Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 04 (40 page)

           
He looked at Ian and frowned. He
rose, went closer, frowned again, and then, in amazement, he swore. "Hae
ye turned back years, then, lad? Hae ye kept the Mujhar young as the 'lini keep
themselves?" He looked at me. "I saw the Mujhar once, near twenty
year ago. This ring was on his hand—this face was on his face."

           
"Well," I said, "Ian
is his son. The resemblance is not surprising."

           
Padgett frowned. "Ye called
this boy your brother."

           
"Aye."

           
"And this ring is from your
father."

           
"Aye."

           
Padgett opened his mouth, shut it.
Then he shook his head. "I canna tak' it, lad. No' from the Prince o' Homana."

           
The ring lay in his hand. But I did
not take it from him. “If you keep my brother alive, even that is not payment
enough!"

           
"My lord—"

           
I thrust myself up from the chair
and went to kneel by Ian. I did not look at Padgett. "If you will not keep
it, give it to someone else. But that is my payment to you."

           
After a moment of silence, I glanced
back. Padgett's hand shook a little. The ring rolled once in his palm.

           
Then he shut his fingers on it and
turned away from me.

           
I caressed Tasha's sleek head and
tried to comfort her.

           
I knew she was in fear. I could see
it in her eyes.

           
If the ferryman can keep my brother
alive, I swear, if I could, I would offer him half of Homana.

           
Serri tucked his head under my elbow
and pressed against my side. You will need it, lir. As a legacy for your sons.

           
And if Strahan destroys Homana? What
legacy is that?

           
It is for you to determine, lir. The
question will be answered.

           
I sighed. I rose. I turned away from
Ian. "In the morning, I go on."

           
I heard Padgett's indrawn breath of
shock. "So soon ye leave your brother?"

           
"I have no choice!" I said
defensively; the guilt was a weight in my belly. "Ian himself would be the
first to tell me that Homana is more important. That she is worth the
sacrifice." Inwardly I disagreed; I thought nothing was worth the life of
my brother. But he would say there was, and so I would respect his wishes.

           
"What do I tell them, then?"
Padgett demanded. "What do I say to them if this man dies, and the Prince
o’ Homana doesna coom back?"

           
I looked at Tasha. She lay so still
by the cot, maintaining a silent vigil. I thought of Ian, dead, and his lir
sentenced also to death. I thought of my father, lacking both of Sorcha's
children. And I thought of myself, brotherless—

           
I shut off the thought at once.
"Tell them the truth," I said. "They know where we have gone.
They know the risks involved."

           
"Do you?"

           
Oh, aye, I thought I did. And I was
willing to take them.

           
I knew I had to take them. For Ian
as well as Homana.

           
"Would you know?” Serri and I
stood on the southern bank of the Bluetooth. "Would you know if my brother
died?"

           
My lir stared across the expanse of
ice-choked river.

           
His green-gold eyes were slitted; I
thought he avoided an answer.

           
"Serri—"

           
Not if he died. But if he did, Tasha
would also die—that I would know at once.

           
I turned back and stared at the
trees that hid Padgett's tiny hut. All I could see was a smudge of bluish smoke
drifting above the bare-branched limbs.

           
Oh gods—if I leave him—if I leave
him and he dies—

           
Resolutely I turned away and stared
blindly across the river. "Come," I said, "we must go." And
I blurred into my wolf-shape.

           
We went north, fighting the winds
and snows. Behind us lay the Bluetooth; we traversed the Northern Wastes.

           
Around us rose bleak walls of slate
and indigo, the backbone of the world. Here there were no trees but
wind-wracked scrub and brush. No grass, no dirt, no turf, only layers of
blue-white ice locked beneath wind-carved layers of crusted snow.

           
We climbed. Where men could not go we
could, picking our way through narrow traceries cutting through turreted
mountains and wind-honed rock. Our coats thickened, our pads toughened, our
eyes remained' perpetually slitted. But we knew we would not turn back.

           
Forests thinned, fell away far below
us. The mountains became little more than upward thrustings of barren rock,
blank and blue in the howling winds.

           
Higher. Higher still. And then we
were through the
Molon
Pass
and into another realm, climbing down out
of the Wastes of Homana into the canyons of Solinde.

           
Serri, I said, my brother?

           
We are too far for me to ask.

           
But you would know if Tasha died.

           
I would know if Tasha died.

           
Small enough comfort. But it was
something; I did not overlook it.

           
The mountains began to shift their
shapes. The slate-blue shadows of Homanan rock took on a darker, more menacing
aspect. There were trees again, but twisted, deformed by cruel winds. Roots
burst free of the soil.

           
Bare, blackened roots, twisting
across stone like a tangle of tapestry yarn. And I began to see shapes in the
rocks.

           
Avid faces, gaping mouths, the
bulging of eyes in terror.

           
It made the hair on my neck rise.
Lir—

           
Ihlini, Serri said. They mock us
with their stone menagerie.

           
Beasts. Hideous, horrible beasts,
all locked in blackened stone. I felt my hackles rise; my lips curled back to
bare my teeth in a visceral, wolfish snarl.

           
Serri—

           
Ahead, lir. Valgaard lies ahead.

           
Through a narrow defile into the
canyon beyond. And there, abruptly, was Valgaard, thrusting out of the earth in
a gout of glass-black stone. Curtain walls, towers, parapets, all forming one
wall of the canyon. It put me in mind of a massive bird, wings outspread to
enfold the world.

           
How it broods. How it makes the
canyon its mews.

           
Sheer walls jutted upward over our
heads. We were small, so small, so insignificant in the ordering of the world.
Valgaard crouched before us, cloaked m rising smoke.

           
My lips drew back. Gods—how it
stinks.

           
The breath of the god, Serri told
me. The stench of Asar-Suti.

           
It was a field of folded stone,
spreading out in all directions. There were waves, curls, bubbles, but all was
made of rock. An ocean of steaming stone.

           
"Serri—something is
wrong—"

           
What is right about the Ihlini?

           
I shuddered. I was not cold; winter
had been banished.

           
Behind us lay the defile and beyond
that the wind-wracked walls of basalt. But here there was nothing but warmth.

           
A cloying, putrid warmth that made
me want to vomit.

           
Sent— I said. Serri, the link is
fading—

           
Too close, he told me. Too close to
the Ihlini.

           
We were. I could feel the weakening
of the link, the dilution of the power that lent me the ability to shapechange.
Even as I concentrated, trying to keep myself whole, I felt the magic fading. I
felt myself caught between.

           
Serri!

           
I felt the power drain away like so
much spilling wine.

           
It splashed against the ground; was
turned into hissing steam. And then dispersed upon the air and blown out of
Valgaard's bailey.

           
Abruptly, too abruptly, I was
wrenched out of my lir-shape and thrown back into human form. But the
transference was too sudden, too overwhelming for me to withstand.

           
I cried out. It started as a howl,
ended as a scream.

           
Stone bit into my face. I tasted
sulfur, salt, iron. I tasted the spittle of the god. It made me spit out my
own.

           
I pressed myself up from the ground.
I was a man again, booted, furred, armed with sword and bow and knife. But I
knew—gods, how I knew—I needed none of the weapons. This was Strahan's domain,
the Gate of the god himself. Nothing but wits could ward me against their
power.

           
The stone was warm beneath my
bootsoles. The field stretching before me was pocked with vents that vomited
steam into the air. Valgaard was wreathed in smoke.

           
"Gods," I breathed,
"look at that. Look at the hounds who guard the lair."

           
Hounds? I could not be certain. They
were beasts, but none that I could name. Merely shapes. Merely things.

           
Extremeties only hinted at;
formlessness made whole.

           
Inert, they waited like black-glass
gamepieces upon the dark board of Asar-Suti.

           
I shut my eyes. Gods—I am so
frightened—

           
But I knew what I had to do.

           
"Serri." I looked down at
him, then knelt and swept him into my arms. "Lir, I must ask you to stay
here."

           
Here? Serri's tone was only a thread
within my mind, the merest shadow of the link. And fading even as we conversed.
My task is to go with you.

           
"Not this time. This time, your
task is to stay behind. I cannot take you with me."

           
lir—

           
"I dare not risk us both. This
is for me to do.”

           
He pushed his nose against my neck.
Lir—

           
"Serri, say you will stay. Say
you will wait for me."

           
But if all goes wrong—

           
"If all goes wrong, at least
you will retain your freedom. You are young yet, even by human standards; you
will not be given to death.”

           
This is not part of your tahlmorra.

           
"I make it a part of it."
I hugged him firmly. "There is a chance, albeit a small one. But perhaps
it will be enough. Perhaps he will be content." I unwound my arms from his
neck. "Say you will stay, Serri. Say you will wait for me here."

           
Serri's tail drooped. He laid his
ears flat back. The tone was only a whisper: I will wait. What else is there to
do?

           
Serri— But the link was broken.

           
I left him. I stepped out from the
defile into the field of steam and stone and did not look back at my lir. The
link was utterly banished; there was nothing binding us now. Only the knowledge
of what we were.

           
Of what there had been between us.

           
Strahan smiled. "Somewhat
belatedly, you accept my invitation."

           
"I thought never to accept it
at all."

           
He nodded. "People do change.
Even princes." He sipped wine. "All men eventually grow up."

           
"Will you?"

           
We confronted one another in one of
Valgaard's tower rooms. The black walls were curved, cylindrical, polished to
glassy brilliance. Tapestries cut the chill; one quick glance had showed me I
did not wish to see what pictures were in the yarns. Something that shrieked of
demons and the god of the netherworld.

           
Strahan sat. I stood. It was a
measure of the circumstances.

           
"Will I?" the Ihlini
echoed. "Well, perhaps, depends on how I feel." He sipped again at
his wine. I had been offered a cup of my own, but had not accepted. "It is
not closed to you, Niall: the ability to turn back the years. No more than to
anyone else; mind you, I do not make the mistake of inviting you to join
me." He grinned. "I know better. I know you would never do it. But
there is an opportunity, for those who desire the power."

           
"And how many have
accepted?"

           
'This year? Or last? Or all the
years of the past?" He set the cup down on a table and rose, thrusting
himself out of his chair. He wore hunting leathers, brown ones, and more than a
trifle scuffed. His long black hair, spilling over his shoulders, was glossy
and fine as a woman's, and held back by a circlet of beaten bronze. There were
shapes in the metal, odd shapes, much as there were shapes in the ill-made stones
in the field of the breath of me god. “So, Niall—you come to me in hopes I will
put an end to my plague."

           
I watched him. He rummaged in a
rune-carved trunk with curving lid. He did not look so much a sorcerer as he
did a distracted student, having lost a favorite book.

           
This is Strahan, I reminded myself,
most powerful of all the Ihlini. Be not misled by the face he wears or the
platitudes in his mouth.

           
"And I ask you: why? Why should
I wish to end my plague?"

           
My plague. Was he so pleased by it, then?
Did he consider it a thing of which to be proud?

           
Aye. He probably did. "If
ending it gave you something in return, it might be worth it for you."

           
"But only if the thing was a
thing of value." Still he rummaged through the trunk, only absently paying
attention to what I said.

           
It was disconcerting. He acted more
man than sorcerer; more human than demon-born. "I think it might be,"
I told him. "You wanted it once, though—out of perversity?—you did not
take it then."

           
He stopped rummaging. Straightened.
Turned. Looked at me thoughtfully. "Willingly you came here."

           
"I was not forced—not
physically. But it was you who brought me here. You did tell me I would come;
now, of course, I have."

           
"Willingly you came here."
Now he did not smile. "And—willingly—you offer yourself to me?"

           
I had forgotten how eerie were his
eyes, how uncanny in their mismatched brown and blue. He stared, did Strahan;
he waited. And I knew not what to say.

           
He turned back to the trunk. Reached
in yet again, drew something forth. I could not see it. He shut it up in a
hand.

           
"Strahan—"