The Song of Homana

by Jennifer Roberson

  Lachlan retrieved the skin at last, drank, then passed it on to me. “Will you tell me what I must know, then? A saga is built out of fact, not fancy. Tell me how it was a king could destroy the race that had served him and his House so well.”

  “Finn would do better to tell it.” If he would.

  Finn, sitting on his pelts with Storr against one thigh, shrugged. The earring glinted in the firelight. In the shadows he seemed more alien than ever, part of the nighttime itself. “What is there to say? Shaine declared qu’mahlin on us for no good reason…and we died.” He paused. “Most of us.”

  “You live,” Lachlan commented.

  Finn’s smile was not precisely a smile, more a movement of his lips, as if he would bare his teeth. “The gods saw another way for me. My tahlmorra was to serve the prophecy in later years, not die as a helpless child.” His hand went out to bury itself in Storr’s thick hair.

  Lachlan hesitated, cradling his harp case. “May I have the beginning?” he asked at last, with careful intonation.

  Finn laughed. There was no humor in it. “What is the beginning, harper? I cannot say, and yet I was a part of it.” He looked at me a moment, fixedly, as if the memories had swallowed him.

  I swallowed, remembering too. “The fault lay in a man’s overweening pride.” I did not know how else to begin. “My uncle, Shaine the Mujhar—who wanted a son and had none—tried to wed his daughter to Ellic of Solinde, Bellam’s son, in hopes of ending the war. But that daughter sought another man: Cheysuli, Shaine’s own liege man, turning her back on the alliance and the betrothal. She fled her father, fled Homana-Mujhar, and with her went the warrior.”

  “My jehan,” Finn said before I could continue. “Father, you would say. Hale. He took Lindir from her tahlmorra and fashioned another for them both. For us all; it has resulted in disaster.” He stared into the fire. “It took a king in the throat of his pride, strangling him, until he could not bear it. And when his cheysula died of a wasting disease, and his second bore no living children, he determined the Cheysuli had cursed his House.” His head moved slightly, as if to indicate regret. “And he declared qu’mahlin on us all.”

  Lachlan frowned intently. “A woman, then. The catalyst of it all.”

  “Lindir,” I agreed. “My cousin. Enough like Shaine, in woman’s form, to be a proper son. Except she was a daughter, and used her pride to win her escape.”

  “What did she say to the result?”

  I shook my head. “No one knows. She came back to her father eight years later when she was heavy with Hale’s child, because he was dead and she had no other place to go. Shaine took her back because he needed a male heir; when the child was born a girl he banished her to the woods so the beasts could have their shapechanger halfling. But Alix lived because Shaine’s arms-master—and the Queen of Homana herself—begged the Mujhar to give her to man instead of beast.” I shifted on my pelts. “Lindir died bearing Alix. What she thought of the qu’mahlin I could not say, but it slew her warrior and nearly destroyed his race.”

  Lachlan considered it all. And then he looked at Finn. “How is it, then, you serve Carillon? Shaine the Mujhar was his uncle.”

  Finn put out his hand and made the familiar gesture. “Because of this. Tahlmorra. I have no choice.” He smiled a little. “You may call it fate, or destiny, or whatever Ellasian word you have for such things…we believe each child is born with a tahlmorra that must be heeded when the gods make it known. The prophecy of the Firstborn says one day a man of all blood shall unite, in peace, four warring realms and two magic races. Carillon is a part of that prophecy.” He shook his head, solemn in the firelight. “Had I a choice, I would put off such binding service, but I am Cheysuli, and such things are not done.”

  “Enemies become friends.” Lachlan nodded slowly, staring fixedly into the fire as if he already heard the music. “It would make a fine lay. A story to break hearts and rend souls, and show others that hardships are nothing compared to what the Cheysuli have suffered. Do you give me leave, Finn, I will—”

  “—do what?” Finn demanded. “Embellish the truth? Change the story in the interests of rhyme and resonance? No. I deny you that leave. What I have suffered—and my clan—is not for others to know.”

  My hands, hooked loosely over my knees, curled into fists that dug the bluntness of my nails into the leather of my gloves. Finn rarely spoke of his past or his personal feelings, being an intensely private man, but as he spoke I heard all the pain and emotion in his voice. Raw and unfettered, in the open at last.

  Lachlan met his eyes. “I would embellish nothing. With such truth,” he said quietly, “I think there would be no need.”

  Finn said something in the Old Tongue, the ancient language of the Cheysuli. I had learned words and phrases in the past years, but when Finn resorted to it out of anger or frustration—or high emotions—I could understand none of it. The lyrical syllables became slurred and indistinct, yet managed to convey his feelings just the same. I winced, knowing what Lachlan must feel.

  But Finn stopped short. He never yelled, having no need, but his quietness was just as effective. Yet silence was something altogether different, and I thought perhaps something had stopped him. Then I saw the odd detached expression in his face, and the blankness of his eyes, and realized Storr conversed with him.

  What the wolf said I cannot guess, but I saw Finn’s face darken in the firelight with heavy color, then go pale and grim. Finally he unlocked his jaw and spoke.

  “I was a boy.” The words were so quiet I could hardly hear them over the snap and crackle of the flames. “Three years old.” His hand tightened in the silver fur of Storr’s neck. I wondered, with astonishment at the thought, if he sought support from his lir to speak of his childhood clearly. It was not something he had said to me before, not even when I had asked. “I had sickened with some childish fever, and kept to my jehana’s skirts like a fool with no wits.” His eyes hooded a little, but he smiled, as if the memory amused him. Briefly only; there was little of amusement in the tale. “Sleep brought me no peace, only bad dreams, and it was hot within the pavilion. It was dark, so dark, and I thought the demons would steal my soul. I was so hot.” A heavy swallow rippled the flesh of his throat. “Duncan threw water on the fire to douse it, thinking to help, but he only made it smoke, and it choked me. Finally he fell asleep, and my jehana, but I could not.”

  I glanced at Lachlan. He was transfixed.

  Finn paused. The firelight filled his eyes. “And then the Keep was full of the thunder of the gods, only the thunder came from men. The Mujhar’s men. They swept into our Keep like demons from the netherworld, determined to destroy us all. They set fire to the pavilion.”

  Lachlan started. “With children inside?”

  “Aye,” Finn said grimly. “Ours they knocked down with their horses, then they dropped a torch on it.” His eyes flicked to Lachlan’s astonished face. “We paint our pavilions, harper. Paint burns very quickly.”

  Lachlan started to speak, as if to halt the recital. Finn went on regardless, perhaps purging his soul at last.

  “Duncan pulled me from the fire before it could consume us all. My jehana took us both into the trees, and there we hid until daylight. By then the men were gone, but so was most of our Keep.” He took a deep breath. “I was young, too young to fully understand, but even a child of three learns how to hate.” The eyes came around to me. “I was born two days before Hale went away with Lindir, and still he took her. Still he went from the Keep to Homana-Mujhar, and helped his meijha, his mistress, escape. And so Shaine, when he set his men upon us, made certain Hale’s Keep was the first.”

  Lachlan, after a long moment of silence, shook his head. “I have gifts many men do not, because of Lodhi and my Lady. But even I cannot tell the tale as you do.” His face was very still. “I will leave it to those who can. I will leave it to the Cheysuli.”

  FIVE

  When at last we drew near the Keep a day later, Finn grew p
ensive and snappish. It was unlike him. We had dealt well together, though only after I had grown used to having a Cheysuli at my side, and after he had grown accustomed to riding with a Homanan. Now we had come home again, at least to his mind; home again, would Finn put off his service?

  It set the hairs to rising on my neck. I had no wish to lose Finn. I needed him still. I had learned much in the years of exile, but I had yet to learn what it was to lay claim to a stolen throne. Without Finn, the task would be close to impossible.

  He pulled up his mount sharply, hissing invectives beneath his breath. And then his face went blank with the uncanniness of the lir-bond and I knew he conversed with the wolf.

  Lachlan, wise harper, said nothing. He waited as I did. But the tension that was a tangible thing did not appear to touch him.

  Finn broke free of the contact at last. I had watched his face; had seen it grow hard and sharp and bleak, like his eyes. And now I grew afraid.

  “What is it?” I hissed.

  “Storr sends a warning.” Finn shivered suddenly, though the sunlight that glittered off his earring was warm upon our shoulders. “I think I feel it myself. I will go in. Keep yourself here.” He looked at Lachlan a moment, considering something, by the look in his eyes. Then he shrugged, dismissing it. “Keep yourself here, as I said, until I come back for you.”

  He spoke lightly enough, no doubt for Lachlan’s benefit, but I could not wait for subterfuge. I caught the rein of his horse and held him still. “Tell me. What is it?”

  Finn looked again at Lachlan, and then he looked at me. “Storr can touch no lir.”

  “None?”

  “Not even Alix.”

  “But—with her Old Blood—” I stopped. He need say no more. Could Storr touch no lir at all, the situation was grave indeed. “There may be danger for you as well,” I told him quietly.

  “Of course. So I go in lir-shape.” He dropped off his horse at once, leaving me with a skittish animal at the end of a leather rein. “Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu,” he said to me, shrugging, and then he was no longer a man.

  I watched Lachlan. As the space in which Finn stood emptied, swallowed instead by the void, Lachlan’s eyes stretched wide. And then they narrowed as he frowned, staring as if he would learn it himself. His fingers dropped to the harp case at his knee, touching it as if to reassure himself he was awake, not asleep. By the time I looked back at Finn the man-shape was completely gone, replaced by the blurred outline of a wolf. I felt the familiar rolling of my belly, swallowed against it, as always, and looked at Lachlan again. His face had taken on a peculiar greenish hue. I thought he might vomit up his fear and shock, but he did not.

  The ruddy wolf with Finn’s yellow eyes flicked his tail and ran.

  “They do not merit fear,” I told Lachlan clearly, “unless you have done something to merit their enmity.” I smiled as his eyes turned to me, staring as if he thought I too might be a wolf, or something equally bestial. “You are an innocent man, you have said: a harper…what have you to fear from Finn?”

  But a man does not stop fearing the specter of childhood nightmares so easily, no matter how innocent he is. Lachlan—with, perhaps, more guilt than he claimed—might have better reason to fear what he saw. He stared after Finn, seeing nothing now, but the greenish pallor had been replaced by the white of shock and apprehension. “Wolves cannot know reason! Does he know you in that shape?”

  “Finn, in that shape, knows everything a man knows,” I said. “But he also claims the wisdom of a wolf. A double threat, you might say, for one who deserves careful consideration.” I shifted in the saddle, half my mind with Finn and the other half knowing what Lachlan felt. I had felt it myself, the first few times. “He is not a demon or a beast. He is a man who claims a god-gift in his blood, much as you claim it in yours. It is only his gods manifest their presence a little differently.” I thought of the magic he made with his music, and then I laughed at his horrified expression. “Think you he worships Lodhi? Not Finn. Perhaps he worships no god, or gods, but he serves his own better than any man I have ever known. How else do you think he would keep himself to my side?” Finn’s horse tried to wander, searching for grass in the snow, and I pulled him back. “You need have no fear he might turn on you, wolflike, and tear your throat from your body. He would do that only if you gave him reason.” I met the harper’s eyes steadily, keeping my tone light. “But then you have no wish to betray me, have you? Not with your saga at stake.”

  “No.” Lachlan tried to smile, but I could see the thoughts in his head. No man, seeing the shapechange for the first time, forgets it so quickly. If at all. “What was it he said to you, before he changed himself?”

  I laughed. “A philosophy, of sorts. Cheysuli, of course, and therefore alien to Homanans or Ellasians.” I quoted the words: “Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu. It means, roughly, the fate of a man rests always within the hands of the gods.” I made the gesture, being very distinct as I lifted my right hand and spread my fingers. “It is usually shortened to the word tahlmorra, which says more than enough quite simply.”

  Lachlan shook his head slowly. “Not so alien to me, I think. Do you forget I am a priest? Admittedly my god is singular, and far different from those Finn claims, but I am trained to understand the faith a man holds. More than trained; I believe it with all my heart, that a man may know and serve his deity.” His hand tapped the harp case. “My gift is there, Carillon. Finn’s is elsewhere, but just as strong. And he is just as devout, perhaps more so, to give himself up to his fate.” He smiled. “Tahlmorra lujhala mei wiccan, cheysu. How eloquent a phrase.”

  “Have you any like it?”

  Lachlan laughed. “You could never say it. You lack an Ellasian throat.” He thumped the harp case. “This one is not so hard: Yhana Lodhi, yffennog faer.” He smiled. “A man walks with pride forever when he walks with Lodhi, humble.”

  And then Finn was back, two-legged and white-faced, and I had no more time for philosophy. I held out the rein as Finn reached for it, but I could ask none of the questions that crowded my mouth. Finn’s face had robbed me of my voice.

  “Destroyed,” he said in a whisper. “Torn down. Burned.” His pallor was alarming. “There is no Keep.”

  I was over the broken stonework before I realized what it was, setting my horse to jumping though he lacked the legs to do it. He stumbled, scrabbling at the snow-cloaked heaps of mortared stone, and then I knew. The wall, the half-circle wall that surrounded every Keep. Shattered and broken upon the ground.

  I pulled up at once, saving the horse, but also saving myself. I sat silently on the little gelding, staring at what remained of the Keep. Bit by bit I looked, allowing myself one portion at a time; I could not bear to see it all at once.

  Snow covered nearly everything, but scavenger beasts had dug up the remains. I saw the long poles, some snapped in two, some charred. I saw scraps of soiled cloth frozen into stiffness, colors muted by time and harsh weather. The firecairns that had stood before each pavilion lay in tumbled fragments, spilled by hostile feet and destructive hooves. All of it gone, with only ragged remnants of a once-proud Keep.

  In my mind I saw it as I had seen it last: undressed, unmortared stone standing high to guard the Keep; billowing pavilions of varied hues emblazoned with painted lir. The perches and pelts existing for those lir, and the children who feared nothing of the wild. Save, perhaps, for those who knew to fear Homanans.

  I cursed. It came viciously out of my mouth along with the spittle. I thought of Duncan, clan-leader of his Keep, but mostly I thought of Alix.

  I rode on then. Directly to the proper place. I knew it well enough, though nothing remained to mark it. And there I slid off my horse, too stiff to dismount with any skill or grace, and fell down upon my knees.

  One pole pierced its way through snow to stab out of the ruins like a standard. A scrap of fabric, stiff from freezing, still clung to the wood. I tugged at it and it came away, breaking off in my hand.
Slate-colored, with the faintest blur of gold and brown. For Cai, Duncan’s hawk.

  Not once had I thought they might be dead. Not once, in all the time spent in exile, had I thought they might be gone. They had been the one constant in my life, along with Finn. Always I had recalled the Keep and the clan-leader’s pavilion, filled with Duncan’s pride and Alix’s strength, and the promise of the unborn child. Never once had I even considered they might not be here to greet me.

  But it was not the greeting I missed. It was the conviction of life, no matter where it existed. Nothing lived here now.

  I heard the sound behind me and knew at once it was Finn. Slowly, suddenly old beyond my years, I stood up. I trembled as if with illness, knowing only a great sorrow and rage and consuming grief.

  Gods…they could not be dead—

  Lachlan made a sound. I looked at him blindly, thinking only of Alix and Duncan, and then I saw the expression of realization in his eyes.

  Finn saw it also. As he leaped, still in human form, I caught him in mid-stride. “Wait—”

  “He knew.”

  The words struck me in the face. But still I held Finn. “Wait. Do you slay him, we will learn nothing from him. Wait—”

  Lachlan stood rooted to the earth. One hand thrust outward as if to hold us back. His face was white. “I will tell you. I will tell you what I can.”

  I let go of Finn when I knew he would do nothing more. At least until he had better reason. “Then Finn has the right of it: you knew.”

  Lachlan nodded stiffly. “I knew. Have known. But I had forgotten. It was—three years ago.”