Daughter of Lir (7 page)

“The mare’s servant has never been a priestess of our
order,” the priestess said.

“Well, then,” said Rhian. “You’re safe from me, aren’t you?
Isn't the mare’s servant a solitary creature? She goes her own way, does as the
Goddess pleases. She’s a leaf on the wind. You are stones in the earth.”

“You are fire in dry grass,” the priestess said.

“Maybe I’ll burn the enemy’s chariots,” said Rhian.

The priestess shuddered. The lamp flared. In the sudden
light, it was indeed a living woman who sat in the Goddess’ place, wrapped in a
woven mantle as if against winter’s cold. “Go,” she said. “Go into the east.
And may the gods of the tribes devour your bones.”

“You hate me,” Rhian said slowly. “You truly do. What have I
ever done to you? What threat can I be? I’m a village woman. I make toys for
children. There’s no demon in me, no spirit from the dark places.”

“No?” The priestess laughed, a hollow sound in that empty
space. “I would have laid you on the altar. I would have slit your throat. I
would have poured out your blood in the Goddess’ name. But I was not permitted.
You were let live. We will all pay for that. All of us. Unless you have the
grace to die beneath the chariots.”

“I am no one,” Rhian said. “I have no demon in me.”

But the priestess was gone. The fog of her hate lingered, the
living stench of fear. The Goddess’ garland struggled to overcome it.

Rhian lay on the pounded earth of the floor. It was
battered, beaten down, but it was still Earth Mother’s breast. She drew a
little comfort from it.

No one had ever wanted her dead before. No one had ever
hated her. Dislike, yes. Jealousy—she had seen enough of that; men liked her
very well, which had never pleased the other women. But never hate. Hate was
ugly, black and reeking of old bones.

And for nothing. There was no ill spirit in her. She would
have known. The mare would have known. Was not the mare a living goddess?

There was no wind here, to tell her secrets. There was only
darkness and silence. She fled into the sunlight.

o0o

The prince and his men were tarrying, she thought, unconscionably
long. They were waiting for traveling companions, the youngest said: traders
who traded often in the east, with a caravan which they could pretend to guard.

None of them was sworn to secrecy, and any one of them would
talk if Rhian slid eyes at him, but Dal was most free of what he knew. He was
awkward in her bed, clumsy and inclined to spend himself too quickly. She did
not mind: he had lovely cream-brown skin and a sweet smile, and he babbled
happily of anything and everything.

“There is a story,” he said when they had been a hand of
days in World’s End. “It’s told in whispers. I overheard my sisters telling
it—and if they’d known I was listening, they would have flayed my hide. It’s a
thing the women keep among themselves. A thing from the temple.

“You know how they say the Mother had no daughters? Seven
sons, she had, and they all lived; but no daughter to be Mother after her.
That’s a lie, my sisters were telling one another. She conceived and carried a
womanchild. Her brooding-dreams were full of ill omens, but she refused to give
in to them. Her child would live, she told the priestesses, and would grow
strong.

“When the daughter was born, lightning struck the top of the
temple and brought it down. That was the first omen, but not the last. Every
foretelling, every casting, told them the same. This was the Lastborn. This was
the child of the world’s end.”

He was remarkably unfrightened by the tale he told. He was a
man, and he had Rhian in his arms, and she knew what he thought of that: she
had heard him crowing to his fellows. He did not understand women’s things.

“Did they say when she was born?” Rhian asked. She felt odd
and cold and remote.

Dal shrugged. “Seasons ago. The Mother had sons already.
Two, I think. Maybe three. I wasn’t born yet.”

Two elder sons, thought Rhian. Emry and another. And Emry
was—and she was—

Dal fell asleep as men did, all at once and to Rhian’s
relief. She slipped away from him, out of the room she had been given in the
garrison-commander’s house, up to the top of the tower. From there she could
see the whole world, as it seemed: the tamed lands on this side of the river,
the Goddess’ grove to the north, the traders’ town and the ferry below, and
across the expanse of water, the wide and empty plain, the sea of grass.

The moon was high. The fort, the tower, were full of silver
light. There was a second moon: the eye of heaven reflected in a cistern by the
wall.

Rhian stooped over the water. Her shadow was dark against
the moon. She passed her hand over it. The shape of her face came clear.

It had changed since she last troubled to look at it. The
lines were purer, the eyes larger, wide and dark in the pale oval of her face.

She had not come here to sigh over her own beauty. She was
looking for something else. The curve of a cheek. The straight long line of a
nose. The set of brows over the eyes. Which were not dark as they seemed in the
moonlight; they were deep blue, like the sky after sunset.

The woman she had called her mother had been pleasant enough
to look at, but no one had reckoned her a beauty. The man who had thought
himself her father was a blunt-featured man, comfortable to look at; but again,
beauty had never been one of his gifts. Rhian looked like neither of them.

She looked like the prince from Lir.

Dreams and madness. Dal had been telling stories, women’s
gossip from the city. Rhian was the potter’s child from Long Ford. She might
dream of cages and yearn for escape, but that did not make her a Mother’s
daughter. It made her a rebel, no more, and a fool for indulging in it.

Maybe after all, she thought, she was a prince’s child. Her
mother had been in the temple in Lir. Maybe she had drawn a lordly eye. Maybe
her daughter was of that blood and breeding.

She could not be the Mother’s own child. Not the doomed one,
the lost one, the one they called the Lastborn: last child of the Mothers, last
daughter of the Goddess.

Emry opened his eyes on moonlight. A shaft of it slanted
through the high window of the room. It was cool and bright and strangely
substantial, as if he could stretch out a hand to grasp it.

She was sitting in the pale light, dressed in her
disgraceful trousers, knees drawn up and arms clasped about them. She was very
real, very solid, like the moonlight itself.

He knew he was dreaming. She had chosen Dal for a bedmate,
which baffled the others, but Emry thought he understood. Dal was young and
eager to please, and his temper was famously equable. Rhian, who was a spirit
of fire, well might find him restful.

And yet she seemed so very clearly here. There was some
great trouble on her, or on her spirit that had wandered in on the moon’s road.

He rose softly. His nose caught the faint scent of her:
herbs and honey, musk and leather, and a memory of horses.

He squatted beside her. She was truly there, huddled on his
floor, in body as in spirit.

“Did you know,” she said after a while, light and calm and
seeming heedless, “that your guards are sound asleep outside your door?”

“Did you put them to sleep?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “Maybe I asked the moon to help.”

“Why, did you wear out poor Dal?”

She did not respond to the jest, either to laugh or to
snarl. “I don’t want to bed you,” she said. “I only . . .”

She did not go on. She was deeply troubled, but he knew
better than to force words out of her. He had a jar of wine, a gift from Britta
the commander. He poured a cup, unwatered, and fed it to her till she gasped
and spluttered and fought.

Now she was annoyed. Her glare was baleful. He grinned at
it. “That’s better,” he said. “Now tell me what’s so desperate that you’d bring
it to me.”

“I’m bringing nothing to you,” she said. “I just wanted—I
needed to look at you. You snore,” she added.

“I do not!”

She bared her teeth. “Do you look like your brothers?” she
asked.

By now he was accustomed to her sudden shifts. This, he
thought, must be what it was like to ride in a chariot. “There is a certain
resemblance,” he said. “Is one of them here? Does he have a message for me?”

“They’re all safe in Lir,” she said, “or wherever else your
father has sent them. Are they all beautiful?”

“Some more than others,” he said.

She took the cup from his hand and drank it down. It seemed
to steady her. She said, “If you don’t leave tomorrow, I’m going without you.”

“I’m waiting for the caravan.”

“It will come in the morning,” she said.

He did not doubt that it would. “And why should it leave as
soon as it arrives?”

“Because war is coming,” she said, “and the sooner we’re
gone, the farther we can go before we find it.”

“And the deeper in the tribes’ lands we are, the longer it
will take us to escape.”

“Not so long, with chariots,” she said.

He granted the logic of that. And because she belonged to
the White Mare, he granted the rest of it as well. “You’ll lead us,” he said.
“Or the mare will.”

Her brows leaped up. “You trust me that much?”

“I trust the mare,” he said.

He might have regretted that, but she took no offense. She
nodded slowly. “She knows where she wants to go. She doesn’t care overmuch if
you follow.”

“Goddesses never do.” Emry fetched the wine and the cup and
poured himself a head-spinning draft. She made much more sense in the haze of
the wine, though her face wavered and blurred. “The caravan won’t be pleased to
leave so soon.”

“The caravan is a pretense. We can take their donkeys and
their trade-goods and leave them here, if they complain too loudly.”

“I don’t suppose,” he said, “that you know the ways of
caravans.”

“No,” she said, “but Conn does.”

“Conn is going to Lir, to carry his message and be healed in
the temple.”

“Another messenger can go,” Rhian said.

“You would force him to go back? That will kill him.”

She regarded him steadily. “Ask him. Give him a choice. Let
him decide.”

“He’s not fit to—”

“Ask him,” she repeated.

Women, Emry thought sourly, were harder-hearted than any man
could hope to be.

o0o

Emry was properly trained. He obeyed her. By the time the
moon had set and the sun come up, he had his men up and fed and preparing to
ride.

Rhian sat with Conn when he came to the room in which the
trader had slept. She was feeding him something pungently herbal, sweetened
with the last of Emry’s wine. Conn was taking it better than she had taken the
wine.

The man had begun to mend a little. His cheeks were less
gaunt. He was much cleaner, and dressed in fine new clothes. He was not an
ill-made man, or a weak one, either.

Emry waited till the potion was gone, till Conn fixed him
with a stare that drew the words out of him. “This one,” he said, tilting his
head toward Rhian, “compels me to ask a thing that I have no right to ask.”

“Yes,” Conn said. “The caravan. She told me.” He did not
seem angry, nor did he seem greatly resigned. There was a light in his eye, and
a fierce edge in the words he spoke. “Yes, I’ll go. Give me a horse that can
carry me—my poor bay will never survive another crossing of the river. Give me
weapons. Give me provisions. Then trust the Goddess to keep me alive until I’ve
won payment for the slaughter of my tribe.”

Emry shut his mouth, which had fallen open. Rhian was
keeping her smile at bay.

“I think,” he said after a while, “that we are softer than
we like to imagine, we in Lir.”

“The sea of grass will teach you to be hard,” said Conn.

o0o

Hoel the caravan-master was polite because Emry was a
prince, but he was no more willing to depart that very day than Emry had
expected. “We can leave in a hand of days,” he said. “No sooner. My people are
weary. They need to rest. And we have trading to do here.”

“The Goddess commands you,” Emry said.

“Surely,” said Hoel, “she can wait a little while.”

“She says not,” said Emry.

“Then let your men stay,” Rhian said from the door of the
commander’s workroom, “and we will take your donkeys and your trade-goods and
go. The king in Lir will recompense you, I’m sure. Or the temple, since it’s
the Goddess who commands this.”

Hoel gaped at her.

“This is the White Mare’s servant,” Emry said, taking pity
on the man. “She speaks for the Goddess.”

Hoel was never so bold before this woman as he had been
before the prince of Lir. “Lady,” he said. “I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you meant it,” she said. “You will stay here.
This prince and his hellions can play at being traders. They’ve a master to
teach them. They’ll do well enough.”

“Lady, they know nothing of trading. The arts, the sleights,
the skills—”

“They will learn,” she said sweetly. “You go, sir, and rest.
Prince, see to it that he’s paid suitably for the use of his animals. We’ll
bring him back a share of the profits.”

She smiled, dazzling even Emry, and left him to contend with
a caravan-master who had, for once in his life, been outmaneuvered.

But being a trader, he had still a few wits left, and a core
of plain courage. “I’ll leave my men,” he said, “but I’ll come with you. You’ll
be needing me.”

“We could all be going to our deaths,” Emry said.

“That I knew,” said Hoel, “when I agreed to this venture.”

Emry inclined his head in respect. “Go,” he said to Hoel.
“The ferry takes the first of us when the sun touches
     
the height of noon. If you’re not
there then, we’ll not wait for you.”

o0o

It was not a large caravan—it needed speed more than
strength of numbers. The things it took to trade were small things, but of
great value among the tribes: bolts of woven cloth, well-thrown pots, ornaments
of shell and bone and stone, and in the care of the master himself, a small hoard
of gold and copper and bronze.