White Mare's Daughter (82 page)

oOo

The first sacrifice, sacrifice of the Hound, went as it
should go. The Hound died well. His blood flowed red on this alien earth. And
in the dancing after, there was no trouble that Agni could discern.

So too the second day, the sacrifice of the Bull, and the
second dance. As freely as the wine flowed, as easily as the people went back
and forth from camp to city, still no one ventured beyond the limits that had
been set.

Last year Agni had been an exile in search of a dream that
the gods had laid on him. There had been no Great Sacrifice in his camp. The
year before . . . Sarama had come back on the day of the Bull,
this day indeed, and Agni had looked ahead to the taking of his stallion and
the gaining of the kingship.

Now he sat on the royal horsehide in the circle of elders,
and it was not as dull as he remembered. He could have risen and joined the
dance; the king was not forbidden.

In a little while he would. At the moment he was content to
sit as a king sits, and to watch the dance wind its skein through the camp and
out into the city.

They danced too, the Lady’s people, a spiral dance
remarkably like the dance of the Sacrifice. There was the beginning of a common
rite. He saw how it was, men and women dancing together, dark heads and fair,
hand linked with hand under the waxing moon.

Here, he thought. Here it began. And maybe someday their
rites would mingle, too, as they mingled in the dance.

Somewhere in the city, Tilia and the Mother sat as Agni was
sitting, or so he supposed. Agni wondered if Tilia found it as dull as he had
when he was the heir and not the king. Or maybe they performed a rite in the
temple, one of their women’s rites that no man was allowed to see. There were a
great many of those. He would be surprised, after all, if there was not one
tonight.

He rose at last when the moon rode high overhead, but he did
not go to join the dancers. He wandered off instead, first to relieve himself,
then simply to walk along the river. The air was soft, no touch of frost—much
softer than it would be on the steppe, this early in the year. Scents of tilled
earth, new grass, spring flowers, rose up with the dewfall, strong enough to
dizzy him.

He wandered out past the horse-herds, past the pen where the
Stallion waited, the one who had been chosen for tomorrow’s sacrifice. The
priests—and Agni among them—had chosen a black this year, night-dark without
glimmer of white. He was a shadow on shadow in the night, a soft snort, the
stamp of a hoof on the yielding ground.

Agni bowed low to him. He pawed restlessly, begging to be
let out, to run with his fellows under the moon.

“Tomorrow,” Agni said to him, “O blessed, you’ll run the
fields in the gods’ country. Then you’ll never be bound again.”

oOo

“So that is a royal sacrifice.”

Agni caught himself before he wheeled and bolted. Tilia was
standing next to him as if she had been there from the beginning. She wore what
women wore here in festivals, the skirt that was their sacred garment, that
they won when they came to womanhood; she was bare else, as they always were
before their goddess, with her hair loose and her breasts like twin moons,
round and full.

She slipped her arm through his, leaning her head against
his shoulder, as beautifully trusting as a child. But that was no child’s body
pressed lightly against his, and no child’s voice either that said, “Come
worship the Lady with me.”

Agni was more than glad to oblige, but he paused. “In the
fields? In the—the burrows?”

“Furrows,” she said with a ripple of laughter. “Where we’ll
sow the seeds of the harvest in the morning. Tonight we’ll sow another kind of
seed.”

He caught himself blushing. Thank the gods, it was too dark
for her to see. “You people are so—close to the earth.”

“Earthy,” she said. “How not? We’re Earth Mother’s own.”

She tugged at him. Agni followed. “You came for me,” he
said.

“Yes,” she said.

“You didn’t have to. Did you? You could have taken anyone
you pleased.”

“I wanted you.”

Agni drew a slow breath. He did not want her to know how
dizzily happy she had made him. Of course she had come to him. She was his
wife. And yet . . .

And yet her custom had not required it, and she would not
have cared if Agni had objected to her taking another man. She had chosen Agni
because she wanted him, not because she was required to do it.

Such a world this was, that he should be trying not to grin
like a mad thing because his own wife wanted him in her bed.

Or, as it happened, in a furrow near the river, in the rich
scent of turned earth, under the high vault of the stars. She lay in the
furrow, all mingled with the earth, and bade him take her so.

He remembered a day on a high hilltop, not long after he
took Three Birds; how Earth Mother had come to him and bidden him love her.
This was Earth Mother’s child, warm flesh and welcoming arms, mortal beyond a
doubt, and yet all the sweeter for it.

Her body that he had come to know so well, her scent with
its hint of spices, wrapped him about. He held himself above her, looking down
at her. So beautiful, so perfectly matched and mated, body joined to body in
the moon’s glimmer.

She arched under him, taking him deep into herself. He
gasped. Of its own accord, his body quickened its pace.

The end of it took him by surprise; seized him and shook him
and left him limp on the earth.

The night air was cool on his fevered skin. He rolled onto
his back, baring his body to the moon.

Tilia lay propped on her elbow beside him, drinking in the
sight of him. Her smile was rich and warm, like cream. “I wanted you,” she said
as if their conversation had not been interrupted. And then: “I want to watch
your sacrifice tomorrow.”

His stomach clenched. The warmth of release vanished. He was
cold, cold and baffled. “What? Why? Don’t you have rites of your own?”

“They don’t require my presence,” she said.

“So why?”

“I want to see,” she said.

“There’s blood,” he said. “There’s killing.”

“I know,” said Tilia.

“
I
have to do the
killing. I’m the priest of the sacrifice. It has to be the king, you see. Or
the king’s heir.”

“I know,” she said. “Your sister told me.”

“Why? So that you can hate me?”

She answered that with silence, which maybe was the best
that it deserved.

He drew a deep and calming breath. “Did she also tell you
that women don’t attend the sacrifice?”

“Women from the tents,” she said. “The Lady’s servants are
another matter.”

“Then I may attend the rite in the temple?”

She bridled. “No man attends—” She broke off. “That’s
different.”

“How is it different?”

“Because it’s a women’s rite,” she said.

“This is a men’s rite,” said Agni.

She hissed. She was not going to see it. But Agni was not
going to give in, either.

“A bargain,” he said. “You come to the sacrifice of the
Stallion. I go to the Lady’s rite.”

“We could just come,” she said.

“So could I,” said Agni.

There: impasse.

She sat up suddenly, curling into a knot. “You don’t make
anything easy,” she said.

He widened his eyes. “Well then. Who’d have thought it? Here
you’ve been wearing us away like water on stone, and now the stone seems a
little hard. This is what a bargain is. A trade. If you give, I give. If you
take, I take something else. You come to the sacrifice, I go to the temple.”

“I can’t give you that,” she said.

“Then who can? The Mother?”

“If the Lady speaks through her.”

“Then I’ll ask the Mother,” he said, “in the morning.”

She unknotted. “And if she says no?”

“No bargain,” he said.

“You are a hard man,” said Tilia.

“No,” he said. “I’m as soft as water, for a tribesman. It’s
your men who are softer yet.”

“Men should be soft,” she said. “If they’re not . . .
they have so little strength of will, and so much strength of body. They do
whatever they take it into their heads to do. Steal, rape, kill.”

He shook his head, not to deny what she said, but to shake
it out of his mind. He must not grow angry. Not now. What she said, he had heard
before, from her, from others of these women. For all he knew or cared, it was
the perfect truth.

But he was making a world here. He had to remember that.
There was no little pride, too, in proving that a man could be as strong in
spirit as a woman.

Therefore he held his peace except to say, “I’ll speak with
the Mother.”

She nodded. The little distance between them might have been
as broad as the steppe.

He rose and gathered his clothes together. She watched him
but did not try to stop him.

He would sleep in his tent tonight. She would come there, or
she would not. That was hers to choose.

Maybe he was a hard man after all. Good, then. He was a
proper tribesman.

oOo

Agni approached the Mother with something very close to
trepidation. She heard him out with that air of hers, as if nothing had ever
surprised her or could surprise her. And when he was done, she said, “Yes.”

His teeth clicked together. “Yes?”

“Yes, you may watch the rite.”

“But—”

She sat in unruffled serenity, sitting as she-king over the
planting as Agni had sat as king over the dancing. “You may watch,” she said,
“from the door. You may not speak. You would be advised not to move. Be eyes
only. Be nothing else.”

“I won’t go blind? I won’t be struck dead?”

“Does that happen in your country?”

Her eyes were not even on Agni. He followed the line of her
gaze, out over the southern field, the Lady’s field, where row after row of
people—men, women, children—sowed seed in the tilled earth. The day before,
they had harrowed it; and the day before that, broken the sods, plowed and
turned it. They had made a rite of it, made this field sacred, the first field
and the field that would make the pattern for all the others.

He watched the sowers in the lead, the people behind them
closing the furrows, and the children with great fans of leaves or sheets of
cloth, driving the birds away.

Just after a chattering flock erupted into the air, Agni
answered the Mother’s question. “It doesn’t happen here? There’s no punishment
for the man who trespasses on the Lady’s rite?”

“No man would do such a thing.”

“Not even for temptation? To see what is so secret that he’s
never to be part of it?”

“No,” said the Mother.

“And you say that men are undisciplined.”

“We teach them to control themselves,” the Mother said.

“But you won’t let them stand face to face with the Lady.”

Her smile, though faint, reminded him distinctly of Tilia at
her most recalcitrant. “The Lady is wherever her children are. Male children as
much as female.”

“But only women may enter her most sacred places.”

“And only a man may enter a woman’s most secret places.
Should we alter that, too? Or object to it?”

“Yet you will allow me in the temple,” Agni said before
matters got any more out of hand. He hoped that she could not see how he
blushed; though that was a vain hope, with his fair skin.

She forbore to remark on it, which was a mercy. She said,
“The world changes. A man sets foot in the temple, and women see blood
sacrifice in a field that was once theirs. The Lady wills this; for what
reason, no one mortal knows.”

“And you never fail to do as the Lady wills.”

“That is my duty and my office,” she said.

“Do you never doubt? Ever? At all?”

“Does it matter if I do?”

“To me it does.”

She regarded him for a moment. He watched her reflect that
to his people he was as she was: first of them all, leader and guide, and
sacrifice too if need be. She did not approve of his holding such an office,
male that he was and ill-schooled in the arts of serenity, but she could hardly
deny that he held it.

When she spoke, it was to the office and not to the man.
“Yes. Yes, I doubt, and I fear, too. The Lady speaks to me, but not always in
ways that I can understand. I must interpret her signs and omens, and hope that
I interpret them rightly. And always I must preserve the image of calm, because
if a Mother is frightened, her people will be terrified.”

“Yes,” Agni said. “Except that for us, it’s not calm we
cultivate; it’s stern authority, and the image of strength.”

“Will you look stronger if you see how we worship the Lady?”

“I will look stronger if I trade what your daughter asked,
for a favor of equal value.”

“Ah,” said the Mother. “It’s all bargains and trade. And
seeming strength.”

“Isn’t that what ruling is?”

“Some of it,” she said. And after a pause: “We gather in the
temple at moonrise.”

“We sacrifice the Stallion at noon,” he said.

She nodded. He nodded. It was not perfect amity, but it was
agreement. It would do.

The Stallion died as the sun touched its zenith. He did
not come quietly, but struggled and fought; he made a war of his sacrifice.

Agni hardly needed an omen so clear, but it seemed the gods
were determined to leave no doubt. This bloodless conquest would not endure.
Blood would come, and battle.

The Stallion died as an enemy dies, fighting his death. Agni
conquered because he must; because he could do no other.

He earned this new and royal horsehide. When it was taken
and the sacrifice all completed, the old hide, the hide of the stallion that
had been Rahim’s, was folded and blessed and given to the gods on the pyre of
the sacrifice. The smoke of it was rank, rising to blue heaven.

Even an ill sacrifice was sweet to the gods. Some of the
tribesmen were afraid; Agni saw the rolling of eyes and the flicking of fingers
in signs against evil. They were blaming the women who stood apart, raised on a
hilltop, watching. Ill luck, the men said, and the gods’ curse, that a company
of females should lay eyes on the men’s rite.