Legacy of the Sword (23 page)

Tumbling.

Blind, he felt his body twisting helplessly. He had no coordination. A hand scrabbled briefly against a wall; an elbow banged; bootleather scrapped itself raw. But mostly he tumbled, touching nothing but air.

Blind. Deaf. Tasting the hot acid spurt of bile into his throat.

And then he opened his mouth and shouted a denial of his fate.

His arm dragged briefly against the silk-smooth, rounded wall. Muscles protested, stretching; he heard the chiming scrape of metal against the marble.

His
lir
-band.

Gods—I am a Cheysuli warrior! Why
fall
when I can
fly—?

He thrust out both arms. Human arms, lacking feathers or falcon bones. Frenziedly he reached for
lir
-shape, but nothing answered his call.

Slow
…
it
is so slow…I will
never
strike the ground.

And if he did not strike the ground, perhaps he would not die.

He felt the air against his body. There was no wind, except air rushing past as he fell. The part of him that was falcon, the part that understood the patterns of flight realized he would have to slow himself significantly if he was to alter a downward fall into the uprush of life-saving flight.

He twitched. Sweat broke out on his body. He reached for the shapechange again.

Upside down. The jerk of trapped air against outstretched wings.

Carefully he tipped one wing, swung over, and tried to angle a climb. But he had miscalculated. The sudden change in size and distribution of his weight sent him slicing through the air, directly at the wall. His fall was curbed, but now his momentum smashed him toward the marble.

The falcon’s wings strained toward even flight. Willpower lifted him upward, veering away from the wall. And yet the oubliette, in its purity of form, nearly defeated him. The left wingtip caught the silk of the marble and the vibration ran up into his body. His direction changed. He slipped sideways into the opposite side.

Left wing snapping with dull finality.

Somehow, he flogged the air. Pain screamed through his hollow bones and reverberated in his skull. Still, somehow, he flew. Perhaps he had not fallen as far as he had feared. He flew, desperately shedding pinfeathers, and reached the edge of the pit.

Falling.

He felt the floor rise up to strike him, battering brittle bones, and then he lost the shapechange. In human-form, Donal flopped across the stone.

Sound filled up the vault. He heard it clearly: a husky, raspy, throaty sobbing, as if it came from a man with no breath left to cry aloud.

He was wet with sweat. His leathers were soaked, rank with the smell of his fear. He lay belly-down on the floor of the vault and pressed his face into the stone, compressing flesh against the bone.

No light.

The torch was gone. He lay in total darkness. But for the moment he did not care; all he wanted was to know he was alive.

His left arm, he knew, was broken. An injury in
lir
-shape translated to the same in human form. How badly the bone was broken he could not say; the dull snap of his falcon’s wing indicated it was not a simple fracture. It was possible the bone had shattered. Bound, it might heal, but it was difficult to bind up flesh already badly burned.

“Lir,”
he said aloud. It hissed in the darkness of the vault.

He gathered what strength he could and sent the appeal through the link.
Lir…by the gods, how I need you!

When he could, Donal pulled his sound arm back toward his body, doubling the elbow beneath his ribs. He tensed, levered himself up, then curled up onto his knees to sit upon his legs. The left arm he cradled briefly against his belly, rocking gently on his heels as if he were a child, but left off both cradling and rocking almost immediately. It hurt too much to move or touch the arm.

“My thanks,” he said aloud, and heard the hoarseness of his voice. “If this was the test of acceptance…I would not care to repeat it.”

He tried to regulate his breathing. He tried to hoard his waning strength.
Lir
-shape was gone, he knew; he was in too
much pain to hold either form. But it would do little good if he could. With the wall shut, even a wolf or falcon would know captivity.

He felt the sweat of pain drip off his face. He shut his eyes and waited.

*   *   *

“Donal.”

A band of dull pain cinched his brow like a fillet of heavy iron. His lip bled from where he had bitten it. He tasted the salt-copper tang. Sweat ran down his face; no more the dampness of fear.

He dared not open his mouth, even to ease his lip, or he would disgrace himself.

“Donal.” It was Carillon’s voice, from where he stood at his bedside. “Donal—Finn is here.”

His eyes snapped open. Through a haze of fever and pain he saw Finn come into the room.
“Su’fali,”
he whispered hoarsely, “tell them no, tell them
no
—” He shifted against the bedclothes, trying to outdistance the pain.
“Su’fali
, tell them no. They want to take my arm.”

Carillon looked at Finn compassionately, but tension was in his tone. “The bones are badly broken. And the burns—they could poison him in three days.”

“You cannot take his arm.” Finn moved toward the bed with Storr padding at his side. “You know better, Carillon.”

“What do I know? That foolishness about a maimed warrior not being a useful man?” Carillon thrust out his twisted hands. “See you these?
I
am crippled, Finn—but I rule Homana still!”

Finn bent over his nephew. “A maimed warrior cannot fight. He cannot hunt. He cannot tend his pavilion. He cannot protect his woman or his children. He cannot protect himself.” He felt Donal’s burning brow. “You know all this, Carillon—I was the one who told you. A maimed warrior cannot serve his clan, nor can he serve the prophecy. He is useless to his people.”

Carillon stood at the bedside. He was trembling. Donal saw it in his hands, in his face; in the rigidity of his spine. The grayish pallor of shock was slowly replaced with the flush of rising anger. “You threaten that very prophecy by sentencing him to death.”

“I sentence Donal to nothing. I will heal him. Is that not why you sent for me?”

“And if the healing does not work?” Carillon challenged. “Occasionally it does not.”

“Occasionally, when the gods see fit to deny it.” Finn did not spare a glance for the lord he had once so loyally served. “Donal—what happened?”

His arm pained. “Carillon took me to the Womb of the Earth,” he said breathlessly. “He left me there. I—gave myself up to the gods. But someone came. Someone—came at me with the torch. I—fell.” He shut his eyes a moment. “When I could, I took
lir
-shape, but—I could not control the fall. I—could not—fly properly. And so—I hit the wall.”

Finn nodded. He glanced around for a stool, found one, hooked it over with a booted foot. In the light from a dozen candles, the gold of his
lir
-bands gleamed. “Nothing more,” he said quietly, sitting down upon the stool. “Nothing more until I am done, and the arm is whole again.” Briefly he smiled. “
Shansu
, Donal…I will take the pain away.”

“
Ru’shalla-tu
,” Donal said weakly.
May it be so.

He closed his eyes. He felt the encouragement of both his
lir
and the presence of Storr as well. Finn did not touch him—he merely sat on the stool and looked at Donal—but after a moment his eyes went opaque and detached. The yellow was swallowed by black.

Donal drifted. He was bodiless, bound by nothing but the pain. It flared and died, pulsing in time with his heart; he wondered if they were linked. But then, slowly, he felt the pain diminish, and the beating stopped altogether.

Am I dead?
he wondered briefly, and found he did not care.

Floating—

—painlessness swallowed him.

*   *   *

Donal slept for three days following the healing, and on the fourth he got out of bed. In dressing he discovered there was no pain in his healed arm, no stiffness in the bone. Only new flesh, too pink against the sunbronzing of older skin.

Shall we come with you?
Lorn inquired as Donal tugged on his boots.

No. I only go to see Carillon.

Taj, fluffed to twice his size as he hunched on his perch,
emitted a single permissive sound. Lorn yawned, stretched, then rose to seek out a warmer place in Donal’s bed. Wolflike, he turned three times in place before settling down.
Lir
like, he thanked Donal for his leftover warmth.

Donal went at once to Carillon’s private solar to speak of what had happened, and found Finn and Alix there as well. He had vague memories of them standing at his bedside, discussing the state of his health; he recalled also that he had tried, once, to tell them to go away, so he could get some sleep. He had slept, but he did not know if they had heeded his suggestion.

Alix sat on a three-legged stool before the fireplace, indigo skirts spread around her feet as she nursed a goblet of hot wine; Donal could see the faintest breath of steam rising from the surface. Finn sat in a deep-silled casement, silhouetted against the sunlight and framed by chiseled stone. At his feet lay Storr, eyes shut. Carillon filled a tooled leather chair with his legs stretched out before him. From the tight-drawn look of the flesh around the Mujhar’s eyes, Donal knew he was in pain.

“
One
good thing has come of this….” Donal shut the heavy door. “It brought my
su’fali
back to Homana-Mujhar.”

Finn swung a booted foot. His smile was very faint. “I said I would come to your wedding. This is not so very premature.”

“Should you be up?” inquired his mother. “Finn told us you might sleep for days.”

“I have.” He waved her back down as she started to rise. “And aye, I should be up—or I will take root in that bed.” He scratched idly at the new flesh above and below the heavy golden
lir
-band on his arm. “Well, at least this way you two aging warriors may speak of old times without a hundred sycophants listening to every word.”

Carillon shifted in the chair, clutching an armrest with one hand. “Old times can wait. For now, we need to learn precisely what has happened.” He moved into a more upright position, straightening the hunched shoulders. “Gods…when I remember the howling Lorn set up…and Taj would not stop flying around the hall….” He shook his head. “I left you alone in the Womb because that is the way it must be done.
Lirless.
Absolutely alone. I gave orders for
no one
to enter the hall. How could anyone have known?”

“The Womb is not entirely secret,” Finn pointed out. “All Cheysuli know of it—though not precisely where; we are taught about it as children. It is one of the first lessons the
shar tahls
give us.” He frowned. “Still—I doubt any Homanans would know of it, save yourself. Who else is in this palace?”

“Oh Finn, you cannot expect us to believe someone from Carillon’s
household
did this!” Alix shook her head. “They are too loyal to Carillon.”

“Loyal to Carillon and
Homana
,” Finn said evenly. “Rank aside, there is a fundamental difference between Carillon and Donal.”

Alix looked back at him levelly. The sunlight lay full on her face, leaching shadows from planes and angles to give her youth again. Donal could almost see the seventeen-year-old girl Finn had stolen from Carillon, then lost to his older brother.

But the moment was fleeting; Donal, looking from his mother to his uncle, saw only a warrior and a woman, kin to one another through their father. Hale was in their faces.

And had it not been for that jehan and Carillon’s foolish cousin
, none
of us would be here.

“Foreigners, then.” Carillon scratched at his beard. “Well, there is Gryffth. The Ellasian Lachlan sent me—was it fifteen years ago?” He frowned, plainly shocked to find so much time had passed. “But he is the only foreigner in the palace at the moment. And Gryffth I trust with
my
life, as well as Donal’s. He helped Duncan and me win Alix free of Tynstar.” Carillon shook his head. “No, not Gryffth.”

“No,” Finn agreed. One boot heel tapped against the wall.

Donal perched himself upon the edge of a sturdy table and helped himself to wine. “I could not begin to hazard a guess. I know there are Homanans who would sooner see me something
other
than Carillon’s heir—and back in the Keep, no doubt—” he shrugged a little, mouth twisted wryly “—but I doubt any of them would wish to have me
slain
—” Abruptly, he set the wine cup down. “No—perhaps I am wrong. My reception in Hondarth was not precisely—warm.”

“What are you saying?” Carillon sat upright in his chair. “What have you been keeping from me?”

Donal saw how attentively Finn and Alix waited for his answer. And so he told them all, briefly, of the confrontation
with the Homanan and the manure that had been thrown. “I felt it was not significant enough to tell you,” he said finally to Carillon. “It was—unpleasant—but nothing to fret the Mujhar.” He turned the cup in circles on the wooden tabletop, idly watching how the silver rolled against the satiny hardwood finish. “But—I
do
begin to see that not all of Homana is reconciled to the ending of the
qu’mahlin.”

“Nor ever will be,” Finn agreed.

Alix, mute but obviously disturbed, picked worriedly at the nap of her indigo skirts.

“I am not surprised,” Finn went on calmly. “I think there are many Homanans who care little enough that we
exist—
there is nothing they can do about that, short of starting another
qu’mahlin
—but I also think they would actively resist a Cheysuli as Mujhar. And you are next in line.”

Donal frowned. “But would they try to have me
slain?
”

Alix’s mouth was grim as she looked at Finn. “Would they?”

He shrugged. “It is possible. Shaine’s
qu’mahlin
was a powerful thing. It bred hatred and fear upon hatred and fear, and fed off violence and ignorance.” He glanced at the Mujhar. “I remember what it was like when Carillon and I came back from Caledon. The purge was over, but there were many Homanans who desired to see me dead.” For the first time a trace of bleakness entered his tone. “We would be wise not to discount the possibility that the
qu’mahlin
still exists for those who wish it to.”