Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 05 (44 page)

           
"Sit down, my lord of Solinde
... I see an alarming pallor in your face."

           
Hart fully intended to ignore the
suggestion. But the pallor was unfeigned; shock coupled with fever had served
to sap his strength. Slowly he seated himself, preferring the chair to falling
down. He found the motion uncomfortable; he was accustomed to using two hands.

           
"Does it hurt?" Strahan
asked. "Is the loss of a hand anything like the loss of an ear?"

           
Hart looked at him in shock. He had
forgotten that Strahan had only one ear. The other had been cut off in a fight
with one of Hart's own kinsmen long ago on the Crystal Isle.

           
Strahan hooked long hair back and
bared the side of his head. "We all suffer losses, some of us more dramatically
than others." He moved the hair back into place.

           
"It was my misfortune the ear
was lost entirely. Had I found it, the Seker might have made me whole . . . but
I was somewhat pressed for time."

           
Hart stirred. "If he is as
powerful as you claim, why did he not simply make you a new one?"

           
"Flesh born of flesh,"
Strahan said. "The original was required."

           
Hart looked down at the stump of his
wrist. He felt the hand there, and yet when he looked he saw nothing at all.
When he moved it, nothing grasped. But the reflexive pain was undiminished.

           
"I know, of course, the loss of
a hand precludes you from returning to your clan." Strahan's mouth shaped
the words with a deep and abiding compassion. "We Ihlini are not so harsh.
A man's mind may be useful even if the body is not."

           
Hart gazed blindly at the hand that
no longer existed.

           
"But it would be so difficult
for a maimed warrior to contribute to his clan," Strahan remarked.
"How can you use a bow? How can you mount a defense? How can you ward your
woman and children against the enemy?"

           
Hart did his best to ignore him, but
the gentle probing found its mark.

           
"And, of course, as part of the
prophecy . . . well . . . what is left to you?" Strahan poured wine.
"What is there for you to do? How can a warrior serve when he is no longer
recognized as a warrior?"

           
Hart stirred at last. "My jehan
lost an eye."

           
Strahan made a dismissive gesture.
"Oh, aye, he did . . . but then he had another."

           
"I have another hand."

           
"A hand is not an eye."
Strahan paused. "What will they do?" he asked. "Will they strip
you of your gold? Blot out your rune in the birthlines? From the path of the
prophecy?"

           
Breath caught in Hart's tight
throat. He felt the slow churning of his belly.

           
"Will they tear down your pavilion?
Take cheysula or meijha from you?" Strahan paused. "Or will no
Cheysuli woman be allowed to speak your name?"

           
"Stop," Hart whispered.

           
"Will they strip you of your
lir? Or will the lir go regardless?"

           
"Stop. "Hart said.

           
"There is no place for you.
Hart. You are now a clanless warrior, unable to serve your race."

           
Hart stood up so fast he overset the
chair. "Ku'reshtin!"

           
But before he could move to strike
him, Strahan caught hold of his wrist.

           
"No," the sorcerer said,
and closed his lingers on the leather that warded the healing stump.

           
The pain was excruciating. Hart
wavered on his feet.

           
"No," Strahan said,
"I can offer you better."

           
Sweat ran down Hart's face to mix
with tears of pain.

           
"You offer me loss of honor ...
the loss of who I am—"

           
"Service to me will replace
it."

           
Hart tore his wrist free, then
hugged it against his chest. Pain robbed him of the words. All he could do was
shake his head.

           
Strahan sighed. "You Cheysuli
are so stubborn. Nearly as stubborn as I." And before Hart could answer,
he summoned men to take him away.

           
The hand was cool on Corin's brow.
It took the heat away. For so long there had been heat. Heat and unbearable
pain. And now Strahan took it away.

           
"You are a fortunate man,"
the sorcerer told him gently. "You very nearly died."

           
The eyes transfixed him utterly.

           
"But you are better now. The
bones begin to heal. I think you will walk again, though possibly with a
limp."

           
Strahan paused. "Do you recall
what happened to you?"

           
Vividly, Corin did. "I
fell." The voice echoed the weakness in his body. "I fell off the
dragon's skull." He gazed clear-eyed up at Strahan. "She said it was
your child."

           
Strahan's winged brows lifted to
touch his circlet. And then he smiled. "May the Seker grant it perfect
health."

           
Corin itched. He ached. He wanted
badly to get up, but knew he could not. "Kiri?" he said plainly.

           
"Mine. She is well, I promise
you." Strahan made a sign and a stool was instantly brought. He sat down
close to Corin's bedside. "You understand, I am sure, why I wanted
you."

           
"You want Atvia."

           
"But only for my lord. I am not
a greedy man." Strahan smoothed the covers. "Is there much pain,
Corin? I can drain it from you."

           
Corin recalled how Lillith had
drained Alaric of wits and life. He said no distinctly.

           
Strahan smiled, and then he laughed.
"Why do you think the worst of me? If I wanted you dead, I would have left
you at the bottom of the cliff, to wash out into the sea. Perhaps to wash up on
Erinn's shores, where Aileen could grieve over you."

           
Corin shut his eyes. "I will
not give you Atvia."

           
"Atvia, for the moment, is
quite within my grasp." Strahan's palm touched his brow again. "I was
thinking of Homana."

           
Corin's eyes snapped open.

           
"Aye, I thought that might get
your attention." The fingers dripped with ice; the fever began to fade.
"Sidra tells me you want your brother's bride. That you want your
brother's title. That you want your brother's throne."

           
Corin bit his lip. "Take your
hand from me."

           
After a moment, Strahan did. The
pain renewed itself.

           
"The Seker is a generous god.
What a man wants, he often bestows.”

           
"Then why does he not simply
give you the realms you want?" The level of pain was rising. He was
transfixed by Strahan's stare. "Why does he not simply take them?"

           
"Through men like me, he
will." Strahan tore back the covers to bare splints and linen wrappings.
"Both legs, Corin. And ribs I cannot count. You are fortunate the bones of
your head were left intact, else I could offer you nothing."

           
"You offer me nothing I will
accept." Corin threaded bruised fingers through his hair and stripped it
back from his face, pulling hard purposely to deflect the pain from his mending
bones. "I will heal. The pain will die. You offer me nothing at all."

           
"You will heal. The pain will
die. But I can offer you much more. I can offer you what you want."

           
Corin grunted his irony.
"Homana is not mine to give."

           
"And if it were?" Strahan
asked softly. "If I offered to share it with you?"

           
"Share what?" Corin
demanded. "You will make me a minion regardless, and then I will need no
throne."

           
Strahan carefully covered him up
again. "A minion has its uses, but so does a living man. I would prefer to
use the latter."

           
Corin turned his head away.

           
"I can turn your legs to jelly,"
Strahan said softly. "You have the power to heal, but I can undo it all.
With only the touch of my hand." Jewels glittered on his fingers.

           
"You have my lir," Corin
said hoarsely. "How can I hope to refuse you? What pleasure is there in it
for a man like you?"

           
“You should hope instead to aid
me." Strahan touched Corin's head. "I will be here if you need me.
Dream awhile, my lord. Dream of your red-headed princess . . . dream of your
brother's throne."

           
Corin slipped into darkness. He
dreamed of his brother's bride.

           
Light spilled into the cell. Strahan
stood in the doorway. "A gift for my stubborn kinsman."

           
Brennan turned his back.

           
"Surcease from your fear."

           
The voice was endlessly tender.
Brennan shut his eyes.

           
"Behold," Strahan said.
"I show you the life of a warrior."

           
Brennan stood facing the wall.
Spread fingers touched fetid slime; nails dug into slick stone in an effort to
beat off beguilement. He hated the cell. Hated what it did to him. Hated
himself because of it. He had grown used to the stench, but not inured to the
distaste. It made him want to vomit.

           
And then the wall moved. Stone
melted away. Brennan opened his eyes.

           
The world unfolded before him.

           
Homana. The grassy plains outside of
Mujhara, stretching east toward dankeep. He was free of Valgaard at last—free
of the tiny cell—free of consuming fear. All around him lay the world, a bright
and shining world, made of earth and sky and sun and moon and the warmth of a
summer day.

           
Brennan's breath hissed out of his
mouth. Filth sloughed off of him. Fresh leathers adorned his body. He was young
and strong and full of life, bursting to run free.

           
Then come. Sleeta said. What keeps
you from it, lir?

           
And he ran, he ran, trading human
flesh for feline, knowing the endless freedom of lir-shape. Running on, through
meadowtands, woodlands, forests, shedding the weight of fear. All he knew was
freedom and the promise of the day.

           
Gods, he exulted, this is the best
of all— And then all was snatched away. All was torn apart. All was swallowed
whole by the darkness of the cell.

           
Beneath his hands was slime.
Banished was his freedom, traded for degradation.

           
"Sleeta," he said only.

           
"Come out with me,"
Strahan said. "There is something you should see."

           
Brennan was too dazed to mark his
way. He knew only that Strahan's servants took him up stairs, then down them,
then through narrow passageways. Eerie godfire glowed, negating the need for
candles. Beneath his booted feet fell away stair after stair, shallow,
hollowed, smooth, worn down after decades of use. Or was it centuries?

           
Down, down, down. Briefly, he
thought of the Womb of the Earth. But this was far deeper. Blacker. It stank of
the netherworld.

           
One man before him, one behind.
Fleetingly, he considered an attempt at escape. But it fled the moment he
thought it; he was in no condition to try such folly.

           
Captivity had worn him to the bone
just as time had worn the steps. Even a child could knock him down; Strahan's
men were not children.

           
Down, down, down.

           
Something gibbered in the wall.

           
Brennan's breath was an audible
rasp. He tried to silence himself, but the months had stripped him of control.
He was frightened, and it showed. Strahan knew his man; knew how to diminish
his pride.

           
Down.

           
And then the servants stepped aside.

           
On the threshhold, Brennan halted.
He thought to turn and run, but a door closed quietly behind him.

           
Through the columns, an echo ran.

           
"Behold," Strahan said,
"the Presence Chamber of the god."

           
Brennan looked down the columned
corridor, stunned by the vastness of the cavern. It unfolded before him into a
multitude of vaulted glasswork ceilings, arch upon arch, each reaching higher
then the last. Much like the rune-carved hammer-beamed timbers in the roof of
Homana-Mujhar, the cavern displayed a filigree of fretwork. A lattice of
delicate glass, set aglow from the glare of the Gate,

           
Something hummed through whorled
columns. Godfire rose, then died.

           
"Come forth," Strahan
said, "and behold the Gate of the god."

           
Steadily, Brennan walked. Behind
him, humming followed.

           
Beyond the Gate, Strahan waited. He
wore black leathers and a velvet doublet of deepest, blood-red purple.

           
Godfire glowed in the creases. On
his brow, the circlet blazed. Raven hair cloaked shoulders.

           
Brennan walked steadily on,
transfixed by the maw in the earth. Around its lips flames danced, licked,
beckoned; the spittle of the god was foul.

           
"There," Strahan said. In
his hands was a rectangular black-lacquered box alive with writhing crimson
runes.

           
Brennan halted. He was but two steps
from the rim of the Gate, but he did not look. Strahan faced him across it.
Between them lay the glowing sphincter of the Seker's netherworld. The realm of
Asar-Suti.

           
He was afraid. But in that moment,
anger swallowed fear. "One might think." Brennan said, "the
Seker would smell better."

           
Strahan's smile vanished.

           
"One might realize,"
Brennan said, "that a Cheysuu cannot be broken." He paused. "Not
by his brother race."

           
The runes ran in frenzied circles
around the edge of the box until there were no runes at all, only a blur of
lurid light red as blood. Strahan's expression was unreadable.

           
"Lock me up," Brennan
said. "Lock me up forever. But I will never serve you. Not in madness or
sanity."

           
Strahan's winged brows rose slightly,
touched the curve of the gleaming circlet. It was of gnarled, twisted shapes,
wracked in blood-born silver. "I am suitably impressed by your
confidence." One eloquent finger tapped the lid of the wooden box; the
runes fell back into place. "I admire your strength of will. But I make no
idle boast: I can break a Cheysuli. And I intend to do it."

           
"How?" Brennan asked.
"You hold my lir; so be it. I can do nothing to free her. You may slay her
if you choose; doing so frees me forever, and you will lose me entirely."

           
"There will be no
death-ritual," Strahan told him. "No escape from the madness
lirlessness will bring. Do you sentence yourself to that?"

           
Madness was anathema to the Cheysuli.
The loss of control in lir-shape or out of it was considered inexcusable, in
addition to being potentially deadly. A Cheysuli warrior made lirless was, in
time, little better than a beast; death was preferable. And so the ritual had
been born. But in order to make the ritual have meaning, suicide was taboo. A
paradox. And clearly, Strahan knew it.

           
Brennan had been raised to respect
the customs of his race. At his Ceremony of Honors, following the bonding with
Sleeta, he had accepted the responsibilities of a warrior knowing full well
that even the Mujhar of Homana owed his life to the will of the gods. The
ritual bound Niall's heir as well as others, and he had accepted it.

           
And now, his commitment was tested.

           
"You have spent the better part
of several months attempting to drive me mad,” Brennan said. "Lirlessness
will succeed where imprisonment could not, but of what use am I then? What good
is a mad Mujhar?"

           
Strahan's smile was sweet.
"More malleable than one who is sane. Look at Shaine." A tendril of
living flame licked up from the Gate, touched his boot, tapped, as if to remind
him; fell back as Strahan nodded. "Look at Shaine, your distant kinsman,
who once gave us Homana-Mujhar because he preferred Ihlini to Cheysuli."

           
"But Carillon took it back ...
it and Solinde. Your homeland, Strahan . . . and now a vassal to the
Cheysuli." Brennan shrugged. "Do your worst, Ihlini. I can hardly
gainsay you, but idiocy may thwart you."

           
"And if I chose to kill the cat
with an excess of—incivility? What would you say then?"

           
"That I will suffer,"
Brennan answered. "No doubt I will beg you to stop. But when you have
stopped, and I have my wits about me, the cycle will start again.”

           
Strahan shook his head. "You do
not understand. I do not need you sane ... I can control a hollow man easier
than one stuffed full with Cheysuli pride."

           
"Then why this mummery?"

           
Strahan sighed. "An amusing
divertissement. But now, shall we to the bargain? You may find it interests
you."

           
Brennan merely shrugged.

           
"I want Homana," Strahan
said. "Through you I can have it."

           
Brennan shook his bead.

           
"In good time, you shall have
it; I will not take Niall’s life. Let him live out his years ... I have as many
as I need." Strahan's eyes narrowed. "The bargain, Brennan: serve me,
and I will spare your father's life. I will spare the life of your lir. I will
give you the years of your life and beyond, through the benificence of the
Seker."

           
"I have no desire to live
forever." Brennan folded his dirt-crusted arms. The lir-gold was dulled by
grime, but it did not dull his determination. "I will not accept your
bargain."

           
"Not even to save your
kin?"

           
He dared give Strahan no advantage.
Brennan set his teeth. "You can only kill them once. Then where is your
power?"

           
"I can destroy the
prophecy."

           
"You have tried so many
times."

           
Strahan sighed. "This, I see,
leads nowhere."

           
"No." Brennan smiled.
"What have you left. Ihlini?"

           
"This," Strahan said, and
opened the wooden box.

           
Through the smoke, Brennan looked.
And then he stared in disgust at Strahan, his distaste as plain as his
bafflement.

           
"Do you not recognize it?"
Strahan asked.

           
"A human hand," Brennan
said flatly. "Ensorcelled, no doubt; else it would have decayed by
now."

           
"More than a human hand. It is
a Cheysuli hand."

           
As he was meant to, Brennan looked again.
His belly knotted itself.

           
Strahan closed the box. "I
should be very careful. Hart may want it back."

           
When he could, Brennan breathed
again and swallowed back the bile. "There was no ring," he said
tightly.

           
"He wagered it away."
Strahan looked past Brennan.

           
"Why not ask him
yourself?"

           
Brennan swung around. Through the
columns came his brother. At his left wrist there was no hand.

           
"I have the power."
Strahan spoke with infinite kindness. "Serve me, Brennan, and I will make
him whole."

           
"Rujho. It was Hart, whose
voice echoed shock throughout the cavern. "Gods, Brennan—not you! I
thought he had only me!"

           
Strahan smiled warmly. "Welcome
to the Gate."

           
Hart barely spared a glance for the
Ihlini. He ran forward toward Brennan. "Rufho—" But he slowed as he
reached the Gate. The light was odd on his face, limning gauntaess and despair.
"Brennan, are you whole?"

           
Brennan swallowed tightly.
"More so than you," he said. "Oh, gods, rujho—" Abruptly he
turned away.

           
"Brennan!" Hart halted
raggedly. Shock made him awkward. "Do you already cast me out?"

           
"Ask him!" Brennan spun
and thrust out an arm toward Strahan. "Ask him. Hart!"