The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) (34 page)

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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)
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He remembered her standing at his shoulder, brandishing the knife in his defense.
“Epona,” he said.
He reached out for her because he could not help himself. She was magic; she might have greater power than he could guess; she might wither him away like dead grass, or cause him to be attacked by an evil spirit, or suck the life out of him as the priests sucked it from Kolaxais. It did not matter.
She had said she was his woman. The part of him that was wary of her was not as strong as the part of him that desired her.
“Epona,” he said again, letting his voice be soft, holding out his hand.
It had been a long day, and a trying one. Epona’s eyes felt gritty with the need for sleep, and there was no hunger in her body for the body of the man. But everything around her was strange, and disturbing; the society with which she would be forcibly joined had already begun rejecting her and she knew it. The coming days would be hard ones, and it was possible she would never learn to feel that this place was home, or these people hers. Only two things here were known and familiar: the horses, and the man.
She did not want to sleep amid the musty rugs and the filthy furs of the Scythian tent, but she thought she could sleep in Kazhak’s arms, at least. That would have to be her home, for now.
She smiled at him and took his hand, pressing it against her breasts.
I
n the morning, Epona’s life as one of the Scythian tribe must really begin. She awoke alone in the tent, Kazhak having left sometime during the darkness. She would learn that to be a Scythian custom; men who stayed in women’s company all night were suspect. A man who had been away, among savages, might have acquired some alien customs, such as sleeping weak as an infant in a woman’s bed. All such foreign ideas were despised. Only the gold and the skills of non-Scythians were welcome on the Sea of Grass. These, and the bodies of their stolen women, who would vanish into the tents and behind the veils, never to be seen again.
Epona had no intention of being such a woman.
Face bare, head uncovered, she emerged from the tent and looked around the encampment. Other women were abroad this morning, tending small cooking fires or caring for the goats that ambled among the wagons. They glanced up as Epona appeared and quickly checked to be sure the lower part of their faces was covered. They watched her through guarded eyes, the spirit locked behind them.
The Scythian women wore felt tunics like the men’s, though longer, with a bib over the chest and cumbersome felt leggings. Their clothing was plain by comparison with their men’s, though each woman had an ornamented belt trimmed in bronze, and Epona caught glimpses of the flash of gold jewelry as they moved about. She was discouraged to realize they all looked alike to her. How could she ever tell which one was Ro-An, the only person she could hope to claim as a sort of friend?
The women watched her, but no one invited her to approach a cooking fire.
Ignoring her gnawing morning hunger, she lounged across the campground as if she were merely out for a stroll in her own home place; her head was high and proud, her expression was assured to the point of indifference.
Let no one know how you feel inside
, she told herself. Her eyes, meanwhile, devoured every detail of her new environment. She saw women she determined must be senior wives, because they were more colorfully dressed and seemed to do nothing but boss the younger women. These principal wives tended to sit in little groups around cooking fires or in front of their tents, talking and chewing on strips of crisp fat. As she walked by one such group, Epona noted that these women of superior status wore boots of spotted fur, elaborately embroidered and trimmed on the sole with beading, making walking impractical. They sat with their feet turned to display the decorated soles to one another, comfortably idle while the newer wives did the labor of the camp.
On their heads were various headdresses: caps and scarves with detachable veils to cover the lower part of the face. When they unfastened these veils to talk to one another—a symbolic relinquishment of privacy—Epona saw that many of them had blackened and broken or missing teeth.
She felt contempt for the useless women in beaded shoes, the women who had no work to do.
But what kind of work will I do here? she wondered. How will I fit into this tribe?
The men had been up since the first light streaked the eastem
horizon, and most of them were already gone from the camp, out with the grazing herds of horses or off hunting. The women had taken over the community they deserted, maintaining it on the sufferance of the males until the true owners returned.
Smoke emerged from the smoke holes of the large tents, and Epona wondered if Kazhak might be inside one of those tents with his kinsmen; with Kolaxais, perhaps. She saw that the gray stallion waited, in hobbles, close to her own brown gelding, and she went to release them both and watch them as they grazed so they would not mingle with someone else’s herd. The stallion was sniffing the wind for mares in season, though no mare would welcome him in the winter. But hope never left his heart; he was a stallion.
Someone came out of one of the royal tents and walked toward Epona, but it was not Kazhak. Dasadas approached her with his eyes fixed on the space immediately above her head and the faintest trace of a smile on his face, obviously intending to be pleasant.
“Epona has had food?” he inquired.
“Did Kazhak send you to ask about me?”
He hesitated. “No, Kazhak is busy, but Dasadas is not too busy to think of Epona. Are you hungry?”
Epona answered him in his own language, as she had spoken to Ro-An. “Epona is hungry. No one has offered to share food with me.”
“They do not know what to think of you,” Dasadas told her. “You are not like other captured women; it is already known that shamans want others to ignore you. But come, Dasadas will give you food.”
He put a gentle hand on her arm to guide her, a gesture far removed from his violent attempt to possess her body a few days before. Now he seemed anxious to please, a friend in a strange environment, and his offer of food made Epona’s stomach growl. She accompanied him eagerly toward a cluster of women surrounding a cooking fire, but their progress was halted by Kazhak’s angry voice, ringing across the encampment.
“The hand of Dasadas is on Kazhak’s woman!” the Scythian bellowed. “If Kazhak cuts off that hand, no one protests!”
Dasadas abandoned his hold on her arm as abruptly as if Epona’s flesh burned him. “She was hungry …” he tried to explain, but Kazhak trotted toward them wearing such a fierce expression that he gave up hope of explaining and backed away, keeping his eyes down.
Epona was angry. If Kazhak had not thought to see that she was fed, what was wrong with Dasadas showing her that courtesy? She started to say as much to Kazhak but he brushed her words aside and hustled her back to the privacy of the tent, where her words and his, would not be overheard.
“No man can put his hand on you now you live in Kazhak’s tent,” he admonished her. “You should have screamed.”
“That is foolishness. He wasn’t hurting me; he was only going to get me something to eat. I was very hungry.”
“No matter if you are starving; if you die. You must not let other man touch you. Is word of Kolaxais.”
“Why should Dasadas be punished for a generous gesture just because of the word of a sick old man? Kolaxais cannot enforce such rules. I was in his tent, remember? The only strength I felt there was not his, but the strength of the shamans.”
Kazhak bowed his head in sadness. “Is so, what you say,” he told her in a subdued voice. “When Kazhak was young, Kolaxais was very strong, a mighty
han,
made many good rules for the welfare of the tribe. Rules like one which forbids man to lay hands on woman who lives in another man’s tent. But now Kolaxais is sick and weak; the rules he makes now are shamans’ rules. There is saying on Sea of Grass: ‘If horses get sick, dogs get fat. If man gets sick, shamans get fat.’ Is so. Shamans get fat and Kolaxais fades away. The heart is dying in our tribe. Shamans make all rules now. There has been no magic to fight them.”
“Is that the only reason you brought me here?” Epona
asked, horrified at the implications. “You think I can fight the shamans for you?”
“Is not only reason,” Kazhak answered, truthfully. “But your people,
you,
can do very strong magic. Kazhak has seen.”
Once more her talents were being demanded for the tribe, and not even the Kelti, this time, but these nomads on their windswept alien plain. She had fled to avoid devoting her life to the spirits. It did not seem fair that Kazhak ask that of her now. If she gave him what he wanted—and she did not believe she could, she was not equipped to duel with shamans! —there would be no end to it. On and on, for all of this life, she would crouch over fires and mutter incantations and exhaust her spirit in the service of others, with no life of her own.
“You have made a mistake, Kazhak,” she told him. “If you mean to pit my powers against the shamans you will be disappointed, for I can do nothing.”
“You cured horse. Dasadas said right; horse would have been dead.”
“Perhaps, but that is the only gift I have, and I did not even know I had that one until the spirit within the horse cried out to me. I am
drui
, but I am not trained, I have not learned the …”
“Tell Kazhak again, what is
drui
?” he interrupted.
“People who you would say work magic, but I think it is not the kind of magic your shamans practice. The
druii
have learned to understand how things are kept in balance in thisworld through our dealings with the otherworlds, and they tell us how to live in harmony with the earth mother so we are benefited and not deprived in thislife. Everything the
druii
do is for a purpose and fits into the pattern.” She listened to herself defending the pattern and was keenly aware of the irony.
“And you are
drui
,” Kazhak insisted.
“Yes, I seem to be, but I left the Blue Mountains before I could be trained.”
“You ran away,” he reminded her with dawning understanding. “You did not want training.”
“That is true,” she admitted. “I have no desire to work magic.”
“You would fight, die for Kazhak, but not work magic for Kazhak?” He sounded puzzled. He could find no way to coerce the woman into agreeing to the plan that had revealed itself so dazzlingly to him the day she cured the Thracian horse. He had seen it with all the clarity of a dream just before dawn: Epona doing magic that would put the shamans to shame, and Kolaxais coming out of his stupor, thanking Kazhak for bringing this magic person to the tribe, becoming once more the strong leader he had been in his prime.
And there would have been rewards for Kazhak, someday. The other sons of Kolaxais would have torn their hair and gnashed their teeth, but the wagons and women and horses of the great prince would have eventually belonged to his favorite son, Kazhak, who rode west.
Why would Epona not cooperate? How could he force a magic person to do magic?
“The shamans plan to question you,” he told her. “They ask many questions of Kazhak: What can you do, what do you know? You must show them something to convince them Kazhak told truth, brought back treasure in you. Otherwise, Kazhak is disgraced.”
“You brought back the swords,” Epona reminded him.
“Wonderful swords,” he agreed, “but not enough to replace what Kazhak lost—horses, brothers. Trip was not successful enough, then Kazhak made matters worse by angering shamans. They may decide to punish Kazhak; may issue order through mouth of Kolaxais.”
“What kind of punishment?”
Kazhak’s voice sunk low in his chest, a deep rumbling like that of a bear rubbing itself against a pine tree, grumbling. “For a prince’s son? Kazhak would be buried in earth up to his neck, other horse men would ride toward him, galloping. Lean down out of saddle, swing leather thongs. Tear off Kazhak’s head.” He gazed morosely into the shadows.
Epona swallowed, hard. The spirits seemed to be maneuvering her into a trap from which there was no escape. Yet she knew of nothing within her abilities that would impress the shamans sufficiently to prove the truth behind Kazhak’s claims. She could not materialize a dying horse out of the air and then save it on order. This man—this gruff, maddening, sometimes tender man, her husband, her responsibility—might die because of her failure. “When will the shamans question me?” she asked.
“Who can say? Shamans always want to smoke hemp, roll bones, dance. Everything they do requires much muttering, waving of hands, long time before anything happens. Probably long time before they send for you.”
Kazhak’s words and tone told her he did not believe all of the shamans’ ritual was necessary; at some point he had begun to suspect it was mainly for show, to impress and intimidate. Epona, familiar with
druii
magic where everything was done for a purpose, tended to agree with him. In the tent of Kolaxais she had not felt that the shamans were accomplishing anything other than continually emphasizing their presence.
But then, she was untrained; what did she truly know of magic? What questions might they ask her, and how could she answer?
Be quiet and listen
, commanded the spirit within.
I will tell you how to live thislife
.
Kazhak saw a slight smile tug at the corners of her mouth and felt reassured. He had done a wise thing in bringing her here; she would not let him down.
“My brothers hunt often; Kazhak will see that you have much food, best food, not get hungry again, is it so?” he promised. “Kazhak’s wives cook every day for you, from now on.”
“Why can’t I cook for myself? And why can’t I stay in your tent, if you have a larger one than this?”
Kazhak’s pleasant expression faded. Epona might help him, but it was obvious she would also continue to complicate things.
“No woman stays in man’s personal tent,” he said brusquely. “Is never done. Besides, even Kazhak does not always sleep there. Kazhak thinks man should sleep in open, under stars, unless weather is too cold, too much wind and ice. Sleeping inside felt walls makes man weak; it has weakened Kolaxais. Kazhak puts his women in nice tents, very good, then Kazhak sleeps with horse. Or in tent by himself if weather is bad. Is best way, is it so?”
“That is a very bad way to live, with men and women kept apart,” Epona protested.

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