Donal watched him step off the dais and walk purposefully toward the far end of the hall. “Usually,” he answered cautiously.
“Then do so now.” Carillon’s voice echoed. “Come with me to the Womb of the Earth.”
A grue ran down Donal’s spine. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. “I have—heard of it,” he said. “In the histories of my race.”
Carillon took the light with him, leaving Donal in the shadowed darkness of the throne. “Now you will see it, Donal. Now you will go where I have gone.”
“You!” Donal turned to stare after the Mujhar. “You have been to the Womb of the Earth?”
“A Homanan.” Carillon’s tone was scored with caustic irony. “Aye, I have. I thought Finn might have told you.”
“There are secret things in every man’s life.” Donal belatedly followed in Carillon’s wake. “My su’fali does not tell me everything…nor, apparently, do you.” He stopped short as Carillon halted at the edge of the firepit.
“Here,” the Mujhar said. “The entrance is—here.”
Donal frowned. His gesture encompassed the tiles of the floor. “Here?”
“Blind,” Carillon muttered in disgust. “A Cheysuli warrior—and blind.” He thrust the torch into Donal’s hands and stepped over the rim of the firepit. Before Donal could blurt out his surprise, the Mujhar kicked aside unlighted wood and pushed away the residue of former fires.
Donal coughed as a layer of ash rose into the air. Carillon bent down and grasped an ash-filmed iron ring set into the bottom of the trench. Donal heard the grate of metal on stone, and then Carillon went down on one knee. His breath was ragged in his throat.
“Carillon—?” Donal moved forward at once, bending to touch one hunched shoulder. “My lord—?”
Carillon shook his head and waved a hand. “No—no—I am well enough. But—I think it will require a younger, straighter back.” Slowly he rose, one hand pressing against his spine. “Give me the torch. The task is yours to do.”
Donal handed him the torch and stepped into the firepit. Frowning, he bent and grasped the ring with both hands, half-expecting to flinch from the warmth of the metal. But it was cool to the touch, though gritty with ash and charcoal.
He spread and braced his legs, gathering his strength. Then, grunting with the effort, he peeled back the iron plate that formed a lid and let it fall clanging against the stone. He stared down into blackness.
Stale air engulfed his face. Instantly he lunged backward, seeking a safer distance. “Gods,” he said, “down there?”
“Why not?” Carillon asked. “The last man down there was me.”
Donal scowled. He knew what Carillon did. The Mujhar had only to appeal to his pride, and his invitation became a thing Donal had to do.
“I have the light,” Carillon sounded suspiciously amused. “I will lead the way.”
“Should I summon my lir?” Donal said with subtle condescension, though he still felt genuine consternation.
“No. There are plenty of them where we go.” Carillon stepped past Donal and slowly made his way down the narrow stairs.
Donal was left alone in the darkness of the hall. After a moment, he followed the guttering torch.
It is a hole in the earth, Donal thought. A deep, utterly black hole, seeking to swallow me up. Down he went, following the Mujhar. Carillon has gone mad. The news of Electra’s escape has driven him over the edge. But even as he thought it, he knew it was not true. Electra’s escape would simply make Carillon more careful in his planning.
He could hardly see, for the torch Carillon carried smoked badly in the darkness, casting shadows into indistinct planes and hollows so that walls merged with ceiling and the steps, shallow and tapering, faded into opacity. He put one hand against the nearest wall, to steady himself.
The surface was cool, growing more damp with every step. He smelled the moldy odor of dampness, the spice of ancient stone. It filled his senses with the perfume of agedness, and his belly with trepidation.
“There are a hundred and two of them.” Carillon’s voice echoed oddly in the narrow staircase. “I counted them, once.”
“A hundred and two?”
“Steps.” Carillons’s brief laugh was distorted. “What did you think I meant? Demons?”
Donal did not laugh. His bare arms and face were filmed with clammy moisture. His hair hung limply against his shoulders and fell into his eyes. “How much farther?”
“We are here.” The echo sounded closer. Torchlight flared up to fill the passageway and Donal saw that they stood in a space the size of a privacy closet. The Mujhar waited. Against the blackness, painted by torchlight, his hair formed a silver nimbus. “Do you see?” Carillon pointed.
Donal looked. He saw almost immediately what the Mujhar indicated: a line of runes carved into the damp stone walls. Time and seepage had shallowed the figures until they were little more than faint greenish tracings, but Donal recognized the shapes.
He looked at Carillon. “Cheysuli built this palace. It does not surprise me that in the very foundations would be the Old Tongue runes.”
“Firstborn runes.” Carillon did not smile. “It was your father who brought me here, Donal. With no explanation, he brought me here to show me the Womb of the Earth, so I would know what it was to be Cheysuli.”
Quick resentment flared in Donal’s chest. “You are Homanan. No man save a warrior can know what it is to be Cheysuli.”
“For four days, I did. It was—necessary.” Carillon put out a hand to the wall, seeking the proper stone. He found it, pressed, and a portion of the wall turned on edge.
A gust of stale air rushed out of the vault, but it was tinged with the tang of life. Shut up the place may have been, but it was not a deathtrap. A man could go in with impunity.
Carillon thrust the torch through the opening and the flames lit up the darkness. Donal, still hanging back at the bottom of the steps, saw the merest trace of creamy color within the vault, and the sheen of polished marble.
The torchlight was cruel to Carillon’s face. Donal saw every crease, every line, every etching emphasized by the flames. But the eyes were endlessly patient.
He stepped past the Mujhar and entered the cream-colored vault. Torchlight danced and hissed, sending the shadows scuttling up walls and ceiling into cracks and crevices. The walls seemed almost to move as he entered, and he saw how the gold-veined marble took life from the roaring flames.
Lir. Lir upon lir, leaping out of the stone. He saw bear and hawk and owl and boar, fox and wildcat and wolf. He saw all the lir and more, lining every inch of the marble walls and ceiling. No surface was untouched, uncarved.
“Cheysuli i’halla shansu,” Carillon said very quietly. “Ja’hai, cheysu, Mujhar.”
Donal spun and faced the man. The words had been fluent and unaccented: May there be Cheysuli peace upon you, and accept this man, this Mujhar. He almost thought it was a Cheysuli who spoke the Old Tongue. But it was Carillon, Homanan to the bone, who faced him in the vault.
He drew in a careful breath. “Are you not a little premature?”
“Because I ask the gods to accept you?” Carillon smiled. “No. Acceptance may be requested at any time; only occasionally is it given when one asks it.” For a moment, he said nothing. When he spoke again, his voice was eloquently gentle, as if he spoke to a simple child. “Donal—you will be Mujhar. But it is up to you to make your peace with it if the gods are to accept you.”
Resentment flared; he thought of Sorcha, begging him not to leave his heritage behind. And here was Homanan Carillon admonishing him the same. “My tahlmorra is quite clear, my lord Mujhar,” he said with a deadly pointedness. “I accepted it long ago, since neither you nor the gods—nor my jehan—ever gave me a choice.”
Carillon did not indicate that the answer—or tone—troubled him in the least. He seemed supremely indifferent to Donal’s feelings, as if what his heir thought was of no importance to him when weighed against the ba
lance of the present and the future.
“Look around you, Donal,” he said gently. “No man who is to be Mujhar can avoid facing his heritage. Duncan proved that to me when he brought me here. For all I am not Cheysuli, he made me see it was your race which made Homana strong. I accepted it and, for a brief time, I accepted the gift the gods saw fit to give me. For me, it was held within those depths.” He nodded in the direction behind Donal’s head. “For you, it may be something else.”
Slowly Donal glanced around the vault. Gold and ivory gleamed. Momentarily he thought he saw a falcon’s wingtip move; then he saw the patch of blackness in the floor. It was a hole. A perfectly round hole, extending into the depths.
“Oubliette,” he breathed. Swiftly he looked at Carillon as the implications came very clear. “You do not mean—”
Carillon’s voice was perfectly steady. “For me, it was required. For you—I cannot say. It is a thing between you and the gods.”
Donal moved closer to the oubliette. The torchlight was swallowed up, and he could see nothing past the perfectly rounded rim. Nothing at all.
And yet he saw everything.
He closed his eyes. The iron collar of comprehension was locked around his throat. “When will the marriage be made?”
“Within the month.” Carillon sounded neither surprised nor pleased, as if he had expected the comprehension. “It gives us time to gather guests so it can all be done quite properly. I cannot have Tynstar believing he has frightened me into this move merely to secure the throne.”
“Of course.” Donal was aware of an odd lack of emotion in himself. Shock? He thought not. Perhaps it was merely that there was no more room for vacillation. “And the march into Solinde?”
“Within two months after the wedding.” Carillon did not smile. “It gives you time to beget an heir.”
The flames roared in the marble vault with its ivory menagerie. “Do you take the torch with you?”
“Of course. It is a part of the thing.”
Donal nodded. Curiously, he felt no fear, no desperation, no resentment of Carillon’s calm pronouncement of his fate. He merely felt that all of it had to be done, in order to temper the links in the chain they forged.
He smiled at Carillon. “Ja’hai-na, my lord Mujhar. Cheysuli i’halla shansu.”
He heard the scrape of stone on stone; the sibilant grate of limestone wall against marble floor. The torch was gone, leaving only the crackle of vanishing flames in his ears and the blossom of fading fire in his eyes. When the noise and the light were gone, he was left alone in darkness.
Donal shivered. The vault was cool, but he thought the quiver through his body came from more than merely that. He was not precisely afraid, but neither was he perfectly at ease. Given the choice again, he might walk out of the vault instead of allowing the Mujhar to leave him.
He sucked in a belly-deep breath, held it a moment, then released it. He shut his eyes, seeking to measure the darkness of the vault against the darkness all men claimed, and found it brighter behind his lids. He opened them again.
“Shansu,” he said, to see if the word would echo. It did, but oddly, falling away into the oubliette that gaped in the floor of the vault.
He put out his hand toward the wall that formed a door. He found it silk-smooth from the skill of the master craftsman who had brought the lir to life. Like the walls, the door was made of marble except for the corridor side, which was dark, pitted limestone. Through the darkness, he knew this side was a perfect creamy ivory, veined with purest gold. In another palace, it would be a monument for all to admire; in Homana-Mujhar, it was a place of subtle secrets.
“Ja’hai,” he said. Slowly, he moved away from the wall. The edge of the pit felt near. Carefully, he poised himself on the rim, and knelt to make his obeisance to the gods. “Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu.”
He tucked his boots beneath him, settling his knees against the marble. His palms he pressed flat against the floor; his fingers curled over the circular rim of the oubliette. He bowed his head and opened himself to what the gods would send him.
Silence. Darkness. A perfect cessation of movement.
He sat. He felt the beating of his heart. He felt the rush of blood through his veins. He heard the quiet whisper of his breathing. He let himself go.
Slowly.
One piece at a time.
He freed himself from the bindings of his body, and let his spirit expand. He felt his awareness slipping away.
He let it slip—
—and then it came rushing back.
Light blazed up in the vault. He stared blindly at the marble wall so full of shining lir, and saw the shadow cast upon it.
Slender. Hooded. Cloaked.
Moving toward me—
—and the torch raised to strike him down.
Donal thrust himself upward, spinning in place at the edge of the oubliette. He saw only the outline of the shrouded figure; no face, merely two delicate, slender hands. And the torch.
The flames burned his eyes, now used to darkness, and he knew the fire would blind him.
In silence, he thrust up his bare left arm. He felt the heat of the flames as they scorched his flesh; he smelled the stench of the charnelhouse. Pain blossomed. He heard himself cry out.
Again the torch thrust for his face; again he thrust it away. He felt the burned flesh of his arm crack, and the sticky wetness of blood.
The attack had done its work. Off-balance, teetering on the brink, Donal reached out to catch the assassin’s arm and caught the flames instead. He fell backward into darkness.
With a muted scream, he stretched out his arms and tried to catch the rim.
Fingers scraped. Bone bruised. Clawing grip slipped and released.
His head, thrown back on an arching neck, knocked against the edge of the marble pit.
Tumbling.
Blind, he felt his body twisting helplessly. He had no coordination. A hand scrabbled briefly against a wall; an elbow banged; bootleather scrapped itself raw. But mostly he tumbled, touching nothing but air.
Blind. Deaf. Tasting the hot acid spurt of bile into his throat.
And then he opened his mouth and shouted a denial of his fate.
His arm dragged briefly against the silk-smooth, rounded wall. Muscles protested, stretching; he heard the chiming scrape of metal against the marble.
His lir-band.
Gods—I am a Cheysuli warrior! Why fall when I can fly—?
He thrust out both arms. Human arms, lacking feathers or falcon bones. Frenziedly he reached for lir-shape, but nothing answered his call.
Slow…it is so slow…I will never strike the ground.
And if he did not strike the ground, perhaps he would not die.
He felt the air against his body. There was no wind, except air rushing past as he fell. The part of him that was falcon, the part that understood the patterns of flight realized he would have to slow himself significantly if he was to alter a downward fall into the uprush of life-saving flight.
He twitched. Sweat broke out on his body. He reached for the shapechange again.
Upside down. The jerk of trapped air against outstretched wings.
Carefully he tipped one wing, swung over, and tried to angle a climb. But he had miscalculated. The sudden change in size and distribution of his weight sent him slicing through the air, directly at the wall. His fall was curbed, but now his momentum smashed him toward the marble.
The falcon’s wings strained toward even flight. Willpower lifted him upward, veering away from the wall. And yet the oubliette, in its purity of form, nearly defeated him. The left wingtip caught the silk of the marble and the vibration ran up into his body. His direction changed. He slipped sideways into the opposite side.
Left wing snapping with dull finality.
Somehow, he flogged the air. Pain screamed through his hollow bones and reverberated in his skull. Still, somehow, he flew. Perhaps he had not fallen as far as he had feared. H
e flew, desperately shedding pinfeathers, and reached the edge of the pit.
Falling.
He felt the floor rise up to strike him, battering brittle bones, and then he lost the shapechange. In human-form, Donal flopped across the stone.
Sound filled up the vault. He heard it clearly: a husky, raspy, throaty sobbing, as if it came from a man with no breath left to cry aloud.
He was wet with sweat. His leathers were soaked, rank with the smell of his fear. He lay belly-down on the floor of the vault and pressed his face into the stone, compressing flesh against the bone.
No light.
The torch was gone. He lay in total darkness. But for the moment he did not care; all he wanted was to know he was alive.
His left arm, he knew, was broken. An injury in lir-shape translated to the same in human form. How badly the bone was broken he could not say; the dull snap of his falcon’s wing indicated it was not a simple fracture. It was possible the bone had shattered. Bound, it might heal, but it was difficult to bind up flesh already badly burned.
“Lir,” he said aloud. It hissed in the darkness of the vault.
He gathered what strength he could and sent the appeal through the link. Lir…by the gods, how I need you!
When he could, Donal pulled his sound arm back toward his body, doubling the elbow beneath his ribs. He tensed, levered himself up, then curled up onto his knees to sit upon his legs. The left arm he cradled briefly against his belly, rocking gently on his heels as if he were a child, but left off both cradling and rocking almost immediately. It hurt too much to move or touch the arm.
“My thanks,” he said aloud, and heard the hoarseness of his voice. “If this was the test of acceptance…I would not care to repeat it.”
Legacy of the Sword Page 16
