The Song of Homana (2 page)

The knife twisted in my belly, though the blade did not exist. “Bloodied gold,” I interrupted, knowing what he would say.

“Aye!” he shouted. “But
worth
it! Shaine’s war got me nothing but a dead son, the loss of my croft and the beggaring of my family. What else am I to do? Bellam offers gold—
bloodied gold
!—and I will take it. So will we all!”

“All?” I echoed, liking little of what I heard. Was all of Homana desiring to give me over to my enemy for his Solindish gold, my life was forfeit before the task was begun.

“Aye!” he shouted. “All! And why not? They are demons. Abominations.
Beasts
!”

The wind shifted. It threw ice into my face again, but I made no move to rid myself of it. I could not. I could only stare at the man in the snow, struck dumb by his admission.

And then I looked at Finn.

Like me, he was quite still. Silent. Staring. But then, slowly, he lifted his head and looked directly at me. I saw the shrinking of his pupils so that the yellow of his eyes stood out like a beacon against the storm. Yellow eyes. Black hair. The gold that hung at his left ear, bared by the wind that blew the hair from his face. His alien, predator’s face.

I looked at him with new eyes, as I had not looked at
him for five years, and realized again what he was. Cheysuli. Shapechanger.
A man who took on the form of a wolf at will
.

And the reason for the attack.

Not me. Not me at all. I was insignificant. The prisoner did not know that my head—delivered to Bellam—would give him more gold than he could imagine. By the gods, he did not even know who I was!

Another time, I might have laughed at the irony. Been amused by my conceit, that I thought all men knew me and my worth. But here, in this place, my identity was not the issue. Finn’s race was.

“Because of me,” he said, and that only.

I nodded. Sickened by the realization, I nodded. What we faced now was more impossible than ever. Not only did we come home to Homana after five years of exile to raise an army and win back my stolen throne, but we had to do it in the face of Homanan prejudice. Shaine’s purge—the Cheysuli call it
qu’mahlin
—was little more than the petty vengeance of a mad king, and yet it had not ended even with the sundering of his realm.

They had not come to slay me or even take me prisoner. They had come for Finn, because he was Cheysuli.

“What did they do to you?” I asked. “The Cheysuli. What did this man do to you?”

The Homanan stared up at Finn in something akin to astonishment. “He is a shapechanger!”

“But what did he
do
to you?” I persisted. “Did he slay your son? Take your croft? Rape your daughter? Beggar your family?”

“Do not bother,” Finn said. “You cannot straighten an ill-grown tree.”

“You can chop it down,” I returned. “Chop it down and into pieces and feed it to the fire—” I wanted to say more, but I stopped. I saw his face, with its closed, private expression, and I said nothing more. Finn was not one for sympathy, or even anger expressed on his behalf. Finn fought his own battles.

And now there was this one.

“Can he be turned?” I asked. “His need I understand—a desperate man will do desperate things—but his target I
will not tolerate. Go into his mind and turn him, and he can go home again.”

Finn’s right hand came up. It was empty. But I saw the clenching of his fingers, as if he sought to clasp a knife. He was asking for my approval. He was liege man to the Prince of Homana, and he asked to mete out a death.

“No,” I said. “Not this time. Use your magic instead.”

The man spasmed against the snow. “Gods, no! No!
No sorcery
—”

“Hold him,” I said calmly, as he tried to leap up and run.

Finn was on him at once, though he did not slay him. He merely held him on his knees, pressing him into the snow, on one knee himself with an arm thrust around the throat and the other gripping the head. One twist and it would be done.

“Mercy!” the dead man cried. But could I do it, I would leave him alive.

Finn would not ask again. He accepted my decision. I saw the hand tighten against the Homanan’s head and the look of terror enter the brown eyes. And then they were empty, and I knew Finn had gone in to do as I had ordered.

It shows in the eyes. I have seen it in the faces and eyes of others Finn has used his magic on. But I also saw it in Finn’s eyes each time: the total immersion of his soul as he sought the gift of compulsion and used it on another. He went away, though his body remained. That which was Finn was elsewhere; he was not-Finn. He was something less and something awesomely more. He was not man, not beast, not god. Something—apart.

The man wavered and sagged, but he did not fall. Finn’s arm remained locked around his throat. The hand was pressed against his skull, but it did not break it. It did not snap the neck. It waited.

Finn twitched and jerked. The natural sunbronzing of his face was suddenly gone; he was the color of death. All gray and ivory, with emptiness in his eyes. I saw the slackening of his mouth and heard the rasp in his throat. And then, before I could say a word, he broke the man’s neck and threw the body down.

“Finn!” I was off my horse at once, thrusting my sword blade down into the snow. I left it there, moving toward Finn, and reached out to grab what I could of his leathers and furs. “Finn, I said
turn
him, not slay him—”

But Finn was lurching away, staggering in the snow, and I knew he had not heard me. He was not himself. He was still—elsewhere.

“Finn.” I caught his arm and steadied him. Even beneath the thickness of winter furs I could feel the rigidity in his arm. His color was still bad; his pupils were nothing but specks in a void of perfect yellow. “
Finn
—”

He twitched again, and then he was back. He swung his head to look at me, and only then realized I held his arm. At once I released it, knowing he was himself again, but I did not relax my stance. It was only because he was Finn that I had left my sword behind.

He looked past me to the body in the snow.
“Tynstar,”
he said. “I touched—
Tynstar
.”

I stared.
“How?”

He frowned and pushed a forearm across his brow, as if he sweated. But his face was dusted with snow, and he shivered from the cold. Once, but it gave away his bewilderment and odd vulnerability. “He was—
there
. Like a web, soft but sticky…and impossible to shed.” He shook himself, like a dog shaking off water.

“But—if he and the others were hunting Cheysuli and not the Prince of Homana…” I paused a moment. “Would Tynstar meddle in the
qu’mahlin?
”

“Tynstar would meddle in anything. He is Ihlini.”

I nearly smiled. But I did not, because I was thinking about Tynstar. Tynstar called the Ihlini, because he ruled (if that is the proper word) the race of Solindish sorcerers. Much like the Cheysuli were the magical race of Homana, the Ihlini sprung from Solinde. But they were evil and did the bidding of the demons who served the netherworld. There was nothing of good about the Ihlini. They wanted Homana, and had aided Bellam to get her.

“Then he does not know we are here,” I said, still thinking.

“We are in Ellas,” Finn reminded me. “Homana is but a day or two away, depending on the weather, and I do
not doubt Bellam has spies to watch the borders. It may well be these men were sent to catch Cheysuli—” he frowned, and I knew he wondered what tokens Bellam required as proof of a Cheysuli kill. Probably the earring, perhaps the armbands as well. —“but it may be they sought Homana’s exiled prince.” He frowned again. “I cannot be sure. I had no time to learn his intent.”

“And now it is too late.”

Finn looked at me levelly. “If Tynstar is meddling with Homanans and sending them out against the Cheysuli, they must be slain.” For a moment he looked at the body again. Then his eyes came back to me. “It is a part of my service to you to keep you alive. Can I not do the same for myself?”

This time I looked at the body. “Aye,” I said finally, harshly, and turned back to retrieve my sword.

Finn moved to his dead horse and stripped him of the saddlepacks. I mounted my horse and slid the sword home in the scabbard, making certain the blade was clean of blood. The runes ran silver in the white light of the storm. Cheysuli runes, representing the Old Tongue which I did not know. A Cheysuli sword for a Homanan prince. But then that was another thing the prophecy claimed: one day a man of all blood would unite, in peace, four warring realms and two magic races. Perhaps it would no longer be a Cheysuli sword in the hand of a Homanan prince. It would merely be a sword in the hand of a king.

But until then, the golden hilt with its rampant, royal lion and the huge brilliant ruby in the prong-toothed pommel would remain hidden by leather wrappings. At least until I claimed the Lion Throne again and made Homana free.

“Come up,” I told Finn. “You cannot walk in all this snow.”

He handed up his saddlepacks but did not move to mount behind me. “Your horse carries enough bulk, with all of you.” He grinned. “I will go on as a wolf.”

“If Storr is too far ahead—” I stopped. Though the shapechanger was governed by the distance between warrior and
lir
, it was obvious this time there was no impediment. The peculiar detached expression I knew so well
came over Finn’s face. For a moment his body remained beside my horse, but his mind did not. It was elsewhere, answering an imperative call; his eyes turned inward and blank and empty, as if he conversed with something—or
someone
—no one else could hear.

And then he was back, grinning in genuine pleasure and the attack on us both forgotten. “Storr says he has found us a roadhouse.”

“How far?”

“A league, perhaps a bit more. Close enough, I think, after days without a roof over our heads.” He ran a hand through his black hair and shook free the powdery snow. “There are great advantages to
lir
-shape, Carillon. I will be quicker—and certainly
warmer
—than you.”

I ignored him. It was all I could ever do. I turned my horse back to the track and went on, leaving behind three dead men and one dead horse—the others had run away. I cursed the storm again. My face was numb from the ice in my beard. Even the wrappings did not help.

When Finn at last went past me, it was in wolf-shape: yellow-eyed, ruddy-furred, fleet of foot. And warmer, no doubt, than I.

The common room was crowded with men seeking respite from the storm. Dripping candles puddled into piles of cooling, waxy fat on each table, shedding crude light and a cruder pall of smoke into the low beamwork of the roadhouse. The miasma was thick enough to make me choke against its acrid odor, but there was warmth in abundance. For that I would share any stench.

The door hitched against the hardpack of the frozen earthen floor. I stopped short, ducking to avoid smacking my head against the doorframe. But then few roadhouse doors are built to accommodate a man of my height; the years spent in exile had made me taller than I had been five years before and nearly twice as heavy. Still, I would not complain; did the added height and weight—and the beard—keep me unknown on my journey home, I would not care if I knocked myself silly against Ellasian doorframes.

Finn slipped by me into the room as I wrestled with the door. I broke it free, then swung it shut on half-frozen leather hinges, swearing as a dog ran between my legs and nearly upset me. For a moment I thought of Storr, seeking shelter in the forest. Then I thought of food and wine.

I settled the latch-hook into place and marked absently how the stout iron loops were set for a heavy crossbeam lock. I could tell it was but rarely used, but I marked it nonetheless. No more did I have room in my life for the ease of meaningless friendships found in road- and alehouses.

Finn waited at the table. Like the others, it bore a single candle. But this one shed no light, only a clot of thick smoke that fouled the air where the flame had glowed a moment before. Finn, I knew. It was habit with us both.

I joined him, shedding furs and leathers. It felt good to be man again instead of bear, and to know the freedom of movement. I sat down on a three-legged stool and glanced around the common room even as Finn did the same.

No soldiers. Ellas was a peaceful land. Crofters, most of them, convivial in warmth and the glow of liquor. Travelers as well, bound east or west: Ellasians; Homanans; Falians too, by their accents. But no Caledonese, which meant Finn and I could speak Ellasian with a Caledonese twist and no one would name us other.

Except those who knew a Cheysuli when they saw one, and in Ellas that could be anyone.

Ellasians are open, gregarious folk, blunt-speaking and plain of habits. There is little of subterfuge about them, for which I am grateful. I have grown weary of such things, though I have, of necessity, steeped myself in it. It felt good to know myself accepted for what I appeared in the roadhouse: a stranger, foreign, accompanied by a Cheysuli, but welcome among them regardless. Still, it was to Finn they looked twice, if only briefly. And then they looked away again, dismissing what they saw.

I smiled. Few men dismiss a Cheysuli warrior. But in Ellas they do it often. Here the Cheysuli are not hunted.

And then I recalled that Homanans had come into Ellas hunting Cheysuli and I lost my smile entirely.

The tavern-master arrived at last, wiping greasy hands on a frayed cloth apron. He spoke with the throaty, blurred accent of Ellas, all husky and full of phlegm. It had taken me months to learn the trick, but I had learned. And I used it now.

“Ale,” he said, “or wine. Red from Caledon, a sweet white from Falia, or our own fine Ellasian vintage.” His teeth were bad but I thought the smile genuine.

“Have you
usca?
” I asked.

The grizzled gray brows rose as he considered the question. “
Usca
, is’t? Na, na, I have none. The plainsmen of the Steppes have naught of trade wi’ us now, since Ellas
allied wi’ Caledon in t’last war.” His pale brown eyes marked us Caledonese; my accent had won us that much. Or
me;
Finn did not in the least resemble a Caledonese. “What else would you have?”