White Mare's Daughter (32 page)

Sarama had retreated to the inner room while Danu prepared
their noonday breakfast. She emerged as the last of it went on the table,
decorously and tidily dressed in the coat that he had made for her. She would
not meet his eyes.

He forbore to press her. Perhaps she was simply preoccupied
with the summons, and shy in front of the child. He knew how it was with a new
lover, how one was inclined to wonder if people could see what had changed. For
a woman who had not undergone the rite of womanhood, or been initiated by the
Lady’s chosen lover, it must be a stranger thing than he could imagine.

If he had known that her people did not practice the rite,
he might have acted differently. But he could not regret what he had done.

They ate in silence. Mika ate as much as the others
together, and again as much, and only stopped because the table was bare. He
belched politely and waited as was proper, for Sarama to rise.

She obliged, perhaps blindly. “Best to go,” she said.

oOo

She intended to ride the Mare, which meant that the colt
would come as well. Mika was wide-eyed with terror—and with yearning.

Sarama blinked out of her abstraction. “You can ride behind
me,” she said.

Mika swallowed hard. Danu opened his mouth to rescue the
child, but Mika had more courage than Danu had given him credit for. He
scrambled up behind Sarama, clinging so tightly that he must have left bruises,
but she said nothing.

Danu smiled what he hoped was reassurance. Mika stared
whitely back; and gasped as the Mare began to walk. But he kept his seat. After
a few strides his terror turned to incredulity; then to a white-lipped joy.

Danu, perforce and contentedly afoot, spared him a moment’s
envy. But only a moment. Humankind were not meant to sit on the back of a
horse; or why had the Lady given them feet?

The colt walked beside him, shoulder to his shoulder, with
occasional forays afield. Danu was forgetting what it was to walk in or about
Larchwood without his hooved companion. It was like the dogs that people had in
some of the western cities, but a dog grown as large as one of the cattle.

That was an alarming thought. Danu laid his hand on the
colt’s neck, tugging lightly at its thick mane. No, no dog; not this one, who
for all his propensity for testing the thickness of one’s hide with his teeth,
was a gentle creature.

Strange that such an animal should be the sign and portent
of that terrible thing called war. Gentle in itself, eager to please, nonetheless
it offered great power; strength; speed beyond simple human feet. A man mounted
on a horse might find his own country too small for his compass; be tempted to
wander far, and perhaps, if he were of such a mind, to think of taking what he
found and keeping it for himself.

Danu did not like to think such thoughts, or to imagine a
person who would think them. And yet, if he was to understand what was coming,
he must try to understand the people who came.

oOo

The city closed about them with its mingling of walls and
trees. The colt moved in close. He did not like the city, but the call of his
own was strong: the Mare from whom he would not willingly be separated, and
perhaps, a little, the man who had brought him from confinement into the great
world.

It came to Danu that he did not like this place, either. It
was tolerable, its people likewise, and for some he felt actual affection. But
it was not his city.

Mika had so far conquered his fear as to sit bolt upright
behind Sarama and grin at his agemates as he rode by. They ran after, calling
to each other, half in envy, half in awe. Sarama on a horse they had grown used
to, but one of their own was a new and mighty thing.

Sarama sealed Mika’s place forever when they came to the
Mother’s house, by slipping from the Mare’s back but leaving Mika there, and
saying, “Watch her for me.”

Mika was too stark with the honor and the terror to do
anything foolish, such as try to ride the Mare. He nodded stiffly and hitched
himself forward till he could cling to the Mare’s mane. Sarama’s smile bound
him there.

It nearly bound Danu. He could not recall ever seeing her
smile before. It was wonderful, marvelous; luminous. Small wonder she was so
sparing of her smiles, if they were all so potent.

oOo

The edge of this one snared Danu and led him into the
Mother’s house. It was crowded at this hour and in this season.

In the outer room the daughters had set up a loom. They were
laying threads for the warp as Danu passed, colors of summer and of autumn, as
if to remember them in the grey winter. They stared openly at Sarama as she
passed, and more covertly at Danu. He had not, in a long while, felt so much a
stranger.

The Mother sat in the second room, spinning wool into
thread, with her daughter Catin for company. Catin’s expression held a secret,
a dark look, darker as she looked from Danu to Sarama. He did not think there
was anything to see; but he was not a woman, with a woman’s keenness of sight.

And they said that men were jealous; that lacking power,
they clung to what they had, which was the favor of a woman. Yet it seemed a
woman could be jealous, too, and perhaps with cause. Though what power Danu
could give the Mother’s heir of Larchwood, he did not know. The colt, perhaps?
The friendship of Three Birds?

The Mother spun her thread, making them wait, as was her
privilege. Danu, after some few moments, took up a spindle that lay atop a new
basket of wool, and began to spin in his own turn.

He had shocked Sarama: her eyes were wide. So; men did not
spin, either, where she came from. Pity. It was useful, but none too taxing;
one could do it while walking on a journey, or while tending children. Or, as
now, while waiting to be acknowledged by the Mother of a city.

Sarama sat near him, watching him. Not the Mother; not Catin.
He noticed that. He wondered if it was deliberate.

oOo

They spun in silence, the Mother and he, for a lengthening
while. The Mother was quicker, but he spun a finer thread.

It was Catin whose patience snapped first. “Mother! Will you
speak or no?”

“I will speak,” the Mother said placidly, “when I am ready
to speak.”

“You’ve thought about war,” Sarama said. “About what I told
you.”

“I have thought,” the Mother said, “and others have been
thinking. I have met with the elders of the women, and with their daughters. We
are agreed that this thing called war not be allowed in our city.”

“You can allow or not allow,” Sarama said. “It will come.”

“Because you bring it,” said Catin.

“I do not bring it,” Sarama said. Perhaps it was her
shakiness still with the words of the Lady’s tongue that made her sound flat,
as if she felt nothing.

“Knowingly,” said the Mother before Catin could respond,
“perhaps not. But it comes behind you. Some of us think that it follows you.”

“The storm follows the crow.” It was not Danu’s place to
speak in such a meeting, and yet he could not keep silent. “The crow does not
cause the storm. It comes with or without her.”

“And yet with one comes the other,” the Mother said.
“Believe this, woman of the horsemen: I am not one who contends that you bear
us malice. But a dark thing rides behind you. We cannot permit it here.”

“You send me away.” Sarama did not sound surprised. “How
will you learn to fight? No one can teach you.”

“We do not wish to learn fighting,” the Mother said.

“You will learn it,” said Sarama. “You will have to.”

The Mother set her lips together. “That may be. But our
people do not wish to learn it from you.”

“Then you die,” said Sarama.

Danu tensed, because she seemed about to turn on her heel
and walk away. But she stood still. She met Catin’s eyes. “This is not well
done,” she said.

“We do as we must,” said the Mother.

But this time Catin was not to be quelled by the Mother’s
words or her will. “I told them what you are, but it’s not my will that they
let you go. You’ll only go back to your horsemen and show them the way to our
country.”

“I will not,” said Sarama.

“So you say,” said Catin. “They won’t have you here, but I
won’t have you going back. I persuaded them to send you elsewhere—an elsewhere
of our devising. We’ll send you where you can be kept out of the way and
prevented from running home to your horsemen. We’ll send you to Three Birds.”

Danu stiffened. “If she is the stormcrow that you call her,
then why do you send the storm to us? Are you so weak and afraid that you can
only think to lay the burden on my Mother, as you did before?”

He had never spoken such words in his life, words of anger
without thought. No, not even to Tilia when she provoked him unmercifully.
Tilia had never turned on him so.

Catin was gaping at him. He had taken her completely aback.
“I think,” he said, “that your fear for your people is honest, and so is your
fear of the dreams that we both have had. But what you do now, these
accusations, this hatred—this is not selfless. You do it for dislike of this
woman, for that and for no other cause.”

“What if I do?” Catin flung back at him. “Tell me now why
you defend her. If she chose you—if she knew how—you would accept her
joyfully.”

Since that was no less than the truth, Danu nodded. “Yes,
that much is so. But desire can see more clearly than hatred. I see that you
can think of nothing better to do than send her—and the war you say she
brings—to my people, so that they may suffer what you are too fearful to face.
Think if you can. See what you do. Larchwood is close to the wood. If it and
its neighbor cities know how to fight, the war can stop before it goes deeper.
But if you refuse to learn, if you send the war onward, many more cities will
be endangered.”

“Without this woman,” said Catin, “the war will not know
where to go. If you keep her safe, the horsemen may never come at all.”

“The horsemen will come,” Sarama said.

“They will not come for you,” said Catin.

“No,” said Sarama.

Danu drew a deep breath. “If you send her to Three Birds,
then I go with her.”

“Yes,” the Mother said. “It were best.”

Catin opened her mouth, but shut it again.

The Mother nodded. “Indeed,” she said, as if Catin had
spoken. “The Lady brought him here, but his tasks are done. It is time he
returned to his own people.”

“He came to wait for her,” Catin said. “Did I matter
nothing?”

“You mattered very much,” said Danu. It was difficult in
front of the others, but it would be no easier if he waited to say what he must
say. “The Lady has much still for you to do. But my part here is done. I belong
in Three Birds. You belong here. For good or for ill, whatever comes—this is
your place.”

“You came for her,” Catin said. She was blind, and deaf to
any words she did not wish to hear. Maybe it was as Sarama had said: the
horsemen’s gods had fuddled her spirit.

He could not say so in front of her. The Mother must see it.
Mothers saw everything.

She said nothing. She suffered Catin to go on, words he
barely remembered once they were uttered, accusations against Sarama, against
him, against the Lady knew what. Could not her own Mother see that she was
distressed in the soul?

When she stopped for breath, Danu spoke; perhaps unwisely,
but he could not forbear. “You chose me,” he said. “I went by the will of our
Mothers and with the Lady’s blessing. And yes, for you, because I had conceived
a liking for you. Don’t destroy that now.”

Had he given her pause? He could not see it. “Go with this
woman,” she said, “since you have conceived a liking for her. Maybe in your
arms she’ll forget the war she tried to bring upon us all.”

Danu did not try to protest. Not again. He bowed his head
and set his lips together and was silent.

“Go,” said Catin. “Go!”

Danu glanced at the Mother. She raised a hand slightly:
conceding authority to her heir.

He swept Sarama out of that room too quickly for her to
object, all but carried her past the daughters—who had made little progress
with threading the loom since he went before the Mother—and deposited her on
the Mare’s back, displacing the startled Mika. The Mare knew her duty: she
trotted off toward the house by the river, with the colt trailing behind.

Danu would follow in a moment. But first he had somewhat to
do. He steadied Mika on his feet, smoothed the boy’s ruffled hair, and said,
“Remember when they come, the horsemen: that you are not afraid of horses.”

Mika did not understand. Yet in time, if the Lady pleased,
he would. Danu tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “Remember,” he said.

Sarama did not need any great fluency in these people’s
language to know that she had been cast out by the king’s heir. That it had
little to do with honest fear of Sarama’s treachery, and much to do with the
man they had in common, Sarama did not doubt at all.

The man himself was visibly dismayed, but it was more anger
than grief. He would make a warrior, Sarama thought, after all—as would the
king’s heir, despite the passion of her protest. That very likely was why she
did it: because she was afraid, not of the horsemen, but of her own eagerness
for battle.

Without Sarama to teach her and her people to fight, she
well might die, or be raped and held hostage. But she would sooner do that than
concede Sarama the victory. It was a madness of obstinacy, unshakable for
anything that Sarama might do; and her king seemed disinclined to restrain her.

Maybe this Three Birds would be more amenable to reason.

oOo

“Is that your city?” Sarama asked Danu when they had
returned to the house, while he gathered belongings, food, drink, supplies for
the journey, with tightly controlled violence.

He shot a glance at her, hot enough to sting, but his voice
was mild. “What? Three Birds? Yes, that’s my city.”