Daughter of Lir Read Online Free Page B

like it ate at Lir. There was
confusion in the temple, dissension among the warriors. Emry dreamed of war.
    Men were not the firstborn of the Goddess, nor had she
blessed them as she had her daughters. And yet Emry dreamed as a woman might,
saw visions as if he had been a priestess in the temple. Had he been born a
daughter, he would have been the Mother’s heir.
    But he was a son, and would be king instead. Though king of
what, he had begun to wonder.
    In this village among so many, on this journey that his
mother had laid on him with the force of a geas, he watched yet another thread
of the world unravel. First he had seen a young woman’s insolence, then he had
known her prescience: dreaming the war that would come and the terrible engines
it would bring, and making of them a toy for children.
    The temple would take her, he thought. Simple rustic she
might be, without great wit or wisdom, but she was as full of the Goddess’
power as a summer cloud with lightnings. She crackled and blazed with it. Maybe
she was the one, the Mother who would be.
    He stood at the choosing with the rest of the priestess’
guard. He saw when she came. Her gown was long out of fashion, but the blue on
blue of it caught the deep and dreaming blue of her eyes. Her ornaments were
poor enough, except for the bronze bells in her ears, but she wore them
proudly. She was beautiful. She shone like a pearl in a field of common clay.
Surely even a blind man could see that this one was blessed of the Goddess.
    The priestess was worse than blind. She turned away from
that shining splendor, turned her back on the Goddess’ own choosing, and laid
the blessing on a coarse and common creature whose only distinction was the
excess of copper and shells and river pearls that she wore about her person. If
that one was blessed of the Goddess, then Emry had lost all power to see.
    The one who should have been chosen was nowhere in evidence.
No one would admit to knowing where she could have gone, or seemed to care.
They were all caught up in celebrating the false chosen.
    The priestess, mercifully, was not minded to linger for the
festival. She left an acolyte in the village to look after her new sister and
conduct her to Lir, then took her boat and her escort, though the sun was
already sinking, and sailed away down the river.
    Emry was glad enough to leave that village behind, nor did
he object to camping on the riverbank between towns, as they had to do when
darkness caught them. A camp was simple; it was, in its way, a clean thing. And
there were no strangers in it.
    The priestess had not spoken a word since before the rite of
choosing. She took no nightmeal, nor did she sit with the rest or share their
wine and ale. She hid herself away in her tent.
    In his right mind Emry would never have done what he did
that night. But he had been brooding on the day’s ill fortune until he was lost
to all good sense. He waited till the camp had quieted, till most of the escort
were asleep, all but the sentries and an acolyte or two who had drawn some of
the guards into the bushes. He slipped into the priestess’ tent, unannounced
and uninvited.
    She was waiting for him. She sat upright as she did in her
boat, legs folded, hands on knees. A lamp flickered beside her. It smoothed the
lines of her body and masked her face in shadow, so that she was the living
image of the Goddess in the temple.
    Emry had no shame of what he was. He was as the Goddess had
made him. And yet in front of this most powerful of women, he was all too
keenly aware of his lesser nature. Heavy bones, heavy limbs, heavy dangling thing
between his thighs. He shuffled. He shambled. His voice was a beast’s growl.
    He shook off the spell that she had laid on him, and knelt
in front of her, because he could not stand inside the tent. “You chose a lie
today,” he said.
    Her eyes came to rest on his face. They were as
expressionless as black stones. “And how may you know that?”
    “I can see,”