She will give me heart's ease, and banish Gisella's words.
Black lashes were long, and eloquent. She knew how to use her eyes, her face, her body. Her tone was languorous. "Were you sent?" She paused, stroking back a strand of hair with a negligent, silver-tipped nail. "Or did you come?"
"I—came."
"Ah." She moved past him to the fire, loose grown swirling, loose hair swinging, and put out elegant hands. A curtain of silken hair fell forward across her right shoulder and hid her face from him. "My thanks for the fire, my lord."
The earring was hidden by hair, the lir-bands by his cloak, as was his belt. There was nothing about him, he thought, worthy of attaching rank to him. "Why do you call me that?"
Still her face was hidden. "You wear it like a crown." She turned, black eyes alight. "Do you know who I am?"
Mutely, he shook his head. He did not really care.
She laughed softly: a husky, seductive sound. "I am a woman and you a man. Perhaps that is all you need to know." Her smile was enigmatic. "I am a whore, my lord—or so they would have you believe."
His voice was rusty. " 'They'?"
"The castle folk." She waved a graceful hand, indicating the distances beyond the door, the mist, the morning. "Your kind, my lord."
"Are they? Are you?" He knew he did not care. Not in that moment. She was the most striking woman he had ever seen. She burned with a flame so bright he could feel it in his own flesh, creeping through to bones.
She lifted both hands and threaded fingers into hair, pulling it up from shoulders, from neck, from face. It cascaded through slender fingers, defining the shape of her face and the elegant line of her spine. "Do you want me, my lord?"
Aidan wanted to laugh, but could not. She was blatant in her actions, but he found he did not care. "If I lay with you, lady, it would mean what the castle folk say is true."
More hair slipped through her fingers. "Do you care?"
No. No and no. "What payment, lady?"
Black eyes narrowed. As she took her hands away, hair curtained the sides of her face. "You could not pay it, my lord. And you might be grateful for it."
Her thought not. He also thought she lied. A glance at the narrow bed, too narrow for two people, confirmed it. He did not know what she played at, or why, but he was tired of it. "I came in because I was hungry. I hoped to bargain for food… but I will leave, if you prefer it."
It was the hardest thing he had done, when he wanted to stay so badly.
She laughed. "No. I prefer no such thing. Your cloak, my lord… and I will give you food."
He slipped it and gave it to her. Her eyes, marking lir-bands, widened briefly. Something else came into her eyes as he saw the links threaded through his belt. Something akin to avarice, and comprehension. Uneasily, Aidan began to wonder if she were a whore after all, and counting her price in advance.
She fed him on barley bread and eggs, and when he asked where were her chickens she smiled and said she required none. He drank milk but forbore to ask about the cow, because he feared she might say she had none. She seemed to have very little, and yet gave it all to him.
When he was done she took his hand and let him to the narrow stair behind the door, and took him up to her bedroom.
No narrow cot was shoved against the curving wall. In the center of the chamber stood a wide bed draped with fine linens and lush pelts. There was nothing else in the room. Slanted light from a single wide casement illuminated the bed.
He looked at her. He could not call her whore. Something in her eyes kept him from it, though he understood her now. She needed no cow, no chickens, no stock. She needed nothing but the continued attentions of any man who could pay her price.
Surely he could. He would be Mujhar of Homana.
"Can you banish dreams?" he asked. Then, more intensely, "No—can you banish nightmares?"
The woman's smile gave him his answer. He put out his hand, and she took it.
He awoke to the chime of gold. It rang repeatedly, as if someone counted coin; as he listened more closely he realized it was not coin at all, but links. And he sat upright in the bed.
She was wrapped in his cloak. Bare feet and ankles showed at the hem; the rest was flung carelessly around the slender, magnificent body he had so thoroughly enjoyed. Her hair flowed to the pelt coverlets and pooled, blue-black on indigo.
"Where is your fir?" she asked.
He stared at her. Then her eyes moved from the chain to his face. Very softly, she repeated her question.
"In Erinn," he said at last. "Does it matter?"
Her lips parted in a glorious smile. "I think it might." She dangled the chain from one hand. It glowed in slanting sunlight. "How did you come by this?"
He did not care for her manner. He altered his own to match it, hoping the answer might startle away her arrogance. "A gift," he said, "from the gods."
"Ah." She nodded musingly. "I thought so," Once again the chain flowed back and forth from hand to hand, chiming. "Indeed, I thought so."
Frowning, he asked her the question he was beginning to think he should have asked at the very beginning. "Who are you?"
Something moved in her eyes. Something dark and dangerous and infinitely amused. "Lillith," she told him gently. "Lillith of the Ihlini."
He felt his belly cramp, and something much deeper. Fear. Denial. Disgust. And comprehension. A terrible comprehension.
Lillith's black eyes glinted. "I could not believe it would be so easy. I thought surely you must know me. I thought it was why you had come, to vanquish the sorceress…" She smiled. "Corin banished me, of course, and for a while I went… but Valgaard grows tedious without my brother, and Lochiel saw fit to go to Solinde to try his own workings…" She shrugged an elegant shoulder. The cloak slipped, baring satiny flesh. "So I came back here, to Atvia. For a while. To see, from afar, how Corin dealt with Gisella." Lillith smiled. "Poor, addled Gisella—has she begun to plague you, yet?"
He could manage one sentence. "Gisella is dying."
"Is she?" Lillith considered it. "Ah, well, it is the price of remaining entirely human… I, of course, serve Asar-Suti, and have an advantage." Her eloquent eyes assessed him. "Do you know how old I am?"
Aidan drew in a tight breath. "Old enough to know better."
Lillith laughed. The sound was free, unconfined, and it frightened him. "Aye," she agreed. "But how old am I really?"
He had heard stories, of course. Lillith was Tynstar's daughter. Tynstar had been dead nearly a hundred years, and had sired Lillith hundreds of years before his death. And yet, looking at her, Aidan knew very well he could not believe the stories. She was young, beautiful, and infinitely deadly.
He ignored the question, and asked one of his own. "What do you want from me?"
Lillith thought about it. "Oh, a child, I think."
Aidan recoiled.
She nodded. "A child, such as the one I bore Ian. Rhiannon. To be used for Ihlini purposes." She looked at him consideringly. "Your prophecy rushes you toward reestablishment of the Firstborn. The Cheysuli may even succeed in accomplishing it…" Frowning slightly, she tapped a silver-tipped nail against one link. "We have, heretofore, failed to stop you. Perhaps it might be best if we aided you—only with a twist." Lillith's smile widened as she made a fluid gesture of explanation. "If we control the Firstborn, we control everything. One way to control them is to make our own." The faint smile dropped away. Her eyes bored into his. "You, my lord, are very important to me, and to all of us. You, my lord, have the proper blood. You are everything: Cheysuli, Homanan, Solindish, Atvian, Erinnish. All you lack is the required Ihlini blood." Tilting her head, she made another graceful gesture. "Do you see? A child conceived between Aidan of Homana and Lillith of the Ihlini would be a Firstborn. The prophecy would be complete… only it would be on Ihlini terms."
For a long moment all he could do was stare. Her explanation was so clear, so precise. With unsettling matter-of-factness, she spelled out the doom o
f his race.
Worst of all, for him, was the knowledge she could do it. In part, it had been done; first Ian, by siring Rhiannon; then Brennan, by siring gods knew what on Rhiannon.
And what might he sire?
A shudder wracked Aidan's body. "You make me vomit," he declared, knowing he as much as she was to blame for this situation.
Lillith smiled. She put out a hand, drew a rune, and a chamber pot appeared on the floor beside the bed. "There, my lord. You need not soil the covers."
The hollowness in his belly began to knot painfully. He knew very well she could do whatever she threatened. But he would not admit it to her. "Will you resort to rape?"
Lillith laughed. "Rape, my lord? You only recently proved yourself more than capable of responding to me… and as for repeating the act, need I remind you your lir is in Erinn? You are, as Ian was, lirless and therefore powerless. You will do or say whatever I require." She shifted forward onto her knees, moving close to him. The cloak slipped, pooling across her heels. "You are quite helpless, Aidan—need I prove it?"
She said the last against his mouth. He tried to pull away, to strip her arms from his body, but something kept him from it. She was pulling him down onto the bed, rousing him, taking away his control and sanity.
She made him respond, taking him to the edge but no farther, even as he hated it, and then withdrew, laughing as he cursed himself, and her. She lifted the chain before his face, letting it drip from both hands. "Lirless man," she taunted. "Child of the gods, are you? More like child of the earth, of me—"
His eyes fixed on the chain. Heavy links gleamed as she cradled it. He thought of the Hunter, the Weaver, the Cripple. He thought of himself, on his knees before the Lion, sobbing aloud as he put out his hands for a nonexistent chain. And yet here it was before him, whole, unbroken, untarnished, joined by his own hands in the ceremony presided over by Siglyn, witnessed by Tye and Ashra.
Ashra, who had warned him a man might lose control of himself if a woman's arms proved too beguiling.
I am a child of the gods…
"No," he said aloud.
Lillith laughed. "Ian said the same thing, many times. But that spell is weak. The binding always fails."
"I said NO—"
The chain moved in her hands. Aidan, transfixed, watched it coil upon itself. Lillith uttered a single cry of shock and tried to throw down the chain, but it clung to her arms like shackles.
Godfire leaped from the tips of her fingers, then sputtered out. The chain wound itself around her right arm and began to work its way toward her shoulder.
"Stop it!" Lillith hissed. "Stop it!"
Aidan lunged from the bed and stumbled against the wall, feeling cold stone scrape against bare buttocks.
"Aidan!" she cried. "Make it stop—"
The chain crawled beyond her elbow. In the light from the casement, it glowed.
"Aidan.'"
The chain burrowed through hair and wrapped itself around her throat.
Lillith gave up her entreaty of Aidan and resorted to a tongue he did not know. She shouted, hissed, chanted; calling, no doubt, on the noxious god she had served for so long. But the chain ignored her grasping, desperate fingers and settled snuggly around her throat, cutting off her voice entirely. All Aidan heard was a throttled inhalation.
White teeth showed in a rictus grin. Lillith staggered up from the bed, clad only in hair and gold, and turned toward Aidan, pleading soundlessly. Her color was deepening. Black eyes protruded slightly.
Aidan, unmoving, stood next to the casement. Lillith stumbled toward him, still wrenching at the chain, clutching at hair and flesh and metal.
She saw the answer in his eyes. Comprehension convulsed her briefly. Then she turned from him, took two steps, and flung herself through the casement into the skies beyond.
When he could move again, he dressed. Slowly, because he still shook. He waited, sitting slumped on the wide bed, and when his strength began to return he thought he could manage the stairs. Carefully he went down, taking up his cloak from the crooked table, and went out to find her.
She lay sprawled on thick green turf, awkward in death as she had never been in life. He had thought she might have aged in death, showing her true features. But she was still Lillith. Still young, still beautiful—and still very dead.
Her hands were locked around the chain. Distaste stirred sluggishly, but numbness replaced it. Aidan pulled her hands away and freed the chain, then unwound it from throat and black hair. He set it aside and shook out his cloak.
When she was covered, save for the curtain of hair fanned out against the turf, Aidan walked out to the edge of the cliff. The chain dangled from one hand. He considered, for an angry moment, throwing it into the sea so far below, but did not. The anger dissipated. The chain was his, fashioned expressly for him by the gods themselves. It was so infinitely a part of him it even answered his wishes.
Or did the gods?
Aidan stared blindly across the turbulent Dragon's Tail to the clifftop Aerie of Erinn. And nodded his acceptance.
"Resh'ta-ni," he murmured. "Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu. Y'ja'hai."
Chapter Eleven
« ^ »
When Aidan, still somewhat shaken, returned to the castle, he was met by a servant who said he must go to Gisella's chamber at once. Foreboding swept in from the distance he had built brick by brick in his soul as he rode down from the headlands, and he realized the delicately nurtured equanamity was nothing more than a sham. He understood the gods—or himself—no more than he had before Lillith's death, and now Gisella commanded his presence yet again.
Corin met him just outside the chamber. His face, beneath the blond beard, was excessively stiff. Only the eyes gave him away. "She wants you," he said harshly. "The physicians say there is very little time…" He passed a hand over bloodshot eyes. "I think they have the right of it, no matter what she believes." His mouth flattened as he took his hand away. "She said she could sing to herself until you came."
"Gods," Aidan blurted. "How have you stood it so long? She is mad, completely mad—how can you bear to look at her and know she is your jehana?"
Corin shrugged awkwardly. "I learned years ago it was easier if I thought of her as someone else. Deirdre has always been my jehana—" He saw the expression on Aidan's face, the concurrence, and sighed, nodding. "Deirdre has been many things to very many of us. While Gisella has been—Gisella." He gestured. "Go in, Aidan. It will be the last time." A muscle twitched high on his cheek, beneath an eye. "This time I come, too."
Aidan went in. He was aware of Glyn's presence almost at once, which somehow soothed him. She sat very still in a chair beside the door, keeping vigil. A queen, even cast off, deserved whatever honor could be offered at her death. And word must be sent to the man she had married so many years before.
Glyn did not smile, though she looked up at him. Her eyes, so large and eloquent, seemed to offer strength, which he needed. He nodded gratitude almost imperceptibly, the moved slowly toward the bed.
Gisella's breathing was audible. It caught, was throttled, then rasped raggedly in her throat, as if expelled from lungs too tired to function. Her color was a sickly grayish yellow. Her eyes were closed, but as Aidan stepped noiselessly to her bedside, they opened.
Gisella smiled. "Do you know the story?"
Wary, he said nothing.
"The story," she repeated. "How I came to be mad."
Oh, gods… Aidan swallowed tightly. "I have heard it."
Her voice was thready, but unyielding. "She was a raven, my mother… not knowing it was a bad thing. Not knowing here, in Atvia, ravens are killed whenever they can be. They are a death-omen, you see." The cords stood out in her throat, like knotted wire. "My father saw her—saw a raven—and shot her out of the sky. Not knowing it was Bronwyn in lir-shape. Not knowing she fled him, meaning to go back to Homana… he shot her down. And as she died, she bore me." The yellow eyes were unflinching, untouched by the
tale. "They say it is why I am mad."
She did not sound it. She sounded perfectly lucid. Perfectly normal. And Aidan, looking at the fading old woman, wondered if Lillith's death had somehow broken through Gisella's addled wits to another woman beneath. To the real Gisella, sane as anyone else, and worthy of wearing a crown.
Gisella's breath rasped. "The chain is broken."
He twitched. "What?"
"The chain. Lillith told me about it. She said she would break it. Destroy it. So the prophecy would die."
Aidan frowned. "When did Lillith tell you this?"
Gisella's face folded upon itself as she thought. "Days? Weeks? Perhaps months." She looked past him to Corin, who approached quietly. She forestalled his question. "He said he sent her away, but she came back. Lillith always came back. She loved me."
Aidan nodded perfunctorily, unwilling to argue that Lillith's attentiveness had nothing at all to do with love. "Granddame—"
"She broke it."
The chain again. Aidan reached for patience. "No."
"She said she would."
"The chain is not broken ." He put his hand on one of the links. "Do you see?"
Feral eyes stared at the gleaming links. Gisella attempted to push herself up in the bed, but failed. And Aidan, much as he longed to help her, could not bring himself to touch her.
Gisella's mouth opened. "She said she would break it! She promised!"
"She failed." Aidan glanced sidelong at Corin. "Lillith is dead."
Gisella's eyes stretched wide. "No—"
"All of them are dead. Tynstar. Strahan. Now Lillith. Do you see, granddame? Their time is finished. The prophecy is nearly complete. Everything Lillith told you was a lie. The chain is whole. I am alive. And the prophecy will be completed."
"No." She glared up at him, trembling. "Throneless Mujhar. Uncrowned king—"
"Granddame, it is over."
"I talk to gods," she whispered.
Aidan's belly knotted.
"I talk to gods," she repeated.
Corin murmured something beneath his breath. Something to do with madness, and dying. But Aidan knew better. Perhaps she did talk to gods.
Cheysuli 7 - Flight of the Raven Page 29