White Mare's Daughter (8 page)

He might have died for that, but he was twinborn with
Sarama. The stallion did not fall on him with battering hooves, nor did the
Elder Mare leave him broken in the grass. She chased him off as she might a
stranger of her own kind, a yearling colt who had gone prying into things that
were not fit for him to know.

He had never told anyone of that. He did not tell the king
now—no, though this was his father and his king. He said, “Yes, perhaps it
could be, that the Mare knew that herd. I’ll go hunting there, though it’s a
stallion I’ll be hunting.”

“That is well,” the king said. “And yet—I could wish that
there were horses in the west.”

“Pray I find my stallion quickly,” said Agni, “and I’ll go
after her, if it will please you, and see that she’s safe.”

The king’s face lit, but then it darkened. “No,” he said. “No.
She’d hate us both for that. Horse Goddess will protect her. Hasn’t she always
been so guarded?”

“Always,” Agni agreed.

They sighed together, the old man and the young. Agni feared
for his sister, and yet it warmed him, to see that his father shared his fear.
If prayers could guard her, she would go warded as if with an army.

He laughed inside himself. She would never believe it, nor
welcome it either. She was too fiercely her own creature, like a boy who must
always be proving himself a man. Small enough wonder, that, since she was what
she was; but she should trust in the goddess. She had more power than perhaps
she knew, and more influence among the tribes.

Someday she would know it. Then Agni would be king, and
would have to contend with her. He almost dreaded it—and he was almost glad of
it.

If Yama seized the kingship instead . . .

As if he had spoken the thought aloud, the king said, “Your
brother Yama is an ambitious man.”

Agni’s hands clenched into fists. “Yes,” he said. “He
says—he is the eldest.”

“Some say that the eldest born should inherit, and not the
firstborn of a man’s kingship.” The king’s eyes glinted. “And you? Do you say
as much?”

“I say,” said Agni, “that in our tribe a man may choose his
heir. In other tribes, the law may differ.”

“In, for example, the tribe from which Yama took his wife?”

Agni did not know why his heart had begun to beat so hard.
No one knew what he did with Rudira. That was their secret, between the two of
them. No one had ever seen them, or caught them, or guessed—

He mastered himself. He was calm. He said coolly, “Which,
Father? He has several.”

“I think you know,” said the king.

Agni held tight to his expression of innocence. “If I do,
then I don’t know I know it.”

“Liar,” the king said mildly. “Some say she’s a witch, did
you know that? Perala’s white-haired daughter, with her skin the color of bone,
and her eyes of winter ice. When he came looking for a husband for her, he
asked for you.”

Agni’s breath hissed between his teeth. “He did not!” he
burst out, and not wisely either.

“Oh, indeed he did,” said the king. “But I refused. You were
too young, I said; truthfully enough. I offered him my eldest in your place.”

Agni sat where he had been sitting for the past hour and
more. He could not breathe. Just so it had been when he was thrown from his
pony, when he was young and uncertain of his balance. The wind struck out of
him. No air, no breath, no life. And no thought either, except an echoing
emptiness. Words rushed to fill it. “Why? Why did you do that?”

“Because,” said the king, “she was not good enough for you.
Not for your first wife. For a second or a third wife, for the likes of
Yama—for that, she served well enough.”

“There may be more to her than you think,” Agni said, almost
too low for the other to hear.

But the king heard it. He laughed: light and free and
surprisingly young. “She is a beauty, isn’t she? Beauty can make up for much.
But intelligence and wit—those are rarer.”

“Rarest of all,” said Agni, “is the woman like a creature of
fire.”

“Not so rare,” the king said, “or even so wonderful, in the
cold light of day. It’s not the wildfire that makes a chief of wives. That’s
for the lesser wives, or for the women one takes on a whim.”

“Not always,” Agni muttered.

The king fixed him with a keen and all too piercing stare.
“You are young,” he said, “and your blood is hot. Have a care how you let it
burn.”

Agni had no answer for that. Evidently the king expected
none. He rose, stretching as a young man stretches, no stiffness of age. “Look
to yourself,” he said, “and be prudent. Few wars are more bitter than the war
of brother against brother.”

“If there is war,” Agni said, “it will not be I who start
it.”

“No?” asked the king. “Perhaps you already have.”

While Agni sat mute, the king left him, walking back straight
and tall to his tent. Only when he was near to it, as he came in sight of a
circle of hangers-on, did his head bow, his shoulders droop, his firm steps
shorten to a shuffle.

Senile, was he? Weak and wandering, had Yama said? Yama
would be most dismayed to discover his error. Nor did Agni have any doubt that
he would. The king had as much as promised to make sure of it.

It would please Agni greatly to see his brother discomfited
as he himself had been. By the gods, how had the king known? Unless Rudira—

And if not Rudira, then who? Who else could know? Would that
one betray him to Yama as to the king?

The world was a dangerous place. Agni had known it when
first he met his brother’s youngest wife, when their eyes had met and he had
felt the fire wake in her; and known, quite simply, that he would have this
woman. Honor, prudence, even life be damned. He would have her.

Sarama left without ceremony, packed up her few belongings
and saddled the Mare and rode away. But her leaving did not go unregarded. When
she sought the Mare, she found another beast there also, a thick-legged sturdy
gelding, and a laden pack with him. Her father’s gift, and his blessing.

It was strange to know so late that her father had some care
for her existence. It warmed her a little, more than the sun could account for.

Agni was not there to see her go. No one was. Only the two
horses amid the many, and the wind and the sky.

She slipped the bridle over the Mare’s ears and smoothed the
heavy forelock, and fastened the girth tight, binding the saddle-fleece to the
broad dappled back. The Mare lipped her palm. Sarama had brought her a small
dainty from the king’s tent, a bit of honey sweet.

She took it greedily but did not protest when Sarama sprang
onto her back. The steppe called her as it called Sarama, luring her away from
the rising sun.

They left without regret. The Mare had no herd here. If
there had been a stallion, he was forgotten in the passing of her season.
Sarama had not even that. Only her brother.

Well. She had left without speaking to anyone, packed up and
simply gone. Yet if her father had known that she would be going now, surely
Agni—

Foolishness. They had no need of words, they two, least of
all words of farewell.

She tightened her grip on the packhorse’s lead and urged the
Mare to a quicker pace. It was a long, long way to the sunset country; the
sooner she was set on it, the quicker she would come there.

oOo

The camp of the tribes sank swiftly behind her, vanishing
into the sea of grass. She followed the line of the sun, at first behind and
then before her. By that and by subtle changes in the land, the lift of a hill,
the curve of a valley, she knew her way. When night came, the stars would guide
her.

She fell into an easy rhythm of travel, a rhythm that she
had learned long ago under the Old Woman’s tutelage: sitting easy on the Mare’s
back, letting the long smooth strides carry her through the ripple of grass.
She could drowse so, if she had need, or ride in a half-dream, resting her
spirit while her body was carried onward. Then she was the Mare, and the Mare
was herself, running light, skimming the earth with her hooves.

The wind was in her nostrils, streaming in her mane. The
myriad scents of the world flowed through it. They told her stories, whole
cycles of sagas. She could lose herself in them, give herself up to them.

oOo

The Mare snorted. Her head lifted. She was walking just
then, resting from an exuberant gallop. The wind brought her a tale that made
her prick her ears and call out.

A call rang in reply. The Mare rounded the curve of a hill,
ears pricked forward, dragging the packhorse behind her—he was not as sure as
she was, that this was anything he wanted to see.

And there they all were, a swirling, whooping crowd of them,
the young men of the White Horse, with Agni in their midst, whooping the
loudest of anyone. A few had won their stallions. Most had yet to do it, and
rode their geldings with a grand insouciance.

Sarama laughed to see them, laughed till the tears ran. It
was not mockery. It was joy. Her brother had always known how best to surprise
her—and this was wonderful.

They had made a camp on the steppe, a hunting camp:
stone-lined square of firepit, tethered or hobbled horses, cloaks spread to
mark each man’s place and his weapons and his belongings. To this and in her
honor they had added a spit on which turned a fine young buck, prize of
someone’s hunting; and there was kumiss, and a skin of sweet berry wine.

Sarama burned to be going, but she could not refuse such
courtesy. Not when they sat her in the chieftain’s place, plied her with cups
of wine and kumiss, and fed her morsels of venison wrapped in flat bread that
they had made of wild grain and baked on stones in the fire.

She ate till she could hold no more, remembered almost too
late a politeness of the men’s side, belched enormously to signify her pleasure
in the feast. They cheered her every move.

In the camp, she thought somewhat wryly, they had barely
acknowledged her presence.

Her eye found her brother. Agni had been sitting beside her,
but had got up to fetch another skin of kumiss. It was for him they did this,
because she was his sister. The worship they accorded her was in part for the
goddess, but in much greater part for their prince.

They would make a fine warband, come the day, puppies though
they were now. Those overlong legs and great clumping feet and patchy beards
would not persist forever. One day soon, these would be men, good men, men whom
a king might delight to call his own.

She had not drawn a circle or cast the bones, nor done
anything to call up the spirit, but it had entered her nonetheless. The
goddess’ closeness opened the door to the lesser power.

Her body had gone numb as the spirit took it, raising it to
its feet, standing till the laughter and shouting stopped. All the
kumiss-blurred eyes had caught and held. That was the spirit, too, possessing
them, a little, through the gate of their drunkenness.

When she had silence, she took it to herself for a while,
cherishing it. Then she let it go. She said, “I thank you, men of the White
Horse, for the honor you show me. Now I go—but where I go, I bid you not
follow.”

She glanced at Agni as she spoke. He was clearer-headed than
the others, watching her fixedly, as if to remember every line of her.

“Do not follow me,” she said again. “Your place, your world,
is here. If I can come back I will. Never come looking for me. If you must hunt
men, for men are great prey—hunt east and south and north. Shut your eyes to
the west. What is there belongs to another. If you presume to reach for it, you
may win a victory. For a while. But in the end the west will conquer.”

“In the end,” said Agni, his voice soft and slow, “the west
will be conquered. You look too close, sister. Look far, and see how it must
be.”

Sarama frowned. So. Her spirit had a rival, did it? And
speaking through her brother, too. She had not known that Agni had the gift. As
far as she had ever known, Agni was a prince, a leader of men, a tamer of
horses—but of the things that Sarama did and understood, he knew nothing.

She should have looked closer when she was with the tribe,
to see what in truth her brother was. He made her a gift of it now, a gift of
defiance. “I see,” she said to him, “how far you look. Ages, my brother. Years
out of count. I speak of now. I speak of what will happen to you, to your
living self, if you do what you more than half think to do. Were I marching
against these people with intent to conquer, I would welcome your army. Yet I
am not. I am following where my goddess leads. She has not called you, nor
given you leave to go.”

“I am not her servant,” Agni said, “though I honor her as
she deserves.”

“You will stay,” she said. “You will be king when our father
is dead. That is the fate laid out for you. Mine is another entirely.”

“Maybe,” Agni said. He shrugged, sighed. She saw how the
spirit ran out of him as if drained from a cup. It was not defeated, she was
not fool enough to think that. It had simply said all that it wished to say.

The spirit in her was inclined to linger. But she was not.
She bowed to her brother and then to them all, a slow sweep of the body. She
smiled, because after all they had meant well, and they were a fine pack of
hunting hounds.

“You have given me a great gift,” she said: “such a
leavetaking as even a king might envy. I’ll take it with me into the sunset
country. And if anyone asks what courtesies the young men of the White Horse
know, I can tell them an honest truth: that you are courteous and most kind.
These virtues will serve you well.”

She feared for a moment that Agni might press her to take
them with her after all, but he refrained. She was proud of him for that.

“Go with the gods, sister,” he said, “and come home safe
again.”