Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 05 (52 page)

           
Lir, Sleeta said sharply. The man.

           
Brennan looked up quickly. And then
gaped in astonishment. “jehan—?"

           
Hart twisted to look. Like
Brennan's, his face reflected shock. And then he expelled a breath, laughing a
little.

           
"Not jehan, Brennan . . . Carrion's
bastard son. The deaf-mute."

           
"Carollan," Brennan
breathed. "By the gods, I had forgotten he lived in Solinde."

           
Carollan approached at a jog. He
was, like their father, a big man, tall and strongly built, though now age
stole flexibility and fluidity of movement. His hair was gray, bound back into
a clubbed braid. Unlike Niall, he still had two eyes of unwavering blue. Both
were fixed on Corin.

           
He knelt as Hart and Brennan moved
aside. His hands were infinitely gentle as he examined eyes, mouth, ears,
wiping away the trickles of discolored blood.

           
"Jehan—?" Corin's head
rolled weakly from side to side, until Carollan stilled it. "Jehan . . .
has Strahan given you back your eye?"

           
The large hands were soothing.
Carefully Carollan scooped Corin up, settled him against a broad chest and
started back the way he had come.

           
Hart and Brennan did not hesitate,
but fell in to flank him on either side. With them went the lir.

           
He was white-haired, but oddly
youthful. There was no age in his face, none at all, though the expression in
sky-blue eyes told of things seen in ages past as well as anticipating all the
days of the future. He tended Corin with endless patience and gentleness,
though he required Carollan's aid because of his ruined hands. Quietly
courteous, he turned aside anxious queries from Brennan and Hart and gave all
his attention to the youngest of Niall’s sons. And at last. Hart and Brennan
subsided into a forced, rigid patience.

           
Taliesin. They knew him well enough,
though neither had met the man. More than man, at that: Ihhni, once servant of
the Seker, harper to Tynstar himself, Strahan's father, and later to the son. Taliesin
of the Ihhni, who lived apart from everyone save Carillon's bastard son.

           
Hart looked at the harper's hands.
Such wracked, twisted things, incapable of functioning normally. There were
some small things Taliesin could do, but more intricate chores called for
straight, flexible fingers and hands with unknotted bones. Once he had made
music for Solindish kings and queens and sorcerers; now he saved a Homanan
king's Cheysuli son from death.

           
He looked at the stump of his wrist.
How he hated the absence of his hand, the lack of fingers, thumb, palm; knowing
the lack sentenced him to a life apart from his people. Slowly he sat back in
the chair and scratched absently at his scalp, taking solace in Rael's presence
upon the chair back, and yet knowing the lir-link was forever tarnished by his
inability to fly. The lack of a hand, translated out of human mass into
raptor's, meant the lack of too much wing; short hops, perhaps, would be
possible, but to resemble chicken instead of hawk—

           
Hart shut his eyes. He was so weary,
so diminished by reaction ... he needed rest badly, and solid food, and an
escape from worry and fear.

           
A hand touched his arm. His eyes
snapped open and he looked up at Brennan, who tried to smile encouragement and
failed. By Brennan’s face he knew his own; too pale, too gaunt, too dirty. And
the eyes, though yellow instead of blue, were full of memories and more than a
trace of confusion.

           
Strahan has touched us all— Hart sat
more upright, then leaned forward as Brennan moved back to the pallet on which
Corin lay. Taliesin had made it clear he required none of their help—Caro was
enough, he said—but still they could not keep themselves from returning time
and again to the pallet. To stare down helplessly at the one who had done most
to thwart the Seker and the Ihlini, and all the while they had believed him
traitor to their race,

           
Taliesin sighed, brushed back a
strand of fine white hair, and turned to look at them both. Caro still knelt at
Corin's side, unable to hear what was said; unable to speak of it if he could.
"He will recover," the harper told them. "He started it himself,
by forcing himself to vomit . . . the draught I have administered will ease the
burning in his blood until it passes normally. It is a side-effect of drinking
the Seker's blood; I experienced it myself.

           
He is lucky he drank only one
goblet, or we would be hard-pressed to win him away from Strahan." He
sighed.

           
"As for the legs, well, time
will heal them of its own accord, but time is not a luxury any of you may lay
claim to." He rose and slipped ruined hands inside the wide sleeves of his
blue robe. "If I thought you would go without him, I would send you on to
Homana-Mujhar."

           
"Why?" Brennan asked
sharply. "Is something wrong in Mujhara?"

           
The harper sought and found a seat
on a stool, settling himself with a calmness that belied the intent of his
words. "Nothing that your return cannot help put to rights, although it
will not settle things entirely. Your cousin has done too much harm in your
absence. There is unrest in the clans."

           
"Cousin?" Hart frowned.
"Teirnan? Why? What has Teir done?"

           
With feeling, Brennan swore.
"He meant it, then, the fool."

           
"Meant what?" Hart scowled
at his brother. "Enlighten me, rujho."

           
Brennan made an impatient gesture.
"He swore to renounce the prophecy because he refuses to acknowledge that
some day Cheysuli and Ihlini must coexist, cohabit, in order to merge the
bloodlines."

           
"Aye, well, I am not so fond of
that idea, either. But—to renounce the prophecy?" Hart shook his head. "Teir
is too quick to act sometimes, but to turn his back on what gives our lives
meaning? I think not."

           
"I think aye," Taliesin
said gently. "He has done it, Hart. I hear little enough here in Solinde,
and rumor is often blown out of proportion, but some truth leaks through. And
you must recall that in Solinde, the people are willing enough to hear words of
Homanan trouble."

           
"Which are?" Brennan
prodded.

           
"That Teirnan has withdrawn
from his clan," Taliesin answered. "He has struck his pavilion and
formally petitioned the shar tahl to remove his rune-sign from the
birthlines." So calmly he spoke of things Cheysuli. "He has gathered
other malcontents and together they have gone from clan to clan, all across
Homana, to win warriors to the cause of the a'saii."

           
"Idiocy!" Hart's startled
disbelief was manifest. "What does he think to do?"

           
"What he hopes to do is
fracture the Cheysuli into separate factions, those dedicated to the prophecy
and those who are newly turned against it." Taliesin shrugged.

           
"Niall has done as I expected,
once I had told him the truth of things. No longer could he—and Ian—believe
implicitly in Ihlini evil, when only a portion of us worship Asar-Suti. They
have acknowledged that we are not so bad after all, most of us, and that
perhaps it would aot be impossible to believe a Cheysuli could lie down with an
Ihlini and bear children with all the required blood."

           
In his eyes was serenity, though his
words were heresy.

           
"Some of you already have
begotten children on Ihlini."

           
"But not Firstborn."
Brennan's tone was taut. "And not willingly."

           
"You lay with Rhiannon
willingly enough," Taliesin retorted gently, "though, admittedly, you
were unaware of her heritage."

           
"And so are we to believe the
Firstborn will result from trickery?" Brennan shook his head. "I am
not Teir, harper, but I find it impossible to believe the day will come when
Cheysuli and Ihlini can live in peace."

           
"Or lie down with one
another?" Smiling, Taliesin shrugged. "The gods are not fools,
Brennan . . . they arrange things deftly and with surpassing subterfuge, when
it is required. I give you a prophecy of my own." His eyes were very
distant. "There will come a day when a prince of the House of Homana takes
to wife an Ihlini woman, born of Asar-Suti—"

           
"No." In unison.

           
"—and from that willing union
will come the child known as the Firstborn, the boy who will one day
rule."

           
"And this is what Teirnan
fights," Hart said grimly. "I begin to understand."

           
"And will you join with
him?" the harper asked. "Or take up your part in the prophecy?"

           
Hart shook his head. "I have no
part. I am the middle son, unpromised to House or princess." Briefly, he
glanced at Brennan. "Once I was Prince of Solinde. Once I was a
warrior." He displayed the stump of his wrist. "Now I am a man
without a clan."

           
"And Solinde a realm without a
king." Taliesin's smile was inexpressibly gentle. "Whatever you may
think of me because I am Ihlini, I hope you will also realize that I am a man
who loves his country. The House of Solinde is in descent. It is time for a new
House, built on strong, proud rootstock. Yours would do, I think."

           
"I am Cheysuli—" But Hart
stopped short.

           
"You are many things,"
Taliesin told him gently, "and all of them of incalculable value."

           
Brennan saw mute, bitter protest
rising in Hart's eyes and moved to make the explanation himself, knowing it was
too painful for his brother. "Taliesin—I think you misunderstand. We were
taught, in childhood, all Cheysuli traditions. All the customs, rituals,
beliefs." He scrubbed wearily at his forehead. "One custom, cruel as
it may sound, is that a warrior stripped by physical dismember-ment or permanent
handicap of his ability to perform a warrior's duties voluntarily leaves his
clan. He is—"

           
"—kin-wrecked." Hart's
clipped interruption stopped Brennan dead. "It is not so heavy a sentence
as the death-ritual, perhaps, requiring no forfeiture of life—" his tone
was bitterly ironic, "—but what he does forfeit is his clan. His kin,
unless they choose to accompany him."

           
Hart shrugged one shoulder in
eloquent acknowledgment of his plight. "I can hardly expect the Mujnar and
everyone else of the House of Homana to follow me into self-exile."

           
Taliesin's blue eyes were oddly
complacent. "A harsh custom, indeed."

           
"Born of necessity,"
Again, Hart shrugged, as if trying to dismiss the ramifications of the custom
that made him clanless. "The law of survival."

           
Thoughtfully, the Ihlini harper
nodded. "I understand: the weak can pull down the strong."

           
Brennan's tone was subdued. "In
the days of our ancestors, when the world was very young, the weak were left to
die so the strong could continue." He did not look at his twin, whom he
judged strong enough despite the loss of a hand; knowing the old custom, in its
day, made sense even in its cruel practicality. "A man dying of disease in
a time of famine eats food better given to another, and perhaps causes two
deaths in place of one."

           
Taliesin did not smile, but his tone
was strangely sanguine. "I will not argue that, perhaps once, the times
warranted such harsh customs. Certainly we Ihlini have made difficult
adjustments in order to survive. But the time you speak of has passed. Hart is
more than merely a warrior, but also a Prince of Solinde." He shrugged,
forestalling incipient protests. "Besides, I think you should recall—loyal
fatalists that you are—there may be a reason for this."

           
Hart's face was stark.

           
"Tahlmorra," Brennan said
hollowly. "A word more eloquent than 'reason.’ "

           
"Then, my lord, you might argue
that the need for such rigid adherence to an outdated custom has
declined," the harper suggested. "You might go before Clan Council,
as the Cheysuli Prince of Homana, and tell them the need is no longer valid.
Now is the time for a new custom, where a man maimed can be valued for things
other than physical abilities."

           
Hart looked at Brennan sharply,
abruptly cognizant of what such change could mean to him as well as to others.

           
Brennan was clearly stunned by the
magnitude of the idea, but Hart knew it would not gainsay him. Yet he also knew
better than to hope too hard for something that might not occur. Clan Council
and the shar tahls, whose job it was to insure the continuance of tradition,
were incredibly protective of Cheysuli customs; it was what made the race so
difficult to destroy, from inside as well as without.

           
"The need is no longer
valid," Brennan said thoughtfully. "Hart is as good a warrior as any
Cheysuli I know, and there is no reason to believe the lack of a hand will
gainsay him from his responsibilities." He nodded. "If I were to go
before Clan Council—"

           
Hart shrugged. "Peacetime,
rujho. If war were to return—"

           
"There will be no war again,
ever. With Corin in Atvia and Keely wed to Sean of Erinn, who is left to fight
us? Solinde?" Brennan spread his hands. "Would you levy war against
your rujholli?”

           
Hart sighed and sat back in his
chair, gazing up at Rael perched on the back. "No more than against my lir."

           
"And so the prophecy nears
completion." Taliesin smiled and rose. "You are so close, you cannot
see it. But you have, just now, completed a major requirement for fulfillment:
four warring realms united in peace."