Across the Spectrum (23 page)

“Why? Will you be stealing him, too?”

“Claiming,” Aymery said. “Or reclaiming.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

The rest of the ladies had been listening in silence. Now
the eldest said, “The hour is late, and dawn comes quickly at this time of
year. Best you sleep, young mortal. Morning may bring us all better counsel.”

Aymery had his doubts, but he was too polite to voice them.
He bowed and thanked them kindly for their hospitality. They bowed in return,
as queens might; and he had known a few of those.

∞

The youngest lady’s name, as far as she had one, was
Halima. She lit a lamp to guide him to his sleeping place, and hovered when
they came there.

It was not awkwardness, or lack of manners, either. She was
studying him intently, as she had when she wore that other skin. Curious;
taking in every part of him, with nostrils slightly flared, as if even in this
shape her senses were keener than a woman’s.

He could feel the slow heat rising. He was not at all sure
what he thought of it. That part of him was still new, mostly.

Maybe it was to her, too. She shied away suddenly, with a
sound very like a snort, and vanished into the depths of the house.

∞

Aymery had choices.

He could leave this place, and hope the magic let him go
back where he had come from, and tell no one where he had been; and that
supposed he came back to find the king still outside Narbonne, and no hundred
years gone by in the two nights he had been gone. He might take a whipping for
running away without the king’s leave, and he might lose his place and be sent
back home. That would shame his family, and he might have to take the tonsure
to make amends, which would not be a pleasant or a welcome thing.

He could stay, and hope to talk the ladies round. They might
even listen. He had a quick tongue, people said, and a way with words. He might
talk himself into more trouble than he had bargained for, too; that had
happened before, and he had suffered for it.

He could try to work such spells as he knew, and take the
stallion, and return him to the king. Though even while he thought of that, he
knew there was no hope of getting past the gate of Tencendur’s pasture. He
would be doing well to come out alive, if he tried that.

Or he could try one more thing. Not a particularly useful or
sensible thing, and even less likely to succeed, but in the morning light, it
seemed the simplest.

The ladies were gone again, and the house deserted. He saw
to such things as needed seeing to, as he had the day before. This time he set
a pot over the hearth and filled it with herbs and roots and bits from the
garden, to simmer all day and feed them all come evening.

Then he went to the ladies’ pasture, where Tencendur was
most interested in one of the elder ladies. Clearly she was not past such
things; and who knew? There might be yet another of the Ladies’ descendants,
come the spring.

When the stallion had done his duty and the mare had gone
back to her grazing, Aymery ventured into the field. Ears swiveled; tails
swished. But no one ordered him out.

The stallion was in as soft a mood as Aymery had ever seen
him. Aymery approached with respect but without submission, as one should with
a stallion.

Tencendur watched him quietly. That could change, he knew,
in an instant.

He bowed politely. The stallion flicked a fly from his ear.
“My lord,” Aymery said, “I come to ask a favor of you.”

To that he received no response. Nonetheless he persevered.
“My king,” he said, “is missing you terribly. Would you consider returning with
me, at least to bid him farewell?”

He felt a little foolish, addressing an animal so, but his
heart knew it was right and proper.

Tencendur seemed as oblivious as any mute beast would be.
The mares grazed like common horses, as if they had never worn any other shape
than that.

“Of course this is a stallion’s paradise,” Aymery said, “and
these ladies are such companions as any man or horse would dream of. And yet,
my lord, would you forswear fame and glory? Would you turn your back on the
king who loves you as a brother?”

The ripe snort came not from the stallion but from the young
mare with the long dark mane. She had come up behind Aymery, silent in the
grass, and blown mockery in his ear.

He ignored her as nobly as he might, though he kept a wary
eye on the hoof that had planted itself beside his foot. “My lord,” he said,
“sweet indeed are the temptations of love, but there are ladies in multitudes
among the king’s armies, and more still in the farms and studs of Francia.”

The hoof came down with toe-crushing force. He barely evaded
it. “
You
are his daughter,” he
reminded her. “Shouldn’t you be looking to tempt another stallion?”

Her glance made him blush from crown to mercifully intact
toe. He was most likely the first human male she had ever come close enough to
get the measure of. So he told himself, but the slow heat was even slower to go
away.

He looked from her straight into Tencendur’s broad ash-grey
forehead. The stallion was as soft-footed as his daughter, and even less
inclined toward mercy.

He thrust his head toward Aymery’s chest, with a twist that
gave Aymery a choice: tumble to the earth under two horses’-worth of hooves, or
scramble onto the stallion’s back.

It was an honest dilemma, and not even a heartbeat’s space
to ponder it. His body chose the heights, and braced for the mountain to erupt.

He dug his fingers into thick ash-colored mane. Tencendur’s
powerful haunches coiled; he surged past his daughter.

Aymery’s heart was thundering in his ears, but he had enough
wits left to notice that he was still astride and the back beneath him was
making no effort to fling him off.

That could change in an instant. Even so he let himself
relax into the strong rolling gait. For all the power in it, it was smooth; the
wind of it blew his hair back out of his face, and startled him into laughter.

∞

Tencendur carried him straight to the villa and into the
courtyard, and there removed him with a deft duck, twist, and spin.

He sat nursing his bruised tailbone while the stallion
danced around him, mane and tail flying, mocking him with every toss of the
head. The hooves flew well away from him, and the wind of that big body’s
passage just barely kissed his cheeks. He had time to get his breath back
before Tencendur stopped and wheeled and loosed a mighty peal of mirth and
triumph.

The ladies came in in the wake of it, once more in their
human forms. It was a procession of sorts, with the youngest first, and the
eldest pacing in last and coming to a halt that completed the circle around the
stallion and the bruised and winded boy.

“You are a presumptuous child,” she said.

He bowed to the truth of that. “I am also a king’s servant.
And this is his horse.”

“First he was ours,” the eldest lady said.

“He was that,” said Aymery. Then he took the leap, the one
he had been thinking of since last night, that might be mad and might be the
death of him. But it was honorable, as far as he could reckon it.

“What if,” he said, “this stallion went back to the king who
loves him, but you had one to take his place?”

“You?” Halima did not seem appalled. She was not exactly delighted,
either, as far as he could tell.

He drew a breath to steady himself. “I know I’m a poor
second to yonder magnificence. But I am young, and I can be taught.” He paused.
“It doesn’t have to be a horse, does it? Unless I misunderstood?”

One of the younger ladies, who was closest to birthing or
foaling of them all, regarded him with a kind of weary indulgence. “So, young
thing. You think to find yourself a life of ease and pampering, and making of
children whenever it pleases you.”

He could not deny that he had thought of that, but he said
to her, “That would be dull beyond bearing, lady. I see that there’s much to do
here, both on the farmstead and in the matter of defense. Are your husbands
frequently stolen or appropriated or otherwise removed from their proper
eminence?”

“Presumptuous,” the eldest lady murmured.

The lady who was bearing said, “That was an accident, and a
singular misfortune. A mortal man happened to wander past our borders while we
were distracted by matters both high and holy. Our lord was young, and it was
spring, and the man was riding a mare. She was in season. What could our lord
do after all but what his nature bade him? He broke the wards that we had set,
and had his will of the mare—and when he came to himself again, he was bound
and bridled and on his way to Narbonne.”

“He sold for a great price,” Halima said, “and the one who
bought him had sorcerers at his command, who wrought such spells as we could
not break without harm to ourselves or our lord.”

Aymery nodded. He had guessed as much. “So,” he said, “if I
offer you all the talents that I have, and any others that you can teach, would
you let my king have his horse?”

“He is no one’s possession,” the lady who was bearing said
with a distinct chill in her voice.

“But the king may belong to him,” said Aymery.

“If he agrees, and you agree to serve our will in all
things,” the eldest lady said, “then so may it be.”

The breath rushed out of him. He had not expected that, not
yet. Maybe not at all. And what it meant. . .

Men gambled their lives every day. Aymery could still lose
this wager—though what exactly that meant, he was not sure.

Once more he bowed to Tencendur, and spread his hands. “My
lord,” he said, “it seems the choice is yours.”

And since Tencendur was a horse, and a stallion at that,
Aymery had no doubt what that would be. Pasture and mares forever after—or
until he was stolen or appropriated again.

If the ladies would allow it. Certainly it would take strong
magic; and Carl was a most Christian king. He had no sorcerers in his
following.

Tencendur rubbed an itch on his knee. If he was thinking,
Aymery could not see him doing it. He nosed at the paving of the courtyard,
found a bit of straw, chewed it thoroughly.

Then he turned and walked out of the circle of ladies. Toward
the outer gate.

They parted before him. Aymery could not read their
expressions. Even Halima was completely blank.

The stallion must be going out to pasture. He could not be
leaving. He was a horse. He would not make choices as a man might.

“You had better go with him,” Halima said as Aymery stood
gaping. “He’ll go where he’s determined to go, but if another traveler happens
by, and the traveler is riding a mare. . . ”

That could happen, Aymery conceded. “But,” he said. “I
struck a bargain.”

“You did,” said the eldest lady. “It begins with this. Go
with our lord, young lord. Be his escort where he wishes to go.”

Aymery was bound to obey—even if he had not wanted it with
most of his heart. “I will come back,” he said.

“We know you will,” said the eldest lady.

Tencendur had nearly reached the gate. Aymery sprang in
pursuit.

The stallion stopped. His eye rolled. Aymery was duly
warned, but he was also properly commanded. He swung onto the now familiar
back.

It suffered him as it had before. He was no more in command
of the horse now than he had been, but that too was familiar, if not precisely
comforting. “As you will,” he said to the ear that curved back toward him, “my
lord.”

As Tencendur carried him through the gate, the echo of
hooves multiplied to an improbable degree. Aymery looked back startled.

The three eldest ladies stood where he had left them. The
rest trotted in the stallion’s wake, even she whose belly swung, huge with
foal.

Halima came up level with his knee, and made as if to nip at
it. He slapped her impudence away—then paused in a kind of horror. By the
bargain he had made, she was his lady now, and the ruler of his life and honor.

She did not seem terribly offended. She continued beside her
sire, but more decorously now, as he cantered out of the valley of the ladies
onto the plain of Narbonne.

∞

The wind was still blowing. The king’s tent was back in
its place, battened down at every point. The king’s council was still bickering
over what to do, and he was in an even fouler mood than he had been when his
horse was stolen.

When a messenger came running with word of a strange new
riding, Carl was more than glad to abandon his council. So, as it happened,
were most of the rest of his councillors. They streamed after him out of the
tent, into the wind and the evening light.

It was as the messenger had said: there was the page Aymery,
whom the king had missed at dinner, riding the stallion Tencendur and leading a
small and very fine herd of mares. The boy rode with neither bridle nor saddle,
and the mares were likewise free of all restraint.

Tencendur halted in front of the king. Carl reached out
almost blindly and took the stallion’s head in his arms. It came to rest
against him.

He sighed, and so did the horse. This was a homecoming, for
both of them.

∞

“I should like to meet your mother,” Halima said.

Aymery was a man of consequence now. He had a tent—minuscule
but all his own—and if the manservant who came with it was a lazy lout with a
mouth on him like a Tiber bargeman, still he was a servant, and Aymery was
acutely conscious of the honor.

The tale had told itself. Most of it was even true: how
Aymery had tracked the stallion to the farmstead where he was bred, and found
him among his harem, and stolen him back for the king’s sake. No one knew about
the ladies, nor was Aymery about to mention that five of them were now enjoying
the admiration of every horseman in the army.

The king had been greatly moved, and would have given Aymery
more than a tent and a servant and a horse and a set of Saracen armor complete
with sword and bow and collection of lances, but Aymery had professed himself
quite unready for the noble bride and the estate on the Saxon border. The
bride’s father was visibly relieved: he had his eye on a greater eminence than
a very young and rather minor lordling from Armorica.