The Shepherd Kings (21 page)

He ran fingers through his thick curly beard and sighed.
Some things a man would be hard pressed to give up. If it meant that he kept
the rest . . . well, and so be it.

A step brought him about. His sister Maryam stood in the
doorway. His smile was swift, broad, and altogether unselfconscious.

She smiled back, warmly. One forgot, then, her unfortunate
resemblance to their late father: the solid features, the thick sturdy body.
Her eyes were beautiful, and her smile. She had her share of pride, as all his
family did, but she tempered it with grace.

“Ah,” he said. “My favorite sister. And are you keeping well
here?”

“Very well,” she said. “This house is pleasant, I do admit.
It’s not so ill after all to have our own place, apart from the Egyptians.”

“It’s as bad as that?”

She shrugged. “No one ever conquered them before. They don’t
know how to endure it.”

Khayan frowned, though not at her, nor particularly at what
she had said. “That’s true, isn’t it? They hate us. They call us the Hyksos,
the Foreign Kings, and the people from Retenu, which is what they call Canaan,
and ‘vile Asiatics.’ They won’t call us by our names. Any of them. As if, in
refusing to acknowledge our names, they refuse our existence.”

“Yes,” she said. “They have a great belief in the power of
names.”

“Have they cursed us, do you think?”

“I’m sure they have.” She took his hand and held it in her
own, and smiled up at him. She was much smaller than he was; a fact that always
subtly amazed him. She had been nigh a woman grown when he was born. Now he was
a man, and she but a smallish woman nearing middle years, unmarried and some
would think unregarded. But Maryam was no such feeble creature as that.

“We should go,” she said to him. “Our mother is waiting.”

He nodded. She led him inward, into the realm of shadows and
half-lights, subtle scents and soft voices, that he had always thought of as
the women’s country. He felt large and ungainly there, creature of sun and wind
and open places that he was.

The Lady Sarai was waiting in the heart of her domain. They
had set up a loom there, and she and her women wove a fabric of wondrous
complexity, colors mingled so subtly and with such artistry that the eye could
barely begin to encompass them. He looked, the quick dart of a glance. But
there was no sign of Barukha.

He had come prepared to fret greatly over that most
maddening of women, and to face the accusation of dishonor. And yet, in Sarai’s
presence, all of that ceased to matter. She was not thinking of that one of her
servants. Perhaps she seldom thought of Barukha at all.

Khayan let out a barely perceptible sigh. He had not been
summoned here for that, then. Sarai had another use for him. He set himself to
be wary, to watch for ambush, but in that quarter at least he was safe.

Sarai looked up from her loom. He was the child of her age,
he and his sister Sadana who had been born in the year before him. After him had
been no more.

And yet, as she sat at the great loom, with only the
lightest of veils over her hair and none concealing her face, she seemed no
older than her daughter Maryam. Her hair was ruddy still, barely touched with
grey. Her eyes were as clear as they had ever been, wide amber eyes that she
had passed to her son and her younger daughter.

For all the terror of her presence, when she looked up from
the loom and smiled, he was as besotted as any raw boy must be with a queen.

“Khayan,” she said. “Come. Sit by me.”

There was room, because her women saw to it that there was.
It was not so unfamiliar to sit at a loom, or to take his turn with the shuttle,
either.

When he had added a finger’s breadth to the pattern, Sarai
said, “You’ve labored mightily to be lord in this place.”

He stared at the fabric stretched out in front of him, as if
a response had been woven into it. But it was only colored thread. “I’ve done
what I may to fulfill my duty,” he said.

“You’re not loved for it.”

“Love has little to do with it.”

“Yes,” she said. She wove her own stretch of cloth, then
paused again. “Why do you trouble yourself?”

“How can I not?”

“Not and be Khayan.” She petted him as if he had been a fine
hound. “Yes, child. As futile as it is, you will go on doing it. But have a
care. No Egyptian in this country is friend to one of us.”

“What, none?” he asked. He was not mocking her, not exactly.
He had been away, after all. Much could have changed. Though, it seemed, little
had.

“We are all enemies,” she said. “Egypt has not accepted us
in a hundred years. I doubt that it ever will.”

“Does that matter, as long as we rule it?”

“As long as you rule it,” she said, “no.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What, Mother? What have you heard?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Then you summoned me simply for the pleasure of my
company?”

“May not a mother do that, when her son has been away for
most of the years of his manhood?”

“She may,” he said. “But you have never yet done anything
for a simple reason. What is it? Rebels in the house? Murderers under the
beds?”

“No more than there ever are,” she said. “No, I’ve another
thought entirely. The Mare.”

He raised his brows. That was a great thing and a mystery, a
deep matter of gods and their servants, and he was part of it. He had been sent
in childhood to his mother’s people, far away in the sunrise countries, to grow
to a man where men were not taught to be arrogant lords of the world, but
obedient servants to women and the gods. His father had not objected; this was
a younger son, and the mother who sent him was high in the lord’s favor.

Then when Khayan was grown to manhood, he was given a task,
chosen over the women of the tribes—most of whom felt themselves far more
suited to it than a mere and youthful male—to bring into the west the living
image of the tribes’ great goddess, Horse Goddess herself. That was the
moon-white Mare. Her predecessor, the goddess’ elder image, was dead. The Young
Mare would go where the elder had gone, away into Egypt, there to bless the conquering
kings with her presence.

It was the will of the Mare herself, the elders had said,
that Khayan be her escort into the west, nor were they at all pleased to say
it. But since the Mare was what she was, her will was to be obeyed, and never
questioned.

The elders had been in much dismay, even in their obedience.
The Mare before this had left the east when she chose her priestess who would
serve her till she died, had gone through all the lands of the west until she
came to Egypt, and there made it clear that she would stay—a shocking thing,
and a great loss to the tribes, for the White Mare had lived in the east since
the dawn of the world. Then too soon she died, and her servant died with her,
felled by some fever of this pestilent country.

That had been a tragedy, but not unbearable—until the Young
Mare in the east had made it clear to the priestesses that she also would go
into the west. More—that she would take her kin with her, the herd of
moon-white horses. Horse Goddess had departed from the tribes, taken her living
presence and the blessing of her regard from the people and bestowed it on
their distant and somewhat estranged kin.

There had been great mourning and weeping, and a great rite
of grief and parting, but no one presumed to stop the Mare or bind her. One did
not bind a goddess.

Khayan stood now in front of his mother, who was a queen’s
daughter of the tribes, and said, “What is it? Hasn’t the Mare chosen her
servant?”

For the first time since he could remember, his mother
looked less than perfectly serene. A frown marred the smoothness of her brow.
Her lips were tight. “No. She has not.”

Khayan blinked. “But the Mare always chooses—” His eyes
passed swiftly over the room. “Where is Sadana? Has something happened to her?”

“Sadana is out drowning her sorrows,” Sarai said. “Riding,
as she always is.”

“But not on the Mare.” Khayan shook his head. “But, Mother,
she was supposed to be chosen. No one ever doubted that she would. That was why
they let me go—because they thought I’d take the Mare to my sister. She was the
priestess’ acolyte. She was to be the chosen one.”

“The Mare passed by your sister in the rite as if she were
no one at all.”

“That’s unheard of,” he said.

“The Mare does as she pleases,” Sarai said with calm that
must be hard won. “Yes, I thought that my daughter would be chosen. I never
thought that she would fail.”

“How could she fail? She’s your daughter.”

“The Mare doesn’t care for that,” Sarai said.

“Gods,” said Khayan. “What this must be doing to Sadana— She
hasn’t come to me at all.”

“And what could you do if she did?”

“Comfort her,” he said. “Console her.”

“That’s not a thing she’ll take from a man just now,” Sarai
said. “And from you least of all.”

“Still,” he said stubbornly and not too wisely. “Why wasn’t
I told sooner? You must have known this soon after I brought the Mare back.”

“We delayed the rite when your father died,” she said. “Then
you were chosen heir, and there was a great to-do over that. It wasn’t till
you’d left to come here that we did what had to be done.”

“And the Mare chose no one.”

“And the Mare chose no one,” Sarai said.

Khayan bent to the loom. The simple labor helped him to
think. This was not a thing of the men’s side, not at all, but Khayan was his
mother’s son. For the Mare to choose no one was unheard of. Or else . . .

“Is there a candidate you could have presented but didn’t?
Someone you never thought of, or thought of and discarded?”

“We presented every woman of suitable age who was within our
reach,” Sarai said. “She ignored them all.”

“Then there’s one you forgot,” he said.

“What, one of our eastern cousins?”

Khayan shrugged. “Maybe. Or some lord’s wife or daughter who
wasn’t able to be at the choosing. I rather doubt that every lord with women of
suitable age would have sent them, the Mare’s servant being what she is, and
living as she does, free and unveiled before the people. Wouldn’t it be like
some of them to hide away their kinswomen, and lie to the searchers? Not every
man is as obedient to the gods as the people in the east.”

“We did think of that,” Sarai said a little dryly. “This has
never happened before. Always, at the choosing, there has been one chosen from
among those presented—however many or few those might have been. This Mare
would have none of them.”

“It’s said,” Maryam said, daring greatly to speak in front
of their mother, “that this is a message and an omen. This country has no love
for us. We should leave it.”

“And yet I’ve heard,” Khayan said, “that when the Old Mare
came here, that was an omen, a token of great favor. Horse Goddess had blessed
my father’s people and chosen them to be her own.”

Maryam bent over the loom as he had done just now, but her
hands were still, making no move to add to the pattern. “Who knows what the
gods think? If the Mare has no companion, then Horse Goddess’ rites can’t be
celebrated. The men have their own gods. They claim that horses are theirs, but
all the wise know that without Horse Goddess we lose the greater part of our
strength.”

“There are precious few men of such wisdom in Egypt,” their
mother said with a suggestion of weariness. “No, my son, and nor are you. But
the horses have always spoken to you. If you might go to the Mare—”

“She won’t choose me,” he said a little too quickly.

“No,” said Sarai, “she’ll not choose a man to be her one
great servant. But she might reveal somewhat to you that she has declined to
reveal to the rest of us. She chose you, after all, to be her guardsman.”

Khayan opened his mouth, but shut it again. He could hardly
argue with such logic. It was women’s logic, Mare’s logic. He bowed to it.

Khayan could not go out at once to confront the Mare.
Night had fallen while he spoke with his mother. The daymeal was long since
spread, and he had been absent from it. There was a sizable repast waiting for
him in his chambers, and a lissome woman in his bed—not the astonishing
Barukha, somewhat to his surprise. This was one of the maids, an Egyptian, with
smoky eyes and smooth bare limbs and no modesty at all.

He ate what was laid out for him, and took the maid, too,
because she was willing—or so she pretended. She lacked Barukha’s liveliness,
but not the skill. She was very skilled, even with a man too tired and
preoccupied to do her justice.

She soothed his body. His mind was not so easily comforted.
It spun back and forth, round and about: Barukha, his mother, his sisters, the
Mare who would not bind herself to a human woman.

Nor would Khayan, either, but that was half laziness and
half circumstance. He did not want a wife. He did not want to exert himself to
the degree that a wife required.

Nor had one been presented to him, Barukha notwithstanding.
Barukha had made it clear that he would have to wait for her. She wanted that
old and wealthy man first, to make her a widow, and therefore free to choose.
Then she would come to Khayan.

And all the while his mind rested on Barukha’s face and
voice, the maid stroked and fondled, bringing him erect in spite of himself. He
woke with a small start to awareness of her face, little pointed Egyptian
cat-face, long Egyptian eyes. The lips smiled but the eyes were dark, dark and
cold.

He gasped. She mounted him and rode him as one of his own
sisters would ride a stallion, still with smiling mouth and empty eyes.

That was Egypt. Yes. That was all this country to a lord of
the conquering people.

~~~

It was a full hand of days before Khayan could do his
mother’s bidding. He could not escape his duties, nor would he shirk them. When
he woke in the morning, the steward Teti was there with his list of things that
the lord should do. After Khayan had done as many of them as mortal flesh could
bear, the dusk was closing in and the daymeal was spread and waiting.