Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 05 (33 page)

           
Much more, he thought hollowly as
the shadows and torchlight played tag along the walls. Fool that I am, I should
have known better. It is no wonder jehan banished me for a year; I have been
gone but three months, and already I have risked a realm, myself . . . the
prophecy.

           
He gritted his teeth. Rael, what do
I tell him if the wager is lost?

           
The truth. Rael responded. No matter
what the punishment, the loss of Solinde is worth it.

           
It was not the comfort Hart sought.
Disgruntled, he withdrew from the link altogether.

           
One of Lisa's servants waited
outside as Hart drew the stallion to a halt. He dismounted slowly, delaying the
moment of truth, and handed over the reins. Rael perched himself upon the roof.
No light showed from the house, for all the windows were shuttered against the
night air.

           
Hart drew in a breath so deep it
made him light-headed, and then he knocked on the door.

           
He was shown to a private receiving
chamber warmed by a blazing fire and was offered wine, ale or usca. He declined
all, too nervous to drink, and asked when the lady would present herself.

           
"As soon as my lord of High
Crags arrives, my lord," the servant answered, and bowed himself out.

           
"Except the lord of High Crags
is already present."

           
Dar stepped out of a curtained
antechamber. With him were six men, all in Solindish livery.

           
Oddly, Hart felt relieved. At last
the man had shown his true colors. "Where is Lisa?”

           
"Lisa has gone to bed,"
Dar said quietly as one of his men moved to lock the door from the inside.
"Lisa has done her part of this night's work by summoning you here; the
rest is left to me."

           
Hart nodded. "And what are your
plans, Dar? To pack me off to Homana before the wager is settled?"

           
Dar grinned and waved a casual
forefinger. His men moved closer to Hart. "Which wager, shapechanger? The
one between you and me—or the one I struck with Strahan?"

           
That, Hart had not expected. He was
unsurprised by the six men who clearly meant him no good, but he had not
considered that Ihlini would enter into it. "What has Strahan to do with
this?" he asked curtly, trying to ignore the tightening of his belly.
"You are not Ihlini; Rael would have known it."

           
"No, I am not Ihlini," Dar
agreed. "But I am an ambitious man, as well as one desirous of winning
favor with those in power, and Strahan offered me something I could not pass
by. Of course, he couched it as a wager; he said he did not believe I could do
it. So now I have done it, and he will pay me my price." Dar grinned.

           
"One way or another, the lady
will be mine."

           
Hart felt strangely relaxed. There
were no Ihlini in the room, and Rael was on the roof; Although the windows were
shuttered against his entry, his closeness still lent Hart all the power he
needed to assume lir-shape. Dar had badly underestimated his enemy.

           
"Dar-"

           
But he was given no chance to finish
his sentence. Six men laid hands on him, and none were gentle.

           
"Bring him here." Dar
indicated the ironwood table.

           
Hart resisted, but six to one were
not good odds.

           
"Dar, it is easy enough to trap
a man, but not so easy to trap a hawk—"

           
"Draw your sword." Dar
ignored Hart altogether, speaking to one of the men. The Solindishman did so,
waiting attentively.

           
Rael— Triggering the link, Hart drew
on the magic in his blood.

           
"Hold him," Dar said.
"Stretch out his left arm so the flat of his hand is on the wood. Quickly Hart
tapped the power.

           
Smoothly, Dar drew his knife and
stabbed it through the splayed hand, pinning it to the table.
"There," he said. "Shapechange now, shapechanger."

           
Pain burst in his hand and set the
world afire. Too shocked to do anything more than gape, Hart knew the
shapechange was banished. As he had so clearly told Lisa, a man in extremity
lacked the required concentration.

           
Dar's eyes were dilated black. “Once
you told me you would sooner wager your left hand than your lir, shapechanger.
Well, you have lost the wager. And now you have lost the hand." He
signaled the man with the sword.

           
"Hack it off. Now."

           
The blow was swift and very clean,
slicing through flesh and bone to stop short in the ironwood. And pain-less, so
stunned was Hart. Standing only by dint of the men who held him up, he stared
at the arm that now ended at his wrist.

           
Rael—Rael—RAEL-

           
Dar made a moue of distaste.
"So much blood," he said. And then he himself fetched the iron from
the fire and slapped white-hot tip against stump.

           
Hart meant to scream. But it died acoming
as he collapsed into the arms of Dar's men.

           
Lillith looked down on her brother.
Strahan knelt on one knee at the rim of the vent, at the edge of the Gate
itself.

           
One hand was outthrust, palm down,
as if he intended to summon Asar-Suti himself. As perhaps he did; white flame
licked up, touched, curled around the fingers, gloved his hand entirely, then
deepened to lilac, to lavender, to deepest lurid purple. In its reflection,
Strahan smiled his beautiful, deadly smile.

           
She saw a tendril of flame slip
beneath the cuff of his doublet, beneath the white edge of his linen shirt.
Where it went she could not follow, for it cloaked itself in his clothing;
then, abruptly, it blossomed at his collar, caressed the flesh of his neck, touched
a gentle fingertip to the sharp-edged line of his jaw.

           
Still Strahan smiled. Even she no
longer smiled, but he was lost to her utterly, caught up in eerie intercourse
with the god of the netherworld, who made and dwells in darkness. Still he
knelt, smiling, as the flame flowed out of the Gate to his hand, then upward to
his neck, and began to lap at his face.

           
Strahan's lips parted. A thin,
tensile wire of flame touched, withdrew, touched again, then flowed up to shape
his mouth into something more than flesh. Emboldened, more tendrils appeared,
and within a matter of moments Strahan's face was alive with a webwork of
fragile purple lace. It overlay his features, shaping them into those of
another man—or into the god himself.

           
"Strahan—" But Lillith stopped
herself. It was not her place to remonstrate with her brother, who was the
god's own chosen. It was her place only to serve, accepting all that was asked,
offering whatever she could,

           
Strahan laughed. He was ablaze with
delicate fire, and yet fabric and flesh was untouched. Kneeling, he was an
incongruous torch; laughing, he was far more than merely human, even by
sorcerous standards.

           
And then, abruptly, the webwork came
undone. Tendrils withdrew, untying knots; untied, the knots fell into disarray.
Within moments Strahan was merely Strahan, and the god was gone from him.

           
He shut his eyes and released a
shuddering breath of deep satisfaction, as if he had lain with a woman. Head
bowed, he made his obeisance to the god, and then he rose to face his sister
across the glowing Gate.

           
"Done," he said. "Dar
has won his wager."

           
"One you are pleased to
lose." Lillith sighed herself; he seemed perfectly normal again. "And
the woman? Will you pay his .price?"

           
Strahan smiled. "Dar is an
overly ambitious man with overweening pride. One day he and his pride will
stumble over those ambitions, and he will fall."

           
It was not precisely the answer she
wanted; perhaps he was still caught in the thrall of the god, speaking of
things she could not know. "How will you break this one?"

           
Strahan shrugged. "I think it
is already done, or very nearly so. The Cheysuli can be a hard, seemingly heartless
race, even with their own; the clans require whole men as warriors,
unmaimed—whole in flesh as well as spirit—in order to maintain the viability of
the race.

           
Much like animals, they cull the
pack of the weakest in order to protect the rest." Again he shrugged.
"Perhaps they have the right of it; I have no use for the weak."

           
Lillith, smiling secretly, thought
it an understatement.

           
"And how will you 'mend' this
one?"

           
Strahan laughed. "By offering
him a reason to live again. Service to me can make him whole, though not in the
way he might wish. But by then it will not matter—he will be too firmly
bound."

           
Deftly she smoothed the velvet of
her skirts. "Only one—the youngest—remains. It is time I went to
Atvia."

           
Strahan looked at her, but she knew
he did not see her. "Safe journey," he said only, then knelt again at
the edge of the Gate.

CORIN

           
Faster. Faster. Faster-

           
He bent low in the saddle, low, so
that the pommel ground into his belly and his cheek was pressed against the
stallion's dampening neck. Whipping gray mane stung Corin's eyes until they
teared; he found release in it, knowing he need not be ashamed of tears shed
because of irritation to the eyes themselves, and not anguish of the heart.

           
Faster—

           
The world was a collage of green and
blue, brown and gray, all blurred together by tears. He clutched leather reins
and pushed them forward against the stallion's neck, giving him his head. On
and on the blue roan ran, doing his rider's bidding.

           
Beneath clamped legs fluid muscles
bunched, rolled, stretched, tautened, fed by the pumping of the stallion's
great heart. Corin tasted dirt and horsehair; smelled the acrid tang of sweat
and wet blankets. In his ears was the song of a winded horse; the rhythmic
pounding beat of iron-shod hooves against hard-packed road. In his heart was
anguish.

           
Oh, gods—forbidden my home for a
year— And he squeezed the stallion yet again with legging-clad legs, urging him
faster yet.

           
You will kill the horse.

           
For a moment Corin did not recognize
Kiri's tone. He was so caught up in the sound and rhythm of the horse and the
weight of his own pain that he had neglected to think of the vixen.

           
He turned his head against damp
horsehair and peered over his shoulder. Far behind, in the sienna-colored dust
of his passing, he saw the rich red flash of his lir.

           
If not the horse, you will kill me.

           
That stopped him as nothing else
could. Corin sat upright in the saddle, gathering reins, and eased the stallion
down- Slowly, carefully; for all he was angry and hurt and frightened, he had
no wish to ruin the roan.

           
If he had not already.

           
Slowly. Slowly. From gallop to canter,
canter to trot, trot to winded walk, head dropped, nostrils sucking and blowing
great gulps of air as the stallion tried to answer the demand of his heaving
lungs. Guiltily Corin freed his right foot from the stirrup and swung it over
the roan's damp, blue-washed rump, letting his weight linger briefly in the
left stirrup and against his thigh. He did not halt the stallion but let him
walk on, knowing the roan needed careful tending if he was to recover
completely.

           
Corin dropped off and kept moving,
dragging reins free of the dangling head to lead the horse onward.

           
Sweat ran down the roan's face.
Lather flecked chest and flanks. He stumbled over hooves but newly-shod.

           
Still walking, Corin half-turned and
looked over a shoulder for Kiri. No longer did she run, trotting instead; he
could see the brush of her black-tipped tail swinging behind her hocks. Closer
now, he could see the glint of eyes in her mask, and the lolling of her tongue.

           
Remorse surged up at once. Oh, lir,
I am sorry. I should know better than to punish you.

           
Save your apologies for the horse. I
have a choice; he does not.

           
Corin looked again at the roan
stallion. He had served well and faithfully for three years, and was rewarded
with thoughtless, cruel behavior. Walking on, not daring to stop until the
stallion was cooler, Corin ran a soothing palm down the proud nose and promised
him better treatment.

           
Guilt clenched the wall of his belly
yet again. It is no wonder jehan feels it necessary to punish me ... I give him
reason enough.

           
Then stop, the vixen suggested.

           
"How?" Corin asked aloud,
clearly frustrated. "There are times I grow so angry I cannot control
myself, knowing only that I have been wronged. And when I try to explain, jehan
will not listen."

           
What is there to explain when your
behavior has accounted for the lives of twenty-eight people—perhaps even more?

           
The guilt rose higher in his belly,
reaching out cruel fingers to grasp, twist, pinch. "That was Hart."
He had meant it to defend and accuse all at once, but his tone was subdued
instead, full of acknowledgment. Aye, twenty-eight people dead, probably more,
all because he and Hart had insisted on going to the Midden, which was a place
none of them frequented for a very good reason.

           
Well, it had been Hart's idea.

           
And yet he had contributed.

           
"To save my life," he said
aloud. "They would have slain us all."

           
Kiri caught up and trotted next to
his left leg. Briefly she pressed a shoulder against him, then dropped aside
again. Courage, lir—the Mujhar disputes your self-defense less than the reasons
for your presence in the tavern. All of you disobeyed orders—that is the bone
of contention.

           
Had you not, no one would be dead.
She paused thoughtfully. Or at least they would be dead by their own murdering
hands, and not by careless fire.

           
"No one meant it to
happen," he murmured unhappily. "And yet jehan refuses to listen to
that, hearing only that his sons were involved in yet another tavern
brawl." Corin shrugged a little, rolling shoulder blades uncomfortably in
an attempt to assuage his guilt, or to push it away. "Had he given us the
chance, we might have been able to help. He might only have stripped us of our
allowances, giving them to the survivors, rather than of our freedom."

           
Lives cannot be bought. Kiri's tone
lacked even a trace of sympathy. As for freedom, you would not know it if it bit
your nose from your face. A man can only know true freedom when he understands
or experiences its loss, so the value becomes greater.

           
Corin slanted her a resentful glance
beneath half-shut lids. "Are you finished?" he asked grimly.

           
Are you?

           
Corin sighed heavily, expelling
acknowledgment along with breath. "Aye," he said unevenly, "I
am. One way or another, I will have to learn to depend only on myself. And
right now, that does not please me. Another man would not depend on me—how can
I? I know what I am as much as anyone else." He kicked a stone out of his
path and watched it skitter across the road into the turf of the meadowlands.
The stallion was so winded he did not even notice. "I am, betimes, sullen
and resentful, selfish and moody, unresponsive and angry. Or so my jehan has
said, and Deirdre, and Ian, over the score of years. No doubt others have said
more, and worse." He sighed. "I like it no more than they, but I
cannot help myself."

           
You are already helping yourself.

           
Corin drew in a breath that filled
his belly with doubt.

           
"And you? What of you, Kiri? Do
you stay with me only out of duty to the gods, and not through loyalty to me?
Do you dislike me for my temper?"

           
I dislike your temper, not you, the
fox said quietly. As for staying with you, what choice have I? I was chosen for
you and you for me... there is a purpose in all things the gods do. As for
personal loyalty, why question it? I would not leave you even if you beat me.

           
"I would never beat you!"

           
Yet you beat the horse in the name
of your fear and anger.

           
Corin looked at the stallion. The
roan breathed more easily and was no longer wringing wet, although he was
hardly fully restored. Corin stroked the blue-white nose again, scratching the
heavy jaw, and promised he would never ride him so hard again.

           
Lir.

           
Corin glanced around. Kiri had
stopped, standing in the center of the road, and stared upward into the sky.

           
Corin did likewise, holding the
stallion back, and lifted a band to shield his eyes against the sun.

           
"Hawk—" he said. His puke
quickened; was it Hart sent to fetch him back? Corin had left a day early. Had
his jehan repented of his sentence?

           
But he knew better. Niall had made
it a royal decree as well as a parental one; the banishment would hold for the
precise number of days it took to fulfill twelve months.

           
The hawk spiraled, drifted, floated
down, and Corin nodded as the blur of the shapechange swallowed the raptor. His
senses, as always, reeled momentarily, then settled; the disorientation faded
quickly as the hawk exchanged bird-form for human.

           
Keely grinned. "Did you think I
would let you go out of Homana alone?"

           
He stared at her. "You cannot
mean to come with me!"

           
"Why not?" She spread her
hands. "There are no duties incumbent upon me except to give my rujho
whatever aid and support he requires.”

           
Corin looked at her. She was slim
and wiry in snug Cheysuli leathers, dressed like a warrior though there was no
doubting she was a woman; the brass-buckled belt hid nothing of slender waist
or the smooth swelling of breasts and hips. Gone were the days she could stuff
her hair beneath a huntsman's cap and swagger like a man with impunity. Now she
did neither, for her tawny hair hung free in a plaited braid, and she made no
attempt to swagger. She had no need of it; as much as any of them, Keely
claimed inbred pride and confidence of carriage.

           
He smiled, and the smile spread
slowly into a grin.

           
Trust Keely. . . . "You should
not come," he told her, though it lacked true conviction. "The
banishment is my punishment, not yours. In this we need not share."

           
"We share in everything,
rujho." Her blue eyes were very steady. "Everything—except, perhaps,
your taste for bedding women." Her mouth hooked ironically. "That I
leave to you."

           
"Your taste runs to bedding
men?"

           
The humor slipped perceptibly.
"My taste runs to belonging only to myself," Keely said grimly.
"If that means I keep myself apart from men, so be it. I am willing."

           
He grunted. "Sean of Erinn may
have something to say about that."

           
"Sean of Erinn will have
nothing at all to say." Keely was very calm, too calm. "Sean of Erinn
will take what he gets—or look to wedding another woman entirely."

           
Corin laughed. "If he does get
you, Keely, be certain he will take you." He used the word in the crudest
sense, knowing it might be the only way she would hear what he had to say.
"Aside from needing an heir for Erinn, he might wish to enjoy his
cheysula."

           
" 'Enjoy,' " Keely said
grimly. "Indeed, 'enjoy.' I hope he will enjoy a foot of steel in his
belly if he presses me when I have no desire for it."

           
He shouted aloud with laughter.
"Since I think you will be naked in your marriage bed, Keely, it might be
difficult to hide a knife." Corin raised a hand as she started to protest.
"Have you come to discuss your personal dislike for the betrothal, or my
own banishment? You will forgive me, I trust, if at the moment I am less
inclined to sympathize with your plight when I have my own."

           
Abruptly she was contrite. "Oh,
Corin, I know. It is so unfair! Jehan had no right to do it, no right at all
... how can he do it? How can he send two of his sons out of Homana into things
they cannot know?"

           
There were times he wished he shared
more of Keely's temperament in addition to coloring. She was outspoken and
high-spirited, and equally subject—as he was—to outbursts of hot temper, but
she was more charitable, more generous in her feelings. She thought less of
herself than of others, and always supported him without thought for what such
support might mean to her father's opinion of her.

           
"He can do it," he said,
"because he is our jehan, and because he is the Mujhar."

           
"Rank excuses nothing,"
she flung back instantly.

           
"Aye," Corin agreed wryly,
"and jehan would say it certainly does not excuse the behavior of his
sons."