Daughter of Lir (43 page)

“I heard she went mad as some mothers do, and forsook her
child. But I think,” said Emry, “that she may remember you now. The king is
weak. The king’s heir is gone. She’ll be wanting another man through whom to
rule. And you are her blood and bone.”

“Are you a shaman? A soothsayer?”

Emry blinked, startled. “Why, no. How can I be? I’m a man.”

“You are a—” Dias seemed startled himself, and more so as he
began to understand. “In your country, shamans are women?”

“And kings,” said Emry.

“How strange.” Dias peered at him. “You look a great bull of
a man, and yet you crawl at women’s feet. Is that why she bought you? For your
servility?”

“I think it was for my beauty,” Emry said.

Dias’ bark of laughter had true mirth in it, however brief,
however swiftly it darkened. “Can you seduce her, man of the west? Can you win
her to your will?”

“She is a sorceress,” Emry said.

“Cannot a sorceress be ensorcelled? She found you
fascinating enough to pay gold for you. Gold, westerner, is life and breath to
her. She’s half yours already. Win all of her, free my father, and I will undo
your slavery. You’ll be a free man again.”

“Can no one here do such a thing?”

“Men of the People do not have women’s arts.” It seemed Dias
was more proud of that than ashamed. “Do it, Goddess’ man, and you shall be
free.”

“And if I fail, I shall be dead,” Emry said lightly. “That’s
a fine bargain, prince.”

“Why, don’t you value your freedom?”

“My heart is no one’s slave,” Emry said. “But to see my own
land and people again, yes, I would be glad of that. I will take your bargain.
Only promise me one thing.”

“What is that?” Dias asked when Emry did not go on.

“When you are king,” Emry said, “give me one gift, one
boon—whatever I ask. Will you do that?”

“If I become king,” said Dias, “I will not give you my
kingship. Anything else that is in my power, if you do this thing, I will
give.”

“May the Goddess witness it,” Emry said.

“And the gods,” said Dias, “above and below.”

They made their bargain there on the rim of the high hill,
in the long rays of the setting sun. The Goddess witnessed it, and Dias’ gods
of wind and sky. When it was made, the sun touched the horizon. Dias bowed low
to it, and sang a long winding song, a chant that seemed to unfurl from him
with no will of his at all. That was the seal of their bargain; that, and the
swift fall of night.

It was Etena and not Aera who sang the princes to their
long rest with the gods below. That, Emry gathered, was a remarkable thing, and
a bit of a scandal. That song belonged to the mother of the king’s heir. In
refusing to sing it, Aera had abdicated from her position. In taking her place,
Etena had laid claim to the office—for her son as well as herself.

So ended the nine days’ mourning, in darkness and raw cold
rain; and so, it seemed, ended Aera’s power among her people.

Emry tumbled out of an unexpectedly deep sleep. The first
blow woke him. The second half-stunned him. He blinked up at an indistinguishable
but unmistakably princely face. “Get up,” said the boy. “The king’s wife wants you.”

So she did, Emry started to say, but he bit his tongue. He
scrambled himself up and into some sort of order. His ribs stabbed where the
prince had aimed a kick. One was maybe cracked. He took care to breathe
shallowly, and to move with care as he dressed and plaited his hair.

The camp was bleak in the grey light. There would be no sun
today: the clouds were heavy and low. It had rained in the night, and would rain
again later, or even snow. The camp dogs huddled in the lee of tents or tried
against the threat of kicks and stones to claim places by the fires. Even the
children were subdued, their usual footraces and noisy games of stick-and-ball
reduced to a somewhat lifeless mock war in the deserted council-circle.

Emry gathered his wits and his courage, drew a deep breath
and let it go, and entered the king’s tent. The king was not in the common
space; maybe Etena was giving up that pretense. She was there with two of her
women. He thought he heard the third keeping up the spell of chants and drugged
smoke, somewhere not too far away.

He bowed in front of Etena, and sat on his heels, and
waited. She spoke no greeting. He let her look at him, steadying his spirit, so
that his skin was like armor, and his face a mask. To her he was a thing, a
possession, like an image of gold or a fine jewel. He was content to be that,
and no more.

“You will do a thing for me,” she said to him. “My son is
now the king’s heir. You are now his servant. You will serve him, guard him,
share his every breath. When I ask it of you, you will tell me what he does,
and when, and with whom.”

“I am, in short, your spy?”

“You are whatever I bid you be.”

Emry bent his head. “As you wish, my lady,” he said.

o0o

Thanks be to the Goddess, he was too shocked to say more,
still less to burst out in hysterical laughter. Now he was doubly charged, and
doubly sworn to watch over the prince Dias. And Dias had bidden him weaken
Etena’s power in the tribe.

Great was the Goddess, and wonderful her ways. If she could
use a man to work her will in this world of men and veiled women, why not?

He learned by inquiry that the king’s heir kept little
enough state. He shared a tent like the one in which Emry had already been a
slave, no larger and certainly no cleaner than the other had been when Emry
found it. The dwellers in this one were not king’s sons, except for Dias. They
were yearmates, or close enough; kin through the royal clan, who had been the
prince Minas’ warband before Minas was taken away. They had all shaved their
hair to the skull, and some had slashed their cheeks and breasts and arms with
knives.

They looked like a pack of demons in the lamplit clutter of
their tent. Dias in their midst was easy to find: he was clean, which surprised
Emry, and his hair was combed and plaited, and his skin was unmarred. One would
think he did not mourn, until one met his eyes. Then the visible sorrow of the
rest shrank to nothing.

He greeted Emry as if he had expected him. “Which of them
sent you?” he asked.

“On the face of it,” said Emry, “your mother.”

A shadow crossed Dias’ face. “To kill me?”

“To spy on you,” said Emry.

“That may be worse.” Dias spoke lightly, as if he did not
care. “Come then, there’s a place for you. Can you hunt?”

“I can hunt,” Emry said, but not with his full attention.
The others had stiffened when Dias spoke of the empty place. He could well
guess whose it was.

Dias did not care about that, either. He pointed with his
chin at the heap of furs and hides nearest him. “You’ll sleep there. Can you
sing? Tell stories?”

“A little,” Emry said.

He held his breath, but no one asked him to entertain them
just then. There was a low growl, hardly to be heard, when he approached Minas’
old place. Dias stared his kinsmen down. He had power here, Emry thought; he
was more than a shadow of his brother who was gone.

In this tent, it seemed, Emry was not to be their general
slave. They let him make order of their chaos, but none of them ordered him
about. They made rather a point of ignoring him.

As he went out with the last armload of moldy hides and
threadbare furs, Dias trailed after him. The air was raw, and had grown more so
as the day advanced. Snow, Emry thought, for a certainty.

He flung his burden in the midden pit which was dug beyond
the outer line of tents. When he turned to go back, Dias barred his way. The
prince thrust a bow into his hand, and a filled quiver. “We go hunting,” he
said.

“It will snow by nightfall,” said Emry.

Dias flung a bundle at him. It unrolled into a mantle:
bearskin, well tanned and almost clean.

“Horses?” Emry asked.

They were waiting, bridled, fleeces strapped to their backs,
and bags of provisions laden on them. Emry rolled his eyes at the sky, which
lowered forbiddingly.

Dias was in no mood to hear any objection. Emry had his
orders, threefold. He mounted the nearer horse, a sturdy and somewhat
nondescript bay. Dias was already astride, already in motion toward the rim of
the camp.

The first spit of snow caught them on the plain. Dias had
found the track of a herd of deer, and was following it as if nothing in the
world mattered but that. Emry kept his head down against the bitter wind, and
his eyes on the track, with glances upward to be certain of the path. It was a
great trust, he thought, for this man to arm a slave and set him in the rear.
If Dias wanted to die, this well might be how he meant to do it.

Emry had no intention of obliging him, if that was his
purpose. Dias dead was no use to Lir. Dias living might breed enough dissension
in the tribe to keep the war at bay for a while at least. Emry very much wanted
Dias alive, well, and able to stand against his mother.

So Emry guarded Dias, there on the plain, with the wind
whipping his face and clawing at the bearskin wrapped tight about him. There
was sign enough of game, and not only the deer Dias was tracking. But of living
things they saw nothing. All the beasts were gone to earth, the birds gone to
roost, against the coming of the storm.

And yet as they rode onward and the snow began to fall, Emry
caught flashes in the corner of his eye. It seemed he saw beasts after all,
like shadows in the snow: a stag, a boar, a shambling bear. Dias did not turn
to shoot the stag. Bear and boar made no move against the hunters.

They were watching. Emry saw the gleam of eyes. Beasts did
not stare at men as these did.

Spirits, he thought. In the snow, in the wind, they trod the
edge between worlds. Maybe Dias had opened the door, in his grief that drove
him from his people’s camp in the threat of snow.

Dias grieved, but he was not altogether mad. They camped
before dark in a sheltered hollow, where a shelf of stone made a shallow cave.
Dias had brought fire in a little jar, and dry tinder to feed it. There was
bread, kumiss, dried meat. The horses’ big warm bodies blocked the wind. They
were in decent comfort, while the snow fell outside and the wind howled its
frustration.

Dias rolled himself in his mantle and lay down between the
fire and the horses. Which left Emry the warmth of the inner cave, but also no
easy escape. He shrugged and fed the fire a twist of dried grass. His belly was
full; he was warm. There was no snow falling on him. His mantle was even
beginning to dry.

One of the horses sighed and groaned and lay down. The other
stood hipshot, already asleep. Beyond them was the dark. Now and then as the
fire flared, Emry saw a swirl of snow.

There were shadows in the storm: bear, boar, stag. Stag was
closest, the great swell of his neck, the spread of his antlers dark against
the night. Emry blinked. The horses raised their heads, ears pricked.

A man slid past them. He moved slowly, as horsemen knew how
to do, and with care not to startle them. He wore for hood and mantle the hide
and horn-crowned head of a stag. The face beneath that regal headdress was
human enough, a long-nosed, sparse-bearded tribesman’s face; the plait of hair
on the narrow shoulder was faded copper. Only his eyes were truly odd as he
came into the light of the fire: one was blue and one was moss-green.

Dias did not stir as the stranger stepped over him. Emry sat
still, alert but unfrightened. “So,” he said, soft lest he wake the prince.
“This is where you all went. Did you call him to you?”

“We called you,” the shaman said. “He had the ears to hear.”

“Are you going to bid me guard him, too?”

“Oh, no,” said the shaman. “We have a message for you.”

That did surprise Emry, for a moment into speechlessness.
Then he found words. “From the White Mare’s servant?”

“From the one who is above the gods.”

That robbed Emry of all speech.

“The prince of chariots lives and is well. The chariots have
come to Lir. You are free, if it pleases you.”

Emry’s heart thudded in his breast. Free. And where fire had
covered the White Mare’s track, snow covered his. If the storm continued, he
could escape at dawn, and be well to the westward and his tracks utterly
obscured before anyone came after him.

And yet.

He had given his word many times over. And he could do more
to defend Lir here than in the crowd of his brothers and cousins and kin.

He was sick with wanting to be home again; to see his
father’s face, and walk in the king’s house, and hear his own language spoken
by his own people. This was exile beyond the nightmare of a miscreant in Lir,
abandoned on the steppe among a barbarous tribe.

Still, it was the path the Goddess had chosen for him. He
had accepted it. If the shaman told the truth, then that was well indeed. But
Emry’s word was still given, and he had still his duty to do.

He would stay.

The shaman was watching him steadily, mismatched eyes fixed
on his face. This man knew the secret, knew what Emry had come for and where
Minas had gone. He was deadly dangerous.

“Swear to me,” said Emry, “by whatever gods you serve, that
you will tell no one in your tribe of this message which you brought me.”

“I was driven out of the tribe,” the shaman said, “by the
one who is the enemy of us all. In this I serve my gods. If by it I help to
destroy her, I will be content.”

“And if it destroys your tribe?”

“I have no fear of that.”

“You should.”

The shaman shook his head. “Dream as you will, man of the
west. Leave if it pleases you. There is no more need of you here.”

“I think there is great need,” Emry said.

“You act alone,” said the shaman. “Our gods will do nothing
for you.”

“I don’t know your gods,” said Emry. “I only know my
Goddess.”