The Unfinished Song: Sacrifice

by Maya, Tara

  Kavio

  In an area of thickets and boulders by the river, Kavio slowed his pace even further. The rain shortened visibility even more than the trees. He heard footsteps in the wet leaves and climbed a tree.

  The rain slowed to a drizzle, then ended altogether.

  Strange. Why did Zumo end the storm before he escaped? His trail will be all the easier to follow in the muddy ground.

  Kavio didn’t dare creep closer for fear of alerting Zumo to his presence, but he didn’t need to. He could peer through the brambles. His whole body tensed like a bow string drawn for battle.

  Zumo.

  With Dindi.

  From his vantage, Kavio couldn’t hear their words, but he saw Dindi half undressed, her nude body plastered with leaves, as if she had been rolling on the ground in a mindless frenzy. Zumo stood next to her, arms protectively around her. She looked up at him with doe eyes, and he saw Zumo bend to kiss her.

  Dindi

  After Zumo departed, Dindi did not know what to do with herself. Her hands were shaking. The rainstorm had passed, but left a silvery wet landscape in its wake. A handful of pixies riding small sparrows landed in one of the puddles, the sparrows to rinse and fluff their feathers, the pixies to fill their hollowed acorn buckets. A nearby robin also bathed in the water, but soon found more interest in the many earthworms that had been washed out of their homes to wriggle on top of the leaf carpet. The red pixie riding her back waved at Dindi, but Dindi did not wave back.

  Dread weighed her down as if she’d eaten a meal of rocks. She took a step back toward the practice tree where she had fought with Kavio. Paused. She turned toward the river, the direction where Zumo had escaped. Stopped. She stumbled forward toward the Tor of the Initiates. Fell.

  On her knees in the mud, she squeezed her eyes shut.

  Don’t cry.

  She dug her fingernails into her arm and focused on the bright pain.

  Kavio had asked her to wear the mask, and Gwenika had pressed it into her hands. Had they planned it together? Had they both known what would happen?

  As if summoned by her suspicions, Kavio dropped from a branch at the edge of the clearing. As Kavio crossed the muddy field, his aura blazed bright red, and his scowl alone scorched her.

  “Zumo escaped down the river before I could stop him,” Kavio said harshly. “I suppose you are glad.”

  She heard the accusation in his voice. Perversely, she welcomed the anger that warmed her.

  “Zumo saved my life,” she snapped back. “Where were you when the Initiates hunted me like a pig? Or when Vultho tried to rape me? You were so proud of the show you put on for your spy, but it wasn’t a spy, was it? It was the War Chief himself. He came after me to get at you, he boasted about it to my face.”

  A shiver trembled through her at the memory of Vultho’s stink in her face and his paws on her body.

  Kavio looked shocked. “Vultho attacked you?”

  She described the humiliating incident as tersely as possible, except for Zumo’s kiss. He frowned the whole time she talked. Somewhere high in the trees, two ravens cawed at each other.

  Instead of offering words of comfort she had hoped to hear, he tossed her the dagger he kept strapped to his leg.

  “You need more practice dancing Red.”

  “Are you going to duel me the way you did Rthan?”

  Kavio dealt her a flat stare. “Yes. If you want to learn the tama, you should learn the battle dances as well. Hold up your weapon.”

  Hesitating more because of his tone than his request, she held up the stone knife.

  “Now attack me,” he said.

  “But you don’t have a weapon.”

  “I don’t need one.”

  “But—”

  “This is part of your training. Attack.”

  She rushed him half-heartedly. It annoyed without surprising her, when he twisted her arm back around her and snickered the knife out of her hand, into his, against her throat. He pushed her away.

  “Again.”

  “No.”

  He leaped toward her, and fear flashed her back to the attack. She lashed out at him as she had at Vultho, from blind panic and rage. Kavio turned her clumsy attack back on her and flipped her to her back in the ground.

  “Again,” he ordered.

  Her body ached. “I was the one attacked. Why are you punishing me?”

  That gave him pause.

  He paced away from her. She could no longer see his light; he had his aura under control now. But she sensed power roiling in him just under the surface.

  “Perhaps you are a spy for Zumo.” He said this as though it were a matter of complete indifference to him. “Perhaps even an assassin.”

  “Me? An assassin?” Dindi blinked. “I think that’s the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me. The rest of my cohort thinks I can’t bake bread, but you think I am capable of being an assassin.”

  “I have no doubt you’re capable of many things.”

  She realized that he was serious. “I would never…”

  He held up a hand. “I don’t care. I don’t want to know. It wouldn’t change anything between us.”

  “Kavio, how could me trying to kill you not change anything between us?”

  “Are you going to try to kill me, Dindi?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then, until you do, nothing is changed. I’ll escort you home.” It was a command, not an offer.

  He guided her by the elbow through the valley floor, a landscape of a thousand silver puddles alive with tiny frogs. The croaking thrummed like music around them.

  “There are things you should know,” he said.

  “Even if I’m an assassin?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Whether you are who you say you are or not, it doesn’t change my duty to my people. I know now what I have to do to bring peace.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  In a toneless voice, he explained the need to find a new Vaedi for the Rainbow Labyrinth, his rivalry with Zumo, the need to balance the interests of the Imorvae and Morvae. Thanks to her Visions of the Corn Maiden, Dindi understood better than he realized. Nonetheless, she said nothing while his words buzzed by her like flies.

  In other words, I couldn’t be more worthless even if I worked for the enemy. In fact, it would probably be a step up. I can’t blame him. My whole cohort thinks I am worthless. Why should he be different?

  “I don’t want to marry the Vaedi,” Kavio said.

  Her attention snapped back to him.

  “When I came to fear you might be a spy for my cousin, I realized something. You are dearer to me than anything else in my life. Dearer than becoming War Chief of the Labyrinth. I want to marry you, Dindi.”

  She stilled. This was what she had secretly wanted to hear, so why did dread bang against the inside of her ribcage?

  “You believe I am too fae to fall in love. You are wrong. Even though I fought it, I have fallen in love with you.” He stared across the marshy land. “But you were right about one thing, Dindi.”

  A bird of prey dipped and caught a frog from one of the puddles. Whole flocks of birds circled the sky. Easy pickings.

  “I love you,” he said. “But I can never have you.”

  She'd learned this about him. When Kavio had something heavy to say and hard to bear, he did not throw his words as other men did, like arrows to be ducked, or toss them away, like pebbles to discard. He laid his words carefully, like rocks set side by side for the foundation of a wall. It was impossible for Dindi to rage back at a wall. She would have felt as foolish as a river gnawing a stone. She held his words in her mind, considering them in with the same dispassion he had given them.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, “my father gave me as a mariah to Hertio. I deserved it. I had killed a man, almost started a war. But all I could see was that my father left me in enemy hands, a slave, to die. I hated him, as you must hate me. When I was exiled from the Labyrinth, he voted for
my death and would have stood on the balcony of our house and watched a mob murder me. He did that because he valued obedience to the law above the life of his own son.

  “My mother is just the opposite. She wanted me to run away from my trial. You remind me of her sometimes, Dindi. She loves me with all her heart, but she could never abide rules. For most of my life, I have pretended to honor the law, like my father, while secretly trying to fly my own way, like my mother. I realize now, I can’t have both. I have to choose.”

  “Choose the Vaedi…or me.”

  A flock of white birds rose and resettled. Their cries sounded like calls to battle.

  “Have you ever wondered what I did to deserve exile from the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold?” he asked.

  “You were innocent.”

  “That doesn’t mean I didn’t deserve it. I was accused of inventing a tama of my own. It wasn’t true. I didn’t invent the dance. But I didn’t learn it from human teachers either. I obeyed the law, but in my own way, knowing damn well no one else would understand what I was doing. Like the old legend of the faery who promised to kill the man neither by day nor night, who devoured him at twilight, I found ways to weave words to the design I wanted no matter the threads on the loom.

  “I’ve done this all my life.” He touched her cheek. She turned her head away, unable to bear his caress. “Even with you. I had no right to expose you to danger by teaching you to dance. I almost killed you. If Vultho discovers I am teaching you, he will kill us both.”

  He dropped his hand. “You will never know what it costs me to love you and never be able to have you.”

  “If I had magic,” she said. “Everything would be different, wouldn’t it?”

  He laughed, a grim sound amidst the croaking frogs. “Only if you had six Chromas, Dindi.”

  They stood at the edge of a silver pool, which reflected their images back at them. Even without a magic bowl, she could see the shimmer of colors in Kavio’s aura. Her own image reflected only an ordinary girl. Ripples broke up the image.

  It had started to drizzle again.

  All his nonsense about spies and assassins and dancing Red had driven one important bit of what he’d said from her mind. It kept nagging her until she realized what it was.

  “Kavio, you said that if someone caught you teaching me to dance, you would be executed.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re a Zavaedi! I thought you could choose to teach whomever you wished. How could they harm you?”

  “Vultho would welcome any excuse to eliminate me, no matter how thin. He would sway the rest.” Kavio smiled sardonically at her. “So, if you are lying about not having magic, it you found some way I can’t imagine to hide your true vast powers, just to lay a trap for me, you wouldn’t have to fight me to assassinate me. You could simply denounce me. My life is in your hands.”

  “Mercy.”

  Dindi swallowed hard. A mist of rain coated her face and shoulders in droplets.

  In some hidden basket of her mind, she had squirreled away the dream that somehow all her practice with Kavio would change her. Awaken her “vast powers” as he sarcastically put it. Hadn’t he promised her there was a chance, however remote, that if she slew the beast of Time, forsook all other activities and devoted her whole life, body and heart, to dancing, she might, might, might find magic?

  Instead of awakening her magic, all she had done was alienate her friends, shame her kin, and risk the life of the man she had fallen love with.

  There were days when she danced too long and too hard, when a pain shot like poison syrup through her veins, causing her whole body to shake and grow weak. The same poisoned, weak feeling quaked through her now, as she drew the corncob doll from the cord around her neck. The doll was her last crutch. She had used hexcraft to give herself the feeling she could do magic, just as Brena had accused. Dindi saw that now. The Corn Maiden deserved better than to have her life dredged back up for the sake of Dindi’s desperate need to pretend she had magic.

  Dindi held out the doll to Kavio.

  “I need you to take this,” she said. She hardly recognized her own voice. It sounded hollow. “I cannot be trusted with it. I have tried to destroy it, but could not. You must destroy it.”

  He studied her face; then, slowly, he nodded. He took off his vest and wrapped the cloth around his hand so he would not have to touch it.

  “This is the last favor I will ask of you, Kavio,” Dindi said. “You are right. You cannot marry me. You cannot teach me. Just by being in your life, I have endangered you, and for what? For nothing.”

  He tugged the doll, but she did not let go. She could not unclench her fingers. Her knuckles squeezed white. She tried to speak but the words clogged her mouth like bitter roots.

  A memory. She is young—three or four—twirling in a circle on the dais in the kitchen. Good smells, of baking bread, of spice, sweeten the smoky air. Her mother is laughing, clapping her hands, and then she scoops Dindi up in her arms and kisses her. One day I’m going to be a dancer, Dindi says, and her mother smiles and laughs and hugs her. Yes, you are, yes you are.

  A memory. She is older. Seven or eight. The other girls are laughing at her because she’s burned the bread. She runs away, but she doesn’t cry. It doesn’t matter if they laugh. One day I’m going to be a dancer, she promises herself, and no one will care if I burn bread.

  A memory. Kavio is holding her. Dancing. Their bodies slide together, apart, together. The oiled leather he wears smells musky and dark and sweet. He leans down and she can feel his breath as intimate as a kiss, and although she knows it is impossible, she imagines, One day, somehow, I’m going to be a dancer and I will marry Kavio.

  Voices in her mind piled like stones. Danumoru, telling Vessia, Some wounds never heal. Sometimes it’s better to let go. Her mother, telling her, I chose you, Dindi.

  Sometimes a dream has to die.

  One day…

  “I won’t ever be a dancer,” she told him. “I won’t come see you again.”

  He took the doll. She let go.

  Chapter Five

  Arrow

  Brena

  Brena aimed the Black Arrow at Rthan’s heart.

  She had been the huntress for her family ever since her husband left and she knew her way around a bow and arrow. She reckoned on the wind, and the arc of sky the arrow would need to climb before it fell again to hit her prey.

  Just as she released the arrow, the canoe shifted. She cursed. The tiny slip altered the arc the arrow traveled. Breathlessly, she scanned its progress, whispering to it under her breath, Fly true!

  It did not fly true.

  The arrow rose and fell just west of Rthan, where it plunged into the breast of the sea and vanished.

  An anguished cry emerged from the water. For a moment, Brena harbored the wild hope that the arrow had hit the Blue Lady, and now that faery bitch might feel some of the pain she inflicted on helpless mortals. No such luck. The one crying was the Golden Lady, who let go of the rope she had been pulling. The canoe wobbled when the forward motion stopped, then rocked when the seal jumped inside. The seal glowed, reformed and became the beautiful blonde woman. Her injured leg bled copiously. Blood stained the bilge water deepening red.

  “Lady,” whispered Brena, “I have failed you.”

  “And I you, my champion.” The faery squeezed Brena’s hand.

  Rthan’s canoe did not slow down, and, with white water spewing in his wake; he pulled his boat up along beside hers. He had his own bow notched with an arrow. Brena knew he had much more experience shooting while sailing than she. He would not miss.

  However the arrow did not fly.

  He stared at her in shock.

  Even after he recovered from his surprise at seeing her, he did not shoot. Instead, he switched his bow for a grappling hook. He hooked her canoe like a big fish, and tugged her behind him until he was able to beach his boat. Then he reeled her canoe to shore. His magnificent muscles bulged as
he worked the rope. Although she knew he would probably kill her when she reached him, she admired the sight. A curious numbness had set in after she lost the Black Arrow. If the Golden Lady died, Brena’s people would die. Possibly, if what the faery had told her were true, the world would die. Brena’s own death hardly seemed to matter.

  “Will he be able to see you?” Brena asked the Golden Lady.

  “No.”

  “I know he can’t see Yellow, but he is the Blue Lady’s henchman.”

  The Golden Lady shifted in the canoe, winced, and rubbed her leg. “The only advantage of being touched by Death is that it renders me nearly invisible to my fellow fae. I don’t know if I am completely invisible to them yet or not, but as I grow closer and closer to the wound in the world, I will pass beyond their ken.”

  “Then flee, before he takes me captive!”

  “I am too weak, Brena.”

  Brena glanced toward the shore, and Rthan, both growing closer. Quickly, opened the flap of her rucksack.

  “Climb in,” she told the Golden Lady. “Hide.”

  The Golden Lady sparkled and diminished, until she became a pixie no taller than a finger. She hid inside the rucksack.

  The bottom of the canoe scraped against sand. Rthan waved his battle-ax in unspoken threat.

  “I hope you’re not going to try anything stupid, Brena.”

  “What do you want, Rthan?” she asked coolly. “That I should kneel meekly for you to bash in my head?”

  “I’m not going to kill you if I don’t have to.”

  She smiled without humor. “Perhaps you want to take me home as your slave wife.”

  “Step out of the boat.”

  “Let me take my rucksack.” Her words sounded forced to her own ears. Fa, I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. Now I’ve called attention to it.

  If so, however, he did not show it. He ignored the pack and focused only on her. His eyes bore into hers as if they were drilling to ignite a fire.