“You do realize I’m not going to stay with the Tarhyn Tribe.”
“I suspected not.”
“If you leave me there, I will escape and follow after you like a stray puppy, yapping at your heels all the way home.”
I breathe a heavy sigh. Chief Lathaira will not accept Ilsevel and Diira in any case. Even if she did, how could I leave my bride behind? I could not bear it.
And what will I do when Ruvaen inevitably calls for my aid in the coming assault on Evisar? Will I ride into battle with my untrained wife at my side? Will I put a blade in her hand, bid her stay close to me, and somehow protect her against impossible odds?
Ilsevel’s gaze roves over my face. “What are you thinking, warlord?”
I shake my head, unwilling to speak my true thoughts out loud. “I think we must return to the Hidden City.”
“There’s no other way?”
“None that I can see.”
“Do you think they’ll kill us both for what we have done?” She asks it so casually, like asking if I foresee coming rain.
“I hope your bond to Diira will change their minds. Licorneir are sacred and rarer than ever these days. Killing you would sendDiira back into thevelrhoarstate, beyond all hope of recovery. To suffer being hearttorn twice over in such quick succession . . . I don’t know what it would do to her soul. If nothing else, the elders will be motivated to protect Diira.”
“If they can be convinced I’ve not cursebound her. Or you.”
I nod.
“And how do we convince them?”
I press my lips together, breathing out slowly through my nostrils. “There might be a way,” I say at last. “But it won’t be easy.”
She blinks slowly, dropping her head in slight acknowledgement. “In that case, don’t tell me yet.” Her eyes flare open, catching mine again. “I want to enjoy whatever is left of today.”
I wait for no other invitation. She’s already in my arms once more, and I lay her down in the thick grass while the licorneir take themselves to a discreet distance, keeping an eye on the treacherous sky.
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 couldpush 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; thevelracord 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.
