Daughter of Lir (10 page)

When he was sure of the weight and balance, he gave them
what they begged for: freedom to run as they would. They lifted up and flew.

Metos rode easily in the car behind Minas, barely holding to
the sides, face to the wind, eyes shut, lost in the glory of their speed. The
ground was a blur beneath. The herds skimmed past. For a while they matched
pace with a hawk flying overhead, until with a leap that was like laughter, the
horses passed him.

This was joy, pure and unsullied. No blood, no fear, no hate.
No shadowed king, no dread of what he in his darkness would do.

But horses could only run so far, and the sun was rising
toward the zenith. Minas had still his morning’s labors amid the chariots, then
must sit in judgment where his father would not. He chose not to be bitter when
he thought of that. Bitterness fed the thing that had taken his father’s
spirit.

He brought the horses back slowly, till they were walking
long and free, still with the chariot light behind them. He smiled at his
mother’s father. “This is the best of all,” he said.

“The yoke could balance lighter,” said Metos, “and there is
a bobble in the right wheel.”

“A very small one,” Minas said, but he brought the chariot
back to the makers’ circle, unharnessed the stallions and saw them led away.
His grandfather had already forgotten him.

It was not until he had stripped to his own loincloth and
knotted up his hair and turned to the wheel that he had been crafting, that he
saw the shadow that sat by the half-shaped curve of it. Even through swaths of
veils he knew her.

Her eyes smiled at him. They were clear green, warm as if
lit from within by the sun.

A man should not lower himself to acknowledge a woman in the
light of day. But this was Aera, Metos’ daughter. Minas smiled at her with neither
shame nor fear for his honor, took her hand in his and said, “Mother. Have you
come to see the new chariot?”

“I saw it indeed,” she said. “How it flies!”

“Swifter than a hawk’s flight,” he said. “Lighter than the
wind of heaven. We’ll make a hundred like it, and sweep across the world.”

“That will be splendid,” she said.

He peered at her. Her brightness had dimmed. Her eyes were
lowered as if she had been a woman like any other, submissive before the prince
her son. “Mother,” he said. “Tell me.”

She said it directly, without shrinking from it. “Your
father bids you cease the morning song.”

Minas’ back stiffened. “Does he indeed?”

“So says the favored wife Etena.”

“Etena.” Minas unclenched his teeth. “Then we may know whose
will this truly is.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to challenge her,” Aera said.
“Yet.”

“But the morning song,” he said in dismay. “The raising of
the sun. Our kings and princes have done it since the dawn of the world. If we
fail in it now, the gods will turn away from us.”

“Child,” she said. She lowered her veil for him, even there
under the eye of heaven. He looked into her face that was still beautiful, as
if carved in ivory. The red-gold of her hair had darkened to the color of moors
in autumn, but there was no frost in it yet, no pitiless winter.

“Child,” she said again, “the gods hear the heart’s song
even more clearly than that of the tongue.”

His eyes widened. She smiled at him. “Mother,” he said after
a moment, “you are a woman of terrible wisdom.”

“I would hope so,” she said. “We do need it.”

“Is it bad?” he asked.

She shrugged, sighed. “No worse than ever.”

“They still don’t see,” he said. “Any of the men. Do you
know what Nus the Hunter said to me yesterday? ‘At last, a king who acts like a
king. A king who kills only what is most worth killing. A king whose whole
heart is set on war.’ Nus was never like that, Mother. He never killed for the
love of blood. He never prayed for war.”

“Don’t all men do that?”

He hissed at her. “Not like that! War is sacred. War is
terrible, but all honor is in it. No one makes light of it. But Nus—Nus was
dreaming of red slaughter.”

“Are you?”

Minas shivered. “You know what I dream of. I don’t hunger
after it as he does. True hunger, and thirst—to drink the blood of
destruction.”

Aera’s face was somber. “Is he the only one?”

“It is spreading,” said Minas, “like a winter sickness. My
battle-brothers have escaped it, so far.”

“And your milkbrother?”

Minas could not help a smile. “Dias’ only nightmare is a
morning after too much kumiss.”

“Dias,” said Aera, “is Etena’s son.”

“Not in the spirit,” Minas said with pure certainty. “The
gods gave her dry breasts to match her barren soul—and gave her son to you to
suckle and raise. He’ll never give way to his mother’s demons.”

“I do hope so,” Aera said.

“I know so,” said Minas.

o0o

She did not linger long after that. Minas threw himself
into his work. He did not want to think the thoughts she had roused in him.
Thoughts born half of dreams, half of whispers among the people. Rites of the
moonless night, conquered children offered to the gods below, drinking of blood
and binding of souls.

He was a creature of the sunlight. He had no fear of the
dark, but he did not serve it, either. What had been done to his father . . .

He had to stop then, or the planing blade would slip and
sever a finger. He turned his face to the sun. It stroked his cheeks with
warmth. His father had been like the sun once, great tall golden man whose
laughter could fill the camp.

But then he had turned away from the light and sought out
the secrets and the silences. Little by little he had abandoned the gods of the
heavens and sought the gods below.

“Etena,” Minas whispered. Etena the shaman’s child, the
witch’s daughter, the captive who had conquered a king’s spirit. Preposterous,
almost, that she had given birth to so cleanly simple a spirit as Dias. Aera
might doubt Dias’ simplicity, but Minas never would. Dias was all as he seemed.
There was no darkness in him.

Minas thrust himself to his feet. He could do no useful work
today. He gathered his garments, nodded to the artisan or two who glanced up at
him, and left them to their labor.

o0o

Minas judged such matters as the king reckoned too trivial
for his royal attention—not many this day: a squabble or two, a handfasting, a
newborn manchild welcomed into the tribe. None of the petitioners seemed
disgruntled to face the king’s son rather than the king himself. Indeed the new
father was visibly relieved.

Minas remembered again the tales of blood and sacrifice. The
children had never been Windrider children. But it had been a long winter. The
spring was barely begun. The gods below would be thirsty for new blood.

When the judging was done, Minas turned toward his father’s
tent. It was not a thing he had done of late; he had been inclined to avoid what
he could not bear to think of. That this darkness had been growing for long and
long, but that this season, this chill spring and late-departing winter, it had
grown measurably greater.

The king’s tent had always been the largest, the richest,
the most imposing. In his life he had taken a hundred wives and concubines
innumerable, prizes of his conquests. Many of those were dispersed among the
tribes, given as gifts to vassal chieftains. But the newest and the loftiest,
and those whom he most favored, traveled with him across the plains.

They filled his tent with rustlings and murmurs, wafts of
scent and a babble of high voices. But on the men's side there was none to be
seen, except the three who were blessed to attend the royal person. Three, and
the one who was always in his shadow, a shadow herself, but for the gleam of
eyes.

Apart from these, the king was alone. He sat cross-legged on
a heap of carpets, while one of his attendants combed his hair and wove it into
plaits, and another shaved his cheeks and chin and combed out the long thick
mustaches. The third sat at his feet and sang a soft wavering song.

His hair had been pale gold once. It was ashen now, and
growing thin. His eyes, once clear pale blue, were as colorless as water.

He was still strong. His shoulders were wide, his arms thick
with muscle. His face was carved in lines as stern as stone.

Minas knelt in front of him as a good son should do. Out
under the sun he felt quite sufficiently a man, but here he dwindled to an
awkward stripling. He felt unduly gaudy in the princely finery he had put on to
sit in judgment: the armlets and collar of heavy river-gold, the circlet of
hammered gold about his brows, the strings of shells and stones woven into his
hair. A plait of it straggled over his shoulder, turned in lamplight from
bright copper to a raw and unlovely red.

He straightened with an effort and met the eyes that gleamed
in shadow. He smiled—more baring of teeth than offering of warmth or welcome.
He spoke, but not to Etena. She was, after all, only a woman.

“My lord,” he said. “Father. I trust I find you well.”

The king lowered his gaze from unimaginable distances. For
the first time he seemed to see his son. He blinked. His shoulders twitched. He
frowned as if in puzzlement. “Minas? Minas, are you truly here?”

“In the flesh, Father,” Minas said lightly, though his heart
twisted.

“Good,” said the king. “Good. And you’re well, then?”

“As well as I can be,” said Minas.

“Good,” the king said again. “Good.” His feet shifted as if
he might rise. Minas held his breath, half in fear, half in prayer—for this was
his father surely, though sadly befuddled.

The shadow behind him made no move, but some signal passed.
The singer’s song, which had muted but not ceased, rose to a buzzing drone. The
king stilled once more. His eyes lifted and went blank. The voice that came out
of him was his royal voice, deep and strangely flat. “Call the war-council.
I’ll speak to them tonight.”

“Father,” said Minas. “It’s too early in the year, surely,
for us to—there’s no time for the clans to gather—we can’t—”

It was like speaking to a stone. Minas broke off. He made
reverence as if his father were still there to be aware of it. He all but fled
then, out into the blessed light.

“Wahai! Wahai!”

The king’s own warband whirled, stamped, shouted, a war-cry
like the baying of hounds. They were all naked, their bodies painted in
dizzying patterns. Their long hair was bleached white with lime and stiffened
into bulls’ horns and great arching stallion-crests. They were wonderful and
terrible to see.

Minas stood on the edge of the council circle. One arm
rested over Dias’ shoulders. The rest of the prince-heir’s companions lounged
about in attitudes of elaborate boredom.

They would dance in their turn, for the prince’s honor and
their own pride. Their hair was loose, their body-paint simple: red ocher on
the brow, yellow on the breast, and the orbs of sun and moon painted on their
cheeks. The sun, sinking into the west, limned their faces in gold.

They would dance until the dark, all the warriors of the
Wind. Then the council would gather round the great fire, the king’s fire, and
the year’s war would begin.

Westward, thought Minas, looking into the sun’s bright eye.
Always westward. Maybe they had fled something once, some monstrous horror,
some fire on the steppe, famine, merciless war. Not even the grandfathers
remembered.

Now they themselves were fire and famine. Fools fled them.
Wise men bowed and offered them tribute—then well might die regardless, at the
king’s whim.

The king had not come out of his tent to see the dancing.
His warleaders feasted on a fat ox, tossing bones and bits of roasted flesh at
the dancers. The dancers darted and spun, evading the barrage. One, too slow or
too unwary, caught a thighbone between the eyes and dropped like a stone.

The others danced over and around him. The drums were
beating, pounding the pulsebeat. Their feet stamped. They beat the earth into
submission.

Minas’ companions whirled into the dance. He spun in the
midst of them, spinning swifter, leaping higher, shouting louder than any. It
was pure mindless bodily pleasure. He lost himself in it.

o0o

The council began at full dark. The king still had not
come out. Minas was dizzy with drink and dancing, but not so dazed that he
could fail to see who was and was not sitting in the council circle. The
wardance had moved to another and lesser fire. It would wind through the whole
camp before it ended, drawing in new dancers, shedding old ones, till all the
tribe was sealed to the king’s war.

Minas had danced enough for a while. He squatted on the
circle’s edge and got his breath back. The sweat dried on his body. He was
shivering, but he hardly felt the night air’s chill.

Dias dropped down beside him. As usual, he had thought of
practical things: he had Minas’ bearskin mantle and a wolfskin for himself.
Minas wrapped himself in the mantle, breathing its wild musky scent.

The war-council was growing restless. There was kumiss
enough, and some had drunk deep of it, but that only made them surly. These lords
and commanders were not accustomed to waiting on any man, even a king.

Minas was breathing comfortably again. His heart had stopped
hammering. He rose, holding the mantle about him, and walked into the
firelight.

Eyes flashed to him. For a moment some seemed to see the one
they waited for: quick flares of anger or expectation, even more quickly dulled
as they recognized the son and not the father. He smiled brilliantly at them
all and took the place to which he was entitled, just outside the canopy that
should have sheltered the king.

They ignored him, and his brother behind him. Whatever the
princes might be entitled to, they were still little more than boys. This was a
council of elders and seasoned warleaders.