Reaching out, I take Taar’s hand and squeeze it firmly. “Shall we continue, warlord?”
The Between Gate to Cruor continues to be a sight of terror to my eyes. At least this time I know what to expect . . . and there are no animate corpses appearing from behind trees to accost us. Nevertheless, when Elydark steps out onto that swaying, narrow bridge, I turn, bury my head in Taar’s shoulder, and pretend as hard as I can that I am anywhere else.
In the end, the crossing is simple enough. This gate is far more stable than the one we just used, and while there is still a sense of lengthening and flattening as we progress from one world to another, I do not embarrass myself with further vomiting when we emerge through mist on the far side.
Cruor stretches out before me beneath a mid-afternoon sun and a cloud-swept sky. I see once more the same valley which, the last time I passed this way, struck me with its wild and untamed beauty. It is still beautiful . . . only this time, I know the corruption that slowly poisons it, and I can see the evidence more clearly. All the subtle ways the darkness of thevardimnarhas chipped away at the once-glorious land of Licorna.
It may yet be restored,I tell myself even now, uncertain if I believe my own conviction.It may yet be made right. Somehow.
Though I cannot for the life of me comprehend how.
We travel on in near-silence, across the valley and over the river. Elydark’s horn points us toward the Luin Stone on its rise. We reach the ruins of the old statue by nightfall, unimpeded by thevardimnar.For this I am grateful. While I know what to expectnow, I don’t relish the prospect of experiencing that horror again. Not without Diira’s song to shield me.
Taar chooses to make camp at the Luin Stone, despite my protests that I am fresh enough should he want to continue into the night. He is strangely withdrawn, wordless and remote as he goes about making camp. He builds a fire, puts on his travel kettle to brew tea, hands me an ume cake, all without speaking. And, rather to my disappointment, he makes no move to grab and ravish my body into ecstatic oblivion.
I chew on ume cake, watching him over dancing campfire flames. Something burdens his heart, something he’s not yet dared to share, even after all these days of travel together. I swallow a dry mouthful and toy with the remaining ume in my fingers.
“Are you going to tell me?” I say at last.
He looks up from his contemplation of the fire. “Tell you what,zylnala?”
“Whatever it is that weighs so heavily on your soul?”
His mouth tilts in a half-smile without mirth. “Is it not enough that my people are on the brink of civil war, and my world faces the prospect of ultimate destruction?”
“Hardly.” I shrug. “Civil war and ultimate destruction have loomed on your horizon for as long as I’ve known you. There’s something else. Something you’re not saying.”
He sighs heavily. Then he gets up, leaving his ume cake in the dust, and comes around to my side of the fire. When he offers hishand, I take it, and he draws me to my feet, staring down into my eyes. “You’re right,zylnala,” he says in a voice full of depths and sorrows. “There is something I am not telling you. But I don’t want to speak of it. Not now. I want to forget.”
Part of me wants to demand answers. But when he bows his head, and his lips find mine, my body and soul light up. I can’t seem to help it—everything about his kiss, his touch, is intoxicating. He kisses me long, hard, lingering. When those kisses deepen, and a groan rumbles in his throat, I know he will take me here and now, on this promontory, overlooking the wilds of Cruor and a distant, ruined city. What’s more, I want him to take me, more than I can possibly describe.
My hands slide up his broad chest, hungry to touch him, to drink in his shape and his strength. His hands begin to rove as well, and I whimper with pleasure at the heat of his touch.
Suddenly I break away, pulling free of his mouth with a gasp. “What is that?”
“What is what,zylnala?” he pants, trying to recapture my lips with his.
I turn my face, gazing out into the deepening gloom of nightfall. “Can’t you hear it?”
He frowns. “I hear nothing.”
I shake my head and push against his chest, stepping out from the circle of his arms as I move to stand on the edge of the rise, in the shadow of the Luin Stone. I look out over Cruor—wild, lonely,decimated Cruor. And I hear the song galloping on the wind.
“Mahra,” I whisper.
It is she—the mother of all licorneir. Giving voice to the sorrow which beats in the very heart of this world. The song of loss unending. I cannot see her, not at this distance, not with these mortal eyes.
But her voice is like a bolt of lightning straight through my heart.
I breathe out slowly. My soul longs to pulse in time with her song. It calls to me, to the hearttorn pain at my core where Diira’s loss runs deep. Other voices sing with hers as well, the voices of all hervelrhoarchildren. A dark and inescapable chorus.
I have heard it before. Heard it and feared it. I have never before so deeplyfeltit. Right down to my bones and being.
“Mahra,” I say again, this time with longing. Longing to run with her, to sing with her. To throw myself into that song as though it is the final resting place for my wayward soul.
But before my lips give voice to the song even now bubbling up inside me, Taar’s hands slip suddenly around my waist, wrapping me tight, pulling me against his chest.
“Zylnala,” he breathes into my hair. “Where did you go? Come back to me.”
