by Tara Maya
“Raptors!” shouted other men, echoing his fear.
This has got to be a joke. Nothing could be so unfair. He’d survived, and even redeemed one of his deathdebts. Just fourteen more to go. Tamio had been injured, but Vumo said he might survive too. For now, they could withdraw, honor served, and go home, assuming nothing insane happened first, like, oh, say, an attack by a bunch of giant eagles.
So, of course, since this is my life, thought Hadi, A bunch of giant eagles attack.
Kemla cried, “We are betrayed!”
That’s what Hadi thought at first too, that the Orange Canyon clans of the sheepmeet had betrayed their enemy guests to the Raptor Riders, breaking the truce that was supposed to hold during the duals.
It wasn’t that simple. The Raptors were snatching up the sheep keepers too. Chaos erupted everywhere as the giant birds swooped up screaming men and women with their talons.
One good thing. There was no suggestion he stand and fight. Everyone ran. Even Vumo gathered Tamio into his arms and ran.
Hadi ran too. He ran like bloody muck-all. That was one thing he could do.
A Raptor chased him. It was so close behind him, he swore he could feel its beak shove against his back. The feathers smelled powerfully of bird, and the wind from the rush under its wings sounded like howling in his ears. He jumped the sheepmeet wall and ran across the open ground, no plan, no place to go.
Too late, he realized the Raptor Rider was herding him toward the edge of the cliff. The giant talons hit him, not to grab him but to knock him off the cliff.
He fell through empty air. A memory flashed: the journey omen. The eagle had knocked the lamb off the cliff, so it could dine off the corpse after the lamb smashed to the rocky floor a mile below.
Ropes burned his arms and legs. Hadi had landed in a net. Other bodies were already there in a bruising pile, and more falling people banged on top of him. Raptors held the edges of the nets and carried the captives away.
Finnadro
The Raptors deposited the wildlings in the forested slopes below the Orange Canyon tribehold, where Amdra said the Deathsworn had been seen by the Vyfae. At her request, however, Finnadro stayed seated behind her on Hawk, in his raptor form, as they circled the area overhead. Finnadro had the Singing Bow drawn and loaded with his finest arrow.
“There.” He pointed with the notched arrow to two figures below. A small one in white fled a larger one in black.
“We’ve found them!” he exalted. “And we can save the girl.”
Dindi
Her boots slid on the ice. She fell hard, bruising her arm. Scraped skin, blood. Pain would have to wait, she wasn’t even aware of it.
Only the cold penetrated. Jaws of cold gnawed her. It was worse than when the Green Woods tribesfolk had ordered her hung by her arms outside.
This was madness. She was not dressed for the snow, she still wore the thin Aelfae gown, with only Farla’s short cape to keep her from freezing. It wouldn’t be enough.
The Ice Snake slithered and coiled through sheer walls of stone. There were no banks, but in some places the ice had thinned in the center of the river so much that Dindi had to hug the canyon wall, where the ice was thickest.
Ugly snow trolls watched her from the overhang, which was coated with icicles as sharp and long as spears. At first she mistook them for tiny, twisted conifers. Their skin was pine green, but their beards were so thick with snow they looked white. For fun, they dropped the ice blades at her. She dodged them as adroitly as she could, but one shattered so close to her that she almost lost her grip and fell into the melted slush. The trolls laughed cruelly.
She made it past the patch of thin ice and the gang of trolls, but the Ice Snake folded into another curve, and then another. How long was the river?
She arched her head up, up, up to stare at Orangehorn mountain. It looked impossibly far to the summit.
Farla said the caves were warm, but Dindi knew she had slim chance to reach the entrance before Umbral or ice fae or mere cold murdered her.
Still, she ran. Any chance was better than no chance.
Then she heard a shrill shriek from the sky.
Above, she saw the raptors.
Umbral
Dindi’s thread led Umbral to the frozen river.
She can’t be serious.
She was following the river uphill, higher into the mountains, which was madness. Spring was perilously close. This was the most dangerous time of year for travel over thin ice. The Ice Snake was a deep, fast river, which never froze at the core. It was never safe even at winter’s heart, never mind now.
She knows you’re going to kill her, Kavio whispered. What risk won’t she take? Even if you don’t cut her throat, you will be to blame if the Ice Snake kills her.
Umbral swore. Shut up, Kavio. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
The sky shrieked. Shadows crossed the ice before him. Umbral squinted up at the raptors. His heart squeezed.
Then the wolves howled.
Wolves and raptors?
He didn’t care about how dangerous it was. He pounded up the ice as fast as his stride would take him. He had to reach her before either enemy.
A torpedo of fur knocked him off his feet.
A wolf.
Then another.
Muck and mercy, it was a pack of them. Other beasts too.
And from overhead, arrows rained down from the Riders on the Raptors.
You need me, said Kavio.
There’s too many of them! Beasts. Humans. Fae. I can’t match their power!
They’re giving you everything you need. You don’t need to match it, you just need to twist it back on them. The more they throw at you, the stronger you will become.
I don’t know how!
But I do. Feed me, Umbral. Let me save you so you can save her.
Umbral didn’t hesitate any longer.
He lifted his fists to the air and sucked in every strand of surrounding power he could grasp, and fed it all into Kavio.
Done!
Two wolves still bore him down, pinning his arms, when a green arrow, a weapon nearly as long as a spear with ten times the velocity, came straight at his heart. But as he merged his power with Kavio’s memories, raw power and instinct united into one explosion of muscle and action. Umbral smashed both wolves together and caught the arrow with the bodies. The arrow was so strong it penetrated both beasts through fur, spine and skull.
Umbral tossed aside the dead wolves.
He danced as he fought. Wolves and wolverines and even badgers (muck it all, badgers?) crazed like rabid dogs, leaped at him one after another, but he ripped a leafless sapling out of the ground and battered them out of his way as fast as they could attack. One damn little fox just would not give up, it leap on him and bit him again and again no matter how many times he tossed it away, until it finally landed right on his face and sank teeth into his nose. Umbral howled and ripped it off and threw it so hard the fox hit the canyon wall, leaving a bloody streak when it slid down the rock to a muddle on the ice.
He turned every move in the fight into a puzzle piece in his war dance. He knew exactly what to do, how to do it, how to balance it, how to control it. It all flowed. Thanks to Kavio, it was as if he had fought fae and beast and man like this a thousand times before.
When he’d woven the hex he wanted he kicked the magic into the air at his foes, smashing their own wind back on them. The blizzard blew the birds out of the sky.
He shook his club at the abandoned sky. “Is that all you’ve got, you mucking bastards?”
Finnadro
The Singing Bow sang with glee when Finnadro released the arrow. The arrow flew strong and true. It should have killed Umbral. But he used Finnadro’s own wolf allies as shields. Finnadro cursed, but the wind whipped away the foul words.
The Deathsworn’s menace tainted the whole mountainside. Finnadro could see the light being drain away as if cascading into a pitch-black canyon with no bottom.
> More wildlings flung themselves at the Deathsworn.
Including Fox.
“No!” shouted Finnadro. He wished he had never agreed to stay on the Raptor. He needed to be down there, with her.
He watched helpless as the Deathsworn bloodied her against the canyon wall. She fell in a puddle of expanding scarlet and did not rise. A silent scream tore through him, but he clamped his jaws so tight he bit through his lip and tasted blood.
Her death is one more debt I will make you pay, Deathsworn, Finnadro promised silently. Pay in full. Pay in blood.
“This isn’t working,” said Amdra. “We have to take out the whole river. Do you have fire arrows?”
“Yes.”
“Light one now.”
That was harder done than said, but Finnadro took out an arrow with a bulb of tar-soaked wool and invoked Red to light it.
“Aim it at the trolls,” Amdra said.
Dindi
Raptors swept by overhead. One of the Riders released a flaming arrow.
That won’t last long in the snow, Dindi thought.
The arrow didn’t hit the snow. It hit a gnarled troll. Beneath his snowy beard, he had woody flesh, which caught the flame like a torch.
The raptors weren’t alone in the sky. Winged High Fae, the Orange Vyfae, flew alongside the giant eagles and hawks. Their wings raised fierce winds that swept down the canyon like a giant broom. Flames leapt from one troll to another. They screeched and ran in circles, setting fires to the trees all around them. One huge burning conifer collapsed onto the Ice Snake.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then an immense groan echoed through the canyon. A single, huge crack, right down the center of the river, started high in the mountain and traveled like a lightning bolt down the ice.
The Vyfae raised more winds. A gust rose from nothing and grabbed her as if in an invisible hand. She had no time for fear. Everything moved too fast. Pain exploded in her head when she hit rock. Then again when she hit ice.
Liquid cold engulfed her and with it the strange warmth that uttermost cold brought as a strange balm. She could no longer care that she was about to die. Her hands closed around something, seeking something. Hadn’t she once had a doll that might have slowed time down, saved her?
But why should she care? At last she felt warm. At last she could sleep.
There was nothing left to hold onto except one hope.
Kavio, our tie was never broken. I’m following the thread back to you…
Umbral
The ice cracked right down the middle. The blizzard sheared the river in half. Snow, trees even boulders torn from their moorings in the clutch of that insane rage…and a human body, looking tiny and frail as a doll.
“No!”
The wind drowned out his cry.
He was too far away to do anything but watch, helplessly, as the wind smashed Dindi against the rock wall and then threw her under the broken ice.
Then the blizzard hit him as well, and he tumbled head over heels in the fury of punching ice and unfrozen water.
Finnadro
“That did it!” shouted Amdra. “We got him!”
“The girl is trapped in that!” Finnadro cried. “We must go back for her!”
She might still be alive. Fox might still be alive too. He clung to that.
“There’s no chance. They’re both dead.”
“You can go back, but I’m going down there. We don’t even know for certain the Deathsworn is dead.”
“He’s dead. They’re all dead. I’m sorry, but there was no other way.”
“Let me down!”
“No! We must report to the Great One.”
Finnadro’s knuckles whitened on his bow. Short of jumping from the Raptor’s back, he had no choice but to agree as Amdra turned Hawk around to head up to the mountain summit, the tribehold of his enemies, and the master Amdra served—now Finnadro’s ally.
Dindi
It is summer and she and Kavio stand in a field, alive with poppies and monarch butterflies. The rest of Faearth might as well not exist. They are dancing together.
He shows her a tricky lift and toss. She lands in his arms, her hair spilling across her face, wisps of midnight mess. The sight makes him laugh. He purses his lips, puffs. The wisps billow up and re-settle back over her eyes.
She puffs back. His bangs flap on the little breeze.
He retaliates with another puff, and she re-retaliates, and then they are both blowing into each others’ faces, cheeks round, lips comically pursed, bangs flapping like wings, until the absurdity is too much.
She collapses onto his chest, shaking so hard she can’t stand, helpless with laughter. Her knees buckle but he catches her in his arms. His strength supports her like a promise. She basks in the heat of him, the musky male scent, with the same delight a cat would purr and roll in a sunbeam. He pets her hair. A patter of heartbeats, hers, his, together, indistinguishable, sounds in her ears. She could no more peel herself off his chest than she could step out of her own skin. They are one cloth.
Dindi didn’t want to let go of the dream. It was a memory, though she could no longer remember the exact day it had occurred—just that it had been during her journey with Kavio to Sharkshead. A lifetime ago. That was all she remembered of it. Someone must have pulled away first, let the embrace loosen, tamped down the last embers of laughter. Probably it had been Kavio. He was always quicker to sober up than she. But maybe, to please him, she had steadied her balance and straightened her face, and said, demurely, “I am ready for my next set, Zavaedi.”
She couldn’t remember. The laughing moment stood alone in her memory, perfect by itself. She had returned to the sequence again and again, rehearsed it in her mind, as if it were a tama, a secret History about only two, known only by two.
And now only by one.
Someone was rubbing heat back into her frozen limbs. Why? She did not want to wake up. She wanted that memory to be her last thought.
“Dindi, come back to me,” Kavio said softly. “Don’t leave me.”
Her eyes flew open.
She was on a black fur cape—Umbral’s raven and bear cape—naked. Another fur covered her, but that wasn’t what had warmed her up. Kavio knelt beside her, stripped down to his legwals, rubbing life back into her arms and legs. She had grown used to Umbral wearing Kavio’s face, but this was different. It wasn’t his handsome face, or perfect body that reminded her of Kavio. Umbral might have looked like Kavio, but there was something in his dark and guarded posture that was all his own. She’d learned to see him as himself.
This was different. This man moved like the Kavio she remembered. Younger. More innocent. More pure.
Still, she had learned not to trust appearances.
“You’re not really Kavio,” Dindi accused.
“I am. He’s given me this. As a kind of thank-you, I think.” Pain flashed on Kavio’s face. “But only for a single, brief turn. We don’t have long, Dindi, before Umbral will be back.”
“Back? But I don’t understand. I thought you were dead, how…”
Kavio tapped his heart.
“The same way you let Spider Woman live again. I’m not really here, Dindi. I’m just a memory. The last thread of a lost pattern. But I can still love you. I can still do this.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
Only Kavio could kiss her and make creation explode into a million unnamable, unimaginable colors. She didn’t need to know anything else. They shared one transcendent kiss. It lasted forever. And it was over instantly.
As soon as the change came, she felt it. One moment she was kissing Kavio. The next, though she was still kissing a man who looked just like Kavio, she knew it wasn’t.
Kavio was gone.
Umbral was back.
Umbral
For a single, sweet flicker of a moment, Dindi was in his arms, kissing him fiercely. Then she stiffened and pulled away. Firelight illuminated her bare s
kin, eager nipples. She had been naked in his arms. Self-consciously, she pulled the fur over her breasts.
She glanced around the white limestone cave. It was a large, if uneven space, like a mouth with a thousand teeth, stalactites and a stalagmites gnashing toward each other with only a handbreadth between many of them. They were camped in the center of this forest of limestone on a spot where previous denizens of the cave had hewed some flat ground from the jagged jaws of rock, close to the small cave where they had entered the mountain. Umbral had found many dozen unused torches, and lit half of them.
“Spider Woman’s prison,” said Dindi.
So Kavio had told him. How Kavio knew, Umbral did not know. Apparently Kavio knew of it as a secret passage to the Orange Canyon tribehold on the summit of the mountain. The rock passages riddled the mountain all the way through.
Umbral stood up. He could not bear to look at Dindi, disheveled and naked on the fur in the firelight, with her lips still moist from Kavio’s kisses. Kavio had kept his word and departed when Umbral asserted himself, but what good was it?
Kissing Dindi, Umbral had realized that he could not blame Kavio for his emotions any longer. Umbral was the one who had chosen to drag Dindi from the ice. Umbral was the one who had found the entrance to the cave—though Kavio had showed him where—and lit the fires. Umbral was the one who had stripped the wet clothes from her body, sucked the water from her mouth and warmed her limbs with his own. Umbral was the one who had knelt by her side until she woke up, only to step aside and yield his body to Kavio for one agonizing moment.
All he’d had to do was let her die. Umbral could have done that and Kavio would have been helpless to stop him. That had been true all along. Umbral just had not wanted to admit it to himself.
Because he had fallen in love with her, as stupidly and overwhelmingly as Kavio had.
Umbral tossed the corncob doll on the limestone floor next to her fur. It clattered and rolled to a stop.
