The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (27 page)

Dindi smashed the ax into the mummy’s back, but she
could see it did no good. Even an ordinary fae would have died for
a day from such a gash, but the mummy regenerated itself almost
instantly from any insult.

Umbral stepped close to the mummy, but he did
nothing more than touch it.

Darkness shrieked.

Waves of shadow rippled like waves in a disturbed
lake. When the shadow swelled past Dindi, the taste was so vile she
vomited. The dark was so intense, it hurt her eyes, the way staring
at the sun would, and the sound, the impossibly high shriek, made
her dizzy. Dindi folded into a ball, unable to bear the
assault.

The mummy had been an undead thing, putrescent and
revolting. But what Umbral did to him—though all Dindi could catch
of it was a flash of light swallowed by a greater blackness—abased
the very order of nature, removing what could not be removed,
leaving only a gap behind.

The darkness passed, but she still felt sick. She
stood on shaky legs, knee deep in mud. Where the mummy had been,
there was now
Nothing
. The rest of the world rushed in to
fill the chasm of nonexistence. Except for a lingering echo of
profoundest defilement, Dindi would have thought she had imagined
the whole thing.

Umbral sludged out of the water. The bog mummy had
scored Umbral’s back with bloody gashes, before he had destroyed
the monster so thoroughly and abominably. Umbral still reeked of
whatever unclean power he had employed, and Dindi shrank away from
him.

“What did you do?” she whispered in horror.

“I absorbed his light into the void,” Umbral said.
“Killed him, the only way a fae truly can be killed.”

“But the fae are immortal.” Yet she had seen it—felt
it—and knew he spoke true.

“The fae are Life itself,” Umbral said. His face was
dead white and drawn into harsh lines. He stood very tall, and she
had never seen him look colder, crueler or more dangerous. “But we
are Death itself.”

“You used
that
Curse.”

“Yes. I used
that
Curse.”

“But why… how had he escaped the Curse in the first
place? Why was he even here and why could we not kill him by
ordinary means?”

He blinked at her as if waking from a trance. The
utterly heartless, almost inhuman, expression on his face gave way
to a wince of pain.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Hours of daylight remained, but the dark energy
Umbral had gathered from killing the Aelfae still burned inside
him, and he had to decide what to do with it. While he pondered
that question, he automatically winnowed the wind for threads,
looking for any nearby humans or fae. Ash would have led the Wolf
Hunter on a merry chase to the south by now, so there should be
nothing from Finnadro’s aura, but Umbral expected to find the
sparks from many fae.

The wind was empty. Seldom, except on the tallest
mountains, which every fae except rock trolls and frost giants
found inhospitable, had Umbral tasted such a barren atmosphere.

“I think we know what happened to the hobgoblins,”
he said aloud. “The Aelfae absorbed them.”

As a Deathsworn might. But since when did Aelfae
have that power?

Ha. Since when had the Aelfae started defying the
Curse by returning to life?

Dindi did not understand the significance. She just
shuddered.

Buried in the wind, Umbral found a thin wisp of
magic, a clean taste, faintly minty, with a hint of wet fur. Had
the rest of the air not been so empty of magic, he might have
missed it. Once he tasted it, however, the whiff of wolf was
unmistakable.

Finnadro.

Muck the man. Ash’s diversion hadn’t delayed him one
step. Did nothing stop him?

Dindi had started a good fire, which crackled inside
a shallow pit of stones. Brooding, Umbral plucked the brace of
grouse he had shot in the morning, before his fight with the undead
Aelfae. He avoided looking at Dindi. She was sequestering hot
stones from the pit to boil water in their single clay pot. He
could not forget the expression on Dindi’s face after he had used
his power to bring mortality to the mummy. She had been less afraid
of the mummy than of him.

After Umbral finished cleaning the birds, he reached
up to snap branches from one of the trees to use as a spit. The
deep gouges from the mummy’s claws sent tendrils of pain across his
back. Gritting his teeth, he gathered the sticks and arranged the
birds over the open fire.

He found Dindi hovering unexpectedly close to him.
Since the fight, she had kept as much distance between them as she
could without quitting his company entirely.

“Your back….”

“I’ll be fine,” he grunted.

“Your fine black wool tunic is all ripped up. The
scratches are deep. You should let me look at it. Otherwise the
wounds will fester.”

“It would do my wounds little good to have you vomit
all over them.”

Dindi blushed, as he had expected, but she didn’t
give way. “I took my Initiation in Yellow Bear. I know something of
healing herbs and remedies.”

Umbral gauged her determination for a long moment
and finally shrugged.

“If you insist.”

“Have you the herbs for Yellow magic in your packs?”
Dindi went to the bags and began to rummage through them. “Never
mind, I found what I want.”

“Oh, good, make yourself at home with my
things.”

“Perhaps you prefer to sit there and bleed?”

“As a matter of fact…”

“Oh, honestly.” Dindi returned to his side. “I think
you’re just afraid it will sting.”

“It’s going to sting?”

“You’ll have to remove your tunic,” she said.

He unlaced his tunic on one side, shouldering out of
it with a flinch. The air was chilly, but not terribly so for the
season. He would not have been uncomfortable except for the
self-consciousness he felt baring his back to her examination. He
remembered the way she had gasped at his scars the night they spent
in the lodge.

She did not gasp now, but her brow furrowed. She
traced the old scars welted into his flesh. There were even more on
his back than on his chest.

“Do you fight monsters often?”

“It gives me something to do.”

“Is that how you became Henchman of the Black
Lady?”

Umbral grabbed her arm, pulled her around and stared
into her face. She met his eyes, challenging.

“Aren’t you? How else could you wield
that
Curse? You’re no ordinary Deathsworn.”

“I suppose,” he said slowly. “I never considered in
that way before. She is not like the other Ladies. One does not
have a choice to serve her or not.”

“I imagine not,” Dindi said. “Who would choose
death?”

“You misunderstand,” said Umbral. “I
did
choose death. All of us who serve Obsidian Mountain would have
preferred death. We were given no choice but to live.”

He became aware that he clenched her arm.
Embarrassed, he released her. His fingers left white shadows of
themselves on her flesh. “Sorry.”

“For what? What you’ve done? Or for what you’re
going to do?” she asked.

That question cut the throat of the matter a bit too
sharply for his taste. He smiled without humor and did not reply.
She returned his un-smile like a dare.

“Why didn’t you obey me?” he asked. “Why did you
attack the Aelfae with the ax?”

“It looked like it was going to kill you.”

“You were trying to save my life?” His brows
rose.

She blushed and busied herself mixing the herbs in
her little pot of boiled water. With a soft sheepskin rag, she
dabbed mixture onto the gashes in his back with gentle efficiency.
She dressed the wound with sphagnum moss and a strip of wool which
she tied around his chest. For the most part she was careful not to
otherwise touch him, but every now and again, her soft fingertips
grazed his flesh. That tantalizing hint of a caress was enough to
flood his mind with wild urges to turn and pin her down with kisses
in the soft moss and show her hands other places they might
venture.

I need not make her sick
, he thought. He
would break down her defenses, feeding her own light back to her
until she was overwhelmed with the exact emotions he wanted her to
feel for him. Not only would that keep her tranquilized, it would
multiply his physical delight in her by the pleasure he felt when
he tapped into her magic.

Because of the direction of his desires, Umbral
thought at first that he imagined it: a soft, multihued glow
reaching out for him shyly, promising warmth and surcease and
contentment in place of the cold, colorless void that perpetually
sheathed him. When the light filled his empty aura, it was a bliss
that surpassed even the pleasure he found when leaching light from
another person’s aura for his own use. For a moment, he could not
understand what was happening.

Then it dawned on him. Jolted with alarm, Umbral
shoved out the intruding light with his shadow as he scrambled to
his feet and away from Dindi.

She just sat there, stunned, staring up at him with
wide eyes—the very picture of innocence.

“D…did I hurt you?” she stammered. “I was trying to
be careful, but the gashes need to be cleaned or they will attract
bad magic…”

She trailed off in the thundering silence from
Umbral.

“What magic were you using on me?” he demanded. “You
have broken your word to me!”

“I was not using magic! Not on purpose!” She
flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would hurt you. You told me
not to block earlier, so I was trying not to block. I was thinking
of the opposite of blocking, reaching out, so to speak,” she made a
gesture of helpless confusion, “I don’t really know what I was
doing. It seems that I never quite know what I’m doing. I did not
intend to hurt you, Umbral. I was only trying to help.”

She could undo me.
He had barely escaped the
fight with the Aelfae with his life. The creature had been tougher
than any opponent he had ever faced as a Deathsworn. Aelfae blood
flowed through her veins.

“You didn’t hurt me,” Umbral said. “My back feels
better. But do not use your magic against me, even if you are only
trying to help. I might react by instinct, before I realized what I
was doing, and…” He didn’t add what might happen. She had seen what
befell the bog mummy.

“I understand,” she said quietly. “I won’t touch you
again.”

I want you to touch me
. The hunger throbbed
through his body. If he could just have her fingers trailing over
his back again without her having to use her magic while she
stroked him.

Yet her magic hadn’t hurt him. It had filled him.
What would it feel like to embrace her light fully? Given freely?

“Umbral?” Dindi asked in a small voice.

“Yes?”

“Is that how you are going to kill
me
?”

“How?”

“With
that
Curse.”

“You’re already mortal.”

“I know but… will you absorb my aura into that…the
darkness around you…”

“My Penumbra. Yes. I will take your Chromas for my
own. It will give me great power. But that’s not why I have to kill
you.”

She was silent, and he hoped she would let the topic
go.

She would not.

“Did you get great power from Kavio’s Chromas?”

“It’s not my habit to discuss Deathsworn secrets,”
he said stiffly. Damn mucking Kavio anyway. Why was she so obsessed
with him?

“But you have all six Chromas—thanks to him.”

“What difference does it make?”

“You have some of Kavio’s abilities…he could breathe
under water, and you did the same, in your fight with the
Aelfae.”

Watery darkness…a struggle against a huge and
terrible foe…as large as a house... a shark
.

“Interesting,” he said. “I suppose.”

“Do you…has anything else of him survived? I mean,
his personality, his essence…”

“No.”

“But…”

“No
.”

She hugged her knees. She had a way of making him
feel like a bastard with nothing but a hurt look.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said. “What was
Kavio to you that you care so much?”

“I loved him.”

“Did he love you?”

“No.”

“No?
Why not?”

“He was my teacher, my Zavaedi. I thought…it might
be more. But it wasn’t.”

“He must have been a complete idiot.”

She bunched her hands into fists. “He was
not
an idiot! He was brilliant. He was kind. He was…”

“…
blind as a bat. He had your love
for the taking. He threw it away. He had the Vaedi right in front
of him. And what did he do? Saunter away on some quest to find…the
Vaedi.” Umbral laughed. “Right into our arms.”

“Don’t speak of him like that!”

“Why not? He deserved what happened to him. He was
too stupid to live. If he had protected you, I would not have you
in my power right now. If he had killed me first, I would not be
able to take your life. If the two of you had banded together, I
would never have been able to overcome you both. But I can and will
destroy you one at a time. Or hadn’t that occurred to you?”

A tear streamed down her cheek. “I hate you.”

“As you should. But you cannot deny the truth. Kavio
looked right at you and never saw you for who you really are. I,
Umbral, am the one who saw your true colors. I have a part of you
that he never will.”

“You will never have any part of me!” She jumped to
her feet, as if she might run off into the night, or perhaps tear
his head off. He did not move from his spot by the fire, but he
tensed, prepared to chase or fight.

She sank again into the moss, wilting into a
miserable heap. She whacked the tear off her cheek with a grimace
of self-loathing he recognized too well.

“I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice. “That was
gratuitously cruel. I should not have mocked you.”