“Enough!” He said it more sharply than he intended. “Sorcha, you are doing yourself harm with this.”
“You do yourself harm.” Her eyes were tightly closed against the pain. “You—do yourself harm…by leaving the clan behind….”
“I cannot rule Homana from the Keep,” he said flatly. “The Homanans would never accept it.”
“Do you see?” she asked in despair. “Already they begin their theft of you.”
“I am not leaving,” he said. “I will come here as often as I may. Sorcha—I am not Mujhar yet—”
“But you will wed the Mujhar’s daughter, and he will make you his son instead of Duncan’s—”
“Never.” His hand clamped down on hers. “Not that. Never. Do you think I am so weak?”
“Not weak,” she gasped. “Divided. Homanan and Cheysuli, because they make you so. But I beg you, Donal, do one thing for me—?”
He gave up, but only because she needed her strength for other things. “Aye.”
“Make the Lion Cheysuli again…and your sons and daughters as well—”
In horror, he watched her knees come up, tenting the soft doeskin coverlet. The mound of her belly rolled as she cried out. What he had meant to say to her was instantly forgotten; he summoned Taj through the lir-link and sent him to bring his mother.
Alix came at once and met her son just inside the doorflap. “You,” she said, “must go.”
“Go?”
“Go. Anywhere. But go away from here.” Her hands were on one arm, tugging him toward the entrance. “Do as I say.”
He did not move, being too big for her to push this way and that anymore. “Sorcha is in pain. I would rather stay with her.”
“Loyalty does you credit, Donal—” Alix stopped tugging, as if she realized the futility in the effort, and merely pointed toward the entrance, “—but this is no place for a man about to become a jehan.”
“I have been one twice before,” he reminded her. “I let you shoo me away then—perhaps I should have refused.”
“Donal—just go. I have no time for you right now.” Alix—still slim in a rose-red gown—turned away from him and pulled aside the curtain. Silver clasps in her dark braids glittered, and then she was gone behind the divider. He heard her speak to Sorcha, but could not decipher the words.
Yet another outcry from Sorcha; Donal walked out of the tent into the light of a brilliant day and petitioned the gods for the safe delivery of woman and child.
And came face to face with Aislinn.
She had shed her cloak, gowned in dark green, and in the sunlight her red-gold hair was burnished bronze. Her face was very pale. “Finn would not tell me where you were,” she told him quietly. “He tried to keep me with him. But—Bronwyn told me the truth. I thought I should come and meet my rival.”
She was all vulnerability, suddenly fragile in the light; pale lily on a slender stalk with a trembling, delicate bloom. But she was also pride; a little bruised, a trifle shaken, but pride nonetheless. As much as claimed by any Cheysuli.
Donal drew in a deep breath that left him oddly light-headed. “Aislinn—the gods know I have done you dishonor by keeping Sorcha a secret, but now is not the time.”
From the pavilion there came the muted cry of a woman in labor, and Aislinn’s gray eyes widened. “The baby—! You told me the child was due—” She broke off, covering her mouth with one hand, and her eyes filled up with tears. But almost as quickly she blinked them away. “No,” she said. “My mother told me tears are not the way to win a man’s regard. Strength, she said, and determination…and the magic of every woman born—”
“Aislinn!” He caught her arms and shook her. “By the gods, girl, I am not a prize to be won. As for what Electra has told you—”
“Then how can I turn your affections to me?” she interrupted. “Can I leash you, like a hound? Can I hood you, like a hawk? Can I bridle you, like a horse?” Her body was rigid under his hands. “Or do I give you over to freedom, and know I have lost you forever?”
He heard Sorcha’s warning sounding in his head: —do not allow the witch’s daughter to turn you against your heritage—
“No,” he said aloud. “I am Cheysuli first.”
“And Homanan last?” Aislinn asked bitterly. “Is this the heir my Homanan father chose?”
His hands closed more tightly upon her arms. Too tightly; Aislinn cried out, and he loosed her only with great effort. “You push me too far,” he warned through gritted teeth. “Both of you—pushing and pushing and pushing, pulling me this way and that—dividing my loyalties. What would you have me do?—divide myself in two? Give each of you half of me? What good would that do for you? Salve your wounded pride?”
“Give up—” Aislinn stopped dead. The color drained out of her face.
“Give up Sorcha? Is that what you meant to say?” Donal shook his head, knowing only he wanted to go away from it all. “I would sooner give up myself.” He laughed a little, albeit with a bitter tone. “For all that, it might be easier.”
Aislinn stared at the ground as if she wished it would swallow her up. The sun was blazing off the red-gold of her hair. “I had no right to ask it. I know it. You have told me how it is with—meijhas and cheysulas. But—I will not lie to you. I want you for myself.” Her head came up and she challenged him with a stare. “She has had you longer, but I will have you yet.”
Wearily, Donal pushed a strand of hair from Aislinn’s face. “You sing the same song. Were it not for me, you might be friends.” And then he recalled Sorcha’s prejudice, and knew it could never be.
There came another cry from the pavilion, but this one did not belong to Sorcha. As it rose up to a wail of outraged astonishment, Donal knew the travail was done.
So did Aislinn. White-faced, she turned from him and walked regally away.
But he knew she wanted to run.
* * *
Alix did not send him away when he entered the pavilion. She did not seem to notice him at all, being too occupied with tending Sorcha and the baby. Softly he approached the partially open divider and stopped short.
Sorcha’s eyes were closed; Donal thought she slept. Lines of strain were graven in her face. She looked older and very weary, but there was peace and contentment in the slackness of her mouth.
“A girl, Donal,” Alix said calmly. “You have a daughter now.”
He could not move. He stood frozen in place, staring down at the bundled baby with her pink, outraged face as she lay snug at Sorcha’s side, and knew a vast humility.
“I do not imagine you recall being in a similar position, once,” Alix said wryly. “I do not recall it so much myself. But it was Raissa who helped me bear you, as I have aided Sorcha.”
“Granddame,” he said, and felt guilty that he had nearly forgotten the woman who had died so long before.
Slowly he knelt down beside the pallet and put a tentative finger to the perfect softness of the baby’s black-fuzzed head. No Homanan girl, this; she had her father’s color.
“Let them sleep. Later, you may hold the girl.” Alix rose, shaking out her rose-red skirts. Donal saw the faint shine of silver threads in Alix’s dark brown hair and realized his mother, like Finn and Carillon, also aged. But less dramatically. Her skin was still smooth, still stretched taut over classic Cheysuli bones, and when she smiled it lit her amber eyes. “It makes one aware of one’s own transience, man or woman, and how seemingly unimportant are such things as dynastic marriages when a son or daughter is born,” she said gently. “Does it not?”
He rose also. “You heard Aislinn and me outside the tent.”
“Bits and pieces. I was too preoccupied to understand it all.” Alix glanced back at Sorcha and the child. “They will do well enough without us. I think we can leave them for a while.”
This time when she urged him toward the doorflap, he did not resist. He went with her willingly.
He walked with her to the perimeter of the Keep, along the moss-gro
wn wall. Unmortared, it afforded all manner of vegetation the opportunity to plant roots into cracks and crannies, digging between the stones. Ivy, deep red and deeper green, mantled the wall against the sunlight. Twining flowers climbed up the runners and formed delicate ornamentation; jewels within the folds of the velvet gown. He smelled wet moss and old stone; the perfume of the place he knew as home. Not Homana-Mujhar. Not the rose-red walls and marbled halls, hung about with brilliant banners. No, not for him.
Even though it would be.
“Aislinn has loved you for some time, since she was old enough to understand what can be between a man and a woman,” Alix said gently. “Surely you knew she did.”
“I thought she might outgrow it.”
“Why should she? Do you not wish for love in this marriage?” At his frown, his mother laughed. “Oh, I know—the Cheysuli do not speak of love, seeking to keep such things impossibly private. But you will have to learn to deal with it, Donal, as your jehan and su’fali did.” When he said nothing, having no answer for her, Alix caught his right hand and stopped him beside the wall. She turned the hand over until the palm was face-up and the strong brown fingers lay open. “With this hand you will hold Homana,” she said evenly. “You are the hope of the Cheysuli, Donal, and a link in the prophecy. Deny this marriage and you deny your heritage.”
He expelled a brief, heavy breath in an expression of irony. “Sorcha said differently. Sorcha said the marriage would force me to turn my back on my heritage.”
Alix squeezed his hand and then let it go. “Sorcha is—bitter.”
“She never was before.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Is it because the child was coming?”
“Partly.” Alix touched him and urged him into motion once again. “I do not doubt she was frightened as well as in pain—the birth was exceedingly easy, but she could not have predicted that. As for bitterness….” Alix stopped to pull a flower from the earth; delicate, fragile blossom of palest violet. “For all these years she has known you would one day marry Aislinn, not her, but it was easy to set that knowledge aside. Now she cannot. Now she must face it, and she does not want to do it.”
“She hates Aislinn. That, I think, I can readily understand; I do know what jealousy is. But—jehana, she hates the Homanans as well.” Again he shook his head. “How do I deal with that, when I am meant to be Mujhar?”
Alix cupped the blossom in her hands. “A violet flower among the white is easily plucked, Donal. Easily crushed and broken. There is no protection from the others when your coloring is different.” She lifted her head and looked at him instead of the flower. “I do not speak of blond hair and green eyes. I speak of blood, and the knowledge of what one is. Prejudiced, aye, because she is more Cheysuli than Homanan—and yet no one will give her that.”
“In the clans, people do not care. You are half Homanan; have you felt different from any other?”
“Aye,” she said softly. “I spent seventeen years with the Homanans and twenty-four among the Cheysuli. But still I feel mostly Homanan; I do not doubt Sorcha does as well.”
“But she was born to the clan—”
“It does not matter.” She lifted the fragile blossom. “This flower is violet. It bloomed this color. It will never be able to claim itself another color, no matter how hard it tries.” She smiled and let the blossom fall to the ground, where it settled into the trembling carpet of snow-white blooms. “Once it might have been purple. But never will it be white.”
Donal stopped walking. He turned to face his mother. “Then—if I am that violet flower, I will never fit in with the white Homanans.”
“No,” she said. “But why wish to fit in when one must rule?”
He turned her to face the way they had come. “Let us go back. I want to see my son as well as my newborn daughter.”
* * *
“Jehan?”
The soft voice intruded into his thoughts. Donal turned, shielding the newborn body in his arms, and saw his son standing in the doorflap with Meghan at his side. Ian’s black hair was curly as was common in Cheysuli childhood, and his yellow eyes were bright as he gazed at his father. But his expression was decidedly reticent.
Donal put out a hand. “Come, Ian…come see your new rujholla.”
The boy moved quickly across the floor pelts, dropping down to kneel at Donal’s side. His curiosity was manifest, but he did not touch the baby until Donal pulled back the linen wrappings and showed him the crumpled face.
He glanced at Sorcha as she drifted slowly back into sleep. “Your turn, meijha—I named the last one.”
Sorcha smiled drowsily. “Isolde, then. I like the sound. Ian and Isolde.”
Donal smiled at his rapt three-year-old son. “She is Isolde, Ian. And she will require your protection. See how small she is?”
Meghan, who had brought Ian soon after Donal had returned to his pavilion, moved forward and craned her neck to peer over Donal’s shoulder. “Black hair,” she said, “and brown eyes, which will lighten soon enough. A Cheysuli, then, with little Homanan about her.”
Sorcha’s smile widened, and Donal saw triumph in her eyes even as she closed them.
He glanced up at Finn’s daughter. There was no bitterness in Meghan’s tone, only discovery and matter-of-factness; it seemed neither to trouble nor please Meghan that she was the image of her Homanan mother: tawny-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned; Carillon’s dead sister to the bone. And she claimed all of Tourmaline’s elegance and grace, even at fifteen years. Yet she lived among the clans with a jehan who was clan-leader, and she felt no lack that she bore Homanan blood in her veins. No lack at all. If anything, she was more Cheysuli than most because Finn saw to it she was.
No Homanan marriage for Meghan. Finn will wed her to a warrior. Donal smiled ruefully. But then I am sure she will have more than enough to choose from.
He glanced up at Alix regretfully. “Will you take Isolde? Much as I would prefer to stay, I promised Carillon I would have Aislinn back by nightfall. And—there are things to be settled between us.” When Alix had taken the baby, Donal bent forward and kissed the drowsing Sorcha softly on the mouth. “Sleep you well, meijha. You have earned a sound rest.”
He rose, scooping Ian up into his arms. “And a hug for you, small warrior. You will be busy from now on.” He glanced at Meghan. “My thanks for seeing to him. Soon enough you will have your own children to tend.”
She laughed, blue eyes dancing in her lovely face. “Not so soon, I hope. I wish for a little freedom, first.”
“Do we go?” Ian asked as Donal carried him from the pavilion.
“No, small one, only I am going. You must stay here.” He saw Lorn get up from his place in the sun by the doorflap and shake his heavy coat, yawning widely.
A cub and a bitch, Lorn observed. How symmetrical.
Donal snorted. A boy and a girl, lir. There is nothing wolflike about either of them.
Unless the boy bonds with one of my kind.
Do you say he will? Donal hoped suddenly for greater illumination into the bonding process, wondering suddenly if all the lir knew which of them was meant for each Cheysuli born.
Lorn paused and lifted one hind leg to scratch, doglike, at his belly. No. Such things are left to the gods.
Taj’s shadow passed overhead. Perhaps he will gain a falcon.
Or a hawk. Donal nodded. I would like him to have a hawk. How better to honor his grandsire?
As you do yours? Lorn asked.
Donal, heading toward Finn’s green pavilion, glanced sharply at the wolf. How do I honor Hale?
The sword. Taj said. One day, it will be yours, as it was ever intended.
Donal did not respond. Instead, as he approached with Meghan, he watched how Sef and Bronwyn sat together in front of Finn’s pavilion, speaking animatedly. His sister’s purple-wrapped braid hung over one shoulder, coiling against her skirts. Unlike Meghan or Aislinn, Bronwyn lacked conscious knowledge of her femininity. She moved and acted more boy tha
n girl, though Donal knew she would outgrow it.
Now, as she laughed and chattered with Sef, he saw how she would lack the pure beauty Meghan and Aislinn already began to claim, but her light would be undiminished. She was his mother come again.
And who else? his conscience asked. Is her jehan in her as well?
He stopped by them both, still holding his son, and looked down upon them as they glanced up in laggard surprise. He saw how Sef had peeled back his right sleeve to show off the feathered band; how Bronwyn had drawn pictures in the dust with a broken stick. Runes, not pictures, he noted on closer inspection. But none were Cheysuli.
Bronwyn sprang to her feet and obscured the runes at once, hands thrust behind her back as if she meant to hide the stick. Purple skirts were filmed with dust, tangled on her boot-tops, but she ignored her dishevelment. “I heard the baby has come!”
Troubled, Donal nodded. “The baby has come. A girl. Sorcha has named her Isolde.”
“May I see her?” Her face was alight with expectation.
“No.” He almost cursed his shortness. “Not—now. She is sleeping. So is Sorcha. They need time alone.” He saw how her bright face fell. “Later, rujholla.” And she was his sister, for all she was Tynstar’s daughter; he hated to disappoint her. She had had no say in what man sired her.
But he dared not give her the chance to prove herself Ihlini.
Slowly the color spilled out of her face. “What is wrong? Is it something I have done? You are so short—”
“No.” Again, he said it more sharply than he intended. Against his will, he looked once more at the runes she had drawn in the dust and then tried to obscure. Odd, alien runes, with the look of sorcery.
“Rujho—?”
“Nothing,” he said. “You have done nothing wrong. Bronwyn—what are those?” He would ignore the runes no longer.
She looked down in surprise at the drawings in the dust, then shot a glance at Sef. It was mostly veiled beneath lids and lashes, but he saw the silent signal.
As if she means to protect him… “Bronwyn!” The tone was a command, and he knew she would not ignore it.
“A secret game,” she answered promptly. “We took an oath not to tell.” Deliberately, she erased the rest of the runes with the toe of one booted foot.
Legacy of the Sword Page 14
