Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (13 page)

           
Kellin leapt to his feet and ran,
and was jerked down almost at once. Iron teeth bit through boot and compressed
fragile flesh, scraping now on bone.

           
—no—no—

           
—no—no—NO— "

           
The lion, still coughing, broke out
of shadow into moonlight. Kellin jerked at the chain again, but palms slipped
in sticky blood. The weight of the trap was nothing as he tried to stand again,
to meet his death like a man.

           
But then the lion roared. The boy
who meant to die a man was reduced, by sheer terror, into nothing but a child
screaming frenziedly for his father.

           
But his father would not come,
because he never had.

           
Horseback. And yet he did not ride
as a man but as a child, a small child, rump settled across the withers, legs
dangling slackly upon one shoulder while the rest of him was cradled securely
against a man's chest.

           
Kellin roused into terror. "Lion—"
He was perfectly stiff, trying to flail his way to escape. Terror overwhelmed
him. "Lion— LION—"

           
Arms tightened, stilling him.
"There is no lion here."

           
"But—" He shut his mouth
on the protest, the adamant denial of what the voice told him. Then another
panic engulfed. "Ihlini—"

           
The man laughed softly, as if
meaning no insult.

           
"Not I, my lad. I've not the
breeding for it."

           
Kellin subsided, though his strained
breathing was audible. His eyes stretched painfully wide, but saw nothing in
the darkness save the underside of a man's jaw and the oblique silhouette of a
head. "Who—?" It faded at once. Pain reasserted itself. "My
leg."

           
"I'm sorry for it, lad .. . but
you'll have to wait for the healing."

           
It took effort to speak, to forced a
single word through the rictus of his mouth. "—whole—?"

           
"Broken, I fear. But we'll be
mending it for you."

           
Kellin ground his teeth.
"—hurts—" And then wished he had said nothing, nothing at all; a
Cheysuli did not speak of pain.

           
"Aye, one would think so."
The grip shifted a little, sliding down Kellin's spine to accommodate the
weight that was no longer quite so slack.

           
" 'Twas a trap for a bear, not
a boy. You're fortunate it left the foot attached."

           
Kellin stiffened again, craning, as
he tried to see for himself.

           
The other laughed softly. "Aye,
lad, 'tis there. I promise you that. Now, settle yourself; you've a fever
coming on. You'll do better to rest."

           
"Who—?" he began again.

           
The rider chuckled as Kellin tried
to sit up. He turned his face downward. "There, now—better? I'm one of you
after all."

           
"One of—me?" And then
Kellin understood. Relief washed through him, then ebbed as quickly as it stole
his strength away.

           
Indeed, one of him. The stranger was
his grandsire, if stripped of forty years. His accent was Aileen's own. There
was only one Cheysuli warrior in all the world who sounded like the Mujhar's
Erinnish queen.

           
"Blais," Kellin murmured.
Weakness and fever crept closer to awareness, nibbling at its edges.

           
The warrior grinned, displaying fine
white teeth in a dark Cheysuli face. "Be still, little cousin. We've yet a
ways to ride. You'll do better to pass it in sleep."

           
In sleep, or something like. Kellin
slumped against his kinsman as consciousness departed.

           
He roused as Blais handed him down
from the horse into someone else's care. Pain renewed itself, so strongly that
Kellin whimpered before he could suppress it. And then he was more ashamed than
ever because Blais himself was Cheysuli and knew a warrior did not voice his
discomfort.

           
Sweating, Kellin bit again into a
split lip and tasted fresh blood. It was all he could do not to moan aloud.

           
"My pavilion," Blais said
briefly. "Send someone to Homana-Mujhar with word, and call others here
for the healing."

           
The other warrior carried Kellin
inside as Blais dismounted and carefully settled him onto a pallet of thick
furs. Kellin opened his eyes and saw the shadowed interior of a Cheysuli
pavilion. Then the stranger was gone, and Blais knelt down on one knee beside
him. A callused palm touched Kellin's forehead.

           
"Shansu," Blais murmured.
"I know it hurts, little cousin, no need to fight it so, I'll think none
the less of you."

           
But Kellin would not give in, though
he sweated and squirmed with pain. "Can't you heal me?"

           
Blais smiled. His face was kind in a
stem sort of way. He was very like them all, though Erinn and Homana ran in his
veins as well as Cheysuli blood. Physically the dilution did not show; Blais'
features and coloring were purely Cheysuli, even if the accent was not. "Not
without help, my lad. I was ill myself last year with the summer fever—well
enough now, you'll see, but weak in the earth magic yet. I'd rather not risk
the future of Homana to a halfling's meager gifts."

           
Halfling. Kellin shifted. What am I,
then? "You have a lir. Tanni. I remember from when you visited
Homana-Mujhar two years ago."

           
"Aye, but she came to me late.
Don't be forgetting, lad—I was Erinn-raised. The magic there is different. I'm
different because of it."

           
Fever-clad weakness proved pervasive.
Kellin squinted at his cousin through a wave of fading vision. "I'm
different, too, like you . .. will I get my lir late?"

           
" Tis between you and the
gods." Blais' callused palm was gentle as he smoothed back dampened hair.
"Hush. now, lad. Don't waste yourself on talking."

           
Kellin squirmed. "The
Lion—"

           
" 'Twas a bear-trap, lad."

           
Kellin shut his eyes because it made
him dizzy to keep them open. "An Ihlini Lion . .." he asserted
weakly, "and it was after me."

           
"Lad."

           
"—was—" Kellin insisted.
"The Ihlini killed Urchin. And Rogan."

           
"Kellin."

           
"They were my friends, and he
killed them."

           
"Kellin!" Blais caught
Kellin's head between two strong hands, cupping the dome of skull easily.
"No more of this. The healing comes first, then we'll be talking of
deaths. D'ye hear?"

           
"But—"

           
"Be still, my little prince.
Homana has need of you whole."

           
"But—"

           
And then the others were there,
crowding into the pavilion, and the wave of exhaustion that engulfed Kellin was
as much induced by the earth magic as by his fever.

           
Voices intruded. The murmurs were
quiet, but they nonetheless broke apart Kellin's tattered dreams and roused him
to wakefulness.

           
"—harsh for any man to lose his
closest companions," Blais was saying from outside as he pulled aside the
door-flap. "For a lad, that much the harder."

           
Light penetrated the interior,
turning the inside of Kellin's eyelids red. The answering voice was well-known
and beloved. "Kellin has always seemed older than his years," Brennan
said as he entered the pavilion. "Sometimes I forget he is naught but a
boy, and I try to make him into a man."

           
" 'Tis the risk any man takes
with an heir, especially a prince." Blais let the door-flap drop, dimming
daylight again into a wan, saffron tint.

           
Brennan's voice was hollow. "He
is more than that to me. I lost Aidan—" He checked- "So, now there is
Kellin. In Aidan's place. In all things, in Aidan's place. He was made to be
Prince of Homana before he was even a boy, still but an infant wetting his napkins."

           
Kellin cracked his lids slightly,
only enough so he could see the two men through a fuzzy fringe of lashes. He
did not want them to know he was awake. He had learned very young that adults
overheard divulged more information than when asked straight out.

           
Blais' laugh was soft as he settled
himself near the pallet. "You had no choice but to invest him when you
did. Aidan had renounced the title already, and I had come from Erinn. D'ye
think I am dead. I heard all the whispers, sufali ... had you delayed Kellin's
investiture, my presence here in Homana might have given new heart to the
a'saii. Your claim on the Lion would have been threatened again."

           
"I might have packed you off to
Erinn," Brennan suggested mildly.

           
"Might have tried, my lord
Mujhar." Blais' tone was amused as he gestured for his guest to seat
himself. "When has a warrior been made to do anything he preferred not to
do?"

           
Brennan sighed as he knelt down
beside his grandson. "Even Kellin. Even a ten-year-old boy."

           
The humor was banished. "He spoke
of a lion, and an Ihlini."

           
The line of Brennan's mouth
tautened. "The lion is something Kellin made up years ago. It is an excuse
for things he cannot explain. He is fanciful; he conjures a beast from the
lions in banners and signets, and the throne itself. And because he has been
unfortunate to witness Ihlini handiwork, he interprets all the violence as the
doings of this lion."

           
"What handiwork?"

           
"The death of a fortune-teller.
He was a foreigner and unknown to us, but his death stank of sorcery."

           
"Lochiel," Blais said
grimly.

           
"He knows very well. Kellin
offers the greatest threat to the Ihlini."

           
"Like his father before
him."

           
"But Aidan no longer matters.
He sired the next link, and that link now is the one Lochiel must
shatter." Brennan's fingertips gently touched Kellin's brow. "It all
comes to Kellin. Centuries of planning all comes down to him."

           
Blais' tone was dry, for all it was
serious. "Then we had best see he survives."

           
"I have done everything I
could. The boy has been kept so closely it is no wonder he makes up stories
about lions. Had my jehan kept me so tied to Homana-Mujhar, I would have gone
mad. As it is, I am not in the least surprised he found a way to escape his
imprisonment. But Urchin and Rogan are also missing; I can only surmise they,
too, were lured away. No Ihlini could get in, and Kellin is too well-guarded
within the palace itself. He would go nowhere without the Homanan boy, and
Rogan would never permit Kellin to leave if he heard any whisper of it. So I
believe we must look at a clever trap set with the kind of bait that would lure
all of them out."

           
Blais' tone was grim. "An
imaginary lion?"

           
Kellin could no longer hold himself
back; his eyes popped open. "There was a Lion!"

           
"Cheysuli ears," Brennan
said, brows arching, "hear more than they should."

           
"There was," Kellin
insisted. "It chased me into the bear-trap . .. after Urchin and Rogan
died."

           
Brennan shut his eyes. "More
deaths."

           
Blais shifted. He sat cross-legged,
one thigh weighted down by the head of a ruddy wolf. His expression was oddly
blank as he stroked the wide skull and scratched the base of the ears.

           
Brennan's momentary lapse was
banished. He was calm, unperturbed. "Tell us what happened, Kellin. We
must know everything."

           
Kellin delayed, testing his ankle.
"It doesn't hurt any more."

           
"Earth magic," Blais said.
"You've a scar, but the bones are whole."

           
"A scar?" Kellin peeled
back the deerskin coverlet and saw the bared ankle. Indeed, there was a jagged
ring of purplish "tooth" marks ringing his ankle. He wiggled his foot
again. There was no pain.

           
" 'Twill fade," Blais told
him. "I've more scars than I can count, but hardly any of them show."

           
Kellin did not care about the scar;
if anything, it proved there was a Lion. He looked now at his grandsire,
putting aside the Lion to speak of another grief. "It was Rogan," he
said unsteadily.

           
"Rogan betrayed me to the
Ihlini."