Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (46 page)

           
I laughed aloud. "Burn,
Varien—burn!”

           
I slammed the stones into the fire.

           
He screamed. Gods, how he screamed—

           
And then the stones were consumed
and I was covered with dust that had once been a man.

           
I scrambled up, ignoring the pain in
my head. "Gisella, your cloak."

           
She stood and stared at me. So I
ripped it from her myself and smothered the oil fire.

           
People were in the room. Women ran
to tend crying children, men drew hungry swords. But there was no enemy to be
slain.

           
"Niall?" Gisella asked.
"Niall. Varien is gone."

           
"Varien is gone," I looked
at one of the guardsmen.

           
"Escort the princess to her
chambers. Be gentle, but firm. See that she remains there."

           
"My lord—" He broke off,
nodded, did not question the oddness of the order. Perhaps everyone knew
Gisella.

           
"My lord." Another man.
"The Mujhar is in the Great Hall."

           
I gaped. "My father?" I
looked for Serri. Lir—at once.

           
We ran.

           
I jerked open one of the hammered
doors, stepped through, swung it shut behind me. "Jehan?" I saw him
at the end of the hall, on the dais near the Lion. "Jehan!"

           
Ian was present as well, and Tasha.
And also my mother, caught in my father's arms. I grinned, strode the length of
the hall, opened my mouth to give him greeting—

           
—and stopped.

           
My mother cried. She cried, but it
was not from happiness. It was the sound of a woman consumed by wracking grief.
"No," she told him, "no—say you will not do it—say you will
renounce it~"

           
Ian's face was stark. His yellow
eyes were empty. He stood rigidly by the throne.

           
"Say you will not," my
mother pleaded. "Say you will not go!”

           
His arms were around her, but they
did not comfort her. They kept her from harming herself. His eyes, when I
looked, were angry, bewildered, lost. They were the eyes of a lirless man.

           
The pain of my head was abruptly
swallowed up by comprehension. "How?” I asked. That only; it was the only
word I could manage.

           
"Plague," my father
answered. "Taj in Hondarth. Lorn here, two days ago. I should have gone
then, but—" He stopped speaking. I saw the grief in his empty eyes.
"Oh, Niall, what has he done to you?"

           
I had forgotten the missing patch. I
put a hand to my face, then took it away. "He set a hawk on me."

           
"Gods," he said raggedly,
"he does not alter his methods." He touched the old scars in his
neck, and I recalled the story. Strahan had set a hawk on my father, some
twenty years ago, and nearly slew him then.

           
But now, he had succeeded.

           
My mother stared in horror at my
face. "Oh—gods—Niall—"

           
"I lack an eye, but not my
life." I looked only at my father. "Jehan—" But I knew an appeal
was useless.

           
'’The war is over," he told us
evenly. "Solinde has given in. The rebellion was never theirs. Now they
weary of the deaths. The realm is ours again."

           
"How can you speak about the
war?" Ian cried. "Gods, jehan, what of you?"

           
"You know what I must do."
His arms still cradled my mother. "What every warrior must do."

           
"But you are the Mujhar!"
my mother said. "Can you not overlook Cheysuli custom even once?"

           
"No." I answered for him,
"No, jehana, he cannot. It is the price of accepting the lir-bond."

           
Her head twisted on its neck as she
glared at me.

           
"And am I to expect you to do
the same thing if you lose your lir?"

           
"Aye," I told her gently.
"I am a Cheysuli warrior."

           
"Oh—gods—two of them—" She
turned her face away.

           
"I have—things," my father
said. "Something for each of you. It was why I did not go at once, hoping
you might return." He set my mother aside. "Aislinn, I beg you—"

           
She shut her eyes. But she did not
touch him again.

           
He turned to the Lion. I saw bundles
in the cushioned seat. He lifted one: a blue-suede bag the size of a
shoulder-pouch. "Aislinn."

           
With effort, she kept her tears in
check. I saw the tremendous strain in the tendons of her neck. She stood
quietly before my father.

           
He lifted her hands, put the pouch
into them, closed her fingers over it. "
Duncan
made Alix many things. Now I give them to
you."

           
Her fingers clutched the leather.
She stared at the hands that held the pouch: his were firm and bronzed, hers
were smooth and fair.

           
"Do you know," she said.
"I only realize this now. That even when you were in love with Sorcha,
desiring her in place of me, it did not matter. I thought it did, then . . .
but I know now I was mistaken." She smiled a little; a sad, bittersweet
smile. "Sharing you was better than not having you at all."

           
His hands tightened on hers.
"The things in the pouch are love-tokens from my father to my
mother." He used Homanan deliberately. "I have always lacked the
skill. I can only give you what another has made . . . and swear the feelings
are the same."

           
He caught her in his arms, lifted
her, kissed her as I had never seen him kiss my mother before. For Cheysuli,
such emotions are private ones and kept from other eyes, but now there was no
reason for it. They did not care who saw.

           
He set her down again. "I am
sorry . . . cheysula, I am sorry—"

           
My mother nodded. She stepped away,
hugging the pouch to her breasts, and in silence let the tears run down her
face.

           
"Ian." My father bent and
took another bundle from the Lion. He unwrapped it carefully, and from the
folds he took the black-and-tiger-eye Cheysuli warbow he had used for as long
as I had known him. “This was
Duncan
's warbow. He gave it to Carillon, who
brought it home again; who gave it to me on your grandsire's death. Now I give
it to you."

           
Ian stared at the floor. "Niall
should have it."

           
"No." But my father
silenced me with a look.

           
"Niall shall have something
else," Ian was told. "This is for you. This is for my first-born son.
The first-born of all my children."

           
I could not help but think of
Isolde. And I knew my father grieved, even as he prepared to give himself over
to death.

           
Ian accepted the bow and looked
beseechingly at our father. He said nothing; he did not have to. All the words
were in his eyes.

           
"Niall." My father took
the last bundle from the Lion.

           
He stripped the velvet away. I
looked on the scabbarded sword. "This was—mine," he told me. "It
served others as a sword is meant to serve, including Shaine and Carillon. It
served me as my grandsire truly intended when it was forged out of star-magic
and other Cheysuli rites. With me, the magic will die, but a sword is still a
sword."

           
"Hale’s sword," I said.

           
He put it into my hands. The
scabbard was smooth, oiled leather, worked with Cheysuli runes. I knew Rowan
had put them there.

           
I stared at the sword. I heard him
strip the gold from his ear and from his arms. He gave them to his cheysula.

           
"Do not watch me go."

           
"Donal!”

           
"Do not watch me go."

           
She shut her eyes and turned away,
clutching my father's gold.

           
Resolutely, Ian stared at the floor.
I looked at the shape in the hilt of the sword: the rampant Homanan lion. The
ruby, called the Mujhar's Eye.

           
I smiled a little. One-eyed, both of
us.

           
When I looked up, my father was
gone.

           
I could not sleep. I lay awake in my
bed and stared blind-eyed into the darkness, knowing it could not match the
darkness of my grief. And when at last I could not stand it, I got out of bed
entirety.

           
There was a thing I had to do.

           
I drew on leggings, house boots, a
winter jerkin. I asked Serri to stay in my chambers; this was for me to do
alone. I took up a candle and the sword my father had left me; went alone to
the Great Hall with its silent, looming Lion.

           
I lighted a torch with the candle,
but did not take it yet.

           
At the end of the firepit I set the
sword down, kicked ash and cold logs out of the way, bared the iron ring.
Two-handed I grasped it, prepared myself, wrenched it up from the stone floor
of the firepit. The lid peeled back and clanged against the rim.

           
I hissed, held my breath; the effort
had set my socket to aching. In time, the frequent bouts of pain would pass.

           
For now, I had to bear them.

           
I waited a moment, then took up the
torch and retrieved the sword from the floor. I went down into the narrow
staircase cut beneath the floor.

           
The torch roared in the darkness,
throwing odd patterns against the shadowed walls. I felt confined by the narrow
space, but I descended anyway. All one hundred and two steps.

           
At the bottom there was a closet. I
lifted the torch, sought the runes and the proper stone, pushed, waited as the
wall fell open. Flame was snatched from the torch and sucked into the vault.

           
I took a breath and went in. It had
been long since I had been in the vault, too long. I had nearly forgotten about
it. My father had brought Ian and me here once, to show us the Womb of the
Earth; even now, the memory made me shiver.

           
The walls were of gold-veined,
creamy ivory, carved in the shapes of lir. I could not name them all. I did not
wish to, now.

           
I thrust the torch in front of me,
entered, then set it into a bracket by the door. Ahead of me, mostly hidden in
the shadows, lay the oubliette. The Womb of the Earth itself.

           
I took four steps into the vault. I
stood at the edge of the pit. I could not say if there was a bottom to it; no
one—alive—knew. But legend said there was not.

           
I unsheathed the sword. In the
torchlight the runes ran like water against the steel. I read them aloud into
the silence: "Ja'hai, bu'lasa. Homana tahlmorra ru'maii."

           
I heard the echoes fall into the
pit.

           
"Accept, grandson. In the name
of Homana's tahlmorra."

           
I waited. I heard no sound. Only the
song of silence.

           
I smiled. "Ja'hai, O gods.
Homana Mujhar ru'maii."

           
The ruby blazed up in the light of
the torch. Such a deep, warm crimson. The Mujhar's Eye was made of blood, as
much as mine had been.

           
"Not my sword," I said
softly. "Not mine at all—and he will need it where he goes." I held
the sword over the oubliette. "Accept, O gods. In the name of Homana's
Mujhar"

           
I let it go. It fell. Down, down,
into the hollow darkness of the Womb—