A Tapestry of Lions

by Jennifer Roberson

  His words were in my head. “Cheysuli—Ihlini…what difference does it make? What matters is that we have one another.”

  I had sworn him an oath.

  I looked at the cat. “Oaths are made to be broken.”

  He was the father of my child.

  The father of the Firstborn.

  Anguish welled up. “Let me be free of this!”

  It echoed in the undercroft, disturbing all the cats.

  They know what they have lost. They long for it back.

  “‘Let them alone,’ you said. ‘They have known their cages too long.’”

  He was not caged. He would not be caged. My father would kill him, then strip the pelt from his body and use it for a rug.

  Would he have us couple on it when he saw I had no bed?

  The jaws clenched together. “For that, then,” I said. “I honor my oath that much—and then we are quit of each other.”

  I knew what I had lost. I longed for it back. But knew I could never have it.

  * * *

  In the hour before dawn I went out of Valgaard, crossed the smoky Field of Beasts, and passed through the defile into the canyon beyond. There I found the cat I had known as man, whose name was Kellin.

  I was bundled in a heavy cloak. “You know what you are,” I said. “I know what you are. According to my father, what you are is what you shall be—until he desires to add a new rug to his floor to keep his feet warm in winter.”

  The eyes were huge and green. Sense had returned to them. They glared balefully.

  “I owe you an oath,” I said. “I gave it freely, not knowing what you are, and could in all good conscience claim its meaning forfeit…but there are things between us that are not so easily governed.” I looked at the female beside him. “Did you tell her there is a child? That the child of the prophecy, so beloved by the Cheysuli, lives here in my body?” I pressed my hand against cloak-swathed belly. “If I suffer this child to live, I bring down my people. I destroy an entire race. That I will not do. But neither will I permit my father to kill you. I have no desire to gaze each winter upon the stones they will put in the sockets that once were your eyes.”

  The black tail lashed. Green eyes did not blink.

  “Then come,” I said roughly, angry that I cared. “I will set you free of this shape so you may resume your own. We have fought for centuries, the Ihlini and Cheysuli—I think it will do no harm if we fight a while longer.”

  If it came, it came. But I would not, as my mother threatened, live to see it. The god would, in making the bargain, require something to seal it. All I had of value was what he had given me.

  Worth giving up, I thought, so I need not spend the centuries watching the descendants of our races waste lives trying to kill one another in the name of a prophecy.

  Worth giving up so I need not replace my mother in my father’s bed for the balance of forever.

  Interval

  The woman knelt at the Gate, and fire bloomed in her hands. She held them out steadily, reached across the pool, and shaped living godfire into a reflection of itself. In her hands the god writhed as he writhed within the Gate.

  She parted her hands and drew them apart. Flame surged in her palms, licking from her fingers as each gout of godfire stretched toward the other. Then she brought her hands together and joined the halves again. She built of flame a goblet, then fed it on itself. Bloody runes formed on the rim. In the bowl sparks snapped; smoke rose from the contents.

  She raised it to her mouth and drank the flame away. The goblet was banished. Godfire glowed in her eyes.

  She looked at the cat who crouched nearby, beside the rim of the Gate. Tufted ears were flattened. Fire blazed in green eyes as the tail beat basalt.

  The woman’s mouth opened and smoke issued forth. Her voice was alive with light. Each word was a spark that broke from her lips and formed into a rune. The words she spoke bound themselves into sentences, until the runes formed a necklet that dangled in midair.

  “He did not know,” she said. “He believed himself Ihlini. He came to you consenting, eager for your touch, eager to serve the Seker. He meant to bind himself to you. What you revealed in his soul was not what he expected.”

  Viscid liquid boiled. Smoke billowed up. The runes that had been words burned brightly in the darkness.

  “I do not question the punishment; he is Cheysuli, and transgressor. But he meant only to serve. His heart was empty of hostility. He meant no sacrilege.”

  A second necklet was conjoined with the first into a glowing girdle. It moved from the air to bind itself around her hips; to seal her wrists together. Smoke issued from her nostrils. Her eyes wept blood.

  “To the god of the netherworld, Who Made and Dwells in Light; who illuminates our souls, I offer this bargain: my immortal life in exchange for his true guise.”

  The blood she wept was black. It ran down her cheeks to fall into the Gate, where the godfire hissed in welcome to itself.

  She prostrated herself. Her hair tumbled free of pins and fell down into the Gate, where the godfire crept up the strands. It lingered at her hairline, then spilled in a glistening net to sheathe her face in a glowing filigree.

  Her breath was made of flames. “Let him go,” she begged. “Let him be a man. I will give you my life. I will give you the child.”

  Godfire gouted forth. It broke in a wave over the cat, bound it in white fire, then dragged it inexorably toward the Gate.

  “No!” she cried. “I promised you the child!”

  Claws locked into stone. And then the claws were human fingers with bloodied, broken nails digging into smoking rock. “Ginevra!” he shouted, with the voice and mouth of a man. “Ginevra!”

  She broke free of her bonds and thrust herself to her knees, hands locked around wrists that were fleshed in human flesh. She dragged him forth from the Gate, breaking bonds. He climbed out, dripping gouts of godfire, and was reborn as a man.

  Her grasp on his wrists broke as she fell to her knees. “Done,” she gasped.

  The man’s breathing was labored. He bared human teeth in a snarl that was wholly bestial, as if he had forgotten how to make his mouth form words.

  “Go,” she said raggedly. “The bargain is made. If you linger now, you invite his renewed interest.”

  The man laughed harshly. He knelt upon the floor in an aspect of obeisance, but the burning in his eyes was born of different loyalties. “‘The Lion shall lie down with the witch.’”

  She stared at him. “What?”

  “My jehan had the right of it. And now we are wed—Lochiel’s daughter and the Prince of Homana.” The laughter broke again from a throat made raw from fire. “How the shar tahls will untangle our birthlines I dare not predict; it may take more decades than either of us has.”

  Her face spasmed. “Go.”

  “Not without you.”

  Her breath halted, then resumed. Color ebbed in a face of fragile, faceted planes, delicate as the arches that shattered overhead. “That is finished. That is over.”

  Green eyes burned in the clean, sculpted features that were, in their fierceness, in their avidity, far more feral than human. He was predator to her prey.

  “Go,” she said again, as the Gate behind her blazed. “There is nothing between us now.” He closed his hand around her wrist. “What is between us now is of an entirely different making than what we shared in bed.”

  The woman’s laughter echoed in basalt, and crystal arches. “Enmity?”

  He pulled her from the floor. “His name is Cynric.”

  PART V

  One

  Kellin knew it at once. She does not understand—she has no comprehension of what we did here, in drinking from the cup.

  Ginevra tore free of his grasp. Between them she built a wall of conjoined, blazing runes.

  His own shredded it. “I drank of the cup,” he told her. “What I know is not forgotten.”

  Ice-gray eyes were black in comprehension. “What have I
done?” she whispered. “What have I wrought?”

  Oddly, he wanted to laugh. “I think—peace.” His mind moved ahead to means. Kellin turned. “Only one thing remains—”

  She saw what he meant to do. “No! Not that—”

  He did not heed her but went straight to the glassy basalt pedestal, all twisted upon itself, and snatched up the heavy links. He would take the chain to his father and prove himself worthy of being Aidan’s son.

  He turned back to Ginevra. Her face was bathed in light, but the shadowed hollows beneath her cheeks underscored the exquisite architecture of her face. Gods, but she is magnificent. They wrought well when they made her. Hoarsely, he said, “Now we go.”

  “No! Not me!”

  She was pride incarnate, and beautiful, blazing with determination. Light from the Gate glowed in her hair. All of it was silver now save for the pure white frame around her face. She did not know. She had not comprehended what the god had stolen from her in addition to what was offered.

  Knowing what she is alters nothing. NOTHING. I want her as much now as I did before. And—I need her as badly.

  Yet looking at her, knowing what he knew of the woman who was Ihlini, but also whom he loved, Kellin was keenly aware of a strange division in his soul. He, too, had been raised to believe in certain assurances, in certain absolutes, such as a conviction that only one race could—and should—survive. Assumptions were made predicated on traditional beliefs; he wondered now if perhaps disservices were done in the name of service.

  To the Ihlini, service to the Seker is as binding—and as honorable—as ours to Cheysuli gods. In that moment he understood. He comprehended at last how his father could, in the name of prophecy, give up a son.

  Should he not be able to sacrifice something as well to serve a greater purpose?

  He looked at the woman. A small part of him wanted to say she was Ihlini, and enemy, and therefore worthy of hatred; but the greater part of him recalled the other woman. Had he not said it himself? “Prejudice and hatred is created, not born.” He had loved her as an Ihlini, knowing no different; now that he did know, why should all things change? Ginevra was simply Ginevra.

  Kellin laughed painfully, cognizant of a truth that no child could comprehend. He gave up his son’s childhood, but will have him in adulthood. I give up old prejudice so I may have a woman, and therefore serve the greatest purpose of all.

  Ginevra scrambled up as he rounded the Gate. “I gave you your freedom! Now go!”

  His hand closed upon her wrist. The other clutched the chain. As she struggled to break free he caught handfuls of her hair, all tangled with bloodied fingers and links of rune-wrought gold. He held her imprisoned skull very still between his palms. “I want—” He could not say it. It filled all of his being, he overflowed with it, but he could not say it.

  Her face twisted. “You want the child!”

  Lips drew back. He did not mean to snarl, to bare his teeth before her, but much of him recalled what it was to be a cat in place of a man.

  She was Lochiel’s daughter.

  Kellin laughed. He saw the spasm in her face, the anguish in her eyes, and knew he had to explain. If he could but find the words. “Ginevra—” He shut his teeth together. Why not let her believe it is because of the child? It would be easier.

  But he no longer desired to predicate decisions on what was easiest. “I have— I have lost too much…” He would say it; he would. “In the past—too many people.” His breath stirred her hair, stark white around her face, silver in his hands. Say the words. Say them so she knows—say them so YOU know. “If—if it is heresy—” He drew in a hissing breath. “If it is heresy to love Lochiel’s daughter, then burn me now.”

  Her eyes were blackened sockets. Ginevra said nothing.

  His breath rushed out of his mouth. “I thought it was a lie. This Lion, I swore, would never lie down with the witch.” His eyes were avid as he cradled her face. “But he has, and found it good—”

  “How can you say that?” she cried. “Knowing what we are—”

  “Knowing what we are is why I can say it.” Kellin clung to her more fiercely, wanting very badly to find the proper words, but not knowing how. He was afraid, suddenly. Afraid he could not win. “Ginevra—”

  A gout of godfire burst from the Gate. It showered them with sparks. An eerie wailing whistle accompanied smoke.

  Ginevra flinched, then her eyes opened wide. “He knows—the god knows—”

  The ground beneath their feet shook. High overhead, one of the arches shattered. Glass rained down.

  “No more time—” Kellin dragged her with him as he headed toward the colonnade that led from the Gate to the passageway beyond. More glass shattered. The chime of its landing was swallowed by the keening from the Gate. Godfire lapped at the edges, then spilled onto the floor.

  She staggered next to him, fighting to regain balance. “I told you to go at once, so he would not renew his interest! You lingered too long!”

  He had, but it was for her. “Then we had best make haste.”

  The voice echoed in the cavern, carrying easily above the keening of the Gate. “Ginevra shall go nowhere. She is my daughter—and within the Seker’s keeping.”

  They spun in place. Lochiel stood on the far side of the Gate. In his outstretched palms danced crimson runes. His cloak smoked of godfire, purling around his body. The ale-brown eyes, in lurid light, were molten bronze in their sockets. The clean architecture of bone, so clear and pure in line, was visible behind the human mask that hid perverted purpose.

  “She made a mistake,” he said, “but it is easily rectified.” The runes in his hand flared higher, brighter, though the brilliance did not distract him. They twisted into knots, then broke apart and reformed. “First, there is the child. We cannot permit it to live. Ginevra knows that. You have only to look at her face.”

  Kellin did not. He knew what he would see there. She was profoundly Ihlini; he did not know if she loved him enough to bear the child whose presence in the world would alter hers forever.

  Scalloped arches broke from the ceiling in sheets and fell behind them, shattering against basalt. A splinter cut Kellin’s cheek. The floor trembled again. The Gate ran white with fire, bubbling over its edges. Kellin had mastered the art of working godfire in order to make runes, but he knew better than to believe he might turn back the flood. Lochiel was Lochiel; his arts were more powerful, and his intentions deadly.

  Kellin moved back two paces and took Ginevra with him.

  Lochiel’s eyes were fixed on his daughter. “She knows what must be done.”

  Color stood high in her face. “I serve the Seker.”

  “Aye,” he said, “you do. In all ways necessary—and in certain sacrifices.”

  “Wait—” Kellin blurted.

  Ginevra cried out, then fell to her knees. Her body shuddered once. Her face was alive with pain as her mouth formed a rictus, then loosened its hideous tension into slack astonishment. “—kill me…” she gasped. “—to kill it, you kill me—”

  “Sufficient punishment.” Lochiel’s runes blazed more brilliantly. “You made a mistake.”

  Kellin dragged her up and turned her from the Gate, pushing her onward. “Go on—go…get out of the cavern!”

  Ginevra screamed. “—inside me—” she gasped. “—so black—” She thrust out her hands and clawed at the air. Godfire sparked from fingertips. Her hair, in the light, glowed silver. “My own—father—”

  Lochiel said calmly, “I can make other children.”

  Kellin built his own rune and hurled it across the Gate, bleeding godfire as it flew. Lochiel’s blazed up, then shattered Kellin’s rune into a shower of impotent fragments. “Tricks,” the Ihlini said, and looked again at his daughter. “I would kill a thousand Ginevras to destroy the Firstborn.”

  “You—will not…you will not—” She reached out to Kellin, clawing. “Take—” She bit deeply into her lip as his fingers closed on hers. “I—wi
ll not—permit—”

  “What choice have you?” Lochiel asked. “This is your sacrifice. Accept it willingly, so you do not shame me.”

  “Shame you! You?” Ginevra writhed against the pain, laughing breathlessly. She clutched Kellin’s hand. “I need make no choice…you have made it for me—”

  Godfire rose up in the Gate, then fell back, splashing, to pool again on the floor.

  She clutched his hand more tightly. “Kellin.” Her grin was ghastly as she bared it to her father. “You are Lochiel the Ihlini, servant of the Seker—but we—we—are more…in my body lies the Firstborn. Do you think he will allow you to kill him?”

  Lochiel laughed. “It is unborn, Ginevra! And will stay that way.”

  “No—” She bit again into her lip. Blood ran red, unsullied; she had given up immortality. “He drank…and I drank. The child has tasted also. What we are together is more than even you can withstand.” She bared her bloodied teeth in the travesty of a smile. “The god, like your cats, is hungry. I think it is time he was fed.”

  Kellin felt her fingers bite into his own, setting fingernails. He saw then what she meant to do.

  “—help—” she gasped. “I cannot do it without you—”

  No. Nor could he without her, or the child in her body.

  “Earth magic,” Kellin murmured. “This is a Gate, like the Womb of the Earth. Here it is perverted, but there is still a stronger power—”

  “Now!” Ginevra cried, and the walls around them trembled. Archways tumbled down, shattering to fragments against the floor.

  Godfire blazed up. At its heart it burned white. In its reflection, as its servant, Lochiel’s face was without feature. He was, in that moment, the avatar of the god. “GINEVRA.”

  “He is hungry!” Ginevra cried. “He cries out for food!”

  “In the name of the Seker, in the name of Asar-Suti—”

  “Aye!” she cried. “In his name always, in all ways. You are his creature; let the god have you!”

  Lochiel’s eyes were livid. “I will raze this fortress before I permit you to take that child from here!”