Daughter of Lir (67 page)

He took her in with round brown eyes and nodded to himself.
“Your name is Aera?” he asked her in the traders’ tongue, with an accent she
had not heard before: thick and guttural.

“My name is Aera,” she said. “And you are what kind of
creature?”

He laughed like a boy, though he was clearly a man of middle
age. “You may call me Eresh. I come from far away from here. The lady of
horses, she told me to look for you. Will you come with me?”

Aera did not move. “Who is the lady of horses?”

“Rhian,” said Eresh. “The potter’s child from Long Ford. The
Mother’s daughter.”

Aera frowned. “
She
knows that. Tell me what she might not know.”

“Your son’s name is Eros,” he said, “and you do not
understand his father.”

She started as if he had struck her. It was all she could do
not to wrap her hands around that plump throat.

He drew back a prudent step, but his smile barely faded.
“Will you come?” he asked her.

She would come, if only to have the satisfaction of throttling
him once his errand was done. He turned his back on her, which showed either
great courage or great foolhardiness, and led her not toward the upper rooms as
she had expected, but onward and outward—toward the stable, she thought. Or
toward the place where the chariotmakers were.

She did not let herself hope. If she went to her death, so
be it. She might be a fool for trusting this foreigner, but that Rhian had sent
him, she no longer doubted. Did she trust Rhian? Not in most things. But in
this . . . yes. She did.

o0o

The place of the makers was a broad open room. Shorn
trunks of trees held up its roof. Long windows were cut in its sides to let in
the light. It was like a vast round tent on enormous poles.

It was empty but for the fading scents of the making: heat
of the forge, new-planed wood, leather and paint. Eresh led her through it to
the far end, where a room was closed off from the rest. It had a door, with a
bar on it, and two guards in front of it. They eyed Aera suspiciously, but
Eresh spoke to them in the language of this place, too rapid for Aera to
understand. She caught words that Emry had taught her:
prince, mother, healer
. What they meant all together, she did not
know. Maybe she was afraid to know.

At length one of the guards exchanged glances with the
other, shrugged, unbarred the door. They ushered her in with drawn swords.

It was lighter in the room than she had expected. It had a
window, high and narrow, and there were lamps, a whole bank of them, though not
all were lit. A bed lay under the window, a wooden frame raised up on legs in
the fashion of this country.

She saw the long still figure, the tail of bright hair, and
thought,
He is dead. After all, he is
dead
.

But her heart refused the thought. He was asleep or
unconscious, but dead, no. His breast rose and fell. He stirred under the woven
coverlet. His face twisted in pain or anger.

She looked down into eyes as green as the night-glare of an
animal’s. That was fury so pure that it had gone perfectly calm.

He spoke, but not to her. “Take her away. Or I will kill
you.”

“You will not,” Eresh said. “Sit up now. Be polite. You’ll
be out of here by evening.”

“I will not,” Minas said. He closed his eyes. “Go away.”

“He will not,” Aera briskly. “And neither will I.” She
plucked away the coverlet before he could stop her, and considered what was
there to see. It gave her time to steady herself.

“The bonesetter says he may ride again,” Eresh told her.
“She’s not so sure of the walking—that left knee, it took the brunt of the
first blow. She’s been pulling out the bits of bone. The other breaks, they’re
clean, mostly. He’s healing well. She has a poultice, you don’t want to know
what’s in it, but it keeps wounds from festering.”

Aera did want to know what was in it, but not this moment. The
bonesetting was well done: tidy splints, taut bandages, very clean. Her heart
was wailing:
My child! O my beautiful
child!
But her spirit was coldly calm. “We would have brought a wagon or a
litter, but we judged it best that she not know we knew.”

“Oh yes,” said Eresh. “Yes, that was wise.”

In the same instant Minas said, “How did you—”

His mouth snapped shut, but he had betrayed himself quite
sufficiently. Aera smoothed a tangle of hair away from his face, catching her
fingers in something that was braided into it: a bronze bell. “The lady of
horses,” she answered him, not wanting to speak a name where the guards could
hear. “They all came to us, all the grey ones, and she, and your daughter.”

“My—”

“She is safe in the camp,” Aera said.

He turned his face away from her. “Everybody knows.”

“Everybody does not. Only your brother and I and one or two
of the warband, who have been sworn to silence. Do you think the People would
have let us play her game, if they had known? They’d have taken this city with
fire and sword.”

“Why didn’t they?” he demanded of the wall.

“Because they would have burned you with it.”

“Yes.”

“My child,” she said with hard-fought patience, “you may be
as insufferable as you please elsewhere, but with me you will remember your
manners. We will bring you out of here. Then she’ll be paid as she deserves.”

He thrust himself up. His lips were white with pain, but he
beat away their hands that would have helped him. When he was sitting against
the wall, breathing hard, shaking with effort, he managed to say, “Who will
give it to her? You?”

“One not bound to her by kin and clan.”

“Coward.”

Aera struck him. He gaped at her, startled green eyes above
the livid print of her hand. He would bruise, she observed coolly. To Eresh she
said, “Send someone to our king, and someone else for a litter. It might be
well to send an armed man or two, if the guards should offer objections.”

“Or if someone else should do so?” Eresh inquired, sliding a
glance at Minas.

“Indeed,” said Aera dryly.

He did her bidding as a good servant should: quickly,
quietly, and without troubling her with further questions. After he had gone,
Minas said, “That is a lord of a city whose name none of us can pronounce. We
think he may be quite a high lord. Possibly a king’s kin.”

“I’m sure he trains his servants wonderfully,” Aera said.
She looked about for a garment to clothe her son in, but there was none. The
coverlet would have to do.

He was scowling at her. The fury had turned aside from her;
the scowl was his wonted expression when he was baffled by something or
someone. He had stopped feeling quite so sorry for himself.

“They kept you clean,” she said. “Good. You should be
presentable.”

“Why?”

She did not dignify that with an answer.

And after a while he said, as if he had just noticed:
“You’re dressed like a man. You’re carrying weapons.”

She did not answer that, either.

He seized her hands. His own were cold, and stronger than
she had expected. “Leave me here,” he said. “Tell my brother I’m dead after
all. That will be true soon enough. Do this for me, if you ever loved me.”

“I mourned you once,” she said. “I refuse to do it again.
The bonesetter says you’ll be able to ride. You’ll walk lame, but I trust in
the Goddess of this country that you will walk. Now scrape yourself together
and stop this nonsense.
Coward
, you
called me. And what are you?”

“Crippled,” he said.

“Never,” she said. “Never speak that word to me again.”

Her face must have been terrible. He blanched as he had when
he was a child, when he had done something to raise her wrath.

“We are going out there,” she said, “and you are going to
face your people. Then let the gods do what they will—and truly, O my son, I do
believe that they will avenge you.”

Mabon was still captain of the guard on the wall, as Rhian
had hardly dared to hope. Better yet: he had Emry with him, dressed as a
guardsman. It was a bold thing to set him out in plain sight, and yet it might
have been the wisest choice. Who after all would expect him to be walking the
wall with a spear in his hand?

They were properly startled to find her sitting up against
the rim of the wall. She could see the warband waiting in front of the king’s
house, and if she lifted her head, she could see the tribe drawn up in the
field beyond the city.

She rose as they came. Emry had a dark look about him, as if
he did not care if he lived or died, but still he managed to smile at her.

“Tell me where the chariots are,” she said.

They glanced at one another.

“If there’s going to be a battle,” she said, “they’ll be
needed here. Tell me you didn’t send them somewhere else.”

“They’re scattered through the cities,” Mabon said after a
pause.

“And none here?”

“A few,” said Mabon, “that the temple has taken.”

“Sweet Goddess,” said Rhian. “What were you thinking, that
you suffered that to happen?”

Mabon stiffened, and for once she saw a spark of temper in
his eye. “This was not my thinking. This was the temple—assuring a quick escape
for the priestesses of the cities.”

“You made no effort to stop it?”

“There was nothing I could do,” Mabon said.

“Too late now,” said Emry. He was leaning against the wall’s
edge, looking out at the massed power of the tribe and the long line of its
chariots. “We’ll have to trust to walls after all.”

“These have been breached,” Rhian said, “thanks to her.”

“You went to the enemy,” said Mabon with great gentleness.
“The grey herd went with you. Do we trust you, lady of horses? What do you want
with us now?”

“I want watchfulness,” she said. “And defense of this
city—to protect it, not destroy it.”

Mabon’s eyes sharpened. “Tell me what you are saying.”

Good, thought Rhian. He was thinking. Emry she could not
read: the helmet shadowed his eyes. “Remember. Defense only. And whatever
happens in the king’s house or the temple, do nothing, unless it threatens the
rest of the city.”

“I’m coming with you,” Emry said.

“No,” said Rhian.

He stood straight and set himself beside her. The tribes had
taught him something: he could be a threat simply by being large and male.

Mabon’s lips twitched. Rhian glared at them both. “You will
only be in my way,” she said to Emry. “Stay here. They need you.”

“You need me more,” he said.

She considered the wisdom of striking him, and the
possibility of knocking him flat. But before she could move, he had caught her
and trapped her, gripping her tight against his body. She struggled fiercely.
He hissed in her ear. “Stop that! Look!”

Her eye caught what he had seen first, because it was behind
her: an armed company trotting along the wall.

Warriors of the temple. Their faces had a look of grim
purpose. Their swords were drawn, their spears leveled.

“Now, now,” said Mabon easily as they came on, ambling out
in front of them, blocking their way to the others. “No need for that. We’ve
got her. We’ll take her where she’s wanted, if you’ll just—”

The company did not slow its advance. Mabon stood his
ground. He lifted his spear in one hand; the other went to his lips. He loosed
a piercing whistle.

The priestesses wavered but did not stop. Farther down the
wall and in the guardhouses, figures sprang into motion: seizing weapons,
pulling on helmets. Guards ran around the wall from the rest of the gates.

Rhian sank teeth into Emry’s arm. He gasped but did not cry
out, nor did he let her go. He heaved her up over his shoulder and began to
run.

Mabon shouted. Metal clashed.

It was battle up there. Rhian, helpless and near mad with
fury, beat on Emry’s unyielding back. She only gained bruised fists for it.

People were running in the streets—armed people. She groaned
aloud. Lir was fighting Lir, temple against city guard. In front of the king’s
house, Dias’ warband was stirring, drawn by the sounds of fighting.

Emry had enough sense at least not to run into the midst of
those. He skirted the edge of the broad open space. His breath was coming a
little quick: Rhian was not a small woman or a light one.

He stopped by the wall of the Mother’s house and set her
down, but kept a grip on her wrists. “I will not run away,” she snarled at him.
“Now let me go.”

He hesitated long enough to fan the fires of her temper, but
he did as she bade.

The warband had drawn together. The man in charge of them—whom
Rhian did not recognize but Emry likely did—snapped out an order. They formed
in a circle, weapons drawn or held at the ready.

“Battle order.” Ernry spoke as if to himself. “What are you
proposing to do? Walk into the king’s house and slit her throat?”

“Not till Minas is out of there,” she said. “If you would
help me, go and see that all the servants and the king’s people are elsewhere.
When we go in, there should be none but women of the temple.”

She was asking him to go back where he had been a prisoner,
where he was still being hunted. She watched him consider that. He liked it: it
was mad enough to suit his mood. “Don’t get killed,” he said. “Promise me
that.”

“I’ll try,” she said.

He hugged her tight, squeezing the breath out of her, and
slipped away around the Mother’s house.

Rhian paused before she followed. The sounds of fighting had
grown louder. And something else, something that raised her hackles: a long
deep rumble. The sound of many hundred hooves on living earth, and of
chariot-wheels rolling over it.

The warband had heard it, too. Their captain snapped an
order. One of the young men sprang down from his horse and ran toward the
king’s house. The guards at the gate barred him with spears.