The Song of Homana (25 page)

“
I
am Homanan—”

“You are a part of our prophecy.” For a moment he smiled the old, ironic smile. “Doubtless you would prefer it otherwise, given a choice—no more than I, Carillon—but there is none. If you die tomorrow; if you die within a
week in Bellam’s battles, Homana and the Cheysuli die with you.”

I felt the slow churning in my belly. “Finn—you set a great weight upon my shoulders. Do you wish to bow me down?”

“You are Mujhar,” he said softly. “That is the nature of the task.”

I shifted uneasily. “What is it you would have me do? Strike a bargain with the gods? Only tell me the way.”

There was no answering smile. “No bargain,” he said. “They do not bargain with men. They offer; men take, or men refuse. Men all too often refuse.” He set one hand against the ground and thrust himself to his feet. The earring winked in the moonlight. “What I tell you this night is not what men prefer to hear, particularly kings. But I tell you because of what we have shared together…and because it will make a difference.”

I took a deep, slow breath. Finn was—not Finn. And yet I knew no other name. “Say on, then.”

“That sword.” He indicated it briefly. “The sword you hold is Cheysuli-made, by Hale, my
jehan
. For the Mujhar it was said he made it, and yet in the Keep we knew differently.” His face was very solemn. “Not for Shaine, though Shaine was the one who bore it. Not for you, to whom Shaine gave it on your acclamation. For a Mujhar, it is true…but a Cheysuli Mujhar, not Homanan.”

“I have heard something of the sort before,” I said grimly. “It seems these words—or similar ones—have been often in Duncan’s mouth.”

“You fight to save Homana,” Finn said. “
We
fight to save Homana as well, and the Cheysuli way of life. There is the prophecy, Carillon. I know—” he lifted a hand as I sought to speak— “I know, it is not something to which you pay mind. But
I
do; so do we all who have linked with the
lir
.” His eyes were on Storr, standing so still and silent in the night. “It is the truth, Carillon.
One day a man of all blood shall unite, in peace, four warring realms and two magic races.
” He smiled. “Your bane, it appears, judging by your expression.”

“What are you leading to?” I was grown impatient with
his manner. “What has the prophecy to do with this sword?”

“That sword was made for another. Hale knew it when he fashioned the blade from the star-stone. And the promise was put in there.” His fingers indicated the runes running down the blade. “A Cheysuli sword, once made, waits for the hand it was made for. That hand is not yours, and yet you will carry the sword into battle.”

I could not suppress the hostility in my tone. “Cheysuli sufferance?” I demanded. “Does it come to this again?”

“Not sufferance,” he said. “You serve it well, and it has kept you alive, but the time draws near when it will live in another man’s hands.”

“My son’s,” I said firmly. “What
I
have will be my son’s. That is the nature of inheritance.”

“Perhaps so,” he agreed, “do the gods intend it.”

“Finn—”

“Lay down the sword, Carillon.”

I faced him squarely in the darkness. “Do you ask me to give it up?” I weighted my words with care. “Do you mean to take it from me?”

“That is not for me to do. When the sword is given over to the man for whom it was made, it will be given freely.” For a moment he said nothing, as if listening to his words, and then he smiled. Briefly he touched my arm with a gesture of comradeship I had seen only rarely before. “Lay down the sword, Carillon. This night it belongs to the gods.”

I bent. I set the sword upon the ground, and then I rose again. It lay gleaming in the moonlight: gold and silver and crimson.

“Your knife,” Finn said.

And so he disarmed me. I stood naked and alone, for all I had a warrior and wolf before me, and waited for the answers. I thought there might be none; Finn only rarely divulged what was in his mind, and this night I thought it unlikely I would get anything from him. I waited.

He held the knife in his hand, the hand which had fashioned the weapon. A Cheysuli long-knife with its wolf’s-head hilt; no Homanan weapon, this. And then I understood.

This night he was all Cheysuli, more so than ever before. He put off his borrowed Homanan manners like a soldier slipping his cloak. No more the Finn I knew but another, quieter soul. He was full of his gods and magic, and did I not acknowledge what he was I would doubtless regret it at once. As it was, I had not seen him so often in such a way as to lose my awe of him.

Suddenly I stood alone on the plains of Homana with a shapechanger waiting before me, and I knew myself afraid.

He caught my left wrist in one hand. Before I could speak he bared the underside to the gods and cut deeply into the flesh.

I hissed between my teeth and tried to pull back the arm. He held me tightly, clamping down on the arm so that my hand twitched and shook with the shock of the cutting.

I had forgotten his strength, his bestial determination that puts all my size to shame. He held me as easily as a father holds a child, ignoring my muttered protest. He forced my arm down and held it still, and then he loosened his fingers to let the blood well free and fast.

It ran down my wrist to pool in my palm, then dropped off the rigid fingers. Finn held the arm over the patch of smooth earth with its circle of five smooth stones.

“Kneel.” A pressure on the captive wrist led me downward, and I knelt as he had ordered.

Finn released my wrist. It ached dully and I felt the blood still coursing freely. I lifted my right hand to clamp the cut closed, but the look on Finn’s face kept me from it. There was more he wanted of me.

He took up my sword from the ground and stood before me. “We must make this yours, for a time,” he said gently. “We will borrow it from the gods. For tomorrow, for Homana…you must have a little magic.” He pointed at the bloodied soil. “The blood of the man; the flesh of the earth. United in one purpose—” He thrust the sword downward until the blade bit into the earth, sliding in as if he sheathed it; until the hilt stood level with my face as I knelt. The clean, shining hilt with its ruby eye set so firmly in the pommel. “Put your hand upon it.”

Instinctively I knew which hand. My left, with its bloody glove.

I touched the hilt. I touched the rampant lion. I touched the red eye with the red of my blood, and closed my hand upon it.

The blood flowed down the hilt to the crosspiece and then down upon the blade. The runes filled up, red-black in the silver moonlight, until they spilled over. I saw the scarlet ribbon run down and down to touch the earth where it merged with the blood-dampened soil, and the ruby began to glow.

It filled my eyes with crimson fire, blinding me to the world. No more Finn, no more me…only incarnadine fire.

“Ja’hai,”
Finn whispered unevenly.
“Ja’hai, cheysu, Mujhar…”

Five stars. Five stones. One sword. And one battle to be won.

The stars moved. They broke free of their settings and moved against the sky, growing brighter, trailing tails of fire behind them. They shot across the sky, arcing, like arrows loosed from bows, heading toward the earth. Shooting stars I had seen, but this was different. This was—

“Gods,” I whispered raggedly. “Must a man ever see to believe?”

I wavered on my knees. It was Finn who pulled me up and made me stand, though I feared I would fall down and shame myself. One hand closed over the cut and shut off the bleeding. He smiled a moment, and then the eyes were gone blank and detached, so that I knew he sought the earth magic.

When he took his hand away my wrist was healed, bearing no scar save the shackle wound from Atvian iron. I flexed my hand, wiggling my fingers, and saw the familiar twist to Finn’s smile. “I told you to trust me.”

“Trusting you may give me nightmares.” Uneasily I glanced at the sky. “Did you see the stars?”

“Stars?” He did not smile. “Rocks,” he said. “Only rocks.”

He scooped them up and showed me. Rocks they were,
in his hand; I put out my own and held them, wondering what magic had been forged.

I looked at Finn. He seemed weary, used up, and something was in his eyes. I could not decipher the expression. “You will sleep.” He frowned in abstraction. “The gods will see to that.”

“And you?” I asked sharply.

“What the gods give me is my own affair.” His eyes were back on the sky.

I thought there was more he wished to say. But he shut his mouth on it, offering nothing, and it was not my place to ask. So I put my free hand on the upstanding hilt and closed my fingers around the bloodied gold. But I knew, as I pulled it from the earth, I would not ask Rowan to clean it.

“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!
”

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—”