I take a step forward, careful to keep my feet in the correct defensive position. “You can’t have her. Not unless you go through me first.”
The corpse woman looks down at me, her mouth twisted in a leer. “You can’t be serious.”
“Try me.”
She narrows her eyes. “Do you really think you can defeat me? A soft, useless creature like you?”
Ibare my teeth. “Probably not. But I won’t go down without a fight.”
“You’re only delaying the inevitable.”
“Sounds to me like you’re frightened.”
“Frightened?” She laughs. “Of you? You’ve already given me everything I want. What have I to fear?”
For the first time the heavy sword wavers in my grasp. “What are you saying?”
Shanaera points a blackened finger at me, the long nail curling from its end. “You broke ties with Taar. It is the only explanation for why you are out here, alone. You’ve severed your bond to him, abandoned him.”
I don’t answer. I cannot—the broken song inside me twists around my throat like a noose.
“How long do you think he will last?” Shanaera persists. “How long before he turns to the virulium again? He knows it’s what he needs. Now, without you there to cloud his judgment, he will remember. He will do what he must, for his people, for Licorna.” She tips back her chin, the mockery in her gaze a lance to my heart. “You’ve done me a service, little whore. And now put down that sword. I’m taking you back with me and delivering you to your own kind. It’s where you belong.”
I draw a thin breath into my lungs, struggling to breathe through the constricting around my throat. In my mind’s eye, I see Taar—his eyes blacked-out with virulium, his teeth strangelyelongated, his whole aspect warped and monstrous. How clearly the un-song in his soul sounds in my ears, echoed in the dead silence of the corpses standing before me. He will die if he takes virulium again. If not this time then the next, or the next after. It will change him forever, corrupt his soul, and everything about the man I once loved will be gone.
But not if I can stop it.
Though my arms tremble with strain, I raise Sylcatha’s sword above my head. “If you want me, Shanaera,” I snarl, “you’re going to have to take me.”
She does not hesitate. In a burst of black un-song, her dead mount surges forward, straight at me. Her sword is out, sharp and descending in a deadly arc that will surely smash through whatever feeble defense my arms may offer. Only I’m not as helpless as she believes.
From somewhere deep inside me, down in that place where the spark of love I once felt for Taar still burns, I draw up a last trace of song. Thin, nearly lost, but still strong. It sears through my spirit, burning bright as soulfire, and bursts from my lips in a blast of gods-gifted melody, striking that dead licorneir between the eyes, penetrating straight to its brain.
The mighty beast awakens. Just for an instant the soul it once bore blazes to life in those dead eyes, and the un-song falters, driven back by a bolt of pure melody. It responds to my command, its great body pivoting almost impossibly. So sharp, so sudden, and so unexpected, that Shanaera loses her seat entirely and tumbles to the ground.
I’m in motion before I have a chance to think. Thinking will only slow me down—I must be a creature of pure impulse if I hope to survive this encounter. So I lunge and, without hesitation, swing Sylcatha’s sword with all my might, aiming for Shanaera’s neck, eager to sever her head. But the survival instinct is strong in her, corpse though she is. She rolls, and my blade connects with solid ground, jarring my bones so hard, I nearly lose my two-fisted grip on the hilt. Her booted foot connects with my side, drives the air from my lungs. I hit the ground hard and think,That’s it then. Your chance is lost. She’ll gut you now.
Pounding licorneir hooves reverberate through the ground. I look up, see the silhouette of Shanaera rising, looming over me. But Sylcatha is already there, unarmed but never helpless. Her licorneir burns bright with battleflame, and her lowered head aims true. The next instant a coiled horn protrudes from Shanaera’s breast, stained with her blackened blood. Shanaera has just time enough to look shocked before Kyrsidar tosses her head, sends her dead body flying through the air.
The other two riders close in on Sylcatha, weapons raised. Their dead eyes are utterly without focus, their movements strange and unnatural, but they are quick, and she is still without her sword. Kyrsidar dodges lightly, carrying her rider safely clear of a blow. The second rider prepares to attack, but does not see the smaller form of a horse hurtling toward him.
Halamar is there. His Licornyn blade might not burn withsoulfire, but it is sharp and true. He slices the dead rider’s head from his shoulders in a single, powerful stroke. The head hits the ground hard, and both it and the body, still clinging to its mount’s back, begin to disintegrate almost at once.
By this time I’ve picked myself up and raised Sylcatha’s sword. “Sylcatha!”I cry.
Kyrsidar veers, gallops toward me, an awesome sight of roiling flame. Sylcatha leans out far in the saddle, and just as they pass me, snatches the sword from my grasp. She wheels about, charges the other dead man on his dead mount. There’s a confusion of action, a clash of burning soulfire and un-song darkness, but when they part ways again, the corpse of the dead man falls, disintegrating like the other.
Movement on my right draws my eye. Shanaera rises from where Kyrsidar threw her, the hole in her chest already repairing, evil, sorcerous threads reconnecting the dead tissue. She cries out in harsh Licornyn, and her dead licorneir goes to her. She’ll be mounted in a moment and deadly as ever, only . . .
I whirl on my feet and dash to the patch of ground where Shanaera’s sword lies. It’s covered in corruption, but I grasp it with both hands and turn to face my foe, braced again in the battle stance Tassa ingrained in me. Sylcatha urges her burning licorneir to stand at my right hand, and Halamar on his horse moves to my left.
Shanaera, mounted once more but unarmed, faces the three of us. Her licorneir roils with un-song, and part of me is tempted todiscover if I can reach it again, if I can wrest control of it back from her. But that single burst of song exhausted me, and I’m not sure I have another in me.
It doesn’t matter. Shanaera’s gaze flicks from Sylcatha to Halamar and finally lands on me. For a moment I think she’ll risk all and charge, unarmed though she is. I hope she will—I trust Sylcatha and Halamar to end her between them. But she holds back, and her putrid lips curl in a dreadful smile. “We’ll meet again, little whore,” she growls.
“That we will,” I answer, and shake her sword over my head. “And next time, I’ll cut the head from your shoulders, you stinking dead bitch!”
Her licorneir turns about and gallops away, trailing blackness in its wake. Kyrsidar takes a few lunging strides as though in pursuit, but Sylcatha pulls her back. To give chase would mean to leave me and Halamar exposed to thevardimnar, without a licorneir song to protect us. So, though Kyrsidar tosses her head, snorting flame and fury, and Sylcatha herself curses soundly in Licornyn, they turn around once more. Sylcatha’s gaze knifes into me.
