Daughter of Lir (41 page)

“In that wind,” said Rhian, “is the Goddess’ voice. I speak
for her now, since no one listens to her Voice in the
     
temple.”

“You speak for nothing,” the bitter priestess said. “You are
the destroyer of Lir.”

The men glanced at one another. They did not know, Rhian
saw. The father of her body, the two who must be her eldest brothers, saw only
a village child who had been chosen for this strangest of priesthoods, the
service of the mare.

The priestesses knew, all of them, who she was. She could
not allow them that advantage. She said, “I am the Mother’s daughter, the child
whom you would have destroyed. But the Goddess forbade that. She willed this.
You will accept it.”

She looked as she spoke, not at the priestesses, but into
her father’s eyes. Eyes as deep a blue as the sky at twilight, like Emry’s,
like her own. Whatever face the Mother had worn, her children had inherited
their father’s.

She watched him understand. She saw the astonishment; the
shock. The memory, as he recalled her birth. “They said you had died,” he said.
“She said it. Did she know?”

“She did not,” the Goddess’ Voice said.

He drew in his breath with a hiss, a sharp sound of anger.
“Even then,” he said, “you defied your Goddess.”

“You speak without understanding,” said the bitter
priestess. “You do not see what we saw, and still see. The fall of Lir, O king.
The end of the world. Because of this child. Because of her.”

“Because of her?” he demanded. “Or because of what you did
to her in your cowardice? What you did to Lir—this is the Mother who should
have been. This—”

“No,” Rhian said. “I am not to be Mother. I belong to the
mare.”

“You must be Mother,” he said. “We must have a lady in Lir.
Otherwise there is no heart, no spirit here. There is no one to rule us.”

“The Goddess rules you,” Rhian said. “I will speak for her,
and you will listen, but I will not sit in yonder chair, nor claim the title or
the office.”

“That matters little,” he said, “once it is known that—”

“It will not be known,” she said. “The truth of what I am,
that stays within these walls.”

“That is wise,” the Goddess’ Voice said. She did not even
sound surprised.

“I do think it is,” said the king slowly, as wisdom overcame
anger. “We will all swear that no word leaves this place.”

“That, we were sworn to on the day she was born,” the Voice
said.

“Perhaps that was ill sworn,” said Rhian, “but it’s done.
It’s too late by far to tell the truth. The people will be troubled enough
without the burden of that.”

The king inclined his head. He was trying, she thought, not
to stare at her.

No matter now. “There will be a truce,” she said. “The king
will see to the preparations for war—in full freedom, bound to no one’s will
but that of the Goddess. You,” she said to the priestesses, “see to the welfare
of the people. Keep their bodies fed and their spirits strong. The king will
defend the cities. You will see that there are cities to defend.”

She met each of their stares. It was like taming horses. The
stronger will won. And Rhian would not give way. She had nothing to lose here.
They had everything.

That was the duty and the purpose of the mare’s servant, the
child in Larchwood had told her: to be free of all the lands under the Goddess’
sway. To speak when no one else could safely speak. To command when command was
needed, but when the need was past, to ride away.

A Mother was bound to her city. The mare’s servant was bound
to nothing but the mare.

Rhian rose. “You will settle matters now, as king and
priestesses should. How you settle them, I care little. Only that you do it.”

When she left, Minas followed. She had half expected him to
linger. But he was making it clear: he was her dog. Not theirs.

“Go to the chariots,” she bade him once they were out of the
hall. “I need no guard now, and your pupils are waiting.”

He kept his eyes on his feet; he bowed somewhat too low, and
did her bidding.

o0o

Much later in the day, after the sun passed noon, the king
found her where she well should be: in the stable, tending the mare. He had put
aside the gold and finery of the council. He was dressed in plain leather and
well-woven cloth, with sword in baldric and dagger at his side.

“Ride with me,” he said, “if you will.”

She raised a brow, but the mare was ready, and she too. She
had had enough of walls.

His horse was waiting, a tall and sturdy red mare. Two of
his sons waited with her, mounted on horses of like quality: the eldest but for
Emry, one must have been, and the other was the youngest.

They kept their eyes to themselves as their father mounted
and as they rode through the city. The people smiled at their coming, bowed and
waved and called out greetings. There was no fear in them, and no crippling
awe, but love and great respect.

Some of that was for the mare, and therefore for her rider.
Rhian had yet to become accustomed to it. She followed the king’s example as
best she could: smiled, bowed, waved in return. It was a little easier the
longer she did it.

It seemed an endless while before they passed the outer wall
of the city. The fields were blessedly open before them, stripped of their
harvest, lying bare under heaven.

The king, it seemed, had a place in mind. The mare was
content to follow his mare. Rhian let the sun fill her, dimmed though it was by
a rising veil of cloud. The wind sang in her ears. It was full of secrets.

They passed flocks of sheep in autumn pasture, and goats
perching precariously on hillsides above the road. They crossed a narrow band
of beechwood, pale gold and sighing in the wind. The clouds by then had
thickened, obscuring the sun. Rhian’s nostrils flared, catching a scent of
rain.

Past the wood they left the road and followed a narrower
track that wound up the side of a hill. The wind freshened as they ascended. At
the summit it whipped their faces, cutting through even leather and well- woven
linen and wool. Rhian shivered, but she was not truly cold. It was exhilarating—glorious.

From here they could see the whole of the country that they
had ridden through to come here, the valley of the river and the patches of
woodland and the circles of villages and towns. The chief jewel of them all,
the city of Lir, lay within its golden walls, a patchwork of green and gold and
brown.

This must be how the Goddess saw it, small enough to enfold
in her hands. “Do you often come up here?” she asked him.

“Whenever I can,” he answered. “From the high places, even
the greatest of troubles can seem small.”

“When I was younger,” she said, “and my spirit needed
comfort, I always went up on the hilltop above Long Ford, and listened to the
wind.”

“The wind knows all that goes on in this world,” the king
said, “though it may be difficult, sometimes, to make it care for what we care
for.”

Their eyes met. His were warm. She found herself smiling.
“It loves gossip,” she said, “and secrets.”

“Some of which are even useful.” He swung down from the red
mare’s back and held up his hands. Rhian let him catch her as she slid from the
white mare’s back. His hands were warm and strong, his body a bulwark against
the buffet of the wind. Today it neither whispered nor laughed; it sang shrill
and keen.

He shifted his hands to her shoulders, and looked her in the
face. “When did you learn what you are?”

“Before I crossed the river eastward,” she said, “it was
made known to me. I should have died there on the sea of grass, and never come
back. Certainly there were those who hoped for it.”

“Priestesses,” said the king. His voice was a growl. “They
took your life from you, your right, your office. They deprived your mother of
your living presence. And I—I never knew I had a daughter. I may make alliance
with them because our country has sore need of it, but for this I will never
forgive them.”

“They were afraid,” Rhian said. “They did as best they
could, as blind as they were with fear.”

“It was not enough,” he said, fierce enough that he reminded
her vividly of his son whom she had left on the steppe. “It will never be
enough.”

“Please understand,” she said as gently as she could. “They
foresaw ruin on every path, as long as I was permitted to live. Yet they did
it. They left me alive. They took away my blood and my kin and the name I would
have had, and made me a stranger. Maybe I would have been better dead. Or maybe
all of this serves the Goddess, and we mortals are too feeble to comprehend her
purposes.”

“She brought you back,” he said: simple as men were, driving
direct to what mattered to him. “If I could stand before the world and name you
your mother’s child, I would do it. I know why I must not, but it’s great pain
to be so wise.”

“May the mare’s servant be ally and friend to the king in
Lir?” she asked him.

“It is permitted,” he said.

“Then let it be so,” she said.

He hesitated. She saw how he moved, then stopped, as if
afraid of her, or himself. Her fear was maybe stronger than his, but she had
not had his years of being king to make her cautious. She pulled him to her and
held him. Her own blood. Her own bone.

After a stretching moment he returned the embrace. He was a
solid presence, broad and strong. A bulwark, she had thought before. A strong
wall against the terrors of the world.

Maybe it would break, as the priestesses had said of the
walls of Lir. But for now it was here, and it was strong, and she—she realized
as the rain came, lashing her face, that she was happy. It was a strange,
sharp-edged, utterly mortal happiness, but it was none the less real for that.

The steppe burned from horizon to horizon. It was the
wrath of the gods, people said—Emry’s understanding of their speech was feeble
still, but he could see the fear in them, the roll of eyes toward heaven, the hands
lifted as if to thrust aside a blow. The wind blew from the east or the south,
which kept the fire from the camp, but the air was thick with ash and smoke.

The whole of the west was walled away from them. Emry prayed
to the Goddess that the caravan had escaped before the fire overwhelmed the
world. It was her doing, he hoped with all his heart, to protect her children
from pursuit, and to conceal what had been done between the traders and the
king’s wife Etena.

How well it had succeeded, he discovered on the third day of
the fire. People were beginning to pack up their tents and flee, but the king
showed no sign of leaving this camp.

That morning the sun barely had power to pierce the pall of
smoke. The air cut at the throat with each breath. More of the tents were
coming down than before, herds being gathered, oxen hitched to wagons, women
and children emerging from seclusion, laden down with baggage.

The king’s sons who had been using Emry as a servant were up
far earlier than usual, muttering to one another, hanging about as if they
could not find anything useful to do. When Emry tried to wait on them, they
snarled at him. One, who until then had been almost friendly, cuffed him and
kicked him and spat at him in the tribesmen’s language.

Emry was too startled to strike back. He kept his head down
instead and escaped under cover of a scuffle between two others of the princes.

There was little enough difference between the scant light
of the tent and the brown dimness of the outer air. He had thought to seek out
the river on pretext of fetching water, but a dark figure was standing near the
king’s tent: a woman where women were not accustomed to be. She carried no
burden, had no child in her arms. She simply stood there, wrapped in veil and
mantle though the morning was breathless with heat.

He knew her by the eyes in the veil: green as summer leaves,
lifting to meet his. Something in them drew him to her, as unwise as that might
be; but he could not stop himself.

“Lady,” he said.

“Prince,” she said.

“Not that,” he said, “lady, nor guardsman either, now.”

“You submitted to this.”

It was not a question, but he chose to answer it as if it
had been. “The others are free,” he said, “and alive, I can hope. If the
Goddess allows. If they escaped ahead of the fire.”

“Why?”

“Your sister wife,” he said, “was insistent.”

For a breathless moment he feared that she would press him
closer to the truth, but she sighed and gave it up. “A dozen of the king’s
sons,” she said, “went raiding westward. None of them has come back. One of
them—” She clasped her arms about herself, shivering in the smoky heat. “One of
them is the king’s heir.”

“They may have escaped, too,” Emry said, “if your gods were
kind.”

“Our gods are not kind,” said Aera. “When I look in my
heart, I see flames. When I pray for their safety, I see bones charred to ash.”

Her voice was so quiet, so still, so perfectly calm, that
Emry closed his arms about her and held her to his breast. For a long moment
she suffered it, thin as a bird in his embrace, trembling with grief she would
not set into words.

Then she stiffened. He let her go. Her eyes blazed at him,
but not with anger. Not exactly. “Do not ever do such a thing again,” she said.

“Not unless you ask,” said Emry.

o0o

It seemed the king had been resisting all counsel to break
camp, because if he did that, he would be turning back eastward; and that, he
would not do. But the wind shifted, and the wall of flame advanced inexorably
toward them. Even the king’s will wavered then.

These children of the steppe could break camp, even such a
great one as this, in hardly more time than it took to command it. They divided
into bands—clans, Emry suspected; they abandoned the slow heavy wagons and
mounted even the women on horses, and fled the fire.