The Song of Homana (4 page)

All my muscles knotted. Sweat broke out on my flesh. I sat in a crowded common room of a roadhouse in the depths of an Ellasian storm, and I sweated. Because I could not help myself.

And then, suddenly, the colors were back. The grays faded. Candlewicks guttered and smoked, turning faces light and dark, and then I realized I sat still upon my stool with Finn’s hand imprisoning my right wrist. It was not iron, it was flesh and bone, holding my arm in place. And then I saw why. In my fist was gripped the bone-handled knife, the blade pointing toward the harper.

“Not yet,” Finn said quietly. “Perhaps later, when we have divined his true intent.”

It made me angry. Angry at Finn, which was wrong, but I had no better target. It was the harper I wanted, for manipulating me so, but it was Finn who was too near.

I let go the knife. Finn let go the hand. I drew it in to my body, massaging the ridges of scar tissue banding my wrist as if it bore iron still. And I glared at him with all the anger in my eyes. “What did he give
you?
A Cheysuli on the throne?”

Finn did not smile. “No,” he said. “He gave me Alix.”

It took the breath from my chest. Alix. Of course. How better to get to Finn than to remind him of the woman he had wanted badly enough to steal? The woman who had turned her back on him to wed Duncan, his brother.

The woman who was my cousin, that I wanted for myself.

I laughed bitterly. “A skillful harper indeed…or more likely a sorcerer, as he claims.” I stared across at the blue-robed man who was calmly refusing to sing again. “Ihlini, do you think? Sent from Bellam to set a trap?”

Finn shook his head. “Not Ihlini; I would know. And I have heard of this All-Father god.” He grimaced in distaste. “An Ellasian deity, and therefore of less importance to me, but powerful nonetheless.” He shifted slightly on the stool, leaning forward to pour himself more wine. “I will have a talk with him.”

He had named himself Lachlan, and now he moved around the room to gather up his payment in coin and baubles and wine. He carried his harp tucked into the crook of one arm and a cup in his other hand. Light glittered off the silver links around his waist and the circlet on his brow. He was a young man still, perhaps my own age, and tall, but lacking my substantial height and weight. Still, he was not slight, and I thought there was strength in those shoulders.

He came last to our table, as I expected, and I pushed the wine jug forward so he would know to help himself. And then I kicked a stool toward him. “Sit you down. Please yourself with the wine. And this.” I drew forth from my belt-purse a jagged piece of gold, stamped with a crude design. But it was good gold, and heavy, and few men would look askance at its crude making. I slid it across the table with a forefinger, pushing it around the bone-handled knife.

The harper smiled, nodded and sat down upon the stool. His blue eyes matched the rich hue of his robe. His hair, in the dim candlelight, showed no color other than a dull dark brown. It looked as if the sun had never touched it, to bleach it red or blond. Dyed, I thought, and smiled to myself.

He poured wine into the cup he held. It was a fine silver cup, though tarnished with age. The house cup for a harper, I thought, seeing little use. I doubted it was his own.

“Steppes gold.” He picked up the coin. “I do not often see payment of this sort.” His eyes flicked from the coin to
my face. “My skill is not worth so much, I think; you may have it back.” He set the coin on the table and left it.

The insult was made calmly and clearly, with great care. Its intent was unknown, and yet I recognized it regardless. Or was it merely a curious man gone fishing for an outsize catch? Perhaps an exiled prince.

“You may keep it or not, as you wish.” I picked up my own mug. “My companion and I have just returned from the Caledonese war against the plainsmen of the Steppes—alive and unharmed, as you see—and we are generous because of it.” I spoke Ellasian, but with a Caledonese accent.

The harper—Lachlan—swirled wine in his tarnished cup. “Did it please you,” he said, “my gift?”

I stared at him over my mug. “Did you mean it to?”

He smiled. “I mean nothing with that harpsong. I merely share my gift—
Lodhi’s
gift—with the listener, who will make of it what he will. They are
your
memories, not mine; how could I dictate what you see?” His eyes had gone to Finn, as if he waited.

Finn did not oblige. He sat quietly on his stool, seemingly at ease, though a Cheysuli at ease is more prepared than any man I know. He turned his mug idly on the table with one long-fingered hand. His eyes were hooded slightly, like a predator bird’s, but the irises showed yellow below the lids.

“Caledon.” The harper went on as if he realized he would get nothing from Finn. “You say you fought with Caledon, but you are not Caledonese. I know a Cheysuli when I see one.” He smiled, then glanced at me. “As for you—you speak good Ellasian, but not good enough. You have not the throat for it. But neither are you Caledonese; I know enough of them.” His eyes narrowed. “Solindish, perhaps, or Homanan. You lack the lilt of Falia.”

“Mercenaries,” I said clearly, knowing it was—or had been—the truth. “Claiming no realm, only service.”

Lachlan looked at me. I knew he saw the thick beard and the uncut, sunstreaked hair that tangled on my shoulders. I had hacked off the mercenary’s braid I had worn for five years, bound with crimson cord, and went as a free man again, which meant my sword was available. With a
Cheysuli at my side, I would be a valuable man. Kings would pay gold for our service.

“No realm,” he said, and smiled. Then he pushed away from the table and got to his feet, cradling the harp. He picked up the blackened silver cup and nodded his thanks for the wine.

“Take your payment,” I said. “It was made in good faith.”

“And in good faith, I refuse it.” He shook his head. “You have more need of it than I. I have no army to raise.”

I laughed out loud. “You misunderstand mercenaries, harper. We do not raise armies. We
serve
in them.”

“I said precisely what I meant.” His face was solemn, eyes flicking between us shrewdly. And then he turned away.

Finn put out his hand and gathered up his knife. No, not his precisely; like me, he hid his away. He carried instead a knife taken from a Steppes plainsman, and it served its purpose. In Finn’s hand, any knife did.

“Tonight,” he said quietly, “I will have conversation with that harper.”

I thought fleetingly of the Ellasian god the harper claimed to serve. Would Lodhi interfere? Or would Lachlan cooperate?

I smiled. “Do what you have to do.”

Because the storm had driven so many inside for the evening, the roadhouse was crowded to bursting. There were no private rooms. The best I could do was give gold to the tavern-master for two pallets on the floor of a room already occupied by three others. When I went in alone, later than I had intended, they already slept. I listened silently just inside the open door, to see if anyone feigned sleep to lure me into a trap, but all three men were deep asleep. And so I shut the door, set my unsheathed sword on the lice-ridden pallet as I stretched out my legs, and waited for Finn to come in.

When he did, it was without sound. Not even the door squeaked, as it had for me. Finn was simply in the room.
“The harper is gone,” he said. It was hardly a sound, but I had learned how to hear it.

I frowned into the darkness as Finn knelt down on the other pallet. “In this storm?”

“He is not here.”

I sat back against the wall, staring thoughtfully into the darkness. My right hand, from long habit, touched the leather-wrapped hilt of my sword. “Gone, is he?” I mused. “What could drive a man into an Ellasian snowstorm, unless there be good reason?”

“Gold is often a good reason.” Finn shed a few of his furs and dropped them over his legs. He stretched out upon his pallet and was silent. I could not even hear him breathe.

I bit at my left thumb, turning things over in my mind. Questions arose and I could answer none of them. Nor could Finn, so I wasted no time asking him. And then, when I had spent what moments I could spare considering the harper, I slid down the wall to stretch full length upon the lumpy pallet and went to sleep.

What man—even a prince with gold upon his head—need fear for his safety with a Cheysuli at his side?

It was morning before we could speak openly, and even then words were delayed. We went out into the ethereal stillness of abated storm, saddled and packed our horses and walked them toward the rack. The snow lay deep and soft around my boots, reaching nearly to my knees. The track was better, packed and shallow, and there I waited while Finn went into the trees and searched for his
lir
.

Storr came at once, bounding out of the trees like a dog, hurling himself into Finn’s arms. Finn went down on one knee, ignoring the cold, and cast a quick, appraising look toward the roadhouse. I thought it highly unlikely anyone could see us now. Satisfied, Finn thrust out an arm and slung it around Storr’s neck, pulling the wolf in close.

What their bond is, I cannot say precisely. I know only what Finn has told me, that Storr is a part of his heart and soul and mind; half of his whole. Without the wolf, Finn said, he was little more than a shadow, lacking the gifts of his race and the ability to survive. I thought it an awesomely
gruesome thing, to claim life only through some sorcerous link with an animal, but I could not protest what so obviously worked. I had seen him with the wolf before during such greetings, and it never failed to leave me feeling bereft and somehow empty. Jealous, even, for what they shared was something no other man could claim save the Cheysuli. I have owned dogs and favorite horses, but it was not the same. That much I could tell, looking at them, for Finn’s face was transfigured when he shared a reunion with Storr.

Finn’s new horse, a dark brown gelding purchased from the tavern-master, pulled at the slack reins. I pulled him back again and got his reins untangled from those of my little Steppes pony. When I looked again at Finn I saw him slap Storr fondly on the shoulder, and then he was pushing back through the snow toward me.

I handed the reins to him. “How does he fare?”

“Well enough.” The fond half-smile remained a moment, as if he still conversed with the wolf. I had thought once or twice that his expression resembled that of a man well-satisfied by a woman; he wore it now. “Storr says he would like to go home.”

“No more than I.” The thought of Homana instead of foreign lands knotted my belly at once. Gods, to go home again…I looped my horse’s reins over his ears, pulled them down his neck and mounted. As ever, the little gelding grunted. Well, I am heavier than the plainsmen who broke him. “I think we can reach Homana today, does the sky remain clear.” I looked skyward and squinted out of habit. “Perhaps we should go to the Keep.”

Finn, settling into his saddle, looked at me sharply. He went hoodless as I did, and the early dawn light set his earring to glinting with a soft golden glow. “This soon?”

I laughed at him. “Have you no wish to see your brother?”

Finn scowled. “You know well enough I am not averse to seeing Duncan again. But I had not thought we would go openly into Cheysuli land so soon.”

I shrugged. “We are nearly there. The Keep lies on the border, which we must cross. And, for all that, I think we both wish to see Alix again.”

Finn did not meet my eyes. It was odd to realize the
time away from Homana had not blunted his desire for his brother’s wife. No more than it had mine.

He looked at me at last. “Do you wish to take
me
to her, or go for yourself?”

I smiled and tried not to show him my regret. “She is wed now, and happily. There is no room for me in her life except as a cousin.”

“No more for
me
except as a
rujholli.
” Finn laughed bitterly; his eyes on me were ironic and assessive as he pushed black hair out of his dark, angular face. “Do you not find it strange how the gods play with our desires? You held Alix’s heart, unknowing, while she longed for a single word from your mouth. Then I stole her from you, intending to make her my
meijha
. But it was Duncan, ever Duncan…he won her from us both.” Grimly he put out his hand and made the gesture I had come to hate, for all its infinite meaning.

“Tahlmorra,”
I said sourly. “Aye, Finn, I find it passing strange. And I do not like it overmuch.”

Finn laughed and closed his hand into a fist. “
Like
it? But the gods do not expect us to like it. No. Only to serve it.”

“
You
serve it. I want none of your Cheysuli prophecy. I am a Homanan prince.”

“And you will be a Homanan king…with all the help of the Cheysuli.”

No man, born of a brief history, likes to hear of another far greater than his own, particularly when his House has fallen into disarray. The Homanan House had held the Lion Throne nearly four hundred years. Not long, to Cheysuli way of thinking. Not when their history went back hundreds of centuries to a time with no Homanans. Only the Firstborn, the ancestors of the Cheysuli, with all their shapechanging arts.

And the power to hand down a prophecy that ruled an entire race.

“This way, then.” Finn gestured and kicked his horse into motion.

“You are certain?” I had no wish to get myself lost, not when I was so close to Homana at last.

Finn cast me a thoroughly disgusted glance. “We go to
the Keep, do we not? I should know the way, Carillon. Once, it was my home.”

I subsided into silence. I am silent often enough around him. Sometimes, with Finn, it is simply the best thing
to
do.

The weather remained good, but the going did not. We had left behind the beaten track that led westward into Homana, seeking instead the lesser-known pathways. Though the Cheysuli were welcome within Ellas, they kept to themselves. I doubted High King Rhodri knew much of the people who sheltered in his forests. They would keep themselves insular, and therefore more mysterious than ever. There would be no well-traveled tracks leading to the Keep.