A Tapestry of Lions

by Jennifer Roberson

  “They said—” Kellin’s lips were white as he compressed them. “They said he left because he hated me.”

  “Who said this?”

  Kellin bit into his bottom lip. “They said I wasn’t the son he wanted.”

  “Kellin—”

  It was very nearly a wail though he worked to choke it off. “What did I do to make him hate me so?”

  “Your jehan does not hate you.”

  “Then why isn’t he here? Why can’t he come? Why can’t I go there?” Green eyes burned fiercely. “Have I done something wrong?”

  “No. No, Kellin—you have done nothing wrong.”

  The small face was pale. “Sometimes I think I must be a bad son.”

  “In no way, Kellin—”

  “Then, why?” he asked desperately. “Why can’t he come?”

  Why indeed? Ian asked himself. He did not in the least blame the boy for voicing what all of them wondered, but Aidan was intransigent. The boy was not to come until he was summoned. Nor would Aidan visit unless the gods indicated it was the proper time. But will it ever be the proper time?

  He looked at the boy, who tried so hard to give away none of his anguish, to hide the blazing pain. Homana-Mujhar begins to put jesses on the fledgling.

  Strength waned. Ian desired to sit down upon the dais so as to be on the boy’s level and discuss things more equally, but he was old, stiff, and weary; rising again would prove difficult. There was so much he wanted to say that little of it suggested a way to be said. Instead, he settled for a simple wisdom. “I think perhaps you have spent too much time of late with the castle boys. You should ask to go to Clankeep. The boys there know better.”

  It was not enough. It was no answer at all. Ian regretted it immediately when he saw Kellin’s expression.

  “Grandsire says I may not go. I am to stay here, he says—but he won’t tell me why. But I heard—I heard one of the servants say—” He broke it off.

  “What?” Ian asked gently. “What have the servants said?”

  “That—that even in Clankeep, the Mujhar fears for my safety. That because Lochiel went there once, he might again—and if he knew I was there…” Kellin shrugged small shoulders. “I’m to be kept here.”

  It is no wonder, then, he listens to castle boys. Ian sighed and attempted a smile. “There will always be boys who seek to hurt with words. You are a prince—they are not. It is resentment, Kellin. You must not put faith in what they say about your jehan. They none of them know what he is.”

  Kellin’s tone was flat, utterly lifeless; his attempt to hide the hurt merely increased its poignancy. “They say he was a coward. And sick. And given to fits.”

  All this, and more…he has years yet before they stop, if any of them ever will stop; it may become a weapon meant to prick and goad first prince, then Mujhar. Ian felt a tightness in his chest. The winter had been cold, the coldest he recalled in several seasons, and hard on him. He had caught a cough, and it had not completely faded even with the onset of full-blown spring.

  He drew in a carefully measured breath, seeking to lay waste to words meant to taunt the smallest of boys who would one day be the largest, in rank if not in height. “He is a shar tahl, Kellin, not a madman. Those who say so are ignorant, with no respect for Cheysuli customs.” Inwardly he chided himself for speaking so baldly of Homanans to a young, impressionable boy, but Ian saw no reason to lie. Ignorance was ignorance regardless of its racial origins; he knew his share of stubborn Cheysuli, too. “We have explained many times why he went to the Crystal Isle.”

  “Can’t he come to visit? That’s all I want. Just a visit.” The chin that promised adult intransigence was no less tolerant now. “Or can’t I go there? Wouldn’t I be safe there, with him?”

  Ian coughed, pressing determinedly against the sunken breastbone hidden beneath Cheysuli jerkin as if to squeeze his lungs into compliance. “A shar tahl is not like everyone else, Kellin. He serves the gods…he cannot be expected to conduct himself according to the whims and desires of others.” It was the simple truth, Ian knew, but doubted it offered enough weight to crush a boy’s pain. “He answers to neither Mujhar nor clan-leader, but to the gods themselves. If you are to see your jehan, he will send for you.”

  “It isn’t fair,” Kellin blurted in newborn bitterness. “Everyone else has a father!”

  “Everyone else does not have a father.” Ian knew of several boys in Homana-Mujhar and Clankeep who lacked one or both parents. “Jehans and jehanas die, leaving children behind.”

  “My mother died.” His face spasmed briefly. “They said I killed her.”

  “No—” No, Kellin had not killed Shona; Lochiel had. But the boy no longer listened.

  “She’s dead—but my father is alive! Can’t he come?”

  The cough broke free of Ian’s wishes, wracking lungs and throat. He wanted very much to answer the boy, his long-dead brother’s great-grandson, but he lacked the breath for it. “—Kellin—”

  At last the boy was alarmed. “Su’fali?” Ian was many generations beyond uncle, but it was the Cheysuli term used in place of a more complex one involving multiple generations. “Are you sick still?”

  “Winter lingers.” He grinned briefly. “The bite of the Lion…”

  “The Lion is biting you?” Kellin’s eyes were enormous; clearly he believed there was truth in the imagery.

  “No.” Ian bent, trying to keep the pain from the boy. It felt as if a burning brand had been thrust deep into his chest. “Here—help me to sit…”

  “Not there, not on the Lion—” Kellin grasped a trembling arm. “I won’t let him bite you, su’fali.”

  The breath of laughter wisped into wheezing. “Kellin—”

  But the boy chattered on of a Cheysuli warrior’s protection, far superior to that offered by others unblessed by lir or shapechanging arts and the earth magic, and guided Ian down toward the step. The throne’s cushion would soften the harshness of old wood, but clearly the brief mention of the Lion had burned itself into Kellin’s brain; the boy would not allow him to sit in the throne now, even now, and Ian had no strength to dissuade him of his false conviction.

  “Here, su’fali.” The small, piquant face was a warrior’s again, fierce and determined. The boy cast a sharp glance over his shoulder, as if to ward away the beast.

  “Kellin—” But it hurt very badly to talk through the pain in his chest. His left arm felt tired and weak. Breathing was difficult. Lir…It was imperative, instinctive; through the lir-link Ian summoned Tasha from his chambers, where she lazed in a shaft of spring sunlight across the middlemost part of his bed. Forgive my waking you—

  But the mountain cat was quite awake and moving, answering what she sensed more clearly than what she heard.

  And more— With the boy’s help Ian lowered himself to the top step of the dais, then bit back a grimace. Breathlessly, he said, “Kellin—fetch your grandsire.”

  The boy was all Cheysuli save for lighter-hued flesh and Erinnish eyes, wide-sprung eyes: dead Deirdre’s eyes, who had begun the tapestry for her husband, Niall, Ian’s half-brother, decades before …—green as Aileen’s eyes—…the Queen of Homana, grandmother to the boy; sister to Sean of Erinn, married to Keely, mother of Kellin’s dead mother. So many bloodlines now…have we pleased the gods and the prophecy?

  The flesh of Kellin’s Cheysuli face was pinched Homanan-pale beneath thick black hair. “Su’fali—”

  Ian twitched a trembling finger in the direction of the massive silver doors gleaming dully at the far end of the Great Hall. “Do me this service, Kellin—”

  And as the boy hastened away, crying out loudly of deadly lions, the dying Cheysuli warrior bid his mountain cat to run.

  PART I

  One

  “Summerfair,” Kellin whispered in his bedchamber, testing the sound of the word and all its implications. Then, in exultation, “Summerfair!”

  He threw back the lid of a clothing trunk and fetched out an array
of velvets and brocades, tossing all aside in favor of quieter leathers. He desired to present himself properly but without Homanan pretension, which he disliked, putting into its place the dignity of a Cheysuli.

  Summerfair. He was to go, this year. Last year it had been forbidden, punishment as much for his stubborn insistence that he had been right as for the transgression itself, which he still believed necessary. They had misunderstood, his grandsire and granddame, and all the castle servants; they had all misunderstood, each and every one, regardless of rank, birth, or race.

  Ian would have understood, but Kellin’s harani was two years’ dead. And it was because of Ian’s death—and the means by which that death was delivered—that Kellin sought to destroy what he viewed as further threat to those he loved.

  None of them understood. But his mind jumped ahead rapidly, discarding the painful memories of that unfortunate time as he dragged forth from the trunk a proper set of Cheysuli leathers: soft-tanned, russet jerkin with matching leggings; a belt fastened with onyx and worked gold; soft, droopy boots with soles made for leaf-carpeted forest, not the hard bricks of the city.

  “—still fit—?” Kellin dragged on one boot and discovered that no, it did not fit, which meant the other didn’t either; which meant he had grown again and was likely in need of attention from Aileen’s sempstresses with regard to Homanan clothing…He grimaced. He intensely disliked such attention. Perhaps he could put on the Cheysuli leathers and wear new Homanan boots; or was that sacrilege?

  He stripped free of Homanan tunic and breeches and replaced them with preferred Cheysuli garb, discovering the leggings had shrunk; no, his legs had lengthened, which Kellin found pleasing. For a time he had been small, but it seemed he was at last making up for it. Perhaps now no one would believe him a mere eight-year-old, but would understand the increased maturity ten years brought.

  Kellin sorted out the fit of his clothing and clasped the belt around slender hips, then turned to survey himself critically in the polished bronze plate hung upon the wall. Newly-washed hair was drying into accustomed curls—Kellin, frowning, instantly tried to mash them away—but his chin was smooth and childish, unmarred by the disfiguring hair Homanans called a beard. Such a thing marked a man less than Cheysuli, Kellin felt, for Cheysuli could not ordinarily grow beards—although some mixed-blood Cheysuli not only could but did; it was said Corin, in distant Atvia, wore a beard, as did Kellin’s own Erinnish grandfather, Sean—but he would never do so. Kellin would never subscribe to a fashion that hid a man’s heritage behind the hair on his face.

  Kellin examined his hairless chin, then ran a finger up one soft-fleshed cheek, across to his nose, and explored the curve of immature browbone above his eyes. Everyone said he was a true Cheysuli, save for his eyes—and skin tinted halfway between bronze and fair; though in summer he tanned dark enough to pass as a trueblood—but he could not replace his eyes, and his prayers in childhood that the gods do so had eventually been usurped by a growing determination to overlook the improper color of his eyes and concentrate on other matters, such as warrior skills, which he practiced diligently so as not to dishonor his heritage. And anyway, he was not solely Cheysuli; had they not, all of them, told him repeatedly he was a mixture of nearly every bloodline there was—or of every one that counted—and that he alone could advance the prophecy of the Firstborn one step closer to completion?

  They had. Kellin understood. He was Cheysuli, but also Homanan, Solindish, Atvian, and Erinnish. He was needed, he was important, he was necessary.

  But sometimes he wondered if he himself, Kellin, were not so necessary as his blood. If he cut himself, and spilled it, would that satisfy them—and then make him unimportant?

  Kellin grimaced at his reflection. “Sometimes they treat me like Gareth’s prize stallion…I think he forgets what it is to be a horse, the way they all treat him….” But Kellin let it go. The image in the polished plate stared back, green eyes transmuted by bronze to dark hazel. The familiarity of his features was momentarily blurred by imagination, and he became another boy, a strange boy, a boy with different powers promised one day.

  “Ihlini,” Kellin whispered. “What are you really like? Do you look like demons?”

  “I think that unlikely,” said a voice from the doorway: Rogan, his tutor. “I think they probably resemble you and me, rather than horrid specters of the netherworld. You’ve heard stories of Strahan and Lochiel. They look like everyone else.”

  Kellin could see Rogan’s distorted reflection in the bronze. “Could you be Ihlini?”

  “Certainly,” Rogan replied. “I am an evil sorcerer sent here from Lochiel himself, to take you prisoner and carry you away to Valgaard, where you will doubtlessly be tortured and slain, then given over to Asar-Suti, the Seker—”

  Kellin took it up with appropriate melodrama: “—the god of the netherworld, who made and dwells in darkness, and—”

  “—who clothes himself in the noxious fumes of his slain victims,” Rogan finished.

  Kellin grinned his delight; it was an old game. “Grandsire would protect me.”

  “Aye, he would. That is what a Mujhar is for. He would never allow anyone, sorcerer or not, to steal his favorite grandson.”

  “I am his only grandson.”

  “And therefore all the more valuable.” Rogan’s reflection sighed. “I know it has been very difficult for you, being mewed up in Homana-Mujhar for so many years, but it was necessary. You know why.”

  Kellin knew why, but he did not entirely understand. Punishment had kept him from attending Summerfair for two years, but there was much more to it than that. He had never known any freedom to visit Mujhara as others did, or even Clankeep without constant protection.

  Kellin turned from the polished plate and looked at Rogan. The Homanan was very tall and thin and was inclined to stoop when he was tired, as he stooped just now. His graying brown hair was damp from recent washing, and he had put on what Kellin called his “medium” clothes: not as plain as his usual somber apparel, but not so fine as those he wore when summoned to sup in the Great Hall with the family, as occasionally happened. Plain black breeches and gray wool tunic over linen shirt, belted and clasped with bronze, replaced his customary attire.

  “Why?” Kellin blurted. “Why do they let me go now? I heard some of the servants talking. They said grandsire and granddame were too frightened to let me go out.”

  The lines in Rogan’s face etched themselves a little more deeply. “Even they understand they cannot keep you in jesses forever. You must be permitted to weather outside like a hawk on the blocks, or be unfit for the task. And so they have decided you may go this year, as you have improved your manners—and because it is time. I am put in charge…but there will be guards also.”

  Kellin nodded; there were always guards. “Because I’m Aidan’s only son, and the only heir.” He did not understand all of it. “Because—because if Lochiel killed me, there would be no more threat.” He lifted his chin. “That’s what they say in the baileys and kitchens.”

  Rogan’s eyes flinched. “You listen entirely too much to gossip—but I suppose it is to be expected. Aye, you are a threat to the Ihlini. And that is why you are so closely guarded. With so many Cheysuli here Lochiel’s sorcery cannot reach you, and so you are closely kept—but there are other ways, ways involving nothing so much as a greedy cook desiring Ihlini gold—” But Rogan waved it away with a sharply dismissive gesture. “Enough of a sad topic. There will be guards, as always, but your grandsire has decided to allow you this small freedom.”

  Summerfair was more than a freedom. It was renewal. Kellin forgot all about rumor and gossip. Grinning, he pointed at the purse depending from the belt. His grandfather had given Rogan coin for Summerfair. “Can we go? Now?”

  “We can go. Now.”

  “Then put on your Summerfair face,” Kellin ordered sternly. Rogan was a plain, soft-spoken man in his mid-forties only rarely given to laughter, but Kellin had always known a quie
t, steady warmth from the Homanan. He enjoyed teasing Rogan out of his melancholy moods, and today was not a day for sad faces. “You will scare away the ladies with that sad scowl.”

  “What does my face have to do with the ladies?” Rogan asked suspiciously.

  “It’s Summerfair,” Kellin declared. “Everyone will be happier than usual because of Summerfair. Even you will attract the ladies…if you put away that scowl.”

  “I am not scowling, and what do you know about ladies?”

  “Enough,” Kellin said airily, and strode out of the room.

  Rogan followed. “How much is enough, my young lord?”

  “You know.” Kellin stopped in the corridor. “I heard Melora. She was talking to Belinda, who said it had been too long since you’d had a good woman in your bed.” Rogan’s face reddened immediately. It was the first time any of Kellin’s sallies had provoked such a personal reaction, and the boy was fascinated. “Has it been?”

  The man rubbed wearily at his scalp. “Aye, well, perhaps. Had I known Belinda and Melora were so concerned about it, I might have asked them for advice on how to change matters.” He eyed his charge closely. “How much do you know about men and women?”

  “Oh, everything. I know all about them.” Kellin set off down the corridor with Rogan matching his longer strides to the boy’s. “I was hoping I might find a likely lady during Summerfair.”

  A large hand descended upon Kellin’s shoulder and stopped him in his tracks. “My lord,” Rogan said formally, “would you be so good as to tell your ignorant tutor precisely what you are talking about?”

  “If you mean how much do I know,” Kellin began, “I know. I learned all about it last year. And now I would like to try it for myself.”

  “At ten?” Rogan murmured, as much for himself as for Kellin.

  “How old were you?”