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Authors: Judith Tarr

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The old men sat in the tree’s shade, heads for the most part
as white as the horsetail, backs more often bent than straight, and faces
seamed with the passing of years. The king was one of the youngest: he still
sat erect, and his shoulders were broad, his yellow hair not yet gone all grey.
He still rode, still hunted, still led the People in battle as a king must do.
When he could no longer do any of that, he would no longer be king.

Drinks-the-Wind was older—how much older, Keen could not be
certain. Not as old as the Grandmother had been, who had died before she
married Walker, but old. Old enough to be ancient. Yet he sat straight and bore
his strong old bones lightly. The plaits of hair that lay on his shoulders and
flowed down to his waist were white, but thick and beautiful as a woman’s. He
had been as handsome as his son when he was younger, it was said. He still had
great beauty, the beauty of a tree in winter, stark and strong under the weight
of snow.

His magic was strong, the power of his name terrible. Tribes
far away from the People knew and feared him. Sometimes they sent their own
shamans to seek his wisdom, as, Keen saw, some tribe she did not know had done
just now: there were strangers in the circle, men smaller and darker and
thicker-set than the People, bearing the spirit-bags and bone rattles of their
calling. They did not speak the language of the People, but communed in signs
that traders and travelers passed from tribe to tribe across the steppe.

The child in Keen’s arms had hushed her crying and lay
quiet, paddling aimlessly as babies do. She was much too young, and yet she
seemed to be watching the stranger shamans present what must be a petition to
the great shaman of the People.

No one acknowledged Keen’s presence. She was only a woman,
standing with her eyes downcast as was proper, holding a newborn baby—a mere
and unwelcome girlchild, everyone could see.

She knew some of the signs; it helped in speaking with women
of distant tribes in the summer gathering, and in trading for this or that when
the traders came through on their wanderings. There was trouble far to the
east: a sickness in the herds, a weakness among the young men, and the hunting
was poor. It was a curse, they thought, or the ill-will of a god, but none of
them had power to alter it.

Drinks-the-Wind heard them out. When they were finished, he
signed to them, briefly but courteously: “I will consider this. Go, rest, be at
ease. My wives will see that you have whatever you desire.”

The strangers left with good enough will, and perhaps some
hope that the shaman’s wives would be both beautiful and accommodating. Keen,
who knew Drinks-the-Wind’s chief wife all too well, expected that they would be
disappointed. Mallard guarded her husband’s honor zealously, and with it the
honor—and the obedience—of his other wives. Older wives, gracious of manners
but plain of face, would attend the strangers, and the younger and fairer women
would be kept discreetly apart.

Then at last Keen was suffered to be noticed.
Drinks-the-Wind looked on her as kindly as he ever could with his fierce pale
eyes like a falcon’s. She bent her head and let him see what she carried. “Here
is the daughter White Bird bore you,” she said. “She asks that you give her
life, and make her your own.” Which was not the truth, but this was ritual.

Drinks-the-Wind looked at his daughter. Keen thought she
heard him sigh faintly. Then, somewhat to her surprise, he took the small
drowsy body from her arms and lifted it up to the eye of the sun. “A strong
child,” he said, “and good to look on. Let her be Whitethorn, of the White
Stone People.”

So did he give his daughter life and make her a child of the
People. Keen left gratefully, carrying the child, who was now named Whitethorn,
back to her less than grateful mother.

“I don’t want it,” White Bird said over and over. “Don’t
make me take it. Let me be!”

It was as if she had gone mad. The older wives sighed and
muttered among themselves, remembering other new mothers who had been strange;
but none quite as strange as this. Old Mallard sent Keen away, to Keen’s
relief.

Keen walked slowly from the birthing-lodge, back to her own
tent on the camp’s edge. Her heart was troubled. To bear a child and not want
it, even if it was a girl—how could any woman, even White Bird, do such a
thing?

There were tasks to be done: hides to scrape and cure for
clothing, for shoes, for mending the tent; seeds of the wild grasses to grind
into flour for bread; herbs to gather and dry, some for eating and healing, and
some for Walker’s magics. The boys who hunted for the youngest shaman had
brought a brace of fat ducks to pluck and clean and roast on a spit, and one,
shyly, brought a grass basket full of berries, first of the summer, which he
had gathered, he said, just for her.

All that she had to do, because Walker had as yet no other
wives, and had taken no captive to share his wife’s labors. Keen had never
minded. It was a haven of sorts, an escape from the memory of White Bird’s
strangeness.

oOo

Sometimes Walker did not come back to his tent till very
late, or if he was working magic or courting a vision, he might not come back
at all. Still Keen prepared dinner for him, roasted the ducks with some of the
herbs that she had gathered, and filled them with the berries.

Maybe the scent brought him back, the rich fragrance of
roasting duck, the pungency of herbs, the delectable sweetness of the ripe red
berries. He came walking off the steppe in the evening, with the last light of
the sun turning his hair to ruddy gold.

Keen, crouched by the fire, caught her breath at the beauty
of him. He walked as light as a red deer, as proud as a stallion.

And he was hers. He smiled as he saw her.

They were modest, he and she. She lowered her eyes as a good
wife should, and offered him the dinner that she had made for him. He sat
politely and ate it, every bite, savoring the rich fat and the sweet marrow of
the bones. Then he urged her to take a portion, and pressed till she gave in.

She was hungry, but not for that. She ate it because it was
proper, and because it filled her stomach. It was good, she supposed. She
barely noticed. Her eyes were full of his face in the firelight, the long clean
planes of it, the beard so fair it hid little, even if he had not cut it short.
It was all she could do not to lean forward and kiss him, out in the open where
anyone could see.

Waiting made it sweeter. She had learned that since she
married him. He had taught her. It was a shaman’s gift, maybe. Certainly it was
not common to young men—and young, unquestionably, he still was.

She went first into the tent. With beating heart and breath
coming quick, she prepared their bed, sweetening it with herbs and the petals
of flowers.

He might not come. Sometimes he did not. He might go back
among the men, or return to the steppe in search of dreams.

But tonight he came almost too soon after her to be proper.
She had just taken off her long tunic and slipped her hair from its braid. As
she drew it over her shoulder and began to comb it out, he lifted the tentflap
and stooped beneath it.

He paused just within the flap, straightening slowly. The
flame flickering in its bowl of fat, the lamp that she had lit to see by,
flared and brightened at his coming, just as her spirit did.

He dropped his tunic without ceremony. His body was lean, no
softness in it. He was not scarred as so many men were, from war, from the
hunt, from quarrels when there were no wars to fight or beasts to kill. He was
all smooth but for the marks that proclaimed him a shaman: over the heart, on
his belly, above his manly parts. Later maybe she would trace the curves and
swirls of them, to feed his power and give him strong dreams.

He swept her up, comb and half-unplaited hair and all, and
kissed her till her eyes went dark. She wrapped arms and legs about him and
took him into herself, even as he stood there. He buried his face in the hollow
of her shoulder, laughing softly. “O beautiful,” he said. “O marvelous.”

He lowered her into the heaped furs and the sweetness of
herbs. She held him within her, drawing him deep, rocking gently, then with
greater urgency. His body was hot against hers. His scent was musk and smoke
and wild grass. He was strong in her, and hard, filling her almost to pain.

She gasped at the gush of his seed like fire in her.
Gods,
she prayed.
Gods, spirits, Mother Earth, let this be a child. Give me a child!

His weight sank onto her, crushing her breasts. She could
not breathe. And yet she clung to him, holding him inside, until he slackened
and shrank and slipped out for all she could do.

He was asleep suddenly, as men could do after they had taken
a woman. Keen slipped from beneath him, struggling a little, gulping air.

Her breasts ached. She stroked the ache out of them, and
that other ache out of her lower parts, finishing what he had begun; putting
the seal on the gate, as the old women would say.

He slept. She finished plaiting her hair, languidly,
watching his face in the lamplight. It was much younger in sleep, all the arrogance
smoothed away, the face of a boy, a child. But the body was a man’s, and the
long limp thing that lay in its nest of hair, below the blue swirls and
interlacings that sealed his power as a shaman.

Keen smiled to herself. Some of the women whispered that
Drinks-the-Wind had patterns of power limned on his rod itself; but none of his
wives would confirm it. Some things, she supposed, were a mystery, and should
remain so.

4

Walker needed a vision.

He was a shaman. Someday, and soon, he would be the shaman,
the chief prophet and true ruler of the People. But first he had to have
visions, proof that his power was greater than his father’s had ever been.

It was his curse and the gods’ jest that instead of a
spirit-guide, some beast or bird, stone or tree or eddy of the river, he was
given his visions through the least regarded of his sisters. And she was not a
willing guide. Sometimes he had to threaten her before she would speak.

In the winter just gone by, he had made a long fast. He had
emptied himself till his spirit was as pure as light through clear water, and
begged the gods for a new guide. They had answered him nothing at all, until he
went back to the camp, drifting light as a feather, and come face to face with
her. And there was the gods’ answer. This was his guide. He would have no
other.

Now he needed a vision. His father had not had a great
seeing in more summers than most could remember; but Walker had been counting.
Nine. Nine summers. Little visions, small foretellings, Drinks-the-Wind had had;
and he was famously wise. No one seemed to notice that the great prophecies had
gone away from him.

They had gone away. And in the way of the gods, they would
come back—must come back to the one who by blood and breeding was the old
shaman’s heir.

The gods had made that clear, just as they had made it clear
that any vision Walker had must come through his sister. He could feel the time
running out. This summer was the ninth-year feast, the great gathering of
tribes, when kings were made and shamans chosen, and the great sacrifices were
offered up to the gods of earth and sky. To that feast, Walker must bring more
than his simple self. He must have a prophecy.

He tracked his sister to one of her lairs, an eddy of the
river where sometimes the young men came to swim and play. There was no one
there on this day of bright and singing spring, except the one he had come
hunting for.

She sat on a stone, seeming no more than a stone herself, in
her worn rag of a tunic, with her feet bare and her hair escaping its plait.
She was no guide for a shaman to boast of, but she was all he had. He had to
make the best of it.

He could tell that she was aware of him: her shoulders
stiffened just perceptibly. But she did not acknowledge him. She was an odd,
wild, ill-mannered creature, and no one seemed inclined to teach her proper
womanly decorum.

Someday Walker meant to, but not now. Not this moment. He
needed a vision.

“No,” she said.

He must have spoken the words aloud, for she was answering
him, still with her face turned away from him, staring out over the sunlit
water.

“I will not give you a vision,” she said.

“Of course you will,” said Walker, softening his voice as
much as he could, though he would dearly have loved to slap her. “You have
visions. I feel them in you. Give them to me.”

“No.”

He seized her arm and pulled her about. She came without
resistance. There was no fear in her face. “You must,” he said through gritted
teeth, “give me what is mine.”

“I have nothing to give you.”

“You must!” he cried. “I must have a vision. I—need—” He
stopped before he betrayed himself. “I must have a vision,” he repeated.

“Invent one,” Sparrow said, so insolently that he struck
her. She cowered under the blow, but her eyes had no submission in them.

He stood breathing hard, glaring down at her. She had grown
more defiant rather than less, the older she grew. Now even force could not
shift her.

That much, her eyes told him. She was wise to his threats,
and aware of his fear: that if he harmed her, the visions would go away.

It was time he found a husband for her. Someone strong, and
not to be swayed by a woman’s wiles. A man who would curb her tongue and teach
her proper obedience.

As for inventing a prophecy . . . he
shuddered to think of it. That was blasphemy. A shaman’s power was in the
truth, though he might veil it in mystery for the people’s sake.

She crouched at his feet, small huddled body, wide defiant
eyes. He could sense no yielding in her.

BOOK: Lady of Horses
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