Daughter of Lir (24 page)

“I am a woman from across the river,” she said.

“Get in the chariot,” he said.

She did not think he knew what he would say before he said
it: he looked startled once it was out. But he did not try to unsay it.

She hesitated no longer than it took to vault from the
mare’s back to the chariot. He started; the horses half-reared. The chariot
rocked. She caught at the sides.

It moved a little like a boat on rough water, and a very
little like a well-gaited horse. It was strange to stand behind a pair of
horses, to feel their motion, but to be separated from them by a thin space of
air, a shaft, and a few bits of leather and bone and forged copper.

She was beginning to find her balance. She slid her hand
around till she touched one of the reins. It was a living thing. Even the
slight weight of her hand made the stallion turn his head.

His big dark eye regarded her. He knew her; all stallions
did. He cast a wary glance at the mare, who had come up beside the chariot. But
she was quiet, biding her time.

A shift of the chariot swayed Rhian against the prince. She
felt him stiffen. She did not move away when the chariot shifted again, not at
once. Not until she heard his breath quicken. Then she let herself be parted
from him again, nearer the chariot’s side.

Minas slackened rein and clicked his tongue. The stallions
leaped as if shot from a bow—across the edge of the field, and then veering
away, out on the open plain. Tumult rose up behind them. The charioteers were
roaring aloud, cheering them on.

The chariot was a noisy thing, with the rattle of its wheels
and the creaking of its frame. And yet one could grow accustomed to the sound.
Then one could hear the wind singing in one’s ears, the heart in one’s breast
and the breath in one’s lungs, and the silence of the charioteer.

It was a very large silence. Minas’ spirit seemed wholly taken
up in the task of driving a poorly matched team over roughening ground.

Rhian settled as well as she could in her part of the
chariot, which happened to be beside and somewhat behind him. It gave her a
fine view of his shoulders, which were as bare as her own, and his long
straight back, and the plait of bright hair following the line of it. She
allowed her eye to linger over his buttocks, which were very well shaped; for
he was wearing nothing at all, as any sane man would on a day so breathlessly hot.

He did not press the horses once the swell of the land had
taken them out of sight of the tribe. They slowed to a trot and then to a walk.
Their coats were darkened with sweat. Rhian saw the foam between their
hindlegs.

The wind was blowing light but steady. It chortled to see
them together, danced and teased, plucking her hair out of its loosening plait
and brushing tendrils of it against his back. He shivered at the touch, but did
not turn or glance at her.

“Don’t tell me,” she said, “that you’ve never seen a woman’s
breasts before.”

Sun and heat had brought color enough to his cheeks, but at
that he went bright scarlet. “Women are modest here,” he said. His voice was
somewhat thick.

“What is this ‘modest’?” she asked. “Is it shame? Is it
fear?”

“It is honor,” he said with a touch of heat.

“Ah,” she said. “Honor. And yet men walk about naked, and no
one seems to mind. Is it only women who have honor?”

“It is only men who have honor. Women have none.”

“But if modesty is honor, and only women have modesty,
then—”

He brought the chariot to a halt and wound the reins about
the post that was set in the rim for just that purpose. She watched with
interest as the horses stood rooted, nor moved forward at all; they did not
even try to graze.

It was with some effort that she focused on him again. He
had turned without thinking, she thought, and been shocked anew by the sight of
her.

This time she did not let him turn away again. She caught
his face in her hands and held him fast. If he had simply wrenched his head aside,
he could have broken away, but he did not do that. “You are a spirit of
mischief,” he said.

She laughed. “I’ve been told that before. But really, tell
me—how can a woman have modesty but no honor?”

“Modesty clothes her for the honor of her kinsmen and the
protection of her family. Without it she has nothing but shame.”

“So,” she said. “You think me shameful.”

“No,” he said. “No.” But his eyes would not look below her
chin.

She let go his face to catch his hands and press them to her
breasts. “This is my pride,” she said. “This is my glory. I am the Goddess’
creation. Man is my flawed image. He exists to serve; to make and rear
children; to ornament my house.”

Minas’ hands had curved to fit her breasts. He was breathing
fast and shallow. His rod was defiantly erect.

She half expected him to fall on her like a bull in rut, but
he did no such thing. He was as properly restrained as a man of her people.

“You are beautiful and more than beautiful,” she said. “You
are a wonder among your people.”

He was beyond speech, she thought, until he said, “I am no
woman’s servant.”

“A Goddess? Can you serve her?”

He shook his head, but he did not answer directly. Instead
he said, “I’ve destroyed any reputation you might hope to have, by carrying you
off like this.”

“Did you? Or did you bestow your honor on me, as a tribesman
does on a woman he conquers?”

“I didn’t—” His teeth clicked together. “Are you allowing me
to claim you?”

“No,” she said. “But your kin may be allowed to think so.”

“And your kin? What will they say?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Not a word. My choices are mine to
make.”

“And if I choose to keep you captive? What will you do
then?”

“You won’t do that,” she said.

She had pricked his pride: she saw how his face tightened.
But he was wiser than to rail at her for what was only the truth. “It would
protect you,” he said as if to himself, “to let them think . . .”

“Surely it couldn’t harm your reputation to have conquered a
goddess.” She was still holding his hands over her breasts. When she let them
go, they stayed. She arched into them.

He gasped, but he seemed unable to move. He could speak, a
little. “It—would never harm—oh, gods!”

“Do I please you?” she asked, slipping arms about his
middle, catching his rampant rod between them. He spasmed at that, but did not
let go his seed.

“Am I beautiful?” she asked him. “Am I splendid? Do you want
me desperately?”

“
Yes!
” It was a
cry almost of pain.

“You are splendid,” she said. “I want you very much.”

“Why?”

That made her draw back a bit, the better to see his face.
“A man of your age and tribe and beauty has any need to ask me that?”

“I know why I want you,” he said with some difficulty, but
clearer as he went on. “Why do you want me? What can I give you?”

“Yourself,” she said. That was the truth, if not the whole
of it. She sealed it with her lips on his, a kiss long enough and deep enough
to drown them both.

This was no dream. Minas lay with her on the steppe, with
the sky a vault of pure and cloudless blue overhead, and the chariot beside
them. He had no memory of loosing the horses, but they were free of the
chariot, hobbled with a bit of rein, grazing at a respectful distance from the
strange pale mare.

The woman rode him as if he had been a stallion, her body
arched, her breasts twin moons above him. His hands clasped her hips, feeling
the strength and the fullness of them, the broad bones well made for carrying
children.

She was magnificent. Beside her, every woman he had ever had
was a pale and sapless thing. When she came to the summit, she loosed a cry of
triumph. Then, and only then, she let him climb the heights to join her. His
cry was fainter by far, breathless, and fading fast.

She held him inside her until it pleased her to let him go.
Then she dropped beside him, breathing hard, wet as if she had been swimming in
the river. The clean musky scent of her was intoxicating.

He could not speak at all. He could only stare at her, and
fight off sleep that was like unconsciousness. He did not want to sleep. He
wanted to stay awake, to know when she left, if she left. For the moment she
seemed inclined to linger, lying on her back with her arms spread wide, and her
beauty all bare to the sky.

He was jealous of the sky. He the reasonable man, the maker
of chariots, the prince of men. He envied any eye that could rest on her, even
if it were the sun.

This, he knew in his belly, was why men kept their women
veiled and shut in tents. Not for honor. Not for protection. Because they could
not bear for any other man to see what was theirs.

He could never bind this one in veils. If he tried, if by
some miracle of the gods he could keep her bound at all, she would die. And, he
thought, she would take as many men with her as she could—and him foremost.

There was a legend from far away and long ago, of a goddess
who walked in the form of a beast. She was larger than a lion, striped like the
shadows of grasses on tawny earth. She was called the tigress. She hunted men
and killed them, and devoured their bones.

And yet, the legend said, she was tender where she loved. To
her children she was the gentlest of mothers, just as she was fiercest in
defense of them.

This was a tigress, with her tawny skin and her white teeth.
She stretched in the grass, luxurious as a great cat. “You,” she said in a
voice like a purr, “have no art at all. But there is something . . .”

He sat up as if she had struck him. Sleep at least had fled,
but with it had gone his deep contentment. “No art? I’m not a good lover? By
the gods, woman—”

“Child,” she said, cutting cleanly across his words, “for a
tribesman, you’re a marvel. But it’s clear no one ever taught you how to please
a woman. That, you’ve fumbled through on your own; and truly I do love you for
it.”

He glowered at her. He was sulking, he knew it, just as he
knew that she was laughing at him for it. Women had told him how well he
pleased them. He had been proud of that. And now this foreigner mocked his
vaunted skill.

Her hand was cool against his burning cheek. Her smile was
maddening, but tender, too. “Poor boy,” she said. “I shouldn’t have told you
the truth.”

“No,” he said. “Better the truth than a lie. But that—it
hurts!”

She kissed him softly. “Of course it hurts. You have your
pride. But do believe me when I say that for all your lack of art, you have
somewhat about you that makes the greatest art an empty thing.”

“Words,” he said. “Such fine words.”

“Every one of them is true.”

He looked long at her. He saw her, maybe, for the first
time. Her beauty. Her strength. Her utter foreignness. “We do not come from the
same world,” he said.

“May we not meet between?”

“Should we?”

She did not answer that. Could not, maybe.

He rose to catch the horses, to harness them again to the
chariot. She helped him—surprisingly skilled, for someone who could not have
seen a chariot before she came to the People. She had a good eye; she learned
quickly.

He thought—yes, hoped—that she would mount her mare and ride
away, but when the chariot was ready, she said, “Show me how to drive the
horses.”

That took gall. But if he had learned anything of her, it
was that she knew nothing of either fear or shame. He could have refused her
outright, and by both law and tradition he should have done just that. But his
mood was strange, his spirit contrary. He sprang into the chariot and held out
his hand.

She grinned her wild grin and let him swing her up in front
of him. The horses were fresh and eager. She was warm and alive between his
arms. He turned his spirit away from the stirring that roused, and focused
himself on the feel of the reins, the stallions’ mood and their willingness to
leap into flight.

She rested her hands over his. Her touch on the reins was
light, barely to be felt. The horses made no objection. He let them walk
forward, though they begged to spring into a gallop. They were obedient, even
the young bay, who had only gone in harness since the last new moon.

When he was sure of them, he slipped his hands free and left
her with the reins. Her breath quickened a little, but she was calm, intent on
what she was doing. He could feel the sway of the chariot in her body, the ease
with which she followed it.

She had been watching him. She knew the exact click of the
tongue that moved the team into a trot. Her hands were not as deft as his; the
horses jibbed a little, caught shorter than they liked. But she softened rein,
and they settled to a steady gait.

She had begun frowning, deeply intent, but as she settled
into the way of it, the smile bloomed.

He had a little warning: a slight tensing of her body, a
minute shift of feet. Maybe she had not meant to urge the horses on quite so
hard, or quite so suddenly. They leaped forward with force that strained the
traces.

Minas nearly tumbled out of the chariot. A lurch and sudden
sway flung him forward.

She braced against him. He caught the chariot’s rim. Her
face had gone white. Good, he thought through the whipping of wind. Let her
know a little fear.

The dun could run the sun into the horizon and race the moon
on its round, but the bay was young and not yet come to his full strength. He
tired soon enough.

Rhian brought him down with more care than Minas might have
expected. She had no more skill in it than she had granted him as a lover, but
she had a certain gift, to be sure. If she had been a man, he would have been
swift to number her among the charioteers. But he could not make himself regret
that she was a woman.