Daughter of Lir (65 page)

Was she the only one in the army with any wits left?
Whatever it cost her, whether she was sent away in bonds or even struck down,
she could not keep silent. She rode forward to Dias’ side, so bold that no man
raised hand against her, and faced the messenger of Lir. “Why? Why give us
everything and only keep one city?”

The woman blinked at her. Like Rhian she knew a woman in the
warrior’s dress; it seemed to take a little of the edge off her terror. Her
speech was less tight, her words easier and quicker off her tongue. “Lir is the
Goddess’ city. The temple is there. It is very holy, and much beloved. While it
stands, the Goddess is blessed in all this world that she made.”

“Ah,” said Aera. “So you preserve the temple, and destroy
your country.”

“While the temple stands, the Goddess lives.”

That, thought Aera, was Etena’s own blindness, her spell
laid on these priestesses of Lir. “This bargain serves us well—except that you
require the king to come all but unattended to your city. You’ll pardon us if
we scent a trap.”

“He may bring half a hundred warriors. We will swear oaths
if you wish, that he will be safe; that he will come unharmed before our
rulers, and fetch his brother with his own hands. Or would it suit him better
to send another?”

“No!” Dias thrust past Aera. The messenger recoiled. He took
no notice. “I will go. My army will camp outside the city, but only my warband
will go within. If all is as you promise, and my brother is surrendered to me,
the bargain will hold. You keep Lir. We take the rest.”

The messenger bowed to him—a sag of relief, perhaps. “That
is well,” she said. “You are but half a day’s journey from the city. If you
press the pace with your smaller company, and leave the army to follow, you
will be in Lir by sunset.”

“We will find your escort,” Aera said, “and make camp. In
the morning we will ride to the city.”

Neither Dias nor the messenger gainsaid her, though both
seemed inclined to do so. Only after the words were spoken did it strike her
what she had done: she had spoken aloud before the king and his warband, and
given them orders, and not one of them had stopped her.

This country was working its spell on the People. Aera moved
to efface herself, but Dias caught her hand. “You stay with me,” he said.

She bent her head to him. She would have given much just
then for a veil, but there was nothing of the sort within reach. She had to
ride with her face bare and brazen, and the king beside her, so that no one
could fail to see her.

He had nothing to say to her. As they resumed the march,
Dias took the lead, with only the vanguard of the warband in front of him. The
rest of the People followed, passing through the narrow valley and out upon a
green river-plain jeweled with cities.

The messenger’s escort was waiting for them there, a dozen
tall women in armor, with spears and bows and long swords. They were not at
ease before the massed power of the royal tribe, but they had courage. They
fell in about their captain, meeting men’s stares with cold eyes. It said much
for the strength of their will that no warrior ventured an insolence. Even the
words muttered from man to man were more admiring than not.

o0o

They camped on the long green hill above the cities. Lir
lay in the distance, largest of them all, ringed with white walls: stone, those
would be, but the city inside them seemed a city of wood, green with trees.

Aera faced her reckoning in the king’s tent that night,
after the daymeal had been eaten and the warriors had gone to their rest. She
waited in the inner room with Ariana and Rhian; they were asleep in the corner,
the child in her mother’s arms.

Dias came in to find her waiting for him, sitting
cross-legged, hands on knees. She had been dreaming awake, of Minas again, and
of Emry—in the dream he was dead, and that was his head in the messenger’s bag,
and she was trying to sew it back onto his body.

For a moment as she stared at Dias, she saw Emry instead.
But Dias was a smaller man, and his eyes were brown, and he did not grow his
beard.

He sat as she was sitting—as warriors sat, or kings,
cross-legged in front of her. He had become a king since it was forced on him:
the strength of his presence swayed her, the clear and imperious power of him.
But he was still the child she had nursed beside her own son, and the boy she
had raised and taught the wisdom of the People.

“You know that I should send you back to the river,” he
said.

She nodded. “And I know that we’ve come too far; you’d need a
war-clan to take me back safely.”

“Or I could kill you,” he said, “for the dishonor you’ve
cast on the king’s house, wearing the weapons and semblance of a warrior.”

“You could do that,” she said levelly. “After all I’m not
your mother by blood.”

That stung him. “Then what am I to do with you? You’ll be a
scandal from here to the eastern horizon.”

“Give me to the mare’s servant,” she said. The words came to
her as she spoke them. “Let her command me; let her honor be my honor.”

“Not Metos?”

“My father cares little for anything but the work of his
hands.”

Dias did not mention her husband. That was kind of him. She
folded her hands and waited while he pondered what she had said. At length he
said, “She’s already claimed you, I think. She gave you a horse, yes?”

“It would seem so,” Aera said.

“Then let it be so,” said Dias.

He was relieved, she thought. Dias had no difficulty passing
judgment as king, but women’s matters made him desperately uneasy. Yet he was
no more a coward in that than any other man of the People.

The sun came through the window of Emry’s prison at a
slightly different angle each day. He liked to lie in it, basking; for when he
woke after the first sleep of his captivity, he found that they had removed his
bindings—but they had also taken all his clothing, and emptied his
storage-chest of anything that could be fashioned into a garment.

It was meant for a mockery, he supposed, and a humiliation.
In the nights he shivered: they had not even left him a blanket for the bed. In
the day he let the sun bathe him, since he was given nothing else for the
purpose. He was fed when the first light came into the sky, but only then, and
poorly enough: bread and sour ale, and once a rind of cheese.

After the first day, there was only one guard on his door.
The guard changed in the night; the first night he heard them talking
desultorily, less than delighted with the duty. In that way he learned what had
become of Minas, and that Rhian was nowhere to be found. The night guard
supposed that she been quietly disposed of, but the morning guard begged to
differ: “She’s still in the city, I’ll wager, biding her time.”

He would have burst through the door if he could, and
overpowered the guards, but they had barred it from the outside. When the
morning guard fed him, she did it with drawn sword. She was not fool enough to
treat him with contempt.

No one came to gloat over him or threaten him. He had been
laid away like a garment in a chest. Clearly he had value as a living man, or
he would be as dead as his father. Just as clearly, he was to be given nothing
that was not strictly necessary. She wanted him weak, body and spirit. Then—what?
A public execution? Sale to the highest bidder? A bargain: his soul for his
body’s freedom?

By the third night, Emry was ready to throw the whole of his
weight against the door, until the bolt was broken, or he was. When the guard
changed, he pressed his ear to the door, straining to hear what they said. It
was only gossip tonight, except for a tidbit or two: the hunt still had not
found Rhian, and the tribes had come almost to Long Ford. Etena had a plan, but
what that was, no one seemed to know.

He would wait for the deep night, when the house was asleep
and the guard, he hoped, was nearly so. Then he would break free. He cared little
what happened after that—escape, he could hope, or at least a little freedom
before he was caught and killed. Whatever became of him, it was better than
lying trapped within these walls.

He slid down in the corner, knees clasped tight to keep in
what warmth there was. It was not as cold tonight, or else he was growing
accustomed to it. He drowsed a little, keeping a thread of wakefulness.

The sound was small, like the scraping of a rat in the wall;
then a scuffle and a soft thump. It came from outside the door.

Emry was on his feet, poised, when the bolt slid. The door
opened.

Emry crouched to spring. Shadows filled the room. Only
slowly did he see that there were but two shadows of big broad men: his brother
Gerent, and Mabon flexing his fingers with an air of great, if pained,
satisfaction. “Jaw like granite,” he said in his rumble of a voice.

Emry shifted until he could see the huddled shape of the
guard. She was stirring already. He was on her before the others could move.
The sound of her neck snapping was loud in the silence.

His rescuers gaped at him. Even Mabon, who had gone to the
steppe with him, stared speechless.

There was no time to explain all that needed explaining.
Emry dragged the guard into the room and arranged her on the bed. She was as
tall as he was, and almost as wide in the shoulders. Her armor did not fit him,
but her shirt and trousers were close enough. Her weapons were light for his
strength but very comforting.

His brother and his friend were still staring. “I suppose
you have a plan,” he said. “Or shall we simply run, and hope for the best?”

Mabon recovered first. He swallowed hard and said, “There’s
a way out. Conory and Davin are keeping it clear.”

Emry’s brothers. “And the other three?”

“Waiting in the city.”

“Good,” said Emry. “Go on.”

They obeyed him. Gerent kept shooting glances at him. Emry
caught the last one and held it, and willed him to stop. It was too dangerous.

Gerent kept his eyes to himself after that, scouting ahead on
soft feet, leading them through darkened corridors. The king’s house was full
of priestesses and their servants. It was telling, thought Emry, that Etena had
laid claim to this house and not the Mother’s. When Etena thought of power, she
thought of kings.

Nearly everyone was asleep. They met one late wanderer, a
young priestess with a child-swollen belly, coming back from the kitchen with a
laden basket. The room into which they retreated was mercifully empty. Once she
had passed, they moved more quickly.

Conory and Davin were waiting for them beyond the kitchens,
keeping watch over a door that Emry knew well. They had all crept out through
it when they were boys.

Guards were waiting for them outside, a company of a dozen,
armed with spears and bows. They were smiling.

Emry swept out his sword and sprang. The taste of blood was
in his mouth, the dizziness of it in his spirit. He would not be shut in prison
again. He would not.

He was in the midst of them, where bows were of no use, and
spears were too clumsy. He fought with cold skill, all fear, all anger shut
away. The heart was here. The lifeblood flowed there.

He struck to kill. Wounded could name the ones who came with
him, and send out hunters to seize them. The dead could speak, after their
fashion, but neither so quickly nor so clearly.

He was aware in his skin that Mabon had found some semblance
of wits and flung himself into the fight. His brothers came in last, but not in
vain: Conory hacked down a woman who was about to spit Mabon on her spear.

It was a fierce fight, but short. Emry felt the sting of
small wounds, but nothing mortal. The others were unharmed. All the guards were
dead. As he had done with the guard on his door, he dragged them out of sight,
so that they would not be so quick to betray him.

The sky was lightening as Mabon helped him conceal the last
of the dead. Reinforcements had not come, nor, so far, had anyone come to see
what had become of the company.

But someone would, and soon. Emry herded his brothers and
Mabon away from the king’s house, aiming for the depths of the city, where the
streets tangled one upon another, and a hunt would not easily find them.

Mabon took the lead once they were out of sight of the
king’s house. There was refuge waiting, or so he said. Emry would be certain of
it when he was in it, unharmed and uncaught.

They kept to the shadows. People were beginning to stir, to
go about the day’s duties. For all the confusion in the king’s house, the city
was much as always. Either Etena had not yet managed to interfere with it, or
she was too wise to try.

The place to which Mabon led them was in the southern
quarter of the city, not far from the river. It was a house of good size, well
kept, with a sturdy gate and, as Emry discovered, a great deal more space
inside than he would have thought from the outside. The rear wall of its garden
opened upon that of a second house, so that in truth it was two large houses
and a garden large enough to pasture horses in.

There were in fact horses there, a grey and a bay, grazing in
a pen near a little orchard. The mistress of the conjoined houses was leaning
on the fence as the sun came up, tempting the horses with a handful of sweet
cake. She turned as her doorkeeper brought the arrivals to her, smiling as much
with relief as with welcome.

Emry knew her rather well. Mabon’s mother had been an elder
of the Mother’s council, and was still a power in the city. She looked like her
son: tall, broad, with fine brown eyes under a strong arch of brows.

“Thank the Goddess,” she said, holding out her hands to
them. “You’re all safe.”

“Not for long,” said Emry, “if anyone thinks to look here.”

That was abrupt, and rude, but Modron seemed inclined to
forgive it. “You have time to rest and eat and be in comfort,” she said. “I
think our enemy may find herself hard pressed to keep her own affairs in order,
let alone go looking for escaped prisoners.”