Inheritance (50 page)

Soon
, he promised it.
The children are still awake. We can do our duty soon
.

Gudon held him by the hand and led him from the tent. Lynan closed his eyes against the bright light until someone placed one of the broad-rimmed Chett hats on his head. The light still hurt a little, but if he squinted, the pain was bearable. There was a cooking fire nearby and he had to fight the temptation to flee the yellow flames. It was something he would have to get used to.

He looked around him. He saw Kumul, Jenrosa, and Ager with his bandaged head, standing nearby, smiling and concerned, and he felt so much affection for them it almost brought him to tears. Then he saw the Chetts. Hundreds of them, all bowing to him, their heads tilted up so they could see him. There was one Chett, however, who did not bow so low. She regarded him with a strange mixture of fear and what he thought might be hope. She smiled slightly, bowed a little deeper, and Lynan nodded to her. Gudon had told him her name, but he could not remember it. Indeed, he could remember little of anything since waking from his terrible dream.

Gudon let go of his hand. Lynan held it up for a moment, wondering at its hard paleness, like ivory. He walked forward a dozen paces, taking it slowly, getting used to the heat of the sun high overhead. He surveyed the land around him, and found the sight of the plains filled him with a joy he could not explain.
I am home
, he thought, and then:
It is time
.

“My name is Lynan Rosetheme,” he said, his voice weak, but in the still air his words carried to everyone. “I am the son of Queen Usharna Rosetheme and General Elynd Chisal. I possess the Key of Union. I am come to you.”

All at once the Chetts started calling his name. The sound—a great ululation—rose into the sky and spread across the Oceans of Grass. Its faintest echoes reached every city and town and village on the continent of Theare, and reached the ear of every king and every queen of Grenda Lear, and to them it sounded at the same time like the whisper of a lover’s promise and the hissing of an enemy’s curse.

Lynan was alive.