The Unfinished Song: Sacrifice

by Maya, Tara

  My memory was stolen, and I was disguised as a mortal. Unfortunately, despite her encounter with the eternal ring of light and shadows, and the Visions she had seen while dancing in the everlasting, she still did not have her full memory back. She also did not know why she, a faery, had been robbed of her self-knowledge, or how.

  Or by whom…

  Behind her, she felt her wings flutter. She always knew she was meant to fly. Why did she listen to those who told her she couldn’t? Even the people who loved her most dearly had no idea who she really was, or what she was capable of.

  Yes, well, and what was she capable of? It was time to see.

  High in the wall of the kiva were entrance holes. The ladder to the hole had been removed, but she didn’t need it. She flew up, out of the earth, and into the sky above the world.

  For a short while, she reveled in the wind under her wings. She laughed in sheer exhilaration. When she scooped the air, her hair rippled like a banner behind her.

  From up above, the Rainbow Labyrinth tribehold looked tiny, a termite hill full of scurrying bugs. Everything about it was squarish. The mesa upon which the hold had been built formed a rough rectangle, the houses were boxes that formed a square around a central quadrangle plaza. People filled the plaza to watch some kind of performance on the dancer’s platform.

  Dipping lower, the tiny people looked more like dolls than termites. She could recognize them by their attire, though their faces were still too distant to see clearly. She spotted the Bone Whistler first, unmistakable in his headdress of human skulls piled high in gruesome sculpture. His retinue of fawning sycophants surrounded him on a dais in front of the plaza. He held the bone flute, playing it occasionally, other times barking out commands or laughing with his councilors.

  The Bone Whistler had evidently decided to share the death agonies of his prisoners, including Vio, with a larger audience. Vio, Vumo, Shula and Danumoro all danced like puppets in the plaza. They had all been stripped naked. Whenever the bone flute sounded, they began again, hopping on thorn mats, stomping on hot coals, or leaping against posts of sharpened sticks. Their feet were bloody stumps. Other cuts and bruises covered their naked bodies. It was clear they danced on the ragged end of exhaustion and would not last much longer.

  Though she spiraled closer and closer to ground level, no one in the crowd looked up or noticed her. All eyes were riveted upon the writhing men and women who were begging for death.

  Vessia didn’t see the couple from the Hidden Woods, Finna and Obran. She wondered if the Bone Whistler had decided to spare the visibly pregnant Green Woods tribeswoman, Finna, this torment. Then she saw them too, off to one side. They had not been spared at all. Torture had forced Finna into early labor. Warriors, like odd midwives, waited for her babe to be born.

  Last of all, she spotted Nangi, the Thought Stealer, who had betrayed Vio and Vumo—her own husband—to her father’s sadism.

  Hm, Nangi, what mischief are you up to now? Vessia wondered. For Nangi had a distinctly furtive demeanor, as she crept closer and closer to her father’s side.

  The Bone Whistler put his flute down momentarily.

  “Gidio, is the babe born yet?”

  “No, War Chief,” Gidio said in a stony voice.

  “Let us slice her belly and yank the babe out,” suggested Ratho the Blood Drinker, the Bone Whistler’s Yellow Zavaedi.

  “What?” The Bone Whistler frowned at Ratho. “And let her die before the child? No. Let her watch her new mewling kit be born and let her dance with it and bash its brains out with her own hand.”

  “Yes, War Chief!” Ratho salivated in anticipation.

  Nangi now stood directly behind her father. She reached to his belt and slipped the bone flute free of the loop where he’d stowed it. Once she had her prize, she jumped up onto the dancing platform and held it up for all to see.

  “Stop!” she cried. “Father, I am putting an end to your reign of blood. I hate you. Everyone hates you. You have driven us all to ruin, you must be stopped!”

  Inspired, and freed of the compulsion from the flute, the captives turned on their tormentors. Vio banged the heads of two his guards together like castanets. Shula, who had been forced to engage in fertility dance with the leering Chezlio, kneed him between the legs. Vumo tackled one of the warriors guarding Finna’s labor, grabbing him around the neck, while Danumoro helped Obran wrestle away the other one.

  The Bone Whistler leaned forward. Beside him, Ratho reached for a bow and arrow and tried to shoot Nangi, but Gidio bashed in Ratho’s head with a thwack of his huge stone mace.

  “Play, Nangi, play the flute!” shouted Gidio.

  She put the flute to her lips. But she must have hesitated. No sound emerged.

  “Play!” Vio echoed in frustration.

  “You can do it, Nangi!” Vumo added.

  Vio and Vumo had to turn their attention to more warriors who rushed the stage to assault them.

  Nangi blew again into the flute. No sound, no toot or wail, not a single note came out of the hollow bone.

  A low chuckle floated out of the throat of the Bone Whistler. He sauntered up to Nangi. The others could not help her, for they had been swarmed by a dozen warriors each.

  The Bone Whistler patted his daughter on the cheek. He leaned close, and spoke so that only she could hear—only she, and Vessia who observed it all from above.

  “Only an Imorvae with six Chromas can play the flute, dear child,” he said. “And I have made sure that I am the only six-banded Imorvae left in all of Faearth.”

  Nangi stared at him dumbfounded. Tears uglied her face. All resistance wilted out of her, and she made no effort to defend herself when her father swiped the flute back and smacked her to the ground with it. She wept in a heap at his feet.

  An infant’s wail pierced the general background noise.

  “Perfect,” smiled the Bone Whistler. He kicked his daughter. “You will dance with the baby. You will smash its head against the plaza floor, then you will dance your own death before me, to repent and cleanse yourself of this betrayal.”

  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 and began to whirl around with it.

  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.

  “Vessia is 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 sm
ile. “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. It wasn’t organized enough to be called a civil war. There were no organized sides, 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 spear man 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.

  Below, they saw Vumo and Nangi fighting back to back.

  “We’d better help them,” Vio said, already raising his mace.

  Together, they flew back down into the fight.

  Kavio

  Danumoro waited outside the building, grave but too tactful to confide his worries. All he asked when he saw Kavio was, “Have you decided the fate of your cousin?”

  “I have,” said Kavio. He nodded toward a throng of Tavaedies and warriors in the maze patterned colors of the Rainbow Labyrinth. “Who are they?”

  “Imorvae from the Rainbow Labyrinth. The word has come that you are exonerated of the charges against you. The Society of Societies met again and judged that you were not to blame for casting the spell that dammed the waters, since without it, the whole valley of the Labyrinth would have flooded. And that was before they knew of this war. What happened here will only confirm their decision.”

  “Surely it didn’t require more than a hundred Tavaedies and warriors to bring those good tidings.”

  “They’ve come to support you,” Danumoro frowned, “in the war to come.”

  “Who leads them?”

  “My son.” Kavio suspected that all fathers everywhere sighed the way Danumoro sighed over his son. “Nilo.”

  “Nilo!” Kavio brightened. It had been long since he’d had any friends of his own generation for companionship. “Just the man. Bring him here and quiet the crowd, I have an announcement to make.”

  When Nilo saw Kavio, he hugged his friend, and then held up his hand and led the crowd in a cheer.

  “We heard of your stupendous victory over the Blue Waters Morvae!” cried Nilo. “It will be the first of many! Next time, your own people will fight at your side.” He added, to Danumoro, “Even you can’t stop this any more, father.”

  “I know,” Danomoro said quietly. “But I don’t think you will always find war as entertaining as you do now.”

  “There will be a war.” Kavio rubbed his hands together. Any doubts he had about his bargain with Zumo evaporated under this reminder of the alternative. “A dance war. My cousin and I have agreed to hold a Vooma—not between ourselves, but between the best female dancers in Faearth. The winner will become the Vaedi, and whom she chooses as her partner, in dancing and in life, will be the next War Chief!”

  “What?” Nilo stared at him. Even Danumoro looked bewildered.

  “Zumo, come out,” Kavio called.

  His cousin emerged from the hut to stand by Kavio’s side before the crowd. The assembled Imorvae jeered and some brandished their weapons. Kavio stilled them with a gesture.

  “We have agreed to a contest to keep the peace!” he cried loudly to the crowd.

  He and Zumo both explained again the rules of the Vooma for the Vaedi. Both publicly pledged their words to uphold the Bargain. At first, many of the young men in the crowd did not like to give up their chance at war and glory, but as Kavio persuaded them, they gradually grew enthusiastic for the contest. It helped when he pointed out that nubile, beautiful dancing girls would soon be streaming into the Labyrinth from all over Faearth; and after all, they couldn’t all marry the War Chief.

  No one knew Kavio’s real plan.

  The Blue Waters tribe had attacked at dawn. It was now just past sunset. Dindi would have been dancing with the fae for one entire day. Any other person would have already succumbed after a single day, but Kavio knew Dindi. Though without magic, she could endure that, he was sure of it. Two days, no, not even she could withstand that, and certainly not three, but he wagered she was still alive. Still dancing.

  The time had come to win her back from the faery circle.

  He prepared Dindi’s bowl with the proper fruits—not easy given the flood—anticipating her expression when she saw it filled with sweet green apples and flowers. He would retire to a tiny clanhold in the backcountry of the tribe lands, teach dancing, and marry a maiden with no magic except the most beautiful smile in Faearth. This was it, his remaking. He didn’t need to defeat his cousin. He didn’t need to prove himself in war. He didn’t need to build himself a higher mountain. What he’d needed all along was to let go of the rocks he’d been dragging.

  As he prepared his boat to launch from the Tor of the Sun, Brena found him. No joy showed on her face.

  �
��Zavaedi Kavio,” Brena said. “Rthan told me you would survive your battle with Blue Lady, but I didn’t believe him. So it must be true. He told me that Vultho could breath water, and you could too.”

  Kavio blinked at her. “Vultho, maybe. But I can’t.”

  “Obviously you can. You fought underwater two and a half days.”

  “What? No…”

  “The shark dragged you under on the day of the attack. That was when the tide of battle turned. The last two days we have spent hunting down the remaining enemy.”

  “But that means…Dindi…”

  She bowed her head. “It is done. She has been on the Stone Hedge for three days now. But we have not yet recovered her body.”

  He stood frozen. His stomach felt filled with sand, his throat with dry leaves. Brena kept talking, but he heard nothing.

  He stumbled to the edge of the tor, where the palisade had stood, to look across the swamp at the Tor of the Stone Hedge. Brena kept up with him, still talking, pleading with him to accept the inevitable.

  He saw lights over the tor, a tornado of color, every Chroma, spun into a chaotic cyclone. No human could survive that. When he closed his eyes, he could almost feel her in his arms, his hands supporting her hips as he lifted her above him, her thighs sliding down his chest as he lowered her back into a spin. Dindi, what have I done? If I had claimed you openly from the start, no one would have dared harm you.

  Instead, I put everything else before you.

  “Kavio, can you help her?” Brena asked.

  “There is one way to save a mariah from death once the ritual of sacrifice has started,” he said. “If I am not too late.”

  “A dance? Can I help?”

  “No,” said Kavio. “It’s something only I can do. Something my father taught me.”

  He pushed off his boat and set out, but he did not feel the strain of rowing, or hear the slap of the water against his canoe. He relived the night he was to have been sacrificed upon the Tor of the Stone Hedge, eight years ago.