Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (31 page)

           
"A thing so vital as this
cannot be learned in a night. It requires years." Burr sipped his honey
brew. "A young warrior is taught from the day of his birth how to strike
the balance in all things. We are a proud race, we Cheysuli, and surpassingly
arrogant—" Burr smiled, "—because we are, after all, the children of
the gods .. . but we are not an angry race, nor one much given to war except
when it is required. The Homanans have called us beasts and predators, but it
is because of what we can do with our bodies, not our desire for blood. We are
a peaceful race. That desire for peace—in mind as well as lifestyle—is taught
from birth. By the time a young man reaches the age to receive a lir, his
knowledge of self-control is well-rooted. His longing for a lir supercedes the
recklessness of youth—no young Cheysuli would risk the wrath of the gods that
might result in lirlessness."

           
"Is that true?" Kellin
asked. "You are a shar tahl—would the gods deny a boy a lir because he
does not suit their idea of a well-behaved Cheysuli?"

           
Burr laughed. "You are the most
defiant and reckless of Cheysuli I have ever known. Yet there is the proof that
the gods do as they will." A hand indicated Sima. "You have your
place, Kellin. You have a tahlmorra. Now it is your task to acknowledge the
path before you."

           
"And take it?"

           
"If it is what the gods
intend."

           
"Gods," Kellin muttered.
"They clutter up a life. They bind a man's spirit so he cannot do as he
will."

           
"You, I believe, are a perfect
example of the fallacy in that logic. You do—and have always done—precisely as
you desire." Burr sipped liquor, then set the cup aside. "You must
fully accept your lir. To remain half-bonded sentences both of you to a life to
which no man—or lir—should ever be subjected."

           
"Madness," Kellin said. He
worked a trapped twig from the weave of soiled breeches. "What if I told
you I believed it was arrant nonsense, this belief that lirlessness results in
madness? That I believe it is no more than a means for a man's misplaced faith
in his gods to control him, or destroy him?"

           
Burr smiled. "You would not be
the first to suggest that. In fact, if you were not the heir to the Lion and
therefore assured of your place, I would say your defiance and determination
resembles the a'saii." He drank, watching Kellin over the rim of his cup.
"It is not easy for a man to accept that one moment he is in the fullness
of his prime, healthy and strong, while the next he is sentenced to the
death-ritual despite his continued health and strength. It is the true test of
what we are, Kellin; do you know of any other race which willingly embraces
death when there appears to be no reason to die?"

           
"No. No other race is so
ludicrously constrained by the gods." Kellin shook his head, tapping the
twig against his knee. "It is a waste. Burr! Just as kin-wrecking
is!"

           
"That. I agree with," Burr
said. "Once, the custom had its place .. . there was a need, Kellin."

           
"To cast out a man because he
was maimed?" Kellin shook his head. "The loss of a hand does not
render a man incapable of serving his clan or his kin."

           
"Once, it might have. If a
one-handed warrior failed, because of his infirmity, to protect a single life,
he was a detriment. There was a time we dared not permit such a risk, lest our
people die out entirely."

           
Kellin gestured. "Enough. I am
speaking now of the death-ritual. I contend it is nothing more than a means of
control, a method by which the gods—and shar tahls, perhaps?—" he grinned
in arch contempt, "—can force others to do their will."

           
Burr was silent. His eyes were
partially hidden behind lowered lashes. Kellin thought perhaps he might at last
have provoked the older man into anger, but when Burr at last met his eyes
there was nothing of anger in his expression. "What the gods have required
of men is duty, honor, reverence—"

           
"And self-sacrifice!"

           
"—and sacrifice." Burr
finished. "Aye. I deny none of it. But if we had not offered any of these
things, Kellin, you would not be seated here before me contesting the need for
such service."

           
"Words!" Kellin snapped.
"You are as bad as the Ihlini. You weave magic with words, to ensorcell me
to your will."

           
"I do nothing but state the
truth." Burr's tone was very quiet, lacking all emotion. "If a single
man in your birthline had turned his back on his tahlmorra, you would not be
the warrior destined to inherit the Lion."

           
"You mean if my Jehan had
turned his back on his tahlmorra." Kellin wanted to swear. "This is
merely another attempt to persuade me that what my jehan did was necessary. You
said yourself you are friends ... I hear bias in his favor,"

           
"It was necessary," Burr
said. "Who can say what might have become of you if Aidan had not
renounced his title? Paths can be altered, Kellin—and prophecies. If Aidan had
remained here, he would be Prince of Homana. You would merely be third in line
behind Brennan and Aidan. That extra time could well have delayed completion of
the prophecy, and destroyed it utterly."

           
"You mean, it might have
prevented me from lying with whatever woman I am supposed to lie with—according
to the gods—in order to sire Cynric." Kellin tossed aside the twig.
"A convenience, nothing more. No one knows this. Just as no one knows for
certain a warrior goes mad if his lir is killed." He smiled victory.
"You see? We have come full circle."

           
Burr's answering smile was grim.
"But I can name you the proofs; Duncan, Cheysuli clan-leader, kept alive
by Ihlini sorcery though his lir was dead, and used as a weapon to strike at
his son, Donal, who was meant to be Mujhar."

           
Kellin felt cold; he knew this
history.

           
"Teiman, Blais' jehan, who
assumed the role of clan-leader to the heretical a'saii. A warrior who would
have, given the chance, pulled Brennan from the Lion and mounted it
himself." Burr's tone was steady. "Tieman renounced his lir. In the
end, completely mad, he threw himself into the Womb of the Earth before the
eyes of your Jehan and jehana in an attempt to prove himself worthy to hold the
Lion. He did not come out."

           
Kellin knew that also.

           
Burr said softly, "First we
will speak of your jehan. Then of the balance."

           
Kellin wanted it badly.
"No," he said roughly. "What I learn of my jehan will be learned
from him."

           
Burr looked beyond him to the slack
door-flap.

           
He said a single word—a name—and a
warrior came in. In his arms he held a small girl asleep against his shoulder;
by his side stood a tousle-haired boy of perhaps three years.

           
"There is another," the
shar tahl said. "Another son; do you recall? Or have you forgotten
entirely that these are your children?"

           
"Mine—" Kellin blurted.

           
"Three royal bastards."
Burr's tone was unrelenting. "Packed off to Clankeep like so much unwanted
baggage, and never once visited by the man who sired them."

           
Kellin refused to look at the
children, or at the warrior with them. Instead he stared at Burr.

           
"Bastards," he declared,
biting off the word.

           
The shar tahl's voice was calm.
"That they are bastards does not preclude the need for parents."

           
Kellin's lips were stiff.
"Homanan halflings."

           
"And what are you, my lord, but
Homanan, Solindish, Atvian, Ennnish. .. ?" Burr let it trail off. "I
am pure Cheysuli."

           
"A'saii?" Kellin
challenged. "You believe I should be replaced?"

           
"If you refuse your lir,
assuredly." Burr was relentless. "Look at your children,
Kellin."

           
He did not want to. He was desperate
not to.

           
"Bastards have no place in the
line of succession—"

           
"—and therefore do not
matter?" Burr shook his head. "That is the Homanan in you, I fear ...
in the clans bastardy bears no stigma." He paused. "Did Ian know you
felt so? He, too, was a bastard."

           
"Enough!" Kellin hissed.
"You try to twist me inside out no matter what I say."

           
"I shall twist you any way I
deem necessary, if the result achieved is as I believe it should be."

           
Burr looked at the boy. "Young,
but he promises well. Homanan eyes—they are hazel—but the hair is yours. And
the chin—"

           
"Stop it."

           
"The girl is too young yet to
show much of what she shall be—"

           
"Stop it!"

           
"—and of course the other boy
is but a handful of months." Burr looked at Kellin, all pretenses to
neutrality dropped. "Explain it away, if you please. Justify your actions
with regard to these children, though you refuse to permit your jehan the same
favor."

           
"He traded me for the
gods!" It was a cry from the heart Kellin regretted at once. "Can you
not see—"

           
"What I see are two children
without a jehan," Burr said. "Another yet sleeps at the breast of a
Cheysuli woman who lost her own baby. I submit to you, my lord: for what did
you trade them?"

           
Words boiled up in Kellin's mouth,
so many at first he could not find a single one that would, conjoined with
another, make any sense at all. Furious, he thrust himself to his feet. At last
the words broke free. "I get nothing from you. No truths, no support, no
honorable service! Nothing more than drivel mouthed by a man who is truer to
the a'saii than to his own Mujhar!"

           
Burr did not rise. "Until you
can look on those children and acknowledge your place in their lives, speak no
word against Aidan."

           
Kellin extended a shaking hand. He
pointed at Sima. "I want no lir."

           
"You have one."

           
"I want to be rid of her."

           
"And open the door to
madness."

           
"I do not believe it."

           
Burr's eyes glinted. "Then test
it, my lord. Challenge the gods. Renounce your lir and withstand the
madness." He rose and took the small girl from the silent warrior's arms,
settling her against his shoulder. Over her head, he said, "It will be a
true test, I think. Certainly as true as the one Teirnan undertook at the Womb
of the Earth."

           
Desperate, Kellin declared, "I
have no room in my life for the impediment of halfling bastards'"

           
"That," Burr said,
"is between you and the gods."

           
Kellin shut his teeth. "You are
wrong. All of you. I will prove you wrong."

           
"Tahlmorra lujhalla mei wiccan,
cheysu," Burr said. Then, as Kellin turned to flee, "Cheysuli i'halla
shansu."

           
Kellin did not stay the rest of the
night in Clankeep but took back his borrowed mount and rode on toward Mujhara.
He had moved beyond the point of weariness into the realm of an exhaustion so
complex as to render him almost pretematurally alert. Small sounds were
magnified into a clamor that filled his head, so that there was no room for thought.
It pleased him. Thought renewed anger, reestablished frustration, reminded him
yet again that no matter what he said—no matter who he was—no Cheysuli warrior
would accept him as one of them so long as he lacked a lir.

           
They would sooner have me go mad
with a lir than go mad because I renounce one.

           
It made no sense to Kellin. But
neither did the mountain cat who shadowed his horse, loping in its wake.

           
He had tried to send her away. Sima
refused to go. Since he had made very clear his intentions to forswear her, the
cat had said nothing. The link was suspiciously empty -

           
As if she no longer exists. And yet
here she was; he had only to glance over a shoulder to see her behind him.

           
Would it not be simpler if he shut
off that link forever? Certainly less hazardous. If Sima died while as yet
unbonded, he could escape the death-ritual.

           
Though Burr says I will not.

           
Kellin shifted in the saddle,
attempting to lessen the discomfort of his chest. The shar tahl had challenged
him to test the conviction that a lirless warrior went mad. And he had
accepted. Part of the reason was pride, part a natural defiance; uneasily
Kellin wondered what might happen if he lost the challenge. If, after all, the
Cheysuli belief was based on truth.

           
What does it feel like to go mad? He
slowed his mount as he approached the city; star- and moonlight, now tainted by
Mujhara's illumination, made it difficult to see the road. What was Teiman
thinking, as he leapt into the Womb?

           
What had his father thought, and his
mother, as the warrior without a lir tested his right to the Lion, and was
repudiated?

           
I would never throw myself into the
Womb of the Earth. It was— He brought himself up short.

           
Madness?

           
Kellin swore the vilest oaths he
could think of.

           
An arm scrubbed roughly across his
face did nothing to rid his head of such thoughts. It smeared grime and crusted
blood—he had left Clankeep without even so much as a damp cloth for cleaning
his face—and tousled stiffened hair. His clothing was rigid with dried blood and
scratched at bruised flesh. Inside the flesh, bones ached.

           
He did not enter Mujhara by way of
the Eastern Gate because they knew him there. Instead he angled the horse right
and rode for the Northern Gate. Of all the gates it was the least used; the
Eastern led toward Clankeep, the Southern to Hondarth, the Western to Solinde.
The Northern opened onto the road that, followed to its end, led to the
Bluetooth
River
: beyond lay the Northern Wastes, and
Valgaard.

           
Kellin shivered. I would have gone
there, had Corwyth persevered.

           
Through the Northern Gate lay the
poorer sections of Mujhara, including the Midden. Kellin intended to ride
directly through, bound for Homana-Mujhar on its low rise in the center of the
city. He wanted a bath very badly, and a bed—

           
His horse—Corwyth's horse—shied
suddenly, even as Kellin heard the low-pitched growling. He gathered rein,
swearing, as the dog boiled out of the darkness.

           
Kellin took a deeper seat,
anticipating trouble, but the dog streaked by him. Then he knew.

           
The link that had been so empty
blazed suddenly to life, engulfing him utterly. He heard the frantic barking,
the growls; then Sima's wailing cry. The link, half-made though it was,
reverberated with the mountain cat's frenzied counterattack.

           
"Wait!" It was a blurt of
shock. Stunned by the explosion within the link, Kellin sat immobile. His body
rang with pain and outrage; yet none of it was his own. "Hers." She
had said they were linked, even if improperly. He felt whatever the cat felt.

           
Freed of the paralysis, Kellin
jerked the horse around, feeling for the long-knife retrieved from Corwyth. He
saw a huddle of black in the shadows, and the gleam of pale slick hide as the
dog darted in toward Sima. It was joined by another, and then a third; in a
moment the noise would bring every dog at a run.

           
They will kill— The rest was lost. A
man-shaped shadow stepped out of a dark doorway and, with a doubled fist,
smashed the horse's muzzle.

           
Kellin lost control instantly, and
very nearly his nose. The horse's head shot skyward, narrowly missing Kellin's
bowed head. The animal fell back a step or two, scrabbling in mucky footing,
flinging his head in protest.

           
Before Kellin could attempt to
regain control of the reins, hands grabbed his left leg. It was summarily jerked
out of the stirrup and twisted violently, so that Kellin was forced to follow
the angle or risk having his ankle broken. The position made him vulnerable; a
second violent twist and a heave tipped Kellin off backward even as he grabbed
for the saddle.

           
"Ku'reshtin—" He twisted
in midair, broke free of the hands, then landed awkwardly on his feet—leifhana
tu'sai!—and caught his balance haphazardly against the startled horse's
quivering nimp.

           
Before he could draw a breath, the
man was on him.

           
Inconsequentially, even as he
fought, Kellin believed it ironic. He had no coin. All anyone would get from
him was a Cheysuli long-knife; which, he supposed, was reward enough.

           
His own breathing was loud, but over
his noise he heard the yowling of the mountain cat and the clamor of dogs. His
concentration was split—for all he wanted no Hr, he did not desire her to be
killed or injured—which made it that much harder to withstand his assault.

           
Booted feet slipped in muck. The
alley was narrow, twisted upon itself, hidden in deep shadow because dwellings
blocked out much of the moon.

           
Kellin did not hesitate but grabbed
at once for Blais' knife; massive hands grasped his right arm immediately and
wrenched his hand away from the hilt. The grip on his arm was odd, but firm
enough; then it shifted. Fingers closed tautly on flesh, shutting off strength
and blood. Kellin's hand was naught but a lifeless blob of bone, flesh, and
muscle on the end of a useless arm.

           
"Ku'resh—"

           
The grip shifted. A knee was brought
up as Kellin's captive forearm was slammed down. The bones of his wrist snapped
easily against the man's thigh.

           
Pain was immediate, Kellin's outcry
echoed the frenzy of the mountain cat as she fought off the dogs. But the
attacker was undeterred. Even as Kellin panted a shocked protest colored by
angry oaths, the stranger wound his fists into the blood-stiffened doublet. He
lifted Kellin from the ground, then slammed him against the nearest wall.

           
Skull smacked stone. Lungs
collapsed, expelling air. A purposeful elbow was dug deeply into Kellin's
laboring chest, rummaging imperiously amidst the wreckage of fragile ribs.
Bones gave way.

           
He inhaled raggedly and managed a
breathless string of foul words in a mixture of Homanan, Old Tongue, and
Erinnish, depending on the words to give him something on which he might focus.
The pain was all-consuming, but not nearly so astounding as the violence of the
attack itself.

           
Sima's screaming echoed in the canyon
of cheek-by-jowl dwellings. A dog yelped, then another; others belled a call to
join the attack.

           
Lir— It was instinctive. He meant
nothing by it. The appeal faded immediately, though not the knowledge of it.

           
Kellin sagged against the wall,
pinned there by a massive body. A shoulder leaned into his chest.