The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (12 page)

“WE WILL BE WITH YOU!” shouted the crowd and the Runners. Even Zumo beside him mouthed the words.

“Will I take the blooded spear to them alone? Or will you be with me?”

“WE WILL BE WITH YOU!”

“Will I lay waste to their pride and tear down their arrogance alone? Or will you be with me?”

“WE WILL BE WITH YOU!”

He held up his own spear, to which was attached the maze-on-white pattern of the Rainbow Labyrinth tribe. He lowered it, and, at this signal, the Runners took off down the ramp. They could outrun horses or deer and would stop for neither corn nor milk until they reached their destinations, the clans which he summoned to war.

“Blood!” he shouted. “Honor! Victory!”

“BLOOD! HONOR! VICTORY!”

On the long dirt ramp down from the top of the mesa to the valley floor, another man riding a horse—barely, considering his paltry hoop skills—caught up to ride beside Vio.

“Danumoro, we are going into battle,” Vio told him. “It’s no place for a soft-hearted Healer.”

“It’s no place for a soft-headed leader either, but that’s not stopping
you
.”

“You have a poor sense of self-preservation, friend, or you would not be so swift to insult your War Chief,” Vio said dryly.

“If we are going into battle, you’ll have need of all the Healers you can find,” Danu said, turning serious.

Vio rode in silence. He could not disagree.

The slick bone frame of the cage did not offer Umbral the best purchase, and worse, two prisoners, scrawny, filthy men who looked crazed from hunger and exposure, screeched and flung themselves against him, hitting, poking, shoving. His position was so precarious these pathetic creatures came close to dislodging him. The worst of the lot was a man with yellow eyes and a scraggly beard who cackled and jabbed Umbral under the ribcage with nails sharpened like knives.

Umbral let go with one hand to punch the bastard in the face.

The whole lot withdrew to the far side of the cage, whimpering. That upset the balance of the cage, which veered wildly in the wind. Umbral secured his grip, curled up his legs and flipped on top of the rickety structure, to take his bearings.

On either side of him, in a row along the cliff, he saw more cages. And, (
oh, that’s lovely
, he thought derisively, as he recognized it), the cages were constructed from Raptor bones. (Shapeshifters always returned to human form in death, so these bones had to have been harvested from living Imorvae—he didn’t like the images that brought to mind). As a building material, Raptor bones had advantages, he granted: they were long and light. There were a dozen bone cages in all, and each contained at least a dozen men and women. It was an ingenious way to imprison such a large number of people. Raptors must have transported the captives here. Their food and water could be lowered in baskets along the rope. Without wings of their own, they would have no hope of escape.

Why keep so many captives alive? Captives who were not put to work as slaves added useless bellies to a tribe. They could assist their captors in only one other role.

As sacrifices.

Three days remained until the eclipse. It was not hard to guess when their blood would spill. He thought of the human sacrifices that Xerpen had needed to restore immortality to the half dozen Aelfae he’d already resurrected. How many sacrifices would it take to bring back a hundred Aelfae? A thousand?
All
of them? The scope of the scheme dizzied him. He couldn’t let Xerpen kill these people. His escape plan was going to need some adjustment.

The shadow of a bird crossed the cage. Umbral tensed, prepared for an attack by the Raptors, but it was only an ordinary bird, a black raven. The raven soared past him, stirring his envy.

Easy for you, friend, but what about the rest of us?

How was he going to free so many captives?

They were hanging in the sky.

The enemy was right above them.

He couldn’t fly.

They couldn’t fly.

Most of them looked like they couldn’t climb the rope either. They were thin and starved and panicked, and, as he’d seen, not jumping to trust him.

The raven landed on the cage, a mere arm’s length from him. The bird cocked its head and peered at him with wise eyes.

Umbral went still.
My friend?

He almost expected the bird to speak. The raven flew away.

So much for that.

Nonetheless, he watched the bird, still sorting through his dilemma. The bird’s dark body was easy to track against the striated tawny rock of the cliff face. It flew right up to a spot in the wall as dark as itself, circled once, then flew away out of sight.

A dark spot? No… a hole. The window in the caves, which he had peered through during the climb up, winked back at him.

Umbral broke into a grin.
Thank you, my Lady
.

First, he used his dagger to cannibalize the lashings of the cage itself to make some tools. The bone pieces were connected to one another with many coils of hemp robe. He released as many of these as he safely could without destroying the main framework. (Though the captives groaned at every femur or tibia that fell away into the abyss, as if they thought he intended to drop them all.) Preparations complete, he stood up, holding the rope, braced on the cage, and rocked his body to start the cage moving like a swing.

Back and forth…

Back and forth…

Back and forth…

With each pendulum swing, the cage nudged closer to the window in the wall, until finally it swayed close enough that Umbral was able to reach out and grab it. He strained every muscle to hold the stone lip of the cave’s window with his knees and the twinned radius and ulna of a wing-bone with his arms, while at the same time he threw the extra ropes into the cave. He held the loosened ends of these—the
unloosened
ends were knotted to the cage—as he jumped the ledge and secured them around rocks.

He skipped back into the cage. The structure was at an odd angle and all the prisoners jumbled together in the crook.

“Climb out, now!” he ordered them.

The crazy bearded man with yellow eyes cackled like a loon. The others just looked dazed and petrified. Fear and hunger weren’t all that paralyzed them. There was something wrong at a deeper level. Their auras were shredded, and leaked …
shadow
… not so different from his own Penumbra.

He’d seen this before.

Umbral threw his Penumbra around all of them, like a net, and added Command to his voice.
“Climb out, now!”

Jerkily, as puppets, they obeyed. Umbral picked out the two who seemed least damaged.
“You and you! Do exactly as I say…”

He repeated the instructions several times, because, even using Command, he wasn’t sure they would, or could, obey. These people had been broken in every sense of the term. He had to tug them along with his own will to force them to do what he wanted.

What he wanted was simple, but not easy. He needed to free all the captives, not just this dozen, and to do that he had to start all the cages swinging, one at a time, tying them to the first one, until he’d turned the separate cages into a crazy-quilt bridge. His puppets helped, although they were almost more trouble than extra hands were worth. The prisoners in the other cages were in no better shape than the first group, so he had to drive them with Command and raw magic to crawl from cage to cage, over rope and plank, until they reached the hole in the cliff.

The whole business took an agonizingly long time, eating away at the morning, and Umbral was certain that at any moment Orange Canyon archers would appear at the top of the cliff or Raptor Riders would sweep through on giant wings, throwing spears. No enemy warriors showed, however.

In the distance, drums boomed and horns bleated. Perhaps they were all too consumed by their ceremony to spare warriors to look for him. Or perhaps they assumed he had perished with Finnadro. Or perhaps Lady Death, in her guise as Mrigana, innocent Aelfae, had subtly turned them from the search. Whatever the reason for the respite, he was thankful. He knew his luck could not last forever.

“Go, go!”
he cried to the last of the captives.

After they scurried out of the way, he cut the cages loose, starting with the ones farthest out. They swung free, worse for the wear, but, he hoped, leaving no clue whence they had emptied their contents. Let the Orange Canyon tribeholders scratch their heads over that mystery.

Inside the cave, he guided the captives down the hollow rock to gather in one of the larger caves. Here, he surveyed his army of broken souls. As soon as he stopped forcing them forward, they puttered to a stop; many slumped to their knees. None tried to grab their freedom and run. They were beyond caring.

Too bad.
It might have been fun to rouse them to revenge and lead them all back up the cliff to take down Xerpen.

Their Chromas had been ripped from them, as if to make them Deathsworn, but incompletely. At least a third of them would die, despite being physically rescued. Their auras had been too thin to begin with, and the gouging of their gossamer souls was killing them in the most painful way imaginable. About a third of them had been Tavaedies to begin with, and their Chromas were made of sterner stuff. They could be saved. Another third were not Tavaedies but had unusually thick auras, or just some stubborn attachment to life, which meant they, like the Tavaedies,
might
survive…

If he made them Deathsworn
.

A shudder rippled through him. He hated what came next. The first step would be the worst. He herded the first third, the lost souls, into one corner of the cave. This lot was moaning, writhing in pain, or already catatonic. He could let them die in excruciating pain or he could do what he had been created to do.

He extended his magic and gave them peace.

All of their remaining auras rushed into him, filling him with power. The emptied shells of their bodies fell to the floor. From their stolen power, he created a shadow raven.

He ordered it: “Go find Ash!”

The shadow bird flew away. He knew it would find the window out of the caves and fly unerringly until it reached his fellow Deathsworn, Ash.

He gathered the two other groups, the Tavaedies and the ordinary, but hardy souls. The ones who were fighting the pain. As much as he regretted it, he was going to have to complete what had been started. There was no way he could return their stolen Chromas to them. All he could do was finish ripping open their souls, burn off the open wound, and make them like himself. Not all of them would endure it.

There was much he had forgotten of his life, but Umbral remembered what it was like to have his Chromas severed.

He’d had no choice then, and he had no choice now.

The first thing I lost was myself.

Not knowing who I was, or who my enemies were, I wandered… aimlessly and furtively. Though I did not know my own name, my gut told me I had more enemies than friends. I must avoid people until I could find myself again.

Rustles and footfalls in the woods warned me that those unknown foes might already have found me. A dozen warriors hunted me. They were swift and silent, but I caught the whispers of their movements through the brush.

They surrounded me all at once. A fighting formation of assailants constricted around me. They were swathed in black. Skull masks, blackened with soot, hid their faces. Several notched bows with arrows, the others wielded spears or cudgels.

Their leader stepped forward. “You don’t know who you are, but we do. You belong to us now.”

I gripped my obsidian dagger. “I belong only to myself.”

The warriors in black held out their hands and cast nets of darkness at me. Though I tried to kick and slash my way free, I only entangled myself. The shadow coils strangled and bit me like serpents.

“Don’t drain him completely!” cried the leader in black. “Snake Bites Twice wants him alive!”

I rushed the warriors. How many I killed or injured, I could not tell, for even as they fell beneath my blows, the dark web strangled the strength from my limbs. The black streaks were not beams of magic like any of the Chroma magic that I knew. Rather they were like rips in the world, gashes that widened as they touched me, sucking me into a void.

Consciousness returned when cold water hit my face. I sputtered and tried to leap to my feet, tried to grab my knife, ready to kill, and…

Couldn’t.

A woman laughed.

My arms were threaded around a wooden pole, and my hands had been bound to my ankles. I was naked except for a rag.

I recognized the figure in black before me.
The black-sooted skull mask, tight black leather legwals. It was the leader of the posse who had captured me. I’d thought at the time it was a slender young man, but now she took off her mask, shook out her hair, and laughed again.

She looked sleek and deadly. She would have been a beautiful woman except for the burn scars, raised and warped, shiny crusts, that marred one half of her face and neck.