Daughter of Lir (35 page)

Minas found that he was hungry. He could eat, and sleep,
too; there was a pallet spread in this court under the stars, as if they had
known how little he liked to sleep in walls.

He slept alone. Rhian was within—and likely with company,
too; he had caught one or two of the garrison making eyes at her.

He had no cause for jealousy. She was as heedless of either
modesty or propriety as the mare whose servant she was. No man could own her,
though one might dream of it.

He lay in the starlight on die far side of the river of souls,
and his dreams both waking and sleeping were full of her. There was a spell on
him, a curse of desire. He doubted she even knew she had laid it on him. Nor,
he thought, would she care.

He had crossed the river into another world. It was not the
world of the dead; and yet, if he was dead to the People, was it so very
different?

Past World’s End the river turned away from the sea of
grass and into the heart of the Goddess’ country. Minas had learned the
different words for gatherings of trees. Now Rhian taught him how gatherings of
people could be divided: village, town, city; garrison, fort, stronghold.

World’s End was a fort. Villages clustered on either side of
the river, no larger sometimes than camps of a tribe. They were almost never
walled. Towns might embrace the river, or might sprawl along the bank or
straggle away inland. Raw and half-built walls rose about many of them. And
where there were hilltops, there were fortresses, large or small, rising out of
ruins of old stone.

Cities were always walled, as warriors of this country wore
armor to protect their vitals. The heart of each city was not a stronghold of
warriors but a temple: a structure of wood or stone in which the women
worshipped their Goddess.

Men did not worship in temples. The great mysteries were
forbidden them. They were a lesser creation, beloved but weak. They could fight
battles, ride horses, even call themselves kings—and, Minas discovered to his
astonishment, rear children, too, while their women went about the real
business of ruling the world.

He was learning to speak the language, a little. He might
not have stooped to it, but he had a little wisdom. People talked among
themselves; maybe they told secrets. Maybe it was simpler, sometimes, to
understand what they said before they remembered to say it in the traders’
speech.

o0o

At the gate of autumn was a festival. They stopped for
that, for three days, in a city between World’s End and Lir.

There for the first time Minas saw the Mother of a city. She
was the living image of one of their carven goddesses: vast breasts, vast
belly, great round thighs. She suckled a child as she sat on the threshold of
the temple, receiving guests and hearing petitioners and judging altercations
as if she had been a king.

Minas, as one of those guests, found himself meeting eyes as
deep as the river on which he had come to this place. She was not old, he
realized; she had seemed as enduring as mountains, but she was still young
enough to bear and nurse a daughter. Her hair was black and thick, rippling
down her back to her ample hips. Her skin had the color and smoothness of
cream. She was splendid.

She smiled with warmth that made him blush from the loins
upward. “You are welcome in Larchwood,” she said.

He bowed as if to a warleader of the People, but he found no
words to say. A person—a man, for a wonder—was waiting to take them to their
lodgings. They had a whole house here, ample for all of them, and servants to
look after them.

There was even a place for the horses, a house built for
their comfort. Cut grass was brought in to them, and handfuls of barley, and
bits of fruit and sweetness to please their taste. They were looked after like
honored guests.

The autumn festival was bound to the harvest: to the
gathering of fruit and grain, the pressing of wine, and the laying away of
provisions for the winter. Minas had seen the laborers in the fields, men and
women and children side by side and toiling in the sun. Great heaps and sheaves
attested to the length of their labor; vats of grapes from the vines on the
hillsides, and baskets of fruit from the orchards and grain from the
threshing-floors.

So much labor, for so many, put Minas well in mind of the
simplicity of the tribes: meat and milk from the herds, meat and hides from the
hunt, fish from the rivers and wild fruits and grain where the women might find
them. But the winters were lean, with poor grazing for the herds and poor
hunting on the steppe; and there were no granaries and storehouses. Such could
not be moved from camp to camp.

He had begun to see, as the river bore him through this
strange country, what use a warrior people could make of these sleek
comfortable farmers and dwellers in cities. Their fighters were few, and many
of those were women.

They had so much to defend, and so much of it built on the
earth or growing in it. They could never sweep together the whole of their
country and carry it away to another camp or another realm of the world. Their
cities bound them like chains to the earth on which they were born. Their
fortresses were still rising on the hilltops, their walls half-built, their
garrisons raw recruits or grey-haired veterans whose scars were few and whose
bellies were soft with good living.

Swift warriors in chariots could conquer them, take their
wealth from them, keep them like herds to till the land and feed the People.
They built fortresses for protection, and stole a prince of the People to make
chariots for them, but their wealth was their weakness. All the gathered tribes
and clans of the People would roar over them as the fire had roared over the
steppe.

He could call that gathering. He could send the spear of war
to every tribe that was kin or conquered, and summon them all to take this soft
rich country. Horsemen in thousands, chariots in hundreds—the muster would be
like none the world had ever seen.

Rhian’s voice brought him back to the waking world. He was
in a wooden box of a room, one with a window that opened on the horses’ house.
A servant waited to help him dress in garments that the Mother had sent: rich
garments, soft garments, wonderfully woven, and ornaments of gold and copper
and bronze, set with amber and precious shell. He walked naked to the window
and looked out to see where Rhian was.

She was outside the horses’ house. The mare was with her.
Minas had never seen the mare gleam so, like a cloud over the moon. Her mane
and tail were as white as a fall of moonlight. There were flowers woven into
her mane, bronze and purple and gold.

Rhian seemed none too pleased. Her voice had an edge as she
addressed the child who stood beside the mare. “Whose command was it to deck
this horse like a beast for sacrifice?”

Minas was pleased that he understood her, for she was
speaking the tongue of the west. The child was more difficult, but he thought
he caught the meat of it: “Lady, this is harvest festival, and this is the
White Mare. We celebrate her, not sacrifice her.”

“Will there be any duties in that celebration?” Rhian
inquired.

The child shrugged. “If you wish, lady, she could ornament
the third-day rite and the sacrifice—but not as the victim! It’s tradition,
lady, that if the mare is in a city during a great festival, she graces it with
her presence, and her servant stands beside the priestesses in the rites.”

“In the temple?” Rhian’s voice sounded odd, as if she was
not quite able to trust it.

“Yes, lady. But I forgot, you are a chosen one, yes? Not
bred or raised to it. You should talk to the Mother. She knows the things that
the mare’s servant should know.”

“Do you know them, too?” demanded Rhian.

“I know a little,” the child said. “I looked after the Old
Mare once when she came to Larchwood. Her servant was very gracious. She taught
me some of the things that she knew.”

Minas wondered if Rhian would notice that she had been
rebuked. It seemed that she did not; or maybe she chose to ignore it. “Teach
me, then, till the Mother has time for me.”

“Sir,” said the servant behind Minas. “Will you dress?”

Minas had been rebuked, too. He considered ignoring it, but
he could hardly go out as he was. He let the man dress him as if he had been a
wooden image, and hang him about with ornaments, and plait his hair; but he
refused the garland that looked a great deal like the one in the mare’s mane.

He looked rather fine, he thought, though he had no weapon
to mark him a man and a warrior. Slaves did not carry weapons, nor, that he had
observed, did most of the men in the west. At most they had a knife for cutting
meat.

Certainly he was not dressed like a slave. He was not
confined, either, except by the walls of this city. He walked freely out of the
house and into the maze of streets, more of them and more tangled than in even
the great gathering of all the tribes.

They were all dark-haired people here. Tribesmen did not
come so far up the river. Minas was somewhat taller and much fairer than anyone
he passed. Children, and a few people who had not been children in some while,
trailed after him in fascination, or darted in to stroke his hair. They made a
game of it, daring one another, giggling and running away when he spun to see
who had touched him.

He caught himself wishing for his guards. Even one would do.
But that was cowardly, and none of these invasions was hostile. They were
curious, that was all.

The city was hung with banners, a richness of woven fabric
that would have been worth a whole tribe’s store of gold. There were flowers
everywhere, and people singing, and where there were open spaces, there were
people in them, dancing to the music of pipe and drum. Nearly always, there was
food near the dancing, tables spread and women or more often men inviting
passersby to eat, drink, share the bounty of the harvest.

He ate their fine white bread and their roasted meats and
their extravagances of fruit and grain and sweetness. He watched their bold
half-naked women dance with their maiden-eyed men. He heard the songs they
sang, some of which he understood, most of which he did not.

He had been wandering aimlessly, but he was aware that the
circles of the city were growing smaller. In time he came to the center, to an
open space that startled him with green: grass, a ring of trees, a structure of
wood on a foundation of stone. Here, he could suppose, was the temple.

He had expected a crowd of dancers and a greater feast than
he had yet seen, but there was no one about, not outside the temple. Within he
heard singing, voices of women and none of men, high and eerie.

He ascended a tier of steps to the temple. Its gate was
open. Scented smoke wafted out. They were burning sweet herbs such as must be
pleasing to their goddess.

He peered within. It was dim almost to darkness, but there
were candles lit. He saw the women in a circle, white naked backs and haunches,
white breasts, broad hips bound with a garment of knotted crimson cords. It hid
nothing of their sex, but rather enhanced it.

Here was pure raw woman, power such as he had never
imagined. They were singing spells to bind the world.

Defiance bade him enter their temple, hear their song within
the curve of those age-darkened walls. But he found his feet would not obey
him. As proud as he was, royal born, descended of gods, here he was only a man.

He was no lord of creation here. He was an upstart, a child,
his gods but children of the one great Goddess. All his dreams and sureties,
the conquest he foresaw, the rule that he would hold, dwindled to folly. He
would never rule here, nor would any man. There was no such power in him.

He recoiled with a gasp, stumbling backward into the
sunlight. Its warmth bathed his face. Its strength weakened the women’s spell.

For spell it was, no more if no less. He was stronger than
it willed him to be. He was of another creation, a lord of sun and sky,
begotten of the free air and the open grass.

“I will conquer you,” he said to them from the sanctuary of
the sun. “I will rule you. By the gods of heaven I swear it.”

Rhian had done very little thinking since she rode away
from the tribe. She plotted and schemed. She acted accordingly. She . . .
killed. But she pondered none of it.

Even on the river, when she could have faced all the things
that she had been and done, and contemplated what was in front of her, she had
chosen to lose herself in the running of the water and the turning of the sky.
All too often, too, she had watched Minas when he was not aware of it, till she
knew his every line. She had not sought him out in the nights; it was a
strangeness in her, a desire to sleep alone, to be alone. She did not want a
man at all, even that one, except to look at.

In Larchwood during the three days of festival, she could no
longer avoid the inevitable. The mare and her servant had duties. Those were
not many and not excessively onerous, but they were real; they were
inescapable. They reminded her of everything she had been evading.

Even while she was awake she saw the faces of the men she
had killed. Waking and sleeping she saw the faces of the men who had died in
her battle: Dal who had been a pleasing lover, Conn who had been for a while
her father, Gwion and Rodry the noblemen of Lir. They haunted her in dreams,
dying over and over again. Even when they let her be, she faced another ghost,
and another bitter guilt: Emry as she had last seen him, standing alone in the
midst of the tribe. Was he dead, then? Had they killed him in retaliation for
their prince’s loss?

She had to hope and pray that they had not; that her vision
was simply memory. He would come back, alive and whole. She had prayed the
Goddess for that, and dared to hope that she had been heard.