Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (38 page)

           
"Grandsire—"

           
"What if it happens
again?"

           
"Again!" Kellin stared.
"You believe it might?"

           
"I must. These four weeks you
have achieved much, but obviously self-control in lir-shape is not one of them.
I cannot risk it, Kellin."

           
"Given time, guidance—"

           
"Aye. But I cannot risk it
while you remain in Homana-Mujhar. It gives the Homanans too broad a
target."

           
Kellin's belly clenched.
"Clankeep, then." Where he would have to explain to Gavan, and to
Burr, and to men and women who would not understand how a Cheysuli warrior
could permit such atrocity in the name of his lir, whom once he had meant to
banish. "Balance," he murmured. "If I can learn the balance
..."

           
"There is another balance,
Kellin. One which has eluded you through all of your life, and which I have, in
my ignorance, permitted to warp that life. I am as much to blame as you are, in
this."

           
Aileen stirred. "No. Not you. I
will not allow you to blame yourself."

           
Kellin looked at her. Aileen's green
eyes blazed with conviction as she stared at her husband; he would get no
support from her. He longed for Sima. but would not call her to him.
"Banishment, then."

           
"The Council has
approved."

           
Kellin winced.

           
"It is not a permanent thing.
You will be permitted home when I am assured you have learned what you need to
know."

           
"And when the rumors have died
down." Kellin sighed. "I understand, grandsire. But—"

           
"I know." Brennan's eyes
were filled with compassion. "It has happened before. My own jehan grew
weary of the excesses of his sons, and banished two of them. Hart he sent to
Solinde, Corin to Atvia. Neither wanted to go any more than you desire to go.
As for me—" he smiled briefly at Aileen, "—I was made to wed before
either of us was ready."

           
Aileen's face was rigid. "I do
not regret it now."

           
"We both did then."
Brennan turned back to his grandson, "For a six-month, a year—no longer
than is necessary."

           
Kellin nodded. "When?"

           
"In the morning. I have made
arrangements for the journey, and a boat will be waiting."

           
"Boat?" Kellin stared.
"A boat? Why? What need have I of a boat?" Trepidation flared into
panic. "Where are you sending me?"

           
"To the Crystal Isle. To your
jehan."

           
Panic transmuted itself to outrage.
"No!"

           
"It is arranged."

           
"Unarrange it! I will not
go!"

           
"You wanted this for
years."

           
"Not now. Not for ten years,
grandsire! I have no intention of going to my jehan."

           
Brennan's gaze was level. "You
will go. For all your anger and bitterness, and the multiplicity of your small
rebellions, you are still a warrior of the clan. I am Mujhar. If I bid you to
do so, you will go."

           
"What has he to do with this?
This is something I must deal with on my own! I do not require the aid of a man
who cannot keep his son but must give up everything to live on an island—"

           
"—where you will go."
Brennan rose. "Aidan has everything to do with this. We could not have
predicted it then, and I doubt it occurred to him—he was in thrall to the gods,
and thought of nothing else but the tahlmorra meant for him—but it is something
we must deal with now. You will go to the Crystal Isle and see your
jehan."

           
"Why? Why do you think this
will help me?"

           
"Because perhaps he can remove
the boy's anger and replace it with a man's understanding that what the
world—and gods—mete out is what he must deal with in a rational, realistic
manner, without recourse to an anger that, in asserting itself, kills
men." The muscles flexed in Brennan's jaw. "Because there is nowhere
else I can send you and not be afraid."

           
Kellin stared. Shame banished
outrage. "Of me? You are afraid of me?"

           
"I must be. I have seen what
happens when the anger consumes the man." His eyes were bleak. "You
must go to the source of your pain. To someone who can aid you."

           
"I want nothing to do with him'."

           
"He shaped you. By his very
distance, by his own tahlmorra, he shaped you. I think it is time the jehan,
and not the grandsire, tended the clay that his own loins sired." Brennan
pushed a trembling hand across his brow. "I am too old to raise you now.
It is Aidan's turn."

           
"Why," Kellin spat out
between clenched teeth, "did you wait so long for this? I begged it all
those years'"

           
"He did not wish it, and I
believed you did not need it."

           
"Does he wish it now?"

           
"No."

           
"But now you believe I need
it."

           
"Aye."

           
It congealed into bitterness.
"Would I need it now if I had had it then?"

           
Brennan shut his eyes. "Gods—I
cannot say .. . if so, I am to blame for what you have become—"

           
"No!" Aileen cried,
"By all the gods of Erinn, Brennan, I've said it before—I'll not have you
blaming yourself for this! What must I do to convince you? He is what he is.
Let him take it to his father. Aidan is more fit to deal with aberration than
either of us!"

           
"Why?" Kellin asked.
"Because he is 'aberration,' and now I am also?"

           
Aileen looked at him. "You are
my grandson," she said. "I love you for that—I will always love you
for that—but I cannot comprehend a man who lacks the self-control to prevent
him from killing other men." Her hands balled into fists. "I am
Erinnish, not Cheysuli—I cannot understand the soul of a Cheysuli. That it is
wild, I know, and untamed, and unlike that of any other, I know. But it is an
honorable soul also, well-bound by the gods, and duty . .. yours is unbound.
Yours is as unlike Brennan's—or Corin's—than any I have known. It is most like
Aidan's in its waywardness, but with a blackness of spirit that makes you
dangerous. Aidan was never that." Aileen glanced at Brennan briefly, then
back-to her grandson. "Go to your father. 'Tis what you need—and, I'm
thinking, Aidan also."

           
Kellin's jaws hurt. "You
said—'no longer than is necessary.' How am I to know?"

           
Brennan reached for and took into
his own one of Aileen's hands. "Until Aidan sends you back."

           
He looked at Aileen in desperation.
"Was it your idea?"

           
She offered oblique answer though
her face was wasted. "In Erinn," she said quietly, "a man
accepts his punishment. And the will of his lord."

           
Kellin stood there a long time.
Then, summoning what little pride remained, he bowed and took his leave.

           
He had, since coming to the Crystal
Isle, seen to it that much of its wildness was tamed, at least so much that a
man might walk freely along a track without fearing to lose an eye to an
importunate branch. And yet not so much wildness was vanquished that a man, a
Cheysuli, might feel his spirit threatened by too much change.

           
It was incongruity: to make the
wildness useful without diluting its strength. And to offer change within a
culture whose very strength was wildness.

           
He wore leathers, as always, snug
against flesh that did not as yet begin to wither with age, and lir-gold on
bare arms that did not surrender muscle. He was fit, if but a few years beyond
his prime; a young man of twenty would call him old—perhaps, more kindly,
older—but to another man he represented all that was remarkable about a
Cheysuli.

           
He paused at the border between
woodlands and beach. Sunlight glinted off water, scouring white sands paler
yet, so that he was forced to lift his hand against the blinding glare.

           
Blobs swam before his eyes, robbed
of distinctness by the brilliance of the sun. They coalesced along the horizon,
where the sea lapped in.

           
He saw the blobs take shape, forming
legs, tails, heads. He whistled. The blobs paused, then came flying,
transmuting sundazzled formlessness into spray-dampened bodies recognizable as
canine.

           
Tongues lolled. Tails whipped. They
lashed their own bodies in a frenzy to reach him, to display a devotion so
complete as to render words obsolete.

           
They were his now. The big male had
died nearly twenty years before—of grief, he believed—but the others had
survived despite the death of the woman who had caused them to be born. Most of
those were dead, now, also—giant dogs died sooner—but they had bred as well, so
that the island never lacked for companionship of a sort no Cheysuli had known
before; they did not keep pets.

           
Nor were these pets; they were, by
their existence, in the beating of great hearts, living memorials to Shona.

           
To him, they were sanity.

           
He paused as they joined him. The
exuberance of their greeting endangered those parts most revered by a man;
grinning, he turned a hip each time a tail threatened, then grabbed two or
three until the dogs, all astonished, spun to whip tails free. Then it began
again, until he told them with false sternness that the game was over; that
they were to be still.

           
He sat down there in the sand,
warding off inquisitive noses, until the dogs, too, settled with grunts and
great rumbling sighs. Wise eyes watched him, waiting for the sign that he meant
to rise and find a stick to toss for their pleasure; but he did not, and after
a time they slept, or lay quietly: an ocean of storm-hued wolfhounds sprawled
upon the beach of an island, in its beget-ting, very alien to their souls. They
were Erinnish, though none of these had been there.

           
They were all he had of her. The son
she had borne in the midst of her dying, in the flames of a burning keep, was
not and never had been his to tend. Another man might have grieved, then done
what he could to raise up the living soul whose heart was partly hers, but he
was denied that comfort. All he had of her, in the days and the darkness, were
memories and dogs.

           
He honored the gods with his
service. He did not question its needs, or the path he had taken; it was his
tahlmorra. A great security resided in the knowledge that what he did served a
greater purpose; that sacrifices made in the name of that greater purpose, no
matter how difficult, would in the end bear out his seeming madness. Let them
attach scorn to his name now, but one day, long after his bones had rotted,
they would call him something else.

           
"But my spark is nothing
compared to the flame of his." Aidan smiled. "My name is a spark, and
Kellin's a bonfire—but Cynric's will blaze with all the terrible splendor of a
wildfire as it devours the land around it."

           
He knew they would curse him. Men
were often blind when it came to needed change. When they acknowledged what had
happened—and what still would come—they would claim him an emmissary of a demon
not to their liking, when all he did was serve the gods who had decided to mend
what had broken.

           
"Revolution," he said; the
dogs twitched ears.

           
"If they knew what was to come,
they would none of them agree; they would all become a'saii."

           
But he would not permit it. That was
his purpose, to guide his people closer to a true understanding that out of
devouring names would rise a new world.

           
It would be difficult. But the gods
would see to it he had a means to persevere. If it required a weapon, a weapon
would be given.

           
Aidan was content. He knew his path
very well.

           
All he had to do was wait for the
weapon, then set it on its path.