The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing

  Wing

  The Unfinished Song, Book Five

  Tara Maya

  Copyright Misque Press on Smashwords 2012

  Published by Misque Press

  Copyright © 2012 by Tara Maya

  Cover Design by Tara Maya

  Misque

  Misque Press

  First North American Edition: September 2012.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real

  persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Also by Tara Maya:

  Conmergence

  The Painted World, Stories, Vol. 1

  Tomorrow We Dance

  The Unfinished Song:

  Initiate

  Taboo

  Sacrifice

  Root

  Wing

  Blood

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – Blade

  Chapter Two – Tracks

  Chapter Three – Crossing

  Chapter Four – Trap

  Chapter Five – Thread

  Chapter Six – Knot

  Chapter Seven – Loom

  Contact Me

  Chapter One

  Blade

  Umbral

  I don’t know who I was before.

  It doesn’t matter.

  I can’t live in the past. The past is dead. I know my future. I know my purpose. I’m told I chose it, this path, this shadow. Who knows. Do any of us really choose what we become? Does the stone choose to become the blade? The chips fall away from either side of the flint, and the edge is revealed by the stone-knapper. The edge was always there, waiting to draw blood. You can’t blame the stone-knapper for setting it free.

  As a stone dies to be reborn as a blade, so a man dies to be reborn as Deathsworn. So I died to be reborn as Umbral: an edge sharpened to cut a single throat.

  I have killed many. Men. Women. Children. Some in battle. Some in their sleep. Some I looked in the eye as I drained their lives. I felt their arms rub against mine, their palms press my palms, as if we were friends. I shadowed their auras as an eclipse blocks the sun, leeched their light and stole their power. Their faces accuse me in the grey mist just before dawn, before I chip free of them, each and every day. Those faces do not matter to any but themselves and me, and not even to themselves any longer. If I had not killed them, another Deathsworn would have.

  There is one, however, that only I can kill.

  Umbral

  Shadow, his unhorse, galloped across the field of blood and snow, into the forest, where rain battled the fire that wanted to devour the trees. Any colder and the rain would have turned to sleet.

  The girl trembled in Umbral’s arms. She felt good there, soft and tiny and clinging to him like a child. Her hair, brightly dyed red, held the fragrance of henna and dried flowers. She clutched at his chest as if she trusted him to protect her; though, more likely, she was just afraid that if she didn’t hang on, he would let her drop and break her neck. He sheltered her from the rain as best he could.

  As if a few drops of water were the main danger to her.

  Deep in the forest, he reached the Deathsworn menhir, large and looming, black and crowned with bones. Here he tapped his horse with his obsidian-beaded hoop, and the shadow beast halted. The forest fire had burnt out here, but it had done its damage. The skeletons of trees around the megalith stuck up from ash, raw black claws.

  At the base of the menhir was another stone, gray granite, broad like an elongated egg or gently convex table. Heavy wooden stakes bit deep in the ground on either end of the stone table. A quick glance confirmed that Ash had stored his extra provisions under the lee of the stone, as he’d ordered.

  When he slid from the horse with the girl in his arms, she tried to pull away.

  “What do you want with me?” she demanded.

  “Shhhh.” He stroked her aura, absorbed and stole wisps of her light into his own darkness. The power tasted even sweeter than he had imagined. “Calmly. I promise I won’t hurt you. This won’t take long. Come.”

  Suspicious yet lulled, she let him draw her to the stone.

  Drawing on the void of his Penumbra, he spun ropes of darkness. He pushed her back onto the rock.

  At last her panic overcame her paralysis. He expected this moment of resistance. His victims never gave up easily; they always flailed for freedom at the end, always futilely, like birds with broken wings trying to fly.

  He sculpted her aura as smoothly as a potter worked clay. She gasped as he fed pleasure into her aura, and while the sensation incapacitated her, he molded her back to the rock and bound her with the dark snakes of energy, wrists over her head, legs stretched straight crossed at the ankles. The rain pelted her, soaking her clothes, outlining every delicious dip and rise of her body. The arc of the rock lifted her hips and breasts, as if in offering. Her nipples pebbled from the cold. She shivered even as her body buckled, shuddering in involuntary ecstasy.

  “Shadow.” Umbral snapped his fingers at his horse.

  The dark bundle of equine-shaped energy unfolded and refolded itself into its giant bat form. Shadow flew to the top of the upright menhir and reached its wings forward, sheltering them both from the rain.

  He used her sweet power, transmuted, to light a ring of fire around both the menhir and the sacrificial altar. Wet leaves burned like incense. Even now, he could not see her Chromas. But when he sipped her aura, the rush of power made him giddy.

  He was supposed to take her to Obsidian Mountain to confirm who she was, but he had no doubt, and he dared not wait. She was more powerful than they suspected. She was too dangerous. She had to be eliminated now, before she realized her own strength.

  Umbral drew his obsidian blade.

  Dindi

  She was helpless. With a single touch, the man in black had reduced her to quivering flesh, yearning for more of whatever he had done to her. Even after he released her, the aftershock left her whole body tingling.

  Dindi recognized the Deathsworn menhirs, but he had no right to bring her here. She was not wounded, condemned or sick. By the law of light and shadow, his kind had no claim to her. But he had stalked her, deceived her and captured her. If he knew the law of light and shadow, he obviously did not give a damn.

  She still did not know why he wanted her.

  His strange, dark beast crouched overhead, hiding them from the rain under huge leathery wings. The man in black lit a circle of flame around them with a single gesture.

  His face. His lie of a face. Why did he have to have that face?

  He loomed over her with a jet knife in his hand. Despite the fire, her teeth chattered.

  He brushed the wet hair from her face. The dagger rose and fell, and a piece of her wet Tavaedi’s costume fell away. Methodically, he cut away her clothes. When nothing remained but a wet scrap over her most discreet elements, he draped a dark wool wrap over her and toweled her wet skin. Where he had had the woolen stored, she did not know. His strong hands brushed her flesh, but he took no liberties. No pinching, no grabbing. He might have been rubbing down his horse. Bat. Whatever it was. Yet that only made the sensation more insidiously sensuous.

  Once the wet clothes were gone, the warmth from the fire stilled her shiverin
g.

  “Better?” he asked.

  The voice. Even the voice was his.

  “Untie me.”

  He shook his head with a slight, sad quirk of a smile.

  That twist of his lips, so familiar, broke her heart.

  “I don’t belong to you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Set me free.”

  “I will.” He held up the blade. “Though not in the way you hope.”

  Terror colder than the ice rain pelted her. “You promised you would not hurt me.”

  “And I will keep my promise. It won’t hurt. I will deliver you to my Lady as gently as a mother wraps a babe in lamb fleece. It will feel just like falling asleep. Warm and soft. Painless. Except you will never wake up.”

  Tears squeezed out the corners of her eyes. “Please don’t kill me.”

  “I take no pleasure in this.”

  “Then don’t do it.”

  “I have no choice. It is your destiny to die, and my duty to be the one who takes your life.”

  He wanted to justify himself? Good. Keep him talking. She searched the ground where he had cast her cut up rags. Among the debris was the corncob doll. She did not want to draw his attention to it.

  “Make up your mind,” she said. “Is it destiny or duty? If it is a duty, then you have a choice. You can only blame destiny if you are someone’s slave. Are you a slave, Umbral? Or are you your own man?”

  His lips twisted again. “You are tied to a rock, helpless, about to feel my blade at your throat, but you won’t give up, will you? I’m afraid I’m not easily goaded, sweet swan.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  He stopped smiling. “You are correct. I haven’t the right.”

  Slowly, he circumambulated the stone where she was bound. He scraped the tip of the obsidian blade against the granite as he walked. Backlit by the circle of fire, he was an ominous silhouette. The scratch-screech of stone rubbed on stone made her fists clench.

  “If I am to die, may I at least know what I have done to deserve this so-called fate?”

  “It won’t change what must be done. But if it comforts you, I will tell you what I know. In all of Faearth, there were only two strands left of Aelfae power which bred true. One ended in Kavio, only son of the White Lady. The other was hidden for generations, but at last we have found it. It ends with you.”

  “So you killed Kavio and you’ll kill me, all to eradicate the last speck of the Aelfae?”

  “The Lady of Mercy offered you a chance to join her. You rejected her love. Instead, you aligned yourself with the fae, and promised to undo the Gift of the Unfinished Song.”

  “The Gift? You mean the Curse? You mean the genocide of the Aelfae?”

  “It may have been a Curse to the Aelfae, but it was a Gift to humankind. They had to lose this world that we might gain it.”

  Knife scrapped stone. A vulture circled helpless prey the same way he circled her. When he reached her wrists or ankles, he let the dagger very lightly trace a line over her limbs, though without drawing blood. The blade did not yet cut, it caressed.

  “I know what you would argue,” he said. “Why could I not simply accept your word that you would not help the Aelfae. You could still learn to love Lady Death—”

  “No.” Dindi found herself strangely calm. Angry yet serene, afraid yet fierce. “I will never love or serve your Lady. As long as I have breath, I will fight Death. If I could bring the Aelfae back this minute, I would do it. Not because it’s my destiny, but because it’s wrong to destroy a whole people, even in a war. Humans crossed a river that should not be crossed.”

  His low, throaty chuckle tickled over her.

  “Thank you, Rainbow Dancer, for trying to make my job easier by relieving me of any dismay I might feel saving the world from you. But strangely, even knowing you would be a willing traitor to you own kind, I cannot love my duty to destroy you.”

  “Traitor to my own kind? You yourself said that I am the descendent of both human and Aelfae. How can I take sides in their war without betraying half of my blood?”

  “Indeed. I do not blame you for following your nature.” He paused so that he stood right over her, and the firelight illuminated his face. He brushed his fingers against her cheek. “The Aelfae were ever the most dangerous of the fae to humans: More seductive than any of the other High Faeries, and the only ones whose unions with humans bore fruit. For their part, we meant nothing to them. All our taboos, our tamas, and our betrothals were but toys to them, to enter or break at will. Yet despite their scorn, or perhaps because of it, we found them irresistible. Some say no human could ever meet an Aelfae without falling in love.

  “Maybe that is why when I saw you, I…”

  He pulled back his hand abruptly.

  Then, to her disbelief, he knelt before her. “Let me do you the honor of being the first and last to recognize you, Vaedi, before I end your life. You will never know what it costs me to do my duty.”

  A moment later his dagger poised over her throat. She felt the cold knapped edge balanced against her jugular.

  “It will be quick,” he promised hoarsely.

  “Please,” she said with a catch in her voice. “At least do not do it wearing his face. Do not let me die looking at my murderer in the body of the man I loved.”

  “It is you who determines how I appear,” Umbral said. “I cannot change it.”

  So, for a moment, Dindi stared into the devastating face of Kavio as he prepared to kill her.

  Then she squeezed her eyes shut and called on a Vision with all her inner might.

  Umbral

  He had promised to be quick. Instead he had prolonged the girl’s agony interminably while he blathered like an idiot. Anything to put off the moment. Even now, that the edge of his blade hovered over her throat, he found it hard to make the final cut. It was as if his arms had been borrowed by another man, a man who would not kill a helpless woman.

  He knew what was happening of course.

  He was being a chickenshit.

  She was pretty; he didn’t want to kill her.

  Too damn bad.

  He emptied himself of that thought, then of all thought. In the empty state, nothing stood between him and his duty. Regret, remorse, desire, despair, these lost their power over him.

  He slashed her throat.

  Vessia (20 Years Ago)

  I am not dead, thought Vessia. The humans killed me, but I am an immortal faery. A night and a day must have passed since they stoned me to death, and I returned to life again.

  That was as obvious as it was astonishing, and it left her with more questions than answers. She knew who she was, but not why.

  My memory was stolen, and I was disguised as a mortal. Unfortunately, she 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 made Vio, and the other captives, dance 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. Torture had forced Finna, the pregnant woman, into early labor.

  Then Nangi, the Bone Whistler’s daughter, grabbed the bone flute. She tried to play it, to turn its power against her father, but no sound, no toot or wail, not a single note came out of the hollow bone.

  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.”