Daughter of Lir (5 page)

She had run ahead of the priestess, skirting towns in which
the riding paused for a day or a night. She was long out of her reckoning, long
departed from any lands or people that she had known.

The world was all strange. The wind and the mare between
them guided her through it. She hunted to eat; she drank from streams or from
the river. When she rested, she rested under stars or moon, or sheltered from
rain in deep thickets.

She was nine days on that road. She never saw the priestess
or the escort. She saw people on the roads, often enough, or sailing on the
river. There was a caravan once, a company of traders with laden donkeys. She
rode with them for a day, by the mare’s choice, until the caravan turned
westward away from the river.

As she drew closer to the border, the hill-forts began to be
whole again, or nearly whole. She saw people in them, setting stone on age-worn
stone, or raising palisades, making them anew as they had been in the days of
war long ago.

The sight of them did not comfort her. Surely they were a
great bulwark against invasion. Their ascents were too steep for chariots and
nearly too steep for horses, and narrow so that horsemen could only come up one
by one. And yet as she looked up at them, she saw smoke and flame, and such a
war as even the legends of the Mothers had never told of.

The farthest town of the Goddess’ country was also the
highest and strongest of the forts that she had seen. It reared up above the
river, perched on a sheer crag, with a road winding down from it to a second
town, a traders’ town, protected with walls and running along the banks of the
river. This was a stopping place for caravans and a haven for travelers. It had
a temple, even, though very small, with only one priestess to tend it. A
garrison guarded it, lodged above and standing guard below in the traders’
town.

Rhian, whose village had known only peace for time out of
mind, found this fortress of World’s End to be a grim and narrow place. The
sunlight came in grudgingly, and there was a reek about it like an animal’s
lair.

There were people of the tall grass living there. These were
a little like some of the families of her own country, particularly in Lir:
tall pale-skinned people with hair as often brown as black, and eyes that
sometimes were grey or even blue. But many of these were fair and one or two
were even red, with hair the color of copper. Those seemed to be the wildest,
the rankest and wariest. They looked as if they had not seen a bath since the
midwife washed them in mares’ milk.

They were all men. When they met a woman, they did not know
how to act. Either they stared past the point of rudeness, or they kept their
eyes fixed on their boots. A woman such as Rhian, armed and mounted, confused
them beyond measure.

Nor was it only the weapons and the mare. It dawned on her,
somewhat into the first day, that they were staring at her. At her body in its
nigh-outgrown trousers. At her breasts.

They were lovely breasts, and worth staring at, but not with
such raw hunger. Surely even these outlanders had seen a woman’s body before?

One was so hungry that he could not help himself. He lunged
at her. That was not wise at all. Even before Rhian’s knife slashed at his
hand, the mare had wheeled and struck him down.

He would live. He was coming to his senses even as the mare
danced onward down the narrow street.

o0o

Rhian had meant to lodge in the town for once, but the
mare greatly disliked this place of close walls and manifold stenches. They
camped on the riverbank upstream of the traders’ town instead, near the ferry.

The mare found ample grazing. Rhian had traded a brace of
rabbits for bread and strong cheese and a jar of sour ale. It was not an ill
dinner, with young greens and a handful of mussels from the river. She ate it
from the shelter of a sprawling willow-tree, perched on the knotted roots,
dangling her feet over the water.

Fish danced and darted in the sunset gleam. Breakfast, she
thought. She leaned against the bole, pressing her back to its cracks and
furrows. Her stomach purred with contentment.

The boat that made the crossing had carried a company of
tribesmen across while Rhian ate her dinner. The boatman had drawn his boat up
on the nearer shore and gone to his own dinner and his night’s sleep.

As Rhian sat half in a drowse, thinking that sleep would be
a useful thing, movement caught her eye. A lone horseman paused on the farther
bank. He was dressed as a tribesman, but his hair was black. His horse was
ribby and lean, the rider nigh as much so, as if they had traveled far on poor
rations.

He paused, the pale blur of his face turned toward the boat
and, no doubt, the boatman’s absence. He swayed for a moment as if in
exhaustion or disappointment. Then, with an air of one who can see no other
way, he urged his mount into the water.

The current was strong. Even when the rider slipped from its
back, staying upstream of it, the horse struggled against the force of the
water. It carried them both inexorably downstream.

Rhian was on her feet, balanced on the willow’s roots. She
felt as much as heard the mare move down toward the water.

Rhian had grown up swimming in this river, breasting the
strong currents of spring and the slower but sometimes more treacherous ones of
summer and autumn. She had no fear of the river as it was now. A man who was
not a strong swimmer, worn and ill-fed, clinging to a weakened horse, was no
match for it at all.

She dived into the water, even as the mare leaped from the
bank. They entered the river nearly side by side, stroking keenly across the
current.

They caught the traveler and his mount somewhat downstream
of the ferry and somewhat east of the river’s middle. The man was faltering.
The horse wheezed with strain.

The mare set her shoulder to its shoulder. Rhian caught the
man as he began to sink. His fist, flailing, caught her beneath the ear. She
reeled, but held on somehow, before the river swallowed her.

She had no breath to curse him. His blind thrashing had
carried them downstream. She got a grip on him—mercifully unimpeded; maybe he
was dead—and cut across the current once more. Her lungs were burning. Her arms
and legs were beyond aching. Her skull throbbed where he had struck it.

None of that mattered. The whole world was the western bank,
the dying flame of sunset, the river’s strength unwavering while hers drained
away in the chill embrace of the water.

She came bruisingly to land, up against a tangle of flotsam.
She dragged her burden up over it, hardly aware by then that it was human, only
that she was bound to it.

It thrashed, heaved, vomited great gouts of water. She
stared into dark eyes hazed with confusion and near-drowning. She blinked. That
face—if it were younger, fuller, less greenish-pale; if there had been no grey
in the beard—

He regarded her without recognition. Of course he would not know
her. When he had last seen her, she had been a young child.

It was the light, fading fast, and her own watery confusion.
This was not her mother’s lover, her body’s father. He had gone away from Long
Ford after his beloved died, gone trading in a caravan that had been lost,
destroyed in a storm that had swept the southlands. He could not be alive,
lying on the bank of the river, looking as if he had been wandering for all
those years in the wilds of the east.

Whoever he was, whatever he might be doing there, he could
not spend the night on the riverbank. She heaved him up, pulled his arm across
her shoulders, and half-carried, half-dragged him toward the place where she
had camped. It was dark long before she came there, but there was starlight,
and a pale glimmer of moon.

It seemed the moon had come down to earth. The mare stood in
the clearing where Rhian had camped, glowing softly in the darkness. A shadow
beside her stirred and snorted: the traveler’s horse, grazing hungrily in the
good green grass.

Rhian let her burden slip to the ground. He sighed and
muttered, words she did not know. Maybe they were eastern words. Then he spoke
a name.
Anansi
.

Her mother’s name. She blinked hard against a sudden
stinging in her eyes.

She dried him as she could, wrapped him closely in her
blanket and her mantle, built a fire and set to brewing a tisane of herbs and
the last of the honey. When it was hot and fragrant, she fed it to him, sip by
sip.

He was coming to himself. The mingling of herbs and
sweetness made him gasp and splutter. He struggled upright, eyes glittering in
the firelight. “Tell me where I am. Tell me I'm on the western side.”

“You are in the Goddess’ country,” she said.

He sagged. She caught at him, thinking he had slid into
dream again, but he was awake. He was weak with relief. “Goddess be thanked,”
he said, hardly more than a whisper.

Rhian lowered him back into the blankets. He was all bones,
like a bird. In memory he was a giant, a big hearty man with a splendid smile.
This gaunt shadow could not be he. He was not greatly taller than she, nor very
much broader.

She did not speak his name. Her heart was full of it.
Conn
. That was his name. Conn.

She sat over him all that night and watched him sleep. The
stars wheeled overhead. The horses grazed and slept, slept and grazed. The fire
died to embers. His breathing deepened and slowed. There was no sleep in her at
all. She was full of the wind’s song, sweet and high and, for once, without
words.

Conn was up before the sun, trying to free himself from Rhian’s
blankets, to mount and ride. He could barely walk, but he insisted that his
horse could carry him.

“Nonsense,” Rhian said. “He’s a rack of bones, and so are
you. Tell me where you need to go. I’ll take your message there—whatever it is
that’s so urgent you’re near to killing yourself with it.”

He set his lips together and shook his head.

He still did not know her. She opened her mouth to tell him,
but the wind snatched the words away. When she tried to find them again, they
were gone beyond recall.
Silence
, the
wind bade her.
Spare him pain
. She
heard herself say instead, “It’s war, isn’t it? War in the sea of grass.
Chariots—”

“What do you know of
chariots?”

Rhian lay gasping for breath. He had flung her down. His
fingers clamped about her throat.

He loosed them a little. Oddly, she was not afraid. He had
killed: the wind was sure of it. But he would not kill her.

“There is a prince,” she said, “coming from Lir. Were you
meeting him here?”

He blinked down at her. He was coming to his senses.
“Prince? Lir?”

“The king’s son,” Rhian said. “He’s riding to World’s End.
He’ll cross the river and enter the sea of grass. He’s seeking chariots.”

“He’ll find them.” Conn let her go. He sank down trembling.
“He’ll find them beyond counting.”

“He wants to steal one,” Rhian said.

“Then he’s mad.”

“Maybe they’re all mad in Lir.” Rhian sat up. Her throat
ached. His hands had not been gentle. “Are they so terrible? The wild tribes?”

“They brew a strong drink from mares’ milk. They drink it
from cups made of skulls.”

“Men’s skulls?”

“Skulls of their enemies.”

Rhian shivered. “That won’t stop him. I don’t think anything
can.”

“He should be fortifying Lir. Walls can stop them. Nothing
else. Only walls.”

His face was white. His eyes did not see her then, nor the
brightening morning. But he saw the mare in the first long shaft of sunlight.
He fixed on her. Something in him eased, that had been taut for long and long.

“Maybe,” he said, “after all. Maybe not only walls.”

A day’s journey short of World’s End, the priestess turned
back toward Lir. She said no word to Emry before she embarked on her boat with
the last of the young women that she had chosen for the temple. There was no
farewell. She turned about under sail and oar, and left them standing on the
shore, Emry and a dozen of his warriors. All of them were men, young and strong
and wild. The women and the rest of the men rode back as escort to the
priestess.

With her departure, Emry and his men were no longer princely
guards. Their finery returned to Lir with the priestess. They rode from the
town of Oakwood as men of much lesser eminence, garrison-troops sent out to
World’s End.

They were like colts let loose in a spring pasture. They
whooped and shouted. They ran breakneck races. They fought mock battles on the
road, to the terror of any who passed by.

Emry wondered why he felt so old. He was not the eldest of
them, at all, but he was the gravest by far. Maybe it was what the priestess
had not said before she left—or the dream he had had in the night. That the
Mother was dead.

He supposed he was not to know. Whether it was mercy or
expedience he could not tell. Lir needed what he had been ordered to do. He
could not abandon it for any cause, even the death of a living goddess who
happened also, and incidentally, to be the mother of his body.

He was obedient to his duty. He took no such joy in it as
his young hellions did. He mourned when he could, as he could. He rode in
sunlight that he barely saw.

o0o

He had all but forgotten the odd woman from Long Ford,
until he rode up the winding track to World’s End and saw her on it, barring
his way. She was dressed in the same disgraceful trousers as before, her hair
just as unruly, the set of her jaw not a whit less stubborn. She was a wild and
striking beauty, and everything about her declared that she cared not at all.

She had a companion, a gaunt man on a rough-coated bay
horse. She was mounted—on—

He heard a gasp behind him. He was less openly shocked, he
hoped. It should hardly have surprised him, after what he had seen and heard
from this woman.