The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (31 page)

Vio raised his brows. He teased, tenderly, out of the hearing of any others, “Do you truly fear my molesting, Vessia?”

She did not reply to the jest in kind, not even to feign impatience. Her mien was regal, her expression glacial. If it was an act, some trick to fool their enemy, he could not fathom the purpose of it.

The snow along the riverbank had been melted and refrozen many times. It crunched under Vio’s feet, but Vessia hardly left prints. She hovered as much as walked. The warriors bivouacked in the bend of the river. He had claimed the most secluded spot for himself and his war leaders, a shallow cave hidden by a waterfall. Vio led her there and bid her sit on the furs draped over a log by the fire. Danumoro followed them both silently.

Vessia’s wings sparkled even in the dim cave. With her brilliant eyes, which glowed like a cat’s in the dark, and her delicately tipped ears, she looked more fae than usual. Her perfect youth unnerved him.

How had she shed the marks of age? Though if he were honest, only her face and form looked younger; the hard light in her eyes looked older than the Vessia he knew. Older than anything human….

He sat down. Danu sat down, following his example. Vessia stood and stared at them, with her wings beating the air in the cave, for a long moment. The whir of wings made a pleasant hum, as of dragonflies over a pond.

“Please sit,” urged Vio.

“I prefer to stand.”

Vio grimaced.

“However, if it offends human custom, I will make allowances.” She seated herself, in a gesture that was both innately graceful and touchingly awkward.

Vio had imagined many scenarios, but not this. Not facing Vessia herself yet still feeling at a loss for words. Why was she staring at him as though he were a stranger? As though he were an insect.

What if I
am
a stranger to her?

For now he remembered that her memory had been stolen from her once before, her memory of herself as an Aelfae. She had mistaken herself for merely mortal when Vio first met her; she had been known in those days as the Corn Maiden.

The Bone Whistler had stolen her name from her once. He could have done it again.

“Vessia,” Danu said, sounding as bewildered as Vio felt, “is that really you?”

She darted her head to dissect Danumoro with the same cold stare. “Who are you?”

“Uh…” Danumoro wilted. How could she not know him? She had known Danu longer than Vio; he was one of her oldest human friends. He appealed wordlessly to Vio.

“Vessia,” said Vio slowly. “Have you lost…”
Your mind
, he wanted to say. But he finished, “Your memory?”

“Only some of it,” she replied, at perfect ease.

“How much…?”

“Perhaps a dozen generations of men; perhaps fifty septs of years; perhaps five hundred winters turned to springs,” she said. “I’m not certain; but not much.”

She was talking about two, three, five hundred years. Not much! Vio and Danu exchanged a glance. Their own small human lives, even though they were counted wise in years, were swallowed into oblivion by such a scale.

“Do you remember me at all?” Vio asked.

“I know who you are.”

“But do you
remember
me? Do you remember…
us
?”

She met his gaze. “No.”

“You’re my wife.” His tongue felt thick.

She shook her head.

“We have a son,” he insisted.

“I have heard,” she said, “that you are a great chief and war-maker among humans. I have come to ask you to put aside your war. Withdraw with your bucks and stallions to your own tribehold, and leave us in peace.”

“Did you hear nothing I said?
You are my wife!
”

“That marriage exists only for you.”

Danumoro said, “Your union is known to the whole tribe.”

Vessia only shrugged.

Refusing to be discouraged, Danumoro continued, “He captured you during the war against Yellow Bear. You were his slave girl. He almost killed you, but you survived. Then he married you, even though you were the last Aelfae left on Faearth… maybe
because
you were the last Aelfae, given your great power, which he needed to defeat the Morvae…”

“Not really helping, Danu,” growled Vio.

“Even if it is true,” she said, “it makes no difference now. Those years are dead leaves, vanished under snow. I have no need to dig them up. What matters is what we do
today
. Will you withdraw your spears?”

“Of course. If you come with me.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Then he
is
holding you prisoner.”

“What? Who? Xerpen?” The suggestion truly startled her. “Of course not.”

“Prove it. Come home with me.”

Vessia stood up to look down at Vio, imperious, beauteous, and fae. Her eyes glinted, and her wings agitated the air.

“I shall not come with you,” she said.

Vio rose to his feet as well. He stood as tall as she—a little taller. “I shall not leave without you. If I have to storm the mountain to free you from Xerpen’s spell, I will do it!”

“Do you threaten me, human chiefling?”

“How have I threatened you, Vessia?”

Her voice turned soft and dangerous. “You just threatened to start a war unless I agree to be your captive.”

“My
wife
.”

“However you choose to phrase it. Surely you aren’t going to let the freedom of one woman plunge two tribes into war.”

“For you, I would plunge all Faearth into war!”

“But
why
?”

“I love you.”

“If you really love me, as you claim…” she was trying, it was painfully obvious, to condescend to his savage lunacy, despite her distaste, “If you really loved me, you would not seek to cage me. You would not threaten war. You would walk away and let me be.”

The contempt and pity in her voice infuriated him. Vio clenched his fists. Her bewilderment was innocent, but he felt it like a barbed spear in the belly, twisting.

“No, Vessia. I’ll not walk away.”

“So you will spill blood to seize me, even against my will? That’s not love, human. Whatever it may be, it’s not love.”

“How do you know?” he retorted. “You don’t love me right now. Fine. Whom
do
you love? Anyone? Are you
capable
of love anymore?”

Cloaked with fae superiority, she did not deign to reply.

“All of this would make more sense to you if you remembered the last twenty-five years,” he said. “You would understand how I love you. You would understand that I can’t leave you in
his
hands, shorn of your memory like a lamb shaved for slaughter. You would understand that even if it looks to you as though I’m the monster who wants to kidnap you and
he
is the hero who wants to save you, everything is exactly the other way around!”

“Please,” she said. “Please, take your army and leave. Do not start a war.”

“I don’t want war anymore than you.”

“If I agreed to go with you, would you leave?”

“Yes.”

“As simple as that. Gaining one woman, you would call off your spears; denied one woman, you would plunge the whole world into war?”

“That’s it exactly.”

“That’s madness!”

“Then call me mad. Will you come home with me?”

She stared into the waterfall. The heart of the slender cascade was a jagged rope of frozen ice, streaked with unending tears.

“Yes,” she said dully. “I will be your slave.”

“Never my slave, Vessia.”

“Do not delude yourself,” she said sharply. “I do not love you. I could never love one such as you. But I will go with you, if it will avert needless bloodshed.”

“Good.”

“But first,” she said, “I wish to say goodbye to my friends.”

Vio tensed. “You mean
him
?”

“Not just him. The other Aelfae.”

Danu made a strangled sound. Vio trusted that he concealed his own dismay better. He formed his next words with care.

“Has he awakened other Aelfae, Vessia? From cocoons, perhaps?”

Vio saw the answer in her face, though she volunteered nothing else.

“So other Aelfae are resurrected,” Vio murmured. Suddenly, he doubted everything he had been sure of, even her love. Perhaps when she said she could never love him again, she spoke truer than she knew.

“You gave me your word that you would allow me to leave your war camp unmolested,” Vessia reminded him. Her wings now were stiff and still. “Keep your word, and I will keep my word to you that I will return and exchange my freedom for peace.”

“You have until the end of the day,” he said. “Return by sunset, or I will melt the ice of this mountaintop into blood.”

Kavio stood on a bare mountainside, naked and alone. The sky was black crystal, jagged and cruel, lit by neither sun nor moon. Was he outside or in a cavern of unbelievably vast proportions? Was he alive or dead? Was the sound around him silence or screaming? He could not tell.

A figure in black approached him, an old woman. She wore a black cloak, and her long white hair whipped in a wind he could not feel. She seemed illuminated from below by a red sun he could not see. Her skin was a labyrinth of folds, her face collapsed in on itself like rotted fruit. He had never seen such a decrepit and wizened elder. Yet her violet eyes were bright, sharp, and young.

“Kavio,” she named him.

“Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

Overpowered by a feeling he did not understand, he knelt before her. “Lady Death. Am I dead? Where is this place?”

“I cannot reach Umbral,” she said. “He is trapped in a darkness not of my making. Only
you
can reach him.”

“Who is Umbral?” Kavio asked.

“You must help him.”

He rose to his feet. He still could not remember everything, but he saw flashes of things, terrible things, which kindled his anger.

“Why should I help you?” he demanded. “You stole everything from me.”

“Not everything.” The windless wind made her white hair dance like the banner of a horse warrior riding to battle. “Not yet. I brought you here to ask for your help because I have no other choice. Or rather, of many evil choices, it was the least dire. And you will help Umbral for the same reason.”

“Who is Umbral?” Kavio repeated. The knowledge taunted the edge of his memory, but it was clothed in pain, like a cloak of thorns, and he shied from donning that truth.

“You already know, Kavio.”

Dindi Dindi Dindi….

Umbral did not know how long Finnadro tortured him over the fire, or when Finn relented, pulled him back, and left the Blood House. But though the torture had ended, for the time being, the pain had not. Incoherent thoughts chased themselves in circles. His body punished him by existing. The burns, the sliced skin, the festering wound in his shoulder, everything hurt, everything bled. Everywhere he looked, the skulls grinned at him with their remorseless, empty eyes. An obscenity of pain forced its fat, ugly body against his mind, like a dirty old man trying to lick his cheek. He couldn’t push it away, so the hot stench was always there, gunge crawling over his skin. He trembled. He shuddered.  He was too hot. He was too cold. He was going insane. The pain was stronger than he was. The pain was winning.

Only now that Dindi was gone did he realize how much of him was holding on for her sake. There was nothing left to hold onto now.

Avenge her
, whispered Kavio.

You’re still there?

Avenge her.

Finnadro is too strong.

Stop fighting Finn.

Are you crazy?

Not yet.
Kavio laughed manically. It wasn’t reassuring.
One day left, Umbral. We have only one day to make the Bone Whistler pay for killing Dindi
.

And serve Lady Death.

And defeat the Aelfae.

And save humanity.

It was too much. He had lost his mind if he thought he could do all that. He was a broken, pitiful wretch, beaten and burned and bloody, a man a day away from his own death. It was all he could do not to betray everything he believed in to his worst enemy, never mind save the world.

Just focus on one thing. Avenge Dindi. You know who killed her.

Yeah. I did. By bringing her here.

Spare me your self-pity. You don’t have time for it. You know who killed her.

The Bone Whistler.

The Bone Whistler. But to kill him, you’re going to need Finn’s help.