Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (37 page)

           
They were my enemy, the a'saii. But
they were of my race, my clan, my kin; I grieved for their deaths. I grieved
for the deaths of their lir.

           
"What of you?" Ian asked.
"The plague is not that selective. Homanans are dying also."

           
I heard murmuring again. A glance at
the others showed me furtive looks exchanged; expressions of bleakness and
affirmation. No matter what was said, the bastard's adherents also suffered
losses. Many losses; like the a'saii, their cause might be overcome by
misfortune rather than anything I might do.

           
"We will win. We have the gods
on our side."

           
"Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan,
cheysu," Ian quoted.

           
"The fate of a man rests always
within the palm of the gods."

           
The Homanan turned his horse aside.
And we were home at last.

           
We found little more welcome in
Homana than we had in Solinde. Here the land was whole, the dwellings unburned,
the crofters alive, and game and livestock healthy, but fear and suspicion also
thrived. We were Cheysuli, and Cheysuli carried the plague.

           
Ian and I learned quickly that it
was best if I went to the doors and asked for food and water, offering coin in
return; for once, my Homanan looks stood me in good stead. But even so, as we
drew closer to Mujhara the wary welcomes turned to rude refusals.

           
And then, with a week's ride left to
Mujhara, we stopped at a snowbound croft and were given warm welcome, both of
us, and invited in for a meal. The old woman was alone, but did not appear to fear
us or the plague. With our lir she took us in and served hot food and tart
cider, spiced with a twist of cinnamon. And when at last we took our furs off
in the heat of the tiny dwelling, our lir-gold was bared to a smiling-if
toothless—reception.

           
"Aye," she said, "I
knew you were Cheysuli. Even buried under fur and leather- You have the
eyes—" she looked at Ian "—and the animals are more than pets. Lir,
are they? Aye. Lovely beasts."

           
Her white hair was quite fine,
thinning; it straggled out of a tight-wrapped knot of braid at the crown of her
head. All the days of the world were in the tapestry of her face. Her faded
blue eyes were rheumy, eaten away with the promise of milk-blindness, but even
when she could no longer see with them, I knew she would see with her heart.

           
"Lady," I said, "Leijhana
tu'sai."

           
She sat in her chair and rocked a
little, grinning at my words. "Old Tongue." She nodded, knotting her
hands in the ends of her faded brown shawl. "Been so long since I heard
it. But even then, it was strange to me. My mouth did not want to shape the
words."

           
I looked at her in startled
supposition. "You are not Cheysuli?"

           
"No, no, not I. Not Cheysuli,
no." She grinned. She rocked. She laughed.

           
"Lady," Ian said.
"You know there is plague in the land, and yet you invite us in. You invite
Cheysuli in."

           
"I am old. I have no one but
myself, and my cat." The gray tabby, in the face of much larger kin in
Tasha, had retreated to the mantel over the fireplace. "When my time
comes, I will give it good welcome. But I think this Ihlini mischief will not
send me to the gods." She nodded. She rocked. She smiled.

           
"Ihlini." I exchanged a
glance with Ian. "You say the plague is Ihlini?"

           
"Born of Strahan, aye."
Again she nodded. Her eyes were closed. She rocked. "It has been coming a
long, long time. I remember the days of Tynstar, in Solinde, when he first told
Bellam that Homana was his for the taking. And so together they took it, once
Shaine was slain in the Great Hall of Homana-Mujhar. Tynstar chased Carillon
out of his homeland and into exile in foreign realms. ..." Her recital
trailed off. Ian and I stared at her in silence, shocked to hear her repeat so
much of our House's history. "But he came home again, he did, and took
Homana back, and then Tynstar stole his youth. Tynstar was strong, but so was
Carillon. And in the end, Carillon prevailed." She smiled briefly; it
faded quickly enough. "But Tynstar sired a son on Carillon's queen, and
now that son is loosed upon the land. Like the plague of Asar-Suti."

           
She said nothing more. In the silence
of the tiny room Ian and I waited for her to finish. But she said nothing more.

           
"Lady,” I said at last,
"how is it you know so much of Tynstar? So much of Shaine?"

           
"Because I was alive when
Shaine was Mujhar," Her rheumy eyes creased in good-natured humor.
"And Tynstar was my lord."

           
"Your lord?" I was on my
feet at once, hand closing on my knife hilt. "Lady—"

           
"Aye," she said, "he
was. And aye, I am Ihlini. But I bid you not to slay me: I am not the enemy.
Save your anger for Tynstar's son."

           
She stopped rocking. She sat very
still in her chair, a small, old, fragile woman, who had suckled at a Solindish
breast.

           
"Why are you in Homana?"
Ian asked, genuinely curious as well as wary. So was I.

           
"Because I like it," she
answered. "Because now it is my home." Suddenly she laughed. From
some hidden place beneath her shawl, she withdrew a thing that glittered. She
held it out in the candlelight, and we saw the stone. A multi-faced crystal;
pale, perfect pink. "Take it," she said. 'Take my lifestone. If you
believe I mean you harm, you have only to crush it, or throw it in the fire.
And the world will lack one more Ihlini witch."

           
After a moment, I put out my hand
and took the stone from her withered palm. I was ungloved; the crystal took on
the color of my flesh, altering texture and hue until it was hidden in my hand.
Perfect camouflage. It seemed weightless, though it was not. It seemed to have
no temperature, though when I first had touched it the stone was undeniably
cool.

           
"Lifestone," I echoed.
"What does it do?"

           
"We have no lir," she told
me. "We have a stone instead. It is a locus for our power." Her eyes
were on the stone. "I have so little, now; I am too old. And I renounced
Asar-Suti."

           
"Renounced him!" Ian
stared at her, "And you were left alive?"

           
The old woman tilted her head a
little. "Betimes I think I was not. But that is only because I am so old.
I lost my youth when I broke faith with the Seker. It was the cost. And now, I
wait for the day I will die."

           
I frowned a little. "How old,
lady? How many years have you?"

           
Briefly, she counted on fragile
fingers. And then she grinned her toothless grin. "Only two," she
said. "Two hundred. Not so old, when you think of how old Tynstar was. Or
how old Strahan will be, if no one seeks him out and slays him." She
looked at us both, "You might," she said. "Go to him, seek him
out, end the Seker's plague. It is the only way you will save your people. The
only way the world will survive."

           
She put out her hand. I returned the
stone. Before my eyes, it flamed, sent a single tendril of lilac smoke into the
air, and then its momentary brilliance was snuffed out. "If you could take
his lifestone, his power would be ended," she told me. "If you
cannot, at least destroy the white wolf."

           
"Gods," I blurted,
"you wish me to slay myself?"

           
Her hand spasmed, shutting away the
pale pink stone.

           
"You?" she said. "You
are the Prince of Homana?"

           
"Aye, lady, I am."

           
"Then you must go. It is a task
you must perform."

           
Distractedly, she pushed at the
wisps of pearlescent hair encroaching into her face. "Go home, my lord of
Homana. And then go to Valgaard, Strahan's fortress, in the mountains of
Solinde. It will be Homana's deliverance."

           
"And that is what you
desire?" Ian asked gently. "Forgive me, but you are Ihlini. What
reason can you give us to believe what you have told us?"

           
"Reason?" Clearly, she was
shocked. "I have told you the truth. It should be enough."

           
Ihlini, my conscience whispered, as
Ian and I exchanged dubious glances.

           
"Reason." She whispered it
to herself. "I am too old; I have forgotten what hatred lies between the
Firstborn's children—what prejudice there is—"

           
"Lady." Ian's tone was
distinctly displeased; I recalled how he had reacted when Lillith had discussed
our supposed kinship on the voyage to Atvia. "We are not blood-bound,
lady. Not Ihlini and Cheysuli."

           
"No?" She smiled,
shrugged, rewrapped her faded shawl. "No, then. As you wish."

           
I looked at Serri. Lir?

           
He remained conspicuously silent.
Old the woman might be, and lacking most of her magic, but the link was
affected by her nearness to us.

           
I caught Ian's eye and hooked my
head toward the door in a silent suggestion. Equally silent, he nodded once and
rose. We put on pounds of leather and fur again, wrapped our faces in wool and
pulled up our hoods from our shoulders.

           
"Lady," I said, "our
gratitude. Leijhana tu'sai"

           
Unsmiling, she looked at us. "I
will give you proof."

           
"Proof?"

           
"Reason to believe." She
pressed herself out of the chair. She was tiny, fragile, bowed down with the
weight of her age. "Proof," she murmured. "My gift to you—my
gift to Homana—" And with amazing accuracy she threw the crystal into the
fire.

           
“Wait!" I leaped for her,
trying to catch her in my arms as the lifestone fell into the flames, but by
the time I touched the woman she was only made of dust. Only dust in the shape
of a woman, and then even that was banished.

           
Slowly I opened my hands. Tiny
crystals glittered against the flesh of my callused palms. Slowly I tipped
them; dust sifted, drifted, settled against the earthen floor.

           
I looked at my brother in silence.

           
"Gods—" But he stopped.
There were no words for this.

           
He turned and walked out of the
croft.

           
There were marks on the doors in
Mujhara. At first Ian and I stared at them blankly in ignorance, and then the
answer became quite dear. A red slash meant plague was in the dwelling. A black
one signified death.

           
All around us was silence, except
for the sounds of our horses. Grayish snowdrifts stretched from doorway to
doorway, filmed with grime and ash. Down the center of each street was beaten a
narrow path of dirty slush over frosted, muddy cobbles. Our horses slipped and
slid, pressing slush into horseshoe-shaped crusts of ice. Behind us came Tasha
and Serri.

           
Though it was midmorning, passers-by
were infrequent. As they saw us, they huddled more deeply into their wrappings
and hastened out of our way. I saw ward-signs made against our lir, our horses,
ourselves, and realized yet another reason for distrusting Cheysuli had
acquired significance. Now they feared us for the plague.

           
The pewter-colored sky spat snow at
us, but fitfully.

           
Flakes no larger than the end of my
smallest finger drifted diagonally across my path of vision, sticking to
leathers, wool, horsehair, waiting for others to follow. I squinted, burrowing
bearded chin more deeply into wool; the path before my roan was quickly
transformed from gray to white.

           
After so many weeks of riding, not
knowing what I might find, I discovered I wanted to do it again so the answer
would be delayed. I did not want to halt at the bronze-and-timber gates of
Homana-Mujhar and see the crimson slash of a plague-house, or the black of a
house of death. I did not want to look at all; even as Ian halted before me, I
stared steadfastly at the ground.

           
"My lord!” someone cried.

           
"My lord prince!" cried
another, and the wide gates were opened to us.

           
I looked up. I saw the leaves of the
gate swinging slowly open before me. And I saw the red mark upon them.

           
"Rujho?" Ian waited. And I
realized I had not moved to enter the outer bailey.

           
"My lord." Someone took my
roan's damp rein. "My lord?"

           
I bestirred myself to look down at
the man. I did not know his name, but I had seen him frequently around the
exterior of the palace. One of the Mujharan Guard whose duty it was to tend the
gates.

           
"No soot," I said.
"No soot upon the gate."

           
"No, my lord—not yet."

           
"Niall." Ian again.
"Here is where we part."

           
I looked at him in surprise.
"You are not going to come in with me?"

           
"I will go to Clankeep. Isolde
is there, and others."

           
He reined back the gray who wanted
to go home to a stable he knew. "I will be back as soon as possible,
depending—" He broke off, looked eastward, yanked wool away from his face.
"Gods, rujho, I am afraid of what I will find."

           
Snow gathered on his shoulders and
on the rim of his hood. There was no sun, only the dim flat light of a winter
day, so that most of his face was hidden in bluish shadow.

           
There was tension in the set of his
mouth and jaw; in the flesh around his eyes. Freed of the woolen wrappings, his
breath smoked in the frigid air.

           
"No more than I am
afraid." I looked past him toward the inner bailey. Patiently, the guardsmen
waited to close the gate. "Go on," I said abruptly. "Go on. Come
back when you can." And I rode past him with Serri trotting at the roan's
right side.

           
I did not look back again. And as I
passed through the outer bailey into the inner, I heard the gates thud closed.

           
Boys came running to take my horse,
slipping and stumbling in the snow. I flung them the reins and jumped down from
the roan, thanking him with a slap upon one furry shoulder. And then I ran up
the steps of the palace with Serri loping next to me.

           
Gods, lir—what if my sons have taken
the plague?

           
Do not beg misfortune, lir. See if
it is true, first.

           
But even Serri's customary wryness
did not make me feel better.

           
My sons—and who else? My mother?

           
I thought of everyone as I climbed
more stairs inside the palace, but I went to see my sons.

           
There were women in the nursery,
talking quietly as they sat and tended their stitchery. But all talk broke off
as I entered; five women stood as one and then dropped into startled curtsies.

           
"My sons?" I asked. That
only.

           
"Well," one of the women
answered at once, as the others only stared. "My lord, see them for
yourself."

           
I was already at the oak-and-ivory
cradle, hanging on to the inlaid run. They slept, did Hart and Brennan, swathed
in soft-combed wool. There was no sign of illness about them.

           
"They thrive, my lord,"
the woman—Calla—told me. "You need have no fears for them."

           
"And Gisella? My mother?"
I could not look away from my sleeping sons.

           
"Both well, my lord."

           
"I saw the mark on the gate.
The red mark." Now I looked at her. "There is plague in
Homana-Mujhar."

           
"Aye." She stared down at
her hands. In them she clasped forgotten stitchery. "My lord, it is the
general. The Queen is with him now."

           
"Rowan?" Oh—gods—no—
"You do not mean General Rowan?”

           
"Aye, my lord, I do."

           
A knife blade teased at the interior
of my belly.

           
"Where?"

           
"In his chambers. The Queen
said to leave him where he would be most comfortable, though others wished to
lock him away." Calla's face was pale. "My lord." She followed
on my heels as I turned abruptly to leave the nursery. "My lord—it would
be best if you did not go."

           
"So I do not risk myself?"
Grimly, I shook my head. "For Rowan, it would be worth it."

           
But as I turned, determined to go to
him, I came face to face with Gisella.

           
Once again, swollen with the weight
of an unborn child. Or, perhaps, two? This time I could not be certain.

           
Hands clutched a soft wool shawl
over her distended abdomen. "You did not go in," she said. "Not
into the nursery!"

           
"Gisella."

           
"You did not expose my sons to
plague?" She was astonished, angry, genuinely frightened.
"Niall?"

           
"I saw them," I told her
gently. "Did you think I would stay away?"

           
"You exposed them!" She
wrenched past me and ran to the cradle, even as I turned back from the door.
"Oh, my boys, my little boys, has he visited you with the plague?"
Her hands were on the soft wool wrappings, peeling them back to expose sleeping
faces. And then, abruptly, she turned on the other women. "I said he was
not to come in. I said he was not to be allowed. I said I wanted him kept away
from my little boys."

           
"Gisella." I cut into her
diatribe before she could flay the white-faced women with her tongue.
"Gisella, no one in this palace has the right to refuse me the opportunity
to see my children."

           
"I do!" she cried. "I
do—their mother! I do not want you to touch them. I told these women you were
not to touch the babies."

           
She stood between me and the cradle,
warding it with her body. How rigidly she stood; how fierce was her defiance.
And I could not really blame her.

           
"I have no plague," I told
her. "I promise you, Gisella—there is no plague in me. Do you think I
would wish to risk them any more than you?"

           
"White wolf," she said.
"White wolf. How can you tell me you do not carry the plague. You are a
white wolf when you take on the shape of your lir!”

           
"Gisella—"

           
“No!" She stared defiantly at
Serri, then transferred it to me. "I—say—no!"

           
Lir, Serri told me, you cannot
battle fear so fierce as this. Give her time. Let her see you do not sicken.
She will accept you then.

           
They are my sons, Serri.

           
And she is their fehana. Do you
think her fear is misplaced? Do you think she is wrong to guard them with her
life?

           
Inwardly, I sighed. No. No—perhaps I
do not. But I might wish the target were other than myself.

           
No doubt. But you have just come
through a plague-ridden realm, and everyone knows what your lir-shape is.

           
"All right." I said it
aloud. "All right, Gisella, I understand. But when you see that I am well,
there will be no more of these demonstrations against me in the presence of my
sons,"

           
Her teeth showed a little.
"There is plague,” she said. "Plague all through Homana. Do you think
I will risk my sons? Do you think I will risk the inheritor of the Lion?"'

           
No, I thought she would not. I
thought she would risk only herself in order to protect the inheritor and his
brother. Even against their father.

           
Mad she might be, but I could not
question her desire to save her sons. Nor would I disregard her loyalty to the
Lion.

           
I sighed. "Well enough,
Gisella. I surrender the battle to you." Through the link, I asked Serri
to stay with my sons; I did not entirely trust Gisella's temper.

           
And as she sang a song to my sons, I
left the nursery to find the sickroom.

           
Rowan's chamber was full of shadows.
The weight of them lay thick upon the furniture and wavered in the comers. I
smelled the scent of beeswax and the promise of coming death.

           
My mother's back was to me as I
entered noiselessly. I saw only the chair and the top of her head above it,
red-gold hair muted in the dim glow of candlelight. As I approached, I saw how
she sat very quietly in the chair, hands folded in her lap. And when I reached
her, I saw how rigidly her fingers were locked together.

           
I heard how she spoke to him.

           
"—so faithfully," she was
saying. "He had no one as faithful as you. Oh, I know, you would argue
there was Finn, as loyal a liege man as could be, but the loyalty did not last.
Not as it should have lasted. Not as your loyalty lasted." Fingernails
picked absently at the soft nap of the jade-green wool of her skirts. "I
know the story. Rowan: how as a boy you swore to serve Carillon as no other man
could serve him, even as he was driven from Homana by Bellam of Solinde. How
you never failed your duty to the rightful Prince of Homana. And when he came
home again, the rightful Mujhar of Homana, you gave him what aid you could. You
helped him become a king."

           
I looked at the man in the bed. Much
of him was hidden beneath layers of heavy blankets, and I could not see his
face. I could not see him breathe.

           
"And when my father was slain
by Osric, and Donal became Mujhar, you were there to help him also. To help him
hold the Lion." I heard the minute wavering of her voice. "One day,
my son will need you, as the others have needed you. How can you leave us now?
How can you fail Niall?"

           
"Mother," I said, and she
leaped up from the chair.

           
"Niall! Oh—gods—" She
pressed a hand against her breast. And then she shook her head. "Oh no, do
not come here. Not you!”

           
"You are here," I told
her.

           
"But I will not be Mujhar.
Niall, please go back."

           
"I owe this man my attendance.
As much as you owe yours." I stopped beside the chair and looked at the
man in the bed. "He has served the House of Homana longer than anyone I
know. It is the least I can do for him."