Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 05 (23 page)

           
The girl looked back once, then
again. Her face was lost in the tangle of unbound hair; like the mare's tail it
streamed out behind, a whipping pennon in the wind.

           
Hart, grinning as the stallion
closed, saw the girl reach up swiftly and catch her hair at the nape of her
neck, winding it swiftly into a single plume. And then she stuffed it beneath
the neck of her gown with both hands, the mare running free, and caught reins
again to pull the mare off the track into the shadows of the wood.

           
Hart nearly rode by the broken
opening in the vines.

           
A decisive hand on the reins checked
the stallion into an abrupt slide on his haunches, and then Hart spun him and
sent him crashing after the mare,

           
Lir? he asked.

           
Hard to see, Rael answered. She
twists and turns, but still heads westward.

           
"Lestra," Hart muttered,
and swore as vine leaves slapped mouth and eyes.

           
No more track, save for what he
could break open in her wake. No more headlong run, but leaps and stumbles
instead, as the stallion tried to negotiate bracken and fallen trees. The world
was a maze of green and brown and black, all shadows in the daylight, with
little or no sun to illuminate their passing. The sound of his own mount
obliterated hers. It was only when he saw a flash of white and crimson that he
knew he drew closer again.

           
A quick glance over her shoulder;
the curve of one fair cheek. And grim determination in the line of her lovely
mouth. He saw her jerk the mare offstride and then turned her northward instead
of west.

           
She will kill the mare yet— But the
thought was never finished. The mare's passing startled a hare from cover and
he broke. The stallion, startled, leaped sideways, stumbled, ran directly into
a huge felled tree and, in trying to leap it off-balance, merely succeeded in
snapping front legs. His rider was thrown headlong out of the saddle into the
nearest tree.

           
Lir— But the light of the world was
snuffed out.

           
A sound. A voice: a woman's, with
desperation in her tone. Telling him in accented Homanan to wake up, and then
when he did not, pleading something else in indecipherable Solindish.

           
Solindish.

           
His eyes snapped open. He was
conscious almost at once of extreme discomfort, all tangled in vine and bracken
and clawed by boughs and limbs. His head throbbed unmercifully; he recalled,
dimly, that it had collided with a tree trunk.

           
He shut his eyes again. Gods, but my
head hurts. . . .

           
He heard a rustle in deadfall and
underbrush. Through his lashes he saw the bright colors of her clothing, now
dulled by debris and mudstains. That she meant to come to his side was plain;
equally plain was that Rael, a flurry of wings and talons, would not allow her
to.

           
"Oh, wake up," she begged.
"Wake up and call off this hawk!"

           
Rael swept down again from the tree
and slapped a wingtip across her raised arm, driving her away once more.

           
Enough, Hart said dryly. Have you no
eyes, lir? The girl is magnificent—let her come as close as she wants.

           
Rael's relief was tangible as it
thrummed throughout the link. But his tone belied the truth. Was this a ruse,
then, to trick her into giving you your payment?

           
Have you ever known me to willingly
suffer so much pain in the name of a woman?

           
Rael lighted on a tree limb. No, he
said dryly, and folded his wings away.

           
Hart opened his eyes again. "If
I try to move, lady, will my head fall off? Or is it still attached?"

           
She twitched in surprise, then
shifted a trifle closer.

           
"Alive, then," she said in
relief. "Oh, I thought I had killed you."

           
"No." He levered himself
carefully up on one arm and wished he had not; his head throbbed alarmingly and
a bough stabbed him in the ribs. "Well, perhaps you did."

           
Tentatively he fingered his
forehead. "Gods, lady, I would say you need no bodyguard, nor even my
protection."

           
She said something in Solindish, then
shook her head. "I meant no harm to you. I wanted to escape you, aye, but
not at the cost of your life."

           
"And my horse?" Hart
looked over to where the chestnut lay. The stallion's breathing was labored.
That he had exhausted himself trying to rise with his shattered legs was plain;
Hart cursed aloud in the Old Tongue with as much eloquence as he could muster.
"You acquit youself well," he said shortly, and pushed himself out of
the underbrush with another bitten off curse. He wavered and clutched the tree
for support. But the stallion's plight was more imperative than pain; grimly he
unhooked his bow and jerked an arrow from his quiver, walking unsteadily to the
chestnut.

           
"The hawk—" she began.

           
Hart did not so much as glance at
her. "Rael will not harm you." He nocked the arrow.

           
She rose, skirts tangled on her
boots, and came to stand beside him. "Had I the strength, I would do it myself."

           
Mocking: "Aye, lady. Of
course." He raised the bow and drew back the string.

           
Released. It sang briefly, so briefly,
and then the stallion was dead.

           
He hooked an arm through the bow,
settling it across his back, and bent to unfasten the saddlepacks. The horse
was slack in death, and very heavy; Hart had to expend more energy than he had
left to free the saddlepacks. His head ached, and he sat abruptly to avoid
falling down.

           
"Give them to me. I will put
them on my mare."

           
Slender hands beckoned him to
comply. "Where do you go, Homanan?"

           
"Lestra. Lady—there is no need
for that."

           
She took the packs anyway and slung
them across her mare's white rump, buckling them onto the saddle. Then she
brought a skin of wine and knelt beside him. "She is not accustomed to
carrying two. You will ride, and I will lead."

           
"Nor is there need for
that." He drank, returned the skin, rose unsteadily.

           
She swept the glorious hair away
from her face and showed him lifted brows. "And do you intend to
fly?"

           
Hart laughed. "Aye, lady, I
do."

           
She nodded calmly, plainly doubting
him. "Even Ihlini cannot do that."

           
He looked at her sharply and
recalled this was Solinde, the realm the Ihlini called home. Here they lived
with impunity. "Thank the gods," he said curtly. "No, such
things are for the Cheysuli."

           
"Aye, but—" She broke off.
The color ran out of her face, leaving her wan as death. She looked quickly at
Rael, then back at Hart. In silence she asked the question.

           
"Aye," he told her,
"I am. Rael is my lir."

           
She pulled her mantle more closely
around her slender body, as if to ward off a chill, "I thought—I thought
him merely well-trained, when he would not let me near."

           
"Lir are not trainable; they do
what they will do." He resettled his bow and quiver. "And now, lady,
I suggest—"

           
But she did not allow him to finish.
"I have heard they have yellow eyes. Yours are decidedly blue."

           
He raised his brows. "Doubtless
you have heard many things . . . some of them may be true." He smiled as
he saw her frown of indecision. "Aye, most Cheysuli have yellow eyes. I do
not because I am also Homanan. But the rest of me is Cheysuli."

           
She looked at Rael again. "You
become him."

           
"No. I become another. Rael
remains Rael."

           
She looked at his hands, at his
fingers, at the shape of the bones of his face. As if she searched for some
clue that would make him bird instead of human. Raptor in place of man.
"The Ihlini have said—"

           
He overrode her. "Do you
traffic with Ihlini?"

           
She stiffened. "This is
Solinde, not Homana! The Ihlini have freedom here."

           
"Freedom to raise a rebellion?
To rule this realm in place of those who should?"

           
"What is it to you?" she
asked angrily. "You are a Homanan, a Cheysuli . . . what is Solinde to
you? You have no stake in what happens in my land!"

           
"Do I not?" He smiled.
"Oh, but lady, I think I do ... because one day I will rule it."

           
"Will you?" She faced him
squarely, tangled hair hanging to knees, skirts caught high on her boots.
"You say so, to me?"

           
"I will say so to anyone,
because it is the truth." That she was genuinely angry, he knew, because
it was shouted from her posture and the expression in her eyes. He had seen
such anger before, such cold, controlled anger, born of a true hostility shaped
by war and heritage. He had seen it in the clans, in the older warriors who had
come through Shaine's qu'nwhiin and decades of Solindish-Ihlini wars. But he
had not thought to see it in her.

           
"Lady, I do not lie in hopes of
impressing you—"

           
"Oh, no?" she asked.
"Men have done it before. Homanans have done it before. Why should I
believe you are any different?" Icy eyes swept him from head to toe;
contempt was implicit in her posture. "I think your sincerity requires
practice, Homanan. You are not particularly convincing."

           
Hart stared at her. She was either
completely unaware of her disarray, or else so angry she did not care. Or else
she realizes that nothing could dull her beauty.

           
He wet his lips. "Lady—"
he began patiently.

           
"No one rules Solinde,"
she said coldly. "No one. A regent sits in Lestra claiming right of
authority from Homana's Cheysuli Mujhar." One arm gestured toward the city
and a rigid finger divided the air. "But is that a ruler?—no. A travesty,
no more. We are a proud land, shapechanger, and unused to kowtowing to a
foreign Mujhar who rules out of ignorance, holding Solinde in trust for a man
we do not—cannot—know. So, shapechanger, when you tell me lies for your own
amusement, to impress me or otherwise, it bears no fruit at all. I am
impervious to such things."

           
"Impervious to the truth?"
Without waiting for an answer he moved past her to the mare and dug into his
saddlepacks. When be had found the thing he sought, he turned back again and
put it into her hands. "There, lady—the truth."

           
She stared at the thing in her
hands. It was small for a thing of so much significance, and yet the shocked
tears that sprang to her eyes belied the seeming worthlessness of it.
"This is the seal," she said, "the Third Seal of Solinde!"

           
"Aye."

           
She stared at him; all the color had
left her face. "The Trey was broken when the war with Carillon was lost.
When Bellam was slain." Her heavy swallow was visible against the fragile
flesh of her throat. "The regent has one seal, the Mujhar the other two.
But—this is the Third Seal!"

           
He had not expected her to know it
so precisely, only to know the cipher. Nor had he expected the seal to have
such an effect on her, that she would stare at him in shocked discovery. He had
every intention of telling her who he was, if only to prove he was not a liar, but
it seemed she already knew.

           
She clasped the seal against her
chest, shielded by pride and hair. "So." Her voice was cool, dulled
by shock and hostility. "So, the Mujhar at last sends his wastrel son to
sit in judgment on Solinde."

           
Wastrel son. It hurt. Worse than he
had expected.

           
"Lady—"