The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (36 page)

An unnerving idea struck me. I could not remember my past; why assume I had any past at all? If the Aelfae had made the first humans from corn and blood, why couldn’t Death have made a creature of her own, with a drop
of her own blood
? What else could explain the overwhelming love I felt for this baby? Snake Bites Twice had said it was my destiny to serve Death. Maybe he had spoken more truly than even the Deathsworn knew. Maybe I had been created from whole cloth to serve her. Not as a slave, but as blood served blood.

“I came here to kill her,” I blurted.

“She knew that. She left the choice to you.”

“This can’t be a real choice.”

“It is the
only
choice, Umbral. I know you don’t want to kill the hidden Vaedi and her warrior Kavio, but they defend the Aelfae, who ruled Faearth’s past. Lady Death is our future. If the future is to live, the past must die. Whose blood would you rather have on your hands? The blood of the sworn enemies of humanity or the blood of all of humankind?
Will you kill this baby?
”

Baby Death cooed at me.

After the Vision, Umbral felt heartened. He suspected Finnadro had inadvertently shared some of his strength through the link. It was not enough to stop the throbbing pain or quiet the weird hiss in his ears, but he was able to sit up when Finnadro gave him more water.

He watched Finnadro anxiously. Lies, masks, and webs of deceit were so much more persuasive to most people, and this was why the Deathsworn dealt in shadow. No one wanted the truth of Death.

The truth was all Umbral had left.

Had it worked?

“Do you understand now?” Umbral’s voice was hoarse but at least audible.

Finnadro crouched beside him. “You have a fever, and the burns… should not be untended. There’s a Healer here. I’m going to take you to her.”

“Then you do understand. You’ll help me.”

“Yes, Umbral. Now I understand.
Of course
, I’ll help you. You should have shown me this from the beginning.”

Umbral wilted onto the mat, relieved. The pain didn’t matter anymore if Finnadro would help him.

“There’s more,” said Umbral. Now that he was telling the truth, he might as well confess everything. Together, they would avenge Dindi and save humanity.

“Dindi was the Vaedi.”

Finnadro lifted his brows. “Um.
Dindi?
That’s…surprising. That’s why you killed her?”

“I was going to kill her….” Umbral paused to cough blood. “But I didn’t. He did… The Bone Whistler killed her.”

“Ah.” Finnadro poured more water on Umbral’s back. “Wasn’t the Bone Whistler killed twenty-and-some years ago?”

“No, didn’t you see that in the Vision?” His head pounded. Ever since he had been in the Blood House, he had heard a strange hissing sound, but only now, as it seemed to be growing louder, could he tell what it was: screaming. It was so hard to think clearly above the screaming.

“No…wait… that was the Vision I shared with Dindi, not you…. The Bone Whistler is alive. He’s here, he’s the War Chief of Orange Canyon. Xerpen.”

“
Xerpen
is the Bone Whistler.”

“Yes, yes.”

“And
he
killed Dindi, not you.”

“Yes, yes.”

“And what about those other two men? Did he torture and kill them too? What about the one who captured me, cut my leg, and started to drain my power? That wasn’t really you…. It was the Bone Whistler—Xerpen?”

“It was…” Umbral should tell the truth, right?
The walls are screaming
. But, wait, no, he still couldn’t tell him the truth about
that
, it would not help bring Finnadro to his cause at all. “…complicated.”

“You seem confused. Don’t you know if you’re guilty or not?”

“I don’t know.” Umbral rubbed his head.

All the skulls are howling
. He just wanted to sleep. He hadn’t done more than doze fitfully for a few moments stretch in three days. “Finnadro, we have to kill the Bone Whistler before the eclipse. Dindi was going to help me, that’s why he killed her. But I’m too weak to do it alone. I need you.”

“I will help you, Umbral,” Finnadro promised. “I understand everything now.”

But through the leash, Umbral heard the thought behind the words:
I
do
understand now…. A man who believes delusions becomes a monster
.

The truth had not worked at all. Finnadro didn’t believe any of it. Not that Xerpen the Orange Canyon War Chief was really the Bone Whistler, not that the Bone Whistler was alive, not that Dindi was the Vaedi, not even that Lady Death had appeared to him as a baby.

Finn thinks I’m a lunatic
.

Of course he did. Umbral’s connection with reality felt pretty tenuous. All around him, the bony jaws in the walls of the Blood House seemed to be gnashing and yowling like dogs set on fire. The screaming in his ears was unbearable. He knew it wasn’t real, but he couldn’t think past the haze of pain in his mind. Finnadro probably knew Umbral wasn’t entirely sane at the moment, and it wasn’t a leap to wonder if he had
ever
been sane.

Finn’s pity was so obvious now, that Umbral wondered how he had missed it.

He shielded his own thoughts behind a maze of screaming walls. He sensed that Finnadro didn’t want to go too deeply into those twists and turns, and that allowed Umbral to squirrel away his spinning thoughts before they leaked through the leash.

If Finnadro thought he was a lunatic, why did he not just kick Umbral back into the fire or in the oubliette, as he’d threatened? There could be only one reason. Finnadro didn’t believe Lady Death was a baby, that she could change age at will, so he didn’t understand that she
was here right now in person
. Mrigana was the only Aelfae with violet eyes. If Finnadro had been paying attention, he would have recognized that she
had
to be the Traitor.

Finnadro didn’t realize Umbral had already turned in the Traitor, so he was humoring “the lunatic” until he could pluck out more memories. Maybe Finnadro would even take him to the Healer—outside the Blood House. Outside the screaming, outside the pain, outside the insanity.

He is not going to help me.

But I can’t let him know I know that.

I have to get out of the Blood House
.

The sheep bleated. The sheep, a young ewe, was easily distinguished from her male counterpart by her slender horns, delicate as a tiara upon her narrow face. Her fur was snowy white and gently curled. She pawed the stone of the inner courtyard, where the humans had tied her to a post.

“This is your big plan?” Yastara asked Vessia. “A sheep?”

“The humans delivered it to us without question, didn’t they?” Vessia asked.

“I don’t see how feasting on mutton is going to help,” said Yastara.

“There
is
a new seasoning for lamb I’d like to try out,” said Hest. “This animal is a little older than I envisioned, but if I braised the meat longer…”

“We aren’t going to
eat
the sheep,” Vessia snapped.

Hest’s hopeful expression collapsed. “Oh.”

The inner courtyard was walled in by the two long lodges and two smaller houses, which formed a tall rectangular wall around the courtyard. Vessia peered between the buildings to the outer terrace, where the Storm Wraith kept vigil. Even Aelfae needed food and sleep, but Vessia knew the undead thing, woven from foul magic and blood sacrifice, would never close an eye. The Wraith sensed her regard and turned his beastly head, with black, lidless orbs, to stare at her. His mouth opened in a roar. Black, bat-like clouds of darkness rushed over the wall.

Vessia and the other Aelfae leaped back, weapons raised. The bat-like wisps of darkness battered them, icy cold, shrieking. The brush of their wings brought searing pain.

“Don’t let them touch you!” Mrigana cried. “They’re tainted with death!”

The Aelfae danced a martial
tama
and fought the bats with nets of color and light. Destroyed, the bats boiled into black rain, the droplets of which burned whatever they touched, like acid, pitting stone and scorching flesh. After a brutal bout, the Aelfae dissolved the last bat. All that remained was black ooze bubbling in the crevices between stones in the courtyard.

“Bring the sheep inside,” Vessia said, trying to hide how shaken she was. Even the Wraith’s breath had almost overcome them.

The ewe was not as hefty as a ram, not even quite full grown, but seemed larger inside the close lodge. The sheep was not happy to be wedged between beds, until she discovered the cots were packed with straw under the wool blankets. She nudged aside the blankets to chew the straw.

Vessia surveyed her army: six Aelfae, including one Traitor; a human clown; and a sheep busy eating a bed. It was not encouraging.

“Are you ready, Dindi?” Vessia asked.

“Yes,” said Dindi. She did not even ask what she needed to be ready to do.

Poor, naïve lamb. Vessia knew she was sending the girl to almost certain death, and the knowledge made her heart ache. During peace, elders protected the young. During war, it was always the young who were slain for the sake of their elders’ schemes.

And this was War.

“Tell me what I must do,” said Dindi.

Should she tell them about the corncob doll? Should she offer to fight the Storm Wraith alone? Could she defeat it, even with the doll’s Death Curse? The Storm Wraith was stronger than the Mud Monster had been, stronger than the Bog Mummy. Dindi wasn’t sure what her chances were. Even more uncertain, however, was whether the Aelfae would accept the aid of Death magic. That had been exactly what turned them against Xerpen. Now that they finally saw the danger he posed, Dindi did not want to lose their trust.

“You’re going to sneak out of here,” Vessia told Dindi. “The Storm Wraith is an undead Aelfae, so his bond with us is strong, although forged of hate and envy. He knows you are here also, but his sense of you is not so strong. He has been watching us. If he continues to ‘see’ you among us, he’ll think you are still here… even if you are really somewhere else.”

“Uh…” Dindi hoped Vessia planned to elaborate a bit more, because that made less sense than rock pie.

Vessia pointed to the sheep. “That will be the new Dindi.”

Not helpful.

“Of course,” said Mrigana. “That’s perfect.”

“Can we still eat it afterward?” asked Hest.

“Xerpen would be suspicious if we ate Dindi,” said Kia.

“Please,” said Dindi, “I don’t understand.”

Vessia flashed a mischievous smile. “Just watch.”

The Aelfae evidently understood her plan. Without being told, they joined into a circle, and danced around the sheep. That they had to leap over cots and flutter near the ceiling didn’t bother them. The dance didn’t bother the sheep either, who kept placidly chewing the straw in the bed, even as a brilliant glow enveloped her.

The light waxed so bright Dindi had to cover her face with her arms. When the radiance subsided, and she blinked, the sheep was gone. In the ewe’s place stood a girl…

A girl who looked exactly like Dindi.

“By the Lost Wheel!” Dindi blurted.

“It’s a doppelgänger,” Vessia said. “A perfect likeness.”

Sheep-Dindi went down on her hands and knees and began to chew the straw in the mat.

“Well, obviously, there are a
few
differences,” Vessia allowed.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Dindi breathed.

“Of course. If an Aelfae or a human can take the shape of an animal, it is only logical that an animal can be given the shape of an Aelfae or human. The animal is still an animal, however, and because it is not in this shape of its own will, as an Aelfae shapeshifter would be, the change will not last long. By midnight, the magic will fade and ‘you’ will turn back into a ewe.”

Hest and Kia laughed. Dindi smiled weakly. She was too frightened right now to find anything funny.

“So I have only a few hours before my absence is noticed.”

“Yes. But you don’t have to go far. Just across the Bridge of One Thread to the forbidden slope. There you must enter, unseen, into the Loom House. You must perform the
tama
I will teach you. Then you must wrap threads from the Loom around a spindle and bring them back here.”

Fa, is
that
all
, Dindi thought sarcastically. “Then what?”

“Then we will have what we need to unweave Xerpen’s memory, and restore him to the honorable man he once was, before Death magic corrupted him.”

Black clouds obscured the stars, and although it was no longer raining, the rocks in the wall were slick. While the Aelfae made a show of escorting Sheep-Dindi around the inner courtyard, the real Dindi crept over the farthest wall from the Storm Wraith. She was dressed in dark purple legwals and a tight-fitted tunic of the same dark shade, (clothes borrowed from Mrigana), and her face was smeared with black grease. Her hair was tied back in a tight braid. She eased herself over the corner between the lodge and a cookhouse and dropped to the other side.