The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (36 page)

The baby cried, unseen, in the lodge behind them.
Coos followed. The Healer must have comforted the infant.

Amdra glanced toward the sound, but made no move to
leave the cliff edge.

“Is he Hawk’s son?” Vessia asked.

Amdra stiffened; Vessia wasn’t sure if she would
answer.

“I don’t know the truth myself,” Amdra said at
last.

“The other possibility?” Vessia asked. She recalled
that Amdra had owned other Raptor slaves before Hawk.

Amdra’s lips curled. She made no accusation; but her
eyes darted to the Chief’s Hall. Then she changed the subject.

Pointing to the Black Well, she said, “It’s on the
rise. Do you see?”

Indeed, the roiling blackness had seemed to thicken
a little even during the short time Vessia had observed it, but
she’d told herself it was just her fear of it that grew stronger
moment by moment.

“That’s the other reason everyone obeys him,” said
Amdra. “If we don’t do what he says, if we don’t keep feeding the
Black Well, the darkness rises. Before the Eaglelords agreed it
would be acceptable to feed it our own people, there were months
when the Riders couldn’t bring back enough war prisoners to feed it
every day. The black tide rose so high in the arroyo that it almost
reached the top of the cliff. Animals at the edge of the canyon
that walked into the dark never returned. Everyone was terrified
what would happen if it overflowed the mountain. We are at the
parting of the waters, you know. From our mountains, the rivers run
both directions, west toward the sea and east toward the desert.
What if the dark tide flowed both directions as well? What if it
never stopped? How many could it kill?”

“But the sacrifices make it subside?” asked Vessia
skeptically. She would have thought the reverse.

“Only if there are enough of them, and if they are
done with the right dances,” said Amdra. “Which only the Great One
and his blind slaves know. He kills those off every few moons and
trains new ones. I don’t know why he lets them dance with him
anyway, they aren’t Tavaedies. They are nothing but placeholders in
the
tama
only he seems to know. As if he…”

Amdra bit her lip. What she would not say? As if he
had created the
tama
himself? Surely he had. That was how
Aelfae danced. Amdra had blasphemed the Great One, spoken of those
he tortured and killed, and even wished for his death, but to
accuse him of creating a new dance was so taboo to her it seemed
worse than all of these things. Humans, Vessia thought in
exasperation, could be absurd.

“The sacrifice is over,” said Amdra. “It’s time to
cross the Bridge.”

They had to walk a way along the cliff to reach the
Bridge. Vessia knew they had reached the crossing when she saw
Xerpen, in his headdress and feather cape, waiting on the other
side.

Where, then, was the Bridge?

She saw nothing, only the empty gulf.

A glint of light was her first clue. Examining the
space closely, she finally saw the Bridge. It was a fine thread
indeed, as thin as a single strand of a spider’s web. The fierce
winds that buffeted the tribehold were worst here, over the
arroyo.

Vessia stepped out onto the thread and crossed the
emptiness. She willed the wind to lift her away, but though it beat
her, she did not fall. When she reached the far side, Xerpen held
out his hand to her, though of course she skipped to the dirt
without touching his fingers.

He was more cheery than usual, which was always a
bad sign.

“Have you seen the Great Loom yet?”

“I didn’t have good view of it from my cage.”

“You brought that on yourself.”

He smiled at her. Once, it might have been
disarming. Time had not been kind to him, however, and none of the
physical charm he had possessed as an immortal fae lord
distinguished his old age. Instead, he’d seemed to shrivel into a
repulsive toad, as if his outer self were inexorably contaminated
by the ugliness inside him. She studied the gaunt skeleton of a
man, trying to find the handsome young singer she had once known
and loved, but too little remained.

“It’s not as powerful as your Windwheel was, but the
Windwheel is lost and the Loom is here. Come, let me show you.”

Xerpen took her to the tall limestone structure, the
ancient Aelfae house. It was even taller inside than from the
outside, because the floor was sunken into the mountain. The entire
room was taken up by the immense wooden frame of a giant standing
loom, as tall as the sequoia of Yellow Bear.

In front of the Loom was a stone altar, like a giant
stone stool.

No one sat at the Great Loom, nor could have. The
scale was inhuman. Yet a shuttle sailed the weft, leaving a wake of
pure, shining light. The patterns went by so fast that all Vessia
could see was a twinkling, a shimmer, as of sunlight glancing off
water, before a new pattern took its place.

“It’s said that every event in the world, down to
the flutterings of the tiniest ladybug is reflected somewhere in
the Pattern on this Loom. Thoughts and emotions are recorded here
too, every thread in the aura of every man and woman, fae and
mortal, in all of Faearth.

“I have a very special
tama
planned,” said
Xerpen. “Once you see it, you will understand everything. The Loom,
the Black Well, and your own role. You will understand and you will
join me.”

“If you are so sure of yourself, give me back my
wings, and let me join you freely.”

“I will.”

Vessia raised her eyebrows.

“When the time is right,” he said.

Slaves bound her hands and feet to a stone slab.
Panic threatened to best her. She feared torture only a little
compared to the gut-twisting terror she felt at the thought of
being fed to the Black Well.

He won’t do it. He wants you alive. For
something. He just wants to frighten you
.

Unfortunately, it was working. Her body creaked as
she moved. She knew it was worn down by
aging
, one of the
more horrible tortures of mortality. Who needed tortures when her
own body was a prison, surrendering like a traitor before a blow
landed?

“Vessia, I apologize for the rough invitation. But
this ritual is for you. You’ll thank me for it soon.”

Six prisoners, blindfolded and bound, were brought
in and tied to posts around the room.

“Don’t worry, their deaths will have nothing to do
with you,” he said. “That’s another hex, a side project I meant to
finish a long time ago. I’ve tried over the years, and never gotten
it quite right. I think I know the right steps now. For you,
though, all I will need is the Loom…and the Black Well.”

“You will feed me to the Black Well?” asked
Vessia.

“Just the opposite. I will make the Black Well feed
you. And me. And the others if my other hex finally works.”

“How can you link the Loom and the Black Well?”

“They’ve been linked from the start. We like to
think our memories are set in stone. But they are fluid, like water
in a looking bowl. They can even be changed, like threads of an
unwanted pattern pulled out off the weft of a loom and rewoven to a
more pleasing design.”

Xerpen stood above her with his hand cupped around
something small, too small to be a knife. He opened his hand over
her chest.

A small orange and black spider fell onto her
breast. It crawled over her, toward her face. Vessia’s skin
prickled from revulsion.

“I’ve made quite a study of Deathsworn magic in the
last twenty-one years,” he said. “We Aelfae were foolish to dismiss
their arts for so long. They’ve powers we could learn to use. The
poison of this spider, for instance, loosens the threads of memory.
Together with the Loom, which can re-weave those threads, even to
patterns from long ago…” He leaned close to her. “I will restore
you, Vessia, to your former glory. And then, together, we will
restore our entire people.”

Lights of all six Chromas filled the room. The High
Fae had arrived. Not just the Vyfae, but all of them. Xerpen had
convinced them all to join him in this perversity. Who knew what
lies he had told them?

“No!” Vessia shouted at them. “The humans will
retaliate if you do this! You cannot start the War again. Faearth
will not survive it!”

Xerpen and the High Fae ignored her. What if Xerpen
was right? What if the War started again…and this time, the Aelfae
won
?

Xerpen slit the throats of the six human sacrifices.
One after the other.

She didn’t want her people back at
that
price.

Xerpen and the High Fae danced in a circle around
the Loom and the table where Vessia was bound. The dance was pure
fae: the pure beauty of patterns that arose from chaos. The High
Fae each brought their respective Chromas to the spell, but Xerpen
brought something else. Dark threads of
Nothing
coiled
around his body, his arms, and eventually, at his command, into the
warp and weft of the Great Loom.

Her body began to tingle. The sensation was not
painful, though it itched so fiercely, she cried out. She could
feel strength and power pour into her. Looking down at her body
laid out on the slab, she saw her skin tighten and smooth, her hair
grow brighter. The old skin that had imprisoned her cracked and
flaked away, leaving baby-tender flesh beneath. She shed age the
way a crab shed an old shell.

Xerpen too, shed his withered wrinkles like a snake
rubbing free of old skin. He scratched off the ugliness, and the
handsome young fae lord she had once loved appeared out of the
flakes.

It felt so wonderful to be young again. She could
not help it; when he grinned at her, and laughed for joy, her lips
parted into a smile. Then he reached down to her and drew strands
of her aura, and tossed them up into the Loom, where they shimmered
into the pattern.

The black threads from the Well touched the threads
from her aura. A jolt rippled through her. She felt sick.

“Xerpen… no more…please…” she begged.

“This is the best part, Vessia. I promise.”

The spider bit her and Vessia screamed in agony.

Dindi felt the memory threads of Spider Woman guide
her steps. At the same time, Dindi poured her own memories into the
dance. She remembered how it felt to be chosen “Duck” by her cohort
during her year of Initiation, the terrible shame and loneliness.
The feeling she would never live down her reputation as the failure
everyone despised. She had not been locked in a literal pit, but
there had been days she had lived in a black pit just the same. Now
all that ugliness welled back up and amplified the dance of Spider
Woman, becoming, like her weaving, something beautiful.

Long ago, before the War, when the humans and the
Aelfae lived, if not in peace, then at least without the relentless
obsession with mutual destruction that later consumed both peoples.
Humans in those days lived little better than beasts. They had no
bows, boats, baskets, blankets or stone houses. They lived in
caves, clothed themselves in unsewn furs and armed themselves with
spears. They kept no beasts, sowed no corn or potatoes. Little
wonder the Aelfae scorned more than feared them.

It was during this generation that to the Aelfae who
lived in the canyons a daughter was born without wings. Her name
was Lume, but the other Aelfae called her, “Human!” and teased and
tormented her. Her own parents felt ashamed of her, and made her
practice over and over again to try to manifest her wings. The most
Lume could ever do was to make herself extra arms and legs. She
could make herself into a monstrosity with four arms and four legs.
But she could not make wings. She could not fly.

At last, the Aelfae decided Lume was a monster, and
should be locked away, so no other Aelfae need hurt their eyes
looking upon her wingless ugliness. They hollowed out a mountain
and locked her inside with just one sheep for company and just one
hole, far above the rocky floor, to let in light and rain.

Immortal and alone in her prison of stone, Lume
amused herself by spinning wool into thread and stretching the
thread between the graceful rock formations of her prison. Every
day, every year, she stretched her threads a little further up the
pit, until at last, she reached the tiny hole in the ceiling. She
emerged into a cave where a human clan lived.

Knowing she was amongst her enemies and knowing her
own ugliness, she expected them to fall upon her with sticks and
stones and beat her. So great was her loneliness, however, that she
did not care. She walked amongst them just to be with other people,
even if they should hate her.

To her amazement, the humans knelt to her and kissed
her hand. None of them had wings, so they did not find it strange
that she had none either. To them, she was beautiful. Her perfect
face, her long flowing hair, and the strange, smooth gown she wore,
all were wondrous. They begged her to tell them the secret of the
strange “fur” she wore.

So Lume the Spider Woman stayed with the clan and
taught them the secret of weaving. She married a human man and
taught her daughters, who taught their daughters, down to the
present generation.

Dindi danced the story of Lume the Spider Woman to
the beat of a handheld drum at the appropriated intervals. At the
end of the dance, Dindi gestured to the loom behind her,
declaiming:

“And this is the loom Spider Woman gave us, that
whoever should reach the age where she can top her loom shall be
called a woman and recognized by all the tribe.”

As she said it, she kicked the loom.

The crash when it hit the ground reverberated
throughout the lodge. But Umbral had done his job well. The loom
did not break. It now stood on four stubby legs, like a table a
handsbreadth off the ground.