Unfinished Song(Book 4): Root

by Maya, Tara

  “I'm the one you hate,” Dindi challenged. “Fight me, if you want to fight.”

  Kemla shrieked. She launched herself over the bodies of the other dancers like a falcon. Kemla was dancer enough that she did not quite let her attack degenerate into mindless clawing and pecking, but otherwise her moves resembled very little the stylistic courtesy that normally characterized a dance, even the War Dance. When the Orange and Green Tavaedies had fought, their moves were lightning quick and iron hard, but the Tavaedies had never ceased to dance. This was no longer a mere dance; it was a real duel, just as the spears were real weapons. Kemla was going to kill Dindi, if Dindi let her.

  But when Dindi felt her aura wavering from Green back to Orange, she caught herself. No. She remembered the old saying:

  Don’t hit your face to fight your head,

  Don’t fight hate by spreading blame,

  Don’t hide blood by painting red,

  Don’t fight fire with flame.

  Dindi kept up her defensive moves, but she did not attempt to take the offensive. Kemla reached out with talons of Orange power. Dindi repeated her earlier sequence of pirouettes and body dips to gather up the strands and feed them back into Green.

  This time, Finnadro danced beside her, watching her carefully, and echoing her moves as exactly as he could. His light changed from Orange to Green, as hers had. His Green was much brighter than his Orange. Dindi kept verdant light around her like a shield, as did Finnadro, and as their motions fell into parallel, their shields melted together into one.

  “I was wrong to take your place, Kemla,” Dindi said, ducking under a blow with less grace than she would have liked. “Just as it didn’t occur to anyone that I might have been hexed to release the Malfae, it didn’t occur to me that you might have been hexed as well. Who did it? Can you remember anything?”

  Kemla screeched and dived again. Dindi rolled across the platform. “Corpses” scattered out of her way. Dindi rebounded like a wolf back to her feet just as Kemla flew overhead. Dindi kicked her, Kemla grabbed her leg, and two tumbled head over heel still grabbling.

  Dindi growled and pawed the Orange in Kemla’s aura. It was utter chaos trying to read the Pattern there while Kemla flapped over her with one brutal blow after another, but somehow Dindi found the thread she was looking for—a sharp, wicked thorn of Orange, almost metallic in its brightness and strength. Dindi could not snap it off with her fingers, nor pull it free. Finally, like a ravenous beast, she gnawed it with her jaws. The Orange thorn originated deeply in Kemla’s aura, but Dindi would not release it. She kept biting until she reached flesh and drew blood.

  Kemla keened in agony.

  She dropped her spear and flailed on the stage. Dindi held up the thorn. “This is it! The hex! The Orange Canyon Riders buried it inside your mind!”

  “It was Amdra.” Kemla gasped, breathing heavily. “That bitch.”

  Dindi lowered her spear, probing, “Kemla...?”

  “Shut up!” bellowed Kemla, thrusting her spear at Dindi while Dindi's guard was down. “She wouldn’t have hexed me if it hadn’t been for you! You had to take everything that didn’t belong to you, even him! I can’t avenge myself on Amdra but I can still kill you!”

  Dindi barely parried in time. She stumbled back, clumsy and angry.

  Finnadro would have leaped to her defense, but Dindi fended him off with a look. Instead, he repeated the sequence he had copied from her, reinforcing the new Pattern that she had invented.

  “Kemla, don't you understand that the magic won't help us if you win this fight? You danced Orange to represent the Orange Canyon tribe! If you win here and now, you're helping them defeat Full Basket and all of us! Is that what you want?”

  Kemla's attacks were growing wilder.

  “Or maybe it is what you want,” Dindi snarled. “Are you so jealous that you’d let everyone die just to kill me?”

  “No!” shouted Kemla. “No! That's not true! I never meant to help them! The bitch lied to me, she said it wouldn’t hurt anyone but you!”

  “Kemla, right now the only way you can save your people is to lose!”

  “You would like that, Dindi, wouldn't you! Well, it's never going to happen! Never will I lose to a dog like you! Never!”

  “Then kill me,” Dindi ordered her flatly, holding open her arms. “Kill me, Kemla, if it's that important to you. And kill your clan too, and mine, and Tamio’s. Go on! Do it!”

  “What are you doing?” cried Tamio. “She’ll kill you!”

  Kemla slid to her knees, weeping. With painful slowness, she began the ritual moves of a sequence that Finnadro had taught them. She was dancing again, not fighting. Even Finnadro recognized it and did not interfere when Dindi took up the other role, all the way to the conclusion, when Dindi's spear rested against the base of Kemla's throat.

  Finnadro

  At the end of the War Dance, Finnadro hurried to the White Lady. He found her still collapsed next to Amdra’s father, Zavaedi Vumo. Nann stomped over there too. She grabbed Vumo and shook him.

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing…nothing!” said Vumo. “We were just sharing a drink!”

  “You poisoned her!” shouted Nann. “She sipped from your bowl and fell over minutes later!”

  “I didn’t do it! It was just beer!” wailed Vumo.

  “I don’t believe it was the drink,” said Finnadro. “I believe the spell to transform Orange to Green must have originated from the White Lady, but it was too much for her.”

  “I thought it was you who did that, Finnadro,” said Nann. “You changed first.”

  “No, not I. The serving girl did. Of course, it could not have been her magic, since, if she even has any, it is very weak. Yet someone imposed a Transformation, the change from one Chroma to another, in the middle of the dance. I don’t know of anyone but the Rainbow Labyrinth who would be willing to do that, or anyone but the White Lady would be able to do that. It was powerful magic, and a good omen.

  “But it may have cost her too much,” Nann lifted the unconscious old woman into her arms. “And that, it seems to me, is not a good omen at all.”

  Vessia

  She stood high on a cliff looking out over a sea of roiling mists. An Eagle and a Wolf stood on the crag.

  “This is not the way to reclaim her!” barked the Wolf.

  “Your softness will doom us all,” the Eagle replied. “We must awaken her to her ancient power. Only then can we save her. Only then can she save us all.”

  “I will not let you take her,” said the Wolf.

  The Eagle lifted into the air and flew away.

  The landscape shifted. This is a Vision, Vessia realized. But why now?

  She stood in the Orange Canyon encampment outside the Winter Warrens. The Raptor Riders, who were also Orange Tavaedies, performed their War Dance. They had dug a deep four-sided ditch to isolate a stage of earth. Logs and branches filled the ditch. Three dozen Tavaedies in colored costumes stomped, chanted and drummed. Two dozen of those wore Orange feathered capes, but the others wore Green branches pinned to fur togas. This was expected; though Morvae, the troop had to dance both sides of the war. Unexpectedly, however, the Green dancers also left a trail of glowing Green magic behind them.

  Morvae War Dances were not as powerful as Imorvae War Dances. The Imorvae could have dancers representing each Chroma, and the closer to the real Pattern of the War, the stronger the omen of the War Dance. The Orange Canyon tribesfolk had found a way around this limitation. They had a dozen Tavaedies dancing real Green. Where had they found Green Tavaedies? Not even their Raptors had any other Chromas besides Orange.

  The drumming reached a crescendo. The Orange Tavaedies all lifted up torches at the same time, and, as they jumped over the ditch, cast the torches violently into the pile of logs and branches in the pit. The whole moat geysered into flame. The Orange Tavaedies picked up Raptor feathers, each one the size of a man’s leg, and fanned the smoke.

  The Gr
een Tavaedies who had been left on the island choked. The Orange Tavaedies danced again, using drafts of Orange magic to drive the smoke into the throats of the Green Tavaedies. The Greens hacked and writhed, and phased in and out of wolf form, until at last all of them collapsed. Some died as men; some died as wolves. All had suffocated.

  Vessia

  Vessia collapsed to the floor of the Great Lodge, clawing her own throat, as if she were choking like the captured wolves.

  Nann and Finnadro helped her back to the log bench.

  “My Lady?” Finnadro’s brow furrowed with concern.

  “I saw the enemy’s War Dance,” Vessia gasped. She still felt short of breath. “Their omen has more power than ours. They captured wolflings and forced them to join their dance. The tama ended with the death of all the wolflings.”

  Nann cursed loudly. Finnadro sucked his breath between his teeth.

  “It doesn’t mean their omen will overpower ours. The transformation during our War Dance was unlike anything I have seen. Surely, there was dominance in that.”

  Vessia did not have the heart to tell him that she had not seen most of their War Dance, and she had no idea what “transformation” he meant. Perhaps a few of their Green Dancers had changed into wolves during the dance. Normally, shape shifting during a tama would have wrought great power indeed, but Orange Canyon had already anticipated just such a move.

  What could she say? If she stole their confidence, she robbed them of their last grasp at victory.

  The wooden slats of the door to the Great Lodge slid aside, though no one touched them. An emerald glow shone brightly in the doorway. Most of the humans in the hall only saw the opened door, and not the light, but all those with a Green Chroma, including Finnadro and Nann, had to duck their heads and shield their eyes. Only Vessia saw the light yet did not turn away.

  The radiance dimmed, so the Tavaedies could uncover their faces. A wolf as big as a horse padded into the Lodge. The humans could see the wolf. They cried and grabbed their bows.

  “Stay your hands!” Finnadro shouted. “It is the Green Lady.”

  The she-wolf reached the dais, where she sat back on her haunches.

  “The White Lady is right,” she growled in human words. “There will be no dawn tomorrow. The Vyfae have joined the war.”

  “I feared as much,” Vessia said. She remembered her Vision of the Eagle talking to the Wolf. The Eagle was not an Imorvae shape shifter, but a faery, the Orange Lady.

  “The enemy is willing to make sacrifices in order to win this war,” said the Green Lady. “We must be willing to make sacrifices of our own. The Sylfae and I have conferred. We will fight fire with fire!”

  Dindi

  They waited for a dawn which never came.

  Warriors filled the marae. Clan brothers stood together in packs. Crones and infants huddled inside the Great Lodge, but maidens and young boys armed themselves, prepared to fight with the men. Younger children moved among them, bringing arrows to those whose quivers lacked, and water skins to those who thirsted. Dindi wore the elaborate garments of a Tavaedi. At last she had what she wanted, to be treated as a real member of the troop. She felt like a fake.

  Kemla sat nearby, ignoring her, but Dindi did not know where Tamio was. Nann had asked him to help with some special task.

  The White Lady rode on the back of the immense wolf which had arrived at the Lodge the previous night.

  “There is a new plan,” the White Lady explained. “The shield will contract, it will not fall. Stand your ground and it will flow around you like a stream around a stone, until the basket covers only the Great Lodge. All who are outside that basket of light must be prepared to fight the enemy.”

  “But my Lady,” objected some, “won’t that leave the Trees of the Wall outside the shield?”

  “The Sylfae have chosen to fight in their own way,” said the White Lady.

  Once she had spoken with all the clumps of clan brothers, she dismounted and stood on the porch of the Great Lodge. There she would dance the tama to contract the shield. Finnadro knelt to her and kissed her hand. Then he mounted the wolf, which bounded away, jumping the stone wall. The shield opened for the Green Lady as it would not have done for anyone else.

  “Why does our greatest warrior leave us on the brink of our need?” cried several angry voices.

  War Chief Nann thumped her staff. “Don’t be fools! He goes to gather the wildlings. We will need all our kin, both root and fang, on this dark day. Now, who will stand with me on the wall, to sound the horns when the time is ripe? Who will be with me, first into the fire?”

  The east promised the rising sun with a foul orange smudge of light. The glare in the east grew, but no sun rose. Instead, black snow fell, stinking of char.

  The Green Woods tribesfolk understood this portent before their Rainbow Labyrinth guests. Strong men wept openly. Proud women hid their faces.

  Dindi did not understand their grief until she sifted the black snow between her fingers.

  Ash.

  The forests were burning. When dawn did arrive, black clouds hid the rising sun. Twilight gloom veiled the day in a shroud.

  “The outtribers brought this on us!” shouted a Green Woods warrior. “Why do we let any of them remain on our sacred grounds? Give Orange Canyon the strangers and the old woman too, if they want them!”

  “Coward!” shouted a familiar voice. “It was your huntsman who brought the bird-people to attack our clans! They burned one of our clanholds first. You dragged us into this mess!”

  Dindi hurried toward the sound of the scuffle. Many people wanted to see the fight, so she had to push through the crowd. She heard flesh smack on flesh.

  Tamio brawled against five Green Woods warriors. Judging by his black eye, things weren’t going his way, until he whistled. Clipclop bowled through the crowd to reach him. Tamio swung onto his horse, where he put his club to good use against his opponents. Dressed in his Purple cornhusk war mantle, and armed with a polished basalt club, he made an imposing sight astride Clipclop. They weren’t used to dealing with a foe on horseback. They fell back. One of them whipped his bow into position.

  Shoving aside the throng, War Chief Nann knocked the bowman with her staff.

  “Enough!” She was one of those women who knew how to bellow rather than screech. “This war has been a long time coming. The Orange Canyon vultures have picked their own tribelands clean of Imorvae slaves. They had to come after us, or give up their way of life, which they will never do. I sent Finnadro for allies, and we are fortunate he found some.

  “I know the wait is hard,” she added more maternally. “But you’ll have your bellyful of fight soon enough. No need to bite each other.”

  The fight broke up. Tamio rode Clipclop over to an area against the wall where several other Rainbow Labyrinth tribesmen tended horses. Dindi’s clan brother Hadi brushed down another mare. There was also a large wooden contraption that leaned up against the stone wall.

  “Tamio!”

  Tamio stared straight forward, ignoring her. But Hadi and the other clansmen around him withdrew a pace to give the betrothed couple a private moment.

  “Tamio,” she repeated. “I may not have another chance to speak to you.”

  Tamio scowled, but dismounted to speak with her. He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned close. To anyone else, it would have seemed a tender farewell, except he whispered, “You’re really the last person I want to see right now, Dindi.”

  “I expected to hear that you'd broken off our betrothal.”

  “Mercy!” He expelled a breath in exasperation. “If I do not marry you now, you know what people will say.”

  “We didn't do anything.”

  “All that matters is what people assume we did.”

  “I don't want to marry because you feel obligated by gossips.”

  “And I don't particularly want to marry a girl who trapped me with her magic,” he said. “But you've left me no choice.” He laughed. �
��With any luck, the Raptor Riders will do me in and then I won't have to dance marriage with you.”

  “That's not funny.”

  “If you don't care about your reputation, I care about mine. If I break our betrothal, I must either explain why, and look a fool, or not explain, and look a cad.” His mouth set stubbornly.

  “All right, then.” She shrugged Tamio’s hands off of her and stepped back. With deliberation, she slapped him. The resounding clap silenced the nearby crowd. All eyes suddenly riveted to Dindi and Tamio.

  “I don't want to marry you!” she shouted, loud enough for all of those nearby to hear. “Consider our betrothal broken!” Then she added for Tamio alone, “You're free, Tamio. Don't do anything stupid when the battle comes.”

  Tamio put his hand to his reddened cheek, staring at Dindi in astonishment. She flounced away, ignoring the hiss of excited gossip that bubbled up in her wake.

  Dindi returned to her place with the Tavaedies.

  “What have you done?” asked Kemla. “Is that your idea of how to send a man out to face his foes?”

  “I thought you didn’t like Tamio.”

  “I don’t!” Kemla took a deep breath. “But that doesn’t mean I want him to get killed.”

  “Neither do I, Kemla.”

  Kemla pressed her lips together. She didn’t say anything else on the subject.

  Tamio

  After Dindi slapped him and left, Tamio was left with nothing to do but meditate on the incomprehensibility of women and wait for the ram horns to sound. Neither was a particularly pleasant activity. The itchy impatience was the same as the wait right before a performance; except he didn’t worry his head might be smashed open by the end of a performance. None of the Green Woods warriors appeared to be frightened. They were boasting cheerfully of all the carnage they would deliver to their ancestral enemy.