A Tapestry of Lions

by Jennifer Roberson

  Kellin’s response was immediate. “I did not come to speak of my jehan!”

  “But we will.” The older man’s tone allowed no room for protest. “We should have had this conversation years ago.”

  “We will not have it now. My jehan has nothing to do with this.”

  “Your jehan has much to do with this. His desertion of you has to do with everything in your life.”

  “Enough.”

  “I have hardly begun.”

  “Then I will end it!” Kellin glared at the man. “I am still the Prince of Homana. My rank is higher than yours.”

  “Is it?” Black brows arched. “I think not. Not in the eyes of the gods…ah, of course—you do not recognize their sovereignty.” The shar tahl lifted a quelling hand. “In fact, you detest them because you believe they stole your jehan from you.”

  Much as he longed to, Kellin knew better than to shout. To give in to such a display was to weaken his position. “He was meant to be the heir. Not I. Not yet; my time was meant for later. They did steal him.”

  “A warrior follows his tahlmorra.”

  “Or obstructs the prophecy?” Kellin shook his head. “I think what they say of him is true: he is mad. No madman bases his actions on what is real. He does as he does because his mind is addled.”

  “Aidan’s mind is no more addled than your own,” the shar tahl retorted. “In fact, some would argue it is more sane than yours.”

  “Mine!”

  The warrior smiled grimly. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  For only an instant Kellin was silent. Then he laughed aloud, letting the sound fill the pavilion. “Because I drink? Because I wager? Because I lie with whores?” The laughter died, but the grin was undiminished. “These actions appear to be a tradition within my family. Shall I name you the names? Brennan, Hart, Corin—”

  “Enough.” The irony was banished. “You came because you wish to renounce your lir. Allow me to do my office. Bide a moment, my lord.” The shar tahl rose abruptly and moved to the doorflap. He ducked out, leaving Kellin alone with a silent black mountain cat. After a moment the priest returned and resumed his seat. His smile was humorless. “How may I serve my lord?”

  Kellin’s impatience faded. Hostility dissipated. If the man could aid him, he had best mend his manner. “The bonding was done hastily, to enable me to escape the Ihlini. Even she admits it.” He did not glance at Sima. “She speaks of balance, and the danger in lacking it. I have none.”

  The shar tahl now was serious. “You assumed lir-shape in anger?”

  “In anger, fear, panic…” Kellin sighed; the vestiges of pride and hostility faded utterly. Quietly, he explained what had happened—and how he had killed a man by tearing out his throat.

  The dark flesh by the older man’s eyes folded upon itself. His eyes seemed to age. “A harsh bonding. But more than that, an improper one. It is only half done.”

  “Half?” Kellin looked at the cat. “Do you mean I could renounce her?”

  “No. Not safely. Your lirlessness is ended; half-bonded or no, you will never be what you were. The question now is, what will you permit yourself to be?”

  Alarm bloomed. “What do you mean?”

  “You are angry,” the shar tahl said. “I perhaps understand it better than most—your jehan and I have shared many confidences.” The severity of the face now was replaced with a human warmth that nearly unmanned Kellin. “Aidan and I have spent much time together. It was why I desired to speak with you before, to explain his reasoning.”

  “Let him explain it!”

  The shar tahl sighed. “The proper time is not yet come.”

  Bitterness engulfed. “There never will be a ‘proper time’!” Kellin cried. “That is the point!”

  “No.” The shar tahl lifted a hand, then let it drop. “That is not the point. There will come a time, I promise…when the gods intend that you should meet.”

  “When he intends, you mean…and he never will.” Kellin gathered himself to rise. “This is bootless. It wastes my time.”

  “Sit down.” The tone was a whipcrack. “You have come to me with a serious concern that needs to be addressed. Set aside your hatred and hostility long enough, if you will, to permit me to explain that you are in grave danger.”

  “I have escaped the Ihlini.”

  “This has nothing to do with the Ihlini. This has to do with yourself. It is of the balance I speak.” The shar tahl glanced at Sima. “Has she explained what could happen?”

  “That I might be locked in beast-form if I lose my balance?” Kellin’s mouth twisted. “Aye. After she urged me to take lir-shape.”

  “Then she must have believed it necessary.” The shar tahl studied Sima with something very akin to sympathy, which seemed an odd thing to Kellin; the lir were considered far wiser than their warriors. “The lir are proscribed from attacking Ihlini. If she urged you to assume lir-shape before the proper time, fully cognizant of the risk, it was because she believed it necessary to preserve your life.” The yellow eyes were intent. “The life has been preserved. Now we must insure that the mind within the body is preserved as well.”

  “Burr—” Kellin cut it off. It was time for truth, not protest. Defiance crumbled in the face of his admission. “I have resented you for years.”

  “I know.” The shar tahl reached for a jug and cups, then poured two full. “Drink. What you must know will dry your mouth; wet it first, and then we shall begin.”

  “Can I learn it by dawn?”

  “A thing so vital as this cannot be learned in a night. It requires years.” Burr sipped his honey brew. “A young warrior is taught from the day of his birth how to strike the balance in all things. We are a proud race, we Cheysuli, and surpassingly arrogant—” Burr smiled, “—because we are, after all, the children of the gods…but we are not an angry race, nor one much given to war except when it is required. The Homanans have called us beasts and predators, but it is because of what we can do with our bodies, not our desire for blood. We are a peaceful race. That desire for peace—in mind as well as lifestyle—is taught from birth. By the time a young man reaches the age to receive a lir, his knowledge of self-control is well-rooted. His longing for a lir supersedes the recklessness of youth—no young Cheysuli would risk the wrath of the gods that might result in lirlessness.”

  “Is that true?” Kellin asked. “You are a shar tahl—would the gods deny a boy a lir because he does not suit their idea of a well-behaved Cheysuli?”

  Burr laughed. “You are the most defiant and reckless of Cheysuli I have ever known. Yet there is the proof that the gods do as they will.” A hand indicated Sima. “You have your place, Kellin. You have a tahlmorra. Now it is your task to acknowledge the path before you.”

  “And take it?”

  “If it is what the gods intend.”

  “Gods,” Kellin muttered. “They clutter up a life. They bind a man’s spirit so he cannot do as he will.”

  “You, I believe, are a perfect example of the fallacy in that logic. You do—and have always done—precisely as you desire.” Burr sipped liquor, then set the cup aside. “You must fully accept your lir. To remain half-bonded sentences both of you to a life to which no man—or lir—should ever be subjected.”

  “Madness,” Kellin said. He worked a trapped twig from the weave of soiled breeches. “What if I told you I believed it was arrant nonsense, this belief that lirlessness results in madness? That I believe it is no more than a means for a man’s misplaced faith in his gods to control him, or destroy him?”

  Burr smiled. “You would not be the first to suggest that. In fact, if you were not the heir to the Lion and therefore assured of your place, I would say your defiance and determination resembles the a’saii.” He drank, watching Kellin over the rim of his cup. “It is not easy for a man to accept that one moment he is in the fullness of his prime, healthy and strong, while the next he is sentenced to the death-ritual despite his continued health and strength. It
is the true test of what we are, Kellin; do you know of any other race which willingly embraces death when there appears to be no reason to die?”

  “No. No other race is so ludicrously constrained by the gods.” Kellin shook his head, tapping the twig against his knee. “It is a waste, Burr! Just as kin-wrecking is!”

  “That, I agree with,” Burr said. “Once, the custom had its place…there was a need, Kellin.”

  “To cast out a man because he was maimed?” Kellin shook his head. “The loss of a hand does not render a man incapable of serving his clan or his kin.”

  “Once, it might have. If a one-handed warrior failed, because of his infirmity, to protect a single life, he was a detriment. There was a time we dared not permit such a risk, lest our people die out entirely.”

  Kellin gestured. “Enough. I am speaking now of the death-ritual. I contend it is nothing more than a means of control, a method by which the gods—and shar tahls, perhaps?—” he grinned in arch contempt, “—can force others to do their will.”

  Burr was silent. His eyes were partially hidden behind lowered lashes. Kellin thought perhaps he might at last have provoked the older man into anger, but when Burr at last met his eyes there was nothing of anger in his expression. “What the gods have required of men is duty, honor, reverence—”

  “And self-sacrifice!”

  “—and sacrifice,” Burr finished. “Aye. I deny none of it. But if we had not offered any of these things, Kellin, you would not be seated here before me contesting the need for such service.”

  “Words!” Kellin snapped. “You are as bad as the Ihlini. You weave magic with words, to ensorcell me to your will.”

  “I do nothing but state the truth.” Burr’s tone was very quiet, lacking all emotion. “If a single man in your birthline had turned his back on his tahlmorra, you would not be the warrior destined to inherit the Lion.”

  “You mean if my jehan had turned his back on his tahlmorra.” Kellin wanted to swear. “This is merely another attempt to persuade me that what my jehan did was necessary. You said yourself you are friends…I hear bias in his favor.”

  “It was necessary,” Burr said. “Who can say what might have become of you if Aidan had not renounced his title? Paths can be altered, Kellin—and prophecies. If Aidan had remained here, he would be Prince of Homana. You would merely be third in line behind Brennan and Aidan. That extra time could well have delayed completion of the prophecy, and destroyed it utterly.”

  “You mean, it might have prevented me from lying with whatever woman I am supposed to lie with—according to the gods—in order to sire Cynric.” Kellin tossed aside the twig. “A convenience, nothing more. No one knows this. Just as no one knows for certain a warrior goes mad if his lir is killed.” He smiled victory. “You see? We have come full circle.”

  Burr’s answering smile was grim. “But I can name you the proofs: Duncan, Cheysuli clan-leader, kept alive by Ihlini sorcery though his lir was dead, and used as a weapon to strike at his son, Donal, who was meant to be Mujhar.”

  Kellin felt cold; he knew this history.

  “Teirnan, Blais’ jehan, who assumed the role of clan-leader to the heretical a’saii. A warrior who would have, given the chance, pulled Brennan from the Lion and mounted it himself.” Burr’s tone was steady. “Tiernan renounced his lir. In the end, completely mad, he threw himself into the Womb of the Earth before the eyes of your jehan and jehana in an attempt to prove himself worthy to hold the Lion. He did not come out.”

  Kellin knew that also.

  Burr said softly, “First we will speak of your jehan. Then of the balance.”

  Kellin wanted it badly. “No,” he said roughly. “What I learn of my jehan will be learned from him.”

  Burr looked beyond him to the slack doorflap. He said a single word—a name—and a warrior came in. In his arms he held a small girl asleep against his shoulder; by his side stood a touslehaired boy of perhaps three years.

  “There is another,” the shar tahl said. “Another son; do you recall? Or have you forgotten entirely that these are your children?”

  “Mine—” Kellin blurted.

  “Three royal bastards.” Burr’s tone was unrelenting. “Packed off to Clankeep like so much unwanted baggage, and never once visited by the man who sired them.”

  Thirteen

  Kellin refused to look at the children, or at the warrior with them. Instead he stared at Burr. “Bastards,” he declared, biting off the word.

  The shar tahl’s voice was calm. “That they are bastards does not preclude the need for parents.”

  Kellin’s lips were stiff. “Homanan halflings.”

  “And what are you, my lord, but Homanan, Solindish, Atvian, Erinnish…?” Burr let it trail off. “I am pure Cheysuli.”

  “A’saii?” Kellin challenged. “You believe I should be replaced?”

  “If you refuse your lir, assuredly.” Burr was relentless. “Look at your children, Kellin.”

  He did not want to. He was desperate not to. “Bastards have no place in the line of succession—”

  “—and therefore do not matter?” Burr shook his head. “That is the Homanan in you, I fear…in the clans bastardy bears no stigma.” He paused. “Did Ian know you felt so? He, too, was a bastard.”

  “Enough!” Kellin hissed. “You try to twist me inside out no matter what I say.”

  “I shall twist you any way I deem necessary, if the result achieved is as I believe it should be.” Burr looked at the boy. “Young, but he promises well. Homanan eyes—they are hazel—but the hair is yours. And the chin—”

  “Stop it.”

  “The girl is too young yet to show much of what she shall be—”

  “Stop it!”

  “—and of course the other boy is but a handful of months.” Burr looked at Kellin, all pretenses to neutrality dropped. “Explain it away, if you please. Justify your actions with regard to these children, though you refuse to permit your jehan the same favor.”

  “He traded me for the gods!” It was a cry from the heart Kellin regretted at once. “Can you not see—”

  “What I see are two children without a jehan,” Burr said. “Another yet sleeps at the breast of a Cheysuli woman who lost her own baby. I submit to you, my lord: for what did you trade them?”

  Words boiled up in Kellin’s mouth, so many at first he could not find a single one that would, conjoined with another, make any sense at all. Furious, he thrust himself to his feet. At last the words broke free. “I get nothing from you. No truths, no support, no honorable service! Nothing more than drivel mouthed by a man who is truer to the a’saii than to his own Mujhar!”

  Burr did not rise. “Until you can look on those children and acknowledge your place in their lives, speak no word against Aidan.”

  Kellin extended a shaking hand. He pointed at Sima. “I want no lir.”

  “You have one.”

  “I want to be rid of her.”

  “And open the door to madness.”

  “I do not believe it.”

  Burr’s eyes glinted. “Then test it, my lord. Challenge the gods. Renounce your lir and withstand the madness.” He rose and took the small girl from the silent warrior’s arms, settling her against his shoulder. Over her head, he said, “It will be a true test, I think. Certainly as true as the one Teirnan undertook at the Womb of the Earth.”

  Desperate, Kellin declared, “I have no room in my life for the impediment of halfling bastards!”

  “That,” Burr said, “is between you and the gods.”

  Kellin shut his teeth. “You are wrong. All of you. I will prove you wrong.”

  “Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu,” Burr said. Then, as Kellin turned to flee, “Cheysuli i’halla shansu.”

  * * *

  Kellin did not stay the rest of the night in Clankeep but took back his borrowed mount and rode on toward Mujhara. He had moved beyond the point of weariness into the realm of an exhaustion so complex as to rende
r him almost preternaturally alert. Small sounds were magnified into a clamor that filled his head, so that there was no room for thought. It pleased him. Thought renewed anger, reestablished frustration, reminded him yet again that no matter what he said—no matter who he was—no Cheysuli warrior would accept him as one of them so long as he lacked a lir.

  They would sooner have me go mad with a lir than go mad because I renounce one.

  It made no sense to Kellin. But neither did the mountain cat who shadowed his horse, loping in its wake.

  He had tried to send her away. Sima refused to go. Since he had made very clear his intentions to forswear her, the cat had said nothing. The link was suspiciously empty.

  As if she no longer exists. And yet here she was; he had only to glance over a shoulder to see her behind him.

  Would it not be simpler if he shut off that link forever? Certainly less hazardous. If Sima died while as yet unbonded, he could escape the death-ritual.

  Though Burr says I will not.

  Kellin shifted in the saddle, attempting to lessen the discomfort of his chest. The shar tahl had challenged him to test the conviction that a lirless warrior went mad. And he had accepted. Part of the reason was pride, part a natural defiance; uneasily Kellin wondered what might happen if he lost the challenge. If, after all, the Cheysuli belief was based on truth.

  What does it feel like to go mad? He slowed his mount as he approached the city; star- and moonlight, now tainted by Mujhara’s illumination, made it difficult to see the road. What was Teirnan thinking, as he leapt into the Womb?

  What had his father thought, and his mother, as the warrior without a lir tested his right to the Lion, and was repudiated?

  I would never throw myself into the Womb of the Earth. It was— He brought himself up short. Madness?

  Kellin swore the vilest oaths he could think of. An arm scrubbed roughly across his face did nothing to rid his head of such thoughts. It smeared grime and crusted blood—he had left Clankeep without even so much as a damp cloth for cleaning his face—and tousled stiffened hair. His clothing was rigid with dried blood and scratched at bruised flesh. Inside the flesh, bones ached.