Unfinished Song(Book 4): Root

by Maya, Tara

  “I will… catch up with you,” Dindi said.

  The other two walked away, leaving her alone with him.

  Umbral stepped out of the shadow of invisibility into Dindi’s view.

  But who did she imagine he was? When she looked into the obsidian mirror whom did she see?

  He stopped just a hand’s reach from her. He could have reached out and stroked her hair if he had wanted. A shudder rippled through her. He could not tell if it was joy, or pain, or fear, or rage. Tears streamed down her cheeks from nothing as simple as one feeling, wrenched free from the unfathomable storm inside her.

  “I knew you would come!” she said.

  Sure you did. Good girl. He nodded. Name me, please.

  Dindi

  He was gaunter and crueler than the year Dindi had known him. His svelte yet powerful build, the epitome of a warrior and a Zavaedi, had not changed, save there was a harder definition to his muscles, as if he had become even more relentless with himself. His body had been knapped with the symmetry found in the finest of obsidian blades. Blade-like, too, was his scrutiny, as though he would slash what he saw to pieces and reassemble it according to some preferred plan of his own. Despite his honed body, there was about him a desolation, an emptiness. He wore all black, tunic and legwals.

  She could not believe he stood in front of her.

  Kavio. Her aura sang his name.

  “Were you watching the contest?” she asked him. “Is that why you’re here? To find the Vaedi?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “Yes.”

  “Did you know it was me in Kemla’s place?”

  Now his brow flicked up. “Really?”

  “Kavio, there’s something I must tell you. Something I should have told you a year ago. I don’t expect it will change anything…between us. But it may make a difference to you for other reasons.”

  “Tell me then.”

  “It’s easier if I show you.” She reached into her blouse to touch the corncob doll—a comforting habit rather than a necessity—and took his hand in hers so he would share the Vision.

  Mayara

  Mayara labored alone in the smoky hut. Joslo had done his best to arrange the soft wolf pelt under her back, but now he was out again, in search of kindling. Normally, female relatives would have been by her side, but she had none. Alone, she shouted at the dark walls of the ugly hut, her prison. When the baby finally came, Mayara had to bite the umbilical cord with her own teeth.

  Exhausted by her hours of labor, Mayara lay back on the wolf fur, nuzzling the newborn at her breast. A little girl meant continuity for their new one-family clan. If she survives, Mayara reminded herself. The infant seemed misshapen; some weird growth sprouted from her spine.

  Then the baby yawned and the lump on her back unfurled into two tiny wings. The baby began to glow with a rainbow aura of light, brilliant as a miniature sun.

  Mercy! My Aelfae blood bred true! Mayara fought her panic. What should she do? What would Joslo do if he came home and found he had sired a winged daughter? He must never know.

  She wrapped up her newborn into a basket on her back, with the wolf wrap to keep the baby snug and hide her wings. Mayara hiked to the same hill where her own mother had once buried her wings. There, just as her Aelfae mother had once done for her, Mayara danced until her daughter’s wings fell away—the baby’s wail nearly broke Mayara’s heart—and then Mayara danced again around the wings themselves. Though she remembered no other magic, she remembered her mother’s spell of hiding, and she even knew, from bitter years of experience, how to expand and strengthen it.

  She closed her eyes and chanted as she danced: “Child of mine, and child of my child, and child of hers! You will never fly, you will never hold you head up high, or look your enemy in the eye. Keep your head down and your heart bound, and always keep your feet on the ground. For she who would fly must some day fall, and she who risks all to soar must some day die.”

  Bands of light, in all colors, lashed out and smacked the fallen wings, which turned to stone. This spell would protect not just one generation, but all future generations. No one would ever be able to see the magic flowing through her daughter’s lineage.

  When she returned to the homestead, Joslo had already returned and started to stack the new wood by the side of the house.

  “Did you bury it?” he asked.

  “What?” She turned still as stone.

  “The afterbirth. I assumed you left to bury it.”

  “Yes.” She relaxed. “Yes, I buried that. Behold—we have a daughter.”

  Joslo set aside his ax to admire the scrunchy-faced girl. He pulled a feather from her downy baby curls. “A swan feather. Where did this come from?”

  “A swan.” Mayara shrugged, as if this were of no import or interest.

  “But it’s not time for their migration.” He laughed. “It must have lost its way from the rest of the flock. Not unlike us. I think it’s an omen for our clan. The question is, a good or bad omen? Was the swan dead or alive?”

  “Alive, very much so,” answered Mayara. “Maybe it lost the rest of its flock. It might never fly again, but I think it will survive.”

  “A good portent then,” said Joslo. “We should take this omen for the name of our new clan. Lost Swan Clan.”

  Mayara kissed her daughter’s head. “Yes. It’s a good name.”

  Umbral

  She released his hand. Umbral fought the urge to hold on.

  “You are Mayara’s descendent. You have Aelfae blood.”

  “Yes,” Dindi said. “I began to suspect after I saw the Visions of Mayara, but before that, I had no idea. It is never talked about in my clan.”

  “Aelfae blood alone does not guarantee you have six Chromas.”

  “I know,” she said. “But I do.”

  “I believe you,” he said.

  She had been right before his eyes. The serving maid of the Tavaedies: a Tavaedi yet not a Tavaedi. It was her spell, he realized which had forced the wolfling to change shape at the wedding. Umbral had even recognized her well enough to unwittingly send Shadow to defend her. She had danced right in front of him, in fact, in front of an entire room of people, and still they had discovered nothing. Nothing!

  “Thank you. For believing me. I wasn’t sure even you would be able to see through Mayara’s spell.”

  “The Vision was quite convincing,” he said dryly.

  A spell protected her from all the world, most especially from the Deathsworn who were the sworn enemies of the Aelfae. In her innocence, fooled into thinking he was the man she loved, she had revealed her secret to the man sent by Obsidian Mountain to hunt her.

  Umbral did not often laugh, but the irony was too rich. For the first time since he had embraced the darkness, he laughed deep from his belly until he was breathless.

  She laughed too. Then suddenly, she hugged him. “I have missed you so much, Kavio!”

  He staggered back a step.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away. “I should not have done that. We are not…we will never. I only wanted you to know the truth about me.”

  “Now I know.”

  He should kill her here and now.

  No. Stick to the plan. He felt as if he were suffocating. He needed to get away. He needed to think.

  “Tell no one you saw me,” he commanded.

  Of all the men she had to see when she looked at him, why did it have to be Kavio?

  Chapter Seven

  Conflagration

  Vessia

  They prepared the Great Lodge for the War Dance. The ceiling had not been fully mended, so wind and snow gusted in at inconvenient moments. Vessia would not join the War Dance, but she would oversee it, from the same dais where she had judged the Midwinter Rite.

  Vessia’s shield would not last much longer. Amdra and her warriors must realize it too, since they probed it daily from the sky. Vessia had proposed that rather than let it fail at some random, perhaps terrible momen
t, that she unravel it all at once, when their side was ready to sortie across the field and attack the Orange Canyon camp.

  Meanwhile, the Tavaedies would dance War. The Tavaedies on the other side would be doing the same. It was a strange thing. Each of them would be performing the same tama, an omen of victory, but with the colors reversed. Here, the Green Chroma would be shown to triumph. But outside the tribehold, on the treetop platform where the Orange Canyon Riders danced, they would have the Orange Chroma win.

  Whose Pattern would prove stronger?

  War Chief Nann and several warriors brought a hooded man with his hands tied behind his back. His hands were wrinkled and spotted; this was no feisty warrior. Another cow thief? She wondered why they were bothering her with this now.

  “We thought you needed to judge what to do with this prisoner,” said Nann.

  She pulled off the hood. It was Vumo, her husband’s brother.

  “Oh, Vumo,” she said sadly.

  “It’s my fault we let him in,” said Nann grimly. “I let him in. He claimed he wanted to spend the festival with me for old time’s sake and I…wanted to believe it.”

  “Maybe it was even true,” said Vessia. “His daughter might not have told him about the attack.”

  “Finnadro will be able to tell,” said Nann.

  “Please, Vessia,” said Vumo. “Do not subject me to that humiliation. I am a fat old drunk. Even if I wanted to, what harm could I do to your people? You know I can’t control my daughter. I will give you my word to cause no trouble.”

  “Let him sit beside me,” said Vessia. “Please, untie him.”

  “Thank you, Vessia.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Nann.

  “I will watch him,” Vessia promised.

  The warriors untied Vumo. He rubbed his wrists and sat on the log next to Vessia.

  “Just one other thing.” He held out his hands apologetically. “Could I maybe have just one teensy-weensy bowl of beer?”

  Dindi

  Everything around her burned and bled. Dindi stood alone in the chaos, powerless to stop it. Suddenly dark riders on black horses stampeded through the field of flying spears. Shadows consumed color in their wake. They came straight at Dindi, and the lead horseman snatched Dindi up onto his horse. She looked up into an ice-cold handsome face. She heard words: Once you come to Obsidian Mountain, you will be mine at last. Then he smiled, and his smile heralded the triumph of Lady Death…

  The nightmare dissolved when Dindi woke up, but the headache it had brought remained. She found herself lying on lumpy piles of cornhusks in the cold pit of a storage kiva. Amidst all the clay pots and baskets and gourds nestled many shadows. Dindi had never been afraid of the dark before, but in the wake of her nightmare, those dancing shadows made her shiver. What little light crept through the egress in the ceiling only made the shadows undulate like mock Tavaedies.

  The next six days were a blur for Dindi. Dindi and the other Tavaedies never left the kiva where they practiced. They slept on blankets right there on the floor. The lessons were intense and unrelenting, yet no one complained.

  Finnadro taught the War Dance to the Tavaedies. His main Chroma was Green, naturally, but he also could dance Blue, Red, and importantly, Orange. Although the Green Woods tribe valued Imorvae Tavaedies, most of theirs were Morvae, and only danced Green. Almost no Green Woods Tavaedies danced Orange, but for the War Dance, they would need both Chromas. Tamio had joined the large Green team. Kemla and Dindi would dance on the side of the smaller Orange team.

  For practice, the Tavaedies were divvied into pairs, and Kemla and Dindi repeatedly faced off. Part of the “realism” of their dance was that one of them must lose their “duel” in order that the other could win. As in a real battle, who won and who lost depended upon their ferocity and quickness in taking the offensive. At the beginning of each new sequence was a new opportunity to steal the upper hand.

  It was easy to see how Kemla had been born for this kind of dancing. The girl loved the competition. She especially liked beating Dindi and gloating over it afterwards. Dindi, on the other hand, hated it. Kemla's gloating irked her, but Dindi couldn't take pleasure in beating Kemla either. Kemla always took the defeat personally, which made Dindi feel bad for her. A few times, Dindi had let Kemla win, but Finnadro had seen through that at once and had berated her for it. Finnadro gave them real weapons—sharp, not dull.

  “You will learn to use these as if your lives depended upon them,” Finnadro said. “They do.”

  When they had practiced to his satisfaction, Finnadro showed them to their costumes, in the corner of the kiva. The girls shouldered into the stiff leather uniforms and leather helms. Dindi was ready first, because Kemla lingered to fuss over the lacing of her pants.

  “Do they know yet?” asked War Chief Nann

  “No.”

  “You still haven't explained?” Nann sounded surprised, and disapproving.

  “If I prepare them, it will ruin the effect.”

  “What if the girls prove too strong? That Kemla dances War like a lioness.”

  “Which is exactly what we want her to do. Don't worry, there will be many Greens. Besides, if there are any problems, the White Lady will intervene.”

  On the other side of the room, Kemla finished fussing with her robe. “I'm ready.”

  “Good.” Finnadro motioned for the girls to take their places again. “Now let's perform the war dance. By this time tomorrow, the war will be real.”

  Kemla and Dindi left the seclusion of the storage kiva in costume and walked directly to the village square. Dindi noted the barricades that the warriors had built during the days she and Kemla had been busy practicing. Instead of the usual hustle-bustle of chattering men and women tending babies, neat rows of armed warriors surrounded the Great Lodge.

  “This is it,” Kemla said in a voice audible just to the two of them. “Everyone who counts is watching.”

  The Green Tavaedies stood already upon the platform. Their Zavaedi was Elder Ferret, a revered warrior-dancer from the Ferret Clan. Finnadro was there also, dressed in Orange.

  Five Orange Dancers took their places opposing the formation of thirty-six Green. The Green Dancers clutched bows, the Orange dancers rode the backs of Dancers of other Chromas and carried spears.

  Finnadro roared and leapt forward, swinging his spear. Kemla and Dindi followed his lead.

  “This is a War Dance,” War Chief Nann had told them. “Do not just dance with your partner. Hate your opponent. The stronger your hate, the more power you feed into the dance.”

  Dindi knew that her anger against Kemla had been peat to the fire of her dance to hex Kemla eight days ago. But it was difficult to find that anger now, fighting the Greens.

  Either Kemla did not have that problem, or she had found some other crimson emotion as strong as hate that transformed her into a raging forest fire. The blaze of burning light around Kemla was nearly blinding, and one by one the Greens fell to Kemla's merciless execution of the battle-like dance steps. The Greens, though not actually slain, could not rise from where they lay once “defeated,” according to the rules of the War Dance.

  Finnadro, instead of doing his best to assist Kemla, seemed alarmed once he realized what was happening. Even after he dueled Elder Ferret in a highly intricate and brutally realistic duel, he watched anxiously. When Kemla forced the Green Tavaedi into the set of moves on the losing side, causing him to “fall” as well, he snapped, “Kemla! Enough! You've done well enough!”

  “Shut up, I’m winning!” she shouted.

  “Fool girl!” shouted Finnadro, “You have to lose!”

  “Never!” screeched Kemla. “I will win!” She attacked another Green, and this time it was obvious that her intent was to maim. The man did not even try to parry with the correct moves, he just dove off the platform in a panic.

  The Green Zavaedi Elder Ferret faced Kemla now. Dindi could see that it was not only their physical selves that met and clashed. Their
auras, too, smashed like clubs together. Physically, Kemla was much smaller and clumsier than the Green Zavaedi, but her aura was like a giant in comparison to his. Whatever Kemla lacked in skill at this kind of dueling dancing, she made up for in sheer magical power.

  “Enough!” The White Lady stood up. “I will put an end to this!”

  Instead, she cried out as if something had punched her and she collapsed into a heap.

  The Green Zavaedi Elder Ferret gaped in horror when the White Lady fell, and Kemla took advantage of his moment of distraction. With a brutal swing of her club, and an even more compelling sweep of her aura, she knocked Elder Ferret in the head and sent him rolling over his knees. The watching clansfolk gasped. They began to babble in alarm.

  Finnadro moved to block Kemla.

  “That won't work!” cried Elder Ferret from his place. “You can't fight Orange with Orange, or it is all for nothing!”

  Finnadro swore in frustration. There were only two Green Tavaedies left, and they hung back, terrified of Kemla’s berserk rage. The Pattern of the Dance was in tatters. If someone didn’t revive the strands of Green, they threatened to unravel completely.

  Dindi jumped off the back of her “raptor.” She stopped imaging herself as an eagle sweeping through a stone canyon. She replaced those images with shady summer willows, meadows in the spring, mossy stream banks and sweet, crunchy green apples. With a pirouette and sweep, her own strands of magic flowed smoothly from Orange into Green. Inventing steps for the dance as she went, she gathered into her arms strands of Kemla’s angry Orange rays and redirected them into the fading strands of Green, so that those strands too flowed Orange to Green.

  It was not how the dance was supposed to go. Nonetheless, Green was starting to outbalance the Orange again, in the fabric of the Pattern. She knew that emerald light billowed around her, and she had dimly heard the gasp of Finnadro beside her when she switched in mid-leap from Orange to Green. But these were peripheral sensations. Her attention was focused entirely on Kemla.