Kellin drew in a breath. What manner of power will you claim? Will you be human at all?
Sima, at his feet, sent a lazy suggestion through the link that he let the child grow up and discover for himself what his tahlmorra was. That a father could, if he watered the clay too much, turn it into sludge so that no one at all could use it.
Kellin smiled. Is that what I was? Sludge?
Sima blinked. Clay with too much grit. You cut the flesh of an unsuspecting potter.
Ah. He laughed softly. And then he thought of other children who had no father to water them at all. I will have them come here.
Sima yawned. Be wary of asking too much. You gave them to those women; if you mean to take them back, you will do more harm than good.
They are my children.
Bastards.
He heard the echo of his own arrogance, and knew what Sima intended. He acceded to a greater wisdom than his own; she was, after all, lir. “Then I will give them leave to come whenever they like, so they will know their heritage.”
And?
He smiled. And I will go to them, so I will share their lives.
Better. She lashed her tail once. What will you do with the others?
What others? He stiffened. Are there more?
I mean the ones to come later.
Later! Sima, by all the gods, do you think me a selfish, rutting fool? What man in the world would turn to another woman with this one in his bed?
Sima purred more loudly and shut her golden eyes. She offered no comment. Her work was done.
Kellin laughed softly and looked down upon his son. Where would a warrior be without a lir such as Sima? Or Sleeta? Or Teel? Or Ian’s Tasha? Or Blais’ Tanni? He touched his son’s brow. What lir will you have—if you have a lir at all?
“Kellin.”
He glanced up. Hart stood in the doorway. He knew without being told what his kinsman had come to say. “They are here,” Kellin said. “Corin. And Keely.”
Hart’s face spasmed. “Did Aidan forewarn you? Or have you your own measure of his power of prophecy?”
It hurt, but he knew the pain was shared. It goaded all of them. “I have no power at all, save what any of us do. I know only what we all do— that the Lion shall swallow the lands.” He beckoned one of the women, gave her Cynric, and rose. “You came to give me Solinde. I think we will find they have come to do the same with their own realms.”
In Hart’s eyes was a measure of quiet respect. “Brennan wrote me of his fears, of his frustrations. He knew very well what you could be, if you permitted yourself to achieve it. I see now he was not wrong.” He nodded slightly. “A fitting legacy for my rujho. He wrought well, did Brennan. And Homana shall prosper for it.”
* * *
Kellin paused in the doorway; it was Corin he saw first. The Lord of Atvia stood with his back to the deep-silled casement. A ruddy fox sat beside one leg: Kiri. Midday sunlight glinted off lir-gold. The once-tawny hair had faded, intermixed with silver, and the beard Corin yet wore showed traces of white, but no sign of age softened the tension in his body or the pride in his stance. For all he had none of the color, he was Cheysuli to the bone.
Kellin was aware of them all within an instant of entering the chamber: Aileen’s solar, with Aileen in it, seated on a chair; near Corin stood a dark-haired woman with eloquent brown eyes he knew was Glyn, Corin’s cheysula; a second woman in a chair with hair a pristine white and eyes like ice—Ginevra’s eyes—was Ilsa, Hart’s Solindish queen; and Keely, Corin’s twin, seated nearby with Sean of Erinn at her back. The Erinnish lord was huge, dominating the chamber. Even in quietude his presence was of the kind another man, even a king, could not ignore.
And lastly Aidan, his father, who stood quietly behind his mother with a raven close at hand, watching the tableau as if he knew very well what was to come.
No doubt he does know. Kellin looked back at Corin even as Hart moved by him into the chamber to join Ilsa. He wondered what had passed among his kinfolk as they awaited his arrival. They had spoken of Brennan certainly; a quiet grief lingered in Keely’s eyes. Her face was tautly drawn over high, pronounced cheekbones. The stubborn jaw was set. But Kellin saw a softness there that she might not acknowledge; she was, they all said, a very proud woman.
He smiled faintly to see her in skirts. He had heard the stories of her tempestuous youth. She belongs in jerkin and leggings, with a sword in her hands. Shona, they said, had been very like Keely. In the face of his granddame, he looked for his mother. In the face of his grandsire, he looked for himself.
But Sean was all Erinnish, bred in the Aerie’s mews; Kellin was Cheysuli. As well as other things, which bring me to this point.
Sean’s rumble broke the silence. “Lad,” he said, “we’ve come for other things, but we owe our respects to the Mujhar of Homana.”
“Leijhana tu’sai,” Kellin said, and saw the startled speculation in Keely’s eyes; had she heard that Brennan’s heir repudiated his race? Well, it was time they understood. “In the name of my other grandsire, I welcome you to his home.”
“Yours,” Keely said softly.
Corin’s smile was grim. “I came to speak with Brennan on a matter of some importance. I find instead I must speak to his heir. It may be—difficult.”
Kellin nodded. “You none of you know me.” He looked at Keely; at Sean. “Not even you, who raised a proud daughter well worthy of my jehan. And I, am I fortunate, will be worthy of them.” He stepped aside and beckoned Sima in. The cat slid through with a rub against his leg, then padded to a deep-silled casement aglow with midday sun. She leapt up, curled herself, and settled on the sill. “You may have heard nonsense of a young, foolish prince desiring nothing of a lir for fear he would lose her, or himself if she were killed. But that man was ignorant. He did not know what manner of gift the gods offered.” He looked at Sima and saw they did the same. “In time, he came to see that a warrior without a lir is not a man at all…and wholly unfit to inherit the Lion Throne.”
Tension fled Corin’s shoulders. His smile widened. “News travels slowly.”
“Much more slowly than rumor.”
Ruefully, Corin laughed. “I know your birthline as well as my own, as I am in much of it…I have no quarrel with it. But you are young to be Mujhar.”
“I am the age you were when you sailed away to your island.”
Corin looked at Keely. “A long time ago, rujholla.”
Keely’s hair also had begun to silver, altering the gold of younger years. “Much too long, I fear, for either of us to recall the feelings of youth, and why we did what we did.” She smiled at her brother, then looked to Kellin. “We are informed there is a new Prince of Homana.”
Kellin saw no reason to rely on courtesy, or the traditions of a culture that now would be altered. “More than that,” he said easily. “Cynric is the Firstborn.”
Tension reinfected the chamber. He wondered if they believed he would not acknowledge such a thing; that he would deny sleeping with an Ihlini despite what it had produced.
Kellin understood; it would be so for years, until old prejudices died. “Her name is Ginevra. Among the Houses in her blood is our own: she is, as am I, a grandchild of Brennan.”
The silence was heavy. Keely broke it. “We do not question that. The gods made it clear that one day it would happen, though I admit none of us believed you might marry an Ihlini.” She slanted a troubled glance at Aidan, who had served as Cynric’s prophet. “But it is difficult for me to reconcile her as anything other than Lochiel’s child. He killed my daughter—”
“—and nearly his own.” Kellin saw it register; marked startled attention. “When he learned the child she carried was Cynric, he tried to murder her. Ginevra refused to submit to the sacrifice he and his god required. With my help—and the help of her unborn child—she killed her father. She destroyed him in the Gate of his own god.” He looked at each of them, one at a time, until he knew he had them. “We have fought the Ihlini f
orever. It was Ginevra’s choice that this war be ended.”
Keely’s gaze did not waver. Her smile was bittersweet. “If it is possible for you to care so much for her, then perhaps I should take instruction in the art of forgiveness. I would like to forgive; she is, by marriage, my granddaughter. But such things do not come easy to a childless woman.”
“Childless!” Kellin looked at Sean and saw anguished affirmation. “But—you also had a son—”
The upstanding veins of Keely’s hand knotted. “Sean and Riordan went to Atvia to visit Corin and Glyn. This time, I did not go.” A spasm of grief wracked her face. “This once, I did not go—”
“Keely.” Sean put a big hand upon her shoulder. “’Twas a storm in the Dragon’s Tail. I was injured…in saving me, my son risked himself.” His eyes glazed abruptly though the voice remained steady. “In Erinn, men rule. There is no one else left of my line.”
Kellin drew in a breath. “Will Erinn have me?”
Aileen laughed softly. Grief had deeply marked her, but she was still profoundly Erinnish in coloring and speech. “With your eyes, my lad? They’ll be needing no kivarna…there’s no mistaking your blood! They’ll be having themselves an Erinnish lord even if he is Mujhar of Homana.”
“As for me,” Corin said, “I have always known I would go elsewhere for my heir.” His hand enfolded Glyn’s. “A barren queen is worthless, some men might declare—but I know better. I would trade her for nothing, and no one.” He exchanged a smile with the woman who could not speak, and looked back at Kellin. “It seemed natural to me that Brennan be my heir should I predecease him, despite the arguments of our youth. He was withal a supremely compassionate and competent man, a man who understood responsibility; he was far better fit to rule than I.” For a moment his voice faltered. “That now is moot, but there is another man to whom I might entrust my realm.”
Kellin did not immediately answer. He was intensely aware that all of them looked at him expectantly, awaiting his response. He knew what it would be, but he wondered if they did; if they understood at all what was about to happen in the ordering of their world.
It has nothing to do with me. But they do not see it; they see only me, and think of immediacies instead of the future. They have not yet reconciled what it is I have done by siring a son with Ginevra. I am Kellin to them, no more—except perhaps to my jehan, who understands very well.
He smiled at Aidan and saw the answer in yellow eyes; indeed, his father knew. The shar tahl knew many things. He was, after all, the mouthpiece of the gods.
One day they will know. They will come to understand. It has nothing to do with me.
Kellin glanced at Sima. Then he looked back at the others and gave them their answer. “I will have none of your realms.” Their startlement was palpable in the minute stirring of their bodies, the intensity in their eyes. “Should you predecease me, you may be certain I shall respect and cherish your lands, doing what I must to keep the people content—but I will name none of them mine. I will serve only as regent until such a time as my son comes of age.” He looked at his father; Aidan’s smile was content. “The Lion may swallow the lands, but it is the Firstborn who shall rule them in the name of ancient gods.”
Epilogue
The Lion’s claws curled down beneath Kellin’s hands. His fingers followed the line, tracing gilt-etched wood. He sought the Lion’s strength to carry him through the ceremony that would, in its celebration, herald a new age.
His arms were heavy with lir-gold; his brow ablaze with more. The weight at his left ear, after its emptiness, was infinitely reassuring. He was, at last, Cheysuli in all things; a lir-blessed warrior who also knew his balance.
Kellin drew in a deep breath, held it a long moment, then released it slowly. He was aware of approval emanating from beside his right leg, snugged between Mujhar and Queen to offer them both support: Sima sat in silence with tail tucked over paws. Great golden eyes were fixed on those gathering to witness the investiture of a new Prince of Homana.
So many people. His kinfolk, of course, grouped near the firepit: Aileen first, wearing the lir-torque Brennan had given her decades before. Their son, Aidan, with a raven upon his shoulder and his mother’s hand in his. Hart with Rael, and Ilsa; Corin and Kiri with mute Glyn; Keely flanked by Sean. And lir, so many lir, in rafters and windows and corners.
Others also: the Homanan Council, complete in all regards, and the castle staff; Gavan, clan-leader of Clankeep, with Burr and other shar tahls; plus the multitudes of warriors, and women with large-eyed children, from all the keeps of Homana. Ihlini also, from Solinde, who did not honor Asar-Suti. No one was turned away. Those who could not fit into the Great Hall gathered in corridors, in other chambers, in the baileys; even, he had been told, in the castle kitchens.
The firepit blazed. The sun beyond stained glass slanted into the crowded hall, glinting off lir-gold and other ornamentation, tinting into a likeness the fair Homanan faces and dark Cheysuli ones.
Kellin noted it. He noted everything, but nothing stood out so much as the woman at his side.
She stood quietly at his right, holding linen-swathed Cynric. She wore a velvet robe of deep bloodied wine that was, in its folds, in its richness, very nearly black. At her ears she wore rubies and jet; her slender neck was weighted with the gold of his lir-torque. Unbound silver hair fell in sheets to her knees. The white around her face framed an exquisite, alien beauty even more remarkable for her pride, for the blazing of her spirit, for the determination housed in icy Ihlini eyes.
This was her son. If it be her task alone, they would none of them forget it.
Kellin smiled. They will remember her from this day. No matter what else may happen, they will never forget Ginevra.
He looked out again at the multitude, then rose from the throne. He extended his right hand. Ginevra put into it her left, as her right arm cradled Cynric. Two steps only, and they stood at the edge of the marble dais steps.
Aidan moved out from the throng. His voice was pitched quietly, but no one in the hall could not hear what he said. “He is the sword.” A shower of sparks rose up from the firepit. “He is the sword and the bow and the knife. He is darkness and light. He is good and evil. He is the child and the elder; the girl and the boy; the wolf and the lamb.”
No one spoke. No child protested, no lir ruffled wing.
Aidan’s eyes were black. “I am no one; I am everyone. I am the child of the prophecy; child of darkness and light; of like breeding with like until the blood is one again.”
Stained glass shattered. Empty casements displayed a sudden darkness: the moon slid across the sun and did not depart. Inside, the hall was black; outside, the world was.
People cried out in fear; Homanans, Kellin knew. Cheysuli feared no gods.
Aidan’s voice whispered: “The sword—and the bow—and the knife.”
Flames roared up in the firepit. The iron lid that covered the stairway to the Womb was flung back on its hinges, crashing into piled wood. In the flurry of ash and flame came a greater, more complex motion: the rushing torrent of dozens of lir issuing from the hole. In the flames they were creamy marble, with blind creamy eyes, but as they burst forth into the light, into the darkness of eclipse, marble shapechanged itself into the clothing of living lir.
Ginevra’s hand gripped Kellin’s. He felt her trembling; sensed the wonder in her heart, and his own, that their son could be the inheritor of so much power.
“I am Cynric,” Aidan said, “and I am Firstborn of those who have returned.”
Lir upon lir, freed of imprisonment, joined brother and sister lir in hammer-beamed rafters, in rune-rimmed sills, at the edge of the firepit. Others gathered near the dais.
Firepit flames died. The hall was left in darkness.
“Cynric,” Aidan said, “who will bring light to the darkness so all men may see.”
The darkness was complete. Silence was loud.
Then Kellin understood. He looked at Ginevra, ma
rking the sheen of silver hair in the dimness of the hall. “Unwrap him.”
Her mouth parted as comprehension filled her eyes. Ginevra deftly freed the week-old infant from embroidered linen wrappings. With an avid tenderness she handed him to Kellin, who raised him up, naked, to the multitudes.
Tiny arms waved. In the darkness fire bloomed. A pale, luminous gold born of infant-etched runes, that encompassed the darkness and defeated it. Its heart was livid white.
Upturned faces were illuminated. Kellin heard murmurings, saw groping hands reach out to one another. Homanans and Cheysuli were bound together by awe.
He looked at his kinfolk standing near the dais: Aileen, crying; Hart and Ilsa; Corin and Glyn; Keely and Sean, all clasping hands. Their expressions were rapt.
Aidan raised his hands to encompass everyone. “From among them shall come a lir worthy of the Firstborn. Worthy of the child who had united, in peace, four warring realms and two magical races.” His voice soared above them. “Cynric, child of prophecy; the Firstborn come again!”
There was a shifting among the crowd as warriors looked at lir, and an abrupt apprehension that was palpable. Kellin himself felt it.
He looked sharply at Sima. What is this? Will we lose the lir after all?
Sima’s eyes were fixed on him in an unwavering intentness. Pupils were nonexistent. You have wrought well. Decade after decade, until years became centuries, the Cheysuli have labored well. It is time now for two races to become one; for the power to be fixed as it was once before. From you and Lochiel’s daughter will come others, and they in their turn shall sire their own, until the Firstborn as a race is viable again.
He felt a clutch of trepidation. What of us? What becomes of the Cheysuli and the Ihlini? Do we die out? Are we replaced? He cast a harried glance at the gathered lir. Desperately he asked, Have I destroyed my own race to elevate yours?
The tip of her tail twitched.
Kellin began to tremble. Sima—am I to lose you after all? To my son? He could not bear it. He could not bear the idea. Gods—do not do this! Would you have me be a monster to my people?
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