Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 05 (16 page)

           
"The Lion shall have a Homanan
Mujhar again . . ."

           
Brennan writhed; they held him down.
"I am Homanan!" he shouted. "I am the Lion's get!" And he
thought in sudden, ice-cold clarity. But if they succeed—if I am slain—there is
still my rujho . . . Hart can be Mujhar. . .

           
And the prophecy perpetuated.

           
Jarek still spoke, softly, calmly,
as if he had practiced it many times, "Elek's death shall be avenged ...
his memory replenished in the blood of his royal murderer's son."

           
Brennan cursed them all, but they
understood none of it. They did not know the Old Tongue.

           
"Carillon's son shall have the
Lion—"

           
"I am Carillon's
great-grandson!"

           
"—and the Lion shall know the
proper line again, the gods-blessed Homanan line. . . ." Jarek's smile was
odd.

           
And then he began to laugh, but the
laughter was odder yet.

           
Brennan rolled his head against the
stone. "Fools and madmen, all—"

           
Grinning, Jarek gave the order.
"Strip him of his armbands."

           
He was stripped.

           
"Fetch the cat."

           
Sleeta—Sleeta—Sleeta—

           
Jarek stepped close. Torchlight
glinted off the knife.

           
"Your earring, my lord."
And touched blade to ear as he took the lobe into his hand and stretched it
down, as if he meant to cut the earring free.

           
Brennan spat at him. "In the
name of the sun and the wind and the rivers, the earth and the sky and the
seas—"

           
Jarek laughed.

           
"—name of the Hunter, the
Weaver, the Cripple—"

           
And Jarek laughed.

           
"—I curse you, Jarek son of
Elek—I curse you to die the death of a lirless man, beneath the jaws and claws
of a beast— "

           
Jarek bent close, still laughing,
and bared his teeth in a mocking challenge. "Levy all the curses you desire
on Jarek, son of Elek, my lord. They will not touch me."

           
His eyes were black in the whipping
torches, but the rims were a clear, eerie gold. "What I do, I do in the
name of Asar-Suti, and he holds precedence over all your petty Cheysuli
gods!"

           
"Ihlini!" Brennan cried.

           
"Now!" Jarek roared,
overriding Brennan's shout.

           
Now, Sleeta echoed, as the lir-link
blazed to life.

           
Brennan, tearing free of them all as
out of the darkness the cry of a hunting cat rose, hardly noticed that Jarek's
knife sliced through weighted flesh and severed his lobe. Pain was something he
no longer acknowledged. Only anger. A terrible, burning anger that swallowed
his knowledge of self and tipped him over the edge.

           
—down—

           
Rage fed the flames.

           
—down—

           
He did not know his name. He did not
know her name, only that she was there, here, lending him needed strength,
giving him what he needed; what he had to have, to use, to wield in the name of
his anger.

           
Anger and something more. Something
he knew as fear.

           
He reached out for the strength, the
fear, the rage; touched it, snared it, hugged it to his breast.

           
—now—

           
Before an Ihlini, he knew, his
Cheysuli gifts were muted nearly to nothingness, but now—oddly—he felt stronger
than ever before.

           
—now—

           
Jarek no longer laughed. "Slay
him!" he screamed.

           
—now— Brennan whispered. And within
the webwork of the link, he tapped Sleeta and all the terrible heritage of his
race.

           
In the guise of a tawny mountain
cat, he shredded Jarek's throat.

           
—run—run—run—

           
A litany in his head.

           
—run—run—

           
On four feet, curving claws raking
divots of debris, the tawny cat ran. Running with him, Sleeta; black on black
in the darkness of the night.

           
—run—

           
Deep in his chest, he coughed.
Wreaths of vine and underbrush fouled his course, lacing his eyes with the
whip-snag of tiny branches. Thorns caught at his pelt, breaking, clinging,
burrowing into his flesh.

           
Still he ran. Flowing, like honey
through a flame.

           
And then, unwanted, came the memory
of what he had been, of what he had done, and he tumbled out of lir-shape into
the man-shape known as Brennan.

           
He landed on one elbow; it gave,
folding beneath his weight, and threw him over onto a shoulder, his left one,
and then all the pain he had forgotten came rushing back again to set his bones
afire.

           
Tangled in deadfall, he lay
breathing heavily. His belly convulsed with it, until the grunting and gasping
subsided, and he knew what he was again.

           
Man.

           
Brennan pressed himself up. Damp
leaves formed a clammy cloak on naked arms against the night. He shuddered
once, twice; gagged, and nearly spewed the contents of his belly onto the
forest floor.

           
"Too fast," he croaked,
touching his pounding head.

           
"Too soon . . . agh, gods, my
head—"

           
Sleeta's eyes were oil lamps in the
darkness. Lir—lir—

           
She pressed her chin against his
shoulder, rubbing as if to offer strength and sympathy.

           
The pain of his abused head nearly
took precedence over the lir-link, which frightened him. He tried to set it
aside and think only of Sleeta, but the pain was so bad even his teeth hurt
with it.

           
Lir. Sleeta leaned against him.

           
Forcing himself to ignore his own
discomfort, Brennan tried to assuage hers, soothing her with gentle hands and
tender words. Through the link they were reunited, re-confirming their need of
one another; the cat's fear, shock and weariness were echoes of his own.

           
"Gods . . ." In human
speech, it was the only word he could manage. He was disoriented, tangled up in
the sensations of cat mixed with man, until for a moment he could not
distinguish himself, being neither human nor feline, but thing.

           
An owl hooted from near by. Another
answered; in the distance Brennan heard the rising howl of a wolf, the yapping
of his pack. He drew up both knees and rested his forehead against them,
willing the pain to fade.

           
Lir. Sleeta again, still pressed
against him. His hand touched matted fur, sticky blood, fluid seeping from an
open wound. And he was outraged at the sacrilege.

           
"Sleeta—" This time the
words began to make sense.

           
He knelt, gently examining her head,
throat, shoulders, carefully fingering ribs and belly and haunches. In the
darkness much of her disrepair was hidden, but he knew she was not unscathed.
The dogs had taken their toll.

           
“Ku'reshtin," he muttered.
"Setting hounds upon a lir."

           
Effective. Sleeta licked at his
neck. They distracted me from you. She paused. Blood, lir. Did he set the
hounds on you?

           
Brennan carefully touched his left
ear. No more lobe, no more earring. Only blood marked the place where he had
borne the cat-shaped ornament.

           
No hounds, lir. This was done by
man. This was done by Ihlini.

           
No! Sleeta's shocked response was
immediate. I would have known an Ihlini.

           
So I thought, he agreed grimly. But
in the past other Ihlini have walked unknown into Homana-Mujhar itself . . .
who is to say what spell was cast to blind us to the truth?

           
She was fretful from pain and
incomprehension. The gods set us to guard the Cheysuli, to know enemy from
friend, to recognize ill intent.

           
And to know Ihlini?

           
That more than anything else.

           
Brennan sat very still, not even
daring to move his hand against her pelt. In but a few words Sleeta had said
more of the purpose of the lir than he had ever heard from her before. As a
child he had been taught that a lir was a gift of the gods, something
incredibly special; the bond between warrior and animal was a blessing no one
else could possibly comprehend, a thing to be cherished above all else. Such
handing down of absolutes left little room for questions, even less for
answers. The lir themselves had always been oddly secretive about so many
things.

           
"Why?" He asked it aloud
because somehow it made it more substantial; he asked it gently, casually,
because he was afraid she would give him no answer if he sounded too intense.
"Why are you to know Ihlini above all else?"

           
Having more power, they offer more
threat. Sleeta licked his shoulder.

           
It was not the answer he wanted; it
told him nothing he did not know already. "Surely anyone with power offers
equal danger."

           
Her breath was warm. Who is his own
worst enemy?

           
"I am my own, of course—that
tells me nothing." And then he stopped speaking. His fingers dug deep into
the thickness of her pelt. "Unless, of course, you are confirming my
jehan's contention that Cheysuli and Ihlini are bloodkin."

           
Sleeta butted her head against his
shoulder. Lir, lir, enough . . . can we not go home?

           
Home. Did she mean Clankeep or
Homana-Mujhar?

           
"Sleeta—" But he did not
finish his question because he heard movement in the forest.

           
He thought at first it was the
Homanans come to find him, to throw him down again on the altar to complete the
sacrifice. He thrust himself to a crouch, legs drawn up to push himself into
headlong flight, but he did not run. The world spun slowly out from under him,
and he fell awkwardly over onto one hip, keeping himself upright only by dint
of one rigid, outstretched arm.

           
No, Sleeta said. Think before you
run.

           
He did as told, and understood what
she meant him to understand. No, what he heard was not the noise of Homanans
hunting him; not those fundamentalist fools.

           
The unveiling of Jarek as Ihlini
would be enough to send them fleeing. If there was one thing more horrifying to
a Cheysuli-fearing Homanan than a warrior assuming lir-shape, it was an Ihlini
sorcerer.

           
No wonder Jarek spouted all that
nonsense about Carollan—he used it to cover his real intent, to hide himself in
the others.

           
He crouched in the darkness with
Sleeta crouched beside him. And then the cat gently butted an arm. The girl, lir
. . . the one who got me free.

           
Rhiannun. So she had done as she had
promised.

           
The noise came closer. No doubt she
thought she moved quietly, using all the stealth she could, but to Brennan,
warrior-bred and trained, her progress was easily followed. She had not learned
to move randomly, to stutter-step, to wait, to move again, as if an animal. She
rustled, snapped boughs, snagged vines and underbrush.

           
He waited until she was close
enough, and then he said her name.

           
Her startled reaction sent her crashing
back two steps and then she was caught fast, clothing and hair snagged on
twisted boughs. He heard her rapid breathing and the tearing of thin fabric as
she sought to free herself.

           
"Meijhana—no. There is no need
to flee me." And he rose out of his crouch to stand, one hand splayed
against the trunk of a conifer to keep him from falling down.

           
"My lord?" All movement
stopped. "Brennan?"

           
"Aye. And my lir, whom you were
good enough to release."

           
He heard more cloth shredded, the
clink of something metallic, the ragged eagerness in her breathing. And then
she was free and stood before him. Debris littered her braids, clung to her
clothing, marred her face. But she smiled, and laughed, and held out glowing
gold.

           
"Yours, my lord. When all the
others ran, I took them to give to you."

           
He had not thought to see the lir-bands
again. Nor had he allowed himself the time to think on what the loss
represented. Although the lir-gold did not make him a man or a warrior in place
of a boy, it was still an integral part of who he was. The loss would have
shamed him as much for his manner of death as wearing them honored his manner
of living.

           
"Lei’hana tu'sai," he
whispered. "Oh meijhana, I owe you so much. For Sleeta ... my life ... for
these. . . ."

           
Her eyes avoided his. "I could
not find the earring, my lord. Perhaps—if we were to go back—"

           
"No. It does not matter. I lack
the lobe in which to wear it." He smiled ruefully at her hiss of
realization.

           
"These are enough, meijhana.
That I promise you." Slowly he slipped hands through the heavy gold
circlets, one by one, and slid the bands up past his elbows until the gold was
locked against living flesh. The bands were cool for only a moment, and then
they warmed, remembering their customary place, and he was whole again.
"Leijhana tu'sai," he said again, tracing the cat-shapes in the
metal.

           
Rhiannon shrugged a little.
"The return of your gold is still not enough to repay the pain I have
caused you and your cat. If I had known what Jarek intended—" She stopped
short, and tears welled into her eyes. "Oh, gods—how could I have been so
blind, so stupid . . . how could I not have seen what he meant to do?"

           
He reached out and caught the back
of her head against the palm of one hand and cradled it gently. Slowly he pulled
her in until she pressed her fare against his soiled jerkin, clinging to his
arms. At first she held herself stiffly, plainly made uncomfortable by his rank
if not by his compassion. Slowly he gentled her, as he had gentled so many
fillies.

           
"Shansu," he said softly.
"Peace, meijhana—I think no less of you for your grief." Yet even as
he said it, he wondered if he meant it. In the clans, grief was an exceptionally
private thing. A Cheysuli showed none where others might see it.

           
Traditionally. But traditions change
...

           
The tears did not last. Rhiannon
moved back, out of s his arms, and wiped her face, succeeding only in smearing
grime across both cheeks. Twigs and leaves clung to her braids. But he thought
he had never seen a woman who looked lovelier, even in disrepair.

           
"Oh, my lord—" She reached
up and touched fingertips to his neck where the blood from his stolen lobe had crusted.
"My lord, they have used you so cruelly. First your poor head, then the
drug, the chains . . . now this."

           
She caught one of his arms as he
wavered and tugged a gently, urging him down. "Sit, my lord, I beg you. It
is clear you are close to collapse."

           
"Is it?" Awkwardly,
grateful for her assistance, Brennan sat down. Sleeta lent him warmth by
pressing against one side; he wrapped an arm around her and gloried in her
presence. "Gods, what I did—" He broke off as the s world turned yet
again, and bit back a curse as he tried to stay upright.

           
"Lie you down," Rhiannon
said. "Here—I will help—"

           
And she moved quickly as he toppled,
taking his head into her lap. Tentatively she stroked sweat-stiffened hair back
from his forehead. Her fingers were cool and light, and the pain was not so bad
beneath her touch,