The Horse Road (16 page)

‘It is
favour
that he wants,' I said, staring into Lila's eyes. ‘He wants to win his way back into the king's favour because his father is in disgrace. Arash is clever and ambitious, your mother has said so. And now he thinks that giving Swan as a gift to the king will ensure his own rise to power within the court. He thinks that Swan's sacrifice will wipe out the stain of his father's drunken wager. I am sure of it!'

I kicked my feet free of the coverlet and strode to the window, almost tripping over the slave girl's legs.

‘I must go to Arash again and demand Swan's return! My father is still master of this house and Arash has no right to take Swan before I am married to him!'

‘I don't know,' Lila said with a sigh. ‘Perhaps Arash is only doing what he thinks your father would have done if he was at home. Perhaps offering up your most precious thing is what is required. My father says that the people of Ershi must fight hard to ward off the evil forces, and to struggle
against them. Perhaps Swan is a weapon in this battle between angels and demons …'

I turned on my heel. ‘She is my mare, she is my protector and my totem; Berta said so! No one can give her except me, and I do not choose this sacrifice!'

I stared out of the window, trembling with doubt and anger. I waited for the sky to break open, for a thunderbolt to strike me dead for my rebellion, my selfishness, but the sky remained a clear, tender blue above the rooftops of the city. A gentle breeze wafted through the apricot trees, carrying with it the muted roar of battle. Did I hold the power to turn aside the destruction of the valley? Perhaps it for this very reason that Swan had been born in the summer of my birth, a foal so beautiful that people cried out in delight as she drifted through the flowers like a white petal, a swan's feather. I clenched my fists against the pain of these memories.

Swan!

‘Perhaps the angels are trusting you to make this wise decision,' Lila said.

‘Swan trusts me! Swan needs me to save her! And Arash has done this household an injustice.'

Lila rubbed her forehead, perplexed and troubled. She knew, as well as I did, that falsehood and injustice were part of the evil Angra's great Lie. If Arash was part of this, how could my sacrifice of Swan set the balance right?

Beneath my window, the cotton awnings – becoming faded in the bright light – flapped gently in the breeze. The slave girl scratched at a scab on her arm.

‘The white horse comes from heaven,' she whispered, her head bent over her knees. ‘It is your protector. So it is believed in my father's tribe.'

I stared at the knobs of her spine and the sallow skin on the back of her neck. ‘What is your name?' I asked her.

The knobs on her spine moved as she shrugged. ‘In this city I have been called Sayeh.'

I knew she would not tell me her true name, her tribal name. ‘Ask Marjan for some salve for your sores,' I said.

‘Even if Arash's thinking is not true, your own could be,' Lila persisted. ‘Even if Arash wishes to win favour, you yourself could still give up Swan to help in this fight against the evil one and his dark forces.'

‘I do not choose to give her,' I said stubbornly. Lila stared consideringly at the set of my jaw. She had known me all my life.

‘Poor Swan,' she mumbled, for she had known Swan for as long as she could remember too. We had often ridden on Swan together, our four legs hanging over her satin sides, our faces filled with wind as she stood in the irrigation ditch behind the valley stables, drinking long draughts of mountain water. Once, Lila had come off over Swan's shoulders at a gallop and Swan had stopped so fast that she scored long lines in
the dirt, and she had bent her neck down and breathed gently on Lila's face until she broke into laughter despite the bruises on her chest.

Now Lila's eyes brimmed suddenly with tears. For a long moment our gazes locked together.

‘You cannot go to Arash looking like this,' she said finally with another sigh. ‘You are not doing this the right way. You must go to him wearing your finest clothes, and your jewels, and with your hair combed, and you must speak softly and prettily to him. You must beseech and cajole him. I'll help you get ready.'

She swept across to the wall niche, hung with a covering of embroidered fabric, and began to look through my clothes. ‘Nothing but tunics smelling of horses,' she complained, but then she found a tunic and trousers so new that I had never worn them yet. My father had bought them from a trader returning from India through the high passes of the Hindu Kush, and they were made of lightest silk, that magical fabric guarded by the kingdom far to our east. We had no trade routes to the east for silk, and could obtain it only when it was sold into India first. No one knew how silk was made, whether it came from an exotic plant or the hair of some fabulous, foreign animal. It was a fabric so light, so liquid, that it lay upon the skin like water or like summer air.

‘This is what you will wear,' Lila decided, holding the clothing up and inspecting it, running its folds admiringly through her hands. The silk was dyed
palest green, like the green of new leaves unfurling to hide the singing birds, when the apple trees blossom. The collar, front and hem of the tunic were embroidered with silver thread, and sewn with hundreds of tiny blue beads and with white pearls, forming a pattern of vines and stars.

‘Prepare your mistress a bowl of warm water, and a cloth,' Lila said to the slave child.

‘There isn't enough water to wash –' I protested, but Lila clapped her hands together gracefully, and Sayeh hurried from the room. ‘You cannot go to beg for Swan smelling like drains,' she said. ‘You must wash your hair too. And you must beg and not demand.'

By the time that I had gone downstairs and washed in the bath room, Sayeh and Fardad had fed the mares a portion of millet each, and the girl was running a curry comb over Thunder's grey dappled sides, sweeping it in gentle circles.

‘She must go and wash too,' Lila commanded. ‘You cannot go riding around alone – it doesn't look right – and you must take her with you to Arash.'

The sun was already high in the sky before everything was arranged to Lila's satisfaction and I climbed upwards through the city again, riding on Nomad and with Sayeh following behind, seated obediently on the household mule.

‘Slaves must walk!' Lila had exclaimed in shock when Sayeh led the mule, curry combed to a high gloss, from the stable.

‘My mother will not allow me to keep a slave,' I had reminded Lila. ‘So I have given this girl her freedom, and she is to be my body servant. You know that my servant left this spring to marry a camel driver. Sayeh will replace her.'

Nomad's hoof beats, and the hoof beats of the mule, fell muffled and dull in the dusty streets. They echoed from the fire temple's pale pillars that had gleamed in the moonlight last night like birch trees. My headlong rush on Grasshopper seemed like something that had happened a long time ago; now, it was like the confused memory of a frightening dream. I had felt filled with burning courage then, and an anger that lifted me up the side of Ershi's hill towards the palace complex as a wind lifts an eagle aloft towards the highest crags. Today, in the glaring light, I felt drained and emptied of everything but fear, despite my pale green finery, my swinging earrings and necklaces of silver and lapis lazuli that Lila had lifted from my jewel casket, and the forehead jewellery that trembled over my eyebrows as I rode along. Lila had combed my hair, curling my ringlets around her fingers, and given me jasmine perfume to rub on my neck, and had spent far too long dabbing cosmetics on to my face.

‘Look!' she had cried finally, holding up a bronze mirror. My face had floated in its dull sheen, the face of a beautiful stranger, coloured, jewelled, and with huge blue eyes filled with trepidation.

Now the smell of my perfume mingled sickeningly with the stench of the dry drains, and a lizard scuttled from beneath Nomad's hooves into a crack in a high wall. The closer we approached to the house of the disgraced Royal Falconer, the worse I felt. Everything seemed to float around me, and I was turning into a mirage, a shimmer of fear. What would I say when I came to the gate? Could I make my voice clear and high like Lila's as I asked for entrance to the reception hall, and could I make it sweet and soft when I begged Arash for Swan's life? And what would I say, what words could I use? Shyness seized me, like a stray dog seizing a hen.
I cannot do this
, I thought,
but I must
.

For Swan.

I glanced back over my shoulder; Sayeh had washed in my leftover water, and Marjan had cut the tangles from her hair and combed it out straight, and found an outgrown tunic of mine, faded but clean, for her to wear. She rode the mule without thinking about it, her body flexible and loose, although when she stood on the ground and was spoken to, she was as stiff as a twig. I saw her lean forward and fondle one of the mule's great ears with its pale fringing of long hair.

We were almost there now. I wiped my sweating palms on my thighs, and then gripped Nomad's reins more firmly. Her mane had been shaved off to reveal the splendid arch of her neckline, and her jewelled
neck collar glinted in the light as she paced towards the high arch of the first courtyard.

Two guards stepped in front of us, and I saw, as I reined my mare to a halt, that they were not the same men who had witnessed my humiliation the previous night. For a long moment we stared at each other, my tongue frozen against the roof of my mouth.

‘I wish to speak …' My voice was a sigh of summer wind against the stuccoed walls. Heat flooded my face and the jewels trembled on my forehead. I cleared my throat and took a deep breath in.

‘I wish to speak with the honourable Arash, your master's son,' I said more loudly.

The men shook their heads, their long black beards scratching across their tunics. ‘He rode out on a sortie at dawn with the heavy cavalry. He is encamped in the hippodrome and will not return to this house tonight.'

I stared at them; were they lying? Should I ask them about Swan? What could I possibly say that would make them disloyal to their master?

‘You are s-sure he is not here?' I asked at last, and they stared back at me impassively, sternly.

‘He is encamped in the hippodrome,' one repeated.

Behind them the walls surrounding that great house soared skywards, throwing the heat on to us. Nomad pawed restlessly at the ground, and I tugged on her reins, wondering whether Swan stood somewhere very close, straining her ears to hear her stable
mate, fidgeting restlessly in a stall, wondering when I would come and bring her home. If Nomad neighed, would Swan hear the sound? If I called her name, would she respond with a gusty whicker of recognition, a high joyous whinny?

‘I have come about a horse,' I said softly, and smiled at the guards although my lips trembled. ‘Arash has said that I might visit a mare that is in the stables here.'

I smiled again, but the guards stepped towards me, their hands on their dagger hilts, and Nomad shifted two steps backwards.

‘We cannot allow you to enter,' one of the men said. My gaze flickered across the grim line of his mouth beneath the great plume of his black moustache, and fell to the tips of his shining black boots.

‘I will wait for the honourable Arash in the hippodrome,' I said, my words running into each other in their reluctance to fly free of my mouth. Nomad wheeled around, and the mule swung its ears and fell into step behind the mare. All the way down through the city my heart beat heavy and slow, like the sound of hoof beats when a horse is very weary. The hippodrome's expanse was quiet; women sat cross-legged on the ground by small, smouldering fires, and shaped dough into flat bread or stitched at embroideries. Here and there a lone horse, perhaps too lamed or injured to ride out, stood with its head hanging. I found Arash's tent at last; it was crimson
and splendid, and deserted save for an old servant who sat on the ground outside, stitching at broken harness, and who said that I might wait for his master's return. Sayeh and I tied Nomad and the mule to a tent peg, and ducked inside to where it was slightly cooler and dimmer. Cross-legged on the thick carpets, I stared at the wall hangings, at the bed of a fine, shining wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I wiped at my sweating face with the back of my hand, smearing the black lines of kohl that Lila had applied so carefully around my eyes.

The afternoon trickled past, sand moving grain by grain. Occasionally, a dog barked. A horse stamped. A baby cried fretfully to be nursed. The old servant man laid aside the leather and his needle, and fell asleep in the tent's shade.

Had Swan been watered this morning? Had someone run a brush over her, lightly and with love? Or roughly and in haste? Had she been fed; was she cool and comfortable or tied up outside in the blistering sun, plagued by flies?

What was the point of it, all those hours that I had spent training her, teaching her to wheel and spin, to gallop flattened out, to canter collected beneath me, her muscles coiled tight? Why should it all come to this, her death at the base of a flaming altar in the king's courtyard, where nobody knew her stories, her skills, her memories?

My mother said that a horse could remember
everything as well as a person could; that if you struck or mistreated a horse it would remember you all of its life and mistrust you. She said that a horse had only to be ridden once along a mountain track and, years later, it would know its way there, would know where to place its hooves to avoid crevices and fissures. She said that a horse had only to find its way to a pool of water on a hot afternoon, or to watch the running of wolves down a ravine in winter, to know those places again. The water it would always know how to find, and the wolves how to avoid.

But I was the keeper of all Swan's memories, and now we had been separated. The magi in their long white robes would not know anything about her. They would not know that they must speak her name to make her walk forward towards the moment of her death. And would she look around in that moment, searching for me, for my familiar figure that had run to her through so many years of dust or rain, through drifting snow, through summer's ripples of heat? Would she wonder why I had deserted her before blackness engulfed her?