The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (2 page)

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.

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.

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.”

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 by the
feet and began to whirl it around.

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.

“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 smile. “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. There were no organized sides yet, 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 spearman 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.

Battle meant a thousand brawls. Groups of two to
five opponents slugged each other in the dusty alleys. Vessia and
Vio flew over the melee. She supported her lover effortlessly with
her wings. From above, the tribehold teemed like a disturbed
termite mound. The enclosure filled the top of a flattop mesa. From
wall to wall it was a maze of two and three story bleached adobe
blocks, some of which already belched smoke. Fire and blood tainted
the whitewash, giving the whole pueblo a reddish hue. Out of the
chaos, however, clear sides coagulated, like butter separating from
milk. The tribehold churned into civil war, Morvae against Imorvae,
clan against clan and brother against brother. But old enemies were
now fighting together. Below, Vumo and Nangi fought back to back;
Gideo and Obran fought side by side; Danumoro helped Finna and her
child find safety in a house, before he and Shula ran back into the
fray.

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

Vessia found a clear spot and landed. Vio held ready
his weapon, a hardwood club spiked with lion teeth, and she
half-expected him to run bellowing out into the crowd, but he did
not move for a few minutes. Although he was monitoring the fight,
his focus was turned inward.

He reached out to stroke one of her wings. “So
fragile, yet so strong. Why did you not tell me you were the White
Lady?”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t even know I was fae.”

“How is that possible? Aren’t fae… quite
different?”

She had to smile. “Not so different. Not the
Aelfae.”

“But the wings…”

“I can hide them. Even remove them.”

“Can you show me?”

She folded back her wings, danced briefly in a
circle around him, then reached back and pulled. A small white
opal, a pearlescent shimmery rainbow rock, fell into her hand. She
showed it to him. “Things do not always look as you might
expect.”