Daughter of Lir Read Online Free PDF Page B

trader’s child.”
    “Your mother is a potter.”
    “My mother was a priestess. Her sister is a potter. The
father of my body was a trader. He traveled up and down the river, and into the
east, and far to the west. He went everywhere. He taught me things, prince.
Things that I doubt a warrior of the city would know.”
    Oh, she was clever with her tongue, and headstrong, and
wickedly persuasive. He had to force himself to remember that she was his
captive, with his noose about her body and his knife at her throat.
    She met his eyes boldly, as if the keen bronze blade had
never threatened her life. “You will need me,” she said.
    “I can’t take you with us,” he said in a kind of despair.
“If the priestess sees you, she’ll have you driven out or killed.”
    Rhian blinked, the only sign of dismay that he had yet seen
in her. Or maybe it was anger. “Her journey is nearly done,” she said. “I’ll
meet with you after you’ve parted from her. Don’t think you can evade me,
either. I’ll be waiting for you.”
    It was as much a threat as a promise. Emry pondered the
usefulness of binding and gagging her and flinging her at the priestess’ feet.
But he was too soft for that, or too much under her spell. He lowered the
knife. She twitched the noose from his hand with ease that was close to
contempt, flashed a grin at him, and vanished over the wall.

4
    When Rhian had escaped from the prince, her knees gave
way. She sank into the bracken below the old wall, gasping as if she had run a
race. She lay for a long while before a stab of panic brought her to her feet.
The rope about her—it bound her like—
    She slipped out of it. She might have left it where it lay,
but she had not grown up in a wealthy house. She coiled it and tucked it tidily
in her pack.
    When she had done that, she was calm. Her thoughts were
clear. The priestess would go on down the chain of towns and villages. The
mounted troop would follow her. Rhian could not lose them. Even if they turned
back or turned aside, the wind would tell her where they were.
    The wind had led her to this. It had given her the words to
speak. It played about her now, plucking at her, blowing warm breath on her
back.
    She started and spun. There was a horse behind her, standing
just above her on the hillside. She had not heard it come, not even a rustle in
the bracken. And yet there, inescapably, it was.
    At first she thought it was the prince’s stallion. But this
was a mare, dappled like the moon. She glowed like the moon, too, shimmering
against the green of the grass, which in that instant seemed too bright, too
clear to be mortal.
    She was more real, more solid than anything about her. The
world seemed a dim and shadowy thing, like a reflection in water.
    Rhian blinked, shivered. The mare snorted wetly and tossed
her head. The vision was gone, if it had ever been more than the eyes’
confusion. The mare stood above her, as mortal as any other daughter of her
kind, with a dark bright eye and an air of conspicuous patience with human
follies. The wind danced in her mane. It seemed to fancy that it had brought
her here, and that Rhian should be delighted beyond measure.
    Rhian eyed the mare sidelong. The mare nibbled a bit of
alder-twig. There were burrs in her tail and grass-stains on her pale coat. And
yet she was no wild thing. That coat had been tended not so long ago, those
hooves trimmed. When Rhian raised a hand, she did not shy away.
    The prince’s rope, that she had so thriftily kept, knotted
into a serviceable headstall and a loop of rein. The mare accepted it as one
who had been trained to it: thrusting her nose into it, sighing as if in
contentment.
    Some signs were as clear as the sun overhead. Rhian bowed to
it and to the Goddess who had sent this mount to carry her. Now she need have
no doubt. This course was ordained. She was meant to continue upon it.
    She scrambled and clambered until she sat panting on the
mare’s back. The mare stood