A Tapestry of Lions

by Jennifer Roberson

  Kellin was very calm as he hung momentarily in the air. He was aware of weighty darkness, encroaching vines and branches, the utter physical incomprehensibility that he was unconnected to his mount—and the unhappy acknowledgment that when he landed momentarily it would hurt very much.

  He tucked up as best he could, cursing strapped ribs. One shoulder struck the ground first. He rolled through the motion, smashing hip against broken branches shrouded in tangled fern, then flopped down onto his back as the protest of his ribs robbed him of control. He landed flat and very hard, human prey for the hidden treacheries of unseen ground.

  For a moment there was no pain. It terrified him. He recalled all too clearly the old Homanan soldier who had taken a tumble from his horse in the bailey of the castle. The fall had not been bad; but as fellow soldiers—and Kellin with them—gathered to trade jests, it became clear that though old Tammis lived, his neck was broken. He would not walk again.

  The panic engendered by that image served as catalyst for the bruised strength in legs and arms. Kellin managed one huge jerking contortion against broken boughs and fern. It renewed all the pain, but he welcomed it. Pain was proof he could yet move.

  I will walk again. But just now, he was not certain he wanted to. Now that he could move he did not, but lay slack and very still against a painful cradle. He forced himself not to gasp but to draw shallow breaths through the wreckage of his chest.

  When he at last had wind again, Kellin gasped out a lengthy string of the vilest oaths he knew in Homanan, Old Tongue, and Erinnish. It used up the breath he had labored so carefully to recover, but he felt it worth it. Dead men did not swear.

  The horse was gone. Kellin did not at that moment care; he could not bear the thought of trying to mount. He wished the animal good riddance, suppressing the flicker of dismayed apprehension—a long and painful walk all the way to Mujhara—then set about making certain he was whole. Everything seemed to be, but he supposed he could not tell for certain until he got up from the ground.

  Sound startled him into stillness. But a stride or two away came the coughing grunt of beast, and the stink of its breath.

  It filled Kellin’s nostrils and set him to flight. It might be bear, mountain cat— He flailed, then stilled himself.

  Lion?

  It bore Corwyth’s hallmark.

  With effort Kellin pulled his elbows in to his sides and levered his torso upright, lifting a battered chest until he no longer lay squashed and helpless. “Begone,” he said aloud, using the scorn of royalty. “You have no power over me.”

  The odor faded at once, replaced with the damp cold smells of winter. A man laughed softly from the shadows shielding the beast. “The lion may not,” he said, “but be certain that I do.”

  Kellin’s breath hissed between set teeth as Corwyth exited the shadows for the star-lighted hollow in which the prince lay. The Ihlini wore dark leathers and a gray wool cloak. Pinned by a heavy knot of silver at one shoulder, the cloak glowed purple in the livid shadows of its folds.

  Knowledge diminished pain; made it no longer important. “Corwyth the Lion. But the guise is now ineffective; I have learned what you are.”

  Corwyth affected a negligent shrug. “I am whatever it serves me—and my master—to be. For you, it was a lion.” The Ihlini walked quietly toward Kellin, crackling no branches, snagging no vegetation. His hands were gloved in black. “Indeed, we heard of the small prince’s fear of lions. It permitted us certain liberties, even though we were powerless within the palace itself. Fear alone can prove effective, as it did in your case. You believed. That belief has shaped you, Kellin; it has made you what you are in heart and spirit, and placed you here within my grasp.”

  Kellin longed to repudiate it, but he could not speak. What Corwyth said was true. His own weakness had provided the Ihlini with a weapon.

  The gloved hands spread, displaying tiny white flames that transformed themselves to pillars. They danced against Corwyth’s palms. “Ian’s death in particular was most advantageous. Your certainty that the Lion had killed him was unfounded—it was but a child’s imagination gone awry, interpreting a passing comment into something of substance—but that substance, given life, nearly consumed you.” The flames within his palms bathed Corwyth’s smiling face with lurid illumination. His eyes were black pockets in a white-limned mask. “That, too, served, though it was none of ours. A fortuitous death, was Ian’s. We could not have hoped for better.”

  Kellin stirred in protest, then suppressed a grunt of pain. He wanted very badly to rise and face the Ihlini as he would face a man, but pain ate at his bones. “Lochiel,” he said.

  Corwyth nodded. “The hand at last is outstretched. It beckons, Kellin. You are cordially invited to join your kinsman in the halls of Valgaard.”

  “Kinsman!”

  Corwyth laughed. “You recoil as if wounded, my lord! But what else are you? Shall I recount your heritage?”

  Kellin’s silence was loud.

  The Ihlini continued regardless. “Lochiel was Strahan’s son. Strahan was Tynstar’s son, who got him on Electra of Solinde. She was, at the time, married to Carillon and was therefore Queen of Homana; but her tastes lay with her true lord rather than the Mujhar who professed to be.” White teeth shone briefly. “Strahan was her son. He was brother—rujholli?—to Aislinn, who bore Niall, who sired Brennan—and a multitude of others—who in turn sired Aidan. Your very own jehan.” Corwyth nodded. “The line is direct, Kellin. You and Lochiel are indeed kinsmen, no matter what you might prefer.”

  Something slow and warm trickled into Kellin’s eyes. He was bleeding—the cut Aileen had stanched? Or another, newer one?

  Corwyth laughed. “Poor prince. So battered, so bruised…and so entirely helpless.”

  Kellin pressed himself up from the ground in a single painful lunge, jerking from its sheath the lethal Cheysuli long-knife. It fit his grasp so well, as if intended for him. Blais could not have known— He flipped it instantly in his hand and threw, arcing it cleanly across the darkness toward the Ihlini sorcerer. My own brand of Tooth!

  But Corwyth put up a gloved hand now free of flames. The knife stopped in midair. Emerald eyes turned black.

  “No!” Kellin’s blurted denial was less of fear than of the knowledge of profanation. Not Blais’ long-knife!

  Corwyth plucked the weapon from the air. He studied it a moment, then tucked it away into his belt. His eyes were bright. “I have coveted one of these for a century. I thank you for your gift.” The young-looking Ihlini smiled. “Without you, I might never have acquired one; Cheysuli warriors are, after all, well-protected by their lir.” Corwyth paused to consider. “But you lack a lir and therefore lack the protection. Leijhana tu’sai, my lord.”

  Kellin wavered. His fragile strength, born of panic and fury, was spent. Nothing was left to him, not even anger, nor fear. An outthrust hand earned him nothing but empty air, certainly little balance. Fingers closed, then the hand fell limply as Kellin bit into his lip to forestall collapse. He would not, would not, show such weakness to the Ihlini.

  “Give in to it,” Corwyth suggested gently. “I am not here to be cruel, Kellin…you paint us so, I know, and it is a personal grief; but there is no sense in maintaining such rigid and painful control merely out of pride.”

  The darkness thickened. Sorcery? Or exhaustion compounded by pain? “I am Cheysuli. I do not in any way, in words or deed or posture, even by implication, suggest that I am inferior to an Ihlini.”

  Corwyth laughed. “Inferior, no. Never. We are equal, my lord, in every sense of the word. Sired by the gods, we are now little more than petty children quarreling over a toy.” His hand closed over the wolf-headed knife tucked into his belt. “Once, we might have been brothers. Rujheldi, as we say—is it not close to rujholli?” Corwyth did not smile. “Uncomfortably close, I see, judging by your expression. But it is too late now for anything more than enmity. The Cheysuli are too near fulfillment. The time is now to stop the prophe
cy before it can be completed. Before you, my Cheysuli rujheldi, can be permitted to sire a child upon an Ihlini woman.”

  Kellin wanted very much to spit. He did not because he thought it was time he showed self-restraint. He, who had so little. With careful disdain, he asked, “Do you believe I would so soil my manhood as to permit it entry into the womb of the netherworld?”

  Corwyth laughed. It was a genuine sound kiting into darkness. It stirred birds from a nearby tree and reawakened Kellin’s apprehension. “A man is a fool to trust to taste and preference in a matter so important. I recite to you your own history, Kellin: Rhiannon, Lillith’s daughter, sired by Ian himself—”

  “Ian was tricked. He was bespelled. He was lirless, and therefore helpless.”

  “—and Brennan, your grandsire, who lay with Rhiannon and sired the halfling Ihlini woman at whose breast you suckled.”

  Kellin’s belly clenched. “My grandsire was seduced.”

  “But you are above such things?” Corwyth shook his head. “A single birth, Kellin…a single seed of yours sowed in fertile Ihlini soil, and the thing is done.” His eyes were black and pitiless in the frosted darkness. “We are not all of us sworn to Asar-Suti. There are those Ihlini who would, to throw us down, try very hard to insure the child was conceived. The prophecy is not dependent upon whose blood mingles with yours, merely that it be Ihlini.”

  Kellin summoned the last of waning strength. In addition to battered chest, a hip and shoulder ached. Welts and scratches stung. Bravado was difficult. “So, will you kill me here?”

  Corwyth smiled. “You are meant for Lochiel’s disposition.”

  Kellin dredged up scorn. “If you mean to take me to Valgaard, you will do it against my will. That much you cannot take from me, lirless or no.”

  “That may be true,” Corwyth conceded, “but there are other methods. And all of them equally efficient.”

  He gestured. From the shadows walked two cloaked men and a saddled horse. Kellin looked at them, looked at the mount, and knew what they meant to do.

  “A long ride,” Corwyth said, “and as painful as I can make it.” He glanced to the horse, then looked back at Kellin. “How long do you think you can last?”

  Eight

  Kellin awoke with his mouth full of blood. He gagged, spat it out, felt more flow in sluggishly from the cut on the inside of his cheek. Pressure pounded in his head. It roused him fully, so that he could at last acknowledge the seriousness of his situation.

  Corwyth’s companions had flung him belly-down across the saddle, little more than a battered carcass shaped in the form of a man. Ankles were tied to the right stirrup, wrists to the left. The position was exceedingly uncomfortable; the binding around his ribs had loosened with abuse and provided no support.

  He recalled his defiant challenge: Cheysuli to Ihlini. He recalled losing that challenge, though little of anything afterward; the pain had robbed him of consciousness. Now consciousness was back. He wished it were otherwise.

  Kellin gagged and coughed again, suppressing the grunt of pain that exited his throat and was trapped with deliberate effort behind locked teeth. Regardless of the discomfort, despite the incipient rebellion of his discontented belly, he would not disgrace himself by losing that belly’s contents in front of an Ihlini.

  A thought intruded: Had I listened to my grandsire— But Kellin cut it off. Self-recrimination merely added to misery.

  The horse moved on steadily with its Cheysuli burden. Every stride of the animal renewed Kellin’s discomfort. He wanted very much to sit upright, to climb down from the horse, to lie down quietly and let his headache subside. But he could do none of those things.

  A crackling of underbrush forewarned him of company as a horse fell in beside him. Kellin’s limited head-down view provided nothing more of the world than stirrup leather and horsehair.

  Then Corwyth spoke, divulging identity. “Awake at last, my lord? You have slept most of the night.”

  Slept? I have been in more comfortable beds. Kellin lifted his head. His skull felt heavy, too heavy; it took effort to hold it up. The light now was better; he could see the Ihlini plainly. Dawn waited impatiently just outside the doorflap.

  Corwyth smiled. There was no derision in his tone, no contempt in his expression. “One would hardly recognize you. A bath would undoubtedly benefit. Would you care to visit a river?”

  The thought of being dumped into an ice-cold river bunched the flesh of Kellin’s bones. He suppressed a shiver with effort and made no answer.

  The Ihlini’s smile widened. “No, that would hardly do. You might sicken from it, and die…and then my lord would be very wroth with me.” Blue eyes glinted. “I pity you, Kellin. I have seen Lochiel’s anger before, and the consequences of it.”

  Kellin’s mouth hurt. “Lochiel has tried to throw down my House before.” It was mostly a croak; he firmed his voice so as not to sound so diminished. “Why do you believe he will succeed this time?”

  “He has you,” Corwyth said simply.

  “You have me,” Kellin corrected. “And I would not count a Cheysuli helpless while his heart still beats.”

  Russet brows arched. “Shall I stop it, then? To be certain of my safety? To convince you, perhaps, that you are indeed helpless despite your Cheysuli bravado?”

  Kellin opened his mouth to retort but found no words would come. Corwyth’s gloved hand was extended, fingers slack. They curled slowly inward.

  There was no pain. Just a vague breathlessness that increased as the fingers closed, and a constriction in his chest that banished the ache of his ribs because this was much worse. Bruised ribs, even cracked ones, offered little danger when a man’s heart was threatened.

  Kellin stirred in protest, but his bonds held firm. The horse walked on, led by Corwyth’s minions. The Ihlini’s fingers closed.

  He felt each of them: four fingers and a thumb, distinct and individual. Each was inside his chest. They touched him intimately, caressing the very muscle that kept him alive.

  It was, he thought, rape, if of a very different nature.

  Kellin desired very much to protest, to cry out, to shout, to swear, to scream imprecations. But his mouth would not function. Hands and feet were numb. He thought the pressure in his head might cause his eyes and ears to burst.

  He could not breathe.

  Corwyth’s hand squeezed.

  Kellin thrashed once, expelling breath and blood in a final futile effort to escape the hand in his chest.

  “Your lips are blue,” Corwyth said. “It is not a flattering color.”

  Nothing more was left. Piece of meat—

  It was, Kellin felt, a supremely inelegant way to die.

  Then the hand stilled his heart, and he was dead.

  * * *

  Kellin roused as Corwyth grabbed a handful of hair and jerked his head up. “Do you see?” the Ihlini asked. “Do you understand now?”

  He understood only that he had been dead, or very close to it. He sucked in a choking breath, trying to fill flaccid lungs. The effort was awkward, spasmodic, so that he recognized only the muted breathy roaring of a frightened man trying desperately to breathe.

  I am frightened— And equally desperate; he felt intensely helpless, and angry because of it. Lochiel’s ambassador had humiliated him in the most elemental of ways: by stripping a Cheysuli of freedom, strength, and pride.

  “Say it again,” Corwyth suggested. “Say again Lochiel cannot throw down your House.”

  Kellin said nothing. He could not manage it.

  The hand was cruel in his hair. Neck tendons protested. “You have seen nothing. Nothing, Kellin. I am proud, but practical; I admit my lesser place without hesitation or compunction. The power I command is paltry compared to his.”

  Paltry enough to kill him with little more than a gesture.

  Corwyth released his hair. Kellin’s neck was too weak to support his skull. It flopped down again, pressing face against winter horsehair. He breathed in its
scent, grateful that he could.

  “Think on it,” Corwyth said. “Consider your circumstances, and recall that your life depends entirely upon the sufferance of Lochiel.”

  Kellin rather thought his life depended entirely on his ability to breathe, regardless of Lochiel’s intentions. As he lay flopped across the saddle, he concentrated merely on in- and exhalations. Lochiel could wait.

  * * *

  When they cut him from the horse and dragged him down, Kellin wondered seriously if death might be less painful. He bit into his tongue to keep from disgracing himself further by verbal protestation, but the sudden sheen of perspiration gave his weakness away. Corwyth saw it, weighed it, then nodded to himself.

  “Against the tree,” the Ihlini ordered his companions.

  The two hauled Kellin bodily to the indicated tree and left him at its foot to contemplate exposed roots as he fought to maintain consciousness. Sweat ran freely, dampening his hair. He lay mostly on one side. His wrists, though now cut free of the stirrup, were still tied together. He no longer was packed by horseback like so much fresh-killed meat, but the circumstances seemed no better.

  Kellin blew grit from his lips. The taste in his mouth was foul, but he had been offered no water.

  The sun was full up. They had been riding for hours without a single stop. In addition to the residual aches of the Midden battle and the discomfort of the ride, Kellin’s bladder protested. It was a small but signal irritant that compounded his misery.

  Kellin eased himself into a sitting position against the tree trunk. He sagged minutely, testing the fit of his ribs inside their loosened wrappings and bruised flesh, then let wood provide false strength; his own was negligible.

  I am young, strong, and fit…this is a minor inconvenience. Meanwhile, he hurt.

  Corwyth strode from his own mount to Kellin, who could not suppress a recoil as the Ihlini touched the binding around his wrists. “There, my lord: freedom.” The wrappings fell away. Corwyth smiled. “Test us as you like.”

  Kellin wanted to spit into the arrogant face. Corwyth knew he knew there was no reason to test. No man, Cheysuli or not, would risk his heart a second time to Ihlini magic.