White Mare's Daughter (11 page)

“So,” said Danu, slipping free of her grip and turning back
toward the loom.

She sprang after him and spun him about. “What will Mother
say if she sees you wearing her gift to me?”

“She’ll know you bribed me again,” Danu said calmly. “She
won’t say a word. She never does.”

“All right, then,” Tilia said. “You can have it. But not
till you’ve done what I ask.”

“Now,” he said, and held her glare until she gave way.

She slapped the armlet into his hand with stinging force.
“Now do it!”

He took his time in putting on the armlet, turning it to
admire its golden gleam, stroking the richness of its surface. A pattern of
spirals wound along it, the Lady’s roads weaving one into the next. His fingers
loved the feel of it.

Just before Tilia would have struck him to make him move, he
sauntered past her into the rain. The armlet was like a cool hand clasping his
wrist.

It held him to a promise. Not one he hungered greatly to
fulfill, but word once given was sacred. The Lady heard it, and remembered; and
if one chose to forget, she well might choose to punish.

Catin, who would be Mother of Larchwood, occupied herself
in this strange place and on this day of rain by sitting in a corner of the
gathering-room while her sisters chattered among themselves. The names of their
gossip meant nothing to the sisters and acolytes of Three Birds, but scandals
were much the same everywhere.

If not a congenial gathering, it had become a moderately
friendly one. There was wine and honey mead to help it, and bread and sweet
cakes at Danu’s order. The menservants knew what else they should do, the
courtesy of their city to guests; and not an unpleasant one, either.

Danu brought cakes and mead to Catin. She seemed wrapped in
herself, rocking slightly, eyes fixed on nothing. She had the look of one who
dreamed dreams, but all those dreams were ill.

He knelt in front of her and poured a cup of mead, then
lifted the hand that lay slack in her lap and wrapped her fingers round the
cup. He held them there, cold and thin as they were, until a semblance of life
came back into her eyes.

She looked at him as if she had never seen him before.
Perhaps, at that, she had not.

He could not tell what she thought of him. Mostly women’s
eyes lit at sight of his face. He was beautiful, they said. He supposed that he
was, since they all agreed on it.

Her eyes blinked. “Here,” he said in the voice he used with
animals and children. “This is honey mead, warmed over the fire. Drink. It will
sweeten your spirit.”

She drank as if he had given her no choice, a sip first,
then rapid swallows, draining the cup.

He smiled. “More?” he asked.

She nodded.

She drank the second cup more slowly, holding it in both
hands, not pausing or lowering it till it too was empty. She did not surrender
it to him to be filled again.

He offered her the basket of cakes. She ate two as she had
drunk: the first in a single bite, the second less swiftly but steadily. Again
she did not wish a third.

Tilia had had the right of it. This Catin was a dull
creature, no life in her. In Three Birds, even if she was the eldest daughter
of the Mother, she would have been passed over as heir.

Larchwood was not lacking daughters with wit and
intelligence. One of them had taken Beki’s hand and led him away. That was an
interesting choice. Beki was neither the youngest nor the prettiest of the menservants,
but he was known to be a wise and careful lover.

Catin’s sisters were lively enough with wine and mead in
them, though they laughed less often than the women of Three Birds. Catin
seemed to gain no benefit from the mead.

Danu did a thing he might never have done if Tilia’s wishing
had not compelled him. He did a bold thing, a thing a respectable man might
shrink from doing. He took Catin’s hand and met her eyes, and said, “Come with
me.”

She did not respond at once. He held his breath, braced to be
struck, cursed, flung away for his presumption.

She sighed a little, just enough to hear, and rose. It
looked, perhaps, as if she led, and not the opposite.

If it had not been raining they could have gone to one of
the gardens or the bowers that were blessed by such things. As it was, with the
house so full, there seemed no better place than Danu’s own cell of a room. It
had a window, which he opened to the rain, and a lamp-cluster which he had had
the foresight to light before he fetched the cakes and mead for Catin.

There was nothing particularly beautiful about the room,
though the bed’s coverlet was well woven, and there was a rug on the floor. The
lamps were plain, without adornment. The chest of his belongings was carved
with the Lady’s spirals and a hatching like the feathers on a bird’s wing.

Catin seemed barely to see it, as she had barely seen Danu until
he gave her no choice but to see him. She sank to the bed as if her knees had
failed her. He began to wonder if she was one of the Lady’s children, so ridden
with dreams and sendings that nothing in the world of flesh was real to her.

He knelt at her feet, carefully, and took her hands in his.
“You dream dreams,” he said. The Lady set the words in him; he felt her, a
presence so strong that his soul reeled. But she held him steady, and let him
meet the eyes that raised to him, startled, coming awake again and fully. Catin
was no dull creature then, nor ill to look at, either.

“You see,” Catin said. “You can see.”

“She lets me see,” said Danu.

“I do,” said Catin. “I dream . . .” She
shivered. She reached for him, drawing in his warmth, taking him as a woman
should take a man.

He was glad to wrap arms about her, to give her what she was
seeking. Warmth he had, of his own and of the Lady’s giving. He was not the
lover that Beki was, nor had he Kosti’s bull-strength, but such as he was, he
gave to her.

She took it as if she had been starving. She did not want
gentleness, or the subtle turns of the Lady’s dance. She wanted swift passion,
white heat, and rhythm so rapid that she ran him out of breath; nor would she
let him stop, only slow a little, till he could breathe again.

He had never run so in a woman’s arms. He had not known he
could.

Her grip on him tightened suddenly. She rocked and spasmed,
locked against him. Just when he must breathe, must break free, she fell back.

He gulped air. His sight had begun to go dark.

Light came back, too bright almost to bear. He was in her
still, though she lay limp, unmoving. He could not move himself, to finish it. His
will was lost somewhere, perhaps in her eyes.

She stirred. He slipped out of her, limp, unsatisfied. She
drew into a knot and began, piteously and horribly, to weep.

Danu was too numb to be dismayed. He gathered her into his
arms as if she had been one of the children, and held her until she quieted.

Danu had never danced so odd a dance with a woman before.
Nor had he known so odd a woman.

When Catin had done weeping, she did not pull away as
another woman might, or flay him with embarrassment or injured pride. She
looked up into his face from the circle of his arms. Her eyes were wide and
dark and very calm.

“I hope,” she said, “that the women of Three Birds know what
they have in you.”

He blinked. That was not what he had expected, either. “Are
you mad?” he asked her. He meant it as a question to be answered.

She took it as he had intended. “I don’t know that I am,”
she said. “The Lady’s hand has been heavy on me. You . . . I see
that she loves you.”

“I’m not a woman,” he said.

“Is that what they teach here?” she asked.

“What, that woman is the Lady’s first and best creation?
Isn’t that truth?”

“No,” she said. “The way you say it—as if you were something
lesser. As if she could never love the likes of you.”

“I’m not—” He stopped in confusion. “I don’t understand
you.”

She smiled. It was a dazzling smile, astonishing, wonderful—terrible.
“You don’t need to understand. Come here.”

When a woman spoke so, a man had no choice but to obey.

She had exhausted him short of the finish, and now she asked
him to rouse again. No man was strong enough for that.

She made him so. This time she took him with both power and
gentleness, soft as water, inexorable as the river wearing away stone.

She did nothing for herself. She roused him again, cradled
him inside her, brought him the gift that her desperation had denied him. It
was quick; it took him by surprise. He cried out.

She held him until the gift was all given, the song all
sung. He did not weep as she had. He was too astonished.

He must look a perfect fool. She laughed at him, but gently,
too light to wound. “I owed you that,” she said, “after what you had done for
me.”

“I will never understand you,” Danu said.

She shook her head, but this time she did not respond.

She sat up. Her hair had fallen out of its braids. Her face
was vivid, no dullness in it. She was staring at him, so hard that he blushed
and tried to turn away, but she would not let him. “You dream, too,” she said.

“No,” he said. He meant it; but something caught his throat.
He had forgotten—he had willed to forget—

It came back in a black flood, memory that he had buried
deep, a dream of fire and shouting, blinding fear, and the terrible beauty of
blood.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. You see. You know.”

“I don’t know anything!”

Danu pressed his hand to his mouth. He did know—he did not
want to, but he did. He knew what she knew.

“What are we seeing?” he demanded of her. “What has the Lady
given us?”

“Fear,” she said. She did not, in spite of that, sound
afraid. “Something is coming. It comes from the east, from the rising sun. It
is like a flood, but a flood of fire.”

His belly knotted. “Fire in the wood? But that could never
come as far as Three Birds. Even Larchwood might escape it in such a year as
this, with the rain coming so often.”

“We thought so, too,” she said. “But the dreams have never
stopped. They’ve only grown stronger. Something comes. I think . . .
did you hear the tale people are telling? Of the stranger who came through the
wood, and the beasts he brought with him?”

Danu stiffened. What? Was he never to be free of this thing?
“You saw him? You saw his beasts?”

She nodded. “He came to Running Waters, and its Mother sent
to ours, because she’s reckoned wise. She sent me to see what it was that so
troubled her sister.”

“They were real? They weren’t deer, or ghosts, or shadows?”

“They were as solid as you beside me,” she said, resting her
hand on his shoulder as if to make sure of it. “I’ve never seen a creature
quite like them. They’re a little like cattle for size, but like deer for
grace, a little. Their hooves are round, and not divided. Their eyes . . .
they aren’t quiet, as cattle are, or placid like sheep. They think. They know
when a person is looking at them.”

Danu frowned, listening to her. It made no sense, and yet in
a strange way it did. He could not see the beasts, but he could feel them. They
were caught in the fire somehow, in the memory of his dream. “
Horses
,” he said. “They are called
horses
.”

“Yes,” said Catin.

“But,” Danu said with a flash of impatience, “what harm can
an animal do? They’re the Lady’s creatures. The stories never vary. They all
say that the stranger was excited when he saw the Lady’s image; that he called
her Lady of Horses. How can her own creatures be a threat to us?”

“I don’t know,” Catin said. “That’s what we came for, to ask
your Mother. She’s the wisest of all the Mothers. She must be able to answer.
Why we all dream so black, with so much blood. Why when we look ahead down the
round of the years, we see darkness.”

“All of you?” Danu whispered. “Every one of you?”

“Most of us,” said Catin. “I worst, I think; or the Mother,
who is too strong to show it. My sisters once or twice. They’re young. They
forget. My brothers have been spared it.”

“Here,” said Danu, “no one else admits to dreaming of it.”

“Maybe no one remembers.” Her hand lay on his shoulder
still. She let it wander up to stroke his cheek, then down to rest over his
heart. “Maybe the Lady favors you.”

He shook his head. “No. I’m only the keeper of my Mother’s
house. I have no greater place in the world, nor do I want one.”

“The Lady doesn’t care what a person wants,” Catin said. “Why
should she? She has her own purposes. We live to serve them.”

Danu bowed his head in reverence at a truth he had been
taught. But it did not prevent him from saying, “My Mother must be dreaming,
too. It can’t have come only to me.”

“Then she’ll know what to say to my Mother,” Catin said,
“and we’ll discover what it is we have to do to turn this flood aside.”

“Yes,” Danu said in a kind of desperate relief. “Yes, that
is how it will be.”

He paused. He should not say it, but it was in his heart,
and it would not let him rest till he had let it out. “I thought. . . that you
were less than you were. It was the Lady’s burden on you. So heavy—it’s a
wonder it never broke you. And yet you’re strong.”

“You have made me strong.” She silenced his denial, fingers
pressed to his lips. They were warm. He could feel the Lady’s strength in them.
“No! Don’t refuse it. I was wandering in the dark places. You came, and light
came with you. The Lady sent you.”

No
, Danu wanted to
say.
My sister did. My sister who has
never known the name of fear; who commanded me to make you speak.

Ah, but had she expected such speech as this? A Mother
might. But Tilia was far short of becoming a Mother.

Maybe the Lady had spoken through her, after all. The Lady
used such instruments as she pleased to use.