Cheysuli 7 - Flight of the Raven

by Jennifer Roberson

  Aidan gritted teeth. "Obscurity," he said grimly, "is a game I do not care for."

  The raven's tone was amused. But it is the one I am best at.

  Giving up, Aidan kicked free of stirrups and carefully let himself down from the saddle. It was a painful exercise and one he regretted immensely, clutching impotently at ribs. Likely he needed them strapped, which meant admitting to the accident. His father would be amused; Brennan never came off a horse.

  Or, if he had, his son had never known of it.

  "Hungry," he muttered aloud. "But chewing will hurt my head."

  Out of sorts, are we?

  Aidan went into the link. Out of sorts and out of patience; I am here for the shar tahl. Perhaps he will have my answers, even if you do not.

  Teel eyed him archly. Oh, he may have them… but are you worthy of them?

  Aidan looped the reins over a post set into dirt before the pavilion. Surely a warrior with you for a lir is worthy of anything.

  It was sufficiently double-edged that Teel did not respond.

  The shar tahl's pavilion was larger than most, since he required additional room for storage of clan birthlines and assorted ritualistic items. It was customary to wait no farther inside a shar tahl's or clan-leader's pavilion than a single pace; Aidan therefore sat very precisely near the open doorflap on a gray-blue ice bear pelt brought from the Northern Wastes. The shar tahl was not yet present, although word had been carried throughout Clankeep the Mujhar's grandson had arrived.

  Even though Aidan was well-accustomed to the immense size and overwhelming presence of Homana-Mujhar, he felt daunted by the pavilion. It was here the history of the clan was kept, rolled tightly in soft leathers and tucked away inside strong chests. His own history resided somewhere in the pavilion, reduced to a single rune-sign on pale, bleached doeskin. A rune, no more than that, yet he felt small because of it. Small because of doubts; was he doing the right thing? The Hunter had not admonished him against displaying the golden link, merely said it was for him. He could not imagine anything to do with gods could be denied a shar tahl. Such men served those gods with steadfast loyalty.

  He waited, legs folded beneath him, with the link clutched in two hands. Teel was not with him, leaving his lir, with some trepidation, to find his own way. Aidan was alone, and feeling immensely lonely.

  He will say I am mad. Or, if he does not say it, he will think it… and soon even the clans will say I mimic Gisella—

  Aidan cut it off.

  I should look at another side… perhaps he will have my answers and share them willingly. Perhaps he will know what this is and what I should do with it—

  Aidan gritted teeth. "Why does this happen to me? First all those dreams, now this nonsense of dead Mujhars and gods—" He clenched fingers around the link. Fear was unavoidable, no matter what Teel said. "What if I am mad?"

  "Aidan."

  He stiffened, then bowed, showing homage, and was startled when a hand touched the crown of his head.

  "No, Aidan—not from you." The hand was removed. The shar tahl came more fully into the pavilion and moved around to face his guest. He was surprisingly young for his place, still black-haired and firm of flesh. He was, Aidan thought, perhaps thirty-five or thirty-six.

  But the shar tahl's physical appearance was not the matter at hand. "Why not?" Aidan asked, glad to think of something else. "Honor is your due."

  "And I do not disparage it. I only resent the time it wastes when there is distress to be addressed." The shar tahl sat down in front of Aidan. It seemed somehow incongruous to see a shar tahl in leathers; Aidan was accustomed to linen or woolen robes, though neither was required. But this particular man, displaying armbands and earring—his absent lir was a fox—was different from the others. Aidan knew it at once.

  It is not merely age… the fire in him is different. It burns a little brighter—Inwardly, he frowned. I have only known old shar tahls… this one is not old. This one is more like a warrior. Perhaps that is the difference.

  The shar tahl's tone was mild. "You come so rarely, or so I have heard, that the reason must be quite important."

  Guilt pinched Aidan's belly. He answered more brusquely than intended. "Aye, it is. This." He set down the link on the fur between them, then took his hands away.

  The shar tahl did not at once look at the object. He looked only at Aidan, who felt years stripped away until he was a boy, staring guiltily but defiantly into the face of authority. Yellow eyes were kind, but also very attentive. "You do not know who I am."

  Aidan maintained a blank expression. "The shar tahl, of course."

  "I mean, which one."

  He debated answers. This shar tahl, a stranger to Aidan, was as odd as the brown man who called himself the Hunter, who called himself a god. Aidan decided to avoid possible problems by stating the obvious. "The shar tahl of Clankeep."

  The other smiled. "You take the easy road. That is not your reputation."

  Aidan's answering smile was twisted. "My reputation is founded on many things, and so there are many reputations. Which one do you know?"

  "The one I heard up north across the Bluetooth, in my home Keep." The shar tahl crossed his legs and linked dark fingers. "My name is Burr. I am but newly come to Clankeep—I thought it might be worthwhile for me to live nearer the Lion."

  Something pricked at Aidan's awareness. Something sounded a faint alarm. "How nearer?" he asked. Then, very quietly, "As near as Teirnan might like?"

  Burr's eyes narrowed, if only minutely. And then he smiled. "Teirnan, as you know, has been proscribed by all clan councils. He forgoes the teachings of the shar tahls; therefore he forgoes my own. And, undoubtedly, anything else I might say to him."

  Certainty firmed Aidan's tone. "But you know him, my proscribed kinsman."

  "Everyone knows of him."

  Aidan spoke very precisely, so no mistake could be made. "I did not say of him. I said you knew him."

  Quiet reassessment. Burr altered manner and tone, as if casting off prevarication and the habitual obliqueness of shar tahl. "I know him. I knew him. I met him, once." The tone was uninflected, shielded behind self-assurance.

  Oddly, it rankled. "But you did not see fit to send word to the Mujhar."

  "Teirnan has more to concern himself with than what the Mujhar might say, or do."

  Aidan felt a flicker of irritation. For a fleeting instant it shocked him—this man was a shar tahl, due honor and respect—but it passed. What they spoke of—prince and priest-historian—could affect Homana's future, as well as the prophecy.

  "What 'more' is there?" Aidan demanded. "You know what he has done."

  "And paid the price for it." Burr's eyes did not waver. "Teirnan has lost his lir."

  "Lost his—" It brought him up short. Aidan spread a hand, made the gesture denoting tahlmorra. "Then Teirnan is dead. We need not concern ourselves with him further."

  "I did not say he was dead."

  "But he must be—he lost his lir."

  Burr's smile was very faint. "The death-ritual is voluntary. It is, to my knowledge, undertaken when a warrior truly believes in such binding clan custom."

  Aidan nodded impatiently. "Of course. It is always done—" And then he understood. "You are saying Teirnan rejected that, too?" It was impossible to believe. "But that means he is mad. No Cheysuli warrior will countenance that. He has to die. The loss of control, the awareness of loss of balance, drives him to it. There is no other choice."

  Burr did not answer. Aidan, staring, heard the echo of his own words inside his skull.

  Am I mad, too? he wondered with a new insight. Am I bound for Teirnan's course, to throw myself away? Is that why Shaine—or whatever he was—tells me I will not rule?

  It nearly overwhelmed him. Lir-bonded or not, was he meant to give up his life to keep the blood free of taint?

  Numbly, he echoed, "There is no other choice."

  The shar tahl spoke quietly. "He does choose, Aidan. Every warrior chooses.
He dies if he wants to die. But that is not Teirnan's way."

  Teirnan, not Aidan. He pushed away thoughts of himself and focused on his kinsman.

  More than bruised ribs ached. Also family pride; the awareness of a betrayal he had never experienced. He had been told all about Teirnan's defection from the clan, his rejection of the prophecy and betrayal of heritage, but Aidan had been conscious of it with a pronounced sense of detachment. He had been too young to know Teirnan, to comprehend the issues.

  But he was no longer too young. Now he began to understand why all his kin hated Teirnan.

  Speculation took precedence over fear of his own ends. "He wants the Lion," Aidan said flatly. "He has always wanted the Lion."

  "Aye, well, men want many things…" Burr neatly turned the subject. "What is it you want?"

  Aidan was no longer certain he cared to continue the discussion with Burr. The man was different. He was unlike any shar tahl Aidan had ever known. That he thought differently was obvious. And what he might do with such thoughts—

  Abruptly, Aidan laughed. Is this what they say of me?

  Burr's smile lapsed. The eyes, so like Aidan's own, were fixed and uncannily feral. The voice was very quiet; the tone a whiplash of sound. "If you question my own commitment to my race, let me reassure you. My belief in the gods is unshakable. It has been since I was quite young—I knew as clearly as I knew my lir what I was meant to be. It was my tahlmorra: I could be nothing else. No man, no woman, no warrior—proscribed or otherwise—could ever turn me from that, any more than Teirnan or anyone else could turn you from the Lion. I am a Cheysuli shar tahl, fully cognizant of my service." Intensity dispersed abruptly, as if no longer needed. The calm smile returned. "What service may I do you?"

  Something in Aidan answered. His distrust of Burr faded, replaced with an odd recognition. This man is very like me—He smiled back slowly, though its twist was decidedly wry. "I have many questions." He pointed at the link. "What do I do with that?"

  Burr, for the first time, looked at the link. Aidan knew what it looked like, what it felt like; he had carried it by hand all the way to Clankeep, unable to hide it away. It was nothing and everything, all bound into the gold and runes, and he dared not let it go.

  For Burr, he had let it go. It waited on the pelt, glinting dully in wan light.

  Abruptly, the man was shar tahl. Aidan was startled by the sudden transformation. It was, he thought, merely his own perspective, somehow altered; this Burr was no different from the Burr of a moment before, in appearance or manner. And yet Aidan felt the change, the slow comprehension, that flooded the man with an eerie exaltation.

  Burr unlaced his hands and reached out, as if to pick up the link. But he refrained. Fingertips trembled a moment. Then quieted into stillness. He did not touch the link. He looked searchingly at Aidan. Then abruptly looked away.

  Aidan frowned. "What is it?"

  Burr quickly rose to his feet and went directly to the open doorflap. The gesture was blatant: Aidan was to leave. "I cannot help you," he said. "You must find your own way."

  Unquestionably dismissal, in tone and posture. Part of Aidan responded instinctively—a Cheysuli warrior was carefully tutored to honor a shar tahl—until he recalled his other self. The self meant for the Lion.

  "No," he said quietly, still kneeling on the pelt. "I came to you with questions. You promised answers." Slowly he twisted his head and glanced over a shoulder at the shar tahl. "Are you the kind of man who can refuse to give them?"

  Burr did not hesitate. "You ask too much."

  Aidan was deliberate. "As warrior? Or as a prince?"

  Burr drew in a breath, then released it audibly. His expression was peculiar. "We spoke of choices, my lord. We spoke of a warrior's tahlmorra. No Cheysuli is truly forced to accept his tahlmorra—he does have free will—but if he is truly commited to his people, to the prophecy, to his belief in the afterworld, he never refuses it. So we are taught: so I believe." The phrasing was deliberate; Aidan understood. "I came to my own arrangement with the gods when I was very young. Now you must come to yours."

  "I know my tahlmorra" Aidan declared. "I came to you for this."

  Burr did not look at the link. "I have no answer for you."

  Anger flickered dully. He had come for help, as advised by his grandsire, and this was what he got. More obscurity. His belly was full of it.

  "Tell me," he said quietly. "You see something in this. You know what this is. Why will you not tell me?"

  "I am not meant to tell you."

  Control slipped askew. "Gods," Aidan rasped, "will anyone speak plainly? My lir practices obscurity; now so do you. Tell me, shar tahl: am I to live, or die?"

  "The gods will decide that."

  Aidan's laughter was a sharp bark of blurted sound. "The Hunter tells me differently. He speaks of choices, even as you do."

  Burr's eyes glittered. "I do not know everything."

  "Neither do I," Aidan gritted. "I'm knowing nothing at all—d'ye think this is pleasant?" He sat rigidly on the pelt. "I came to you for help, because grandsire suggested it. Because I think I am going mad."

  There, it was said. The silence was very loud.

  Burr swallowed tightly. For a brief moment there was war in his face, a battle that underscored, to Aidan, the great need for him to know. Then the shar tahl muttered a brief, sibilant petition and pulled aside the doorflap.

  Aidan was filled with emptiness. He was six years old once more, faced with adult betrayal; the inability of anyone—even those who should—to understand the pain that drove him so desperately. "Nothing," he murmured numbly. "You give me nothing at all."

  Burr's jaw was clenched. "If I could, I would. But if your lir will not, who am I to do it?" He gazed at the link, glowing wanly in the light. "I only know part of it."

  Aidan scooped up the link and rose, turning to face the shar tahl. Contempt shaded his tone. "What do you have for me?"

  The yellow eyes were kind. "My lord, my sympathy."

  Chapter Six

  « ^ »

  It was dark when Aidan rode into Mujhara, well after sunset. He had come close to staying one more night at Clankeep, but judged three enough; it was time he tested his newfound "knowledge" regarding links, Mujhars, and himself.

  He rode in through the massive gates of Homana-Mujhar, only vaguely acknowledging salutes and greetings—he was too weary to offer more—and gave the dun into the keeping of the horseboy who came running. Brief instructions passed on, Aidan then went into the palace by way of the kitchens, studiously avoiding his kinfolk, who would no doubt ask him questions he did not wish to address. He was not yet in the mood. First things first.

  Word of his return would not be carried to the Mujhar or his parents once they had retired for the night. Aidan kept himself to the kitchens, cadging meat, ale, and bread from servants startled by his presence, until well after bedtime. Then he sent Teel to his perch in private chambers, and went by himself to the Great Hall.

  Bootsteps echoed as he walked the length of the firepit, dividing the hall in half from dais steps nearly to the doors. As always, he took no lamp or candle; this was better done in dimness, with only the summer-banked coals for light.

  He silenced his steps, and stopped. In the darkness, Aidan laughed: bitter irony. Speaking with the Hunter had changed nothing for the better. Now the dream was real even when he did not sleep.

  He stood, as he had stood so often, before the Lion Throne. In its seat was the chain.

  Aidan linked hands behind his waist. "No lir," he declared. "Is that what makes the difference? You want me to come alone?"

  Nothing answered him.

  The challenge faded away. Aidan sighed, smearing one palm against his brow hard enough to stretch flesh. He was twitching from exhaustion, both mental and physical; he had not slept very well in the three nights at Clankeep. "—tired," he said aloud. "Will you never let me rest?"

  In dim light, gold gleamed.

  Go, he
told himself. Just go, go to bed—turn your back on this idiocy. Think of something else. Dream of something else. Imagine yourself with a woman—

  But the chain transfixed his eyes, washing him free of all thought except the need to touch it. To hold it in his hands.

  I think I begin to hate you—

  But nothing could make him ignore it.

  Wearily Aidan mounted the dais steps. He halted briefly before the Lion, rubbing absently at gritty eyes, then slowly knelt. The motion was awkward and painful; his ribs still ached. He placed both hands upon the curving, carved armrests and gripped the Lion's paws. The throne was dead to him. A thing of wood; no more. He sensed none of its power or the ambience of its age.

  Burning eyes locked on the chain coiled against dark velvet. "So," he said unevenly, "I shall put out my hand to touch it, and the gold will crumble to dust."

  Aidan put out his hand. Fingertips touched gold. He waited for it to crumble, but the chain remained whole.

  "Something," he breathed, "is different."

  Nothing answered him. Silence was very loud.

  He waited. He knew what had to happen. It happened without fail. It had always happened.

  He clung one-handed to the Lion. "This time, something is different."

  The hissed declaration filled the hall. He heard himself breathing; the uneven rasping of air sucked through a throat nearly closed off by emotions. He could not name them all, only two: a slowly rising despair and a burgeoning exhilaration.

  They were, he thought, contradictory emotions, even as he felt them. How could a man experience exhilaration and despair, both at the same time? From the same cause?

  He allowed his fingers to move. Now the palm touched the chain.

  Cool, rune-scribed metal. No different from that on his arms. Solid, substantial gold.

  "I know you," Aidan challenged. "You entice me, you seduce me, promising fidelity—the moment I pick you up, there will be nothing left but dust."

  Nothing answered him.

  Sweat prickled flesh. He ached, yet felt no pain, only a brittle intensity. A growing, obsessive hunger.