The Shapechangers (10 page)

“Well…if the Ihlini are so powerful, how is it you have withstood them before?”

“That is a thing between the races. I cannot say.” He frowned faintly. “The Ihlini have no real power before us. Oh, they have recourse to some of their illusions and simple arts, but not the dark magic. But we also suffer, for though the Ihlini cannot overcome us with their arts, neither can we take
lir
-shape before them, or hear our
lir.
We are as other men before them.”

Alix, stunned by his words, said nothing. All her life she had known the Cheysuli had awesome arts at their call, though she could not have named what they did; to hear Duncan speak of the Ihlini as the demons she had ever thought the Cheysuli, upset her preconceived notions of the order of things. Already Finn had destroyed her innocently confident childhood. Duncan had further shaken her foundations by speaking of a prophecy and the future she faced with his clan. Now, to think of the Ihlini as a real threat to the land she loved, Alix felt a desperation building in her soul.

Too much is being shattered
…she thought abstractedly.
They are taking too much of me, twisting me, promising things I have ever feared…

“Here,” Duncan said gently, “you have suffered long enough.”

She dragged her eyes from the fire, blinking at the residue of flames that overlay his dark face. He held something in his hand, offering it to her. She saw it was a silver comb, gleaming in the firelight. Slowly she put out a hand and took it, fingering the intricate runic devices that leaped and twisted in the flickering shadows.

“You may have it,” Duncan said. “I carried it for a girl in the Keep. But you have more need of it.”

Alix hesitated, staring at him. She could not, even as she tried, view him as her enemy. Finn’s threat was very real, substantial; Duncan’s was not.

Or else he hides it from me…

“Use it,” he urged gently.

After a moment she set the comb down and began to undo her tangled braid. Duncan stirred the fire with a stick, coaxing life back to the rosy coals.

She picked twigs and leaves from the heavy plait, gritting her
teeth at the pain of snarls set so deeply she would have to rip most of them out. To cover her grimaces she spoke to Duncan.

“You have a wife?”

“No, I have no
cheysula.
”

She dragged the comb through her hair. “Then you have a
…meijha
?”

He glanced at her briefly, face closed. “No.”

She scowled at him as she ripped at a tangle. “Why did you go to such effort to explain the freedom of your race, if you do not subscribe to it yourself?”

Duncan continued to stir the fire, though it did not particularly require it. “I am clan-leader. It came on me eight months ago, when Tiernan died. With it comes much responsibility, and I chose not to divide myself between a
cheysula
and the leadership this year.” He waved the stick idly. “Perhaps next year.”

Alix nodded absently as she freed the last tangle from her hair. Her attention was not really focused on Duncan, but she sensed an odd tension in him as he watched her silently. His eyes followed her hands as she pulled the silver comb through the heavy length of her dark hair.

The exercise improved her disposition and her feelings toward the clan-leader. No man, did he want to sacrifice her to some unspeakable god, would allow her the amenities common to courtesy. She was grateful to him.

“My thanks,” she said gravely, then smiled warmly at him across the fire.

Duncan was on his feet in one movement, muttering something in the lyrical Old Tongue. His lips compressed into a thin line and his eyes were suddenly hostile as he stared at her, transfixed.

“What have I done?” she cried, aghast.

“Can you not feel it?” he demanded. “Can you not hear the
tahlmorra
in you?”

Alix dropped the comb. “What do you say?”

He swore and turned from her, hands curling into fists. Then he gathered up a bundled blanket and tossed it at her violently.

Alix caught it before it could fall into the fire, recoiling from his cold anger until she felt a tree against her back. As he continued to stare at her with an unwavering, bestial glare, Alix pushed herself to her feet and hugged the blanket as if it would protect her.

“What do you say?” she whispered.

“
Tahlmorra…
and you know nothing of it,” he snapped.

“No!” she cried, illogically angry when she should be frightened. “I do not! And do not mutter to me of it when I
cannot comprehend what it is. How am I to conduct myself if you tell me nothing?”

Duncan took a trembling breath and visibly controlled himself, as if he knew he had frightened her. “I had forgot,” he admitted quietly. “You cannot know it. But I question that you feel nothing.”

“Feel
what
?”

“We serve the prophecy,” he said with effort, “but we cannot know it perfectly. The
shar tahls
tell us what they can, but even they cannot know everything that the gods intend. The
tahlmorra
, as a whole, is unknown to us. But we feel it. Sense it.” He sighed constrictedly and ran a stiff hand through raven hair. “I have come to face a part of my
tahlmorra
I did not know. I should welcome it…but I cannot. I cannot accept it. And that, in itself, is a denial of my heritage.”

Alix felt a measure of his pain, amazed at the depth of his turmoil. His solemnity had vanished; the man she had thought so controlled and implacable was no different from herself. But she did not understand, and said so.

Duncan relaxed minutely. “No. You cannot. You are too young…and too Homanan.” His eyes, focused on the heavy curtain of her hair, were bleak. “And Carillon has already won your heart.”

“Carillon!”

He gestured to the blanket still clasped in her arms. “Sleep. We ride early.”

Alix watched him walk into the shadows, disappearing as easily as if he were a part of the night. She wondered, as she shook out the blanket and lay it by the tree, if he were.

The gods sent her a dreamless sleep.

Alix rode with Duncan the next day, hands clasping the saddle and body held carefully upright so she would not touch his back. With Finn she had kept herself from him because of his undisguised interest in her; Duncan’s dignity seemed to demand such behavior on her part. She could not imagine hanging onto him or otherwise interfering with anything he did. And he had closed
himself to her since their conversation of the evening before. For all he was still courteous, he was also cool toward her.

When evening came and the band of Cheysuli stopped to set up camp, Alix found herself delegated to tend Duncan’s fire as if she were a servant. She disliked the sensation. It made her feel a true prisoner, even though she was treated mostly like a visitor.

Alix dumped a tree limb onto the fire and scowled at it blackly, angry with herself for remaining so acquiescent to orders and angry with the circumstances in general. When she sensed a presence on the outer fringes of the firelight she straightened, then gasped and stumbled back a step as she saw the baleful gleaming eyes of a ruddy wolf.

It came closer, into the light, and blurred itself before her. Alix released her breath and gritted her teeth as she saw the form shape itself into Finn.

“Do you seek to frighten me to death?”

Finn laughed at her and squatted to pour himself a cup of honey brew from the pot Duncan had set over the fire. After several restorative swallows he fixed her with a bright gaze and scratched idly at his cheek.

“Well, I have returned your princeling to safety.”

Alix knelt down on a thick dark pelt, disgruntled enough to speak rudely even to him. “You did not slay him?”

“Carillon is meant for a death, like all men, but it will not come at my hands.”

She shot him a dubious glance. “You would do whatever you could in this personal war you wage against the Mujhar. Even to slaying his heir, were you given the chance.”

“But Duncan would not let me do it.” He laughed at her startled glance. “No, I would not slay Carillon. He has a part in our own prophecy, if we are to believe he is the one the runes show us. There is no name; only his deeds are written down. The prophecy does not foretell the prince’s death so soon, so you may take comfort in that. First he must be Mujhar.” Finn studied her over the cup as he drank, still squatting by the fire. “You do not seem to fret for him,
meijha.
Have you retrieved your heart from him so soon?”

Alix lifted her chin defiantly. “I will be with him soon enough, when he returns for me.”

“Your place is with us,” he said seriously. “We are your people. You do not belong with valley crofters
or
the majesty of the Mujhar and his heir.”

She knelt on the thick fur, leaning forward in supplication. “You took me from my people. You
stole
me, as the Homanans say Hale did to Lindir. Can you not understand how I feel about
the race you say is mine? By the gods, Finn, you even threatened to force me!”

“I did not think you would have me willingly.”

Alix released a breath in frustration. “Why will you not hear me? Are you ever so witless as you seem?”

“Witless!”

“Do you do anything with any thought put to the consequences?”

“The
qu’mahlin
has left us little time for thought. Most of the time we act because we must.”

“You use that as an excuse!” she cried. “You prate about the
qu’mahlin
as if only you have suffered. Yet you leave me no room to think perhaps your race has the right to curse Shaine, because you behave as if you are free to do what you wish. Duncan would have me see you are men like any other, yet you behave as if the Cheysuli
are
demons with no understanding of what you do to others.”

“You need learning,” he said bluntly. “When we have reached the Keep and you have spoken to the
shar tahl
, you will understand better what it is to be Cheysuli. You will understand what the
qu’mahlin
has done. Until then you are lost.”

“Take me home,” she said softly. “Finn, take me home.”

He set the cup down and looked at her levelly. “I do.”

Alix ground the heels of her hands against her eyes, feeling the grittiness of exhaustion and tension. Her desperation was growing, swelling up inside her until it threatened to burst her chest and force tears from her eyes. She had no wish to cry before Finn of all people, and the sensation of futility and helplessness hurt so bad she could think only to hurt back.

“I will escape,” she said firmly. “When I have the time, and the opportunity, I will win free of you. Even does it come to putting a knife into you.”

He smiled. “You could not.”

“I could.”

“You have neither the spirit nor the strength to do it.”

Furious, Alix snatched up the pot of bubbling honey drink and threw it at him. She saw the contents strike his upraised arm and part of his face, then she was on her feet running.

Finn caught her before she reached the edge of the firelight. Alix cried out as he caught one arm and twisted it behind her back. Then he jerked her around until she faced him, and she was suddenly terrified as he bent over her.

“If you would be so bold as to do that,
meijha
, and yet be caught, you had best be prepared to suffer the consequences.”

Alix cried out again. She could feel his breath on her face; the
dampness of the spilled drink as it stained her gown. She felt her lip caught in his teeth, then stumbled back as Finn was jerked away from her.

Alix gasped in pain and shock as Finn came off the ground, hand to his knife. Then he froze, staring angrily at his assailant.

“You will not force a Cheysuli woman,” Duncan said coldly.

Finn took his hand from his knife. “She may have our blood, Duncan, but she has been reared Homanan. She wants humbling. If you leave her to me, I will see to it she behaves with more decorum.”

“We do not humble our women, either,” Duncan snapped. “Leave her be.”

“Why?” Finn demanded, all affronted male pride. “So you can take her?”

“No.”

“If she is what you want as
cheysula
, clan-leader, then you had best follow tradition and ask for her clan-rights in Council.”

Duncan smiled thinly. “I ask no clan-rights of any woman this year,
rujho.
But if you are so hot to take her, you should hear your own words. She is no light woman, Finn. Ask for her clan-rights, when she has been proven to have them.”

Finn glared at him. “I have no need of formal clan-rights where a woman is concerned. There are enough to be had without taking a
cheysula.
”

“Stop!” Alix cried, so loudly they both stared at her in surprise. Self-consciously she swept back her loose hair and scowled at them. “I know nothing of these traditions you speak of, or clan-rights, or Council . . or
anything
! But you had best know I will do
nothing
against my will! You may have forced me to come with you now, but there will be a time when you do not watch me, and I will get free of you all. Do you hear? You cannot keep me!”

“You will stay,” Duncan said calmly. “No one escapes the Cheysuli.”

Finn smiled. “The clan-leader has spoken,
meijha.
We may disagree, my
rujho
and I, but not on this.”

Alix felt the tears welling in her eyes. She widened them instinctively, trying to take back the moisture, but the first tear fell. On a choked sob she spun and ran from them, wondering what animal they would send to fetch her back.

She found a damp mossy area beneath a huge beech tree not far from camp and sat down quickly, loose-limbed and awkward. For a moment she gazed blindly at the shadows and wondered forlornly if she would ever see her home again. Then the enormity of her plight crept upon her. Alix pulled her knees to her
chest and hugged them, hiding her face in her torn and stained skirts.

Liren
, said a gentle voice, so empathetic it nearly undid her.
Liren.