The Unfinished Song - Book 6: Blood (20 page)

And then the screams.

Always the screams.

Until Umbral was the last one left in the stone room.

The guards came for him. Their empty eye sockets showed only darkness. Yet they found him and manipulated his bindings to unhitch him from the post without freeing his arms. His feet were given enough rope to walk a step, though even those cords were weighed by stones. He had to drag those, and himself, to keep up with the guards who yanked and shoved him between them.

They forced him into the night, which was not even half over though it had already seemed longer than most months. They dragged him to a house of round white stones with a slotted, covered doorway halfway up the wall, reached by a ladder. A miasma of pain surrounded the house like a bruise, throbbing and obvious to his Vision. Foulest magic had been practiced there, a cousin to the Deathsworn magic he knew, but twisted and wicked. It was not just akin to the penumbral knots he had encountered before, and to the Black Well, it was the
source
of the Black Well.

But I am already in darkness. I am already shadow. They can do nothing to me. I am not afraid.

He repeated the words the whole way. Up each step of the ladder. But he fell silent, even in his own mind, unable to hew thought, when they took him through that doorway.

Into the Blood House.

Dindi expected to tire long before the faery dance ended, but in fact the ring dissolved shortly after she arrived, its purpose, if any, apparently fulfilled. Vessia ordered the dancers to stop, and to Dindi’s astonishment, every fae, down to the tiniest willawisp, obeyed. Instantly. Dindi had never seen fae so obedient.

Vessia thanked and dismissed everyone. Again, without demure, the fae dispersed. As each High Fae Lady sparkled away, the lower fae darted off into the night, leaving nothing behind but streaks of light.

The Green sylfins and spring blossom flori who had led Dindi to the dance returned to cloud about her to titter goodbye. Their soft, ticklish kisses felt like butterflies brushing her cheeks. She laughed and shooed them on. The whole time, she kept an eye on Vessia because Dindi did not want to venture back over the Bridge of One Thread alone. Especially not when Xerpen left the steps and sauntered near her.

“Let me leave!”

Everyone, including Dindi, turned at the sharp demand. All the High Faery Ladies had departed except two, the Orange Lady and the Green Lady. They wore the guise of winged women. The Orange Lady had tawny skin, short feathery amber hair, a feather dress, and eagle wings. The Green Lady had pale green skin, long jade hair braided with white and pink flowers, and wings like leaves.

“You gave me leave to enter your demesne,” the Green Lady reminded the Orange. “Yet you now block my magic.”

A flock of Vyfae arrived, one by one, on the cliff, becoming bird-headed men as they landed. Each carried a spear. They formed a threatening circle around the Green Lady, points protruded inward, like hostile spokes. She looked like the last green leaf on a branch conquered by autumn.

“I gave you leave to enter,” replied the Orange Lady, smiling. “I gave you no leave to leave.”

The single dancing ring had broken into two separate groups by this point: the Aelfae (except Mrigana, who was still “travelling,” whatever that meant) accompanying Xerpen, and the Vyfae mobbed around the Green Lady. Between the two, a space widened, as the Aelfae strolled away. The Green Lady cast a question over the gulf, aiming her plea at Vessia.

“Will the Aelfae let this happen?”

Vessia shook her head but before she could speak, Xerpen touched her arm.

“It’s unpleasant that the other High Fae quarrel amongst themselves, but now is not the time to interfere. Two more days, that’s all we have to wait.”

The Vyfae began to dance around the Green Lady. Dindi could see cords of Orange light winding around her, like spider silk around a fly.

“What are they going to do to her?” Dindi demanded. “What do they want from her?”

She addressed Vessia, but Xerpen answered.

“Blood sacrifice,” he purred, “whether a virgin’s blood on a new white cloth, a spilled life, or most powerful of all, a soul unwoven into the threads of its constituent colors, ready to be woven anew into something better, this is the essence of power. It’s primal, and all beings want more, whether we are mortal or immortal.”

Dindi inadvertently peered into the abyss of his eyes, fell in, and couldn’t escape. She couldn’t bear how different he looked from his days as the Bone Whistler, how crushingly handsome he was. She had seen what he had become glutted on power: fat, wrinkled, and old. Ugly as the hurts he had caused. But right now, he rippled with sleek muscle, sinuous and stunning. His aura towered over everyone else, a titan, larger than mere thew, sinew, and skin. The heat and color bedazzled and enveloped her, tasting like cream and wine and spice, intoxicating her, making her dizzy with craving for something she knew must be forever out of her reach. Need, raw
need
, threatened to drive her to her knees, to grovel at his feet, to beg him to fill her, smother her, devour her. Need, raw need, billowed until she was conscious of nothing more urgent than to let him unweave her meaningless aura and re-weave her colors into his own glorious Pattern. She would beg him, she would do anything he asked if only, oh,
please, please, please
…

He reached forward and tucked a tendril of Dindi’s hair behind her ear. The gesture was tender and intrusive.
I can touch you if I want to,
he was telling her.
I can do whatever I want to you.

And all she could do was stare helplessly into his eyes, lips moist and parted, waiting for him to unravel her.

She struggled to remember the Bone Whistler as a mortal: old, ugly, and evil. It helped, but only for a flutter of a thought. Aversion wasn’t enough to protect her. Xerpen radiated too many songs, too many colors, too many tastes…
too much of everything I crave
. It was like Tamio’s love spell, a thousand times magnified, a thousand times concentrated. He was going to win, and she welcomed it.
Oh, please, please, please
…

He brushed his thumb over her lips. His smirk promised her everything she desired and dreaded.

She touched her lips and remembered her first kiss, her first love, honeyed nuts and sugar cakes, sunshine and butterflies. The taste of that kiss was woven into her memory and would live as long as she did. If she unwove herself, that too would be lost.
He
would be lost, one more little piece of him, gone:
Kavio
.

She jerked her gaze free of Xerpen’s hypnotic eyes. The craving did not evaporate, but she was able to push away from the abyss. She stepped back, physically.
I have loved someone far better than you, Xerpen
.

For an instant, he was so surprised she had rejected him that it was comical. She had no time to giggle, which was probably all that saved her life. If she had actually laughed in his face, or let her triumph show in even the tiniest grin, he probably would have smashed her flat. As it was, his rage crackled like bolts of lightning through his aura, and she realized, shocked and petrified, that he had
heard her thought
as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud.

He stepped toward her and she took another step back. The other Aelfae were oblivious to the swift, silent struggle for Dindi’s sanity. They would not help her, she was sure of it.

A scream curdled the night.

Xerpen swapped his attention so fast that it felt like the removal of a physical weight. Dindi sagged in relief. Like all fae, Xerpen could shift from obsession to indifference instantaneously.

The scream just went on and on. All the Aelfae had paused to watch. Dindi snapped around to see the Orange Lady plunge her spear in and out of the Green Lady’s belly. The Orange Lady opened her sternum from base to top, revealing intestines, lungs, and heart, still beating like a red apple hidden in a basket. The most terrible part was that the Green Lady was not dead yet. Her mouth was open in a rictus of agony, but she had no breath left to scream. The bird-headed Vyfae fell on her like vultures on a kill, pecking, plucking. Her body finally turned to gray stone, the fae sign of temporary death.

“Tomorrow, she’ll resurrect,” said Yastara, with a shrug.

“But the Orange Lady will not let her go,” said Vessia. At least it
bothered
her. “The Orange Lady will keep her rival captive for eternity, if we let her, and kill the Green Lady again and again, day after day. We cannot allow that.”

“The Orange Lady is our generous hostess,” said Xerpen. “Let her have her fun. Two days, Vessia. Then all will be set right.”

No! You can’t go along with that! Dindi wanted to shout.

But Vessia turned and walked away with Xerpen. The other Aelfae too.

Dindi knew she had no choice but to follow. The Vyfae cawed their victory. Flush with loathsome power, a few glanced her way with glowing amber eyes, still hungry for blood. If she stayed here, she’d be their next meal.

As she scrambled after the Aelfae, she tripped. On the ground, she found what had caught her foot. A wilted sylfin boy, whose Green skin had paled to sickly chartreuse, had crumpled to the earth. He was not the only Green fae who had collapsed. All around, the flori had withered into hard, tiny balls, curled up like seeds. They weren’t dead. It was their winter form. With the Green Lady dead, condemned to die over and over in horrible agony at the hands of her hateful enemy, there would be no spring for the little flower pixies.

Umbral excluded every other thought but survival. He focused his whole presence on this moment, this place, this challenge. Fear prowled, scraped claws down his back, urged him to cower before the first whip had even landed on his back.

He had been in places like this before. He’d felt the hot breath of this beast on his face before.

I will not succumb.

I will not submit.

I will not surrender.

He no longer told himself Deathsworn magic would protect him from what was to come. Nothing would protect him but his own raw will.

In the belly of the Blood House, history left a stench. All the memories here were evil. Pain, and pleasure taken by inflicting pain. At first it overwhelmed him; he couldn’t do more than pick up pieces, glimpses. Past and present, visions and reality, cannibalized one another. Sobbing, stifled. Skittering, close. Red embers in a black pit. The crackle of a fire. The reek of rendered human fat, burnt. A flat stone, carved like a spider. Skulls with glowing eyes. Chaos. Madness. Despair.

The white, rounded “stones” which formed the walls were not stones at all, but human skulls, with jaws and eye sockets facing inside. Each skull had been turned into a lamp, burning fat—the distinct smell of human lard. The sick ember in each skull was just enough to make the eye sockets and teeth radiant.

The main light came from the rectangular pit where the coals blistered scarlet and white, brim full of evil promise. The smoke smelled foul. Haze obscured everything in a patina of darkness.

A wooden frame stood like a loom in front of the rectangular pit. Soot-blackened leather straps dangled at the four corners. To this device, the blindmutes strapped him. His arms were tied far above his head, painfully stretched. His legs were bound to the corners, humiliatingly spread. The fire pit was behind him, now out of view. He could still feel the heat. Still hear the coals crack and spit. He was naked except for the loincloth, vulnerable, and felt the shame of it, the helpless fear. As they meant him to. He combated the sense of weakness with anger.

I will not succumb.

I will not submit.

I will not surrende
r
.

The blindmutes were unnerving, the way they navigated with absolute assurance despite the black hollows in their eye sockets. They moved behind him, behind the fire pit at his back, to the far end of the room. He couldn’t see them, which he hated. He visualized the room from above to connect the unseen actions to sounds: A scraping, as of something heavy being heaved, combined with panting and grunts from the blindmutes. They must have been shoving aside the big flat stone, carved like a spider, at the far end of the fire pit.

A chill, fetid miasma hit him.

Underneath the stone must be a hole. Something deep, a core into the mountain. One of the unclean places.

The sobbing came more loudly. The wail was barely human—made by someone driven past the point of sanity.

A new sound, shushing, rhythmic. He closed his eyes, trying to place it. It made him think of…climbing. Not quite. Of…ropes.

The four blindmutes were reeling up ropes out of the hole. The rhythmic pull and slap of the ropes went on and on.

Finally, the blindmutes pulled the ropes back up. A gasp of pain, followed by more pitiful sobbing, and pleas babbled by one who has forgotten human language.

The blindmutes dragged their prize past Umbral. Bone hooks attached to the ropes that dug cruelly into the bleeding flesh of a man as pale as a cave spider. His thin, translucent skin wrapped tight over bone. A starving man. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his teeth, rotten from prolonged hunger, dripped black out of his mouth. He had to have been hanging in that utter blackness, from the hooks on the pits, starving and alone, for a month, to look like that.