Daughter of Lir (59 page)

Tempter, Aera thought. Trickster, troublemaker. This was the
wolf-shaman—he lived for mischief. But she could not go out, could not warn
Dias. The young king was ripe for temptation. His brother alive, his mother laired
where he had meant to go—it was a trap, as neat as any she had seen.

Emry would see it. But would he speak of it? He was the
enemy. Even love could not change that.

She sat unmoving, and maybe she betrayed her king, too, with
her silence. She had no power to move or speak.

o0o

She was still there come morning, when the horde of the
People surged across the river. Then she could rise. Then, stiffly, she could
go out.

She moved like one in a dream. She had put on garments that
came to hand, and taken what went with them: bow, spear, battleaxe. Chariots
rumbled past, toward the boats and rafts. One swept her up, its charioteer
still yawning, bleared with sleep.

She rode across the river as a warrior, crowded in with a
boatload of charioteers and fighting men. The chariots rode behind, and the
horses preternaturally still in the barges. The priests and the shamans chanted
ceaselessly, sustaining the force of the spell.

She could die. Or she could live, and see her elder son
again. It did not matter which the gods intended for her. Not without Emry. Not
without the half of her spirit.

Emry left the camp of the People in the deep night before
the horde crossed the river into the Goddess’ country. He could not take a
chariot—not from this side of the river. He took the sturdiest of the teams
that Dias had given him, a pair of strong-bodied bays, and riding one and
leading the other, crossed the river under the stars.

The Goddess was with him. An eddy of the river caught him
just before he stumbled into a company of guards, and swept the horses
downstream to a jut of bank that no one had thought to watch. His mount and his
remount scrambled out of the water, paused to shake away the wet, and with no
urging from him, set off westward.

He was empty of words. His heart felt nothing. When he
looked within, he saw Aera’s face, the cold lack of recognition, the words that
damned him.
I don’t know you.
So
simply, so completely she had cast him away.

She had set him free. He was going home. What he went to, he
did not know, nor care. His father dead, the kingship gone, Etena set up as
Mother—it did not matter. It was home.

He put aside memory of Aera’s face, the children’s faces, the
tent that had housed them, the belongings they had gathered—all the home that
he had made in his captivity. He was going back to Lir. He was going where he
belonged, whether he lived or died.

o0o

The king of Lir inspected the prisoners. His eyes were cold,
but Minas saw no hatred there. No death, either, though he would not have been
surprised to find it.

The priestess-warriors had brought them in, but his own
people guarded them now. “I hope you understand,” he said to them, “how fierce
a battle I fought to gain possession of you. The temple wanted you—all of you—and
badly.”

“What did it cost you?” Rhian asked him. Minas wondered if
she meant to sound so impudent.

The king kept his temper. “A little gold and a great deal of
pride. And a promise. You’re bound in this city until the war is over.”

Minas’ teeth ached with clenching. It was no more than he
had expected, but it was not an easy sentence.

“You’ll need me beyond these walls,” Rhian said, “and the
mare, to give heart to the people.”

“Did you think of that before you ran westward?” the king
asked. Minas, watching him, reflected that betrayal cut deeper and festered
longer between kin who loved one another. But that was not just; it was not
necessary.

“She did not run,” he said. “I ran. She pursued me. Punish
me, but let her go. She did nothing that she should not have done.”

“Don’t believe him,” Rhian said. “I made no effort to bring
him back.”

“Except with guilt,” Minas said, “and the constant reminder
of what fate I was forcing on you.” He turned to the king. “Keep me captive,
yes, because if I see even the hint of an opening, I will bolt. But spare her.
This is none of her doing.”

“You love me too much,” Rhian said. “Stop it. Let him punish
me as I deserve. Let him—”

“Enough.”

The king did not raise his voice, but the slap of it
silenced them both. “I am going to punish you. You, prince of chariots, will
not leave this house unless bound and under guard. You may make chariots. You
may ride horses within the walls. You may instruct recruits under the eye of
such captains as I may choose. One word, one hint of corruption, and you will
be shut in your chamber until this war is ended.

“And you,” he said to Rhian, “are free of the city, but
nowhere beyond it. You will not speak with this man, except under guard. You
will not be alone with him. You will do nothing to further his cause in this
war.”

“Or?” Rhian asked.

“Or you die.” The king’s voice was perfectly flat. “She
wanted you dead when you were captured. It’s your good fortune that the women
who caught you were not entirely her creatures. There is still reverence for
the White Mare, even in the temple. The captain will live, I hear, though she
was flogged with canes until the darkness took her.”

Rhian stiffened. Minas liked it little, either. The woman
had been as kind as her orders would allow, and only as implacable as she had
to be.

“Have you considered,” he asked the king, “that that one’s
death now might save us all?”

“It was too late when she came to Lir,” the king said. “Some
say it was too late when the Mother’s daughter was let live in spite of the
omens.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He had not slept in much too long. None
of them had. “There is truce now between this house and the temple. I will do
whatever I must to sustain it, within the bounds of law and justice. If that is
to execute you—both of you—then I will do it.”

Rhian took his hands in hers. He had melted her heart, as no
doubt he meant to do. “I’ll stay in Lir, if that will keep peace with the
temple. But let me help with the war.”

“Dare I trust you?”

“This time,” she said, “yes.”

He paused for a long while. Then he nodded slowly. “I have
captains enough, and soldiers, and the people know what to do. But one thing I
need. You spoke of it—and it’s true. Heart. Someone to keep up their spirits
and bolster their strength and see that no one breaks for fear or exhaustion.
Can you do that inside of the city? Are you strong enough?”

Of course she was, Minas thought. It was the very nature of
her.

Was he strong enough to endure captivity, shut in the king’s
house without her and never left alone? If the People were coming, if there was
hope of freedom, maybe. Maybe he would not wither and die.

o0o

He would never let anyone see him quail, even Rhian. His
hands were unbound, at least, and his guards were as congenial as guards could
be. “We don’t blame you for bolting,” Huon told him—having taken a place in
Minas’ guard since, as he said, he had been doing it since Larchwood; he had
grown accustomed to the duty. “We’d do it, too, if we were prisoners in a
foreign country.”

They were vigilant, and there were always at least two of
them. They followed him everywhere, even to the privies. When he occupied
himself with the chariots, they idled about the edges, just happening to guard
every path of escape. They were king’s guards: princes of their kind.

They were all men. Large men, larger than Minas, and strong.
They were very well armed.

He did not see Rhian all that day, nor know if she was
guarded as he was. He threw himself into the making of a chariot, even knowing
that it would be sent against his own people. It kept him from dashing himself
against the walls.

And this was only the first day.

He was the only one there, that day. The others would come
back, the guards promised him. They were out preparing for the war.

As the day stretched, someone else appeared in the broad
high workroom. He darkened the light, rousing Minas from a near-trance of
weaving strips of leather to be the chariot’s floor.

Minas looked up into a face that had become familiar over
the years. It was a broader, thicker, darker face than most of those he saw
here, with a beard crimped into waves, and the upper lip shaven. It was
smiling, round brown eyes crinkling at the corners.

Minas warmed in spite of himself, almost into a smile of his
own. “Eresh,” he said.

The foreigner swept a low bow. “At your service, O maker of
chariots. You didn’t expect me? It’s spring. The roads are open. The river of
trade flows free. Where else would I be but in the land of gold and beautiful
women?”

“Somewhere where there is no war?”

Eresh threw back his head and laughed. “Oh yes, that would
have been wise, wouldn’t it? But the astrologers, you see—they said that this
was a year of peace and plenty, and trading would be profitable. So we went out.
Now it seems I should have consulted the soothsayers instead.”

“Or the gossips in the markets,” Minas said. He
straightened, flexing his shoulders, stretching the knots out of his back.
“There’s still time to escape.”

“Not in oxcarts.” Eresh did not seem dismayed. Either he
knew little of war, or he had more courage than his soft body might have
indicated. He perched on a stool, his ample rump and tiered kilt overflowing
it, and watched with his perpetual bright interest as Minas went back to his
weaving.

He was good company, better than the guards. He told stories
of his country, his king and gods, and gossip from the lands to the south.

There were many of those—as many as there were tribes on the
steppe. They all built cities, beside which this city of Lir was a simple
village, and houses as high as mountains. “They even build mountains,” he said,
“in a country very far away, and bury kings beneath them.”

“Like barrows?” Minas asked as he cut new strips from the
tanned bullhide. When Eresh looked blank, he said, “Hills on the steppe, made
by men’s hands, for the burial of kings.”

“Are they as tall as mountains,” Eresh asked, “and built
entirely of stone?”

“They’re dug in the earth,” said Minas, “and heaped with
turves. Sometimes they’re shored with wood, sometimes with stone.”

“These are all stone,” Eresh said. “The building of them is
years long. Kings begin them in youth, as a vaunt and a promise. Houses of
everlasting, some people call them, for the dead to live in until the world’s
end.”

“Our dead go to the otherworld,” Minas said, “and become
gods.”

“There too,” said Eresh, “but these people must keep their
bodies whole, or their spirits die.”

“Then if you take a head or burn a body, the spirit is dead?
Don’t their bodies rot?”

“Their sorcerers have great arts to keep them whole.”

“So only kings can live forever.” Minas shook his head.
“That’s not a world for me. I’d be terrified to die.”

“They do love the world of the living,” Eresh said. “Why, do
you have no fear of death?”

“Death is a passage,” said Minas. “Some of us stay, and are
gods. Some come back. For need or desire, love or vengeance, or because we
haven’t earned godhood—we live again, until we win our freedom.”

“That is . . . an unusual world to be living
in,” said Eresh. “But comforting. It must be that.”

“And you? What is death to you?”

“Darkness,” said Eresh, “in the Great Below. Our dead don’t
come back—except for one. He was a goddess’ lover. She went down and down and
down, through the realms of shadow, and won him back with the beauty of her body.
Even the gods below were no proof against that.”

“No god is,” Minas said. “Did you know, to the tribes on the
steppe, this country we sit in is the otherworld, and the river between is the
river of souls. I am dead to my people, dead and a god.”

“Can gods go back?”

“Not the gods of the dead.”

“And yet you tried.”

Minas bent to his cutting. “I had to try. Even knowing . . .”

He could not finish. Eresh was kind enough not to do it for
him.

But there was no turning his heart away from it. Etena had killed
him, just as surely as she had destroyed his father.

o0o

Rhian was not in the room when the guards brought Minas to
it. Her belongings were still there, but the air felt strangely empty.

Although there was no sleep in him, he undressed and lay on
the bed. The guards took positions: one by the door, one by the window. His lip
curled at that, but he kept his thoughts to himself. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, the night had advanced very
little. Warmth stirred against him. He looked down at his daughter’s tumbled
hair and bare cream-brown shoulder.

She looked up, wide green eyes in a tangle of black curls.
Her expression was by no means tender. “You ran away and left me,” she said.

He could not deny that.

“Now they’re punishing you.” Her satisfaction was palpable.
“
She
wanted you whipped. She wanted
to watch. The king threw a bag of gold at her and told her to keep her poison
to herself.”

“He really said that?” Minas asked.

“Do I tell lies?”

“You do not,” he said gravely.

“I think a whipping would do you good,” his daughter said.
“Next time you run away, you’ll take me with you.”

“If I run away again,” he said, “I’ll be killed.”

“Not if I’m with you.” She sat on his chest, as bare as she
was born except for the image of the Goddess that hung on a cord about her
neck. “I hate you,” she informed him.

“I do deserve that,” he said.

“Huon says you were trying to get killed. That’s why you
ran. You are not allowed to get killed. I need you alive.”