The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (10 page)

“Your father is right, Amdra. Little Medo will
understand why you couldn’t save Hawk,” said Vessia.

“Shut your mouth, Vessia!” shouted Vumo. “Why do you
think any of us are doing this, except for that boy?”

“Father,” Amdra said. “Hawk is still alive. I just
tested our link. He’s running toward us even now. But he won’t make
it across the river before Finnadro catches him.” She paused. “You
know I have to do it.”

The resistance went out of Vumo. He sank to back
down on the fire-blackened log.

“It’s taboo. If the War Chief finds out we went
back
for your slave…”

“Are
you
going to tell him, Father?”

“Of course not.”

“We just have to get Hawk across the river and away
from the Green Woods tribelands. No one will know he wasn’t with us
from the start.”

“Amdra, I’m begging you. Don’t do it.”

She clenched and unclenched her fists.

“I have no choice,” she said. “He needs me.”

Dindi stood straighter. Now that it came down to
Umbral’s offer, her heart thundered in her hollow chest. The
campfire flagged until Umbral fed it fresh wood. The pleasant aroma
of roasted fish still lingered. It had been odd to watch him eat,
just like an ordinary man. He’d given her the larger portion when
he clearly could have finished the whole by himself. He’d polished
off his piece with neat, swift bites which wasted nothing, and
stacked the tiny bones like firewood. She had accepted his food
without thinking, but now she regretted sharing his meal, as if by
doing so, she had already sold herself to him.

It was an intolerable burden, waiting for her captor
to demand his price. How she wished that she and Tamio had
consummated their infatuation when they’d had the chance.

She wondered if Umbral would be rough with her. Thus
far he had done nothing to physically harm her. No, what he had
done was worse: turn her own body against her. She couldn’t
suppress her dread that when he decided it was time to take her,
she would lose all volition to fight him. She would fall into the
void and lose herself. And, what appalled her most, she might even
enjoy his touch, though it destroyed her.

Morning brightened and he didn’t speak. He stared
away, avoiding her, as if he were the one who had something to
fear.

“You must already know what I want,” he said
finally, looking directly at her. “There could only be one
thing.”

“Yes.” She trembled.

“You must be…willing.”

“Why? You seem quite able to take what you want by
force.”

“Not this. Otherwise why would I offer you your
life? I would have just taken it. You must be my partner, at least
while our bargain lasts. Otherwise, you are useless to me. ”

“
You threaten me with death, but at
the same time ask that I be willing. That is nothing but an
illusion of willingness.”

“For one such as I, an illusion must suffice. But
you do have a choice. The question is, what are you willing to do
to stay alive?”

No. The question is what am I willing to do to
kill you
.

“Anything you demand,” she said through grated
teeth.
Until I avenge Kavio
.

He released a breath. “We might as well do it
now.”

He approached her and pulled aside the flaps at the
top of her parka. His finger gently grazed her collarbone.

Her voice quavered. “You’ll have to tell me what you
expect. I’ve never done it before.”

“Yes, you have, Dindi.”

Does he know that Tamio and I went down to the
stream bank together?
Dindi wondered. Tamio was right. Gossip
spread unaccountably far unbelievably fast.

“I swear to you that I have never—” she began.

He lifted the collar of black energy that he had
leashed around her neck. It dissolved.

She had forgotten its weight until she was free of
it. As if a rock fell off her shoulders, she felt more buoyant as
soon as it was gone. Even the air tasted less of ash. Umbral
stepped back.

“I want you to dance for me.”

“D... dance?”

“Dance for me,” he repeated softly. “Dance for me,
Dindi.”

“W... what Pattern do you want me to dance?”

“I want you to show me a dance that has never been
taught to you.”

“How can I do that? How could I know a dance that I
haven’t learned?”

His eyes bore into hers, inescapably piercing. “You
know how. Dance, Dindi. Just open yourself and dance.”

It was impossible to resist his urging. Dindi wasn’t
sure if it was because he exerted some magic over her or because
his command echoed the inner song that had compelled her since the
earliest days of life she could remember.
Dance, Dindi
, he
told her. Yes, she could do that.

Except that she almost couldn’t. She stood still,
the flickering fire at her back, Umbral’s glittering eyes before
her, and she panicked. She had danced without predetermined steps
before, with the fae, a thousand afternoons, but she had never
danced freely in front of another human being.

And to dance for this man, of all people. He seated
himself on the raven cape, one arm resting on a raised knee,
dangerous and Deathsworn to his black heart. His gaze fell on her
so exclusively and intensely that she felt it almost like a touch,
intimate and forbidden.

Dance for me, Dindi
.

Did he repeat the words or could she just feel them
reverberating in her pounding heartbeat?

Dance.

Dindi took off her heavy parka and gutskin legwals.
The morning was warmer, and the fire strong, but mostly just
because it didn’t feel right to wear the heavy garments for fae
dancing. Underneath, she wore a short tunic, tightly laced to keep
her breasts from bouncing too much, and legwals unlaced up to her
thighs. She blushed and wished she had thought to lace those up
before removing the outer legwals, but to fiddle with the laces
now, she felt, would just draw attention to them. Maybe he wouldn’t
notice.

She began with a pose from an established Pattern,
because she was nervous and she had to begin somehow. Her first
steps were slow, deliberate. She imagined the ponderous beat of a
drum ordering her from one pose to the next. As the movement
allowed her body to release her mind from its worries, everything
began to flow. Fear and anguish were forgotten; dread and
embarrassment dropped away like unwanted clothes to the frosted
ground. Motion turned liquid and carried her away into a waking
dream in which she was one with the flickering firelight, with the
frosted trees and even with the man who watched her,
transfixed.

Then, as if from afar, she heard him command:
“Find the White Lady.”

At that trigger, the Vision exploded around her.

Watching Dindi dance, Umbral began to shake.

There was no doubt left who she was. Whatever spell
had hidden her before no longer worked on him. Her faery blood was
evident in her every pirouette and leap. If she had unfurled wings
and fluttered into the air, he would hardly have been shocked.
Magic pooled around her as she danced. There was no doubt that she
danced a Pattern she had not been taught. Her unfettered gyrations
owed nothing to some humble clan dance meant merely to keep bugs
off corn. This was fae magic, deep as the earth and free as the
clouds, and it welled out of her very being. She hadn’t just
invented this dance. It was Dance that had invented her.

Had Umbral’s presence not frightened them off, every
fae in the region would have been dancing about her in a circle by
now, drawn like moths to flame by the sweetness of that magic.

He should stop her now, before she gathered too much
power about her, power she might think to use against him.

Yet he didn’t stop her. He couldn’t. He wasn’t sure
if it was because she was already weaving some spell around him, or
if it was simply because he couldn’t bear to turn away from the
vision of her in her element.

She had created her own music. Throbbing drum and
soulful flute echoed in the dell, though there were no musicians.
The earth and trees themselves sang to her. She shone with a
luminance that increased with every whirl, and rainbow dewdrops
glinted over her limbs like sequins. Mists of all colors floated
around her like veils, now hiding her, now revealing her. Crimson
and gold. Azure and emerald. Lilac and apricot. All the tints of
the rainbow. All of them.

Surrounded by her colors, she was not afraid, though
her position was uncertain and she knew Umbral was her sworn foe.
She had been afraid before, but while she danced, nothing could
touch her. She was a fountain of inexpressible bliss. Her innocent
joy touched everything around her, including him. It was an emotion
he had not felt in a long, long while.

At the same time, her body was sheened with sweat.
Her breasts bobbed under her tightly laced leather top. When she
kicked or leaped, he caught a glimpse of her naked thighs under her
split skirt. She was human, with all the carnality inherent in
mortal flesh. When she bent back her head and he saw a rivulet of
sweat trail down her arched throat to the dip between her breasts,
Umbral felt his own flesh stir in eager communion.

He had told himself that it was necessary to make
her dance to help him find the White Lady. Now he knew that he had
just needed to see her dance, with all her colors, just once.

Just once before he killed her.

He had not promised her anything different. Only to
spare her as long as she was of use to him.

His mind had gone twisting down other paths, other
alternatives. Why not turn her to the Shadow instead of killing
her? But seeing her dance, the pure joy she took in it, he knew she
would never turn. Not only would she never agree to it knowingly,
but to take her over to the Shadow by force would murder all that
was precious in her. It had been different for him. He had already
lost his memory when the Deathsworn put him through the Dark
Initiation. Embracing the Shadow had been just one more loss, no
worse than the rest, at least once he had accepted it.

Ripping all six Chromas from Dindi would be like
ripping the wings off a butterfly. Even if she survived it
physically, she would be dead in all the ways that mattered most to
her.

Better just to kill her outright, he thought. Far
better.

His stomach knotted. He belonged to the side of
Death now. He had pledged his loyalty to Lady Death, and would not
break his oath.

He would kill the Vaedi, whether she could find
another Vision or not, whether she helped him find the White Lady
or not.

But not yet.

Not yet.

“Find the White Lady!” he commanded her.

At that trigger, the Vision exploded around her. He
tried to grab it this time, so he could see for himself what she
saw.

All around Vessia, the tribehold burned and bled,
but she noticed none of it anymore. Memories flooded her mind like
a tide returning to the sea.

Vessia crashed to her knees. For the past twenty
years, she had lived as a human. An outsider, a stranger, she had
never quite fit with humans, never quite belonged, yet she had
counted herself one of them, loved two of them as her parents. She
had learned to love two human men—Danumoro as a friend, Vio as a
husband.

Those few years were but a handful of sand against
the mountain of years she had lived before, as an immortal, as a
warrior and then a War Chieftess of her people, a leader of armies
against the humans in the terrible War between their kind and hers.
The White Lady had been her Shining name. White was the armor she
had worn, bleached leather and human bones, and some called her by
the longer name: Vessia the Bone White Lady. For centuries, she had
protected her people against the murderous human beasts. During
those years, she had fought fiercely and loved freely, taking many
men as lovers—fae and human both, for human males had flocked to
her beauty like moths to a flame, despite her contempt for them.
Only one fae lord had always been by her side, the one lover she
returned to most often.

And after the final treacherous genocide, when
humans had awakened the monsters of the deep to massacre all of her
friends before her eyes, only one other of her kind had survived
and escaped with her. They, the two Last Aelfae in Faearth, had
sworn blood vengeance against the humans.

Xerpen.

“Xerpen! Xerpen!” Hard, sob-like gasps wracked her
body. “
Ayaha
, Xerpen! What have I done?”

“Now you remember,” Xerpen said.

“I remember,” she said. She clutched her hair as if
she would tear it out. “I wish I did not. I bless whoever took this
burden from me. I was happier before.”

Gwidan. Kia. Lothlo. Yastara. Mrigana. Hest
.
The faces of her dead friends swam before her eyes, whether she
opened or shut her lids. “What am I to do with such memories?”

“Help me,” he said.

“Help
you
?” She spat on the ground before
him. “You have become one of them—their leader! You have become
everything we swore to oppose! You are worse than the worst of
them!”

“They cursed me. I became as they made me. I became
what they wanted, though for my own ends.”

“You can justify it!”

“You loved me once.”

“Did I?” She shook her head. “I called it love,
derisively, at the time, but even then I knew it was less than
that. Play, pleasure, self-indulgence, a way to pass time, and a
convenience, but there was no commitment, no mutual responsibility,
no sacrifice.”

“No pain, no distrust, no jealousy. How
terrible!”

“Can you have trust without the possibility of
distrust? Can you really be said to need someone if separation does
not bring pain? Can you really love someone without changing
yourself in response? It took a human to teach me what real love
is.”