The chalk cliff shapechanged itself to granite.
"The gods required me to give up my son. Now that son provides a way for us to destroy an Ihlini who would, given the chance, bring down all of us. He would smash the Lion to bits, then feed it chip by chip into the Gate of Asar-Suti." Aidan's tone was unflinching. His eyes condemned the weakness that would permit a man to refuse. "Make the sacrifice worth it. Make the death of your friend count for something—as Shona's death did."
Kellin's throat hurt. "This is not what I came for."
"It is," Aidan said. "Have I not said I am the mouthpiece of the gods?"
Kellin gestured helplessness. "All I ever wanted—all I ever wanted—was some word, some indication you cared, that you knew I existed . .. but you gave me nothing. Nothing at all."
Silence lay heavy between them. Then the faintest of sounds, so subtle that in another time, in another moment, no one would have marked it. It was the soft sibilance of a man's hand crumpling fabric.
Tears stood in Aidan's eyes as he clung to the doorflap. "What I gave you—what I gave you was what I believed you had to have." His mouth worked briefly, "Do you think I did not know what it would cost you?"
"But you never came."
Aidan's laugh was a travesty. "Had I come, I would have taken you back. Had I sent word, I would have told you to come. For the sake of your son, Kellin, I had to give up my own."
"For my son!"
"Cynric," Aidan whispered, and the blackness in his eyes ate away the yellow. "The sword and the bow and the knife—"
"No!" Kellin shouted. "What of me? What of me? I am your son, not he! What about me?"
Aidan's eyes were empty of all save prophecy.
"You are the Lion, and you shall lie down with the witch."
"Jehan—" he said brokenly. "Is this what they have done, your beloved gods? Made you over into this?"
"The Lion shall devour the lands."
For the first time in his life, Kellin put his hands on his father.
For the second time in Aidan's life, he put arms around his son. "Do not be ashamed," he said. "There is no shame in tears."
Muffled, Kellin said, "I am—a warrior."
"So am I," Aidan agreed."But the gods gave us tears nonetheless."
Three
They stood upon the dock, facing toward the city of Hondarth sprawled indistinct on the distant shore: the former Prince of Homana, who might have been Mujhar, and the present prince, his son, who one day would be.
The sea-salt breeze blew into their faces, ruffling hair, tickling eyelashes, softly caressing mouths.
Behind him, silent wolfhounds gathered at the border between wooden dock and paler sand, waiting for their master. Perched in a nearby tree sat the raven called Teel, while the lovely mountain cat, blue-black in the light of the sun, waited mutely beside her warrior.
Kellin slanted a pensive, sidelong glance at his father. They did not, he had decided, much resemble one another. The son of Shona and Aidan appeared to be a mixture of everyone in his ancestry—which was, he felt, a stew of hybrid spices—save that the cat at his side and the gold on his flesh marked him as something more distinct than merely human.
He does not look so old as I thought yesterday.
Kellin stripped a wayward lock of hair from an eye, blinking away the sting. Yet if one looks at the eyes, he seems older than anyone else. "So—you expect me to go." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that."
Aidan's smile was faint, with a hint of irony in it.
"It would be folly indeed to expect quite so much acquiescence ... surely you still have questions."
"A multitude. This one, to begin: how can you say I am the Lion who is meant to lie down with the witch? What witch? Who is it? How can it be done?" Kellin gestured incomprehension. "Even now my grandsire discusses a marriage between me and Dulcie—and I sincerely doubt Dulcie is this witch."
Aidan's smile was unabated, as was the irony.
"Marriages, no matter how well planned, do not always occur."
It provoked Kellin to retort sharply. "As one nearly did not occur between Aileen of Erinn and the Prince of Homana?"
Aidan laughed, unoffended. "Old history. They are well content, now; and that marriage did occur."
"What of mine?"
"Oh, I believe you will indeed be married."
Aidan nodded. "One day."
It seemed important to know. "To this witch?"
Aidan's tone was deliberate, akin to Rogan's when the tutor labored to instruct an easily distracted student. "What precisely have I said, when I prophesy?"
"That the Lion will lie with the witch." Kellin sighed. "I have heard it more than once."
"Lying down with a 'witch' does not necessarily mean you will marry her."
"Ah." Black brows sprang upward. "Then you advocate infidelity."
Aidan showed his teeth in a challenging grin that Kellin saw, in surprise, was very like his own.
"I advocate merely that you do what must be done. How it is done is up to you."
"To sleep with an Ihlini . . ." Kellin hitched his shoulders because the flesh between them prickled; the idea was unattractive. "That is what she is, this witch, is she not? An Ihlini?"
"It has been done before."
"Oh, aye—grandsire did. Ian did. I know the stories."
"Do you?" Aidan's brows slanted upward in subtle query. The wing of white hair, against deep russet, was blinding in the sunlight. "Do you also know that I slept with one?"
"You!" It was entirely unexpected from a man who was shar tahl. "They say you bedded no one after my jehana died."
"I did not. I cannot. Surely they told you the cost of kivama, when the partner dies. It is much like a lirless warrior, save the body does not die.
Only the portion of it that might, given opportunity, given the wherewithal, sire another child."
"But—I am the only one."
"And will ever be." Aidan looked at him. "In Atvia, before I married Shona, I bedded an Ihlini woman. And the second time, I knew it."
"Willingly?"
"With Lillith?" Aidan sighed. "To excuse myself, to justify my action, I might prefer to say that even that first time she ensorcelled me ... but it would be a lie. What I did. I did because I desired it; because I could not, in my maleness, deny myself the gratification found in a woman's body, despite whom she might be."
"Lillith . .." Kellin tasted the name and found it oddly seductive. "It was she who lay with Ian and bore him a child."
"Rhiannon, who later lay with my fehan and bore him a child. Melusine is her name."
"You know it?"
"She is the woman who sleeps with Lochiel. She bore him a child ... while she herself, Melusine, was born of Cheysuli blood as well as Ihlini—yet chooses to serve Asar-Suti."
It seemed surpassing odd, "How do you know all this?"
"Lochiel sees to it I know. Lochiel and I—" Aidan's taut, angled smile was strangely shaped, "—have long been adversaries on more battlefields than the obvious ones. He sends me messages."
"Lochiel?" Kellin found it incomprehensible. "Why?"
"To make certain I know." Wind ruffled the white wing against Aidan's temple. "Her name is Melusine, and she bore him a daughter. It was that daughter with whom you shared a cradle."
Kellin grunted. "I know something of that."
"Do you?" Aidan's gaze was steady. "Shall I tell you the whole of it, then, so you may have another thing for which to hate me?"
"What? More?" It might have stung once; it might have been a weapon Kellin took pride in wielding, but no longer. Much remained between them, but some of the pain was assuaged. "Then tell me, and I will decide if I should rekindle my hatred."
Aidan looked directly at him. "I bargained for you. It was little more, to him, than a simple trade. I was to choose—" He rubbed briefly at his forehead as if it ached, then glanced away toward distant Hondarth. "There were two babies, as you know: you, and Lochiel's daughter. I
had no way of telling which was which. You were both of you swaddled, and asleep; it is somewhat difficult to tell one infant from another, in such circumstances."
"Aye. How did you?"
"I did not."
"But—you chose me."
"I left Valgaard with a child in my arms. I did not know which one it was." Aidan sighed. "Not until I unwrapped you and saw you were male. Then I knew, and only then, that my choice had been correct."
"But—if you had chosen the girl ..." Kellin let it go. The repercussions he saw were too complex to consider.
"If I had, you would have been reared as Lochiel's son."
And the girl as a princess within the bosom of Homana-MuJhar, where she might have worked against us. The flesh rose on Kellin's bones. He rubbed at his arms viciously, disliking the weakness that made his fear so plain. "So." It seemed enough.
"So." Aidan nodded. "You know the whole of it."
Kellin stared fixedly across the lapping water.
He could not look at his father. He had spent too long hating from a distance to give way easily, to admit to circumstances that might persuade a man to act in such a way as to ignore his son.
"You risked a great deal."
"It was my only choice. It was Homana's only chance."
Kellin frowned fiercely. "You said—the Lion will devour the House. Is that not the same fate Lochiel aspires to give us?"
"There is a difference between swallowing the lands, and destroying them. Words, Kellin—symbols. Intent is divulged with words. Think of the prophecy."
"Eighteen words, again?"
" '—shall unite, in peace—' " Aidan said. "Well?"
Kellin sighed, nodding. "Then to unite the lands, I must swallow them. Swallowing, one might argue, is a form of uniting."
Aidan smiled, "Vivid imagery. It helps a man to remember." He looked at the waiting boat. "We all make choices. You shall make yours."
Kellin saw his father form the eloquent Cheysuli gesture he had detested so long. He matched it easily with his own hand. "Tahlmorra."
Aidan's answering smile was serene. "You have run from it long enough,"
"So, now you send me to it. To Lochiel and Valgaard—and to the witch?"
"That," Aidan said, "is for the gods to know."
Kellin sighed disgust. "I have not had much congress with gods. They are, I am convinced, capricious, petty beings."
"They may indeed be so, as well as other things perhaps not so reprehensible." Aidan was unoffended. "The example for all manner of behavior lies before you; we all of us are their children."
"Even the Ihlini?"
"Stubborn, resentful children, too spoiled in their power. It is time they recalled who gave it to them."
Kellin chewed his lip. "Why am I to bring you this chain? What are you to do with it?"
"Tame the Lion."
"Tame me!" He paused. "Tame me?"
"Who shall, in his turn, swallow the Houses—unite them, Kellin!—and bring peace to warring realms."
He clamped his teeth together. "All because of a chain. Which you broke. And left, like a fool, in Valgaard?”
"Aye," Aidan admitted. "But then I have never suggested I am anything else."
" 'Mouthpiece of the gods,' " Kellin muttered. "You claim yourself that."
"And so I am. But the gods made all men, and there are foolish ones," He smiled. "Bring me back the chain, and the beast shall be tamed."
"A quest," Kellin gritted.
"The gods do appear to enjoy them. It passes the time."
Kellin shook his head. There was much he wanted to say, but too little time in which to say it. He had been given his release; time he took it, and went.
"Shansu," Aidan said. "Ckeysuli i'halla shansu."
Kellin's tone was ironic. "If there is any such thing in Valgaard." He paused. "You said you would not go to Homana-Mujhar because you feared you would bring me back."
"Aye."
"I am here now. That risk is gone." He hesitated. "Will you go home now?"
The wind teased auburn hair. "This is my home,"
"Then—to visit. To be hosted by the Mujhar and his queen." It was hard to force the words past the lump in his throat. "She wants nothing more, jehan. Nor does he. Can you give them that now?"
Aidan's soft laugh was hoarse. "You believe me so much a monster as that . . -" He sighed. "There is still much to be done here."
"But—"
"But one day I will return to Homana-Mujhar."
Kellin smiled faintly. "Is that prophecy?"
"No. That is a jehan who is also a son, and who would like to see his parents."
Kellin sighed. There yet remained one more thing.
He looked away to the distant shore, then turned back and stared hard at Aidan as Sima leapt into the boat. "Fathers desert their children." He used Homanan purposely; he did not in this moment intend to discuss his own sire, but those of other children.
The wind stripped auburn hair back from Aidan's face. It bared, beneath the skin, the architecture of bone that was ineffably Cheysuli, if housed in paler flesh. "Aye."
"Other fathers . ., Homanan, Ellasian, Solindish—they must do it all over the world—"I did it myself. I banished three to Clankeep. "—Is there ever a reason?"
"Many reasons."
It was not the proper answer. Kellin reshaped the question. "Is there ever justification?"
"Only that which resides in a man's soul,"
Aidan answered. "To the child, bereft of a father, bereft of the kivama that might explain the feelings that caused the father to leave, there is nothing save an emptiness and a longing that lasts forever."
"Even if—" Kellin hesitated. "Even after the father is dead?"
"Then it is worse. A deserted child dreams of things being put to rights, of all the missing pieces being found and rejoined. A deserted child whose dreams die with the father's death knows only a quiet desperation, a permanent incompleteness; that the dream, even born in hatred, pain, and bitterness, can now never come true."
Kellin swallowed with difficulty. Unevenly he said, "A hard truth, jehan."
"And the only one there is."
Four
Kellin bought a horse in Hondarth, rode it across the city, then traded it for another at a second livery. The second mount, a plain brown gelding disinclined to shake his entire body with violent dedication every four steps, proved considerably more comfortable. The ride commenced likewise.
It crossed his mind once, as he and Sima neared the turning to Mujhara, that he could go home.
What would the Mujhar do, send him away again?
But the order had been for him to remain with his father until Aidan saw fit to send him home; Kellin could, he thought, argue that it was done.
Except he knew better. It most decidedly was not done, it being the ludicrous quest to fetch out of Valgaard two halves of a chain his father had broken, then foolishly left behind.
He might have kept it for himself and saved me the trouble.
Sima flanked his horse. Aye. Then we would be where we were three weeks ago: banished to the island. She paused. Where there are dogs.
Kellin laughed aloud. "Fastidious, are we? Disinclined to consort with dogs?" He grinned at his horse's ears; he knew the cat sensed his amusement within the link. "They are good dogs, Sima, regardless of your tastes. They do not bark like terriers, snatching at ankles if you move . .. nor do they bell like hounds on the morning you most desire to sleep."
No, she admitted. But I am quieter even than those Erinnish beasts.
"Usually," he said. "Your purring, beside my ear, is enough to shatter my skull."
You told me once it helps you to go to sleep.
"If I cannot sleep, aye; there is something soothing about it. But when you sprawl down next to me and take up with rumbling when I am already asleep ..." He let her fill in the rest. You are not a housecat, lir. You are considerably larger in many aspects, most markedly in your noise—and in
the kneading of your claws.
Sima forbore to answer.
It grew cold as they drew closer to the Bluetooth River. Kellin was grateful he had thought to buy a heavier cloak in Hondarth; he wished now it was fur-lined. But it was nearly summer, and people in the lowlands did not think of such things when the sun shone so brightly.
He shivered. If I were home in Homana-Mujhar, or within a woman's arms— Kellin sighed. That is my favorite warmth.
I thought I was.
He grinned. There are certain kinds of warmth not even a lir may provide.
Then I must assume you would prefer a roadhouse woman and her bed to the cold ground tonight.
He straightened in the saddle. Is there one?
One? Or both?
Either. A woman without the roadhouse would prove warm enough, as would a roadhouse without a woman. But a woman in a roadhouse would be the best of all.
Then you may rest well tonight. There is one around the curve of the road.
So there was. Content, Kellin rode up to the stable and dropped off his horse with a sigh of relief.
There was no boy to do the work for him, so he led the horse inside the daub-and-wattle building, stripped his mount of tack, then rubbed him down and put him into an empty stall with hay and a measure of grain. He left saddle and bridle beneath drying blankets, then went out into the twilight to look for Sima.
She waited beneath a tree, melding into dusk.
Kellin dropped to one knee and butted his brow against hers. Tomorrow we go on.
She butted back. Do we?
You saw the cairn at the turning. It is but three leagues to the ferry. We will cross first thing .. . by sundown tomorrow, we will be in Solinde.
Sima twisted her head and slid it along his jaw, so that a tooth scraped briefly. And by sundown the day after that, Valgaard?
His belly tightened. I would sooner avoid it—but aye, so we will.
Sima butted his cheek, tickling his left eye with the tuft of an ear. He buried his face in the silk of her fur, then climbed back to his feet. Keep yourself to the trees.
Keep yourself to one wine.
Kellin grinned. But not to one woman? So much faith in me, lir!
Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 Page 30