Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (10 page)

           
"We are not wed," I
pointed out. "The union was never consummated."

           
Lillith smiled. "We could take
pains to see that it was."

           
"No." I said it coldly,
banishing any attempt at polite-ness or diplomacy.

           
Lillith's husky laugh rang out.
"If you axe frightened of me, my lord, why not have your warrior brother
accompany us? His magic will prevent me from using mine."

           
Another man might have instantly
refused the chance to gain an ally, being too proud and too full of himself; was
not a fool. Strahan had already impressed upon me how easy it was for an Ihlini
to level sorcery against me, and I was not about to give Lillith the
opportunity. I rousted Ian from conversation with one of my mother's ladies,
ignored his muttered threat, and explained matters to him. He stopped
complaining, summoned Tasha from his chambers, and went with Lillith and me
into the city streets-In the thirty-five years since Carillon had returned from
exile and made the Cheysuli welcome in their homeland again, most of the Homanans
had learned to coexist with warriors and lir. Tasha's presence no longer
alarmed Mujhara's citizens to the point of taking action against her as they
once would have against a mountain cat who happened into the city. While no one
precisely welcomed her—she is large, lethal, and incredibly powerful—neither
did they hunt weapons with which to slay her.

           
Ian and I flanked Lillith out of
good manners, nothing more. Tasha preceded us, clearing a path through the
crowded streets as passers-by made way immediately.

           
Though the streets were cobbled, a
thin layer of dust rose to film Ullith's wine-red skirts and turn them a faded
ocher-red. But she hardly appeared to notice. She observed everything around
her with calm, discerning eyes, as if she fit the city into a private ordering.
She did not appear aware of the stares she received from men, or the mutters
from the women. They could not know she was Ihlini, but her vivid apartness
made her a beacon in the streets.

           
Ian and I took her to
Market Square
, the hub of every city or country village.
In Mujhara the Square is huge, hedged by buildings at every turning. It was
here everyone brought wares to trade and sell, commodities meant for
competitive distribution. Canvas stalls filled up the Square, narrowing the
alleys and streets to winding walkways hardly wide enough for three to walk
abreast. Even Tasha found the going more difficult.

           
"Is it always like this?" Lillith
asked.

           
Ian was ahead, I behind. Jostled, I
stumbled a step closer to her. "It is Market Day today. Another time it is
not so bad, although the Square is always crowded." My foot squashed a
sodden sweetmeat someone had dropped; grimacing, I shook the remains from the
sole of my boot.

           
"It is worse at
Summerfair."

           
Lillith held up her skirts with both
hands as Ian broke a path through the throngs of people. "Rondule is not
so big as this. But then, neither is Atvia as big as Homana."

           
"Do you not come from
Solinde?" I nearly had to shout over the babble of the crowds.

           
"Originally." She slanted
a glance at me over a shoulder. "Atvia is now my home."

           
"Because of Alaric."

           
"Because I choose it as my
home."

           
Ian was brought up short by a man on
horseback, always questionable transportation in the Square. Lillith, still looking
at me, bumped into him. Ian turned, intending to steady her; he stopped
himself. For a moment they merely looked at one another, as if offering mutual
challenges.

           
Then Lillith laughed. Ian loked
away.

           
"Rujho" I said sharply,
"look."

           
Ian turned. We had been stopped by
the stall of a furrier, and the smell of freshly-dressed hides was pungent.
There were pelts of every sort: coney, fox, beaver,
 
bear, wolf and mountain cat, countless other
kinds. The largest pelts were tacked upon wood and hung from the back of the
stall. Tails depended from nails. The plusher, finer pelts were piled upon
benches and over the counter itself.

           
My hand had automatically gone down
to brace myself against stumbling. It was buned in sleek softness; one look
told me the hide had once clothed a living cat.

           
I recoiled. The color was Tasha's,
lush red tipped with chestnut brown. Though there is no tenet in the clans
against trapping or slaying animals who are not lir, the likeness to Tasha sent
a shiver of distaste and superstition down my spine.

           
Ian's face was stark. Here we saw
hundreds of pelts, and all the animals dead.

           
"Lovely," Lillith said,
and her hands caressed the remains of the mountain cat.

           
A man stepped forward from behind
his racks of pelts.

           
He was small, quick, authoritative.
"A discerning eye," he said, smiling warmly at Lillith, but not too
familiarly.

           
A shrewd glance at Ian and myself
told him we could afford the price of any one of a hundred pelts; his smile
became obsequious. "A fur-lined mantle, perhaps? A bit of coney for the
collar?" He snatched up a night-black mountain cat pelt and swept it
around Lillith's shoulders.

           
"Black on black," he said.
"Lady, you are lovely."

           
But Lillith looked past the man and
lifted a slender hand. "No," she said, "the white."

           
The furrier glanced over his
shoulder. His brown hair was tied back with a length of blue-dyed leather. His
clothing also was of leather, with strips of fur at collar, cuffs and doublet
hem. Red fox, I knew. I thought it fit his manner.

           
"Lady, that is not yet ready
for sale." Still smiling, he took the black pelt from Lillith and offered
a silver one instead. "This one suits you well."

           
"That one,” Lillith said, and
there was no mistaking her tone.

           
The furrier pressed palms against
his leathers. "It has only just come in. There are treatments. I must
first render it suitable." He bobbed his head toward Ian and then myself.
"Perhaps something else for the lady?"

           
"There is nothing here for
her," Ian said flatly. "I hunt and skin animals when I must, for food
and warmth and shelter, but I do not slay—or sell—so many as to make my living
at it."

           
The furrier slanted a nervous glance
in Tasha's direction. The cat's amber eyes were fixed on his face, as if she
intended to leap on him momentarily.

           
"I wish to see it,” Lillith
said, and threw down the silver pelt.

           
The furrier complied. He settled the
white pelt down in front of Lillith and folded his arms across his chest.

           
"Wolf," she said, and I
thought I heard satisfaction in her tone.

           
"Aye,” the furrier agreed.
"Brought in this morning. The trapper gave it only a bit of a
cleaning." Deft fingers peeled back an edge of the pelt to show the hide
beneath. "It wants softening, brushing, dyeing; all the things I do to the
pelts to make them lovely enough for a lady as lovely as you." No more
merchant's chatter; he meant what he said, profoundly.

           
Lillith fingered the fur. "Will
it be white again? True white?"

           
"Wants cleaning." He
bobbed his head.

           
She smiled. "The wolf must have
been a lovely animal, alive."

           
"Wanted killing,” the furrier
said. "Plague-ridden beast." Uneasily he glanced at me. "No
more, of course. I'd never be selling a plague-ridden pelt."

           
"What plague?" I frowned.
"There is no plague in Homana."

           
"North, across the
Bluetooth
River
," he said. "Herders took sick
after a white wolf got into their sheep."

           
"This wolf?" Ian asked.

           
The furrier shrugged. "Trappers
are taking every white one they can find, for the coin. Herders are paying good
silver."

           
"What are you paying?" I
demanded.

           
He did not look away from me.
"Copper," he said, and smiled. "There is no plague in
Mujhara."

           
"And what will you sell it
for?" Ian asked.

           
"Gold," the furrier
answered. "White wolves are rare; there are people who crave the
unusual."

           
"Lovely," Lillith
murmured, burying fingers in the pelt.

           
"Enough," I said abruptly,
"there is more for you to see." I put a hand on her arm and turned
her away from the stall.

           
"Nothing for the lady?"
asked the man. "Nothing for either of you?"

           
"We do not crave the
unusual," Ian answered, "when purchased at the price of an animal's
life."

           
"It carried plague!” the man
insisted, then shut his mouth as if he realized he might lower his asking
price.

           
"Plague," Ian said in
disgust as we threaded our way through the throng. "More likely the
sheepdogs carried the sickness."

           
"Or the herders themselves."
Lillith smiled. "I have seen enough. I would like to go back to the
palace."

           
"You have seen nothing," I
said, surprised, "You have hardly tapped Mujhara—"

           
"I have seen enough," she
repeated distinctly. A slim hand insinuated itself in the crook of my arm.
"Will you escort me home, my lord?"

           
The emphasis as she singled me out
was slight, but still apparent, and certainly so to Ian. I saw the slight twist
at one comer of his mouth; amusement or irritation, perhaps both. He glanced at
me, smiled, gave in graciously.

           
But I thought he and Tasha fell back
a few steps with an undue amount of alacrity.

           
Lillith said little enough as I
escorted her back to Homana-Mujhar, keeping herself in companionable silence. Ian
and Tasha followed, but she ignored them both. The hand still rested in my
elbow; I could hardly strip it away, though I longed to do it. Common courtesy
denied me the pleasure.

           
Ihlini or no, she is Alaric's
representative—in bed or out of it, as she says. What little I have learned of statecraft
from my father forbids outright rudeness unless I have no choice. And/or now,
there is a choice.

           
Still, I wondered if Lillith had
truly seen enough. Or if, more likely, she had seen precisely what she had come
to see.

           
We took ship from Hondarth, bound
for Atvia. It was possible to go overland through Solinde to the western
port
of
Andemir
, then set sail for the island, but the
fastest way was to go by sea entirely. Besides, we had no wish to enter Ihlini
environs with Lillith in our company.

           
Aside from Varien, Lillith, lan,
Tasha and myself, there was an escort of sixteen Homanan men handpicked from my
father's personal Mujharan Guard. Ian, less inclined to approve of such things
as royal escorts and decorum, was amused by it all. I felt a mixture of pride
and resignation. I was content enough to accept my role as Homana's heir with
all attendant traditions, but I realized, somewhat belatedly, that never again
would I have the freedom to flee my princely concerns. The marriage, proxy or
no, had locked the circlet around my head.

           
The weather, as we sailed out of
Hondarth, was good.

           
The rains had lifted entirely, leaving
clear skies and a more temperate climate behind. Only a faint cool breeze
snapped the blue sails of our ship and set the scarlet pennons flying-Behind us
lay the whitewashed city and lilac-heathered hills. Ahead of us floated the
Crystal Isle, wreathed in silver mists. Ian, standing beside me at the
taffrail, nodded toward the island. "All the history, rujho. Do you ever
think of it?"

           
"I thought of it enough when
the shar tahls made me memorize all the stories." Cautiously, I eyed the
white-caps slapping against the prow. I had not yet decided if I was born to
sail or to keep myself to land.

           
Ian laughed. "I, as well . . .
but now those stories seem more alive. I think we should have come here then.
Immediacy makes the lessons more comprehensible."

           
"I have no intention of
reciting those lessons now," I declared. "Still . . . you have the
right of it. Perhaps we should have come."

           
"Why not recite those lessons
to me?" inquired the husky voice from behind us. "Surely you know I
learned a different history."

           
I turned to face Lillith. Ian did
not. Beside him, wide paws spread, Tasha snarled and pressed against Ian's leg.

           
She wore an indigo mantle. The
edges, stitched with gold thread, snapped in the rising wind. Her unbound hair
blew freely about her shoulders. I was put in mind of a shroud. Black. Silken.
And all-encompassing.

           
"Then shall I tell you what I
know of the island?" She slipped between Ian and me, touching neither of
us, yet I was as aware of her as if she were a wine too heady for my wits. As
for Ian, I could not say how he responded, save to see how rigid was his
posture. "It is the birthplace of the Cheysuli," Lillith told us.
"The heart, if you will, of Homana."

           
Whatever I had expected of her, it
was not that. Never the truth. Sidelong, I looked at her, and saw the distant
smile. "The Ihlini rose out of Solinde," I said; it was common
knowledge.

           
A thick strand of hair was whipped
into her face.

           
Slender fingers caught at it and
pulled it away from the questing grasp of the wind; silver-tipped nails
flashed.

           
"The Ihlini rose out of
Homana." The smile was gone, but there was no hostility in her tone,
merely matter-of-factness. "I am certain Tynstar told Carillon, probably, even
your father. It is the truth, Niall; once the Ihlini and Cheysuli were as
close—closer—than you and Ian."

           
She had never said my name before.
Accented, the syllables had a different sound. The sound of intimacy, which did
not please me at ail.

           
"Lady," deliberately I
denied familiarity, "I think you mouth lies we would rather not
hear."

           
"Then tell me your
truths," she invited. "Both of you: tell me what all Cheysuli
children are told, when the shar tahls share the knowledge contained in the
histories."

           
Ian turned abruptly. "What do
you know of Tynstar?"

           
He took her by surprise. Arched
brows rose slightly.

           
Then she smiled, and the corners of
her eyes creased.

           
The wind put color into her cheeks.
But before she could answer Ian, I asked her a question of my own.

           
"How old are you,
Lillith?" In my intentness, I hardly noticed my use of her given name.
"I have heard the stories of aborted aging.'

           
Lillith laughed. "Along with
other arts." She looked at each of us, one by one, and her smile grew
wider still. "I shall answer both of you: I am more than a hundred years,
and Tynstar was my father."

           
Ian physically recoiled. Behind him,
Tasha growled.

           
"Tynstar!" I blurted.
"How is it possible?"

           
"How is it not possible?"
she countered. "Oh, I know, you are thinking of Electra, Tynstar's
mistress. Your granddame, was she not?" Lillith nodded before I could
answer. "Well, I can only say that when a man such as Tynstar lives for
more than three hundred years, he will take more women than only one. Electra
was the last one, perhaps, but hardly the first." She raised her head
against the wind and let it caress her face. "My mother was Ihlini. We do
not weigh the value of people by rank, only by power ... but in your terms, she
would have been a queen. As my father was the king." Lips parted in
sensual pleasure. Eyes closed, she bared her flawless face to the rising wind.

           
"Strahan is your
half-brother." I thought again of the man I had met in Mujhara, who had
nearly drowned me in the mud.

           
"My younger brother,"
Lillith agreed. "So young . . . and so newly-come to his arts." She
opened black eyes and looked at me. "There is much left for him to
learn."

           
"But not so much for you,"
Ian said harshly. "Is that what you seek to say? To warn us of your power?
Do not bother, lady. I have no intention of ignoring who or what you are."

           
"No," she said, "that
is obvious. But why must you assume I bear you or your brother ill will?"

           
"You are Ihlini." It was
explanation in itself.

           
"And kin to you, somewhere ages
and ages ago."

           
Lillith gathered in flying hair and
contained it in a slender hand. "I am, albeit unspoken. Queen of Atvia. I
am content with Alaric. What would I do with Homana? Why do you assume I want
it?"

           
"You are Ihlini." This
time from me, and equally inflexible.

           
"Ihlini," she said.
"Second-born of the First, and therefore a threat to you." Lillith
shook her head, "Not all of us seek to hinder the prophecy."

           
Ian's mouth opened, closed. I saw
him visibly gather his thinning tolerance. "Lady," he said finally,
with the infinite patience of a man who despises his opponent, "you have
the right of it when you say Tynstar must have spoken to Carillon and my jehan.
Aye, I know the truth that drove the demon: fulfillment of the prophecy means
the end of the Ihlini. How can you not work against us?"

           
Lillith stood very still. Mostly she
faced Ian now, but in her profile I saw a look of exalted triumph.
"Aye," she said on a breath of accomplishment, "I think you
begin to understand."

           
Ian shook his head. "Understand
an Ihlini? I think not."

           
She backed away from us both;
wind-whipped wraith, suddenly, indigo blue and black. And magnificent in her
pride. "Why should we be any different?" she asked. "Why should
we be hounded by your dogs of righteousness until no one in all the world can
see the sense in what we do—why we fight for our survival! Do you see?

           
Do you see it at all?" Her eyes
searched my face and Ian's. "Evil, you claim us; demons you call us; seed
of the dark god himself. And why? Because we do what we must to survive.
Survive! Would you do any differently if promised demise by the fulfillment of
a prophecy?" The mantle cracked in the wind. "Words," she said
bitterly.

           
"Words. And with them, you
destroy an entire race. Even as you were nearly destroyed. Will you do the same
to us? Unleash a Cheysuli qu'mahlin?”

           
"Enough," Ian said,
white-faced. "You have said enough."

           
"Have I?" Lillith demanded.
She glanced at me, then met Ian's baleful, yellow-eyed glare. "Looking at
you, I say I have not. But then you are fanatic enough to be a'saii"

           
The last was bitterly said. But
before I could ask her how she came to know so much of the Old Tongue,

           
Lillith turned her back on us both
and took herself out of our sight.

           
A'saii. Ian? I knew better. Until I
looked at his face.

           
"Rujho—" I began.

           
Ian's face was the mask I knew so
well. But his ashen color was not. "She has the tongue of a serpent."

           
"Can a serpent tell the
truth?"

           
His head snapped around as he looked
at me in shock-

           
“You believe her?"

           
"No," I told him,
troubled, "I think no Ihlini would ever bear us anything but ill will. But
what if she tells the truth about their reasons for hating us so?"

           
"Truth, lies, what does it
matter? Their knives are just as sharp." Ian shook his head. "Would
it make you less dead if the man who slew you believed he was serving his
race?"

           
The taste of salt was in my mouth.
The tang was bittersweet. "No, rujho! No."

           
"See that you remember
it," Ian told me flatly. "See that you never forget."

           
I watched him as he took Tasha with
him to the other side of the deck. Alone, incredibly alone, I stood against the
taffrail and wondered if there was, beyond the obvious, any real difference
between Ihlini and Cheysuli.

           
We love and hate and fight with
equal certitude. But then, so can brother and brother; so can sister and
sister.

           
I shivered. The wind was decidedly
cold.

           
The
Idrian
Ocean
is a fractious beast, tame one day, wild
the next. As we passed the crumbled headlands of southwestern Solinde, nearing
the two islands known as Erinn and Atvia, the beast turned definitively
disagree-able; I discovered I was a good sailor in good weather, a poor one in
bad.

           
I stayed below much of the time,
studiously ignoring what I could of the pitching ship, but when the swells
deepened and the timbers began to groan alarmingly, I dragged myself up the
slippery ladder to the sea-splashed deck above.

           
The sun was swallowed by clouds. I
could not tell if it were evening or afternoon. Wind-wracked, sea-swept, I
could not even tell if it rained, or if the water came from the ocean. All I
knew was I was soaked through in an instant, and the deck was incredibly slick.

           
"Ian?" He was somewhere on
deck, I knew; he spent as much time above as I did below. "Ian!"
Slipping, sliding, swearing, I made it to the taffrail and clung with all my
might. Spray nearly drowned me; the wind tried to batter me back.

           
I spat out the taste of salt. All
around me the light was odd, an unearthly, ocherous green. My belly began to
dance within the confines of my flesh.

           
"Gods," I muttered aloud,
"if this is but a gentle blow, I would not care to see a gale."

           
The wind snapped the words back at
me, along with the salty spittle of the sea. Eyes stung, mouth protested; I
spat back, making certain I did it with the wind, and not against.

           
Ian came up behind me, looming out
of the lowering sky. "The captain suggests we go below."