White Mare's Daughter

by Judith Tarr

  Trapped. And yet so was she, her breasts in his hands, her body arching toward his. She kissed him deep, just till he strained for breath, then outlined his body in kisses. All of it, crown to ankle, down the heart side and up the other, and back round to his lips again. Each kiss was like the lick of a flame.

  He had never felt as he felt now: as if his bones would flare to ash, and all for the touch of a woman’s lips. Rudira had heated him to burning. Beside this, she had been ice and dry bones.

  Tilia drew back a little, searching his face. Not as she had when the Mother commanded her, but as if this time she did it for herself. To see what he was. To understand him, if she could. If any of her kind could understand one of his.

  She seemed more sure than he that she could do it. She traced his face with her fingers, marking each line of it. She raked nails lightly through his beard and played with his hair. Its straightness seemed to fascinate her. She extricated it from its braid and coiled a strand of it around her finger, and watched as it sprang free.

  He slipped fingers through her mass of black curls. They caught and tangled, thick as tendrils of vine in a wood or roots of grass on the steppe. Yet they were softer by far, like nothing that he knew a name for. Sleep, maybe. Curls of mist in the morning. The first tender grass of spring, winding round his fingers.

  He learned to know her fingerbreadth by fingerbreadth, from crown to soles. She had a mole on her shoulder, and a whorl of dark down in the small of her back. The down of her legs and arms was heavier, but still soft; not at all like the black mat of her sex, with its crisp curls concealing the tender pink lips. The scent and taste of her were subtly different than the women he had known, even those of this country: salt-sweet as they all were, but more sweet than salt.

  She had no shyness, nothing that one would call modesty. Where his touch gave her pleasure, she arched into it, purring in her throat. He, who had learned silence in his nights with Rudira, caught himself gasping audibly as without warning she rolled him onto his back and mounted him.

  He matched her rhythm, finding it strong and deep, slower than he was used to, like a surge of water in a lake. He rode it like water, slow undulant motion, almost like a man in a dream. But dreams were never as vivid as this, even the dreams from which one woke having spent one’s seed, pouring it out on Earth Mother’s belly.

  One could burn swiftly, as he had with Rudira; flare like a torch and cool almost at once thereafter. Or one could burn slowly, fire that grew stronger as it burned, nor consumed the flesh about it. She brought him to a shout of triumph and a slow descent thereafter, heartbeat by heartbeat into a quivering stillness.

  She sat astride him still, though he had slipped from her, slack as a man must ever be after he has spent his seed. Her face drifted above him, past the deep swell of her breasts. She was smiling, a smile that made him think of cream.

  Some madness in him, some imp or demon, brought him awake all at once. He seized her, spun her, sat astride her as a moment ago she had sat astride him.

  Her smile barely wavered, though her eyes were wide. He was exhausted, drained dry, and yet he could not resist. He kissed those warm ripe lips. Those cheeks. That broad brow beneath the peak of night-black hair. That firm round throat, those shoulders, those breasts, that belly made for carrying children. Sons. Strong sons for a king of men.

  And, he thought in a kind of wonder, no one would come to challenge him, no one threaten him with death or worse for daring to touch this woman. She was his wife. His first wife, his royal woman, who would, the gods willing, bear his heir.

  She would do that. All her people cherished children deeply, and made as many, as often as they could.

  His joy darkened abruptly. How many children had she had? How many men had she—and would she—

  “Tell me this,” he said. “This Great Marriage. Will you be—taking men after this?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “That’s not our custom,” he said: taking pride in his calmness, in his strength in not seizing her and shaking her and shouting at her for saying that terrible thing. Of course—as if oaths and marriage meant nothing at all.

  From that thought he asked her, “Then what did we do? What is the Great Marriage, if it’s not to keep one only for the other?”

  “Me only for you,” she said with dismaying perception. “You for whatever woman pleases you.”

  “That’s the gods’ way,” he said. “A man loves many women, sires many sons. A woman loves one man, bears his sons, submits to his will.”

  “It is not the Lady’s way,” she said.

  “Then what? What is this Great Marriage? I am to touch no other woman, while you have your pick of the men?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not about who—has anyone. It’s the spirits together. What they talk of. How they raise children. What house they keep, and who lives in it. Everything that matters.”

  “That’s what a wife does,” he said, “and knows no other man than her husband.”

  “Here,” she said, “a husband does it, too.”

  He sank down beside her on the sweet-scented bed. He could, in a little while, take her again by storm. His body was unconcerned with the follies of the mind. It wanted her more than ever, now it had had a taste of her.

  She seemed of much the same mind. Her hand wandered teasingly down his breast and belly to the waking beast below. She held it gently in a warm hand, even as she frowned at the things they had said to one another.

  No woman had ever talked to him so, with bodily passion but cool clarity of mind. It tangled him in confusion. He wanted to be angry; he wanted to understand. He was all in knots.

  She sweetened it to simplicity. She roused him again. He rolled her onto her back; she clamped legs about his middle.

  Her frown lingered. It fanned his own temper, drew him the tighter. He took her hard.

  She growled in her throat, half lust, half laughter. She matched his every thrust. She raked nails down his back. She bit his neck, and laughed when he yelped.

  It was love like war, snarling and tumbling from end to end of the hut and out under the stars. They fetched up against the treebole, Agni pressed to the roughness of its bark, and Tilia stone-heavy on top of him. Nor was she in any haste to relieve him of her weight. She had him in her power, and well she knew it.

  He groaned. She lightened herself a little for that, but trapped him still, veiling him in her hair. Her skin was hot against his. Her scent was musk and flowers—stronger now, richer, dizzying to the senses.

  “I shall teach you,” she said, “to be a great lover. Then all the women will vie to choose you.”

  “I am not going to teach you anything,” he said, rough in his throat, “that will make my men any more eager to get their hands on you than they already are.”

  “I do thank you for that,” she said as if she meant it.

  He tried again to shift away from the knob of root that dug into his back. This time she let him go. He came up from beneath her and knelt in the mold of leaves and grass.

  She smiled in the lamplight and the starlight, and reached, and smoothed a trailing lock of hair out of his face. The gesture touched him strangely. More than anything that she had done, it warmed his heart.

  Maybe, he began to think, this was not folly. Maybe it could be as he had hoped, king and king’s wife, ruling cities that looked to them willingly. And maybe, if the gods favored him, he would win her favor—as if he needed to win it. But he wanted it. He wanted her to look at him always as she was looking at him now, with tenderness that he had never seen before. As if after all she felt a flicker of fondness for him, and a promise, maybe, of more.

  And why that should matter, when all that he need think of was his possession of her, he did not know. He had been in this country too long; and Sarama and Taditi before that had taught him to think strange things. He was, when it came to it, a middling poor likeness of a tribesman.

  That was a thought he had never
thought to have, even when he was cast out. That he who had so prided himself in being a man among men of the tribe had become—something different. Something that could make a thing called the Great Marriage with a woman who reckoned herself a king’s heir, and look at himself and at her, and know but a faint urge to run howling back to the steppe.

  This country had conquered him, in its way. And yet, he thought as Tilia sighed and fell asleep with her head lolling heavy on his breast, he was still Agni—was still the king of the horsemen. No rite or vow or binding could alter that.

  LADY OF HORSES

  I: CONQUERING THE CONQUERORS

  76

  In the winter of the year that the horsemen came to Three Birds, Sarama bore a daughter in what the women reckoned a swift and easy birthing—the Lady’s gift, and blessed, they said.

  Sarama, who had labored most of the night, dared not imagine what a long or a difficult birthing was like. It should be enough to lie exhausted in a clean and sweet-scented bed, with her daughter in her arms, and the father of her daughter holding them both in his embrace.

  Just so he had held her when the child was born, all the hours of it, tireless, uncomplaining even when she screamed and swore. “Your fault!” she remembered shrilling at him. “You did this!”

  She had been even angrier when some of the women laughed, and the midwife said, “Surely. And you, too. It takes two, child. Now stop your tantrum and push.”

  She was so furious that she obeyed—and to her utter surprise, brought the baby into the light then and there, red squalling flailing creature like the embodiment of her own temper.

  The baby was still rather red, and Sarama could not have begun to call her pleasant to look at. And yet she was the most beautiful thing in the world. She slept against her mother’s breast, all clean and warm and soft. She had dark hair, a great deal of it, and a face more round than oval, and a bud of a mouth that pursed, seeking the breast even in her sleep. Sarama dared to hope that she would grow up beautiful: as beautiful as her father.

  Danu bent over them both. He touched the baby’s hair with a finger—such a large finger, and such a small head, and so gentle a touch. “What will you name her?” he asked softly.

  “Rani,” Sarama answered at once. Then: “Unless you’d rather something else.”

  “No,” he said. “Oh, no. The mother names the child. Or don’t the tribesmen—?”

  “The father names his sons,” she said. “The mother is permitted to name the daughters, if he permits them to live.”

  Danu shivered. She had told him before how the tribes culled their youngest and weakest in lean seasons, and how a father might choose not to raise his daughters. He had been horrified then; he was horrified now.

  She freed a hand, lifted it to touch his face. “There,” she said. “There. You are her father, no? And you permit her to live. So I name her. Her name is Rani.”

  “Rani,” he said. “It’s a pretty name.”

  “A noble one, too. It means something like Mother, and something like King, and something like both put together. She’ll shine brightly in the world.”

  “Yes,” he said. His eyes were on the child, his voice soft. “So little a creature, to matter so much.”

  “So strong a man, to be so smitten.” She strained a little over the baby’s head, just to the point of pain, and kissed the part of him that she could reach: his shoulder, as it happened. She sank back with a sigh into the support of his arm.

  He eased her down. If he had been solicitous she would have been annoyed, but he did it matter-of-factly, because after all she had just given birth to a baby.

  She could not imagine any man of the tribes making himself into a birthing-stool for one of his women, bearing her as she bore the child, and enduring every grueling hour of it with no more respite than the woman herself had. Even Agni—Tilia had not conceived yet, that anyone knew of. When she did, and Agni discovered what was expected of him, he would be appalled. Birthing was a woman’s rite. A man had no part in it at all.

  Sarama was glad that her man was not a tribesman. That he was here, hollow-eyed and pale about the lips with tiredness, holding her and her daughter—their daughter—in the strong circle of his arms. Too often she thought of him with a little condescension, as something less than a man, because he was so gentle and soft-spoken and so very respectful of women. She had no shame of him, nor did she despise him, but he was not a man as her brother was, or her brother’s following.

  Now as he held her, his body making a wall against the world, she knew a prickle of shame. There was nothing weak about this man. He was a wonder and a marvel, though he would blush if she said so.

  Beyond the warm wall of him, the world began again to touch on her: people coming in, stepping softly, but bright-eyed, eager to see the baby. The Mother, Tilia, some of the elders from the city. A diffident handful of Danu’s brothers, big men all and strong, but almost too shy to lift their eyes to Sarama. And, last and at some remove, Agni.

  Her brother wore kingship well. He had always taken for granted that when he spoke, men would listen. Here in the Lady’s country it was more to the purpose that women should listen, but as Tilia’s consort in the Great Marriage he had gained what he looked for. He was listened to. He could speak wherever Tilia spoke, and be heard.

  Neither he nor Tilia was given to displays of the gentler sort, but there was an ease between them that Sarama could not mistake. They got on well together. He had not, that Sarama knew of, gone wandering in search of other women, and Tilia had not chosen any but Agni since the Great Marriage. They seemed well content with one another.

  If she honestly needed to know, she could ask Tilia. Agni . . .

  On the steppe, even after long time apart, Sarama and Agni had been as close as only the twinborn could be. Here, something lay between them. It was not only Danu, or Rani, or both. It went deeper.

  It had somewhat to do, Sarama thought, with the country itself; with the defense that Sarama had mounted against the horsemen, and the choice that she had made, to be one of the Lady’s people. Agni had never faulted her for it, but neither had he forgiven her. She was born to the tribes. She should be loyal to them.

  She was born to the Mare’s people. That was a thing that he had never understood. The Old Woman had taken her away when she was small. Agni had been left behind, manchild that he was and firstborn son of his father’s kingship. Sarama the daughter, elder though she might be, was of no account to the reckoning of kingship. Agni was the prince, the heir. He would be king when his father was dead.

  Agni was the king’s son by birth and upbringing. Sarama belonged to the Mare. And the Mare was a face of the goddess, that same power who was Lady of the Birds and Lady of the Deer, and Earth Mother too. The Lady’s country was Sarama’s country, as much as if Sarama had been born and bred to it.

  Sarama did not see what profit there could be in saying such things. Agni was all prickly pride. He would not care to hear her defense.

  Yet he had come to look on her daughter—mere female though Rani might be. He brought with him a breath of clean air and horses, as if he had come in from the fields. He bent with no constraint that Sarama could discern, and kissed her on both cheeks, and said, “Well done, sister, and a great victory. She’ll be a great power in this world.”

  Just so, or nearly, did a man greet his wife or his kinswoman when she had given a son to the tribe. Agni’s eyes glinted, daring her to remark on it. She smiled at him and said, “I thank you, brother. We’ve named her Rani. Would you like to hold her?”

  Agni’s expression of shock made her laugh, but he was a bold creature. He took the child from Danu’s hands, none too clumsily, either, and held her as he might have held a puppy.

  It served the purpose. He regarded her half in alarm, half in dawning amazement. “Gods,” he said. “She’s little.”

  “She’ll grow,” Danu said.

  “Young things do,” said Agni. The constraint between them was les
s pronounced than usual. Danu was too tired, Agni too captivated with the baby to indulge it.

  Sarama was not one to smile warmly at the sight of such amity, but she sighed a little in relief. She was always afraid that those two would quarrel, although they never did. They preserved a teeth-gritted civility, but with an edge of tension.

  At a glance and a gesture from Danu, Agni sat beside the bed, still holding Rani in his arms. No one else asked to hold her. That privilege was given a man first. The women would wait till there was no man present.

  Sarama wondered if Agni knew that. If he did, he was not inclined to grant them the reprieve. He was staying, his manner said, for as long as it suited him.

  He seemed comfortable in the manner of a man of this country, cradling a child while the women settled to a round of quiet chatter. Sarama slipped half into a dream, lulled by the sound of it. She was aware, dimly, of Danu’s body beside her, warm welcome presence, and the slow surge of his breathing as he too slid into sleep. It was a deeply peaceful sound.

  Sarama was blessed: in her man, in her child, in her kin. Without knowing precisely why she did it, she stretched out a hand.

  Agni widened his eyes a little at her touch, but did not shake it off. She smiled sleepily. After all, she thought. After all, her brother was her brother.

  77

  Agni came back late from the Mother’s house, seeking not the house he slept in but the camp of his tribes. It was deep midwinter and bitterly cold, but never as cold as it could be on the steppe; this was a milder country altogether. His men were out and about with little care for the cold or the wind, though the snow that threatened, and the early dark, would quell them soon enough.

  They greeted him as they always did, nodding or smiling or calling his name. He did not preserve the royal distance that his father had. It was not in him, and he saw no profit in it.

  Winter had cooled the blood in most of them. They were not so eager now to fight, or even to ride about the country. Of those who had gone to hold cities elsewhere, some had come back, and others sent messengers as often as the weather or the roads would allow. Word was that winter to the eastward was much worse than here. It would be a cruel season on the steppe, after a dry summer and a rainless autumn.