A Tapestry of Lions

by Jennifer Roberson

  * * *

  Kellin ran until he could run no more, then dropped into a steady jogging trot. Though his breath fogged the air, the first terror had faded, replaced by a simple conviction that if he did not halt, not even to catch that breath, he could remain ahead of Corwyth.

  He assumed the Ihlini lived. To believe otherwise was to court the kind of carelessness that might prove fatal. If he had learned one thing from his beloved Ian, it was never to assume one was safe when one could not know.

  Deadfall snapped beneath booted feet, then died out gradually as Kellin learned to seek out the thicker shadows of softer, muffled ground. In six strides he learned stealth, reverting to simple instincts and the training of his race.

  If I had a lir— But he did not, and wishing for one would gain him nothing save a tense uncertainty of his ability to survive.

  At last even his trot collapsed into disarray. Kellin staggered, favoring his right side. Exhaustion robbed him of strength, of endurance; apprehension robbed him of grace. He stumbled once, twice, again. The final tumble sent him headfirst into a tangle of tall bracken, which spilled him into shadow. Kellin lay there, winded, sucking cold air scented heavily with mud, and resin, and fear.

  Go on, his conscience told him. But the body did not respond. Remember what happened to Rogan. Remember what happened to Urchin.

  Kellin squeezed shut his eyes. He had, until the moment of Urchin’s death, believed himself inviolable. Ian had died, aye, because the Lion had bitten him, and the fortune-teller had died by the same violent means, but never had Kellin believed death could happen to him.

  Rogan and Urchin, dead.

  I could die, too.

  Could the Ihlini’s sorcery lead Corwyth directly to Kellin?

  Run—

  He stumbled to his feet yet again, hunching forward as a cramp bit into his side. He banished the pain, banished the memories of the deaths he had witnessed, and went on again.

  —am a Cheysuli warrior…the forest is my home—and every creature in it—

  He meant to go home, of course. All the way to Mujhara herself, and into Homana-Mujhar. There he would tell them all. There he would explain. There he would describe in bloody detail what Corwyth had accomplished.

  The sound was a heavy cough. Not human. Clearly animal. A heavy, deep-throated cough.

  Kellin froze. He sucked in a breath and held it, listening for the sound.

  A cough. And then a growl.

  —am Cheysuli—

  So he was. But he was also a boy.

  The growl rose in pitch, then altered into a roar.

  He knew the sounds of the forest. This was not one of them. This was a sound Kellin recognized because it filled his dreams.

  He did not cry out, but only because he could not. Lion?

  “No,” Kellin blurted. He denied it vigorously, as he had denied nothing before in his life. Urchin had come, and the Lion had been driven away. The daytime was safe. And only rarely did the Lion trouble his dreams now, since Urchin had come.

  But Urchin was dead. And night replaced the day.

  “No!” Kellin cried. There can be no Lion. Everyone says.

  But it was dark, so dark. It was too easy to believe in such things as Lions when there was no light.

  He fastened himself onto a single thought. “I am not a child anymore. I defeated the Steppesman and knocked down his knife. Lions do not exist.”

  But the Lion roared again. Kellin’s defiance was swamped.

  He ran without thought for silence or subterfuge. Outflung hands crushed aside foliage, but some of it sprang back and cut into the flesh of his naked torso, jerkinless in flight. It snagged hair, at eyes, at mouth; it dug deeply into his neck even as he ducked.

  Lion!

  He saw nothing but shadow and moonlight. If I stop—

  From behind came the roar of a hungry, hunting lion, crashing through broken brush on the trail of Cheysuli prey.

  Huge and tawny and golden, like the throne in Homana-Mujhar.

  How can they say there isn’t a Lion?

  Blood ran into Kellin’s mouth, then spilled over open lips; he had somehow bitten his tongue. He spat, swiped aside a snagging limb, then caught his breath painfully on a choked blurt of shock as the footing beneath crumbled.

  Wait— He teetered. Then fell. The ground gave way and tumbled him into a narrow ravine.

  Down and down and down, crashing through bracken and creepers, banging arms and legs into saplings, smacking skull against rocks and roots. And then at last the bottom, all of a sudden, too sudden, and he sprawled awkwardly onto his back, fetching up against a stump. Kellin heard whooping and gulping, and realized the noise was his own.

  Lion?

  He lurched upward, then scrambled to his feet. He ached from head to foot, as if all his bones were bruised.

  Lion?

  And the lion, abruptly, was there.

  Kellin ran. He heard the panting grunts, smelled the meat-laden breath. And then the jaws snapped closed around his left ankle.

  “No!”

  The pain shot from ankle to skull. Jaws dug through leather boot into flesh, threatening the bone.

  Kellin clawed at the iron teeth of the iron, bodiless beast that had caught boy instead of bear. Fingers scrabbled at the trap, trying to locate and trigger the mechanism that would spring the jaws open.

  No lion— It was relief, but also terror; the beast could not be far behind.

  Kellin had heard of bear traps. The Cheysuli disdained such tools, preferring to fight a beast on its own level rather than resorting to mechanical means. But some of the Homanans used the heavy iron traps to catch bear and other prey.

  Now it’s caught ME— Pain radiated from the ankle until it encompassed Kellin’s entire body. He twitched and writhed against it, biting into his bloodied lip, then scrabbled for the chain that bound trap to tree. It was securely locked. Designed to withstand the running charge of a full-grown bear, it would surely defeat a boy.

  Frenziedly, Kellin yanked until his palms shredded and bled. “Let go—let go—LET GO—”

  The deep-chested cough sounded again. Through deadfall the lion came, slinking out of shadow, tearing its way through vines and bracken.

  Kellin leapt to his feet and ran, and was jerked down almost at once. Iron teeth bit through boot and compressed fragile flesh, scraping now on bone.

  —no—no—

  “—no—no—NO—”

  The lion, still coughing, broke out of shadow into moonlight. Kellin jerked at the chain again, but palms slipped in sticky blood. The weight of the trap was nothing as he tried to stand again, to meet his death like a man.

  But then the lion roared. The boy who meant to die a man was reduced, by sheer terror, into nothing but a child screaming frenziedly for his father.

  But his father would not come, because he never had.

  Eight

  Horseback. And yet he did not ride as a man but as a child, a small child, rump settled across the withers, legs dangling slackly upon one shoulder while the rest of him was cradled securely against a man’s chest.

  Kellin roused into terror. “Lion—” He was perfectly stiff, trying to flail his way to escape. Terror overwhelmed him. “Lion— LION—”

  Arms tightened, stilling him. “There is no lion here.”

  “But—” He shut his mouth on the protest, the adamant denial of what the voice told him. Then another panic engulfed. “Ihlini—”

  The man laughed softly, as if meaning no insult. “Not I, my lad. I’ve not the breeding for it.”

  Kellin subsided, though his strained breathing was audible. His eyes stretched painfully wide, but saw nothing in the darkness save the underside of a man’s jaw and the oblique silhouette of a head. “Who—?” It faded at once. Pain reasserted itself. “My leg.”

  “I’m sorry for it, lad…but you’ll have to wait for the healing.”

  It took effort to speak, to force a single word through the rictus of hi
s mouth. “—whole—?”

  “Broken, I fear. But we’ll be mending it for you.”

  Kellin ground his teeth. “—hurts—” And then wished he had said nothing, nothing at all; a Cheysuli did not speak of pain.

  “Aye, one would think so.” The grip shifted a little, sliding down Kellin’s spine to accommodate the weight that was no longer quite so slack. “’Twas a trap for a bear, not a boy. You’re fortunate it left the foot attached.”

  Kellin stiffened again, craning, as he tried to see for himself.

  The other laughed softly. “Aye, lad, ’tis there. I promise you that. Now, settle yourself; you’ve a fever coming on. You’ll do better to rest.”

  “Who—?” he began again.

  The rider chuckled as Kellin tried to sit up. He turned his face downward. “There, now—better? I’m one of you after all.”

  “One of—me?” And then Kellin understood. Relief washed through him, then ebbed as quickly as it stole his strength away.

  Indeed, one of him. The stranger was his grandsire, if stripped of forty years. His accent was Aileen’s own. There was only one Cheysuli warrior in all the world who sounded like the Mujhar’s Erinnish queen.

  “Blais,” Kellin murmured. Weakness and fever crept closer to awareness, nibbling at its edges.

  The warrior grinned, displaying fine white teeth in a dark Cheysuli face. “Be still, little cousin. We’ve yet a ways to ride. You’ll do better to pass it in sleep.”

  In sleep, or something like. Kellin slumped against his kinsman as consciousness departed.

  * * *

  He roused as Blais handed him down from the horse into someone else’s care. Pain renewed itself, so strongly that Kellin whimpered before he could suppress it. And then he was more ashamed than ever because Blais himself was Cheysuli and knew a warrior did not voice his discomfort.

  Sweating, Kellin bit again into a split lip and tasted fresh blood. It was all he could do not to moan aloud.

  “My pavilion,” Blais said briefly. “Send someone to Homana-Mujhar with word, and call others here for the healing.”

  The other warrior carried Kellin inside as Blais dismounted and carefully settled him onto a pallet of thick furs. Kellin opened his eyes and saw the shadowed interior of a Cheysuli pavilion. Then the stranger was gone, and Blais knelt down on one knee beside him. A callused palm touched Kellin’s forehead.

  “Shansu,” Blais murmured. “I know it hurts, little cousin, no need to fight it so. I’ll think none the less of you.”

  But Kellin would not give in, though he sweated and squirmed with pain. “Can’t you heal me?”

  Blais smiled. His face was kind in a stern sort of way. He was very like them all, though Erinn and Homana ran in his veins as well as Cheysuli blood. Physically the dilution did not show; Blais’ features and coloring were purely Cheysuli, even if the accent was not. “Not without help, my lad. I was ill myself last year with the summer fever—well enough now, you’ll see, but weak in the earth magic yet. I’d rather not risk the future of Homana to a halfling’s meager gifts.”

  Halfling. Kellin shifted. What am I, then? “You have a lir. Tanni. I remember from when you visited Homana-Mujhar two years ago.”

  “Aye, but she came to me late. Don’t be forgetting, lad—I was Erinn-raised. The magic there is different. I’m different because of it.”

  Fever-clad weakness proved pervasive. Kellin squinted at his cousin through a wave of fading vision. “I’m different, too, like you…will I get my lir late?”

  “’Tis between you and the gods.” Blais’ callused palm was gentle as he smoothed back dampened hair. “Hush, now, lad. Don’t waste yourself on talking.”

  Kellin squirmed. “The Lion—”

  “’Twas a bear-trap, lad.”

  Kellin shut his eyes because it made him dizzy to keep them open. “An Ihlini Lion…” he asserted weakly, “and it was after me.”

  “Lad.”

  “—was—” Kellin insisted. “The Ihlini killed Urchin. And Rogan.”

  “Kellin.”

  “They were my friends, and he killed them.”

  “Kellin!” Blais caught Kellin’s head between two strong hands, cupping the dome of skull easily. “No more of this. The healing comes first, then we’ll be talking of deaths. D’ye hear?”

  “But—”

  “Be still, my little prince. Homana has need of you whole.”

  “But—”

  And then the others were there, crowding into the pavilion, and the wave of exhaustion that engulfed Kellin was as much induced by the earth magic as by his fever.

  * * *

  Voices intruded. The murmurs were quiet, but they nonetheless broke apart Kellin’s tattered dreams and roused him to wakefulness.

  “—harsh for any man to lose his closest companions,” Blais was saying from outside as he pulled aside the doorflap. “For a lad, that much the harder.”

  Light penetrated the interior, turning the inside of Kellin’s eyelids red. The answering voice was well-known and beloved. “Kellin has always seemed older than his years,” Brennan said as he entered the pavilion. “Sometimes I forget he is naught but a boy, and I try to make him into a man.”

  “’Tis the risk any man takes with an heir, especially a prince.” Blais let the doorflap drop, dimming daylight again into a wan, saffron tint.

  Brennan’s voice was hollow. “He is more than that to me. I lost Aidan—” He checked. “So, now there is Kellin. In Aidan’s place. In all things, in Aidan’s place. He was made to be Prince of Homana before he was even a boy, still but an infant wetting his napkins.”

  Kellin cracked his lids slightly, only enough so he could see the two men through a fuzzy fringe of lashes. He did not want them to know he was awake. He had learned very young that adults overheard divulged more information than when asked straight out.

  Blais’ laugh was soft as he settled himself near the pallet. “You had no choice but to invest him when you did. Aidan had renounced the title already, and I had come from Erinn. D’ye think I am deaf? I heard all the whispers, su’fali…had you delayed Kellin’s investiture, my presence here in Homana might have given new heart to the a’saii. Your claim on the Lion would have been threatened again.”

  “I might have packed you off to Erinn,” Brennan suggested mildly.

  “Might have tried, my lord Mujhar.” Blais’ tone was amused as he gestured for his guest to seat himself. “When has a warrior been made to do anything he preferred not to do?”

  Brennan sighed as he knelt down beside his grandson. “Even Kellin. Even a ten-year-old boy.”

  The humor was banished. “He spoke of a lion, and an Ihlini.”

  The line of Brennan’s mouth tautened. “The lion is something Kellin made up years ago. It is an excuse for things he cannot explain. He is fanciful; he conjures a beast from the lions in banners and signets, and the throne itself. And because he has been unfortunate to witness Ihlini handiwork, he interprets all the violence as the doings of this lion.”

  “What handiwork?”

  “The death of a fortune-teller. He was a foreigner and unknown to us, but his death stank of sorcery.”

  “Lochiel,” Blais said grimly.

  “He knows very well Kellin offers the greatest threat to the Ihlini.”

  “Like his father before him.”

  “But Aidan no longer matters. He sired the next link, and that link now is the one Lochiel must shatter.” Brennan’s fingertips gently touched Kellin’s brow. “It all comes to Kellin. Centuries of planning all comes down to him.”

  Blais’ tone was dry, for all it was serious. “Then we had best see he survives.”

  “I have done everything I could. The boy has been kept so closely it is no wonder he makes up stories about lions. Had my jehan kept me so tied to Homana-Mujhar, I would have gone mad. As it is, I am not in the least surprised he found a way to escape his imprisonment. But Urchin and Rogan are also missing; I can only surmise they, t
oo, were lured away. No Ihlini could get in, and Kellin is too well-guarded within the palace itself. He would go nowhere without the Homanan boy, and Rogan would never permit Kellin to leave if he heard any whisper of it. So I believe we must look at a clever trap set with the kind of bait that would lure all of them out.”

  Blais’ tone was grim. “An imaginary lion?”

  Kellin could no longer hold himself back; his eyes popped open. “There was a Lion!”

  “Cheysuli ears,” Brennan said, brows arching, “hear more than they should.”

  “There was,” Kellin insisted. “It chased me into the bear-trap…after Urchin and Rogan died.”

  Brennan shut his eyes. “More deaths.”

  Blais shifted. He sat cross-legged, one thigh weighted down by the head of a ruddy wolf. His expression was oddly blank as he stroked the wide skull and scratched the base of the ears.

  Brennan’s momentary lapse was banished. He was calm, unperturbed. “Tell us what happened, Kellin. We must know everything.”

  Kellin delayed, testing his ankle. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  “Earth magic,” Blais said. “You’ve a scar, but the bones are whole.”

  “A scar?” Kellin peeled back the deerskin coverlet and saw the bared ankle. Indeed, there was a jagged ring of purplish “tooth” marks ringing his ankle. He wiggled his foot again. There was no pain.

  “’Twill fade,” Blais told him. “I’ve more scars than I can count, but hardly any of them show.”

  Kellin did not care about the scar; if anything, it proved there was a Lion. He looked now at his grandsire, putting aside the Lion to speak of another grief. “It was Rogan,” he said unsteadily. “Rogan betrayed me to the Ihlini.”

  The Mujhar did not so much as twitch an eyelid. The mildness of his tone was deceptive, but Kellin knew it well: Brennan wanted very badly to know the precise truth, without embellishments or suppositions. “You are certain it was he?”

  “Aye.” Kellin suppressed with effort the emotions to which he longed to surrender. He would be all Cheysuli in this. “He said he would take me to my jehan. That you knew we were to go, just the three of us, but that we meant to go to Clankeep. He said he would send true word to you where we were, but only after we were on our way to Hondarth.”