Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 07 (68 page)

 
          
Aidan
blessed Keely. Trying not to think of her daughter.

 
          
Lochiel
was swift and relentless. Aidan parried once, twice, a third time, countering
the blows with strength born of rage and desperation. He heard the screaming,
the killing, the shrieking. The roaring of the flames. The sound of his own
breathing, through a raw and burning throat.

 
          
From
the corner of his eye, he saw Shona stop running. Saw her swing around. Saw her
come back toward him.

 
          
No, meijhana
—
no
—

 
          
The
kivarna
told him the truth: she could
not bear to leave him. She could not bear not to know.

 
          
"Run!"
he shouted to her.

 
          
Irresolute,
she slowed. Instinct warred: protect the child, aid the man. Defend what was hers.

 
          
A
strong, proud woman. An eagle of the Aerie, undeterred by Ihlini. Knowing she
could not flee when the man was left behind.

 
          
"Run!"
Aidan shouted.

 
          
The
blade broke in his hands.

 
          
Gods—

 
          
Lochiel
laughed. The tip of his sword drifted down; deftly he turned, caught his knife
out of his sheath, and threw.

 
          
It
spun, arcing swiftly, and lodged itself hilt-deep in Shona's breast.

 
          
Aidan
screamed. The
kivarna
between them
shattered, destroyed in a single moment as the knife penetrated. The broken
sword fell from his hands as Aidan lunged to grab Lochiel, but the Ihlini
stepped neatly out of the way. The blade he had so negligently lowered to aid
his knife throw came up with a snap of the wrist. The tip pricked into Aidan's
left shoulder as he hurled himself forward, then drove through relentlessly.

 
          
Pain.
Pain redoubled, and tripled; his
kivarna
reverberated with the outrage done to Shona. His own injury did not matter.
What mattered to him was
Shona
—

 
          
But
his legs would not work, nor his arms. He felt the blade grate on bone as
Lochiel twisted the sword, jerking it from his shoulder, and then blood flowed
swift and hot.

 
          
Shona.

 
          
He
fell. To his knees. His left arm hung uselessly, twitching from shock and
outrage.

 
          
Shona.

 
          
Lochiel
walked by him. Away from him. He turned his back on him. He carried the
bloodied sword lightly, easily, deft as a born swordsman. Aidan, twisting
frenziedly to watch even as he tried to rise, thought the young Ihlini graceful
as a dancer as he stepped across burning ridgepoles and deftly avoided drifting
bits of burning fabric. The screams, now, were gone, replaced by a deadly
silence.

 
          
Save
for the crackle of flames.

 
          
Lochiel
went to Shona. He knelt and pulled the knife from her breast. Her swollen belly
pushed toward the sky. Lochiel tore tunic aside. The bloodied knife glistened.

 
          
Aidan
knew what he meant to do. Instinctively, he
knew
.

 
          
In
one rushing expulsion of breath and strength, Aidan lurched to his feet. He
tried to run. Fell. Lurched up again, staggered, stumbled across the ground.
Dripping blood hissed in ash.

 
          
Shona.

 
          
He
had no knife. No sword. Only desperation, and the wild, killing rage.

 
          
"Put no hands on her—"

 
          
Lochiel,
kneeling, slanted him a single glance across his shoulder. And then turned back
to his work.

 
          
"
Put—no
—
hands—"

 
          
Lochiel
removed the baby, cut the cord, wrapped the child in Shona's cloak. Carefully
he set the bundle on the ground beside the body. With a lithe, twisting turn,
he rose to face Aidan.

 
          
"I
want the seed," he said. "I will make the seed
mine
."

 
          
Legs
failed him. Aidan fell awkwardly. "
Sh-Sh-Shona
—"

 
          
"No
more time," Lochiel murmured.

 
          
From
out of the burning darkness looped the glitter of a blade. The edge bit in,
then turned. The skull beneath shattered.

 
          
«
^
»

 
          
Muddy
ash fouled Brennan's boots. Blankly, he stared at them. How much of the ash was
from wood? How much of the ash from bone?

 
          
He
shuddered. The spasm took him unaware, rippling through from head to toe,
stretching his scalp briefly until the flesh at last relaxed. And he knew, with
sickening clarity, it was what his son now fought. But on a different level:
Aidan had nearly died. Aidan still might die.

 
          
Clankeep
lay in ruin. Most of the wall still stood, for stone does not die from fire, but
nearly all of the pavilions were destroyed. Some lay in skeletal piles,
ridgepoles charred black. Others were nothing but coals, or mounds of muddy
ash.

 
          
Brennan,
looking, felt sick.

 
          
A
man nearby, bending to peel aside a charred husk of bedding pelt, let it fall
from ash-smeared fingers. "My fir," he murmured rigidly. And then
nodded, accepting; he had spent the morning looking, while Brennan inspected
Clankeep. Now the man was freed. Now the warrior could go.

 
          
Brennan
watched him. Deep in his belly the snake of futility writhed.
Lirless
, the warrior would die, though
he had survived the attack.

 
          
"A
waste," he murmured quietly, damning the tradition. Damning the need for
it.

 
          
The
lirless
warrior stood over the
bedding pelt and the remains that lay beneath it. Shoulders slumped briefly;
then he made the fluid gesture Brennan knew so well. And walked out of the
walls into the charred forest beyond.

 
          
So
many already dead. And now one more.

 
          
Brennan
sighed. He was weary, so very weary… drained of strength and answers. Here he
was superfluous, with nothing to do but watch as the others tended their dead,
their living, the remnants of their lives.

 
          
"So
many dead," he murmured, "and all because Lochiel desired to send us
a message. To assure us he
existed
."

 
          
"Brennan."
It was Ian, walking slowly through ash-grayed mud and charred pavilions. His
face was strained, and old. "They found her the day after, over there. She
has been attended to. They gave her the Ceremony of Passing six days ago."
Ian's gesture was aimless. "There is nothing we can do, save tell Aidan
when he wakes."

 
          
His
mouth was oddly stiff. "
If
Aidan
wakes."

 
          
Ian
hesitated a moment too long. "Given time—"

 
          
Brennan's
tone was vicious. "Do you think time will make a difference? You have seen
him—you have
heard
him! When the
Ihlini cracked his skull, all the wits spilled out."

 
          
Ian
drew in a quiet breath. "You do him an injustice."

 
          
"By
the gods,
su'fali
—he is mad! You
heard his babble! When you
can
understand a phrase, it makes no sense at all." Brennan's face spasmed.
"I would be the first to declare him fit and the last to declare him mad…
but I know what I have heard. I know what I have seen."

 
          
Ian's
tone was patient. "I have seen men struck in the head do and say strange
things—"

 
          
"And
have they prophesied?" Eloquent irony.

 
          
Ian
sighed. "No."

 
          
"Gods—"
Brennan choked. "Why did they let us have him at all if they meant to take
him from us?"

 
          
Ian
offered no answer.

 
          
"So
many times, as a child, he nearly died. We knew he would, Aileen and I—we tried
to prepare ourselves for the night he would wake, coughing, and die before the
dawn… the fever that would burn him… knowing we would lose him, and that there
would be no more." Brennan balled impotent fists. "And now, when he
is grown, when he is a strong, healthy man—they take him away from us!"

 
          
"
Harani—
"

 
          
"I
should not have let them come. When he told me he meant to bring Shona here, to
bear the child here—" Brennan's face spasmed. "I should have refused.
I should have said it was better for her to bear it in Homana-Mujhar—"

 
          
"You
could not have prevented him."

 
          
"—where
there are physicians, and midwives—and protection from the Ihlini."

 
          
"There
was nothing you could have done. Aidan is grown, Brennan… he makes his own
decisions."

 
          
"I
could have insisted."

 
          
"He—
and
Shona—had a perfect right to do as
they wished. You had no right to stop them."

 
          
"But
look what happened
—"

 
          
"
Tahlmorra
," Ian said softly.

 
          
Brennan's
shoulders trembled. His voice was a travesty. "Why did they give him to us
if they meant to take him away?"

 
          
Ian
put a hand on his nephew's shoulder. "Come,
harani
. It is time we went back. Aileen will need you… and,
perhaps, your son."

 
          
Brennan
shut his eyes. "They have destroyed my son," he whispered. "Even
if he lives."

 
          
He became aware he had been shouting. His
throat ached from it, but when he tried to form the words with his mouth,
nothing happened. He felt separated from his body, drifting aimlessly, apart
from the world and yet still a part of it. And when he opened his eyes, he
stared out of the bed into faces he did not know, yet they knew him.

 
          
He sensed the violence in his body before it
came, and as it came he understood it. His flesh crawled upon his bones,
rippling and writhing. And then his limbs began to twitch. Slowly at first,
then more quickly, until the convulsions took bones and muscles and made clay
of them, molding them this way and that.

 
          
Fire was in his head.

 
          
He screamed. He heard himself screaming,
though he could make no sense of it; he heard voices attempt to soothe him,
though he could make no sense of it. He did not know the language.