The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (18 page)

“Can you use a hoop?” Vio asked, tossing her one of
the instruments the humans used to guide their mounts.

“I don’t need it,” she said.

He lost his skepticism only after she leaped onto
the bare back of the mare, whispered into her ear, and left the
kraal at a gallop.

He kicked his own horse to catch up with her.

“Fine,” he laughed. “Of course an Aelfae can ride.
And you’ve brought your bow, which is fine. But stay out of the
heart of the combat.”

She shrugged. She had once had a taste for killing
humans, but that sun had set. She had no desire to end more of
their sad, short lives. Privately, she vowed to kill only to
protect Vio from imminent death.

The Morvae had septs of warriors on horseback, and
many hundred warriors on foot, but there was no structure to their
resistance. Vio routed them and chased them higher and higher into
the mountains. After half a moon of harrying the warriors, the
remnant of the Morvae forces overtook their families, who had fled
ahead of them, most the very day of the Bone Whistler’s fall. Two
thousand tribesfolk had fled to the hills, some because they clung
to their hate of Imorvae, others because they feared retribution.
They had taken their aurochsen and goats and whatever they could
carry on their backs. This miserable straggle of refugees left a
trail of cast off treasures and dead in their wake. Vio and his men
“liberated” most of the livestock in a series of raids.

The refugees grew ever more desperate and ragged.
The alpine landscape grew ever harsher. Desert canyons surrendered
to snowy slopes. The oldest and youngest refugees died in droves,
along with slaves who were sacrificed by the Morvae Tavaedies to
cast hexes against the pursuing army.

Vessia killed nine humans. Three of those aimed
weapons at her husband. The other six were Tavaedies dancing around
a
mariah
, a sacrificial slave, whom they had tied to a tree.
They threw rocks at him as they danced a hex meant to be sealed by
the slave’s death. Vessia shot six arrows and pierced six throats.
She cut the slave free.

“From which tribe were you captured?” she asked
him.

“Y…yeeeellow Bear,” he stammered.

“Go home.”

The Morvae sacrifices and war dances were all in
vain until they reached the border of Orange Canyon. A flock of
Raptor Riders circled over the borderlands. Their leader shouted
down to Vio.

“We know you betrayed your chief, Skull Stomper! If
you cross into our tribelands, we will consider ourselves at war
with the Rainbow Labyrinth!”

Vio ordered his men to halt. They drew their horses
up on a ridge and watched the procession of refugees pour across
the no-man-man’s land past trees branded with the mark of Orange
Canyon’s totems, the Eagle and Ram.

“Let them go,” Vio ordered his men. “Our tribe needs
rest from war.”

“I have not forgotten our other task,” he told
Vessia privately. “But the tribelands of Orange Canyon lie between
us and the Kiva Beneath the World. If I am caught there with an
army, it will mean war. If I am caught there alone with my wife, it
will mean both our deaths. The Big Horn Pass will be watched by the
birds.”

“Send your army home,” she advised. “Our horses too.
Those prairie-prancers aren’t fleet enough for the mountain
passes.”

He sent the seven septs of horsemen home, guarding
the captives and livestock. He promised he would catch up with them
as soon as he could. However, he was frowning when he spoke again
to Vessia.

“I think I know what you intend, but I don’t think
it is a good idea to travel by wing.”

“Why not?” she asked.

If her wings had not been stolen by Xerpen, flight
would
have been her preference. Vio still did not know she
had lost her wings. How could she tell him, without also revealing
her betrayal? She had been wondering what excuse she could give him
for not flying. Perhaps he would give her one.

“I don’t think it’s safe,” he said.

A feeble reason, but Vessia nodded gravely as if it
were the best argument in the world. “Very well.”

He looked surprised and relieved. “You concur?”

“I have something else in mind,” she said.

She whistled. Two bighorn sheep, ewes, trotted into
the clearing where she and Vio stood. She danced herself into a
trance to bring on the transformation. The
tama
lasted a
long slide of shadow over the ground, much longer than it should
have. She sorely lacked practice. At last, however, she felt warmth
flow through her body, and she extended the multicolored threads of
magic to twine into the bodies of the sheep. The animals bleated in
dismay when their bodies stretched and grew. Soon both ewes stood
nearly as tall as horses. Their woolly bodies were stockier, their
legs leaner.

Vio examined the animals dubiously. “Can we
ride
sheep?”

“We Aelfae used to do it often. They are not much
different from horses. Those also used to be small in stature, as
the wild ponies still are today. We enlarged them only when we
needed to ride, then returned them to their natural size. It was
not until you humans stole a herd of horses from us while they were
enchanted that they stayed that way. You should not have done that,
by the way. It is one thing to ask animals for their help from time
to time. They will do that much gladly if you ask in a way they
understand. But it was not fair to the horses to make them into
your slaves forever.”

“What choice did we have? We could not magic them
back and forth as easily as you Aelfae.”

Vessia shrugged. What point was there in debating it
now? Her people had lost the War. With the Aelfae gone, the humans
would ruin the world as they liked.

She gestured, inviting Vio to climb onto one of back
of one of the ewes. Bemused, he did so.

“If I had known your plan, I would have kept the
riding blankets and hoops,” he said.

“It is not necessary. I will tell the sheep where to
go, and they will take us there.”

He shook his head, muttering, “Fae.”

Vessia was not a thought-eater, like Nangi. But the
thread of Vio’s thought was so clear, she picked it up easily.

At least she did not try to fly in front of my
men
, he thought.
Too much more strangeness from her, and the
people will make me exile her from the tribehold. Or turn against
me altogether
.

That’s when it struck her: he was
ashamed
of
her.

The taste of his shame was ash in her mouth.

As always, when Dindi finished dancing, she
equivocated about what she saw. However, Umbral didn’t mind, or
possibly didn’t even notice. The break from travel put in him a
better mood, even after they resumed their traipse across the
Boglands.

She was still his captive, though their truce held.
It was not so different traveling with him than it had been
traveling with her own clanclatch, a thought which bothered her
when it occurred. True, he did not regale her with comical stories
and gossip as Tamio had on the journey from the Corn Hills to the
Hidden Woods. Nor did he babble endlessly about diseases and
animals, as her friend in Yellow Bear, Gwenika, had done when they
had traveled together to the Vast of Blue Waters. Mostly, Umbral
was grim and silent. Sometimes, for no good reason, he was furious
and frightening.

But one morning, when the day painted the sky a
particularly stunning blue, Umbral flashed a mischievous smile.

“The sky was not
always
blue, you know,” he
confided in a stage whisper.

Catching his mood, she whispered back. “What color
was it? And why are we whispering?”

“It used to be white, like an unpainted pot,” he
whispered back. “There’s a secret History that is danced about
it.”

“I’ve never seen that History danced.”

“I cannot dance it for you right now, but I can tell
you the tale. And I suppose there is no need to whisper, since we
are the only ones in earshot.” He stopped whispering; his deep
voice rumbled over the grassy field. Umbral walked, while she rode
Shadow. Beneath his air of rascality prowled a somber tone.

“When the Aelfae first climbed up from the deep,
into Faearth, which then was new born, they found a dark, empty
world, a blight. They used their magic to imbue this inert foam
with things that bloom and things that creep, with hares and pears,
and spruce and moose, and cats and corn.

“In those days, the sky was not blue, but white, and
sheep had wings—”

“Sheep
?
Wings
?” Dindi laughed.

“Yes, wings! Both rams and ewes. Alert, alone, Cero
Skylord shepherded his winged sheep across the bowl of sky. Their
fleeces, when shorn, gave clouds to Day; their horns gave stars to
Night. But he often lost them because their wool’s hue, shirts pale
as bone, blended with the skull-white roof of their keep. The poor,
lost sheep would flit about, forlorn, until Cero found them and set
them right. To ease his task, he painted the sky blue.”

“So that’s the secret, then,” said Dindi. “I might
have known you’d blame the Aelfae for the sky’s outrageous
color.”

Umbral looked up at the firmament, so brilliant blue
it looked close enough to reach up and stroke.

“It
is
outrageous, isn’t it? And how like an
Aelfae to simply repaint the world in a brighter hue just because
he fancied it! But there is more to Cero Skylord’s tale. For
meanwhile, below, from dirt sown—by the Aelfae themselves—with rain
and light, a new race arose from the mud like corn: Mortal humans,
born to die, born to weep….The one creation the Aelfae would rue,
had they but known.”

Dindi shivered, but she did not ask Umbral to stop.
When he spoke to her like this, quietly, seriously, about ancient
legends from the history dances or strange rumors from distant
tribes, it reminded her of someone. She wasn’t sure who, but she
enjoyed it.

“But awhile yet the Aelfae guarded their might,”
Umbral continued. “As for Cero, he was far too lovelorn to fear
humans, or even eat or sleep. From his house at the top of the sky,
he could view the skirt of stone of Faearth’s mountains, and the
ocean’s sweep. So it happened that one fair morn, he looked down
and saw a fae maiden so bright with beauty she made beauty new.
Pert and prone to laugh, was Gaya, to twirl and to leap. She danced
and entranced him. He was torn between his shyness and love at
first sight.

“Not all were shy. Human men saw her too, with her
skirt blown by a breeze that teased them with a peep. They lusted
for the faery and were sworn to make her their pet that very night.
They caught her, stripped her nude, sure they were alone, not
knowing Cero saw them sneak and creep. He gave their mothers cause
to mourn when he flew down to save Gaya from her plight. He killed
them all.

“Away with her he flew, back to his sky home.

“She told him, ‘As oft as you have looked down to
peep at me, I have looked up into the sky and sworn one day I would
make a fire ignite in your hearth for me. I have long loved you. Do
I flirt alone?’

“’
My love for you is wide as the
sky and as deep,’ he said. And soon to them a son was born: Ovin
Sheepkeep, whose strength was to unite his parent’s
powers—far-ranging insight, girt with stone.”

As Umbral said the exact words, “
unite his
parent’s powers,
” Dindi recognized who it all reminded her of,
both the story and the telling of it.

Kavio.

A deep sadness spread inside like seeping water.

Without warning, the horse bucked her off and threw
her into the mud. The unhorse writhed and flexed, visibly
shrinking, before it popped, like a bubble.

“What happened?” she asked in shock.

“The dark energy dissipated,” Umbral said. “It was
never a real beast. But you knew that. I constrained the void to
that shape, but it could not keep.”

“You might have warned me my mount might disappear
out from under me.”

He shrugged, struggling not to smile.

The unhorse had never eaten, so Dindi did not know
how the beast had lasted as long as it had. Nonetheless, the
incident unnerved her. It was just one more reminder about how
unnatural Umbral and everything he touched truly was.

After he helped her to her feet, he tried to
recapture the earlier mood, offering another story about Cero and
Gaya, but she could not bear to hear him speak anymore, sounding so
much like Kavio.

“Maybe later,” she said, meaning:
Never
.

He met her eyes, his lips tightened, and she knew he
heard the unsaid word.

“Maybe later,” he agreed.

If Umbral tried to tell her a tidbit or tale, she
turned her head away, and pretended not to listen. He stopped
trying.

For days more they trudged in almost complete
silence. It was not a companionable quietude but prickly as thorns.
Umbral grew surlier and when he spoke to her at all, it was to bark
orders, which she obeyed seething with resentment. Her thoughts
bent not to escape but to revenge.

She imagined herself killing him. Stabbing him in
the kidney with a spear. Shooting him through a lung with an arrow.
Decapitating him with an ax. Slitting his jugular with a dagger.
Poking an awl through his eyeball. The images made her feel
unclean, but she could not stop herself.

So the Deathsworn is taking her across the
Boglands
. The route surprised Finnadro. By wing, flight
straight over the Boglands was the fastest path to either Orange
Canyon or Obsidian Mountain, but by foot, or even by horse, it was
another matter. It would take twice as long as the southern route,
even if conditions were perfect. Nasty fae inhabited the marshes,
and some rumormongers even claimed that wisps of Aelfae Patterns
haunted the empty lands. Both Green Woods and Orange Canyon
tribesfolk ventured there to gather peat and medical mosses, but
the undertaking was always perilous, and some who went never
returned. Nor were the Deathsworn immune to the dangers. There were
no Deathsworn marked-paths across the Boglands.