The Song of Homana

by Jennifer Roberson

  “Rocks,” Finn murmured, and turned away with Storr.

  I opened my hand and looked at the rocks. Five smooth stones. Nothing more.

  But I did not drop them to the ground. I kept them, instead.

  It was Rowan who held the tall ash staff upright in the dawn. The mist clung to it; droplets ran down the staff to wet the fog-dampened ground, as my blood had run down the sword. The banner hung limply from the top of the staff: a drapery of crimson cloth that did not move in the stillness. Within its silken folds slept the rampant black lion of Homana, mouth agape and claws extended, waiting for its prey.

  The tip of the staff bit into the ground as Rowan pushed it. He twisted, worked the standard into the damp, spongy ground until the ash was planted solidly. And then he took his hands away, waiting, and saw it would remain.

  A cheer went up. A Homanan cheer; the Cheysuli said nothing. They waited on foot at my back, separated from the Homanans, and their standard was the lir who stood at their sides or rested on their shoulders.

  I tasted the flat, dull tang of apprehension tinged with fear in my mouth. I had never rid myself of the taste, no matter how many times I had fought. I sat on my horse with my sword in its sheath, ringmail shrouding my body, and knew I was afraid. But it was the fear that would drive me on in an attempt to overcome it; in doing so I would also, I prayed, overcome the enemy.

  I turned my back on that enemy. Bellam’s troops lay in wait for us on the plains, the dawning sunlight glittering off weapons and mail. They were too far to be distinct, were merely a huge gathering of men prepared to fight. Thousands upon thousands.

  I turned my back so I could look at my army. It spread across the hill like a flood of legs and arms and faces. Unlike Bellam’s hordes, we did not all boast ringmail and boiled leather. Many wore what they could of armor, that being leather bracers, stiff leather greaves and a leather tunic. A breastplate, here and there; perhaps a toughened hauberk. But many wore only wool, having no better, yet willing to fight. My army lacked the grandeur of Bellam’s silken-tunicked legions, but we did not lack for heart and determination.

  I pulled my sword from its sheath. Slowly I raised it, then closed my callused hand around the blade, near the tip. I thrust the weapon upright in the air so that the hilt was uppermost, and the ruby caught fire from the rising sun.

  “Bare your teeth!” I shouted. “Unsheathe your claws! And let the Lion roar!”

  SEVENTEEN

  The sun, I knew, was setting. The field was a mass of crimson, orange and yellow. But I could not be certain how much of the crimson was blood or setting sun.

  The ground was boggy beneath my knees, the dry grass matted, but I did not get up at once. I remained kneeling, leaning against my planted sword, as I stared into the Mujhar’s Eye. The great ruby, perhaps, was responsible for the color. Perhaps it painted the plains so red.

  But I knew better. The field was red and brown and black with blood, and the dull colors of the dead. Already carrion birds wheeled and settled in their eternal dance, crying their victory even as men cried their defeat. It was all merely sound, another sound, to fill my ringing head.

  The strength was gone from my body. I trembled with a weakness born of fatigue that filled my bones, turning my limbs to water. There was nothing left in me save the vague realization the thing was done, and I was still alive.

  A step whispered behind me. I spun at once, lifting the sword, and set the point at the man.

  He stood just out of range, and yet close enough had I the strength to try for a lunge. I did not. And there was no need, since Finn was not the enemy.

  I let the tip of the sword drop away to rest against the ground. I wet my bloodied lips and wished for a drink of wine. Better yet: water, to cool my painful throat. My voice was a husky shadow of my usual tone; shouting had leached it of sound.

  “It is done,” Finn said gently.

  “I know it.” I swallowed and steadied my voice. “I know it.”

  “Then why do you remain on your knees like a supplicant to Lachlan’s All-Father creature?”

  “Perhaps I am one…”I sucked in a belly-deep breath and got unsteadily to my feet. The exertion nearly put me down again, and I wavered. Every bone in my body ached and my muscles were shredded like rags. I shoved a mailed forearm across my face, scrubbing away the sweat and blood. And then I acknowledged what I had not dared say aloud before, or even within my mind. “Bellam is—defeated. Homana is mine.”

  “Aye, my lord Mujhar.” The tone, as ever, was ironic and irreverent.

  I sighed and cast him as much of a scowl as I could muster. “My thanks for your protection, Finn.” I recalled how he had shadowed me in the midst of the day-long battle; how he had let no enemy separate me from the others. In all the tangle of fighting, I had never once been left alone.

  He shrugged. “The blood-oath does bind me…” Then he grinned openly and made a fluid gesture that said he understood. Too often we said nothing to one another because there was no need.

  And then he put out a hand and gripped my arm, and I accepted the accolade in silence only because I had not the words to break it.

  “Did you think we would see it?” I asked at last.

  “Oh, aye. The prophecy—”

  I cut him off with a wave of one aching arm. “Enough. Enough of the thing. I grow weary of your prating of this and that.” I sighed and caught my breath. “Still, there is Mujhara to be freed. Our liberation is not yet finished.”

  “Near enough,” Finn said quietly. “I have come to take you to Bellam.”

  I looked at him sharply. “You have him?”

  “Duncan—has him. Come and see.”

  We walked through the battlefield slowly. All around me lay the pall of death; the stench of fear and futility. Men had been hacked and torn to pieces, struck down by swords and spears alike. Arrows stood up from their flesh. Birds screamed and shrieked as we passed, taking wing to circle and return as we passed by their bounty. And the men, enemy and companion alike, lay sprawled in the obscene intercourse of death upon the matted, bloody grass.

  I stopped. I looked at the sword still clutched in my hand. The Cheysuli sword, Hale-made, with its weight of burning ruby. The Mujhar’s Eye. Or was it merely my eye, grown bloody from too much war?

  Finn put his hand on my shoulder. When I could, I sheathed the sword and went on.

  Duncan and Rowan, along with a few of my captains, stood atop a small hill upon which stood the broken shaft of Bellam’s standard, trampled in the dust. White sun rising on an indigo field. But Bellam’s sun had set.

  He was quite dead. But of such a means I could not name, so horrible was his state. He was no longer precisely a man.

  Tynstar. I knew it at once. What I did not know was the reason for the death. And probably never would.

  It—Bellam was no longer recognizably male—was curled tightly as if it were a child as yet unborn. The clothes and mail had been burned and melted off. Ash served as a cradle for the thing. Ringmail, still smoking from its ensorcelled heat, lay clumped in heaps of cooling metal. The flesh was drawn up tightly like brittle, untanned hide. Chin on knees; arms hugging legs; nose and ears melted off. Bellam grinned at us all from his lipless mouth, but his eyes were empty sockets.

  And on the blackened skull rested a circlet of purest gold.

  When I could speak again without phlegm and bile scraping at my throat, I said two words: “Bury it.”

  “My lord,” Rowan ventured, “what do you do now?”

  “Now?” I looked at him and tried to smile. “Now I will go into Mujhara to claim my throne at last.”

  “Alone?” He was shocked. “Now?”

  “Now,” I said, “but not alone. With me go the Cheysuli.”

  We met token resistance in the city. Solindish soldiers with their Atvian allies still fought to protect their stolen palace, but word spread quickly of Bellam’s death and the grisly manner of it. I wondered at Tynstar’s decision; surely the
Solindish would hate and fear him for what he had done. Had he not broken the traditional bond between Bellam and the Ihlini? Or would the sorcery prove stronger even than fear, and drive the Solindish to follow him still?

  The resistance at Homana-Mujhar broke quickly enough. I left behind the bronze-and-timber gates, dispatching Cheysuli and lir into the interior of the myriad baileys and wards to capture the turrets and towers along the walls, the rose-colored walls of Homana-Mujhar. I dismounted by the marble steps at the archivolted entrance and went up one step at a time, sword bare in my hand. By the gods, this place was mine…

  By the gods, indeed. I thought of the stars again.

  Finn and Duncan were a few steps behind me and with them came their lir. And then, suddenly, I was alone. Before me stood the hammered silver doors of the Great Hall itself. I heard fighting behind me but hardly noticed; before me lay my tahlmorra.

  I smiled. Tahlmorra. Aye. I thought it was. And so I threw open the doors and went in.

  The memories crashed around me like falling walls. Brick by brick by brick. I recalled it all—

  Shaine, standing on the marble dais, thundering his displeasure…Alix there as well, beckoning Cai within the hall, and the great hawk’s passage extinguishing all the candles.…Shaine again, my uncle, defying the Cheysuli within the walls they built so long ago, destroying the magic that kept the Ihlini out and allowing Homana’s defeat…My hand tightened on my sword. By the gods, I did recall that defeat!

  I went onward toward the dais. I ignored the Solindish coats-of-arms bannering the walls and the indigo draperies with Bellam’s crest. I walked beside the unlighted firepit as it stretched the length of the hall with its lofty hammer-beamed ceiling of honey-dark wood and its carven animal shapes. No, not animal shapes. Lir-shapes. The Cheysuli had gone from carving the lir into castles to painting them onto pavilions. The truth had been here for years, even when we called them liars.

  I stopped before the dais. The marble, so different from the cold gray stone of the hall floor, was light-toned, a warm rose-pink with veins of gold within it. A proper pedestal, I thought, for the throne that rested on it.

  The Lion. It hunched upon its curling paws and claws, its snarling face the headpiece upon the back of the throne. Dark, ancient wood, gleaming with beeswax and gilt within the scrollwork. Gold wire banded the legs. The seat was cushioned in crimson silk with its rampant black lion walking in its folds. That much Bellam had not changed. He had left the lion alone.

  My lion; my Lion.

  Or was it?

  I turned, and he stood where I expected.

  “Yours?” I asked. “Or mine?”

  Duncan did not attempt to dissemble or pretend to misunderstand. He merely sheathed his bloodied knife, folded his arms, and smiled. “It is yours, my lord. For now.”

  I heard the shouts of fighting behind him. Duncan stood just inside the open doorway, framed by the silver leaves. His black hair hung around his shoulders, bloody and sweaty like mine, and he bore bruises on his face. But even for all the soiling of his leathers and the smell of death upon him, he outshone the hall he stood in.

  The breath rasped in my throat. To come so far and know myself so insignificant— “The throne,” I said hoarsely, “is meant for a Cheysuli Mujhar. You have said.”

  “One day,” he agreed. “But that day will come when you and I are dead.”

  “Then it is like this sword—” I touched the glowing ruby. “Made for another man.”

  “The Firstborn come again.” Duncan smiled. “There is a while to wait for him.”

  A soft, sibilant whisper intruded itself upon us. “And shall you wait a while for me?”

  I spun around, jerking my sword from its sheath. Tynstar, Tynstar, came gliding out of the alcove so near the throne.

  He put up his hand as Duncan moved. “Do not, shapechanger! Stay where you are, or I will surely slay him.” He smiled. “Would it not grieve you to know you have lost your Mujhar the very day you have brought him to the throne?”

  He had not changed. The ageless Ihlini was smiling. His bearded face was serene, untroubled; his hair was still thick—black touched with silver. He wore black leathers, and bore a silver sword.

  I felt all the fear and rage and frustration well up within my soul. It was ever Tynstar, enforcing his will; playing with us like toys.

  “Why did you slay Bellam?” When I had control of my voice, I asked.

  “Did I?” He smiled. He smiled.

  I thought, suddenly, of Zared, and how he had died. How Lachlan had harped him to death upon his Lady. I recalled quite clearly how Zared’s corpse had looked, all doubled up and shrunken, as Bellam’s had been.

  For only a moment, I wondered. And then I knew better than to let Tynstar bait me. “Why?”

  An eloquent shrug of his shoulders. “He was—used up. I had no more need of him. He was—superfluous.” A negligent wave of the hand relegated Bellam to nonexistence. But I recalled his body and the manner of his going.

  “What more?” I asked in suspicion. “Surely there was more.”

  Tynstar smiled and his black eyes held dominion. On one finger gleamed a flash of blue-white fire. A ring. A crystal set in silver. “More,” he agreed. “A small matter of promise conveniently forgotten. Bellam was foolish enough to desire an Ellasian prince for his lovely daughter, when she was already given to me.” Amusement flickered across the cultured, guileless face. “But then, I did tell him he would die if he faced you this day. There are times your gods take precedence over my own.”

  The sword was in my hand. I wanted so to strike with it, and yet for the moment I could not. I had another weapon. “Electra,” I said. “Your light woman, I have heard. Well, I shall forget her past while I think of her future—as my wife and Queen of Homana.”

  Anger flittered in his eyes. “You will not take Electra to wife.”

  “I will.” I raised the sword so he could see the glowing ruby. “How will you stop me, when even the gods send me aid?”

  Tynstar smiled. And then, even as I thrust, he reached out and caught the blade. “Die,” he said gently. “I am done with our childish games.”

  The shock ran through my arm to my shoulder. The blade had struck flesh, and yet he did not bleed. Instead he turned the sword into a locus for his power and sent it slashing through my body.

  I was hurled back against the throne, nearly snapping my spine. The sword was gone from my hand. Tynstar held it by the blade, the hilt lifted before my eyes, and I saw the ruby go dark.

  “Shall I turn this weapon against you?” His black eyes glittered as brightly as his crystal ring. “I have only to touch you—gently—with this stone, and poor Carillon’s reign is done.”

  The sword came closer. My sword, that now served him. I slid forward to my knees, intending to dive and roll, but Tynstar was too fast.

  And yet he was not. Even as the ruby, now black and perverted, touched my head, a knife flew home in Tynstar’s shoulder. Duncan’s, thrown from the end of the hall. And now Duncan was following the blade.

  I found myself face down against the marble. Somehow I had fallen, and the sword lay close at hand. But the ruby, once so brilliant, now resembled Tynstar’s eyes.

  Duncan’s leap took Tynstar down against the dais, not far from where I lay. But Tynstar struggled up again, and Duncan did not. He lay, stunned by the force of his landing, sprawled across the steps. One bare brown arm with its gleaming lir-band stretched across the marble, gold on gold, and blood was staining the floor.

  “Tynstar!”

  It was Finn, pounding the length of the hall, and I saw the knife in his hand. How apropos, I thought, that Tynstar would die by a royal Homanan blade.

  But he did not die. Even as Finn raced toward him, the Ihlini pulled Duncan’s knife from his shoulder and hurled it down. Then he sketched a hurried rune in the air, wrapped himself in lavender mist, and simply disappeared.

  I swore and tried to thrust myself upright. I failed
miserably, flopping hard against the dais. And so I gave up and lay there, trying to catch my breath, as Finn knelt beside his brother.

  Duncan muttered something. I saw him press himself up off the floor, then freeze, and it was Finn who kept him from falling. “A rib, I think,” Duncan said between tight-locked teeth. “I will live, rujho.”

  “All this blood—”

  “Tynstar’s.” Duncan winced as he settled himself upon the top step, one hand pressed to his chest. “The knife was mostly spent by the time it reached him, or he surely would have died.” He glanced at me briefly, then gestured to his brother. “Finn—see to Carillon.”

  Finn heaved me up into a sitting position and leaned me against the throne. One curving, clawed paw supported my head. “I thought perhaps I could slay him,” I explained, “and save us all the worry of knowing he is free.”

  Finn picked up the sword. I saw the color spill out of his face as he looked at the ruby. The black ruby. “He did this?”

  “Something did.” I swallowed against the weariness in my bones. “He put his hand on the blade and the stone turned black, as you see it.”

  “He used it to fix his power,” Duncan said. “All of Carillon’s will and strength was sucked out through the sword, then fed back with redoubled effect. It carried the sorcery with it.” He frowned. “Rujho, the sword has ever been merely a sword. But for it to become accessible to Ihlini magic, it had to have its own. What do you know of this?”

  Finn would not meet Duncan’s eyes. I stared at him in astonishment, trying to fathom his emotions, but he had put up his shield against us all.

  “Rujho,” Duncan said more sharply. “Did you seek the star magic?”

  “He found it. He found something.” I shrugged. “Five stones, and blood, and the stars fell out of the skies. He said—” I paused, recalling the words exactly, “—Ja’hai, cheysu, Mujhar.”

  Duncan’s bruised face went white. At first I thought it was fear, and then I saw it was anger. He spat something out in the Old Tongue, something unintelligible to me—which I thought best, judging by the fury in his tone. Having never seen Duncan so angry, I was somewhat fascinated by it. And pleased, very pleased, I was not the focus of it.