“Stop,” I say, and grip Sylcatha by the arm.
The Tarhyn warrior shakes her head. “No! We can outpace them!”
We cannot. Even the mighty licorneir tire eventually, but not the dead. The un-song propels them at tremendous speed, and Sylcatha’s Kyrsidar simply cannot match it. Diira could—Diira could outpace any creature on four legs. None of these beasts would have a hope of catching her.
But Diira is dead. I must face this foe alone.
The gnawing emptiness of loss rips at my gut. I close my eyes even as a scream builds up inside of me—a scream that bursts through the tatters of un-song and out from my throat in a harsh explosion of unmelodic force, entering the mind of Kyrsidar. The licorneir pulls up abruptly.“Vulmon!”Sylcatha shouts, and I feel the song passing from her mind into her licorneir’s. But that song no longer commands influence over her beast.
Kyrsidar turns, facing the oncoming riders. She snorts fire butdares not burst into battleflame, not with me on her back. This makes her vulnerable, and Sylcatha too. I need to get away from them both, but when I move to dismount, Sylcatha catches me fast. “No,maelar!”she cries.
Halamar is still far behind us and the dead licorneir, his horse simply unable to match the speed of these greater animals. So we are alone as Shanaera and her two companions close in upon us. The other two riders I see at once are utterly dead things, like the shamblers I have faced before; empty sacks of rotten flesh, mobilized by demonic energy. But Shanaera’s white-filmed eyes flash with a hellish inner light.
She draws her beast to a halt a few yards from us, close enough that I can see the creeping decay which eats away at her features. It is more advanced than it was even when last we met. Her mount is utterly silent, not heaving for gulps of air like Kyrsidar. Its once-proud head lowers until its nose nearly touches the dirt, and its black horn seems to point straight at me. At this proximity the clamor of its un-song is worse than ever, and I have nothing with which to counter it but a sad, shattered melody.
Shanaera looks at me long and hard, but finally shifts her gaze slightly to the rider at my back. “Well met, Lathaira’s daughter,” she says.
Sylcatha curses through her teeth. Fear radiates from her body. Brave warrior though she is, she is not prepared to look a walking corpse in the face.
“So Taar’s got you cleaning up his little messes for him, has he?”Shanaera continues, choosing to speak in mortal tongue, no doubt for my benefit. “Funny. I never saw you as the dog-to-heel type.”
Sylcatha’s hand moves. She wants to go for her sword, but cannot draw it with me in the saddle in front of her.
So I draw it instead.
Moving quickly so as not to talk myself out of the impulse, I reach for the saddle scabbard, grasp the hilt, and whip the blade free. Then, before Sylcatha can stop me, I slip from the saddle. The distance to the ground is jarring, and my body is weak after far too many days collapsed in bed. The numbness ofvelrhoarthreatens to turn my limbs to stone, but I brace myself, assuming the stance which Tassa taught me, and point the blade at Shanaera and her dead mount.
“Let Sylcatha go,” I say. “Let her ride from here, return to the host. I’m the one you want, not her.”
Shanaera looks down her nose at me. Then she speaks to Sylcatha, this time in rapid Licornyn. Sylcatha barks a sharp negative:“Ko!”
“Well, there you have it,” Shanaera says. “She’d rather die than abandon you, it seems. Strange—there was a time when the Tarhyn Tribe were known to harbor an abiding hatred for humans. They were revered for it!” She sneers. “You’ve gone soft, chieftain’s daughter.”
Sylcatha throws a glance my way. “Give me my sword,maelar.”
I shake my head and begin to say, “Please, Sylcatha, get out of here—” but Shanaera’s laughinterrupts me.
“Maelar?” she cries, shaking her head in wonderment so that her sparce braids dance about her shoulders. “Is this what the world has come to then? Taar’s human plaything is made into a little queen after all! And here I thought you were only good for ashahk.”
I won’t let her get to me. I grimly grasp thevaritarsword with both hands, struggling somewhat to balance the much greater weight than I am used to. “I’ve taken Taar from you once, Shanaera,” I declare, my words bolder than I feel. “Do you really want to test me again?”
“Ah! But I don’t see Taar,” she replies, her smile full of poison. “He sent you away all on your own, novelrato bind you any longer. And with just a uselessvelrhoarand a Tarhyn disgrace for guards! How pathetic.” Her smile grows unnaturally large, a scar across her rotten face. “Where is your licorneir, little whore? The beast that so debased itself as to bond with a creature like you?”
Though I try not to let her words influence me, a painful burst of broken song claws at my mind, and I cannot help but wince.
Shanaera sees it and laughs. “Your bond was not so profound in the end, was it? Not to her. Nor to him.”
“What do you want, Shanaera?” I demand, my voice rough with pain.
“Oh, I want Taar, of course. And I intend to get him. You may have thrown me off course temporarily, but I’m not so easily dissuaded from my purpose.” Her smile vanishes, and she leans forward in the saddle. “You’re coming with me, and your little Tarhyn guard as well, though she’ll be a corpse. Halamar we’llleave to rot—avelrhoaris useless to everyone, either dead or alive.” She spits the word like a slur.
“Maelar,” Sylcatha says again, “my sword—”
“DON’T CALL HER THAT!” Shanaera shrieks, rounding on Sylcatha once more. “Don’t you know what she is? That creature is the daughter of Larongar Cyhorn. Yes—the very man who sent his Miphates into this world to pillage its resources and, in so doing, unleashed hell on us all. And you dare call her your queen?”
Sylcatha’s face goes ashen. I feel her turning to stare at me, feel the disbelief warring with horror in her soul. But I dare not meet her gaze. I keep my eyes fixed on Shanaera, my stolen sword upraised. “I told you to leave her out of this,” I growl. “Let her go, and Halamar too. If you do, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .”
“You’ll what?” Shanaera’s eyes flash. “Come along nicely, like a little lamb? I think not. No, Sylcatha’s big frame will make a fine addition to my own host—a host which you and Taar so rudely decimated at our last meeting. I’m in need of more strong bodies.”
