“Three years.” I stared around the remains of the Keep. “Harper—what happened?”
He looked steadily at me. “Ihlini.”
Finn hissed something in the Old Tongue. I merely waited for further explanation. But I said one thing: “This is Ellas. Do you say Tynstar has influence-here?”
Dull color came up into Lachlan’s face. “I say nothing of that. Ellas is free of Ihlini domination. But once, only once, there was a raid across the border. Ihlini and Solindish, hunting the Cheysuli who sheltered in this realm, and they came here.” A muscle ticked in his jaw. “There have been songs made about it, but it is not something I care to recall. I had nearly forgotten.”
“Remember,” Finn said curtly. “Remember it all, harper.”
Lachlan spread his hands. “The Ihlini came here. They destroyed the Keep. They slew who they could of the Cheysuli.”
“How many?” Finn demanded.
“Not all.” Lachlan scrubbed a hand across his brow, as if he wished to free himself of the silver circlet of his calling. “I—do not know, perhaps, as much as I should.”
“Not enough and too much, all at once,” Finn said grimly. “Harper, you should have spoken earlier. You knew we came to the Keep.”
“How am I to know them all?” Lachlan demanded. “The High King gives the Cheysuli shelter, but he does not count them, old or young. I doubt Rhodri can say how many Keeps or how many Cheysuli are in Ellas. We merely welcome them all.”
This time it was Finn who colored, but only for a moment. The grief and tension were back at once, etching lines into his face. He wore his mask again, the private mask, stark and hard in his insularity. “They may all be dead. And that would leave only me—” He broke off.
Lachlan took a deep breath. “I have heard that those who survived went back into Homana. North. Across the Bluetooth River.”
Finn frowned. “Too far,” he muttered, looking at Storr. “Too far even for the lir-link.”
I looked directly at Lachlan. “You have heard much for a man who recalls so little. To Homana, you say. North, across the Bluetooth. Are you privy to information we have no recourse to?”
He did not smile. “Harpers are privy to much, as you should know. Had you none in Homana-Mujhar?”
“Many,” I said briefly. “Before Bellam silenced the music.”
Finn turned his back. He stared again at the remains of Duncan’s slate-gray pavilion. I knew he meant to master himself. I wondered if he could.
“May I suggest,” Lachlan began, “that you use my harp skill in trying to rouse your people? I could go into taverns and sing The Song of Homana, to test how the people feel. How better to learn their minds, and how they will answer their rightful king’s call?”
“The Song of Homana?” Finn said doubtfully, turning to stare at Lachlan.
“You have heard it,” the harper said, “and I saw what it did to you. It has a magic of its own.”
He spoke the truth. Did he go into Homanan taverns and play that song on his Lady, he would know sooner than anyone else what my people were capable of. Had Bellam cowed them, it would take time to rebuild their spirit. Were they merely angry, I could use it.
I nodded at Lachlan. “The horses require tending.”
For a moment he frowned, baffled, and then he understood. Silently he took away our horses and gave us room to speak freely, without fear he might overhear.
“I give you leave to go,” I told Finn simply.
Something flickered in his eyes. “There is no need.”
“There is. You must go. Your clan—your kin—have gone north across the Bluetooth. Home to Homana, where we are bound. You must go and find them, to set your soul at peace.”
He did not smile. “Healing Homana is more important than seeking out my clan.”
“Is it?” I shook my head. “You told me once that clan- and kin-ties bind more closely than anything else in Cheysuli culture. I have not forgotten. I give you leave to go, so I can have you whole again.” I held up a silencing hand. “Until you know, it will eat at your soul like a canker.”
The flesh of his face was stiff. “I will not leave you in companionship to the enemy.”
I shook my head. “We do not know if he is an enemy.”
“He knows too much,” Finn said grimly. “Too much and too little. I do not trust him.”
“Then trust me.” I put out my gloved hand and spread my fingers, palm up. “Have you not taught me all you can in the art of staying alive, even in dire adversity? I am no longer quite the green princeling you escorted into exile. I think I may have some control over my life.” I smiled. “You have said it is my tahlmorra to take back the Lion Throne. If so, it will happen, and nothing will gainsay it. Not even this time apart.”
He shook his head slowly. “Tahlmorras may be broken, Carillon. Do not mislead yourself into believing you are safe.”
“Have more faith in me,” I chided. “Go north and find Alix and Duncan. Bring them back.” I frowned a moment. “Bring them to Torrin’s croft. It was Alix’s home, and if he is still alive it will be a place of sanctuary for us all.”
He looked at the ruined pavilion, buried under snow. And then he looked at Storr. He sighed. “Rouse your people, my lord of Homana. And I will bring home the Cheysuli.”
SIX
Mujhara. It rose out of the plains of Homana like an eagle on an aerie, walled about with rose-red stone and portcullised barbican gates. Homana-Mujhar was much the same: walled and gated and pink. The palace stood within the city on a hill. Not high, but higher than any other. Lachlan and I rode through the main gate into Mujhara, and at once I knew I was home.
Save I was not. My home was filled with Solindish soldiers, hung about with ringmail and boiled leather and glinting silver swords. They let us in because they knew no better, thinking Homana’s rightful lord would never ride so willingly into his prison.
I heard the Solindish tongue spoken in the streets of Mujhara more than I heard Homanan. Lachlan and I spoke Ellasian merely to be safe. But I thought I could say anything and be unacknowledged; Bellam’s soldiers were bored. After five years and no threat from without, they lived lazily within.
The magnificence was gone. I thought perhaps it was my own lack of discernment, having spent so long in foreign lands, but it was not. The city, once so proud, had lost interest in itself. It housed a Mujhar who had stolen his throne, and the Homanans did not care to praise his name. Why should they praise his city? Where once the windows had glittered with glass or glowed with horn, now the eyes were dark and dim, smoked over, puttied at corners with dirt and grime. The white-washed walls were dingy and gray, some fouled with streaks of urine. The cobbled streets had crumbled, decayed until the stench hung over it like a miasma. I did not doubt Homana-Mujhar remained fit for a king, but the rest of the city did not.
Lachlan looked at me once, then again. “Look not so angry, or they will know.”
“I am sick,” I said curtly. “I could vomit on this vileness. What have they done to my city?”
Lachlan shook his head. “What defeated people do everywhere: they live. They go on. You cannot blame them for it. The heart has gone out of their lives. Bellam exacts overharsh taxes so no one can afford to eat, let alone wash their houses. And the streets? Why clean dung when the great ass sits upon the throne?”
I glanced at him sharply. He did not speak as Bellam’s man, saying what he should to win my regard. He spoke like a man who understood the reasons for Mujhara’s condition—disliking it, perhaps, as much as I, but tolerating it better. Perhaps it was because he was Ellasian, and a harper, with no throne to make his own.
“I am sorry you must see it this way,” I told him with feeling. “When I—” I broke it off at once. What good lies in predicting something that may not happen?
Lachlan gestured. “Here, a tavern. Shall we go in? Perhaps here we will find better fortune than we found at the village taverns.”
We had better. Failure ran
kled, though I understood it. It is difficult to ask poor crofters to give up what little they have to answer the call of an outlawed prince. It was soldiers I needed first, and then what other men I could find.
I stared at the tavern grimly. It looked like all the others: gray and dingy and dim. And then I looked at Lachlan.
He smiled, but it lacked all humor, a hooking down of his mouth. “Of course. We will go on to another…one you will choose for yourself.”
I jumped off my horse, swore when I slipped in some muck, and scraped my boot against a loosened cobble. “This will do well enough. Come in, and bring your harp.”
Lachlan went in before me when he had taken his Lady from his saddle. I paused to let him enter alone, then went in behind him, shoving open the narrow, studded door.
At once I ducked. The beamwork of the dark roof was low, so low it made me wince against its closeness. The floor beneath my feet was earthen, packed, but bits of it had been scraped into ridges and little piles of dirt, as if the benches and tables had been dragged across it to rest in different places. I put up a hand to tear away the sticky webbing that looped down from the beam beside my head. It clung to my fingers until I scrubbed it off against the cracked, hardened leather of my jerkin.
A single lantern depended from a hook set into the central beam, painted black with pitch. It shed dim light over the common room. A few candles stood out on the tables, fat and greasy and stinking. There was little light in the place, just a sickly yellow glow and the haze of ocherous smoke.
Lachlan, with his harp, was welcomed at once. There were perhaps twenty men scattered around the common room, but they made way for him at once, drawing up a stool and bidding him begin. I found a table near the door and sat down, asking for ale when the tavern-master arrived. It was good brown ale when it came, hearty and woody; I drank the first cup down with relish.
Lachlan opened with a sprightly lay to liven them up. They clapped and cheered, urging him on, until he sang a sad song of a girl and her lover, murdered by her father. It brought a less exuberant response but no less a liking for Lachlan’s skill. And then he picked out the opening notes of The Song of Homana.
He got no more than halfway through the tale. Abruptly a soldier in Solindish ringmail and too much wine pushed to his feet and drew his sword. “Treason!” he shouted. He wavered on his feet, and I realized how drunk he was. “You sing treason!” His Homanan was poor, but he was clearly understandable. So was his implication as he raised the shining sword.
I was on my feet at once. My own sword was in my hand, but other men had already seized the soldier and forced him down on his stool, relieving him of his sword. It clanged to the floor and was kicked away. Lachlan, I saw, had set down his Lady in the center of a table, and his hand was near his knife.
Four men held the soldier in place. A fifth moved to stand before him. “You are alone here, Solindishman,” he said. “Quite alone. This is a Homanan tavern and we are all Homanans; we invite the harper to finish his lay. You will sit and listen…unless I bid you otherwise.” He jerked his head. “Bind him and stop up his mouth!”
The soldier was instantly bound and gagged, propped upon the stool like a sheep held down for shearing. With less tenderness. The young man who had ordered him bound cast an assessive glance around the room. I saw his eyes on me, black in the dimness of the candlelight. They paused, oddly intent though seemingly indifferent, and moved on.
He smiled. He was young, eighteen or nineteen, I thought, with an economy of movement that reminded me of Finn. So did his black hair and the darkness of his face. “We have silenced this fool,” he said calmly. “Now we shall let the harper finish.”
I sheathed my sword and sat down slowly. I was aware of the men who had moved in behind me, ranging themselves along the wall. The door, I saw, was barred. This was not an unaccustomed occurrence, then; the Solindish were the hunted.
The knowledge made me smile.
Lachlan completed his lay. The final note, dying out, was met with absolute silence. I felt a trickle of foreboding run quickly down my spine; I shivered, disliking the sensation. And yet I could not shake it from me.
“Well sung,” the black-eyed young man said at last. “You have a feel for our plight, it seems. And yet you are Ellasian.”
“Ellasian, aye.” Lachlan raised a cup of water to his mouth and sipped. “But I have traveled many lands and have admired Homana for years.”
“What is left to admire?” the Homanan demanded. “We are a defeated land.”
“For now, aye, but do you not wait only for your prince to return?” Smiling, Lachlan plucked a single string of his Lady. The sound hung in the air a moment, and then it faded away. “The former glory you aspire to have again…it may come.”
The young man leaned forward on his stool. “Tell me—you travel, as you say—do you think Carillon hears of our need? Do you sing this song wherever you go, surely you have had some response!”
“There is fear,” Lachlan said quietly. “Men are in fear of Solindish retribution. What army could Carillon raise, were he to come home again?”
“Fear?” The other nodded. “Aye, there is fear. What else could there be in this land? We need a lord again, a man who can rouse this realm into rebellion.” He had all the dedication of the fanatic, and yet there was little of the madness in him, I thought. He was desperate; so was I. “I will not lie and say it would be easy, harper, but I think Carillon would find more than a few ready to rally to his standard.”
I thought of the crofters, muttering into their wine and ale. I thought of what little success we had had in learning if Homana desired my return.
“What would you do,” Lachlan asked, “were he to come home again?”
The other laughed with a bitterness older than his years. “Join him. These few you see. Not many, but a beginning. Still, there are more of us yet. We meet in secret, to plot, and to aid Carillon however we may. In hopes he will come home.”
“Bellam is powerful,” Lachlan warned, and I wondered what more he knew.
The Homanan nodded. “He is indeed strong, and claims many troops who serve him well. And with Tynstar at his side, he is certainly no weak king. But Carillon brought the Cheysuli into Homana-Mujhar before, and nearly defeated the Ihlini. This time he might succeed.”
“Only with help.”
“He will have it.”
Lachlan nodded idly. “There are strangers among you. Even I, Ellasian though I may be.”
“You are a harper.” The young man frowned. “Harpers have immunity, of course. As for the soldier, he will be slain.”
Lachlan looked at me across the room. “And the other?”
The Homanan merely smiled. And then the men were at my back, asking for my knife and sword. After a moment’s hesitation, I gave them into their hands. Two men remained behind me, another at my left side. The young man was taking no chances. “He will be slain, of course.”
Of course. I smiled at Lachlan, who merely bided his time.
The knife was given to the young man. He looked at it briefly, frowning over the Caledonese runes and scripture, then set it aside on the nearest table. The sword was given to him then, and he did not at once put it down. He admired the edge, then saw the runes set into the silver. His eyes widened. “Cheysuli-made!” He glanced sharply at me. “How did you get this?” For a moment something moved in his face. “Off a dead man, no doubt. Cheysuli swords are rare.”
“No,” I said. “From a live one. And now, before you slay me, I bid you do one thing.”
“Bid me?” He stared, brows rising beneath the black hair. “Ask, perhaps…but it does not mean I will answer.”
I did not move. “Cut the leather free.”
His hands were on the hilt. I saw him look down at the leather, feeling the tautness of it. I had wrapped it well, and would do so again.
“Cut the leather free.”
His stare challenged me a moment. And then he drew his knife and did prec
isely as I asked.
The leather fell free of his hand. He stared at the hilt: the rampant, royal lion of purest Cheysuli gold, the burnished grip, the massive ruby clutched in curving prongs. The magnificent Mujhar’s Eye.
“Say what it is, so all will know,” I told him quietly.
“The lion crest of Homana.” His eyes moved from the hilt to my face, and I smiled.
“Who carries this sword, this crest?”
Color had left his face. “The blood of the House of Homana.” He paused. Then, in a rush of breath and words, “But you might have stolen this sword!”
I glanced pointedly at my guards. “You have disarmed me. Say I may come forward.”
“Come, then.” Color was back in his face. He was young, and angry, and afraid of what he thought he might hear.
I rose, pushing away my stool. Slowly I walked forward, looking only at the young man, and then I stopped before him. He was tall, Cheysuli-tall, but I was taller still.
I pushed back the sleeve on my left arm, showing him the scar that ringed my wrist. “See you that? I have another exactly like it, on my right. You should know them both, Rowan.” He flinched in surprise. “You were prisoner to Keough of Atvia, as I was. You were flogged because you spilled wine on Keough himself, even though I asked them to spare you. Your back must show signs of the flogging, even as my arms show the mark of the iron.” I let go the sleeve. “May I have my sword back, now?”
Stiffly, he lowered his head to look at it in his hands. And then, as if realizing the history of the blade, he thrust it out to me. I accepted it, feeling safer almost at once, and then he dropped to his knees.
“My lord,” he whispered. “Oh, my lord…forgive me!”
I slid the sword home in its sheath. “There is nothing to forgive. You have done what you should have done.”
He stared up at me. I saw how his eyes were yellow in the candlelight; I had always thought him Cheysuli. It was Rowan who denied it. “How soon do we fight, my lord?”
I laughed at his eagerness. “It is late winter now. It will take time to gather what men we can. In true spring, perhaps, we can begin the raiding parties.” I gestured. “Get up from there. This is not the place. I am not the Mujhar quite yet.”
The Song of Homana Page 6