Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08

by A Tapestry of Lions (v1. 0)

  "Again!" Kellin stared. "You believe it might?"

  "I must. These four weeks you have achieved much, but obviously self-control in lir-shape is not one of them. I cannot risk it, Kellin."

  "Given time, guidance—"

  "Aye. But I cannot risk it while you remain in Homana-Mujhar. It gives the Homanans too broad a target."

  Kellin's belly clenched. "Clankeep, then." Where he would have to explain to Gavan, and to Burr, and to men and women who would not understand how a Cheysuli warrior could permit such atrocity in the name of his lir, whom once he had meant to banish. "Balance," he murmured. "If I can learn the balance ..."

  "There is another balance, Kellin. One which has eluded you through all of your life, and which I have, in my ignorance, permitted to warp that life. I am as much to blame as you are, in this."

  Aileen stirred. "No. Not you. I will not allow you to blame yourself."

  Kellin looked at her. Aileen's green eyes blazed with conviction as she stared at her husband; he would get no support from her. He longed for Sima. but would not call her to him. "Banishment, then."

  "The Council has approved."

  Kellin winced.

  "It is not a permanent thing. You will be permitted home when I am assured you have learned what you need to know."

  "And when the rumors have died down." Kellin sighed. "I understand, grandsire. But—"

  "I know." Brennan's eyes were filled with compassion. "It has happened before. My own jehan grew weary of the excesses of his sons, and banished two of them. Hart he sent to Solinde, Corin to Atvia. Neither wanted to go any more than you desire to go. As for me—" he smiled briefly at Aileen, "—I was made to wed before either of us was ready."

  Aileen's face was rigid. "I do not regret it now."

  "We both did then." Brennan turned back to his grandson, "For a six-month, a year—no longer than is necessary."

  Kellin nodded. "When?"

  "In the morning. I have made arrangements for the journey, and a boat will be waiting."

  "Boat?" Kellin stared. "A boat? Why? What need have I of a boat?" Trepidation flared into panic. "Where are you sending me?"

  "To the Crystal Isle. To your jehan."

  Panic transmuted itself to outrage. "No!"

  "It is arranged."

  "Unarrange it! I will not go!"

  "You wanted this for years."

  "Not now. Not for ten years, grandsire! I have no intention of going to my jehan."

  Brennan's gaze was level. "You will go. For all your anger and bitterness, and the multiplicity of your small rebellions, you are still a warrior of the clan. I am Mujhar. If I bid you to do so, you will go."

  "What has he to do with this? This is something I must deal with on my own! I do not require the aid of a man who cannot keep his son but must give up everything to live on an island—"

  "—where you will go." Brennan rose. "Aidan has everything to do with this. We could not have predicted it then, and I doubt it occurred to him—he was in thrall to the gods, and thought of nothing else but the tahlmorra meant for him—but it is something we must deal with now. You will go to the Crystal Isle and see your jehan."

  "Why? Why do you think this will help me?"

  "Because perhaps he can remove the boy's anger and replace it with a man's understanding that what the world—and gods—mete out is what he must deal with in a rational, realistic manner, without recourse to an anger that, in asserting itself, kills men." The muscles flexed in Brennan's jaw. "Because there is nowhere else I can send you and not be afraid."

  Kellin stared. Shame banished outrage. "Of me? You are afraid of me?"

  "I must be. I have seen what happens when the anger consumes the man." His eyes were bleak. "You must go to the source of your pain. To someone who can aid you."

  "I want nothing to do with him'."

  "He shaped you. By his very distance, by his own tahlmorra, he shaped you. I think it is time the jehan, and not the grandsire, tended the clay that his own loins sired." Brennan pushed a trembling hand across his brow. "I am too old to raise you now. It is Aidan's turn."

  "Why," Kellin spat out between clenched teeth, "did you wait so long for this? I begged it all those years'"

  "He did not wish it, and I believed you did not need it."

  "Does he wish it now?"

  "No."

  "But now you believe I need it."

  "Aye."

  It congealed into bitterness. "Would I need it now if I had had it then?"

  Brennan shut his eyes. "Gods—I cannot say .. . if so, I am to blame for what you have become—"

  "No!" Aileen cried, "By all the gods of Erinn, Brennan, I've said it before—I'll not have you blaming yourself for this! What must I do to convince you? He is what he is. Let him take it to his father. Aidan is more fit to deal with aberration than either of us!"

  "Why?" Kellin asked. "Because he is 'aberration,' and now I am also?"

  Aileen looked at him. "You are my grandson," she said. "I love you for that—I will always love you for that—but I cannot comprehend a man who lacks the self-control to prevent him from killing other men." Her hands balled into fists. "I am Erinnish, not Cheysuli—I cannot understand the soul of a Cheysuli. That it is wild, I know, and untamed, and unlike that of any other, I know. But it is an honorable soul also, well-bound by the gods, and duty . .. yours is unbound. Yours is as unlike Brennan's—or Corin's—than any I have known. It is most like Aidan's in its waywardness, but with a blackness of spirit that makes you dangerous. Aidan was never that." Aileen glanced at Brennan briefly, then back-to her grandson. "Go to your father. 'Tis what you need—and, I'm thinking, Aidan also."

  Kellin's jaws hurt. "You said—'no longer than is necessary.' How am I to know?"

  Brennan reached for and took into his own one of Aileen's hands. "Until Aidan sends you back."

  He looked at Aileen in desperation. "Was it your idea?"

  She offered oblique answer though her face was wasted. "In Erinn," she said quietly, "a man accepts his punishment. And the will of his lord."

  Kellin stood there a long time. Then, summoning what little pride remained, he bowed and took his leave.

  Interval

  He had, since coming to the Crystal Isle, seen to it that much of its wildness was tamed, at least so much that a man might walk freely along a track without fearing to lose an eye to an importunate branch. And yet not so much wildness was vanquished that a man, a Cheysuli, might feel his spirit threatened by too much change.

  It was incongruity: to make the wildness useful without diluting its strength. And to offer change within a culture whose very strength was wildness.

  He wore leathers, as always, snug against flesh that did not as yet begin to wither with age, and lir-gold on bare arms that did not surrender muscle. He was fit, if but a few years beyond his prime; a young man of twenty would call him old—perhaps, more kindly, older—but to another man he represented all that was remarkable about a Cheysuli.

  He paused at the border between woodlands and beach. Sunlight glinted off water, scouring white sands paler yet, so that he was forced to lift his hand against the blinding glare.

  Blobs swam before his eyes, robbed of distinctness by the brilliance of the sun. They coalesced along the horizon, where the sea lapped in.

  He saw the blobs take shape, forming legs, tails, heads. He whistled. The blobs paused, then came flying, transmuting sundazzled formlessness into spray-dampened bodies recognizable as canine.

  Tongues lolled. Tails whipped. They lashed their own bodies in a frenzy to reach him, to display a devotion so complete as to render words obsolete.

  They were his now. The big male had died nearly twenty years before—of grief, he believed—but the others had survived despite the death of the woman who had caused them to be born. Most of those were dead, now, also—giant dogs died sooner—but they had bred as well, so that the island never lacked for companionship of a sort no Cheysuli had known before; they
did not keep pets.

  Nor were these pets; they were, by their existence, in the beating of great hearts, living memorials to Shona.

  To him, they were sanity.

  He paused as they joined him. The exuberance of their greeting endangered those parts most revered by a man; grinning, he turned a hip each time a tail threatened, then grabbed two or three until the dogs, all astonished, spun to whip tails free. Then it began again, until he told them with false sternness that the game was over; that they were to be still.

  He sat down there in the sand, warding off inquisitive noses, until the dogs, too, settled with grunts and great rumbling sighs. Wise eyes watched him, waiting for the sign that he meant to rise and find a stick to toss for their pleasure; but he did not, and after a time they slept, or lay quietly: an ocean of storm-hued wolfhounds sprawled upon the beach of an island, in its beget-ting, very alien to their souls. They were Erinnish, though none of these had been there.

  They were all he had of her. The son she had borne in the midst of her dying, in the flames of a burning keep, was not and never had been his to tend. Another man might have grieved, then done what he could to raise up the living soul whose heart was partly hers, but he was denied that comfort. All he had of her, in the days and the darkness, were memories and dogs.

  He honored the gods with his service. He did not question its needs, or the path he had taken; it was his tahlmorra. A great security resided in the knowledge that what he did served a greater purpose; that sacrifices made in the name of that greater purpose, no matter how difficult, would in the end bear out his seeming madness. Let them attach scorn to his name now, but one day, long after his bones had rotted, they would call him something else.

  "But my spark is nothing compared to the flame of his." Aidan smiled. "My name is a spark, and Kellin's a bonfire—but Cynric's will blaze with all the terrible splendor of a wildfire as it devours the land around it."

  He knew they would curse him. Men were often blind when it came to needed change. When they acknowledged what had happened—and what still would come—they would claim him an emmissary of a demon not to their liking, when all he did was serve the gods who had decided to mend what had broken.

  "Revolution," he said; the dogs twitched ears.

  "If they knew what was to come, they would none of them agree; they would all become a'saii."

  But he would not permit it. That was his purpose, to guide his people closer to a true understanding that out of devouring names would rise a new world.

  It would be difficult. But the gods would see to it he had a means to persevere. If it required a weapon, a weapon would be given.

  Aidan was content. He knew his path very well.

  All he had to do was wait for the weapon, then set it on its path.

  Part THREE

  One

  The chapel was built of standing stones set into a tight circle. Most of them still leaned a little, like teeth settling badly in a diseased jaw, but someone had taken the time—probably years—to see that many of the stones had been pushed back into proper alignment. The circle was whole again, with a carved lintel stone set over the darkened entrance, and a heel stone put up in front. Kellin went slowly to it, drawn by its singular splendor.

  The side facing him was unnaturally flat, chipped and rubbed smooth. Across the dark gray face ran runic symbols he had seen but once before, in his Ceremony of Honors. He recognized most of them, but he was not perhaps as conversant in the Old Tongue as he should be. I have lived too long among Homanans.

  Kellin was transfixed by the shapes carved into the stone. The runes were incised deeply; he thought the carvings no more than fifteen or twenty years old. The heel stone was older yet, but not so ancient as the circle itself. An infant standing within the shade of his fathers.

  Standing, the heel stone reached Kellin's chest. As he knelt, the runes became clearer. He put a finger upon their shapes to trace them out. "One day - . . blood . . . magic."

  "One day a man of all blood shall unite, in peace, four warring realms and two magical races," said the voice. "And if those few words you mouthed are all you know of the Old Tongue, it is well you come to me for instruction."

  Kellin did not move. His fingers remained extended to touch the runes. Only the tips trembled.

  Not what I expected a Jehan to say to his son as he sees him for the first time. It served to fuel his anger.

  Aidan stood in the chapel doorway. The sunlight was full on his face, glinting off the gold freighting arms and ear. It struck Kellin as incongruity; oddly, he had expected a simple man, not a warrior. But Aidan was that, and more; best Kellin remember it.

  He wanted very badly to say all manner of things, but he desired more to find just the right challenge. Let Aidan lead him, then; he would await the proper moment.

  "Get up from there," Aidan said. "I am not the sort of man to require homage."

  He does not know me. It shook him; he had expected Aidan to know. It altered his intent. "You gave that up," Kellin said, forgoing patience. "Homage."

  Aidan smiled. "That, as well as other unnecessary things." He hesitated. "Well, will you rise? Or have you come with broken legs to have them made whole again?"

  Kellin wanted to laugh but suppressed the sound. He was not certain he could control it.

  "No," he said only.

  "Good. I am not a god; I do not perform miracles."

  Delicate contempt. "Surely you can heal. You are Cheysuli."

  "Oh, aye—I have recourse to the earth magic. But you are too healthy to require it." Aidan gestured. "Rise."

  Kellin rose. He found no words in his mouth, only an awkward, wary patience inhabiting his spirit.

  Aidan's ruddy brows arched. "Taller than I believed . .. are you certain the clan desires to lose you?"

  It was perplexing. "Why should you believe the clan might lose me?"

  "Have you not come for the teaching?" It was Aidan's turn to frown. "The clans send to me those men—and women—who wish to learn what it is a shar tahl must do. I serve the gods by interpreting and teaching divine intentions . . ." He shrugged. "I make no differentiation between a man who is physically more suited to war than to study, but the clans often do. I am persuaded they would labor most assiduously to talk you out of coming here." The glint in his eyes was fleeting. "Surely the women would."

  It was disarming, but Kellin would not permit it to vanquish his irritation. He used the reminder that his appearance was considered by most, especially women, as pleasing to look for himself in Aidan. He saw little. Aidan's hair was a rich, deep auburn, almost black in dim light, save for the vivid white wing over his left ear. His eyes were what a Cheysuli would describe as ordinary, though their uncompromising yellowness Homanans yet found unsettling. His flesh was not so dark as a clan-bred warrior, but then neither was Kellin's.

  There we match; in the color of our flesh. But not, I am moved to say, in the color of our hearts.

  Aidan's tone was polite- "Have you come to learn?"

  It nearly moved him to a wild, keening laughter; what he wanted to learn had nothing to do with gods. In subtle derision, he said, "If you can teach me."

  Aidan smiled. "I will do what I can, certainly. It is up to the gods to make you a shar tahl."

  "Is that—?" Kellin blurted a sharp sound of disbelief. "Is that what you think I want?"

  "What else? It is what I do here: prepare those who desire to serve the gods more closely than others do."

  Kellin moved around the heel stone. He marked that the sun had been in Aidan's eyes; that what his father saw of him was little but silhouette, or the pale shadow of three dimensions.

  He sees a warrior, somewhat taller than expected, but nonetheless kneeling in communion with the gods. Well, I will have to see to it he knows me for what I am, not what he presupposes. He moved to the front of the stone, permitting Aidan to see him clearly. Now what do you say?

  Aidan's skin turned a peculiar grayish-white.

>   His flesh was a chalk cliff in the sun, showing the damage done by rain and damp and age. Even the lips, carved of granite, were pale as alabaster.

  "Echoes—" Aidan blurted, "—but Shona. The kivama—" He was trembling visibly.

  Kellin had not believed he much resembled his dead mother; they said she was fair, and her eyes brown. But obviously there was something; Aidan had seen it too quickly. Or perhaps only feels it because of his kivama.

  Contempt welled up. He wanted badly to hurt the man. "She did bear me," he said. "There should be something of her in me."

  Aidan's face was peeled to the bone so the shape of his skull was visible. The eyes. so calm before, had acquired a brittle intensity that mocked his former self-possession. His mouth was unmoving, as if something had sealed it closed.

  Is this what I wanted, all those years? Or do I want more yet?

  Aidan drew in a breath, then released it slowly.

  He smiled a sad, weary smile. The chalk cliff of his face had lost another layer to the onslaught of exposure; in this case, to knowledge. "I knew you would hate me. But it was a risk I had to take."

  Kellin wanted to shout. "Was it?" he managed tightly. "And was it worth it?" He paused, then framed the single word upon years of bitterness.

  "Jehan."

  In Aidan's eyes was reflected as many years of conviction. "Come inside," he said. "What I have to say is best said there."

  He did not want to—he felt to do as asked would weaken his position—but Kellin followed. The chapel was not large inside, nor did it boast substantial illumination; a tight latticework roof closed out the sun, Kellin allowed his eyes to adjust, then glanced briefly around the interior. A rune-carved alter stood in the center. Set against the tilted walls were stone benches. Torch brackets pegged into seams in the stonework were empty.

  "Where is your lir?" Aidan asked.

  "She led me here, then disappeared."

  "Ah." Aidan nodded. "Teel disappeared this morning as well, so that all I had were the dogs; it was a conspiracy, then, that we should meet without benefit of lir."