Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (27 page)

           
Be rid of it, lir—at once—

           
I stared at the tooth.
"Lillith," I said aloud. "Lillith, Alaric—Gisella—" And I
knew what they had done.

           
What they had made me do.

           
My hand spasmed. Fingers shut over
the tooth. Tightly, so tightly; the tooth bit into my flesh. "Oh
gods—Deirdre . . . they have made me slay them all!"

           
Lir, be rid of the charm!

           
I thrust an arm against the ground
and pushed, rising unsteadily. And then I hurled Lillith's gift as far as I
could into the forest depths.

           
They have made me slay them all.
Deirdre, Liam, Shea—even Ierne and the unborn child—

           
Oh gods.

           
I began to run again.

           
Lir! Serri came running behind me; running,
running, even as I went running. Lir—wait—

           
Dead. All of them dead.

           
All the proud eagles of Erinn,
proud, fierce Erinn, with its aerie upon the white chalk cliffs overlooking the
Dragon's Tail-Deirdre.

           
Oh—gods—Deirdre—

           
I stopped running. I stood in the
sun-gilded clearing and felt the warmth upon my face as I turned it toward the
sun. Gods, I said, how is it that in the moment you give me the greatest gift
of all, you take away another?

           
You give me the knowledge of what I
can do . . . and the knowledge of what I have done.

           
Serri, beside me, lifted his head
and licked my hand.

           
Lir, be not so bitter. What is done
is done; look not to lay blame upon your platter when it was another who had
the fashioning of that platter.

           
The fashioning of that platter. . .
. "Gisella?" I asked aloud. "No. It was Alaric who put the torch
into my hand; Lillith who stood by him even as he did it."

           
I recalled it so well, that night
upon the dome of the dragon's skull. And all the light in my eyes as I set torch
to beacon-fire.

           
Gods. All dead.

           
Gisella: who had spun a web within
my mind and bound me to her will.

           
At her own instigation? Perhaps not.
Perhaps she as much as I was a puppet caught in the tangle of strings pulled by
Lillith and Alaric. I thought she lacked the wits and concentration to make or
carry out such plans.

           
And yet it had been Gisella who had
ensorcelled a lirless man.

           
A man who was lirless no longer.

           
"Serri," I said aloud,
"there are things that I must learn, and I must learn them well. Things
such as taking lir-shape. Things such as healing." I paused. "And the
gift of compelling a person to do as I wish him to do."

           
Lir—

           
"And then we will go to Clankeep.
And then to Homana-Mujhar.''

           
Lir—

           
I looked down at the wolf, my lir,
and knew myself complete even while I felt the emptiness of grief; the
hollowness of despair. "Serri," I begged, "teach me what I must
know."

           
Serri seemed to sigh. It begins, he
said, with the shapechange. . . .

           
Gods—but I cannot begin to say what
it is to trade human form for animal. There are no words to describe the
melding of heart and mind and spirit, the perfect bonding of man and animal. I
knew only that I could not comprehend how I had lived before, so empty, so
insubstantial, so unwhole; so vague a shadow of what a man can be when he is a
Cheysuli warrior.

           
It is a trade, the ability to put
off one form and wear another. A transience unlimited by beginning and end,
simply a time of being, when I was a wolf I was a wolf, not a man, not Niall;
not even the Prince of Homana.

           
Not even a Cheysuli. Just—a wolf,
and bound by such freedom as an unblessed man cannot possibly comprehend. Not
even a Cheysuli. Because even a warrior, in human form, lacks the perfection of
the animal he becomes when he trades one shape for the other. Even a Cheysuli
is less than he can be.

           
I began to understand. And I began
to see why my race is so arrogant, so insular, so certain of their place within
the tapestry of the gods. Our colors are brighter.

           
We are the warp and weft of Homana,
and all the patterns besides. Pick us from that pattern and the shape of the
dream collapses. The shape of life collapses.As Homana herself would collapse.

           
Gods, but what responsibility. And I
began to understand what my father faced, trying to merge Homana and the
Cheysuli. Trying to blend recalcitrant yarns into a harmonious tapestry.

           
I learned to think as a wolf, feel
as a wolf, act as a wolf. I learned how vulnerable is a man's naked flesh; how
much stronger are hide and fur. I learned sounds I had never heard, scents I
had never smelled, flavors I had never tasted. 1 learned what it meant to be alive,
alive, as no man can ever be until he claims a fir.

           
I learned that to be lirless and
trapped forever in the shape of a man is a torture of the kind no Cheysuli
should ever experience.

           
I thought of myself as I had been:
lirless, unblessed, a shadow of a man, lacking a soul altogether.

           
And I thought of Rowan. And began to
respect him as I had never fully respected him, knowing only I had resented him
as I had resented myself, because we neither of us claimed a lir.

           
O gods, I thank you for this lir.

           
Serri taught me the shapechange and
the responsibilities inherent in the ability. There was, he said, a matter of
balance, a matter of retaining the comprehension of self.

           
Without it, a man in lir-shape who
grows too angry can also grow too careless, and he can tip the delicate
balance. Tipping it, he loses himself, and slides over the edge into the
madness of permanent lir-shape.

           
Because a man, he said, is a man;
locked in lir-shape forever, he loses the thing that makes him human and
becomes a beast instead.

           
I wondered aloud: would it be so bad
to be an animal forever?

           
And Serri had answered that a man,
born a man, was intended to be a man; the gods, seeing how unbalanced the scale
had become, and why, would take their retribution.

           
And I had said: Our gods are not
retributive; that is a thing of Asar-Suti, the Seker, the god of the
netherworld.

           
And he had answered: It is a thing
of all gods, high and low, when their children go astray.

           
Aye, a trade. The putting off of
human form and the replacement with animal flesh and blood and bone. But where
does the man-shape go when the man desires the guise of an animal? Into the
earth. We vouchsafe our Human forms to the power of the earth, whose magic
gives us the ability to borrow the animal shape for as long as need be. We are
so rooted in the earth, we Cheysuli; so intricately rooted.

           
And I wondered what it was like to
be a Firstborn; to know myself foremost of all the children to come. To have
power in abundance, more so than Ihlini or Cheysuli, and yet also to carry the
seeds of self-destruction.

           
I thought of Ceinn and his fellow
a'saii, barking back to the days of the Firstborn and desiring the power again.

           
Their desire was not wrong,
precisely—the prophecy, fulfilled, would give us that power again, with added
stability gained from the bloodlines merged—but their method of attaining the
power was. Could they not see they valued the Old Blood too much?

           
But zealots are too often blinded by
the magnificence of their vision; while dedication can be an admirable, awesome
thing, it can also be incredibly deadly. As it might have been for me.

           
Enough. The time for contemplation
is done. "You have taught me," I told Serri, "and I have
learned. Now it is time to go."

           
I have taught you a little, lir, and
you have learned a little less. Be not so drunk upon the wine of
accomplishment.

           
I laughed. "Drunk, am I? No, I
think not. I think I am afraid . . . and I think I am angry, too. But not so
angry as to forget what little I have learned; I have no intention of
challenging all the a'saii. Only to ask for what is owed."

           
Nothing is owed a man, lir. Unless
it is the service the man himself owes to the gods and the prophecy.

           
"Serri, you are sounding
pompous. As for things owed—aye, a man owes service to the gods. But a man also
owes respect to another man when that man has earned it."

           
As you have earned it?

           
"I have. I have gained my
lir."

           
Serri sighed. Not so much, I think,
most of the time. But, then again, sometimes I think perhaps it is.

           
"And sometimes we are in
accord." I bent, tugged a charcoal-tipped ear, suggested silently we go
on. It was time to go to Clankeep.

           
A long walk.

           
"Who speaks of walking when I
can run?" I asked, and blurred into my lir-shape.

           
What joy it is to slip the bonds of
human flesh and wear the shape of a wolf instead.

           
Gods, how we ran!

           
The guardsmen burst through the
underbrush in a blaze of black and crimson. Horses beat the deadfall and brush
aside, trampling it down even as the riders urged them forward. I saw the
glitter of bared steel as the Mujharan Guard hacked their way through the
forest.

           
Serri?

           
Taken by surprise—responding with
the instincts of a wolf—I leaped over a fallen tree to hide behind a screen of
limbs even as Serri leaped beside me.

           
Serri—

           
I am here. I am always here.

           
“There!” one of the guardsmen cried.
"Did you see him? There—the white wolf-—"

           
"And a second wolf as well,”
claimed another.

           
"But not white," said a
third. "Gray or silver—I could not tell."

           
And then Ian, with Tasha leaping
beside him, rode out of the trees to join the others. "We are not tracking
wolves, captain. We are tracking the Prince of Homana.

           
Screened behind a veil of leaves and
heavy fern, I saw my brother rein in by the man who had spoken first; an older
man, brown-haired, with a coif of mail shrouding most of his head.

           
"Aye." the soldier agreed
grimly, "but are we to ignore a white wolf when we see one? The plague—"

           
"We are not certain the plague
is caused by wolves," my brother said mildly. "After all, how many
white wolves can there be?"

           
White wolves? I myself was white
when in lir-shape; it had concerned me greatly at first, for albino coloring is
undesirable, signifying weakness. Albino stock is always slain; I had seen it
done to an entire litter of puppies born to one of die captains' bunting
bitches when I was just a child. But Serri had assured me I was white, not
albino. My eyes were blue, not red; my hearing was unaffected. There was
nothing in me of weakness.

           
But—plague?

           
I heard one of the men mutter:
"There is a bounty on white wolves."

           
"And would you risk the plague
to bring one in for a copper penny?" the nearest rider asked.

           
"Silver," the first
retorted. "For silver, I might do it."

           
"Ride on," my brother
said. "We are hunting a man not a wolf; I think the Mujhar would pay more
than a silver penny to the man who finds his heir."

           
I heard someone mutter something
about a body, and realized they thought me dead. I am not a man much taken with
jokes of death, real or not; at once I took back my human form and stepped out
in front of them all. "But what coin for the heir if he finds
himself?"

           
Hands went to swords and knives, then
fell away. I heard startled exclamations, curses, murmurings of relief.

           
"Rujho. Gods, rujho, you are
alive!" Ian swung a leg across his horse's neck and leaped out of the
saddle, beating his way through the ferns and dangling creepers.

           
I met him half way and clasped his
bare arms, grinning as I felt the gold beneath my fingers. "Alive," I
agreed. "Ian—truly I did not mean to worry everyone. But—"

           
"It is enough that you are alive,"
he interrupted. "I am not our jehan—let him give you the reprimands."

           
I grimaced. Aye. No doubt he had
more than one for me. "Ian—"

           
"Gods, we thought you were
dead! We found the remains of your horse—the gear—" He shook his head. "Rujho."

           
"There was reason," I told
him. "In a moment, I promise you will understand. ..." I went from
him to the captain, still mounted, and caught his horse's rein.

           
"Captain, take word at once to
the Mujhar and the Queen that I am well—quite well—and tell them I will be home
in a few more days. There is something else I must do first."

           
"My lord." He stared. As
if I were a spirit risen from the dead; perhaps, in a way, I was. But I had no
time for such speculation when my father and mother believed I was dead. I
frowned. "Go at once, captain. Do not tarry any longer."

           
He tightened his reins to turn,
signaling to the others.

           
But even as they turned, he hung
back and drew in a deep breath. "My lord—forgive me, but ... for a moment,
I thought you were Carillon."

           
He was deadly serious. And he was
old enough to be.

           
"You served him, did you
not?" I pushed the horse's nose away from my face. "You knew him,
then."

           
"I did not know him—not as
General Rowan or others of higher rank; I was not a captain then. But aye, I
served him." He smiled. He was older than I had thought, but career soldiers
are often an ageless lot, become old before their youth is spent. "My
lord, it has always been said of you; that you resemble the late Mujhar. But
now it is doubly striking. Now that you wear a beard."

           
I had forgotten the beard entirely.
I would have to shave it off. But—not yet. For the moment, I found I did not
mind the comparison.

           
Carillon never had a lir. I smiled.
"Go back, captain, and carry word the heir is alive. And I will be home
soon."

           
"My lord." He spun his
horse and was gone, leaving broken vines and bracken in his wake.

           
I turned to Ian. "I swear, I
intended no one to worry."

           
"They did. We all did. Gods,
rujho, what do you expect? I saw what your temper was before you disappeared;
for all I knew, you had sought the death-ritual."