Legacy of the Sword (31 page)

On the first day, he built a shelter out of saplings. He wove them together with vines. He took stones from the ground and made a firecairn in the center of the shelter. He lighted a fire and put herbs into the flames, until smoke rose up to fill the tiny shelter.

He stripped out of his leathers and folded them into a pile outside the shelter. He took off armbands and earrings, setting them on top of the piled clothing. Naked
, lirless,
alone, he entered and sat down, cross-legged, and allowed the smoke to cloak his body.

It grew warm within the shelter. Too warm. What flesh had first shrunk from the twilight chill now exuded sweat that
formed in droplets and ran down sun-bronzed flesh to the earth. Breathing grew labored, and husky.

He did not close his eyes. Smoke entered them. Burned; burning, his eyes began to water. Tears coursed down his face to drip against his chest, where it joined the sheen of sweat that bathed his flesh.

He sat. He waited. When the herbs and wood burned away and the rocks of the cairn grew cool, still he waited. He did not eat. He did not sleep. He did not move at all.

*   *   *

On the second day, he stalked and slew a silver wolf. He drained the blood from the body, and then he smeared it onto his flesh from head to toe. It dried. Itched. Flaked. But he ignored it.

He ate raw the wolf’s warm heart.

The taste was vile.

But he disregarded it.

*   *   *

On the third day, he bathed in a glass-black pool. He scraped blood and grime and smoke-stench from his flesh with heavy sand. Blood speckled up where he scraped too hard; his blood; that which was now cleansed as the flesh was cleansed, as the spirit was cleansed; that which made him Cheysuli.

He had sweated out the impurities from within.

He had slain his other self; devoured that which had nearly devoured him; renewed the self he had slain in the bloody christening ritual.

He was cleansed.

I’toshaa-ni.

*   *   *

“Five days,” Rowan said. “You might have told the Mujhar.”

Donal, holding Ian in his arms as he stood before his pavilion, met Rowan’s eyes levelly. “There was a thing I had to do.”

A muscle ticked in Rowan’s jaw. “You might have told the Mujhar,” he repeated implacably. “The Ellasian prince came back telling a tale of near-murder and violence…and yet
you
see fit to leave the city without a word to anyone.”

“I saw fit.” As Ian squirmed, Donal set him down. The boy steadied himself against his father’s leather-clad leg, then
ran off to chase a new-fledged hawk as it tried to ride the wind.

Rowan held the reins of two horses. One of them was Donal’s chestnut stallion. “You have no choice,” he said.

“There is ever a choice, for me.” Donal did not smile. “I did not flee, general. I did not run from Carillon’s wrath. I came home to my Keep because there was a thing I had to do. A form of expiation.” His face still bore traces of the tavern beating, though most of the soreness had passed.
“I’toshaa-ni
, Rowan…or do your Homanan ways preclude you from comprehension?”

Dull color darkened Rowan’s taut brown skin. For the briefest of moments Donal saw the general’s tight-shut white teeth when his lips peeled back as if he would speak. But he did not. He merely pressed his lips together again tensely and held out the reins to the chestnut horse.

“I might prefer
lir
-shape,” Donal said quietly.

“Do you challenge me?” Rowan’s voice gained emotion. There was anger in it, raw, rising anger. “Do you challenge me?” He cut off the beginnings of Donal’s answer with a sharp gesture. A Cheysuli gesture, quite rude, demanding the silence of another. “Aye, I know what you do,
my lord.
You look down from your Cheysuli pride and arrogance and count me an ignorant man. Unblessed, am I?—a man without a
lir
? Do you think I do not know? Do you think I do not
feel
your opinion of me?” Rowan stared at Donal with a predator’s challenge; with the unwavering stare of a dominant wolf facing a younger cub wishing to fight for the rule of the pack. “
Lirless
I may be, Donal, but—
by the gods!
—I am Carillon’s man! What I do, I do for Homana. You would be better to think of me as someone who means you well, rather than your keeper.”

Resentment rose up in Donal’s belly. But also guilt, and a tinge of honest regret. Mutely, he took the reins from Rowan’s hands. “I was in need of cleansing,” he said in low voice. “Rowan—I needed
i’toshaa-ni.
”

“No doubt you will need it twice or thrice before this war is done.” Rowan swung up on his horse, pulling his crimson cloak into place across the glossy rump of his tall white stallion. He looked down upon Donal, and his face was very grim. “Carillon has no more time for the follies of youth in his heir. And neither, I think, do I.”

“You!”
Donal mounted and spun his horse to face Rowan squarely. “You are not of my clan—my kin—you are not even a proper warrior. Aye, I look down on you from Cheysuli arrogance—how can I not? You are a
lirless
man, and yet you live. You live, while the
lir
you might have had is dead all these long, long years.”

“Would you rather have
me
dead?” Rowan’s hand caught the reins of Donal’s horse. “By the gods, boy, you may be Duncan’s son, but you have none of his sensitivity. I hear more of
Finn
in you—too quick to judge another man by what feelings are in yourself.” Still he held the fretting stallion. Dust rose into the air. “Do you think I feel nothing? Do you consider me little more than Carillon’s puppet, titled out of courtesy?” Rowan’s lips drew back.
“Ku’reshtin
!—you should know better. I
earned
what rank I hold, which is more than you can claim.
No
—” Again, the sharp gesture cut Donal off. “I was born, as you were, to the clan. But Shaine’s
qu’mahlin
raged, and my life was endangered the moment I drew breath. My kin, in running, were slain, and I was left to the Ellasians who found me. Am I less a man for that? Am I less a man because I claim no
lir
?” His eyes held Donal’s without flinching. “Less a
warrior
, aye, as you would count a warrior—but not less a
man
than you. I am what I have made myself. And I am content with that.” For a moment, his hand tightened on the reins of Donal’s horse. “Homanan puppet, some men call me. But what will they call you?
You
claim the Homanan blood…while I am
all
Cheysuli.”

Donal glared. “I claim nothing but the favor of the gods.”

Rowan laughed. The sound rang out raucously, and he threw the leather rein back at Donal. “Do you, now? Are you better, then, than others?” But he stopped laughing. The ironic humor left his voice. Donal saw the tautness in Rowan’s mouth and heard the too-smooth note of elaborate condescension in his tone. “And does your divinity preclude you from lying with your wife?”

Donal felt his breath flow out of his chest. He stared back and saw minute disgust in Rowan’s eyes.

Disgust…with
me…“
What has Aislinn said?
”

Rowan shrugged with studied negligence and gathered in his reins. “You will have to ask
that
of Carillon.”

“Then let us do it.” Donal set heels to his horse. “By the gods,
let us do it—
”

C
arillon sat in his favorite private solar, soft-booted feet propped up on a three-legged footstool and torso slumped back into the depths of a padded velvet chair. In his hands he cradled a goblet of pale yellow wine; he nursed it, sipping almost absently. A fresh flagon sat on the table beside the chair.

Donal, facing him, felt impatience rise. He had sought out the Mujhar and confronted him, demanding to know what Aislinn had said of their failed wedding night. Carillon had said nothing, merely waving him into silence as if he must think things over. And so Donal waited.

Taj perched atop the high back of a second chair; Lorn, sleepy-eyed, slumped loosely against the stones in front of the fireplace. Neither offered comment: Donal thought they, like he, waited.

Carillon stared fixedly into the half-gone goblet of pale sweet wine, as if he dreamed. Donal thought he looked lost somehow, elsewhere entirely; there was a slackness about his spirit, a lessening of the intensity Donal had always known in him. But after a moment he stirred. “I am told you left Aislinn to seek entertainments with Lachlan’s brother; that you embroiled yourself in a brawl that quickly became more than a misunderstanding. Evan says you are fortunate to be alive.”

“Aye.” Donal controlled his voice with effort. “I am—fortunate. But I left Aislinn because she would not have me lie with her. There were—impediments.”

“Impediments?” Carillon straightened in his chair. One hand gripped the goblet, the other clenched on the knobbed end of the wooden chair arm. “If you speak of a young bride’s natural modesty, you should know that a caring husband can overcome
impediments
such as that.” He did not smile. “You and Sorcha were quite young when first you lay together. And yet you managed it. Why could you not manage this?”

Donal felt the coil of distaste and embarrassment tighten within his belly. “She would not have it,” he said quietly. “She swore she would not have it. There were—words of insult. Words meant to hurt, to unman me—and they did.” Donal looked straight at the Mujhar. “What I heard were Electra’s thoughts, Electra’s words in Aislinn’s mouth, and I refuse to lie with
her.
”

Carillon sat forward in the chair, hunching, both hands clutching the goblet. “Electra,” he said hoarsely. “
By the gods
, I wish that woman were dead!”

Donal moved forward. “But she is not,” he said evenly. “She is alive, and well, and no doubt abetting Tynstar as he seeks to attack Homana.” He paused before the Mujhar, a man grown old before his time, and aging too quickly even now. “But—she is also here, my lord…within your daughter’s mind. And while she dwells there, there will be no heirs to the Lion Throne.”

For just a moment, the twisted hands on the goblet shook. Wine spilled, splashing against the soft leather of Carillon’s boots. “And so they shall win this realm because there are no children of my daughter and her husband,” he said. “War becomes—incidental. Unnecessary, somehow. Because they can destroy us another way.” Carillon drank. He tossed back the wine as if it were water, then poured a second goblet. But this time he only stared into it, his face lined with bitterness and regret.

And then he looked at Donal. “Can you not shut her away? Shut her out of Aislinn’s mind?”

Donal shrugged. “She is the parasite and Aislinn is the host. A rapacious parasite…and a fragile, erratic host.”

Carillon sighed and shut his eyes. For a long moment he kept himself in silence. Then, “Name me a monster, if you will, but I must bid you to use force. Use the power I know you have.”

Donal stared at him in shock. “You would have me force your daughter?”

“Not
rape
.” Carillon shook his head. “No, never that. Use the third gift.
Compel
her to lie with you. I know you will not harm her.” He pushed himself out of the chair. “Poor Aislinn—it is not her choosing, what Electra has done to her. She has become a valuable gamepiece, a gamepiece which Electra can use to raze the House of Homana. She
infests
Aislinn now, so that against her will Aislinn heeds what Electra intends, even to attempting murder.” He ran twisted fingers through the heavily silvered hair. “But one way of making certain Electra does not succeed is to overcome her with magic stronger than what she has learned from Tynstar.”

“It is
force
,” Donal said. “Kin to rape, or worse— you ask me to take her will from her and replace it with my own.”

Carillon set the goblet down on the table and moved slowly to one of the sun-drenched casements. He stared out, but Donal thought he saw nothing. “It is not force if it be replaced with willingness.”

Donal crossed to the table and picked up Carillon’s goblet, meaning to wash the foul taste from his mouth with a swallow of sweetened wine. But the Mujhar, turning back, saw it. “No!” he said sharply, crossing to catch the goblet from Donal’s hand. “No—I am sorry…it is my favorite, and the cask is nearly empty. Until more is delivered, I am limited to a single goblet each night…and I am a selfish man.” Carillon smiled. “I think you might do better to keep yourself from wine this night and think of what awaits you in your bed.”

Donal shook his head. “I have no taste for this.”

“I do not ask you to
have taste
,” Carillon said raggedly. “I ask only that you perform a service any man should be ready and willing to perform.”

“Ready and willing!” Donal threw at him. “This is your
daughter
, Carillon…not some silly chambermaid!”

“Do you think I do not know?” Carillon shouted back. His voice shook a little, and Donal saw the anguish in the depths of the fading blue eyes. “Ah gods, would that I had never married the woman, so this would not be necessary.
Would that I had wed someone else
—” He broke off. Tears shone in
his eyes. “They warned me. Finn, mostly. And Duncan. Even Alix and my sister.
Do not wed Electra
, they said,
she is Tynstar’s meijha and will only seek to slay you.
Oh, aye, they had the right of it…and now I pay the price.”