ll sleep, and never wake.”

  Sparrow looked as if she might have resisted further, but Linden’s eyes were unyielding. She bowed her head and was silent. This after all was the same mercy she had given Walker. It was fair, in its fashion: that he should be trapped forever in his body, and Blossom should be set free.

  oOo

  No one else spoke as Blossom was carried off to her sentence. The silence persisted after she had gone. Its breaking came from outside: a murmur that resolved into the sound of hooves on earth, and took shape as a company of riders making its way through the camp toward the king’s circle.

  Linden rose. His face forgot to be somber. He opened his arms wide in welcome.

  Cloud opened his own arms from the back of his grey stallion, riding to the circle’s edge and springing down. Linden was there, pulling him into a glad embrace, drawing him inward, setting him down on the royal horsehide.

  It was done altogether without thought, and it shocked the elders and the lesser kings. Cloud was not even yet a king, still less a king of the plains; yet he was set as an equal beside the king of kings.

  Nor did he refuse that equality. Cloud had no arrogance, but he knew what he was, and what he was worth.

  He inclined his head to the lords of the plains. He smiled at the king’s companions. His smile warmed on Kestrel. When it fell on Keen, who was still in the circle, rocking Summer who had begun to fuss, it went wonderfully soft.

  Summer stretched arms toward him, straining, proclaiming at the top of his ample lungs where he wished to go. Keen had little choice but to set him in Cloud’s lap. There he subsided to a contented gurgle.

  When she would have withdrawn, Cloud caught her hand. “Stay,” he said.

  She blushed and shook her head. “I can’t—”

  He would not let her go. “My lord,” he said to Linden, “it’s not our custom, but since we are here, and since she is of your people, I’m minded to ask . . . would you give me leave to court this woman?”

  “Court?” Linden asked.

  “Approach her,” Cloud said, “and persuade her to make a marriage with me.”

  Linden’s eyes were wide. “You want to marry her?”

  “Shouldn’t I?”

  “But I didn’t think you—”

  “Sometimes we do,” Cloud said. “She has to agree. If I have your leave—her king can do that, yes? Or should I ask her father?”

  “The king can do that,” Linden said. “But—”

  “Then will you?”

  “Why are you asking me? You took her long ago. Why does it matter now?”

  “It matters to her,” Cloud said.

  Linden turned his baffled blue gaze on Keen. “Has he spoken to you of this?”

  Keen shook her head. She seemed stunned.

  “Do you want it?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but—”

  “He wants to m
arry you,” Linden said. “That would make you a prince’s wife. It would also make a great alliance between our people and his—between the plains and the south, and between Sky-father’s children and Horse Goddess’ children.”

  “Did you think of that?” Keen demanded of Cloud.

  “No,” he said. “Not . . . at first.”

  She slipped her hand out of his. He sat with her son falling asleep in his lap, such a sight as the People had never seen in the king’s circle before, and such a look on his face that if Kestrel had been a woman he would have melted.

  Keen was proof against it. “Is that why you want me? For the alliance?”

  “No!” he said.

  “Then why?”

  “Because,” he said, “I know you would want this.”

  “I never said—”

  “You never needed to.”

  She sank down, forgetting that it was the royal horsehide she sank to. Linden made no move to stop her.

  She knelt in front of Cloud. “I will marry you,” she said. “But if you ever doubted it—”

  “Never,” he said.

  “Good,” said Keen.

  “And if I won’t give my leave?” said Linden.

  They both turned to stare. They had forgotten him, maybe. He laughed at their expressions. “Do you care if I give or deny it?” he asked Keen.

  She frowned. “You are my king.”

  “Not if you’ve given yourself to this one,” Linden said.

  “I am still of the People,” she said. “Until—”

  “Yes,” said Linden. “Until marriage makes you one of his people.”

  “Will you allow that?”

  “I think,” said Linden, “that it would be a very good thing.”

  “You won’t raid the Grey Horse if they’re your allies,” Keen said.

  “Yes,” said Linden.

  “And it would make you free of the south, which is rich country, with fine grazing.”

  Linden nodded. “And Horse Goddess rules us all, and Horse Goddess’ priestess is mighty and holy and will keep us as honest as we can be, but if we have a marriage to make us happy, it makes everything better, somehow. Don’t you agree?”

  Keen nodded gravely. “I’ll take him,” she said, “if I have your leave.”