by Judith Tarr
A fierce white heat flared up in Agni. It was the war-gods’ fire, the burning of their joy. He swept up the spear and whirled it about his head and sang, a song of triumph.
III: BEGINNINGS
93
The king of the horsemen rode into the camp in the first dimming of evening. The sun was high, but the shadows had shifted and begun to grow long. The heat was breathless, the wind gone, the sun’s hand heavy with sleep. But no one slept, not on this day, unless it were the dead.
Agni had stood beside Yama’s body as the men of the king’s warband lifted it up and carried it off the field. He was calm, empty of either hate or grief. Even anger was gone.
He had won. He had what his father had meant him to have, the name and office of the king.
The camp was waiting for its king to come back. Agni had forbidden any to bring word. He would bring it himself, give Yama’s body into its mother’s hands, and take her surrender as he had taken that of all the kings and chieftains who had followed Yama to the battle.
How many of those were regretting their choice of king, Agni could well see. If they had not chosen Agni’s own brother and enemy, they might still be fighting, and victory close to hand.
There was a great sweetness in that knowledge. Agni entered the camp in the cloud of it, and found a terrible silence.
There were dark faces amid the fair. Women of Three Birds stood among the women of the tribes.
There was no mistaking what had happened here. While Agni was winning the battle, Sarama’s archers had taken the camp.
There was no gladness in them, no light of joy. Agni had rather expected that of these unwarlike people set face to face with war. But such somber faces, such heavy silence, made the skin between his shoulders tighten.
The cause was deeper in, where he was riding in any case. As he speeded his pace, he heard the whispers behind him. The women had recognized the body on its bier of cloaks and spearshafts. None of them raised her voice in a keen.
That was a notable thing. One learned much of a king’s standing in a tribe by such tribute as the women of his tribe gave or failed to give him.
oOo
Agni passed through the camp’s center to the king-place. There was the camp of the White Horse, a sight as piercing as memory, and yet oddly remote. It was not Agni’s camp, not any longer. His own was west of here, on the other side of the hill, in a field outside of Three Birds.
Women of Three Birds were waiting for him there as they had been on the camp’s edge. He saw archers with their bows, Taditi and Sarama, and—which he had not expected—elders and acolytes of the city and the temple.
And Tilia, kneeling outside of the king’s tent. The Mother lay in front of her. There was nothing of sleep in that heavy body. Only death.
Agni’s heart constricted. His throat was dry. It was only a woman, part of him insisted. King she might have been in the reckoning of her people, but she was conquered. She had had no power but what he chose to give her.
And yet she had been the Mother. And she was dead.
Of all the deaths that he had seen that day, this was the last that he had expected. She was not supposed to die. She was supposed to keep safe in the city, and come out in a cloud of birds when the fighting was over, and heal what could be healed, and teach the earth to grow green again.
He surprised himself with grief. He sank down beside her, bent and laid his hand on her breast over the silent heart. The cause of her death was unmistakable. Tribesman’s knife: blade of flint, hilt of carved bone.
He met Tilia’s gaze over the cooling body. He expected grief, and found it in plenty. Yet he had not expected to find serenity.
Anger, rather. Bleakness. But Tilia was as serene as the Mother had ever been. It was a little cold, that serenity, but there was no mistaking it.
“Tell me how,” he said.
Tilia did not answer. It was Sarama who said, “She asked me to admit her to the king’s tent. I didn’t know—I think—she knew. She knew what she was doing. But why?”
There was a wail in that, though tightly reined in. Taditi gripped her shoulder and said, “It was Yama’s wife. The white bone of a woman. Rudira.”
Agni started as if struck. “Ru—” He took himself in hand with all the strength he had. Made himself stop shaking. Said as calmly as he could, “Where is she?”
A cluster of the archers stirred, drawing his eye. A figure erupted from them and flung itself at Agni.
Only Sarama was quick enough. Her knife slashed.
Rudira darted aside, but not far enough. With a cry she stumbled and fell.
Agni caught her. It was madness, he knew it, yet he had seen no weapon in her hand. And he had heard a word in her cry: the sound of his name.
She lay in his arms, gasping, whimpering with pain. Her odd pale beauty had not changed, nor had she. She was still Rudira.
His body, remembering the heat of her, quickened in response, but his heart was cold. “Why?” he asked her. “Why did you do it?”
She carried on with her whimpering for a while, but he was not taken in. She swallowed the last of it and stroked his cheek, wincing at the pain in her side. “I thought—I was—it was an enemy. I couldn’t let her in the tent.”
“Yama-diti said the same,” Taditi said. “I suppose it’s true. She couldn’t have known who it was that was coming in.”
“She knew,” said Sarama, clear and cold.
Rudira clung to Agni with sudden strength. But her eyes were on Sarama, glaring at her. “You hate me. Everyone hates me. But you can’t do anything to me. I belong to him. I’m his wife.”
Sarama’s eyes widened, but no wider than Agni’s own. “Are you now?” said Sarama.
Rudira held Agni in a deathgrip. “Yes. Yes, I am. Aren’t I? Tell them, my lord. Tell them I am.”
Agni opened his mouth, shut it again. Nothing that he could think of to say would be of any use.
Tilia astonished them all with a ripple of clear laughter. “By the Lady! You all look so dumbfounded. So tell us, king of the horsemen. Are you married to this woman?”
“No,” Agni said. Then more vehemently, “No, I am not. She was married to my brother.”
“He is dead,” Rudira said. “I am the king’s wife. I must be the king’s wife. You are the king. How can I not be your wife? As,” she said with sweet reason, “we have been to one another for lo these several years.”
Agni heard her with much less horror than he might have expected. The women who heard were neither surprised nor shocked. Nor, as far as he could tell, were the men who had followed him. Was there anyone who had not known what he was to Rudira?
With a kind of revulsion, Agni laid Rudira down, and not with great gentleness, either. He had to pry her hands loose and hold them tightly to keep them from locking behind his neck.
She arched her back and flaunted her breasts at him; but he had only to lift his eyes to see better. “Husband,” Rudira said. “Beloved.”
“You’re mad,” he said.
“Oh, no,” said Tilia. “She’s quite sane. Just . . . slantwise.”
“I must be a king’s wife,” Rudira said.
“You’ll be nothing,” said Agni, “because you killed the Mother of Three Birds.”
“She was an enemy,” said Rudira.
She made him think, piercingly, of Rahim. The same simplicity. The same incomprehension. The same unmistakable failure to understand what she had done.
Rahim he had loved. Rudira . . .
Love had never been a part of it. Lust, oh yes. His body sang to be near her. If it had had its way, he would have fallen on her then and there, and taken her by storm.
But his heart did not want her at all. “You’ll die,” he said, and there was no more pain in the words than if she had been a tribesman who had fallen afoul of the laws. Pain enough, that was, but not as it would have been for one he loved.
It was Tilia who asked, “Why?”
He stared at her.
She repeated the question. “Why? Why will she die?”
“Why— Because she killed the Mother.”
“That’s no reason,” Tilia said.
Agni gaped like a fish. “But—she killed—”
“She didn’t know,” Tilia said.
“You can’t let her live. She’ll try to kill you.”
“I don’t think so,” said Tilia. She came and knelt beside Rudira, looking her in the face. “That was my Mother you killed,” she said.
“Do you want me to be sorry?” Rudira asked.
“No,” Tilia said. “I want you to know. And that,” she said, tilting her head toward Agni, “is mine. Are you thinking that I’ll share him?”
Rudira’s eyes narrowed. “He was mine first.”
“I married him,” Tilia said.
“Of course you did,” said Rudira. “He needed you. He couldn’t be king here without you.”
“He could,” Tilia said, “but this way was easier.”
Rudira sat up. She had forgotten that Agni stood near her, and could hear every word. She had also, it seemed, forgotten that she was wounded. “He belongs to me,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” said Tilia.
“I’ll kill you too,” Rudira said.
Tilia laughed. Agni tensed to leap, for Rudira’s expression was murderous; but she did not spring on Tilia.
Any hope he might have had of mastering this debacle was long gone. There was Yama all forgotten, and the Mother unregarded, and these two women deciding his fate.
He could give in to rage, or he could rise and see that both Yama and the Mother were cared for as they deserved. Yama as king, for after all he had been that; and the Mother as befit her rank and office.
He did not delude himself that either Tilia or Rudira was chastened by his actions. Rudira was not to be punished, as far as he could see. There had been a brief moment when he might have overcome her, but that was past. Tilia appeared to bear her no rancor. And that was the strangest of all the things he had seen in this country: that a Mother should be dead, and the one who had killed her was not even rebuked for it.
“She’ll pay,” a voice said above him. He looked up startled. Catin looked down from the back of her mare. She was as ragged and insouciant as ever, sitting cross-legged on the broad rump, and the horse did not even turn an ear.
“She’ll pay,” Catin repeated. “Have no doubt of it. You may not understand the price, but she will.”
“What, to give me up?”
Catin looked long at him, then shook her head. “Man,” she said. “Irredeemably a man.”
“I should be ashamed of that?”
“It might do your spirit good.” She stood on the dun mare’s rump, as steady as if it had been a level floor, and stretched her arms to the sky. “Look!” she cried. “The world’s changing. Do you feel it under your feet? Do you taste it on the back of your tongue?”
“I see it clear enough,” Agni said.
“You barely see your rod in front of your belly.” She somersaulted off the mare’s back, bounding lightly, impossibly, to her feet. “Rudira,” she said. “Rudira, destroyer of worlds, come and talk to me.”
There was the mad greeting the mad, dark woman face to face with bone-white over the Mother’s lifeless body.
Rudira had even less use for this tattered vagabond than for the Mother’s heir—now, before the Lady, Mother indeed—of Three Birds. She sneered at Catin.
Catin grinned at her. “Run away with me,” she said.
“I’d rather die,” Rudira said.
“Certainly,” said Catin. “But we’re going to run away first.”
“I am staying here. That man is mine. I am not giving him up.”
Catin half-turned over her shoulder and looked Agni up and down, a long raking sweep. “Why, child, whatever for? He’s pretty, I grant you, but there’s a surfeit of pretty men in the world. Come with me and you can have them all.”
“Are they all kings?”
“In their own minds they are,” said Catin.
“I must have a king,” Rudira said. “Nothing less is worthy of me.”
“Every man you choose is a king,” said Catin. “Think of it. How splendid you make them. How they fall over one another to love you.”
Rudira preened. “So they do. But, stranger, what do you gain from it?”
“Amusement,” Catin said.
Rudira’s brows drew together. “You’ll not laugh at me.”
“Never you,” said Catin. “No, not ever.”
“Well then,” Rudira said. “I’ll make my own kings. But that one—he is so lovely. I want him.”
“Who’s to say you won’t have him?” Catin laid her arm about Rudira’s shoulders, close as a sister. “Come, see, there’s the most delightful young thing among the Stormwolves. He took a wound—a scratch, little more— but he’s in great need of comforting. Because, you see”—and she lowered her voice almost to inaudibility—“he’s afraid he might not be able to love a woman again.”
“What,” said Rudira in shock, “is he wounded there?”
“Of course not,” said Catin, “but too close for him to tell the difference. We can show him very well, don’t you think?”
“Exceptionally well,” said Rudira.
oOo
Agni watched them go in a kind of disbelief. Of all the strange things he had seen, this was the strangest. And, now it was too late, the most dismaying.
He should have kept Rudira here. He should have seen her punished according to the laws of the tribes. For that, for killing an enemy so treacherously, she would have died.
He called himself back to his senses. There was more than enough to do besides fret over a pair of madwomen. A king and a Mother were dead. A battle had ended in blood and slaughter. There were armies to see to, terms to offer. A world to change—that much Catin had seen clearly.
A great part of him wanted to run after Rudira, seize her, throttle her—tumble her in the grass. But enough of him was king, and enough of him was sane, that he turned his back on the dwindling sight of her and set his face toward the duties of his kingship.
94
The world had shaken on its foundations. And when it was still again, the battle was over. Agni had won it.
The tribesmen would make great legends of it, but Sarama could see the dazed look on his face. He did not believe it yet, not really. He was numb.
He could have cast his brother Yama to the dogs. It would not be the first time a victorious king had done that to a vanquished enemy—particularly an enemy whom he had detested for his life long. But Agni had never had the art of cruelty. He gave Yama a king’s burial before all the gathered tribes, and raised his barrow with all proper honor.
It was atonement, maybe. Agni would never admit it, but Sarama knew her brother.
oOo
While he did as a king must for a fallen king, the Lady’s people saw their Mother to her rest.
It was a rite of silence, a giving of her body to the earth that had borne it. There were no dirges, no great processionals, no displays of fire and splendor. She made her way on the shoulders of her children, down from the horsemen’s camp, over the eastward hill and across the field of battle, and so into the city over the bridge that spanned the pit of spears. Her people, all that lived and could walk, came slowly in her wake.
They passed to the Lady’s grove. The men and boys hung back on the edges of the trees. The women went on into the green and peaceful circle that neither blood nor war had ever touched, until now. Until a Mother was laid within the earth, the first Mother that had ever died of treachery, in an act of war.
A woman of wealth in a city as rich as Three Birds might be buried with gold and with beautiful things that she had loved. But a Mother belonged to the Lady.
Her rite was old, older than memory. She went into the earth naked as she had been born. No work of hands adorned her. Her bed was made of flowers, and flowers covered h
er.
They laid her to sleep in a waft of sweetness, and covered her over with green turves. Then as the moon rose above the trees that ringed the grove, her sisters and daughters, her kin, her friends, the women of her city, danced to honor her memory.
oOo
Tilia led the dance as was her duty. A vast quiet had filled her when she saw the Mother dead at her feet: an emptiness that was not serenity, nor yet acceptance.
The dance anchored her to the world again. It made her real; confirmed her in the truth.
The Mother was dead. She was the Mother. When she came out of this grove, her name would be taken away. She would be no longer Tilia. She would be Three Birds, and Three Birds would live in her, in her body, just as her child grew and stirred and dreamed of the world into which it would be born.
She could refuse it. There was no disgrace in that. She could give it to Mareka or to one of the elders; to women who had borne and suckled a plenitude of children.
She had yet to suckle even one. Some might cry out that she was not worthy. And maybe they would be right; but the Mother—her Mother who was dead—had named her heir.
She must trust the Lady. She would take what she was given. She would be the Mother of Three Birds.
Agni would call her arrogant. Strange sunlit thought for that dance in the moonlight.
His face came clear in her memory. She danced the spiral dance around it, around him. His quick laughter, his quick temper. The lift of his chin when he caught sight of someone he knew. The long clean line of his back. His beauty that was nothing like a woman’s.
She made a gift of that memory to the Mother who was dead: a beautiful young man to keep her company in her long sleep; a warmth of sunlight to brighten the dark.
His spirit would not miss the little bit of it that she took. Nor, she thought, would he mind too greatly that she had done it. He had honored the Mother, too. Maybe, in his way, he had loved her.
oOo
Sarama elected to see the Mother to her rest, and to leave Yama to the men who had fought him and the men who had fought under him. And yet as she danced the Lady’s dance, it gave her no peace. Danu’s face kept intruding on her memory. Danu’s voice kept sounding in her ear, speaking words that she could never quite understand.
