Thalor turns, addressing another party in the room, one I cannot see from where I lie. “Can you do nothing more for him?”
A thin voice responds: “I cannot do more without the princess’s gods-gift.”
No sooner does he speak than a sudden burst of song erupts in my ears. I don’t know how to understand it. It is like the brilliance of the moon and all the starry host, gathered together in chorus, singing a song which has been sung throughout the ages of existing reality, but which my ears have only just opened up to hear.
The sound is anathema to the un-song which sustains me. I shrink away, horrified.
But beyond Shanaera—beyond the figure of my father, beyond the shadowy forms with faces I do not know and cannotdiscern—beyond them all, a great, horned beast raises his head suddenly. His black eyes flare, not with light, but with darkness. He tosses his head and makes a sound, but the sound is like nothing these ears of mine have ever before heard. It is the sound of un-song itself.
That wheedling, thin voice speaks again: “The princess even now approaches. Her gift is great, greater than I initially supposed. And she has gathered licorneir with her. I must meet her myself and lay claim to that gift.”
Thalor answers in a growl, “You are not ready.”
“Then,” the voice replies, “you must make me ready.”
I cling to Shanaera like a child, my addled mind struggling to make sense of the world around me. Again I hear that distant song, that burst of light. Again my body and being recoils. I try to force some awareness into my brain, to take stock of my surroundings. I lie on a stone floor, my arms and legs bound with chaeora ropes. The walls of the circular chamber are blocked in, but it feels familiar to me. Some part of my memory knows there once were tall windows here, looking out on all sides.
My gaze turns to the horned beast standing in the center of the chamber. At last a jolt of true recognition shoots through me like galvanization. Onoril! My father’s licorneir! I know him, I recognize him, the magnificent great beast who is my father’s heart-bound.
Madness rises up in me again, an obscuring dark fog. I scream, wordless terror and panic bursting from inside me like pressure released but never truly eased. Thalor, my father, turnsto Shanaera and snarls, “Can you not keep him quiet?”
She wraps her arms more tightly around me, rocking gently and murmuring,“Shhhh, shhhhh.”
Activity moves on the edges of my vision. They seem to be mounting something on the wall. Some strange creature, like an ape I think at first, fastened by its wrists to ropes hanging from hooks in the ceiling. It takes some blinking from my death-filmed eyes before I recognize that it is—or was—a man. An ancient, withered husk of a man that should not be alive but somehow is. Magic moves in his veins, bubbling and oozing from every pore and orifice as the profound energy leeches out from him. It must require a tremendous work of spellcraft to keep that sack of bones and sagging flesh intact, to keep the spirit trapped inside.
Thalor observes as the ancient thing is secured to the wall. Then, with a last desperate look at me, he turns to Onoril and mounts him. It is so strange to see—that image I have longed for all these years. My father on his licorneir, both proud and beautiful and strong. And yet in this place, they have become the stuff of nightmares. I see black soulfire licking from the corners of my father’s eyes.
“You will see, Taarthalor,” he says, his voice firm and clear. “I will make it right. Just as I promised your mother. I will make it all right and see Licorna become the greatest power in all Eledria.”
I open my mouth to shout the truth at him. My mother is dead. She died in the first fall of thevardimnar. She and a million souls perished that day, twenty years ago . ..
But I cannot form the words, not even in hell-speak.
Thalor begins to sing. The bond he shares with Onoril is profound, and his voice instantly calls awake the soulfire of his mount. It flares black and furious across the licorneir’s shoulders, along his arching neck, an intensity of magic beyond anything I have ever witnessed. In all my years of bonding with Elydark, of riding with other Licornyn and witnessing their bonds, I have never seen anything like this flame. As my father sings, as he channels the song of his licorneir into a line of power, a ripple goes out from them—like branching lightning, bursting from this chamber out into the sky beyond. Clawing across the heavens in stark warning of what is to come.
My heart is dead. It no longer beats, torn apart as it is. But I feel it, a heavy stone in my chest, sagging against my ribcage. I know what is coming next. I know what that black lightning foreshadows.
The stones of the floor begin to glow, to melt, to churn. I watch them move, whorl, and then seem to burn away entirely. Onoril, having shifted his footing, stands on the lip of a great pit of howling, ravening darkness.
And so my father and his licorneir unleash hell upon my world once more.
32
ILSEVEL
Black lightning ripples out from Evisar Citadel, spreading across the sky.
I have never seen it so clearly, the way it originates from the citadel tower. When we came this way before, my eyes were not filled with Mahra’s light and Mahra’s song, and I could not perceive the world as clearly as I do now.
Though we are miles distant, still on the fields of Agandaur beyond the city ruins, I cast my gaze ahead and see the very cracks in the stones which compose the tower itself, feel the way the foundation shakes as a tremendous surge of power erupts from inside it.
And the lightning—it originates from the tower. I know it at last for what it truly is, for what it has been all this time. Un-song. Rippling un-song, tearing across the atmosphere of this world,ripping away the defenses of licorneir music, which envelops this world. Making the path clear for hell itself to enter in.
Mahra comes to a halt at the head of our great company. Both mounted and unmounted licorneir alike form lines on either side of her, stretching across the expanse of Agandaur. Most of those riding with us today have never seen Evisar, never looked upon the ruins of their king’s city. There is a deep solemnity to the song vibrating through their hearts, from the oldest rider to the smallest child. They understand—whether consciously or not—that here lies the origin of their world’s torment.
But they have survived the journey across Cruor. Though they are afraid, their courage has only grown as their souls bond ever more tightly to the licorneir they ride.
We have crossed the landscape at tremendous speed, despite our numbers. All of the Rocaryn Tribe—men, women, elderly, and children alike—wrapped in the songs of their licorneir, which sustain them, filling them with energy sufficient for any mere physical body. The song channeled from Mahra through my gods-gift is stronger, more intense than anything the Licornyn riders have known for many years. They need no food, no water, not even sleep.
