Chapter 3
ILSEVEL
It is a lonely countryside out here, beyond Rothiliar House.
All Cruor may be desolate and devastated, but farther in there are more signs of the civilization that once was.
Ruinous houses, sunken-in towns, even distant vistas of marvelous cities, crumbling into ruin and yet radiating the memory of their former grandeur.
Out here no such sights remain. Our licorneir avoid dark forest tangles, keeping to open countryside, their strides long as they eat up mile upon mile of open grasslands, interrupted by massive protrusions of stone erupting from the earth like the claws of ancient monsters, seeking to escape imprisonment.
And all around us hangs a pervasive silence.
A silence which not only strikes the ears, but the very soul.
I’d not been unaware of it while wrapped in Taar’s body within the shadowy shelter of Rothiliar House, but absorbed as we were in each other, I could push that awareness to the back of my mind.
Out here, under the open sky, the immensity of that empty absence of song is oppressive.
This is a world stripped of life, save for the vegetation; even that has a poisoned quality, a sense of perpetual existence without vitality, despite the lush green presented to my eye.
Rather than let my perceptions dwell on absence, I concentrate instead on the ongoing songlife of this magnificent being on whom I ride.
I am not yet accustomed to the wonder of the connection I now share with the unicorn.
It is as strange to me that she would choose this bond as it is that Taar would choose to love me.
A persistent parasite of unworthiness burrows in the back of my mind, but I strive not to let it latch hold.
Bowing over my unicorn’s blue-black neck, I aim for the western horizon before me.
Diira is the swifter of the two licorneir, and I feel her eagerness to outstrip Elydark.
Go on, I sing into her heart. Run as you wish to!
Diira shakes her head, dark mane fluttering before my vision. There is safety in numbers, she sings back even as she pulls in her stride, keeping her nose close to Elydark’s shoulder.
I don’t like that. I don’t want to be worried about safety, not after everything I endured yesterday.
I was burned alive and left abandoned, lost in excruciating pain.
I looked into the faces of the dead, connected to their tortured minds.
I saved my husband from damnation. All this I did and survived.
Now I can either let the memory of those horrors engulf my soul until I can no longer function .
. . or I can ferociously accept what happened and refuse to live in fear.
Go, Diira! I sing into her heart, only half-aware of the manic quality in my song. Faster! Farther!
Diira utters a wild, bugling call, unable to resist my infectious urging.
Stretching out her neck, she lengthens her stride and unleashes the coiled power of her muscles.
Within a few hoofbeats, she outpaces powerful Elydark and seems almost to take flight across the swath of green landscape before us.
I laugh at the sound of Taar’s voice shouting behind me, little heeding his words.
It’s not as though I’m going to leave him; the velra cord would prevent it, even if my own heart did not inevitably draw me back to him.
But just for a moment, I indulge the need to prove my own courage to myself, here in a world comprised of so much horror.
Unleashed, Diira surges with power, and the oneness of our bond pulses in my veins so that I feel as though my own feet pound the turf and my own heart soars with a half-forgotten desire to ascend to heaven and race the stars themselves.
Starsong sings through my veins. It is, in its way, as thrilling and life-altering as the explosions of sensation which Taar calls to life within me.
I never dreamed I could be capable of such splendor.
The difference between our progress across Cruor now and the first time I saw this landscape is indescribable.
Four days ago I rode with Taar, wrapped in his arms following our night together in the shepherd’s hut, still stinging from the pain of his rejection the morning after.
I was sunk so deep in my pain, the only thing which roused me was the song of a lonely, hearttorn unicorn, reaching out to me from across the vast distances, tugging at my heart.
Little could I have imagined that in so short a while I would find myself bound to that very same unicorn.
That the two of us would each heal something broken in the other.
So, despite the uncertainty of all that awaits at the end of this ride, despite the constant peril of the vardimnar which lurks on the edge of awareness, I laugh into the wind, my hair blowing behind me, my soul triumphing in the song and the connection and the joy of a heart which has found its place in the worlds. Surely no darkness can reach me here.
No sooner does that thought pass through my head when, as though conjured in response, a long, low note of song ripples along the wind and wraps around my awareness.
Even with Diira’s song in my heart and wind rushing in my ears, I hear it.
Acute as a knife to the heart, it stabs through my mind—a song of black fire, burning too hot for this world.
Diira hears it too. I feel the shock shoot through her soul.
She pulls up abruptly. It is as though the furnace inside her is suddenly doused, and she turns her head, gazing off to the north where mountains cut a jagged line across the hazy edge of the world.
My eyes follow the trajectory of her gaze, even as my soul reaches out after the echoes of that singular note.
It comes again. A song of such aching loss and loneliness.
Pure in its way, without other emotions to complicate or diminish the intensity of what is felt.
Other voices simmer beneath that one, singular tone—a whole chorus of souls joined in unity with this greater spirit—but I am only vaguely aware of them. Her voice is the only one that matters.
Her.
Mahra . . .
I cannot see her from this distance. But something tells me Diira can.
There’s an intensity of focus in my unicorn’s eye.
The cold wind blows harshly against her, tossing her mane in a wild snarl, but she does not blink or budge.
With an effort, I pull my awareness away from that distant song and focus on my own song instead, the one shared with Diira.
Her inner voice, twined with mine, continues to sing, but she is drawn to that sorrowful longing, to that lost and distant chorus.
To her hearttorn brothers, sisters, and mother, whose pain she shared but a short while ago.
Leaning forward, I place my hand on Diira’s neck, bury my face in her mane. “No, my love,” I murmur, a trace of music in my voice. “Don’t listen to her. Not now. Hear my song instead.”
Closing my eyes, I lean into the song we share, the bond we formed over my burnt and suffering body. The two of us—lost souls who came home to one another just when the darkness seemed ready to swallow us whole. We saved each other then; we can do so again.
I am here, I sing to her, channeling the force of my gods-gift through my spirit. I am here. You are no longer alone. We are no longer alone.
Diira startles as though pulled abruptly from a trance.
Her voice shivers in my mind, wordless but full of gratitude and warmth.
She turns her head away from that distant place, and a sense of calm radiates through her, through me.
I’ve drawn her back from the brink, and somehow I know she will not be so easily tempted away from me next time.
Our bond will deepen. Perhaps one day neither of us will hear Mahra’s siren call anymore.
I’m breathing hard, whether from the exertion of the ride or hearing that lonely song I cannot say.
Turning in my saddle, I look back to see Taar and Elydark bearing down upon us.
The velra shining between me and my husband flares brilliantly, and I smile at the sight of it.
Then I notice the fury masking Taar’s face.
Elydark pulls up sharply alongside Diira, half-rearing. “What were you thinking?” Taar barks as his unicorn’s forehooves hit the ground hard beneath him. “What were you thinking, riding away from me like that? Have you no idea even now how much danger you put yourself in?”
I quirk an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You forget, warlord. I rode this way alone with Diira only yesterday. Chasing down your sorry hide to rescue you from certain doom.” I lean in my saddle, looking him straight in the eye. “I’m not some helpless damsel in distress anymore. Can you accept that?”
A series of expressions pass behind his eyes, one after the other.
I can’t tell what he wants more: to kiss or to throttle me.
Possibly a little of both. With a muttered curse, he tears his gaze from me and gazes out in the same direction from which Mahra’s voice had sung.
His nostrils flare, and his jaw hardens.
Finally he looks at me again. “Cruor is too treacherous for anyone to navigate alone. Especially someone who knows its ways so little as you do.”
“I know.” I roll my eyes and toss him a saucy grin. “That’s why I pulled up to wait for you.”
He studies me grimly, his breath uneven through his flared nostrils. He knows I’m not telling him the whole truth. Our connection may be new, but it is true. And I begin to realize how difficult it will be to keep things from him.