Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (50 page)

           
I smiled. "It comes from the
Gate. See how it is reflected time and time again, multiplied one hundredfold
in the columns and the arches?" I watched his avid eyes. "The Gate
itself is in the ground, but it is open, and its light is uninhibited.

           
It is godfire, Devin—it is the light
of truth, so that the Seker can illuminate the dark comers of your soul."

           
The light was in his eyes. I could
see no pupil in them, only a vast empty blackness filled now with livid
godfire. "He will see my weakness."

           
"All men are weak. He will draw
it from you and replace it with strength."

           
"Is that why you have no
fear?"

           
"I have fear." I touched
his hand. "His glory is terrible. When one looks upon his aspect, one
knows he—or she—is insignificance incarnate." I closed my fingers on the
still flesh of his hand.

           
"The Seker awaits."

           
"Ginevra!" He drew me back
as I turned toward the columns. "Ginevra—wait." His face was graven
with lines of tension. "I need you."

           
I carried his hand to my mouth I
felt his minute trembling; he feared as all men do, who must face Asar-Suti.
Against his palm, I said, "I am here for you. Before the god, I swear it:
I will always be here for you. We are bound already by the child in my body.
Once we share the nuptial cup, we will be bound forever."

           
His voice was raw. "I
am—unworthy,"

           
"Of the god?" I smiled.
"Or of me?"

           
Devin laughed; it was what I had
hoped for. "Of both," he said.

           
I arched haughty brows. "Then
neither the god nor I have grounds for discontentment. Things are as they
should be." I glanced toward the Gate, then looked back into his face.
"Come," I said gently. "There is no sense in delaying the
truth."

           
"Truth," he echoed,
"is what I fear."

           
I held his hand tightly in mine.
"Why?"

           
"I am what you have made me.
Ginevra's Devin, whatever—whoever—that is. I know nothing at all of my past .
.. what if Devin of High Crags is a man who aspires to waste his coin in tavern
wagers and his seed in roadhouse whores?"

           
My laughter echoed throughout the
cavern. "Then the greater truth will be that Devin of High Crags is now a
changed man." I shook back hair. "And they may spin the tale that it
was the god's doing—or lay credit where it is due."

           
He was suspicious now.
"Where?"

           
I set his hand against my heart.
"Here," I said, "deep in my soul. What other truth is
there?"

           
Devin looked beyond me. "Then
let us get it done. Have them bring the nuptial cup. I am very thirsty."

           
My father waited for us at the Gate
of the netherworld, clothed in black that the godfire dyed purple. In his hand
was a rune-scribed silver goblet; at his feet lay the god himself.

           
"Where is he?" Devin
breathed.

           
"There." I dipped my head.
"Beneath the ground—that pool is the Gate."

           
I heard vague surprise in the timbre
of his tone.

           
"That hole in the ground?"

           
"His greatness is such that he
requires no sepulcher," I said it more tartly than I intended; I expected
Devin to be more circumspect in his worship of the Seker. Everyone else was.

           
Devin stared at the Gate. Light
lapped at the edges, and smoke rose up. It wound around my father and clung to
the folds of his robe. His gaze was fixed solely on Devin.

           
"Come," Lochiel said.

           
Devin's grasp tightened. "What
is that?" he whispered.

           
He meant the pedestal just behind my
father.

           
"A chain," I whispered
back. "A keepsake from a Cheysuli who thought he could defeat my
father."

           
"It is in two pieces."

           
"The Cheysuli broke it. He
surrendered to my father and broke the chain in half." I squeezed his
hand. "Enough. There is a task we must do. Or do you mean to put off the
ceremony that will make us one in the eyes of the god?" Devin's smile was
fleeting. He stared at the cup.

           
"Empty," Lochiel said from
the other side of the Gate. He held out the goblet. "Fill it, Devin, if
you would have my daughter."

           
The tension spilled out of Devin. He
turned to face me, brought my hand to his lips, and kissed my fingers. Then he
released my hand and turned to Lochiel. He extended his arm across the maw of
the Gate.

           
So vulnerable, I thought. The god
has only to rise and swallow him whole.

           
But the Seker did not do it. Devin
accepted the cup from my father's hand, then knelt at the edge of the Gate.
Without hesitation, with no sign of fear, he dipped the silver goblet into the
pulsing godfire.

           
Illumination engulfed him. Devin
laughed, then dipped the cup lower. When it was filled, he rose and inclined
his head in tribute to Lochiel, then turned to me. The cup's smoking contents
flared, burning more brightly, so that the light stripped bare all shadows from
Devin's face, washing the darkness from him- His eyes burned brilliant green.

           
I placed my hands over his and
guided the cup to my mouth. I drank liquid light and let it fill me. Cold fire
burned as my blood responded to it.

           
Gods, but it was sweet. Such a
sweet, cold fire ...

           
I laughed and shook back my hair,
then guided the cup to Devin.

           
He drank. I saw the widening of his
eyes in shock; I feared, for a horrible moment, he might sprew it from his
mouth. But he swallowed. He shivered once. When I saw the emerald of his eyes
replaced with livid black, I knew it was done.

           
My father's voice was an intrusion.
It took effort to listen. "You have shared the blood of the god at the
god's own Gate. His blood is yours. There can be no parting you now."

           
Devin turned. "Is there
more?"

           
"There is always more."
Lochiel extended his hands, and Devin placed the goblet in them. My ither
smiled, then dropped the goblet into the light and smoke. "But you have
begun already. Kneel down. Ginevra—here, beside the Gate."

           
I knew better than to question.

           
"Remain there. It must be you
first, so the child, too, is blessed."

           
I dared not look at Devin. I knelt
there beside the Gate, thinking of my child, and waited for the god.

           
He came all at once, without
warning. I knew only that I was blinded as the light sprang forth, and then it
engulfed me. I felt hands touching me, reaching through my clothing to pluck at
my flesh, until I feared it might be stripped from my bones.

           
I shuddered once, then stilled. The
god's hand was upon me.

           
I knew only what my father had told
me: that the hand of the god, the light of the Seker, would reveal the inner
soul. Hidden truths would be uncovered. Small vanities displayed. The
insignificant desires of a human would be mocked for what they were, so they
could be replaced with perfect service to the god.

           
My perfect service was to bear the
god a child.

           
A son for the Seker, Who Lives and
Dwells in Light—

           
I laughed aloud. "A son!"
I cried. "A son to bring down the House of the Cheysuli!"

           
And the god was gone. I felt him go
as abruptly as he had come. I wavered there on the edge, enshrouded in swirling
smoke, and then Devin raised me up to keep me from tumbling in.
"Ginevra?"

           
It was vital that I know. I turned
my head to look at my father. "Is it done? Is it done?"

           
Lochiel smiled. "The god is
well pleased."

           
I drew back then from Devin.
"Kneel," I said.

           
The blackness lived in his eyes,
which once had been clear green, but I saw something more. The emptiness
remained though he had drunk of the cup.

           
"Kneel," I repeated. To
mitigate the tone, I touched his face. For him, and only for him, I offered the
key. "Release the cat," I whispered, so my father would not hear.
"Let him go free from the cage of your fear."

           
Devin knelt. He crossed his arms
against his breast and bent low in homage beside the Gate.

           
The god spewed forth.

           
I held my breath. It will only take
a moment—

           
Devin screamed. He screamed and
screamed in a language I did not know, shaping words I could not decipher. His
head fell back as he flung out both arms. He hung there on his knees,
transfixed by the god. Blackened eyes were wide and blind-I could not help
myself; I shouted a denial. I saw the transformation, the alteration of bone
and flesh. From man into cat: the hands became paws, the fingernails claws, the
teeth elongated into fangs, and the sound that issued from his throat changed
itself in mid-note from the shouting of a man to the scream of an angry cat.

           
Black as night, he was. Like the one
we had seen in the canyon. But the eyes were purest green.

           
I was rooted to the stone, Cheysuli—Cheysuli—

           
Cheysuli.

           
"Punish him!" Lochiel
shouted. "Punish the transgressor!"

           
God, he was Cheysuli

           
The god made him a man again, so he
would know. I looked very hard for the mark of a Cheysuli, the sign of a demon,
but all I saw was Devin.

           
In one step I reached him. I struck
with all my strength, smashing my hand across his face. "How could you do
this?" I shouted. "How could you do this to us?"

           
To us, I said. Not to me.

           
It infuriated me.

           
"How?" I cried. And then,
viciously, "Is this part of your tahlmorra? To seduce an Ihlini so she conceives
of your child?"

           
There was no response in his eyes.
The god held him immobile, crucified on air; was he deaf as well as blind?

           
"Step back," my father
said. "The god will deal with him."

           
Trembling, I stepped back. I saw the
nicker in green eyes. Then a shudder wracked the Cheysuli.

           
"Tahlmorra," he gasped, in
the tongue I did not know. "Tahlmorra lujhalla-—"

           
My father overrode him. "Have
you ever wondered," he mused, "what it would be like to be trapped in
lir-shape forever?"

           
"—lujhalla me
wiccan—cheysu—" And then, "Not Devin—"

           
The god sprang forth again. In a
man's place writhed a cat with eyes the color of emeralds.

           
All I could think of was the
incongruity: Not yellow at all.

           
Lochiel looked at me. "We will
turn it loose," he said, "and then we will call a hunt."

           
Was it like this, I wondered, that
they first brought you here?

           
The cat remained senseless, deep in
enforced sleep; they had thrown him unresisting on his side across a horse,
then tied him to the packframe.

           
"Ginevra," my father said.

           
The cat's tongue lolled from a
slack-lipped mouth. The eyes were half-lidded, dulled by the touch of the god.

           
We shared a bed, you and I. We
shared our hearts.

           
We shared our souls. And now we
share this: a hunt to the death.

           
"Ginevra."

           
Lochiel again; I did not tarry
longer. I turned my horse away from the cat and rode to the head of the party,
letting no one see weakness. I was Lochiel's daughter.

           
I led them out of Valgaard, across
the Field of Beasts, through the narrow defile into the canyon beyond. Then my
father stopped us and used his own knife to cut the beast free. The heavy black
body fell flopping to the ground. It brought no response; dull green eyes
remained slitted and senseless, and the red tongue fell out into the dirt.

           
"Ginevra." A third time.

           
I looked at them all; at five of my
father's minions; at my mother who watched me with undiminished avidity. Lastly
I looked at him, who served Asar-Suti with an unflagging, perfect service.

           
"Leave it," I said evenly.
"The hunt may commence tomorrow."

           
My mother raised her voice for the
first time since we had left the fortress. "I wonder," she said, "that
you take no steps to insure he does not flee. Would it not be wiser to kill him
now?"

           
Lochiel looked at the cat.
"Where is he to go? He is bound to Ginevra, bound by the god. And bound
also, perhaps, by the child in her body."

           
I could not look at him. I was
ashamed, so ashamed that I had denied myself. That I had permitted myself to
love him.

           
"No," he shook his head,
"our prey will not flee. He will wait here for us, until we choose to
come."

           
"Sweet revenge," I
declared. "When you have trapped him, will you put him with the others in
the undercroft?"

           
"There? No. When I decide to
take him, it will be for his pelt. I have a whim to rest my feet in winter on
the hide of a dead Cheysuli."

           
My mother's carmined mouth gloated.

           
In Valgaard, I threw back the lids
to all the trunks and pulled the clothing from them, then piled it on the bed.
I took the caskets containing the gifts I had bestowed and dumped the contents
on top of the clothing. Lastly I dug out the nightshift I had worn the first
night we shared a bed and tossed it into the pile. Then I summoned godfire.

           
"A waste," my mother said,
"of a comfortable bed."

           
I did not turn. I did not care. Let
her stand there if she would; I wanted nothing more than to watch all of it
burn.

           
All of it. All of it. Every bit of
it.

           
"Will you burn yourself
too?"

           
I swung. The names were in her eyes.
It turned them Cheysuli yellow. "You wanted him," I said viciously.
"From the beginning, you wanted him. How does it feel to know he was
Cheysuli?"

           
My mother smiled. "So am I. So
are you. And aye, I would have bedded him. He was in every way a man."

           
I drew back my lips from my teeth.
"Shapechanger!"

           
The light in her eyes was livid. She
looked beyond me to the bed as the godfire consumed it.

           
"Which one pleased you
most?" she asked. "The warrior—or the cat?"

           
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted
to bum her, too. I wanted to tear the mirror from the wall and hurl it into the
fire.

           
Even as I thought it, the mirror
shattered.

           
Melusine shook her head. "A
dangerous thing, when Lochiel's daughter is angry. The very walls are at
risk."

           
"Why have you come?"I
cried, "Are you hoping I will cry?"

           
She wore her hair pinned up. Light
glittered off all the gemstones. "Once I wanted your father to care as
much for me as Devin does for you. He does not. Once I wanted your father to
care as much for me as he does for you. He does not, and never will. And so I
am soundly defeated in all patterns of the dances which are danced between men
and women—even between fathers and daughters." Her face was very still, but
her eyes were livid. "I bore a single living child. I nearly spent myself
in the birth, and tore myself so badly I could never bear again."

           
Behind me the bed burned. So did all
of his clothing, the jewels I had given him, the nightshift he had removed with
avid tenderness. "You are punishing me."

           
In her eyes godfire dimmed; the bed
was nearly consumed. "The child you carry is the child of prophecy."

           
I touched a hand to my belly.

           
" 'The Lion shall lie down with
the witch,' " my mother quoted. "It is what their madman says, the
shar tahl who was a prince."

           
"Aidan," I murmured; I was
consumed by realization, by the knowledge of what I was: a vessel for the child
that could destroy my race. "I shared a cradle with his son. My father
told me."

           
"As an infant you shared his
cradle. As a woman, you shared his bed."

           
It jerked me out of numbness
"That was Kellin? Him? But—he said nothing of it! He made no indication!
He was—" I broke it off, then finished it by rote, "—Devin. We all
thought he was Devin."

           
I looked at her. "You are
punishing me. That is why you have come."

           
Her eyes were yellow again.
"You nearly killed me,” she said. "But you were what he wanted, once
I could not bear again. You were his only hope. I counted as nothing. And then
he came—and once there was a child, Lochiel gave you both what should have been
mine!"

           
The godfire died to ash. I grieved
for the woman, that she could be so bitter. I grieved for myself, that I had
lost my mother when I most needed her.

           
And I grieved for the child who was
not, after all, the salvation of my race, but the herald of its destruction.

           
"I will be dead," she
said, "but you will live to see it."

           
When I was certain she was gone, I
closed the door and locked it with meticulous care, I put a rune upon the lock
so not even my mother could open the door. Only my father might, but he would
not come.

           
Godfire was gone. The bed, the
jewelry, the nightshirt—all had been consumed. All that remained were charred
bits and pieces and a drift of violet ash.

           
Grief roused itself. Anguish awoke.
The terrible anger was stilled.

           
I knelt. I plunged my hands into the
ash and closed them on frosted remnants. They did not burn my flesh. The pain
was all inside, where no one could see it.

           
But I would know.

           
I would always know.

           
It burns, such pain. It devours the
heart and soul.

           
When the summons came, I did not
shirk it. I did not delay. Clad in the tattered remnants of my pride, I went to
the tower chamber and presented myself to him. My deference was plain; there
was no latitude, in this, for anything save shame.

           
He sat upon a tall stool set before
a grimoire on a tripod stand. He wore russet hunting leathers, as if he planned
already how the chase would commence. With his hair freshly cropped close
against his head, I saw the shape of the skull. A beautiful man, my father; but
the beauty now was tarnished by the memory of another, who had so indelibly
replaced Lochiel as the model, in my mind, of pure masculine beauty.

           
I hated myself for it, but I could
not banish it.

           
I looked at my father, saw my
father's face, and superimposed the features of another man.

           
It was easy to do. I saw in that
instant that they were very like.

           
My lips parted. Color drained.
"—true," I blurted. "All of it true—"

           
Winged brows arched. "What is
true?"

           
"I did not see it before—but
now ..." I shivered.

           
"We are, both of us, linked by
more than enmity."

           
Only a few candles shed
illumination. Most were unlighted. "Aye," my father said; in smoky
light, his eyes were bronze. "For years we denied it; for decades, so did
they. We came to accept it sooner than the Cheysuli. Most of them still deny
it." His smile was slight. "We are everything they cannot
countenance, we who serve the Seker. I think it less taxing to us to admit the
truth. After all, we merely desire to destroy them in order to maintain what we
have fought so hard to win. Autonomy from gods."

           
I shivered. "But—the
Seker."

           
"I said, 'gods.'" He
emphasized the plural. "They worship a pantheon of gods, while we
comprehend true power lies only with one." He held his silence then,
weighing me by expression. "It provides many answers." He rose from
the stool and lifted something from the gutter in the pages of the grimoire.
Candlelight glinted. A gold ring, set with jet. "It lives again," he
said. "It knows my touch."

           
"But—it knew his, too! And he
is Cheysuli!"

           
"Kellin is many things. Kellin
of Homana is very nearly a Firstborn himself. He has the Old Blood in
abundance, twice and thrice again . . . the earth magic lives in him." The
ring sparked deep red. "Our lifestones answer power. This close to the
Gate, it does not distinguish. It acknowledged his gifts, no more. But it would
not kill him; his blood is very like ours."

           
"Old Blood," I said.
"Ours is older yet."

           
"No." His tone was
thoughtful as he contemplated the ring. "Exactly the same, Ginevra. In all
ways, the same. If I were to cut into my left hand and spill my blood, then cut
into Kellin's hand and spill his blood, we would see they were the same. But
until we mixed the blood, until we clasped hands, nothing could come of it save
we each would bleed to death if the cuts proved too deep."

           
The cut inside my heart was very
deep indeed.

           
"Then Devin of High Crags is
dead."

           
"It would seem so." He
shut his hand upon the ring and squeezed. When he opened it again, the ring was
naught but shattered crystal. He blew it from his palm. "Now,
certainly." His eyes were steady. "Come here, Ginevra."

           
I shuddered once. Suppressed it.

           
"Ginevra," he chided.
"Do you fear me? Do you believe I would harm you?"

           
My lips were stiff. "There is
no need," I said. "I have shamed you. I have dishonored you. You need
do nothing save withhold your regard, and I am diminished."

           
"Diminished." He smiled.
"Lochiel's daughter should never be diminished."

           
"I am. I am." I fell to my
knees. "The god will know my shame each time I go before him. And I will
know he knows!"

           
My father came to me. I bowed my
head before him. He put hands upon my head and cradled it tenderly. "You
are everything I could desire in a daughter. You have not failed me. You have
not dishonored me. There is no shame in what you have done; you did it at my
behest. If you castigate yourself, you also castigate me."