Chapter 29 #3
I turn from the sight of them to look once more at Miramenor.
The licorneir has not reacted to the violent death of his former rider.
He stands as he was, still as stone. No sign of any hearttorn explosion of pain.
Is it because he had already severed their connection by choice?
I’ve never heard of such a thing, didn’t know it was possible.
But I feel the wound in his spirit, not the same as velrhoar, but not unlike it either.
His soul seems to be encased in a shell of stone.
How do I reach him? I sing to Mahra.
There is only one way to reach him now, Mahra replies in a voice of rippling song.
His heart is broken with a love which ended in shame and regret and betrayal.
The memories of goodness they once shared cannot sustain him through the pain of sundering.
He must form a new bond, must discover love anew.
I frown. I’d not considered it, but it occurs to me suddenly that all these wild licorneir, with whom I am linked through Mahra, are primed to form new bonds. They carry the love of their dead riders in them, but they are intended to live in intimate connection.
Tassa succeeds at last in cutting Halamar free.
The instant he staggers away from the stake, she takes him in her arms, and he wraps his arms around her in turn.
My heart lifts at the sight. Closing my eyes, I allow myself to feel the goodness of the song beginning to reform between them—a song I’ve sensed since the first time I saw the two of them together.
The broken harmonies are not wholly mended, but the mending has begun.
Taar would be glad to know, I think. My lips form a small smile. I hope he does know. Somehow.
Finally Tassa turns. With Halamar at her side, before the watching eyes of the Rocaryn Tribe, she approaches, her gaze fixed upon Mahra.
My enormous licorneir towers over her, making powerful Tassa look like little more than a child once more .
. . the same child who, many years ago, was placed on the great mother licorneir’s back, along with her brother, and sent fleeing across the world.
“Mahra,” Tassa says softly. It is strange to hear such a tone from her after the violence she just committed.
Mahra inclines her head, allows Tassa to rest a hand on her muzzle.
A little song flows back and forth between them—memory of a terrible day and the darkness which swallowed everything.
Everything except two children, whom Mahra carried to safety despite the pain of velrhoar shredding her heart.
There is enormous strength shared between these two great spirits.
It occurs to me that, had Tassa been born before Taar, it would have been she who bonded to this mighty being.
But Mahra is mine now. I feel the truth of it with a confidence I couldn’t have known before. My gods-gift moves through me and through her, and I know my purpose beyond any shadow of doubt.
Tassa lifts her head at last and looks directly at me. She swallows painfully. Then, in a loud voice that carries across the green, she says, “Maelar.”
And she drops to one knee.
I could not be more surprised. My eyes widen, and my breath catches.
But Halamar, standing a few paces behind Tassa, immediately follows her example.
Movement catches my eye. I turn to see the rest of the Rocaryn Tribe, gathered around the green, falling down in genuflection, cupping their hands before them, as though making an offering.
Even the elders—seven, for Halaema is not among them—adjust their old bones into kneeling positions and extend their withered hands in the same gesture.
Not to me . . . no, I’m not foolish or arrogant enough to think that.
It is Mahra for whom they make this reverence.
But I am the one mounted on Mahra, and it is my song which moves and flows with hers. My song which ripples through the hearts of all these gathered licorneir.
I am their maelar. Though Taar is dead, I remain his chosen queen. And I will honor the choice my husband made with everything that’s left in me.
Pulling my gaze away from the Licornyn people, I focus on Tassa, who has upturned her face to mine. And I say in a low voice: “Take me to my husband.”
All the ilsevel blossoms are dead. Up the hillside, through the halls and passages of Elanlein, and here in the great Moon Chamber.
Their delicate petals have all withered away, and the glowing hearts at their centers are rendered black lumps without song.
It is as though they could not look upon the horror which took place here and survive.
I stand before the blood-stained altar slab.
The same slab on which they once bound Nyathri when she lay in hearttorn torment.
And here are the chaeora cords, just as they used to bind her.
Only this time, they bound my husband—held him in place while he struggled and slavered, rabid on virulium. Before plunging a blade into his heart.
If it weren’t for Mahra’s song wrapped tight around my soul, I would collapse.
A wild frenzy of grief builds inside me, seeking to burst from my chest like a parasitic vine and overwhelm all that once made up my selfhood.
I stand there, leaning heavily forward, my hands pressed against the black stain on the altar stones.
Taar’s blighted blood. I feel his final, fear-filled moments.
The pain, the throbbing, maddened heartbeats, just before virulium swallowed him in darkness, and he knew no more.
I lift my head at last. It feels like a leaden weight on my neck, but I force myself to look up, to meet Tassa’s gaze. She stands across from me, her face like stone. “Tell me what she said,” I whisper in a voice I scarcely recognize as my own. “Shanaera—tell me her words. Exactly.”
Her skin looks unnaturally pale in the light of the tear-shaped licatha lantern she carries.
Her lashes lower, her eyes focused on the black stain where my hands even now press.
“She said he was luinar of Licorna still. She claimed he would rule longer than any other luinar before him.” She swallows with difficulty, and the words cut like knives across her lips.
“She said she had seen it and would make it come to pass.”
I can hear Shanaera’s voice in my head, a hiss of poison moving through the corridors of my mind. “She means to bring him back,” I say. “She means to make him like her.”
Tassa looks sick. “There must be some way to stop her.”
My hands form fists, knuckles pressed into the bloodstained stone. “We’ll ride out in pursuit. Immediately. We’ll catch them before they ever reach Evisar and save . . .” I stumble over the words, but manage to push them out, “. . . save his body from desecration.”
But Tassa shakes her head. “Shanaera has too great a start on us. We’ll never overtake her.”
I don’t want it to be the truth. I want to scream my denial, to call Mahra to me, to set out on my own even now, and ride down those cursed dead.
Instead I close my eyes, lean into the licorneir song as it flows through my heart, my veins.
How many times in my life have I acted on impulse, only for others to suffer for my lack of forethought?
I owe Taar better than my worst inclinations.
And I have a task to accomplish here; a task which I must see through.
“We will find them,” I say firmly. “We will find Taar, and we will unmake whatever it is they have made of him.”
“Even if we could catch them, we don’t have enough Licornyn riders to match Shanaera’s undead force,” Tassa says.
“I know.” Bowing my head over the slab, I breathe out a long exhale.
Then, straightening, I back away from the stone, hands still clenched tight, and pull my shoulders straight.
“But soon we will have a force greater than anything Cruor has ever seen. And with that force, we will take back Licorna for the Licornyn, once and for all.”
My teeth clench in a terrible smile. “It is high time, Talanashta, that you formed a velarin bond.”
Her eyes, so dark and stricken with sorrow, take on a sudden keen light.
The rising sun gleams across the fiery flanks of a thousand licorneir, gathered on the open plains beyond Elanlein, where Diira and I once rode together.
It is a profoundly beautiful sight—more so to my eyes, which can perceive the unique colors of the song they sing.
But even ordinary eyes cannot help but be awed by so great a congregation of these glorious beings.
The Rocaryn Tribe gather among the trees.
Some are too frightened to emerge. Others stagger forth, blinking in the dawnlight, their eyes wide and filled with wonder, as though they’ve wandered to the edge of heaven itself.
There are few warriors left among the tribe.
So many died on campaign over recent years, including the assault on Evisar.
Most of what remain are either too young, too old, too crippled, too frail.
Babies clutched in the arms of weary mothers, tots clinging to the hands of aged grandparents.
But they are all of them Licornyn. They were all touched by Nornala’s grace. Every soul here cries out with a wordless hunger for that connection which is their birthright.
I survey the sight before me from astride Mahra.
The people on one hand, the licorneir on the other.
I feel the way their different songs pull toward each other, longing for harmony.
And I know, in a way I couldn’t have understood before, that it was never the warlike prowess of the riders which made the Licornyn so formidable.
It was always this song—this strange licorneir symphony, born in them through the blood of Mahra and Onoril, who first bonded with the maelar and luinar of this world.