Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (40 page)

           
"The Lion shall lie with the
witch, and the witch-child born of it shall join with the Lion to swallow the
House of Homana and all of her children."

           
"Jehan!"

           
Yellow eyes had turned black. Aidan
stared fixedly at Kellin, one hand raised to indicate his son. "The
Lion," he said, "shall devour the House of Homana."

           
"Stop—"

           
His voice rose. "Do you think
to escape the Lion? Do you think to escape your fate?" Lips peeled back.
"Small, foolish boy—you are nothing to the gods. It is the Lion's cub they
desire, not the Lion himself ... you are the means to an end. The Lion shall
lie down with the witch."

           
Kellin was instantly taken out of
himself, swept back ten years. To the time of Summerfair, when he had put on
his second-best tunic to go among the crowds and see what he would see, to
taste suhoqla again and challenge a Steppes warior. To enter the tent filled
with a sickly, sweetish odor; to see again the old man who sat upon his cushion
and told who he was, and what would be his fate.

           
"Lion—" Kellin whispered,
staring at his father. "There is a lion—after all—"

           
Aidan smiled an odd, inhumane smile.
"Kellin," he said plainly, "you are the Lion."

           
"I am sorry." Aidan's tone
was quiet, lacking its former power. "But I warned you. It is never a
simple thing—and rarely pleasant—to learn your tahlmorra."

           
Kellin clung to the heel stone for
support. He did not precisely recall how he had reached it.

           
He remembered, if dimly, stumbling
out of the shadow-clad chapel into clean sunlight—and then he had fallen to his
knees, keeping himself upright only by virtue of clinging to the heel stone as
a child to its mother's neck.

           
He continued to clutch it. He
twisted his head to ask over a shoulder. "Do you know what you said?"

           
Aidan, squinting against sunlight,
sighed and nodded. "Most of it. I can never recall clearly what I say when
I prophesy, but the intent remains in my mind," His eyes were steady, if
darkened by the acknowledgment of what had occurred. "Despite what you led
me to believe with regard to your ignorance of your tahlmorra, it is not the first
time you have heard such words."

           
"I was ten." Kellin stood
up and relinquished his grip on the stone, aware of a cold clamminess in his
palms. "But I did not know—"

           
"No," Aidan agreed,
"a child could not. Nor many men. You were not ready. Even now you are not."

           
Resentment congealed. "So you
did it to prove something."

           
Mildly, Aidan said, "You did
ask. In plain and impolite words."

           
Another time he would have fought
back. Just now something else struck him as more important. "You
said—" He looked warily at the chapel, as if it were responsible for
putting the thoughts inside his head. "You said I am the Lion."

           
"You are."

           
"But how? I am a man. Not even
in lir-shape am I a lion!"

           
Aidan nodded. "Where words will
not serve, symbols often do." He traced the runes inscribed in the heel
stone. "These are symbols. And so is the Lion."

           
"The Lion is a throne."

           
"That, too, is a symbol."
Aidan smiled. "You are a man in all the ways in which a man is measured;
fear nothing there. But you are also the next link in the prophecy of the
Firstborn. It may somewhat devalue my dedication to say this so baldly, but
prophecies are sometimes little more than colorful pictures, like the lir we
paint on pavilions."

           
It gave Kellin something, a tiny bit
of strength with which to reassert his challenge. "Then there is no truth
to it."

           
"Of course there is truth to
it. Does the painted animal shape mean there is no living lir?" Aidan
shook his head. "A prophecy does not lie. At times circumstances change,
and the fate itself is changed; they gave us free will, the gods. The ultimate
result may be altered, but what served as catalyst was never a falsehood. It is
not graven in stone." He tapped fingertips against the heel stone.
"This will remain here forever—for as long as the world has—to speak of
the prophecy and all it entails. Eighteen words." His smile was not
condescending, but unadorned serenity; he was certain of his place within the
prophecy. "Eighteen simple words that have ruled our lives since before we
were even conceived."

           
Kellin looked at the runes. "
'One day—' " But he broke off reflexive quoting. There was another matter
he considered more important. "How can I be the Lion?"

           
"You are. No more than that.
You are the Lion .. . just as I was the broken link."

           
Kellin wanted to deny it all, to
accuse the shar tahl who was also his father that purposeful obscurity offered
no one an answer. But what came out of his mouth was a simple truth: "I do
not understand."

           
"That is one of my purposes
here: to explain things more fully."

           
Bitterness reasserted itself.
"To other men whose lives have been twisted by their tahlmorras?"

           
"Come with me."

           
It provoked. "Where? To that
palace? I have seen it. You do not live there."

           
"To my pavilion." The
smile, now lacking the unearthly quality of prophecy, was freely offered again
with nothing more in its shaping than hospitality. "I am Cheysuli, Kellin.
Never forget that."

           
Aidan's pavilion clustered with
others in a smaller version of Clankeep. It was pale green with ravens adorning
its sides; on the ridgepole sat the model.

           
Sima, sprawled on a rug before the
doorflap, blinked sleepily in the sun. You found him.

           
Kellin scowled. As you meant me to.
That is why you left me.

           
She was unrepentent. Teel and I
thought it best.

           
I do not appreciate such secrecy in
my own lir.

           
Nor does your jehan. She twitched
her tail. Even now he chastises Teel.

           
He deserves it. So do you. He did
not stoop to pat the cat but went on by her and into the pavilion as his father
pulled back the flap.

           
Aidan seated himself on a brown bear
pelt and gestured for Kellin to make himself comfortable.

           
"We built the Keep here because
I saw no sense in inhabiting a palace. We are Cheysuli. We are here to rebuild
what we can of the old religion, while imbuing it with new." He smiled.
"I am somewhat controversial with regard to my beliefs; some elders name
me a fool."

           
Kellin said nothing. He had come for
none of this.

           
"This is a place of history and
magic," Aidan continued, "and we treat it as such. Palaces have no
place here."

           
He disputed at once. "I thought
the Cheysuli built it. There are runes in the pillars. Old Tongue runes, like
those on the heel stone." It was proof; it was enough; it trapped his
traitorous father.

           
"Runes can be carved later, as
those on the heel stone were."

           
Kellin exhaled patience. He was
wrung dry of it. "So, it is a Homanan palace after all. Should that
matter? The Homanans are our people, too."

           
Aidan smiled. "If that was a
test, then assuredly you have passed it."

           
In succinct Homanan, Kellin swore.
"I did not come for this!"

           
"No." Aidan rested his
hands on his knees. "Ask what you will, Kellin."

           
Kellin did not hesitate. The
question had been formed nearly twenty years before. He had mouthed it every
night, practicing in his bed, secure in his draperies as a child in its
mother's womb. Now he could ask it in the open, in the light, of the man who
knew the answer- "Why did you give me up?"

           
Aidan did not hesitate. "It was
an infinitely Cheysuli reason, and one you will undoubtedly contest, though you
should know better; you, too, are Cheysuli."

           
Kellin inhaled angrily on a hissing
breath.

           
"Tahlmorra. That is your
answer."

           
"The gods required me to
renounce my title, rank, and inheritance. I was the broken link. The chain
could only be mended—and therefore made much stronger—if I gave precedence to
the next link. Its name was Kellin." Aidan's eyes did not waver. His tone
did not break. His demeanor was relaxed. All of his self-possession was very
much in opposition to the words he spoke. "It was the hardest thing I have
ever done."

           
Through his teeth, Kellin said,
"Yet you did it easily enough."

           
The first crack in Aidan's facade
appeared. "Not without regret. Not without pain. When I set you into my
jehana's arms—" Aidan broke it off, as if afraid to give up too much of
himself after all. His tone was husky. "You were Shona's child. You were
all I had of her. But I was, in that moment, a child of the gods—"

           
"It is a simple thing to blame
gods."

           
Aidan's lips parted. "It was
done for Homana."

           
"Homana! Homana, no doubt,
would have been better off with a contented prince instead of one who lacked a
Jehan. Do you know what my life has been?"

           
"Now, aye—the kivama has told
me."

           
"And what does it mean? Nothing?
That I spent my childhood believing myself unworthy, and my adulthood cognizant
that I mean nothing at all, save I can sire a son?" Kellin's fists
trembled against his thighs. "Use your famous kivama and see what you did
by renouncing a son in favor of the gods."

           
"Kellin." The chalk cliff
sloughed another layer; soon it would be bare, and the true man uncovered.
"I never intended for you to suffer so. I knew it would be hard, but it
had to be done . . . and you are not, above all things, a malleable man. You
choose your own path—have always chosen your path—no matter the odds."

           
"I was a child—"

           
"So was I!" Aidan cried.
"I had dreams, Kellin—nightmares. To me, the Lion was a vastly frightening
thing." With effort, he let it go. He smiled sadly, no longer hiding his
truths. "Do you know what it is like for a Jehan to at last acknowledge
that the thing which frightens him most is his own son?"

           
Kellin was nearly incoherent with
outrage. "Is this your excuse for giving me up? That you are afraid—"

           
"It was necessary. There was a
purpose in it for me—and one, I believe, for you."

           
Kellin jeered. "Facile words,
jehan."

           
"True words, Kellin."

           
"Why would you be afraid of me?
I am your son."

           
"You are the Lion. You are
meant to lie down with the witch. You are meant to sire the Firstborn."
Aidan's eyes did not waver. "It is one thing to serve the gods, Kellin,
knowing what you work toward—it is entirely another to realize that what you do
matters in the ordering of the world." His smile was without humor.
"Men who honor no gods, who fail to serve the gods, cannot understand the
enormity of the truth: that the seed of a single man's loins can alter forever
the shape of a world."

           
Kellin was furious. "You will
not blame me for this! You will not for one moment lay this at my door-flap! Do
you think I am a fool? Do you think me so ignorant as to be led by facile
words? By the gods, jehan—by any fool's gods—I will not be turned aside by your
faith, by your admirable devotion, by the mouthings of a madman when I want to
know the answer to a single, simple question!"

           
"And I have told you why!"
Kellin had at last shattered Aidan's composure. It loosed the final layer of
cliff and laid bare the underside of the man, not the shar tahl; the once-born
Prince of Homana who had bequeathed it all to his infant son. "My
tahlmorra. You should understand a little of that, now that you know what yours
is."

           
"Jehan—"

           
"Would you have me hold you by
the hand and lead you through it? Are you so blind—or so selfish—that you
cannot permit yourself to see another man's pain?"

           
Kellin expelled a curse framed upon
the Old Tongue. "What manner of pain could lead a man to renounce his
son?"

           
"The pain in knowing that if he
did not, an entire race might be destroyed."

           
"Jehan—"

           
"The throne was never meant for
me. Here is where I was bound. The link—my link—was shattered in Valgaard; do
you understand what I mean? I was broken, Kellin ... I was .. . my link—a
symbol—was destroyed. Yours was left whole.

           
Whole, Kellin—to be joined with the
rest of the chain when Brennan is dead, and a new king ascends. Do you see? I
was in the way. I was unnecessary, The gods required a prophet, not another
rump upon the throne ... someone to proclaim the coming of the Firstborn.
Someone to prepare the way."