Roberson, Jennifer - Cheysuli 08 Read Online Free Page B

lessons.
"Because I set fire to the tapestry."
                "And the year before
that?"
                "Tried to chop the Lion to
bits." Kellin nodded matter-of-factly. "I had to do it, Rogan. It was
the Lion who killed Ian."
                "Kellin—"
                "It came alive, and it bit him.
My harani said so.
                Rogan was patient. "Then why
did you try to burn down the tapestry?"
                "Because it's made of lions,
too. You know that," Kellin firmed his mouth; none of them understood,
even when he explained. "I have to kill all the lions before they kill
me."
                Summer was Kellin's favorite season,
and the fair the best part of it. Never searingly hot, Homana nonetheless
warmed considerably during midsummer, and the freedom everyone felt was
reflected in high spirits, habits, and clothing. Banished were the leathers and
furs and coarse woolens of winter, replaced by linens and cambrics and silks,
unless one was determinedly Cheysuli in habits at all times, as was Kellin, who
wore jerkin and leggings whenever he could. Everyone put on Summerfair
clothing, brightly dyed and embroidered, and went out into the streets to
celebrate the season.
                Doors stood open and families
gathered before dwellings, trading news and stories, sharing food and drink. In
Market Square Mujharan merchants and foreign traders gathered to hawk wares.
The streets were choked with the music of laughter, jokes, tambors, pipes and
lutes, and the chime of coin exchanged. The air carried the aromas of spices
and sweetmeats, and the tang of roasting beef, pork, mutton, and various
delicacies.
                "Sausage!" Kellin cried.
Then, correcting himself—he had taken pains to learn the proper foreign word:
"Suhoqla! Hurry, Rogan!"
                Kellin's nose led him directly to
the wagons at the outermost edge of Market Square , conspicu-ously far from the worst of the
tangle in the center of the square. Already a small crowd gathered, Homanans
nudging one another with elbows and murmuring pointed comments about the
foreigners and foreign ways. That other traders were as foreign did not seem to
occur to them; these foreigners were rarely seen, and therefore all the more
fascinating.
                Kellin did not care that they were
foreign, save their foreignness promised suhoqla, which he adored, and other
things as intriguing.
                Rogan's voice was stem. "A more
deliberate pace, if you please—no darting through the crowd.
                You make it difficult for the guard
to keep up in such crowded streets—and if we lose them, we must return to the
palace at once. Is that what you wish to risk?"
                Kellin glanced around. There they
were, the guard: four men of the Mujharan Guard, hand-picked to protect the
Prince of Homana. They were unobtrusive in habits and clothing generally,
except now they wore the crimson tabards of their station to mark them for what
they were: bodyguards to the boy in whom the future of the Cheysuli—and Homana
herself—resided.
                "But it's suhoqla ... you know
how I love it, Rogan."
                "Indeed, so you have said many
times."
                "And I haven't had it for
almost two years!"
                "Then by all means have some
now. All I ask is that you recall I am almost four decades older than you. Old
men cannot keep up with small—" he altered it in midsentence, "—young
men."
                Kellin grinned up at him. "A
man as tall as you need only stretch out prodigious legs, and he is in Ellas."
                Rogan smiled faintly. "So I
have often been told," he looked beyond Kellin to the wagon. "Suhoqla
it is, then- Though how your belly can abide it . .." He shook his head in
despair. "You will have none left by the time you are my