Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 07 (7 page)

 
          
Bane,
by right of rank, had the largest stall in the stable block; a second block
housed the Mujhar's favorite mounts. Brennan slipped the latch and entered the
straw-bedded stall. The stallion laid back ears, cocked a hoof, then shifted
stance to adjust his weight. One black hip briefly pressed Brennan into the
stall; automatically slapped, the hip duly shifted itself, ritual completed.
Raven ears came up. One dark eye slewed around to look as Brennan moved in
close. Bane blew noisily, then bestowed his chin upon Brennan's shoulder,
waiting for the fingers that knew
just
where to scratch.

 
          
The
murmured words were familiar. Bane spoke neither Homanan nor the Old Tongue of
the Cheysuli; Bane spoke motion and voice and touch and smell, the language of
horse and rider. He listened but vaguely to the words Brennan crooned, hearing
instead the tones and nuances, knowing nothing of meaning. Only the promise of
affection. The attendance upon a king by a royal-born man himself.

 
          
Bane
did not mark the underlying anguish in Brennan's tone, the soft subtleties of
despair. He was horse, not human; he did not answer to anything unless it
concerned his few wants and needs. But even if he
were
human, even a Homanan, the emotions would escape him.
Cheysuli-born were different. The unblessed, regardless of bloodlines, of
humanness, were deaf to things unsaid. Blind to things suppressed.

 
          
But
Ian was not unblessed. Ian was Cheysuli. His own share of anguish and despair,
though mostly vanquished by time, made him party to them in his nephew.

 
          
He
moved close to the stall, pausing at the door. Briefly he watched Brennan with
his stallion, noting tension in the movements, marking worry in the expression.
Seeing such indications was what he had learned to do as liege man to the
Mujhar, and as kin to volatile fledglings not always cognizant of caution.

 
          
"I
have," Ian began quietly, "spent much of my life offering succor—or
merely an attentive ear—to those of my kin in need. You have always held
yourself apart, depending in great measure on a natural reserve and full
understanding of your place. But I have never known a Lion's cub to be beyond
the need of comfort."

 
          
Brennan,
startled, stiffened into unaccustomed awkwardness, then turned. One arm rested
on Bane's spine, as if maintaining contact might lend him strength. The other
fell to his side. The gold on his arms gleamed in a latticework of sunlight,
vented through laddered slats in the outside stable walls. "Did
jehan
send you?"

 
          
Ian,
hooking elbows on the top of the stall door, smiled with serene good humor. His
arms, like Brennan's, were bare of sleeves, displaying Cheysuli gold. "I
am not always in his keeping, any more than you. Give me credit for seeing your
pain independent of the Mujhar."

 
          
Brennan
grimaced, looking away from his uncle's discerning eyes to the black silk of
Bane's heavy rump. Idly he smoothed it, slicking fingers against the thin cloak
of summer coat. Thinking private things. "It was always
jehan
you went to, or Hart—then Keely,
when Hart was gone. There were times I wanted to come, but with so many others
to tend, I thought your compassion might be all used up."

 
          
Ian's
eyes were on Bane. He was, like the stallion, past his prime, with hair more
gray than black, and white creeping in. By casual reckoning, he was perhaps
fifty; in truth, nearly seventy. It was the good fortune of the Cheysuli that
age came on them slowly, except for prematurely graying hair. The bones and
muscles stiffened, the skin loosened, the hair bleached to white. But nothing
about Ian's manner divulged a weakening of spirit any more than in the
stallion.

 
          
He
shifted slightly, rustling boots in straw and hay and bits of grain dropped by
Bane over the door. "Niall's children cannot escape the often too-heavy
weight of
tahlmorra
, except perhaps for
Maeve." Still-black brows rose in brief consideration. "But even
then, I wonder—who are we to say there is no magic in her? Niall's blood runs
true… even in Aidan."

 
          
Brennan
winced. And Ian, who had baited the hook with quiet deliberation, saw it swallowed
whole.

 
          
"Oh,
aye," Brennan sighed wearily. "The blood runs true in Aidan…
including Gisella's, I wonder? It is what everyone
else
wonders, regardless of the truth." Brennan turned again
to the stallion. A lock of raven hair, showing the first threading of early
silver, fell across a dark brow deeply furrowed with concern. "You know
and I know my
jehana's
madness is not
hereditary, but the Homanans overlook it. All they see is his
difference
, then they mutter about
Gisella."

 
          
"You
cannot ask a man to hide his true self," Ian said gently, "and yet
Aidan does so."

 
          
Brennan's
mouth tightened. "You refer to what
jehan
told me. About Aidan's dreams."

 
          
"There
was a time he would have told you himself."

 
          
Brennan's
expression was bleak. "Not for many years. He changed,
su'fali
… somehow, some
when
, he changed."

 
          
"Perhaps
he believed he had to."

 
          
The
tone now was anguished. "I did not
want
him to! Why would I? After so many years of sickness… after so much worry and
fear…" Brennan sighed, shutting his eyes. "We thought he would die,
su'fali
. In fever, he often babbled. We
learned not to listen."

 
          
"Because
what you heard made no sense."

 
          
Mutely,
Brennan nodded.

 
          
"And
so now he does not speak." Ian shook his head. "Aidan is perhaps not
what you expected… but trying to reforge a sword will only make the steel
brittle."

 
          
Brennan
swung abruptly from the horse. "Have I tried?" he cried. "He is
as much a man and warrior as you or I. There is nothing in him I would curse,
wishing for alteration… he came through a sickly childhood in better fashion
than we hoped for, and now there are no doubts he will live to inherit the
Lion. But I cannot say what he
thinks
—"
Brennan broke it off. The stallion shifted restlessly, disturbed by the raw
tone. "
Su'fali
, have you never seen
him look through you? Not
at
you, but
through. As if you were not present. As if
he
were not, but in another place."

 
          
Ian
felt serenity slipping. He was one of those men others spoke to freely, finding
him easy to confide in. It was a trait not well known among the Cheysuli, who
had, in the old days, forbidden the showing of private emotions before others
for fear of divulging a weakness to enemies. But those days were past. Things
changed within the clans—some said too many things—and he saw no oddity in
listening to the sometimes illogical initial commentary of a man—or a woman—trying
to find the proper way. It had been so with Niall, and with Hart, and Keely.
Brennan had needed no one; Corin had
wanted
no one, unless she be twin-born Keely. But even that had changed.

 
          
As
everything changed. Now Brennan needed someone to explain a son to his father.
And Ian could not do it.

 
          
"So
you have," Brennan said dully. "You have seen it as well."

 
          
Ian
sighed. "How can I give you an answer? How can anyone? Aidan is like none
of us in many ways, while very like us in others. I see Aileen in him. I see
you in him. But perhaps all of us look too hard for unimportant things, such as
who he resembles or sounds like. Perhaps Aidan is merely
Aidan
—"

 
          
"That
bird." Brennan's tone was intent. "That raven—"

 
          
Ian
smiled. "Teel is a
lir
."

 
          
Brennan
shook his head. "More. I swear, he is more. Have you seen the look in
Aidan's eyes when he goes into the link?"

 
          
Ian's
smile broadened. "If Keely were here, no doubt she could tell us what it
is they converse about, but I would imagine what they say to one another—or
what Teel says to him—is little different from what we say to our own
lir
. You should see
your
expression when Sleeta links with you."

 
          
"Aye,
well, she is sometimes difficult to deal with." Brennan's brow smoothed as
a faint smile pulled his mouth crooked. "Aidan himself has said Teel
hag-rides him unmercifully."

 
          
Ian
stepped aside as Brennan left Bane and unlatched the door to exit the stall.
"For too many years he was sick, too many times close to death. It marks a
man, Brennan. It marked your
jehan
.
It marked you. It marked Hart and Corin and Keely. Did you think your son would
escape it?"

 
          
Brennan
swung shut the door and slammed the latch into place. "The Lion requires a
man who can rule with intellect, not with dreams and fancies."

 
          
"Ah,"
Ian murmured. "Is that why you allowed yourself none?"

 
          
Brennan's
face hardened. "You understand what responsibility is,
su'fali
. Do you blame me? When it comes
to levying war, dare a king think of dreams?"

 
          
"There
is no war in Homana. Nor in Solinde. Nor in Erinn or Atvia. What war are you
fighting,
harani
?"

 
          
Brennan
shook his head. "No one understands what it is to look at Aidan and wonder
what he will be. To wonder what he is."

 
          
Ian
refrained from answering at once. There was wildness in the Cheysuli, for all
they practiced control; he knew from personal experience how difficult it was
to maintain balance under trying circumstances. Some said it was the beast in
the blood. Ian knew better. There was a price to pay for control: the
occasional loss of it.

 
          
His
royal nephew, for all Brennan's reknowned maturity, was as capable of anger as
his volatile brother, Corin, or Keely, his prickly sister. He simply did not
show it as much, yet Ian thought it best now to avoid provocation. It was next
to impossible to make a man see reason if his mouth was busy shouting.

 
          
He
watched Brennan a moment, marking redoubled tension. "Do you wonder, then,
why he says nothing to you? Why he goes so often to the Lion? If you have, in
any fashion, caused him to wonder if he is—
askew
—in
any way, should he trust himself with a throne shaped like a mythical beast? Or
believe it an enemy?"

 
          
"By
the gods, Ian, he is a grown man, a
warrior
."

 
          
"This
began when he was a child. Children view things differently."

 
          
"Children
are often too fanciful. They frighten themselves." Brennan's eyes, oddly,
were black. "Do you think I know nothing of that? Even within Bane's
stall, knowing the door is
there
, I still
feel the fear of being closed in."

 
          
"Do
you blame yourself for that?"

 
          
Brennan's
expression was ravaged. "I was locked in the Womb for a very short time…
and yet I believed it days." He raked a hand through his hair. "Gods—how
I frightened myself. I made all those
lir
into beasts…
carved marble shapes
, I
remade into living beasts. And now I reap the reward… shut me up in darkness,
and I lose myself utterly."

 
          
Ian
nodded slightly. "And so the
jehan
,
seeing a child's fear fed by fancies, told him it was not real. Over and over
again, until the child thought it best to keep everything to himself."

 
          
Desperation
threaded Brennan's tone. "They are
dreams
,
Ian. What else was I to do? Allow him to frighten himself?"