Daughter of Lir (45 page)

She beckoned. The tent’s wall was folded here, and the fold
was an entrance.

It admitted them to a space that startled him. There was
light, not a great deal of it but still dazzling after the firelit dark. A tree
of lamps illuminated a shimmer of fine fabrics that he well remembered, for
they had come from Lir. A bed of furs lay in the midst of them. And there was a
pot from which radiated a wondrous warmth. A firepot after all, and in the
king’s tent—where else would such a rarity have hidden itself?

His guide had slipped into shadow and vanished. He was alone
in the light and the warmth.

It was clear what was expected of him, and who expected it.
He opened the chest half-hidden in a hill of cushions, found a jar of southern
wine and a pair of golden cups. Another jar carried about it a distinct scent
of musk: rarity indeed, unguent from the cities beyond the southern horizon,
too rich almost to bear.

He considered preparing himself in every way possible, but
it might be excessively shocking even to her, to find him naked in the bed she
had laid for him. He sat cross-legged on it instead, and basked in the warmth.

She let him wait for a very long time. He drowsed sitting
up, as a warrior could. The dizziness of the dance faded. Music wound through
his heart, the Great Song of Lir from its beginning.

He had come to the ninth Mother, she who wore three faces,
three daughters born at the same birth, when the inner curtain stirred. He
ended the verse in the chamber of his skull, and looked into Etena’s unveiled
face.

She had painted it, though not as they did in the west: this
was a white mask with a thin dark curve of brows, and lips painted small, like
a scarlet bud. It was like a goddess’ face, but a goddess from a country he did
not know.

She was wrapped in a mantle of gleaming black fur. She let
it fall from shoulders that were still beautiful, and a body that, though
softened with years and idleness, had kept its loveliness more readily than her
face. He let her see the pleasure he took in looking at her.

She bloomed with it, so much that he was taken aback. Had no
one ever let her know that she had beauty'? Or had it all been power, and a
face that no man who did not own her must see?

“Is it true,” she asked him, “that in your country a woman
can command anything of a man, and he must obey?”

“True enough,” he said.

Her dark eyes glittered. “Stand, then,” she said. “Undress
yourself.”

“Would you not prefer to do it for me?”

She sucked in a breath. He had outraged her—but he watched
her reflect on what he asked of her. He saw the glint of curiosity, and the spark
of heat that came with it. Her fingers found the fastenings of his coat and
worked them loose one by one. Her eyes were narrow; she frowned, focused like a
child.

She would kill him in a heartbeat if he displeased her. She
would break his spirit if she could, and rule it utterly. Yet he knew a
softening of compassion for her, that was almost pity. So much power; so little
peace.

She undressed him as if he had been a child’s doll. Surely
she had seen men naked before—the men of this tribe wore little enough in the
summer. But maybe not in front of her, smiling at her, offering himself for her
pleasure. Emry had gathered that the woman’s pleasure was seldom the man’s
concern, here.

When all his garments were laid aside, she explored the
whole of him with her hands, meticulously. She ran her palms across the width
of his shoulders, down his breast, over his arms. She lifted his hands,
measuring her own against them: hers were swallowed in his, her fingers soft on
the calluses of bow and spear and sword. She spanned his waist, his hips, the
strength of his thighs. She shied from the thing that must be most clearly on
her mind.

She circled him slowly. He felt her touch on his back, the
firm tug on his plait. She stroked him as if he had been an animal. He arched
and sighed, purring in his throat. She shied again. Poor creature, never to
have known this of all delights there were.

She came round to face him. “Take me now,” she said. “For
the gods—for the festival. Because the king—”

“You ask me to be your sacred king?” he asked her.

She was perhaps beyond answering.

“When I am done,” he said, “do I die?”

She seemed to recover a little at that, enough to speak
rapidly, in swift gusts of breath. “Do your duty well and be a king where a
king is needed, and you will live to give me your strength again. Fail me, or
breathe a word of it outside this place, and there will not be enough of your
bones to scatter on the wind.”

Emry understood a great deal just then, that had not been
clear to him before. She had the king utterly subdued to her will—but one part
of him accepted no such compulsion. She had made her king a gelding; but for
certain purposes she needed a stallion. Nor could it easily be one of the
tribe, not if she would be safe from betrayal.

She must have looked on Emry as a gift of her gods. “So this
is why you bought me,” he said.

“I prayed to the gods,” she said, “and they brought you to
me. I asked for a king, or a king’s son. You are that, my divinations tell me.
And you have sired sons.”

His teeth clicked together. Of course she would want him for
that. He would wager that her next son, once he was born, would not be given to
a rival to nurse. And she would see to it that it was a son, whatever rites or
potions she needed in order to ensure it. It would not even matter that it
would be a dark child: she was dark herself.

She had planned this with great care, he could see, and
considerable patience. He made no effort to hide his admiration. “Lady,” he
said, “you are remarkable.”

“I do what I must,” she said, but he could tell that she was
pleased.

He moved carefully, slowly, as one approaches a beast of
uncertain temper. She did not recoil. Very gently he stroked her as she had
stroked him, with the same soft touch. She shivered. He persevered; where she
quivered most strongly, he lingered.

Little by little her tautness melted. Her heart would not
stop beating or her mind cease scheming, but he could make her body forget all
the world but itself.

When her knees gave way, he eased her down, still playing
the parts of her like the notes of a pipe. The song he made was subtle and
ineffably sweet, traced in touches and in kisses and, when she opened to him of
her body’s own accord, in the rhythm that was oldest of all but for the beat of
the heart.

She caught fire in his arms. Her lips fastened on his. Her
arms and legs locked about him. She drove him deep inside her, gasping a little
as if in pain, but taking no notice of it.

He was hers now as a moment before she had been his. He gave
himself up gladly. She was eating him alive. But one thing he kept that was his
own: his will to hold until she had come to the summit. She gasped then in what
sounded for all the world like shock. Her body spasmed. Her eyes went empty, as
empty as her king’s.

Emry’s own shock broke his hold on his body. They must have
fallen together: when he could see again, they were lying side by side in the
heap of furs. Her head was flung back, her eyes wide and staring. Tremors ran
still through her body.

Just as he was about to give way to horror, her eyes snapped
shut. She drew a sharp breath, then another. She sat up with a stifled cry, but
fell back as if all strength had drained from her.

“Out,” she said, so soft he barely heard it. Then louder:
“Get out.”

He rose on wobbling knees and gathered his clothes. The last
few articles of those, she flung at him. Her aim was dreadful. “Get out!
Out
!”

No matter how angry she might fancy herself to be, he had no
intention of running naked into the cold. He dressed quickly but with care,
under her smoldering stare. When he was fit to go out among the people of her
tribe, he stooped and kissed her lightly on the brow, and slipped through the
slit in the tent-wall.

Etena sent no one to drag Emry out and fling him off the
rim of the hill. Nor did he wake choking in blood. She had taken what she
needed from him, however angry it had made her. Now once more she left him to
his own devices.

He could be patient. If he had gone too far, he would have
died that night. That she let him live told him much.

Once the festival was over, winter’s grip closed tight and
hard. Emry took to spending a good part of the days in the makers’ circle, when
he was not preoccupied with Dias: guarding him, riding or playing at mock
battles with him, or listening and trying to understand the words as he sat in
judgment as king’s heir.

But when Dias was well protected by the crowd of his
warband, or sleeping through the cold of another bitter day, Emry slipped away.
The makers had brought their tents close together. Their fire was the warmest
in the camp. When the forge was going as well, there was no warmer place on
that part of the steppe.

He went for the warmth, and to learn what he could learn.
Metos was glad of a strong pair of hands; Emry, as he said bluntly, had little
gift for making chariots, but muscle enough to make him useful.

He went also for the one who was there, though she did not
show her face outside of her father’s tent. He knew she watched him: he felt
her eyes on him. She never summoned him as Etena had. Nor would she. She was
too much a child of her people.

So too was Emry. But he was in her country. He could try to
play the game as her people played it.

o0o

One day in the dead of winter, when for a little while
there was a thaw, and the sun came out and the air was almost warm, Emry lent
his strength to the shaping of a chariot-wheel. That fascinated him most of
anything the makers did, and they were glad to teach him the way of it.

When that was done, it was still barely noon. Dias would be
in council with the elders for some while yet. It was not a war-council; that
could not be held without the king. They were settling other, lesser matters of
the tribe, the small and dull but indispensable things that every king and
king’s heir must concern himself with.

Emry was not excessively sorry to be spared that duty. Today
it meant that, for a while, he was free. He could take a horse and ride. He
might sleep. Or he could leave the new-made wheel and withdraw, without fanfare
but without secrecy, to Metos’ tent.

He had seen the two sisters go out not long since, each
laden with empty waterskins. Metos was completing the turning of an axle. The
tent was quiet, but he had not seen Aera leave it.

She was within, weaving on a loom. The thread was wool from
the sheep, dyed green and blue and, here and there, dusky red. She wove a
subtle pattern, like the steppe in autumn; she was intent on the task, her
hands deft, making swift work of it.

He crouched a little distance from her and watched her. She
ignored him—deliberately, he thought. He was content to wait her out. Her hands
were slender and strong, the fingers delicate in their touch, pale as ivory.
Her profile was carved fine, finer than any in his own country. Her hair,
cropped for mourning, curled softly on her forehead. The sight of it struck him
with a sudden, piercing tenderness.

He had loved many women, and been loved by many in return.
But this was different—stronger, clearer. When he was away from her, he felt
her absence. When he was with her, he had come home.

Even with her refusing to acknowledge him, and making it
clear that she would not ask him to lie with her. She was not like Etena. She
could not break the vows she had sworn to her king.

He pitied Etena. He did not pity Aera at all. She was too
strong.

But that strength was brittle, and close to breaking. She
would be too proud, he thought, to ask anyone for anything, not for herself.

After quite a long while she said, “You should not be here.”

“I think I am needed here,” he said.

“You,” she said tightly, “of all men living, are the least
use to me.”

“Am I?”

“Why are you not with Dias? He could die, and you would be
here, smirching my honor.”

“Dias is with the warband,” Emry said, “in front of the
elders and the clan-chiefs in council. He’s as safe as he’s likely to be.”

“And I am not?”

“Your body is well defended here,” Emry said. “Your spirit . . .
who protects that? It’s the spirit she destroys.”

“Why do you think I came here?” Aera asked him. “I know what
I risked in doing it—I’m safer from her under my father’s eye, but I lose any
power I had under hers.”

“You have allies, surely,” he said, “and spies.”

“Such as you?”

“Surely I’m not alone.”

“You are not,” she said. “Now tell me, if you are my ally—how
it is that you performed the midwinter sacrifice with her, the rite of kings.
That now, though she tells no one, it is known that her courses have not come
on her since before the sacrifice.”

Emry dropped back on his heels. “So. She did as she
intended. But what use will a child be to her? It might be a daughter. Even if
it is a son, it will be years before she can make him king.”

“Power,” said Aera. “A king’s wife who is with child is
sacred. Once she has the child, if it is a son—and you may be sure, outlander,
that if one does not come out of her body, one will be brought forth before the
People—she can raise him as truly her own. She failed in that before. I will
wager that she has no intention of doing so again.”

“But,” he said, “in the long years before he can be king,
what will she do? Dias’ hatred is unshakable, and he never comes near her. How
will she rule him, if she can’t touch him?”

“Does she need to touch him? She has you.”

She lifted her eyes. Their clarity struck Emry like a blow.
She was angry—not with Etena, and certainly not with Dias. With him. “How could
you do it?” she demanded. “How could you let her—”