Daughter of Lir (31 page)

Minas lived in a black dream, a darkness shot with fire.
Sometimes he hovered just beyond the circle of shamans. They spoke to one
another, but in the languages of beasts, which he could not understand. And
sometimes he sat with the wolf, kicking his heels against the wall of the
world, that dropped away to infinity beneath him. The wolf never said anything
intelligible, either. It merely laughed at him, with its red tongue lolling and
its plumed tail waving in mockery.

This world was a dizzy, rolling thing. It had the pitch and
sway of a horse’s gait, but oddly skewed, as if—

As if he lay face down on a horse’s back, and the horse
moved at a steady canter. When he tried to move, he found he could not. He was
bound. The darkness about him had a distinct scent of horses, and a less
distinct one of damp wool, and a powerful tang of smoke.

There was a roaring in his ears. His head ached with
pounding insistence; his mouth tasted of a solid month’s debauch.

He remembered firelight; feasting. He remembered wine. He
remembered—chariots? A raid. Had he dreamed that?

This seemed a nightmare, but it was as real as the raw
chafing of horsehair ropes on his wrists and ankles. He was a captive. He was
also about to be catastrophically ill.

Struggling only made it worse. In desperation, he raised his
voice and howled. The effort nigh split his skull—but it brought the horse to
an abrupt halt.

He heard running feet. A hand plucked the coverings from
about his face. His stomach let go all at once and completely.

The bindings slipped free. Someone lowered him to the
ground, turning him on his back, laving his face with blessed coolness.

He blinked till his eyes cleared as much as they were going
to. There was still a thick haze over the world, and a gagging reek of smoke,
but the face above him was one he knew—oh, gods, well indeed.

“I should like to pamper you,” Rhian said, “and let you
rest, but there is no time. The grass is burning. If I untie you, will you give
me your word, sworn on your name, that you won’t try to escape?”

His spirit was still half lost in a fog, but he could think,
after a fashion. When he tried to speak, he erupted in a coughing fit.

She set a waterskin to his lips. He drank in small sips, as
a wise man did, though his thirst was terrible. When he had had enough to
soothe his throat, though never enough for his thirst, she took the skin away.
“Will you swear?” she asked him. “And mean it?”

“What will you do if I won’t?” he asked her. His voice was a
rough whisper.

“I’ll tie you on the horse again,” she answered, “and get
you out of here before we both burn.”

“I will ride,” he said. “I swear—to you, on your name as a
goddess’ servant. Until we escape the fire. Then—”

“Then if I have to bind you again, I will.” She set her
shoulder to his, lifting him with surprising strength. His legs were
totteringly weak. His head was throbbing. But he had been riding since before
he could walk. Once he was up, he stayed there.

She wrapped his face in a wetted cloth, as if he had been a
woman in a veil. But no woman had ever ridden stark naked but for a flapping
tatter of cloak.

The fire’s roar had risen to fill the world. Even the mare
was more than eager to escape it. Once her rider was safe on her back, she
leaped into flight. Sparks swirled about her. Minas, swept in her wake, thought
he saw wings, as if she were a great gleaming bird: a bird of fire.

o0o

The wind saved them. It had been blowing strongly
westward, but as they fled, it shifted into the south. Above the roar of fire,
Minas heard the rumble of thunder. He almost thought he caught a scent that was
not smoke, an achingly clean scent, the scent of rain.

Whatever the truth of that, the wind’s shifting shifted the
fire, driving it toward the north. When he glanced back, he could see the
terrible splendor of it, the burning wall mounting up to heaven.

The horses dropped from a gallop to a canter. The stallion
on which Minas rode was laboring. The mare seemed tireless; but was she not a
goddess? Her pale coat was darkened with sweat, with soot and smoke.

The woman on her back looked like a spirit from the realms
below, with her soot-blackened skin and her matted hair.

From a canter they slowed to a walk. They were going due
west, and steadily away from the wall of fire—away too from the People, and
from the lands that Minas knew, where he had hunted or raided. They were
riding, he thought, toward the river of souls. Toward her country—the country
where bronze was as common as flint, and women ruled like kings and gods.

He was mortal and he was ill, and his head was full of aches
and fog. He did not understand. He could only ride. The grey stallion followed
the mare, close as a foal to its mother. He shut his eyes and lowered his head
to the coarse mane and left himself be carried. It would end when it ended.
Until then, he would simply endure.

o0o

He was dimly amazed when at last they stopped. He was even
more amazed to discover that he was shivering. He was cold; he was wet. It was
raining. The thunder had given birth at last.

It was a fireless camp, but Minas had seen enough of fire to
last him a while. Rhian raised a tent, a small one, and drew out bread and
cheese from the pack that had ridden behind Minas on the stallion’s back. Minas
was too sick for hunger, but he choked down what he could, sipping water laced
lightly with kumiss.

Rhian washed the soot and ash from her body and her hair,
standing naked in the downpour, laughing as it lashed her skin. When she was
clean, she crawled into the tent, still smiling. He could feel the heat that
radiated from her. She was like a fire herself.

He, poor shivering filthy thing, could only huddle in his
corner and stare. When she reached out a hand, he stiffened. But there was
nowhere to go.

She cleansed him with a cloth wetted with rain, taking her
time about it, going gently where there were bruises and raw skin. Her touch
was light. It warmed him.

After a while he gave up his resistance, sighed and
submitted. It was only wisdom, he told himself. He was too sick to go far, and
he had given his word. He would stay until the morning. Then he would go back
to the People.

She lay beside him, her warmth against the chill of his
mortal flesh. He half hoped, half feared that she would do more; but she only
held him. Her breast was a soft swell beneath his cheek. Her arms raised a wall
against the chill and the rain. “Sleep,” she murmured. “Sleep.”

o0o

The morning was bright and cool and scoured clean. The
wind had borne away the stench of smoke. The fire was still burning: as Minas
stumbled out of the tent, he saw the black pall of smoke on the horizon, and
the daylight-dimmed flicker of flame. It would burn long, he thought, and burn
far.

The People were on the other side of it. He could only pray
that they had had warning; that they had escaped.

“That is the wrath of the Goddess,” Rhian said, coming out
beside him. “Is she not mighty?”

He glanced at her, then quickly away. Her only garment was
her hair. It covered her most insufficiently.

He was no better dressed than she. He turned to dive back
in, to find something, anything to cover himself, but she barred his way. “Come
here,” she said. “Warm your bones in the sun.”

He could not make himself thrust past her. He spun away
instead, and flung himself to the grass. It was wet. He was almost glad of the
chill.

She brought him bread and a handful of dried meat. His
stomach was less unsteady than it had been the night before. He was almost
hungry. But he clenched his fists and set them on his thighs. “Tell me what
this is. Tell me why I am here. There was a raid—I didn’t dream that. How did I
come to be with you?”

She drew a long breath as if to steady herself; and coughed.
The smoke was in her lungs. She did not appear to take any notice. “There was a
raid on the raid. Your brothers—your brothers are dead.”

He surged to his feet, but his knees could not hold him. He
sank back down again. “All of them?”

“All.” She knelt in front of him. “One of them had taken you—bound
you, drugged you. He was going to kill you. I stopped him.”

Minas was not surprised. Not angry, either. He felt nothing
at all. “Etena?”

She nodded.

“And you knew?”

“I . . .” She had never had such difficulty
meeting his eyes before. “We bought you. She sold you to us.”

She was speaking words in the traders’ tongue. He had
thought he knew it, and well. But the words made no sense. “You . . .
bought me?”

“Traded you. You, and gold. In return she took the captain
of the guard.”

“Your prince from the west? You sold her your prince?”

“It was his will,” said Rhian.

Minas’ head ached worse even than it had when he first woke
on the grey’s back. “I think I must dreaming. Or mad.”

“This is the waking world,” she said. “Your father’s wife
wanted to be rid of you. She could have killed you—but this, she seemed to
think, was better.”

“But why—”

“So that you would suffer. So that you would be a slave.”

He looked about, and laughed. “You tell me this here? Now?
You’re alone. You don’t even have a scrap of cloth to cover yourself. Are you
the one who is mad?”

“I am the one who cannot lie to you, even to save myself.
You can’t escape. The mare won’t let you. And if she would, where would you go?
There is a wall of fire between you and your tribe. That wall will stay as long
as you try to go back.”

“Fire dies,” Minas said. “It burns everything there is to
burn. Then it goes out.”

“How much is there to burn? How wide a sea of grass?”

“It can’t—”

“If the Goddess wills, it can. You belong to me. Believe it.
Accept it.”

“I’ll kill you,” he said, a snarl in his throat.

“If you were going to, you would have done it before now.”
She regarded him with calm blue eyes. “I think it best if I bind you again. To
be safe. And to spare you temptation.”

“Why? So that you can use me as a man uses a woman?”

Did she flinch? He could not be certain. “We will use you,”
she said. “That much is true.”

He fought her. But she was stronger than she had any right
to be, and he was still weak from hunger and the drug. Even then he might have
eluded her, but in his struggle he fetched up against the forelegs of the mare.
Her head loomed over him. Her breath blew lightly in his face. She opened her
mouth and gently, very gently, took his wrist in her teeth.

Those jaws could crush bone. He did consider it—but a
cripple could not be king over the People. He lay stiff and still while Rhian
bound his wrists and ankles together and heaved him onto the grey’s back.

She said no word. She broke camp swiftly, packing everything
tightly, slinging it behind Minas. The grey lurched forward, with the mare just
ahead of him.

It was deliberate, he thought, that she held the horses to a
trot. Face down and bound, he felt every stride in the roots of his teeth.

This was torture, clever and cruel. After an endless time
she paused to let the horses drink and graze. She pulled his head up and thrust
the neck of a waterskin into his mouth. He had to drink or drown.

She gave him enough to take the edge off his thirst. She did
not feed him or let him off the horse. He would not beg, though his belly was
rubbed raw and his shoulders were all but pulled from their sockets and his
bladder was ready to burst.

It was that last which broke him. He endured well past noon,
but came a time when he must either wet himself or ask for mercy.

She said no more than she had since the ride began. She
unbound him from the horse. He fell feet-first, which was better than
headfirst, to be sure. She did not unbind his ankles. He managed to kneel, and
to relieve himself with a sigh that was almost a groan.

She watched him without expression. He had no blushes left
in him. He met her stare with one just as flat.

“A bargain,” she said. “I will let you ride like a man, but
with your hands tied, if you swear to make no effort to escape. If you prove
your good faith, I may even unbind your hands.”

He hunched his shoulders. “I give my word,” he said.

She unbound his ankles, and then his wrists—but only to
bring his hands around to his front and bind them again. His shoulders cried in
agony. He set his teeth against it.

It was rather less miserable to ride sitting up. Minas fixed
his eyes on her back as she rode in front of him. So straight, it was, with the
heavy black braid brushing the mare’s loin. So wide and straight in the
shoulders, so full in the hips—so perfectly a woman.

He hated her. It was a perfect hate, honed and flawless. It
was purer and somehow cleaner than the hate he bore Etena, or the brothers who
had conspired with her to do this to him. Etena lived, unless the fire had taken
her. His brothers had died—the gods’ justice, and yet he owed vengeance to
those who had killed them.

His hate for Rhian was remarkably close to love. It was a
pure thing, a simple thing. She dared to own him. She dared to bind him with
cords and oaths, to compel him who was born to suffer no woman’s compulsion.

And to think that he had wanted her once, yearned for her so
badly that he had dreamed of keeping her with the People. Was this her Goddess’
revenge for that, or his own gods’ mockery?

“What use will you make of me?”

Rhian looked up from building a fire in the evening’s camp.
Minas sat under the mare’s guard, his bound hands clasping his knees. The
evening was cool; his skin was pebbled with chill, even with one of the cloaks
thrown over his shoulders. And yet, she thought, his anger was warming him
enough to keep his teeth from chattering.