The Prize in the Game (39 page)

Conal remembered a dream, or something like a dream. He raised his hands and his voice as the pain flowed strong again. "Isn't this enough, Rhianna?" he addressed the air. "Damona, of the Judgments, have we not suffered even as the mare suffered? Bel, Lord of Moderation, who made the Wards that make us what we are, isn't this enough?"

The pain rose to a new crest as he shouted his defiance to the gods, and on that crest came a new wrenching. He screamed then, because his mouth was open to speak and he could not stop it. He thought the enemy might take it for a battle cry, because it was surely as loud as one.

Something heard. As the pain was at its highest, blood gushed out from Conary's fatal wound, and out of the black bloodtide came Blackie.

He thundered toward the enemy, head lowered and horns ready. It worked at Edar, Conal thought crazily, wondering which god might have thought this a good answer. Rhianna, maybe.

Then, as the wrenching ebbed and his scream died away, the ground around him was covered with the shadows of champions advancing on foot. The pain ebbed and ebbed, and still they came, the shadow of an army wielding the shadows of weapons. He could recognize his own shadow, many times repeated, clustered around him and going forward. Conary's shadows rose from his fallen body, and Leary's flowed out from him, and Finca's from her, and shadows from all of those there who had borne the pain and stood ready to fight on the ninth day. More and more shadows came pressing up from behind; many of them he did not immediately recognize even as

they parted around the chariot and flowed toward the army of Connat in eerie silence.

Conal raised his arms, and more shadows flowed out of him. The air around was dark with them, going forward, away from him. The army of Connat was giving way already before the army of shadows. They were back in the water, and still the shadows pursued.

"Should we go, too?" Emer asked.

The pain was still running through Conal, and he still had no spears, although most of his shadows did. "Go on," he said. Whatever he could do, he would. Emer spoke a word to the horses and they moved on, ears back uneasily.

As they went forward among the shadows, the darkness pressed around them until he could see nothing but darkness in any direction. He heard a cat growl and saw again the huge cat he had defeated on the heights of

Cruachan, there among the shadows. He was standing alone on a moun-taintop, stars falling all around him.

Then he was in the chariot again, moving, with a rush of wings, a swirl of ravens very close, dark against darkness.

Then the shadow of the ogre Bachlach was there, his huge ax held in both hands, swinging up to strike at

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Conal's head.

Emer urged the horses on. Bachlach strode after them effortlessly. The pain was rising again. "I think we can outpace him," Emer said.

"He didn't have his turn," Conal said, forming the words carefully. "He survived being beheaded, and so did

Darag."

"He's a god and Darag is his son," Emer said, not slackening the pace.

"Howmdash" Conal began, but the pain, combined with the jolting of the chariot, was too much.

"I just worked it out," she said.

Bachlach's shadow was in front of them, huge and implacable, ax raised. The pain swelled up to meet him, the highest crest yet. Conal bowed his head and felt the ax-blow as mercy. The pain did not ebb, but left him entirely. His head rolled down his chest. He caught it in his right hand, laughing. It was smaller than he would have expected, about the size of the heads on the chariot, not like a living head. It must have been shrunken already.

They were still driving on through darkness. Bachlach was gone, and so was the pain. "Are you all right?"

Emer asked.

"I think so," Conal said. After all, his head was safe in his hand and nothing hurt at all, which was very good.

He moved a little, experimentally. He drew a deep breath. It was wonderful. "I love you," he said.

The shadows were still all around them in the dark, some of them shaped and some shapeless, all of them pressing insistently. Another swirl of ravens came out of nowhere, silently sweeping past. Then the chariot was gone and Emer was gone and he was falling through the star-shot darkness, his head clutched tight in his hand.

30

(ELENN)

She smiled at ap Dair, she smiled at her mother, she smiled at the Demedian king, she smiled at the wedding branches, autumn-colored now, she just smiled and smiled and waited for it to be over.

It felt as if she had kept that smile on her face every day of the four months since the black bull had come charging into camp and died at her feet. She had known at once that Ferdia was dead, though she had not understood what it meant for the war until later. She had smiled and gone on smiling, hiding everything she was feeling underneath the smile. It was surprising how much strength she found underneath. She had thought she was weak, but all the time her strength had been there, waiting for her to find it. She had always hidden her secret feelings away from her mother, but now she hid them from everyone. She was strong. It was Emer who was weak.

So Elenn waited, smiling her way through all the customary hand-kissing and congratulations of betrothal.

Marriage was so familiar a ritual she could have done it in her sleep. The only thing that made this different was that the handsome young stranger standing beside her was not her new husband-to-be but his nephew,

come to take his place in this ceremony and escort her back to him. Otherwise, it was all just the same, even to the dizzy speed of the proceedings. She waited, and as soon as they let her go to get her things, she hastened to tell her sister.

Emer was lying facedown on her bed in the room they shared, absolutely still. Her tangled hair spread out on the blanket. There was none of the relaxation of sleep, but she could easily have
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been dead. The first time

Elenn had seen her like that, she had rushed to her in alarm. Now, after four months, it seemed almost normal. All the strength and independence Emer had found since she took up arms had disappeared since the battle, since Conal's death.

Elenn closed the door. "Ap Dair is back," she said to her sister's unresponsive back. "He's come straight from the ship in a tearing hurry. Urdo wants me. Wants the alliance, that is, he hasn't seen me of course. But so much the better. I am sick of men wanting me for my beauty.

He will take the whole army and feed them and let them fight in his war and keep them as long as it lasts. I am betrothed to him already and we sail at sunset."

Emer rolled over slowly and sat up. Her eyes were red and the shadows under them were darker than ever.

"Sunset today? Then you will get away," she said.

"Yes. I will be High Queen of Tir Tanagiri. And I will take you with me," Elenn declared. "I have been thinking about it. If Conal comes back for you, he can find you as well in Caer Tanaga as anywhere else."

In her heart, Elenn was sure Conal was dead. At the truce talks, Atria had told them he was. His mother and his father had worn their hair loose in mourning. Emer had refused to believe Atha and gone to ask Darag, who was king of Oriel now, as Elenn had always known he would be.

Darag had told Emer gently that nobody had seen Conal since the battle.

It was true there was no body, but only Emer refused to believe he was dead. She had been mad, mad like

Inis, talking as if she had been in the battle, when in fact everyone knew she had been back in Cruachan, not even in the camp. Since then, it was as if all the life had gone out of her. Elenn didn't understand it. It wasn't like grief as she knew grief.

More tears welled up in Emer's eyes. They both ignored them. "Have you asked Maga if I can come with you?" she asked.

"Not yet," Elenn said. "But I will, and we are leaving on the tide." Her clothes were in the chest at the foot of the bed. She could just take the whole thing. She took off her pearl circlet and dropped it in on top of them.

She picked up her comb and turned it over in her fingers, then dropped that in, too. She shook off the orange bridal shawl and folded it. She would need that once more, for the actual bullwedding, once she met Urdo.

She would wear her cloak. She could collect Beauty from the kennel master on the way, and then she would have everything. She would never come back, never. When Urdo died, she would marry someone else in Tir

Tanagiri, someone she would meet there, someone she would choose herself.

"She won't let me go with you," Emer said flatly, breaking into Elenn's thoughts, which were already halfway to Tir Tanagiri.

"What makes you think that? It's a good idea. You'll be company for me, and away from here, and doing different things." All of Elenn's plans for getting away had counted on taking Emer with her. She recognized that there was an element of selfishness in this; it would be nice to have somebody familiar there with her.

But even if she didn't want her, she could not leave Emer in the position she had been in herself, being forced to do what Maga wanted and knowing she had nowhere else to go.

"I know all that, and I'm grateful, really I am. But Maga won't let me go. You are bringing her an alliance. I am too valuable a piece on the gameboard for her to give up for nothing."

"You haven't asked her either," Elenn said reasonably.

Emer shrugged fiercely, showing a flash of her old fire. "I asked to go to Rathadun to train to be a priest. Ap

Fial says I have the skills, and Inis said the same."

"It's twenty-one years of training," Elenn said, sitting down on her own bed.

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"I know that," Emer said. "But I'd be away from here, and I'd like it and be good at it."

"Orlam says lawspeakers and priests can go anywhere," Elenn said. The idea was new to her.

She'd never thought of doing anything like that. But Emer really wasn't like her at all. In some ways, it might be what her sister needed to help her get over losing Conal. She had exhausted herself day after day doing the gods' work throughout the war, after all, and never said a word about it unless you counted the babbling about axes and

ravens when she came down the hill on the last day. Being an oracle-priest was something she could do where madness wouldn't even be a disadvantage. Elenn shook her head. She wanted Emer to come back to sanity, not choose madness as an escape.

"Yes. Go anywhere, have their own lives. Be useful. But Mother refused. She wants to make sure there's only one way out, the way she wants me to take. So I'm sure she won't let me go with you either, kindly as you intend it. I pleaded with her and Allel for that, and she was adamant. I'm not going through that again. I don't have the energy to spare." Emer sank down on her arms again.

"Couldn't you go anyway?" Elenn asked tentatively. "I remember Orlam saying, and maybe Inis as well, something about them taking anyone at Rathadun."

"The way they do it is that they will take a farmer's child for nothing but expect a large payment from a king's child. This means they can keep doing it. Kings' cast-out children might not be welcome anywhere," Emer said, flat despair in her voice.

"I'll ask if you can come with me, and you'll always be welcome with me," Elenn said, putting her hand on her sister's shoulder. "I'll go to ask now while she's with other people."

"Is Urdo ap Avren here?" Emer asked, her voice muffled.

Elenn almost snapped, then remembered to be patient. At least with Emer, she did not have to keep smiling.

"He couldn't come himself. He's in the middle of a civil war. He sent his nephew, the new king of De-media, and his wife has come as well. She's a Jarn and wears a veil. It seems very strange.

But there are lots of

Jams in Tir Tanagiri. I'll have to get used to it."

"He must be a very new king of Demedia," Emer murmured.

"He is. His father's dead and his mother's in rebellion, but Urdo trusts him." She would have a lot of new politics to learn. She could see it would be a lot of work, but she could do it.

She could manage a kingdom, even a huge high kingdom. As long as she was away from Maga and had a husband who could keep alive for long enough. She could love a husband, bear him children, do everything she needed to. "It's the rebellion that Urdo needs our army for."

"Mother will be so glad to be rid of the army," Emer said.

It was true. Maga had raised the army and now they were an embarrassment. They wanted to fight someone.

The Battle at the Ford was neither a victory nor a real defeat. They had run from shadows, but the shadows hadn't actually killed anyone. The only people killed in the battle were Conal and Ferdia and Conary. When the bull died at Elenn's feet and the shadows disappeared, the priests and the kings had decided the war was over. For the time being, there was peace, unless anyone did anything new to provoke more fighting. So the army hadn't been needed. They had stayed at Cruachan rumbling with discontent all summer. The allies had gone home after the patched-up peace, but when they heard that the army of Connat remained in arms, they had kept their people in arms, too, afraid Maga was about to attack someone. Allel had tried to dismiss the army, but how could you dismiss an army that wanted so badly to stay in arms and make up for the past?

"This is a wonderful solution," Elenn agreed, not saying that it was her own idea. "Sit up and put your clothes in your chest, then let's go and find Maga, then we can say goodbye and go to the boats."

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Emer sat up slowly as if it were a great effort. She didn't look at her chest or pull together the clothes that were scattered about the room, but Elenn decided not to push. In any case, she didn't have anything near as many clothes as Elenn, who had all her wedding gifts. Without looking, Emer picked up her two arm-rings, which were lying on the floor beside the bed. She pushed them onto her arms. Then she lifted her chest and looked at Elenn. Elenn picked up her own chest and led the way out into the hall.