The Song of Homana

by Jennifer Roberson

  He remained where he was. “Will you formally accept my service?”

  I reached down and caught his woollen shirt and leather jerkin, pulling him to his feet. “I told you to get up from the floor,” I said mildly, startled to find him so grown. He had been but thirteen the last time I had seen him.

  Rowan straightened his clothing. “Aye, my lord.”

  I turned to the other men. Rowan’s, all of them, intent upon rebellion. And now intent upon the scene before them; not quite believing the prince he had promised had come into their midst.

  I cleared my throat. “Most of you are too young to recall Homana before the days of the qu’mahlin, when my uncle the Mujhar ordered every Cheysuli slain. You have grown up fearing and distrusting them, as I did myself. But I learned differently, and so must you.” I put up a silencing hand. “They are not demons. They are not beasts. They serve nothing of the netherworld; they serve me.” I paused. “Has any of you ever even seen a Cheysuli warrior?” There was a chorus of denials, even from Rowan. I looked at each man, one by one. “I will have no bloodshed among my men. The Cheysuli are not your foes.”

  “But—” one man began, then squirmed beneath my eye.

  “It is not easy to forget a thing you have been taught to believe,” I went on, more quietly. “I know that better than you think. But I also think, once you have got over your superstitious fears of something you cannot comprehend, you will see they are no different from any other.” I paused. “You had better.”

  Rowan, behind me, laughed once. I thought there was relief in his tone.

  “Will you serve me,” I asked, “even with the Cheysuli by my side?”

  Agreement. No denials. I searched for reluctance and found none.

  “And so the Song continues,” murmured Lachlan, and at that I laughed aloud.

  It was Rowan who told me of my kin, what remained of them: my mother and my sister. We sat alone at a corner table, speaking of plans for the army we must gather. He spoke clearly and at length, having spent much of his time considering how best it could be done, and I was grateful for his care. He would make the preparation much easier. But when at last he chanced to say, off-handedly, that my mother no doubt missed my sister’s company, I raised my hand to stop him.

  “Is Tourmaline not at Joyenne?”

  Rowan shook his head. “Bellam took her hostage. Years ago; I think it was not long after you escaped from Homana-Mujhar.”

  Escaped—Tynstar had let me go. I picked at the scarred wood of the table and bid Rowan to continue.

  He shrugged, at a loss for what to tell me. “The Lady Gwynneth is kept at Joyenne, well-guarded. Princess Tourmaline, as I said, is at Homana-Mujhar. Bellam seeks to hold anything that might bring you to him. He dares not allow either of them freedom, for fear they could be used as a rallying point for the rebellion.”

  “Instead of me?” I ran a hand through my beard to scratch the flesh beneath. “Well, Bellam will be busy with me. There is no need for him to hold two women.”

  “He will,” Rowan asserted. “He will never let them go.” He stopped a moment, eyeing me tentatively. “There is even talk he will wed the lady, your sister.”

  I spat out an oath and nearly stood up, hand to my re-wrapped sword hilt. Instead I sat down again and hacked at the table with my knife, adding yet more scars to the wood. “Torry would not allow it,” I said flatly, knowing she would have little to say about it. Women did not when it came to their disposal.

  Rowan smiled. “I had heard she was not an acquiescent hostage. And with two women in one castle—” He laughed aloud, genuinely amused.

  “Two?”

  “His daughter, the Princess Electra.” Rowan frowned. “There is talk she is Tynstar’s light woman.”

  “Tynstar’s.” I stared at him, sitting upright on my stool. “Bellam gives his daughter over to that?”

  “I heard it was Tynstar’s price.” Rowan shifted on his bench. “My lord, there is little I can tell you. Most is merely rumor. I would not dare claim any of it as truth.”

  “There is some truth in rumor,” I said thoughtfully, taking up my ale again. “If she is Tynstar’s light woman, there is a use for her in my plans.”

  “You wish to use a woman against the sorcerer?” Rowan shook his head. “Begging your pardon, my Lord, I think you are mistaken.”

  “Princes are never mistaken.” I grinned at his instant discomfort. “All men can be mistaken, and fools if they think not. Well enough, we shall have to consider a plan. Two of them—to wrest my mother from Joyenne, and Torry from Homana-Mujhar.” I frowned, wishing Finn were with me. To set a trap without him—I focused on Rowan again. “For a man who swears he is not Cheysuli, you are the perfect image of a warrior.”

  Dark color moved through Rowan’s face. “I know it. It has been my bane.”

  “There is no danger in it, with me. You could admit it freely—”

  “I admit nothing!” I was pleased he did not hide his anger, even before his prince. Treacherous are men who are all obsequious nods and bows, never letting me see their hearts. “I have said I am not Cheysuli,” he repeated. “My lord.”

  I laughed at his stiff, remembered formality. And then the laughter died away, for I heard Lachlan harping in the background. Making magic with his Lady.

  I turned to look at my enigmatic ally. Ellasian. A stranger who wished to be my friend, he said. Bellam’s man? Or Tynstar’s? Or merely his own, too cunning to work for another? I still doubted him.

  Slowly I rose. Rowan rose with me, out of courtesy, but I could see the puzzlement in his eyes. I went across the room and stopped at Lachlan’s table, seeing how his blue eyes were black in the yellow light of the tavern.

  He stopped playing at once, his fingers still resting upon the gleaming strings. His clustered audience, seeing my face, moved away in silence.

  I drew my sword from its sheath. I saw the sudden flaring of fear in Lachlan’s eyes. A sour, muted note sang from his harp and then stilled, but the candles and lantern guttered out.

  Darkness. But not so dark there was no light. Merely shadows. And the sorcerous green stone in Lachlan’s Lady gave off enough brilliance to see by.

  His fingers were in the strings. But so was the tip of my sword.

  I saw it in his face: the fear I would harm his harp. Slay it, like an animal, or a man. As if the wood and wire lived.

  “Put her down—your Lady,” I said gently, having felt her magic twice.

  He did not move. The stoneglow washed across the blade of my sword, setting the runes to glinting in its light. And in that light I knew power, ancient and strong and true.

  The blade was parallel to the strings, touching nothing. Slowly I turned it. One string whined its protest, but I held it back from death.

  Lachlan bent forward a little, sliding the harp free of my sword. Carefully he set his Lady in the center of the table and took his hands away. He waited then, quietly, his arms empty of his harp.

  I put my left hand on my sword, on the blade below the crosspiece. I took my right hand off the hilt. That I offered to Lachlan.

  “The Solindish soldier,” I said calmly. “Slay him for me, harper.”

  SEVEN

  “Forgive me, my lord,” Rowan said quietly. “Is it wise you should go, and alone?”

  I sat upon a rotting tree stump, high on the hill behind Torrin’s croft. Alix’s foster father was indeed still alive, and he had been astonished to find me the same when I had arrived at his dwelling some weeks before. He had given me the story of the Ihlini attack much as Lachlan had, verifying that what remained of the clan had gone north across the Bluetooth. So now, using Torrin’s croft as a temporary headquarters, I gathered what army I could. Here I was safe, unknown; the army camped in the sheltering forest on the hills behind the valley, practicing with swords and knives.

  I stirred, knocking snow off my boots by banging heels against the tree stump. The day was quite clear; I squinted against the sunlight. �
�Wise enough, does no one find me out.” I glanced at Rowan, standing three steps away, in the attitude of a proper servant. I thought it would ease with time, so that he served through desire instead of rigid dedication. “I have told no one but you and Torrin of my plan.”

  Rowan nodded as the color came and went in his sunbronzed face. He was not accustomed to being in my confidence. It rested ill with him, who thought himself little more than a servant no matter how often I said he was much more. “There is the harper,” he offered quietly.

  I grunted, shifting my seat on the rotting stump. “Lachlan believes he has proven his worth by slaying the soldier. I will let him think it. He has, to some extent…but not all.” I bent and scooped up a stone, idly tossing it through the trees. “Say what is in your mind, Rowan. At my behest.”

  He nodded, head bowed in an attitude of humility. His hands were behind his back. His eyes did not look at me but at the snow-covered ground beneath his boots. “You distrust the harper, still, because you do not know him well enough. My lord—I say you know me little better.”

  “I know enough,” I said. “I recall the thirteen-year-old boy who was captive of the Atvians along with me. I recall the boy who was made to serve the Lord Keough himself, though he be cuffed and struck and tripped.” Rowan’s eyes came up to mine, stricken. “I was in the tent also, Rowan. That you must surely recall. And I saw what they did to your back.”

  His shoulders moved, tensing, rippling beneath the leather and wool. I knew what he did, flinching from the lash. He could not help it, no more than I at times, when I recalled the iron upon my wrists.

  At that, the flesh twinged. I rubbed at both wrists, one at a time, not needing to feel the ridges to know they were there. “I know what it was, Rowan,” I said unevenly. “No man, living through that, would willingly serve the enemy. Not when his rightful lord is come home.”

  He stared again at the ground. I saw the rigidity in his shoulders. “I will do whatever you require.” His voice was very quiet.

  “I require you to wait here while I go, and to be vigilant in your watching.” I smiled. “Lachlan may fool us all, in the end, by being precisely what he claims, but I would know my enemy before I give him my back. I trust to you and Torrin in this. See to it the harper does not leave and make off for Mujhara, to carry Bellam word of my whereabouts. See to it he cannot give any of us away.”

  Through the trees came the clashing of swords and the angry shout of an arms-master. The men drilled and drilled until they would drop, cursing the need for such practice even while they knew it was necessary. They had been gone from war too long, most of them; some of them had never known it. Men came from crofts and cities and even distant valleys, having heard the subtle word.

  Carillon, it said. Carillon is come home.

  I stood up, slapping at my leather breeches. The snow was slushy now, almost sodden; I thought the thaw would come soon. But not yet. I prayed not yet. We were nowhere close to being an army, and in spring I wanted to start my campaign against Bellam’s men.

  I smiled. In spring, when the planting began, so no one would be expecting battle. I would anticipate a summer campaign, and throw Bellam into disarray.

  I hoped.

  “He will know,” Rowan said, “the Solindish king. He will send men.”

  I nodded. “Take the army deeper into the forest. Leagues from here. Leave no one with Torrin; I do not wish to endanger him. I want no fighting now. Better to hide like runaway children than give ourselves over to Bellam’s men. See they do it, Rowan.”

  He crossed his arms and hugged his chest, as if he were suddenly cold. “My lord—take you care.”

  I grinned at him. “It is too soon to lose me yet. Does it come, it will come in battle.” I turned away to my horse and untied his reins from a slender sapling. The same little dun Steppes gelding, still shaggy and ragged and ugly. Nothing like the warhorse my father had given me five years before.

  Rowan’s face was set in worried, unhappy lines. All his thoughts were in his eyes: he thought I would die and the rebellion come to an end.

  I mounted and gathered in my reins. “She is my lady mother. I would have her know I live.”

  He nodded a little. “But to have to go where you know there are soldiers—”

  “They will be expecting an army, not a single man.” I touched the hilt of my sword, wrapped once again and scabbarded at my saddle. “I will be well enough.”

  I did not look back as I rode away from the young man I had learned to trust. But I knew he stood in the shade of the trees, squinting against the sun.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The walnut dye turned my hair dark and stiff and dull. Grease made it shiny and foul. One braid, bound with a leather lace, hung before my left ear. The beard was already dark, and unknown to any who had seen me at eighteen.

  My teeth were good and I still boasted all of them. I rubbed a resinous gum into them to turn them yellow and foul my tongue. My clothes were borrowed, though I doubted I would return them; the man who wore mine no doubt preferred them to his, they being much better than his rags. What I wore now was a threadbare woollen tunic, once dark green, now brown with mud and grease. Matching woollen trews bagged at my knees, reaching only halfway to my ankles. I had put off my boots and replaced them with leather buskins.

  Leather bracers hid my wrist scars, something a guard might look for. No doubt Bellam had described me as tall, tawny-dark and blue-eyed, with shackle scars on both wrists. I was still tall, but now walked stooped, hitching a leg, one shoulder crooked down as if a broken bone had been improperly set. There was nothing of Bellam’s pretender-prince about me as I walked toward the village surrounding Joyenne. Not even the sword and the bow, for both could give me away. Both I had buried in the snow beneath a rowan tree, marked with a lightning gash. I carried only the knife, and that was sheathed beneath my tunic against my ribs.

  I scuffed through snow and slush, kicking out at the dogs who ran up to see the stranger. Joyenne-town was little more than a scattered village grown up because of the castle. There were no walls, only dwellings, and the people passing by. They took no note of me.

  I could smell the stink of myself. More than that, I could smell the stink of a broken homeland. The village I had always known had been a good place, full of bustle and industry. Like all villages it claimed its share of reprobates, but the people had mostly been happy. I had known some of it well, as young men will, and I recalled some of the women who had been happy to show favor to their lord’s tall son. And I wondered, for the first time in my life, whether I had gotten children on any of them.

  The main track led directly to the castle. Joyenne proper, built upon a hill, with walls and towers and the glittering glass of leaded, mullioned casements. My father had taken great joy in establishing a home of which to be proud. Joyenne was where we lived, not fought; it was not a bastion to ward off the enemy but a place in which to rear children. But the gods had seen fit to give them stillborn sons and daughters, until Torry and then myself.

  Joyenne was awash with sunlight, gold and bronze and brown. The ocher-colored stone my father had chosen had bleached to a soft, muted color, so that the sunlight glinted off corners and trim. Against the snowy hill it was a great blot of towered, turreted stone, ringed by walls and ramparts. There was an iron portcullis at the frontal gate, but rarely was it ever brought down. At least in my father’s day. Joyenne had been open to all then, did they need to converse with their lord.

  Now, however, the great mortar mouth was toothed with iron. Men walked the walls with halberds in their hands. Ringmail glinted silver in the sunlight. Bellam’s banner hung from the staffs at each tower: a rising white sun on an indigo field.

  Because I was a poor man and fouled with the grime of years, I did not go to the central gate. I went instead to a smaller one, stooped and crooked and hitching my leg along. The guards stopped me at once, speaking in poor Homanan. What was it, they asked, I wanted?

  To s
ee my mother, I said civilly, showing stained and rotting teeth. The scent of the gum was foul and sent them, cursing, two steps back. My mother, I repeated in a thick and phlegmy voice. The one who served within the castle.

  I named a name, knowing there was indeed a woman who served the hall. I could not say if still she lived—she had been old when I had gone to war—but a single question would tell the men I did not lie. She had had a son, I knew, a son twisted from childhood disease. He had gone away to another village—her everlasting shame—but now, I thought, he would come back. However briefly.

  The guards consulted, watching me with disgusted, arrogant eyes. They spoke in Solindish, which I knew not at all, but their voices gave them away. My stink and my grease and my twisted body had shielded me from closer inspection.

  Weaponed? they asked gruffly.

  No. I put out my hands as if inviting them to search. They did not. Instead they waved me through.

  And thus Carillon came home again, to see his lady mother.

  I hitched and shuffled and stooped, wiping my arm beneath my nose, spreading more grease and fouling my beard. I crossed the cobbled bailey slowly, almost hesitantly, as if I feared to be sent away again. The Solindishmen who passed me looked askance, offended by my stink. I showed them my yellowed, resined teeth in the sort of grin a dog gives, to show his submission; to show he knows his place.

  By my appearance, I would be limited to the kitchens (or the midden). It was where the woman had served. But my lady mother would be elsewhere, so I passed by the kitchens and went up to the halls, scraping my wet buskins across the wood of the floor.

  There were few servants. I thought Bellam had sent most of them away in an attempt to humble my mother. For him, a usurper king, it would be important to wage war even against a woman. Gwynneth of Homana had been wed to the Mujhar’s brother; a widow now, and helpless, but royal nonetheless. It would show his power if he humbled this woman so. But I thought it was unlikely he had succeeded, no matter how many guards he placed on the walls; no matter how many Solindish banners fluttered from the towers.