The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (11 page)

“Listen to yourself. You rant like a lunatic. Do you
hear what you are saying…that you must suffer to feel pleasure,
that you must change what you are to earn someone’s affection? This
is madness, Vessia. He has hexed you. He has used you. He danced a
love spell and ensnared you as surely as the swain hexed the maiden
who spurned him.”

A gust of cold air cleared the ash from the air for
a moment. She shivered. “That is absurd.”

Xerpen’s eyes glowed with fever hate. His voice
slithered over her like the sibilant melody of a flute.

“Before you go to him, let me tell you a few
things.

“What you call love is really a cage. If you trade
in your freedom, expect pain as your wage—a trap of four walls, a
net of soft lies, tied to his hearth, his pet, his slave. That’s
what it means to be a human wife. Night after night, he will seed
you. His brood will burst your belly and bleed you. Your breasts
will sag, your hair will gray, until one night, he’ll no longer
need you. You know it’s true. I do not lie. He’ll sleep with
younger girls, will you or nil you, but if you lie with another
man, he’ll kill you. That’s what it means to live a human life. You
will pound grain, you will knead bread, you will hew wood. You will
not fly. You’ll beat rugs, brush furs, spin wool, make beds, cook,
clean, lack sleep, mash, mend, scrub, sweep, break, bend, fall,
weep.

“And he will steal your wings.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She clapped her hand
over her mouth, unable to fight the future he painted.

Xerpen pulled the stub of the spear shaft from his
shoulder. The stone tip was still fixed to it with gut string. He
held out the weapon to Vessia.

“But if you still prefer him to me, then give me to
the Black Lady,” he said. “For she is the real enemy, the one we
have fought all these years. The one I was still fighting, even
here, though you could not see it any better than the human fools.
The Curse is already on me, you know that. If I die, I cannot come
back, any more than the rest of our kind. Pluck me from Faearth.
Let Lady Death have one more Aelfae. Then you will finally be
alone.”

Vessia clenched her fists. Xerpen: Xerpen the Singer
of Light, had once been his Shining Name; he had always been silver
voiced. His other name was Xerpen the Two Tongued, for he could
talk to two people at the same time, stretch truth in opposite
directions in two different tales simultaneously, and each would
only hear what Xerpen wanted them to hear. She had always been the
warrior, and he her bard. With his song he could charm birds to the
rivers and fish to the trees. With reed flutes, he had made
beautiful music.

He’d made himself a new flute since then.

If she had not lost her memory, she should have
guessed the identity of the Bone Whistler long ago.

“Give me the Bone Flute,” she commanded.

His smugness slipped. His tongue darted to the
corner of his mouth, lizard-like. “I don’t have it.”

She took the spear from his hand and smacked him
across the face with it. “Give me the Bone Flute!”

“Oh, here it is after all.” He smiled sickly and
produced the flute.

She freed it from his grip.

“This is my offer,” she said. “Leave now. Flee and
never set foot again in the Rainbow Labyrinth. Change your name,
live in hiding, and do not seek to regain the power you have lost.
Tell no one who you are. Seek no revenge. Live out the few years
left to you, before the Curse claims you, dwelling in quiet despair
over the misery you have wrought on Faearth.

“I will not kill an Aelfae,” she conceded. “But if
you betray my trust, I will tell the Skull Stomper you are alive,
and how to hunt you down, and
he
will kill you. Now go!”

Xerpen the Singer of Light, Xerpen the Two Tongued,
Xerpen the Bone Whistler, staggered away, down the alley. Just as
he disappeared from sight around the corner, he shouted back at
her.

“How will you hunt me down without wings,
Vessia?”

She ran after him but all she found was the echo of
his laughter and smoke. Bloody footprints on the pavement tracked
halfway down the alley then simply stopped, as if he had taken
flight.

Panic stabbed her. Her fist closed around the small
bag with the opal inside, the shimmering stone into which she had
folded her wings. Her fingers closed around something hard. She
enjoyed a trickle of relief, but it lasted only a moment, before
worry compelled her to open the leather bag and slide out the
stone.

The stone in the palm of her hand was dull grey—an
ordinary rock.

Fool, fool,
fool
that she was, she had
released a monster. And to thank her, he had stolen her wings.

Umbral could see the ribbons that wove the Vision
around Dindi, and he even caught a glimpse of the White Lady.
Excited, he tried to close his fist around the wisp of light.

It was like trying to clench snow with fire. The
Vision only melted faster the harder he tried to grip it.

He refused to accept failure. If he could not pull
the Vision to him, he would cage it. He carefully grew prickles of
darkness around the waves of light, like a forest of thorny
brambles around a captive sun.

The void in his Penumbra snuffed out the sun. The
Vision vanished.

The Vision popped like a bubble.

Panting with exhilaration, Dindi came to a rest in
the same semi-supine pose which she had used to initiate the dance.
Her intricate spiraling frolic had brought her only inches away
from where Umbral sat. Her transport into a sensuous world of bliss
faded, leaving her with a dying fire behind her, cold midnight
stars overhead, and a man whom she detested before her.

His skin was as sheened with sweat as hers, his
respiration just as labored. He crouched like a wolf ready to leap,
muscles taut. For a moment, they stared at one another, inches
apart, breaths mingling. Then Dindi gave a small cry, and stumbled
back.

“Careful!” Umbral shot out an arm to steady her
before she could flounder into the fire pit.

Dindi no longer felt the winter chill. But she felt
the utter coldness of the void around Umbral when he touched her
arm. She felt the nausea his closeness evoked in her. Yet she
steeled herself not to pull away from his grip.

When he reached out and caressed her face, she stood
stock still, compelling herself with stony resolve not to
shudder.

Umbral let his hands drop from her. He turned his
back and walked to the far edge of the camp, restless and palpably
angry.

“I’m trying my best not to fight it,” she said
through grated teeth. “If you’re going to take me, do it now.”

He managed to glower with his back, since he would
not turn to face her. “I already have what I want from you,
Dindi.”

“You do?” she demanded incredulously. “But…you
haven’t…”

She trailed off, too embarrassed to finish the
thought out loud.

“What did you think?” he asked dryly.

What had she thought? What else could she have
thought? Had she not caught him peering at her, when he thought she
didn’t notice, with naked lust in his eyes? Or had she misread him?
What did she know of the lusts of strange men, after all?

“I told you already,” he said with a touch of
impatience, “I am Deathsworn. There is nothing you have that I am
permitted to use…except your magic.”

“My magic,” she repeated flatly. Ever since her
failed Initiation Test, she had yearned for someone to recognize
her magic and ask her to dance.

But, mercy, not like this.

“Orange Canyon has captured the White Lady. I know
you had a Vision of her yesterday, and another one just now. I need
your Visions to track her.”

“To help
you
capture her? To throw her from
the mouth of the dog to the mouth of the wolf!”

“No, Dindi. I wish only to free her. I don’t know
what Orange Canyon intends to do to her, but I assure you it will
be worse than anything the Deathsworn desire. The White Lady is not
a threat to us; she has already accepted the Gift.”

“She has already been Cursed to die, you mean.”

He shrugged. “However you prefer to phrase it. My
guess is that Orange Canyon plans to sacrifice her at the
Paxota.”

“What is that?”

“A ritual offering of tribute, held during the
spring equinox. Both animals and humans are slain as sacrifices,
and the more powerful the blood sacrifice, the more powerful the
magic. Powerful prisoners of war are highly valued tribute
offerings. This equinox will be unusual, because it will coincide
with a full eclipse of the sun, so Deathsworn on Obsidian Mountain
have prophesized. It is likely Orange Canyon Tavaedies have
foreseen the eclipse as well. It’s hard to imagine a more powerful
sacrifice than the last Aelfae. We have a common goal in preventing
that. The winter solstice has just passed, so we have three moons
at most to rescue her.”

She did not believe him, though she wanted to. She
dared not believe him
because
she wanted to. He had
perfected the art of showing people the face they wanted to see. He
would tell her whatever she wanted to hear, anything to trick her
into helping him. The only thing she believed was that he needed
her willing cooperation, because otherwise he would not have asked.
He would have simply taken.

Dindi wished she were not so afraid. Her thoughts
felt sticky and tangled like a spider web poked with a stick. She
wanted to stay alive to see Kavio avenged. Or did she just want to
stay alive? She was sure, without knowing why, that she was the
only one who knew that Umbral had murdered Kavio. Umbral was too
powerful for her to fight alone, so any dream she harbored of
paying Kavio’s deathdebt herself was vain.

The White Lady, on the other hand, would surely
unleash the molten bowels of the mountains and the blazing bolts of
the storm clouds on her son’s murderer. If Dindi could just tell
her. If Dindi could just free Vessia from those who held her
captive…without delivering her to a worse fate.

“I don’t see how knowing the White Lady had her
wings stolen helps you,” Dindi said.

His eyes widened. “Is that what you saw? Orange
Canyon took away her wings? That is actually very helpful to
know.”

“I thought you saw the Vision as well.”

“Unfortunately not,” he said. “I will soon find a
way. In the meantime, you must report exactly what you saw.”

She would have thought her heart could not pound any
faster, yet now it started thumping wildly. Umbral was not as
invincible as he seemed. He had no idea she had seen Vessia right
after the fall of the Bone Whistler, a day some twenty and one
years past. He thought she had seen Vessia recently, in the hands
of her captors.

Or was he just testing her, to see if she would lie
to him?

The only way to know was to lie to him.

“I saw her with Amdra and Vumo. They were on
horseback. They stopped to camp and took her wings.”

“What shape were the wings once removed?”

“A small shiny rock…an opal, I think.” It seemed
best to sprinkle some truth into her lie.

Umbral nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes. That makes
sense.”

Dindi forced her smile of triumph to hide in a
frown. So Umbral wasn’t the only one who could tell people what
they wanted to hear.

She had to tread very carefully. But if he could be
deceived in this, perhaps she had a chance to deceive him in other
things as well. Perhaps she had a chance to save both herself
and
the White Lady.

Unless I’m just deceiving myself
.

“I will give you my word to help you free the White
Lady from Orange Canyon,” she said. Then, she pushed his limits,
despite her fear he would push back. “In return, I want something
from you.”

His brows climbed his forehead. “Really.”

Breathe deep. Don’t cringe. Don’t give in to
fear. Just keep pushing. Just keep dancing
.

“I want your word that you will not kill me until
after the White Lady is safe. I can’t go to sleep every evening and
wake up every morning wondering if you will decide you don’t need
me anymore and slit my throat.”

“Is that all?” he asked in the same dry, dangerous
tone.

“No.”
Breathe deep.
“I also don’t want you to
put that…that horrid leash thing back on me. You have my word that
I will not run away until the White Lady is free.”

“You
will
be leashed.”

“You said you wanted me to help you willingly. I
can’t be willing and tied up like an animal at the same time.”

He paced back and forth in front of the fire. The
flames popped.

“All right. I agree. If you give your word not to
run away…and not to use your magic except when I command it. Then
no leash. And you can sleep in peace until after we have freed the
White Lady. Is it a bargain?”

“It is a bargain.”

He took out his knife and sliced his palm, then
handed the knife to her.

If only she could stab him with it.

She had never sealed a bargain in blood before,
though she knew the custom. Terrible hexes were said to afflict
those who broke the blood seal.

She pricked her own palm. He clasped her hand,
mingling their bloods. Her aura also mingled with the black void
that pulsated around him. The emptiness hit her powerfully again, a
sense of vertigo.

She had to pull away her hand. She staggered a few
steps to the stream and vomited. She waited until the stream
carried away the mess before she washed her face and tried to
recover her dignity.

“If you break your vow, you will wish for the simple
death you would have had before,” he warned.

“I would not break my word.”

He nodded. “No. I don’t believe you would.”