Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (5 page)

           
"Your father once knelt to
me," he said in a perfect contentment. He did not gloat. I think he did
not need to. "Did he never tell you?" A nod of his head as I held my
silence; it was the least I owed my father. "No, he would never say it;
not to you, but it is true. And now his son as well." Strahan paused.
"His Homanan son; the Cheysuli would never do it."

           
So easily he reached into my soul
and touched that aspect of my character which I hated. Not my brother.

           
Never Ian. So—myself, for resenting
the gifts Ian—and others—claimed. Gifts I should claim myself.

           
I wrenched myself from my unintended
posture of obeisance. A small thing, to face the sorcerer standing, but the
beginnings of rebellion. It was the least I would offer him.

           
"State your business," I
said flatly. I have learned something of royal impatience from my father, who
hates the demands of diplomacy. Too often he is trapped by endless petitioners.

           
Strahan's eyes narrowed a trifle.
"You are betrothed to your cousin, Gisella of Atvia: do not wed the
girl."

           
Stunned, I waited for something
more. And when he offered nothing, I laughed. It was unintended. The situation
hardly warranted levity, but he caught me so off-guard there was nothing else I
could do.

           
I laughed at him. And Strahan did
not like it.

           
"You fool," he snapped.
"I could grind you into the mud before you could utter a word, and never
bestir myself."

           
Suddenly, he was no longer so
awe-inspiring. I had touched a nerve. "Do it," I challenged,
emboldened by his unexpected vulnerability. "What better way of keeping me
from wedding my Atvian cousin?"

           
Something hurled me flat against the
ground, pinning me on my back. Half-swallowed in mud, I lay there, staring up
at the angry sorcerer. "Drown," he said between clenched teeth.
"Drown in all this mud!"

           
I could not move. I felt the ground
shift beneath my flattened body. It heaved itself up from under me, lapped over
my limbs and began to inch up my torso. I felt it in my ears; at the comers of
my eyes.

           
But even as I drowned, I was aware
of a nagging question. Why did it matter to Strahan if I wed Gisella or not?

           
The mud was at my mouth. My body was
nearly swallowed whole. I felt the first finger reaching into my nostrils. I
shouted, but my mouth filled with the mud.

           
Drowning—

           
Insanely, I did not think of dying
for itself. I thought instead of disappointing others by the helplessness of my
dying. Ah gods, not like this—Carillon would never die like this—in such
futility.

           
Abruptly, the rune winked out.
Darkness filled my head.

           
I thought it was the mud. I thought
it might be death.

           
And then I realized that though I
lay flat on my back in the street, I was free of the drowning mud.

           
I lay there. All was silence, except
for my ragged breathing. The abrupt disappearance of the brilliant rune left my
eyes mostly blinded; I saw nothing, not even the tight from nearby dwellings.
Only darkness.

           
I twisted. Thrust one shaking hand
into the ooze and slowly pushed myself up. Mud clung to me from head to toe,
but it no longer threatened to drown me. I was weary unto death, as if all the
strength had been sucked from me. I was cold, wet, filthy, stinking of my fear
. . . and angry that I was so inconsequential a foe for the Ihlini.

           
"Why should I do it?"
Strahan asked. "Why should I trouble myself with you?"

           
I twitched. Spun again to face him.
I had believed myself atone; that Strahan had gone into the darkness.

           
And then I saw the ghostly
luminescence of his face in the light of the quarter moon, and I realized the
clouds had broken at last.

           
I spat out mud. My reprieve made me
momentarily brave. "I think I understand, Ihlini. If I wed Gisella and get
sons on her, I have added yet another link to the chain. Another yarn to the
tapestry of the Firstborn." A muscle jumped once in his cheek. "Aye,
that is it! Atvian blood mixed with that of Homana, Solinde and the Cheysuli
brings us decidedly closer to fulfilling the prophecy." Suddenly, I
laughed; I understood it at last. "By keeping me from wedding Gisella you
break the link before it is truly forged."

           
"Wed her," he said
sharply, abruptly changing course. "Wed the Atvian girl; I do not care.
One day you will come to me; I invite you now to do it." His odd eyes
narrowed a little. "If you have sons, I will make them mine. I will take
them . . . but I think you will never get sons upon Gisella because the others
will see you dead."

           
"Others?" I could not help
the blurted question. "Who but you would wish me dead?"

           
It was Strahan's turn to laugh.
"Has your father taught you nothing? Do they keep you in ignorance,
thinking to ward your pride? Not any easy thing to know, is it, that you are
the center of the storm." Silver glinted at his single ear. "Better
to ask: who would not wish you dead."

           
"Not—?" I whispered
hollowly, as if I were a puppet and he the puppetmaster.

           
Strahan pursed his lips in
consideration. Black brows rose below the circlet. "Or, if not dead ... at
least replaced by another."

           
Replaced. Me? But it was not
possible. I was the Prince of Homana, legitimate son of Donal the Mujhar and
Aislinn the Queen, Carillon's daughter. The proper blood was in my veins. There
were no other legitimate children; the Queen was barren, the physicians said.

           
There was and always would be only
me. How could they think to replace me, and—by the gods!—with whom?

           
One hand parted the darkness and
filled it with light again. "Shall I prophesy for you, my lord
prince?" asked the compelling tone. "Shall I show you what will come
to be, no matter how hard you try to rewrite what the gods themselves have
written?"

           
He did not wait for my answer. He
lifted the hand again and lent it the fluid, eloquent language of brush against
living canvas. I saw the fingers move, forming shapes amidst the darkness.

           
Colors poured out from Strahan's
fingertips; argent purple, deepest lavender, palest silver lilac. And the lurid
red of fresh-spilled blood.

           
He painted a picture of living
flame: a rampant

           
Homanan lion and a compact Cheysuli
warbow. All rich in detail, even to the curling tongue of the gape-mouthed lion
and the ornamentation of the warbow. They hung against the air as if they
waited. As if I had only to pluck the bow from the darkness and loose an arrow
at the lion.

           
I stared. Swallowed hard. There were
no words in my mouth. All I knew was a sense of awed, awful discovery: the
picture he painted was a true one, regardless that the artist was enemy.

           
"The Homanans want no Cheysuli
shapechanger on the throne," Strahan said above the hissing of the flame.

           
"The Cheysuli want no unblessed
Homanan on the throne.

           
But Donal's son is both and neither;
what do you think will happen?" The parti-colored eyes were eerie in the
light of the glowing shapes. "Look to your people, Niall," he said.
So softly, he spoke; so gentle was his tone.

           
"Look to your friends . . .
your enemies . . . your kin—lest they form an alliance against you.”

           
Smoothly, he bled together the
shapes of bow and

           
Hon. And out of the name I saw born
the face of my brother—and the face I knew as my own.

           
"I think I need not trouble
myself with you," Strahan said in quiet satisfaction. "I will let the
others do it for me."

           
"You should have come to me
first." She had both temper and tongue to complement the red-gold
brilliance of her hair. "Do you know how I have worried since that horse
returned without you?"

           
That horse had indeed returned
(without me, of course) and my absence had set the palace into an uproar.
Rather, my lady mother had. Most of the Mujharan Guard had been stripped from
better duty and sent out looking for me, as if I were a foolish, spoiled child
gone wandering in the streets. And they had found me, some of them, just as I
approached the gates of Homana-Mujhar. It had been a humiliating experience
trying to explain how my horse and I had come to be separated. Especially since
I could say nothing of Strahan's presence in the city. Not to them. Not at
once. Not until I faced my father.

           
But now, looking at my mother's pale
face, I knew it had been worse than humiliating for her. Always she worried.
Always she fretted, saying Ian alone was not enough to guard me against
misfortune. This would give her fuel for the fire.

           
Deep down, I was touched she cared
so much, knowing if arose out of insecurity because she had borne only a single
son, but mostly I was resentful. Oh, aye, she meant well by it, but there were
times the weight she placed upon me was nearly too much to bear.

           
You may not be his son, she often
said, but you bear his blood, his bone, even his flesh. Have you not looked in
the silver plate?

           
Oh aye, I had, many times. And each
time I saw the same thing: a crude vessel lacking luster, lacking polish.

           
But no one saw the tarnish because
it was overlaid with the shining patina of Carillon.

           
Even now she gave me no time to
explain; to say a word to my father as he came into my chamber and shut the
heavy door.

           
And so I let the resentment speak
for me. "Would you have me remain in my befouled state, then? Look at me!”
I had gotten as far as shedding muddy boots, soaked doublet; I need her in
filthy leather leggings and damp linen shirt. Thin rivulets of muddied water
ran down to stain toe carpeted floor.

           
"Niall." That from my
father; that only. But it was more than enough.

           
I looked back at my mother's taut
face. "I am sorry," I told her contritely, meaning it. "But I
wanted to bathe and change first, before I came to you.”

           
“It could have waited. I have seen
men in worse conditions, and they were not my son." The strain snowed at
the corners of eyes and mouth. She was still beautiful in a way harpers and
poets had tried to describe for years, but ft was a fragile, brittle beauty, as
if she might break with the weight of who and what she was. Aislinn of Homana,
daughter of Carillon; once a princess, now a queen, and the mother of her
beloved father's grandson.

           
I think she judged herself solely by
the fact she had borne Carillon an heir. A true heir, that is; a man with much
of his blood, not a Cheysuli warrior handpicked because Carillon had no choice.
No, my mother did not view herself as woman, wife, mother or queen. Merely as a
means to perpetuate her father's growing legend.

           
The resentment died as I looked at
her. I could not name what rose to take its place, for there was no single
emotion. Just a jumble of them, tangled up together like threads of a tapestry;
the back side, not we front, with none of the pattern showing.

           
I released a breath all at once.
"I am well. Only wet and dirty. And more than a little hungry." I
looked at my father, longing to tell him at once of my confrontation with
Strahan. But I would not so long as my mother was in the room. I saw no good in
giving her yet another thing to fret about.

           
"Ian?" he asked.

           
I shrugged, turning away to strip out
of my clammy skin. "At Clankeep. I think he will stay the night." I
heard the servants in the antechamber, ruling up the cask-tub with hot, scented
water. Oil of cloves, from the smell of it.

           
"Niall—“ It was my mother
again, moving toward me, but she did not finish. My father put his hands on her
shoulders and turned her away from me. He did it gently enough, but I saw the
subtle insistence in his grasp.

           
"Leave him to me, Aislinn. We
have guests to entertain."

           
Womanlike, she instantly put a hand
to the knot of red-gold hair coiled at her neck to tend her appearance.

           
There was no need. She was
immaculate, as always. The bright hair, as yet undulled by her thirty-six
years, was contained in a pearl-studded net of golden wire. Her velvet gown was
plain white, unadorned save for the beaded golden girdle and the gold torque at
her throat.

           
My father's bride-gift to her some
twenty years before.

           
"So we do." Her voice was
flat, almost colorless. "But I wonder that you choose to host them at
all."

           
"Kings do what kings must
do." I heard an edge in my father's voice as well. "We are at peace
with Atvia, Aislinn; let us not break the alliance with discourtesy."

           
Her eyes flicked back to me. Great
gray eyes, long-lidded and somnolent. Electra's eyes, they said, recalling the
mother's beauty. But in conjuring Electra's name they also conjured Tynstar's.

           
"This concerns you as well,
Niall," she said abruptly.

           
"More so than us, when it comes
to that. And if your father does not tell you the whole of it, come to me. I
will."

           
The tension between them was
palpable. I looked from mother to father, but his face was masked to me. Well,
I could wait all night. One thing he had bequeathed to me was more than my
share of stubbornness.

           
My mother went to the door and
tugged it open before either my father or I could aid her. She lifted heavy
skirts and swept out of the door at once, leaving me to shut it and face my
father alone at last.

           
My father. The Mujhar of Homana he
was, but more and less than that to me. He was a Cheysuli warrior.

           
A son looking upon his father rarely
sees the man, he sees the parent. The man who sired him, not the individual- I
was no different. Day in, day out I saw him, and yet I did not. I saw what I
was accustomed to seeing; what the son saw in the father, the king, the
warrior. Too often I did not see the man.

           
Nor did I really know him.

           
Now, I looked. I saw the face that
had helped mold my own, and yet showed nothing of that molding. The bones were
characteristically angular, hard, almost sharp; even in light-skinned Cheysuli,
the heritage is obvious in the shape of the bones beneath the flesh. The
responsibilities of a Mujhar and a warrior dedicated to his tahlmorra had
incised lines between black brows, fanned creases from yellow eyes, deepened
brackets beside the blade-straight nose. These was silver in his hair, pale as
winter frost, but only a little; we age early only in that respect, and with
infinite grace.

           
For the first time in a very long
time I looked at the scars in his throat and recalled how Strahan had once
tried to slay my father by setting a demon-hawk on him.

           
Sakti, her name was, and she had set
her talons true, even as she died. But my father had not, thanks to Finn, my
kinsman, and the gods who gave us the earth magic.

           
Earth magic. Another thing I lacked.

           
He was tall, my father, but not so
tall as I, with all of Carillon's bulk. He lacked my weight, though no one
would name him a small man; Cheysuli males rarely measure less than six feet,
and he was three fingers taller yet. He was certainly more graceful than I,
being more subtle in his movements. I wondered if that total ease of movement
came with the race or age. The gods knew I had yet to discover it.

           
Beneath lowered lids, as I began to
undress, I watched my father, and wondered how he had felt as Carillon
bequeathed him the Lion Throne. I wondered what he had thought, knowing so much
of Cheysuli tradition would have to be altered to fit the prophecy. To fit him:
the first Cheysuli Mujhar in four hundred years.

           
I would be the second.

           
He said nothing of my mother to me.
A private man, my father, though open enough about some things. Just—not about
what I wanted to hear.

           
"Well?" That said, he
waited.

           
I stripped out of my leggings and
walked naked into the antechamber. Steam rose from the cask. The scent of cloves
drifted into the air. And then I waved away the servants so my father and I
could discuss things privately.

           
I considered telling him the whole
of it, from the beginning of the hunt to my arrival, on foot, at Homana-Mujhar.
But that would be unnecessarily perverse of me, and I thought the circumstances
warranted more seriousness. So I took a shortcut straight to the matter of most
importance to us both.

           
"I met a man tonight," I
began. "A stranger, at least to me. But he had a message meant for the
Prince of Homana." I took up the soap and began to lather my muddy skin.
"He said I was not to wed my Atvian cousin."

           
My father's motion to hook a stool
over with one foot was arrested in mid-reach. He did not sit down at all but
faced me squarely, an expression of astonishment mingled with genuine
bafflement on his face.

           
After a moment of startled
speculation, he frowned.

           
"How odd, that such a thing is
said today."

           
I dipped under the water to soak my
hair; came up with water streaming down my face. "Why only odd
today?" I spat out soapy water and grimaced at the taste.

           
"Because the Atvians we host
tonight are here upon business concerning the betrothal." This time he
finished hooking the stool over and sat down. "It seems Alaric has decided
it is time the betrothal became a marriage."

           
I stared at him. The scent of cloves
filled my nostrils.

           
Water still ran down my face. But I
did not try to wipe it away. "Now?"

           
"As soon as can be." He
sighed, stretching out long legs. "Alaric and I made an agreement nearly
twenty years ago. He has every right to expect that agreement to be
honored."

           
His tone was a trifle dry. My father
has no particular liking for Atvians, having fought them in the war; he has
less affection for Alaric, the Lord of Atvia himself. For one, Alaric's brother
had slain Carillon, making my father Mujhar. And Alaric himself, upon swearing
fealty to Donal of Homana, had demanded my father's sister in marriage as a
means to seal the alliance. Though my father had hated the idea, he had agreed
at last because, in service to the prophecy of the Firstborn, he saw no other
way of linking the proper bloodlines.

           
And to link them further, he had
declared his firstborn son would wed the firstborn daughter of Bronwyn and
Alaric.

           
Oh, aye, Alaric got the match he
wanted. He even got the daughter, called Gisella. But no other. For Bronwyn
died while birthing my half-Cheysuli cousin.

           
I looked at my father's face. He is
a solemn man, the Mujhar, not much given to impulsiveness or high spirits.

           
Once he might have been different,
but responsibilities, I am told, can often change even the most ebullient of
men. The gods knew he had known more of them than most, my father. He had had
mother, father, uncle and Mujhar all stripped from him, in the name of the
prophecy. In the name of Ihlini treachery.

           
Lir-gold shone on his bare arms. He
was Mujhar of Homana, but he did not forsake his Cheysuli customs, even in
apparel. Certain occasions warranted he put on Homanan dress, but mostly he
wore the leathers of his race.

           
Our race.

           
I slid down against the curved wood
of the cask and flipped the soap into the water. "Well, I expected the
marriage to be made one day. You never hid it from me, my tahlmorra." I
grinned; it was an old joke between us.