Daughter of Lir (50 page)

“Yes,” Emry said. Why that seemed to trouble these people so
excessively, he could not understand.

“Tell me why, apart from my given word, I should allow you
to do this thing. She is a great lady. You have been a slave. It’s dishonor for
you even to look at her, let alone make her your wife.”

“That may be so,” Emry said, “but I should like to ask her.
By your leave, my lord, since that is required here.”

Dias shook his head in amazement. “You’re clever, foreigner:
tricking me into giving my word before I understood how truly outrageous you
could be. Well then. You may ask her. If she refuses, you’re bound by it. Do
you understand that?”

“Perfectly,” Emry said.

“If she declines to accept your suit, you’ll ask no more of
me. The gift is given. It can’t be given again.”

“That too I understand,” said Emry.

“Then it’s done,” said Dias, “and may the gods help you.”

Emry bowed to him, as low as to a Mother.

He would not understand that, but certainly he could
understand Emry’s smile. He shook his head again, sharply this time. “Go, get
out. You’re making my head ache.”

Aera had thought that Etena’s exile would set her spirit
free and undo the confusion that had beset her. But as Dias rode to his
kingmaking, and then when he was made king, she found that she was more
troubled than ever. Instead of walking in the light as even a respectable wife
might do once her husband was dead, she shut herself up as tightly as any
maiden. She even traveled in the wagon, with its curtains lowered and both
light and air shut out.

It was a living thing she ran from: a pair of deep blue
eyes, a set of broad shoulders, a white smile. When she slept she dreamed of
him. When she was awake she struggled to keep from spying on him. She wanted
him more, the harder she tried to deny him.

She was a woman of full age. Her son had grown to manhood
before he died. Her husband was dead. She was subject still to her father and
to the young king; but custom permitted her to ask them to choose her a new
husband—even to name him, if she was discreet.

She did not want a husband. She wanted a living man in her
bed, a warm body and strong arms. She wanted the sweetness of him, the gentle
way he had, but with no weakness in it.

She wanted him. And that was folly touching on madness, for
a woman of the People to yearn so for an outlander.

o0o

On the morning after the kingmaking, she was mending one
of her father’s tunics, straining her eyes in the dim light of the tent, when
she heard that too-familiar voice in the outer room. He was asking for her. Her
sister Dania responded with suitable stiffness, reminding him that he was male
entire and Aera was a woman of unblemished reputation.

“I come,” he said to that, “by the king’s leave. Lady, of
your courtesy, ask the lady Aera if she will speak with me.”

He spoke softly, but the crack of command must have taken
Dania aback. When she spoke, it was much more faintly than before. “I will ask.
I cannot promise—”

“Ask,” he said sweetly, but still with that ring of royal
bronze.

Aera took pity on Dania, or so she told herself. Before
Dania could part the curtain, Aera emerged from behind it, abandoning her
mending to stand in front of Emry with lowered eyes and folded hands. “You
asked for me?” she murmured.

He was not dismayed as a man of the People would have been.
Gods, he was smiling—did he know how that made her heart melt?

He knelt in front her, still smiling, and spread his hands.
“Lady, I did ask, and the king gave me leave to ask you.”

She looked down at him. She understood what he was saying.
It did not shock her: and that surprised her a little. She felt . . .
what? Surely not a wild white joy.

“You know how impossible it is,” she said. “I was chief wife
of a king. You are a foreigner and a slave.”

“I am a king’s son,” said Emry, “and a king’s heir, and no
longer a slave. Your king has set me free.”

“You are still a foreigner,” she said.

“I see men here taking wives from tribes that are, maybe, as
distant kin as I am to you. My father’s father’s grandfathers in the dawn time
were horsemen of the steppe. White Horse People, they were called. Now we are
the Goddess’ people, and the White Mare’s children.”

“That sounds very noble,” she said. “But what power or
wealth do you have here? How will you keep me? Is it my dowry you need, to make
you a man of substance?”

“I am the king’s guardsman,” Emry said.

“Provide me with a tent,” she said, “and all that is
necessary for its comfort, with servants to tend it and a wagon to carry it and
herds to feed it, and I will ask my father to consider you as my husband.”

He blanched a little at the price she set on herself, but he
was hardly deterred. “If I can give you all those things,” he said, “will you
accept me?”

She threw down her heart and set her foot on it before he
heard how it sang. “Give me what I ask, and I will give you myself.”

His smile blinded her with its brilliance. He leaped up, as
light on his feet as a much smaller man, and bowed low before her. “When I see
you again,” he said, “it will be under the wedding canopy.”

o0o

As Emry was leaving the makers’ circle, Metos himself came
to meet him. Emry paused. Metos knew, he thought: the green eyes raked him from
head to foot. “You are a brash child,” Metos said.

“I’ll be more than brash,” said Emry. “She sets a price on
herself—but they tell me that the bride’s father offers a dowry to the man who
would marry her. Is that so, my lord?”

“It is so,” said Metos. His eyes were glinting.

“So,” Emry said. “As her dowry, will you offer a tent and
servants and a wagon and cattle? Goats, too, I suppose. And sheep.”

“She has a dowry,” Metos said, “of two wagons and a large
tent and threescore spotted cows and a bull to serve them. I will trade one
wagon with its oxen, for three maidservants and a score of milch goats and a
flock of sheep.”

“That,” said Emry after a respectful pause, “must be a splendid
wagon indeed.”

“I made it,” Metos said, as if that answered everything.
Which to be sure it did.

“Then I will trade it,” said Emry.

“There is another thing,” Metos said, “which I will demand
of any man who takes my daughter.”

Emry’s glow of self-satisfaction died.

“I am the maker of chariots,” said Metos. “If a man would
claim my daughter, let him be possessed of a chariot and a team and suitable
remounts. I will give my child to none but a charioteer.”

“Then I will be one,” Emry said, “to be worthy of her.”

Metos lifted a brow, but said nothing. Emry bowed to him as
he had to Aera, but without quite the insouciance. This price was higher than
the other, and notably more difficult.

He would pay it. What he had seen in her eyes when briefly
they raised to his—if she had been a woman of Lir, she would have summoned him
to her bed long ago.

Brash, Metos had called him. Well then, he would be as bold
as a man could be.

o0o

He waited till night had fallen. Dias, as he had hoped,
came back to his tent at not too late an hour, and not too drunk with kumiss.
He was warm with it, expansive; he grinned when he saw Emry. “Well, westerner?
Did she throw you out on your ear?”

There were others with him. Not all of them were men Emry
knew. For that he curbed his tongue, and only said, “She offered a bargain,
which I took. But her father wants more.”

“Does he now?” Dias paused in entering his tent. His hand
flicked, dismissing the strangers, but keeping Aias by him.

Emry slipped in behind Aias’ broad back. Lamps were lit;
Dias’ bed was spread, ready for him to fall into it.

Instead he rounded on Emry. “What does Metos want in return
for his daughter?”

“That I be a charioteer,” Emry said, “with chariot and
horses.”

Aias snorted. “He should ask for the moon and a basket of
stars. You’ll get them sooner.”

“Not if the king gives me a gift,” Emry said.

It was audacious. Deadly, maybe. But he trusted in Dias’
equable temper, and the charm of his own smile.

“Why,” asked Dias, “should I give you a clan-chieftain’s
wealth?”

“Because I’ve served you well since I came here,” Emry
answered, “and will serve you as I can, for your sake as much as for hers.”

“You have gall,” Dias said. “We admire that here. I’ll give
you horses, you’ve earned those. But a chariot? That’s too much, westerner. Too
much by far.”

“What,” said Emry, “if I were able to make one? Would I be
allowed to keep it?”

“That would be a marvel,” said Dias. “Hasn’t Metos himself
said that you have no gift for making?”

“I will pray,” said Emry, “that the Goddess will give me the
gift.”

Dias laughed. “Yes, pray! Maybe she’ll favor you. If she
does, what you make is yours. I’ll see that Metos knows it.”

“I thank you,” said Emry.

“Thank me when your prayers are answered,” Dias said. He was
still grinning, as if it were a grand jest that Emry would do what he had
sworn.

o0o

Metos did not laugh. He said flatly, “You’ll build a
chariot when yonder camp dog stands up and sings.”

“Maybe,” Emry said with determined lightness. “I do have the
king’s leave. He hasn’t forbidden me to ask for help.”

“You may ask,” said Metos, “but your own hands, and only
yours, will do the making.”

“If I ask, may I be answered?”

“You will be answered,” Metos said.

“Will I be given what I need?”

“Ask,” said Metos, “and it will be given.”

Emry let out his breath in a long sigh. Metos saw it: the
corner of his mouth twitched. He went back to the wheel that he was shaping.
Emry went to discover what he must do to fulfill this task he had taken on
himself.

o0o

Necessity, the Mother had told Emry long ago, was the best
of teachers. He was not gifted with the maker’s art, but his will was strong.
When yet another wheel-rim warped and snapped, or when the copper he was
smelting for the fastenings tried to leap out of the pot, he made himself
remember her face. He persevered doggedly, learning the craft little by little.

From the first he suffered under the eyes of every idler in
the gathering. They were not circumspect in their reckoning of his talent.
There were wagers on how soon he would give it up, and how broken he would be
when he did it.

He set his teeth and endured them. They all knew why he was
doing it. He was half a laughingstock, half a legend: the western slave who
labored to win the maker’s daughter.

On the day when he made two wheels that matched, and that
rolled smoothly on their axle without wobbling or cracking, his mob of watchers
cheered as loudly as if he had won a race. There was still the body of the
chariot to build, and the yoke-tree, and the complexity of the harness, over
which he struggled in the nights after the long grueling days in the makers’
circle. But the worst of it, the part he had dreaded most, was done.

He never saw the one he did this for, or tried to visit her.
That would come after, for good or ill.

He was aware, sometimes, that Metos watched him. The maker’s
stare was different from that of his perpetual audience: keener, brighter,
colder. He never said anything then to Metos, nor Metos to him. All their
conversation was of the making of chariots. They did not speak of Aera, or of
any other earthly thing.

Emry was living in Metos’ world. It was a world of absolute
focus, of pure will. He lived, ate, breathed chariots. When he slept, they
filled his dreams. He would wake with a start, and it might be black night or
full morning, but he would know, his hands would know, exactly what they must
do.

He lost track of the days and nights. The moon waxed and
waned. They were still in the camp of the gathering, but the tribes had begun
to scatter. They would not be waging war this season. The new king would firm
his rule before he began his first conquest.

That was nothing to Emry. Emry was making a chariot.

Came a day when he stood under a sky heavy with cloud, and
looked at the thing which he had made. It was a smaller chariot, not the two-man
war-car but a lighter, whippier thing, meant to carry a single man behind a
team of swift horses. He had left it plain except for copper sheathing on the
end of the pole, and copper bells on the bridles, and bits cast in copper.

“It’s not badly made,” Metos said beside him.

“I suppose it could be prettier,” Emry said.

“Pretty is for fools and children,” said Metos. He inspected
the pole, and peered beneath the car. “This is different. What did you do?”

“I made it lighter,” Emry said, “but it should be stronger.”

“We’ll see the truth of that,” said Metos. He had given no
signal that Emry could see, but one of the younger makers led out a team of
golden duns, and another brought up a chariot already harnessed, as plain and
almost as light as the one that Emry had made.

Emry had to be a charioteer in truth: had to see the duns
harnessed with his harness and bidden to draw his chariot. He stepped gingerly
into it. The woven leather of the floor had a live feel under his feet. The
chariot rode almost weightlessly light. The horses sprang forward rather too
strongly, all but pitching him out before he had well begun.

He found his balance somehow. The horses settled. They were
fine horses, well trained. They forgave his uncertain hand on the reins, and
taught him to be less awkward.

As they found their stride, he began to find his. The
chariot rolled smoothly over the new grass. It balanced well though it was so
light. The horses could stop and turn with ease.

He tried their paces around the field, first slow and
careful, then swifter. The chariot flew behind them.