Daughter of Lir (49 page)

Aias and Kletas flung her before the priests and the dead
king. Dias set his foot on her back.

He was dressed, or not dressed, as a priest. The bull’s head
concealed all of his face but the mouth and chin: firm chin, mouth set thin and
stern. The wheel of the sun was painted in ocher on his breast and thighs, and
on the palms of his hands as he lifted them.

“Father!” he cried. His voice boomed from the bull’s mask.
“You have gone to be lord among the dead—and may the gods grant that your soul
is yours again, and your spirit whole.”

The dead king sat unmoving. The living priests had no more
motion in them. Only the wind stirred, plucking at the trailing edges of
mantles.

Dias swooped down without warning and heaved Etena to her
feet. Her knees buckled. He held her up with one contemptuous hand. “This,
Father, is the thing that destroyed you. This stole your soul and gnawed your
life away. I would sacrifice it, Father, on the altar of your spirit—but it is
never worthy of such a thing. Better it be stoned to death and its carcass
flung out for the dogs.”

“I did not kill him.” Etena’s voice was startlingly clear.
“If you would punish his murderer, then look to the one who suckled you at her
breast.”

“You will not speak of her,” Dias said in a low growl. And
louder: “People of the Wind! Judge this creature. What death shall we give her?
What torment shall she suffer?”

“What is worse than death?”

They all looked astonished at Metos. He who never left his
circle except in a chariot, who never saw aught but the chariots that he made,
was standing just outside the circle. He stood taller than any near him, with
his face like a falcon’s and his eyes like green stones.

He spoke again. “If we give her death, we give her oblivion—for
is it not known that as we did in life, so is it done to us in death? Would you
give her up to the peace of forgetfulness? Is that sufficient atonement for
what she has done?”

“If we let her live,” Dias said, “we leave her free to
commit her crimes again. She is a witch, a sorceress. She destroys men’s
souls.”

“They call me a god,” said Metos. “Exile her. Cast her out.
Take her name from the memories of the People. Curse her soul and her spirit,
so that when death takes her at last, she may go into the claws of the gods
below, and not into the peace of silence.”

He spoke with the voice and authority of a god. Even Dias,
king that he was, bowed before it.

They cast her out as she had been brought to the circle,
naked, masked, without food or weapon. The king’s warband took her in chariots,
far out on the plain, too far to return on foot, and there left her.

Emry rode with Dias, clinging behind in the warrior’s place.
Aias’ chariot carried Etena. Emry half expected that they would fling him out
with her, for Dias had said no word to him beyond the simple command: “Get in.”
But once he was there, it seemed he was forgotten. When they turned back to the
camp, Emry was still in the chariot.

o0o

It was not until the mourning was over, the king laid in a
barrow with his chariot and horses, and the head of bull and stallion set on
guard above it, that they knew: a handful of the king’s sons were missing with
weapons and chariots. There was no fire to consume them, no raid to destroy
them. Hunters tracked them westward into the devastation of the fire, but they
were too swift. They were gone.

Emry, standing on the edge of that plain of ash and blown
snow, knew in his heart that she had gone with the king’s sons; that she was
leading them. She was riding westward into Lir.

He would wager that Metos had expected that—that the maker
of chariots knew precisely what he had done in loosing that serpent upon the
west.

But Lir was strong, and well accustomed to the power of
women. She would not find it so easy to corrupt. Nor would she ever again
seduce a king as she had seduced the lord of these people.

The tribe was free of her. It was waking, stretching,
rejoicing in its freedom. In a little while it would begin the march toward the
great gathering and the kingmaking.

And then, he was sure, the Goddess would see that Dias was
much delayed before he could begin his own conquests. Then maybe he would turn
north, or south. Maybe the west would be safe.

Maybe the moon would come down and pour its light in molten
silver over the earth, and the sun’s light turn black, and the stars fall in a
shower of ash. Emry was only intermittently a fool. He knew as well as any
seer, that this tribe went west. It had gone west since before living memory.
It would go until there was no more earth to ride on—and then, he supposed, it
would set sail on the sea, or spread wings across the stars.

Emry turned his back on the sunset. He was no longer a
slave. What he was, he was not certain yet; but they had not cast him out or
killed him. He was, as far as he could tell, the king’s companion. Servant,
maybe. Protector of his right hand.

And that was strangest of many strange things, that Emry
prince of Lir should be trusted guardian to the king of chariots.

Dias did not take possession of the king’s tent, though he
was entitled to it. The king’s wives and concubines, Emry gathered, would be
returned to their kin or offered as gifts to the new king’s friends and allies.
Or he might keep them; but Dias showed no inclination toward his father’s
leavings.

All the old king’s wealth, like his women, was Dias’ to keep
or give away. That at least he considered with care and some little wisdom. He
gave great gifts in the gathering of tribes: gold and treasure, women, a share
of the flocks and herds. But he kept wealth in plenty. He made a name for
generosity, but kept a name for great riches. And that, everyone agreed, was
altogether befitting a king.

It was a splendid kingmaking, in a splendid spring after so
bitter a winter. There Emry saw in truth the numbers that could be mounted
against the west, and his heart went cold. They were as innumerable as the
birds of heaven. And all of them, to the last and poorest, mounted their
warriors in chariots.

They made Dias king on the day of high spring, as ordained
by the priests of all the tribes and clans. It was a glorious day, clear and
warm. The seared earth to the west was coming to life, waking to a shy new
green. The steppe round the great camp, where fire had not come, was lush with
grass.

They raised Dias up on a high mound of earth, the barrow of
an old king or god. Its summit was bright gold, carpeted with flowers. Red
blood stained it, blood of sacrifice: a hundred bulls, glorious extravagance,
offered up to the gods of the air and the gods below. The hides, the thighbones
wrapped in fat, sent a rich black smoke to the gods. The lesser meat made a
feast for the tribes.

While the last bull’s bellow was still fading into the
earth, the priests laid on Dias the hide and head of the king of bulls, the
white bull, the lord of the steppe. He braced under it as if it were as heavy
as stone. Then he straightened, easing to the weight of it. His shoulders
broadened. His head rose. He spread his arms. The roar of his people bore him
up.

Emry felt that roar in his bones. Hundreds, thousands of
voices acclaimed their new king, his youth, his strength, the simple splendor
of him after Etena’s fading shadow.

It was a beautiful, terrible thing, this tribe and this
king. Emry withdrew from it, retreating to such solitude as there was. He would
go; now, truly, he would set out for home. The one who had bought him was gone.
His purpose was completed. He only stayed—why? Because he was a coward?

Because he was a fool. He had not seen or heard from Aera
since the priests came back to the tribe. She was secluded in her father’s tent.
She had traveled from camp to camp shut in a wagon, who he knew hated to be so
confined.

Now that the king was made, the gathering proper would
begin: feasting, dancing, marrying and giving in marriage. Men took wives from
distant clans, and women—if secretly—inspected the young men. Often they did
more than that, if what he heard was to be believed.

He did believe it. It was in the Great Song of Lir, how
gatherings had been on the steppe, long ago when his ancestors were wild
horsemen such as these.

And it was in the song that when a king died, his wives
either went with him into the tomb, or went to his sons, or were free. Emry
knew that no wives had been sacrificed in this king’s name, nor had his sons
taken any of them, even Dias. There would be marriages made, that much he
understood; chieftains of the clans, lords of the tribes would take the
choicest of the women as gifts.

It repelled him to think of them so. It sickened him to
think that she might go to some thick-bellied clan-chieftain, to share his bed
and bear his sons. Daughters were not welcome among these people.

The thought when it came was almost unthinkable. But he had
to think it. He could not bear to see her sent away, given like a gold collar
or a fine heifer. Even when he told himself that Dias would not do such a thing
to his foster-mother—what after all did Emry know of any of them? They were not
his people. They did not think as he thought.

He went to Dias in the morning after the kingmaking,
choosing his time with care. The feasting had gone on late, but Dias was a man
who liked to rise with the sun. Indeed, this morning Emry heard him before he
saw him, a deep sweet voice chanting in the dawn. The young men snarled and
muttered and buried their faces in their furs, all but Aias, who grinned at
Emry and said, “The sunrise-song. Now I know we have a king again.”

Emry saw him coming back from the eastern edge of the camp,
looking like any other tribesman, though darker and broader than most. He
greeted Emry with a swift smile. Emry returned it almost before he thought.
Dias’ good humor was difficult to resist. As heavy as the king’s mantle had
weighed on him the day before, this morning it seemed the burden was light.

“A fair morning to you,” he said in greeting.

It was fine indeed, bright and warm and clear. “I heard you
singing,” Emry said.

“What, did it wake you?”

Emry shook his head. “I gather it wasn’t approved of while
your father was king.”

“While that woman was king in all but name,” said Dias, “it
was forbidden.”

“She’s gone,” Emry said. “The priests have come back. The
sun shines here as it didn’t before.”

“Ah,” said Dias, looking keenly at him. “You feel it. You
would be a priest here, you know. Or a shaman. The gods speak to you.”

Emry shrugged at that. They had come to the tent in which
Dias was living, a very handsome one, though not as handsome as that in which
the old king had died. There were no women in it yet, but by gathering’s end
there would be. Already the lords and chieftains were offering their daughters.
Dias would choose among them—it was part of his duty, like judging disputes and
leading the armies to war.

The tent’s flap was fastened back, letting in light and air.
No darkness or dimness or drugged smokes here. All was open, bright and clean.

Dias settled in the shade of the tent, beckoning Emry to sit
beside him. A boy, young and shy, brought the perpetual bread and kumiss. It
was an honor, Emry knew, to break bread with the king; but Dias did not put on
airs. He was as easy as he had ever been, speaking of this and that,
undertaking with considerable skill to put Emry at ease.

“Kingship suits you,” Emry said as they passed the skin of
kumiss back and forth.

“Are you surprised?” Dias asked him.

“Are you?”

“This was never meant for me,” Dias said. “I was going to be
my brother’s warleader, his right hand. That was all I cared for. I never
dreamed, even in nightmares, that this would come to me.”

“It seems the gods willed it,” Emry said.

“And you? Do you still hope to be king, if you can go back
to your people?”

Emry considered the wisdom of an honest answer. “If the
Goddess wills,” he said, “I will be king.”

“And my enemy?”

“Or your ally.” Emry leaned back in the heap of furs and
cushions. “Tell me, king of chariots. What am I now? Your slave? Your servant?
Your guest? Your hostage?”

“What do you wish to be?”

Emry hesitated. Now, he thought: say it, or forever keep
silent. It was difficult to the point of pain to speak as he must speak, so
that this man would understand him. “I would wish,” he said at last, “for the gift
that you promised me when you were made king.”

Dias raised his brows. “Would you now? Yes, you’ve earned a
reward for what you’ve done for us. If it’s in my power to grant, you shall
have it.”

“It is in your power,” Emry said. He could hardly get out the
words.

“Then it is yours,” said Dias, as an innocent man would.
“Only name it.”

“The lady Aera,” Emry said.

Dias was as taken aback as Emry had thought he would be. He
was not angry, not at first. “The lady—my foster-mother? What in the gods’ name
would you want with—”

“I would like,” said Emry, “to have your leave to approach
her. To ask her—if she would be—”

“A concubine? She who was chief wife of a king and mother of
his heir?”

“She would be whatever she wishes to be. Wife, concubine,
mistress of a slave—it doesn’t matter.”

“You are mad,” Dias said.

“Maybe,” said Emry. “Maybe I’m simply foreign. I don’t know
the proprieties here. In my country, I would be unspeakably bold in daring
this; but I might also let it be known that if she were to ask, I would be glad
to accept.”

“Gods,” said Dias. He seemed too shocked for anger. “You
truly are asking for her. Why? What use do you think you can make of her?”

“She can make of me whatever use she pleases.”

“She has—had—a son no younger than you.”