by Judith Tarr
Agni held out the cup. She had to raise herself to take it, kneeling in front of him.
Her fingers brushed his as they closed on the cup. It was a skull-cup, and new, still faintly rose-tinted with the blood that had given it life. It had yet to be carved or painted or bound with gold as Agni intended.
A shudder ran through her. She knew whose skull this had been. Agni met her eyes over the curve of it.
She took it in both her hands, trembling just visibly. She had great courage; far more than her son had ever had. Eyes still locked with Agni’s, she raised the cup of her son’s skull to her lips, and drank long and deep.
Taditi had brewed the poison well, and brewed it strong. For a stretching moment Yama-diti sat still, as if she felt nothing. Then it struck, hard and sudden like a spear to the vitals. She fell, convulsed.
No one moved to catch her or to aid her. Her daughters, who might have done so, clutched at one another and stared.
She died alone as all of them watched. It was ugly but it was swift. It was as much mercy as Agni could give, and more than she deserved.
oOo
When it was over, when she lay still at last, heavy with the stench of death, the women of the king’s tent came to take her away. None met Agni’s gaze.
He knew most of them: they had elected to belong to him before he was driven out. The rest must be wives taken since Yama made himself king, or Yama’s own elder wives.
There were no children. Yama had sired no sons, nor daughters, either.
Not one of all those women shed a tear for Yama-diti. Even her daughters were dry-eyed. They would take her and bury her in the women’s rite, and relegate her to silence.
Her spirit would not haunt them. Taditi had promised Agni that. Whatever malice lingered, the women would cleanse the world of it.
It was, when he thought about it, remarkably like the burial of a Mother. And for all that he had hated her, and as glad as he was that she was dead, this much he could concede. She had, in her way, been a woman of great power and strength of will. Even in death she had yielded to no one.
oOo
When it was done, when she was taken away and her daughters had gone with Tillu to be his wives and servants, there was still Rudira. Patir had stayed, and Taditi come back from seeing to Yama-diti’s rites.
Rudira had not moved at all, or spoken. She had no intention, it was all too clear, of surrendering herself to the women. She was Agni’s burden. Agni and Agni alone must judge and sentence her.
Agni regarded her in a kind of despair. The rest of Yama’s wives were a simple matter. Most had been the old king’s, and briefly Agni’s. Agni could take one or all of them. Or, if he so chose, men of the tribes would take them and be honored, as Tillu was, because of who they were and had been. But Rudira he did not trust, nor would ever trust. Rudira wanted to be a king’s wife.
The skull-cup lay where Taditi had set it after Yama-diti fell, not far from Agni’s foot. There was still a little wine left in it, a dark stain on the white bone. Agni could bid Rudira drink it. She might even obey.
He could not marry her. He could not give her to someone else. No more could he kill her. It was a perfect dilemma. Maybe if he chose at random, said the first thing that came into his head—
“Ah! There you are.”
Agni blinked. A shadow swelled in the light from without, and shrank into the madwoman Catin. Her eyes were on Rudira; the rest of them might never have been there at all. “What are you doing here? You don’t belong in this place.”
Agni could not read Rudira’s expression. It might be relief; it might be annoyance. Or it might be something else altogether. “I want to belong to him,” she said, sliding a glance at Agni.
“Why? He doesn’t want you.” Catin crouched beside her. “Really, you don’t need him. It’s a wide world, and he’s bound himself to such a tiny corner of it.”
“But I want him,” Rudira said.
“Whatever for? Besides the obvious, of course. He’s pretty, but I’ve seen prettier. His rod is lovely, neither too large nor too small, and he’s even learned to please a woman with it; but the world is full of men who know how to please a woman.”
“He’s a king,” Rudira said.
“What, that again? Silly. Here, get up. Come ride with me.”
“But I don’t—”
“You’re much too pale,” Catin said, “and much too thin. You need the sun and the wind, and air that’s not been shut inside of a tent.”
“But—”
“Come,” said Catin. “I’ve a mind to ride to the world’s edge and see what lies beyond it. Haven’t you ever wondered? Don’t you want to see?”
Rudira stared at her, pale eyes wide. They were all staring. Catin took not the slightest notice. “I’m going,” she said.
“But why do you want—” Rudira began.
“Never ask why,” Catin said. “Just come.”
Rudira’s face twisted as if in pain. “I’m afraid,” she said.
“Ah, child,” said Catin with rough gentleness, “of course you are. You don’t even know what you are, still less what to do about it.”
“What am I?”
“That, no one can tell you. You have to see for yourself.”
“You’re mad,” said Rudira.
Catin smiled. “Of course I am. Come to the world’s edge with me.”
Rudira wavered visibly, on the verge of diving into hiding, or worse, into Agni’s arms. But Catin held out her hand.
Rudira stared at it. It did not move. She clasped it, a desperate leap, as if she had been drowning. Catin pulled her up, but gently, and drew her into the light.
She stood blinking at it, tears streaming down her cheeks. After an incredulous while she straightened. Her eyes cleared. She lifted her face, turned it to the sky.
Suddenly she laughed. There was pain in it, and no little terror. But it was honest laughter. Now it was she who led Catin, half running, laughing in the sun.
oOo
Long after they were gone, Agni sat unmoving, and the others with him. At last Patir said, “Only a god could be so incomprehensible.”
“Incalculable,” Agni said.
“What’s difficult about it?” said Taditi. “They’re both exactly as mad as they need to be. That’s very sane, sometimes. Catin knows that you can’t keep Rudira here. Rudira doesn’t know anything worth knowing. She’s been set free of the world. She’ll not trouble you after this. You were all the brightness she knew. Now she has the sun itself.”
“I don’t understand you, either,” said Agni.
And yet, in a way, he did. If he had lived all of his life inside of a tent, and if his spirit yearned for the light, but did not know either what it yearned for or why . . . he might have been as Rudira was. He too might have reached for such light as he could find, and not reckoned the cost.
97
The Mother of Three Birds, whom Agni had never learned not to call Tilia, became a mother at last in the autumn of the year. It was harvest time, the golden time, when summer lingered in the days, but the nights were sharp with frost.
Sarama was out with the archers as she often was that autumn, running the king’s messages from town to town, or reminding the scattered tribes that they were to keep his laws. There were horsemen everywhere that war had touched, healing what they had harmed, and mending what they had broken. Not all of them were pleased to be so constrained; but Sarama’s company of grim-faced women on fast horses, armed with bows and deadly of aim, had proved to be the king’s best weapon against young tribesmen’s arrogance.
Girls and women were coming out of the towns and cities, begging to learn to ride and shoot. Sarama had a handful of them with her that day as she rode back to Three Birds from a long month’s riding about. They were mounted awkwardly on remounts, and not all were as glad to be riding as they had thought to be; it was not a comfortable thing to learn, in the beginning.
But she had some hope of these. The
fires of war had swept over them and tempered them like gold in the forge.
She was steppe-born, bred to wander lifelong and never settle in any one place. But as every tribe had its camps to which it returned season after season, she had Three Birds. She was not always sorry to leave it, particularly since the walls had begun to go up about it, warding it against war thereafter, but she was never aught but glad to come back. Her friends were there, her kin, her daughter—and Danu, who was her heart’s center.
She came from the east this time, all the way from Larchwood, where Tillu had made himself lord and guardian of the eastward borders. He had done well for himself, king’s friend that he was, and husband to the king’s sisters. Through his kin in the wood he knew all that passed there, and much that passed on the steppe beyond.
All was quiet, the flood of tribes stilled. They would have time, and perhaps much of it, before war came back into this country.
Unless of course they wrought it themselves. But Sarama had no expectation of that. Not this year, and not the next. Thereafter . . . the Lady knew.
She was thinking of this as she topped the hill and looked down on the city. The field between had almost healed. The grass upon it was very green, and flowers grew on the mounds where the dead slept.
The pit of spears with its bridge was still there, and Agni’s wall rising just beyond it. He was building in earth and stone. Already it was breast-high to people standing behind it.
She could still see the city, its circles, its high peaked roofs, and the temple rising above them all. And, riding up from the bridge, a lone man on a dun horse, with a much smaller figure riding in front of him.
Her heart leaped. As if to match it, the Mare half-reared. Sarama let her go, plunging down at a gallop.
A pealing cry rang out: Danu’s stallion fighting the bit, till Danu surrendered as Sarama had, and set the stallion free to run.
They met on the field where the grass grew thick, swirling about one another. Sarama was laughing, dizzy with wind and speed. Rani called out to her: “Mama, Mama, Mama!”
They spun to a halt. Rani leaped into her mother’s arms. Sarama held her tight, drinking in the sun-warmed child-scent, till she wriggled and squawked in protest.
Reluctantly Sarama loosened her grip and let Rani slide down astride the Mare’s neck. Rani clasped her about the middle and clung, babbling happily: a headlong mingling of words and baby-talk.
Sarama met Danu’s gaze over the tangle of dark curls. She was grinning, she realized, like a perfect fool.
And so was he. He was beautiful. He sat his stallion now with easy grace, not quite as one who had ridden before he could walk, but close enough. “You’ve been practicing,” she said.
He shrugged a little. “I have your honor to think of.”
“And your own pride?”
He shrugged again, a roll of wide shoulders. She would have loved to stroke them, to trace their width in kisses.
Tonight. His glance knew what she was thinking: it warmed till she came nigh to springing on him then and there, and never mind the baby between.
But she was wise after all, rather wiser than she sometimes liked to be. She kept to her place as he kept to his, and took note of his expression as he recalled what had brought him out to greet her. “The Mother,” he said. “It’s time.”
Sarama’s head emptied of everything, even Danu. “But—it’s early.”
“Not so early,” he said, “and all’s well. But since you’ve come, she would like—”
“Yes.” Sarama flung the word over her shoulder. The Mare was already a dozen long strides closer to the city than she had been before.
The dun stallion was hard on her heels. Rani whooped with glee. She loved a gallop, that one. No doubt of it: she was her mother’s child.
oOo
Tilia—the Mother—had gone into the birthing-room in the morning. The child was coming, but not for a while yet.
Tilia looked tired and ruffled and no more distressed than she should. Agni was much less composed. His beard looked red as fire against his white cheeks. His eyes were wild.
“You look,” said Sarama, “like a spooked colt.”
He glowered at her. “What, are you laughing at me? I’ve never even seen a baby born before.”
“You’ve foaled mares,” Sarama said. “It’s not so different. It just takes a great deal longer.”
“Mares aren’t foaling my child.”
“Stop that,” Tilia said before Sarama could muster a retort. “I need him and I want you, but if you’re going to squabble, you can do it somewhere else.”
Agni looked down, sulky as a boy. Sarama felt no little bit sullen herself. They were both excessively well rebuked.
Agni laughed first. That was a remarkable thing; unheard of. But so was seeing the king of the horsemen in the birthing-room with the woman who carried his child.
Sarama would have laid wagers that he would never do such a thing. But for Tilia he had done it. Oh, he loved her indeed, so to overcome the strictures of custom and apprehension and pure male pride.
oOo
Their daughter was born just before sunset, and their son not long after, just on the threshold of the night. They were dark children, but Sarama suspected in her bones that the son’s eyes would be amber when he was older.
Agni looked on them as fathers had, perhaps, since the morning of the world: half in awe and half in incredulity. He could not stop looking at them, or touching them, or counting fingers and toes. “They’re perfect,” he said, and more than once.
“Of course they are,” said Tilia. She was vastly and luminously happy. To be barren for so long, and when at last she came to it, to bear two—that was a great thing, and proof to any who might have doubted, that she was fit to be Mother in Three Birds.
Her gladness blessed them all. Sarama drew back with Danu, leaving them to each other: Agni in his wonder, Tilia in her deep and singing joy.
Danu’s arm slipped about Sarama’s middle. He had learned, and very well, to act as well as to be acted upon. He set a kiss in the hollow of her neck and shoulder. “Shall we make ourselves another?” he murmured in her ear.
She smiled sidelong. “Would you like to?”
“With all my heart.”
“And some of the rest of you, too.”
He laughed, soft and deep. But his mind had wandered somewhat afield. “Would you have thought it? Those two, of all people that could have been. She’s tamed the king of the horsemen.”
“And he has conquered the Mother of the cityfolk.” Sarama laid her head on his shoulder as she had wanted to do since he came riding toward her across the healing battlefield. “Are you conquered, beloved? Am I a tamed thing?”
“Do you want to be?”
“I want . . .” She slipped a hand beneath his coat, but only to let it rest there. People were coming, crowding to look on the wonder and share the blessing: twin children born to the Mother in her city, and to the king who had joined with her in the Great Marriage. They took no notice of the two in the shadows, nor listened to the words that they murmured to one another.
“I want to be blessed,” Sarama said. “To be yours as you are mine. To go out as the Lady calls me, and to come back, and you are here.”
“Always,” he said. “I am always here.”
“Promise?”
“By my heart,” he said.
“You know,” she said, “what this is. What all of it is. We were what we were. Horsemen. Gods’ children. Bound to the Lady of Horses. And you were unlike anything we had ever known. We never understood you—maybe never will. And yet, look at us. We’ve come together. We’ve made something new.”
“Something that knows the meaning of war.”
He did not often go as dark as that, or as quickly. She brushed his lips with hers, to warm them, and wrapped her arms about him and held him tight. “All things have a price. Would you go back altogether to what you were?”
He shivered,
but he shook his head. “No. Not without you.”
Sarama drew back until she could see his face. Shadow lay half across it, but his eyes were clear. They saw farther than they wanted to see, and deeper, too. “You’ve grown strong,” she said.
“No. I’ve grown hard.”
“Strong,” said Sarama. “You’ll never be a hard man. Not you. Just as I’ll never be gentle, nor those two yonder be aught but proud. We change, the world changes. But what’s in the heart of us, that holds fast.”
“Pray the Lady it be so,” Danu said, “for if it’s not, then all this world of ours that was so beautiful—it will die. Nor will it ever be reborn.”
“The Lady won’t die,” Sarama said. “Listen to her. Listen! She’s older than the gods. When all of them are gone, she will remain. So too her children. They’ll change; there’s no help for that. But they’ll never vanish from the world.”
Danu’s eyes were as dark as ever. He was not comforted, not wholly. He had seen too much for that; too much war, too much death.
So had they all. As Sarama moved to speak again, a baby’s cry silenced her. One of the Mother’s children, the king’s children, had roused and was proclaiming its presence in the world.
It was a strong cry, and swiftly doubled, more shout of triumph than wail of anguish. The world was pain, it declared, and yet the world was joy. Hunger; satiation. Sorrow and gladness.
She let their voices speak for her. Danu was a wise creature, when he allowed himself to be. She watched the light come back into his face.
He traced the line of her cheek with his finger. “Shall we make a son this time?”
“If you want one.”
“I would like that,” he said gravely, but with a glint in it.
“Then we should set about it,” she said.
“Now?”
“Will there ever be a better time?”
He lifted his head and peered into the birthing-room. Sarama half-turned herself to see what he was seeing.
The babies’ cries had quieted. The Mother had them both at the breast, and people all about, a great crowd of them as it seemed, and not all people of the city, either. Patir was there, and Taditi, and others whom she knew from the king’s camp.
