Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 (53 page)

           
Ginevra laughed. "You wanted to
kill it! Now you change your mind?"

           
"As I must," he said.
"The Seker's aspect is of godfire. I think he would like to be human once
again, that he may walk the land freely as he sunders it."

           
She clung more tightly to Kellin's
hand. “If you would give him a body, give him your own!"

           
"GINEVRA!"

           
"Your own!" she cried. And
then, "Now, Kellin!"

           
With their power they burned out his
eyes, leaving blackened, melted sockets, and exploded the runes in his hands.
His clothing caught fire. The flesh of his face peeled away so the bone exposed
itself. A rictus replaced his lips, displaying perfect teeth. Lochiel staggered
forward, waving impotent stubs on the ends of blazing arms, then tumbled into
the Gate.

           
The godfire within dimmed as if
measuring its addition. And then it burst upward in a geyser of naked flame,
licking at the jagged remains of shattered crystal arches. The Gate bled
godfire in Lochiel's immolation.

           
A shudder wracked Ginevra. She fell
to her knees. Silver hair streamed around her, tangling on the floor with
steaming godfire and melting glass. In the rumbling of the Gate, her sobs went
unheard.

           
"Come." Kellin urged her
up. "If Asar-Suti desires a second helping . .."

           
She caught great handfuls of
god-bleached hair in rigid, trembling hands. Tears shone on her face.

           
"What manner of man sires a
child such as I, who murders her own father?"

           
A ripple moved through the floor. It
fractured the massive columns that spiraled to the roof.

           
Black glass rained down. With it
came more arches, the fretwork of the ceiling, and then the roof itself.

           
"Ginevra!" Kellin dragged
her to her feet one-handed as he tucked the two pieces of chain into his belt.

           
Cracks appeared in the rim of the
Gate. Fissures ran toward them. As the roof fell down, part of it splashed into
the Gate, so that godfire gouted forth.

           
In its depths, something screamed.

           
The floor beneath them rolled. From
high over their heads, from the bulwark of the fortress, came a keening howl of
fury.

           
"They know," Ginevra said.
"The bonds are all broken. Lochiel is dead and so they die—and Valgaard is
falling." She caught his hand tightly. "I have to find my
mother."

           
As they burst from out of the
passageway into the corridor, Melusine was waiting. In her hands was a sword
made of livid godfire. "What have you done?" she cried. "What
have you wrought?"

           
Ginevra laughed crazily to hear her
own words repeated. "Lochiel is dead."

           
"The walls fall," Melusine
said; in her eyes shone the light of madness, yellow as a Cheysuli's.
"Valgaard is sundered . . ." She looked at Kellin.
"Kinsman," she said, then raised the sword high.

           
"No!" Ginevra struck
before he could, transfixing her mother's breast with a single blazing rune.
The sword was snuffed out. "No," Ginevra repeated. Her eyes were
anguished. "Go away," she said. "Get out of Valgaard now."

           
Melusine laughed. "Without
Lochiel? You must be mad!"

           
"Mother—" But the floor
between them fissured.

           
A jagged hole appeared. Kellin
staggered, righted himself, then caught Ginevra and yanked her back as
Melusine, screaming, tumbled in. "Mother!"

           
He did not remonstrate, nor try to
explain there was no hope as godfire gushed forth and drove them back. Ginevra
knew. "Shansu." he whispered, though she would not understand.

           
She pressed a hand across her face
so he would not see her tears.

           
Kellin did not permit them to stop
until they were through the defile on their Valgaard horses and safe within the
canyon, where the floor did not split, the walls did not fall down, and the
roof above their heads did not collapse upon them.

           
There Sima waited.

           
He expected the link to be sundered
by Ginevra's presence, but Sima's pattern was clear. You did well, his lir
said, to release my kin.

           
He thought of the undercroft, where
he had, with his power, torn the doors off their hinges and permitted the cats
to escape. They deserved a better tahlmorra than to die with Lochiel.

           
Sima's eyes gleamed golden. Tufted
ears slicked.

           
Do you understand?

           
No. I was taught we could not link
when an Ihlini was near.

           
There is some of the god in you. Not
only in your magic, but in your tolerance. You are both children of the gods;
the time for schism is ending. She glanced at Ginevra. Tend her first. There
will be time for us later.

           
He climbed off his horse, hooked its
reins over a branch, then went to Ginevra's. "Come down," he said,
and reached out a hand.

           
Ginevra looked down at him from atop
her mount. Ash marred her cheek. Silver hair was a tangled tapestry on either
side of her face. In her eyes was an anguish of such immensity he feared it
might break her.

           
He could not help herself.
"Meijhana—"

           
At the sound of the enemy tongue,
spoken so close to sundered Valgaard, Ginevra flinched.

           
Then, with careful deliberation, she
unhooked a foot from a stirrup and got off on the other side.

           
It put the horse between them.

           
She could not have taken a blade and
stabbed any deeper. He was eviscerated.

           
Gods, he prayed, let this woman
never hate me. I could not bear it.

           
Ginevra took the horse away to the
far side of the canyon. She sat down there upon a broken stump clad in the
stormwrack of her soul and stared blindly into shadows with ice-gray eyes
glazed black.

           
With effort, Kellin turned back to
his horse. He unbuckled girths, pulled off saddle and blankets, scrubbed down
the damp back with a handful of leaves. When he was done, he went to her horse
and did the same service. Ginevra said nothing. Smoke crept into the canyon.
 
It was laden now with odors: burned flesh, the
stink of the netherworld, the smell of a world come undone.

           
"It is gone," Ginevra
said.

           
Kellin turned from her horse.

           
"Gone." She sketched a
rune in the air; he recognized bal'sha'a by the movement of her fingers.

           
But nothing came of it. Her fingers
moved deftly, yet nothing flared into brilliance in answer to her shaping.
"The Gate is closed," she said. The hand, bereft of power, slapped
down slackly and lay curled in her lap. "And so now there is no
godfire."

           
Her eyes were oddly empty.
"Everyone I knew is dead. Everything I knew is gone."

           
His voice shook.
"Ginevra—"

           
Her face was a wasteland.
"Lochiel was right. We are truly destroyed."

           
"No." He drew a slow
breath, treading carefully; he desired in no way to be misconstrued, or what
they had built between them—that now was in jeopardy—would collapse into ruins.
"No, not destroyed." He would not lie to her; would never lie to her.
"This aspect of it, perhaps, but your race survives. Asar-Suti is
defeated, but there are Ihlini in the world."

           
"Good Ihlini?" She smiled,
but without amusement; it was a ghastly mockery of the smiles he had won
before. "Those who repudiate the Seker will surely survive and be looked
upon with favor, but what of—us? Those like my father, and Strahan before him,
and Tynstar before him." The line of. her jaw was blade-sharp as she set
her teeth.

           
"What of Ihlini like me?"

           
"You said it yourself: the Gate
is closed."

           
She did not flinch. "Aye."

           
"I would like to think that as
we end this war, such Ihlini as they were will turn from the dark arts to
fashion a new world."

           
" 'Such Ihlini’ " she
echoed. "Like me?"

           
He said it deliberately: "You
are not your father."

           
"No." Moonlight glinted in
hair. "No, so I am not. Or surely I would have killed you there at the
Gate." Her mouth warped briefly. "Perhaps I should have."

           
"Aye," he agreed. "Or
left the cat loose so the hunt could commence."

           
It shook her. It shook her so badly
he knew she as much as he comprehended the precipice.

           
He gave her the truth. "I do
not believe Cynric's task is to have the Ihlini killed."

           
Her tone was harsh. "As we
killed my mother and my father?"

           
My poor meijhana. He went to her,
and squatted down before her. "No matter how hard you strike at me, it
will not bring them back."

           
Ginevra laughed harshly. "How
can I strike at you? You only did as I asked, there in the cavern. What does it
matter to me how it was done, or that we used an unborn child for his
power?"

           
He caught her hand. "Do not
punish yourself for choosing to live. You did—we did—what had to be done."

           
"All of it? All of it?"
Her hand shook in his. "My father. My mother. My—home." Tears glazed
her eyes as she put a hand against her belly. "So falls the Ihlini race.
As according to prophecy—but before he is even born!" Her voice was raw.
"Are you pleased by it?"

           
He put his hand on her hand and let
it rest against her belly. "He is Ihlini, also."

           
She wrenched her hand away and
pressed both against her mouth. Fingers trembled minutely.

           
Through them, she said, "How
can you love me? I am everything you hate."

           
"When I was Cheysuli—" He
smiled to see her start. "When I was Cheysuli, and knew it, I hated
Ihlini. There was no choice. They meant to destroy my House. They had killed
people I loved. They would kill me, if I gave them the chance to do so."

           
He pulled her hands away and held
them in his.

           
"When I was Cheysuli but no
longer knew it, I was free to understand that life is much more complex. That
the gods, when they act, when they wish to humble a man, wield a weapon of
irony."

           
"Your gods'"

           
"Mine. Yours also." He
lifted a strand of her hair. In the sunset, the silver was gilt. "You knew
what would happen."

           
Ginevra stiffened.

           
"You knew very well. It was
what you implied when you came to me here, to fetch me to the Gate so you could
win me back my human form." He looked into her eyes. "You grieve for
more than their deaths. You grieve because of your guilt. That Lochiel's
daughter, bred to serve her people, preserved in the name of love the life of
the only man who could destroy her race."

           
"You shame me," she said.

           
It shook him. "In what
way?"

           
"The truth. The truth shames
me. I have betrayed my race." She put trembling fingers against his mouth.
"And I would do it again."

           
He wanted in that moment,
recognizing her truth as an absolute, to give her a truth in return.

           
To admit to her—and to himself as
well—what demon had lived in his soul all his adult life.

           
Before, he had not known. And if
someone had told him, if someone had dared, he would have taken solace in
ridicule. I have used weapons in my life, but none so sharp as the blade of
honesty. It is time, I think, to use it on myself and lance the canker I have
cherished.