The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (48 page)

“Thank you, friend!” he said to the wolfling. He waved to Vio, who waved back. He and his archers were harassing the Raptors as best they could, but as long as they were trapped on the far side of the ravine, there was not much they could contribute to the war.

The Sylfae dug their root-like feet into the edge of the cliff, bent their heads, and stretched out their arms. The branches weren’t long enough, but the Sylfae pulsed with shimmering emerald light, and the branches grew and grew, faster than vines, all the way across the empty space, until the huge trees formed a half dozen living bridges.

Vio lifted his spear and shouted a war cry. He led his army across the tree trunks.

“Well met…” Finn cried, holding out his arm as Vio approached. He broke off, startled, then fell on his face. He rolled over and clutched his side, which gushed hot liquid into his hands. He held them up in astonishment. Blood dripped on his face. Through his red fingers, he could see the moon had begun to eclipse the sun.

Harcho had stabbed him from behind. Leering, he plunged his double-pointed spear downward for the final blow.

Vio arrived a moment too late to save Finnadro from Harcho the Bone Breaker’s first blow, but he intercepted the second. Vio could not pause to see if Finnadro had survived. Harcho slashed the sharpened teeth of his spear at Vio, who ducked, rolled, and swiveled his own spear at Harcho’s back. Harcho spun into a two legged kick that avoided the spear and smacked Vio in the face. Vio grabbed one of his feet and twisted Harcho to the ground.

Harcho took the fall and came back up swinging.

“I know who you are,” said Harcho. His next kick landed in Vio’s chest, shoving him into a back roll. When Vio would have come up, his weak arm betrayed him. Harcho’s spear sliced him across the face, knocking him to the ground. Harcho laughed. “And I have to say, I’m disappointed!”

He spun his spear as fast as a windwheel in a storm and rained down blows at his leisure. Vio speared upward, but the momentum was wrong; Harcho kicked the spear out of his hand, then delivered another round of smacks with the jagged brunt of his weapon.

Vio could not regain his balance. It was all he could do to scramble out of the way, wheezing from the hit to his chest, which had knocked out his breath. Razor thin mountain air didn’t help.

“You should be snoozing by the hearth, old man,” sneered Harcho. “I have no time to fight gray-haired fools.”

A hand shot out to grab Harcho’s foot. They had both forgotten Finnadro, or dismissed him as dead, but, though scarlet puddled around him and he could not rise from where he lay, he could do this.

Harcho kicked Finn in the face with a foul curse, but the momentary distraction was all that Vio needed. He marshaled his reservoir of strength and flung himself at Harcho’s spear. He broke the long spear over Harcho’s head.

Dazed, Harcho sank to his knees. Vio snapped his neck and tossed the corpse on the dirt.

He fell to his own knees then, under a wave of dizziness. He crawled to Finnadro.

Finn’s eyes were glazing over, but he still had a pulse.

Most of his warriors had already teemed over the living bridges and joined the battle against Orange Canyon. The Healers, however, had set up their dancing circle on the eastern slope, and darted over to the combat side only to escape again with the wounded. Vio waved at one.

A familiar figure in Yellow reached his side and knelt by Finnadro.

“Danu,” said Vio. “Will he survive?”

“The spear seems to have missed anything vital,” said Danu, already wrapping up the wound.

“Good. Carry him back to the Healing Circle.” Vio straightened.

“Wait a minute…where are
you
going?” demanded Danumoro.

“Where do you think? To fight, Danu. To fight!”

Dindi was momentarily distracted by the sights beyond her duel with Umbral. On either side of the chasm, fighting erupted as armies teemed up the mountain from the west and even from the east. Great trees toppled and stretched impossibly far to create bridges across the chasm on either side of the Bridge of One Thread. Men on the west slope poured across those bridges to the east.

She was foolish to look away from her own fight for even a blink. Umbral made no such mistake. He smashed Dindi’s spear out of her hand. It keened as it fell into the darkness, which gnashed at it like jaws of shadow. She kept fighting, but now she had to deflect the killing blows with punches and kicks, and every hit jarred her to the bone.

She loved him. She had lost him once and never wanted to lose him again. But she would kill him if she had to.

She pulled the corncob doll free of her blouse. Xerpen had crushed it, but nothing could destroy it. It always returned to her. Before she had a chance to use it, however, Umbral broke her last attempt at offense, bent her back so that her arms were pinned, yanked her head back by the hair, and pricked the spear-point between her breast.

She squinted up into the sky just as the moon devoured the sun. A corona circled the darkness like a Windwheel of flickering petals.

“I’m sorry it ends this way,” he whispered. “It’s destiny.”

“I’m sorry too.” A tear escaped down her cheek. “But it’s not the destiny
I
choose.”

She shunted into him. The force of her motion drove his spear into her sternum, but she ignored the pain and kissed him fiercely, shocking him into stillness just long enough that she could press her body against his, and pin the corncob doll against his naked chest. Blood poured over both of them, her blood—the last requirement of the hex—the missing ingredient when she had tried to use the doll against Xerpen.  She felt herself dying.

Now!
she commanded the doll.

A web of a thousand rainbow strands of light unfurled around them. It was the spell she had prepared for Xerpen, turned instead against Umbral. The threads from the Great Loom unwove the dark magic around him, unraveled his memory, and loosened the power he had absorbed from the fallen house. She felt something in her own aura flare in response; she had to absorb that power or be destroyed by it. Power warmed her body. Sacrifice became rebirth. The wound in her chest unwove as if time devoured its tail, until the spear that had pierced her crumbled to dust in the corona of her flaring Chromas.

He sagged in her arms and she had to hold him tightly, else he would have slipped and tumbled away into the dark ravine. She saw the hate evaporate from his eyes, and pleaded silently for recognition to dawn there in its place. Now that the dark mask of Umbral, Henchman of Lady Death was gone, would he remember his true name? His mother, his father, his kin, his tribe, his true allegiance? Would he remember
her
?

“Do you know who you are?” she asked.

Please remember. Please
.

He blinked at her. His eyes were so wide and innocent. Bewildered.

“The Deathsworn captured you and lied to you,” she reminded him. She choked on the words. “They gave an animal your own form and made you kill it, and then told you that you were a murderer. All to convince you to murder again.
Do you know your name?
”

“I don’t… remember,” he said slowly.

Tears streaked her face. “Kavio. Your name is Kavio.”

Vessia staggered free of the Storm Wraith’s web of torment, but the words of gratitude she would have spoken to her liberator died on her lips. She recognized Lady Death’s black wings, shadow dress, and obsidian scythe, but in place of the skeleton or old woman Vessia had always seen before, Death’s face was young and beautiful and painfully familiar.

“Mrigana,” Vessia gasped. Suddenly, she knew that she had discovered this before, perhaps even
many
times before, but Mrigana had unwoven the knowledge from her mind as nimbly as a weaver redressed a tangle, with far more subtlety than Xerpen had stolen whole years of her life.

“There was no traitor reporting to Lady Death,” Vessia said. “No traitor except the ultimate Traitor…. You yourself are the Enemy!”

“You!” spat Xerpen, every bit as shocked. “It was you all along!”

Vessia wondered if Mrigana had unwoven memories of his too.  If so, it had not been recently. Mrigana was more powerful than Vessia had ever imagined, but, Xerpen too, had grown formidable.

The three Aelfae stood equidistant from one another, as if at points of a triangle, each glaring at each.

“You unblind your eyes at last,” said Mrigana. “Vessia, you and I will meet in battle, I assure you, but it need not be on
this
day. On
this
day, you must choose whether you will help Xerpen against me, or whether you will help me against Xerpen.”

“Vessia!” shouted Xerpen, eyes bugging as he realized what this meant. “You must choose
me
! I love you! I am doing this for us, for our people! You will be mine on the New Day.”

Past Xerpen, Vessia could see the Aelfae had opened the cages and slain the human guards, but now her friends were hard-pressed fighting the entire warrior caste of Orange Canyon. Most of the human slaves ran higgledy-piggledy like frightened sparrows in the wake of a hawk, but a few humans, including Amdra, helped the Aelfae fight Orange Canyon warriors.

“No, Xerpen,” she said. “I’ll never be yours.”

She met Mrigana’s eyes, and the dark-haired beauty nodded once. They both strode toward Xerpen, Vessia with her staff swinging, and Mrigana with her scythe.

Xerpen’s face twisted into a mask of hate. He raised both hands. He unleashed obscene currents from his hands, twin to the lightning wielded by the Storm Wraith. Thunder clapped, though there were no clouds.

The Black Well answered with an explosion of darkness that gurgled over the sides of the chasm. The darkness had shape and form, legs and eyes, thousands of them. Myriads of obsidian spiders, molded from the death mist, winking red eyes, swarmed over the edges of the cliffs.

“Your loss, Vessia!” he snarled. “I don’t need you,
fool
!”

Dindi searched Kavio’s face for some hint that he remembered himself, or her, but all she saw there was shock and incomprehension. She hoped at least his identity as ‘Umbral’ had been unwoven, along with his hate.

Ire flashed in his face, and Dindi tensed. Kavio grabbed a weapon from one of the straps he wore and propelled it at her. She ducked, ready to fight him again if she had to…

The spear sailed over her shoulder,
thunk,
into a hideous black spider as large as a skull, which had crawled onto the Bridge of One Thread behind her.

“Look out!” he cried.

The direct hit should have killed the spider, but it kept crawling until Dindi grabbed the heft of the spear and shook the arachnid off into the air.

Spiders clambered out of the Black Well on both sides of the chasm. Some flung up ropes of silk to swing into the air, up to the Bridge. She saw at once the creatures were unnatural and undead, like the Bog Mummy, the Mud Monster, and the Storm Wraith. They were pure obsidian in color, except for their glistening red eyes. The tiniest among them could chew a man’s hand off, and the largest could squash a horse. There were thousands of them.

“Mercy...” she breathed. Then shouted: “Behind you!”

He whirled around to kick one spider off the thread and slash another with a dagger. She couldn’t help. Spiders advanced on her side as well, and it took all her concentration to fight them off. They would not die. All Dindi and Kavio could do was fling them back into the Black Well to commence their climb again. The only thing that slowed the spiders was their propensity to eat one another. Clumps formed where the spiders crawled over each other in a mass, trying to devour one another. There were so many of the fiends that outbreaks of cannibalism didn’t stem the flood of black skittering.

Dindi and Kavio stood back to back, trying to keep the Bridge clear.

“Don’t let them bite you!” Dindi said, after several creepies in a row had leaped toward her neck, fangs extended. “I’m sure they’re venomous!”

“Yeah,” he said dryly, “I got that impression too.”

A particularly large spider leapt toward him, and he had to flip around to kick it with both legs. The force of the kick, plus his weight on the Bridge when he landed back on his feet, shook the whole Bridge. The rest of the spiders fell, but Dindi almost tumbled too. He grabbed Dindi to steady her. For a moment, they were face to face again.

“Uh,” he said, “This might not be the best time to bring it up, but who the muck are you? And who am I? And why are we in the middle of the air on a thread, fighting spiders that refuse to die?”

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“No kidding.”

They both had to turn back to back again, as more spiders latched onto the Bridge and skittered toward them.

“Was I bitten by a spider?” he asked. “Is that why I lost my memory?”

“Something like that. Here’s all you need to know. My name is Dindi. Your name is Kavio. You are a good man—a hero—and I’m your friend. That thing below is the Black Well. And you need to help me stop the darkness from flooding the whole world.”

“How?”

She put her hand on the corncob doll. “With Death magic. I have a way to wield it… and so do you. I’ll show you the
tama
.”

She didn’t know any
tama
for this. But she remembered what the Aelfae said: when the time comes, you just dance. So she trusted her instinct, and danced, and Kavio mirrored her. The next time the spiders attacked, Dindi hit them with the corncob doll, and Kavio lashed out with his Penumbra, and the spiders exploded into dust.

More spiders came, and they did it again.

And again.

And again.

Out of oblivion, I become aware of myself. The noise of battle is all around me, at a distance, for I find myself standing over a chasm, seemingly suspended in thin air. I can’t even see the bridge, so slender is the thread, though I can feel it pinch into the bare soles of my feet. I am sure (I don’t know why) that it is day, yet the sky glooms like night. The sun is but a mane fringing a void.

I despair… until I realize I am not alone.

She tells me her name, and supposedly my own, but I don’t recognize it. I recognize nothing. I have no idea how I arrived here or why, but I’m guessing that fighting an army of deathless shadow spiders on a flimsy bridge, above an abyss, below an eclipse, in the middle of a war, is not a good sign.

The whole world is overshadowed by darkness, grief and ruin, and I sense that I have awakened at the end of all things.

The beautiful young woman on the bridge with me holds out her hand and suddenly I know that
this
is all that matters. The whole world wages insanity; order and reason are unwoven; and I would gladly let this mad creation explode and expire, except for
this
: we two are together, fighting the darkness side by side.

Finnadro awakened to soft green light. He stared up into the flawless face of his Green Lady. She beamed at him, but he flinched.

“The humans have done their best to heal you, my champion,” she said, “but you are still grievously wounded. It is time to let the fae take over. After all this, I will not let the death magic of either Xerpen or the Black Lady claim you.”

Only then did he become aware that he was in the middle of a circle of Sylfae and lesser Green fae, flori and sylfins, pixies and willawisps and other, stranger, types, all holding hands and dancing around him. Whorls of sparkles and eddies of emeralds shimmered in the whirlpool of light. Then, to his surprise, sundry Yellow fae joined the circle, and, in adding their golden light, brought healing warmth to the fragrance of the green magic.

The Green Lady trailed her fingers in the green and golden light, and with her other hand, she touched Finnadro’s chest. Warmth soaked into his wound. The healing hurt, not in a sharp way. It reminded him of the satisfying ache that accompanies exercise after prolonged idleness. Muscles and organs returned to their proper place with a groan and sigh of effort, followed by satiation.

Sitting up, he saw that he was on a mound on the eastern slope. The dancing of the fae had left a ring of flowers and new moss on the mound, but beyond, the ground was still frozen, with snow in the shades of buildings. Nothing remained of the Blood House except a cavity. Finnadro shuddered, and some of the warmth left him.

The Green and Yellow fae scattered suddenly. Orange fae, including Vyfae, approached, led by the Orange Lady herself. A human walked beside her—Hawk.

“They healed you, too, I see.” Hawk rubbed his arm. “I wish fae could be depended upon for healing
all
of the time, not just when their fickle whims strike them.”

Finnadro stood up and placed himself between the Green Lady and the Orange. He remembered the terrible Vision that Xerpen had shown to him of what the Orange Lady had done to her sister.

“Be at ease, Finnadro.” The Green Lady touched his shoulder. “I’m in no danger. My sister and I will ride into battle together.”

The Orange Lady shifted into a glowing orange eagle, larger than even the Raptors.

“Hawk will do the same for you,” said the Green Lady.

“But my Lady,” Finnadro growled, “How can you trust your sister after what she did to you?”

The faery shrugged. “Yesterday is unwoven, tomorrow is unspun. Today’s weft is all that matters.”

To a faery, maybe
, Finnadro thought mulishly.

There was no arguing with her. The Green Lady bounded upon her Orange sister’s back, and the eagle took flight.

“I know how you feel, Finn,” said Hawk. “But to be fair, even Orange Canyon and Green Woods are fighting on the same side now. We have bigger things to worry about than each other. Look!”

Finnadro turned around. He had seen the stain out of the corner of his eye, but this was the first time he looked closely enough to see that the smirch from the Black Well had metastasized into a swarm of spiders. The spiders scampered and skittered, slung their webs and drove their fangs into any victims they caught. Already, they had obnubilated the Sylfae bridges across the chasm, and many of the lodges upon the western summit, under sticky membranes. Men and fae alike fell before them.

“Muck and mercy! How do we fight
that
?” breathed Finnadro.

“It’s worse than you think.”

“That’s not possible—I already think the worst.”

“The spiders cannot be killed.”

“I take it back. That’s worse.”

“The more fae light and human blood they consume, the stronger and more numerous the vermin grow. There’s no end to the blighters. They will overrun all Faearth, and the best we have managed so far is to delay their advance. None can stop them.”

“It’s hopeless then.”

“The way I see it,” said Hawk. “Our choice is to die running or die fighting.”

Finnadro answered Hawk’s grim smile with one of his own. “Why do we stand here nattering, then? Don your feathers, friend Hawk, and let us fight.”

The spiders knew no fear. They didn’t learn from the fate of their dusted friends. They attacked rabidly, and they kept coming. They had spun their own bridges across the chasm, a growing ladder of sticky web that allowed more of them close enough to leap to the Bridge of One Thread.

“This dance is fun, but you know it’s not going to save us,” Kavio remarked laconically, during a brief pause between attacks.

“What do you want to do?” she demanded. “Give up?”

He pulled her close to him and looked down at her. “I want to kiss you before we both die.”

Her lips parted in surprise.

He glanced over his shoulder to gauge how close the next wave of spiders was, and clutched her closer.

“Maybe I have no right to ask… maybe we just met... maybe you’re even pledged to another, and I don’t have time to kill him right now. But, even though I can’t remember you, it feels as if I’ve known you forever. It feels as if I should be kissing you.”

“You
should
be kissing me, Kavio,” she whispered. “You should never stop kissing me.”

His lips touched hers and then they merged together in one fierce, perfect melding of sweetness and need. Once she started, she didn’t want to stop, but he pulled back and casually pointed to the new army of spiders, who had found their way to the Bridge. Dindi turned and dusted one, and he dusted two more on his side.

“We can never stop all of them, Dindi, mystery friend of mine. There are too many.”

She grinned. One couldn’t get kissed like that and not grin, army of spiders be damned.

“Just keep dancing.”

Xerpen laughed with delight to see the shadow spiders wash over the lips of the well. The venomous creatures feasted on the flesh of humans and fae alike. Any living being who drank of the wine of the Black Well perished forever and fed the shadow, but on
his
terms. Undeath, not death, would win…once he finished his final enchantment. He needed to unweave the mistake, the creation of humanity, then Death would surrender to immortality. Only then would Faearth be fit to welcome back the Aelfae.

It is time to finish one song and begin a new one. The new song will be beautiful. The new song will be perfect
.

Vessia attacked him, and Xerpen defended himself, but his mind was not on the blow and counterblow. Mrigana had started dancing a
tama
. He recognized in the tendrils of her magic some of the same weaves he had used to create the Black Well. That was not surprising; he had studied penumbral magic on Obsidian Mountain itself, learning all the secrets of his Enemy except her identity.

Mrigana wanted to capture all the power he had accumulated (over decades) ripping Chromas from captives in the Blood House. He would not let her.

The eclipse was almost over. He didn’t dare turn his back on Vessia and Mrigana to make sure the Deathsworn and the girl had fallen into the abyss, but they must have died by now, and regardless—with or without their sacrifices— he had to start the final hex. He could not let his painstaking work as Snake Bites Twice and the War Chief of Orange Canyon go to waste.

He began to sing and dance a
tama
. All the spiders thrummed a choral background to his hex.

Unleashing the spiders had a consequence Xerpen could not have foreseen. The undead monsters did not differentiate between tribes, but consumed all living things in their path. And so the two armies, invaders and defenders, who had been seeking each others’ destruction only moments before, joined as one against this new threat. Vessia saw Vyfae fly to fight side by side with Sylfae, and Raptors dive down to tear spiders off the back of wildling wolves. The alliance began spontaneously, out of dire necessity alone, but Amdra rallied her own people and made it more.

“See the vile magic of the so-called Great One!” she shouted. “This is what his reign of blood has brought to us! Overthrow the tyrant! Overthrow the tyrant!”