The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (35 page)

“Don’t listen to the human!” Hest said angrily. “Don’t you recognize who it is? It’s our brother Ovin Skylord! We all thought him lost…”

“He
was
lost!” said Lothlo. “I’m sorry, brother, but the human is right. We learned this to our sorrow yesterday. This is Ovin, yet not Ovin.”

“I can reach him!” Hest held out his hand to the Storm Wraith.

Lothlo and Yastara both tried to stop Hest, but it was too late. Gale, wail, and hail forced them back, even as the winds parted to let Hest surge forward.

The undead Storm Wraith eagerly grasped the hand. Hest bellowed, an animal sound, shock curdled by pain, and writhed helplessly in the noose of the Storm Wraith’s encircling arms.

Dindi knew she was the only one who could stop the Storm Wraith. If she used the corncob doll in front of the Aelfae, in front of Xerpen, she would put herself in danger, but if she did nothing, Hest would die and never come back to life again. She couldn’t let the Curse have him twice.

She ran forward to hit the Storm Wraith with the corncob doll.

Vessia shoved her out of the way, to confront the Wraith first.

“No!” Dindi shouted. “It can destroy you!”

Vessia stood undaunted before the Wraith, but her attention was on Xerpen.

“Enough, Xerpen!” she cried. “You’ve made your point.”

The squall bent around him, so he stood in the middle of the deluge untouched and dry. A faint smile played on his lips. He lifted his hand and made the inverse of the gesture he’d made before. The lightning ceased; the rain abated; the wind subsided.

The Storm Wraith remained but bowed its head to Xerpen.

“Go into the lodge,” Xerpen commanded Vessia and the Aelfae. “Remain there until the Eclipse tomorrow. After the final sacrifice, we will have all the power we need to deal with the human upstarts
my
way.”

“As you command, Xerpen,” Vessia said. She shouted at the others. “You heard him! Into the lodge!”

The Aelfae stared at her. They were frozen in shock. Except for Mrigana. Nothing seemed to shock
her
. Dazed, they filed into the lodge.

Xerpen curled his finger at Dindi.

“Human girl, you will come with me.”

Fear bolted through Dindi, but she could not stop her feet from dragging her toward him. Her mouth dried, and panic clawed the inside of her skull, but she couldn’t scream or cry or even protest.

Vessia grabbed her by the arm. Xerpen’s thrall over Dindi melted away.

“The clown comes with me,” snapped Vessia.

For a moment, she and Xerpen locked gazes.

He shrugged. “Take her.”

Dindi scurried into the lodge without being told. Vessia was the last inside. She fastened the rawhide door apron behind her. The Storm Wraith still stood outside the lodge, like a sentry, but at least now they did not have to look into the black abyss that glowered about him.

“That was Ovin,” Hest said unsteadily, to no one in particular. “But…”

“You could not have helped him,” said Yastara. “Don’t you think we tried that yesterday with Gaya? Whatever these undead are, they are neither alive nor dead. All they feel is pain and hate and hunger! If you try to touch their thoughts, you share their madness.”

Lothlo said, “It’s as though they were resurrected, as we were, but incompletely.”

“Or incorrectly,” said Yastara. “They had nothing of light in them, yet their bodies were indestructible—as if their bodies but not their auras were immortal.”

“Now you tell me,” said Hest, cupping his head in his hands. Where the Storm Wraith had touched him, red sores festered on his arms and neck.

“What does this mean, Vessia?” Kia asked.

“It means Xerpen has gone mad,” said Vessia, and she added, with even greater bitterness, “And we are his captives. We have been, all along. That’s why one of the undead things attacked Lothlo and Yastara when they disobeyed Xerpen’s instructions and left the tribehold. Xerpen controls these undead.”

“But how is that possible?”

“Because he created them,” said Vessia. “As he created the Black Well. Created it, fed it, and fattened it with blood sacrifices, for years upon years. It was right in front of me, but I refused to see….” She smiled crookedly at Dindi. “The little clown tried to warn me, and still I refused to see.”

“Vessia,” Mrigana asked carefully, “Are you saying we have to kill Xerpen?”

“No, of course we will not kill our friend,” said Vessia. “But we
do
have to stop him before the sacrifice tomorrow. We must do to him what he did to me.”

Mrigana raised her brows questioningly.

“Take his memory,” said Vessia. “Take away the years that have made him mad, and restore to him the innocence and goodness he lost. But we cannot do it alone. That Storm Wraith will never let an Aelfae out of this room.” She placed a hand on Dindi’s shoulder. “Are you ready to play hero?”

Vio stood on a boulder that jutted out into the river. He held his staff but did not lean on it; his back was straight and proud. The sun smeared bloody fingers on the western sky, but it had not yet set. He would give her more time.

His face was so bleak, none of the men dared approach him, except Danumoro, who crouched on the boulder at his side.

Deeper the sun sank into a darkening sky, and still, Vessia did not return to him.

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” Danumoro said at length.

“Don’t.”

Danumoro sighed and kept his peace.

Eagles wheeled in the sky. They were ordinary birds, not giant shapeshifters, but Vio frowned at them, thinking of portents and omens. Their journey animal had been a hawk. He had his own notions of what that might bode, but he kept it to himself. Also, it was unseasonably cold, even for this altitude. Strangeness in the weather, in his experience, was always the fault of either fae or hexers, sometimes the ill-fated collusion of both.

“At home, I have a fine blanket,” said Vio after a while. “I’ve had it as long as I’ve been married. It was from Orange Canyon, as I recall, and the wool, when it was new, was starchy and rough, not very comfortable to be honest, though I used it because it was tough. You know how blankets are. Sometimes, after too much use, they fall apart at the seams, becoming two separate pieces of cloth held together only by a few threads. Any strain will rend them apart. But this blanket was not one of those. Some blankets actually improve the more you use them; the threads become matted and tangled together until the rough wool feels as soft as felt. Those are the comfortable kind that you wear every day. Vessia and I would sit together on the balcony, sharing that blanket. I will bring her back, Danu, and we will sit on our balcony again, together.”

“Sometimes a man must accept that a woman does not choose him.”

Vio grunted. He tempered his anger when he saw the sadness in Danu’s face, and remembered that Danumoro had loved her once too, but she had chosen to marry Vio instead.

“What if she doesn’t love you any more?” Danumoro asked quietly. “We don’t know what the Bone Whistler did to her—he is capable of any evil.”

“I don’t know how much of herself he stole from her. But I know she is stronger than he thinks. Something of her true self
must
remain. I will not give up on her, because I know she would never give up on me.”

The last rays of light died. Hidden in the dark, the river was a rushing sound behind them; the mountain was a silent presence in front of them.

“She’s not coming,” said Vio.

Danumoro stood up and clasped Vio’s hand. “Then we will go and get her.”

Finnadro had suspected all along the brutes enjoyed inflicting pain. It wasn’t their fault; they were kept alive, as an act of mercy Xerpen said, by the force of Xerpen’s will alone. The reason for their seeming blindness and inarticulateness was that, to achieve any higher functioning, they had to be directed like puppets by Xerpen’s own magic. Otherwise they reverted to the lowest animal behavior, eating, defecating, and hurting others for entertainment.

They were enjoying Umbral’s suffering over the fire when Finnadro climbed down the ladder.

“Get him off of there!” Finnadro snapped at the blindmutes.

From where Umbral lay bound, he met Finnadro’s eyes.

Thank you, Finn
.

The gratitude made Finnadro feel ashamed. The blindmutes lifted the wooden frame off the pit, and Finnadro himself helped cut the leather cords, which had been melted into impossible knots, off of Umbral’s wrists and feet.

Umbral fell into his arms, and Finnadro helped the damaged man to lie down on the floor.

“Water,” Finnadro said.

The blindmutes brought him a jar. He gave some to Umbral to drink and poured the rest in a steady stream over the burns.

Umbral’s parched lips moved, but no words came out. Finnadro had to strain to pluck the thought directly.

I don’t have the strength to feed you the Vision. You’ll have to take it
.

Finnadro did not want to go back into that maze of ice. He did not trust Umbral. Weak, pitiful, even weeping he was, yes, but was he
broken
? Whether through the leash or through some other, even deeper intuition, Finnadro sensed that at the core, Umbral still had one strand left that had not been cut, one more trap to spring.

Why did he want Finnadro to see why he had chosen to dedicate himself to the Deathsworn? Was he ready to surrender, or did he hope to convert Finnadro? Suppose the Deathsworn had woven some spell of power around him, and now he wanted to entwine Finnadro in the same spell? To extend a Pattern in that way, without a new
tama
to weave it, would be impossible for any but the most powerful Zavaedi.

If anyone could do it, Umbral could.

Having Umbral at his mercy had not helped ease Finnadro’s nightmares from their first meeting at all. His dreams these last two nights had been worse than ever.

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Finnadro. “I don’t care why you became the monster you are, Umbral. I don’t care about you at all anymore. I want one thing only from you: the identity of the Traitor. Give that to me, and I’ll give you a merciful death. Otherwise, I will let them hang you in the abyss.”

To himself, he swore he would never do that; but it was the only threat he had left.

The threat
worked
.

Finnadro felt the change through the leash: Umbral’s struggle to find some other road, his despair as he realized he had one path left, and finally,
finally
, his
surrender
.

He would walk only the road Finnadro left him.

The glowing eyes of every skull in the Blood House flared brightly for a moment, surged to power by Finnadro’s own triumph. He was drawing power from the Blood House, and it reflected power back to him. He tamped down the giddy pleasure he felt at
winning
. He still needed to see the Vision.

Again, Umbral’s mouth moved, but only a groan emerged.

“Say it again,” said Finnadro, listening, not to the moan, but to the thought.

I tried to kill Lady Death
.

“What does that have to do with the Traitor?”

You’ll have to see to understand…

The light in the skulls flickered black. The lamps relit but more dimly. Finnadro wanted to growl and chew Umbral’s throat out. Even in surrender, Umbral had managed to do it on his own terms. If Finnadro wanted to know the Traitor’s identity, he had to risk confronting Lady Death herself, as Umbral had.

Whatever she had done to Umbral, whatever torture she had put him through, had been so terrible that even here in the Blood House, faced with worse terrors than Finnadro had ever dreamed existed, Umbral still could not quite betray her.

It’s only a Vision
, Finnadro reminded himself.
It won’t have the same power over you as it had over Umbral a year ago
.

And yet, he was afraid.

Obsidian Mountain had been named for its quarries, which only the Deathsworn themselves were permitted to mine. I found I had a knack for finding rich veins of obsidian. Once I had earned more of my captors’ trust, they welcomed my strong arms and back in the quarry, since many of the other Deathsworn lacked my level of fitness. To my surprise, I found I also knew how to knap the shiny black stone, though I had no memory of learning how.

“Is there nothing you cannot do?” Ash asked in wonder one day while she watched me tap out a blade of obsidian.

“Leave.”

“Well, I can’t leave the Deathsworn, either.”

“Remember.”

“Memory is overrated. I don’t remember what happened to me before I came here. But I know why.”

I paused to study my stone. “Why, Ash? You’re so young.”

“Oh, I was younger still when they brought me. A child of eight summers.”

“Mercy, Ash…” For a moment, my reserve broke, shattered by shock and sympathy. I bent again over my tapping.

I had one purpose since I had been stripped of my Chromas: To kill Lady Death and escape captivity. I couldn’t afford to care about my captors.

“This is what I’ve heard. As I suppose you’ve guessed, I was born of the Red Spears Tribe. A rival clan raided our camp by night. They killed the men right away. The women and children…” Forced shrug. “The women were used. They decided I was close enough to grown to use. They left me for dead, piled with the other corpses, which they set on fire.”

“And the Deathsworn?” Umbral asked.

“When they came for the bodies, they found me and healed me. They gave me the poison that takes away memory. The same as they gave to you. They say it comes from a spider that only lives in one cave, in a secret spot somewhere in Orange Canyon.”

“How do you know all this if you don’t remember?”

“The Deathsworn who took me had watched the whole thing. They didn’t stop it. Deathsworn don’t interfere in tribal feuds. But they talked about it for years.”

“I wish I could remember what happened to me. But I suppose you must be glad you cannot.”

“The thing about fire is that it never stops burning. The heat gets trapped under your skin somehow.”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Snake Bites Twice says there is a cure for the poison. A way to get your memory back. Some kind of potion made from the venom of the same spider that causes the amnesia.”

“Is that so?” I concentrated on the stone in my hands, afraid to reveal my sharp interest.

“I know you want it.
I want it, too
.”

“Why? Remembrance could only bring you pain.”

“Or the one thing I was denied! My people have a saying: Bones burn for revenge. My skin may have stopped burning, but my bones still burn! I want to tell each of those men who did that to me, ‘Guess what. You thought a little girl like me couldn’t fight back. But I’m not that little girl anymore. Now you’re going to wish you were the one who had died.’ Dame Vulture says let your former life go. I
will
let it go… as soon as it lets
me
go.” Ash’s Penumbra flickered around her, burning, but coldly, darkly, bleakly. “One day I will remember their names and faces. Then I will hunt them down and burn them.”

Ash shook herself after a moment. Umbral held out the obsidian-in-progress.

“Very nice,” she said.

“It will kill.”

“Do you ever dream of revenge, Umbral?”

“Those who have been wronged dream of revenge. Those who have wronged others dream of forgiveness.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Which are you?”

I let a final flake fall away from the obsidian. I held up the leaf-shaped blade.  The perfect symmetry of each scallop crisped the blade’s twinned edges. The hilt, where the stone rounded, was sized to a fist. I placed it in her hand, careful of her fingers.

She played with it, jabbing at imaginary foes. “Ya! Ya!”

Snake Bites Twice arrived so quietly that she almost stabbed him with the blade.

Ash blushed, mumbled something, and handed the blade back to me. It was a cold, heavy thing, yet it had grown warm where she had gripped it. I liked the heft in my hand. This was the blade with which I planned to slit the throat of Lady Death.

“The blade to kill Kavio is complete,” I said.

Snake Bites Twice did not ask for it.

“The Lady will see you now. Follow me.”

I concealed my pleasure. The Deathsworn thought that I had finally agreed to give my Oath of Loyalty to the Black Lady.

Beyond the quarry loomed a cave like a mouth frozen in a black howl. This was the entrance to the oldest part of the settlement, dating to pre-human antiquity. I did not remember how I knew, but I had expected this. Every human settlement in Faearth had once belonged to an older, greater race. Every tribehold, and even the heart of Death’s dominion itself, had been stolen from the Aelfae.

And there were always caves.

The entrance arched like a rainbow over a deep shelf, creating a pocket in the mountain, which was oddly luminous with sunset shadows. Houses had been built into the walls here, half hewn from stone, half built up with rocks. Wrinkled men and women draped in blanket shawls, black on black, stood in front of the houses and bowed as Snake Bites Twice and I walked past.

“They bow to you, Umbral,” said Snake Bites Twice.

“To
me
?”

“The Elders honor your choice.”

Not for long
. My fist curled tighter around the hilt of the new blade.

The top of the cave sloped to meet the ground until it was no longer possible for a man to stand.

“From here, you must go alone,” said Snake Bites Twice. “Besides the Lady herself, no one except Lady Death’s Chosen, which is to say, Dame Vulture, may enter into the mountain’s womb. In the years I have been here, over three septs, only Vulture has been invited to meet the Lady in person.” Snake Bites Twice frowned, and Umbral realized this upset the old man. “And now
you
.”

Or maybe
that
was what upset him.

Was he jealous? Or protective? Did he suspect my desire to meet Lady Death was less than submissive?

“Take your weapon,” said Snake Bites Twice. “Ash told you what to do, yes?”

I was to place the dagger at her feet and swear my loyalty. I still couldn’t believe they were naïve enough to allow me face to face with Death armed.

Or maybe I was the naïf, if I thought I could kill Death herself. If humanity could so easily free ourselves of her tyranny, would we not have done so long ago? Had not the Imorvae allied themselves with the Aelfae against the Morvae and the Deathsworn in just such a foiled rebellion?

And how did I know that? I wanted to pound my head against the cave wall in frustration. I knew a thousand facts, but they added up to nothing without the missing piece of my own true name.

I held to what I was sure remained of my true self: my desire to be my own master. I would kill Death or make her kill me, but I would never be her slave.

To enter the womb of the mountain, I had to crawl. The air cloyed, and the roof narrowed so much that rock scraped my back as I slithered along like a snake. I wondered why Lady Death had never invited Snake Bites Twice to see her. The passage would have suited him.

The utter blackness and claustrophobia of the space oppressed me. I had nothing to guide me except what I could feel with my hands. I sniffed, hoping for a draft, but there was nothing in the dark but stone and stillness and stale, chalky air.

A terrible thought slunk into my mind. What if Snake Bites Twice and the others had already guessed my true intentions? What if the “invitation to meet death” was literal…they had just sent me to slither like a worm into my own tomb? Behind me, the Elders must be laughing at how eagerly I had gone to my grave.

So what? If they kill me, I still win
, I reminded myself.
At least they can’t use me
.

But I didn’t want to die easily.

I kept crawling.

The air felt fresher at last. I could no longer feel the rock pressing my back.

Ahead, I saw a faint, mauve light.

Soon, I was able to stand up in an area illuminated by weird purple light from a hidden source up ahead. It was dim, only outlining silhouettes, and I walked carefully through an uneven cavern toward it.

A sound so strange I could not at once identify it echoed through the cavern.

A flute?

An animal?

A baby.

A baby?!

Past another tight spot, I entered a spherical room so breathtaking I felt the beauty of it shimmer down my back like music. I imagined a geode, which, when split open like a clam, revealed an interior of brilliant purple crystals. This was such an orb on the grandest scale, a palace of glowing purple crystal.

One of the crystals stretched out like a road, perfectly flat and smooth, from the edge of the sphere to the center. I walked this path in a daze.

The music was no illusion. The entire room hummed with power. The majesty of it thrilled me. The song strummed the cords of my soul, a race of competing and complimentary melodies, joyous and sweet, honeyed, salted, spiced, a thousand flavors cascading, joined into a harmony greater than the sum of individual notes. 

This was not what I had expected.

The crystal sphere was hot. The black dagger almost slipped from my sweating hand. I clutched it in both hands, reminding myself of my goal, my need to be free. There were warriors who swore that Lady Death was more beautiful than any other, mortal or fae, in Faearth. I would not be seduced by beauty.

The baby wailed again.

The sound hardened me. Why would Lady Death have had a human baby brought into her secret crystal chamber except for some dark ceremony involving blood sacrifice?

The deeper I penetrated into the crystal womb, the more crystals crisscrossed my path like reticular branches. I had to duck under and step over the spikes. Other spots were clear of any other crystals besides the “road”; I could see the bottom of the sphere more than a hundred spans down, filled with deadly spears of crystal pointing up, like a defensive pit bristled to impale intruders. Even in these clear spots, however, I could not see what awaited me.

What awaited me, at the heart of the sphere, seated on a crystal slab, was an old woman rocking a baby in her arms.

“There you are at last, Umbral,” she said.

The old woman was Dame Vulture.

“We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought I was to meet Lady Death.”

“Indeed.”

“You?”

She laughed. She stood and dropped the baby into my arms, forcing me to catch it or let it fall to the briar of crystal thorns a hundred feet below.

Oh, mercy. What if there was one last test before the Black Lady appeared to me in person?

Please tell me they don’t want me to prove my loyalty by killing this baby
.

It—she—the baby—had violet eyes. She smiled at me. Innocence personified.

I must have seen infants before—hadn’t I? I envisioned myself as a boy, disgusted by snotty noses and poopy bottoms; or as a brash young warrior, disdainful and distant from milky infants.

This baby was different
. I felt strangely linked to her. It was as if someone had reached into my chest, pulled out my heart, and handed it back to me in a tiny body. It would make no sense to describe the protectiveness I felt for this child as
love
. That word was a cup too shallow to hold the ocean of connection between us. If she hurt, I hurt. If she smiled, I smiled. If she died, I died. She was my heart.

“Lady Death appears to us as many different ages,” said Dame Vulture. “Lately, she has been like this.”

The baby cooed and tugged at Umbral’s vest.

“
This
is Lady Death? This
baby
?”

“Yes.”

Baby Death.

I had to sit down.

Dame Vulture sat beside me. “It’s fitting, is it not?”

This was not fitting. This was the opposite of fitting.

“At the dawn of our race, when there were only two humans, the first man and the first woman, the Aelfae wanted to kill them,” said Dame Vulture. “Only one Aelfae defended them, hiding them from the rest to save the pair’s lives. Only
she
, of all her kind, took our side.”

“At a price.”

“We are mortal by nature, Umbral,” Vulture said gently. “The Aelfae made us as toys. They made the first human bodies by mixing corn meal and blood. It was a game to them, I think. They never meant us to breed, spread, and think for ourselves. They never meant for us to
grow
. But that is what maize does. It outgrows its roots. It may begin in the mud, but it reaches for the sky. Only
she
valued that. Only
she
defended us. Now will
you
defend her?”