Now there were stirrings of rebellion from the conquered peoples, for whom the free Nomads had in Blacktooth’s childhood years displayed only contempt. Chür Ösle Høngan, then, was a relative of Høngan Ös, and his motherline was qualified for the high kingship. Brownpony was involved (meddling?) in Nomad politics, which was the same as Nomad religion, for only the shaman class could be electors. The thought came to him now that the cardinal, the elderly priest, and the Nomad with royal family connections in the Wilddog Horde might have stopped to confer with Jackrabbit shamans before they visited Leibowitz Abbey. Several half-overheard conversations during the journey supported the idea.
He was ordered to silence, and he meant to obey. But to regard it as a matter of no concern to him would be to turn his back on his late parents and their heritage. He was grateful for Chür Høngan’s kindness toward him. One day it might be possible to become proud of his heritage, if pride were not one of the deadly sins his faith warned him against. If the two northern Hordes, the Wilddog and the unvanquished tribes of the Grasshopper, stopped showing contempt for the conquered tribes, Jackrabbit and Grasshopper, he might be able to hold his head up in the world. But he knew the Jackrabbit Horde and his own exiled people must again assert themselves before that could happen. He knew he would be glad to help if he could.
Blacktooth saw her the following morning. She was a young girl, much like Ædrea but beyond Ædrea in beauty. Naked, she stood under a ledge washing herself and dancing in a little waterfall made of new-melted ice. A stone’s throw away, she looked once at Blacktooth, who stopped and stood frozen, his scalp crawling. Her eyes left him to follow Holy Madness, himself unseeing, who rode the cardinal’s stallion. They followed him until a big wad of loose wet snow fell over the ledge and made her dart back out of sight. Seconds later a delicate white mare galloped out from under the ledge and disappeared into a thicket of snow-dripping spruce. Blacktooth shook his head. The altitude made one quite dizzy.
Later, when the Nomad stopped and waited for all to catch up, Blacktooth walked past him and said, “I saw her this morning myself. As Fujæ Go, the Day Maiden.”
“Was she young?” Chür Høngan asked.
“Very young, and beautiful.”
“Whoever he was yesterday, today he’s dead,” said the warrior. “She wants a new husband.”
“She was looking at you. Or the cardinal’s horse.”
Høngan frowned, shook his head, and laughed. “The horse. They say she copulates with stallions when there is no Lord of the Hordes. It’s this thin air, Nimmy. Works on both of us.”
Blacktooth continued to walk while the carriage caught up with the waiting Nomad. There was a trade-off somewhere behind him, and the same horse came back with a different rider.
“Why don’t you ride beside the Axe?” asked the cardinal, for the first time referring to Wooshin by that name.
“Because I have a boil on my behind, Your Eminence, but also because I need to walk.” Blacktooth had smoked some of the strong medicinal stuff the Nomad had brought down from Nebraska, and he was feeling more loquacious and less self-conscious than was his wont. Also, he had lost his fear of Brownpony, and begun to like the man.
“What’s this I hear about you and the Wild Horse Woman, Nimmy? Do you change religions often?”
“I hope, m’Lord, that my religion of today is always just a little improved over my religion of yesterday, and a vision of a maiden in an icy waterfall does wonders for my religion of today, although tomorrow I might question the vision’s reality. But did I say she was the Høngin Fujæ Vurn?”
Brownpony laughed. “You feel, then, that reality and religion might or might not have something to do with each other at this altitude?”
“At this altitude, yes and no, m’Lord.”
“Keep me informed if she turns up again,” Brownpony said lightly, and trotted on ahead.
It was a time of visions. Blacktooth had heard of miracles in the mountains, magic on the plains, and chariots in the sky. The Virgin was appearing simultaneously to small groups of her elect in three different locations on the continent. Furthermore, what her apparition said in the west, her voice in the east put to a severe test. It was almost as if she was arguing with herself. This, perhaps, was the best proof of her divinity, for in divinity opposites are always reconciled. Nunshån and Fujæ Go, Night Hag and Day Maiden, aspects of the Høngin Fujæ Vurn. There was a third aspect; at appropriate times, she became the War Buzzard, presiding over the field of battle, the feeding ground.
It’s just the thin air, Blacktooth told himself. But why not a Wild Horse Woman? He had seen her on horseback when he was a child. He had seen her this morning under the waterfall, and she was the same young woman. The women of the Hordes own the breeding mares, and pass them to their daughters. Nomad women are wonderful breeders of horses. And no warrior rides a mare into battle. To ride a mare is to advertise one’s unreadiness to fight. So Cardinal Brownpony’s stallion is both a mount and a statement. Wild horses are forbidden, except to her betrothed, because they are hers. She is a natural projection of Nomad culture onto the Nomad consensual world, but to admit this is not to say she is wholly unreal. Christians make similar projections; so many apparitions of the Virgin! And she is an arbiter of power on the Plains; by choosing a husband, she chooses a king. It amused him to imagine her choosing a pope.
Blacktooth’s departure from the abbey had not gained him a freedom to think for himself—he had always had that. But now he didn’t have to feel guilty about it. His own religious practice was necessarily suffering because of the journey, and because of his sins, but he tried as often as he could to spend an hour silently reciting Saint Leibowitz’s Grocery List while he rode or lay awake at night: Can kraut, six bagels, bring home for Emma. Amen. Short and sweet, it kept the mind from wandering toward Ædrea. He greatly preferred it to the Maxwell’s Laws Memorabilium that had so confused Torrildo, and perhaps contributed to his delinquency.
But his anger at himself about Ædrea and his feelings kept seeking an outlet. When they camped that evening, the Axe as always asked, “You ready die now?” Blacktooth, without a negative comment, immediately kicked at the Axe’s crotch. The headsman dodged, but the blow glanced off his hip; he laughed with delight. “You very mean man tonight,” he said, and allowed Blacktooth to attack thrice more before he threw him on his face in the melting snow. It was the first time the student had ever touched the teacher, and Wooshin embraced him after helping him to his feet.
This time you ready die, yes?” That was the second night. They were gathering speed as they rode northward and downward. On the fourth night, a messenger with a lantern and a bodyguard trotting along behind delivered the news to Elia Cardinal Brownpony: the Pope was dead. He and the soldier stopped for refreshments with them, then continued southward with a summons for Abbot Jarad and other cardinals across the Brave River. More such messengers would be fanning out from Valana by all roads with the same summons for all cardinal bishops, cardinal priests, cardinal deacons, cardinal abbots and cardinal abbess (1), cardinal nephews and cronies across the continent, while the city of Valana prepared for another conclave.
That night the cardinal huddled in conference with the Nomad and the chaplain, while Blacktooth and the Axe sparred farther away from the fires. On the morrow, they availed themselves of the public baths in Pobla, the first real town they had visited. Father e’Laiden shaved his beard and was seen no more with the rest of them, although Blacktooth caught sight of him later in the company of a fair-haired man in Nomad clothing and with Nomad weapons but with manners that did not come from the Plains. Out of Pobla, Holy Madness rode eastward toward the Plains. Hence too, half an hour later, his Chaplain e’Laiden followed him, accompanied by the blond, urbane young warrior.