by Tara Maya
“I don’t see how knowing the White Lady had her wings stolen helps you,” Dindi said.
His eyes widened. “Is that what you saw? Orange Canyon took away her wings? That is actually very helpful to know.”
“I thought you saw the Vision as well.”
“Unfortunately not,” he said. “I will soon find a way. In the meantime, you must report exactly what you saw.”
She would have thought her heart could not pound any faster, yet now it started thumping wildly. Umbral was not as invincible as he seemed. He had no idea she had seen Vessia right after the fall of the Bone Whistler, a day some twenty and one years past. He thought she had seen Vessia recently, in the hands of her captors.
Or was he just testing her, to see if she would lie to him?
The only way to know was to lie to him.
“I saw her with Amdra and Vumo. They were on horseback. They stopped to camp and took her wings.”
“What shape were the wings once removed?”
“A small shiny rock…an opal, I think.” It seemed best to sprinkle some truth into her lie.
Umbral nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes. That makes sense.”
Dindi forced her smile of triumph to hide in a frown. So Umbral wasn’t the only one who could tell people what they wanted to hear.
She had to tread very carefully. But if he could be deceived in this, perhaps she had a chance to deceive him in other things as well. Perhaps she had a chance to save both herself and the White Lady.
Unless I’m just deceiving myself.
“I will give you my word to help you free the White Lady from Orange Canyon,” she said. Then, she pushed his limits, despite her fear he would push back. “In return, I want something from you.”
His brows climbed his forehead. “Really.”
Breathe deep. Don’t cringe. Don’t give in to fear. Just keep pushing. Just keep dancing.
“I want your word that you will not kill me until after the White Lady is safe. I can’t go to sleep every evening and wake up every morning wondering if you will decide you don’t need me anymore and slit my throat.”
“Is that all?” he asked in the same dry, dangerous tone.
“No.” Breathe deep. “I also don’t want you to put that…that horrid leash thing back on me. You have my word that I will not run away until the White Lady is free.”
“You will be leashed.”
“You said you wanted me to help you willingly. I can’t be willing and tied up like an animal at the same time.”
He paced back and forth in front of the fire. The flames popped.
“All right. I agree. If you give your word not to run away…and not to use your magic except when I command it. Then no leash. And you can sleep in peace until after we have freed the White Lady. Is it a bargain?”
“It is a bargain.”
He took out his knife and sliced his palm, then handed the knife to her.
If only she could stab him with it.
She had never sealed a bargain in blood before, though she knew the custom. Terrible hexes were said to afflict those who broke the blood seal.
She pricked her own palm. He clasped her hand, mingling their bloods. Her aura also mingled with the black void that pulsated around him. The emptiness hit her powerfully again, a sense of vertigo.
She had to pull away her hand. She staggered a few steps to the stream and vomited. She waited until the stream carried away the mess before she washed her face and tried to recover her dignity.
“If you break your vow, you will wish for the simple death you would have had before,” he warned.
“I would not break my word.”
He nodded. “No. I don’t believe you would.”
Chapter Three
Crossing
Hawk
I lift off the edge of my nest.
My wings row the waves of wind. My feet pump the air for a few steps, before I tuck them beneath me. With strong, hard strokes I beat my wings, climb higher on the steps of the sky. Below me, the mountains are folded like bunched cloth, sprinkled with the green fuzz of trees over orange bedrock.
I catch a current of air, swift like an invisible river, and extend my wings to let it carry me. I soar.
Another soars above me, higher in the river of wind than I. Her wing name is Golden Hawk. Her wings are larger than mine, her bearing more majestic, for female raptors are larger than the males. She is a queen among raptors, a warrior woman, a beauty. She is also my lover.
Even now, I can’t believe my fortune in finding her. We, the Free Raptors, the last Imorvae of Orange Canyon, are a dying people. Every year, our numbers dwindle as the Eaglelords catch more of us, giving us to their Riders as slaves. We do not know how they find us despite all our efforts to hide. No Free Raptor who has been captured has ever returned from slavery to tell his tale.
I promise myself silently I will never let my mate be caught and enslaved. We two will fly free forever, and so too will our children.
I emit the joyful cry of our kind, one to another: My love! My mate!
She cries back, but not in love. Her caw is that of a predator.
Her talons extend and she drops swiftly down on me, as if I were nothing but a pigeon or a pika. The attack can mean only one thing. Golden Hawk is a traitor.
Too late, I understand what others of my kind must have discovered before me: The secret of how our enemies capture us.
They, too, are Raptors.
We tumble in the air, locked together. We flap and fight and scratch. Her betrayal rakes my soul with fiercer pain than her talons ripping flesh. I want to peck out her eyes. I want to eat out her heart.
Traitor! I screech at her in the language of raptors.
Slave! she mocks.
She takes me down on the mountainside. The slave-takers are waiting, with their nets and their spears and their terrible magic. My wings are pinned. Against my will, I am forced into human form. It feels clumsy. I hate arms, stupid, heavy, featherless things, and right now they are tied behind me. At least I still have wings, though they are moth wings now, which sprout foolishly from my human back.
She takes human form too. In this form, she has no grace, no symmetry. Her face is as ugly as her heart. She watches me thrash against the nets.
“You’re one of us!” I protest. “You’re Imorvae!”
“I may have been born to that blood,” she says. “But I’ve overcome it.”
It’s all so clear now. They never shift shape in front of the lower castes; they take bird form only to trap us, the free ones. Probably it’s taboo for them to shift, since that would give away their secret—that they were born with the same Imorvae blood in their veins as their despised slaves—and worse yet, that they twist the mating bond to ensure their slaves never try to escape.
“Don’t be a fool, Anayo.” She tosses out my secret name in front of my enemies as if it were trash. “You will only hurt yourself if you fight your fate.”
“You were the greatest among us!” I rage at her. “Why? Why?”
“How do you think I became greatest?” she asks coldly.
“You are not Golden Hawk! You are Fallen Hawk to me!”
“You are the one who is earthbound, Anayo,” she sneers.
I tear free of the foes holding me, and launch myself at her. I forget I cannot peck her, and bash her head with mine. Good enough. I will use my head as a battering ram and smash her like a rotten egg.
The slave-takers tackle me again. This time they add more ropes, bind me tighter. They do something to me, something that makes me writhe in pain. My scream echoes off every canyon wall.
They drop a rock at my feet.
“You will get your wings back when you have learned obedience,” says my so-called love. Fallen Hawk. Even now, I cannot bring myself to say her secret name out loud, but I hear the others address her with it, as if it were available to all.
Amdra.
She herself places the blindfold around my eyes.
Hawk
Hawk ran. His shoulder wound throbbed with every step. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the landscape as it would have looked from above: thickly wooded hills descending into an alluvial plain of river, lake and marsh. On the other side, another brace of mountains towered over the peat bogs, higher and more majestic than the first. Past that inner range of mountains lay the endless prairie to the north and desert canyons to the south.
He had to cross the Ottermark River into the Boglands if he ever wanted to see his nest again.
He ran until a crimp in his side forced him to slow. This was not exactly his favorite way to travel. He didn’t have high hopes for his chances. Finnadro would be yapping at his heels any moment now.
Except…he wasn’t. Hawk forced himself back into a jog, while he pecked over the puzzle. Finnadro should have found his trail easily enough. He had been on the move for several hours. Their paths should have intersected by now.
Unless…. Was it possible Finnadro wanted him to go free?
Finnadro
Finnadro wanted Hawk to think he had a chance to escape. Only if Hawk crossed the Ottermark River, and assumed he was safe, would he meet up with his mistress Amdra again. Only then would Hawk lead him to the White Lady and her captors.
As he trailed Hawk from a respectable distance, Finnadro automatically noted features in the landscape he normally would have attended to more closely. Passing a stream, he saw a hole in the ice. On the shore, he saw fragments of a frog, scat that glittered with fish scales, and nearby, a tiny den dug into the bank. Marks in the snow indicated short skittering alternating with longer leaps. All were signs of a mink, which liked to forage for food between the water and ice layer in the winter. Another day, he might have hunted the animal for its fine white coat, but not today. A bear, disturbed by the forest fire from its hibernation, had rambled through the woods. Fortunately, the trail was obvious and surely even an inexperienced hunter would know better than to follow bear prints. Nonetheless, normally, Finnadro would have followed the trail, to make sure the grizzly found a new sleepy-hole. Not today.
Today he was hawking, and his bird would lead him to his quarry.
Dindi
While Dindi packed and doused the fire pit with snow, Umbral combed and babied his horse. It was a beast of impressive height and sleekness, black and shiny as polished obsidian. Dindi had never seen an all black horse, only brown or gray horses which sometimes had black dappling or black socks. Even the seating blanket and hoop had been dyed black to match.
“Does he have a name?” Dindi asked softly.
Umbral, with his arms around the neck of the steed, was murmuring into the beast’s ear, causing the horse to snort as if in amusement at a shared confidence. Dindi wasn’t sure that Umbral had heard her.
“Shadow,” Umbral said, without looking at her.
Of course.
“Since we have only one horse,” Umbral said abruptly, then paused.
“I will walk.”
“No. Shadow can carry us both. You’ll have to sit in front of me.”
They cleaned up their campground and put dirt over the ashes in the fire pit. Then Umbral lifted her up onto Shadow and mounted behind her with his arms clasped around her waist. So close to him, it was impossible to ignore the void around him. Any other person would have had at least a faint aura of light, if not a bright Chroma. Every time Umbral touched her, he drew her towards that void, causing her stomach to drop as if she were in freefall. If his mere touch made her literally sick to her stomach, Dindi wondered what would it be like to ride touching him for an entire day? For days on end? For three moons? She bit her lip very hard.
Umbral was an excellent horseman and Shadow an excellent steed. Despite the lack of any formal path, they made good time through a maze of gray pine, blue oak and cedar. The fae fled from their approach, which left the forest dim and desolate. Worst of all was the pall of the twisted magic which enveloped him. Dindi grew sicker and sicker, until at last she could not bear Umbral’s embrace one moment longer.
She pushed his arms away and threw herself off the horse. She landed heavily and ran into the woods. Behind her, she could hear Umbral cursing. He reigned in Shadow and dismounted to bear down on Dindi with an expression of rage held in tight control.
“I told you that if you tried to leave me—” he began furiously.
He stopped because Dindi was kneeling on the frozen mud, throwing up.
His anger gave way to an emotion more guarded. He knelt beside her and wiped off her mouth with the hem of his cloak. Unfortunately, his renewed proximity only made it worse. She shuddered and dry heaved, for there was nothing left in her to vomit.
“Are you well?” he asked. “Is it breakfast that disagreed with you?”
Dindi shook her head.
He drew back from her, hands curling into fists. “It’s me. My…nature.”
She didn’t answer. That was answer enough.
“Dindi, I can make it so that you don’t notice it. So you won’t be sick. I can even make it feel…pleasurable. I did it the day I brought you from the battlefield. Let me do it again.”
She remembered the ecstasy his touch had brought her moments before he tried to kill her. She craved that bliss, and dreaded it more than death itself. She couldn’t let him steal control of her body like that again. But what could she say? She had pledged to abide by his requests. She kept very still while he came close. He reached his hand to stroke her aura. She could feel that too, as a tingle mirrored on her flesh below the aura. Bliss electrified her aura. Her mouth parted, and her tongue darted out to stroke her lips. It was glorious. It was dangerous. Without knowing how, she pulled back, walling herself off from the tempting sensation.
“You’re blocking me,” he accused. “Dindi, stop it. Let me do what I must. It won’t hurt you. It will be soothing.”
She tried to do as he wished, but instead, it felt as if the wall between them grew stronger.
“Stop blocking me!”
“I don’t know how to stop!”
She didn’t expect him to believe her. She looked up at him, expecting anger, perhaps even violence. He drew in a deep breath.
“We need to take a break in any case. Our route from the Green Woods tribelands to the Orange Canyon tribelands will be across the ford of the Ottermark, into the Boglands. The Boglands are the closest no man’s land, and it makes sense they would make a run for it. But the Boglands themselves are treacherous, and possibly they would risk following the river north, to cross at the Muckmire Ford, or even to take canoes down the river to Bushel Nut. In your Vision, did they mention which way they were headed?”
Mutely, Dindi shook her head.
“We should try to find out. We need another Vision. It is time for you to dance for your supper, Dindi.”
She never thought she would hate being asked to dance.
Vessia (20 Years Ago)
Vessia entered a house that stank of burnt flesh. After she stilled the fire with a water dance, she found a man’s body that had been seared beyond recognition. She strapped the corpse into the bone armor the Bone Whistler had discarded, and pinned the burnt fingers around the Bone Flute. The bone garments looked too clean compared to the singed corpse. She rubbed ash into the bone to blacken them.
She worked urgently and furtively, afraid any moment she might be caught at her trickery. She need not have hurried. Hours passed before Vio rejoined her.
“We’ve cleaned out most of the resistance,” he explained. “Some of the Bone Whistler’s supporters escaped the tribehold before we could slay them. They will continue fighting us from the canyon hillside. If we drive them from the hills, I predict they will seek refuge with one of the Bone Whistler’s allies, perhaps Red Spears or Orange Canyon.”
Vessia nodded, hardly listening.
Vio finally noticed the fire-blackened room. “Why are you here?”
“The dead body,” she said. She pointed.
“
The Bone Whistler! He is truly dead.” Vio released a heavy breath. “Thank Mercy. It’s hard to believe one man could have caused so much destruction. I often feared he was more than human and could never die.”
He knelt over the body. “I suppose even a murderer deserves our final respects. I will order his body sealed into a jar and left for the Deathsworn.”
“Do that,” Vessia said, “But the Bone Flute must be disposed of separately.”
Vio lifted the flute from the corpse.
“The Bone Flute. I suppose you are right, we must keep this out of the wrong hands. But what can we do with this evil instrument? Can we destroy it?”
“You cannot destroy it. We must take it to the Kiva Beneath the World and hide it there. We must go at once, and we must go in secret.”
“I will send someone…”
“No. It must be us. You and me.”
“Why us?”
“I am the only one who can open the door to the Kiva, but I cannot do it alone. You are the only one I trust.”
He nodded. “I will be leading a campaign against the Morvae who fled to the hills. Once they are routed, we will separate from the rest of my army and journey to the Kiva Beneath the World.”
“We have no time for you to pursue your quarrels! Hiding the Bone Flute must come first.”
His lips twisted, and he cupped her chin. “Beautiful Corn Maiden, do not fret. We will do all we must in good time. My priority is to secure the peace in the tribehold. Now that the Bone Whistler is dead, no one but you can use the Bone Flute. There is no immediate danger from a dead man’s bone.”
Vessia blew a raspberry after he left. Without telling him the truth, that Xerpen still lived, she could not press the urgency of their mission. She couldn’t even tell him that Xerpen had stolen her wings. She had brought this on herself. Nonetheless, his patronizing dismissal irked her.
She assumed the delay would be only a matter of days, but it took much longer than that to mount the expedition. Tasks popped up like voles on a prairie. Before the assembled crowd in the center plaza, Vio changed his Shining Name from the Skull Stomper to the Maze Zavaedi. He announced that the White Lady, his wife, had slain the Bone Whistler. Most people imagined they had seen this with their own eyes, and the news encountered embellishment rather than doubt as it spread from the tribehold to the more distant clans.