Chapter 27 #2
Strange. My gods-gift, highly attuned to the slightest fluctuation of melody, rhythm, and the mysterious strains of harmonics beyond human perception, cannot help but discern all the broken shards of melody, the way they fracture against each other.
But there’s a rightness to it which I could not hear before.
Instead it is my own perspective which suddenly feels far too small, too simple, too lacking in understanding to comprehend what it is these great beings sing.
These beings who are so far beyond the limitations of my mortality, however divinely endowed.
They may wear physical forms, but their true essence is soulfire, the burning hearts of stars.
And that song they sing? That tormented melody which wracks my very being with its pain?
It is beautiful. It is a thing beyond mortal description, beyond the limitations of words.
Were I a Miphates mage, I would collapse to my knees in despair, recognizing that no written spell in any language could ever hope to capture the power and majesty of such a song.
But if I open my heart, if I open my gift . . . if I open my hearttorn soul . . . I may begin to understand.
My lips move. The sounds emitted by human throat and tongue and breath seem far too small for such a song.
But I must give it physical shape, even as my spirit rises to sing in a voice outside the perceivable range.
Wordless, simple, a low note born from the guttural pain in my core, I let it out.
Let it flow from the soles of my feet, through bones and blood and feeble flesh.
A humble offering, but made of the best I have to give.
It rises in strength and intensity, from a moan to a wail to a high, keening cry—unlovely, harsh, a haunting specter of sound which echoes away from me on my lonely hilltop, caught on a wind and carried swiftly through the night.
My breath spent, I gasp another lungful of air: a raw, agonized sound which scrapes my vocal chords even as my chest expands. Then I sing again, louder than before, that same low drone rising to a shriek. Ululating and reverberating through every fiber of my frail human frame.
This is the song of the hearttorn. A song I have sung in my soul but never tried to give physical voice. The song of the bereft, the soul of pain rendered into a music no living creature can bear to hear and yet which all must know someday if they are brave enough to face the ordeal of living.
The third time I draw breath, the third time I let my voice ring out, I shape the sound anew, using tongue and lips to structure the keening into a single word, which I fling from me with all the force I can muster: “Mahra!”
Far away, across the valley, the mother of all licorneir turns her head. Though she is too far off for my mortal gaze to perceive, I feel the moment when eyes which leap with black flames find me. The intensity of that gaze strikes me to the quick, and I stagger, nearly lose my breath.
Then Mahra sings again. There is command in her song: the great herd of her children changes course, thundering hooves, burning flanks, streaming comet tails and manes flying in the wind of their tremendous speed.
They sing as they come, and the song is so great, so terrible, it takes shape before my gods-gifted vision: a massive front of writhing fire and pulsing energy, rushing across that landscape like a pyroclastic flow.
I should be afraid. Maybe I am afraid. But fear simply does not matter anymore.
They seem to cover the space between us in moments.
Time means nothing in the midst of that song.
It descends on me, covering the valley and swarming the hillside where I stand, waiting.
I feel the truth of my own incredible smallness—the limitations of time and mortality and death.
Some part of me recalls, as though from a dream, what it was to be unbound by such petty chains, to be a limitless essence of stardust, stretched out over eons, and I know that if I were to hear this song while in that state, I would more fully comprehend it. As it is, it will likely kill me.
I stand firm, even as the thundering hooves quake the ground beneath me, threatening to rend open stone and let the heat at the core of the world escape to blend with their own black fire.
Closing my eyes, I hold out my arms, breathe in the unfathomable power of song and soul and flame as it washes over me.
Only yesterday, to stand in the midst of this song would have ripped me into little tattered shreds of being.
Now it catches me up in its tempest gale and bears me away.
I am not prey to the storm, but a part of it, drawn to its very heart.
The licorneir flow over the hill, their flaming bodies passing so close to me.
My outflung fingertips brush fiery manes and flanks as they surge past. And yet I remain uncrushed, so nimble are their footfalls, so perfect the flow and control of their powerful bodies.
Here, in the center of their song, I hear harmonies I could not before.
What had been pure chaos and brokenness from a distance is, in fact, far deeper, far more complex than I ever imagined.
I hear the pain of their loss, I hear the loneliness of their souls—but I hear more as well.
In this song is the very essence of love.
A love which can only come into being in conjunction with loss.
It is the great balance, the great mystery, that one cannot exist in this world without the other.
The great sorrow that must and will devastate all mortal souls.
But it is not the end.
I hear it now—echoes of eternity. The vastness of existence beyond stone, beyond air, beyond flesh, beyond words, beyond time. The great truth of immortal song. The song of love itself. And I know: only love remains.
I felt it sometimes, frail flesh-creature though I am.
In those moments of deepest connection with Taar, when our breaths synced, and our hearts beat in tandem, and our songs joined.
I had felt the unendingness of those far-too-brief gasps of utter joy.
Those moments exist even now and will continue to exist when I am dead, when I am gone, when all that I know is rendered dust and forgotten.
Though I pass beyond time’s bounds, and time itself is made naught, what I knew with Taar will go on. Beyond death, beyond time.
Suddenly the song of the hearttorn licorneir is clear in my ears.
It is not a song of brokenness at all, but the song of heaven itself.
I am moved to open up my heart and sing with them, the song my gods-gifted voice was always meant to sing.
As the melody flows from inside me, I see Diira galloping across endless plains, faster than thought, her soulfire blazing bright as a shooting star.
She is real—not imagined, but true in a way I myself, wrapped in this fleshly body, cannot be.
But where is Taar? As I sing, I search for him as well, and yet I do not see him.
Though the song ripples along the velra cord, which still anchors my broken heart, he does not appear to my vision.
Tears fill and spill over my eyes, for I had thought perhaps, in this moment of revelation, I would glimpse him again, one last time.
I become aware of a presence. Standing directly in front of me, a burning sun of power only just contained in physical form. My throat tightens. The song which had poured so freely from me catches, falters, turns to silence. Slowly I open my eyes, face the being before me.
Mahra. Pulsing with black fire which, now that I see it up close, is not black after all, but a color my eyes were unable to perceive before, shining and vivid and new.
Her children are with her, surrounding me, a thousand licorneir and more, all alight with this same glorious flame.
Sorrow limns their souls, but it is a sorrow made beautiful in song.
And Mahra herself holds their song within her, gives it shape, gives it space, and then gifts it back to them.
She looks at me—and I wish suddenly that I could ever be worthy of such a gaze. The licorneir are overwhelming, but I have become somewhat immune to the true greatness of their souls. In Mahra, it is all recalled anew. She is ancient and ageless, a star born long before the beginning of this world.
Her voice burns into my skull, words I could never have hoped to understand before, but which now take a shape of meaning: I have been waiting for you, Maelar.
I draw a shivering breath. Waiting . . . for me?
Waiting for your song. Waiting for your voice to sing with mine.
My . . . my song is frail, I admit. Broken.
As is mine, Mahra replies. And so we sing the brokenness. Together.
I nod, though I still do not fully comprehend.
But I know now that the gods did not give me their gift so that I might heal the broken licorneir.
Rather, the broken licorneir have given me space for my own brokenness, and my gift has enabled me to enter into it.
Only there may we be made whole. Not healed, but new. Joined in this holy fire.
Come, Maelar, Mahra says, and kneels on the ground before me. She is so huge, her head still towers above mine, though I am standing. It was appointed for me, by Nornala’s grace, to bond with the queen of Licorna.
But I shake my head sadly. I am not queen of Licorna. I never was.
Fire flashes in her eyes. You are the chosen bride of Licorna’s king. You are maelar, now and forever.
Again I hear the echoes of eternity in her song. The timeless certainty, beyond my understanding. I wouldn’t dare to argue with such a being.
If you are willing, I sing, I will bond with you, Mahra. Though I do not believe I am worthy.
At this she seems to laugh, as though my worthiness or unworthiness never entered into her consideration. The voice which burns into my head says only: Join with me then. Enter deeper into my song.
I don’t know how I ever summoned the courage.
Somehow I grip a handful of her flaming mane, and it does not burn me.
I pull myself up onto her back, my head whirling with dizziness when she rises up to her full, towering height.
Her song and the songs of her children flow through me now, channeled through her fire into my soul.
I sing with them—a harmony of loss, of sorrow, of love everlasting.
Suddenly I am grateful. The gratitude is so great, it nearly breaks me, and only my grip on Mahra’s mane keeps me from falling to the dirt.
I throw back my head and keen my sorrow once more, but there is gratitude in the keening.
I cry out to Nornala, to all the seven gods, in thanks for the love they gave me, however briefly it may have lasted in this lifetime.
Because I know now, in a way I never could have known before, that it will never end.
The licorneir sing with me, sing of their own lost loves.
And the beauty of their song, the beauty of their pain, is a balm to me in my suffering.
There is the harmony I needed—theirs was the song my own melody required to transform it from brokenness to beauty.
It was I who needed them all along. And here, in the midst of them, I am finally where I belong.
Mahra bursts into a gallop, carrying me with her, and the licorneir follow, singing through the night.
Our voices join with the stars overhead, and I know without a doubt that I hear Diira singing with us high above.
When at last the sun rises, I look around me at a living sea of licorneir, and feel my heart bonded to each of them in a way I never would have imagined possible.
It is like I have become the expanded, timeless, stardust version of selfhood, beyond the capacity of my physical frame.
I spy Elydark among them, the pain of his velrhoar heart palpable, the beauty of his love undeniable. He looks at me, draws strength from the bond we now share.
In his eyes, I see at last what I must now do.
Mahra, I sing, we must save them. We must save the Licornyn, give them back to the licorneir. We must rescue this world from what it has become.
I am with you, Maelar, Mahra sings back to me, her strange fire rippling through my heart. I and my children. Say only where you would go, and we will carry you there.
I turn my head, my gaze searching out across the miles, beyond the horizon, to the place where I know the Morrona flows, and beyond. To that place where Taar lost his life, and where his frightened people await their ultimate doom.
He did not abandon them; though they killed him in the end, he never forsook them.
Neither will I.
To Elanlein, I sing. To the Hidden City.
With a toss of her head and a flash of fire in her eyes, Mahra utters an explosive burst of song.
Then she leads the way, her feet scarcely touching the ground as she flies over the lonely landscape.
The thundering hooves of a thousand licorneir echo to the heavens above as they follow at her heels.