White Mare's Daughter (5 page)

She was rather surprised that he had not offered to find her
a husband. That would come later, she had no doubt. Yama meant to be king, he
had told her as clear as words. And when Yama was king, such oddities as Sarama
would be disposed of, made a proper part of the people.

“Lady,” she said to the bright depths of the sky, “whatever
you will, I obey; but it would serve us very well if yonder bullcalf failed of
his ambition.”

She received no answer. She had not asked for one. It was
enough to know that she was heard.

After the third of the three great sacrifices, the clans
and tribes lingered yet a while in the place of gathering. Spring, which could
be capricious, showed one day a blast of winter in chill rain and a spit of
snow; the next, a coy face of summer in warm breezes and cloudless sky. The
herds were yet content though they had wandered somewhat afield in search of
grazing. When they had gone a day’s journey, then the people would disperse to
their summer runs.

They were not so far out yet, and the people, freed of the
obligations of the high festival, mingled freely among the tents. Then
marriages were made, alliances promised, feuds made and broken. One of Agni’s
brothers by a mother of the Spotted Bull took to wife a woman of the Dun
Cow—and not a madwoman either, that Agni could determine. She seemed a meek
enough creature, demure in her veils, with wide-set brown eyes like a doe, and
a voice like a dove’s call.

She was said to be beautiful. Muriadni would know for
certain this night; and he was eager for it, between kumiss and his brothers’
teasing. He had been kept away from any woman through the gathering,
particularly in the dances on the days of sacrifice, housed in a tent apart and
kept under strict if laughing guard. He looked, Agni thought, like a young
stallion kept penned during the mares’ season: ready to batter down the walls
and leap on the first mare he saw.

Weddings were grand occasions among the people, rich with
gifts and feasting. Strangers would come from far away to partake of a great
lord’s bounty, bringing songs and tales and sometimes a marvel. When Yama took
his first wife, Agni remembered, a traveller had had a wondrous thing, a knife
made of smooth shining stuff’ both softer and keener than stone, which he
called copper. He had not given it to anyone though many sought to trick him
out of it, nor offered it as a wedding gift, which had been reckoned rude.

But Agni rather thought he understood. This copper could
take an edge that would draw blood from air, and bore a sheen on it like sunset
on water, red and golden and faintly green. He would not have given such a
thing away, either, though he be thought mean for it, and less than princely.

There were no such wonders at this wedding, though someone
was showing off a mare born all white and not, he swore, greyed as the children
of the Mare were. And indeed she was a strange thing to look at, her coat pure
blank white, her skin pink beneath it and not the black of the Mare, and her
eyes blank and icy blue.

Those eyes had a demon in them, people said. Maybe so; but
there was none in the mare. She was a placid thing, inured to stares and
exclamations and strangers’ hands running over her.

oOo

Agni found Sarama not in the crowd about the white mare,
where he might have expected, but hovering on the edge of a taleteller’s
circle. This was nothing so wondrous as a horse born white; simply a man in
travelworn clothes, one eye blinded in an ancient knife-fight, with a
strikingly clear voice for one so apparently ravaged by age and wandering.

“Yes,” he was saying as Agni came up beside Sarama, “I
traveled toward the setting sun with the people of the Black Mare and the
people of the Red Bull and many another people, westward and westward, till I
found the Golden Aurochs that some had told me were long vanished into the
grass. But they were very much alive, and they were riding westward, seized by
the desire of their king and drawn by tales of wonder—just as I had been, who
came from so far to find them. They were camped by the edge of a great and
terrible place, a forest of trees such as none of you has ever seen, trees so
tall they touched the sky. Beyond those, their wise men knew, was treasure; but
they had failed of their courage, and would not venture the trees.

“But I was only one man, and men have called me mad before.
I said my prayers to Skyfather and to Earth Mother and to Horse Goddess, too,
and sang myself a beast to carry fodder for my horse, and rode into the dark
place. Oh, it was dark, my children! Dark as night, full of whispers and
rustlings and the flutter of wings. And there was no sky to see, no stars to
light my way, and hardly the sun by day. Yet the gods guided me, sent game to
my bow, kept my horses on a path as straight as it might be, till I came to the
light again.

“It was a beautiful thing, my children, beautiful and purely
strange. For there was the grass that grows in the world I knew, and a great
river that was still, after all, a river; and the sun over them, and rain when
the gods willed it, and night with moon and stars. But all on that plain of the
river, as far as eye and mind could perceive, were the habitations of men.

“And such men! Men, my children, who live in tents built of
earth and wood and stone, that never move, but stand fast from life to life.
Cattle they know, and goats, and sheep, but of horses they know nothing. They walk
where they must go, or float like logs on the river, nor think to mount one of
their cattle—strange people, fools one might think, but such treasures as they
amass, such wonders as they make, how could they indeed be witless? They clothe
themselves in all the colors of earth and water and sky, and surround
themselves with the work of their hands, wonderful things of wood and stone and
pottery, and a thing that some call metal, and when it is red they call it
copper, and when it shines like the sun they call it gold. This is a rarity,
and a sign of great wealth, but is neither a wonder nor a thing to remark on
there, no more than their garments or their pots or the music they make with
pierced reeds, that sounds like the voices of the gods.

“But strangest of all, and most remarkable, my children, is
that no man rules there. No, not one. Their kings are women, my children. Yes,
it is true! Women rule them. Women walk boldly, with faces unveiled, and speak
as freely as men, and men not only listen; they bow their heads and obey.”

But for the respect every civilized person owed a teller of
tales, he would have been drowned out then by a tide of disbelief. As it was,
people murmured and nudged one another, and someone laughed, almost loud enough
to overwhelm his voice. He jabbed his chin at that one, not at all dismayed,
and nodded broadly. “Oh, you laugh, do you, little man? So did I, long and
loud, in my disbelief. And yet it was true. They know nothing of Skyfather.
Earth Mother only they know, whom they call Lady of the Birds, and they worship
her in every dwelling, in every place in which they gather. Men, too; men there
submit in all things to the women, nor carry weapons, nor know the arts of war,
except to drive off the wolves from their flocks. And that, my children, the
women also do, strong tall creatures whose hands are hard and whose hearts are
implacable.

“Still,” he said, and there he sighed as if at a memory,
“not all of them are as men, or as stones, either. They are free of themselves;
aye, very free. Nor do they scorn a half-blind traveller, if he come mounted on
a beast they reckon impossible, and bearing gifts from far places. My knife
they had little use for save for cutting meat, but my bow they loved, for they
had nothing like it. It would wage great war among the wolves, they said. I
gave it to them. How was I to refuse? My horse I would not give, nor dared they
ask for her; but when she foaled, they kept her colt. It was tribute, they
said, to the Lady of the Birds. I thought that they might sacrifice him, but
they kept him, the daughters of the she-king of that place, and made a little
king of him, feeding him the choicest grasses and garlanding him with flowers.”

There was more to his tale—a great deal more, from the look
and sound of him—but Sarama, it seemed, had heard enough. She wandered off as
if in a dream, and Agni followed.

When she stopped, she had left the tents and found her way
to the horselines, though not as far as the Mare. Agni did not know what
stopped her there. Probably nothing but the turning of her thoughts, and
perhaps the sight of a mare with a new colt at its side. He had been born in
the night from the look of him, tiny and spindly and down on his pasterns but
bright-eyed, curious, coming to investigate the strangers while his mother
grazed nearby. She was an old mare, a mare who had borne many foals; she was
far too wise to guard her child against the goddess’ children, though she
favored them with a long glance before she bent to her grazing.

Sarama knelt in the grass, making herself smaller so that
the foal might not take fright and flee. But he was a brave one, a
mouse-colored creature who would, Agni judged, be black when he was grown. He
approached her boldly, neck outstretched, ears pricked, tiny nostrils flared,
till he touched her with his nose. She knelt motionless except for her hand,
which came up slowly to stroke the soft newborn fur of his neck. He snorted and
shied a little, but he came back. By degrees and with a bit of snorting and
rapid retreating, he suffered her to stroke him from ears to tail, lift his
feet one by one, breathe into his nostrils and, Agni had no doubt, lay the
goddess’ blessing on him.

It was nothing that Agni himself had not done, and yet he
watched, fascinated. Sarama was Horse Goddess’ servant. She spoke for the
goddess to the people, on those rare occasions when the goddess might choose to
speak. Not all those people, he could see, walked on two legs.

Sarama let the colt go. He went direct to his mother and
nursed hungrily.

Sarama straightened. She was smiling. “That one will be a
hunter’s mount,” she said. “He’s small but very brave, and he’ll be strong and
sure on his feet.”

“Maybe I’ll lay claim to him,” Agni said.

She slid her eyes at him. “You? No. Your horse is waiting
for you.” Her chin tilted northward, away from the camp. “There. You’ll leave
soon.”

She was not asking. She was telling. From anyone else he
might have resented it, but Sarama was Sarama. “And you?” he asked her. “Will
you stay and wait for me?”

“I’m not your wife,” she said. It was quick, and no thought
in it, he did not think; she softened face and voice when she spoke again. “You
know I go where the goddess bids me.”

“I thought the goddess bade you come home, now that Old
Woman is gone.”

“To do what? Sit in a tent? Wear a veil? Be someone’s wife?”

Agni did not see why she should be so angry. He certainly
had said nothing to merit it. He chose to be calm, to say mildly, “Old Woman
sat in the king’s council and spoke when the goddess moved her to speak.
Sometimes she staved for a whole round of seasons. Isn’t that what you came to
do?”

“I came to show the king the cup of her skull,” Sarama said,
soft and too still. He read grief in it, and more of that inexplicable anger.
Sarama was always angry at something. It seemed to be her nature—as it was with
young mares, never a quiet moment, ears flat and teeth bared and hind feet
restless always.

Stallions learned to avoid the mares when they were in such
a mood, but Agni was a man. Men did not run away from women, even women in a
temper. “So where will you go?” he asked. “Back to the goddess’ hill?”

“No,” said Sarama, again too quickly. “There’s too much
memory there.”

“So you’ll stay with us,” he said. “Heal. Speak for the
goddess when she asks. The people will be glad to have you back. They’ve been
too long without Horse Goddess’ word on them. Not all the foals are as fine as
this one. Too many are born weak or dead, and those that live are too often
flawed.”

Sarama tossed her head in annoyance. “What, don’t you
so-wise men know how to breed horses? I saw the stallion who’s been covering so
many of the mares. Am I the only one who can see how poor a beast he is? His
front legs are crooked and his hindlegs too straight. He’s pretty, to be sure,
with that sun-colored coat, but there’s nothing worth keeping beneath it. It
doesn’t take the goddess to tell you to keep the hide and be rid of the horse,
and find another sire for the herd.”

“I said much the same,” Agni told her, “and the men bade me
mind my business.
You
could speak
with honest authority.”

“I’ll speak,” she said, “but I’m not staying here.”

“So? Where will you go?”

“West,” said Sarama. “Toward the setting sun. To the country
in which women rule, and men bow their heads and obey.”

Sarama had not truly known what she would say until she
said it. That she could not stay—yes, she had known that, had known it since
Yama accosted her and made her too keenly aware of her position among the
people. Old Woman had had great power, that had kept the men at bay. Sarama was
too young yet; and she had been born into a strong clan.

Too strong, Old Woman had said. It had thought to master
Horse Goddess through Sarama’s mother. She had died in the battle. Sarama might
not live, either, or live in captivity.

Then who would serve the goddess? Who would ride and love
and tend the Mare? Not a man. The Mare would never suffer that. But the men
might imagine that she would.

Sarama was not the people’s servant. She had had to learn
that. The goddess was her own self. The people of the White Horse were hers by
virtue of their sign and symbol, but her servant did not belong to them. Just
so did Sarama belong to the Mare, but the Mare did not belong to Sarama.