Daughter of Lir (37 page)

“The mare’s servant serves the mare,” said the Mother. “The
rest of us are of lesser account.”

Rhian looked as if she might have contested that, but the
Mother gave her no time.

“I came simply to bid you farewell,” the Mother said, “and
to give you blessing upon your journey.”

“You honor us,” Rhian said, “and your blessing is most
welcome.”

“Even to you?”

The Mother was not speaking to her but to Minas. He still
had a prince’s instincts: he had spoken before he thought, stumbling in the
western tongue, but managing to find the words. “Even to me,” he said,
“blessing is always welcome.”

He had startled them all, and Rhian not least. Only the
Mother seemed unsurprised. She smiled at him and raised her hands. “Then may
the Goddess bless you and watch over you, and bring you safe to your journey’s
end.”

They all bowed to that—Minas, too, as a prince might before
the gods.

He was a most imperfect slave. But these were most indulgent
masters. He brought the team round in the flame of the morning, saluted the
Mother as if she had been a king of the People, and swept his little company out
of the city.

o0o

It was a glorious morning, bright and clear, with a light
wind blowing, just enough to cool the heat of the sun. The horses were fresh
but obedient. The road was broad and clear, as if it had been meant for a
chariot. It ran along the river, so that there was always water to drink and
bathe in. Often there were trees, but never so thick as to shut out the sun.

They skirted the villages that owed service to the cities
like hunting-clans to the greater tribes. Even so, they could hardly escape
notice. Nothing like them had been seen in this part of the world before.

People were not afraid. That astonished Minas. On the
steppe, everyone knew the rumor of the terrible chariots and their even more
terrible riders. Here, that rumor had never come. What the lords and
priestesses knew, it seemed, was not open knowledge. Their people lived in
innocence.

To them the painted box on wheels, drawn by horses, was a
marvel. They followed it in open delight, chattering with questions. They
wanted to know who and what the charioteer was, how the chariot was made, how
the horses had been taught to pull it. They plucked at the harness, peered at
the fittings. Sometimes, if they were bold, they begged to drive the chariot.

“Gods,” Minas said on the second day, after they had escaped
from a particularly persistent mob of villagers. “Your country has nothing to
fear from the People. You’ll overwhelm them with curiosity.”

Rhian was riding the mare just then, leaving Minas alone in
the chariot. She grinned at him with an utter lack of sympathy. “The women were
all remarking on your skill as a charioteer.”

“They would know?”

“They know a good hand on the rein, whether the man be
sitting on a horse or standing behind it.”

That was not the part of him she was speaking of, and she
made sure he knew it. He was glad of the sun and wind that had turned his fair
cheeks to ruddy bronze. They hid the blush.

He would never grow accustomed to women with eyes as bold as
men’s, and tongues that if anything were bolder. He almost began to regret how
quickly he had learned to make sense of their language.

When they traveled by night, it was less difficult. The
roads were nearer empty then. Under stars and a sliver of moon, they sped
through the darkened villages. Those were closer together, the farther they
went, till it seemed there was hardly open space between them.

Late the second night, they stopped to rest, camping in a
grove of trees. Past the trees the land rose in a long swell. The stars were
very close; they seemed to sit atop the hill, resting as the riders rested,
waiting for the morning.

Minas slept as a wise warrior did, with one ear alert. That
ear heard Rhian rise, just before the sun came up, and creep softly away from
the others.

He woke at once and completely. She was climbing the hill,
alone, without even the mare to bear her company. Something about her, some
turn of the head, some tensing of the back, brought him up and in her wake.

She might reckon herself quiet, but he was silence itself.
He could pass like a shadow in the starlight. The horses barely raised their
heads at his presence.

She ascended the summit of the hill and sat there. Minas,
making himself part of a shadow of trees, looked to see what she was gazing at
with such intensity.

It was a village, he saw, on a long level of the river.
There was nothing remarkable about it. It was smaller than some. The hill on
which she was sitting held the ruins of a fort, but none had been built in its
place, nor did the village boast a wall. It was a cluster of huts and houses,
no high roof of a temple. Sheep grazed between the hill’s summit and the
village. Minas did not see the shepherd. Either there was none, or he had
hidden himself in a fold of the land.

“Long Ford?” Minas asked.

She started like a deer. It was fair revenge, he thought,
for her laughter of the morning before.

She settled quickly: like the mare she served, she was not
at heart a skittish creature. She kept her temper, too, which surprised him
somewhat. “Yes,” she said. “Long Ford.”

“Will we ride through it?”

“The road passes by it.”

“We could,” he said delicately, “go round this hill, and
keep it between ourselves and the village. If we would avoid the curious, and
the women who so admire my hands on the reins.”

“It would delay us,” she said as if to herself. “If they
knew I was here—my aunt—the friends I had—”

“It would be rude simply to ride through without stopping.
And the errand is too urgent to let us linger.”

“You don’t think I’m a coward?” she asked him.

“No,” he said, and that was the truth.

“It would be cruel, too. Wouldn’t it? To let them see me,
but not pause to speak, or explain. Because explanations would take so long,
and a proper welcome even longer. And we have to come to Lir.”

“That is so,” he said.

“Then we will go round the hill,” she said, “and leave the
river.”

She did not sound relieved to have made the choice, or
content with it, either. But it was wise; it seemed she saw that.

He did not greatly like to deepen her wisdom, but the sun
was close to rising, and they were clearly visible from the village, if anyone
had looked up. “Come away,” he said, “before we’re seen.”

She looked as if he had struck her, but she let herself be
led down from the hill.

When Rhian had killed three men with arrows from her bow,
she had known less pain of spirit than she knew in choosing to pass by the
village that had raised her. It was an older pain, she thought. She had evaded
it longer, and given it more time to fester.

She wanted, that morning, to run back into Dura’s arms; to
hide herself in the small cluttered house, in her old bed between the hearth
and the potter’s wheel, and not emerge again until all this strangeness was
gone.

That was foolish, and she knew it even as she thought it.
The strangeness had become her world.

She had never been born in Long Ford, or bred there. The
place of her birth had cast her out. Now she traveled toward it as if to invade
it.

The two guards, circumspect men both, said nothing of her
taking the long way round that particular hill. Once they were past it, at full
speed of chariot and remounts, they were a bare day’s journey from Lir.

When she was a simple village child, that had seemed a great
distance. Now that she had crossed the sea of grass, and known that her many
days’ journey there was but a portion of a vast whole, this day seemed as short
as the blink of an eye. She had lived out her life in the shadow of Lir, and
never known what she was to it. For that, she had needed to travel beyond the
shadow, into the cold glare of the truth.

Maybe that was why she had been sent to Long Ford, and not
farther away. Not simply because the priestess from Long Ford had happened to
be in the temple that day, with a child that had died, and breasts that had
ached with untasted milk. If she was not to be sent to the lands of the dead,
which were both farther away than anyone could imagine and nearer than the next
breath or the next heartbeat, then she would be kept within the sight and the
power of the priestesses in Lir.

The mare had taken her to the sea of grass, to free her. But
now Rhian came back. She rode in a chariot on ways that she had never traveled
before, westward through the close-gathered towns to the city of the Goddess.

It lay like a jewel in a broad ring of open land: fields and
groves and orchards now stripped by the harvest. The leaves of the trees had
turned, so that the city was ringed in scarlet and gold. The river shimmered
with it. Boats rode the water, fleets of them, traders’ boats and fishermen’s
boats and pleasure-boats of princes.

The city itself was walled in golden stone. It had five
gates, one for each quarter of the wind, and one for the Goddess who ruled them
all. Her presence was everywhere about it. Her image was carved in the stones,
and stood at the turns of the road, and hung from the branches of the trees.
Even the wind was hers, the breath of her spirit in her oldest and most beloved
city.

The road was broad and clean. Stones were laid on it to ease
travelers’ passage. The chariot’s wheels rumbled over them, deafening those who
rode in it.

They had a following of people afoot and on horseback, women
and men and children, in a chorus of barking dogs and a tumult of questions.
The horses, trained in war and accustomed to a close press of bodies, had not
had to pull their chariot along a paved road before. They were fractious, and
more so the closer to the city they came.

Rhian gripped the sides of the chariot as one of the dun
stallions bucked hard enough to rock the car. Minas kept the horse in hand. His
face was quiet, intent. He seemed in no difficulty. Yet there was a tightness
in his jaw, a deepening of the frown with which he contemplated the horses.

“Stop the chariot,” she said abruptly.

He glanced at her. After a moment he shrugged, as if he had
considered asking why but decided against it. He gentled the horses down,
taking his time about it, letting them settle little by little.

When they were still, Rhian turned to the crowd that had
stopped with them. “Please,” she said. “Of your courtesy. Draw back, move
softly. Be a guard of honor. For the horses’ sake, I ask it of you.”

“Are you the mare’s new servant?” demanded one of the women
on horseback, a proud gold-bedecked creature on a splendid black mare.

For answer, the white mare herself came between Rhian and
the rider, flattening ears at the black mare, sending her in swift retreat. The
others bowed, even the children for once somewhat subdued, and opened a ring around
the chariot.

Rhian smiled at them all. “I thank you,” she said, “and my
charioteer thanks you from the bottom of his heart. Will you escort us, then?
Will you conduct us into Lir?”

They were pleased to do that, and in reasonable order, too,
now they understood that it mattered to the horses. That was the courtesy of
the Goddess’ country, and the fine manners of Lir.

The way opened before them after that, although it had been
thronged with travelers. They made a path for the chariot, a road of honor. The
horses, as if aware of that, arched their necks and danced a little.

Minas’ jaw was still set, but his frown had eased. He was
merely intent on what he was doing. She wondered if his heart was beating as
hard as hers, as they drew closer to the high gate. There were guards above it
in bright armor, and people in it, watching their advance.

“The king?” Rhian asked the nearer of Mabon’s guards.

The man, whose name was Huon, was farsighted; he could see
faces where she saw only a blur of dark and pale. After a moment he shook his
head. “It’s guards, mostly, and people from the city. No one of rank.”

“He would wait inside,” Minas said, “if he is a king like
our kings. They never come out. It would be beneath them. They send their sons,
maybe, or their warband, for escort. But not themselves.”

“That is how it is,” Huon agreed. He tilted his head toward
the great circle of their escort. “Did you think these came on us by accident?”
Rhian had not been thinking. Whatever the mother of her body had been, she was
a potter’s child. She knew little of kings and Mothers, ranks and courtesies.

“You’ll have to guide me,” she said, “through the city’s
ways. I come from a simple village. Cities are all strange to me.”

“And this is Lir.” Huon nodded. “Yes, I’ll guide you, if
that’s your wish. Follow me now. Remember who you are, and what you are and why
you came here. You are higher than kings, but your grace permits you to bow to
the will of kings.”

Minas startled her with a sudden smile. It was crooked, but
it understood more, just then, than she did. “Will your proud people accept
such a thing, if they see it in a slave?”

“Are you not a king’s heir?” Huon asked.

Minas stood straighter. His shoulders went back, his chin
came up. He was as beautiful as his horses.

The rush of heat startled her. She had felt so little for so
long, that to feel it now, almost under the gate of Lir, left her breathless
and barely able to see, let alone think.

She must be as clear-headed as she had ever been, to face
this city. Its gate opened like a mouth, gaping to swallow her.

She fought free of that vision. She had ridden through gates
of cities before, though not a city as great as this. She had seen crowds of
people, been stared at, remarked on, followed. That was the lot of the mare’s
servant, the woman who had brought the chariots into the Goddess’ country.