The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (12 page)

I lift off the edge of my nest.

My wings row the waves of wind. My feet pump the air
for a few steps, before I tuck them beneath me. With strong, hard
strokes I beat my wings, climb higher on the steps of the sky.
Below me, the mountains are folded like bunched cloth, sprinkled
with the green fuzz of trees over orange bedrock.

I catch a current of air, swift like an invisible
river, and extend my wings to let it carry me. I soar.

Another soars above me, higher in the river of wind
than I. Her wing name is Golden Hawk. Her wings are larger than
mine, her bearing more majestic, for female raptors are larger than
the males. She is a queen among raptors, a warrior woman, a beauty.
She is also my lover.

Even now, I can’t believe my fortune in finding her.
We, the Free Raptors, the last Imorvae of Orange Canyon, are a
dying people. Every year, our numbers dwindle as the Eaglelords
catch more of us, giving us to their Riders as slaves. We do not
know how they find us despite all our efforts to hide. No Free
Raptor who has been captured has ever returned from slavery to tell
his tale.

I promise myself silently I will never let my mate
be caught and enslaved. We two will fly free forever, and so too
will our children.

I emit the joyful cry of our kind, one to another:
My love! My mate!

She cries back, but not in love. Her caw is that of
a predator.

Her talons extend and she drops swiftly down on me,
as if I were nothing but a pigeon or a pika. The attack can mean
only one thing. Golden Hawk is a traitor.

Too late, I understand what others of my kind must
have discovered before me: The secret of how our enemies capture
us.

They, too, are Raptors.

We tumble in the air, locked together. We flap and
fight and scratch. Her betrayal rakes my soul with fiercer pain
than her talons ripping flesh. I want to peck out her eyes. I want
to eat out her heart.

Traitor!
I screech at her in the language of
raptors.

Slave!
she mocks.

She takes me down on the mountainside. The
slave-takers are waiting, with their nets and their spears and
their terrible magic. My wings are pinned. Against my will, I am
forced into human form. It feels clumsy. I hate arms, stupid,
heavy, featherless things, and right now they are tied behind me.
At least I still have wings, though they are moth wings now, which
sprout foolishly from my human back.

She takes human form too. In this form, she has no
grace, no symmetry. Her face is as ugly as her heart. She watches
me thrash against the nets.

“You’re
one
of us!” I protest. “You’re
Imorvae!”

“I may have been born to that blood,” she says. “But
I’ve overcome it.”

It’s all so clear now. They never shift shape in
front of the lower castes; they take bird form only to trap
us
, the free ones. Probably it’s taboo for them to shift,
since that would give away their secret—that they were born with
the same Imorvae blood in their veins as their despised slaves—and
worse yet, that they twist the mating bond to ensure their slaves
never try to escape.

“Don’t be a fool, Anayo.” She tosses out my secret
name in front of my enemies as if it were trash. “You will only
hurt yourself if you fight your fate.”

“You were the greatest among us!” I rage at her.
“Why? Why?”

“How do you think I became greatest?” she asks
coldly.

“You are not Golden Hawk! You are Fallen Hawk to
me!”

“You are the one who is earthbound, Anayo,” she
sneers.

I tear free of the foes holding me, and launch
myself at her. I forget I cannot peck her, and bash her head with
mine. Good enough. I will use my head as a battering ram and smash
her like a rotten egg.

The slave-takers tackle me again. This time they add
more ropes, bind me tighter. They do something to me, something
that makes me writhe in pain. My scream echoes off every canyon
wall.

They drop a rock at my feet.

“You will get your wings back when you have learned
obedience,” says my so-called love. Fallen Hawk. Even now, I cannot
bring myself to say her secret name out loud, but I hear the others
address her with it, as if it were available to all.

Amdra.

She herself places the blindfold around my eyes.

Hawk ran. His shoulder wound throbbed with every
step. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the landscape as it would have
looked from above: thickly wooded hills descending into an alluvial
plain of river, lake and marsh. On the other side, another brace of
mountains towered over the peat bogs, higher and more majestic than
the first. Past that inner range of mountains lay the endless
prairie to the north and desert canyons to the south.

He had to cross the Ottermark River into the
Boglands if he ever wanted to see his nest again.

He ran until a crimp in his side forced him to slow.
This was not exactly his favorite way to travel. He didn’t have
high hopes for his chances. Finnadro would be yapping at his heels
any moment now.

Except…he wasn’t. Hawk forced himself back into a
jog, while he pecked over the puzzle. Finnadro should have found
his trail easily enough. He had been on the move for several hours.
Their paths should have intersected by now.

Unless…. Was it possible Finnadro
wanted
him
to go free?

Finnadro wanted Hawk to think he had a chance to
escape. Only if Hawk crossed the Ottermark River, and assumed he
was safe, would he meet up with his mistress Amdra again. Only then
would Hawk lead him to the White Lady and her captors.

As he trailed Hawk from a respectable distance,
Finnadro automatically noted features in the landscape he normally
would have attended to more closely. Passing a stream, he saw a
hole in the ice. On the shore, he saw fragments of a frog, scat
that glittered with fish scales, and nearby, a tiny den dug into
the bank. Marks in the snow indicated short skittering alternating
with longer leaps. All were signs of a mink, which liked to forage
for food between the water and ice layer in the winter. Another
day, he might have hunted the animal for its fine white coat, but
not today. A bear, disturbed by the forest fire from its
hibernation, had rambled through the woods. Fortunately, the trail
was obvious and surely even an inexperienced hunter would know
better than to follow bear prints. Nonetheless, normally, Finnadro
would have followed the trail, to make sure the grizzly found a new
sleepy-hole. Not today.

Today he was hawking, and his bird would lead him to
his quarry.

While Dindi packed and doused the fire pit with
snow, Umbral combed and babied his horse. It was a beast of
impressive height and sleekness, black and shiny as polished
obsidian. Dindi had never seen an all black horse, only brown or
gray horses which sometimes had black dappling or black socks. Even
the seating blanket and hoop had been dyed black to match.

“Does he have a name?” Dindi asked softly.

Umbral, with his arms around the neck of the steed,
was murmuring into the beast’s ear, causing the horse to snort as
if in amusement at a shared confidence. Dindi wasn’t sure that
Umbral had heard her.

“Shadow,” Umbral said, without looking at her.

Of course.

“Since we have only one horse,” Umbral said
abruptly, then paused.

“I will walk.”

“No. Shadow can carry us both. You’ll have to sit in
front of me.”

They cleaned up their campground and put dirt over
the ashes in the fire pit. Then Umbral lifted her up onto Shadow
and mounted behind her with his arms clasped around her waist. So
close to him, it was impossible to ignore the void around him. Any
other person would have had at least a faint aura of light, if not
a bright Chroma. Every time Umbral touched her, he drew her towards
that void, causing her stomach to drop as if she were in freefall.
If his mere touch made her literally sick to her stomach, Dindi
wondered what would it be like to ride touching him for an entire
day? For days on end? For three moons? She bit her lip very
hard.

Umbral was an excellent horseman and Shadow an
excellent steed. Despite the lack of any formal path, they made
good time through a maze of gray pine, blue oak and cedar. The fae
fled from their approach, which left the forest dim and desolate.
Worst of all was the pall of the twisted magic which enveloped him.
Dindi grew sicker and sicker, until at last she could not bear
Umbral’s embrace one moment longer.

She pushed his arms away and threw herself off the
horse. She landed heavily and ran into the woods. Behind her, she
could hear Umbral cursing. He reigned in Shadow and dismounted to
bear down on Dindi with an expression of rage held in tight
control.

“I told you that if you tried to leave me—” he began
furiously.

He stopped because Dindi was kneeling on the frozen
mud, throwing up.

His anger gave way to an emotion more guarded. He
knelt beside her and wiped off her mouth with the hem of his cloak.
Unfortunately, his renewed proximity only made it worse. She
shuddered and dry heaved, for there was nothing left in her to
vomit.

“Are you well?” he asked. “Is it breakfast that
disagreed with you?”

Dindi shook her head.

He drew back from her, hands curling into fists.
“It’s me. My…nature.”

She didn’t answer. That was answer enough.

“Dindi, I can make it so that you don’t notice it.
So you won’t be sick. I can even make it feel…pleasurable. I did it
the day I brought you from the battlefield. Let me do it
again.”

She remembered the ecstasy his touch had brought her
moments before he tried to kill her. She craved that bliss, and
dreaded it more than death itself. She couldn’t let him steal
control of her body like that again. But what could she say? She
had pledged to abide by his requests. She kept very still while he
came close. He reached his hand to stroke her aura. She could feel
that too, as a tingle mirrored on her flesh below the aura. Bliss
electrified her aura. Her mouth parted, and her tongue darted out
to stroke her lips. It was glorious. It was dangerous. Without
knowing how, she pulled back, walling herself off from the tempting
sensation.

“You’re blocking me,” he accused. “Dindi, stop it.
Let me do what I must. It won’t hurt you. It will be soothing.”

She tried to do as he wished, but instead, it felt
as if the wall between them grew stronger.

“Stop blocking me!”

“I don’t know how to stop!”

She didn’t expect him to believe her. She looked up
at him, expecting anger, perhaps even violence. He drew in a deep
breath.

“We need to take a break in any case. Our route from
the Green Woods tribelands to the Orange Canyon tribelands will be
across the ford of the Ottermark, into the Boglands. The Boglands
are the closest no man’s land, and it makes sense they would make a
run for it. But the Boglands themselves are treacherous, and
possibly they would risk following the river north, to cross at the
Muckmire Ford, or even to take canoes down the river to Bushel Nut.
In your Vision, did they mention which way they were headed?”

Mutely, Dindi shook her head.

“We should try to find out. We need another Vision.
It is time for you to dance for your supper, Dindi.”

She never thought she would hate being asked to
dance.

Vessia entered a house that stank of burnt flesh.
After she stilled the fire with a water dance, she found a man’s
body that had been seared beyond recognition. She strapped the
corpse into the bone armor the Bone Whistler had discarded, and
pinned the burnt fingers around the Bone Flute. The bone garments
looked too clean compared to the singed corpse. She rubbed ash into
the bone to blacken them.

She worked urgently and furtively, afraid any moment
she might be caught at her trickery. She need not have hurried.
Hours passed before Vio rejoined her.

“We’ve cleaned out most of the resistance,” he
explained. “Some of the Bone Whistler’s supporters escaped the
tribehold before we could slay them. They will continue fighting us
from the canyon hillside. If we drive them from the hills, I
predict they will seek refuge with one of the Bone Whistler’s
allies, perhaps Red Spears or Orange Canyon.”

Vessia nodded, hardly listening.

Vio finally noticed the fire-blackened room. “Why
are you here?”

“The dead body,” she said. She pointed.

“The Bone Whistler! He is truly dead.” Vio released
a heavy breath. “Thank Mercy. It’s hard to believe one man could
have caused so much destruction. I often feared he was more than
human and could never die.”

He knelt over the body. “I suppose even a murderer
deserves our final respects. I will order his body sealed into a
jar and left for the Deathsworn.”

“Do that,” Vessia said, “But the Bone Flute must be
disposed of separately.”

Vio lifted the flute from the corpse.

“The Bone Flute. I suppose you are right, we must
keep this out of the wrong hands. But what can we do with this evil
instrument? Can we destroy it?”

“You cannot destroy it. We must take it to the Kiva
Beneath the World and hide it there. We must go at once, and we
must go in secret.”

“I will send someone…”

“No. It must be us. You and me.”

“Why us?”

“I am the only one who can open the door to the
Kiva, but I cannot do it alone. You are the only one I trust.”

He nodded. “I will be leading a campaign against the
Morvae who fled to the hills. Once they are routed, we will
separate from the rest of my army and journey to the Kiva Beneath
the World.”

“We have no time for you to pursue your quarrels!
Hiding the Bone Flute must come first.”