The Song of Homana

by Jennifer Roberson

  “When did you get back?” he asked quite calmly.

  I stood up, dripping, and reached for the blanket he tossed to me from Torrin’s pallet. “Not so long ago that I have had time to fill my belly.”

  “But time for a bath.” His tone was perfectly flat, but I had little trouble discerning his intent. I had not had that trouble for some years now.

  “Had you seen me—or smelled me—you would have pushed me in yourself.” I climbed out of the cask and pulled on the dark brown breeches, then bent to jerk on the knee boots. My shirt was green. I put a brown jerkin over it and belted it with leather and bronze. “I thought I would go up to the army. Will you come?”

  “Ah, the army.” Finn smiled his ironic smile. “Do you wish to call it that.”

  I scowled at him, combing my fingers through my wet hair. It tangled on my shoulders and dampened the fabric of shirt and jerkin. “Rowan has done what he can to assemble men willing to fight. I will use what I can. Do you expect me to gather the thousands Bellam has?”

  “It makes no difference.” Finn followed me through to the other room, where Alix knelt to hang the pot of bread dough over the fire. “You will have the Cheysuli, and that is enough, I think.” He put out a hand to Storr, seated by the table.

  I scoffed. “I have you. And no doubt Duncan, and perhaps those he has managed to persuade to join me in the name of the prophecy.” I scooped up a clay jug of Torrin’s sour wine and poured myself a cup, pouring a second for Finn as he nodded willingness to drink.

  “You have more than a few.” He accepted the cup without thanks and swallowed half the wine at once. “How many would you ask for, could you have a larger number?”

  I returned the jug to its place on the sideboard near the fireplace and perched upon the table as I drank. “The Cheysuli are the finest fighting men in all of Homana.” He did not smile at my compliment; it was well known. “And with each warrior I would gain a lir, so double the number at once.” I shrugged. “A single warrior is worth at least five of another, so with a lir it is ten to one.” I shook my head. “It is folly to wish for what I cannot have. Nonetheless, I would be more than pleased with one hundred.”

  “What of three hundred?” Finn smiled. “Perhaps even more.”

  I stared at him, forgoing my wine altogether. “Have you turned sorcerer, to conjure up false men?”

  “No.” Finn tossed his empty cup to Alix, who caught it and put it with the jug. “I have conjured up men I thought long dead. Shaine, you see, did not slay as many as we feared.”

  I set my cup down very precisely in the center of the table. “Are you saying—?”

  “Aye.” He grinned. “While searching for my clan, I found others. The Northern Wastes boast many places where a clan may hide, and I found several of them. It took time, but we have gathered together every warrior we could find.” He shrugged. “All the clans are here; we are building a Keep beyond the hill.”

  He said it so simply: “All the clans are here; we are building a Keep beyond the hill.”

  I stared at him. A Keep. With three hundred warriors and their lir.

  I whooped. And then I was on my feet, clasping him in my arms as if I could not let him go. No doubt too demonstrative for Finn’s sensibilities, but he knew the reason. And he smiled, stepping away when I was done.

  “My gift to you,” he said lightly. “Now, come with me and I will show you.”

  We went out at once, leaving Alix to tend her bread, and Finn gave me back my Ihlini horse. His eyes were on it, for he had known me to ride the dun, but he waited until we were free of the croft and riding toward the hill before he asked me about it, and then obliquely.

  “Torrin said you had gone to Joyenne.”

  “Aye. To get my lady mother out.”

  “You did not succeed?”

  “No, but only because she refused to come.” The sunlight was bright in our eyes. I put up a hand to block the stunning brilliance. “Bellam holds Tourmaline, my sister. He has for some time. I do not doubt he keeps her safe, being who she is, but I want her free of him.” I swore suddenly as the anger boiled over. “By the gods, the man threatens to wed her!”

  We rode abreast with Storr leading the way. Finn frowning, nodded, saying little. “It is the way of kings. Especially usurper kings.”

  “He will not usurp my sister!”

  “Then do you mean to dance into Homana-Mujhar as easily as you did into Joyenne?”

  And so I knew what he thought of my actions. I scowled at him blackly. “I got in and got out with little trouble. I was careful. No one knew me.”

  “And did you yourself put those bruises on your face?”

  I had nearly forgotten. My hand went to my jaw and touched the sore flesh. “The Ihlini did this. Or rather: his conjured beast.”

  “Ah.” Finn nodded in apparent satisfaction. “No trouble at Joyenne, you say, but an Ihlini set a beast on you.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Why should I concern myself with your welfare? All you manage to do is tangle with one of Tynstar’s minions.”

  His irony, as ever, galled me. “Enough. It was not my fault the men found me. They could have found me here.”

  “Men? First it was an Ihlini and his beast. Now there are more.” He gestured to direct me up the bill.

  I glared at him. “Why not just compel me to tell you the truth, as you did Lachlan?”

  “Because I had believed you knew enough to tell me willingly.”

  I sighed and leaned forward as my horse climbed the hill toward the treeline. “You should not worry. I slew them all, even the Ihlini.”

  “I have no reason to worry,” he agreed. “What have I done, save swear a blood-oath to serve you always?” For the first time a hint of anger crept into his voice. “Do you think I waste my time? Do you wish to do this alone? Think how many times over you would have been slain without me. And now, when I leave you to seek my clan—at your behest—you place yourself in such jeopardy even a child knows better.”

  “Finn—enough.”

  “Not enough.” He glared at me openly now. “There is some little of my life invested in you. All of it, now. What we do is not entirely for you, Carillon, and for Homana, but for the Cheysuli as well.” His mouth tightened as he reined his horse back even with mine. “Were you to die now, in some foolish endeavor of your own devising, the rebellion would fail. Bellam would rule forevermore. He would likely wed your sister, get new sons on her, and put them on the throne behind himself. Is that what you wish?”

  I reached out and caught his reins, jerking his horse to a halt. All the anger and frustration came pouring out as pride. “I am your prince!”

  “And I your liege man!” He ignored the jerk of the reins against his hands. “Do you think it is so easy for me to watch you as a father with a son? I am not your jehan, Carillon, merely your liege man. And a cousin, of a sort, because my jehan saw fit to lie with a haughty Homanan princess when he had a cheysula at home!”

  He had never said so much before. Had coming home done it? I knew the differences in myself. Perhaps there were some in Finn as well.

  I let go his reins and minded my own, though I did not start up the hill quite yet. “Does the service grow so tedious, seek another,” I suggested bitterly.

  His laugh was a short bark of sound. “How? The gods have tied me to you. Better yet: they have set iron around your neck as well as mine, and locked them together, like oxen in a yoke.”

  I sat in the blinding gold of the late afternoon sun and said nothing for a long moment. And then when I did, I asked a question I had not thought to ask before: “What do you want from this life?”

  He was surprised. I could see it in his eyes. He understood perfectly well what I asked, and probably why, but he went on to step around the question. “I want you on the throne of Homana.”

  “Given that,” I agreed, “what more?”

  “The Cheysuli free to live as they would again.”

  “Given that.” Had I to d
o it, I would ask him until the moon came up.

  Finn squinted into the sun, as if the light would shield his feelings from me, or lessen the pain of the question. He appeared to have no intention of answering me, but this once I would make him.

  “Finn,” I said patiently, with all the solemnity I could muster, “were the gods to give you anything, anything at all, what would you ask for?”

  At last he looked directly at me. The sunlight, striking through the trees like illuminated spears, was my unwitting servant. All of Finn’s soul was bared to me in the light. This once, just once, but enough for me to see it. “You have not met Donal, have you?”

  I thought it a question designed to lead me away from the quarry, like a dog led away by a clever fox. “Alix’s son? No. I have only just got here. Finn—”

  But he was serious. “Could I have it, I would ask for a son.” He said it abruptly, as if the admission endangered the hope, and then he rode away from me as if he had shared too much.

  There were no tracks to mark an army, no pall of smoke hanging above the treeline to mark the army’s presence. There was nothing Bellam could use to seek me out. Finn took me into the forest away from the valley and I knew the army was safe. Rowan had done my bidding by taking them deeper into cover; even I could not say there was an army near, and it was mine.

  The forest was overgrown with vines and creepers and brambles and bushes. Ivy fell down from the trees to trip the horses and foul the toes of my boots. Mistletoe clustered in the wooden crotches and a profusion of flowers hailed our passing. Homana. At last. Home again, for good, after too long a time spent in exile.

  Sunlight spilled through the leaves and speckled the forest floor into goldens, greens and browns. Finn, riding before me, broke a pheasant from cover and I heard the whirring of its wings as it flew, whipping leaves and stirring sunmotes in its passage to the sky. I thought, suddenly, of the last time I had supped on pheasant: in Homana-Mujhar, feasting a guest, when my uncle had been pleased with a new alliance made. Too long ago. Too long being mercenary instead of prince.

  I heard the harp and nearly stopped. There was nothing else save the threshing of the horses tearing through the brush and vines and creepers. But the harpsong overrode it all, and I recognized the hand upon the strings. “Lachlan,” I said aloud.

  Finn, reining in to ride abreast of me, nodded. “He has come each day, sharing his music with us. Once I might have dismissed it as idle whimsy, but no more. He has magic in that harp, Carillon—more even than we have seen. Already he has begun to give the Cheysuli what we have lacked these past years: peace of spirit.” He smiled, albeit wryly. “Too long have we forgotten the music of our ancestors, thinking instead of war. The Ellasian has reminded us; he has given us some of it back again. I think there will be music made in the Keep again.”

  We passed through the final veil of leaves and vines and into the Keep. And yet it was no proper Keep, lacking the tall stone wall that circled the pavilions ordinarily. This was not a true Keep at all, not as I had known it, but a wide scattering of tents throughout the forest. There was no uniformity, no organization.

  Finn ducked a low branch, caught it and held it back as I rode by. He saw the expression on my face. “Not yet. It will come later, when Homana is made safe again for such things as permanent Keeps.” He released the branch and fell in next to me. “This is easily defensible. Easily torn down, do we need to move on again.”

  The tents huddled against the ground, like mushrooms beneath a tree. They were the colors of the earth: dark green, pale moss, slate-gray, rust-red, brown and black and palest cream. Small and plain, without the lir-symbols I remembered: tents instead of pavilions. But a Cheysuli Keep, for all its odd appearance.

  I smiled, though it pained my injured face. I could not count them all. I could not see them all, so perfectly were they hidden, even though I knew how to look. And Bellam? No doubt his men, if they came so far, would miss the Keep entirely.

  Defensible? Aye—when an enemy does not see until too late. Torn down fast? Oh, aye—requiring but a moment to collapse the earth-toned fabric. A perfectly portable Keep.

  And full of Cheysuli.

  I laughed aloud and halted my horse. Around me spread the Keep, huddled and subtle and still. Around me spread my strength, equally subtle and silent and still. With the Cheysuli and an army besides, Bellam could never stop me.

  “Tahlmorra lujhalla mei wiccan, cheysu,” I said softly. The fate of a man rests always within the hands of the gods.

  Finn, so silent beside me, merely smiled. “You are welcome to Homana, my lord. And to the homeplace of my people.”

  I shook my head, suddenly overcome. “I am not worthy of it all…” In that moment, I was certain of it. I was not up to the task.

  “Are you not,” my liege man said simply, “no man is.”

  When I could, I rode farther into the Keep. And thanked the gods for the Cheysuli.

  TEN

  The harpsong filled the forest. The melody was so delicate, so fragile, and yet so strong. It drew me as if it were a woman calling me to her bed; Lachlan’s Lady, and I a man who knew her charm. I forgot the warriors Finn had promised and followed a song instead, feeling its magic reach out to touch my soul.

  I found him at last perched upon the ruin of a felled beech, huge and satin-trunked. The tree had made its grave long since, but it provided a perfect bench—or throne—for the harper. The sunlight pierced the surrounding veil of branches and limbs like enemy spears transfixed upon a single foe: the harp. His Lady, so dark and old and wise, with her single green eye and golden strings. Such an eloquent voice, calling out; such a geas he laid upon me. I reined in my horse before the beech and waited until he was done.

  Lachlan smiled. The slender, supple fingers grew quiet upon the glowing strings, so that music and magic died, and he was merely a man, a harper, blessed with Lodhi’s pleasure.

  “I knew you would come,” he said in his liquid, silken voice.

  “Sorcerer,” I returned.

  He laughed. “Some men call me so. Let them. You should know me better now.” For a moment there was a glint of some unknown emotion in his eyes. “Friend,” he said. “No more.”

  I realized we were alone. Finn I had left behind. And that, by itself, was enough to make me fear the Ellasian harper.

  He saw it at once. Still he sat unmoving upon the beech trunk, his hands upon his Lady. “You came because I wished you to, and because you wished it,” he said quietly. “Finn I did not require; not yet. But he will come, and Duncan.” The sunlight was full upon his face. I saw no guile there, no subterfuge. Only honesty, and some little dedication. “I am a harper,” he said clearly. “Harpers require men of legend in order to do what they do. You, my lord, are legend enough for most. Certainly for me.” He smiled. “Have I not proven my loyalty?”

  “Men will slay whom they are told to, do they have reason enough for it.” I remained upon my horse, for I did not fully trust him with that harp held in his hands. “You slew the man I bid you to, but a spy would do so easily enough, merely to maintain his innocence.”

  He took his hands from the harp and spread them. “I am no spy. Save, perhaps, your own.”

  “Mine.” I said nothing more; for the moment he had made me speechless. And then I looked deeper into his eyes. “Would you, an Ellasian, serve me, a Homanan, in anything I bid you?”

  “Providing it did not go against my conscience,” he said at once. “I am a priest of the All-Father; I will not transgress any of His teachings.”

  I made a dismissing gesture. “I would ask no man to go against his lights. Not in something such as his gods. No. I mean, Lachlan, to see just how loyal you are.”

  “Then bid me,” he returned. “I am here because I wish to be, not because some Ihlini sorcerer or Solindish king has sent me. And if they had, would I not take them the news they wish to hear? Would I still be here, when I could tell them the location of the Cheysuli and your army?” />
  “A wise spy spies,” I told him flatly. “The hare that breaks too soon is caught quickly by the fox.”

  He laughed. Lachlan’s laugh is warm, generous, a true casement of his soul. “But it is not a fox I fear, my lord…it is a wolf. A Cheysuli wolf.” His eyes went past me. I did not turn, knowing who stood there.

  “What would you do, then?” I asked.

  The laughter had died. He looked at me directly. “Spy for you, Carillon. Go into Mujhara, to the palace itself, and see what Bellam does.”

  “Dangerous,” Finn said from behind me. “The hare asks to break.”

  “Aye,” Lachlan agreed. “But who else could do it? No Cheysuli, that is certain. No Homanan, for whom would Bellam admit without good reason? But I, I am a harper, and harpers go where they will.”

  It is true harpers are admitted to places other men cannot go. I knew from my own boyhood, when my uncle had hosted harpers from far and wide within Homana-Mujhar. A harper would be a perfect spy, that I did not doubt.

  And yet— “Lachlan of Ellas,” I said, “what service would you do me?”

  His fingers flew against the strings. It was a lively tune, evocative of dance and laughter and youth. It conjured up a vision before my eyes: a young woman, lithe and lovely, with tawny-dark hair and bright blue eyes. Laughter was in her mouth and gaiety in her soul. My sister, Tourmaline, as I recalled her. At nineteen, when I had seen her last, though she would be twenty-four now.

  Tourmaline, hostage to Bellam himself. And Lachlan knew it well.

  I was off my horse at once, crossing to the beech in two long steps. My hands went out to stop his fingers in the strings, but I did not touch them after all. I felt a sudden upsurge of power so great it near threw me back from the man. I took a single step backward against my will, all unexpected, and then I stood very still.