A Tapestry of Lions

by Jennifer Roberson

  Devin still knelt. His face was drained by the knowledge of what he had felt, of the power in my father. “How can I serve with such blankness within me?”

  Lochiel smiled. “You are empty. It will pass. We will see to it you are filled. The god himself will do it.” He looked at me and smiled, then stretched out his hand. “Take my daughter. Get a son upon her. The wedding shall follow when I am certain she has conceived.” He put our hands together, flesh against flesh.

  I could look at no one save Devin. My father’s voice became a part of the chamber, like a chair or a hanging; one did not acknowledge such things when Devin was in the room.

  His eyes burned brilliant green. His spirit could not contain the avidity of his desire.

  No more than I could mine.

  “There is no need to wait,” Lochiel said. “Much is lost, in waiting. The Wheel of Life is turning; if we do not stop it soon, our own lives will end.”

  Four

  We had blown out the candles and now lay abed, delighting in discovery. Devin’s breath warmed my neck. “What did he mean?” His mouth shaped the words against my flesh. “Why do our lives end if the Wheel of Life keeps turning?”

  “A Cheysuli thing…” I turned my head to kiss his chin; to savor the taste of his flesh. “Must we speak of this now?”

  His laughter was soft, as were his fingertips as they cherished my flesh. “Aye. You said you would teach me everything—well, perhaps not this.”

  Indeed not this. It made me blush, to know myself so wanton. “I am not the one to speak—” I caught my breath short and bit into my lip as his hand grew more insistent, “—but—it seems to me—gods, Devin!—that with all the wits you have lost, you did not forget this.” I used his emphasis.

  Devin laughed again: a rumble deep in his chest. His hand moved to my breasts, tracing their contours. His flesh was darker than mine—I am Ihlini fair, and his eyes were green in place of my ice-gray—but our bones were similar. We Ihlini breed true.

  His voice was vibrant. “A man forgets little in the way a body works in congress with a woman.”

  “So it would seem.” Our hips were sealed together. I turned toward him again, glorying in the feel of his flesh against my own. “The Wheel of Life is a Cheysuli thing. They speak in images, often: the Wheel, the Loom, and so on. They are, if nothing else, a colorful race.” I traced the flesh of his chest, glad I could no longer count his ribs. The muscle was firm again. I avoided the scar left over from the healed knife wound. “This prophecy of theirs bids to end our people by making a new race. The Firstborn. If we keep them from that, if we destroy the prophecy, their Wheel will stop turning, and the world as we know it will continue as it is.”

  “As it is?”

  “Well—as it should be. It will take time to turn them away from their gods. They are ignorant people, all of them.”

  “The Cheysuli?”

  It was difficult to concentrate as I explored his body. “And others. The Homanans. The Ellasians. The island savages.” I touched his lips with my fingers. “Even the Solindish must suffer—it is a Cheysuli warrior who holds the throne in Lestra.”

  “Heresy,” he whispered; his tone was amused.

  “So it is.”

  “And if we make a child, we can stop this Wheel?”

  “My father is convinced.”

  He turned then and put his hand on my belly, spreading his fingers. The warmth of his palm was welcome. “Have we made it, then?”

  I laughed. “Would it please you so much to be quit of your duty after a single night?”

  “Duty? Duty is something you do with no real desire for it.” The hand tightened as he bent down to taste my mouth. “This is no duty.”

  Breathlessly, I asked, “And if I have not conceived?”

  “Then we will continue with this ‘duty.’” His tongue traced my eyelids. “Do you think I wish to stop?”

  It was abrupt, the chill in my soul. I could not answer.

  He sensed my mood immediately and ceased the slow seduction. “What is it?”

  I was reluctant to say it but felt I owed him truth. “There is a—strangeness—in you.”

  The words were too facile. “When a man knows nothing of his past, strangeness is natural.”

  “Aye. But—” I broke it off, sighing; this was not a topic I wished to pursue. Now.

  He did. “But?”

  “I wish—I wish you were whole. I wish you knew yourself. I wish you were all of a piece, so I need not wonder what bits and pieces may yet be missing.”

  Devin laughed. “I am whole where it counts.”

  “I am serious.”

  In that moment, so was he. Seduction and irony fled. He turned onto his back. Our hair mingled, black on black against the pallor of pillows. Strands of mine were wound around his forearm. “Aye, I wish I recalled my past—every day, I wish it, and in the darkness of the nights…but it is gone. There is nothing, save a yawning emptiness.”

  It hurt to hear him so vulnerable. “I want it to be vanquished.”

  There was no light, save from the stars beyond the casement. I could see little of his face and nothing of his expression. “I cannot spend my life wondering what I might be if it never is recalled…the present is what matters. What I am is what you are making me. Ginevra—” But then he laughed softly, banishing solemnity, as if he could not bear to think about his plight. He twisted his head to look at me. “What woman would not desire such a man? You can meld me this way and that, until you have what you want.”

  My vehemence stunned us both. “I have what I want.”

  He caught his breath a moment; released it slowly. He turned onto a hip, moving to face me, to wind his fingers in my hair. He pulled my face to his even as he leaned to me. “Then we shall have to give your father the grandson he desires for the Seker, and then we shall make our own.”

  He was right. What counted was the now, not the yesterday. If the child were not conceived soon, the Wheel might turn far enough so that we were destroyed in place of the Cheysuli.

  But I could not tell him what I most feared. That the emptiness in him, the bleakness in his eyes that he would not acknowledge, might rob us of our future.

  * * *

  My father gave us five days and nights together, and then he summoned Devin. It piqued me that he would give us so little time—did he think we could conjure a child with a rune?—but I did not complain. Devin was nervous enough without my poor temper, and I dared make no response to my father.

  I told Devin to go, that it was necessary he spend much time with my father, to better prepare him for the role he would assume once he had received the god’s blessing. I saw the look in his eye, the tension in his body, and wished I knew a way to banish the concern.

  But it, too, was necessary; a man facing Lochiel must understand what he did, lest he forget his proper place in the ordering of the world.

  And so I sent him off with a kiss upon his fingers and one upon his mouth, knowing very well my father would test him in ways no one, not even Lochiel’s daughter, could predict. If he were to assume an aspect of power within the hierarchy of the Ihlini, he had to learn the way.

  It was late afternoon when I sent Devin to my father; only the Seker and Lochiel knew when I might see him again. I set myself the task of embroidering a runic design into the tunic I made for him—green on black—and tried not to think bleak, empty thoughts about what might happen if my father decided, all on his own, that Devin’s missing memory might render him weak in the ways of Ihlini power.

  My mother came into our chambers. She wore deep, rich red. Matching color painted her lips. “So.”

  I gritted my teeth and did not look up, concentrating fiercely on the design beneath my hands. She would say what she had come to say; I would not permit provocation.

  The sound of her skirts was loud as she came closer. “So, in all ways my daughter is a woman.”

  Do not be provoked— I nodded absently, taking immense care
with a particularly elaborate rune.

  She waited. She expected a response. When I made none, the air between us crackled. So close to the Gate, such anger is personified.

  I completed one rune, then began another.

  My mother’s hand swooped down and snatched the tunic from me. “And did the earth move for you? Did the stars fall from the sky?”

  Sparks snapped from my fingers. With effort, I snuffed them out. A single drop of blood welled on a fingertip, where the needle had wounded me as she snatched the tunic away. I looked up and saw her smile; it satisfied her to know she had won the battle of wills.

  Or had she?

  I shook back my hair and rose from my stool, folding hands primly in violet skirts. “Indeed,” I said, “it did move. And will again, I trust, when he returns to me.” I smiled inoffensively. “It should please you to know your daughter is well serviced. I have no complaints of his manhood, or the frequency of our coupling.”

  Breath hissed as she inhaled. The color in her cheeks vied for preeminence over the paint on her mouth. “I will have no such language from you!”

  I laughed at her. “You began it!”

  “Ginevra—”

  “By the Seker himself,” I said, “can you not let me have this? You would take everything else from me, even my father’s attention…what wrong have I done you? I am neither enemy nor rival—I am your daughter!”

  Her face was white. “He gives you everything. I have to beg his attention.”

  “Surely not. I know otherwise. I see otherwise.” I kept my hands in skirt folds, so as not to divulge the tension in them. “You are only angry that you misjudged Devin. You looked upon his injuries and dismissed him at once, pleased your daughter would wed an unhandsome man. And now that he is healed and you see he is beautiful, you are angry with yourself. Now that we have bedded and you see I am content, you desire very much to destroy what we have.” I lifted my head. “I will not permit it.”

  Melusine laughed. “He will break,” she said. “When he meets the god, or before…perhaps now, with Lochiel. His head is empty of knowledge, his spirit empty of power. He is no better than a Cheysuli hauled here before the Gate, lirless and powerless. Pleasing in bed or no, he is wholly expendable.”

  I gritted my teeth. “The lifestone knew him. If he had no power, it would have consumed him.”

  Crimson lips mocked a true smile. “There is another test.”

  “My father tends to such things.”

  “You should tend to this one; you share a bed with a stranger. What if Lochiel were to discover he is not Devin at all?”

  It was a refrain. “The lifestone knew him.”

  “Test him,” she said. “Break it.”

  “It would kill him!”

  “A chip,” she said scornfully. “The tiniest chip would divulge the truth.”

  The air crackled between us. This time it was my doing. “I pity you,” I told her. “That you must stoop to this merely because he is a man who prefers the daughter to the mother.”

  “What?”

  “I know your ways better than you think. I have seen you at meals, and other times. Do you think I am blind? You court his favor assiduously…but he gives it all to me.”

  Red lips writhed. “I challenge you,” she said. “Break a chip from the stone. Otherwise you will always wonder if you sleep with Devin of High Crags, or a man of another heritage.”

  Sparks flew as I pointed at the door. “Go!”

  Melusine smiled. She built an elaborate rune in the air between us; before I could build my own to ward away the spell, she breathed upon the rune. It was blown to the bed, where it sank into the coverlet and disappeared. “There,” she said. “Let us see what pleasure it brings you when next he services you.”

  “There are other beds,” I told her. “And if you ensorcell those, there is always the floor.”

  Melusine threw down the tunic. In her hands, all the stitching had come undone. My labor was for naught.

  I waited until she was gone. Then I went to the chest and drew out the pouch in which he had put his lifestone. I loosened the thong-snugged mouth and poured the ring into my hand.

  In my palm the stone was black. No life moved within it. But I had seen it burn twice; first, at my father’s touch; then on Devin’s hand.

  A lifestone crushed ended an Ihlini’s life. To kill a Cheysuli, you kill his lir; to kill us, you destroy the lifestone.

  If he were not what he seemed and I struck a chip from the stone, nothing at all would happen and we would know the truth. But if he were Devin and I broke a piece of the stone, it would injure him.

  I shut up the ring in my hand. Gold bit into my flesh. The stone was cool, lifeless. There must be trust between us. If I doubt, I undermine the foundations we have built.

  At my mother’s behest.

  I bent and picked up the ruined tunic. With great care I picked out the tattered embroidery, gathered silk thread, then began with deliberation to wind it around the ring. I would have him wear the stone where my mother could see it.

  When that was done, I would begin the painstaking spell to undo the binding she had put upon the bed. Kept close in my arms, where the emptiness did not matter, it was his only haven.

  * * *

  Five days later, after a night-long meeting with my father, Devin came to me high of heart just as dawn broke. He woke me with a kiss. The bleakness was replaced with good humor and an unbounded enthusiasm. He showed no effects from staying up all night. “He says the power is building. He can feel it, he says.”

  I sat upright. “Are you sure?”

  He laughed joyously. “I cannot—I feel precisely the same today as I did when I awoke here—but he assures me it is true. And so I begin to think I may be of some use after all.”

  “Some use,” I agreed. “But no one suggests how much.” I laughed at his feigned heart-blow. “And what are you planning? I see the look in your eye.”

  His hand rose in the gesture I knew so well. Two rings glinted upon it: my emerald, and the lifestone. There was no hesitation in his manner. His fingers were steady, assured, and the rune was more elaborate than any I had seen from him before.

  “Kir’a’el!” I cried. “Devin—”

  It shimmered in the air. Then it snuffed out the candles and became the only illumination in the room, dominating the dawn. It set his eyes aflame.

  “Only a trick,” he said negligently, but he could not hide his satisfaction.

  “Three months ago you could not bestir the air to save your soul.” I raised my own hand and built a matching rune. It was the distaff side of kir’a’el. Mine met his; they melted together like wax, then twined themselves into one. The conjoined rune glowed with the purest form of godfire. I stared hard at Devin, filled with blazing pride. This was what we were born for. “Together we can make anything!”

  “A child?”

  “Not yet.” We touched our hands together, let the new rune bathe our flesh, then bespoke the word that banished it. “We shall have to try again.”

  His eyes were still alight with the acknowledgment of power. “Come out with me now. I have horses waiting.”

  “You are sure of yourself.”

  “Then I will go by myself.”

  “Hah.” I arched brows haughtily. “You could not even get beyond the Field of Beasts, let alone find the defile.”

  “I found it before.”

  “Tied to the back of a horse like so much dead meat? Aye, you found it.” I caught his hand and kissed it. “Let us go, then. I could not bear to have you lost.”

  But even as I dressed, having banished him from the chamber—otherwise I would never progress beyond the disrobing stage—I was aware of a tiny flicker of trepidation. For so long he had been helpless, bereft of Ihlini power, yet now he promised power in full measure. I did not begrudge it—we are what we are—but I was concerned.

  Would he become so consumed by the power and Lochiel’s ambitions that he would negl
ect me? Once the child was born, would there be a need for me? Or would I become as my mother: valueless in their eyes because my duty was done?

  Naked, I shivered. Before me I conjured his eyes, so avid in tenderness. I felt his arms, his mouth; knew the answer in a body perfectly attuned to his.

  Lochiel had sired me. Melusine had borne me. But it was Devin of High Crags who had brought me to life. Without him, my flame dimmed.

  I will not be defined by the man with whom I sleep.

  Yet he was defined by me. I was his only water in a wasteland of emptiness.

  * * *

  Devin took me out of Valgaard into the rocky canyons. It was all new to him, who had seen none of it, and I gloried in the telling of our history. He was fascinated, asking many questions, until the cat squalled. The noise of it echoed eerily.

  He reined his horse in at once. His face was stark white, bleached of color and substance. Even his lips cried out for my mother’s paint.

  “Only a cat,” I said. “Snow cat, I would wager. They sometimes come into the canyons. Though usually in winter.” I frowned. “It is early for it, but—”

  The cat screamed again. Devin stared blindly.

  I searched for any subject to break his mood. “My father will call for a hunt. Perhaps you would care to go. You could have the pelt for your own…or perhaps I could make a coverlet for the cradle—”

  He turned to me then and fixed me with a gaze of such brittle intensity I thought he might shatter. His voice was a travesty. “The cat is calling for something.”

  I shrugged. “Its mate, perhaps. Devin—”

  A shudder took him. The tendons stood up in his neck like rope knotted much too tightly. His mouth moved rigidly as if to form words, but no voice issued.

  “Devin—”

  “Do you hear it?” His eyes were wholly empty. “A lonely, unhappy beast.”