Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (29 page)

           
"The Lion of Homana." I
shook my head. "I think what disturbs me most, now that I begin to see it
more clearly, is that they have been so unfair to you. Always it is Carillon.
Even from my jehana. It is so easy for everyone to see him when they look at
me. And yet—they overlook that it was you who sired me. It is thoughts and
memories of you I should invoke."

           
He laughed a little, showing the
face I knew better as Ian's, albeit older than my brother's. "Aye. It
brightens a man's pride to hear the son compared to him—when the comparison is
favorable." He nodded. "But I think the dye has been set, Niall. It
is Ian who reminds them of me, and you who reminds them of Carillon."

           
I grimaced wryly. "Well, I
think it no longer matters. I think—"

           
"—I think it is time we spoke
of business and set aside self-examinations." He rose, stepped to me and
caught my arm as I raised it. “I will not belabor it, Niall. You should never
nave left as you did."

           
I was up, brushing at my breeches.
"No, but—"

           
"I want no excuses; what is
done is done. But I expect you to accept more responsibility in the
future."

           
"Jehan—"

           
"We are at war, Niall," he
said plainly, as if I could not understand. "Strahan raises an army in Solinde.
And so does the bastard, here." He sighed and scraped the hair back from
his face, leaving it bare and bleak. "Everyone thought you dead. And so I
had to contend with a Homanan Council who bestirred themselves to consider the
possibility of naming the bastard to your place—they would sooner have Carillon's
bastard in place of mine—and a Cheysuli Clan Council who spoke of lan as your
successor, citing the prophecy." He shut his eyes a moment. "Gods, I
feel like I have been juggling unbalanced knives . . . Aislinn sick to death
with worry—this plague that begins to spread—trying to placate hostile
councils—and, of course, there is Strahan. Gods, there is always Strahan."

           
Abruptly he turned away, showing
only his back to me. His hands were on his hips, head bowed; he looked more
disgusted than anything else, but I thought perhaps he was only weary. Weary of
all the burdens Carillon had bequeathed to him.

           
And that he will bequeath to me.

           
"Niall." He turned back.
"There is yet another thing. Perhaps the most important—the gods know it
turned the councils upside down." He smiled. "Suddenly they could no
longer speak of which bastard would inherit, but who to name as regent for the
Prince of Homana's heir."

           
"The Prince of
Homana's—heir?" I stared. "Gisella bore the child? A son?"

           
"Two," he said succinctly.

           
"Two?"

           
"Both boys." He grinned.
"And so I am made a grandsire."

           
"Both boys," I echoed in a
whisper. "By the gods, I have an heir." And then I looked at him more
sharply.

           
"Gisella?"

           
His grin faded. "She is well...
but no different from before."

           
"No," I agreed grimly,
"it is a permanent affliction."

           
And then, unable to dwell on Gisella
in the face of such news, I began to smile again. "Two boys! How will I
ever tell them apart?"

           
"It is possible even now. But I
will let you see for yourself." He reached out and clasped my arm.
"No more delays, Niall. We must go back to Homana-Mujhar."

           
“No—jehan. ..." I thought of the
two boys at Homana-Mujhar, and the choice suddenly became much harder.

           
Gods, what do I do?

           
"No?" my father asked in
amazement. "No?"

           
“No,” I tried to pull away.
"I—cannot. Not yet."

           
"Cannot." He swung me
around to face him. "Niall, my patience is wearing thin."

           
"So was mine!" I cried.
"Why do you think I left Mujhara? Because I could not wait any
longer!"

           
"Niall, I cannot express to you
how precarious is our position at the moment. - - nor my surprise that you can
so easily dismiss two newborn sons."

           
"I do not dismiss," I said
curtly. "Gods, jehan, I could not. But—I need to stay. I must. There is a
thing I have to do—"

           
"What thing is more important
than the security of your claim to the Lion Throne?" He was angry, very
angry; I wanted to look away and could not. "Do you understand what I have
told you, Niall? As Strahan assembles another army in Solinde, the bastard
assembles one here. There is plague all through the north, creeping down even
now from the Wastes into the rest of Homana. And you have the audacity to tell
me you cannot come to Homana-Mujhar?"

           
My answer was to summon Serri to me.
I heard his response within the link, and even as I turned the wolf came
running, running to meet me. His ears lay back along his skull and his mouth
gaped open, allowing the tongue to loll. The black-smudged tail stood out
behind him like a pennon in the wind. How he ran, my magnificent lir; how he
ran to answer my call.

           
I dropped to one knee and caught him
in my arms. He snugged his muzzle against my neck and muttered into my flesh
and beard, forgoing the link to express his feelings aloud. And then I twisted
my head to look up at my astonished father. "I left because I had to. I
had to find my lir. And now I stay because I have to, so I can be fully
acknowledged a warrior—a Cheysuli—before my clan."

           
He said nothing. He did not have to.
All the world was in his eyes.

           
“When—"

           
"Three days," he said
quietly. "I'toshaa-ni, for the cleansing, and then the Ceremony of
Honors." He swallowed heavily. "For this, I can give you three days.
I wish I could give you three years."

           
And then he walked away.

           
But not before I saw the tears of
pride and thankfulness in his eyes.

           
Itoshaa-ni.

           
It is a mystery to most men because
the Cheysuli keep it that way, desiring no profanation. It has always been a
mystery to me, not because I am not Cheysuli, but because it is a highly
personal thing, an expression of the intense need for the cleansing of flesh,
spirit, mind, heart and soul.

           
For Ian, the need had come upon him
twice: once, during the rituals associated with the Ceremony of Honors; again,
when he had been so soiled by Lillith's Ihlini sorcery. He did not speak of his
experiences to me, saying only that I would be born out of smoke and sweat and
pain to be a man again, new-made, as no other man can be. Certainly not a
Homanan.

           
At dawn, I went out of Clankeep into
the forest.

           
There I painstakingly built a
shelter out of saplings, binding them with vines and sealing the cracks with
leaves until the shelter was a hummock against the ground, closed to the world
save for the tiny entrance.

           
I took stones from the ground and
built a firecairn in the center of the shelter. And when it was made I lighted
a fire and fed it with herbs the shar tahl had given me.

           
The smoke made me cough- The stench
made my eyes water.

           
I shaved. Bare-faced, I stripped. My
clothing I left in a pile outside the door; naked, lirless, alone, I sat down
beside the fire and let the smoke form a shroud around my body.

           
I waited.

           
When at last the sweat ran down my
flesh and the tears ran out of my eyes, I began to see a reason for the ritual of
cleansing. For three days I would fast, until there was nothing left in my
body; until the sweat cleansed the impurities from my flesh; until I was a
new-made man, lacking the soil of the former life.

           
I dreamed of Carillon. Though I
remained in the shelter I had built, a part of me broke free. It left behind
the shelter and the fasting and the smoke and went elsewhere, to Homana-Mufhar;
to the Great Hall, where I sat in the Lion Throne. I stared down the length of
the empty hall and saw it was not empty at all; that a man approached, and I
knew him.

           
Carillon.

           
I knew it was him, though I had
never seen him. Because he looked like me.

           
He was—old. Though he stood rigidly
straight, I saw how his shoulders hunched a little; how his spine seemed to
pain him. And I saw the hands, so twisted, so wracked, so ruined. But mostly I
saw the spirit of the man, because its intensity was such that it set the hall
ablaze.

           
"Grandsire," I said.
"You are dead. How can you come to me?"

           
"I come to you because I am a
part of you, as I am a part of your mother, your sons, the children yet to
come. I am in them as much as I am in you, and so it will ever be. You can rid
yourself of me no more than you can shed your flesh and become another man."

           
"Not another man," I
agreed, "but an animal. I am Cheysuli, grandsire."

           
"And in animal form, do you
become someone who is not Niall?"

           
I frowned at him. "No,
grandsire—of course not. I am still myself."

           
He smiled. And then the shadows
swallowed him, and I was back in my smoky shelter.

           
On the second day, naked, lirless,
alone, with only a snare and a knife to my name, I caught and slew a young
ruddy-colored wolf. He fought his death. He fought me.

           
He left weals upon my flesh and
anguish in my heart, thinking of Serri, but I slew him. And then I bathed in
the blood and ate the still-warm heart, to vanquish that portion of myself that
might be suborned by the freedom of the fir-shape.

           
I dreamed of Ceinn. He stood before
me as I sat upon the Lion Throne of Homana and told me to get out of it; that I
was unworthy because I lacked the lir-gifts; because I was not a proper
Cheysuli. He told me I was forgotten by the gods and therefore no part of the
prophecy; my abdication would be a blessing to all the folk of Homana, Cheysuli
and Homanan alike.

           
I listened. I waited. And when he
was done reciting the things the shar tahls had told him since birth, even as
they had told me, I rose and stepped away from the Lion, relinquishing the
throne. I gave it over to Ceinn willingly.

           
And as he stepped forward, intent on
claiming it himself, I saw the wooden lion's head move.

           
The jaws widened, waiting. I tried
to cry out, to tell him no; to say the Lion would swallow him-but he did not
hear; he did not choose to hear. And so as Ceinn sat down upon the Lion Throne
of Homana, the gaping jaws closed over his skull and crushed it.

           
On the third day I bathed in an
isolated pool and washed the blood from my flesh. With handfuls of sand I
scoured the grime and smoke-stench from my body, raising blood into the
wolf-wounds, and then I washed it off with clean, cool water. And at last,
clean within and without, I put on the fresh leathers someone had left outside
the shelter and went back to Clankeep a new-made man, born again of
i'toshaa-ni.

           
In the center of the clan pavilion,
I knelt on the hide of a spotted mountain cat. Around me sat ranks of warriors
and their women—not all of them, because the pavilion was no longer large
enough—but those members of Clan Council, the ruling body of the Cheysuli.

           
Once, it was believed there was only
a single clan remaining in all of Homana, because of Shaine's qu'mahlin.

           
My royal Homanan ancestor had done
his best to rid the realm of every Cheysuli by ordering all of them slain.

           
The qu'mahlin had failed, thank the
gods, but only after thirty years of methodical elimination. And mostly because
Carillon had stopped it once he had reclaimed the Lion Throne from Bellam of
Solinde. In those days an entire clan would have filled only half of the
pavilion; now most of the people had to remain outside.

           
It was evening. Only the fire in the
cairn before me lighted the pavilion, throwing odd illumination over the faces
of the warriors and the women. Looking at them, I thought of the days of the
Firstborn, when all men and women of the clans claimed the ability to assume lir-shape.
But because we had become so blood-bred, so isolated in our insularity and
arrogance, the gifts had begun to weaken. Only through the fulfillment of the
prophecy would we reclaim the power that we once took for granted.

           
So many faces. Nearly all of them
characteristically dark, angular, polished bronze by the sun of Homana.

           
Black hair, yellow eyes, so much
gold in ears, at throats, on arms and hips and wrists. So much strength; why
was it the people of other realms desired to break that strength?

           
Why did the Homanans desire it?

           
Not all, Serri said. Many, still,
because it is natural for the earth magic to frighten those who do not claim
it, do not know if... but not all. Carillon began the change in common opinion.
Donal furthers it. And you will further it even more.

           
He lay beside me on the edges of the
pelt. I moved hand from lap and buried it in Serri's lush pelt. In so short a
time he had become my world, my other self; I wondered how I had managed to
live before we had found one another. How I had functioned without my lir.

           
Much of the ceremony had already
been concluded.

           
But there remained the most
important part: the bestowing of the lir-gold to signify I was a warrior of the
clan, a man grown, a Cheysuli in place of a lirless, soulless boy.

           
Rylan himself sat before me on the
other side of the cairn. The firelight made his face a mask of black and
bronze, stark in the harsh shadows, but smiling. And as he smiled, he spoke.

           
"Before all the old gods of the
Cheysuli, I as clan-leader bear witness that you have sought and found a lir
according to the customs of our people. That you and the lir have linked as a
lir and warrior must link, to make the magic whole. And I bear witness that
through this link the lir has accepted you in heart and soul and mind as well
as spirit, as you have accepted him."

           
He waited. I inclined my head in
affirmation.

           
"The lir-bond is for life.
While you live, the lir lives.

           
But should your life be taken from
you within the natural lifespan of the lir, regardless of the manner, the lir
shall be released from the bond to return to the freedom of the forests, no
longer bound to the body that once was a Cheysuli warrior."

           
Again, I nodded.

           
"Should the lir die in battle
or in sickness or by other unknown causes, you will be made soulless, empty,
unwhole, and you will give up your name as a Cheysuli warrior to seek an ending
however you may find it, in the death-ritual of the clan, unarmed and alone
among the beasts of the forests."

           
I had tasted lirlessness once
already. I did not hesitate to accept the consequences.

           
Rylan's eyes held mine steadily.
"For you, I must be very clear: the lir-bond requires payment, even from
those who rule. You will be two men, warrior and Mujhar, but the bond will
constrain you still. Should Serri die, my lord, you will be required to
renounce the Lion and go alone among the beasts.”

           
I thought suddenly of
Duncan
, my other grandsire, who had not ruled
because he had helped to win Carillon the Lion. He had been clan-leader even as
Rylan was, required to perform the rituals of the Ceremony of Honors as Rylan
did now for me. Aye, I thought of Duncan, my long-dead grandsire, who had lost
a lir and lost his life, giving it over willingly even though he also gave up
the leadership of the Cheysuli.

           
And I thought of my father, who, too
young, had accepted the responsibilities of the lir-bond before he had known he
would be Mujhar.

           
And I thought: It is not a thing
done lightly.

           
No, Serri agreed, and no man will
force you to it.

           
I drew in a deep breath and nodded
to Rylan. "y'Ja'hfd, clan-leader. Sa'hai-na." I nodded again. "I
accept. The price is willingly accepted,"

           
"Ru'shalla-tu," he said
quietly. May it be so. Quietly he moved aside and made way for the shar tahl,
who carried a roll of bleached-white deerskin in his arms. He was Arlen; not
young, not old, but the most high of all the clan members, being a man totally
dedicated to serving the prophecy and the histories of the Cheysuli.

           
Arlen knelt before the cairn and
carefully unrolled the deerskin, making certain it did not wrinkle or tangle
itself. Hands smoothed it efficiently; he must have done this so many times,
too many times, and yet he made no indication he was weary of the task. He
merely did it.

           
And by doing it, he made me a place
in my clan.

           
"One day a man of all blood
shall unite, in peace, four warring realms and two magic races." A finger
touched the rune-signs painted on the supple hide. "Already we begin to
approach completion, the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Firstborn,
so:" He touched a faded green rune. "Here is Hale, liege man to Shaine
the Mujhar, and jehan to a daughter got on Shaine's Homanan daughter."

           
Arlen glanced briefly at me, as if
to be certain I followed him; I did. I could not take my eyes from the finger
that so carefully showed me my heritage.

           
He touched another rune, this one
red, of a different shape. "Here is
Duncan
, born of the line of the Old Mujhars, in
the days before we gave the Lion to the Homanans. Here is Carillon, born of
Shaine's brother, harani to the Mujhar, and who took back the Lion from me
enemy." The finger moved yet again. "And here is Alix, daughter of
Hale and Lindir, who bore a son to Duncan: Donal, who accepted the Lion from
Carillon, and who sired a son on Carillon's half-Solindish daughter."