The Song of Homana

by Jennifer Roberson

  Dyed brown hair. Not gray, as he had said, pleading vanity, but another color entirely.

  I sat down. I set my back against the cold wall and waited. I thought of Torry and Finn in the darkness and rain, and Lachlan here before me. “Why?”

  He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “Originally, it was a game I wished to play. How better to see your realm than to go its length and breadth unknown? So my father agreed, saying if I wanted to play at such foolishness, I would have to play it absolutely. He forbade me to divulge my name and rank unless I was in danger.”

  “But to keep it from me…” I shook my head.

  “It was because of you.” He nodded as I frowned. “When I met you and learned who you were, I wrote at once to my father. I told him what you meant to do, and how I thought you could not do it. Take Homana back from Bellam? No. You had no men, no army. Only Finn…and me.” He smiled. “I came with you because I wanted to, to see what you could do. And I came because my father, when he saw what you meant to do, wanted you to win.”

  I felt a sluggish stirring of anger deep inside. “He sent me no aid—”

  “To the pretender-prince of Homana?” Lachlan shook his head. “You forget—Bellam encroached upon Ellas. He offered Electra to Rhodri’s heir. It was not in Ellas’s interests to support Carillon’s bid for the throne.” He softened his tone a bit. “For all I would have liked to give you what aid I could, I had my father’s realm to think of, too. We have enemies. This had to remain your battle.”

  “Still, you came with me. You risked yourself.”

  “I risked nothing. If you recall, I did not fight, playing the harper’s role.” He shook his head. “It was not easy. I have trained as a warrior since I was but a child. But my father forbade me to fight, and it seemed the best thing to do. And he said also I was to go to watch and learn what I could. If you won the war and held your realm for a twelve-month and a day, Rhodri would offer alliance.”

  “It has been longer than that.” I did not need to count the days.

  “And did you not just send to other realms, offering the hand of your sister in marriage?” The color moved through his face. “It is not my place to offer what I cannot. My father is High King. It was for him to accept your offer, and I had to wait for him.” He shut his eyes a moment. “Lodhi, but I thought she would wait…”

  “So did I.” The stone was cold against my spine. “Oh Lachlan, had I known—”

  “I know. But it was not for me to say.” His face was almost ugly. “Such is the lot of princes.”

  “Could you have said nothing to her?”

  He stared at the cushion-strewn floor. “I nearly did. More times than I can count. Once I even spoke of Rhodri’s heir, but she only bid me to be quiet. She did not wish to think on marriage.” He sighed. “She was ever gentle with my feelings, seeking to keep me—a harper—from looking too high, as did her brother, the Mujhar.” He did not smile. “And I thought, in all my complacency, she would say differently when she knew. And you. And so I savored the waiting, instead.”

  I shut my eyes and rested my head against the stone. I recalled the harper in the Ellasian roadhouse, giving me my memories. I recalled his patient understanding when I treated him with contempt, calling him spy when he was merely a friend and nothing more.

  And how I had bidden him slay a man to see if he would do it.

  So much between us, and now so little. I knew what he would do. “You had no choice,” I said at last. “The gods know I understand what it is to serve rank and responsibility. But Lachlan, you must not blame yourself. What else could you have done?”

  “Spoken, regardless of my father.” He stared at the floor, shoulders hunched. So vulnerable, suddenly, when he had always been so strong. “I should have said something to someone.”

  And yet it would have done no good. We both realized it, saying nothing because the saying would bring more pain. A man may love a woman while the woman loves another, but no man may force her to love where she has no desire to do so.

  “By the All-Father himself,” Lachlan said wearily, “I think it is not worth it.” He gathered up his Lady and rose, hooking one arm through the silver circlet. He had more right to it than most, though it should have had the shine of royal gold.

  I stood up stiffly and faced him. I held out the ring on its leather thong. “Lachlan—” I stopped.

  He knew. He took the ring, looked at the crest that made him a man—a prince—apart, then slipped the thong over his head once more. “I came a harper,” he said quietly. “It is how I will leave in the morning.”

  “Do you leave me, old friend, I will be quite alone.” It was all I could say to him; the only plea I would ever make.

  I saw the pain in his eyes. “I came, knowing I would have to leave. Not when, but knowing the time would come. I had hoped, for a while, I would not leave alone.” The line of his jaw was set; the gentleness of the harper had fled, and in its place I saw the man Lachlan had ever been, but showing it to few. “You are a king, Carillon. Kings are always alone. Someday—I shall know it, too.” He reached out and caught my arm in the ritual clasp of friendship. “Yhana Lodhi, yffennog faer.”

  “Walk humbly, harper,” I said softly.

  He went out of the room into the shadows of the corridor, and his “Song of Homana” was done.

  I went into my chambers and found her waiting. She was in shadow with a single candle lighted. She was wrapped in one of my chamber robes: wine-purple velvet lined with dappled silver fur. On her it was voluminous; I could see little but hands and feet.

  I stopped. I could not face her now. To look at her was to recall what Finn had done, and how it had ended in banishment. How it had ended with Torry and Lachlan gone as well. To look at her was to look on the face of aloneness, and that I could not bear.

  “No,” she said, as I made a movement to go. “Stay you. Do you wish it, I will go.”

  Still in shadow. The wine-colored velvet melted into the shadows. The candlelight played on her hair–unbound, and hanging to her knees.

  I sat down on the edge of my draperied bed because I had no strength to stand. I was all over ash, as Lachlan had said, and still damp from the storm outside. No doubt I smelled of it as well: wet wool and smoke and flame.

  She came and stood before me. “Let me lift this grief from you.”

  I looked at her throat with the bruises on it; the marks of a crazed man’s madness.

  She knelt and pulled off my heavy boots. I said nothing, watching her, amazed she would do what I, or a servant, could much more easily do.

  Her hands were deft and gentle, stripping me of my clothing, and then she knelt before me. “Ah my lord, do not grieve so. You put yourself in pain.”

  It came to me to wonder whether she had ever knelt for Tynstar.

  She put one hand on my thigh. Her fingers were cool. I could feel the pulse-beat in her palm.

  I looked again at the bruises on her throat. Slowly I reached out and set my hands there, as Finn had set his, and felt the fragility of her flesh. “Because of you,” I said.

  “Aye.” Her eyes did not waver from mine. “And for you, good my lord, I am sorry he had to go.”

  My hands tightened. She did not flinch or pull away. “I am not Tynstar, lady.”

  “No.” Neither did she smile.

  My hands slid up slowly to cup her skull with its weight of shining hair. The robe, now loosened, slid off her shoulders and fell against the floor: a puddle of wine-dark velvet. She was naked underneath.

  I pulled her up from the stone and into my arms, sagging back onto the bed. To be rid of the loneliness, I would lie with the dark god himself.

  “I need you,” I whispered against her mouth. “By the gods, woman, how I need you.…”

  FOUR

  The infirmary tent stank of blood and burning flesh. I watched as the army chirurgeon lifted the hot iron from Rowan’s arm, studied the seared edges of the wound and nodded. “Closed. No more blood, capta
in. You will keep the arm, I think, with the help of the gods.”

  Rowan sat stiffly on the campstool, white-faced and shaking. The sword had cut into the flesh of his forearm, but had missed muscle and bone. He would keep the arm and its use, though I did not doubt he felt, at the moment, as if it had already been cut off.

  He let out his breath slowly. It hissed between his teeth. He put out his right hand and groped for the cup of sour wine Waite had set out on the table. Fingers closed on the cup, gripping so hard the knuckles shone white, and then he lifted it to his mouth. I smiled. Waite had put a powder in it that would ease the pain a bit. Rowan had originally refused any such aid, but he had not seen the powder. And now he drank, unknowing, and the pain would be eased somewhat.

  I glanced back over my shoulder through the gap in the entrance flap. Outside it was gray, gray and dark blue, with the weight of clouds and winter fog. My breath, leaving the warmth of the infirmary tent, plumed on the air, white as smoke.

  “My thanks, my lord.” Rowan’s voice still bore the strain, but it lessened as the powder worked its magic.

  He began to pull on his fur-lined leathers, though I knew the motion must hurt. I did not move to help because I knew he would not allow it, me being his Mujhar, and because it would hurt his pride. Like all the Cheysuli, he had his pride; a prickly, arrogant pride that some took for condescension. It was not, usually. It was merely a certainty of their place within the boardgame of the gods. And Rowan, though he was less Cheysuli in his habits than Homanan, reflected much of that traditional pride without even knowing it.

  I shifted in the entrance, then grimaced in response to the protests of my muscles. My body was battered and sore, but I bore not a single wound from the last encounter earlier in the day. My blood was still my own, unlike Rowan’s—unless one counted what I had lost from my nose when struck in the face by my horse’s head. The blow had knocked me half-senseless for a moment or two, making me easy prey, but I had managed to stay in the saddle. And it was Rowan, moving to thrust aside the attacker’s sword, who had taken the blow meant for me. We were both fortunate the Atvian had missed his target.

  “Hungry?” I asked.

  Rowan nodded. Like us all, he was too thin, pared down to blood and bone. Because of his Cheysuli features his face was gaunter than mine; because of my beard, no one noticed if I seemed gaunt or not. It had its advantages; Rowan looked ill, I did not, and I hated to be asked how I fared. It made me feel fragile when I was not, but that is the cost of being a king.

  Rowan pulled on his gloves, easing into the right one because the movement hurt his arm. He was still pale, lacking the deeper bronze of Cheysuli flesh because of the loss of blood. With his eyes gone black from the drug and the pallor of his face, he looked more Homanan than Cheysuli.

  Poor Rowan, I thought: forever caught between the worlds.

  He scrubbed his good arm through his heavy hair and glanced at me. He forced a smile. “It does not hurt, my lord.”

  Waite, putting away his chirurgeon’s tools, grunted in disgust. “In my presence, it hurts. Before the Mujhar, it does not. You have miraculous powers of healing, my lord…perhaps we should trade places.”

  Rowan colored. I grinned and pulled aside the doorflap, waving him outside even as he protested I should go first. The mist came up to chill our faces at once. Rowan hunched his shoulders against the cold and cradled his aching arm. “It is better, my lord.”

  I said nothing about the powder, merely gestured toward the nearest cookfire. “There. Hot wine and roasting boar. You will undoubtedly feel better once your belly is full again.”

  He walked carefully across the hardpacked, frozen ground, trying not to jar the injured arm. “My lord…I am sorry.”

  “For being injured?” I shook my head. “That was my wound you took. It requires my gratitude, not an apology from you.”

  “It does.” Tension lines marred the youthfulness of his face. He watched the ground where he walked and the thick black hair hid most of his face. Like me, he had left it too long uncut. “You would do better with Finn at your side. I am—not a liege man.” He cast me a quick, glinting glance out of drug-blackened eyes. “I have not the skill to keep you safe, my lord.”

  I stopped at the cookfire and nodded at the soldier who tended the roasting boar. He began to cut with a greasy knife. “You are not Finn, nor ever can be,” I said clearly to Rowan. “But I want you by my side.”

  “My lord—”

  I cut him off with a gesture of my hand. “When I sent Finn from my service six months ago, I knew what I was risking. Still, it had to be done, for the good of us all. I do not dismiss the importance his presence held. The bond between Cheysuli liege man and his Mujhar is a sacred thing, but—once broken—there is no going back.” I grasped his uninjured arm, knowing there was no lir-band underneath the furs and leathers. “I do not seek another Finn. I value you. Do not disappoint me by undervaluing yourself.” The soldier dropped a slice of meat onto a slab of tough bread and put it into my hands. In turn, I put it into Rowan’s. “Now, eat. You must restore your strength so we can fight again.”

  The mist put beads of water into his hair. Damp, it tangled against his shoulders. His face was bleak, pale, stretched taut over prominent bones, but I thought the pain came from something other than his arm.

  A pot of wine was warming near the firecairn. I knelt, poured a cup and handed it up to Rowan. And then, as I turned to pour my own, I heard someone shout for me.

  “Meat, my lord?” asked the soldier with the knife.

  “A moment.” I rose and turned toward the shout. In the mist it was hard to place such sounds, but then I saw the shapes coming out of the grayness. Three men on horseback: two of them my Homanans, the third a stranger.

  They were muffled in furred leathers and woolen wrappings. The mist parted as they rode through and showed them more clearly, then closed behind them again. “My lord!” One of the men dismounted before me and dropped to one knee, then up again. “A courier, my lord.”

  The gesture indicated the still-mounted stranger. He rode a good horse, as couriers usually do, but I saw no crest to mark him. He wore dark leathers and darker wool; a cap hid most of his head so that only his face showed.

  The hot wine warmed my hands, even through my gloves. “Atvian?” I put no inflection in my tone.

  The stranger reached up to pull woolen wraps from his face. “No, my lord—Ellasian.” Mouth bared, the words took on greater clarity. “Sent from High Prince Cuinn.”

  Lachlan. I could not help the smile. “Step you down, friend courier. You are well come to my army.”

  He dismounted, came closer and dropped to one knee in a quick bow of homage. Neatly done. He had a warm, friendly face, but was young, and yet he seemed to know his business. He was red-haired beneath the cap, judging by his brows, and his eyes were green. There were freckles on his face.

  “My lord, it pleases me to serve the High Prince. He bids me give you this.” He dug into a leather pouch at his belt and withdrew a folded parchment. A daub of blue wax sealed it closed, and pressed into it was the royal crest: a harp and the crown of Ellas. It brought back the vision of Lachlan and his Lady, when he told me who he was.

  I broke the seal and unfolded the parchment. It crackled in the misted air; its crispness faded as the paper wilted. But the words were legible.

  Upon returning home to Rheghed, I was met with warm welcome from the king my father. So warm, indeed that he showered me with gifts. One of these gifts was a command of my own, did I ever need to use it. I doubt Rhodri ever intended me to be so generous as to loan the gift to you, but the thing is already done. My men are yours for as long as you need them. And does it please you to offer a gift in return, I ask only that you treat kindly with Ellas when we seek to make an alliance.

  By the hand of the High Prince,

  Cuinn Lachlan Llewellyn

  I grinned. And then I laughed, and set my cup of hot wine into the hands of the cour
ier. “Well come, indeed,” I said. “How many, and where?”

  He grinned back when he had drunk. “Half a league east, my lord. As to the number—five thousand. The Royal Ellasian Guard.”

  I laughed again, loudly. “Ah Lodhi, I thank you for this courier! But even more I thank you for Lachlan’s friendship!” I clapped the courier on his shoulder. “Your name.”

  “Gryffth, my lord.”

  “And your captain’s?”

  “Meredyth. A man close to the High Prince himself.” Gryffth grinned. “My lord, forgive me, but we all know what Prince Cuinn intended. And none of us is unwilling. Shall I send to bring them in?”

  “Five thousand…” I shook my head, smiling at the thought. “Thorne will be finished in a day.”

  Gryffth brightened. “Then you are near to winning?”

  “We are winning,” I said. “But this will make the ending sweeter. Ah gods, I do thank you for that harper.” I took the cup from Gryffth as he went to remount his horse, and watched him ride back into the fog with his Homanan guides.

  “Well, my lord,” Rowan said, “the thing is done at last.”

  “A good thing, too.” I grinned. “You are not fit to fight with that arm, and now you will not have to.”

  “My lord—” he protested, but I did not listen as I read Lachlan’s note again.

  The map was of leather, well-tanned and soft. It was a pale creamy color, and the paint stood out upon it. In the candlelighted pavilion, the lines and rune-signs seemed to glow.

  “Here.” I put my forefinger on the map. “Mujhara. We are here—perhaps forty leagues from the city: northwest.” I moved my finger more westerly. “The Cheysuli are here, closer to Lestra, though still within Homana.” I lifted the finger and moved it more dramatically, pointing out the Solindish port of Andemir. “Thorne came in here; Atvia is but eight leagues across the Idrian Ocean, directly west of Solinde. He took the shortest sea route to Solinde, and the shortest land route to Homana.” I traced the invisible line across the map. “See you here? —he came this way, cutting Solinde in half. It is here our boundary puts its fist into Solinde, and it is where Thorne was bound.”