White Mare's Daughter (78 page)

“It is not the Lady’s way,” she said.

“Then what? What is this Great Marriage? I am to touch no
other woman, while you have your pick of the men?”

“No,” she said. “It’s not about who—has anyone. It’s the
spirits together. What they talk of. How they raise children. What house they
keep, and who lives in it. Everything that matters.”

“That’s what a wife does,” he said, “and knows no other man
than her husband.”

“Here,” she said, “a husband does it, too.”

He sank down beside her on the sweet-scented bed. He could,
in a little while, take her again by storm. His body was unconcerned with the
follies of the mind. It wanted her more than ever, now it had had a taste of
her.

She seemed of much the same mind. Her hand wandered
teasingly down his breast and belly to the waking beast below. She held it
gently in a warm hand, even as she frowned at the things they had said to one
another.

No woman had ever talked to him so, with bodily passion but cool
clarity of mind. It tangled him in confusion. He wanted to be angry; he wanted
to understand. He was all in knots.

She sweetened it to simplicity. She roused him again. He
rolled her onto her back; she clamped legs about his middle.

Her frown lingered. It fanned his own temper, drew him the
tighter. He took her hard.

She growled in her throat, half lust, half laughter. She
matched his every thrust. She raked nails down his back. She bit his neck, and
laughed when he yelped.

It was love like war, snarling and tumbling from end to end
of the hut and out under the stars. They fetched up against the treebole, Agni
pressed to the roughness of its bark, and Tilia stone-heavy on top of him. Nor
was she in any haste to relieve him of her weight. She had him in her power,
and well she knew it.

He groaned. She lightened herself a little for that, but
trapped him still, veiling him in her hair. Her skin was hot against his. Her
scent was musk and flowers—stronger now, richer, dizzying to the senses.

“I shall teach you,” she said, “to be a great lover. Then
all the women will vie to choose you.”

“I am not going to teach you anything,” he said, rough in his
throat, “that will make my men any more eager to get their hands on you than
they already are.”

“I do thank you for that,” she said as if she meant it.

He tried again to shift away from the knob of root that dug
into his back. This time she let him go. He came up from beneath her and knelt
in the mold of leaves and grass.

She smiled in the lamplight and the starlight, and reached,
and smoothed a trailing lock of hair out of his face. The gesture touched him
strangely. More than anything that she had done, it warmed his heart.

Maybe, he began to think, this was not folly. Maybe it could
be as he had hoped, king and king’s wife, ruling cities that looked to them
willingly. And maybe, if the gods favored him, he would win her favor—as if he
needed to win it. But he wanted it. He wanted her to look at him always as she
was looking at him now, with tenderness that he had never seen before. As if
after all she felt a flicker of fondness for him, and a promise, maybe, of
more.

And why that should matter, when all that he need think of
was his possession of her, he did not know. He had been in this country too
long; and Sarama and Taditi before that had taught him to think strange things.
He was, when it came to it, a middling poor likeness of a tribesman.

That was a thought he had never thought to have, even when
he was cast out. That he who had so prided himself in being a man among men of
the tribe had become—something different. Something that could make a thing
called the Great Marriage with a woman who reckoned herself a king’s heir, and
look at himself and at her, and know but a faint urge to run howling back to
the steppe.

This country had conquered him, in its way. And yet, he
thought as Tilia sighed and fell asleep with her head lolling heavy on his
breast, he was still Agni—was still the king of the horsemen. No rite or vow or
binding could alter that.

In the winter of the year that the horsemen came to Three
Birds, Sarama bore a daughter in what the women reckoned a swift and easy
birthing—the Lady’s gift, and blessed, they said.

Sarama, who had labored most of the night, dared not imagine
what a long or a difficult birthing was like. It should be enough to lie exhausted
in a clean and sweet-scented bed, with her daughter in her arms, and the father
of her daughter holding them both in his embrace.

Just so he had held her when the child was born, all the
hours of it, tireless, uncomplaining even when she screamed and swore. “
Your
fault!” she remembered shrilling at
him. “
You
did this!”

She had been even angrier when some of the women laughed,
and the midwife said, “Surely. And you, too. It takes two, child. Now stop your
tantrum and push.”

She was so furious that she obeyed—and to her utter
surprise, brought the baby into the light then and there, red squalling
flailing creature like the embodiment of her own temper.

The baby was still rather red, and Sarama could not have
begun to call her pleasant to look at. And yet she was the most beautiful thing
in the world. She slept against her mother’s breast, all clean and warm and
soft. She had dark hair, a great deal of it, and a face more round than oval,
and a bud of a mouth that pursed, seeking the breast even in her sleep. Sarama
dared to hope that she would grow up beautiful: as beautiful as her father.

Danu bent over them both. He touched the baby’s hair with a
finger—such a large finger, and such a small head, and so gentle a touch. “What
will you name her?” he asked softly.

“Rani,” Sarama answered at once. Then: “Unless you’d rather
something else.”

“No,” he said. “Oh, no. The mother names the child. Or don’t
the tribesmen—?”

“The father names his sons,” she said. “The mother is
permitted to name the daughters, if he permits them to live.”

Danu shivered. She had told him before how the tribes culled
their youngest and weakest in lean seasons, and how a father might choose not
to raise his daughters. He had been horrified then; he was horrified now.

She freed a hand, lifted it to touch his face. “There,” she said.
“There. You are her father, no? And you permit her to live. So I name her. Her
name is Rani.”

“Rani,” he said. “It’s a pretty name.”

“A noble one, too. It means something like Mother, and
something like King, and something like both put together. She’ll shine
brightly in the world.”

“Yes,” he said. His eyes were on the child, his voice soft.
“So little a creature, to matter so much.”

“So strong a man, to be so smitten.” She strained a little
over the baby’s head, just to the point of pain, and kissed the part of him
that she could reach: his shoulder, as it happened. She sank back with a sigh
into the support of his arm.

He eased her down. If he had been solicitous she would have
been annoyed, but he did it matter-of-factly, because after all she had just
given birth to a baby.

She could not imagine any man of the tribes making himself
into a birthing-stool for one of his women, bearing her as she bore the child,
and enduring every grueling hour of it with no more respite than the woman
herself had. Even Agni—Tilia had not conceived yet, that anyone knew of. When
she did, and Agni discovered what was expected of him, he would be appalled.
Birthing was a woman’s rite. A man had no part in it at all.

Sarama was glad that her man was not a tribesman. That he
was here, hollow-eyed and pale about the lips with tiredness, holding her and
her daughter—their daughter—in the strong circle of his arms. Too often she
thought of him with a little condescension, as something less than a man,
because he was so gentle and soft-spoken and so very respectful of women. She
had no shame of him, nor did she despise him, but he was not a man as her
brother was, or her brother’s following.

Now as he held her, his body making a wall against the
world, she knew a prickle of shame. There was nothing weak about this man. He
was a wonder and a marvel, though he would blush if she said so.

Beyond the warm wall of him, the world began again to touch
on her: people coming in, stepping softly, but bright-eyed, eager to see the
baby. The Mother, Tilia, some of the elders from the city. A diffident handful
of Danu’s brothers, big men all and strong, but almost too shy to lift their
eyes to Sarama. And, last and at some remove, Agni.

Her brother wore kingship well. He had always taken for granted
that when he spoke, men would listen. Here in the Lady’s country it was more to
the purpose that women should listen, but as Tilia’s consort in the Great
Marriage he had gained what he looked for. He was listened to. He could speak
wherever Tilia spoke, and be heard.

Neither he nor Tilia was given to displays of the gentler
sort, but there was an ease between them that Sarama could not mistake. They
got on well together. He had not, that Sarama knew of, gone wandering in search
of other women, and Tilia had not chosen any but Agni since the Great Marriage.
They seemed well content with one another.

If she honestly needed to know, she could ask Tilia. Agni . . .

On the steppe, even after long time apart, Sarama and Agni
had been as close as only the twinborn could be. Here, something lay between
them. It was not only Danu, or Rani, or both. It went deeper.

It had somewhat to do, Sarama thought, with the country
itself; with the defense that Sarama had mounted against the horsemen, and the
choice that she had made, to be one of the Lady’s people. Agni had never
faulted her for it, but neither had he forgiven her. She was born to the
tribes. She should be loyal to them.

She was born to the Mare’s people. That was a thing that he
had never understood. The Old Woman had taken her away when she was small. Agni
had been left behind, manchild that he was and firstborn son of his father’s
kingship. Sarama the daughter, elder though she might be, was of no account to
the reckoning of kingship. Agni was the prince, the heir. He would be king when
his father was dead.

Agni was the king’s son by birth and upbringing. Sarama
belonged to the Mare. And the Mare was a face of the goddess, that same power
who was Lady of the Birds and Lady of the Deer, and Earth Mother too. The
Lady’s country was Sarama’s country, as much as if Sarama had been born and
bred to it.

Sarama did not see what profit there could be in saying such
things. Agni was all prickly pride. He would not care to hear her defense.

Yet he had come to look on her daughter—mere female though
Rani might be. He brought with him a breath of clean air and horses, as if he
had come in from the fields. He bent with no constraint that Sarama could
discern, and kissed her on both cheeks, and said, “Well done, sister, and a
great victory. She’ll be a great power in this world.”

Just so, or nearly, did a man greet his wife or his
kinswoman when she had given a son to the tribe. Agni’s eyes glinted, daring
her to remark on it. She smiled at him and said, “I thank you, brother. We’ve
named her Rani. Would you like to hold her?”

Agni’s expression of shock made her laugh, but he was a bold
creature. He took the child from Danu’s hands, none too clumsily, either, and
held her as he might have held a puppy.

It served the purpose. He regarded her half in alarm, half
in dawning amazement. “Gods,” he said. “She’s little.”

“She’ll grow,” Danu said.

“Young things do,” said Agni. The constraint between them
was less pronounced than usual. Danu was too tired, Agni too captivated with
the baby to indulge it.

Sarama was not one to smile warmly at the sight of such
amity, but she sighed a little in relief. She was always afraid that those two
would quarrel, although they never did. They preserved a teeth-gritted
civility, but with an edge of tension.

At a glance and a gesture from Danu, Agni sat beside the
bed, still holding Rani in his arms. No one else asked to hold her. That
privilege was given a man first. The women would wait till there was no man
present.

Sarama wondered if Agni knew that. If he did, he was not
inclined to grant them the reprieve. He was staying, his manner said, for as
long as it suited him.

He seemed comfortable in the manner of a man of this country,
cradling a child while the women settled to a round of quiet chatter. Sarama
slipped half into a dream, lulled by the sound of it. She was aware, dimly, of
Danu’s body beside her, warm welcome presence, and the slow surge of his
breathing as he too slid into sleep. It was a deeply peaceful sound.

Sarama was blessed: in her man, in her child, in her kin.
Without knowing precisely why she did it, she stretched out a hand.

Agni widened his eyes a little at her touch, but did not
shake it off. She smiled sleepily. After all, she thought. After all, her
brother was her brother.

Agni came back late from the Mother’s house, seeking not
the house he slept in but the camp of his tribes. It was deep midwinter and
bitterly cold, but never as cold as it could be on the steppe; this was a
milder country altogether. His men were out and about with little care for the
cold or the wind, though the snow that threatened, and the early dark, would
quell them soon enough.

They greeted him as they always did, nodding or smiling or
calling his name. He did not preserve the royal distance that his father had.
It was not in him, and he saw no profit in it.

Winter had cooled the blood in most of them. They were not
so eager now to fight, or even to ride about the country. Of those who had gone
to hold cities elsewhere, some had come back, and others sent messengers as
often as the weather or the roads would allow. Word was that winter to the
eastward was much worse than here. It would be a cruel season on the steppe,
after a dry summer and a rainless autumn.