The Song of Homana

by Jennifer Roberson

  He swallowed twice. “The Queen screamed, my lord. We all came.” He gestured at Lachlan and Perrin. “There were more at first, but I sent them away. I thought you would prefer this matter handled in private.”

  I felt old and tired and used up. I held a sword against my liege man. I had only to look at his face to know why it was necessary. “What did you find when you came?”

  “The Queen was—in some disarray. Finn’s hands were on her throat.” Rowan looked angry and confused. “My lord—there was nothing else I could do. He was trying to slay the Queen.”

  I knew he meant the leg wound. I wondered how bad it was. Finn stood steadily enough now, but I could see the pain in the tautness of his gaunt, bloody face.

  Lachlan spoke at last. “Carillon—I have no wish to condemn him. But it is true. He would have taken her life.”

  “Execute him.” Electra’s tone was urgent. “He tried to slay me, Carillon.”

  “It was Tynstar,” Finn said clearly. “It was Tynstar I wanted.”

  “But it was Electra you would have slain.” The sword, for the slightest moment, wavered in my hand. “You fool,” I whispered, “why have you done this to me? You know what I must do—”

  “No!” It exploded from Rowan’s throat. “My lord—you cannot—”

  “No,” I said wearily, “I cannot—not that. But there is something else—”

  “Execute him!” Electra again. “There is nothing else to be done. He sought to slay the Queen!”

  “I will not have him slain.”

  It was Lachlan who understood first. “Carillon! It will bare your back to the enemy!”

  “I have no choice.” I looked directly at Finn, still caged by the steel of my sword. “Do you see what you have done?”

  He raised his hands. He closed them both on the blade, blocking out the runes. The ones his father had made. “No.”

  I was nearly shaking myself. “But you would do it again, would you not?”

  The grimace came swiftly; bared teeth and the suggestion of a deep growl in a human throat. “Tynstar—”

  “Electra,” I said. “You would do it again, would you not?”

  “Aye…” A breathy hiss of sound expelled from a constricted throat. He was shaking.

  “Finn,” I said, “it is done. I have no choice. The service is over.” I stopped short, then went on when I could speak. “The blood-oath is—denied.”

  His eyes were fixed on mine. After a moment I could not bear to look at them, but I did. I had given him the task; it was mine to do as well.

  He took his hands from the blade. I saw the lines pressed into his palms, but no blood. He bled enough already, inside as well as out.

  His voice was a whisper. “Ja’hai-na,” he said only. Accepted.

  I put the sword away, hearing the hiss of steel on boiled leather as it slid home. The lion was quiescent; the brilliant ruby black.

  Finn took the knife from the sheath at his belt and offered it to me. My own, once; the royal blade with its golden Homanan crest.

  It nearly broke me. “Finn,” I said, “I cannot.”

  “The blood-oath is denied.” His face was stark, old, aging. “Ja’hai, my lord Mujhar.”

  I took it from his hand. There was blood upon the gold. “Ja’hai-na,” I said at last, and Finn walked from the room.

  THREE

  When I could, I went out into the corridor and moved slowly through the dimness. The torches were unlighted. The hallway was empty of people; my servants, knowing how to serve, left me to myself.

  No more howling. Silence. Storr was gone with Finn. My spirit felt as extinguished as the torches.

  I went alone to the Great Hall and stood within its darkness. The firepit was banked. Coals glowed. Here, as well, none of the torches was lighted.

  Silence.

  I tucked the Homanan blade into my belt beside the Cheysuli knife in its sheath and began shifting the unburned logs in the firepit with my booted feet. The coals I also kicked aside until I bared the iron ring beneath its heavy layer of ash. Then I took a torch, pushed the shaft through the ring, and levered it up until the heavy plate rose and fell back, clanging against the firepit rim. The ash puffed up around it.

  I lighted the torch and went down when the staircase lay bare. I counted this time: one hundred and two steps. I stood before the wall and saw how the rain had soaked in from the storm. The walls were slick and shiny with dampness. The runes glowed pale green against the dark stone. I put my fingers to them, tracing their alien shapes, then found the proper keystone. The wall, when I leaned, grated open.

  I stood in the doorway. Lir-shapes, creamy and veined with gold, loomed at me from the walls. Bear and boar, owl and hawk and falcon. Wolf and fox, raven, cat and more. In the hissing light of the iron torch they moved, silent and supple, against the silken stone.

  I went into the vault. I let the silence oppress me.

  FoolFoolFool, I thought.

  I took the cheysuli knife from my sheath. The light glittered off the silver. I saw the snarling wolf’s-head hilt with its eyes of uncut emerald. Finn’s knife, once.

  I moved to the edge of the oubliette. As before, the torchlight did not touch the blackness within. So deep, so soft, so black. I recalled my days in there, and how I had become someone other than myself. How, for four days, I had thought myself Cheysuli.

  I shut my eyes. The glow of the torchlight burned yellow against my lids. I could see nothing, but I recalled it all. The soft soughing of shifting wings, the pip of a preening falcon. How it was to go trotting through the forest with a pelt upon my back. And freedom, such perfect freedom, bound by nothing more than what the gods had given me.

  “Ja’hai.” I reached out my hand to drop the knife into the pit.

  “Carillon.”

  I spun around and teetered on the brink while the torch roared softly against the movement.

  I might have expected Finn. But never Tourmaline.

  She wore a heavy brown traveling cloak, swathed in wool from head to toe. The hood was dropped to her shoulders and I saw how the torchlight gleamed on the gold in her tawny hair. “You have sent him away,” she said, “and so you send me as well.”

  All the protests leaped into my mouth. I had only to say them in a combination of tones: impatience, confusion, irritation, amazement and placation. But none of them were right. I knew, suddenly and horribly; I knew. Not Lachlan. Not Lachlan at all, for Torry.

  The pieces of the fortune-game, quite suddenly, were thrown across the table from their casket and spread out before me in their intricate, interlocking patterns that double too often as prophets. The bone dice and carven rune-sticks stood before me in the shape of my older sister, and I saw the pattern at last.

  “Torry,” was all I said. She was too much like me. She let no one turn her from one way when it was the way she wanted to go.

  “We did not dare tell you,” she said quietly. “We knew what you would do. He says—” already she had fallen into the easy attribution so common to women when they speak of their men “—that in the clans women are never bartered to the warriors. That a man and woman are left to their own decisions, without another to turn them against their will.”

  “Tourmaline…” I felt tired suddenly, and full of aches and pains. “Torry, you know why I had to do it. In our House rank is matched with rank; I wanted a prince for you because you deserve that much, if not more. Torry—I did not wish to make you unhappy. But I need the aid from another realm—”

  “Did you think to ask me?” Slowly she shook her head and the torchlight gleamed in her hair. “No. Did you think I would mind? No. Did you think I would even protest?” She smiled a little. “Think you upon my place, Carillon, and see how you would feel.”

  The pit was at my back. I thought now another one yawned before me. “Torry,” I said finally, “think you I had any choice in whom I wed? Princes—and kings—have no more say than their women. There was nothing I could do.”

>   “You might have asked me. But no, you ever told. The Mujhar of Homana orders his sister to wed where he will decide.” She put up a silencing hand. Her fingers seemed sharp as a blade. “Aye, I know—it has ever been this way. And ever will be. But this once, this once, I say no. I say I choose my way.”

  “Our mother—”

  “—is gone home to Joyenne.” She saw my frown of surprise. “I told her, Carillon. Like you, she thinks me mad. But she knows better than to protest.” The smile came more freely. “She has raised willful children, Carillon—they do what they will do when it comes to whom they marry.” She laughed softly. “Think you that I was fooled about Electra? Oh Carillon, I am not blind. I do not deny she was a pathway to Solinde, but she is more than that to you. You wanted her because—like all men who see her—you simply had to have her. That is a measure of her power.”

  “Tourmaline—”

  “I am going,” she said calmly, with the cool assurance of a woman who has what she wants in the way of a man. “But I will tell you this much, for both of us: it was not intended.” Tourmaline smiled and I saw her as Finn must see her: not a princess, not a game piece, not even Carillon’s sister. A woman; no more, no less. It was no wonder he wanted her. “You sent him to the Keep to recover from his wounds. You sent me there for safety. I tended him when Alix could not, wondering what manner of man he was to so serve my brother’s cause, and he gave me the safety I needed. Soon enough—it was more.” She shook her head. “We meant to do no harm. But now it comes to this: he is dismissed from his tahlmorra, and mine is to go with him.”

  “Tahlmorra is a Cheysuli thing,” I told her bleakly. “Torry, no. I do not wish to lose you as well.”

  “Then take him back into your service.”

  “I cannot!” The shout echoed in the vault, bouncing off the silent lir. “Do you not see? Electra is the Queen, and he a Cheysuli shapechanger. No matter what I say in this, they will always suspect Finn of wishing to slay the Queen. And if he stayed, he might. Did he not tell you what he tried to do?”

  Her lips were pale. “Aye. But he had no choice—”

  “Nor do I have one now.” I shook my head. “Do you think I do not want him back? Gods, Torry, you do not know what it was for the two of us in exile. He has been with me for too long to make this parting simple. But it must be done. What else is there to do? I could never trust him with Electra—”

  “Perhaps you should not trust her.”

  “I wed her,” I said grimly. “I need her. Did I allow Finn to stay and something happened to Electra, do you know what would happen to Homana? Solinde would rise. No mere army could gainsay an outraged realm. Murder, Torry.” Slowly I shook my head. “Think you the qu’mahlin is ended? No. Be not so foolish. A thing such as that is stopped, perhaps, but never forgotten. For too long the Cheysuli have been hated. It is not done yet.” The torch hissed and sputtered, putting shadows on her face. “This time, a race would be destroyed. And with it, no doubt, would also fall Homana.”

  Tears were on her face, glittering in the light. “Carillon,” she whispered, “I carry his child.”

  When I could speak, albeit a trembling whisper, I said his name. Then, to myself: “How could I not have seen it?”

  “You did not look. You did not ask. And now it is too late.” She gathered her skirts and cloak with both her hands. “Carillon—he waits. It is time I left you.”

  “Torry—”

  “I will go,” she said gently. “It is where I want to be.”

  We faced each other in the flickering light in a vault full of marble lir. I heard the faint cry of hawk and falcon; the howl of a hunting wolf. I remembered what it was to be Cheysuli.

  I dropped the torch into the oubliette. “I can see no one in this darkness. A person could stay or she could go—and I would never know it.”

  Dim light crept down the stairs behind her. Someone held a torch. Someone who waited for Torry.

  I saw the tear on the curve of her cheek as she came up to kiss me. And then she was gone, and I was left alone with the silence and the lir.

  I let the cover fall free of my hands and slam shut against the mouth. The gust of air sent ash flying. It settled on my clothing but I did not care. I kicked coals and pushed wood over the plate again, hiding the ring in ash, and went out of the Great Hall alone.

  I meant to go to bed, though I knew I would not sleep. I meant to drown myself in wine, though I knew it would leave me sober. I meant to try and forget, and I knew the task was futile.

  Come, lady, and hear of my soul,

  for a harper’s poor magic

  does little to hold

  a fine lady’s heart

  when she keeps it her own.

  I stopped walking. The music curled out to wrap me in its magic and I thought at once of Lachlan. Lachlan and his Lady. Lachlan, whose lays were all for Torry.

  Come, lady, and listen:

  I will make for you music

  from out of the world if you wait with me,

  stay with me,

  lay with me, too…

  I will give you myself

  and this harp that I hold.

  I followed the song to its source and found Lachlan in a small private solar, a nook in the vastness of the palace. Cushions lay on the floor, but Lachlan sat on a three-legged, velvet-covered stool, his Lady caressed by a lover’s hands. I paused inside the door and saw the gold of the strings: the gleam of green stone.

  His head was bowed over his harp. He was lost within his music. I saw how his supple fingers moved within the strings: plucking here, touching there, ever placating his Lady. He was at peace, eyes shut and face gone smooth, so that I saw the elegance in his features. A harper is touched by the gods, and ever knows it. It accounts for their confidence and quiet pride.

  The music died away. Silence. And then he looked up and, seeing me, rose at once from his stool. “Carillon! I thought you had gone to bed.”

  “No.”

  He frowned. “You are all over ash, and still damp. Do you not think you would do better—”

  “He is gone.” I cut him off. “And so is Tourmaline.”

  He stared, uncomprehending. “Torry! Torry—?”

  “With Finn.” I wanted it said so the cut would bleed more quickly, to get rid of the pain at once.

  “Lodhi!” Lachlan’s face was bone-white. “Ah, Lodhi—no—” He came three steps, still clutching his Lady, and then he stopped. “Carillon—say you are mistaken.…”

  “It would be a lie.” I saw how the pain moved into his eyes; how it stiffened the flesh of his face. He was a child suddenly, stricken with some new nightmare and groping for understanding.

  “But—you said she was meant to wed. You meant her for a prince.”

  “A prince,” I agreed. “Never a harper. Lachlan—”

  “Have I waited too long?” His arms were rigid as he clasped the harp to his chest. “Lodhi, have I waited too long?”

  “Lachlan, I know you have cared. I saw it from the beginning. But there is no sense in holding onto the hope that it might have been.”

  “Get her back.” He was suddenly intent. “Take her from him. Do not let her go—”

  “No.” I said it firmly. “I have let her go because, in the end, there was no way I could stop her. I know Finn too well. And he has said, quite clearly, he will allow no one to keep him from the woman he wants.”

  Lachlan put one hand to his brow. He scraped at the silver circlet as if it bound him too tightly. Then abruptly, as if discovering it himself, he pulled it from his head and held it out in one fist as the other arm clasped his Lady.

  “Harper!” His pain was out in the open. “Lodhi, but I have been a fool!”

  “Lachlan—”

  He shook his head. “Carillon, can you not get her back? I promise you, you will be glad of it. There is something I would say to her—”

  “No.” This time I said it gently. “Lachlan—she bears Finn’s child.”

&
nbsp; He lost the rest of his color. Then, all at once, he sat down on the three-legged stool. For a moment he just stared at the wooden floor. Then, stiffly, he set his Lady and the circlet on the floor, as if he renounced them both. “I meant to take her home,” was all he said.

  “No.” I said it again. “Lachlan—I am sorry.”

  Silently he drew a thong from beneath his doublet. He pulled the leather from around his head and handed the trinket to me.

  Trinket? It was a ring. It depended from the thong. I turned it upward into the candlelight and saw the elaborate crest: a harp and the crown of Ellas.

  “There are seven of those rings,” he said matter-of-factly. “Five rest on the hands of my brothers. The other is on my father’s finger.” He looked up at me at last. “Oh, aye, I know how things are in royal Houses. I am from one myself.”

  “Lachlan,” I said. “Or, is it?”

  “Oh, aye. Cuinn Lachlan Llewellyn. My father has a taste for names.” He frowned a little, oddly distant and detached. “But then he has eleven children, so it is for the best.”

  “High Prince Cuinn of Ellas.” The ring fell out of my hand and dangled on its thong. “In the names of all the gods of Homana, why did you keep it secret?”

  A shrug twitched at his shoulders. “It was—a thing between my father and myself. I was not, you see, the sort of heir Rhodri wanted. I preferred harping to governing and healing to courting women.” He smiled a little, a mere twisting of his mouth. “I was not ready for responsibility. I wanted no wife to chain me to the castle. I wanted to leave Rheghed behind and see the whole of Ellas, on my own, without a retinue. The heirship is so—binding.” This time the smile held more of the Lachlan I knew. “You might know something of that, I think.”

  “But—all this silence with Torry. And me!” I thought he had been a fool. “Had you said anything, none of this might have happened!”

  “I could not. It was a bond between my father and me.” Lachlan rubbed at his brow, staring at his harp. He hunched on the stool, shoulders slumped, and the candlelight was dull on his dyed brown hair.