The Prize in the Game

by Jo Walton

  “Childbirth doesn’t usually last this long,” Darag said. “Aunt Elba was two days with Orlam, one night with Leary, and half a day with the twins. She says your mother was a day and a night with you, and my mother was three days with me.” He lowered his voice a little at the end, as always when he spoke of his mother.

  “You’ve really been thinking about this,” Conal said.

  “Maybe because I’m not suffering it,” Darag said. “I asked last night. Aunt Elba said that it was just this sort of pain, but it was all worth it because you knew you would have a child at the end.”

  “Well, maybe that just might make this all worthwhile,” Conal said and laughed, which was a mistake because it brought on the pain again.

  “But what could you be giving birth to, if you were?” Darag asked. Even if Conal had been able to speak, he would have had no answer.

  “She said we would suffer as the mare suffered,” Conal said after a short eternity which was only the pain. With automatic piety, he touched his hand to his head in the way that symbolized Beastmother as he spoke of her. Darag echoed him, looking more worried than ever. “Grandfather thinks that means for a term of days, and so does the oracle-priest of Connat, ap Fial. But we have passed three already, and six. What if it never leaves us? The mare died.”

  Darag hesitated, drew breath, thought better of it, then spoke at last. “I don’t think so. I think that if what we saw in the Cave of Cruachan means anything, it means we will survive this.” He drew breath again, carefully. “Besides, the reason I have been wondering about birth is because I had a dream about the first times. About the building of Ardmachan. In my dream, the mare gave birth as she was killed, and Beastmother—” again he touched his head “—spoke through the filly that was born. And all the folk of the dun lay on the ground in pain that was very like the pain you have.”

  Conal looked at him sharply. “Have you told Inis?”

  “You know how hard it is to ask Inis anything,” Darag said guiltily. “I had this dream before you killed the mare, before any of this happened. But I had it over and over.”

  “Inis was always asking us about dreams like that,” Conal said accusingly. Then the absurdity of it struck him and he smiled. “Of course I never told him my dreams either, and no doubt we had the same reason.”

  “You have dreams?” Darag asked, shaking his head. “Then they could have made oracle-priests out of both of us and left the kingship to poor Leary?” He grinned at Conal.

  It was difficult to do, because the pain was coming again, but Conal managed an answering grin. He let the pain flow through him, trying not to be impatient although he knew what he wanted to say and could not say it. He knew better than to try to talk across the pains. He had heard other people trying. Talking came too close to screaming. The pain felt like lightning striking through him, slowly. He clenched and unclenched his fists. Darag kept standing there waiting for it to go, not showing any impatience. Hatred welled up in Conal like bile in his throat, but he swallowed it back. He could have clutched it to him like a familiar cloak on a cold night, but instead, he pushed it away. This wasn’t Darag’s fault, he thought for the first time. Not everything was. It had taken this to make him see it, but it was true.

  “Remember how we let Leary win the race on the road to Cruachan?” Conal asked as soon as he had breath. Darag’s grin had recalled Muin, where their rivalry had for a little while seemed a wholesome thing. “Leary would make a terrible king of Oriel.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Darag said warily.

  “You wouldn’t either,” Conal said, and they looked at each other tentatively for a moment, on entirely new ground.

  Darag looked down. “In the cave on Cruachan, I saw you avenge my death.”

  Conal went cold. “Were you king of Oriel then?” he asked.

  “I was. But we were not old men, we were hardly more than ten years older than we are now.”

  Conal thought of the way he had seen himself crawling forward, looking for water, clutching a helmet in one hand, the other arm hanging loose from his shoulder. How hard it was to judge time. He had not been wearing a king’s colors. There had been some gray in his hair. He had been wearing a herald’s spray pinned to a short cloak. He shook his head to drive the vision away. “Inis says nobody can know our real future, which is always changeable. He says we can only know how things have been in other worlds.”

  “I think you avenge my death in all the other worlds,” Darag said.

  “What else did you see in the cave, really?” Conal asked, wanting time to think about the implications of what Darag had said, and about the new way they were talking.

  “Apart from you avenging my death? You returned my head to my body, to give me release.” Darag’s smile was strange. “Well, I saw my death, of course, bound to a stone, too weak to stand without support but fighting to the very end. And I fought monsters, as I said in the hall, and met the god who called himself Bachlach and took his head, and let him take mine.”

  The pain had come over Conal again as Darag was speaking, and he kept his eyes fixed on his cousin’s face, seeing it clearly, the curl of his nostril and the angle of his dark eyes. He had hated him for so long that it was a hard habit to break. He had denied all the good things about him to do it.

  “I knew he might kill me, of course, but I had already seen my death, and what could be worse than that?” Darag went on, not looking at Conal, staring off into the trees. “When he handed me back my head I asked him the way to the third day after I had come up the hill, and he pointed out the path to me. Somewhere on the way down, my head went from being under my arm to being back on my neck again.”

  “I thought—” Conal began, but the word came out on a squeak, so he began again, husking the words. “I thought it was because you did not sleep.”

  This made Darag look more cheerful. “That would be a worthy reason,” he said. “I thought it was because the gods take an interest in me, and because I am not afraid to ask them for help.”

  “That isn’t an unworthy reason,” Conal said reluctantly. Their eyes met. “You won the contest,” Conal conceded, for the first time.

  “I always thought you hated me for things I can’t help,” Darag said.

  There were a lot of easy answers he could have made that would have turned that away. But Conal understood what he meant. He swallowed awkwardly, and suddenly he felt the way he did in his dreams, the way Inis talked about feeling, as if the choice he made next would change worlds. The easy way would be to lie and go on striving futilely against Darag. But the hard way—

  It was only recently that he had realized there were ways of living honorably that did not involve becoming king of Oriel. He had told Emer that there were things more important, but he should have put it like that. She would understand, and he wasn’t sure Darag would. He thought how brave Emer was, to stay in Connat, eating with her mother every night, and every day coming to the ford to fight for them, holding the road at least as much as Darag was. There was no honor in taking the easy way, none at all.

  “I hated you because you always made me second-best,” Conal said, stumbling over the words. “I hated you because you were better than me.”

  “I never hated you,” Darag said. “I just reacted to you hating me. And you are better than everyone else. It’s not surprising you wanted to be best of all.”

  “I don’t think I hate you anymore,” Conal said, not quite sure whether it was true or what it meant, or even that he would really say it until the words were hanging in the air.

  “Are you offering me friendship?” Darag asked, incredulous. There was warmth in his smile. Conal almost … no, Conal did like him for it.

  He could feel the distant warning that the pain was coming again. “Friendship, loyalty, my house to yours,” he said as briefly as he could.

  Darag put out his arms to embrace Conal as kin. Conal moved forward to return the embrace, and as he did, the pain took him, skewering him right thr
ough. If Darag had not held him up, he would have fallen. He breathed hard and did not scream. He was sure the pains had not been this close together even yesterday, not even this morning.

  When he could stand alone, Darag let him go, and they looked at each other warily. They had known each other all their lives, but they had never before been friends.

  “You should go back to camp before Atha comes looking for you,” Conal said.

  “The boy will have told them I held my road,” Darag said. “If she had not held hers, we would know by now. Your relief should be coming soon. I’ll wait here a little while longer with you.”

  26

  (ELENN)

  Elenn was sitting in front of her tent when they brought Laran back. She was staring aimlessly across the camp, but she would have denied to anyone else that she was waiting. She could not deny it to herself, not the fourth time she had done it, the seventh morning of the war.

  She had dressed that morning in her new slate-blue overdress, a wedding gift from Laran. She had bound up her hair with Orlam’s silver-and-pearl circlet. She had kissed her new husband farewell and wished him luck, in front of her parents and half the camp. Then she had taken Beauty to the master of hounds, who was here without his dogs and only too glad to have Beauty to train. She had come back here alone. She could not bear to be with anyone, and the comfort Beauty offered was too painful. After four days of sending husbands off to fight Darag, hope was something she would have liked to feel. Laran ap Noss was a good man and a fine champion, one of the Royal Kin of Muin. She had liked him, and he had adored her. Their night together had been delightful. She had wept silently in the darkness, after he fell asleep, struggling to hold back sobs that might have woken him.

  His charioteer, Semion, drew up in front of the tent. He and another of Laran’s followers lifted Laran’s headless body out and set it down on the ground in front of Elenn.

  Now that she was expected to weep, tears seemed far away. She rose to her feet in one movement and stood grave and still. She reached up and removed the circlet from her hair and ran her hands through it, letting it fall into the disarray of mourning.

  “Bring me water and cloths,” she said. She set the circlet down just inside the tent, where it would stay dry. Then she knelt beside Laran’s body and let her hair fall forward over her face. She gave the traditional three howls. As she did, the tears came, as they had every time. She let them fall unchecked.

  A servant brought a bowl of water and some strips of cloth. Elenn straightened up and pushed back her hair. She did not wipe her eyes. It was good that her tears should be seen. Tears were said to ease the dead on the first part of their journey. She would have done anything she could to make it easier for Laran. It was the least she could do. After all, whether she wanted him to or not, he had died for her.

  She took the bowl, then motioned the servant away. A circle of people had gathered. She wished they would not. She knew this must be done under the sky and before any who would watch, but even so, she would have preferred to be alone. Alone with Laran one last time, if he cared for that now. Dark clouds covered the sun. Soon it would rain, but she could pay no attention to that.

  Semion brought a length of fine white linen, as fine as the blue Elenn was wearing and doubtless also woven by Laran’s mother. Elenn took it and set it down carefully. She wished there had been time for her to weave a winding-sheet herself. Even the poorest farmers wrapped a little strip of woven cloth around their dead, binding it around a wrist or a forehead. However much or little, the cloth was always made by those closest to the dead—a parent, or a spouse, or a child. She wished there had been time for her to know Laran’s mother.

  The charioteer hesitated for a moment, looking at Elenn with grief on his face. “Shall I help?” he asked. Elenn shook her head. She did not want the distraction. She knew what to do. She had always done it alone before.

  She pulled off Laran’s soiled and bloody shift and clout and piled them together behind her. She dipped a clean cloth in the water and began to clean off the blood. The water wasn’t really warm enough, but Elenn didn’t want to call for more. She’d have to talk to someone. She worked steadily, washing him as gently as if he had been alive and able to feel her touch. She remembered her father washing and binding up her scrapes and scratches when she was a child. One day she might wash a baby, or perhaps even wash and bind the wounds of a living husband. She hadn’t found the death wound yet. Darag had taken his head and his armor, as usual. She wished she could ransom the head, all her husbands’ heads. She had asked Maga about it, but her mother had said that she had nothing Darag wanted.

  It took hours before Laran was clean. The rain came long before she had finished, but she worked on. Without a head, she could not possibly remove all the blood, but she had done her best and he would not come before the Lord of the Dead disgracefully dirty. She commended him to as many gods as she could, calling out loudly and holding up her hands in the rain. She had no idea whether any of them heard or cared. She doubted it. When she bent to wrap him in the linen, she felt despair. If any gods paid attention to people, they were away on the roads, helping Darag and Atha hold off the might of the island and kill her husbands. None of them cared for the mourning cries of Elenn ap Allel, alone in the center of the camp of Connat. All the same, she sewed up the linen in the ritual way and whispered a last prayer to the merciful Queen of the Dead. She pricked her finger with the needle and blotted the blood carefully onto the last damp stitches. Now he was ready to have his body burned and his name given back in the Hymn of Return at sunset.

  She tucked the needle back into her sleeve. She bent forward over his body for one last moment, then straightened up and stretched, alone in a little circle of quiet among the waiting people. It was only afternoon yet, there was all the rest of the day to live through before the next. The rain had stopped and the clouds were scudding fast across the sky.

  Semion came forward and bowed. “I shall take him now,” he said. Elenn bowed in return. Semion’s face was cold as he lifted the burden into the chariot one last time. Elenn wondered if he hated her for causing Laran’s death. They had been very close. Last night, Semion had eaten with them, smiling and congratulating them. All her husbands and their charioteers were sure they would be different, would be the ones who would kill Darag and live on past the fight at the ford. She wondered what would happen when she stopped being able to pretend to believe them.

  She looked at the crowd then, expecting to see her mother come with news of who she must marry tonight. But Maga wasn’t among the watchers today. The person who came forward as Semion took Laran’s body away was Ferdia’s father, Cethern of Lagin. He was a man in vigorous middle age, broadly built like his son and dressed as a king in red and green. Several other people also stepped forward, but he raised a hand to bar their way. “I have business with the Lady Elenn that won’t wait,” he said, frowning at them until they gave way and retreated before his authority.

  “May I sit down?” he asked politely, coming forward. The people waiting moved farther away. Some of them left altogether.

  Elenn raised her chin, confused. She had never had much conversation with Cethern, although he had been at Cruachan for a month before the war began. She could not think what his business with her could be, unless possibly he had come to speak for his son. Her heart gave a great leap, and then a lurch as she understood what it would mean. “You are welcome, sir,” she said automatically. “Can I offer you refreshment?”

  Cethern sat down on the drier grass where the tent had partly sheltered it. “Not now, thank you,” he said quietly, so only she could hear. “You must fast until sunset, and I would not eat before you.”

  Elenn smiled, hiding her feelings. She moved Laran’s bloody clothes into the tent, out of the way for now. Then she settled herself next to him on the cushion she had used before, straightening her skirts carefully. The leather of the cushion was wet. “So, why do you honor me with your company?” she
asked.

  He looked at her shrewdly and shook his head, gesturing to the people around them. Ap Dair the Poet was among them now. He smiled at Elenn as their eyes met. “This is about as private as we can get without going out of camp, which there isn’t time for. And I’m sorry, but there’s no polite way to say this. Your mother wants my son to marry you. I’m against it, not for any harm you’ve done me or anything against you yourself at all. You’re beautiful enough in all truth, but I don’t like this business you and your mother have been doing between you. The last thing I want is for my son to get killed tomorrow morning because your mother is holding you out as a prize in a game and he’s gone daft enough to try to win you.”

  “Neither do I,” Elenn said, and to her dismay felt her voice quaver in the middle. The thought of Ferdia brought before her dead and headless was unbearable. She swallowed hard to avoid tears. “Not in the least. Do you think I like having my husbands brought before me cold and dead? Can’t you see it would be ninety times worse if it were Ferdia?”

  “So it’s true what your mother says?”

  “What does she say?” Elenn asked, getting her voice back under control.

  “She tells me you are in love with my son. She says he is in love with you, too, and gave you a dog in pledge of this before you both left Ardmachan. Is this true, or one of her fabulations that she has put together to ensnare me? And if it is true, how is it that you have allowed yourself to be married off to four other men night after night and seen them each killed in the morning? Are you the most heartless woman in Tir Isarnagiri, as well as the most beautiful?”

  Elenn looked down, knowing her cheeks were heating with anger and embarrassment. How she had gloried in being called one of the three most beautiful women in Tir Isarnagiri, and how it hurt now to be called the most beautiful. “I am not heartless,” she said quietly, keeping control of her voice only with an effort. “And what my mother says is true. I love Ferdia, and he gave me a dog. The dog is with the master of hounds now, but you may have seen her with me.”