Daughter of Lir (71 page)

“So is water,” said Emry, “and yet it wears away stone.”

Dias peered at him through the haze of wine. “What will you
do, wear away at us?”

“Unless you dispose of me before I can begin,” Emry said,
“yes.”

“I’m not going to dispose of you. I’m going to let you
live.”

“As what?”

“As . . .” Dias drew out the word till Emry
was ready to hit him. “What would you like to be?”

“What will you let me be?”

“King in Lir,” said Dias. “The bargain I gave her. Lir and
the lands about it. The rest is mine.”

“What bargain did you give my wife?”

“I gave her you,” Dias said.

“If she agrees to it,” said Emry, “I’ll take what you offer.
The rest you’ll have to win for yourself.”

“Are you not king of this country?”

“I’m not king of anything,” he said, “in strict point of
fact—I’ve not been raised or consecrated. But if and when I should be, I take
only the kingship of this city. I won’t command any other. What you want, you
win for yourself. I’ll have no part of it.”

“That’s a bargain?”

“It’s the best you’ll get.”

“It means the war will go on. You could stop it if you
would.”

“Would your young men thank you for that?”

“No,” said Dias. “Would yours?”

“Probably not. Young men are fools everywhere. But the
Mothers, the elders, the rulers of cities, they’d not thank me for giving them
up in their absence. They’ll fight you, my brother. Some may even win.”

“That’s the splendor of war,” Dias said. “I’ll take your
bargain. With one condition.”

Emry waited.

“That you do nothing to help the cities. No armies. No
chariots. They’ll fight on their own, and win or lose without you. Your war is
fought. You lost. This is the price you pay for it.”

Emry lay on his face. The wine dulled grief and pain, of the
spirit as of the body.

He turned onto his side, propped on his elbow. Dias lay
flat, eyes on him, silent. “I accept your condition,” he said.

“Good,” said Dias.

“Lir is mine, then? Truly mine?”

“Yes.”

“Then when morning comes, you will leave it. You will not
come again except as I bid. Beyond the borders I am your man as I ever was.
Here, I am lord and king.”

Dias’ expression was pure delight. “You are insolent! You’re
splendid. Is it true that there are no kings in this country but you? That all
the rest are women—Mothers?”

“It is true,” said Emry.

“Do you know what I’ll do when I conquer them?”

Emry shook his head.

“Marry them!”

Emry’s mouth was open. He shut it.

Dias grinned and hugged himself. “I’ll make them all wives.
They’ll learn to be modest; they’ll discover obedience. I’ll tame them, every
one.”

“Or they’ll tame you.”

“Not in this world,” said that king of men.

He could dream, Emry thought. Waking would come soon enough,
when he met the Mothers of cities.

Emry rode out with Dias, riding as charioteer behind a
team of greys. The rest of Dias’ men who had been in the city rode behind,
mounted or in chariots. The people of Lir watched them from the walls. The
People of the Wind watched them from the field.

As they came, the tribes began to beat on drums and shields
and the sides of chariots, a steady, rolling sound that resonated in the earth.
A name was woven in it.

It was not Dias’. It was Emry’s. They were giving him the
accolade of a king.

Emry glanced over his shoulder. Dias was grinning from ear
to ear.

And there with the royal tribe, closely surrounded but free,
clean, and dressed as lords and warriors—even to the women—were Emry’s
charioteers whom he had thought dead. Most were wounded, but all were able to
stand. Davin stood foremost, head up, living, breathing, and doing his best not
to disgrace himself or his kin in front of all these wild tribesmen.

“These are yours,” Dias said. “We kept them for you.”

“Were you treated well?” Emry asked them.

They all nodded, some stiffly, some unhappily, but none of
them could deny it. Davin spoke for the rest of them. “So. It was all for
nothing.”

“Hardly,” said Emry. “You won the respect of the tribes.
They’ll call us brave now, and reckon us equals, rather than slaves.”

“We’re still conquered,” muttered Davin.

“So have we been before,” Emry said, “and won in the end.
Come here. Keep your head up. Smile. We’re guests; I’d thank you to act like
it.”

Some of them barely managed as much, but Emry’s will held
them. They were like the rest of Lir: fractious, but at heart obedient.

They would do. It was good to have them there. And it was
good to be with the People, eating their food, even drinking their hideous
kumiss, side by side with Dias and Aias and Borias and the rest.

o0o

When Emry rode back to Lir, not only his own people came
with him. Metos the maker of chariots rode beside him, bringing Rhian’s
daughter to her mother. Emry’s daughters and his son were coming, riding on the
river from the sea of grass. It was time they were safe with their father
again, and with their mother.

She was in the city, but she was hardly idling about,
waiting for him. There was a great deal to do to clear away the wrack of war
and prepare for Emry’s kingmaking. That would come with the full moon, the
first moon of summer, which was a festival in every country that any of them
knew.

It was a strange kingmaking. There were no priestesses. The
White Mare’s servant was there to say the words that should be said, to speak
the blessings in all their richness; the mare herself stood with her.

In older days the king had been made in the enclosure of the
temple. But that was burned to ash. Emry chose instead the field where chariots
had first met chariots in open battle. The horde of the People stretched down
along the river, and the people of Lir filled the field from the hill to the
walls.

Emry came out in a chariot. This time Dias was his
charioteer. It would tell the People a thing that they needed to know, and
assure the people of Lir that they were more than slaves or captives.

There were chariots all around the circle of the kingmaking,
and charioteers both of Lir and of the People. In one, Aera was standing, still
dressed as a warrior, with their two dark-haired daughters, as like as cubs of
the same litter. In the chariot beside hers, their son bounced and gurgled in
Metos’ arms—a sight to widen eyes among the tribes, but in Lir it was a
perfectly common thing. Metos at heart, Emry had been thinking, was remarkably
like the men of Lir.

Emry turned his eyes away from them, if not the whole of his
mind. Rhian waited for him on the hilltop, all alone, mounted on the White
Mare. For the first time he saw her in the garments that were proper to her
office: tunic and leggings of moon-white doeskin, embroidered with signs that
were older than Lir. There were river-pearls and white doves’ feathers braided
in her hair, and silver about her neck and wrists and waist. She held a cup in
her hands, a skull-cup bound with silver and studded with blue stones. It was
very old and very powerful, and had come from the treasury of Lir.

Emry was resplendent in crimson and gold, the sun to her
moon. But it was he who blinked, dazzled, and she who regarded him steadily. He
descended from the chariot and knelt on the grass of the hill, at the White
Mare’s feet.

The words Rhian spoke over him were as old as the cup in her
hands, so old that their meaning was forgotten. He felt them as a wash of wind
over him, a rush of warmth like the flare of a fire.

She poured water from the cup on his bowed head. It was cool
and clean, little like the heavy scented oil with which his father had been
anointed in his day. Her hands rested briefly where the water had fallen,
blessing him. She crowned him with gold, a narrow fillet that Minas had made,
binding his brows like the clasp of strong cool hands.

She raised him up. The roar of acclamation rocked him on his
feet. As when he brought Dias to the tribes, they began their accolade, beating
swords on shields and spears on earth, pounding on drums, chanting his name.
His own people took it up, caught up in it, till the great roll of sound shook
the sky.

o0o

Minas and Metos between them had contrived a means for him
to get about while his legs healed: a cart on the wheels and axle of a chariot,
shaped for him to sit in with his splinted legs stretched out. With his beloved
duns in the traces, he had a fair turn of speed, and he could go almost
anywhere out of doors that a man could go on foot or horseback.

He was at the kingmaking, though he took his place neither
with the People nor with the folk of Lir. He sat in his cart somewhat apart
from both, with his daughter perched beside him. He was content, he told
himself. When he looked at Rhian, he was a great deal more than that. She kept
so little state; it was wonderful to see her as she was meant to be, a person
of power in the world.

He left after Emry was crowned, but before the crush of
people and chariots could bar his escape. As he reached the open field north of
the city and let the duns choose their own speed, Ariana stood behind him and
clasped arms about his neck and whooped like the wild thing she was.

They ran till the duns were tired, which was a gratifyingly
long way. Minas was not greatly inclined to turn back; but he should be seen at
the feast, to honor Emry and to reassure his brother. Dias would not believe
even yet that Minas intended to keep on living.

Maybe it was cowardice, but Minas had no intention of dying.
He would live, if only to spite Etena.

He drove back slowly. Ariana had curled up beside him and
gone to sleep. The warm weight of her against him was remarkably comforting.
His legs ached deep in the broken bones; his shattered knee throbbed, with
flashes of sharper, fiercer pain: pain that had become so familiar he barely
noticed it, except when he had nothing else to think of.

On a whim he took the long way back, winding through fields
and copses, round a handful of villages. The people there went about their
tasks as they had before war came to their country. It mattered little to them
who was king in the city; their world was the turning of the seasons and the
tilling of the fields and the tending of their own, both the beasts in the
byres and the children in the huts and houses.

Farther away, down the river toward World’s End, the war
went on. Larchwood was besieged. Towns and villages fought fiercely against
parties of raiders. Many had fallen, been sacked and burned, their people
killed or taken captive. A few had surrendered.

None had chosen Emry’s way. But then, thought Minas, Emry
was different. He was a man, a king. He had ridden with the People. These
Mothers and ruling women neither understood nor wished to understand the
People’s ways.

Minas wondered how long Emry would hold to his promise that
he would do nothing to help or harm anyone but Lir. His brothers were in
Larchwood. Rumor was that the second son, next eldest after Emry, would declare
himself king of Lir, and condemn Emry for a coward and a traitor. But Minas
suspected that that was merely rumor. It was more likely that the Mother would
name herself Mother over all her people, and undertake to rally them against
the enemy.

Or maybe she would submit to marriage with Dias after all,
and persuade the rest of the Mothers to do as she did. Those that did not would
die. Dias would not again suffer a woman to seize power as Etena had, nor let
her live to destroy him.

Minas could already see how this country had changed the
People. His own mother riding as a warrior, driving a chariot, standing unveiled
beside her husband, would have been unthinkable in the world he had been born
to. Men who ventured to ravish women here were as likely to be gutted or gelded
as to gain what they were after. These people were gentle, but they were not
weak. And the women fought as strongly as the men.

o0o

Just before the last rise of the road, from which he would
be able to see Lir, he paused to water the horses. There had been few travelers
on the road; war kept people at home, and anyone who would be out and about was
at the kingmaking. And yet a rider came toward him on a short thick-bodied
horse. The man was well matched to his mount, riding without elegance but
skillfully enough.

Ariana leaped out of the cart and ran laughing toward the
rider. Eresh the foreigner laughed and swung her up in front of him. “Good day,
little warrior,” he said. “Where have you been keeping yourself?”

“Riding with Father,” she said. “Did Mother send you to
bring us back?”

“I’m sure she would have, if she’d thought of it,” Eresh
said. He smiled at Minas. “The feasting’s begun. They’ll be looking for you.”

“Yes,” said Minas.

Eresh brought his gelding up beside the cart, loosed rein
and let the beast graze beside Minas’ stallions. The duns ignored him. “You’re
healing well, they say,” said Eresh. “You do look more alive than you did. Are
you still dead?”

“To the People I am,” Minas said.

“And in Lir?”

Minas shrugged, one-sided. “I’m the one who makes chariots,
who belongs to the mare’s servant.”

“Is that enough for you?”

Minas frowned. “What else is there?”

“Certainly,” said Eresh, “the making of chariots is a great
thing. But will you live your life in this city? Or will you go with your tribe
after all, and make chariots for them, as your grandfather does? He’s dead to
them, too, yes? Or can a man be living and still be a god?”

Minas pondered the man and his words. They opened wounds he
had been trying to ignore until they healed. But wounds of the spirit festered
deeper than any other.

He belonged nowhere but in Rhian’s arms. That was the truth.
The People were no longer his people. When he rode among them or feasted with
them, he was welcome, he was beloved, but he was not part of them. It was the
same in Lir, though he was not so well loved there. He had no home, no tribe,
except Rhian and the daughter who regarded him gravely from the back of Eresh’s
horse.