The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (16 page)

“Why do I feel there’s a request buried in all that self-righteousness…?”

“I’ll need Hawk.”

“I guessed as much.”

She inclined her head, and Hawk shifted form.

Moments later, Hawk rounded the far mountain with Finnadro and Amdra on his back. Finnadro saw clearly what he had missed while chasing Umbral, the row of cages. He’d seen them once before, full of war prisoners, his own people. They were empty now.

He was reluctant to ask Amdra what had happened to them. She might interpret it as begging. He knew nothing he said would change their fate.

The Singing Bow whispered to him:
There
.

Finnadro glanced to the cliff and noticed the hole in the wall.

“Get me to that cave!” he shouted against the wind. Why did flying have to be so windy?

“There’s no way the Deathsworn could have reached that cave from where he fell!” Amdra said.

“He’s alive, and that’s where he went,” insisted Finnadro. “The Singing Bow never lies.”

Hawk swooped close enough for Finnadro to jump inside the cave entrance. Amdra and Hawk kept flying.

“I’ll inform Xerpen!” Amdra shouted back over her shoulder.

That suited Finnadro just fine. He didn’t need anyone else poaching his quarry. He wanted to finish this hunt himself.

The cave was odd, shaped like the inside of a snail shell. Stone steps led down and up from his position.

Down
, whispered the Singing Bow.

At first, he had light from the cave’s entrance, but the uneven spiral quickly blocked out the last rays of sunset. He descended in pitch black. How ironic that he had been forced to delay his hunt due to blindness, yet now he had to hunt in the dark.

He moved by sound, by scent, and by touch; he moved with the silence of a creeping wolf. Perhaps his caution was pointless, since the Deathsworn had had a whole day’s head start. Surely, he was long gone.

Or not.

Flickering lights below on the stair indicated torchlight ahead. Finnadro descended into a wider cavern with torches set up on rocks. Hideously mutilated corpses littered the cavern floor, and standing in the center of the horror with his arms red to the elbows in gore, stood Umbral, the Henchman of Lady Death. He had his back to the stairwell because he was crouching over a man screaming in pain, and, as Finnadro watched, Umbral sliced his dagger across the victim’s throat.

The scream choked off into a gurgle.

Finnadro did not issue a challenge, man to man. He did not engage the villain in clever banter. He did not waste his breath to plead with his foe to surrender to justice. His arrow was notched without his having to think about it. He aimed.

He shot.

Even though Finnadro did everything right, swiftly and soundlessly, Umbral sensed danger and moved… but not fast enough.
Ha! You won’t escape this time!
The arrow hit Umbral in the shoulder. He whirled around, enraged instead of dead. Victims—only a few in the cave were still left alive—scattered and fled, but Umbral charged toward Finnadro.

Finnadro let go of his bow and drew his knife. No grace, no finesse was possible in such close quarters with such fierce hate burning in both men. They rushed each other and wrestled, brute on brute,
strength to strength, knee to groin, knife to throat. Umbral tossed him hard on the stone, but Finnadro jumped back into the fray. Finnadro took punches to his ear and gut, bright flames of pain, but he didn’t slow. His own rain of blows weakened Umbral. Best of all, Umbral was not using his greatest power—his dark webs, his Deathsworn magic. As if he had nothing left, as if his arrows of strength were all used up.

Finnadro threw his foe to the ground and throttled him until he passed out, and he didn’t stop, because he knew he must
keep going to make it stick. He planned to cut Umbral’s head off and hack his whole body to pieces and then burn the pieces, because anything less and Finnadro feared the monster would find some way to lurch back to life. He seemed too powerful to die from mere lack of breath, like an ordinary man.

“Don’t kill him!” commanded a deep and irresistible voice.

Xerpen was here.

Finnadro unclenched his hands from around Umbral’s throat, though every muscle in his body screamed that to let go was a mistake.

“Please, Great One! Allow no mercy for one like this!”

“No mercy,” Xerpen agreed. He strolled over to Finnadro and sneered down at Umbral’s bleeding body. Finnadro’s arrow still stuck out from his shoulder. “But he knows something we
need
to know: The identity of the Traitor amongst the Aelfae. I have sought this information for… longer than you can imagine. I will not let the knowledge die with this scoundrel.”

Finnadro formed his hand into a fist. One blow to the nose and he could crush Umbral’s face. He wished he had done it before Xerpen had arrived. He smashed down his fist…onto the stone floor. It bruised, though not as much as letting Umbral live.

“Yes, Great One.”

“Please, we are brothers in this. Call me Xerpen. You know I hate this evil as much as you do.”

Finnadro drew a deep breath and nodded. He moved away from Umbral, but it didn’t help. He almost tripped over a young girl, mottled from rough handling, naked except for Umbral’s own cape. She had dark hair and big eyes that stared blindly now, glazed, at nothing. She looked familiar….

Mercy. It was the girl Umbral had taken hostage.

“Do you know her?” Xerpen asked gently, at Finnadro’s sharp intake of breath.

“Her name was Dindi of Lost Swan. She was an innocent he took for… his own pleasure, I must presume, since there was nothing else she had to offer. I had sworn to her kinsman I would save her.” He covered her with the fur. “Another man I will betray if I do not collect Umbral’s deathdebt.”

Xerpen touched his shoulder. Warmth spread through Finnadro, like a promise of light in a dark place, and Finnadro looked at him in wonder.

“I have one more favor to ask of you, though I have no right,” said Xerpen. “Will you be the one to question him?”

Finnadro thought about what Xerpen was asking. Questioning Umbral would not involve banter over bowls of beer and a chirping fire. This man would answer nothing willingly. The interrogation would not be easy.

Good.

This man did not deserve easy.

In the Guest Lodge, Vessia listened to the night’s song. Humans drummed, conversed, and enjoyed their evening feast. Bonfires crackled and hissed in the Plaza of Eagles. Beyond the festivities, however, she noticed other sounds. The squawks and caws of great birds.

The Raptor Riders were readying their mounts.

Why didn’t Xerpen tell me? I told him I wanted to go on the next flight
. 

Never mind, she wasn’t some dandelion to wait for the wind to blow her seeds. If she wanted to fly, she would fly.

“The human shapeshifters are going somewhere,” she told her companions. “I am going to join them.”

“Should we come with you?” asked Mrigana.

“No, let’s not overwhelm the mortals. I think they are going into battle. I’ll tell them I’m accompanying them as an observer.”

She left the stone lodge and skirted the revelers. There were a number of other stone buildings and huts, also arranged in compounds, on the stepped levels of the mountain summit. The largest square, the Plaza of Eagles, where the humans drummed and feasted, dominated the center of the tribehold. The Raptor’s Lodge was on the far side of the settlement from the Guest Lodge. Because of her circuitous route, Vessia had to climb up and down several flights of steps, fashioned from slate slabs between the terraces of turf that formed the various levels of the tribehold.

Footfalls pattered behind her. Vessia paused, and her shadow almost bumped into her. Vessia dragged the interloper forward by her cape.

It was the human girl, the little clown, still with a boot on her head. She smiled sheepishly at Vessia.

“Why are you following me?”

“I just want to help.”

The innocent words inexplicably made Vessia shiver. She beheld the flash of an inner Vision:

A faery is standing on a veranda, under the stars of a clear night. She unfurls her wings, about to fly on the wonderful breeze singing past her. She has been trapped in this adobe box, this human cage, all day long, near the oven, in dense, smoky air that reeks of toasting corn. All day she has endured a parade of humans coming in and out, babbling at her about things she cares nothing about, asking for her help, reminding her of obligations and complications and responsibilities, pushing their needs and their demands into her lap like baskets to fill, and it’s enough, enough, enough, too much! She needs time alone. She needs to get away.

Inside, a handsome man is knapping spearheads. She admires his work. He is skilled and fast and has already finished several perfect, symmetrical blades. Mostly, however, she’s glad to see him because his presence frees her. Now that he’s here, although he is occupied with knapping tools, she can get away.

On the floor beside the adobe dais where the man works, a tiny boy, three or four years old, picks up one of the finished blades. The boy begins pounding the flint with a sooty rock he’s picked up from the hearth, imitating his father.

The flint blade shatters.

The man is livid. He shouts. The boy bursts into tears.

The woman furls her wings. She goes inside, scoops up the little boy, and pats his back. She calms the man, saying, “Don’t be angry with him. He just wanted to help.”

Vessia broke free of the Vision, bewildered by what she had seen. Who
was
that woman? How could a faery be trapped in a human home? Why didn’t she just fly away?

The human girl quivered in Vessia’s grasp, the way a guinea pig would gawp at a peregrine falcon. Vessia sighed. She freed the girl, hoping she’d scurry away, but when that didn’t happen, Vessia wasn’t surprised.

“What’s your name again, niece?”

“Dindi of Lost Swan clan.”

“How old are you, Dindi?”

“I’ve seen sixteen years named.”

“I’ve seen every year named since the humans first started naming them and all the unnamed years before that,” said Vessia. “Do you know the last time an eclipse fell on the spring equinox? Imagine a thousand years, and then imagine as many years as that six more times, and then a few more, and that is how long it has been. I saw that. Yet
you
are going to help
me
? You’ll be my hero?”

“You don’t remember
all
of your years, auntie.”

Vessia shrugged. “Does a granary miss a few seeds blown away on the wind?”

“Yes, if those were the planting seeds for the next harvest. Yes, if the theft was deliberate. Yes, if your memory has been
stolen
!”

“So you say. Oblivion is not as unusual as you seem to think, however. Most days are simply repetitions of the day before. It isn’t necessary to remember all of them, so much as to recall the wheel of life. The cycles of things, of day to night, of autumn to spring, these are what we cherish. The details which change are the details that don’t matter.”

“That…that’s...so wrong!” blurted the girl.

No, I shouldn’t think of her as just ‘the girl.’ Her name is Dindi.

Dindi asked, “What if those details include
people
?”

“The only important people in my life are immortal, as I am, and a few missing moments matter no more to them than to me.”

“That’s not true. Your husband and son are mortal. Their moments are finite. Aren’t they important to you?”

The conversation irked Vessia.
Don’t be angry with him. He just wanted to help.
She pushed away the voice from the Vision. She didn’t have time for this.

She had reached the Raptor’s Lodge and could see the Riders untying the blindfolds from their shapeshifter slaves so the men could change into birds. It was all rather silly. She could tell the Riders also had the ability to shift form, so why did they not become birds themselves? Xerpen had said something about it being a secret, but she had not paid much attention. Human taboos were absurd. However, it now occurred to Vessia that the humans might
refuse
her request to accompany them, so she decided a bit of discretion might be in order.

“Perhaps you
can
help me, Dindi.”

Dindi perked up.

“Come with me,” said Vessia. “And take that boot off your head.”

The girl turned pink and removed the cranial footwear. She scrambled to follow Vessia’s long strides.

The Raptor’s Lodge was built much like the other stone longhouses, except that there was no fourth wall. Individual stalls were formed by wooden divisions between rooms, with the final wall open so the bird could land and launch directly from the room. When the slaves were not in bird form, the blindfolded slaves were kept tied to a post in the wall. Leather flaps could be let down over the missing wall to keep out the worst of the wind and snow, but otherwise the slaves bedded in large straw nests to keep warm.

Vessia only knew one of the Riders, a young woman named Amdra. Some of the Raptor Riders had already mounted their birds and launched into the air where they circled, waiting for their leader.

Amdra and her slave, Hawk, were still inside one of the three-sided stalls. Hawk had been released from the post, but he had not shifted yet. Still blindfolded, he knelt in front of Amdra, clenching his fists in pain, while she sent pulses of pain through a leash of Orange light to choke him.

“Stop thinking that! Stop it!”
Amdra said, throwing magic force into her voice.

Vessia moved so that her silhouette shadowed the open wall.

The persimmon light died. Hawk collapsed. Amdra snarled, “Who dares enter this nest without my leave?”

Vessia said nothing.

As Vessia had hoped, when Amdra realized who it was, her attitude became obsequious.

“Lady, I did not know you would be visiting.”

“I will accompany your birds on the raid.”

“The Great One said that?”

Vessia’s lip curled.

“Of course he did,” said Amdra. “Why else would you…? Of course, my Lady, I can find you a Raptor to ride…”

“I do not ride slaves.”

Hawk pulled himself from the dirt back to his knees.

“But then…how…?” frowned Amdra.

“I can change my shape,” said Vessia. “It’s not difficult.”

“But my Lady, a Raptor without a Rider would be…confusing…to our people…”

“I’ve already considered that. I’ve brought a decoy
who can ride on my back and give the appearance of being a Rider, when seen at a distance. She will not be controlling me, but observers won’t know the difference.”

“You’ve thought of everything.”

“Of course. When do we leave?”

“Immediately, Lady.
Hawk, time to shift. We launch at once.”

The air whistled in her ears. Stars had been daubed like white paint, still wet and shiny, on the black bowl of night which looked so close she feared star paint might smear her hair. The last time Dindi had been in this position, clutching the neck feathers of the back of a great bird, hoping she wouldn’t fall to her death untold spans below, it had not ended well. Presumably Vessia was not going to pop and disappear as the shadow bird had, but still. Dindi clutched the feathers in her neck tightly.

Vessia, in bird form, followed the other Raptors down the mountains to a plateau where a huge camp of tents had been pitched. A stone hedge surrounded the camp but no permanent houses.

Vessia did not descend all the way to ground, but the other birds drove the running crowds as would eagles dive at a herd of wild sheep… if eagles carried nets. They exercised a well-rehearsed strategy, organized by trios: Two Raptors held a net between them, while the third drove the people off the cliffs and into their trap. Vessia circled far above, so screams wafted up as distant whines. Dindi couldn’t distinguish faces. All the humans squeaked and ran in a seething mass, as if the individuals didn’t matter. It was like watching rats being smoked out of a granary. It made Dindi think of what Vessia said, comparing mortal lives to seeds blown off in the wind.
This is how they see us
.

The raid ended. The Raptors flocked back to the tribehold. Vessia trailed after them at a more leisurely pace. Most of the Raptors circled around to the forbidden side of the tribehold, the western peak, where cages dangled from the cliff.  Some Riders leaped down to the cages, hooked the nets, and forced the captives to crawl from one prison to another or risk falling into the arroyo. A number of captives could not keep their balance. Their thin shrieks pierced the air when they fell.

The cages soon brimmed with people, and still there were more captives than places to keep them. The Raptors landed back at their own quarters and kept the captives huddled together on the ground while the Riders debated where to stow them.

“Interesting,” Vessia said once she was human again. Well, relatively human.

“Interesting?” exploded Dindi. “Vessia, you can’t be prepared to go along with this!”

“I don’t even know what ‘this’ is.”

“Xerpen wants human sacrifices to feed to the Black Well!”

“Yes, he told me. He was forced to this at the point of a spear. Originally, he planned to use war prisoners, but the Traitor killed them all early. That’s why he had to order this raid. Believe me, he was upset about it.”

“Yeah, because he values human life so highly.”

“Your sarcasm betrays your youth. The power fueling the Black Well was created by Lady Death to kill the Aelfae, but it now threatens all Faearth. Only Xerpen has been holding it back, at a terrible cost. Unless he feeds the Well threads of light, it will overflow and destroy everything it touches. But the Triple Sacrifice in three days—two now, I suppose—will finally fill the Well and end the threat forever.”

“He’s lying.”

“Why should he?”

“Because… because…”

Because
the Henchman of Lady Death, the man who killed your son, told me so, and I believed him and pledged my word of honor to help him…
Maybe not the most convincing argument ever.

Was Vessia right? Was Dindi so young and stupid she had trusted the wrong person? It was hard to have faith in her own judgment when she felt so hopelessly outmatched.

“I have far more reason to trust my friend than to trust
you
, little hero.” Vessia said the nickname with more affection than viciousness, but Dindi still winced. She knew she wasn’t a hero. She was certain, however, that Xerpen was a villain.

“Come, we should return to the Guest House. It’s such a lovely spring night, I’d rather sleep under the stars, but Xerpen went through such trouble to set it up for us. ”

A whip snapped, and Dindi froze. The Riders had come to some decision about the remaining prisoners, and now Orange Canyon warriors cracked whips at the captives, driving them away somewhere to await their gruesome deaths out of sight.

“It’s not right,” said Dindi, through gritted teeth.

Vessia shrugged. She was so young and beautiful. And cold as a mountain’s glacial crown. Dindi wondered if there was anything left of the woman she’d seen in the Visions at all. Dindi still wore the corncob doll, which had first introduced her to Vessia, hidden under her blouse. Unfortunately, Dindi was afraid to mention the doll, given that it was hexed by Lady Death. What could she say anyway?
Golly, you were much nicer when I spied on you through magic Visions.
Sure,
that
would work …when rocks floated.