The Song of Homana (3 page)

Finn’s yellow eyes were almost black in the dim candlelight, but I saw the glint in them clearly. “What of Homanan honey brew?”

At once the brows drew down into a scowl. The Ellasian’s hair, like his eyebrows, was graying, close-cropped against his head. A blemish spread across one cheek; some childhood malady had left him scarred. But there was no suspicion or distrust in his eyes, only vague disgust.

“Na, none of that, either. ’Tis Homanan, as you have said, and little enough of Homana comes across our borders now.” For a moment he stared at the gold earring shining in Finn’s black hair. I knew what the Ellasian thought: little enough of Homana crossed the borders, unless you counted the Cheysuli.

“No trade, then?” I asked.

The man picked at snags in his wine-stained apron. He glanced around quickly, judging the needs of his customers out of long practice. “Trade, after a fashion,” he agreed in a moment, “but not wi’ Homana. Wi’ Bellam instead, her Solindish king.” He tipped his head in Finn’s direction. “
You
might know.”

Finn did not smile. “I might,” he said calmly. “But I left Homana when Bellam won the war, so I could not say what has befallen my homeland since.”

The Ellasian studied him. Then he leaned forward, pressing both hands flat against the table. “
I
say ’tis a sad thing to see the land brought down so low. The land chafes under that Solindish lord.
And
his Ihlini sorcerer.”

And so we came to the subject I had wanted to broach all along, knowing better than to bring it up myself. Now, did I say nothing and ask no questions, I made myself out a dullard, and almost certainly suspect. The man had proved talkative; I had best not disabuse him of that.

“Homana is not a happy land?” My tone, couched in Caledonese-tinged Ellasian, was idle and incurious; strangers passed time with such talk.

The Ellasian guffawed. “
Happy?
Wi’ Bellam on her throne
and Tynstar’s hand around her throat? Na, not happy, never happy…but helpless. We hear tales of heavy taxes and over-harsh justice. The sort of thing that troubles us little enough in Ellas, under our good High King.” He hawked and turned his head to spit onto the earthen floor. “They do say Bellam desires an alliance with Rhodri himself, but he’ll not be agreeing to such a miscarriage of humanity. Bellam’s a greedy fool; Rhodri is not. He has no need of’t, wi’ six fine sons.” He grinned. “I hear Bellam offers his only daughter to the High Prince himself, but I doubt there will be a match made. Cuinn has better thighs to part than Electra of Solinde’s.”

And so the talk passed to women, as it will among men. But only until the Ellasian left to see about our food, and then we said nothing more of women, thinking of Homana instead. And Bellam, governed by Tynstar.

“
Six
sons,” Finn mused. “Perhaps Homana would not now be under Solindish rule, had the royal House proved more fertile.”

I scowled at him. I needed no reminders that the House of Homana had been less than prolific. It was precisely because Shaine the Mujhar had sired no son at all—let alone
six
of them!—that he had turned to his brother’s only son. Ah, aye, fertility and infertility. And how the issues had shaped my life, along with Finn’s. For it was Shaine’s infertility—except for a defiant daughter—that had left an enormous legacy to his nephew, Carillon of Homana, and the Cheysuli shapechanger who served him. The Lion Throne itself, upon the Mujhar’s death, and now a war to fight.

As well as a purge to end.

The tavern-master arrived bearing bread for trenchers and a platter of steaming meat, which he set in the center of the table. Behind him came a boy with a jug of Ellasian wine, two leathern mugs and a quarter of yellow cheese. I saw how the boy looked at Finn’s face, so dark in the amber candlelight. I saw how he stared at the yellow eyes, but he said not a single word. Finn was, perhaps, his first Cheysuli. And worth a second look.

Neither boy nor man lingered, being too pressed by other custom, and Finn and I set to with the intentness of
starving men. We were not starving, having eaten at the break of day, but stale journey-loaf eaten in a snowstorm is not nearly as toothsome as hot meat in a warm roadhouse.

I unsheathed my knife and sliced off a chunk of venison, dumping it onto my trencher. It was a Caledonese knife I used now in place of my own, a bone-handled blade wrought with runes and scripture. The hilt had been cut from the thigh of some monstrous beast, or so the king of Caledon had told me upon presentation of it. The blade itself was bright steel, finely honed; the weight of it was perfect for my hand. Still, it was not my own; that one—Cheysuli-made—was hidden in my saddlepacks.

I ate until I could hardly move upon my stool, and ordered a second jug of wine. And then, even as I poured our mugs full again, I heard the hum of rising conversation. Finn and I both looked instantly for the cause of the heightened interest.

The harper came down the ladder with his instrument clasped under one long arm. He wore a blue robe belted at the waist with linked silver, and a silver circlet held back the thick dark hair that curled on his shoulders. A wealthy harper, as harpers often are, being hosted by kings and gifted with gold and gems. This one had fared well. He was tall, wide-shouldered, and his wrists—showing at the edges of his blue sleeves—were corded with muscle. A powerful man, for all his calling was the harp instead of the sword. He was blue-eyed, and when he smiled it was a professional smile, warm and welcoming.

Two men cleared space for him in the center of the room and set out a stool. He thanked them quietly and sat down, settling harp against hip and thigh. I knew at once the instrument was a fine one, having heard so many of the best with my uncle in Homana-Mujhar. It was of rich honey-gold wood, burnished to a fine sheen with years of use. A single green stone was set into the top. The strings glowed gossamer-fine in the smoke and candlelight. They glinted, promising much, until he touched them and fulfilled that promise with the stroke of a single finger.

Like a woman it was, answering a lover’s caress. The music drifted throughout the room, soft and delicate and infinitely seductive, and silenced the voices at once. There
is no man alive who cannot lose himself in harpsong, unless he be utterly deaf.

The harper’s voice, when he spoke, was every bit as lovely as the harp. It lacked the feminine timbre of many I had heard, yet maintained the rich liquid range the art requires. The modulation was exquisite; he had no need to speak loudly to reach all corners of the room. He merely spoke. Men listened.

“I will please you as I please myself,” he said quietly, “by giving you what entertainments I can upon my Lady. But there is a task I must first perform.” From the sleeve of his robe he took a folded parchment. He unfolded it, smoothed it, and began to read. He did not color his tone with any emotion, he merely read. But the words were quite enough.

The harper, when finished, folded the parchment precisely as it had been and returned it to his sleeve. His blue eyes, nearly black in the smoky light, looked at every man as if he judged his thoughts. All idleness was gone; I saw only shrewd intensity. He waited.

I wondered, in that moment, if he recruited. I wondered if he was Bellam’s man, sent out with the promise of gold. I wondered if he counted the pieces for himself. Five hundred of them if he knew I was here. One thousand if he brought me home to Homana-Mujhar.

Home. For disposal as Bellam—or Tynstar—desired.

I saw what they did, the Ellasian men. They thought of the gold and the glory. They thought of the task and the triumph. They considered, for a moment, what it might be to be made rich, but only for a moment, for then they considered their realm. Ellas. Not Homana. Rhodri’s realm. And the man who offered such gold had already swallowed one land.

The Ellasians, I knew, would do nothing for Bellam’s gold. But there were others in the room, and perhaps they would.

I looked at Finn. His face was a mask, as ever; a blank, sun-bronzed mask, with eyes that spoke of magic and myth and made them both quite real.

The harper began to sing. His deep voice was fine and sweet, eloquently expressing his intent. He sang of the bitterness of defeat and the gut-wrenching carnage of war. He sang of boys who died on bloodied fields and captains who fell beneath Solindish and Atvian swords. He sang of a king who hid himself in safety behind the rose-red walls of Homana-Mujhar, half-mad from a crazed obsession. He sang of the king’s slain brother, whose son was trapped in despair and Atvian iron. He sang of the same boy, now a man and free again, who lived his life in exile, fleeing Ihlini retribution. He sang my life, did this stranger, and brought the memories alive.

Oh gods…the memories
…

How is it that a harper can know what was? How is it that he captures the essence of what happened, what I am, what I long to be? How is it that he can sing my song while
I
sit unknowing, knowing only it is true, wishing it were otherwise?

How is it done?

The poignancy nearly shattered me. I shivered once convulsively, then stared hard at the scarred wooden table while the shackle weals beneath the sleeves of my leather shirt ached with remembered pain. I could not look at the harper. Not while he gave me my history, my heritage, my legacy, and the story of a land—
my
land—in her death struggle.

“By the gods—” I murmured before I could stop.

I felt Finn’s eyes on me. But he said nothing at all.

“I am Lachlan,” said the harper. “I am a harper, but also a priest of Lodhi the All-Wise, the All-Father; would you have me sing of Him?” Silence met his question, the silence of reverence and awe. He smiled, his hands unmoving upon the harp. “You have heard of the magic we of Lodhi hold. The tales are true. Have you not heard them before?”

I looked over the room. Men sat silently on their benches and stools, paying no mind to anyone save the harper. I wondered again what he intended to do.

“The All-Father has given some of us the gift of song, the gift of healing, the gift of words. And fewer of us claim all three.” He smiled. It was an enigmatic, eloquent smile. “I am one, and this night I will share what I can with you.”

The harp’s single green stone cast a viridescent glow as his fingers danced across the strings, stirring a sound that at once set the flesh to rising on my bones. His eyes passed over each of us again, as if he sought to comprehend what each one of us was about. And still he smiled.

“Some men call us sorcerers,” he said quietly. “I will not dispute it. My Lady and I have traversed the leagues of this land and others, and what I have seen I have learned. What I will give you this night is something most men long for: a return to the innocent days. A return to a time when cares were not so great and the responsibilities of
manhood did not weigh so heavily. I will give you your greatest day.” The blue eyes swelled to black. “Sit you still and listen, hearing only my Lady and myself, and I will give you the gift of Lodhi.”

I heard the music begin. For a moment I thought nothing of it: it was harpsong as ever, boasting nothing more than what I had already heard. And then I heard the underscore moving through the melody. A strange, eerie tone, seemingly at odds with the smoother line. I stared at the harper’s hands as he moved them in the strings, light glittering off the strands. And then I felt him inside my head.

Suddenly I was nothing but music. A single, solitary note. A string plucked and plucked again, my use dictated by the harper whose hands were on my soul. I stared at the eloquent fingers moving, caressing, plucking at the strings, and the music filled my head.

The colors of the room spilled away, like a wineglass tipped and emptied. Everything was gray, dark and light, with no blacks and no whites. I saw a harper in a gray robe with gray eyes and grayish hair. Only the harp held true: honey-gold and gleaming, with a single emerald eye. And then even that was gone…

No more war—no more blood—no more wishing for revenge
. Only the sense of other days. Younger days, and a younger Carillon, staring with joy and awe at the great chestnut warhorse his father had gifted him on his eighteenth birthday. I recalled the day so well, and what I had thought of the horse. I recalled it all, for on that day I was named Prince of Homana, and heir to the Lion Throne.

Again I clattered down the winding staircase at Joyenne, nodding at servants who gave me morning greeting, thinking only of the promised gift. I had known it was to be a horse, a warhorse, but not which one. I had hoped
—
and it was. The great red stallion had gotten a matching son on my father’s best mare, and that son was mine at last. Full-grown and fully trained, ready for a warrior. I was not so much a warrior then, knowing only the practice chamber and tourney-fields, but I was more than ready to prove what I could of my skill. And yet I could not have wished for that chance to come so soon
.

I saw then the underside of the harper’s spell. It was true he gave me my innocent days, but with those days came the knowledge of what had followed. He could not have summoned a more evocative memory had he tried for it; I think he did it purposely. I think he reached into my mind, digging and searching until he found the proper one. And then he gave it to me.

The memory altered. No more was I the young prince reaching out to touch the stallion. No. I was someone else entirely: a bloodied, soiled, exhausted boy in a man’s body, his sword taken from him and his wrists imprisoned in Atvian iron. Taken by Thorne himself, Keough’s son, who had ordered the iron hammered on.