Daughter of Lir (19 page)

“You are the king’s wife, yes?” Rhian said. “Is your son his
heir?”

Aera inclined her head.

“Then I’m being paid great honor,” said Rhian, bowing where
she sat.

“I am certain you are worthy of it.”

Rhian shrugged slightly. “I’m no king’s wife, nor his
mother, either.”

“A god ranks higher than a king.”

“You think I’m a god’s wife?” Rhian bit back laughter. That
would have been a very ill thing to do here, in this woman’s domain, surrounded
by women who, Rhian had been aware for some little while, were watching her
subtly but intently. There were women playing with children in front of the
flap into the king’s tent, and others weaving baskets or sewing garments or
nursing babies in a circle about her. She was perfectly closed in.

“I think,” said Aera, “that you belong to the Powers.”

“Because I ride like a man? Because I came trading with my
kin?”

Aera smiled. “Many say my father is a god. He insists that
he is not. But he is not as other men are.”

“The women of my people are all much like me,” Rhian said.

“Indeed?” said Aera. “Tell me of your people.”

Rhian sipped wine from the golden cup, taking her time,
ordering her words. The king’s wife waited patiently. “I come,” Rhian said
after a while, “from the west. Our country is across the river. Our people—”

“Across the river?”

That was a new voice, one that had not spoken in that place
before, nor had Rhian noticed her among the women. She stood beyond the circle,
with two or three others behind her. She must have been lovely once: her bones
were handsome and her dark eyes large. But time had not been kind to her. Her
face was worn, her hair ashen. She spoke the traders’ tongue in a different
accent, harsher, deeper in the throat.

She must be very high in rank indeed: her gown was
embroidered from throat to hem, and her ornaments were gold. Rhian had not
noticed till then that Aera wore no ornaments. Her grace was regal enough,
without need of gold to brighten it.

Aera sat as still as ever, but she had tensed. “Etena,” she
said coolly. “You honor us with your presence.”

Etena smiled without warmth. “It seems we are honored
indeed. So, is it true? We have a goddess among us?”

When Minas had said much the same, it had been an honest
question, with an honest heart behind it. Rhian met those eyes, which should
have been so familiar, dark eyes set in a broad-cheeked face, and saw nothing
that spoke to her spirit.

“I am a goddess’ servant,” Rhian said, soft, and civil.

“There are no mortal folk beyond the river,” Etena said, “or
so the wise have taught us. The river flows with the souls of the dead. The
gods live on the other side.”

“There well may be a river of souls,” Rhian said, “but our
river is water and fish and a god or two. My people are mortal certainly. We are
born, we live and die as mortals do.”

“How can that be so?” Etena asked. “Can the wise be in
error?”

“The wise speak in riddles,” Aera said. “Those are men who
ride with her, beyond a doubt, with a western look to them, and a western sound
to their speech.”

“And they crossed the river to come here.” Etena’s eyes had
narrowed. She stepped into the circle of women, drawing close to Rhian,
searching her face.

Rhian bore the scrutiny with all the calm that she could
muster. She must not betray weakness. She must be like a stone, standing fast
against wind and current.

“Yes,” said Etena as if to herself, but unless she spoke the
traders’ tongue by force of habit, she must mean Rhian to understand her. “I
have not seen this race before. You are traders, you say?”

“And children of traders,” Rhian said. “We travel the world
about. Would you be pleased to be shown the finest of our wares, come morning?
We have ornaments of pure gold, cloth as fine as a spider’s web, jewels of the
earth—”

“You will bring them to me,” said Etena, “come morning.”

Rhian bent her head. Greed, Conn had taught her long ago,
was a frequent weakness of the powerful. Rulers of tribes and cities coveted
the rare and the beautiful. Traders lived by that. It could, if they were wise,
make them rich.

She wondered what Aera coveted. It did not seem to be gold.
Knowledge, maybe. If that was so, she was more dangerous than Etena. Etena
could be distracted from learning the truth of the caravan’s presence here.
Aera might not be so easy to deceive.

Rhian rose. “I thank you for your hospitality,” she said.
“We will bring our wares in the morning, for you to choose.”

“You will bring them,” Etena said. “No man may look on the
faces of the king’s wives.”

“Even a man or two to fetch and carry?” asked Rhian. “Our
men are properly tamed. They’ll keep their eyes to themselves.”

Etena sniffed. But she said, “That may be permitted.”

Rhian glanced at Aera. That lady’s face was perfectly blank.
“Until the morning,” Rhian said to them both.

Emry feasted as lightly as he could, that night. That was
still heavier than he would have liked. He was an honored guest, though not as
honored as he might have been if these people had known his true rank. He was
given a royal share of the meat, and his cup was never suffered to be empty.

When at last he could politely excuse himself, the stars
touched on midnight. Men of the tribe were still dancing and singing, though
wine and kumiss had flattened a fair number of them. The traders were still
upright. So, he was pleased to see, were most of his men. He caught an eye
here, an eye there. They began to rise one by one, not too obviously, he hoped.

Their tents were pitched, their camp made a little apart
from the main camp of the tribe. The horses and donkeys grazed in a herd nearby.
Mabon and Bran the smith stood guard over the packs and boxes of the caravan’s
wares. They were awake and alert; Emry caught a flash of bronze before he came
into the light of their fire.

Mabon eased first, recognizing his prince. Bran kept his
sword drawn till he saw that Emry was alone. Then he lowered the blade.

“Trouble?” Emry asked him.

Bran shrugged, a roll of his heavy shoulders. “A foray or
two on the baggage. Nothing we haven’t faced before.”

“And?” Emry asked, fixing him with a level stare.

He shifted his feet, seemed to remember he still had his
sword in his hand, thrust it into its scabbard. “We found the chariots, my
lord,” he said.

“Ah,” said Emry.

“They’re kept under guard,” Bran said, “in a camp of their
own. The men who live in that camp—they’re makers, my lord. They build
chariots.”

“Who was guarding the baggage while you were discovering
this?”

“I was, my lord,” Mabon said, as Bran drew in on himself.

“When you stand guard,” Emry said to this man of the
villages, “you stand guard. When you are set free of that, then you go wherever
you choose.”

Bran was knotted tight. Emry held his breath. An instant
before he would have spoken again, the smith flung up his head. “Yes, my lord.
I’ll not do it again, my lord. But that is what I came for—to see chariots. To
see how they are made.”

“In the morning,” said Emry, “you will go and see, by my
orders. For tonight, you are a guard, and a guard you will be until I send a
man to take your place.”

“Yes, my lord,” Bran said. From the sound of it, his teeth
were clenched.

That was not an ill thing. The man needed strength of will,
just as he needed discipline. “You’ll never make a soldier, smith,” Emry said,
“nor should you. But while you play the caravan guard, you stand under my
orders. Remember that. We are not in the Goddess’ country now. We are among
people who make cups of their enemies’ skulls, and dash those enemies’
menchildren against the rocks. They may smile at us, lay feasts before us, but
if they discover why we came, they’ll slaughter us without mercy.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Bran.

Emry nodded briskly. “To your post, sir.”

The man went as he should have done, not happily, but with a
firm step. Emry let go his breath slowly.

Mabon caught his eye. “It was my fault, my lord. When he
said he wanted to go, I didn’t stop him.”

“You’ll stand double shift with him, for that,” said Emry.
“There can be no slackening here. Our lives depend on it.”

“I know that, my lord,” Mabon said. “We all know it.”

“We must be it,” said Emry. “We’ve lived soft, we princes.
We think we can fight, because we practice with weapons, and hunt, and once in
a very great while meet a raiding-party off the steppe. There hasn’t been a war
in our country in living memory. The great wars were all so long ago that all
the strongholds we built then have fallen into ruin. None of us knows, truly
knows, what war is. These people were born fighting. Their year is rounded in
war. Either they’re preparing for it, or riding to it, or fighting it, or
celebrating the victory. They’ve never known what peace is.”

“My lord,” said Mabon, “that’s a splendid speech. Will you
be giving it to the others, too?”

He was not mocking his prince, but his brow was lifted and
he had a quirk to his mouth. Emry growled wordlessly at him and stalked off to
his tent.

o0o

Once inside, in the light of the little lamp that was
shaped like a Mother’s body, round and full, Emry stripped off his finery and
dropped groaning onto his blankets. Haranguing poor Mabon, lashing the smith
with his tongue—he was sore in need of discipline himself.

He watched completely without surprise as one of the shadows
took the shape of a goddess’ servant. “I suppose,” Rhian said, “you thought the
tents had raised themselves.”

“I thought the tribesmen did it,” Emry said.

“Bran and Mabon and I did it,” she said. “I stood guard for
Bran when he went, he said, to look after the horses—but he went farther than
that. You were harsher on him than he deserved.”

That was exactly Emry’s thought, but he was in no mood to
admit it. “What did you do to him for running off? Were you kind to him,
either?”

“I never said a word to him,” she said.

“Then you were more cruel than I was,” Emry said.

“I don’t think,” she said, “that it’s your place to judge
me.”

“No, it’s not,” he said. “Have you done chastising me? May I
sleep now?”

“Don’t you want to hear what I did among the women?”

He glowered at her. “What did you do among the women?”

Her eyes were wicked. “I ate. I drank middling bad wine. I
talked to the king’s wives. One of them is very dangerous. The other is both
dangerous and wise.”

He set his lips together and waited her out. She wanted him
to beg for every word.

After a while he thought she would win the contest: she
would leave without having spoken. But she was not so strong of will. She said,
“The prince who brought us here—he’s the king’s heir. His mother made me her
guest. I think that matters, somehow. There is another wife, who seems very
strong; I’d say she rules there, except that the prince’s mother has power she
can’t touch. She commanded me to bring the best of our wares to her in the
morning, as if she has a right to choose first. She’ll let me bring a man or
two to carry them.”

“Factions,” he said. “If the heir and his mother are one
faction, and this covetous one is another—did you see the king? The man is ill.
How long do you wager he’ll live?”

“Quite long, if he’s not meddled with,” she said. “He’s as
strong as a bull in body. But his spirit is a pale and feeble thing.”

“This is not a feeble tribe,” Emry said, “as much as we
might wish that it were. Its king may be a mask for the true ruler, but she
does indeed rule.”

“The greedy one,” Rhian said. “I’d wager gold on it, if I
had any. The other . . . she wouldn’t grasp after power. She’s
beyond that. The greedy one is like a priestess. I think the other may be
closer to a Mother.”

Emry shivered slightly. A Mother’s power went far beyond the
ruling of cities. The king ruled men, but the Mother embodied the Goddess. If
there was a Mother here, their purpose might be defeated before it began.

He could not let himself think such things. They must do
what they had come to do. They could not fail.

“I’ll be your porter,” he said. “We need a trader with us.
Hoel—”

“Conn,” she said.

His teeth clicked together.

“Conn lived in this country. He’s a trader from his
childhood. He’ll know how to talk to this wife of a king. And you,” she said,
“will say nothing at all. Can you do that?”

He could hardly call her insolent: she was the mare’s
servant. But he could not keep himself from saying, “You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you as far as a young man can be trusted,” she
said. “But do remember that in the tribes, young men are never, ever trusted
with other men’s wives. If you want to ride out of here with your parts intact,
you will be the mute servant, and not the prince of Lir.”

The parts in question shriveled alarmingly. How she could
have seen, he did not know; he was well covered. She laughed at him, tugged at
his plait and said, “I see you understand. In the morning, then. Tell Conn.
Come sunrise, see that we’re ready to trade with a queen.”

She went, he supposed, to her blissful rest, now she had
burdened him with tasks enough to keep him up till morning. That was her
revenge for what he had done to Bran. He snarled, he kicked the pallet that he
would see no more of this night, but he did her bidding. He was an obedient
servant.

Minas woke with a start. For a long moment he could not
remember where he was. Not the young men’s tent, no—not the old shabby one, nor
the splendid new one that they had taken from a prince of the conquered tribes.
There were stars overhead. There was grass under him. Not far away, something
large stirred, snorting softly.