Daughter of Lir

  DAUGHTER OF LIR

  The Epona Sequence

  Book 3

  Judith Tarr

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Book View Café Edition

  July 29, 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-430-7

  Copyright © 2001 Judith Tarr

  PRELUDE

  THE LASTBORN

  On the day the Mother’s daughter was born, a storm battered the city of Lir. Winds tore at its walls and towers. Thunder cracked. Rain lashed the streets.

  She was very young to be the Mother of a city, though not so young to bear a child. This was her third, and the first that was not a son: a blessing, and great joy, for a daughter would be Mother in her place, when she was old and august and had lived the full count of her years. She came to the birthing knowing she bore a daughter. She sang through the pains, though her dreams of late had all been dark.

  Just as her daughter leaped into the world, the world itself split asunder. Lightning struck the topmost tower of the temple and cast it down in ruins. The Mother, secure in the sanctuary below, loosed a great cry, fierce and shrill above the tumult of heaven.

  They laid the child on her hollowed belly, all bloodied and newborn as it was. In the ringing silence after her cry, the Mother bit through the cord and bound it with her own hands. But she did not take the small wriggling creature in her arms. When she reached to do it, the last strength poured out of her, a gout of blood that wrung a cry from the midwives. She fell back with a soft sound, neither a gasp nor quite a cry.

  The child began to slip from her belly. One of the priestesses caught it: the youngest, standing startled as if she had not known what she would do until she had done it.

  A murmur passed among the attendants. The young priestess should not have been there. She was new come to childbed herself, but her son had scarcely opened his eyes on the world before he shivered and died.

  She clutched the baby to her breast, which was full and aching with new milk. The child nosed, seeking; found the nipple; began to nurse. She stood transfixed. She made no move to thrust the child away, nor did anyone move to take it from her.

  o0o

  The Mother lived, if barely. They had entrusted her life and spirit to the Goddess whose living image she was. Healer-priestesses tended her. Even a man had come, one of the sacred dancers, who had a great gift of making and healing.

  The rest of the Goddess’ servants gathered in the heart of the temple, in the shrine that was as old, some said, as the world. It was round like the curve of the Goddess’ arms, and full of lamplight. But the shadows crowded and whispered.

  Before the image of the Goddess, squat and holy, the priestesses knelt in a circle. Chill as it was without, it was warm here, warm as their bodies. The dim light flickered on bare white shoulders, heavy breasts, rich swells of haunches.

  As close as they seemed, linked arm in arm in their circle, their eyes on its center were hard and cold. The child lay there in the youngest priestess’ lap, washed clean of blood and birthing. She was awake; her eyes were open, dark and oddly focused. She did not cry.

  They had taken the omens. They had sung the words, danced the dance. They had drawn the pattern of the child’s life on the floor, painting it in red ocher and blue woad and the sweetness of green herbs. Yet stronger than all that brightness was black earth, earth charred in fire. The scars of it swept across the rest, overwhelmed it, obliterated it.

  “This cannot be Mother,” said the eldest priestess as she knelt by the broken pattern. “This should not even live.”

  “This is the Lastborn, the Stormborn,” said her sister, like an antiphon in the Goddess’ rite. “This brings the world’s end.”

  Voices took up the litany, murmuring round the circle. “We cannot let this—thing—see the sunlight. It carries our destruction.”

  “Sacrifice it here? Expose it on a hillside? Feed it to the dogs?”

  “No.” That voice was clear and strong, though the one who spoke had seen years enough in both sun and shadow. She was highest of the priestesses but for the Mother. In the Mother’s incapacity she spoke for the Goddess, as her living Voice.

  She put on no airs. She was a plain woman, thick-legged, sturdy. She had borne a dozen children, and all of them had lived. Her body showed the marks of them, on the belly, on the soft heavy breasts.

  When she spoke, they all listened. She was the Goddess’ own, her beloved child. “No,” she said again. “This child will not die. The Goddess has no thirst for blood.”

  “This is bloodthirst incarnate,” the eldest priestess said. “It clutches death in its hand. Let us give it what belongs to it. Let us end it now, before it ends us all.”

  “No,” the Goddess’ Voice said again. “However ill the omens, however dark the path ahead of her, the Goddess bids her live.”

  “She cannot be Mother,” the eldest priestess said, flat and hard. “Her heart is darkness. She will destroy us.”

  “The Goddess will protect us,” said the Voice. She sighed and sagged briefly, as if beset with weariness.

  The youngest priestess spoke as the Voice paused to gather strength. Her voice was soft and shy, but the words were clear enough. “I will take her.” They had all been ignoring her—deliberately, since she took the child from its mother’s slackened arms, then compounded the fault by suffering it to drink life from her breast. She would atone for that. She knew it as well as any. And yet she spoke.

  “My son died this morning,” she said. “My heart is empty. My breasts ache. My man is far away, trading in the southlands, and will not return until the winter. No one outside the temple knows what has passed here. If I take her and raise her as my own, and tell her nothing of the truth—might not the ill things pass us by?”

  “The gods know,” said the eldest priestess.

  But the youngest had drawn strength and fire from her own words, and from the small warm creature in her lap. “The Goddess knows. But the gods and spirits—I took her up in my arms. I gave her her first milk. Let us cleanse her here, purify her, make her new again. I will name her and hold her up in front of the people, and she will be my child. We will weave a new fate for her.”

  The priestesses shifted uneasily. “That has never been done before,” the eldest said. “To lie to the gods—it could bring on us the very thing we fear.”

  “The Goddess wishes her to live,” said the Voice.

  “Does the Goddess wish us to die?”

  “I only speak for her,” the Voice said. “I don’t pretend to understand her.”

  “I will take the child,” the youngest priestess said again. “She need not die in the world—only to what she was to have been. She will be my daughter before the gods and their servants.”

  The elder priestesses shook their heads. But the Voice nodded slowly. “Let it be so,” she said. “Let it be done. Let this child of blood and war be raised in peace. Let her grow up in gentleness. Let her never know the darkness that would have claimed her.”

  “No more let her know the Goddess’ service,” the eldest priestess said. “Let her be a child among the Goddess’ lesser children. Let no choosing of the temple fall upon her, nor great arts be taught her. Let her know nothing of power or magic. Let her be a simple woman, plain, unremarkable. Let her live and die in obscurity.”

  The youngest priestess bowed her head. She was the first of her family to be chosen for the temple. She had hoped not to be the last.

  Surely there would be daughters of her body. One of them would go as her mother had gone—and this one, meanwhile, would live. She who had been born to be Mother and queen would be a simple village child; but better that than dead upon the altar of sacrifice.

  “So let it be,” she said, “in the Goddess’
name.”

  I

  THE POTTER’S CHILD

  1

  The Goddess’ servant came to Long Ford in the spring of the year, not long after the snows had melted. The river was still running high, but boats could ride down from the city, and horsemen and lumbering oxcarts venture the road.

  The priestess came in a boat, sitting erect and still with her acolytes about her. She was not terribly old, but neither was she young. Her body was heavy with years and childbearing. There was silver in her hair, but her broad face was smooth. It had no beauty, but it was splendid with power.

  She was one of the great ones, one whose name was taken away, who spoke and acted for the Goddess in all things. It was a very great thing to see such a one under the common sky, sailing down the river in the morning.

  Her escort rode just ahead of her on the road by the river. They were haughty warriors of Lir, mounted on fine horses. Their armor was hardened leather, their ornaments clashing copper. Each wore a wolfskin for a cloak.

  Their commander gleamed in gold and bronze, and his mantle was a lionskin. He was highest and most haughty of them all, and his stallion was magnificent: dappled silver-grey, with a mane like a fall of water, and a dark brilliant eye.

  They looked very much alike, the horse and the rider. Rhian, watching from the hill above the village, spared a long moment for the priestess in the boat, but the man on horseback kept catching her eye. He was young; he carried himself very high, but the nearer he came, the clearer it was that he was hardly older than she was herself.

  This must be a prince of the city. People rode or sailed to and from Lir in every clear season, but princes did not come this way often. Not much more often, indeed, than priestesses from the temple.

  They were going on past Long Ford, she supposed, on some embassy of great importance. Nobody ever stopped here. It was a small village, not poor at all, but not rich, either. There was nothing of note in it, except a smith who knew how to forge bronze, and once a daughter who had been chosen to be a priestess in Lir.

  She was dead years since. The temple had not summoned another in her place, not even Rhian who had been her daughter.

  A shadow on the spirit had brought Rhian to the hilltop, to the old fort that was long broken and abandoned, in time to see the priestess and the prince and the rest. She had dreamed again last night. In the dream she was a bird, a wonderful bird, a bird with feathers of flame. Her wings were wide. Her voice was as sweet as all heaven.

  But she could not sing. A collar of bronze bound her throat, crushing the voice from her. The bars of a cage closed about her. She was trammeled, silent, bound till she could not move.

  That dream had haunted her all her life. She had thought herself inured to it, until she woke gasping, her heart hammering, and no thought in her but flight.

  She was calmer now. The wind was whispering in her ear, cajoling her, telling her its secrets. Sarai the weaver was with child again, and this time it would live. The brindled cow had delivered twin calves in the night. The hunters had found a fine stag and would bring him back come evening. Bran the smith was thinking of Rhian, and of what they would do in his bed tonight.

  She blushed all over at that. The wind laughed and danced in the new spring grass. It had better secrets than that. Strong secrets, wonderful secrets. What the priestesses said in the shrine of the Goddess. What the warlords said in their hall of weapons in Lir. What the king, the great warleader, said to the Mother of Lir when they lay together in the long murmuring nights.

  Not, said the wind, stilling for a moment, that they had said anything for long and long. The Mother was sick. She was dying. They were all very sad in Lir.

  “Is that why the priestess is coming down the river?” Rhian asked the wind. The chill that shivered across her skin did not come from that little bit of breeze. This was an older, stronger, colder thing.

  The wind wandered for a while through the grass. It came round at length to Rhian and played with the loose strands of hair that were always escaping from her plait. The priestess was looking for new priestesses, it said. It was a Ninth Year. The priestesses always went questing then. And maybe this year, it conceded, one of the young women chosen would be Mother when the Mother died—since she had no daughter, only sons; and the Goddess had not given her blessing to any priestess in Lir.

  These were high matters, too high for a potter’s child. But the wind had always expected her to understand things both lofty and strange. Rhian was like a goddess sitting above the world, knowing what went on in it, but having no part of it.

  That was a dangerous thought. She lay down on the breast of the earth and whispered her apology. Then she leaped up. She would go to her work, bury herself in her duty. She would tend the kiln and keep the house and forget it all: The wind’s gossip. The dream that had driven her out into the sun. The priestess, the prince, everything that was higher or stronger or less perfectly ordinary than Long Ford.

  But as she paused, with the wind teasing her, plucking at her gown and blowing her hair in her eyes, she saw through the dark curling veil that the priestess’ boat had turned toward the bank. The horsemen were pausing below the village. They were stopping after all. They were coming to Long Ford.

  Her heart hammered till surely it would leap from her breast. Had they come for her, then? Would they make her a priestess in Lir?

  She was a priestess’ daughter. She dreamed dreams. The wind told her secrets. Surely they would take her. They would shatter the collar, break down the cage. They would let her fly free.

  She danced down the hill, but she was walking sedately by the time she passed the outermost houses of the village. If she would be a priestess, she must learn to walk with dignity, not run about like a hoyden child.

  But oh, it was difficult. If she could go to Lir—if—if—

  All her life, when she was not dreaming of cages, she had dreamed of Lir. City of bronze and gold. City of proud warrior princes. City of the Goddess, the Lady of the Birds, and of her high and holy temple, and her blessed priestesses.

  Maybe now she would see it. Maybe she would be a priestess in it, as her mother had been. Maybe even the dreams would stop, and she could sleep in peace.

  o0o

  The priestess and her following stayed the night in Long Ford. There was a feast, for the hunters had come back with their stag. The village elders kept the guests to themselves, as was proper, but Rhian was a bold bad creature when she wanted to be. She plucked a platter of venison from the hands of the headwoman’s youngest daughter, smiled with utter sweetness, and said, “You go and play. I’ll take your place for tonight.”

  Kimi was none too reluctant to be freed of her duties. Her eyes had already slid toward one of the younger and more toothsome of the priestess’ warriors. She was gone almost before Rhian had finished speaking.

  Rhian smiled to herself. Her own eyes were sliding, too, but not toward any downy-cheeked boy.

  The prince from Lir sat near the priestess at the feast. He was even lovelier in the late sunlight than he had been in the morning by the river. With his armor and his lionskin laid aside, he was still a fine figure of a man. His shoulders were broad. His arms were strong. His hair was black and thick and plaited behind him. It was like her own: it seemed determined to burst out of its bonds and run riot down his back.

  She made sure to serve him and the warriors and lesser priestesses nearest to him. She did not quite dare to thrust herself in front of the elders and the priestess, but she was close enough to hear what they said, and to watch their faces as they spoke.

  The wind told better secrets. This talk was all of food and drink, the weather, the crops, the state of the river-trade. No one was speaking of the Mother, of her living or dying.

  The warriors and the acolytes were even less interesting. They ate, mostly; eyed the young folk of the village, both male and female; and, as the ale went round, boasted mightily of their wars and hunts. To this the acolytes added tales of their
journey downriver, gossip from the city, and a long giggle over the prowess of certain young men of the city.

  One of them was the prince. His name, Rhian had already discovered, was Emry. He was the king’s son, and the Mother’s eldest child. He ignored the banter—resolute, maybe, or simply oblivious to it. He had said very little since he came to the village, only enough to assure Rhian that he was not mute. His voice fit the rest of him, deep and sweet.

  She picked out the choicest bits of venison from her platter and set them in his bowl. He barely touched them. His eyes did not see anything in that place. They were dark; it was not until he raised them by chance to hers, that she realized they were not brown but deep blue.

  He took no notice of her. That piqued her. She had had to fend off a dozen half-drunken advances already. Men liked her; she had always had her pick of them. They said she was beautiful. But this man, who was as beautiful as she, seemed hardly to be aware that she existed.

  Maybe he grieved for his mother. When he rose to go to the privies, she followed.

  He went on past the privies, as she had suspected he would, and wandered up the hill. The sun was setting. It cast a light like blood across the tumbled and broken stones.

  He stood in the midst of them, wide shoulders hunched, glowering at nothing. Rhian settled not far from him, squatting on her heels. Gathering stalks of grass and a handful of pebbles, she began to build a fort with them, no higher than her hand.

  When the tower and the wall were laid out in stones and the palisade of grass-stems had begun to go up, his shadow fell across her. He straightened a corner of the wall, and braced it with a bit of twig.

  “Your gate should face east,” he said. “That’s where the enemy will come from.”

  “More likely they’ll come from the south or the north, along the road by the river,” she said.

  He squatted beside her. He was not offended to be so contradicted, which surprised her. “You think about war?” he asked.