White Mare's Daughter (59 page)

He straightened his shoulders and said to Maya, “Come.”

She took his outstretched hand and climbed up behind him,
more adeptly this time, and with less stiffening and clutching. Agni, who
wanted to go stiff and clutch at something familiar himself, sent Mitani down
the hill. The others followed, some slowly, some with great insouciance,
refusing to be astonished by this broad new world.

oOo

The nearest of the cities was Maya’s city. There were, she
said with gestures, ten tens of people in it—very few, her manner professed,
but she was proud of it nonetheless. It was built in circles, though the houses
were square-sided, all facing inward toward one that was higher and more ornate
than the others. It seemed to be a king’s house, covered with signs that must
be sacred, with carved beams and bright paint.

They rode through the fields that were plowed in curves and
circles, sprouting with green, precise and ordered. People were doing things in
the fields, digging or plucking or rooting in the earth beneath the young
grain. They all came erect as the tribesmen rode past, wide eyes, pale faces, a
murmur that followed them.

Agni had seen goats in outlying fields, and cattle and
sheep. But no horses. Theirs were the only ones: the first, maybe, that had
walked in this part of the world.

oOo

People were standing just past the first of the houses, at
ease but alert, like guards. Yet they were unarmed. In all their rich and
beautifully colored clothing, he saw not one knife or spear, no bow, no weapon
of war.

Maybe their bodies were their weapons. They were all women,
dark as Maya was dark, and most were plump, and one or two were grossly fat. As
fat as any tribesman could dream of being in a year of impossible richness,
when there was nothing to do but lie about and sip from the honeycomb.

Then Agni truly believed that the traveler’s tales were
true. No one dressed so, stood so, looked so, who lived as tribesmen lived.
These people were rich. They lived soft and without fear.

And women ruled them. Agni saw men in the fields, but they
hung back. Women came forward, bolder than Agni had ever seen, staring openly
and murmuring to one another. None quite dared come close enough to touch the
horses, but while Agni gaped like a fool at the city and its people, they had
closed in all about. The only way open was ahead, toward what must be the
elders.

Strange to think of them so, all these women, standing
monumental and calm. Something about them made Agni think of Taditi, and of the
Old Woman.

One was not the tallest, but she was the most monumental,
vast breasts, vast thighs, face as vastly calm as the face of the moon. She stood
among the others, but something in the way she stood, in the way the others
stood about her, made her their center.

Agni swung his leg over Mitani’s neck and slid lightly to
the ground. The women watched in silence. He beckoned. “Tillu. Talk to them if
you will. Tell them that we come to trade with them.”

Tillu nodded, and spoke to them. The one of great presence
replied in a deep sweet voice. Tillu said, “She says that you are welcome, and
that you are her guests in this city. She’s called the Mother. That’s her name
and her title. You’re to call her that.”

“My mother is dead,” Agni said—and where that came from, he
could not have told.

Nor had he meant Tillu to render it into that other
language, but it was done before Agni could stop it. The Mother stepped forward
and laid her hand on Agni’s arm.

“She says,” said Tillu, “that she is sorry, and that you
should not be. All mothers are one Mother. They are all the Goddess.”

“The Old Woman said that,” Agni said. He shook himself.
“Tell her we thank her, and we’ll visit the market, if she gives us leave.”

She inclined her head as if she had been a king. Then in her
own person she led him into her city.

oOo

“I hope you’re being clever,” Patir said in Agni’s ear as
they stood in a market that would have been a great wonder in a gathering of
tribes. And this was a city reckoned no larger than a clan-gathering on the
steppe.

Agni raised a brow at Patir. “You think we should fall on
them with fire and slaughter?”

“I think these people know nothing of war,” Patir said.

“So I see,” Agni said. “I also see that they are very rich,
and very complacent. Wouldn’t you choose to conquer without bloodshed, if you
could?”

“Easy pickings,” Patir said. He sifted through a bowl of
bright stones, picking out the brightest, turning them to make them sparkle.
“It’s too easy.”

“These people have never known war,” Agni said. “Look at
them. We’re strangers; we’re armed. We rode in on horses. And they smile at us
and offer us whatever they have.”

“They’re buying us off,” said Patir. “They’re cowards.”

“They’re innocents,” Agni said.

“Is there a difference?” Patir let the stones fall back into
the bowl and went on down the line of stalls to a trader in woven cloth.

There were spread weavings more elaborate than Agni had
known was possible, bright as flowers, some rough, some smooth, some a mingling
of both. Agni would have reckoned them fit for kings, but even the children
wore such marvels of the weaver’s art, playing carelessly in the dust and mud,
with no one to rebuke them for dirtying their beautiful coats.

There were more traders in cloth, and traders in pots of
wonderful artistry, and traders in things to eat—most of which Agni could not
even name—and among them women who offered the ruddy wonder of copper, and even
more wonderful than that, the bright gleam of gold.

It was like sunlight given substance, cool and smooth to the
hand, and startlingly heavy. Agni marveled at a great twisted ring of it, a
ring for the throat, as the trader indicated with a gesture and a smile, with
knobs of amber ornamenting the ends. It clasped his neck as if made for it, and
sat cool and heavy on his shoulders.

“It is yours,” Tillu said, appearing beside him, speaking
for the Mother, whom Agni had seen just a moment before at the far end of the
market. She could move quickly for a woman so huge, and lightly, too. For
himself Tillu added, “Amazing. The amber’s the same color as your eyes. She knows
it, too. She’s got her eye on you, my lord.”

Agni did not dignify that with a response. He ran his finger
round the curve of the ring, cherishing the feel of it. Then he frowned. “This
is a thing of great price, an ornament for a king.”

Agni thought Tillu might be too caught up in his teasing to
repeat the words, but he had a fair sense of his own importance. He spoke; and
the Mother nodded, eyes on Agni.

“You must want something in return,” he said to her.

Once she had heard that in her own tongue, the Mother
nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Bring none of your war here.”

The word she used, though strangely altered, was Agni’s own,
in his own language. His eyes widened slightly at that. She went on, and Tillu
spoke for her, stumbling, searching for words, because this was not trade-talk
or guide-talk; this was the conversation of kings.

“If you will go on,” she said, “and let us be, then you may
have your fill of whatever you please. It is riches you wish, yes? Not blood.”

“Riches,” Agni said, “and kingship.”

She frowned slightly. “A man cannot be a Mother,” she said.

“What—” Agni fixed a hard stare on Tillu. “What did you say
to her?”

Tillu spread his hands and sighed. “I said what I could say.
There’s no word for king here—nothing for a man who rules over the people. The
only word close to it is the word for Mother.”

“Ah,” said Agni. He reflected on that, while the Mother
waited, patient. “Tell her that a woman cannot be a king.”

“But there’s no word for—”

“Teach her a new word,” Agni said. “And ask her where she
learned the word for war.”

“King,” she said, softening it, twisting it a little, making
it sound like the other words she spoke. “That is—a man who rules, yes? Men
never rule here.”

“So I gathered,” Agni said. “And the word for war?”

“It is the word for what is,” she said. Nor would she say
more than that. Instead she said, “Come with me. Be a guest in my house tonight.”

Agni could see that he was not well advised to refuse.
Equally clearly he could see that Patir and Rahim and Gauan had drawn in close,
and that they liked this not at all.

Agni inclined his head to the Mother, to his friends’
manifest distress. But if he was to take this country, he must know how best to
go about it.

oOo

“She tried to buy you,” Rahim said as the Mother led them
out of the market. “These people have no honor.”

Agni, who was still wearing the golden torque, shrugged with
more nonchalance than he felt. “You expected otherwise? These are women ruling
women. When did a woman ever have honor?”

That silenced Rahim, though clearly it did not satisfy him.
Nothing but war in the manner of the tribes would do that. And that, they would
not get here.

“These people are unarmed,” Patir said. “I doubt they even
know how to fight. If they have no honor, then what have we if we kill them?
They have no defense against us.”

Agni nodded. “Yes. Yes, you see it. There must be a way in
honor to take this country.”

“Take it as you take a woman,” said Gauan. “If she’s
willing, take her gently and with all good will. But if she’s not—then take her
as you may, and let her learn to accept you.”

Someone hissed. Rahim maybe, warning Gauan of delicate
ground. But although Agni had been cast out of the White Horse for taking a
woman who was unwilling, he had never done such a thing, nor ever intended to.

He said to Gauan, “You may have the right of it. These are
women, after all. Surely a woman is a woman, even if she rules a city.”

“That is a fine figure of a woman,” Tillu observed, watching
the Mother as she walked ahead of them. “I wonder, do they take men as we take
women?”

“You don’t know?” Rahim asked.

Tillu shrugged. “Well. The traders tell tales, but who knows
which of them are true?” And though Rahim begged him to tell the tales, he
shook his head and laughed, and would not tell even one.

Agni, listening to them, felt his cheeks go hot. The girl
Maya had vanished somewhere between the edge of the city and its market. As
wonderful a creature as this Mother was, when Agni’s nether parts grew hard, it
was the girl he thought of and not the woman. The woman was too much like Earth
Mother; too close to the goddess’ self.

oOo

Her house was as large as a clan-chieftain’s tent, made of
wood and painted inside and out. It was hung and carpeted with more of the
wonderful weavings, and full of treasures, fine pots and chests and furnishings
made of wood and carved and again painted. Agni saw an outer room with a loom
laid out on the floor, and an inner room with shutters open to the sunlight.
There were others deeper in, but those he was not shown, not just yet.

It was strange to look up and see wooden beams overhead:
like being in the forest, but lighter, brighter, because the sun was allowed to
come in. With the Mother and a handful of younger women and girls who must be
her daughters, there was only room for Agni and Patir, Rahim and Tillu. The
rest, except for half a dozen of his own men of the White Horse, he sent back to
the camp with word that he was safe, and to wait.

Gauan went with them to lead them, not particularly
willingly. He had been spinning great webs of fancy with Rahim, boasting of the
wine he would drink and the women he would win. He was sore disappointed to be
sent back to the company of men.

The half-dozen who stayed behind camped with the horses on
the grassy hillside near to the Mother’s house, though she offered another
house for them.

“They prefer to sleep under the sky,” Agni said, which was
true. The Mother did not argue, nor did she seem greatly afraid of armed men so
close to her house. For that matter his three dozen had failed to dismay her;
but he reckoned it wise not to burden her with the feeding of them all.

They went back laden with foodstuffs and with treasures,
that they would show off to the rest. Those who stayed were even more richly
endowed and even better fed.

The four who were guests with Agni in the Mother’s house
were richest of all. They feasted like kings: a whole kid roasted and served on
a great platter, nested in fruits and steaming grain, and bread finer than Agni
had ever seen before, and honeycomb, and mead, and wine that came, the Mother
said, from the south.

They ate and drank well, but not till they fell into a
stupor. They were too wise for that. None of the women seemed disappointed or
in any way dismayed.

It was not the liveliest feast Agni had ever sat to. There
was a woman who sang, and a pair of young men came in and danced a stilted,
stately dance. Those were the only men Agni had seen up close. All the rest
were women.

He made bold to ask the Mother: “Where are your men? Do you
have any but these two?”

When the question was made clear to her, she neither
blanched nor laughed. She responded calmly, “We have as many men as anyone
else. Men cooked this dinner that you eat so happily. Some are hunting,
herding, travelling abroad.”

“You have sons?” Agni asked. “A husband—husbands?”

There was a word, it appeared, for sons, but the other left
Tillu baffled and struggling to explain. The Mother’s reply was clear enough.
“I am blessed by the Lady: all my children are daughters. No man shares my bed
now. The last one I chose, chose to go back to his own mother. I’ve seen none
since whom I would invite into my bed. Until,” she said, “tonight.”

There was no mistaking the import of her glance, even before
Tillu rendered the words so that Agni could understand.