The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) (37 page)

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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)
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To locate a spring, Uiska had walked back and forth with
her two hands held out in front of her body. Sometimes she carried a willow wand but it was not really necessary. Her spirit within knew where the water was; its sister spirit. She heard its voice murmuring to her night and day; she dreamed of cascades of pure, rippling, lifegiving water. In the Blue Mountains Uiska’s gift was not as urgently needed as that of Kernunnos, or Tena, but all knew that without water existence in thisworld was impossible, and therefore honored the
drui
woman as being a person of great importance.
Uiska,
Epona said to herself.
Uiska.
She shaped her lips to form a whistle, imitating the whistle Voice of the Waters had used. She had never had the temerity to try such a thing before; she was shocked at how unlike her it sounded.
She heard the watching Scythians begin to mutter to each other.
Kazhak himself had told her that once winter set in, there were no more thunderstorms on the Sea of Grass.
But she could not allow herself to doubt. The horse had predicted it for her, and now the spirit within urged her on.
Suddenly she felt it again, the power she had felt when she was with the Thracian mare. Then it had been fleeting, a few moments of strength and exultation that swiftly faded. Now it was stronger, gripping her with the unshakable certainty of the stones, the trees. She
knew
. There were no limits to those who believed. Whatever she chose to do now, in this time and place, she could achieve.
She held her head high and smiled with old wisdom in a young face.
Once more she pictured the storm, the coming storm. And now she really did smell the rain, really felt the tension building that preceded the thunder and the starfire. With the power pouring through her she had a sense of being a vessel only, and she opened to the magic, the strength, welcoming it, letting it work through her.
Once more she pursed her lips and a piercing whistle shot through the camp like a Scythian arrow.
Concentrate on the wind. Take it into your skin and your
blood and your bones. Know what the wind feels like: movement; cold. Coming, coming. Draw it into you. Become the wind. The wind. The wind.
In a soft voice, arms still upraised, eyes closed, she began chanting the names of the spirits of the air and the water, chanting in a soft voice not meant for Scythian ears, for these were sacred names.
She pulled herself into herself, dwindling away into a hard, tight core, calling the wind, drawing it, drawing it …
The mighty storm came blasting across the Sea of Grass, howling like a creature in agony.
I
t might have come anyway; the horse had believed it would. Even Epona could not be certain, afterward. She had felt the power fill her, the quiet, clenched sensation of pulling her energies into a vortex that demanded all her attention, as a mother might concentrate on the life within her womb to the exclusion of everything else, awaiting the moment of birth. The wind had come then, but it might have been coming anyway.
Yet the sky had been cloudless, and the air had been still.
The Scythians were shocked by the sudden fury of the unseasonable thunderstorm. The great booming rolled repeatedly across the sky as a massive curtain of black cloud raced toward the encampment. Starfire crackled and crashed. The wall of wind slammed into the tents, threatening to tear them from their moorings, though Scythian tents were attached to a sturdy wooden framework intended to withstand almost any savagery of weather. Cloaks and rugs and saddlecloths developed wings and flew away, their owners running after them. Man and his animals had beaten the surrounding earth
to bare clay and dust, and now the dust rose in clouds, stinging their eyes.
Panic crackled over the backs of the herds like starfire.
The domestic animals, goats and sheep and hobbled saddle horses, were spooked into aimless movement, and little boys ran after them, trying to keep them from breaking out of the camp.
On the grasslands beyond, the immense horse herd began to move as well, seething like the contents of a boiling pot, on the verge of a stampede as the whiplash of starfire frightened and drove them.
Epona slowly lowered her arms. She was surprised to find that they ached, and her fingers refused to flex.
The rain fell with her falling arms, pouring down in incredible volume, soaking the spirit and quelling rebellion. Drenched, half-drowned, the livestock calmed; the horse herd did not stampede. The Scythians sought cover and waited for the storm to abate.
Epona stood alone in the open, head up, unafraid of the starfire. Had she not nourished the fire and honored its spirit?
The storm passed over and was gone, as quickly as it had come.
The Scythians emerged hesitantly from their tents and wagons and saw the Kelti woman still standing there calmly, undismayed by the elemental display. Tsaygas and his fellow shaman, Mitkezh, who had sought safety within their tent, peered out at Epona through the tent flap but came no farther. They looked at her as weasels watch from their holes, dark eyes cold and hostile, observing a new predator in their territory.
I am very tired,
Epona said to herself.
I have to sleep.
Saying nothing to anyone, she made her way back to her tent without paying any attention to the faces that stared at her or the whispers that followed her. Numbly, she stripped off her wet clothes, wrapped herself in her bearskin cloak, and collapsed on her sleeping rugs.
She fell instantly and deeply asleep, and did not waken until Kazhak tugged at her shoulder and called her name.
She sat up, groggy and disoriented. At first she did not know where she was or who the man was, and she tried to push him away, wanting only to sink back into the restful nothingness, but he would not let her.
“Epona. Epona! Sit up. Up! Yes, better, is it so? You must tell Kazhak what happened. The storm … everyone is talking, and the shamans are … Epona, what did you do?”
She sat with slumped shoulders, shivering. In spite of her heavy cloak she was cold, and still very tired. “I did what I could to impress them,” she answered him.
“You told Kazhak you had no power over the weather.”
“I did not think I did. I still don’t know … I tried, that’s all.”
“It is being said that Epona brought the thunderstorm, and there should be no thunderstorm on the Sea of Grass in this season.”
“What do the shamans say?”
Kazhak chewed on his lip. “The shamans have said nothing. They are in their tent, beating the drums, chanting. Shamans are upset.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Instead of answering her with words, awkward words, Kazhak threw his arms around Epona and came very close to cracking most of her bones with a mighty hug.
As if the thunderstorm had permanently altered the climate of the steppe, the atmosphere in the encampment seemed changed from that day on. The Scythians could no longer pretend Epona did not exist. The men still would not meet eyes with her, of course, but she was aware that they watched her with varying degrees of respect and awe, as one who had matched power with the shamans and forced those men to hide in their tent, unable to turn aside the storm she brought down upon them.
The women were shyly proud of her, now. She was of their own sex, a despised female; yet she had somehow transcended
her gender and earned respect. Respect!
It was frightening to think that such an honor could come to one of their own kind, but it was tantalizing, too. The other women, even the senior wives in their beaded boots, began to vie for her attention, to invite her to share their cooking fires and their days, to take part in their gossip and enter into the myriad details of the life they had constructed for themselves apart from the men.
Even the shamans must, temporarily, pay her grudging respect, the respect of the professional for a colleague. Until they could truly determine the extent of her powers and the threat she might pose to their own position they walked softly in her vicinity, unwilling to bring something to life for which they were unprepared.
But they hated her now. She knew it. She could feel it in the rising hair on the nape of her neck and the tingling in her thumbs whenever one of the Scythian priests was anywhere near her.
Kazhak was mightily pleased. “Shamans will do nothing more to Kolaxais,” he told Epona, “while they fear Epona. Kazhak was afraid they would let the old prince die, then keep him sitting up and speak through his mouth, but now they will not do that.”
“Is that the sort of magic your shamans practice?” Epona asked with contempt. “That is an unclean act, an insult to the body that housed a spirit.”
“Shamans do many things,” Kazhak told her. “Many things Kazhak does not think you would like. It is so, they heal sickness. Sometimes. But Kazhak thinks they sometimes cause it, too, when they can benefit from it.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“Is it not so among your priests?”
“Of course not. They would be punished by the spirits, in thisworld or the next, if they tried to use their gifts to increase their personal power.”
“Then they are not like our shamans,” Kazhak concluded. “Epona is right; your magic is not our magic. There are no
druii
like you on Sea of Grass.”
He meant it as a compliment, but she could not honestly allow his statement to stand.
“There might be, somewhere,” she said. “The druii teach that there are people with the spirit gifts in every land and among all races. Sometimes they do not even know what they are themselves, but in the dreamworld they meet one another and exchange information. In the dreamworld they can see the pattern clearly from both ends, from the long ago time of the first great
druii
kingdoms to the far away time when the earth mother will call on the
druii
to save her from destruction.”
Kazhak was astonished. “This is true thing?”
“It is what I was taught.”
“And you believe?”
“Of course. I can feel the truth of it. I more than believe.”
“Shamans would not believe,” Kazhak said with certainty.
“No. But Tsaygas and Mitkezh are not
druii
, I am sure of that.”
“What of their magic? Is it real? Is any magic real, or is all tricks? Who can know? Kazhak does not feel it, as you say you do. Kazhak does not know what to believe.”
Epona felt sorry for the man. She suspected it had been a long time since he had had much faith in the shamans, and now even that was gone, replaced by a partial belief in her and something she might not even be able to do. But she was more fortunate: She knew her limitations; yet she also knew that the magic was real, and possible.
Only not, perhaps, for her. It was herself she did not fully believe in. She lay in her tent and wondered,
Did I really summon the storm? Did I really save a dying horse?
Doubt assailed her as her brief moments of magnificence shrank into the past, two isolated spots of light.
Perhaps the shamans were causing the doubt; perhaps they were casting spells to weaken her. She knew this was a possibility and struggled to hold on to her memories: the power singing within her, the sense of being used by something larger and more important than herself. She longed for it
again, that soaring sensation of invincibility, of taking nature into her two hands and bending it to her will.
Was that feeling of power—so heady, so tempting—akin to the power the shamans sought? Why should it be right for her and wrong for them? Why had she once resisted it?
She did not like these thoughts; she suspected they would have never come to her in the Blue Mountains.
Winter attacked the Sea of Grass with a vengeance. It was not an alpine winter, with the sky gradually fading into the soft gray of a dove’s breast and the silent, sweet falling of snow blanketing the earth mother, keeping her snug for the gestation of new life. Winter on the grasslands was controlled, like every other season, by the tireless spirit of the wind that swept across the prairie, scattering seed and animal and man.
Wind howled and tore. It drove particles of stinging ice into the eyes and through the clothing. It pelted the unprotected with a granular snow like tiny hailstones; it came in the blink of an eye and could catch and kill you within a short walk from your wagon. The wind could whip a smothering whiteness across the land, composed of snow so heavy it was suffocating, making breathing all but impossible, and what breath remained was sucked out of the lungs by the pervasive cold. Terrible cold. Cold that sank through the flesh and gnawed the marrow within the bones.
Kazhak told Epona of the worst blizzard within his memory, a storm during which deer had turned their rumps to the wind until such masses of ice built up on their hindquarters that the living flesh pulled away in long strips. The dazed, suffering animals wandered aimlessly across the prairie when the storm was over, and the Scythians hunted them down without effort.
Driving ice crystals could blind livestock unless sufficient precautions were taken. When the sky turned a particular dead-white color, Epona watched as the herders wrapped the heads of the most valuable horses with cloth to protect them. When the storm had passed, they found the cloth shredded and many horses had bleeding faces.
The Scythians had spent many generations surviving in this
brutal climate. Now that she lived among them, their women taught Epona how to dress for warmth, how to cover her face, how to build a tent for her man by constructing a round lattice-work frame of wood, then lashing felt rugs securely to this support with hair ropes capable of resisting the wind.
The wind that was like a member of the tribe, always to be considered on the Sea of Grass.
It was not surprising the nomads looked with awe at a woman who seemed able to summon such a force.
Epona began, for the first time in her life, to resent the weather, although she knew it was only an aspect of the earth mother and not a being bent on thwarting her personally, But it forced her to spend most of her time in the wagon—trapped in the wagon, that was how she thought of it—denied the freedom of the horse’s back and the beckoning grassland. In a large, snug lodge, filled with family and the cheer of the fire spirit, the Kelt had spent many long winters without discomfort, but that was far different from the cramped, dark wagon she now occupied.
“Why can’t I at least have Ro-An come and share this tent with me?” she asked Kazhak. “Other women share space; none of them have to live alone, as I do.”
“Who would live with a magic person?” Kazhak replied. He did not want any of his other women in the tent with Epona; that would lessen her status in the eyes of the shamans, it would make her appear to be no different from the others. “Go, visit with other women,” he advised Epona. “But sleep in this place alone except for Kazhak.”
“Then, how soon can I ride again? When can I take my horse and …”
“It is winter. You cannot ride out alone; storms come too fast, is not safe.”
“They tell you I called the storm,” she reminded him. “Do you think it would hurt me?”
“Is one thing to call something; is another to control it. Could be, you would be safe, but Kazhak does not want to take chance.”
Having seen ice storms, Epona did not think she would be
safe, either, but she at least wanted the freedom of choice. If he had told her she might ride when she pleased, she would probably have stayed safely in the encampment until spring. Since he refused to allow her to go out, she could think of little else.
Feeling the rebellion in her, Kazhak took the brown gelding out of the encampment and turned him loose with the main herd.

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