The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (18 page)

“What was that?”

“A leash,” said Xerpen. “Not to bind you; for
you
to bind
him
. He is powerful, Finnadro, with six Chromas, which in him have become voids of themselves: Penumbras. But I have given you the power to equal him, the power to
master
him. Preparing a leash, one that cannot be broken, is even more difficult, in its way, than preparing a War Dance. This
is
a war, to be fought on the battleground of one soul. A powerful dance indeed went into creating this binding. Don’t be afraid that I would set you to a task without the tools you need.”

“I am not afraid,” promised Finnadro.

Umbral regained consciousness bound to a post inside a dismal slate shack with a low roof. It stank of piss and burnt dung. He was on his knees lashed to a post. Cords pinched his wrists to his ankles with the post between, a position designed to inflict misery. He heard coughing and knew he was not alone, but for a moment all he could focus on was the intense pain in his shoulder.

Finnadro’s arrow had been removed, and the flesh-hole had shut in on itself awkwardly, with no healing spell to guide it.
That will scar,
he thought, displeased; it was an indulgence, such a worry, vain and foolish, since scarring would not likely be the worst of his problems.

His tunic had been ripped from him, though torn morsels of leather had stuck to the ragged edge of the wound. Rivulets of sweat beaded his bare chest. He tried to scratch, but the bindings thwarted that. The awkward splaying of his knees and elbows infuriated and humiliated him. For a moment, dark memories clawed at his mind, and he panicked. He thrashed with the mindless need to break free, attracting the attention of his neighbors.

A fellow captive kicked him. He had about two dozen neighbors in all. Except except for the kicker, most were as far from him as they could scoot in the narrow shed. Their hands were bound, but they weren’t staked to a post as he was. “Shut up, shut up, you’ll bring
them
in.”

Them? He lifted his brows in a question.

Furtive gestures directed his attention to the guards at the door. Their eyes were filled with black milk, and they barked orders only in strange, wordless gargles. These blind, tongueless brutes struck him as strangely inhuman. Not in the manner of fae, but like creatures barely alive, as if they had been worn down to the bone.

No one fed the captives, but the guards brought a bowl of water and let the prisoners lap from it like dogs. Umbral, being specially bound, could not slake his thirst with the rest.

Sleep was unobtainable, despite his desperate exhaustion. As moonshadows crawled across the floor, Umbral marked the stones they touched and covered and left behind. Shadow by shadow, stone by stone, the blindmutes came for captives, taking them one at a time.

Screams followed.

Rumors travelled by whispers among the captives who waited. Some of the captives knew the name of this place:
The Waiting House.
From here they would be taken someplace worse.

The Blood House… The Blood House…

Fear at the name tasted rancid.

What is it?

No one would, or could, say. The screams were answer enough.

When a guard came, the whimpering and pleading would start, “Please, not to the Blood House, please, please…”

It made no difference. The guards were eyeless, not earless, but they were deaf to pleas for mercy.

Umbral had his own idea. He recalled those he had rescued from the cages, whose auras had been torn open to bleed power. In the Blood House, he suspected, the purpose was not to spill blood but to steal light. As he knew too well, the best way to tear apart the weave of an aura was to inflict damage on the clay that held it. The body was the weakest link of the soul.

The two dozen with him dwindled to half that number.

He had already been ripped open and emptied out. What else could they do to him?

Nothing,
he told himself.
Nothing. I am not afraid.

At black noon, at midnight, pixies landed on Dindi’s head and started jumping until she woke up to shoo them off.

“What is
wrong
with you?” she demanded.

Finger-sized fae of several hues surrounded her, and she noticed they were all flori, flower pixies. There were pretty purple crocus flori, dainty and pert. There were iris and calla lily flori in majestic headdresses, purple and white respectively, the latter curled back like swans’ necks. There were bluebells, silver bells, camellias, dahlias, dew berries and apple blossoms. The pixie girls pirouetted in petal skirts and the pixie boys sported blossom caps. Sitting cross-legged next to Dindi’s bed mat were several other Lower Fae, all Green, slender limbed and patient, but worried. These were sylfins, humbler cousins to the Sylfae, the sprites of brush, bush, and vine, all the lesser shrubberies, as Sylfae lived in true trees, the elms, oaks and pines.

All flori and most sylfins slept through the winter.

“I suppose it’s spring.” Dindi yawned. “Aren’t you a little early, though?”

They all burst into babble.

“Dindi! Dindi! You must come with us!”

“Little friends, it’s not a good time to dance…”

“Not with us! With the Aelfae!”

“And with our Lady!” added the sylfins. “The Sylfae are worried about her, Dindi—we all are—but what can we do? She has come here, straight into the arms of her enemy!”

Dindi tried to rub away her headache. “Who? Hey. Where are the Aelfae?”

The lodge with its many beds was empty except for Dindi herself and the flori and sylfins.

“Those weasels!” she said. “They’ve gone somewhere without me! And I bet it’s important.”

“It’s very, very,
very
important!” The pixies nodded vigorously.

Pixie ideas of import she could ignore but not the collective interest of the Aelfae. She dressed as quickly as she could (“not that!” the sylfins told her when she would have put on her parka), more quickly, indeed, than she wanted to, since the pixies pulled and tugged her toward the door without letting her put on any of her clothes (“or those” about her boots) except her white faery dress.

“Show me where the Aelfae are!” Dindi said.

The tiny fae flew ahead. She followed the path of light traced on the wind.

The fae led her to the Bridge of One Thread.

“Oh,” she said.

At night, fighting no light but star specks, the Black Well oozed more ominously. The abyss below the thread, which was only a glint in the wind, yapped at her to swallow her like a giant mouth. The howling vortex sounded like a thousand screams of rage.

“I can’t cross this alone,” she apologized to the fae. She stepped back from the edge. A sweat broke on her forehead. She wiped it off, ashamed to have let them down.

Some hero. She couldn’t even cross a gulch.

Pixies were nothing if not stubborn. They had no intention of accepting her refusal. They tugged her and squawked in her ears. They pulled and pulled her until she was afraid they might pull her right over the edge.

She waved them away.

“Fine, fine!” she shouted. The noise startled her. She lowered her voice. “Fine! I’ll, uhm,
try
. That’s all I can promise!”

She tested the thread with one foot. She squinted. Between the darkness, the thinness of the “bridge,” and the wind, which stung her in the face, she might as well have been blind. Her bare foot was near numb with cold, but the thread dug into the flesh. The other foot was still on solid earth. She did not need to see as long as she could feel. She took a second step, committing both feet to the Bridge.

One foot in front of the other. Just keep walking.

The distance was farther to walk than it looked. The two summits only seemed paired from afar. Now she could see eternity itself lay between them.

Right foot. Left foot. Step. And step. And step. Right foot, left foot…

…step and step and step…

Just keep walking.

Step and…

And she had reached the other side.

It struck her that she’d have to go back the same way she came, eventually. She looked back, wondering if it would not look so far in retrospect.

No. It still looked pretty far.

The pixies had no time for worry about return trips. They tugged and tugged at her until she followed them again.

There were fewer buildings on this summit, only seven. The path of pixie light did not lead to any of these, however, but hugged the lip of the cliff, to a flat spot, still in view of the Black Well, where brilliantly luminous beings danced in a faery ring. Many fae danced the circle tonight, including all six kinds of High Fae.

Dindi had only ever seen them all together once, upon the Stone Hedge at Yellow Bear. That was one of the Seven Sacred Places in Faearth. To her knowledge, Cliffedge was not. The Morvae did not like to build their tribeholds in places where all Chromas were welcome, which was the law in all Sacred spots.

Maybe the Aelfae changed everything.

For they were dancing in the faery ring too—of course they were. A careless human could dance herself to death that way, but, as immortal beings, they had nothing to fear from faery rings.

As Dindi watched, six more High Fae arrived, the High Faery Ladies themselves. The Orange Lady arrived first, in the form of a giant golden eagle. The Red and Blue Ladies arrived next, then the Purple, the Yellow Lady in her bear form, and last of all the Green Lady.

They did not join the circle of dancers at once. The Green Lady, especially, held herself in reserve while the Orange Lady surged toward her, and the others watched the confrontation. The fae near Dindi stopped their progress and hovered on wings that beat like overactive hearts.

The Aelfae left the dance to watch as well. The lesser fae continued to whirl around behind this tableau but even that did not disturb the weird hush that fell over the mountain.

“Sister,” said the Green Lady, drawing herself up to a stiff and formal height, “Do I have your leave to enter your demesne, and, in this place near the darkness, dance my color and my magic
with our Aelfae kin?”

“You have my leave,” said the Orange Lady. “Sister.”

A sigh rippled through the flori and sylfins nearest Dindi. Relief whistled like a breeze through the High Fae and Aelfae who witnessed the exchange. Merriment resumed, more merry.

“Oh, good,” said a pixie. “Guess we didn’t need you after all, Dindi.”

She rolled her eyes. The pixies assured her she could go back to sleep, but she hadn’t come all this way just to turn around. Besides, that meant crossing the Bridge of One Thread again. She wasn’t ready for that.

Dindi had danced with the fae often enough that she wasn’t worried about falling into the trap of the faery ring.
Don’t let them close the circle
—take her hands on both sides—
keep a little back from the main weave of light, don’t be drawn into the vortex
. The last time she’d danced with the High Fae, she’d almost died, but she had danced for three days and nights straight and she didn’t plan another such marathon. (She wondered if they
would
keep dancing until the equinox? It was entirely possible, but she wouldn’t try to keep up if they did.) As for the Aelfae, they introduced a new element. She wondered what it would be like to dance with them,
really
dance, freely. She couldn’t wait to find out.

The fae, High Fae, and Aelfae hardly noticed the newest addition to their frenetic ranks. What were the steps to this dance? What were the patterns of the weave? What was the point of this magic? How could she hope to know? The dance was an orgy, a fever, a madness—oh, the madness!—a fury, a bacchanalia, a typhoon, a torture, an ecstasy—ah, the ecstasy!—an autumn storm, a spring flood, a blind stampede to nowhere at the edge of a black cliff. Human dances compared with faery dances the way descending steps compared to sledding down a snowy slope, and
this
dance compared to that like going over the side of a mountain on an avalanche.

Dindi loved it.

In the whirligig, Vessia crossed her path several times, but at one point she looked at Dindi directly, with annoyance. Even Vessia would not stop the dance, or leave it, to banish Dindi, so Dindi stayed, and Dindi danced.

Time did not unwind in a faery ring, yet Dindi was not submerged inside the circle, so for her it was a little later that another dancer noticed her for the first time, with even less pleasure. Mrigana actually came to a full stop, and for a second, Dindi imagined she saw something terrible flicker across the Aelfae’s face, something terrifying. Mrigana’s black braid froze in a halo around her, like a black crown. Her face was white and drawn, white and tight, white as a skull.

An instant later, Mrigana disappeared.

Dindi couldn’t comprehend what she thought she had seen. She might have supposed she imagined it, but the other Aelfae cried, “Mri has
travelled
! She’s
travelled
!” in a way that implied travelling meant something more than a trek up a mountain. Whatever it was, they celebrated her accomplishment as they danced.