Daughter of Lir by Judith Tarr Page A

of
men, but seemed to come from the earth underfoot.
    Minas’ hackles rose. The council should have been lively,
men speaking in swift alternation, boasting, arguing, planning the war as they
had at the beginning of every season since anyone could remember. But they sat
still, and their eyes glittered. They said nothing. The king’s shadow stretched
long across them.
    There were no shamans among them. Minas had not looked before,
nor thought to look. But the bone rattles were silent, the horn-crowned heads
nowhere to be seen. Priests of the gods there were none, no workers of magic,
no servants of the Powers. Only the king and his warleaders and the elders of
the People.
    Minas escaped. He fled, if he would admit the truth. He felt
no shadow on him—but would he know if it had already corrupted him?
    o0o
    He hardly saw where he was going. His feet took him where
they would. He did not hear Dias behind him, but he was too craven to go back
and look for his brother. If it was Dias’ mother who had done this, then Dias
was in great danger. But Minas was no priest or shaman. He had no power but
what was in his hands: to wield a weapon, or to make one.
    There was one who had power in truth, whom some were calling
a god. He found himself there, in front of his grandfather’s tent, on the far
side of the chariotmakers’ circle.
    It was a small tent for so great a man. Two of his daughters
kept it for him. His wives were dead long ago, nor had he taken others. Some
whispered that he had cut away his manhood as a sacrifice to the gods.
    He was man enough, Minas knew. He simply did not care. His
spirit burned too bright, with too narrow a flame. All of it was given to his
work. He thought of little else.
    He was awake as Minas had thought he might be. His tent was
full of lamps, dazzling bright. They were one of his few indulgences. His tent
was all but bare, his belongings few. If it was not meant for the making of
chariots, he did not wish to own it. Every gift that he was given, he gave
away. Except the horses. Those he kept—but they were among the herds. Here he
had little and would have been content with less.
    He sat cross-legged on a single worn hide. He was naked, as
if he had been asleep. But his eyes were fiercely awake. Something gleamed in
his hand.
    Gold, it seemed to be, but its color was odd—too flat
somehow. Too shallow. It was shaped into a small blade such as a man might use
for cutting his hair.
    “A knife of gold?” Minas asked, squatting in front of his
grandfather.
    Metos tossed it at him. He caught it by the blade; gasped
and recoiled. Blood welled from the cuts in his fingers. “ Ai ! It bit me. What spell is on it?”
    “That,” said Metos, “I should like to know.”
    Minas lifted the thing gingerly, by the haft this time. That
was carved of bone. Minas did not recognize the clan-marks that were on it.
“Where did you find this?”
    “A trader brought it,” Metos said. “He said it came from
beyond the river of souls.”
    “The river that flows round the feet of the setting sun? But
there’s nothing past that. Except maybe the gods’ country.”
    “No,” said Metos. “He said not. He said there’s more to the
world. Tribes as numerous as ants in a hill. Great wealth. Vast camps—cities,
he called them: camps that never move, where men live year after year.”
    “I’ve heard of cities,” Minas said. “The tribes we overrun,
they babble of them. But how can men live so? They’d hunt the land bare inside
of a year.”
    “They keep cattle,” Metos said, “and teach the earth to grow
fruit at their command. You’ve seen that, child. You saw the tribe that we
overran, that had fields growing beside a camp where they lived most of the
year. They said they’d learned it from a western shaman.”
    “We slew every man of them,” Minas said. “My father took the
chief’s wives. They wept a great deal. They all sickened and died before the
winter was out.”
    “They were soft,”