Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 05

by A Pride of Princes (v1. 0)

  "There will be no death-ritual," Strahan told him. "No escape from the madness lirlessness will bring. Do you sentence yourself to that?"

  Madness was anathema to the Cheysuli. The loss of control in lir-shape or out of it was considered inexcusable, in addition to being potentially deadly. A Cheysuli warrior made lirless was, in time, little better than a beast; death was preferable. And so the ritual had been born. But in order to make the ritual have meaning, suicide was taboo. A paradox. And clearly, Strahan knew it.

  Brennan had been raised to respect the customs of his race. At his Ceremony of Honors, following the bonding with Sleeta, he had accepted the responsibilities of a warrior knowing full well that even the Mujhar of Homana owed his life to the will of the gods. The ritual bound Niall's heir as well as others, and he had accepted it.

  And now, his commitment was tested.

  "You have spent the better part of several months attempting to drive me mad,” Brennan said. "Lirlessness will succeed where imprisonment could not, but of what use am I then? What good is a mad Mujhar?"

  Strahan's smile was sweet. "More malleable than one who is sane. Look at Shaine." A tendril of living flame licked up from the Gate, touched his boot, tapped, as if to remind him; fell back as Strahan nodded. "Look at Shaine, your distant kinsman, who once gave us Homana-Mujhar because he preferred Ihlini to Cheysuli."

  "But Carillon took it back ... it and Solinde. Your homeland, Strahan . . . and now a vassal to the Cheysuli." Brennan shrugged. "Do your worst, Ihlini. I can hardly gainsay you, but idiocy may thwart you."

  "And if I chose to kill the cat with an excess of—incivility? What would you say then?"

  "That I will suffer," Brennan answered. "No doubt I will beg you to stop. But when you have stopped, and I have my wits about me, the cycle will start again.”

  Strahan shook his head. "You do not understand. I do not need you sane ... I can control a hollow man easier than one stuffed full with Cheysuli pride."

  "Then why this mummery?"

  Strahan sighed. "An amusing divertissement. But now, shall we to the bargain? You may find it interests you."

  Brennan merely shrugged.

  "I want Homana," Strahan said. "Through you I can have it."

  Brennan shook his bead.

  "In good time, you shall have it; I will not take Niall’s life. Let him live out his years ... I have as many as I need." Strahan's eyes narrowed. "The bargain, Brennan: serve me, and I will spare your father's life. I will spare the life of your lir. I will give you the years of your life and beyond, through the benificence of the Seker."

  "I have no desire to live forever." Brennan folded his dirt-crusted arms. The lir-gold was dulled by grime, but it did not dull his determination. "I will not accept your bargain."

  "Not even to save your kin?"

  He dared give Strahan no advantage. Brennan set his teeth. "You can only kill them once. Then where is your power?"

  "I can destroy the prophecy."

  "You have tried so many times."

  Strahan sighed. "This, I see, leads nowhere."

  "No." Brennan smiled. "What have you left. Ihlini?"

  "This," Strahan said, and opened the wooden box.

  Through the smoke, Brennan looked. And then he stared in disgust at Strahan, his distaste as plain as his bafflement.

  "Do you not recognize it?" Strahan asked.

  "A human hand," Brennan said flatly. "Ensorcelled, no doubt; else it would have decayed by now."

  "More than a human hand. It is a Cheysuli hand."

  As he was meant to, Brennan looked again. His belly knotted itself.

  Strahan closed the box. "I should be very careful. Hart may want it back."

  When he could, Brennan breathed again and swallowed back the bile. "There was no ring," he said tightly.

  "He wagered it away." Strahan looked past Brennan.

  "Why not ask him yourself?"

  Brennan swung around. Through the columns came his brother. At his left wrist there was no hand.

  "I have the power." Strahan spoke with infinite kindness. "Serve me, Brennan, and I will make him whole."

  "Rujho. It was Hart, whose voice echoed shock throughout the cavern. "Gods, Brennan—not you! I thought he had only me!"

  Strahan smiled warmly. "Welcome to the Gate."

  Hart barely spared a glance for the Ihlini. He ran forward toward Brennan. "Rufho—" But he slowed as he reached the Gate. The light was odd on his face, limning gauntaess and despair. "Brennan, are you whole?"

  Brennan swallowed tightly. "More so than you," he said. "Oh, gods, rujho—" Abruptly he turned away.

  "Brennan!" Hart halted raggedly. Shock made him awkward. "Do you already cast me out?"

  "Ask him!" Brennan spun and thrust out an arm toward Strahan. "Ask him. Hart!"

  Hart turned toward the Ihlini. Shock at seeing Brennan had overtaken the immediacy of his disability, but now it was obvious that Brennan had been told. He had expected it. And it obviously made a difference.

  Emptiness overwhelmed him. Despair was overpowering.

  "I offer your brother a choice," Strahan said, "now I will give it to you."

  Hart sighed wearily, too weary to protest as he stripped fallen hair out of his gaunt face. Cheysuli were characteristically angular, formed of remarkably striking bones, but captivity, illness and strain had fined Hart down too far. If the dark skin were any tauter, the cheekbones would cut through flesh. "You asked him for Homana. Now you ask me for Solinde."

  "But your bargain is different." Strahan's fingers splayed across the lid of the box, tapping idly. "He says there is no inducement to make him accept my service. But you are a different man. What would you have of me?"

  Hart's laughter had the edge of madness in h. "My freedom," he said promptly. "The freedom of my rujholli. No further dealings with you."

  "Unacceptable." Strahan smiled. "Serve me. Hart. Accept the Seker as your lord."

  "And destroy the prophecy." Hart shook his head. For all he meant to sound fierce and adamant, unimpressed by Strahan's words, he knew he sounded precisely what he was: badly frightened, nearly worn through, on the brink of breaking down from the loss of hand and clan. It took all he had to speak steadily, betraying nothing of what he felt inside the dwindling shell. "You have taken my hand, Ihlini . . . you have stolen my heritage from me. I am, as you have said, clanless and unwhole. There is no place for me among the Cheysuli." He spread his arms and displayed hand and stump. "What have I left to lose?"

  "Your lir"

  Hart laughed at him, though it had a ragged sound.

  "Rael is free .. . Dar never caught him. Try again, Ihlini."

  "He may be free," Strahan conceded after a moment, "but you are separated. Eventually, the lir-bond shall grow thin, too thin . . . grow brittle, so brittle . . . until it cannot survive, and breaks."

  Hart drew in a deep breath. "So be it, Ihlini. Madness—and eventual death—is preferable to serving you and your noxious god."

  Strahan tilted his head toward Brennan. "The life of your twin-born brother."

  Hart looked at Brennan. He saw the rigidity of the body, the bleakness in yellow eyes. He looked for some suggestion, some hint of what Brennan desired him to say. But there was none. Brennan looked soundly defeated, cocooned in futility.

  That shook Hart more than anything else. He drew in another deep breath. "An idle promise, Ihlini. Brennan would sooner be dead than have me become your minion merely to save his life."

  Brennan's smile was bittersweet.

  Strahan considered it. He stroked the wooden box. "I will give you the girl."

  Anger flared anew. "Is she not what you promised Dar?"

  "Dar is expendable." Strahan brightened. "Would his life be enough for you?"

  Hart drew in his left arm and hugged it against his chest. "You will kill whomever you choose, regardless of what I want. I would be a fool to accept such terms."

  "Give in." Strahan suggested. "The service w
ill not harm you. You will still be Prince of Solinde. Still have the white-haired woman. Still have your games of chance. What more could you want?"

  Hart's hard-won demeanor began to slip. In his eyes was emptiness. "What I want you cannot give."

  Brennan, clearly afraid, took a step toward him.

  "No." Strahans tone was a whiplash of sound that hissed in the glassy cavern. "This is his choice, now."

  "No!" Brennan shouted. A tendril of flame flowed out of the Gate and slapped him to the ground.

  A second gout deftly blocked Hart's move to reach his brother. It beat him back until he cursed aloud.

  “Now," Strahan said, "tell me what you want."

  Hart hugged his arm, swaying on his feet. "I want my clan!” he shouted. "I want the regard and honor of my race, not the ouster I am due." He thrust his left arm into the air and displayed the emptiness at the end of his leather-cuffed wrist. His arm shook with the tension of his rigid body. "With one blow of a sword, Dar had me stripped of my heritage. Maimed warrior, worthless warrior ... not fit to be part of the clan. And so I am kin-wrecked—" He shut his eyes a moment, then drew in an unsteady breath and went on. "Where does it leave me, Ihlini? Why should I serve you?" Hart stood on the edge of the Gate, oblivious to its flame as the tears ran down his face. "You cannot give back my hand—no more than grow back your ear!"

  Strahan opened the box.

  In noisy silence. Hart stared at the hand in its bed of silk. There was no blood. The cut had been clean, leaving no gore at all. Oddly dispassionate, coldly assessive, he studied the severed hand. He marked scars won in childhood and arms-practice. The enlargement of one knuckle. The sinews beneath brown flesh. There was no mistaking the hand. He knew it was his own.

  Instinctively he made an impossible fist. As the tremor spread through his stump, the hand in the box closed its fingers.

  Hart cried out. He wavered on the brink. Flame licked up and drove him back, staggering, until he fell to his knees. He cradled his arm and rocked.

  To and fro.

  To and fro.

  Oblivious to his brother.

  Strahan's tone was gentle. "You have only to say you will serve me."

  Hart hugged his arm and rocked.

  Strahan looked at Brennan. "You have a choice as well."

  Brennan knelt on the glassy floor. All he could do was stare at Hart, sharing a measure of his anguish.

  "I will let you consider it." A flick of his hand built an encircling fence of flame to keep them near the Gate.

  Then Strahan walked away. As he moved, smoke followed. The columns sang their atonal song.

  Corin leaned back on his elbows, gritting his teeth in response to the discomfort of ribs and legs. He was indeed fortunate, as Strahan had pointed out, to have survived the fall from the cliff. To survive the fever that followed. But he had, and now he healed; with healing came renewed and abiding anger: he was prisoner to the Ihlini.

  And yet he was not in a cell. His room was small, hut hardly bereft of luxuries. The bed was comfortable. The hangings were richly patterned, if in runic glyphs he did not know and feared to leam. The door was clearly unlocked. If he could walk, he might go free. But his legs were not quite healed.

  He had tried, time and again, to contact Kiri through the link. But Valgaard was the font of Strahan's power; even Old Blood was neutralized. It would take wits instead of magic to win free of his captor's grip.

  The door swung open. Corin tensed as Strahan entered. He saw rich dark clothing, rune-wrought circlet, the compelling mismatched eyes. And he knew the time had come at last to meet absolute power in human form.

  The room lay in darkness in deference to his rest. But now Strahan bent over a gilded candle, blew, set the wick ablaze. The flame was purest purple.

  Another. Another. Until the room ran with lurid godfire, the excrescence of the god.

  Strahan stood over him. "The time is come," he said gently. "You must make your choice."

  Corin slowly leaned back against piled bolsters and uncrooked his elbows, hearing the pop of weakened joints; feeling the fatigue of battered flesh. He tried consciously to ease the tension from his rigid body, knowing he would fail.

  "I have something for you." Strahan put it into his hand.

  Corin stared at it. A ring. A circlet of heavy gold, incised with careful runes, and a brilliant blood-red ruby held firm by taloned prongs. The ring of the Prince of Homana.

  Chilled, Corin looked at Strahan. "You have my rujholli"

  "Brennan. Hart. You" In the eerie light, Strahan's face was etched in fretwork shadows. "In addition to your lir."

  Corin's eyes went back the ring. It was too large for him, he knew, because he had tried it on once. Brennan was taller, heavier, more strongly made than Corin; Hart was very like him. Their fingers were longer, stronger, browner. More Cheysuli than his.

  Corin looked at his own signet. The emerald still glittered against his flesh. The gold shone brightly as ever, if perverted by the godfire. Strahan had not touched it.

  "Trade," Strahan suggested.

  His hand spasmed closed, trapping the ring in his palm.

  "This is Brennan's ring."

  "Put it on, and it is yours," Strahan smiled. "And all it represents.”

  Corin swallowed tightly. "Is he dead? Have you killed him? Is that why you taunt me with it?"

  "He is quite unharmed, and I do not taunt. I offer."

  Strahan paused. "If you want it, it is yours. You need only put it on."

  "I am Crown Prince of Atvia."

  "You are prisoner to me,"'Strahan moved a trifle closer. "There is no need for dissembling, Corin. I understand very well what it is to desire something very badly. I understand passion and ambition and the need for a thing fulfilled. Do you think I do this for pleasure?"

  His eerie eyes were black in the purple glare. "Brennan is unfit for his inheritance. Homana lacks a proper prince. There is a need for you."

  "Unfit—" Corin clenched the ring in his hand. "What have you done to him?"

  Strahan's gemstones glittered. "Shown him what he is: a man unfit to rule."

  "Brennan is more fit to rule than any man I have seen!"

  "More fit than you?” Strahan smiled coolly. "I think you discount yourself needlessly . . . and I think you misjudge him." He turned away briefly, paced three steps, turned back. And halted. "If a man is unfit to rule, should he not be replaced?"

  "My rujholli—“

  But the angry protest was overridden. "If a man is incapable of holding the Lion, should he be its master?"

  "And if Brennan were unfit. Hart is next in line!”

  "Hart will have Solinde."

  Corin spoke distinctly. "My jehan was most particular in parceling out the realms. Mine is Atvia."

  "Your realm, Corin, has been mine for several months, because of Lillith's power over its lord. But now Alaric is dead. His heir has disappeared. Into the confusion, I have moved to quell the fear." Strahan smiled. "There is no need for you there."

  Corin sighed. "They would still turn to Hart. He is second-born. I would end up with Solinde."

  "Hart will never be accepted in Homana ... at least by the Cheysuli."

  A chill touched Conn's neck. "What have you done to Hart?" Foreboding knotted his belly. "Why would they not accept him?"

  "Becaused a maimed warrior has no place in the clans." Strahan shrugged. "Through great misfortune—he lost an important wager—Hart now lacks a hand. The Cheysuli will no longer honor him as a warrior. He is, as he himself says, clan-wrecked."

  "Maimed—" Corin mouthed it. The ring bit into the flesh of his palm. "Oh—no . . . no—"

  "Aye," Strahan said, "and none of my doing. So—you see?—Homana is in dire need of a prince. A healthy, whole prince, willing to hold the Lion—"

  Bitterly, Corin finished it,"—in the name of Asar-Suti."

  The Ihlini lifted a single eloquent shoulder. "A minor price to pay. Look what you will get—Homana, the L
ion . . . Aileen."

  Corin's head snapped up; he stared at the sorcerer.

  Strahan smiled warmly. "Need I remind you? She is to wed the Prince of Homana."

  Gilded candles guttered. Flame danced and smoked.

  Corin clutched the ring. "Show me," he said hollowly. "Show me my rujholli."

  Strahan bowed his assent.

  Three

  The Gate emitted a deep gurgling belch, like a man suppressing laughter, as Strahan left the cavern. Godfire continued to play around the rim. Tendrils of it licked out of the hole, probed the air, withdrew in a splash of smoke. Caught in tiers of glassy arches, the echoed hiss was amplified.

  Brennan rose, pressing himself to his feet with one thrust of a splayed hand. He went immediately to his brother.

  Hart still knelt on the uneven floor, left arm hugged against his chest. The rocking had ceased, but not the rigidity of his body or the emptiness of his eyes. His face showed the strain of his captivity: pronounced hollows beneath high cheekbones, dark circles beneath blue eyes; a stark bleakness of expression that had nothing to do with captivity and everything to do with the choice Strahan had given him.

  Gently, Brennan touched the crown of Hart's bowed head. “Rujho, I am sorry."

  The sound of Harts swallow was loud in the circle of flame. "The worst," he said, "the worst is knowing I can never fly again."

  Brennan drew in a very deep breath, knowing there was nothing he could say to assuage his brother's anguish.

  Hart turned his face up to stare at Brennan. "All of those other things I think I could learn to live with, given time—even being kin-wrecked . . . but to know I am earthbound forever—"

  "I know." Brennan's fingers touched Hart's head. "I know."

  "You do not know." Awkwardly, Hart got to his feet.

  "No warrior whose lir lacks wings can understand the freedom there is in the air, the manifest miracle of flight—"

  He broke off a moment, realizing he walked too close to the edge of control. "I do not discount Sleeta or your own lir-shape, Brennan, but it is not the same as mine."