Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (41 page)

           
"Jehan—"

           
"You are the Lion. You are
meant to devour the House of Homana."

           
Kellin's face spasmed. "You say
first I am the Lion, and then I am a link in a chain . . ." He shook his
head in emphatic denial. "I understand none of it!"

           
Aidan's voice was hoarse. "We
are all but links. Mine was shattered. Its destruction sundered the chain. Even
now it lies in Valgaard, in Lochiel's keeping."

           
"A real chain?"

           
"A real chain."

           
"Broken."

           
"I broke it. I broke me to
strengthen you."

           
Kellin bared his teeth. "What
good does it do, then, if Lochiel holds it?"

           
"Someone must get it
back."

           
"From Lochiel?"

           
"Someone must take the two
halves and make them one again."

           
Kellin understood. He sprang to his
feet. "By the eods—not I! I will not be used in a personal revenge that
concerns only you.”

           
Aidan's eyes were infinitely yellow.
"Lochiel killed your jehana."

           
Kellin recognized the battle and
struck back at once, using all his weapons, "I never knew her. What does
it matter?"

           
"He cut you from her body as he
burned down all of Clankeep."

           
It hurt desperately. He had blamed
himself so long for his mother's death. "No—"

           
"He wanted the seed,"
Aidan said. "He wanted to raise you as his own, to turn you against your
House ... to defang the Lion utterly before it reached maturity."

           
Kellin fastened on a thing, a small,
cruel thing, because he needed to, to salvage his anger, to shore up his
bitterness. They were things he knew.

           
"Where were you," he asked
viciously, "while Lochiel the Ihlini cut open my mother's belly?"

           
Aidan's eyes mirrored Kellin's
desperation.

           
"Where do you think I got
this?" A trembling hand touched the white wing in his hair. "A sword.
It broke open my skull and spilled out all the wits, all the words, all the
things that make a man ... and turned me into someone no one, not even I, can
truly understand." His face was wasted. "Do you think, in all your
hatred, when you lie awake at night cursing the man who left you, that any man,
any father, would ask the gods to give him such a fate?"

           
Kellin was shaking. He could not
stop himself.

           
"I want—I want ..." He wet
dry lips. "I want to be free of the beast."

           
"Then kill it," Aidan
said,

           
"How?"

           
"Go to Valgaard. Rejoin two
halves of a whole."

           
"And that will make me whole?"
Kellin's wild laugh tore his throat. "Expiation for your weakness does
nothing to destroy my own!"

           
"Go to Valgaard."

           
Kellin bared his teeth. "You
have not seen what I have become!"

           
"Nor has Lochiel." Aidan
rose and opened the doorflap. "Perhaps the beast in you is a weapon for us
all."

           
"I killed a friend'"
Kellin cried. "Do you say it was necessary, that the gods required this to
fashion a weapon?"

           
The chalk cliff shapechanged itself
to granite.

           
"The gods required me to give
up my son. Now that son provides a way for us to destroy an Ihlini who would,
given the chance, bring down all of us. He would smash the Lion to bits, then
feed it chip by chip into the Gate of Asar-Suti." Aidan's tone was
unflinching. His eyes condemned the weakness that would permit a man to refuse.
"Make the sacrifice worth it. Make the death of your friend count for
something—as Shona's death did."

           
Kellin's throat hurt. "This is
not what I came for."

           
"It is," Aidan said.
"Have I not said I am the mouthpiece of the gods?"

           
Kellin gestured helplessness.
"All I ever wanted—all I ever wanted—was some word, some indication you
cared, that you knew I existed . .. but you gave me nothing. Nothing at
all."

           
Silence lay heavy between them. Then
the faintest of sounds, so subtle that in another time, in another moment, no
one would have marked it. It was the soft sibilance of a man's hand crumpling
fabric.

           
Tears stood in Aidan's eyes as he
clung to the doorflap. "What I gave you—what I gave you was what I
believed you had to have." His mouth worked briefly, "Do you think I
did not know what it would cost you?"

           
"But you never came."

           
Aidan's laugh was a travesty.
"Had I come, I would have taken you back. Had I sent word, I would have
told you to come. For the sake of your son, Kellin, I had to give up my
own."

           
"For my son!"

           
"Cynric," Aidan whispered,
and the blackness in his eyes ate away the yellow. "The sword and the bow
and the knife—"

           
"No!" Kellin shouted.
"What of me? What of me? I am your son, not he! What about me?"

           
Aidan's eyes were empty of all save
prophecy.

           
"You are the Lion, and you
shall lie down with the witch."

           
"Jehan—" he said brokenly.
"Is this what they have done, your beloved gods? Made you over into
this?"

           
"The Lion shall devour the
lands."

           
For the first time in his life,
Kellin put his hands on his father.

           
For the second time in Aidan's life,
he put arms around his son. "Do not be ashamed," he said. "There
is no shame in tears."

           
Muffled, Kellin said, "I am—a
warrior."

           
"So am I," Aidan
agreed."But the gods gave us tears nonetheless."

           
They stood upon the dock, facing
toward the city of
Hondarth
sprawled indistinct on the distant shore: the former Prince of Homana,
who might have been Mujhar, and the present prince, his son, who one day would
be.

           
The sea-salt breeze blew into their
faces, ruffling hair, tickling eyelashes, softly caressing mouths.

           
Behind him, silent wolfhounds
gathered at the border between wooden dock and paler sand, waiting for their
master. Perched in a nearby tree sat the raven called Teel, while the lovely
mountain cat, blue-black in the light of the sun, waited mutely beside her
warrior.

           
Kellin slanted a pensive, sidelong
glance at his father. They did not, he had decided, much resemble one another.
The son of Shona and Aidan appeared to be a mixture of everyone in his
ancestry—which was, he felt, a stew of hybrid spices—save that the cat at his
side and the gold on his flesh marked him as something more distinct than
merely human.

           
He does not look so old as I thought
yesterday.

           
Kellin stripped a wayward lock of
hair from an eye, blinking away the sting. Yet if one looks at the eyes, he
seems older than anyone else. "So—you expect me to go." He snapped
his fingers. "Just like that."

           
Aidan's smile was faint, with a hint
of irony in it.

           
"It would be folly indeed to
expect quite so much acquiescence ... surely you still have questions."

           
"A multitude. This one, to
begin: how can you say I am the Lion who is meant to lie down with the witch?
What witch? Who is it? How can it be done?" Kellin gestured
incomprehension. "Even now my grandsire discusses a marriage between me
and Dulcie—and I sincerely doubt Dulcie is this witch."

           
Aidan's smile was unabated, as was
the irony.

           
"Marriages, no matter how well
planned, do not always occur."

           
It provoked Kellin to retort
sharply. "As one nearly did not occur between Aileen of Erinn and the
Prince of Homana?"

           
Aidan laughed, unoffended. "Old
history. They are well content, now; and that marriage did occur."

           
"What of mine?"

           
"Oh, I believe you will indeed
be married."

           
Aidan nodded. "One day."

           
It seemed important to know.
"To this witch?"

           
Aidan's tone was deliberate, akin to
Rogan's when the tutor labored to instruct an easily distracted student.
"What precisely have I said, when I prophesy?"

           
"That the Lion will lie with
the witch." Kellin sighed. "I have heard it more than once."

           
"Lying down with a 'witch' does
not necessarily mean you will marry her."

           
"Ah." Black brows sprang
upward. "Then you advocate infidelity."

           
Aidan showed his teeth in a
challenging grin that Kellin saw, in surprise, was very like his own.

           
"I advocate merely that you do
what must be done. How it is done is up to you."

           
"To sleep with an Ihlini . .
." Kellin hitched his shoulders because the flesh between them prickled;
the idea was unattractive. "That is what she is, this witch, is she not?
An Ihlini?"

           
"It has been done before."

           
"Oh, aye—grandsire did. Ian
did. I know the stories."

           
"Do you?" Aidan's brows
slanted upward in subtle query. The wing of white hair, against deep russet,
was blinding in the sunlight. "Do you also know that I slept with
one?"

           
"You!" It was entirely
unexpected from a man who was shar tahl. "They say you bedded no one after
my jehana died."

           
"I did not. I cannot. Surely
they told you the cost of kivama, when the partner dies. It is much like a
lirless warrior, save the body does not die.

           
Only the portion of it that might,
given opportunity, given the wherewithal, sire another child."

           
"But—I am the only one."

           
"And will ever be." Aidan
looked at him. "In Atvia, before I married Shona, I bedded an Ihlini
woman. And the second time, I knew it."

           
"Willingly?"

           
"With Lillith?" Aidan
sighed. "To excuse myself, to justify my action, I might prefer to say
that even that first time she ensorcelled me ... but it would be a lie. What I
did. I did because I desired it; because I could not, in my maleness, deny
myself the gratification found in a woman's body, despite whom she might
be."

           
"Lillith . .." Kellin
tasted the name and found it oddly seductive. "It was she who lay with Ian
and bore him a child."

           
"Rhiannon, who later lay with
my fehan and bore him a child. Melusine is her name."

           
"You know it?"

           
"She is the woman who sleeps
with Lochiel. She bore him a child ... while she herself, Melusine, was born of
Cheysuli blood as well as Ihlini—yet chooses to serve Asar-Suti."

           
It seemed surpassing odd, "How
do you know all this?"

           
"Lochiel sees to it I know.
Lochiel and I—" Aidan's taut, angled smile was strangely shaped,
"—have long been adversaries on more battlefields than the obvious ones.
He sends me messages."

           
"Lochiel?" Kellin found it
incomprehensible. "Why?"

           
"To make certain I know."
Wind ruffled the white wing against Aidan's temple. "Her name is Melusine,
and she bore him a daughter. It was that daughter with whom you shared a
cradle."

           
Kellin grunted. "I know
something of that."

           
"Do you?" Aidan's gaze was
steady. "Shall I tell you the whole of it, then, so you may have another
thing for which to hate me?"

           
"What? More?" It might
have stung once; it might have been a weapon Kellin took pride in wielding, but
no longer. Much remained between them, but some of the pain was assuaged.
"Then tell me, and I will decide if I should rekindle my hatred."

           
Aidan looked directly at him.
"I bargained for you. It was little more, to him, than a simple trade. I
was to choose—" He rubbed briefly at his forehead as if it ached, then
glanced away toward distant Hondarth. "There were two babies, as you know:
you, and Lochiel's daughter. I had no way of telling which was which. You were
both of you swaddled, and asleep; it is somewhat difficult to tell one infant
from another, in such circumstances."

           
"Aye. How did you?"

           
"I did not."

           
"But—you chose me."

           
"I left Valgaard with a child
in my arms. I did not know which one it was." Aidan sighed. "Not
until I unwrapped you and saw you were male. Then I knew, and only then, that
my choice had been correct."

           
"But—if you had chosen the girl
..." Kellin let it go. The repercussions he saw were too complex to
consider.

           
"If I had, you would have been
reared as Lochiel's son."

           
And the girl as a princess within
the bosom of Homana-MuJhar, where she might have worked against us. The flesh
rose on Kellin's bones. He rubbed at his arms viciously, disliking the weakness
that made his fear so plain. "So." It seemed enough.

           
"So." Aidan nodded.
"You know the whole of it."

           
Kellin stared fixedly across the
lapping water.

           
He could not look at his father. He
had spent too long hating from a distance to give way easily, to admit to
circumstances that might persuade a man to act in such a way as to ignore his
son.

           
"You risked a great deal."

           
"It was my only choice. It was
Homana's only chance."

           
Kellin frowned fiercely. "You
said—the Lion will devour the House. Is that not the same fate Lochiel aspires
to give us?"

           
"There is a difference between
swallowing the lands, and destroying them. Words, Kellin—symbols. Intent is
divulged with words. Think of the prophecy."

           
"Eighteen words, again?"

           
" '—shall unite, in peace—'
" Aidan said. "Well?"

           
Kellin sighed, nodding. "Then
to unite the lands, I must swallow them. Swallowing, one might argue, is a form
of uniting."

           
Aidan smiled, "Vivid imagery.
It helps a man to remember." He looked at the waiting boat. "We all
make choices. You shall make yours."

           
Kellin saw his father form the
eloquent Cheysuli gesture he had detested so long. He matched it easily with
his own hand. "Tahlmorra."

           
Aidan's answering smile was serene.
"You have run from it long enough,"

           
"So, now you send me to it. To
Lochiel and Valgaard—and to the witch?"

           
"That," Aidan said,
"is for the gods to know."

           
Kellin sighed disgust. "I have
not had much congress with gods. They are, I am convinced, capricious, petty
beings."

           
"They may indeed be so, as well
as other things perhaps not so reprehensible." Aidan was unoffended.
"The example for all manner of behavior lies before you; we all of us are
their children."

           
"Even the Ihlini?"

           
"Stubborn, resentful children,
too spoiled in their power. It is time they recalled who gave it to them."

           
Kellin chewed his lip. "Why am
I to bring you this chain? What are you to do with it?"

           
"Tame the Lion."

           
"Tame me!" He paused.
"Tame me?"

           
"Who shall, in his turn,
swallow the Houses—unite them, Kellin!—and bring peace to warring realms."

           
He clamped his teeth together.
"All because of a chain. Which you broke. And left, like a fool, in
Valgaard?”

           
"Aye," Aidan admitted.
"But then I have never suggested I am anything else."

           
" 'Mouthpiece of the gods,'
" Kellin muttered. "You claim yourself that."

           
"And so I am. But the gods made
all men, and there are foolish ones," He smiled. "Bring me back the
chain, and the beast shall be tamed."

           
"A quest," Kellin gritted.

           
"The gods do appear to enjoy
them. It passes the time."

           
Kellin shook his head. There was
much he wanted to say, but too little time in which to say it. He had been
given his release; time he took it, and went.

           
"Shansu," Aidan said.
"Ckeysuli i'halla shansu."

           
Kellin's tone was ironic. "If
there is any such thing in Valgaard." He paused. "You said you would
not go to Homana-Mujhar because you feared you would bring me back."

           
"Aye."

           
"I am here now. That risk is
gone." He hesitated. "Will you go home now?"

           
The wind teased auburn hair.
"This is my home,"

           
"Then—to visit. To be hosted by
the Mujhar and his queen." It was hard to force the words past the lump in
his throat. "She wants nothing more, jehan. Nor does he. Can you give them
that now?"

           
Aidan's soft laugh was hoarse.
"You believe me so much a monster as that . . -" He sighed.
"There is still much to be done here."