A Tapestry of Lions

by Jennifer Roberson

  Brennan’s tone was uncharacteristically curt, but also defensive as he answered his cheysula. “Rhiannon has nothing to do with this.”

  “She was your downfall as much as gambling was Hart’s and I was Corin’s!” Aileen snapped. “Don’t be forgetting it, Brennan. We all of us do things better left undone. Why should Kellin be different?”

  He shivered once more, and then his body stilled. In quiescence was relief, carefully Kellin sought and found a cloth to wipe his mouth. It hurt too much to move; he leaned against the wall. Brickwork was cool against overheated flesh.

  Distracted by his movement, Aileen turned from her husband. “Are you well?”

  “How can he be well?” Brennan asked. “He has drunk himself insensible and now suffers for it, as well as for a fight that nearly stove in his chest.” His mouth hooked down in derision. “But he is young, for all of that; he will begin again tomorrow.”

  “No,” Kellin managed. “Not tomorrow.” The room wavered again. He caught at brickwork to keep from falling.

  “Kellin.” The derision was banished from Brennan’s tone. “Sit down.”

  The floor moved beneath Kellin’s feet. Or was he moving?

  “He’s ill!” Aileen cried. “Brennan— catch—”

  But the command came too late. Kellin was aware of a brief detached moment of disorientation, then found himself sprawled across the floor with his head in the Mujhar’s arms.

  He was cold, so cold—and a wail of utter despair rose from the depths of his spirit. “—empty—” he mouthed. “—lost—”

  Brennan sat him upright and held him steady, examining his eyes. “Look at me.”

  Kellin looked. Then vision slid out of focus and the wail came back again. A sob tore loose in his chest. “Grandsire—”

  “Be still. Look at me.” Brennan cradled Kellin’s head in his hands, holding it very still.

  “Are you wanting a surgeon?” Aileen asked crisply.

  “No.”

  “Earth magic, then.”

  “No.”

  “Then—”

  “Shansu,” Brennan told her. “This is something else, meijhana. Something far beyond the discontent caused by too much usca.”

  It was indeed. If not for the Mujhar’s hands holding him in place, Kellin believed he might fall through the floor and beyond. “—too hard—” he whispered. “Too—”

  “—empty,” Brennan finished, “and cold, and alone, torn apart from the world and everything in it.”

  “—lost—”

  “And angry and terribly frightened, and very small and worthless.”

  Kellin managed to nod. The anguish and desolation threatened to overwhelm him. “How can—how can you know?”

  Brennan’s severity softened. “Because I have felt it also. Every Cheysuli does when it is time to bond with his lir.”

  “Lir!”

  “Did you really believe you would never have one?” Brennan’s smile was faint. “Did you believe you would not need one?”

  “I renounced it!” Kellin cried. “When Blais left—I swore—”

  “Some oaths are as nothing.”

  “I renounced a lir, and the gods.” It was incomprehensible that now, after so long without one, he might require a lir; or that he should have to battle the interference of gods he did not honor.

  “Clearly the gods did not renounce you,” Brennan said dryly. “Now the time is come.”

  Kellin summoned all his strength; it was a pathetic amount. “I refuse.”

  The Mujhar smiled. “You are welcome to try.”

  Aileen was shocked. “You are overharsh!”

  “No. There is nothing he can do. It is his time, Aileen. He will drive himself mad if he continues this foolishness. He must go. He is Cheysuli.”

  “And—Erinnish…and Homanan—and all the other lines—” Kellin shivered. “’Tis all I count for, is it not? My seed. My blood. Not Kellin at all!” His spirit felt as cold and hard as the floor. Desperately, he said, “I renounce my lir.”

  “Renounce as you will,” Brennan said, “but for now, get up on the stool.”

  Kellin gritted his teeth. “You are the Mujhar, blessed by the gods. I charge you to take it away.”

  “What—the pain? You earned it. The emptiness? I cannot. It can only be filled with a lir.”

  “Take it away!” Kellin shouted. “I cannot live like this!”

  Brennan rose. His eyes, so intensely yellow, did not waver. “You have the right of that,” he agreed. “You cannot live like this.”

  “Grandsire—”

  “Get up, Kellin. There is nothing to be done.”

  He got up. He ached. He swore, even before Aileen. He was profoundly empty, bereft of all save futility and a terrifying apartness. “I renounced it,” he said, “just as I renounced the gods. They have no power over me.”

  Brennan turned to Aileen. “I will have usca sent up. Best he dulls his pain with that which caused it; in the morning he will be better—” he slanted a glance at his grandson, “—or he will be worse.”

  She was clearly displeased. “Brennan.”

  The Mujhar of Homana extended a hand to his queen. “There is nothing to be done, Aileen. Whether or not he likes it, Kellin is Cheysuli. The price is always high, but no warrior refuses to pay it.”

  “I do,” Kellin declared. “I refuse. I will not accept a lir.”

  Brennan nodded sagely. “Then perhaps you should spend the next few hours explaining that to the gods.”

  Six

  “Leijhana tu’sai,” Kellin murmured as his grandparents shut the door behind them. He was sick to death of Brennan’s dire predictions and Aileen’s contentiousness; could they not simply let him alone? They try to shape me to fit their own idea of how a prince should be.

  Or perhaps they attempted to shape him into something other than his father who had renounced his rank and title as Kellin renounced his lir.

  He drew in a hissing breath and let it out again, trying to banish pain as he banished the previous thought. Kellin had no desire to consider how his behavior might affect his grandparents, or that the cause of his own rebellion was incentive for the very expectations he detested. Such maunderings profited no one, save perhaps the occasional flicker of guilt searching for brighter light. He had no time for such thoughts; his ribs ached, and his manhood as yet reminded him of its abuse. Best he simply took to his bed; perhaps he would fall asleep, and by morning be much improved in health and spirit.

  But restlessness forbade it even as he approached the bed. He was dispirited, disgruntled, highly unsettled. Even his bones itched. His body would not be still, but clamored at him for something—

  “What?” Kellin gritted. “What is it I’m to do?”

  He could not be still. Frustrated, Kellin began to pace, hoping to burn out the buzz in blood and bones. But he managed to stop only when he reached the polished plate hanging cockeyed on the wall.

  He stared gloomily at his reflection: a tall man, fair of skin—for a Cheysuli, he thought, though dark enough for a Homanan!—with green eyes dilated dark and new bruises on his face.

  Aileen’s applications of wine had stiffened his hair. Kellin impatiently scrubbed a hand through it, taking care to avoid the crusting cut. The raven curls of youth were gone, banished by adulthood, but his hair still maintained a springy vigor. He scratched idly at his chest, disliking the tautness of the wrappings. The linen bandages stood out in stark relief against the nakedness of his torso.

  Kellin stared at his reflection, then grinned as he recalled the cause of sore ribs. “And what of the thumbless thief?”

  But the brief jolt of pleasure and vindication dissipated instantly. Luce was not important. Luce did not matter. Nothing at all mattered except the despair that welled up so keenly to squash his spirit flat.

  Kellin turned from the plate abruptly. Better he not look; better he not see—

  Emptiness overwhelmed, and the savage desire to tear down all the
walls, brick by brick, so he could be free of them.

  He burned with it. Cursing weakly, Kellin lurched to the narrow casement. Beyond lay Homana of the endless skies and meadows, the freedom of the air. He was confined by walls, oppressed by brickwork; every nerve in his body screamed its demand for freedom.

  “Get out—” he blurted.

  He needed desperately to get out, get free, get loose—

  “Shadow,” he murmured. “Half-man, hollowman—” And then he squeezed shut his eyes as he dug fingers into stone. “I will not…will not be what they expect me to be—”

  Cold stone bit into his brow, hurting his bruised face; he had pressed himself against the wall beside the window. Flame washed his flesh and set afire every nick, scratch, and cut. Rising bruises ached as blood throbbed in them, threatening to break through the fragile warding of his skin.

  He paced because he could not help himself; he could not be still. A singing was in his blood, echoing clamorously. He paced and paced and paced, trying to suppress the singing, the overriding urge to squeeze himself through the narrow casement and fling himself into the air.

  “— fall—” he muttered. “Fall and break all my bones—”

  Hands fisted repeatedly: a cat flexing its claws, testing the power in his body, the urge to slash into flesh.

  He sweated. Panted. Swore at capricious gods. He wanted to open the door, to tear it from its hinges, to shatter the wood completely and throw aside iron studs.

  Kellin sat down on the stool and hugged bare arms against wrapped chest, ignoring the pain. He rocked and rocked and rocked: a child in need of succor; a spirit in need of release.

  Tears ran down his face. “Too many—” he said. “Too many…I will not risk losing a lir—” Only to lose himself to an arcane Cheysuli ritual that robbed the world of another warrior despite his perfect health.

  Lirless warriors went mad, he had been taught, as all Cheysuli were taught. Mad with the pain and the grief, the desperate emptiness.

  “—mad now—” he panted. “Is this different?”

  Perhaps not. Perhaps what he did now was invite the very madness he did not desire to risk in bonding with a lir.

  Brickwork oppressed him. The walls and roof crushed his spirit.

  “Out—” he blurted. But to go out was to surrender.

  He rocked and rocked and rocked until he could rock no more; until he could not countenance sitting on the stool another moment and rose to pace again, to move from wall to wall, to stand briefly at the casement so as to test his will, to dare the desperate need that drove him to pace again, until he reached the door.

  Unlocked. Merely latched. He need only lift the latch—

  “No.” A tremor wracked Kellin’s body. He suppressed it. He turned away, jubilant in his victory, in the belief he had overcome it—and then felt his will crumble beneath the simplicity of sheer physical need.

  It took but a moment: boots, doublet, russet wool cloak, long-knife. Emeralds winked in candlelight.

  Kellin stared at the knife. Vision blurred: tears. Tears for the warrior who had once sworn by the blade, by his blood, by the lir whose death had killed him.

  He thought of the words Blair had offered him a decade before.

  It hurt. It squeezed, until no room was left for his heart; no room remained for his spirit.

  “Y’ja’hai,” Kellin breathed, then unlatched and jerked open the door.

  * * *

  He did not awaken the horse-boy sleeping in straw. He simply took a bridle, a horse—without benefit of blankets or saddle—and swung up bareback.

  Pain thundered in Kellin’s chest. He sat rigidly straight, daring himself to give in as sweat trickled down his temples. Scrapes stung from the taste of salt, but he ignored them. A smaller pain, intrusive but less pronounced, reminded him of his offended netherparts, but that pain, too, he relegated to nothing in the face of his compulsion.

  Winter hair afforded him a better purchase bareback than the summer season, when mounts were slick-haired and the subsequent ride occasionally precarious. It was precarious now, but not because of horsehair; a rider was required to adapt to his mount’s movements by adjustments in body both large and small, maintaining flexibility above all else, but the skill was stripped from Kellin. With ribs bruised and tightly strapped, he was forced to sit bolt upright without bending his spine, or risk significant pain.

  He knew the way so well: a side-gate in the shadows, tucked away in the wall; he had used it before. He used it now, leaving behind the outer bailey, then Mujhara herself as he rode straight through the city to the meadowlands beyond. The narrow track was hard footing in the cold, glinting with frost rime in the pallor of the moon.

  No more walls— Kellin gritted his teeth. No more stone and brick, no more streets and buildings—

  Indeed, no more. He had traded city for country, replacing cobbles with dirt and turf, and captivity for freedom.

  But the emptiness remained.

  If I give myself over to the lir-bond, I will be no different from any warrior whose promise to cheysula and children to care for them always is threatened by that very bond.

  It seemed an odd logic to Kellin. How could one promise supersede the other, yet still maintain its worth? How could any warrior swear himself so profoundly to lir and family knowing very well one of the oaths might be as nothing?

  For that matter, how could cheysula or child believe anything the warrior promised when it was made very clear in the sight of gods and clan that a lir came first always?

  Kellin shook his head. A selfish oath demanded from selfish gods—

  The horse stumbled. Jarred, sore ribs protested; fresh sweat broke on Kellin’s brow and ran down his face. Cold air against dampness made him shiver convulsively, which set up fresh complaint.

  He cast a glance at the star-freighted sky. Revenge for my slight? That I dare to question such overweening dedication to you?

  The horse did not stumble again. If the gods heard, they chose not to answer.

  Kellin, for his part, laughed—until the despair and emptiness shattered into pieces the dark humor of his doubts, reminding him once again that he was, if nothing else, subject to such whims as the gods saw fit to send him.

  Merely because I am Cheysuli— He gripped the horse with both knees, clutching at reins. He recalled all too well what his grandsire had said regarding madness. He recalled even more clearly the wild grief in Blais’ eyes as the warrior acknowledged a far greater thing than that he must give up his life; Tanni’s death and the severing of the lir-bond had been, in that moment, the only thing upon which Blais could focus himself, though it promised his death as well.

  Irony blossomed. Certainly he focused nothing upon me, who had from him a blood-oath of service.

  One sworn to the gods, at that.

  Kellin and his mount exchanged meadowlands for the outermost fringes of the forest. His passage stirred the woods into renewed life, startling birds from branches and field warren from burrows. Here the moon shone more fitfully, fragmented by branches. Kellin heard the sound of his horse and his own breath expelled in pale smoke. He pulled the russet cloak more closely around his shoulders.

  The horse stopped. It stood completely still, ears erect. Its nostrils expanded hugely, fluttered, then whuffed closed as he expelled a noisy snort of alarm.

  “Shansu—” Even as Kellin gathered rein to forestall him, the horse quivered from head to toe.

  From the shadows just ahead came the heavy, throaty coughing of a lion.

  “Wait—” But even as Kellin clamped his legs, the horse lunged sideways and bolted.

  Seven

  In the first awkward lunge, Kellin felt the slide of horsehair against breeches and the odd, unbalanced weightlessness of a runaway. With it came a twofold panic: first, the chance of injury; the second because of the lion.

  He had ridden runaways before. He had fallen off of or been thrown from runaways before. It was a straightforward hazard
of horsemanship regardless how skilled the rider, regardless how docile the horse. A horseman learned to halt a runaway mount with various techniques when footing afforded it; here, footing was treacherous, and vision nonexistent. This particular runaway—at night, in the dark, with customary reflexes obliterated by pain and disorientation—was far more dangerous than most.

  Kellin’s balance was off. He could not sit properly. He was forced to ride mostly upright, perching precariously, breaking the fluid melding of horse and rider. Vibrations of the flight, instead of dissipating in his body, reverberated painfully as the horse broke through tangled undergrowth and leapt fallen logs.

  Branches snagged hair, slapped face, cut into Kellin’s mouth. A clawing vine hooked the bridge of his nose and tore flesh. He felt something dig at one eye and jerked his head aside, cursing helplessly. One misstep—

  He tried to let reflexes assume control, rather than trusting to himself. But reflexes were banished. His spine was jarred as the horse essayed a depression in the ground, which in turn jarred his ribs. Kellin sucked in a noisy breath and tried to ease his seat, to let the response of muscles to his mount’s motion dictate the posture of his body, but failed to do so.

  The horse stumbled, then dodged and lurched sideways as it shied from an unseen terror. Kellin blurted discomfort, biting into his cheek; he thought of snubbing the horse’s nose back to his left knee in the classic technique, but the trees were too close, the foliage too dense. He had no leeway, no leverage.

  The horse hesitated, then leapt again, clearing an unseen impediment. It seemed then to realize it bore an unwanted rider. Kellin felt the body shifting beneath his buttocks, away from clamping legs; then it bunched and twisted, elevating buttocks, and flung its rider forward.

  Awkwardly Kellin slid toward the horse’s head, dangling briefly athwart one big shoulder. Hands caught frenziedly at mane as he tried to drag himself upright, clutching at reins, digging in with left heel, but the horse ducked out from under him.