Daughter of Lir (20 page)

He was lying in the grass near the horses. The stars were
bitter-bright, but the eastern sky had begun to lighten. The air smelled of
morning.

Hooves paused near him. They belonged to a mare of unusual
color, dappled like the moon.

He remembered the mare well. The goddess from across the
river had ridden her. She was a goddess herself, he had been given to understand.

She grazed quietly in the starlight, almost within reach of
his hand. Her pale coat glimmered. Her long mane ran like water. She was
smaller, more sturdily built than the horses of the People, but she was
beautiful in her way—just as her rider was.

She looked as if she had been there since the gods made the
world: stretched out along the broad back, arms about the strong arched neck,
legs dangling easily down.

She seemed asleep, till she raised her head. Her thick plait
slid over her shoulder. Her skin was whiter than the mare’s coat, her hair
blacker than the lightening sky.

She was bare from crown to toe, not even a cloth about her
loins. He had seen women naked. Of course he had. But never like this. She slid
from the mare’s back and bent over him. Her breasts swayed. The nipples were
dark and large.

She smiled. He never knew what she did, but he had been
properly and modestly dressed in tunic and leggings, and he was no longer. The
night air was cool on his burning skin.

She knelt astride him. He gasped. He was near blind with
wanting her. But when he thrust upward, her fingers closed about his rod,
holding the whole of him fast.

Her smile widened. “I rule here,” she said. “Remember that.”

Even if he could have shaped the thought to argue with her,
the words would have escaped him altogether. He could only think of her—of her
skin, soft as sleep, and her scent, both pungent and sweet.

She brushed his lips with a kiss. It felt like a flicker of
flame. She traced the line of his chin, his jaw, his neck and breast, down
along his belly to the rampant thing that seemed no part of him at all. Till
she circled it in kisses, and lowered herself on it. Then it was all of him
there was.

He was ready to burst with the urgency of it, but she held
him by some power beyond magic, till he knew that he would die if she did not
let him go. She did it all at once, with a rush so fierce, and a convulsion so
strong, that it sent him spinning down into the dark.

When he could see again, his whole body quivered in spasms.
He gasped for breath. She was sitting astride him still, a solid weight across
his middle.

He could see her clearly in the grey light of dawn. Her
whole body was suffused with a delicate flush. Her cheeks and breasts were
rose-pale, like the sky over her. She smiled down at him, long and lazy and
sated.

How she could rise after that, still less mount the mare and
ride away, he never knew.

He followed the sway of her ample hips above that ample rump
until they vanished over the rise of the ground. His spirit yearned to stay
with her, but his flesh was like unmolded clay. It lay inert in the grass,
while the morning brightened about him, and the last of the stars faded into
light.

The morning song came soaring out of him by no will of his
at all. It was a creature of its own, a power that for that moment possessed
him. He was empty of thought. His whole being was that long pure sound.

o0o

Aera heard it from the king’s tent. There was nothing
human or even earthly in it. It sounded like the sun’s own voice, bathing the
earth and flooding the sky.

It drew her out of the tent into the swelling light. No one
else seemed to have heard it. The captives were up as they would have been
since long before dawn, tending fires and drawing water and waiting on those of
the People who were up and about after the night’s debauch. None of them paused
or looked up to see what might have made that astonishing sound.

It faded slowly, till there was nothing to be heard but the
morning clamor of the camp. Aera’s bones thrummed as if the song had settled
there.

She turned slowly. She felt as she had when she carried
Minas in her body: brimming full, gravid with light.

As she paused to test the limits of this strange new
sensation, her eye caught a stir toward the camp’s edge. People were coming:
the woman of the traders, who had faced Etena yesterday and lived to tell of
it, and two men behind her, big black-bearded men as all of them were. One
carried a heavy pack. The other was dressed like a tribesman in embroidered
leather, with beads and feathers woven into his greying hair.

They walked toward the king’s tent. Children and camp dogs
followed. Some of the bolder boys were making a game of darting toward the man
with the pack, slapping his pack, then leaping away again. He trudged under the
weight of it, seeming dull as any captive, but Aera caught the flash of his
glance.

This was no slave, whatever else he was. The children and
dogs had to stop short of the king’s tent, but Aera could pass within.

They entered by the main way, where one of Etena’s women was
waiting for them. Aera chose another, less obvious entrance. She knew where
they would go. Etena had let it be known that the courtyard was hers that
morning, and no one was to trespass in it.

She had said nothing of spying from the tent’s wall. Aera
had found several clever slits, so made that they seemed but seams in the felt,
from which one could see and hear everything either within or without, but
never be seen oneself.

The traders were led direct to the court, but Etena lingered
within. She would keep them waiting till they were prowling like wolves in a
cage.

That was her way. She spent the time in ordering matters
about the king’s tent, chastising one of his wives with a willow switch, and
seeing to it that the king’s mind was well enslaved—he would not rouse again as
he had the day before, Aera suspected, if Etena had any say in it.

Aera settled for a long watch. The traders arranged their
wares to advantage under a canopy that the porter made of the flesh and bones
of his pack. Clever, that. Aera would study it later if she could. Her father
would be interested to know of it.

Once the canopy was up and the wares spread, the traders
settled decorously to wait. The older man sat cross-legged like a tribesman.
The younger one took a guard’s post, standing alert but at ease. That was a
truer face of him, Aera thought, than the other had been. He was a fighting
man. Caravan guard, she supposed, and a wise enough choice in a strange camp.

The woman sat on her heels behind the array of gauds and
small treasures. Her chin was up, her shoulders straight. Her hands rested on
her thighs. She looked like a carven image. Her gown was very fine, woven of
cloth like a sunset: deep blue and twilight purple and swelling shades of rose
and gold. She wore a necklace of shells, and in her ears swung bells of bronze.

She was beautiful, Aera observed. Very much so. In motion
she was almost too quick to catch, but now that she was stilled, she was
breathtaking.

Aera considered a number of things. It need not matter to
her what became of a pack of foreigners. But these . . . they
came from beyond the river. They carried bronze, even wore it as an ornament,
as if it had been a common thing. Their caravan guards and servants were
remarkably well fed and well dressed.

Etena was still busy within. The drone of the witch-women’s
chanting rose and fell. That would go on for long enough.

Aera slipped from her hiding place along the wall of the
tent, toward the flap through which the traders had been led. She came out with
dignity, proper in her veils. The men, she noticed, glanced at the woman, but
Rhian shook her head just visibly. The older man eased a little. The younger
one, as befit a guard, did not.

Aera knelt on one knee in front of their wares. She did not
touch them, but her eyes noted them. “These are very fine,” she said. “But if
you would sell them to the one for whom you intend them, you would let that one
do it.” She tilted her head toward the guard.

Rhian’s brow rose. “Will he be safe if he sits where I am
sitting?”

“As safe as a male can be in this place,” Aera said.

“Which is not very.” Rhian shook her head. “Thank you, but I
prefer him as he is.”

“My sister wife,” Aera said, “has a distaste for feminine
beauty that is not her own. Male beauty, she likes very well indeed.”

“Well enough to destroy it lest anyone else possess it?”

The child had a clear eye, Aera thought. “She’s not one to
geld the colts if they can serve her entire.”

Rhian drew breath to speak, but the young guard spoke before
her. “I’ll take the risk,” he said.

“You are wise,” said Aera. “Keep silent and let your elder
speak, and smile if you can.”

He smiled at that, so sweet that even her jaded heart began
to flutter. He was fully as beautiful as Rhian, though the curly beard hid a good
part of it. “My mother brought me up properly, lady,” he said. “Conn will speak
and I will smile, and Rhian will do what is best for her to do.”

Rhian suffered that—not happily, but Aera had not taken her
for a fool. It was more remarkable that the men understood than that she did.

They shifted as Aera had indicated: young guard in Rhian’s
place, Rhian where he had been—visible but not obvious, nor taunting Etena with
the beauty of her face.

Aera nodded. “You’ll do,” she said.

o0o

When at last Etena came, the sun was nearer the zenith
than the horizon. Emry’s backside ached with sitting, but he had known better
than to get up and pace. This was a test, and they must pass it.

The king’s wife swept in as regally as any Mother, trailed
by a retinue of women. She dripped with gold: golden chains, golden rings,
golden collar. Disks of gold were sewn on her veil, so that in place of a face,
he saw nothing but a shimmer. He had to struggle to see her eyes.

Dark eyes, and cold. Rhian had warned him. He still had not
expected the depth of that chill. This woman loved no living thing. She loved
power—that was her heart and soul.

She reminded him rather too vividly of the priestess who had
traveled with him from Lir. The thought did its best to quench his smile, but his
training held. He lowered his eyes as a proper young man should do, and let
Conn speak the greeting for all of them.

The chill at that was perceptible. “You, woman from beyond
the river,” Etena said. “Why do you say nothing?”

“In my country,” Rhian said in tones of perfect politeness,
“men are taught to serve. These men serve me. I give them leave to speak for
me.”

The dark eyes had begun to glitter. “Men serve you? Men
serve a woman?”

“Beyond the river,” said Rhian, “women rule. Men submit to
their will.”

“You cannot be telling the truth,” Etena said.

“I can indeed,” said Rhian. She prodded Emry with her toe.
“You, trader. Choose a gift for the king’s wife.”

Emry bent his head in what he hoped was adequate submission.
He considered the baubles in front of him. Some were very fine. Some were
gaudy. He might have liked to see that necklace of golden flowers about—not
Rhian’s neck, no. She was too bold a beauty. But the other of the king’s wives,
she of the green eyes and the elegant bearing, would have looked most well in
so delicate an ornament.

Etena leaned in close, calling him back to himself. Her
breath came light and quick. She lusted after gold as another woman would lust
after a man.

He smiled at her and spread his hands over the bright array.
“Choose, my lady. Choose freely. Whatever you wish, it is yours.”

Etena’s eyes were gleaming. “Indeed,” she said to Rhian,
“your men are submissive. How refreshing.” She passed her hand over the
scattering of baubles. Her fingers twitched. He thought she might seize them
all, but she had more restraint than that.

She took a long time to choose. She liked gaudy, and the
gaudier the better. The heavier, the more massive it was, the more pleased she
was to fondle it.

When at last she chose, it was the bauble he had expected: a
massive collar made of plates of beaten gold, each plate inlaid with sheets of
colored stones, green and blue and red. There was no fineness in it, nor any
elegance. But it was a great deal of gold.

Her glance bade him lift it. She bent her head in its
concealing veils, so that he could lay it about her neck. Her shoulders bowed
with the weight of it, but straightened soon enough. She stood tall in her
black robes, with that massive golden thing seeming all the gaudier against
them.

“I will take this,” she said, “as the king’s tribute. The
rest you may trade as you may.”

They had been dismissed. Emry for one was glad to go. He
gathered together their wares, playing the servant to the last. But as he moved
to fold away the flower necklace, some spirit moved him to take it up instead,
and go to the place along the wall where he sensed green eyes on him, and offer
it with the flourish that he had not seen fit to give Etena.

He did not think Aera was often startled. She hid it
quickly; but there was that moment, that glimpse beneath the veils of her
dignity.

Other veil she had none. Her head was bare, her hair
glinting with red-golden lights. Her face was lovely, even more so than he had
imagined. He would never touch her cheek, he would not be so bold, but he could
not keep his eyes from caressing it.

He raised the necklet between them. “This belongs to you,”
he said.

He saw how she loved the shape and the delicacy of it, but
her brows drew together. “I require no gifts,” she said, “nor tribute, either.”

“A gift can be freely given,” he said.

“A simple man of the caravan can give away gold?”

“I have my share in the venture,” he said. He moved quickly,
before she could elude him, to slip the necklet over her head. It settled about
her neck and over the sweet swell of her breast. It was as exquisite on her as
he had thought it would be.