Cheysuli 7 - Flight of the Raven

by Jennifer Roberson

  "We can put them in our chamber."

  "It will not be 'our' chamber, not at first. The Homanans are somewhat bound up in proprieties… we will have to have separate chambers until after the ceremony."

  Shona's eyes widened. "We've been sharing a bed for months! We've never kept it a secret."

  "The Homanans—"

  "—are skilfins, " she muttered. "Well, then, if we're to have separate chambers, I'll be putting the hounds in mine." She turned on her heel and marched toward the steps, thick braid swinging.

  Aidan, following, tried to compromise. "It does not mean we have to sleep alone, Shona—only live in separate chambers. No one has to know who sleeps where…" Except they would. Everyone knew such things. Common gossip had a nefarious power when it came to making the rounds. "Never mind," he said. "Put them wherever you will… but if any of them bites me when I come in at night, 'tis out to the kennels for them all."

  Shona slanted him a glance. "Perhaps."

  "Or you could come to my chamber."

  She arched a brow as they reached the top step. "If the Homanans are so persnickerty—I'd be thinking you'd have more right to be sneaking about the castle at night than me."

  "But I do not keep fourteen dogs on my bed."

  "Eleven," Shona corrected pointedly. "And for now there are only nine, until the two bitches and the puppies arrive."

  Aidan sighed. "Does it matter?" And then signaled the door to be opened. "This is the formal entrance. There are other, less conspicuous ways in—"

  "My lord." A servant bowed briefly. "My lord, you are to go at once to the Mujhar's chambers. By order of the Prince of Homana."

  "Go to—why?"

  The servant was not forthcoming, except to repeat the need for haste. "At once, my lord."

  Blankly, Aidan turned to Shona. But before he could say anything, she spoke to the wolfhounds, dropping each with a gesture. A command to hold kept them in place; Shona turned back to Aidan. "They'll not move to trouble anyone."

  Another time he might have argued with her—his experience with dogs did not lead him to believe they would stay where they were put—but just now he was not even slightly concerned with whether the wolfhounds stayed or wandered.

  He merely nodded absently and led Shona through torchlighted corridors and up two winding staircases to the Mujhar's sprawling apartments on the third floor.

  Two men in the crimson tabard of the Mujharan Guard flanked the largest entrance. The door itself stood open. As Aidan arrived with Shona, both guardsmen bowed. He nodded absently at them, then went in with Shona at his side.

  He knew the truth when he saw Deirdre. She sat in a chair at Niall's bedside, very still and pale. Her eyes were fixed on the bed's occupant.

  Ian stood at one of the casements, his back to the doorway. All Aidan could see was his silhouette, but nothing more was required. The rigidity of Ian's posture bespoke the measure of his grief.

  It was Brennan who came across the room to Aidan. His gaze rested briefly on Shona's stricken face, then he turned to his son. "He will wish to see you. Come."

  Aidan was cold. Cold and sick. He did not want to be present. He wanted to turn and walk out immediately, to go somewhere no one could find him, because if he was gone the dying could not be accomplished.

  But he did not turn and walk out. Slowly, numbly, Aidan moved toward the canopied bed. Aileen was there as well, seated on a stool near Deirdre. Curled at Niall's side was the ruddy-brown wolf, Serri.

  Niall lay beneath silken bedclothes. But his face was uncovered still, displaying the ravages of the thing that would claim his life. The patch over his eye did not hide the loose downward slant of the right side of his face, or the drooping of his mouth. His flaccid flesh was waxen.

  "Jehan," Brennan said quietly. "Aidan has come home."

  For one horrible moment Aidan feared his grandfather was already dead, but then he heard the ragged, shallow breathing and saw the single eye crack open. It was clear, unclouded by pain; Aidan's kivarna abruptly flared to life, bringing him the unwelcome and painful awareness that Niall knew precisely what had happened and precisely how long he had.

  Niall's right arm lay slackly across the wolf, not hugging Serri because he could not, but touching him, maintaining the physical contact as well as the mental. Serri's head rested very gently on Niall's chest. Incongruously, Aidan thought of Shona's wolfhounds. And then was ashamed.

  A lir is nothing like a dog…

  He was, oddly, perfectly calm. He stood beside the bed, beside his father, and looked down on the wreckage of his grandfather.

  "Take his hand," Brennan said softly. "He cannot reach for it himself—and he would want it."

  Dully, Aidan knelt down and reached for Niall's hand. The flesh was cold and lifeless. "Grandsire. I am come home."

  The single eye remained open. The lips twitched, then twisted. Niall's speech was slow and halting, but he made himself understood. "The girl?"

  Aidan nodded, turning slightly to stretch out a hand to Shona. "I have brought her home, grandsire. All the way from Erinn. Keely's girl, grandsire… and Sean's."

  Shona moved across the bedchamber slowly, lacking her natural grace. Aidan sensed her grief and shock and abiding regret: she looked on her grandsire the Mujhar for the first and last time, for it was quite clear Niall would not live to see the sun rise.

  She stopped beside Aidan, but did not kneel. She was very tall in a chamber full of tall men, and incredibly dominating through sheer force of personality. Aidan, sensitized to her, still felt the tingle of her strength, and smiled in bittersweet acknowledgment as he saw the recognition in Niall's eye.

  Shona wore, as usual, Erinnish tunic and trews, belted and booted. The heavy braid of intricate double and triple plaiting hung over her shoulder, dangling against the bedclothes. There was nothing even remotely feminine about her, or subdued. She burned like a beacon.

  "Keely's girl," Niall slurred. "Ah, gods, but I knew she would bear one worthy of the blood and trust and truth…" He swallowed with difficulty. "You must wait your turn, my bright, brave Erinnish lass, but one day you will grace the halls even as my Deirdre…"

  Aidan twitched. "Grandsire—"

  Brennan touched his shoulder. "Not now, Aidan. Later."

  But Aidan knew better: there would not be a later.

  "Grandsire, I bring news from Atvia." He cast a glance at Deirdre, so white and still in her chair. "What would you most desire in the world?"

  Niall was visibly weakening. "I have what I most desire."

  "No…" Aidan caught Deirdre's hand and pulled her from the chair, onto her knees beside the bed, then placed her hand atop the Mujhar's. "No, there is more. There has always been more."

  The dimming eye flared. "Is it true? Gisella—?"

  Aidan swallowed down the painful lump. "Aye. In my presence." Then, knowing it would require a formal declaration in front of kinfolk as witnesses before being accepted by the Homanan Council, he raised his voice. "The Queen of Homana is dead."

  The cold fingers twitched. Aidan took his own hand away and left Deirdre and Niall to share the handclasp. Niall's voice was deteriorating, but he managed to give the order. "Have the priest fetched at once."

  Deirdre was shocked. "Niall—no… let it wait—"

  He summoned waning strength. "If I do nothing else before I die, my proud Erinnish princess, I will make you a queen."

  Aidan, at the doorway, dispatched one of the guards for a priest. Then he waited beside the door, not wanting to intrude on the Mujhar and his meijha.

  The marriage ceremony was necessarily brief. Niall struggled to say his vows. Deirdre answered quietly but firmly, and when it was done she bent to kiss his ravaged mouth.

  "Queen of Homana," he whispered. "It should have been yours from the first."

  Deirdre, dry-eyed, shook her head. "I never was wanting it," she answered. "All I ever wanted was you. The gods were kind enough to allow it… but oh, my braw boyo, the years
have been so short…"

  Niall's eye did not waver as he gazed at Deirdre of Erinn, now Queen of Homana. "Better than none…" he whispered. "Better than none at all…"

  She was queen for the space of a breath. As Niall ceased to live, the title passed to Aileen, and Brennan became Mujhar in his father's place.

  It was Ian who executed the custom. Slowly he went to the bed and took Niall's hand in his, easing the heavy black seal ring from the still hand, and then he turned. To Brennan.

  "My lord," he said formally, "you are the Mujhar. Will you accept this ring; and with it, my fealty?"

  Brennan's mouth barely moved. "J'hai-na," he said. "Tu'halla dei, y'ja'hai… Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu. Cheysuli i'halla shansu.'"

  Ian waited until Brennan put out his hand, and then he stripped from it the glowing ruby signet of the Prince of Homana. He replaced it with the black ring etched with a rampant lion.

  Brennan, stark-faced, nodded. "Y'ja'hai." He took back the ruby ring from Ian, and turned.

  Aidan, still standing by the door, abruptly realized the ceremony included him. Panicking, he backed up a step, met the wall with his heel, and stopped.

  Brennan took Aidan's cold hand into his and eased the topaz ring from his right forefinger. The ruby went on in its place. "Tu'jhalla dei," Brennan said formally. "I declare you Prince of Homana, heir to the Lion Throne."

  Aidan felt empty. He stared at his father, seeing a stranger; feeling a stranger himself, defined by a single sentence that did not, he felt, accurately sum up anyone, least of all himself.

  "Tu'jhalla dei," Brennan repeated. Lord to liege man; they all of them were liege men now, if by definition different from the Cheysuli custom. That had been Ian's place. And Brennan did not, Aidan realized in shock, have a true liege man.

  He swallowed heavily. "Ja-hai-na." he whispered. "Y'ja'hai, jehan. Leijhana tu'sai. Cheysuli i'halla shansu."

  He heard Aileen's quiet tears. Saw Deirdre's bone-white, bone-dry face. Saw the rigidity of Ian's posture; the grief and comprehension in his father's eyes. Sensed Shona's tangled emotions as painful as his own.

  Something moved. He looked to the bed. Serri sat up, amber-eyed in the shadows. Then he jumped down and trotted out of the chamber.

  Aidan moved.

  "Let him go," Brennan murmured.

  "But—Serri—"

  "Serri is a lir."

  It was, Aidan knew, enough. Sufficient to explanation. And as he nodded, acknowledging, he heard, as they all did, the single distant mournful wail keening through the corridors.

  In chorus, the wolfhounds answered.

  Chapter Four

  « ^ »

  In the pale, still hours of dawn, Aidan found himself in the Great Hall. The firepit coals were banked. Only the merest tracery of first light crept into the hall through stained glass, muting the colors into unaccustomed pastel softness. The dawn did not yet illuminate anything below the intricate beamwork of the high ceiling, losing itself in scrollwork.

  Aidan stood for a moment just inside the silver doors, listening to the silence, and then he began to walk.

  He looked at the walls as he walked: at the faded tapestries generations old; at the brighter, richer ones worked by Deirdre and her ladies. He looked at the intricate patterns of weapons displayed on the walls: whorls of knives and lances, brass bubbles of bossed shields, the gleaming patina of blades. Even the floors now were not so stark; carpets imported from foreign lands softened the hard bleakness of stone. Once Homana-Mujhar had been little more than a fortress, a stone shell; now it was the cynosure in all its magnificent splendor, the seat of Homana's power. And the font of that power was the Lion itself.

  Aidan at last looked at the throne, thinking of the smaller version on the Crystal Isle. But this one was different. This one was filled. This one housed a Mujhar.

  Aidan stopped dead. He felt betrayed, his intention usurped. It did not matter that he knew the man, or that he was flesh of the man's own flesh, only that he had come to summon his grandsire, and his father had stolen the chance.

  Brennan watched him with eyes devoid of expression. He sat slumped in the throne haphazardly, arms and legs askew. He wore black, as was his custom, and faded into the dim hollowness of the crouching Lion.

  Kivarna flared. Aidan sensed grief and anger and sorrow and pain; the acknowledgment of a new task. And the desire to abjure it altogether, if it would change the present.

  Aidan walked. And then stopped. He stood before the Lion and the Mujhar it now protected.

  Brennan did not stir, except to move his mouth. "Men covet thrones," he said quietly. "Men conspire and kill and start wars and destroy cities, all for the winning of a throne. But rarely do they think of what it means to sit in one… or to acknowledge the consequences, the cause of the change in power."

  Aidan said nothing.

  "The firstborn sons of kings know they will inherit, one day," Brennan continued, "but they never think about how they will get it. They consider only what they will do when they are kings in their fathers' places, and what changes they might make, and how they will conduct themselves… but never do they consider how thrones pass into their hands."

  It seemed to require a response. "How?" Aidan asked softly.

  "A man dies," Brennan said, "to make another king in his place."

  Aidan purposely damped down the blazing of his kivarna. He had no desire to intrude on his father's anguish; and even less to let it intrude on his. "He would not have wanted to live forever," he said evenly. "Especially like that. You know that, jehan. His time was done. Yours was come."

  "Too glib, Aidan."

  "But the truth." Aidan glanced behind, judging the coals, then sat down on the rim of the firepit, balancing carefully. "When did it happen?"

  "Two days ago. At midday." Brennan scrubbed a hand across his weary face. "He was with Deirdre, in her solar… they were discussing the need for refurbishing guest chambers. Nothing of any consequence…" He sighed, expression bleak. "One moment he was fine, the next—as you saw him."

  Aidan nodded. He had heard of it before, though he had never seen the results.

  "We were not at war," Brennan said. "And most likely never to go to war again, so that he could die in battle… but somehow I always thought it would come upon him another way."

  Aidan thought of something he had heard once, and repeated it, hoping to soothe his father. " 'A warrior can predict his death no more than his tahlmorra.' "

  Brennan grimaced. "Too glib, again. But then you have always had smooth words when everyone else had nothing." He moved, putting order to his limbs. "Why did you come?"

  Aidan, hunched on the rim of the firepit, stared blindly at the dais through eyes full of unshed tears. "I wanted to bring him back."

  Brennan said nothing at first. And then he released an uneven sigh that bespoke the grief and understanding. "I wish there were a way—"

  "There is." Aidan's face spasmed. "I have done it before… with other dead Mujhars."

  "Oh, Aidan—"

  "I have."

  Brennan hooked rigid hands over the clawed handrests and pulled himself forward, from under the Lion's maw. "Now is neither the time nor the place to speak of dreams—"

  Aidan was on his feet. "But I do speak of them—because they are more than dreams!" He took two long strides forward, stopping at the first of three dais steps. "Jehan, you have no idea how it is for me—how it has been for me—"

  "I have every idea!" Brennan cried. "By the gods, do you think we have not stayed awake at nights? Your jehana and I have spent countless days and nights discussing you and your dreams, trying to make sense of seemingly senseless things… Aidan, have you any idea how it has been for us?" He clutched the dark wooden throne. "And now you come on the night of your grandsire's death to say you can summon him!"

  "I can," Aidan whispered.

  Silence. Brennan's' eyes were ablaze with grief and something akin to frustration. "We all loved him. We
all would like him back. But none of us concocts a story—"

  " 'Tis not a story!"' Aidan shouted. "I have spoken with dead Mujhars: Shaine, Carillon, Donal—why not with Niall now?"

  Brennan's face was ashen. His hands shook on the throne.

  "I can," Aidan repeated.

  Brennan closed his eyes.

  I will prove it to him. I will prove me to him—Aidan clutched the links on his belt. If I cannot prove this to him, he will never trust me again. This is necessary.

  "No," Brennan croaked.

  Aidan twitched, staring. He had begun to concentrate.

  "No," Brennan repeated. "You will not do this thing."

  "If I do not—"

  "He is dead. Let him be dead."

  "The others have come, jehan—"

  "I said let him be dead!" Brennan leaned forward. "I do not know what—or who—you are… for the moment I would like you simply to be my son." His face worked a moment. "I need you to be my son."

  Stricken mute by the magnitude of his father's emotions, Aidan could only stare. And then, when he could, he nodded. He took his hands from the links.

  Eventually, Brennan eased himself back in the throne. His posture was less rigid, his tone less intense. He smoothed the fit of his jerkin with a deft, yet eloquent gesture. "So, you have settled on Keely's girl."

  Aidan understood very well what Brennan did. The change in topic was intended to change also the knowledge of what they had only just shared regarding Aidan's congress with dead Mujhars. Neither would ever forget it, but Brennan wanted it set aside so he need not deal with it.

  Aidan shrugged. "Neither of us 'settled' on one another. The gods took an interest… there was no other choice."

  "She is not much like Keely… more like Sean."

  Aidan smiled faintly. "She is very like Keely on the inside. On the outside—well, there is Keely there as well. Once you get past the Erinnish height and stature, and Sean's coloring…" He smiled more broadly. "Shona is mostly Shona."

  "You realize the wedding will have to wait," Brennan warned. "There is the Homanan mourning custom for a deceased Mujhar… they would look askance on any wedding, even a royal one, so close to the Mujhar's passing."