Daughter of Lir (63 page)

They arranged him on the pallet as if he had been a
stiffened corpse. One bent just a little too close. The bronze blade slipped
sweetly home in her heart. The other was not even aware that she had died,
until she crumpled on top of Minas. Even then the second was not sensible
enough to stay out of reach. She tugged at her sister-priestess, freeing Minas’
hand.

This blow was not so sure, nor so strong. It struck low and
jerked upward, ragged, catching on bone. She, fool to the last, started and
twisted, driving the dagger into her own heart.

She fell across Minas’ legs. He keened with pain. The knife
was caught between them, lodged in her breastbone.

Through the red darkness of agony, he saw a shadow that was
the captain, and other shadows behind her. They lifted the terrible weight from
his legs. They bound his hands and jerked them sharply above his head, a
punishment so petty that he would have laughed, if there had been any laughter
in him. They tied him to the post that held up the roof. And they left him, as
if they no longer cared whether he lived or died.

Death would be a pleasant thing. Etena would not like it. She
wanted him alive and maimed. A maimed man could not be king.

Would she break Dias’ legs, too, when he came? Or cut off
his manly parts? Minas was rather surprised to have kept his. Maybe she had a
use for them.

Etena. Slayer of kings, destroyer of worlds. There was a god
from long and long ago, a name Minas had forgotten. He had a consort, lady of
blood and slaughter.

Minas drifted inside the shell of his body, in a fiery ring
of pain. Darkness was in the heart of it, and coolness. And eyes. Glowing beast-eyes.
Wolf-eyes.

Phaiston the shaman looked at him out of the center of his
self. For once the wolf was not laughing. Was it even possible that he wept? He
did not say anything. After a while he stood up on four legs and flicked his
tail and went away. Then the darkness was complete, except for the black-red
glow of pain.

Gerent found Rhian at the farthest edge of Lir, down by
the river, overseeing the breaking of piers and the scuttling of boats. She had
made a contest of it, with the party that scuttled their boat the fastest to
win a skin of southern wine. They went at it with a grand good will, and no
cringing of fear; in laughter and singing, and a bright air of defiance.

She saw her brother running down the road, darting past a
company of soldiers, hurdling a heap of fishing-nets. It was not unusual for
Gerent to run; Gerent was swift-footed and proud of it, and he often ran
messages from the king’s house.

As he came closer, the look on his face made her stand up
slowly, rising from the bollard from which she had been overseeing the contest.
He was stark white, and his eyes were as black as his hair. She had never seen
such an expression on a human face.

He might have run right into the river, if she had not
caught him. The force of his speed spun them both about.

For a long while he could only stand there, stiff in her
hands, breathing hard. Then she said, “Tell me.”

He blinked. A little life came back into his eyes. “The king
is dead,” he said.

Rhian gasped as if he had struck a blow to her middle.

“
She
sits in the
king’s place,” Gerent said. “Priestesses hold the king’s house.”

Rhian found a word to speak. Only one, but it was a very
important word. “Emry?”

“Alive. Imprisoned. The others were out in the city, thank
the Goddess. Except me; somehow they overlooked me. I got out. The council—they’re
alive. He wanted that. Emry. Father—Father would have—if—”

He was close to breaking, but he held himself together.
Rhian gripped his shoulders. “Ariana?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see her.”

Rhian could not break, either. There was one last name she
must speak. “Minas?”

Again Gerent said, “I don’t know. I came from the hall. He
was with the chariots, I know that; I saw him there before council.”

She could hardly fault him for his failures. He was in
shock. He had thought to come to her, at least. “Gerent,” she said carefully,
and for his ear alone. “Find Mabon. Be careful; don’t let anyone catch you.
Find him and bring him to me. I’ll be with the mare’s herd, up in the north
pasture. Be sure that no one sees either of you, either going or coming. Can
you do that?”

Gerent nodded jerkily. As she had hoped, her orders steadied
him. He had a task; a purpose. He could focus on that. Maybe it would keep the
horror at bay.

She turned to the people who watched. They all stood
staring, struck dumb. “Finish it,” she said to them. “For the king’s sake, for
the love you bore him, for any hope you have for this city—finish what you’ve
begun.”

She did not wait to see if they obeyed. Gerent was already
gone. She set off at the run, letting them see her go toward the king’s house;
but when she was out of sight, she turned toward the north, out of the city and
toward the high pastures.

The mare was there, grazing with her sisters, looking as if
she had been there since the world began. Rhian had not seen her since that day
in the mist, four days’ ride to the eastward. For a long while it was enough
just to cling to that sleek white neck and smell the familiar smell of grass
and wind and horse. Then the mare stamped at a fly, and one of her sisters
squealed at the stallion, and the world was back again, black-edged with grief.

Her father was dead. Etena had killed him. What fools they
all had been, dreaming that because that daughter of the dark gods had done
nothing for a handful of years, she would continue to do nothing. She had been
biding her time. She was a great master of that. Had she not proved it among
the tribes?

It was a long while before Mabon came climbing up the steep
slope. Rhian had dried her tears. She was sitting on a stone in the sun, just
beyond the mare, listening to the wind. It had no gossip in it today; its song
was a keen.

Mabon’s face was as blankly shocked as her own must be. He
had Ariana in his arms, and she was quiet but her eyes were clear.

He came up beside Rhian and sat in the grass. Ariana slid
from his lap to Rhian’s, clasped arms about her mother’s neck and held tight.

It was all Rhian could do not to crush the breath out of
her. She was safe, whole—alive.

Mabon’s voice startled her; for a moment she had forgotten
he was there. “I can’t stay long,” he said. “It was all I could do to get out
unseen. They’re hunting for her—for you both.”

“Where was she?” asked Rhian.

“I was with Eresh,” Ariana answered for herself. “He was
telling me stories. When the priestesses came, he helped me hide. I hid for a
long time, even after he went away. Then Mabon came and got me.”

“And glad I was to find you, little bird,” he said, ruffling
her tumbled curls. To Rhian he said, “There’s no safe place for you anywhere in
Lir. I’ve left a pack down below, with everything in it that you’re likely to
need.”

“Where will we go?” Rhian demanded of him. “And what of our
kin, our friends? Her father?”

A catch in Mabon’s breath made Rhian go still, except for
the tightening of her arms about Ariana. The child squawked in protest. Rhian
barely heard. “Minas is dead,” she said.

“No,” said Mabon. But his voice was strange. He would not
look at her.

Rhian drew a steady breath, and then another. “What has she
done to him?”

Mabon’s eyes closed. His back was rigid. “He’s still alive.
He’s still a man.”

“What did she do to him?”

Mabon told her, simply, starkly. “Eresh the foreigner found
him. Thank the Goddess, the man has sense. He sent for a bonesetter in the
city, and for a miracle she was willing to come—and for a greater miracle, none
of
her
servants was there to stop
her. She did what she could. Is still doing it, I suppose.”

“How bad?” Rhian could hardly say the words, but say them
she must. “How badly broken is he?”

“Badly,” Mabon said. “But the bonesetter is the best in Lir.
If anyone can heal him, she can.”

“He’ll want to die,” Rhian said. “He’s not a tame thing. He
endures this cage because of me—because I’m here. He—”

“And me!” Ariana broke in. “He stays for me. He told me.”

“And you,” her mother agreed. “You set his heart free. But
if we go—wherever in the world we can go—he won’t want to live.”

“You’ll die if you go back,” Mabon said. “You may matter
little to her, but your daughter is the Mother’s heir.”

“She is not—”Rhian stopped. Ariana was, as far as anyone
could be, heir to the Mother who was dead. Etena knew it. The whole temple
would know.

“I’ll do what I can for Minas,” Mabon promised her. “I’ll
keep him alive for you. Now go. They’ll be looking here soon; they know as well
as anyone where you’re likely to be.”

Rhian made up her mind all at once. What she would do; where
she would go. It was a terrible thing she would do, but do it she must. Etena
and the temple had made sure of that.

Mabon brought the pack up from the lower field. The mare was
waiting, conspicuously patient. Rhian settled the pack on her back and mounted
the mare. Mabon lifted Ariana up in front of her. “Go with the Goddess,” he
said.

Rhian stooped and kissed his forehead. “Stay alive for me,”
she said. “Keep that fool of a man alive. Sane, I won’t ask for. Just keep the
soul in his body.”

“I give you my word,” he said.

As the mare began to move, one by one her kin lifted their
heads. The stallion pawed extravagantly and shook his mane on his heavy neck.
The chief of the mares, as white and old and massive as a mountain under the
moon, heaved herself up from where she had been basking in the sun, and called
to her children. They came across the field, from coal-black foal to moon-white
matron, and took their places ahead of her. With the stallion as outrider and
the queen mare to drive them and the living goddess pacing before, the Goddess’
hooved children turned their backs on Lir.

Rhian had no part in it. The mare carried her, that was all,
and her daughter still and silent in front of her. She willed nothing,
commanded nothing. It was all the mare’s doing.

The Goddess was with her. What she did, as appalling as it
was, she did with the whole of the White Mare’s kin behind her.

She closed her eyes and buried her face in her daughter’s
hair, inhaling the sweet familiar scent. When she lifted her head again, the
rise of the hill lay between the herd and the city. What Mabon thought, what
expression he had worn as Horse Goddess declared her will, Rhian might never know.

Her heart was burdened down with grief and a terrible anger,
but looking back at the herd that followed, Rhian knew a glimmer of hope. If
Horse Goddess was with her, then maybe, just maybe, some good would come of
this.

The village called Long Ford was empty when the People
came to it, its inhabitants fled into the hills. There was a fort above it, but
no one had troubled to raise it up out of ruin.

There was nothing whatever in the houses, not even a basket
of grain. Some of the young men, furious at the lack of plunder, set fire to
the village. They burned it to the ground and trampled the ashes underfoot, and
rampaged through the fields, beating down such crops as there were, green and
small and months from the harvest.

Dias made no move to stop them. He had ordered a camp in the
fields upriver of the village, and sent out scouts to reconnoiter between there
and Lir. As eager as he was to find his brother again, he had a king’s gift of
patience.

The day after Long Ford burned, before the scouts had come
back, Dias was in among Black Deer clan, which had brought in a trove of grain
and cattle from a cluster of villages to the south. They had taken heads, too,
two score of them, and leather armor and bronze weapons. It was poor plunder,
for there was little gold and only a dozen horses, but Dias was glad to have
the weapons, and even more than those, the grain and cattle.

o0o

Aera had been as close to him as she dared come, among a
crowd of hangers-on, but an eddy had caught her and thrust her out toward the
edge. There was a hill, a long slope up to the ruined fort. On a whim she
climbed to the top.

No one else seemed drawn to that vantage. She could see the
whole of the camp below, and the long bend of the river, and the boats moored
in multitudes. There were villages up and down the river, but from here they
were hidden by an arm of forest or a rise of the land.

To the north was another long hill. The scouts had gone over
it, spying out the land toward Lir. A hawk was circling above it, lazily, turning
on the point of a wing.

She looked where the hawk was looking. At first there was
only the curve of the hilltop and the cloud-shot blue of the sky. Then they
came up over the hill.

Horses. Grey horses, dark or dappled or white. They had the
look of a wild herd from the steppe: tangled manes, long unkempt tails, patches
of winter coat still dropping from some of the elders. And yet they gleamed in
the sun, moon-silver or white as snow.

So strange was the sight of them, so alien to this settled
country, that at first Aera did not even see the riders. The mare who led the
rest, a white mare, carried two figures, one larger, one smaller: a woman of
this country, black-haired, rich-bodied, and a dark-haired child riding at ease
in front of her.

Aera, perched on the height in the sun and the wind, knew in
her heart that the Goddess of this country had come riding over the hill from
Lir. The mare shone like the moon. The woman’s beauty was not mortal. Together
they were more real than the world they walked in.

The People had caught sight of them: faces turned, fingers
pointed. Men began to run toward the northward end of the camp; but the nearer
they came, the slower they ran. The herd came on without pause, in no
particular haste, at the pace of the foals and the gravid mares.