Lady of Horses (2 page)

“The gods don’t speak to women,” Sparrow said.

“The gods speak to whomever they choose.” The Grandmother
sighed, almost too faint to be heard. “Ah, child. They will test you—torment
you. Have a care to be strong. And remember. Men cannot bear the weight of the
truth. If you must lay it on them, do it gently; or veil it in a lie.”

“And if I won’t do that?”

“Then the gods defend you,” the Grandmother said.

Sparrow left her then, for she could see that there was little
life left, and no strength to bear anyone’s presence but her own. When she came
back, the Grandmother would be dead.

She grieved, walking out into the bitter cold and the
advancing dark. And yet she was glad.

The Grandmother would wake on the other side of the sky.
There she would be young again and beautiful, and strong as she had been when
she was a girl. And if the gods were kind, and certainly if they were just, she
would stand born anew, and a shape of light and swiftness would come upon her:
a shape that was the mare whose gift she had received, but had been forced to
give up. It would all be given back to her, all that the prince had taken.

Then she would mount, singing for the joy that was in her.
And the mare would turn, wheeling as the stars wheel, and bear her away, riding
swifter than wind over the undying grass.

Walker was making magic. It was only a small magic, a
matter of fire and breath and a green plover’s feather, and yet he set his soul
in it, as if it had been a great working before the tribe.

Keen lay in the tumbled sleeping-furs and watched. He had
forgotten her, as he had forgotten everything else but the magic he was making.
She did not mind. She had given him the strength to do this thing, whatever it
was—she seldom asked. Her body in its deep places, the fire in her spirit, had
fed his, till he rose and left her, and went to rouse the fire and work his
spell.

Whatever he did, she loved to watch him. Walker was a young
man, far too young, some said, for a shaman; and yet he was the prophet of the
tribe, the speaker to the gods who rode on the wind, the Walker Between the
Worlds. He was beautiful, too, in the way of the People: slender and tall,
fair-haired and grey-eyed, his face carved as clean as the edge of a fine flint
blade. When the young men danced, he danced in front of them all, and all the
women envied Keen, because her husband was both graceful and strong.

Keen hugged herself amid the furs, clasping her arms tight
about her breasts and running her hands down her belly. One came to rest there;
the other slipped between her legs where she still throbbed gently from their
loving. Maybe this time, if the gods were kind—maybe they had made a child.

She smiled, thinking of it; letting herself slip into a
dream of a bright-haired infant, a son for his father, with Walker’s beauty and
grace, and his gift of magic.

From the middle of the dream, she almost convinced herself
that he would be born; that he would exist. That she could reach in the furs
beside her and touch him, and show him what his father did, finishing his
spell, letting the feather fall spiraling into the fire and vanish in a flare
and a brief, pungent stench.

Walker lingered for a while after his spell was done,
crouching in the fading firelight. The shadows stroked the long lines of his
back; they clasped his lean hard buttocks as, only a little while before,
Keen’s own hands had done.

When he rose, he took her somewhat by surprise. She lay
still.

He took no notice of her. He was smiling, a faint, edged
smile. Whatever the working had been intended for, it seemed he was satisfied.

She was ready to take him back to bed again and to do the
other thing, too, that he loved to do after his workings as before; but he
ignored her. He pulled on the long tunic of pale doeskin that was his right as
shaman, and plaited his thick pale-yellow hair, weaving into it another feather
of the plover; and then he went out, leaving her alone in the dimness of the
tent, with nothing to keep her company but the dying fire and the lingering
stink of burnt feather.

oOo

Sparrow did not see Walker come out of the tent he shared
with Keen, but she knew that he was out and about, just as a sparrow knows when
the hawk has left his nest. The camp was different when Walker was abroad in
it. People walked softer where he was, and watched their tongues. Everyone was
afraid of the Walker Between the Worlds.

Sparrow was not afraid of him. But neither did she exert
herself to attract his notice. She was on her way to fetch water from the
river, a task not particularly urgent but demonstrably useful—not least for
that it freed her from her father’s tent.

The wives were at their feuds again, White Bird taunting the
others with her beauty and her wealth and the son who, she was certain, was
swelling her belly. The rest, who had given the old man mostly daughters, were
inclined to be bitter about it. And when the wives were bitter, the daughters
were most likely to suffer.

Sparrow, eldest and least regarded of those daughters, kept
her head down and her shoulders bent as she trudged through the camp. Her back
was still sore from the blow she had caught before she left the tent, when she
strayed unwisely in reach of an angry wife.

She would straighten it when she came to the river, down
among the reeds where no one could see, or care that he saw. Maybe she would
bathe, too. Maybe she would swim. Maybe even she would visit the horses—though
that would require great caution and no little store of luck.

She had to be careful while she was still in the camp, not
to walk too swift or too light, or look too glad of her errand. People must see
nothing but the brown shadow, the shaman’s ill-regarded daughter, the little
dark changeling among the tall fair tribesmen.

She had almost escaped—was almost free of the camp, and
ready to slip away through the reeds and sedges of the river—but she had
outwitted herself. She had strayed too close to the camp’s edge where Walker’s
tent was.

Walker did not always see her. Only when he chose to. Only
when he had a use for her.

“Sparrow,” he said. His voice was as beautiful as his face,
deep and sweet. “Sister. Have you come to visit us, then?”

Sparrow could hardly pretend not to have heard: not with him
standing in front of her, blocking her advance. He was a great deal taller than
she, and rather broader; he was, she saw in a glance under her brows, smiling
that thin smile of his.

People found it terrifying. Sparrow merely glowered at it.

“What, little sister,” Walker said, “no welcome for your
brother? Not even a smile?”

“What do you need now?” she asked him—rudely, she knew, but
she did not care.

“I could say I only needed your company,” Walker said.

She snorted. “I need your absence. White Bird thinks she’s
near her time. I’m to fetch water for the birthing. Or shall I tell her why
I’ve been delayed?”

“White Bird, is it?” Walker said. “Well then, you mustn’t
keep her waiting. Here, I’ll take one of the waterskins. The task will go the
quicker if two of us do it.”

Walker had never in his life offered to do anything out of
the generosity of his heart—and certainly not the drawing of water, which was
the most menial of labors. He needed her, then, and desperately, if he would
stoop so far.

oOo

People saw him. They could hardly avoid it. They had seen
him before, keeping company with his ill-favored sister; it was a kindness,
they thought, and a mark of his strong spirit, that he had no shame of her
company. They admired him the more and her the less, the more often he did it.

Sparrow had never cared overmuch for what people thought.

Since the Grandmother died, nine winters past, she had cared
even less. She performed her duties quietly and well, because that was the
least troublesome way to do it; then she had the world to herself.

Except, of course, when her brother the shaman vexed her
peace. He did not do it often, which was a mercy. Mostly he went his own way,
strutting among the men or making a great show of seeking solitude to perform
his magics. When he came to her, it was because he needed something. A gift. A
thing that he had little or nothing of, and she had altogether too much.

He walked with her down to the river, the image of noble
solicitude. As soon as the reeds had risen to hide them, he turned on the
narrow path and stopped her.

She had been expecting that. She stopped somewhat out of his
reach, even if he stretched his arms long, and eyed him warily. She was not
going to give him anything. Not unless he asked.

Of course he knew that. He hated her for it: she saw how his
eyes went narrow and cold. There was no warmth in his voice, either. “You’ve
been dreaming again. I can tell. What is it now?”

Sparrow considered the lie that veils the truth—the lie the
Grandmother had lived by. She was living one, too. She had been living it since
the third spring after the Grandmother died, when her women’s courses had come,
and with them the dreams. And other things, things that brought her no pleasure
and certainly no peace; but the dreams most of all.

Her brother had not been Walker then. He had been Minnow,
for the little fish that darts in an eddy of the river. But she had always been
Sparrow, and no doubt always would be.

She knew better even then than to trust him. He was a
slippery creature, like the little fish of his name. And yet when she woke from
the first dream, the dream she knew was truth, he had been there; and in her
befuddlement she had seen only the beauty of his face and the clear grey of his
eyes, and she had told him what she dreamed. He had listened to every word of
it, intently, for he was their father’s pupil, and was to be a shaman when his
beard had grown. He had said words that she forgot almost as soon as they were
spoken, words that soothed, that bade her rest, be at peace, forget the fear
that had flung her into the light of morning.

Then he went away, and when next she heard of him, it was as
a wonder and a rarity, a true dreamer, a shaman of power such as the People had
seldom seen. But the dream he related to the tribe, the prophecy he spoke in a
voice thrumming with power, was her dream. Hers, and never his.

She was still dreaming dreams. He was still taking them and
claiming them as his own. It was just as it had been with the Grandmother and
the prince. No one would ever believe that a woman could do what she had done.
If she tried to proclaim the truth, people would call it a lie. Then where
would she go? What would she do? A woman could not be a shaman. That was the
way of the world.

That the gods had chosen to give her such gifts and withhold
them from her brother—that was their jest. Of course, her brother declared, she
was to give those gifts to him, one by one, as each was given. He was the one
who had been meant to receive them. She was but the vessel through which the
gods passed them to their rightful master.

Now he demanded yet another vision. If he had a gift, it was
to know when she dreamed; but this dream she had no desire to share. It was the
dream she had most often. It had been the first, though she had not known it
then for what it was, nor had she ever betrayed it to him. It came to her the
night the Grandmother died, as a sort of death-vision—and that was what she had
thought it was, until the spring, when other dreams began to come.

This dream had no fear in it, and no horror. It was a dream
of pure splendor. In it, she stood on the steppe under the moon. And out of the
moon came a Mare.

It was Mare as the men’s stallion was Stallion—greatest of
all her kind, glory and goddess. She was as white as the moon, and she shone,
leaping down out of the sky. The earth sighed as she touched it. The stars
shone brighter in the light of her. She was splendid; she was beautiful beyond
words. She was too holy, ever, to give to this man, this liar, her brother.

Therefore she gave him the other dream, the first that she
had betrayed to him. “I saw it again,” she said, flat and hard. “The black claw
of winter, and the bitter spring. Then the summer of plenty. The bone-thin
horses in the blowing snow, and the bleak plain and the dying herds of cattle
and goats; and then, as always, the fat herds grazing in a field of flowers.”

Walker hissed between his teeth. She thought for a moment
that he would strike her. Sometimes he did, if she did not give him as much as
he wanted. But this time he held back the blow. “Is that all? It’s
useless—worse than useless. I need something better!”

“Then let the gods give it to you,” she said. “I have only
this. I never ask for it. It simply comes.”

His hand rose then. She braced against it. But again he did
not strike. He turned instead, stiff with disgust, and stalked away.

He was still carrying the second, larger waterskin. She
shrugged. It was not water she had come for, not really. She was free of him
now, and would be, she could hope, for days yet. Everyone else was safe in the
camp, or out hunting, or riding with the herds of horses. She had the river to
herself.

She shook off the oppression of her brother’s presence, the
shadow that darkened her spirit when he had been at her again, stealing her
visions. She was not giving him as many as she had before. If she could help
it, she would give him none at all; but he was too determined for that. He
needed the visions. He could not be a shaman without them.

And she could not be a shaman with them. She was a woman.
She could not be anything, she sometimes thought; but that was foolishness.

oOo

For now she was free. She hid the waterskin in the reeds,
in a place she had used before, and wandered down the riverbank toward a broad
eddy. There, where the bank curved round an islet, was a quiet place, a pool
where one could swim, or paddle in the water. The horses came there sometimes
to drink, and deer, and once she had seen a bear fishing.