White Mare's Daughter (98 page)

He let them wait for it. He knew already what he would say,
but he wanted to study their faces, to see who and what they were.

Some he knew, men of the White Horse and its brother tribes.
Others came from farther away, north and south perhaps, even east. They had all
come in search of wealth, gold and copper, fine weavings, willing women. And
yes, war.

War they had had. The rest . . .

He spoke at last in the murmurous silence. “Men of the
tribes,” he said. “Dreamers of riches. Slayers of women and children, destroyers
of cities. You belong to me now. I am your king by right of conquest. Do you
accept me?”

Silence.

Agni would not repeat what he had said. To do so would have
been weakness. He sat as a king sits, gleaming in gold, with his wife of the
Great Marriage beside him and his yearbrother on guard at his right hand.

He let them see that. He let them remember what he could do
if they refused him.

It would be a brief fight. His own men were few, and theirs
a multitude.

But custom held them. Law bound them. First one, then
another came slowly forward, dropped stiffly to his knees, bowed on his face.

Not one refused. Not even those of the White Horse, though
they came late and slow. When each man of the White Horse rose, he looked into
Agni’s face, looked hard and long.

He bore their scrutiny. He had no shame of what he was or
had done. Nor had he committed the crime for which his people had cast him out.

Maybe they saw that. Maybe they simply accepted the
inevitable. He had defeated their king. He had won them and all that was
theirs.

Before he was outcast, he had been their prince, their king
who would be. He watched them remember. He watched them choose. To follow him.
To take him as their king.

When they had risen and drawn back, a great tension drained
out of him. It had been there, if he had known it, since he was driven from the
tribe. He had made his own tribe and people, but these were his kin. That they
accepted him—it mattered. It mattered very much indeed.

oOo

When Agni had received the last of their tribute, he rose.
He spread his arms. He called them all—every one—to the festival. Victors and
vanquished mingled; enemies that had been were transformed into allies. Even
blood- feuds were laid aside.

In the morning the feuds would come back. Enemies would
remember that they hated one another. But they would be one army, one great
gathering of tribes. Then Agni must see that they were given places to camp,
grazing for their herds, occupation for their men.

The Lady’s country was wide. It could sustain them. As for
what they could do: all that they had burned and broken, they could mend, and
whatever they had destroyed, they could build anew.

That would be the work of years. Then when war came again
from the steppe, they would be ready. There would never again be such easy
conquest as Agni had found, or as Yama had met in his turn.

All that would come when it came. For this day, they kept
festival.

But Agni was not quite done with his judging. There was
still a matter that he would not leave to the women.

oOo

Yama-diti had secluded herself with her daughters in a
tent beside the king’s tent. It was small and rather tattered: such a tent as a
poor relation would claim, or a discredited wife.

Agni did not succumb to the pathos of it. That Yama-diti was
deeply bereaved, he did not doubt. But she was never either poor or powerless.

He had her summoned to him in the king’s tent, because a
king did not go to a woman unless it was her bed he sought. He waited where his
father the old king had been accustomed to receive his wives and daughters, in
the common space, the high wide center of the tent. It was brighter and airier
than he remembered, with the tentflap fastened back and banks of lamps lit—more
lamps than they had ever had in the old time.

He was not in the least surprised to see Rudira enter with
the woman and her daughters. In front of them Yama’s widow at least observed an
appearance of circumspection.

When they had been brought in, Patir who had been his
messenger, and Tillu who had attached himself to the company, both stood on
guard at Agni’s back. Agni had not asked them to do that, but neither did he
forbid. He did not particularly wish to be alone with these of all women.

At a gesture from Agni, the women sat. Yama-diti and her
daughters were modestly attired in the manner of the tribes, but Rudira wore
fabric of this country woven as thin and pale as mist. She kept her eyes
lowered, her hands in her lap. He elected not to see how her nipples tightened
under the gown, or how she arched ever so subtly so that he would be sure to
notice.

The tentflap was lifted still. Taditi came to stand in it,
half blocking the bright flood of light from without, but not so much that it
failed to shine full on the unveiled faces of Yama-diti and her companions.

Rudira blinked and cowered, shielding her eyes. Agni did not
recall that he had ever seen her in full daylight. Only in dim places, in
shadows, or under stars or moon.

The sun did not destroy her as they said it would destroy a
witch, but neither did she bask in it. Not as Yama-diti did, like an old
serpent coiled at ease on a stone, fixing Agni with a flat glittering stare.

Agni could not speak the words that would have been proper
to a woman whose son had died. Not when it had been Agni who killed him. Agni
could muster no grief, no regret that he had done it. Brother in blood Yama had
been, but in the spirit he had never been aught but an enemy.

This woman had borne him, raised him, taught him bitter and
envious hatred of any who had what he had not. Agni they had hated above all,
because though he was younger born, he was the firstborn son of Rama the king.
Yama was eldest of the princes, but Agni was the heir, who would be king in his
turn.

Yama had never been the enemy. Not truly. The mind that
ruled him, the will that bent him, was here. Rudira wanted to be a king’s wife,
would do anything at all to gain it. Yama-diti wanted to be a king’s mother: to
hold power as a woman must among the tribes; to rule through the son of her
body.

Agni had pardoned the men who fought against him. This one
he could not pardon. She had not merely fought. She had conspired to destroy
him.

When he spoke, he spoke to the point. “I can’t let you
live,” he said.

Yama-diti neither stirred nor flinched. One of the daughters
began to weep softly, the easy tears of a woman who hopes to melt a man’s
heart.

But Agni’s was set in stone. “You may choose,” he said.
“Poison in the cup, or the spears of my warband under the sky.”

“The spear is a man’s death,” Yama-diti said.

“You were a king’s wife. That honor is allowed you, to die
like a man.”

“And if I choose neither?”

“I choose,” Agni said.

“Poison,” said Yama-diti without hesitation. “I do not wish
to die like a man.”

Agni inclined his head.

“But,” said Yama-diti, “I ask a thing of you. My daughters
had nothing to do with what was done to you. They are your sisters, the
children of your father. Let them live.”

“Why?” Agni asked. “They’re your creatures. They have no
minds or will apart from you.”

“Then give them to a man who can master them.” Yama-diti’s
eyes glittered, stabbing the air in back of Agni’s shoulder. “Give them to
him.”

Agni glanced back at Tillu. Yama-diti’s eyes, the force of
her regard, shook him out of comfort and away from familiarity. For a moment he
saw Tillu as a stranger would: the terrible scars in a face that had never been
beautiful, even in youth and unmarred.

It was the face of a forest man overlaid with a faint cast
of the tribes, strong as old stone. A blade had cloven it in a fight long ago,
Tillu had told him. It had healed, but he would never lose the marks, the nose
broken and split, the lip twisted in a perpetual snarl.

Agni blinked, and his sight cleared again. He saw the eyes
above the scars, and the spirit in them. A good man, a man wise after his
fashion, and loyal to the king whom he had chosen to follow.

Agni raised his brows. Tillu lowered his. “Your choice,”
Agni said.

Tillu nodded. “They’re a king’s daughters,” he said, “and a
king’s sisters. Their breeding is good. I’m less sure of their tempers—but my
eldest wife is a strong woman. She’ll teach them manners.”

Agni watched the sisters. The one who had wept was sitting
narrow-eyed, her tears forgotten. The other regarded Tillu in a kind of horror.

Idiots. If they reckoned it punishment to be given to a good
and loyal man who would treat them far better than they deserved, then so be
it. “Watch your back,” he said to Tillu, “and eat nothing that either of them
serves you. And give their children to other women to raise.”

“I’ll tame them,” Tillu said, “never you fear. They’ll be
eating from my hand.”

“Biting it, rather,” Agni muttered, but Tillu only laughed.
He was not at all unhappy with this prize that he had been given. He might be a
little less than pleased with their faces; they were sour creatures, with their
mother’s strong chin and her hawk’s nose. But faces mattered little when a man
was getting sons, and blood mattered much. In one stroke of an old woman’s
mockery, Tillu had become kinsman to the king.

Yama-diti’s expression betrayed nothing. If she had hoped to
be denied, to take her daughters into death with her, she had been
disappointed. Yet Agni rather suspected that she had hoped for this. It would
be like her to bind her daughters to a man so ugly that few women would go to
him willingly, but whose heart was good and who would treat them well.

He would get sons on them, and daughters. She was dead by
her own choice, but she would live on in her children’s children.

Taditi was waiting. Agni caught her eye. She came forward
with the cup and set it in his hand. He caught the strong sweet scent of wine,
and the other thing beneath it, both bitter and pungent.

Yama-diti’s eyes fixed on it. Had she expected him to wait,
to send her away, to give her time to work more mischief? Or had it simply come
home to her that this was the reckoning?

Agni held out the cup. She had to raise herself to take it,
kneeling in front of him.

Her fingers brushed his as they closed on the cup. It was a
skull-cup, and new, still faintly rose-tinted with the blood that had given it
life. It had yet to be carved or painted or bound with gold as Agni intended.

A shudder ran through her. She knew whose skull this had
been. Agni met her eyes over the curve of it.

She took it in both her hands, trembling just visibly. She
had great courage; far more than her son had ever had. Eyes still locked with
Agni’s, she raised the cup of her son’s skull to her lips, and drank long and
deep.

Taditi had brewed the poison well, and brewed it strong. For
a stretching moment Yama-diti sat still, as if she felt nothing. Then it
struck, hard and sudden like a spear to the vitals. She fell, convulsed.

No one moved to catch her or to aid her. Her daughters, who
might have done so, clutched at one another and stared.

She died alone as all of them watched. It was ugly but it
was swift. It was as much mercy as Agni could give, and more than she deserved.

oOo

When it was over, when she lay still at last, heavy with
the stench of death, the women of the king’s tent came to take her away. None
met Agni’s gaze.

He knew most of them: they had elected to belong to him
before he was driven out. The rest must be wives taken since Yama made himself
king, or Yama’s own elder wives.

There were no children. Yama had sired no sons, nor
daughters, either.

Not one of all those women shed a tear for Yama-diti. Even
her daughters were dry-eyed. They would take her and bury her in the women’s
rite, and relegate her to silence.

Her spirit would not haunt them. Taditi had promised Agni
that. Whatever malice lingered, the women would cleanse the world of it.

It was, when he thought about it, remarkably like the burial
of a Mother. And for all that he had hated her, and as glad as he was that she
was dead, this much he could concede. She had, in her way, been a woman of
great power and strength of will. Even in death she had yielded to no one.

oOo

When it was done, when she was taken away and her
daughters had gone with Tillu to be his wives and servants, there was still
Rudira. Patir had stayed, and Taditi come back from seeing to Yama-diti’s
rites.

Rudira had not moved at all, or spoken. She had no
intention, it was all too clear, of surrendering herself to the women. She was
Agni’s burden. Agni and Agni alone must judge and sentence her.

Agni regarded her in a kind of despair. The rest of Yama’s
wives were a simple matter. Most had been the old king’s, and briefly Agni’s.
Agni could take one or all of them. Or, if he so chose, men of the tribes would
take them and be honored, as Tillu was, because of who they were and had been.
But Rudira he did not trust, nor would ever trust. Rudira wanted to be a king’s
wife.

The skull-cup lay where Taditi had set it after Yama-diti
fell, not far from Agni’s foot. There was still a little wine left in it, a
dark stain on the white bone. Agni could bid Rudira drink it. She might even
obey.

He could not marry her. He could not give her to someone
else. No more could he kill her. It was a perfect dilemma. Maybe if he chose at
random, said the first thing that came into his head—

“Ah! There you are.”

Agni blinked. A shadow swelled in the light from without,
and shrank into the madwoman Catin. Her eyes were on Rudira; the rest of them
might never have been there at all. “What are you doing here? You don’t belong
in this place.”