White Mare's Daughter (3 page)

They shook their heads and clicked their tongues. “Ah well,”
said the first, “all the Dun Cow people are mad.”

“And White Horse people?” the other whispered, furtive but
not furtive enough.

“Ah!” said her sister. “Well. But they are prettier than Dun
Cow people. All that red hair. Did you see the prince last night? Wasn’t he
lovely? That face. Those shoulders. Those yellow eyes. Now if I’d been married
to him instead of . . .”

“Hush!” the other said, clapping a hand over her mouth.
“Someone said to someone who said to me . . . but that’s a
dreadful thing, if it’s true: that someone else thinks the same as you, but she
does something about it.”

“I wish I dared,” her sister sighed. “It’s said he’ll be
king when the old one goes to the knife.”

“It’s also said,” said the other, “that Lord Yama will make
sure that doesn’t happen—and the other princes are eyeing the king’s place,
too. Remember when our king died? He wasn’t even particularly old, but he had
brothers and cousins enough to get a good war going.”

“Prince Agni will win,” her sister said.

“Ah, to be so certain,” said the other with a touch of
mockery. “Here, sister, did you hear what Dissa did with her hair? Can you
believe it? By the Mare, washing it in henna to see what it would do!”

“She wanted to look like a White Horse woman,” her sister
said, “and maybe get Prince Agni to come and visit her during the Bull Dance.”

“Then she should whiten her hair with lime and make herself
all pale in the face,” the other said. Her sister widened eyes as if at a
scandal, but then, as if shocked into it, she giggled.

Sarama would have loved to rise up and knock their heads
together, but war in the women’s tent was hardly a fit beginning for her return
to the White Horse people. She yawned instead and stretched, waking for the
world to see. The sisters fell abruptly silent. Sarama smiled impartially round
the tent, and went to make her morning toilet.

oOo

It was a fine morning, the sun still below the horizon but
the sky full of light. A scud of clouds ran away westward before a fair wind,
with a flock of birds in close pursuit. Geese, she thought, flying on some
errand of the gods.

The camp woke around her. Veiled women tended cookfires.
Their little children played at their feet, and older children ran in packs
like the camp dogs. She could hear the lowing and snorting of cattle in the
herds beyond the tents, the cry of a stallion, the shrill angry squeal of a
mare. Scents of dung and spilled kumiss, grass and horses and humanity,
roasting meat and baking bread, wrapped her about in warm familiarity. Home was
the steppe, the Mare’s back, the Hill of the Goddess under the sky, but this
was a place she knew, and knew well.

She paused at the privy-pit and passed on down to the river,
with a mind to bathe though the air was cool and the water would still be
snow-cold. Horse Goddess enjoined cleanliness on her servants, whatever its
cost. Sarama had grown accustomed to the shock of icy water on warm skin, till
she could not wake fully without it, nor confront the day unwashed and
unblessed.

No one else was so bold or so bound by duty to the goddess,
although women came down to draw water, and once a gangling boy who saw her
bathing there, went stark white, and bolted as if from a demon.

She laughed at that. Women in the tribes were never seen
naked, not even, if they were proper, by their husbands. Out on the steppe, in
the company of the Old Woman and the Mares, one had no need of such
foolishness. Did a mare go clothed, after all, while she grazed on the
hillside?

Poor women, thought Sarama as she rubbed herself dry, eyed
her too-well-worn clothes and marked them for washing, and hoped that someone
in her father’s tent would have garments to lend her while they dried. For the
moment she put them back on. They were men’s clothes, or near enough; practical
if one lived as she lived, on the back of the Mare. She had never worn the
skirts and shawls that so trammeled a woman.

It was not likely she would find what she needed among her
father’s wives and daughters. Agni however, Agni her womb-brother, would have
clothes that she could borrow: gods knew he must have outgrown no few of them
since she saw him last.

He was still asleep, the lazy great oaf, but he woke quickly
enough once she wrung water from the river onto his face. He woke fighting,
too, but she had expected that. She danced back laughing, undismayed by the
terror of his glare. “Wake up, brother!” she said brightly. “Greet the sun.
It’s a fair morning, and I need a new shirt and a tunic, and trousers, too. Do
you still have the red tunic I liked so much?”

He growled, but he answered her almost civilly. “I still
have it. I thought you’d want it. It’s over there.” He tipped his chin toward
the bag of dun horsehide that had housed his belongings for as long as Sarama
could remember.

With his leave freely if not joyously given, Sarama dived
into the bag. The red tunic was there, a wonderful thing, made as it was of
cloth woven in the sunrise countries and brought far out into the steppe to
clothe a prince. She found leather trousers, too, that fit not badly, and
boots, and a belt with a clasp of bone carved in the shape of a running horse.
She put them all on, wrapped her old clothes into a bundle and thrust it into
his hands while he stood swaying, still half asleep. “See that these are
cleaned,” she said.

That woke him to indignation. “Am I your servant?”

“I am the goddess’ servant,” she said, “and all men are
mine. Go on, see who’ll do the cleaning. Then we’ll find someone to feed us
breakfast.”

He growled again. She grinned. He stalked off to do her
bidding, as she had known he would.

oOo

They made the sacrifice of the Stallion as the sun touched
its zenith, all gathered on the plain beyond the camp. Herdsmen kept the lesser
horses and the cattle and the goats well away. The women and girls kept to the
tents, for it was an ill thing to see a woman’s face in the rite of the
Stallion.

Unless that woman was Sarama. She was the Mare’s child: not
a man, no, never, but not a woman either, not as other women were. It was not
given her to speak or perform in that rite, but neither was she forbidden the
sight of it. Her place was just outside of it, on a sudden rise of ground,
sitting the Mare without bridle or saddle. The two of them were preternaturally
still.

Agni could see them from where he stood, again and by his
father’s will in a place of honor. He had begun to wonder if the old man might
not be playing a game, taunting the sons of other mothers with this one who had
no womb-brothers, only the sister who belonged to the Mare.

Their mother had been a strange one by all accounts, born to
the tribe and yet outside of it, suckled it was said by the Mare herself. She
had died bearing her children, as a mare might die in bearing twins.

He had never known her. Other wives had suckled the two of
them, passing them from hand to hand till the Old Woman came and took his
sister away.

He had not understood then why she must go and he must stay.
He had been furiously angry. He had screamed, he remembered. Screamed till he
had no voice left. But the goddess had never cared for mere male rage.

Odd, he thought now, and yet wonderful, that they had grown
up as close as they had, though parted so often and for so long. The womb was a
potent place. Sarama said she could remember it: dark and warm and close. He
was less blessed, or perhaps less cursed. His first memory was of her being
taken away, and of his fury—not that she was going, but that he could not go
with her.

She sat on her hilltop, mounted on the moon-dappled Mare,
high and remote. He down below, hemmed in by the men of the tribes, wondered if
she was happy; if she knew what it was to be part of the people.

He would ask her later. Not now. Now was the chanting of the
priests in their tall horsehead masks, the beating of the drums like the
thunder of hooves on the earth, the dip and sway of the dance. He as an
initiate, new come into man’s place, might wear the horsehide tunic but not the
mask—not yet. Not till he passed the test of the hunt, caught a stallion wild
on the steppe, tamed him and conquered him and brought him home to be his
mount.

He shivered a little, thinking of that. After the gathering,
when the tribes had gone on the summer wanderings, each apart from the other on
the broad breast of the world, he would go out. This was his consecration, this
sacrifice.

The tunic was heavy on him, heated by the sun, chafing the
bare body beneath. His palm was slippery on the haft of the knife that he must
carry, the black stone dagger honed and polished till it gleamed, its edge so
keen that it could draw blood from air.

He was terrified; exhilarated. Excitement raised his shaft
as it had risen for Rudira, hard and aching, yearning toward a woman.

And there was none here, none but Sarama.

He sighed faintly. Tonight, yes. Rudira would be waiting for
him. Maybe even she would come to him, impossible boldness, but utterly like
her. His breath came a little quicker, thinking of it.

The priests’ chant wound on, now deep as the drums, now
shrill as a stallion’s call. Their dance had drawn in close to the altar, the
sacred stone that the gods had laid down, high as a man’s waist, level as if
smoothed by a monstrous hand. They linked hands in a circle and stamped,
beating the earth, now with this foot, now that. The drum pounded with them.

Down the way that the men had left open, treading the
trampled grass, the Stallion came in his glory. A priest led him, a man without
a face, masked and clothed in undyed horsehide. The eyes behind the mask were
hidden in shadow, as if he had none at all; as if the mask and the garments
were empty, and inside them naught but air. Nameless, faceless, silent, he led
the Stallion toward the circle.

It was a red Stallion always, unblemished, unscarred, with
no mark of white upon him. Agni’s father, as chief of the priests, had chosen
and blessed him, and whispered in his ear the secret name, the name that he
would bear before the gods.

Sometimes the beast did not go willingly to his sacrifice.
Then, Agni knew, the priests fed him herbs to calm him. It was not a thing
anyone talked of, but everyone knew it was done, and knew the look, too, the
slight stumble in the gait, the slight clouding of the eyes.

This one had been fed no herb. He walked calmly, head up,
alert, looking about him with interest but no fear. The scent of blood was sunk
deep in earth and altar. His nostrils flared; he snorted, but did not shy away.

He was bold, this one, and beautiful, as red almost as the
tunic that Sarama wore on her hilltop—Agni’s tunic that had been, that she had
made hers. The gods would love him; he would speak well for the tribes, and his
strong back would bear the weight of their prosperity in the year that would
come.

No wise man spoke as the Stallion approached the altar, yet
Agni heard the hiss of a whisper behind him. “That’s a fine one, that is. The
Old Man chose well.”

“Of course he did,” someone else hissed back. “He knows he
should be going to the altar with the horse. It’s his time, and past it. Did
you see how he stumbled just now, and forgot the word he was about to say?”

Agni stiffened. The king had hesitated, yes, but who would
not? It was a long rite, and the words were difficult, some so old that their
meaning was forgotten. And if he had misstepped slightly—well; and the ground
was uneven, much trampled from the day before. The Bull had not gone quiet to
his death. One of the priests would be a long while recovering. Another would
be laid in the earth when all the sacrifices were done, with great reverence,
for he had died on the horns of the Bull.

The Stallion offered no such violence. And the king was not
ready, not yet, to mount the back of the sacrifice, and to offer his own throat
to the knife.

“It is a Ninth Year,” said the hissing voice behind him. He
could not turn to see who it was, but he had his suspicions. “Everyone forgets,
or chooses to; but this is a year when a king should go with the Stallion into
the earth. We’ll pay for that, you’ll see. The gods don’t like to be deprived
of their due.”

Agni, who had been born in a Ninth Year, the year his father
had risen from prince to king, was well minded to whirl about and ask the one
who was so eager to see the king die, whether he would offer himself instead,
as the royal born well might. If it was Yama as he suspected, he would win
naught but a glare for his pains.

But he could not so disrupt the rite. The Stallion had
nearly reached the altar. The scent of blood had roused him at last. He was
sweating and snorting, stepping uneasily, but he did not stop, did not pull
back rearing and fighting as the Bull had done the day before.

Agni loved him for that courage. As he reached the ring of
priests, the ring broke; the priests drew back.

Agni did not need the stroke of the drum to know that it was
time. He stepped forward from among the youths who were not yet men. His
fingers were locked tight round the knife’s hilt. He could not have let it go
even if he willed to.

He was aware, keenly, of the eyes on him. He was the chosen
one, the one blessed, the instrument of the sacrifice. None of them moved, none
spoke. The wind blew away the sound of their breathing.

The faceless priest stood in front of him, holding out the
cord of braided leather with which he had led the Stallion. Agni took it
blindly. His eyes were full of the beast. The proud head lifted, ears pricked,
nostrils fluttering as they drew in his scent.

He laid a hand on the soft muzzle. The Stallion breathed
deep, feinted a nip, looked at him with eyes that laughed, stallion-laughter,
as fierce as it was joyful.