Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) (9 page)

I had been expecting a manor house similar to Mendor’s Landholding in Falinor, I suppose, large and solid but not overly imposing. The Clanhold of Broche Rhuidh was large and solid, but there the resemblance to Mendor’s house stopped. Broche Rhuidh was stone-built, rising gracefully from the top of a small shoulder of the mountain. Behind it, the sheer face of the granite crag towered high enough to scrape the belly of the clear sky. The living rock of the cliff itself formed the back wall of the Clanhold. Crenellated towers stood at each corner behind battlements fashioned of the same rock, but the massive gates stood flung wide in the warm late morning sunshine. Behind the walls, the Clanhold itself stood huge and graceful, solidly rooted in the mountain.

I looked at Cullin, aware that my mouth hung open. “You didn’t tell me Broche Rhuidh was a palace,” I said faintly.

Cullin looked at the Clanhold judiciously, then at me. “Aye, well, I suppose it’s big enough,” he said. “And it’s comfortable. Cold in winter, though.” He urged the stallion forward, leaving me still gaping on the brow of the hill.

I kicked the sorrel into a canter to catch up. “Cullin?”

He turned, grinning at me over his shoulder.

“Cullin, is your father a king?” I pulled the sorrel up even with the bay stallion and reached out to touch Cullin’s arm.

Cullin laughed. “A king?” he repeated. “Hellas, no. But I must have mentioned he was Clan Laird.”

“Aye, you did,” I said, looking at the awe inspiring structure ahead of us. “But you didn’t tell me what it meant.”

He grinned. “In Isgard, the title would be prince, I think,” he said. “There are no kings in Tyra.”

“A prince,” I repeated faintly. “That makes me—”

“A young lord,” he said matter-of-factly. “Merely the son of a younger son. If we hurry, we’ll be in time for the noon meal.”

I followed him, still slightly stunned, remembering those fantasies of my childhood. In my imagination, the father who came to rescue me was always nobly born, sometimes even a prince. But those were daydreams. At least, I thought they were mere daydreams. “A young lord,” I muttered to myself. “Hellas-birthing. A young lord....”

They came out to the courtyard to meet us as we rode in. I recognized them from Cullin’s descriptions as they stood on the wide, stone steps leading up to the broad, carved doors. The tall, straight man with red hair fading to grey was Medroch, Cullin’s father, the Clan Laird. Beside him stood another man, his hair the colour of polished oak. Cullin’s brother Rhodri was not quite as tall as their father, but he had a good expanse of shoulder narrowing to lean, muscular hips. The woman at his side, slightly plump and smiling, was Rhodri’s wife Linnet. Three boys, ranging in age from twelve to sixteen stood on the step behind her—Rhodri’s sons, Brychan, Landen and Tavis.

Slightly apart from them was another woman, tall, slender and beautiful, her hair the red-gold of a sweet maple leaf in the autumn sun. She held a young girl of about three by the hand, her other hand on the shoulder of another girl of about six who stood in front of her. She had to be Cullin’s wife Gwynna. The children were Elin and Wynn. Both the girls had hair like freshly minted copper coins, and stood gravely regarding their father as he dismounted in the courtyard, the youngest with a finger in her mouth.

Medroch stepped forward to meet us as we mounted the steps. He held out his hands and Cullin put both of his into them, bowing slightly from the waist.

“Welcome home, Cullin,” Medroch said, his voice deep and mellow. His eyes, grey as smoke, clear as water, turned to me. “Leydon’s son?” he asked.

“Aye,” Cullin said. “I’ve brought him home.”

Medroch searched me up and down in frank appraisal. “Ye favour your father,” he told me. “But you’ve your mother’s eyes. Be welcome here, Kian dav Leydon. This is your home.” He held out his hands to me.

Following Cullin’s example, I placed my hands in his and bowed. “Thank you,” I said, and my voice sounded rusty and hoarse.

Cullin greeted his brother warmly, placed a kiss on Linnet’s upturned cheek, then presented me to them. In a daze, I acknowledged the introductions and stood in a stupor as Linnet kissed my cheek and bid me welcome. When I turned again to Cullin, I found him standing with his arms around Gwynna, kissing her with a fervency and enthusiasm that belied his wry phrase,
agreeing to disagree.
He finally stepped away from her, bent to scoop up both children into his arms and brought them over to present them to me. They were shy, but both gave me smiles.

“There’s a meal waiting,” Linnet said at last. “Cullin, take Kian to the bath house and both of you get cleaned up. We’ll serve the meal when you’re finished.”

***

Cullin and Gwynna retired to their suite for three days, appearing only occasionally for meals. Again, it didn’t quite fit with Cullin’s ironic description of their marriage. When I commented on their absence the first evening Cullin and Gwynna failed to appear for dinner, Rhodri threw some light on it for me.

“It’s a strange relationship, ye ken,” he said, smiling. “For the first while, they canna keep their hands off each other. Ye couldna get a sheet of parchment between them.” He laughed. “You wait. By the end of the fortnight, they’ll still be standing close, but it’ll be nose to nose and toe to toe, arguing about everything from the way Cullin trims his beard to the way Gwynna mends the girls’ smocks. They won’t admit it, but they love each other with a grand passion. They just canna live with the other for long.”

I made a noncommittal reply and returned to my meal. But I smiled.

***

Sympathetically aware of my sense of strangeness, everybody left me alone for the next few days, letting me adjust at my own speed. I wandered the Clanhold, exploring the rooms and corridors, studying the rows of portraits hanging in the Great Hall. I paused before one of them, a painting of a young man, redheaded, grey-eyed, with a smile very much like Cullin’s, but clean-shaven. He wore a bonnet with a sprig of rowan tucked behind the clan badge, the plaid secured at his shoulder by an ornate brooch fashioned to look like a leaping stag with a large, yellow stone glittering between its great rack of antlers.

“My son, Leydon,” Medroch said at my shoulder, startling me. “Your father. That was done just before he left the Clanhold, about three years before you were born.”

“Is there one of my mother?” I asked, still looking at the portrait. Even though I could see the likeness to myself in him, Leydon dav Medroch was a stranger. I could not remember him at all.

“We have no portrait of Twyla,” Medroch said quietly. “She never wanted one done.”

I nodded and he left me to continue my exploring.

The language came back first. I don’t know when it was I suddenly realized that I not only understood everything being said around me, I was as fluent with Tyran as they. Cullin had used the language with me during our journey south, but I had stumbled and stuttered when I tried to speak it. Here at the Clanhold, it came naturally and easily, and I pondered that development in silence.

Then one day about a sevenday after we arrived, I wandered out of the house and found my way to a high cliff overlooking the sea. On some instinct, I followed a narrow little track until I came to an enclave tucked into a tumble of rocks. A thicket of silverleaf maple, salt-bitten and twisted, clung tenaciously to the stony soil among the rocks. I found a moss-covered stone in the sun and sat, watching the breakers crash against the cliff wall on the opposite side of the small bay, sending spume purling high into the air.

I looked up as a shadow fell across me. Cullin stood there, dressed only in kilt and shirt. “I used to come here and watch the sea,” I said quietly. “And I gathered eggs on that wall over there.”

“Aye,” he said. “Ye did. This was one of your favourite places as a child. Is it coming back then, Kian?”

“Some things,” I said. “Only a little.”

“Well, it might never all come back to ye,” he said. “But ye ken that you’re home.”

“I’m home here,” I said. “In this spot. But not in the house yet.”

“Ye can stay here, if ye wish,” he said. “Or ye can come wi’ me when I leave again.”

I looked up at him. “I’ll come wi’ you,” I said. “I canna feel I belong here. It’s too grand for the likes of me.”

He laughed. “Aye,” he agreed. “I’ve always felt that way myself.” He stood for a moment, watching the sea birds circle endlessly over the water, searching for fish. Then: “I’d be pleased to have you with me, Kian,” he said quietly. “I’ve grown fond of ye these last seasons.”

The feeling of relief that swept through me caught me by surprise. Pleased by his words, I grinned up at him. “Was I worth the five silver?” I asked.

He considered that. “Aye,” he said gravely. “I expect so.” He touched one of the silver-chased hilts at his belt and laughed. “In any case, the daggers certainly were.”

A fortnight later, we left Broche Rhuidh for Honandun and another merchant train. That began a pattern we were to follow for the next seven years—traversing back and forth across the continent with merchant trains, and once every year or so going back to Broche Rhuidh to see Cullin’s family. We seldom stayed more than a season at the longest, and most visits were only a few days longer than a fortnight. It was a rhythm of life that suited us both. Cullin’s small band of guards was much in demand and we never had to seek contracts actively. The merchants came to us.

Cullin had an easy manner with both the guards and the merchants. He possessed the ability to fit himself deftly into the company of nobles and soldiers, merchants and farmers. When the occasion demanded, he could out-lord the haughtiest of noblemen and the next minute, be down on the floor of a tavern, drinking ale and throwing dice with a troop of soldiers. He had the happy faculty of blending seamlessly into his surroundings. He spoke at least six languages, not counting Tyran. When he undertook to teach me, I discovered I, too, had a flair for languages and he informed me that was something else I had inherited through my father from my grandfather.

He also undertook to teach me manners. All I remembered was living as a slave. Under Cullin’s tutelage, taking my cues from him, I learned how to comport myself in any company and found out I also had a good flair for acting.

Cullin had been right about my growing. Over the next several years, I stretched up to within a thumbs-length of his height, but fell short of his weight by nearly two stone. The active life spent mostly outdoors and the work with the sword gave me a man’s shape to match my height. In a kilt, shirt and plaid, and a golden topaz on a fine chain in my left ear by the braid in my hair, I looked as much the Tyran clansman as Cullin. We made a good pair. And some time in those years, we slipped effortlessly into the relationship of foster-father and foster-son more than uncle and nephew. It was comfortable for both of us.

***

Nennia came unexpectedly and startlingly into my life not long after I turned twenty by Cullin’s reckoning. Cullin and I had come home to the Clanhold when snow and storms closed the passes through the Laringorn Alps. We arrived just in time for the Winter Solstice Festival and the Clanhold was full to overflowing with celebrants not only from our own glen, but from all the neighbouring glens. Cullin and I were no sooner welcomed properly than Medroch drew me aside and informed me gravely that it was high time I was married, then announced that he had arranged for me to wed Nennia dan Caennedd, daughter of the laird of Glen Afton. Before I had time to do more than sputter my confusion, he had us handfasted and the deed was done.

Nennia was a shy little girl, about my own age, mayhap a bit younger, slender and graceful as a young fawn with a glimmer of humour lurking always at the corners of her mouth. To my surprise, and to hers, too, I think, she delighted me, and I apparently pleased her. But we had so little time together. Cullin and I left shortly after Imbolc when the passes began to open again. As we were leaving, she informed me, a dimple forming at the corner of her mouth, that she believed she was with child. Before we could return to the Clanhold, a messenger from Medroch reached us. My delicate little wife was dead in early childbed, and I had a son.

“And the boy?” Cullin asked, for I could not speak.

“Healthy and strong,” the messenger replied. “Your lady wife has taken charge of him. They named him Keylan.”

Medroch’s grandfather had been called Keylan. I nodded. “A fitting name, I said hoarsely. “Aye, fitting.”

Nennia’s death saddened me greatly, but I could not grieve as deeply as I thought I should. We had scarcely begun getting to know each other before I left. Poor, shy little fawn of a girl. I would never forget her, and I greatly regretted my lack of overwhelming grief. But soon, life eased back into the now familiar pattern of ranging back and forth through the mountain passes between Laringras and Isgard. I was content in the rhythm of my life.

The road,
little more than a narrow track, wound through the towering cedars and firs at the base of the cliffs. It followed the course of the river through the spur of mountains thrusting north from Laringras to curve around the east border of Falinor and Isgard. Overhead, thick grey cloud obscured the tops of the peaks in every direction, and filled the chilly air with a fine, wet mist that was trying to make up its mind to become drizzle.

Southern mountains in early spring, I thought in disgust as I rode nearly a furlong ahead of the straggling merchant-train. I hate southern mountains in early spring. I hate drizzle and mist. I hate rain forests. And I especially hate mountains in early spring when they stood shoulder deep in drizzly mist and choked by rain forest. Too cursed many places for bandits to lie in ambush, waiting for an unwary merchant-train. Too much chance we might have to earn every silver the merchants paid us for the whole trip in the half-season it took just to get through these passes.