by Tara Maya
Though Nangi shook her head and backed away on her hands and knees, as soon as her father raised the flute to his mouth and began to play a mockingly sweet tune, she jumped up, twirled around and performed several neat back flips to reach the newborn.
Finna screamed and fought to keep her child, but the warriors held her down. Nangi wept as she took the child by the feet and began to whirl it around.
Enough. Vessia decided. This evil must end.
Had she herself sacrificed her memory and her power to assume human form, to do this—end this abomination?
Vessia fluttered to the ground between Nangi and the Bone Whistler.
“Bone Whistler!” Vessia said. Though she did not speak loudly, her voice carried to every ear in the plaza. The watching crowd fell silent in shock. Only Vio found his voice.
“The White Lady!” Disbelief warred with elation in that cry. A warrior in the throng that surrounded him clobbered him silent again.
“You have forgotten that an older power than your own exists in Faearth, human,” Vessia said, keeping her focus on the Bone Whistler.
In his astonishment at seeing her alive, he dropped the flute from his lips just long enough for Nangi to break free of its spell, and safeguard the baby in her arms. Quickly enough, the Bone Whistler regained his nerve and narrowed his eyes.
“I didn’t recognize you before, but it doesn’t matter. I can control fae as easily as humans.” He brought the flute back up to his mouth.
The music slid off her. She saw the compulsion in it reaching for her with six serpents of sick light, but she brushed the tentacles of magic aside.
His eyes bugged.
“As it takes six Chromas to play the flute, so with six Chromas am I immune. I am the last of the Aelfae, the High Rainbow Faeries who once ruled this world. As long as I live, there is still one faery with six Chromas left in Faearth.” She flashed a dangerous smile. “But do go on. Try and play me, Bone Whistler. I challenge you.”
The first sign of real panic gripped him, but in his desperation, he could not think of anything to do except what he had always done. He lifted the flute again and blew.
The music rushed her again, stronger than before, strong enough to blast the tops off mountains or boil lakes to salt. But all his strength slid right off her and rebounded back upon him, binding him tightly in his own spell, knotting him in his own power.
He fell to the ground, limbs akimbo, in a seizure of shaking. Light crackled from him and shadows gushed around him, although Vessia suspected only she could see it.
A roar like a waterfall undammed in the plaza. At first, Vessia did not know where it came from, for there was nothing of magic in it. Only immense, immeasurable rage, the anguish of a whole people long pent up, and now suddenly released in one hammer blow. The crowd, who only moments before had watched passively, even avidly, the torment of the captives of the Bone Whistler, now switched allegiance, and began to storm the dais where their War Chief and his sycophants cowered.
“Death to Bone Whistler! Death to the Morvae!” raged the mob.
Chaos erupted. Tavaedies who had stood side by side moments earlier turned on one another and began to dance hexes at each other. The non-magic men and women of the swarming crowd satisfied themselves with ripping the flesh off the warriors of the Bone Whistler. There were no organized sides yet, only the riot of a people so long held enthralled by an evil power that they no longer knew what to do with their freedom but kill whatever they could seize.
Vessia had not expected this. The mob seized her too. Some lifted her up on their shoulders and shouted that she was their savior. A moment later, the tide of the brawl turned, and some of the Bone Whistler’s supporters attacked her, screaming for revenge.
A hand grabbed hers and tugged her free. It was Vio. He had found a stone mace somewhere and bashed her assailants out of the way.
“You can kill the Bone Whistler himself, but you would stand there and let these scum kill you?” he asked her in exasperation.
“I cannot die,” she said, bemused still. Mercy, what have I unleashed here?
“So I gathered,” he said, quite dryly.
Despite his injuries, his exhaustion, still evident, and the fact that he fought for both their lives, he could still smile at her and make her heart somersault.
“I love you,” she blurted to him.
“And I love you.” Vio hit a spearman on the head. “Can you fly with a guest?”
“Oh! Yes, sorry…” She wrapped her arms around him and both of them soared above the crowd.
From above, the battle looked even worse. It was a full out war, the tribehold turned upon itself. The fighting in the plaza spilled out into the streets between the houses. Looters raced to sack the holds of their enemies. Fires already licked out of the windows of some homes.
“What have I done?” she asked in horror.
“What had to be done,” he said. “Don’t worry. Now that I know that Nangi and Gidio are on our side, we can reach some reconciliation with the moderate Morvae. Some, like Chezlio, will fight to the last bashed skull, I fear, but with Ratho dead, there are actually few die-hard supporters of the Bone Whistler left. We will sort this out, Vessia. We will restore peace and prosperity to the Rainbow Labyrinth.”
“We’re going to have a son,” she said.
“What?” He could still be surprised, after all the other shocks. “How could you know?”
“A girl from the future told me so.”
“My fae wife,” he muttered. He looked a bit unnerved.
Battle meant a thousand brawls. Groups of two to five opponents slugged each other in the dusty alleys. Vessia and Vio flew over the melee. She supported her lover effortlessly with her wings. From above, the tribehold teemed like a disturbed termite mound. The enclosure filled the top of a flattop mesa. From wall to wall it was a maze of two and three story bleached adobe blocks, some of which already belched smoke. Fire and blood tainted the whitewash, giving the whole pueblo a reddish hue. Out of the chaos, however, clear sides coagulated, like butter separating from milk. The tribehold churned into civil war, Morvae against Imorvae, clan against clan and brother against brother. But old enemies were now fighting together. Below, Vumo and Nangi fought back to back; Gideo and Obran fought side by side; Danumoro helped Finna and her child find safety in a house, before he and Shula ran back into the fray.
“We’d better help them,” Vio said, already raising his mace.
Vessia found a clear spot and landed. Vio held ready his weapon, a hardwood club spiked with lion teeth, and she half-expected him to run bellowing out into the crowd, but he did not move for a few minutes. Although he was monitoring the fight, his focus was turned inward.
He reached out to stroke one of her wings. “So fragile, yet so strong. Why did you not tell me you were the White Lady?”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t even know I was fae.”
“How is that possible? Aren’t fae… quite different?”
She had to smile. “Not so different. Not the Aelfae.”
“But the wings…”
“I can hide them. Even remove them.”
“Can you show me?”
She folded back her wings, danced briefly in a circle around him, then reached back and pulled. A small white opal, a pearlescent shimmery rainbow rock, fell into her hand. She showed it to him. “Things do not always look as you might expect.”
“May I hold it?”
She hesitated.
“Don’t you trust me yet, Vessia?”
“It’s not that. It’s just…for so long I knew I was meant to fly, yet I was unable to. I never want to be without wings again.”
She handed him the opal.
“So small, yet so precious.” He hefted it in his hand. “Amazing. Look—it fits in my salt bag.”
He slipped the opal into a tiny leather salt bag he wore tied into the waist-tie of his legwals. Desert warriors habitually carried salt at all times. In the extreme heat,
a lick of salt could be more valuable than water. He treasured the bag, one of the few items he had inherited from his father rather than the Bone Whistler, so she was touched when he pressed it into her hands.
“Keep the bag if you like.”
“Thank you, Vio. But I think I prefer—”
Suddenly Vio cussed.
An eyeblink later, he shoved Vessia behind him and raised his club to parry a blow.
“Time to join your master, Crusher!” Vio snarled at his attacker.
“Not before you, Skull Stomper!”
Chezlio the Crusher, former Blue Zavaedi of the Bone Whistler, was a big, ugly man. Like all the Bone Whistler’s coterie, he wore human bones; in his case, mingled with piranha teeth. Underneath the mesh of bones, he had daubed blue paint over naked muscle. Blue feathers trailed from his human skull headdress and shells clacked in the legbands around his calves.
Chezlio hammered blows down on Vio. The lighter man darted in and out of five swipes for every thrust of his own. Then Chezlio managed to lock his arms around Vio’s neck. The two men scuffled in the dust, locked in a deadly hug.
Vio flipped Chezlio over his back. Chezlio landed hard but nothing stopped him. He barreled toward Vio again.
“Get to safety!” Vio commanded Vessia, as if stone clubs and flint spearheads were more dangerous to her than to him. The reverse was true. She was immortal. Slain, she would die for a day. His life would spill out with his blood, irrevocably.
But she ran. It had just occurred to her that Chezlio’s “dead” master might be insufficiently dead.
She needed to find the Bone Whistler.
She had left him writhing on the ground after she’d turned the power of his own Bone Flute against him. All it had taken was that sight, the tyrant fallen, for the crowd to rise up against him and his supporters. But their joy might have been premature.
She passed a man shouting, “The Bone Whistler is dead! Kill everyone who danced to his tune!”
You all danced to his tune, Vessia thought. Once you bloody your fangs on revenge, where will you stop?
She reached the spot where she had left the tyrant. Only a smear of blood marked the pavement.
She followed the stain he’d left crawling away. Along the way, he’d shed his distinctive garments of bleached leather and human bone. Nearly naked, he huddled like a rat in an alley, submersed in a heap of midden. The stench of burning wool overpowered the stink of the rubbish. The building behind him billowed black smoke, and bits of fleece floated in the ash drifting from the balcony. He was too weak to fight her when she pulled away the trash and dung he burrowed under.
Someone had struck him with a spear in the shoulder. It should not have been a fatal injury, except that she had already weakened him with the Bone Flute. The shaft had broken, but the spear point remained embedded in his ligament. Blood, like viscous pomegranate, welled from the wound.
“Come to finish me off, Vessia?” he asked. The loose flesh around his jowls quivered.
She marveled at his comfort with her name. The day before, when he’d ordered her death, he had looked right through her, seeing only a tool to hurt Vio. When she had come back to life and defied him, he’d recognized her as the Last Aelfae: I didn’t recognize you before, but it doesn’t matter. I can control fae as easily as humans, he’d boasted. It seemed he did not just know her as Aelfae. He possessed her name.
“Would you rather live a little longer, to face your victims’ wrath?” she asked.
His lips drew back over his teeth. “Victims? Is that how you think of them now? Once you thought differently. Once you would have aided me, not betrayed me.”
“How have I betrayed you? The first day I met you, you killed me.”
“You don’t remember me, or yourself. But I can change that,” he said. He pushed something into her hands. “Take back what was stolen from you.”
It was a stone knife. All blade, no handle. The cold, sharp edge cut into her hand when he pressed it into her fist. Droplets of blood seeped from her palm. Like a spider bite, the prick hurt beyond its size. Shadows swam before her vision; she was dizzy; she staggered; she swayed. Memories surged through her.
The knife slid from her fingers and clattered on the ground.
“Xerpen! Xerpen!” Hard, sob-like gasps wracked her body. “Ayaha, Xerpen! What have I done?”
Umbral
Umbral slashed the girl’s throat.
Or would have…if Time itself had not betrayed him.
His blade, his arm and everything around him slowed as if embalmed in syrup. His slash never completed the killing stroke. Instead, he was swallowed into the edge of a Vision. He could not move; then time sped up again, and he stumbled backward.
Dizzy and disoriented, he crouched on the ground, primed for battle. No opponents assaulted him. The Vision had dissipated. He tried to hold on to what he had seen, but he had been too far to the edge of the Pattern. Only one figure had shone clearly: the White Lady.
The girl was still bound to the altar.
A clear night sky glittered with stars. The bat beast, Shadow, hung upside down from a nearby tree. The rain had ended. Nothing even dripped.
Hours had passed. Hours.
She was still bound with ropes of dark energy. The circle of fire still burned. How could she have pulled in the threads to weave a Vision? He rose from his battle-crouch and approached her with the same caution of a man about to steal a cub from a she-wolf.
Shimmering orange lights and shadows illuminated her skin and the folds of dark wool sloped and dipped from her breasts to her hips. Wide frightened eyes like a doe peered up at him.
“How did you do it?” he asked.
Dark lashes hit her cheeks. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’re going to kill me no matter what I say.”
“Yes.” He frowned. Somehow, in the middle of a dead winter night, she smelled of wildflowers and summer clover. “Your power is impressive, but in the end you’ve gained nothing but a few breaths more.”
Still, although he palmed his dagger again, he did not immediately try to kill her. The Vision had been important. He wished he had seen more of it. He needed to think this through.
While he dithered, crunching wet leaves alerted him. Three to four people approached. They had some stealth-craft, but the squelching ground betrayed them to his careful ears.
Ash, grey with soot from her namesake, arrived at the menhirs. Pieces of Stoneheart followed after her, carried by Owlhawker and Masher.
“We were waiting for you at the other stone,” Ash complained to Umbral. “That’s where the other Gifts to the Lady are tied.” She disapproved of and dismissed the girl tied to the altar with a single sneer. “I can see why you decided to bring that one here alone, though. I saw you grab her from the battlefield. She didn’t look too injured to me. Seems to have all her parts.”
Masher went closer to examine the girl. He whistled. “She sure has parts.”
Masher darted out of the way before Umbral could smack him out of the way. Without a word to the girl, Umbral brought down his blade. She flinched away.
But he tapped the throbbing black cords of energy, not her neck. The shadow ropes fell away. She blinked at him in wary surprise. Umbral held his hand out to her. Even more warily, she took it and he helped her stand. He nudged the pile of her clothes scattered on the ground. She took the hint and dressed herself as well as she could in the garments he’d cut to rags. Even piecemeal fur would still keep her warm. He stood between her and Masher while she dressed, though maybe it was not necessary. She used dexterity to the advantage of modesty.
Once he was satisfied she would not freeze to death, he faced the others. “She is not a Gift to the Lady. Not yet. I have a use for her first.”
“I’ll bet.” Masher licked his lips. “And I bet you won’t share.”
“Get your head out of your groin,” said Owlhawker, disgusted and angry. “What does any of t
hat matter? Stoneheart is dead!” He tossed the head and torso, neatly wrapped and bound, in front of Umbral. It was an accusation.
“We’re all dead,” said Umbral.
“Don’t give me that Deathsworn big talk. I’m sick of it. Stoneheart was killed in a battle we shouldn’t have been fighting. We’re not warriors. We don’t get involved in wars!”
“You’re quite wrong,” corrected Umbral. “Our whole reason for existing is to fight a War. Just not the war you’re thinking of. Don’t be fooled by the colors on the battlefield or the Chromas of the Tavaedies in their battle dances. There is only one War, and we just won an important skirmish. Stoneheart served the Black Lady.”
Owlhawker spat. “That for the Black Bitch!”
In a flash, Umbral thrust the girl to one side, stepped forward and punched Owlhawker to the ground.
“Stand up!” Umbral ordered.
Owlhawker cupped his bleeding nose. He stood up, but a step further away from Umbral than before, sullen and wary.
“You want to insult the Lady of Mercy again?” Umbral asked coolly.
“No,” said Owlhawker.
“Pick up Stoneheart. We will do him honor on Obsidian Mountain. Then—”
The girl had been quiescent up until now, but she took advantage of Umbral’s diverted attention to bolt free.
She got as far as Ash, who smacked her to the ground with a wood staff.
Umbral intervened quickly, before Ash could beat his prisoner to death. He hauled the girl back to her feet and leashed her with black strands of darkness from his Penumbra: a cord about her neck, wrists secured in front of her, a pull line that led back to his black aura. A gag seemed unnecessary since she had not made a sound besides small, sharp intakes of breathe.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said. “You may live to see another turn of the moon, if you do exactly as I ask of you. I deserve to get some use from you. I just lost a man today. That deathdebt too is yours to pay, since he died to help me get you.”
“I also have a deathdebt to collect from you,” she said in a low voice. She did not spit and strut her hate, but he saw it pooling in her vivid eyes.
