Daughter of Lir (16 page)

She laid her hand on his brow. It was cool, no fever in it.
She smoothed the bright hair back from it. His face remained as still as ever.

He was beautiful in motion, with his quick grace and his
startling strength. At rest he had the long-limbed awkwardness of a yearling
colt. His face was long, its lines almost severe: long arched nose, long mouth
stilled into sternness. The brows were level, and darker than his hair, more
red than gold. His beard was sparse with youth. He kept it shaven in a fashion
of the young men, a glint of fair stubble on the lean cheeks.

She had tended his wounds a little while ago, such as they
were. They were none of them enough to fell a strong young man. She took his
hand in hers and held it. It was limp. She ran her fingers along the calluses.
Every warrior had those, but his were different: he wielded more than rein and
weapon. He was a maker, too, a forger of metal, a builder of chariots.

So many arts and skills, and all so quiet now, without word
or reason. She came terribly close to hunting her father down and demanding
that he tell her what he knew. But if Metos did not want to speak, he would
not.

She pressed Minas’ hand to her cheek. It stirred, twitching,
curving to match her cheek. He gasped for breath; coughed. He sat bolt upright,
staring as if he had never seen her before—or never thought to see her again.

She had never wept, even as a child, but she wept now. Minas
was breathing deep and hard, like a man who had been drowning in deep water.
His hand wrenched away from hers. Dias had it, clutching at his brother,
shaking him, babbling nonsense.

Minas shook him in his turn, until he fell silent. “Tell me
how long,” he said, addressing it not to Dias but to Aera.

She had had time to calm herself, to master her face and
voice. “A hand of days,” she said.

Minas blanched a little. “But it was only—” He broke off.
His head shook; he breathed deep again, as if to steady himself. “It could have
been longer,” he said to himself.

“Why? Where were you?”

Minas looked long at Dias. His eyes were different, Aera
thought. They were the same clear green that they had always been, the same
shape, in the same face. But something had happened to them. They were both
deeper and brighter—as if they saw farther and understood more than they ever
had before. There was a new sadness in them, but a new strength, too.

Dias shook him till he gasped. “Stop that! Stop staring like
that! Answer me.”

“I was . . .” Minas blinked, and shuddered
deep inside himself. “I was learning. I was being taught—what to do. What—what
our father is. What’s become of him.”

“Who taught you?”

The words had escaped Aera before she thought. Minas turned
to her. “Shamans,” he said. “Priests. She drove them out. They wait—outside.
They watch. The wolf could follow me in. The others couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
They’re afraid of what rules here.”

No need to ask who
she
was. “Why did she drive them out?”

Again the words seemed to speak themselves. And again Minas
answered willingly. “They can call on the gods of air and heaven,” Minas said.
“The eater of souls wants no rival here.”

“If we kill her—”

“She won’t allow that.” Minas lay back as if the strength
had run out of him.

“We have to,” Dias said—Dias who was the son of Etena’s
body. “She’s a canker in the People’s heart. She’s swallowed the king.”

It made Aera both sad and proud to hear him. This was none
of Etena’s. And yet that smooth oval face, darker than the wont of the People;
the dark brown curling hair, the dark eyes—those were Etena’s. He was the
evening to Minas’ red-gold morning.

Minas spoke from where he lay in the tumbled furs. “You will
not kill your mother. The gods would curse you for that.”

“But the People would be saved.”

“No.” Minas covered his eyes with his hands, as if in some
way, in the dark, he could see more clearly. “Swear to me by the blood we
share: you’ll do nothing without my knowing of it.”

Dias set his lips together. “Whatever I do, you will know.”

Minas accepted that. Aera did not. But she said nothing. It
was cowardice, she knew as she did it. And maybe it was the best thing, to let
be what would be. To let the men settle it as they would, and for once be a
woman as they thought of women, blind and weak and foolish.

Fear hung like a cloud over the tall grass. Emry’s caravan
of traders both true and false found the tribes either little minded to trade,
that season, or given to wild extravagance. There was no telling which it would
be until they entered a camp—if they were not driven off by packs of howling
raiders, or shot at from concealment.

“The world has gone mad,” said Conn without perceptible
dismay. He was at home here, and the madder it was, the happier he seemed to
be. His grief had turned to a kind of dark joy. He who had been so gentle in
Long Ford was a fierce fighter here, with skill that Rhian would never have
looked for outside the warrior bands of Lir.

She was hardly the same person she had been, either. The
people of the plains looked on her as a freak of nature, a woman riding like a
man, deferred to by the men who rode with her. Word ran ahead of her, so that
after the first tribe or two, those they met knew the grey mare and her rider,
and reckoned each of them a goddess.

They had ridden from spring into summer, crossing the broad
sea of grass, while the moon waxed and waned, and the stars wheeled overhead.
There were no more tribes to meet, except tribes in flight. They were fleeing
the scourge of the steppe, seeking refuge to the west. But they would find war
there, too, for those who held the lands would defend them. There was nowhere
for any of them to go.

Only Emry’s caravan was bold enough to journey toward the
chariots and not away. One tribe tried to stop them. Its king was young and his
brothers were numerous and headstrong, and they had declared themselves
protectors of the goddess on the grey mare.

“You can’t go on,” the king said as the caravan formed its
by now familiar line, the donkeys less heavy laden than they had been, but
still weighted down with treasures for trade. As Rhian went to mount the mare,
she came face to face with a wall of tall yellow-haired men. They were all
smiling, as amiable as men could be, but they would not move to let her pass.

“Stay with us,” the king said. “Be our luck. Protect us from
the scourge that comes upon us.”

“I mean to do just that,” she said, making some effort at
least to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “If you will let me pass—”

“Oh, no,” said the king. “If you go on, you’ll die. Even
you, goddess with the wonderful eyes. The thing that comes on us, it is a fire
in the dry grass, a storm of wind across the world. Not even a goddess can
stand against it.”

She lifted her chin. Her temper sparked. “Do you say that I
am weak?”

He flushed and stammered. But he was stubborn, and he was
certain that he was chosen to protect her. “Please, goddess,” he said. “Don’t
make us bind you.”

“Bind me?” She was not afraid at all. She was purely angry.
“Do you dare? Let me pass!”

They would not. She dug in her heels and braced. They closed
in, stretching to lay hands on her—on one whom they reckoned a goddess.

A whirlwind swept across them, flinging them flat. The mare
came near to bowling Rhian over. Rhian caught mane blindly. The force of the
mare’s speed flung her onto the broad back. She saw a blur of faces, dark men, her
own men, fierce with outrage; and foremost of them all, Emry who did not know
he was her brother.

They would have trampled the king and his brothers
underfoot, and no matter whether they sparked a war among these people; but
Rhian’s cry, piercingly shrill, froze them in midstride. “
No
! Let them be. They’re not the enemy.”

They begged to differ, but the mare spurned them all with
her heels. They could stay and fight and be overwhelmed, or they could scramble
together their caravan and follow.

The king and his riders watched them go from the safety of
the camp’s edge. The mare had cowed them perfectly, as she would reckon only
proper.

Rhian had begun to know the exhilaration of power. From
potter’s child to living goddess—that was a splendid leap. She almost forgot
the terror of what she went to, rivers of blood and the world’s end, in the
wild joy of this ride under the endless sky.

o0o

On a day of high summer, in breathless heat, they came at
last to the war’s heart. The land was empty of the living. They had passed a
burned camp, and then another; then a hill of skulls surmounted by the head of
a spotted bull.

Emry had been sending scouts ahead for days now. Today it
was Dal and the silent Nemes. They came back much earlier than anyone had
expected, while the caravan paused by a little river to water the horses and
donkeys. Dal’s face was white. Nemes was even more silent than he usually was.

“Half a day ahead,” Dal said, unwontedly brief. “Hundreds of
them. Hundreds of hundreds.”

“Is there a battle?” Emry asked.

His voice had a hint of roughness in it. He was afraid, too,
Rhian thought. They all were. The tribes’ fear had infected them.

And they were riding straight into the bull’s horns.

Dal answered Emry’s question steadily enough. “There was a
battle farther on, but days ago. They’ve camped—who knows how long? They look
well settled. There’s water. The hunting’s good—they’ve killed or captured all
the tribes that would have taken the game.”

“Maybe they’re finally content,” one of the traders said.
“They must be rich beyond believing.”

Conn laughed. He sat his brown gelding by the riverbank,
some little distance away, but his ears were keen. “Those demons are never
content. Do you know what they say? They’ll ride to the world’s end, and
conquer everything before them.”

“But not us,” said Emry. His face was as grim as Rhian had
ever seen it. “We’ll stop them.”

A growl of assent ran through the caravan. They might be
afraid, but they were not cowards—not a one of them.

o0o

They camped there, even as early as it was, rather than
come on the enemy as the sun was setting.

“Remember,” Emry told the circle of them all, all but the
guards he had set. “They’re not the enemy now. They’re our hope of rich trade.
We’re traders—merchants, not warriors.”

“Do we have anything they’re likely to want?” Dal asked. It
was unlike him to be defiant, but he was still pale with the shock of the truth
at last: the might and numbers of the force they faced, and the terror—even at a
distance—of its chariots.

“Traders always have something,” Hoel the caravan-master
said.

“Even for people who can take by force whatever they
please?”

“Ah,” said Hoel, “but that’s the game. They take easily, but
to trade—that’s not so easy. And we carry things that are not common on the
steppe. Fine things, things they maybe have never seen.”

“Yes,” said Conn from the edges where he always was.
“They’re loaded down with wealth, but they’re wild things still. The fine cloth
that they weave in the cities, the works of silver and gold and copper and
bronze, the jewels and fripperies that we carry—these will captivate them.”

“You know them,” Emry said.

Conn shrugged. “I know the rumors that run across the
steppe. You’ve heard them yourself.”

“Yes,” said Emry. “That they worship the sun. That a pied
bull leads them. That a god lives among them, and his magic makes their
chariots.” He leaned toward Conn, his eyes intent. “Tell me what you haven’t
told us before. Who are these people? Will they possibly trade a chariot for
our treasures from the west?”

“You are no fool,” Conn said, “but now you choose to talk
like one. The chariots are their greatest weapon. They’ll never give it to the
likes of us.”

“Then we’ll have to steal one,” said Emry.

“You can try,” Conn said, “and die.”

“And maybe we won’t fail. The Goddess is with us. She’ll
protect us.”

“The gods of the charioteers—”

“She made all that is,” said Emry, as certain of his words
as if he had been a priestess, “all that they worship: the sun and the moon,
the stars, the earth underfoot, the bull and the stallion. All that is is
hers.”

They were all staring at him, and not only Rhian. She had
not thought before, what it must mean to be a man, and a Mother’s son, and to
be given eyes that saw farther than most. She had been refused the choosing—but
it had fallen on her regardless. A man could never be chosen at all.

Out here in the grass, the world was a different place. And
yet the Goddess was the same. He spoke the truth, this child of hers.

o0o

It was an oddly festive camp, that night. They built a
fire without care for concealment, and posted sentries but made no effort to be
quiet. They sang songs of the cities and the south, hymns to the Goddess, jests
and satires and wicked ditties that made the young men blush and look anywhere
but at Rhian or each other. They drank the last of the wine, and danced under
the moon.

Rhian danced for them. The moon was in her, and the mare was
in season, tormenting the stallions in their would-be decorous line. Someone
had a pipe and someone else a small drum, and Emry sang in his deep sweet
voice.

The night was warm, the moon was bright. She let go her
trousers and danced in her skin, in her free hair and the necklet of shells
that Dal had given her, with Bran’s bronze bells in her ears.

The drum set the rhythm. The men beat it out on the earth’s
breast. She stamped and whirled, swooped and swayed, now like a bird, now like
a gust of wind over the grass. She laughed with the joy of it.