The Song of Homana

by Jennifer Roberson

  I found the proper staircase, winding in a spiral to an upper floor. I climbed, sensing the flutter in my belly. I had come this far, so far, and yet a single mistake could have me taken. Bellam’s retribution, no doubt, would see me kept alive for years. Imprisoned and humiliated and tortured.

  I passed out of the staircase into a hall, paneled in honey-gold wood. My father’s gallery, boasting mullioned windows that set the place to glittering in the sun. But the beeswax polish had grown stale and dark, crusted at the edges. The gallery bore the smell of disuse and disinterest.

  My hand slipped up between the folds of my soiled tunic, sliding through a rent in the cloth. I closed my fingers around the bone-handled hilt of my Caledonese knife. For a moment I stood at the polished wooden door of my mother’s solarium, listening for voices within. I heard nothing. It was possible she spent her time elsewhere, but I had learned that men or women, in trying circumstances, will cling to what they know. The solar had ever been a favorite place. And so, when I was quite certain she was alone, I swung open the oiled panel.

  I moved silently. I closed the door without a sound. I stood within the solar and looked at my mother, and realized she had grown old.

  Her head was bent over an embroidery frame. What she stitched there I could not say, save it took all her attention to do it. The sunlight burned through the mullioned panes of the narrow casement nearest her and splashed across her work, turning the colored threads brilliant in the dimness of the room. I noticed at once there was a musty smell, as if the dampness of winter had never been fully banished by the warmth of the brazier fires. This had ever been a warm, friendly room, but now it was cold and barren.

  I saw how she stitched at the fabric. Carefully, brows furrowed, in profile to me. And her hands—

  Twisted, brittle, fragile things, knobbed with buttons of flesh at her knuckles and more like claws than fingers. So painstakingly she stitched, and yet with those hands I doubted she could do little more than thrust needle through fabric with little regard for the pattern. Disease had taken the skill from her.

  I recalled then, quite clearly, how her hands had pained her in the dampness. How she had never complained, but grew more helpless with each month. And now, looking at her, I saw how the illness had destroyed the grace my father had so admired.

  She wore a white wimple and coif to hide her hair, but a single loop escaped to curve down the line of her cheek. Gray, all gray, when before it had been tawny as my own. Her face was creased with the soft, fine lines of age, like crumpled silk.

  She had put on indigo blue, ever a favorite color with her. I thought I recognized the robe as an old one she had given up more than seven years before. And yet she wore it now, threadbare and thin and hardly worthy of her station.

  Perhaps I made a sound. She lifted her head, searching, and her eyes came around to me.

  I went to her and knelt down. All the words I had thought to say were flown. I had nothing but silence in my mouth and a painful cramping in my throat.

  I stared hard at the embroidery in her lap. She had let it fall, forgotten, and I saw that the pattern—though ill-made—was familiar. A tall, bearded soldier on a great chestnut stallion, leading the Mujhar’s army. I had loved it as a child, for she had called the man my father. It seemed odd that I would look now and see myself.

  Her hand was on my head. At first I wanted to flinch away, knowing how foul the grease and dye had made me, but I did not move. With her other hand she set her fingers beneath my chin and turned up my face, so she could look upon me fully. Her smile was brilliant to see, and the tears ran down her face.

  I reached out and caught her hands gently, afraid I might break them. They were so fragile in my own. I felt huge, overlarge, much too rough for her delicacy.

  “Lady.” My voice came out clogged and uneven. “I have been remiss in not coming to you sooner. Or sending word—”

  Fingers closed my mouth. “No.” She touched my beard lingeringly, then ran both hands through my filthy hair. “Was this through choice, or have you forgotten all the care I ever taught you?”

  I laughed at her, though it had a hollow, brittle sound. “Exile has fashioned your son into another sort of man, I fear.”

  The lines around her eyes—blue as my own—deepened. And then she took her hands away as if she had finished with me entirely. I realized, in that instant, she was sacrificing the possessiveness she longed to show me. In her eyes I saw joy and pride and thankfulness, and a deep recognition of her son as a man. She was giving me my freedom.

  I rose unsteadily, as if I had been too long without food. Her smile grew wider. “Fergus lives on in you.”

  I walked to the casement, overcome for the moment, and stared out blindly to watch the guards upon the ramparts. When I could, I turned back. “You know why I have come.”

  Her chin lifted. I saw the delicate, draped folds of the silken wimple clustered at her throat. “I was wed to your father for thirty-five years. I bore him six children. It was the gods who decreed only two of those children would live to adulthood, but I am quite certain they have learned, both of them, what it is to be part of the House of Homana.” The pride made her nearly young again. “Of course I know why you have come.”

  “And your answer?”

  It surprised her. “What answer is there to duty? You are the House of Homana, Carillon—what is left for you to do but take back your throne from Bellam?”

  I had expected no different, and yet it seemed passing strange to hear such matter-of-factness from my mother. Such things from a father are never mentioned, being known so well, but now I lacked a father. And it was my mother who gave me leave to go to war.

  I moved away from the window. “Will you come with me? Now?”

  She smiled. “No.”

  I made an impatient gesture. “I have planned for it. You will put on the clothes of a kitchen servant and walk out of here with me. It can be done. I have done it. It is too obvious for them to suspect.” I touched my fouled, bearded face. “Grease your hair, sully your skirts, affect the manners of a servant. It is your life at risk—you will do well enough.”

  “No,” she said again. “Have you forgotten your sister?”

  “Torry is in Homana-Mujhar.” I thought it answer enough as I glanced out the casement again. “It is somewhat more difficult for me to get into Homana-Mujhar, but once we are safely gone from here, then I will turn my plans to Torry.”

  “No,” she repeated, and at last she had my complete attention. “Carillon, I doubt not you have thought this out well, but I cannot undertake it. Tourmaline is in danger. She is hostage to Bellam against just this sort of thing; do you think he would sit and do nothing?” I saw the anguish in her eyes as she looked into my frowning face. “He would learn, soon enough, I had gotten free of his guards. And he would turn to punish your sister.”

  I crossed to her at once, bending to catch her shoulders in my hands. “I cannot leave you here! Do you think I could live with myself, knowing you are here? You have only to look at this room, stripped bare of its finery and left cold, no doubt to freeze your bones. Mother—”

  “No one harms me,” she said clearly. “No one beats me. I am fed. I am merely kept as you see me, like a pauper-woman.” The twisted hands reached up to touch my leather-clad wrists. “I know what you have risked, coming here. And were Tourmaline safe, I would come with you. But I will not give her over to Bellam’s wrath.”

  “He did it on purpose, to guard against my coming.” That truth was something I should have realized long ago, and had not. “Divide the treasure and the thieves are defeated.” I cursed once, then tried to catch back the words, for she was my lady mother.

  She smiled, amused, while the tears stood in her eyes. “I cannot. Do you understand? I thought you were dead, and my daughter lost. But now you are here, safe and whole, and I have some hope again. Go from here and do what you must, but go without me to hinder you.” She put out her hands as I sought to speak. �
�See you how I am? I would be a burden. And that I refuse, when you have a kingdom to win back.”

  I laughed, but there was nothing of humor in it. “All my fine plans are disarranged. I thought to win you free of here and take you to my army, where you would be safe. And then I would set about planning to take Torry—or take Homana-Mujhar.” I sighed and shook my head, sensing the pain of futility in my soul. “You have put me in my place.”

  “Your place is Homana-Mujhar.” She rose, still clasping my hands with her brittle, twisted fingers. “Go there. Win your throne and your sister’s freedom. And then I will go where you bid me.”

  I caught her in my arms and then, aghast, set her aside with a muttered oath. Filthy as I was—

  She laughed. She touched the smudge of grease on her crumpled-silk face and laughed, and then she cried, and this time when I hugged her I did not set her at once aside.

  EIGHT

  I went out of Joyenne as I had gone in: with great care. Stooping and hitching I limped along, head down, making certain I did not hasten. I went out the same gate I had come in, muttering something to the Solindish guards, who responded with curses and an attempt to trip me into a puddle of horse urine pooling on the cobbles. Perhaps falling would have been best, but my natural reflexes took over and kept me from sprawling as the leg shot out to catch my ankle. I recalled my guise at once and made haste to stumble and cry out, and when I drew myself up it was to laughter and murmured insults in the Solindish tongue. And so I went away from my home and into the village to think.

  My mother had the right of it. Did I take her out of Joyenne, Bellam would know instantly I had come back, and where. Who else would undertake to win my mother free? She had spent five years in captivity within her own home and no one had gotten her out. Only I would be so interested as to brave the Solindish guards.

  It is a humbling feeling to know all your plans have been made for naught, when you should have known it at the outset. Finn, I thought, would have approached it differently. Or approached it not at all.

  I retrieved my horse from the hostler at a dingy tavern and went at once, roundabout, to the rowan tree to unearth my sword and bow. It felt good to have both in my hands again, and to slough off the tension my journey into Joyenne had caused me. I hung my sword at my hips again, strapped on the Cheysuli bow, and mounted the gelding once more.

  I rode out across the snowfields and headed home again. To a different home, an army, where men planned and drilled and waited. To where Homana’s future waited. And I wondered how it had come to pass men would claim a single realm their own, when the gods had made it for all.

  I thought of Lachlan then, secure within his priesthood. He had told me how it was for him; how Lodhi’s service did not require celibacy or cloistering or the foolishness of similar things. His task, he had said, was merely to speak of Lodhi to those who would listen, in hopes they would learn the proper way. I had acknowledged his freedom to do so, knowing my own lay in other gods, but he had never pressed me on it, and for that I was grateful indeed.

  The sun burned yellow in an azure sky, reflecting from the snow. The horse sweated and so did I; the grease stank so badly I wanted to retch and rid myself of its stench. But until I had time to bathe myself I would have to remain as I was.

  I saw them then, silhouetted against the skyline. Four men atop a hill, shapes only, with sunlight glittering off their ringmail. All save one, who wore dark clothes instead. No mail. No sword at all.

  My heart moved within my chest in the squirm of sudden foreboding. Intentionally I kept my hand from my sword, riding onward along the narrow track beaten into the slushy snow. Men had the freedom to come and go as they pleased; Solindish or not, they had the right to ride where they would. And I had better not gain their attention with a show of arms or strength.

  The hill lay to my right and ahead. I rode on doggedly, round-shouldered and slumped, affecting no pride or curiosity. The four waited atop the hill, well-mounted and silent, still little more than shapes at this distance, yet watching. Watching always.

  I did not quicken the gelding’s pace. I made no movement to call attention, and yet I could feel their eyes as they watched me, waiting, as I passed the crest of their hill. Still it lay to my right, bulging up out of a rift through which ran the smallest of snow-melt streams. That stream lay to my left; I rode between water and men. The gelding snorted, unimpressed, but I thought he sensed my tension.

  The ringmail blazed in the brilliant sun. Solindishmen, I knew. Homanan mail was darker, duller, radiating less light in the sun. Showing less light in the starlit darkness when armies moved to set an ambush. It was something my father had taught me; perhaps Bellam was too sure of his men and saw no need for such secrecy.

  I rode on. And so did they.

  Three of them. The men in mail. They came directly down the hill toward me, moving to cut me off, and I saw them draw their swords. This was no parley, no innocent meeting of strangers. It was blood they wanted, and I had none to spare.

  I doubted I could outrun them. The snow was thick and slushy, treacherous footing to any horse, but to mine in particular: short-legged and slighter of frame. Still, he was willing, and when I set him to a run he plunged through the heavy going.

  Snow whipped into the air in a fine, damp spray, churned up beneath driving hooves. I bent low and forward, shifting weight over the moving shoulders. I heard the raspy breathing of my horse and the shouts of men behind me.

  The gelding stumbled, recovered, then went down to his knees. Riding forward as I was, the fall pitched me neatly off over his head. It was not entirely unexpected; I came up at once, spinning to face the oncoming men, and stripped the bow from my back.

  The arrow was nocked. Loosed. It took the first soldier full in the throat, knocking him off his horse. The next shaft blurred home in the second man’s chest, but the third one was on me and there was no more time for a bow.

  The sword slashed down to rip the bow from my hands. I stumbled, slipping to my knees in the slushy snow, and wrenched free the sword in my scabbard. Both hands clamped down on the leather-wrapped hilt. I pushed myself up to my feet.

  The Solindishman swung back, commanding his horse with his knees. I saw the sunlight flashing off his blade as the man rode toward me. I saw also the badge he wore: Bellam’s white sun on an indigo field.

  The soldier rode me down. But he paused to deliver what he thought was the death-blow; I ducked it at once and came up with my blade, plunging it into the horse’s belly. The animal screamed and staggered at once, floundering to his knees. The soldier jumped off instantly and met me on common ground.

  His broadsword was lifted high to come down into my left shoulder. I caught his blade on my own and swung it up diagonally from underneath, wrist-cords tightening beneath the leather bracers. He pulled away at once, dropping to come under my guard; I met his blow with a downward stroke across my body. He changed then, shifting his stance to come at me another way, but I broke his momentum and slid under his guard with ease, plunging my sword to the hilt through his ribs. Steel blade on steel mail shrieked in disharmony a moment, and then I freed my sword as the body slumped to the snow.

  I turned at once, searching for the man who wore no ringmail or sword, but saw no one. The crest of the hill was empty. I listened, standing perfectly still, but all I heard was the trickling of the tiny streamlet as it ran down through its channel.

  The Solindish warhorse was dead. The horses belonging to the two soldiers dead of arrows had gone off, too far for me to chase. I was left with my shaggy Steppes horse, head hanging as he sought to recover from his flight.

  I sheathed my sword, reclaimed my bow and mushed over to him through the snow, cursing the wet of my buskins and the chill of ice against my flesh. The ragged clothing I wore was soaked through from the flight and the fight. And I still stank.

  I put out my hand to catch dangling reins and felt something crawl against the flesh of my waist. I slapped at it at once, c
ursing lice and fleas; slapped again when the tickling repeated itself. I set my hand against the hilt of my Caledonese knife and felt it move.

  I unsheathed it at once, jerking it into the sunlight. For a moment I stared at it, seeing blade and bone, and then I saw it move.

  Every muscle tensed. The horse snorted uneasily behind me. I stood there and stared, fascinated as the bone reshaped itself.

  It was growing. In my hand. The smooth, curving hilt lengthened, pulling itself free of the blade’s tang. The runes and scripture melted away into the substance of the bone, as if the pieces carved away to make the shapes were replacing themselves.

  And then I knew I was watched.

  I looked up at once, staring at the low ridge of the hill from which the Solindishmen had come. There, dark against the blue of the sky, was the fourth man. The one without ringmail or sword. Too far for me to discern his features, save I knew he watched and waited.

  Ihlini, I knew instantly.

  I threw the knife away in a convulsive, sickened movement. I reached at once for my bow, intending to loose an arrow. But I stopped almost at once, because an arrow against sorcery claims no strength.

  The bone. The thighbone of a monstrous beast, the king of Caledon had said. And the Ihlini had conjured the source of the bone, placing it before me in the snowfields of Homana.

  The bones knit themselves together. From one came another, then another, until they ran together and built the skeleton. The spine, ridged and long. Massive shoulder joints. And the skull, pearly white, with gaping orbits for eyes.

  Then, more quickly, the viscera. The brain. The vessels running with blood. The muscles, wrapping themselves into place, until the flesh overlay it all. And the hide on top of that.

  I gaped at the beast. I knew what it was, of course; my House had used it forever as a crest, to recall the strength and courage of the mythical beast, long gone from the world.