Daughter of Lir (53 page)

She kissed the lip she had bitten. It was swelling already.
“Curb your dreams, tribesman. Look as if it’s me you lust after, and not her
quivering vitals.”

“I do lust after you,” he said somewhat painfully. “Her I
hate with a perfect passion.”

She swooped toward him. He flinched, but this time she kept
her teeth to herself. She kissed him long and deep. It was played grandly for
Etena’s sake, but she did nothing by halves. Her hand slid down between them,
found his rampant rod, and did things to it that would have made him groan
aloud if she had not held him captive with the kiss.

This was sacred, he told himself. Their Goddess accepted it
as worship. And Etena would see, and that would be a beginning of revenge.

Just when he would happily have taken Rhian then and there,
and never mind how many watchers there were, she slid away from him. He
followed half-blindly. There were others bent on the same errand, the woman
leading as Rhian did, withdrawing to—where? The furrows of the fields?

She chose the stable, which had the advantage of being close
by. The newcomers’ chariots were there, and their horses, fretting in
confinement. Minas was ready to fall with Rhian into the nearest heap of straw,
but she had forgotten his existence.

Mabon was leaning on the barrier between stalls, nose to
nose with a bay stallion who looked remarkably like Mabon himself: big, ruddy,
with a glossy black mane and a wicked dark eye. The stallion snorted at the
newcomers and retreated into the stall. Mabon turned to greet them.

Rhian’s embrace was tight and rather long. Minas surprised
himself with one as full of gladness. He had not seen Mabon since the autumn,
when Mabon left Lir to oversee the building of fortresses between Larchwood and
World’s End. Mabon was a prince after all, kin to the king, and high in the
king’s favor.

“You didn’t come here for the festival,” Rhian said when the
greetings were over, when they had settled together outside the bay’s stall.
“Did you come with the king’s guests?”

“I graciously provided escort from World’s End to Lir,”
Mabon said. He grinned at Minas. “I made sure that she was well guarded, and
carefully—by a company of women. Her magic doesn’t work with them, it seems—unless
they’re priestesses. It’s very odd.”

“Very,” said Minas dryly. “Did you have anything to do with
the priestesses’ adoption of her?”

Mabon sighed. “No; and that’s the Goddess’ own truth.”

“Tell it like a proper tale,” Rhian said. “From the beginning.”

He nodded. Minas bit his tongue. It was best this way; Rhian
had the right of it. He unclenched his fists, which were aching, and set
himself to listen.

Mabon wriggled till he was comfortable, stretched, yawned
and rolled his head on his shoulders. When Minas was ready to beat the words
out of him, he said, “I was in World’s End after spring festival, bearing
messages from the king to the commander there, and waiting for a new company of
workers who had been promised for the fort above Whitewater. Word came down
from the garrison across the river: a riding of chariots had come asking sanctuary.
Of course I went to see—the message was brief, but it was urgent, and my workers
were delayed. And chariots—that, my king would wish to know, and quickly.

“I found them as you saw: the king’s wife and her women, and
half a dozen charioteers. She had told the story you heard her tell the king. I
got the rest of it from her men, with the help of a rainy evening and a jar of
wine.” Mabon paused for breath. Minas resisted the urge to choke it out of him.

“Your king took his own life—took poison. He was brave at
the end, and in possession of his wits. As soon as he was dead, the tribe
turned against his wife. The priests and shamans came back, and she was cast
out. They say . . . it was the gods’ decision; no man made it.
And so no man can bear the blame, whatever comes of it.”

Minas’ throat locked shut. He forced out words in spite of
it. “Who—who is king now?”

“You are dead,” Mabon said. “They mourned you for nine days,
your brothers said. It was a terrible, a grievous loss. Then when the time
came, the king named a new heir: her son, the prince Dias.”

Minas slumped against the wall. Of course it would be Dias.
“And he is king.”

“King,” said Mabon, “and her most bitter enemy.”

And the son of her body, so that it was the most terrible of
sins to kill her, even in the name of justice. She was alive and in exile, and
in Lir, because Dias and not Minas was king.

“Tell me the rest,” Minas said harshly. “Tell it straight. No
more questions.”

Mabon looked at him a little oddly, but did as he bade. “She
was turned out on the steppe, but half a dozen of the king’s sons, who may have
had reason not to want to stay under the new king, went after her and found
her. She convinced them to follow her westward. She was looking for the country
where women rule, where no woman is forced to hide behind a man.

“Of course she found it—but from the first she insisted on
being taken to the king. Old habits die hard, I suppose.

“The priestesses were in World’s End when I brought her back
to it. They had business in the temple, they said, but they were in the
commander’s house, with little enough reason for it, and not a great deal of
welcome, either. The house of war and the house of the Goddess are much divided
now.

“Yet there they were, as if they were waiting. When she
came, they took her to themselves, and swept her away to the temple before any
of us could stop her.”

“She wants Lir,” Minas said, “for vengeance, and because she
thinks she can rule it. Does she know that the king’s wife has no power here?”

“There is no Mother in Lir,” Rhian said slowly. “You don’t
think she means to—”

“She is capable of trying,” said Minas.

“No,” Mabon said. “Oh, no. The priestesses see in her
something they can use, but they would never—”

“Would they not?” Rhian clasped her knees and rocked as she
was fond of doing when she had a great deal to think about. It cleared her
head, she had told Minas once. “She has power. She invokes spirits, and they
come. She subdued a king to her will, and ruled a tribe from behind the shield
of his name. And what do they have here? An empty place. A daughter whom they
hate, who can’t be Mother because the White Mare has claimed her. A king who
defies their will, builds forts instead of temples, and fails to include them
in his councils. What could be more perfect? Consecrate her priestess, claim a
revelation, ordain her Mother—then trust her to seduce this king as she did the
other. How can she fail, with the temple behind her?”

Mabon shuddered. “Goddess forbid. Surely they’ll see what
she is. The king does; that’s as plain as the daylight.”

“That won’t matter,” said Minas, “if the priestesses either
fail to see it, or see it and don’t care. She wants to destroy my people as
much as they do—maybe more. They won’t object if the king falls, either. It
would be a great thing for them, surely, to cast down all men who would presume
to rule.” He glared at Mabon. “You saw all this, and yet you brought her here.
Why?”

“Because,” said Mabon, “if she’s a danger to us, best we
have her where we can see her. The priestesses claimed authority; they forbade
me to send word to the king, and commanded me to provide escort. That’s why
there was no warning. I tried to send a man ahead, but he had a mishap on the
way: fell in the river and drowned. The Goddess—”

“The priestesses did it,” Minas said. “You should have cut
her throat before she crossed the river—or drowned her in it as the priestesses
drowned your messenger. They say they saw their world end when the Mother bore
her daughter—and everything they’ve done from that day has brought that ending
closer. Now they have the one who will end it for them, not here with us, but
in the hall with them, eating the king’s meat and drinking his wine. She is
their destruction.”

They were staring at him. He did not see why. He was
speaking the clear and evident truth. They could see it; they were not blind.

To relieve the burden of their stares, he said sharply, “You
didn’t tell us—what of the king’s heir of Lir? Is he dead?”

Mabon shook his head like a man fighting free of a dream.
“They said he was alive. And well, they said. He was the new king’s ally, his
guard and protector.”

Minas’ sigh of relief echoed Rhian’s. The man was his born
enemy, that was true; but a king’s son was a king’s son. It was well that Emry
had not died for Etena’s sake.

“He was guarding Dias, you say?” Rhian asked.

Mabon nodded. “So I was told. There was some debate as to
who laid it on him: the king’s wife who owned him or the king’s wife who
fostered Dias.”

Minas’ teeth clicked together. “The king’s wife who—my
mother?”

“One of the king’s sons kept insisting that they were
lovers, but the others declared that she would never do such a thing.”

“She would not,” Minas said, snapping off the words. “That’s
baseless rumor. So Etena set him to spying on my brother—and he became my
brother’s man. Marvelous are the ways of the gods.”

“Indeed,” said Mabon. And after a pause: “There is . . .
one more thing.”

Minas waited. Rhian raised a brow. “And that is?”

“The woman is with child.”

Minas burst out laughing. “Great gods of the air! Is there
no lie she’ll not stoop to?”

“It’s true,” Mabon said. “It seems to matter a great deal
who fathered it—and they all agree that it could not have been their king.”

“Gods,” breathed Minas. “Oh, gods. So that was why she
wanted him.” Neither of them seemed to understand. Very likely they did not
care. But it was a great thing, a dangerous thing. “She bought your prince,” he
explained to them, “because he was a prince. She needed him for a purpose: to
beget a child whom she could raise as her own and claim as the king’s, to rule
by her will. My father was no longer capable; that we suspected. But he died
too soon, and she was cast out—her gamble failed. And so she gambled again.
What would it be worth, for a woman to bear a child to the king’s heir of Lir?”

“Why,” said Mabon, “not a great deal. Except . . .”

“Except,” said Rhian, “that the king’s heir is also the
eldest son of the Mother. If it’s a daughter, the Mother has an heir of her
blood, though not of her line. And if it’s a son—”

“If it’s a son, it’s the son of the king’s heir.” Mabon
whistled softly. “That woman will have power however she can find it.”

“Now do you see why we should kill her now, tonight?” Minas
demanded.

They both shook their heads—sorrowfully, even with anger,
but there was no shaking the will of either. “No,” Rhian said. “Not if she’s
with child. The child is an innocent, and it’s Emry’s. It would be a terrible
sin against the Goddess to kill the woman who carries it.”

“Even if letting her live will hasten the destruction of
Lir?”

“They let me live,” Rhian said, “and the omens about my
birth were terrible.”

“You are not what that woman is,” Minas said through the
bile in his throat.

“Certainly,” said Rhian. “But the laws of the Goddess are
clear. Every bearing woman is sacred, for the sake of her child. If anyone
harms her, he invokes the Goddess’ wrath.”

“I would chance it,” Minas said grimly.

“I will keep you in chains like the slave she imagines you
to be,” said Rhian, “or you can swear to me solemnly by all you hold holy, that
you will do nothing to harm that woman’s child.”

Chains, thought Minas. Captivity was terrible enough. If he
was bound, he would die.

And yet, to let that woman live . . .

He covered his face with his hands. “I will not harm the
child,” he said.

He had said nothing of Etena—but Rhian had not asked him for
that. Did she, perhaps—?

It did not matter. She accepted his word as it was, nor
demanded that he change it.

Rhian lay with Minas in the dark before dawn. The sounds
of revelry in the king’s hall had muted somewhat. The lamp flickered low.

The room in which Minas slept was dim and cool, with a
glimmer of bronze: he had been learning to forge it, and bringing his efforts
here. He had a passion for the metal; it surprised her that he did not decorate
himself with it as he had the room. But he only ever wore the bell that she had
braided into his hair.

She raised herself on her elbows. Minas’ eyes were shut, but
he did not breathe like a sleeping man. She kissed him softly. He did not
respond.

He was beautiful in that faint golden light. Her eyes loved
his narrow, high-cheeked face with its noble arch of nose.

“Are you grieving?” she asked him gently. “Is the pain too
great to bear?”

His breath shuddered as he drew it in. “What? That you won’t
let me dine on Etena’s liver?”

“No,” she said. “That your father is dead. That someone else
is king.”

He rolled onto his face. His shoulders were knotted tight.
When she reached to smooth out the knots, he thrust himself away from her.

She let him be. After a while he spoke. The burr of the
tribes was thick in his voice. “Nine days they mourned me. That’s a king’s
rite; princes merit three days at most, or four. I’m an ancestor now, enrolled
among the gods. When the People pray, they pray to me.”

“Well,” she said. “You crossed the river of souls. Your
grandfather is a god. Is he dead, too?”

“You know he’s not.”

“There, you see. A living god.”

“I’m dead,” he said. “They mourned me. They propitiated my
spirit. And a living man is king over the People.”

Words alone would not console him. She laid her body against
his and held him. He did not push her away. Maybe her presence was a comfort;
she chose to believe it was.

o0o

The king was always glad to see Rhian, even when she
caught him in a moment of quiet before the daymeal. His youngest son was with
him, and a servant who was plaiting strings of golden beads into his hair. It
was the last night of festival, and the king’s house had been made splendid
with bright banners and garlands of flowers. All the high ones who were in Lir
would dine here today. There would be dancers and singers and tellers of tales,
and when night fell, the long dance out into the fields for the great blessing.