Chapter 27
ILSEVEL
Eventually I begin to walk.
My body shivers like a leaf, and yet my feet feel like great stone blocks. A strange combination, as though I am anchored to this world by these dreadful weights when everything about me wants to scatter and fly off into the breeze.
I am tempted to simply curl up into a tight knot and will myself out of existence. But that feels dishonoring to Taar. He gave me a chance to escape. He sacrificed himself for my sake. The least I can do is force my body into some sort of motion, some semblance of life-struggle.
So I walk. On and on. No better than one of Shanaera’s dead shamblers, empty as I am of spirit, I have no particular direction, no idea of destination or purpose.
The velra, stretching out before the eyes of my spirit, seems to waft aimlessly, no longer a certain pull, leading me always back to him.
Why does it still exist at all? Why did it not disappear, as my bond to Diira disappeared when she was slain?
Perhaps Taar lives. Perhaps I misunderstood what happened to Elydark.
But no. I am hearttorn myself—I know the song of velrhoar, intimately. I remember when it first overwhelmed me, remember the burning and the pain and the brokenness of the melody pouring from my soul. It is unmistakable. Elydark would only sing that song under one condition.
And that truth I cannot face.
So I walk. It feels like many miles, but it might not be so far.
Every now and then my body comes down with hideous shakes.
But I’ve already wept until I am dry, then vomited, then wept some more.
I am empty now. Utterly spent save for this clinging spirit of life which propels me on against my will.
The day, which began with his death, lengthens toward evening.
I tip back my head, peer at the empty sky, waiting for the black lightning to strike.
When it comes, I will die too, and I will join Taar.
I want the darkness to come, to tear me to shreds.
I already feel as though I’ve been torn to shreds from the inside out, and yet my heart insists on beating still.
It is a curse. It is a curse to love a man so much.
Oh, why does this velra between us not break?
Why does it deceive me into believing he might still be alive, when I know—I know, damn it—that it cannot be?
Elydark would not have abandoned me if Taar lived.
But Elydark is long gone. I haven’t seen him or any other living creature all the long hours of this endless day.
I am abandoned—by nature, by the gods. A creature alone in the universe, waiting only to be swallowed by hell.
I am parched. I don’t want to care about such physical needs, but the reality is becoming harder and harder to ignore.
All my weeping and heaving has left me drained, and my wandering footsteps have not led me to a water source.
Even if I came upon some stream or pool, I have no dried ilsevel blossoms with which to purify the water.
Maybe the vardimnar won’t come. Maybe I will be forced to die a slower, more lingering death of thirst and starvation.
The sun sets. The day has lasted a thousand years, but when it ends, it seems sudden, like a candle snuffed.
I lift my head and peer up at the darkened sky, hoping it is the vardimnar.
But no—stars appear above me, in ones and twos, then in dozens, hundreds.
Pinpricks of shining light, so vastly far away and uncaring of my solitary plight.
Strange to think I once believed I heard them singing.
I climb a hill, stumbling, half-crawling my way to the crest, then collapse at the top in the sparse grass and lie spread-eagle.
Watching the progress of those stars. No moon tonight—no eye of Nornala to look on me in my distress.
Just Her distant, shining children, who care little for this fading world or the kinfolk they leave behind in it.
Closing my eyes, I cast my mind back many weeks. Back to another hilltop beneath this same star-strewn sky. Where I lay with my husband, breathing his air, resting in the safe circle of his arms. I hear his voice again, whispering in my ear:
“I know so little about you, Ilsevel Cyhorn. I know your courage, your determination. Your strength in the face of adversity. I know the beautiful timbre of your voice, the voice of heaven itself. But there is still so much I know nothing of.”
I feel his breath on my cheek as he pulls me closer, feel his nose pressed against my temple as he inhales my scent, like he would draw me straight into himself and hold me there forever. “I want to,” he murmurs. “I want to know everything that can be known about you.”
“Taar,” I whisper, the first I have spoken in many hours, in many lifetimes. “Taar, I want to know you too. All that there is, all that remains to be discovered. But you’re gone now . . . you’re gone and . . .”
My voice breaks. The enormity of the truth is more than I can bear.
Too late, my heart cries. Too late, too late, you little fool. You pushed him away. You lost precious days, hours, moments. And now it’s too late.
Though I had not thought I would be able to weep again, tears trickle from the corners of my eyes into the spreading fan of my snarled hair.
Still I feel him, so close. The strength of his arms, the beat of his heart.
The pulsing power of our connection, unexpected and yet profound.
But he is slipping away now. Even as the velra refuses to break, even as I am drawn to him as profoundly as ever, he fades from my grasp.
“Please, Taar,” I beg, “take me with you, wherever you have gone. Don’t leave me here. I’m ready. I’m ready to go now.”
Only stillness answers. When I open my eyes, it is to a revelation of solitude.
My husband is not here. And yet I cannot cease to be, no matter how I wish to.
I lie here on this cold, dark hilltop, staring up at the stars.
Thousands upon millions of glittering beings, unconcerned with my mortal pain.
That is when I hear it—the strange song of black fire, searing across my awareness, awakening my dulled gods-gift with a shrieking wrongness that should be beautiful but has warped too far.
It shocks me, though I’ve been waiting for it all this while, without realizing that this was what I awaited.
A song of loss and loneliness, pure and sharp as a dagger through the heart, multiplied by a thousand voices uplifted together, and yet led by a single voice alone.
A voice I recognize. A voice I have heard many times before now without truly understanding.
“Mahra,” I whisper.
The next moment I scramble to my feet and stare out across the darkened landscape, straining after that song, that black soulfire.
I know they are out there—the wild licorneir, the velrhoar beasts.
Those who have lost their riders, lost their way, and run rampant with grief across the lonely stretches of their vanishing world.
Gathered to their mother’s side, they sing with her, a great chorus of broken song that shatters my very soul to hear.
And yet the last time I heard it, I wanted to join, wanted to throw my own hearttorn voice into that storm of souls and become one with the velrhoar.
But Taar’s strong arms wrapped around me.
He held me fast, and I realized I had something which mattered more to me than my own loss, something worth fighting for.
Only Taar is gone now.
I rise up on my toes, as though this slight increase of height will cast my vision farther.
A cold wind blows, and it seems to carry the song away from my perception.
I shiver, holding my own body tight, and feel once more abandoned to my own pain.
How could I have believed I was meant to save this world?
How could I have believed the gods gifted me this voice for some great and noble purpose?
I see in my mind’s eye the faces of the Rocaryn people, watching me as Taar and I rode through the Hidden City.
They hated me—and they killed Taar for loving what they hated.
I don’t want to help them. Even if I had the strength, the power, I don’t want to stand between them and their doom.
They deserve whatever is coming to them.
But Taar loved them.
I shudder, shaking my head viciously against the thought that will not leave.
He loved them. They did not understand him, did not recognize the sacrifices he made for their sakes.
And it never mattered. He loved them anyway.
In the end, he was unwilling to abandon them, not even for my sake. So how can I abandon them now?
“It doesn’t matter,” I whisper to the silent, uncaring night. “I can’t help. I can’t help anyone. I am alone, I am lost, I am useless.”
Tilting back my head, I stare up at the sky, convinced the black lightning will rip through the layers of reality at any moment, and the vardimnar will fall.
But all I see are those millions of dancing, singing stars.
They mock me with their beauty, their sense of purpose, the sacred geometry of their dance.
Then I hear it again: the strains of Mahra’s song, the voices of her children.
The brokenness reaches me from across vast stretches of dark miles, filling me up from the inside.
But it’s different somehow. Different from every other time I’ve heard it.
Still huge, vaster than an ocean, wild and frenetic, almost lunatic in its loneliness, and yet . . .
From the very first time I heard that song, from the very first day I entered Cruor and discovered the magnificent horror of this world, I have had but one thought: harmony. That song needs only the right harmony to sing the broken pieces back into wholeness.
Now as I listen to it, however, I cannot help thinking: It isn’t their song which is broken.