Daughter of Lir (46 page)

“She summoned me,” he said. “I belong to her. And . . .
she’s a sad thing, for all her power.”

“You did it because you
pitied
her?”

“And because she asked me,” he said. “When a woman asks, a
man can refuse—never doubt that. But—”

“But you wanted her.”

“She wanted me,”
     
he
said, “and she needed what I had to give.”

Aera looked long
     
and
hard into his face. Her eyes were like green stones, full of light but
snow-cold. “You are no one’s friend here,” she said, “or ally. You belong to
your own country. We are nothing to you but enemies—makers of war, who will
destroy your people. Are we not?”

That was true enough to silence him for a moment, but then
he said, “You bade me win her heart. Surely you knew her body would come with
it.”

“Did you truly do
     
it
because I bade you?”

“No,” he said. “But I did remember it. Are you so angry
because you never thought I could do it?”

“I am not—” She bit her lip. “You are too different. I
believe again that you come from the gods, from beyond the river of the dead.
Surely no human man can be as you are.”

“I am utterly mortal,” he said. He stretched out his hand
and closed it about hers. “See? Warm. I’m as alive as you are.”

She snatched her hand free. “She bade you, didn’t she? She
bade you seduce me.”

“She did not.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I do not lie,” he said. “My people, we abhor the lie. She
laid nothing on me that concerned you.”

“And Dias? What did she ask that you do to him?”

“Protect him,” Emry answered. “Spy on him, too—but she has
never asked me to tell her what I see.”

“If she did, would you?”

“I would tell her nothing that any spy of hers could not
tell her for himself.”

“What, nothing?”

“I may be her slave,” Emry said, “but I am not her ally.”

“Nor are you mine.”

“But maybe,” he said, “I am your friend.”

“No man can be my friend.”

“No man of this tribe, maybe.”

“No man in this world. Go. Are you not bound to obey any
woman who commands you? I command you to leave, nor ever come back.”

“I am not bound to obey any woman who is not my Mother or my
mistress, or my commander in battle.”

“Commander in—”

“Not,” he said reflectively, “that that would be
particularly likely, since my father commands all the warriors of Lir, and I am
his heir.”

“So you are—”

“Oh yes,” he said. “I hide it terribly badly, don’t I? She
wanted me for that. Royal blood, you see, for the things that one needs a king
for, or a king’s heir.”

“For the—” This time she spoke again too quickly for him to
intervene. “Do you know all of the things she needs a king for?”

“Those that the king himself is too soul-lost to do, or too
perfectly enslaved.”

“Or too valuable to waste.” She seized his hands in a grip
strong enough to bruise, hardly aware perhaps that she did it. “She made you
king with the midwinter sacrifice. Do you know what becomes of the king at the
coming of spring? When the new year is born, and winter’s grip breaks, and the
gods put on their crowns of new green? Do you know what happens to him then?”

He saw it in her eyes. It was a memory, too, a very old one,
sung in the measure of the Great Song of Lir. “The year-king,” he said. “The
royal sacrifice. But—”

“She wanted you for that,” Aera said. “To give her a son,
then feed her power with your life and soul. Your blood shed in the new moon of
spring, in the midst of the great rite, will give her more than she ever took
from the king of our People.”

“But your king—she’s sucked the soul out of him. What will
she do, fill him up with mine? Doesn’t she fear he might turn rebel?”

She hissed at him. “This is no game!”

“It is not,” he agreed. “But it’s a long cold while until
spring, and who knows what might happen? I’m forewarned. She’s preoccupied. She
may not even want me for that at all. Can a king’s heir be sacrificed? Surely,
if the heir of a king from across the river can fulfill the gods’ decree, then
the son of the king who rules in this tribe—”

“Dias did not take the place of the king in the dark of the
year,” Aera said.

“But he was given the bull’s hide by the hands of the king.
He was named heir in front of the tribe. Surely that matters more here than
whatever the king’s wife did in the night?”

“Him,” said Aera, “I can protect. You cannot even protect
yourself.”

“Can I not?”

“So,” she said. “You’re a man after all. I’ll pray my gods
you can stop strutting long enough to feel the axe on your neck.”

“Why? So that I can know the pain of my own folly before I
die?”

She slapped him, hard. His head rocked with the force of it;
it dizzied him. “Gods,” she said through set teeth. “Gods, if only I could hate
you.”

“It would be simpler,” he agreed.

She struck him again, laying him flat. He stared up into her
white wild face. She stooped and kissed him as hard as she had struck him, and
with the same passionate intensity.

Just when he must breathe or fall into the dark, she let him
go. He might have taken her glare for hatred, or rage, but he did not think it
was either.

She bent once more. Her hands cradled his face, her fingers
tangling in the curls of his beard. This kiss was soft, and tasted of salt.
There were tears on her cheeks. “I should not,” she said, “I should never—in
this life—”

She was not weeping for him, not in her heart. She thrust
herself away from him. “Get out, before we dishonor all our kin.”

“There is no dishonor in this,” he said. But he rose,
because plainly she could not bear that he saw her weep. Such pride; so much
pain. And beauty to break the heart.

He kissed the tears from her cheeks, and pressed her hands
for a moment to his heart. Then he left her to mourn her sorrows in peace.

Aera wept till her throat was raw and her ribs ached. All
the grief that she had held tight in her heart, all the pain, the anger, the
pure blind rage, burst out of her with no hope of restraint. Not only did she
weep for her son. She wept for his father, who was worse than dead; and for his
brother, who might be dead by spring. And she wept a little for herself,
because she had been so perfectly, utterly a fool.

She had reckoned it enough to raise Etena’s son as if he had
been her own, and to keep him safe until he was a man. For her own son she had
taken too few precautions. She had never thought that Etena would dare to touch
him, once the king had named him heir. Folly—for Etena had dared to corrupt a
king. Mere princes would be as nothing to her.

Now Minas was dead, and Dias was in danger. Did Etena hope
to keep the king alive until the child within her was grown? Or had she chosen
another of the sons to be king between? That would not be Dias. Dias would
never submit to her magic.

If two royal heirs were sacrificed come spring . . .
what power would that give her? Would she hoard it, or would she wield it in
ways that Aera was too befuddled to conceive?

The storm of grief had passed. Aera lay in her father’s tent
beside the half-finished weaving, all empty and wept clean.

Her mind was very clear. She rather thought she understood
what Emry had done to her, though she could not be sure why. He truly did not
think as men did here.

He was no ally, no. Enemy? Without a doubt. And yet she did
believe that she could trust him—until they came to his country. Very likely he
hoped to prevent that for as long as possible. This conflict of kings and
kings’ wives would serve his people very well.

It seemed he had chosen her side of this battle. Because she
did not own him, and Etena did? Because she was the weaker, and he had a soft
heart for the downtrodden? Or simply because he wanted to lie with her?

Not so simple, that. She wanted to lie with him—oh gods,
desperately. If she had been even a fraction less firmly bound by honor and
grim good sense, she would have taken him as a man takes a woman, headlong and
heedless, instead of casting him out.

She gathered herself together and washed the traces of tears
from her face. She returned to the loom and began where she had left off, her
hands moving swiftly but with care, so that no thread was awry.

Her sisters came back when she had woven an armlength of new
cloth. They were silent women, as odd by now as their father. Aera beside them
was a bright and frivolous spirit.

She had not realized before how stifling their silence was.
As maddening and sometimes dangerous as the king’s tent could be, with its
factions of quarrelling wives and concubines, its squalling babies, and its
perpetual drone of Etena’s spells, still it was a lively place. Maybe she had
not been happy there, but she had been more honestly alive than she was here.

Her son was dead. She was not. The westerner had proved it
in ways that still heated her loins when she thought of them.

She thought long on what she would do. That night she slept
more deeply than she might have expected, and woke certain of her choice.

With no need to protect her son, with Dias as well guarded
as he could be, she could afford to be reckless.

She chose her time carefully. In the mornings Etena rose at
her leisure, lingered over her toilet, held audience for her allies and spies.
Then the king was lightly guarded, only one of her witches with him to sustain
the spell. If he was to go out, he would do it at noon or after, when Etena had
let him know what she wished of him.

In the morning then, a handful of days after she had decided
on it, Aera approached the king’s tent by one of the less conspicuous ways. She
made no attempt to be furtive, for that would draw suspicion. She had a basket
over her arm, laden with bread that she had made, and flesh of the deer that
Emry had brought, dried with herbs and berries in the way that she had learned
from her mother. It was gift and tribute, and excuse as well, so that she
seemed to have an errand in the king’s tent.

She entered that world which had once been hers. It was dark
and close and seemed unutterably crowded, and yet she saw no living thing. The
women were all hidden away, secreted in the inner reaches.

The king was hidden less thoroughly than his women. Who but
Etena would dare to touch him? Her spell bound them all, warriors and women
alike.

It was time they began to break free.

Aera entered a space of dim light and cloying smoke and the
ceaseless, maddening chant. The woman who intoned it had the same empty stare
as the king, the same absence of life or soul. She was a vessel, that was all;
a voice for Etena’s will.

Aera silenced her with a honey-sweet. She sank back in her
cushions, her face rapt in bliss, as the drug that Aera had baked in the cake
sent her wafting down into sleep.

The king lay hardly more conscious as Aera covered the
incense-burners and did what she could to clear the heavy air. She knelt in
front of him. He was naked in a nest of foreign weavings and rare furs, his big
body slack. His skin was soft and cool. His hair was thinner than she
remembered, and greyer.

She laved his face with water that she had brought, steeped
with herbs that sent a strong green scent through the smoky sweetness of
Etena’s spells. Did he rouse a little? She washed his neck and breast, his
arms—trying hard not to think of another body, another big bull of a man who
was as strong and clearheaded and free as this one had been when first she knew
him.

He stirred under her hands. He looked as if he were swimming
up out of deep water. She slapped him lightly with the wetted cloth, first one
cheek, then the other. He groaned. His head tossed.

He blinked at her. His eyes were deeply clouded, but his
brows were knit.

Her heartbeat quickened. There was a glimmer of awareness
there. He had a soul still. It was a poor feeble wandering thing, and it did
not like to linger in this hulk of a body, but that it was there, still in his
possession, she could not mistake.

She had hoped for this, but not dared to expect it. So, she
thought: Etena’s magics were not as strong as fear made them.

Or this was a trap, and she had fallen headlong into it. She
had gambled on that, in coming here.

She heard nothing beyond the room, sensed no spy behind a
curtain. Nothing in the king’s tent had changed, except the light in his eyes,
brightening slowly.

Just as she thought he might have recognized her, the light
went out. His eyelids drooped. His body was slack again, his soul lost.

Aera regarded him in something that was not quite grief. Not
much longer now, she thought. Even Etena could not keep this broken thing
walking, speaking, fighting in battles. Very soon she would need another slave
to her will.

As Aera rose to retreat, the king’s hand closed about her
wrist. Its strength astonished her. His eyes were still shut, his face still
empty of expression. He said, “Minas. Minas my son. Where is he?”

She realized that she was gaping at him. His grip on her
wrist tightened. She gasped at the pain.

“Where?” he whispered.

“Dead,” she said baldly.

He let his breath out in a long hiss. “So that was not a
dream. And the other? Dias? I gave him the bull’s hide. Was that true, too?”

“Yes.”

“She’ll kill him. She’ll kill them all, in the end: every
son of my body. She hates us beyond reason.”

“You slaughtered every male in her tribe,” Aera said, “and
enslaved or killed the women. She has reason enough, when all’s said.”

“I made her my wife,” he said. Then: “Enough. She’ll come
soon, to put back all my chains. Do a thing for me.”

“If I can,” said Aera.

“Kill me.”