Daughter of Lir by Judith Tarr

of the sun and air,
celebrations of the daylight, daily judgments and smaller justice. When he
hunted, he hunted only lion and boar. He troubled himself with nothing that was
not, in his reckoning, kingly.
    He was still abed with the newest of his wives. Her weeping
had stopped some while since. His grunting had paused; as Minas’ song died
away, Aera caught the soft rasp of the royal snore.
    Her charges had fallen into disarray during her moment of
inattention. She brought them back to order with a sharp word. None of them was
weeping, at least. Even the twins, noted for their sullenness, were mending
tunics with reasonable application.
    Aera’s jaw was aching again. Of all these children, every
one of them beautiful and every one of them the child of a man of influence
among the conquered tribes, not one went willingly to the king’s bed. Time was
when that had not been so; there were still a few who had come here in great
hopes of royal favor, dreaming of the power that a king’s wife could claim for
herself.
    But all the power was in one woman’s hands, these days. That
woman was not Aera. And as for being wife to the king . . .
    Some of them were whispering, off in the corner, but Aera’s
ears were keen. All their voices were muted to sameness, so that she could not
tell who spoke. Still the words were clear, their tone unmistakable. They were
speaking in trader-speech, which was all most of them had in common.
    “I made myself a necklace of wild garlic,” one said, “and
said a spell over it, to keep him from me.”
    “I’m going to provoke one of the older wives into beating
me, if he asks for me again,” said another. “I’ll make sure my lip is split.
Maybe, if she breaks my nose—”
    “You’d go that far?” breathed a third.
    “Wouldn’t you?”
    There was a pause. Eyes gleamed, darting back and forth.
After a while the first said, “He smells like dead things. His rod is cold.
It’s like a stone inside me. Even the seed he spends—it’s like ice.”
    “Maybe,” said the third hesitantly, “that’s what it’s
supposed to be like.”
    The first scoffed. “What, are you an idiot? Haven’t you ever
played with the young men behind your father’s tent at night?”
    “My father would never let me out of his sight.”
    “Poor thing,” said the second. “Believe us, men are warm,
sometimes as warm as a good fire. And they may smell of many things, but death
is seldom one of them.”
    “Sometimes,” said the first, “when he takes me, his eyes go
empty. There’s no man in there. There is . . . something else.”
    “It’s that bitch Etena,” the second said, spitting out the
name. “I’ve seen her in the night sometimes, when the moon is dark. She dances
naked, and things dance with her. Dark things. She embraces them. She—does
things with them.”
    “You think the king is—” the third began, but she could not
go on.
    “We know the king is not as he used to be,” said the first.
“I forget, you come from the High River people. You never knew him before. He
was beautiful. He was a golden king, a sun-king.”
    “Like his heir?”
    “Very like. Though that one is a summer prince, all red and
gold. His father was paler, like winter sun, but warm. He used to laugh, and
sometimes he’d sing. He’d even be caught playing with children.”
    “I can’t imagine that,” the third wife said.
    “It was a long time ago,” said the first. “Before the king
conquered Etena’s people. Her father was a shaman, did you know that? Her
mother was a witch from the northern fells. She learned things from them, you
can lay wagers on it. Dark things. Terrible things.”
    “Now she rules the king,” said the second, “and through him
the tribe. She has him thinking of nothing but the dark.”
    “And war,” the first said. “Always war.”
    “War is not so bad,” the third murmured. “Women stay home
then. Men ride out. Sometimes they’re even killed.”
    Neither of the