The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (37 page)

She landed in a crouch and waited, every muscle tense, for a flash of lightning or a flurry of wraith-bats, any indication that the Storm Wraith had noticed her escape. The night was silent except for a lone cricket and the hoots of the small owls, which lived in the rafters of the lodges.

One thing could be said of Cliffedge, the Orange Canyon tribehold; it had no lack of crags, crevices, and shadowy niches to hide a girl intent on stealth. Dindi scurried and slithered from one nook to another, past Eagle Lords and warriors in feathered warbonnets, past laughing groups of men deep in their beer bowls, past Riders leading their blindfolded slaves on leashes up and down stairways of stone.

When she reached the Bridge of One Thread, she had to stand and walk across an open space, the Plaza of the Spider, but there was no one here, for no one but fae could cross the bridge unaided without falling into the chasm.

No matter how many times Dindi faced the Bridge, it did not cease to steal her breath and batter her courage to a nub. She faced it now for a long moment, tasting the winds, and testing the air to find the invisible thread.

The howl was more terrible than ever, whipped up by the threat of storm that had arrived with the Storm Wraith. The Black Well fumed and frothed with a frenzy she had not seen before, as if it knew its time had almost come to spill over its confines. The darkness reached almost to the top of the canyon now. Cold gnawed her, raising prickles on her flesh.

Dindi closed her eyes and tried to banish the darkness with a memory of light. She thought of Kavio, holding her in his arms, dancing with her, a rainbow of power around him. She thought of Umbral crying to her to spread her wings as they fell through the empty sky.

Unbidden, she saw a flash of another memory: Umbral’s Dark Initiation upon Obsidian Mountain, when he had stabbed Kavio through the heart.

I understand now, Umbral
, she thought.
I still don’t know why you became what you are. But I know how they turned you into a blade of Death.

She opened her eyes. Below her, the seething darkness mocked her with shrieks that sounded like sadistic laughter.

“You shall not win,” she told the darkness. Her voice was lost in the wind, but she knew some mindless evil within the dark heard her and screeched with rage. Tentacles of darkness whipped up from the chasm, but they could not yet reach the top.

“Mayara,” she whispered. “I am your daughter. Help me!”

She felt an itch in her back. She focused all her will. Her spine warmed, wonderfully, as if a beam of sunlight shone upon her back while soothing oil was being rubbed into her shoulder blades. The cold no longer mattered. Dindi spread her wings behind her.

She knew she still could not fly. The wings were too fragile, too new to her. But they helped her maintain her balance, helped her fight the wind, as she crossed the invisible thread, step by step. No matter how the gales clawed at her, or sought to throw her down, she maintained her pace across the entire chasm.

She reached the forbidden mountaintop, with its strange, mismatched edifices. One of the houses, built from roundish white stones, glowed with an ugly ruddy light. It repelled her, as if an unspeakable abomination lurked inside, scratching to get out. She hurried past it.

Beyond, jutting above the rest of the hills, stood the ancient megaliths of the Loom House. Several of the creepy blindmutes shuffled by, and, despite their white eyes, Dindi feared their notice and hid until they passed. Midnight was not far off. She did not have much time. Yet she waited a long time to make sure they were gone before she resumed her crawl up the terraced earth to the Loom House.

Two bird-headed Vyfae, with the bodies of beefy men, guarded the door.

Dindi despaired. She had not thought anything would be guarded, since no human could come here. Perhaps Xerpen feared fae intruders. How was she to pass the High Fae?

She tugged the cord around her neck. She kept it there, always, and others seldom noticed it: the corncob doll. With this, she could not just kill the fae, but destroy them utterly, for all eternity.

But it would mean wielding the Curse. Was Vessia right? Was that what had corrupted Xerpen? And what about Umbral?

Dindi didn’t want to take the chance. She’d have to do this the old-fashioned way.

The place where the Aelfae had danced the other night
was not far. Dindi hopped down there and searched the ground until she found what she needed. Tiny pods: the curled up flori who had fallen into hibernation when their mistress the Green Lady had been captured and tortured. She scooped up as many as she could find and brought them back with her to the Loom House.

Crouching behind a crag, she held the pods in her cupped hands and breathed warmth into them until the pixies uncurled, yawned and rubbed their eyes.

“Is it Spring yet?” asked one little green girl.

“Brrrr,” complained a little green boy, “Cold for spring.”

“Friends, I need your help,” Dindi whispered. She explained quickly. She gave one of them a sharp stick.

The pixies darted into the air. They wagged their tails in front of the Vyfae and stuck out their tongues.

“Hey, bird-brain! Bet you can’t catch us!” they squealed.

The Vyfae grunted and waved them away. “Bug off, pests!”

The pixies realized they weren’t being annoying enough. To a pixie, that was a challenge. They began to land on the heads of the Vyfae, tickle their toes, untie the cords around their spears. The Vyfae squawked in outrage, but when the pixies fluttered away, the guards were satisfied. They did not leave their post.

One bold pixie lad rammed a Vyfae in the eye with the sharpened stick. Blood spurted out when the eyeball popped grotesquely. That did it.

“WE WILL SMASH YOU!”

The pixies fled away over a hillock, and the two Vyfae flew after them.

Dindi slipped inside the Loom House.

The Loom was as tall as three Tavaedies standing foot-upon shoulder. The threads of the Loom were pure Light, of all Chromas, drawn from the substance of the world itself. In the light of the Loom, the giant stones of the walls became clear as water, the mountain itself, transparent. She could see across the whole of Faearth, as if it were all part of the same immense Tapestry. Strains of music reverberated in her ears, woven like swimming light into the ever shifting, ever changing Patterns on the great Loom. Dindi stared at the spectacle, slack-jawed in awe, before she recalled to herself her purpose here. The room became again a simple room of stone, the Loom simply a large wooden device.

She danced the
tama
Vessia had taught her. An Aelfae would not have needed to memorize a
tama
, but Dindi was not ready to trust her intuition for such an esoteric and essential spell. Vessia had also given her a stick to use as a spindle, but Dindi had given it to the pixies. Instead, Dindi used the corncob doll as a spindle, catching it upon the magic threads of light that fed into the Loom. Maybe mixing Death magic and Light magic was not wise, but then again, she was not sure a simple stick would have withstood the strain of the strands of Light. The corncob shimmered under the burden, even though the threads were gossamer thin, almost invisible, like the Bridge of One Thread.

When she had captured many arm’s lengths of filamentous magic, Dindi put the corncob doll back around her neck. She did not cut the threads. Vessia had told her she could not, even if she’d wanted to. The ends seemed to release from the Loom and crimp up like wisps, but Dindi knew they were not truly disconnected from their source.

She emerged from the Loom House. The Vyfae, with just three eyes among the two of them, were still away, chasing pixies.

Triumph electrified her. She had never expected to get this far. Now all she had to do was survive the return trip.

She did not dare think too much about how well everything was going as she crept back across the mountaintop, from stairwell to stairwell, courtyard to courtyard, past wild heaps of uncarved rock and mountain sward. She took a different route from before, because she had to avoid different groups of blindmutes. This time, she circled closer to the edge of the mountain.

She had not realized, however, how close she’d come to the upside down tree, until she saw it.

The Green Lady was bound there, horribly brutalized, but—most terrible of all—still alive. The Vyfae had not killed her at sunset this day, but left her to die as slowly as possible. Tears stung Dindi’s eyes to see the beautiful faery in agony.

How could she leave the Sylfae queen like this?

Dindi glanced at the sky. Despite the cloud cover, she knew it was almost midnight. Her ovine double would revert to a quadruped soon…. She didn’t have time to rescue the Green Lady. Not to mention, Dindi would be a fool to jeopardize the mission against Xerpen.

Then again, it was widely agreed, wasn’t it, that she
was
a fool.

Dindi whistled. A dozen of the green pixies she had freed zoomed to her.

“Did you lose the Vyfae?” she asked.

“Of course!” they scoffed. “Not hard at all!”

“Good,” said Dindi. “Because now we are going to free your Lady.”

Dindi eased herself carefully down the trunk of the upside down tree. The pixies bit and chewed through the ropes binding her, and when the faery fell free, Dindi caught her. The faery was taller than Dindi, but slender, and light as a child to carry. Dindi had no trouble climbing back up the tree with her.

“But how will we get our Lady off the mountain?” the pixies asked. For once they had the good sense to speak in hushed voices. “We are not strong enough to carry her, and she has not enough strength herself to fly. No others of our kind can come here without the Vyfae knowing.”

“I’ll have to take her back with me,” Dindi said. But she hesitated, dismayed. It was one thing to climb with the Green Lady up the tree trunk. It was another to carry her all the way across the forbidden summit, secretly and stealthily… and what would she do when she reached the Bridge of One Thread?

Fa, I’m an idiot! A clown indeed. What was I thinking? I can’t do this!

She should leave the Green Lady here, to her fate. So what if she died a few more times before Xerpen was defeated? Once he was gone, the power of the Vyfae could be broken by the other Aelfae, and the Green Lady would be fine. Right?

But Dindi thought of the Black Well, ever rising, waxing in might, hour by hour, and she wasn’t sure. That dark magic could consume any soul it touched, human, low fae, high fae or Aelfae. She was sure the Vyfae did not truly understand the power Xerpen had unleashed. The Aelfae themselves had refused for a long time to face it. What if the darkness consumed the Green Lady into eternal oblivion? What would become of the woods, the flowers, and all the green and growing things of the world? Of warmth, love, and compassion? Would there ever again be a spring dawn?

She shouldered the faery and resumed her creeping, slower than before. Weren’t faeries supposed to be waify? The wounded maiden did not feel like a light burden now.

The agitation of the Vyfae brought more of them swarming around the buildings. Their predatory shrieks sounded furious, angrier than even blinding by pixies could account for. Had they discovered the Green Lady was missing?

The blindmutes, perhaps in response, also poured out of their huts in greater numbers. Soon Dindi found one path cut off by a pack of blindmutes and the other end by a flock of Vyfae. She realized they would converge on her.

She leapt over a rock wall, and then over another, dashing and darting, until she had no idea where she was anymore. All she knew was that she had to avoid being seen.

The Green Lady groaned in her arms. Soft as the exhalation was, it was too loud with hunters all around them. Dindi glanced over her shoulder and saw the orange glow of approaching Vyfae. She broke into a run, looking back to make sure they weren’t following…

…and ran smack into the chest of a man in a feathered robe. He grabbed her by the arm, pinching her painfully.

“Why in such a hurry, little clown?” The man smirked down. Then he released his grip and caressed her face. He wore a tall headdress with an attached mask, but behind it, his eyes glistened.

When she met his gaze, worry fell away from her. The black clouds parted, opening the heavens to the stars, and rays of moonlight fell upon the two of them like a grace. She dropped the Green Lady to the ground. The faery moaned in pain but did not awaken. Dindi no longer cared. She stared up at the man touching her cheek with adoration.

I belong to you
, she told him, though she was unable to speak out loud. Speech was superfluous.
I am yours! I love you!

“I know,” he replied gently, with a faint smile. “And I love you.”

It was Xerpen.

Umbral hated the weakness that forced him to lean on Finnadro to walk. Finnadro had wanted to carry him, but that would have been worse. Umbral insisted on standing upright, at least, even though every step shot bolts of agony through his body.

“I don’t think you’ll make it across the Bridge,” muttered Finnadro. “But I will take you to rest in the Waiting House, and have the Healer summoned to meet you. Curse those blindmutes, they should not have used the Third Rung!”