Flight of the Raven - Part One, Chapter Four

[kalinara]

So last time, we caught up with Brennan and then Aidan got knocked off his horse.

You'd think, at some point, Niall would stop sending his descendants to Clankeep. Bad things always seem to happen to them on the way...



So since the last chapter ended with Aidan getting knocked out, this chapter starts with some dreams:

He dreamed. He dreamed he was made of smoke and fire in place of flesh and blood. His heart was a white flame and his soul whiter still, so brilliant it was blinding. Out of the white flame of his heart and the whiter brilliance of his soul came the music that poured through his veins like quicksilver, burning what it touched with a pain exquisitely sweet. He wanted to cry with its beauty, but knew he dared not.

Water extinguishes flame. Extinguished, I will die.

The dreams get a bit more rational - Aidan seeing a man of smoke taking the shape of a raven, then flying south to what had once been standing stones and perches on a shattered, rune-scribed altar.

We get the chain motif again, the raven spots a chain beneath the altar. He touches it, He turns into a man. He lifts it. And one of the links of the chain breaks.

But now, things get interesting. He's still holding part of the chain:

The voice was firm and commanding. "You hold me in your hand. What do you want from me?"

Aidan tried not to gape. Where had the stranger come from?

For that matter, where was he?

"Who are you?" he blurted.

Disbelief was manifest: black brows arched up, then snapped together over a blade-straight nose. "The Mujhar," he said. Clearly the stranger believed Aidan could surely name him; only a fool could not, or a man with no eyes to see.

So this is not Niall here. Who is he?

Certainly the man looked it. He wore black velvet and leather of exquisite quality and cut; a scarlet rampant lion clawed its way across the black silken overtunic belted with heavy gold. Hands, hooked into the belt, were strong, long-fingered, callused, the hands of a soldier; no Cheysuli, he. The eyes were a clear, piercing gray. Black hair was frosted silver.

Neither young nor old. Aidan thought him fifty. But something he could not name whispered of agelessness.

There's some back and forth. Aidan asks for the guy's name. The guy insists he's the Mujhar. Aidan accuses him of lying. And then:

Well-cut lips tightened. "That is punishable by death."

"Oh?" Aidan smiled. "Then kill me, Mujhar… kill the man who will hold the Lion when the proper time is come."

"You?" Black brows swept up again. "You will hold the Lion?"

Aidan spoke lightly. "So I have been told. It has to do with my birth—I am Brennan's son, and grandson to Niall."

"Ah." It was succinct, yet brimming with comprehension. "Where I am, there is no time… and I did not realize so much had already passed." He smiled consideringly. "Are we to Niall already?"

Aidan is lovely here, surprisingly snarky.

He adopted a coolly condescending tone. "You will forgive me, I hope, if I fail to display the deference due a Mujhar—I show it to my grandsire, who is deserving of it. You I do not know."

"Oh, I think you do." The gray eyes were oddly lambent. "The history of the Cheysuli is full of my name and title."

Aidan held on to his patience. "Then why not give me both."

"You have the title: Mujhar. The name I am called is Shaine."

So THIS is interesting. Shaine the Mujhar. The man whose daughter ran off with his Cheysuli liegeman. The man who began the qu'mahlin.

We saw him before, in a truly terrible book. But now the series is considerably better.

Aidan points out that Shaine is dead. Shaine doesn't disagree. He asks if Aidan would like to hear how.

"I know how. I was taught. All of us were taught." Aidan did not smile. "Shaine killed himself when he voided Ihlini wards set to keep Cheysuli from Homana-Mujhar."

"A painful death, and somewhat unexpected," agreed the other. "But by then it no longer mattered… Finn would have killed me once he walked the hall. It was what he came to do." Briefly the eyes smoldered. "Hale's shapechanger son… gods, but I hated them. And Alix was the worst, coming before me like Lindir, but dark instead of fair." Lips writhed briefly. "Carillon would have wed her, and made her Queen of Homana. I could see it in his eyes."

Shaine's death scene was by far the best part of Shapechangers, I admit. And for all that the younger generations of Cheysuli seem very informed about their parents' and grandparents' experiences, the Carillon-and-Alix gossip apparently didn't travel down. Aidan is dumbstruck, stating that Alix married Duncan instead.

Aidan starts to freak out a bit, thinking that he's dead. Shaine disagrees, saying that Aidan has time yet. And he's here for a reason:

Shaine the Mujhar stared back. "We are not discussing me. We have come to speak of you."

"Me?" Aidan blurted. "What have you to do with me?"

"Stand up," he was told.

Aidan slowly rose. Links in his hand chimed.

The man examined him. "Cheysuli," he said in disgust. "I should have known Carillon would lift my curse as soon as he claimed the Lion… well, it took him five years to win it back from Bellam, and longer still to end the extermination." The line of the mouth was bitter. "Qu'mahlin, you shapechangers call it? Aye, well, nothing lasts, not even the Cheysuli…" Gray eyes narrowed. "Red hair, fair skin… is it merely you mimic the fashion?"

Cheysuli phenotypes are bewildering in general. Aidan looks like Aileen, but with his father's eyes.

Aidan is angry when he understands, though. He asserts that he is Cheysuli and received the lir gold properly. He is Cheysuli and the heir to Homana.

Shaine asks if he's certain.

The derision snared Aidan's attention. "Of course I am certain," he snapped. "I have told you who I am, and you say I am not dead; how would I not be heir?"

"By never accepting the throne."

Aidan swallowed a shout. Quietly, he said, "I was born to accept the throne. The Lion will be mine."

Shaine lifted a hand and pointed to the chain dangling from Aidan's hand. "Men are but links," he said. "Links in a chain of the gods, who play at the forge as a child plays at his toys. Make a link, and solder it here—solder another there… rearrange the order to better please the eye." The arrogance had faded, replaced by intensity. "Some links are strong and never yield, bound to one another… others are flawed, and break, replaced by those who are stronger so the chain is never destroyed. It is a game of the gods, Aidan, to forge a flawless link, then join it to the other. One by one by one, making the chain strong. Making the chain perfect. Disposing of weakened links so as not to harm the whole."

Holding the broken chain, Aidan said nothing.

Shaine did not smile. "The weak link has a name: Aidan of Homana."

Cryptic.

Aidan tries to control his anger and says that nothing Shaine says is real. Shaine asks why Aidan summoned him then. And he clarifies, the first link in the chain that Aidan is holding is Shaine himself.

Aidan tells Shaine to begone.

Gray eyes glittered. "But I am in you, Aidan. All of us are."

Aidan threw down the chain. Shaine disappeared.

Honestly, for drama, I'd have ended the chapter here. But this is interesting. Shaine is the first Mujhar of the series. Not in Homanan history of course, but he is a significant figure. And he is their ancestor too.

Aidan has something of a seizure, and then hears another voice.

"Shansu," the voice repeated. "I would be the last to harm you."

We don't get a description, but there's a hand touching Aidan's brow, pressing him against his brow. He reassures Aidan that his lir is safe.

"Who—?" Aidan squinted.

The hand was cool on his brow. "For now, it makes no difference. I have a name, aye, but we do not bestow them on men, who cannot deal with the power held in a true name. If you like, you may call me the Hunter; it will do as well as my real one, which means very much the same."

The voice reassures Aidan that, unlike him, the horse is okay. And we see this guy finally:

Aidan focused with effort. Now he could see someone. A man, kneeling by his side. A brown man: hair, skin, eyes, leathers, all degrees of peat-brown, as if he hid himself in the wood—or, Aidan thought dimly, as if he was of the wood. Not old, not young, but in between; a score of years older than Aidan, a score younger than Niall. Dark eyes were kind, but compelling.

Something in Aidan answered. "You are Cheysuli—?" But he broke it off almost at once. "No—no, of course not… how could I think such a thing?"

The Hunter smiled. "There is Cheysuli in me. Or, to be precise: there is me in Cheysuli."

I suppose it was only a matter of time. The Cheysuli serve the gods. Perhaps now we're meeting one.

Aidan asks the Hunter what he hunts. Men, apparently. And indeed, per the hunter, he is hunting Aidan. Aidan kind of freaks out at this, understandably.

Sweat sheened Aidan's face. He felt it under his arms; in the hollow of his belly, beneath aching ribs. "What have you done with my lir?"

"Sent him ahead, as I said. Do you think I could hurt a lir?" The tone changed to shock. "No more than harm you, who are true-born or the Cheysuli…" The Hunter's voice faded. His face registered concern. "I have little experience with humans, even with those of my blood… perhaps I would have done better to come in another guise." He frowned thoughtfully. "But this one has always served me… it has always been so benign…"

Yep, I definitely think we're dealing with gods now.

Aidan asks why the guy is hunting him. He wants to know what Aidan's learned. Aidan keeps asking about the lir, and this is interesting too:

The brown man's smile vanished. "Ruefully, he rubbed his jaw. "I see the link is even stronger than we expected… we might have done better to lessen it, to make lir and warrior less dependent upon one another, but without the strength of that bond, there could be repercussions. And we could not afford those." He shook his head. "No, I think it is as well."

Patience frayed. "What is as well?"

"The bond," the Hunter answered equably. "The thing you call the lir-link. The thing that sets you apart from all the others we made… except, of course, the Ihlini." He sighed. "We do not succeed in everything. Imparting free will was a risk we decided to take… the Ihlini were the result." He paused. A trace of grimness entered his tone. "And, now, the a'saii."

It's interesting to imagine what the Ihlini were like in the days of the Firstborn. How much of their current practice has to do with their god, and how much pre-exist.

We know the Ihlini use runes, but so do the Cheysuli. There were runes involved in the sword Hale made that Donal carried (it still would have made more sense if HALE were the source of Alix's Old Blood, but we've ranted about that before.) The Ihlini use stones, and there were rubies in that sword as well.

For the first time, I actually regret that the stupid sword is gone, because the implications are very interesting. What IS Cheysuli star magic after all?

So Aidan starts to realize that he's talking to a god, and understandably, he's freaking out. He asks why the Hunter sent Teel away. It was because he wanted to speak to Aidan alone. The lir don't know everything after all.

The Hunter just says that the lir are arrogant enough, and calls them "familiars" not gods. It does sound like the Hunter may have matched them together though, since he says that Teel is different, even for a lir, and he'd thought him suited to Aidan.

"Because you also are different." There was no sting in the quiet words; from a god, they were revelation. "You will spend much of your time questioning things; that is the way of you. Many men act first with little thought for result—rashness is sometimes a curse, sometimes a virtue—but your gift is to think things through before acting." The Hunter smiled. "You will make mistakes, of course—you are man, Aidan, not god—but you are also exceedingly cautious. Some might call you reluctant, others will name you afraid, but cowardice is not your curse."

Aidan wet drying lips. "What is my curse?"

The god just answers cryptically there. We do get a name drop for Keely. Goddamnit.

"But—" Aidan, staring at the tiny tree, did not finish, forgoing the question he meant to ask in a flood of others like it. "Is that all?"

"All?" Brown eyebrows arched. "Trying to be himself—or herself, as Keely learned—is one of the most difficult tasks a human can face."

Keely's book was pointless and she didn't so much "be herself" as get things handed to her without having to make a goddamn choice. Sorry Roberson, but you COULD have made this hit so much harder.

Aidan points out that he has to be a Mujhar and the Hunter continues with the foreshadowing we've seen earlier in the chapter, telling him "That, too, is a task. Not every man succeeds."

There's a bit more banter. The Hunter asks Aidan about his dreams, revealing that, despite his godhood, he doesn't actually know what Aidan dreamed. He tells him that the gods gave humans the freedom to rule themselves because they wanted children, not minions. They don't want fanatics or zealots. They don't put dreams in anyone's head. He wants to know.

So Aidan tells him about Shaine. The Hunter confirms that it is not a false dream. He confirms that Shane's been dead for a hundred years. And he seems to be implying that Aidan will be facing tests and other gods.

The chapter ends with a dramatic exit:

Something arced through the air. Aidan, scrambling forward painfully, caught it. And knew it instantly by touch. By the texture of the gold, formed into a seamless, flawless link big enough for a man's wrist.

"You do know—" he began, but found the Hunter gone.

In his place reared a tree, in full-blown majesty.

Indeed.