The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing

by Tara Maya

  She jabbed her folded elbows hard into his gut.

  “Ow!” He let her go and rolled away, trying to recapture his breath.

  He thought she’d made her point already, so he wasn’t paying attention, and didn’t see the spear. He heard the buzz of whipped air, then his head exploded with pain. She’d smacked him in the head with it.

  She prodded him in the chest with the stone-tip. “I should kill you now.”

  “I’m not an Orange Canyon warrior, you damn she-wolf.”

  His ears still hissed. He shook his head like a wet dog, but that only made it worse.

  “If you had been, I would have aimed lower,” Kemla said. She prodded him hard enough that the spear drew blood. “Did you cast a love hex on me?”

  He laughed. “You have it that bad?”

  She tried to smack him with the spear again, but he rolled to his feet. “Stop! There’s no hex.”

  “Keep your paws off me, or I’ll kill you.”

  “You are a very vicious young woman.”

  “And don’t forget it.” Kemla gestured to the distinct lack of horses in their vicinity. “Look at what your fooling around has done! Everyone has left already. They’ve probably already spotted the journey omen without us. You chased off my horse. Go catch it now. Or do you expect me to walk all the way?”

  Hadi

  Every journey begged a journey omen. That was the tradition among Hadi’s people, though the Green Woods tribesfolk laughed when they heard it. Nomadic during all the warm months, they only sought omens when they planned to remain in one spot for an extended time. A staying-put omen.

  For Hadi and other farming folk from Rainbow Labyrinth clans, the first stretch of their journey toward Orange Canyon was fraught with anxiety. They all kept alert for a glimpse of an animal which could either consecrate or doom their entire quest for revenge. Tamio hopped from foot to foot, excited as a little boy on his first hunt, hoping to win the honor of spotting the omen animal. Kemla took interest solely because she knew it would annoy Tamio if she outdid him. The dozen or so other Rainbow Labyrinth travelers tilted and turned their heads, noses a-quiver like squirrels. Only Jensi showed no interest in the omen or the journey. She stared at her own shuffling toes, as if the only omens she could expect on this journey were worms.

  Hadi spotted a beast peeking from the woods at the war party, but he was so horrified, he didn’t say anything, as if, by not naming it, he could pretend it away. Maybe somebody else would see another, better omen.

  How often did that happen? Did people ignore the true omens of their journey? Did ignoring omens ever fool fate?

  Unfortunately, Tamio also saw the beast. “Look! A wolf!”

  It wasn’t a wolf for long. As the beast trotted toward them, causing Hadi’s heart to jump into his throat and his boots to scuff, as if of their own accord, back a step or two (he bumped into Tamio), the fur shimmered and sparkled and shifted to legwals on a bare-chested man with shaggy hair and an unshaven face.

  Paro. Does that count as an omen animal? Hadi wondered.

  “I’m not an animal,” Paro said.

  I guess not.

  “Too bad,” said Tamio. “Any totem of the enemy tribe, a bird or sheep, would be muck luck for us. A wolf, a true wolf, any totem of Green Woods or of Rainbow Labyrinth, would be a good luck. You’d have been a good omen.”

  “Too bad,” said Paro, unsympathetically. “Find another omen.”

  Paro did not move toward Jensi. He did not even greet her out loud. He only joined the group of walkers in a casual way. He did look once at her, a deliberate coup d’oeil, but after he had scratched whatever question itched him, he did not repeat it. She didn’t return the look or directly acknowledge his presence. Yet Hadi knew she was aware of Paro, and annoyed. Her posture, which had sagged, snapped straight. Her chin climbed another rung of air.

  He didn’t like to see Jensi annoyed—honestly, no one liked to see Jensi annoyed, she could be as sharp as Gramma Sullana—but he couldn’t help thinking it was better for her to be defiant and proud than morose. Too bad it took Paro’s stupid grinning face to bring out the change.

  They tramped along, all of them. Hill after hill, snow and trees. Downhill for now, which should have been easier than uphill, but somehow wasn’t. Snow sucked at his feet, he had to fight for each step. His uncles, guilty and solicitous, had outfitted him with a parka and a second pair of legwals, to keep him warm. Quilted wool, woven in the swan pattern of Lost Swan clan, stuffed with goose down. Unfortunately, the parka wasn’t water-resistant in the least. Snowflakes melted into wool, and once the damp sank into the stuffing, it never dried. It smelled fungal and weighed him down like a vest of rocks.

  The mass of travelers were clumped closely for now, but Hadi knew that once they each found their pace, the line would stretch along the path until they were out of sight of one another. The leggy Green Woods folk already pulled ahead. Hadi’s folk bunched together, still waiting on the omen. Why was it just when you needed a fourteen-point buck, none would appear? Though, come to think of it, Hadi had never seen a fourteen-point buck. Only a ten-point. And even then, he’d had a better view of the stag’s tail than his antlers. Another failed hunt.

  Sigh.

  “THERE!”

  Tamio’s bray, unexpectedly close, made Hadi jump.

  “There, there!” Tamio jabbed his finger at the hill across from them.

  A lot of bustle, a lot of cries of, “Where, where?” “I see it!” and “What is it?” before the collective established it was a lamb. Not a fuzzy, cute, mewling baby lamb, but a reedy, leggy thing, which had found purchase on a scrape that looked to Hadi impossibly vertical.

  As they watched, an eagle swooped down from higher up the hill. The lamb bleated—its mother answered from lower down, hidden in the brush, but there was nothing she could do—and began a mad scramble along the precipice.

  The eagle dived. It shoved the lamb with its talons and knocked the little body right off the rock. The lamb flailed and plunged, more than a thousand paces. Hadi’s jaw dropped almost as far. The poor little lambkin hit just short of the bottom of the canyon. It flipped, bounced and rolled the last twenty paces. It would have been comic, except he pitied it too much to laugh at it. The eagle swept up the corpse at leisure.

  “What an omen!” Tamio pumped fists in the air.

  “That was ‘good’?” Paro sounded bewildered. “Eagle. Ram. Two totems of the enemy?”

  “One destroyed the other. That’s got to be good for our side.”

  Hadi wished he could take a swig of Tamio’s confidence.

  Interpreting the omen provided the travelers with their afternoon topic of conversation. Lots of theories. Hadi didn’t share his own: Whether or not their revenge raid achieved victory, predators would feast and innocents would suffer.

  3.14 Finnadro

  After he sent Hadi back to the tribehold, Finnadro unlaced a section of his legwal, and pulled back the green-stained leather. On his thigh was a welt of shiny, purplish scar tissue, many months old now, where a section of his skin had been flayed from his flesh.

  The Deathsworn had done that to him.

  The physical injury had not hurt as a much as what had followed. The Deathsworn had also drained him. Like a tick, but instead of blood, the man in black had leeched away his magic. And also unlike a tick, which anesthetized its victims, Finnadro had felt every agonizing minute of the theft.

  The memory rose like bile, sour and filthy, which he could not swallow back down, his throat was too dry. He had never shared the incident with anyone, because he could not bear the shame. He, the big man with a Shining Name, the Wolf Hunter, the Green Lady’s Henchman, was secretly a coward.

  Why had he not pursued the Deathsworn those many moons ago? He had told himself it was because he had needed to save the White Lady. That came first. The truth was, he had welcomed the excuse. He was as much a slave to his fear as any weakling who pissed himself and fled a battle.

/>   The Deathsworn had drained him and left him for dead. That was all that had spared Finnadro the fate of the others, the ones who had been tortured to death. Finnadro remembered exactly how the bodies had been left, entangled in their own offal. A shudder rippled down his spine. He tied his legwal back together.

  Now he had no choice but to face the Deathsworn again.

  At least he would not do it alone. Leaning back, he howled like a wolf.

  Within moments, he smelled them. Several pairs of gleaming green eyes appeared in the shadows around the clearing. One after another, wolves trotted into view. They were wolflings who had proved themselves able to balance the beast and the man inside, to hunt as animals, yet retain their understanding of human words. If they preferred to spend most of their time as wolves, that was their business, as long as they retained the hearts of men. Finnadro knew them all, both by their wolfling names and by their secret human names, which he would not say out loud.

  He nodded to them, and the wolves cocked their heads.

  Two more wolves appeared, females. Finnadro welcomed them as well.

  Whitepaw, the pack chief, changed. Human, he was a powerfully built but grizzled elder, with a white beard and baldpate, keen jade eyes.

  “Why are we meeting at a Deathsworn rock? Even wolves stay clear of their taboos.”

  “I respect Deathsworn taboos when they respect ours. This particular Deathsworn is a Rogue.”

  Whitepaw whistled. “Rogue.”

  When an ordinary man abandoned the law of light and shadows, they called him a Rover, a man without clan and tribe. Deathsworn had no clan or tribe to begin with, but they were still hooped to the law. If a Deathsworn abandoned the law of light and shadows, they called him a Rogue. Anyone in Faearth was permitted to slay a Rogue on sight, but almost no one except another Deathsworn could hope to actually do so.

  “Get the scent,” Finnadro said. “We’ll need to hunt by night as well as day, napping only, until we catch up with him. He’s got a strong lead on us, and we have to close it as quickly as possible. He has a girl with him. Get her scent too.”

  He didn’t need to tell them they would rescue the girl if they could. They had worked with him before, and new his priorities.

  Whitepaw changed form and all six wolves sniffed around the Deathsworn altar. Whitepaw barked like a dog, and then all six of them began to run. Finnadro followed them. The sun had set and by night his tracking skills paled compared to theirs.

  The wolves led him back to the river, almost to the exact spot he had chased Hawk. Finnadro cursed silently. If only he had known, he would not have had to double back and lose more time.

  Moonlight illuminated the Ottermark; the waters ran red. Most of the captives who had participated in the Chase earlier in the day had been caught, and their bodies had been dumped here at sunset. They had been hunted down like beasts, and their bodies had be left to rot like beasts, not given with honors to the Deathsworn. A few bloated forms bobbed along the shore, caught in brambles.

  Finnadro waded knee deep into the ford, but then he paused and commanded the wolflings to stop.

  “Change form,” he commanded them.

  The others shifted except the pack chief, Whitepaw. The old wolf stood still for a long time. Finnadro wondered if Whitepaw disdained human form these days…or if he found the change harder after years as a wolf. The river shush-shushsed through the reeds.

  Finally, Whitepaw changed. Finnadro cleared his throat.

  “We will be crossing into no man’s land, and possibly into Orange Canyon tribelands. We will be going against a foe who spits on honor, who lies, tortures, rapes and murders without a care. We will cross this river to catch that foe and bring him to justice. But there is another river we will not cross. We will walk on the shore of honor; we will not cross to the other side. We are not beasts, but men and women. We will not shame our tribe with either cowardice or wanton cruelty. We will stand by each member of the pack. And we will not stop until we hunt down our foe.”

  He took his dagger and cut a slice of his palm. He dripped the blood in the river. Each of the wolflings bit into his or her own arm or hand and let a few drops of scarlet wash away in the water. The seven of them were now one pack. They held their blooded arms up in the air, fists clenched, and shared a howl, Finnadro as loudly as the others.

  Then the six wolflings changed into wolves and splashed across the ford, with Finnadro sloshing swiftly behind.

  One of the bloated bodies broke free of the brambles and drifted downriver.

  Chapter Four

  Trap

  Zumo

  Many naughty little boys think their mothers can eat their thoughts.

  Mine actually could.

  She knew better what I was thinking than I did myself. She would grab me by the ear, yank a thread from my aura and put it to her tongue.

  “Is that what you think?” she’d scream.

  Then she would smack me on the other ear. I was never beaten for what I did; I was always beaten for what I was going to do.

  One day, when I was six or seven, shortly before all children are Tested for magic in the Labyrinth, I was playing with my cousin Kavio and she came to collect me. I knew she didn’t like me to play with Kavio, and figured she might beat me for it, but she was all smiles and squeezes. She offered me my favorite treat, honeyed nuts.

  She tugged a little orange thread of light from my aura, but even then, she didn’t care that I’d told Kavio I hated her and planned to run away. He’d loved the idea—he felt just the same about his father, he said. He offered to go with me.

  Neither of us meant it, but I figured my mother would beat me anyway.

  But no. She only wanted to know one thing: If I suspected what she was planning.

  I hadn’t suspected anything…until that moment.

  That’s when I discovered a secret: the thread runs both ways. She could taste my thoughts, but today I found I could also taste hers.

  And no wonder she didn’t want me to know what she was thinking.

  She was planning to kill me.

  It’s for your own good, it’s for your own good, she kept repeating in her mind. Better to kill you than let him get you. He can have the other one.

  I did not know what to do. She took me into the kitchen, bid me sit on the platform by the beehive shaped adobe oven, the oven which was taller than me, and handed me a bowl of honeyed nuts. She turned her back to me and sharpened her stone dagger on the sharpening rock in front of the oven.

  “I’ll just crack some more for you,” she said loudly.

  I sucked on the nuts. I hid my fear. The cloying treat choked me, and I had to cough it out. She still held the thread of my aura; but I let nothing flow from me. Instead, I pulled, as softly as I could, from her.

  An image hit me, a clear Vision, of what she planned to do. Turn around. Pretend to hug me so she could pin my arms to my side. Slit my throat. Catch the blood in a bowl, the very bowl of honeyed nuts I held in my lap. When I stopped gurgling—she knew how long it would take, she had killed this way before—she would chop me up and stick pieces of me into the oven.

  I’ll say the boy ran away, she thought. No one will know.

  She turned around.

  I threw the bowl of nuts in her face and ran from the house.

  I ran to Kavio’s house. I told him my mother planned to kill me and we must run away together. For real. At once.

  He refused. In the meantime, he’d ended whatever fight he’d had with his father, and now insisted that I return home. Said my mother loved me, wouldn’t ever hurt me. I knew better. I kept saying, “She wants to kill me,” but he wouldn’t believe me. He threatened to tell his father.

  My mother and older sister arrived at Kavio’s house, with Kavio’s father. Now it was too late. I had no way to escape. They were all against me. They all trusted her; no one trusted me. And so I couldn’t trust any of them.

  My older sister took my hand and whispered for my ear
s alone. “It’s safe. She’s changed her mind.”

  I still trusted my sister—a little. I couldn’t forget that she was the one my mother wanted to keep alive. She was the one my mother favored. I saw an orange thread on her and touched it, and saw an image of my mother weeping and telling her to help bring me back. So I went home with them.

  At home, mother served us the evening meal as if nothing had happened. My father came back from wherever he’d spent the day. I used my new skill to taste a thread from my father. No clear thoughts, but I sensed a woman who smelled of cloves. He suspected nothing.

  For dessert, my mother served the rest of the honeyed nuts.

  Even the smell made me sick. I could not eat any of them. I have never eaten them since.

  Zumo

  Zumo dipped his fingers into the mix of blue powder and rendered fat, which he daubed into careful stripes on his face. He strapped on his blue beaded headband and tied it at the back of his head. His room was a fine one, with bright white walls, a blue ceiling with white spots like stars. It was on the third floor so two large windows allowed wind to pass through and cool the room, even when, as now, the afternoon sunlight made the walls and the blue-and-white striped blankets glow.

  He would miss this room if he never saw it again.

  “Aren’t you done yet?” His mother Nangi stood in the doorway to his chamber. “Fa, but you are vainer than a virgin bride. How neatly you paint your face isn’t going to impress your uncle.”

  “I think it’s a mistake to go,” Zumo said. “Not that you care that he will be as like to eat as feed me.”

  “He may kill you,” Nangi agreed. “There’s no knowing. If he does, you have no one but yourself to blame. I told you that your sister would take care of the White Lady, in a way that could not be blamed on us, but you insisted on locking her up under Vio’s nose. Did you think he would allow such a provocation? What have I done to deserve such a goat-headed fool for a son?”

  Zumo scowled. He hated it when his mother was right. “So I shouldn’t go.”