The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (35 page)

Vio snarled at the man. “You traitor.”

“Fa,” said a new voice, “I think that feather
belongs in your headdress, Vio.”

The Bone Whistler strolled out from behind the
boulder. The other warriors parted to let him through.

All the blood drained from Vio’s face.

“You’re dead,” he whispered. It felt like a fist
closed around his throat.

“Why? Because Vessia killed me?” The Bone Whistler
laughed. “Vessia has been in my bed far more often than in yours,
boy. Oh…she didn’t tell you that?”

Vio did not believe it for a heartbeat. Not a word.
Not until he looked into Vessia’s stricken face.

“Tell me he’s lying,” said Vio. He heard a horrid
grating crunch, like a pestle crushing bone, and realized it was
the noise from his own teeth grinding. “Tell me you didn’t sleep
with him, Vessia. Tell me you didn’t let him live. Tell me you
didn’t aide my worst enemy and lie to me about it. TELL ME. Tell me
you didn’t LET HIM LIVE TO CRAWL INTO YOUR MUCKING BED!”

Suddenly, he was shaking her, shouting so loud, so
close into her face that his spit sprayed her cheek. It was as if
another man, no, not a man, a beast, an ogre of rage, had taken
over. His face purpled, every vein popped. The small part of him
that was still sane could only watch aghast as liquid wrath
engorged his blood.

“You are mine!” he raged. “I should never have let
you out of that cage! That’s where I’ll keep you from now on! I
won’t share you with him!”

“Get your hands off of me!” she shouted back. She
shoved him away.

The rage ogre who had taken control of his body
called her every ugly name in the language. Filthy, beastly names.
Worse and worse.

She slapped him.

Her face was as flushed as his, she was just as
angry. But she was still so fragile compared with him, that her
slap did not hurt him at all. He didn’t even feel it.

His return blow knocked her to the ground in a
bloody heap.

It snapped him back to his senses. The rage ogre
disappeared, leaving Vio alone with what he had done.

The sight of the woman he loved on the ground,
bleeding, was too close to the last terrible time he had seen her
fall because of him. The night he had thrown the stone that killed
her. The Bone Whistler had used the Bone Flute to force Vio to do
that, and dance all the while, a puppet in a sick show. But no one
had forced his hand today. He had hurt her all on his own.

He was terrified he had killed her. He almost
collapsed with relief when she stood up. He cringed at what he had
done. The whole side of her face was a mess. He’d blackened her
eye, broken her nose, her jaw too. As he watched, she drew magic
into herself and her face resumed its flawless beauty. But the
expression in her eyes damaged him more than any blow.

“Vessia…I didn’t mean to…” He choked on the futile
apology. It sounded hollow even to him. “I could not lose you.”

“Maybe she would forgive you if you returned her
wings, Vio,” said the Bone Whistler.

Vio pulled the opal out of the leather bag hitched
on his belt. He handed the shimmering white stone to her without a
word. Anything. Anything to make it right again.

“But…” said Vessia. She looked confused. “How did
you get this, Vio?”

“When I gave you my bag to hold your wings, I
switched the stones.”

“You
stole my wings? It was
you
, right
from the start? It was
you
, all this time? Why, Vio? Why,
why, why?”

“I told you.
I cannot lose you
.”

“I believe that all this time, she has been unfairly
blaming me for that crime,” said the Bone Whistler. That hateful,
taunting purr was the tone the tyrant had used with all his victims
as he had them tortured to death. “Now at last you see him for what
he is, Vessia.”

Vio thought he had lost her when he punched her, but
now he realized he might have won her back even from that. She was
not as fragile as her form, and the immortal fae were used to a
level of happy-go-lucky mayhem that would have destroyed mere
humans.

But
this
. Taking her wings.
This
was
the thing she would never forgive.
This
was the betrayal he
could never recover from.

“You
have
lost me, Vio,” she said sadly.
“You’ve lost everything. Xerpen is going to kill you now. Aren’t
you, Xerpen?”

“Not just him,” the Bone Whistler said cheerfully.
“Every last filthy human on Faearth.”

Vio felt dizzy. It was so obvious, he had never
guessed. “You’re Aelfae.”

“
That’s right, Vio. Vessia and I
are the only survivors of the last massacre. But I’m going to use
your death to bring back a few sleeping friends of ours. And with
their help, I’ll resurrect our entire people.”

“And I am going to help him,” said Vessia.

The Vision dissipated but Umbral had seen
enough.

One. The Bone Whistler was alive.

Two. The White Lady helping him.

Three. Dindi had known this and led him on a wild
goose chase to give the Aelfae villains time to complete their hex
to destroy humanity. Lady Death was right. Dindi was a traitor to
her own race.

The girl had played him for a fool.

She wasn’t the only one to blame. He had let Kavio’s
memories tie him in knots. Fa! Umbral had almost come to believe he
himself
was in love with the girl. But that wasn’t
him
. Umbral, Henchman of the Black Lady, did not fall in
love.

Enough.

He had let her string him along for long enough. He
should never have spared her life even for a day. He was the blade
to her throat. It didn’t matter how much he hated himself.

It was time to make the last cut.

For a thousand generations, I fought humans.

Deep in the night, when sleep evades me, and
depression gnaws me like rats in my throat, I still see the faces
of my lost companions. My best friend, Mrigana, with her long dark
hair and sardonic smile; jolly Hest, who was always ready with the
perfect spice for a roast or a healing herb for a wound; Lothlo and
Yastara and their daughter Kia, poor Kia who always tried too hard;
Gwidan, whose strength of arm was matched only by his breadth of
heart; and my own beloved Xerpen. There were many other Aelfae
friends and relatives I loved and lost, but those seven were with
me to the bitter end.

One by one, I watched them die at human hands, until
Xerpen and I were the last living Aelfae.

Those last years of the War between humans and
Aelfae were the bitterest of my existence. All of us became
hardened by the constant killing, the constant attempt to flee the
humans, who always found us, followed by more killing, more dying.
Always, more of us died than they.

We knew we were losing the War.

We were desperate. Once, we even tried to travel
into the future, to see if the humans would defeat us, and if so,
what we could do to change our fate. It was for this purpose that I
built the Windwheel. Though I told no one, I put most of what magic
I possessed into it. When it failed, my magic was diminished—I
never recovered my full strength.

That was the beginning of the end for us. It was
after that my friends started dying before my eyes. And because I
had wasted my magic in the useless Windwheel, I was powerless to
help them.

I often wonder what would have happened if the
Windwheel had worked.

I often wonder what I would say to the Vessia of
that long-ago yesteryear if I were to meet her today.

The time had come for Vessia to cross the Bridge of
One Thread to the far summit. No human besides Xerpen who went
there left alive.

I am not human
, she reminded herself.

She was Cursed with mortality, however, and she felt
her age and weakness and, yes, dread, as she and Amdra and the
dozen Tavaedies who guarded her, waited for the signal from the
other side that it was time for her to cross.

Typical of Xerpen to demand her presence then make
her wait on his leisure here, at the very edge of the cliff. He
knew fear festered in anticipation.

Vessia crouched at the brink, the place where any
movement caused pebbles to careen over the chasm. The mountain was
top heavy, with a thick lip that jutted out over the sheer drop to
the arroyo far below. Xerpen had taken her wings. She considered
throwing herself over that edge nevertheless.

One of the Raptors would probably snatch her up
before she could hit the bottom. Three or four of them were always
in the air, by shifts, endlessly circling the mountain citadel like
vultures waiting for a beast that refused to die.

Besides, she did not want to fall into the canyon. A
foul darkness, a fog or cloud, hid the bottom, so all she could see
when she looked down were shifting coils of gloom upon gloom. The
mist, blacker than soot, roiled restlessly but never dissipated. It
was too low to be a storm cloud, and seemed too unclean for healthy
rain or snow. The reek burned the inside of her mouth. Vessia
forced herself to stare into the fog, trying to understand it, but
she could not do so for too long at one time. It nauseated her.

There were only seven huts on the East Peak on the
far side of the chasm. Five were built from tawny wedges of rock,
fitted together without mortar. The only humans moving between
those huts, on nameless errands, were slaves in loincloths. They
were so gaunt and pallid they looked like living skeletons. Only
black hollows showed where their eyes should have been. Yet they
never groped or stumbled, but scurried along their paths without
hesitation.

The sixth hut looked like the others, at first
glance, squat and square, except instead of angular stones, it had
been built from round, white stones, which were weirdly isomorphic,
and which, at times, seemed to radiate with a ghastly and unnatural
ruddy luminescence.

The final building was also different from others.
It had been built with towering slabs of shining white limestone,
leaned up against one another for support, an older and altogether
different construction from the rest of the human settlement. It
was taller than the other houses, and instead of a thatched roof,
further slabs of limestone formed a flat cap. Vessia knew as soon
as she saw it that it antedated every human thing in the tribehold.
She suspected what must be inside.

There was one other tent-like structure, directly
across the chasm, pitched too close to the edge of the cliff for
any sane person’s taste. The tent ropes wrapped around a thick tree
stump, as if the whole thing might teeter off the edge if it
weren’t tied down.

Why has Xerpen brought me here?
Vessia
wondered.
Just to gloat? Will he take me to the Blood House, or
lower me into the maw of darkness below? Even if he believed he
could convince me to help him, why would he need me? He has plenty
of fae allies, plenty of human fools to grovel at his feet.

Vessia tried again to force herself to look into the
blackness. This was no Aelfae or human magic she knew.
What
is
it?

Amdra came to stand beside her, probably to make
sure she did not sick up.

“It’s called the Black Well,” said Amdra. “
He
keeps it fed.”

A scream curdled the air.

It came from the weird, rudescent house. The blind,
skeletal slaves dragged a naked man, barely alive, hideously
mutilated to the cliff opposite the spot where Amdra and Vessia
stood on the other side of the chasm, beside the tent. The slaves
pulled the leather trappings off the “tent” and now that it was
uncovered, she saw it was actually a cage, lashed together from
human bones. The slaves pushed the naked captive into the cage.

He screamed again. Not a plea. Not a curse. Just
hopeless, animal pain.

The slaves shoved the cage off the edge. They heaved
on ropes, to unwind them from the stump, and lowered the cage into
the black mist.

The Black Well.

He screamed all the way down, until the moment the
dark swallowed him. The silence that followed chilled Vessia more
than all his howls.

When the bone cage was pulled back up, out of the
slithering dark, nothing remained. Nothing.

“He wanted you to see this,” said Amdra.

“I’ll bet he did.”

“It used to be only our enemies, captured in raids,
who were fed to the Black Well. More and more, it is our own
people. The Raptors have begun to raid the camps of the Drover
caste. The Weaver caste and the Eagle caste still think they will
be immune. But I think, in the end, it will eat us all.”

Even
him
, Amdra thought.
That’s my
one last hope
.

Vessia shook her head.

“Why do these humans allow him to be their War
Chief? He doesn’t even have his flute! He’s old. He’s weak. He’s
clearly insane. Don’t they know who he is?”

“No one is allowed to call him by the old title. We
only use ‘Great One.’ But yes, all the elders know. Most of them
were from Rainbow Labyrinth originally, his Morvae followers who
never abandoned him. The Orange Canyon Eaglelords are just as
fanatic. They despise the Drover caste anyway; what do they care if
a few dozen must die now and then? As long as the Great One can
make Orange Canyon the greatest tribe of all, greater than Rainbow
Labyrinth. They live for the day our Raptors will fly over the
skies of the Labyrinth and rain rocks of fire upon their heads,
take their riches and their women and their land and their power
and their pride. Always Orange Canyon has been second, and always
the Morvae have been second. No one hates First like Second.”

As humans had always hated the Aelfae
, Vessia
thought.
As the Bone Whistler now hated the humans
.