Daughter of Lir (36 page)

She stood with priestesses in the rites of the festival. It
was more than strange to know that the mare gave her this right, and yet to
feel like an impostor; then to remember what she would have been if the
priestesses in Lir had not forbidden. That would have been she in the Mother’s
place, center of all the rites, strongest and clearest voice of the Goddess in
these lands that had been hers since the dawn time.

There was still no Mother in Lir. Nor would there be, unless
Rhian took that place.

She saw that, there in the temple of Larchwood, in the
circle of priestesses. It was clear in the sacred fire. It was truth.

She sat with the Mother on the third night of the festival.
They were all gorged with feasting, weary with revelry. In the city, the sounds
of celebration had faded somewhat. People were falling asleep where they danced
or ate. Come morning they would wake to a duller world.

“You will be glad to go,” said the Mother.

“Not for your sake,” Rhian said, “or for your city’s.”

The Mother smiled. “No, of course not. But Lir is waiting.”

“The king sent us a message,” Rhian said. “Not to lay any
compulsion on us, but the sooner we bring our cargo there, the better for us
all.”

“The king is wise,” the Mother said.

“So I’m told.” Rhian turned her wine-cup in her fingers. It
was nearly full, but she had no desire to drink.

She let her eyes wander over the Mother’s hall, half of
which was under roof, and half under the stars. A great number of people were
there, but there was no one near enough or alert enough to hear what they said
to one another.

After a while she said, “It may be best if I leave Mabon to
deliver the cargo, and go . . . wherever the mare’s servant
should go. Back to World’s End, maybe. I’d be welcome there.”

“And not in Lir?”

Rhian met the Mother’s quiet dark stare. “I was born there.
I was sent from it on the day I was born. There were those who would have
preferred that I die that day, and never have lived to discover what I am.”

“If the Goddess had meant you to die, you would have died.”

“So one would think,” Rhian said. “But will Lir be glad to
see me? I think not.”

“What is Lir? Is it walls? A city? Or a gathering of people,
not all of whom might be of the same mind?”

“Are you saying,” said Rhian, “that I should not care what
the priestesses think, or what their prophecies have told them?”

“What is done is done,” the Mother said. “What is still to
do—that is laid on you, as the Goddess wills. Will you run away from the place
where she has been leading you since the day of your birth?”

“Maybe I was never meant to go there at all. I was never to
know who I was.”

“Yet she made certain that you did.”

“Does that come when one is made a Mother?” Rhian asked.
“Does the knowledge of everything come then?”

The Mother laughed, and for a moment Rhian saw the girl she
must have been—and not so long ago, either. “Oh, I know very little! But when
signs are as clear as this, I can see them well enough.”

“I don’t know what I see,” Rhian muttered, “and the wind
won’t speak to me.”

“Have you sought it out?” the Mother asked.

“It always came to me,” said Rhian.

She sounded petulant even to herself. But the Mother’s
expression did not change. “If you call on it, it may choose to answer. What
have you to lose by trying?”

A Mother’s wisdom, thought Rhian, could be wonderfully
exasperating. She left the food she had barely touched and the wine in which
she had had no interest, and sought the open air.

The wind was chained here, trammeled in walls. But down by
the river it was free to play as it would. It was a small wind tonight, a
playful wind, dancing on the water, brushing her cheeks with soft quick
fingers.

Truth, she thought. She had been shutting it away, as she
shut away remembrance. It had been niggling at her, calling to her, for long
and long, all the way from the sea of grass.

It was not as easy to open her ears to it as it had been
when she was a simple potter’s child in Long Ford. Too many thoughts crowded in
on her; too much knowledge, too much awareness. She had become a power in the
world.

The wind cared nothing for powers among human children. It
was in a light mood tonight, too light to heed any will of hers. It teased and
tormented her. It told her secrets that were perfectly useless: how a shepherd
had gone to the pasture with his sheep and found two black ewe- lambs born long
out of season; how the grandfather fish from the eddy downstream had come into
a fisherman’s net, but had broken free again. Nothing that could profit her;
nothing even interesting.

She perched on the end of a pier, knees drawn up, clasping
them tightly. The wind was cool, not winter-cold yet, but hinting at it. It was
the dark of the moon tonight, and the sky was thick with stars. They shimmered
on the water.

She felt his tread on the pier long before he crouched
beside her. “The Mother said you would be here,” Minas said.

“Did she send you to me?” Rhian asked without taking her
eyes from the river.

“She said that I should find you,” he said. The burr of the
tribes was strong in his voice tonight, as if the longer he stayed in the
Goddess’ country, the more he strove to remember what he had been.

“Did she tell you why?”

“Only that you might wish to see me.”

And be reminded, she thought, of why she should go to Lir,
and with whom she should do it.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” she said. “Riding—you and I and
two of the king’s guards. The chariots will follow in the boats, and the rest
of the company.”

She heard his long sigh. His relief must have been enormous;
he hated the boats. And yet he asked, “Is it wise to do that?”

“Wiser than to linger,” she said. “I think we should come
there quickly. The king’s summons was urgent. He needs us now, not half a month
from now.”

“We could,” he said, “take one of the chariots, and two
teams of remounts, and be there even faster.”

She slid a glance at him. He was keeping his eagerness well
reined in, but his expression was livelier than she had seen it in a long
while.

She hated to dull it again. Indeed, why should she? Need
they make any great secret of this thing that they brought to the king? It had
seemed best when they first agreed, she and Mabon and Bran, to bring the
chariots on the river and not to risk them by land. Yet one chariot, with such
a charioteer, surely would come safe to Lir.

“Good, then,” she said. “We’ll do that. The guards can
follow on horses.”

His smile was swift, and swiftly suppressed, and yet it
warmed her. “Will there be fighting?” he asked a little too brightly.

She was not sorry to dash that hope. “Here, in the heart of
the Goddess’ country? Not likely.”

“Then why did we come slowly, in boats, and not quickly, in
chariots?”

“To keep the chariots safe,” she said, “and unbroken, till
they come to the king.”

“They would have been safe,” he said. “They’re strong enough
for battle.” He peered at her in the bright starlight. “That’s what you fear,
isn’t it? That they’ll terrify your people. They’re new—different. They promise
things that your country hoped never to see.”

“We’ve known war,” she said, “since the dawn time. There
have been battles, invasions. What we are now, we are because horsemen came
from the steppe, rode over our people, and made themselves kings at the side of
our Mothers. Those old forts on the hills—those went up when great hordes swept
across the river and did their best to crush us. Many of them won, or thought
they did. But here we are. And yet . . .” She sighed. “It’s been
a long time since anyone challenged us. We’re not as strong now as we were
then. And you—your people—are very strong indeed.”

“I belong to you now,” he said, soft and bitter. “I am your
slave. They who rule the steppe, they are no longer my people.”

“Not even in your heart?”

He did not answer that. She rose and held out her hand. For
a long moment she thought he would not take it, but in the end he did. She drew
him up. “We should sleep,” she said.

She did not mean that they should sleep together. She
wondered if he was disappointed when she left him at the door of their lodging
and went alone to her bed. She hoped that he was.

As it happened, she did not sleep at once, nor indeed till
very late. There were preparations to make. She had to choose the two armed men
who would ride with them. Mabon could not go: he had to see that the chariots
traveled safely on the river. But when she went looking for him to ask for two
of his men, she found him in the common-room of the lodging with Bran,
lingering over wine.

They welcomed her with wine-warmed gladness. Neither of them
was awash in it, but they were much at ease. Mabon filled a cup and held it
out.

She took it but did not drink. “There’s little time for
wine,” she said. “I’m taking one of the chariots, and the charioteer, to Lir.
Mabon, will you lend us two of your guards? They should be ready to ride at
dawn, and ride fast.”

Mabon raised his brows. “Trouble?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “But my heart bids me go.”

“Ah,” said Mabon. “The Goddess. Or is it the mare? Is she
eager to see her kin again?”

Bran spoke before she could find an answer. “I’ll go. I’ll
ride.”

“You’re not a guard,” she said. “You belong with the rest of
the chariots.”

“And not with you,” he said. His tone was flat.

She stared at him. He had seemed over the months of their
journey to come to acceptance of the world as it was. She had even thought him
happy, surrounded by chariots, learning what Minas and the chariots themselves
had to teach.

The wine had loosened his tongue. He met her stare with
defiance that made her think, painfully, of the boy he had been. He still was,
in his heart. He still wanted her—a wanting that was close to anguish.

She loved him. He was her yearmate, her friend, her heart’s
brother. But her desire for him was lost somewhere between Long Ford and the
camp of the Windriders. She had taken Dal as much to spite him as for the boy’s
beauty and his ready smile. But when Dal died, she had wanted no one else of
her own people. She only came close to wanting the man who, by now, hated her perfectly:
the man she had bought in return for the king’s heir of Lir.

All this filled her heart as she met Bran’s stare. “You will
stay,” she told him as gently as she could, “and guard the chariots, and
continue to learn all you can of them. When you come to Lir, there will be a
forge for you, and apprentices, and whatever else is necessary. Tell me what
you need, and we will have it.”

“I need . . .” His voice caught. “Be careful
what you promise. I’ll hold you to it.”

“I’ll see that you get it,” she said.

He had mastered himself, wine and all. “I’ll get word to you
before dawn. May I have your leave to go?”

Rhian had never in her life given Bran leave to do anything.
Mothers did that, and elders, and priestesses. Rhian was only Rhian.

She was the mare’s servant. Bran bade her remember it. “You
have my leave,” she said stiffly.

Minas was up in chilly starlight, choosing the
chariot-teams and the chariot, and harnessing Adis’ duns that were most apt to
his hand. By the time the others came out yawning and stumbling, he was ready
to go.

He carefully said nothing to any of them of the ease with
which he had done all this. There had been no guards on the boats, and the
herds had only the mare to watch over them. Everyone else was asleep in a haze
of wine.

Conquerors had only to know when the festivals were, and
attack in the wake of them. Thieves could have made off with all the chariots
and every one of the horses, and no one been the wiser.

There seemed to be no thieves here. When anyone wanted a
thing, he asked for it. Most often he was given it, either in trade or as a
gift.

But Minas could not ask for his freedom. That, they would
never grant. He was too valuable.

He had thought, there in the dark with its faint threat of
frost, of taking the chariot and riding out—east, not west. He had gone so far
as to gather the reins and rouse the team.

But he did not bid them take him home. He had his honor.
And, he admitted, he was curious. He wanted to see this city everyone spoke of
as if it were the gods’ own dwelling place, and meet this king whose son had so
captivated Etena that she traded gold and a prince for him.

He had come this far. He would see it through to the end.
Therefore he was ready before the others had even come out, and waiting when
they came. He had half expected them to insist on a baggage train, soft
creatures that they were, but apart from the remounts, who carried small
burdens, they traveled as light as tribesmen on a raid.

There were only the four of them: Minas and Rhian in the
chariot, and two black-bearded young men on horses.

As the first light swelled in the sky, Minas took up the
reins. The dun stallions snorted. They were eager to go.

But he held them in. The Mother herself walked toward them
down the long sloping way from her house, with a pair of young women for
escort. She moved lightly for so massive a woman, with grace that must have
been remarkable in her youth.

All of the guards who had come from World’s End were there.
To a man and a woman, they bowed before the Mother. Only Minas kept his head
erect, and Rhian, who was distracted: the mare, relegated to the remounts, had
chosen that moment to put one of the stallions in his place.

Even a Mother had to wait on a goddess. When the flurry of
squealing and kicking had died down, with no bloodshed but with the stallion
much subdued, Rhian turned as if to speak to Minas, caught sight of the Mother
and started. “Lady! I didn’t see you. Please, if you’ll pardon me—”