The Shapechangers (7 page)

“I will be with you,” he said softly. “They have said I must go with them.” He grimaced. “They say I am not yet strong enough for the ride to Mujhara, but they did not lie about the wound. It is near healed, and I feel strong enough to fight any of them.”

She looked at the wrist and saw healing ridges marking the wolf bite. The swelling and seepage was gone, replaced by new skin.

They have healing arts at their beck
, she said silently, unconsciously echoing Finn’s words.

“Well, my lord, perhaps it is best,” she said aloud. “I do not seek to lose you so soon.”

“I have said you will come with me to Homana-Mujhar.”

She smiled sadly into his face. “As your light woman?”

Carillon grinned and lifted her hand to brush his lips across her wrist. “If it must be done, Alix, I will not prove unwilling.”

She blushed and tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it firmly. He shook his head slightly and smiled. “I do not seek to discomfit you. I have merely said what is in my mind.”

“I am your cousin.” She did not entirely believe him.

Carillon shrugged, “Cousins often wed in royal houses, to secure the succession.
This
bond would not be a thing Homanans disapprove of.”

Alix tried to answer. “My lord…”

His brows lifted ironically. “Surely you can dispense with my title if we discuss our futures in this way.”

Alix wanted to laugh at him but could not. She had longed for such thoughts and words from him all through their brief acquaintanceship, though she had never thought them possible. Now she could not comprehend it. The revelation of her ancestry destroyed the roots she had depended on.

“I will wed a princess, one day,” he said lightly, “to get heirs for the throne. But princes have mistresses often enough.”

She heard the echo of Duncan’s voice in her mind, explaining the casual Cheysuli custom of wives and mistresses. An open practice she could not comprehend.

Yet Carillon offers me much the same…
She shivered
convulsively.
Who has the right of it
—
the Cheysuli or the Homanans?

“Alix?”

She carefully freed her hand from his and met his blue eyes. “I cannot say, Carillon. We are not even free of this place yet.”

He started to say something, but Finn’s approach drove him into silence. Carillon glared at the Cheysuli warrior, who merely laughed mockingly. Then Finn turned to Alix.

“Will you ride with me,
rujholla
?”

She noted the change of address and felt a mixture of gratitude and resentment. She would acknowledge no blood relationship to him; nor would she accept the sort of physical commitment he wanted from her.

She moved closer to Carillon. “I ride with the prince.”

“And likely have him fall off the horse from in front of you.”

Carillon glared at him. “I will keep to my horse, shapechanger.”

Finn’s earring winked as he laughed. “You had better change your name for us, princeling, or you insult your cousin as well.”

“
You
seek to do that, not him!” Alix snapped.

He grinned at her, then shot a mocking glance at Carillon. “Have you forgot? You have gained more than just your light woman as a cousin this day. You also have kin among the rest of us.”

“Kin among you?” Carillon asked disparagingly.

“Aye,” Finn said equably. “Myself. She is my
rujholla
, princeling, though only by half. But it makes you and I cousins, of a sort.” He laughed. “I am kin to Homana’s prince, who would serve his liege lord by slaying us all. But to do that you would have to slay
her
, would you not?”

Color surged into Carillon’s face. “If I slay any shapechanger, it will be you. I leave the rest to my uncle the Mujhar.”

“Carillon!” Alix said, horrified.

Finn laughed at them both, spreading his hands. “Do you see, princeling? What you say of us concerns her. Beware your intentions, do you seek to keep her safe.”

Carillon’s hand dropped to the heavy sword belted at his hips; Alix was still amazed the Cheysuli had let him keep it. But he did not draw the blade. Finn smiled at them both and walked away, calling to another warrior in the Old Tongue.

“He only seeks to goad you,” Alix said softly. “To satisfy his own craving for a place.”

Carillon glanced at her in surprise. Then he smiled. “Do you prophesy for me, Alix? Can you see into my heart as well as his?”

Inwardly she flinched away from the reference to sorcery, and
that at her own command. “No. I only say what I feel in him. As for you…” She hesitated, then smiled. “I think you will be Mujhar, one day.”

He laughed at her and pulled her into his arms, lifting her into the air. “Alix, I thank the gods I rode my warhorse through your garden that day! Else I would not have you sharing such wisdom with me.”

She grinned down at him, delighting in the feelings spilling through her body. His hands on her waist were firm and sure, possessive, betraying no signs of weakness from the wolf-wound. Alix let one hand curve itself around his neck, tangling in his tawny hair.

“And did I not share my wisdom with you when you trampled all my fine young plants?”

He spun her again, then set her down with a rueful grin. “Aye, that you did. You near made me ashamed of my birth.”

Alix laughed at him. “Even a prince can manage to go around a garden when his prey avoids it. I cared little for the fine clothes you wore or the gold you threw at me to pay for the damage.” She lifted her head haughtily, mimicking the actions of a highborn court lady. “I cannot be
bought
, my lord prince, for all you are heir of Homana.”

“But can you be won?” he asked steadily.

Her smile faded. She averted her face. “If I can be won, it is something left to me to discover. I cannot say.”

“Alix—”

“I cannot say, Carillon.”

Duncan came up before Carillon could speak again. He led a bay horse and carried the oddly compact bow he had polished the evening before. Carillon, looking sharply at it, sucked in his breath.

Duncan frowned at him. “My lord?”

“Your bow.”

The Cheysuli held it up. “This? It is not so much. I have better at the Keep. This is for raiding and hunting, and expendable.”

“But it is still a Cheysuli bow,” Carillon said seriously. “I have heard of them all my life.”

Duncan smiled briefly and held it out. “Here. But keep in mind it is not the best I have made.”

Carillon disregarded the modest statement and took the bow almost reverently, fingering his enemy’s weapon. It was finely crafted, age-polished hardwood. The grip was laced with leather to cushion a man’s palm. Odd runic symbols ran from top to bottom, winding around the bow like a serpent.

Carillon looked at Duncan. “You know what is said of a Cheysuli bow.”

Duncan smiled ironically. “That an arrow loosed by one cannot miss. But that is all it is, my lord; a legend.” His eyes narrowed in cynicism. “Though it serves us well. If Shaine’s troops fear a Cheysuli bow, it is all the better for us.”

“Do you say a man
can
miss with this bow?”

Duncan laughed. “Any arrow can miss its mark. It is only rare for a Cheysuli to loose one with poor aim.” His smile faded into implacability. “It comes from fighting for survival, my lord. When you are hunted down like a beplagued animal by the Mujhar’s guardsmen, you learn to fight back how you can.”

Carillon’s face tautened. “The legend of these bows was known
before
the purge, shapechanger.”

Duncan’s mouth twisted. “Then let us say the skill was
refined
by it, prince.”

Carillon thrust out the bow. Duncan took it without comment and looked at Alix. “It is time to go. Will you ride with me?”

Her head lifted. “I told your brother—I ride with the prince.”

Duncan handed the reins of the bay horse to Carillon. “Your warhorse will be returned when you are better, my lord. For now you may have mine.”

Carillon mounted silently. Before Alix could attempt a scrambling mount Duncan lifted her up behind the Cheysuli saddle. She looked down into his impassive eyes and felt a faint tug of familiarity. But he walked away before she could question it.

Finn, mounted on a dun-colored horse, rode up beside them. “Should the princeling falter before you,
rujholla, I
will be more than happy to take you onto my horse.”

Alix looked directly into his angular, mocking face and said nothing at all, ignoring him as pointedly as she could.

Finn merely grinned and fell into place before them. The journey was begun.

The long ride took the heart from Alix as she clung to Carillon. She drooped dispiritedly against his broad back, longing for respite from the steady motion of the horse. Whenever Finn rode by she straightened and arranged her face into an expression of
determined spirit, but when he left them she returned to her haze of weariness.

The Cheysuli did not tell either captive where they rode, only that their Keep lay at the end of their journey. When Carillon demanded his instant release and that of Alix, threatening the Mujhar’s displeasure and retribution, Duncan refused courteously. Alix, watching him silently during much of the day’s ride, wondered at the difference so evident in the brothers. Finn seemed the more aggressive of the two; Duncan kept his own council and gave nothing away to supposition. Though Alix wanted nothing more than to leave the shapechangers’ presence with Carillon accompanying her, she far preferred Duncan’s company to Finn’s.

In the evening she sat before a small fire with Carillon, staring into the flames in exhaustion. The prince had shed his green cloak and draped it over her shoulders. She folded it around herself gratefully. He looked tired and worn as he stretched his hands out to the fire’s warmth; for all it was the beginning of summer, the nights were still cold. Alix knew her own appearance was no better. Her braid was loosened and tangled and her gown showed the results of too long a time spent in it. Her face felt grimy and the welt left by the tree limb stung.

The Cheysuli, she marked, took little with them on a raiding mission. Their mounts were packed lightly and the warriors carried only a belt-knife and the hunting bows for weaponry. Alix eyed them glumly as they quickly set up a small camp, spreading blankets where they would sleep and building tiny fires to heat their evening ration of journey-stew. The colored pavilions were kept packed away; Alix realized she would spend the night unprotected by anything save a blanket.

Uneasily she slanted a glance at Carillon, seated next to her on Duncan’s blood-red blanket. “I would near give my soul to be safe in my own bed in my father’s croft.”

Carillon, gazing blankly into the fire, looked over to her with an effort. Then he smiled. “Had I a choice, I would be in my own chambers within Homana-Mujhar. But even your croft would do me well this night.”

“Better than here,” she agreed morosely.

Carillon shifted and sat cross-legged. The flames glinted off the whiteness of his teeth as he smiled maliciously.

“When I have the chance, Alix, these demons will regret what they have done.”

A strange chill slid down her spine as she looked sharply at his determined face. “You would have them all slain?”

His eyes narrowed at her reproving tone. Then his face relaxed
and he touched her ragged braid, moving it to lie across her shoulder. “A woman, perhaps, does not understand. But a man must serve his liege lord in all things, even to the slaying of others. My uncle’s purge still holds, Alix. I would not serve him by letting this nest of demons live. They have been outlawed. Sentenced to death by the Mujhar himself.”

Alix pulled the cloak more tightly around her shoulders. “Carillon, what if there was no sorcery used against your House? What if the Cheysuli have the right of it? Would you still see to their deaths?”

“The shapechangers cursed my uncle’s House when Hale took Lindir away with him. The queen consequently died of a wasting disease, and Shaine’s second wife bore no living children. If not sorcery, what else could cause these things?”

Alix sighed and stared at her hands clasping the green wool. She pitched her voice purposely low, almost placating. But what she said had nothing to do with placation.

“Perhaps it was what the Cheysuli call
tahlmorra.
Perhaps it was no more than the will of the gods.”

His hand moved from her braid to her jaw and lifted her face into the light. “Do you champion the demons again, Alix? Do you listen to them because of what you have learned?”

She looked at him steadily. “I do not champion them, Carillon. I give them their beliefs. It is only fitting to acknowledge the convictions of others.”

“Even when the Mujhar denounces them as sorcerers of the dark gods?”

Alix touched his wrist gently and felt the ridged scars of the bite from Storr. Once again the image of Finn shifting his shape before her eyes rose into her mind, and it was only with considerable effort she kept the frightened awe from her voice.

“Carillon, will you allow him to denounce
me
?”

He sighed and closed his eyes, withdrawing his hand. He rubbed wearily at his brow and irritably shoved hair from his eyes.

“Shaine is not an easy man to convince. If you go before him claiming you are a shapechanger, and his granddaughter, you touch his pride. My uncle is a vain man indeed.” Carillon smiled at her grimly. “But I will not allow him to harm you. I will have that much of him.”

Alix drew up her knees, clasping her arms around them. “Tell me of Homana-Mujhar, Carillon. I have ever been afraid to ask before, but no more. Tell me of the Mujhar’s great walled palace.”

He smiled at her wistful tone. “It is a thing of men’s dreams.
A fortress within a city of thousands. I know little enough of its history, save it has stood proudly for centuries. No enemy force has ever broken its walls, nor entered its halls and corridors. Homana-Mujhar is more than a palace, Alix; it is the heart of Homana.”

“And you have lived their always?”

“I? No. I have lived at Joyenne, my father’s castle. It is but three days from Mujhara. I was born there.” He smiled as if reminiscing. “My father has ever preferred to keep himself from cities, and I echo his feelings. Mujhara is lovely, a jeweled city, but I care more for the country.” He sighed. “Until my acclamation as formal heir last year, I lived at Joyenne. I spent time at Homana-Mujhar; I am not indifferent to its magnificence.”