Nine White Horses by Judith Tarr Page B

be—braying asses. Her father had been a stallion. Everyone said it,
though it seemed that he was one no longer. Perhaps this was only a pleasure
for one’s youth.
    She would be sorry, if that was so. She liked the suppleness
of human shape. She liked to talk; she loved to sing. She learned to read, from
being tethered close by Shams as he endured his tutors. She heard the
disputations of philosophers. She became, had she known it, most widely and deeply
learned, while her brother and master yawned and groaned and took flight
whenever he could. He would only hear his lessons at all when she was near,
because it inconvenienced his teachers, and because she provided swift escape.
They learned to ride well and swiftly, those masters of the arts, or they did
not linger long in his service.
    He would happily have dismissed them all. But his father was
adamant. “I was a knave and a fool,” said Kehailan. “My son will learn to be
wise.”
    His son did not want to be wise. His son wanted to ride
a-hunting, or a-drinking, or a-whoring. Shams al-Din, as his father’s mamluk
observed, was in all respects his father’s child.
    o0o
    When both al-Ghazalah and Shams al-Din had attained their
seventeenth year, Ghazalah knew that she was like no other creature in the face
of God’s creation. Mares, except for Ghazalah, remained mares from birth to
death. Maidens, except for Ghazalah, held that form by day as by night.
    It was noted that the four-footed line of Kehailan seemed to
partake somewhat of the longevity of their human forebear. It was also noted
that Ghazalah seemed most fully to have held to human youth: slow to reach the
fullness of her growth, and slow to settle to the placidity of age. That she
remained a maiden, however, she owed to Shams al-Din. She was his. No other, be
he beast or man, might have her.
    She was, as she thought, content. Her secret was hers to
cherish. Her brother was the fairest youth in Egypt, the best horseman, the
surest shot with the Turkish bow, though he was no Turk but Arab of the holy
line of Mecca. If he was not also the wisest, if he lacked perhaps some essence
of intelligence, that was little enough to sully her peace. She had sufficient
for them both.
    It is the way of mares and of educated maidens, as all the
wise know, to have no patience to spare for the follies of love. Likewise, it
is the way of young men, and most especially of ruinously spoiled young
princes, to have patience for nothing else. Shams fell in and out of love a
dozen times in a day. The swiftness of his falling out, Ghazalah observed, was
directly proportioned to the swiftness of his gaining his desire.
    Therefore she was neither surprised nor unduly troubled
when, in riding through the city of a morning, he halted abruptly and drew a
long sigh. “There,” he said. “There is the love of my life.”
    They had come to the fringes of the bazaar; the streets were
full to bursting. But Shams had eyes for one alone. Ghazalah discerned her
easily enough by the yearning of her brother’s body on her back; and she was,
admittedly, noticeable. In that city of small, dark, slender people; she
towered like a young tree. Her hands and the oval of her face were white as
milk. Her hair under its drift of veil was the color of gold in the forge. Her
eyes were as blue as the sky in winter, and bold, knowing nothing of modesty.
    They met Shams’ with most unmaidenly directness, measuring him
as if he had been the slave and she the lord of Islam. They gave him due credit
for his beauty, but reckoned his youth and his callowness and his
disinclination to use what wits he had, and discarded him.
    He, of course, was smitten to the heart. “I will have her,”
he said. “I must have her. I will die if I do not have her.”
    She had turned her back on him. Bravely he battled the
currents of the city, following her as best he might through the rounds of the
market: the bakers, the sweetsellers, the cloth merchants, the sellers