Page 58 of WarBride

Taar roars and shakes his head. He takes a step back, blinking globs of black tears. For an instant—so brief, I wonder if I imagined it—I glimpse his eyes, staring out at me through that viscous film. He takes another step back, and his talon-tipped hands release their grip on my head. I drop to my knees, gasping in relief. Still he retreats, one staggering step at a time, his body and being quaking in the aftermath of that single burst of song.

“Taar,” I gasp again, my voice too ragged to be musical. I tip my head back and try again, a bare whisper of sound.“Taar.”This time it works: the gods-gift emerges from my lips again, clear and true.

He screams. His awful hands go to his own head, clasping over his ears as though to block out the noise. Dissonance ripples out from his mouth, from his soul, a pulse of power that knocks me flat. I stare up at the spinning branches of winter-bare trees overhead, at a distant, cloud-strewn sky.

Then all goes dark.

*****

I don’t know how long I lay there, flat on my back in the middle of that forest trail. When I open my eyes once more, the clouds have rolled on by. The clear sky beyond them is purpling with twilight, and a few faint stars are just visible in the highest reaches.

Slowly, painfully, I push up onto my elbows. Gods, everything hurts! All the mud on my clothing and skin has dried into cakey flakes, and I’m fairly certain I’ve cracked a rib or two. I look around at the abandoned carts and knapsacks littering the road around me. The escaped townsfolk hadn’t the courage to come back searching for their goods. The donkey carcass looks particularly grim in the half-light, surrounded in a pool of blood. An opportunistic raven sits on its belly and gives me an evil look.

There’s no sign of Taar anywhere. Or the unicorn either.

Shuddering in every limb, I get to my feet. I’d much prefer not to; in fact I’d be perfectly happy to put my head down and simply drift back into unconsciousness. But with the cold of night settling in, that would be a fatal mistake. If I want to survive this night, I need to get moving, keep my blood warm. Can I make it back to the town on foot? Surely it can’t be too far. I take a step down the road.

Then I stop. And look back into the forest.

What has become of Taar? Has it been an hour already? I don’t know how long I was unconscious. Has he succumbed to the poison, his innards liquified and drained from his corpse?

I wrap my arms around my stomach, trying to stifle the sickening sob welling up inside me. I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t save him. In the end my gods-gift was just as useless as it has ever been. That single burst of fear-inspired song may have saved my life, but it couldn’t save his.

Why did the unicorn come for me? The question picks at my brain, refusing to let go. He believed there was something I could do . . . but what?

It’s too late now. They’re both gone. And the hour is probably spent. Taar is dead. He’s dead; he must be. And I couldn’t help him, any more than I could help my sister. I’m right back where I was before, only now I’m cold, wet, haggard, and bruised across every part of my body. My feet are heavy as I turn them down the forest track. But with no other options available to me, where else am I to go? What else am I to do?

I stop again. Turn and gaze over my shoulder into the forest. There’s something there, some faint glimmer of light. I can’t really see it, but I feel it, thin and delicate and trailing through those trees, and . . . and it seems to be wrapped around my wrist somehow.

Frowning, I stare down at my forearm. For a moment I seem to see again that cord with which the skinny young priest bound my hand to Taar’s. Was it just last night? It hardly seems possible. So much has happened in the intervening hours, I scarcely feel like the same person I was then. It must have been some other Ilsevel who stood with her hand clasped in the grip of a powerful warlord stranger.

“It isvelra,” he’d explained when he saw the confusion on my face,“woven from the roots of theilsevelblossom, which is sacred to my people. The influence does not last more than a few hours, but it temporarily binds us to one another.”

Am I still bound to Taar? Is the cord still alive? It seems to be, for when I move my arm, I could swear I see it glinting through the trees up ahead. And if it’s still alive, does that mean that he . . . ?

I don’t wait to question further. Renewed energy burns in my veins, an unexpected surge of hope and determination.Gathering up handfuls of my skirts, I spring from the path and forge into the forest in pursuit of that delicate gleaming.

22

TAAR

“Give me to drink! Give me to feast!”

“I thirst! I hunger!”

I feel her thirst and her hunger as though it is mine. I feel her need for blood, for death, for unmaking. The voice in my head still sounds like Shanaera sometimes, begging me, entreating with all the desperation of her soul, wringing my heart of life’s blood.

But it isn’t truly Shanaera I hear. It never was.

“I will have my feast, Taarthalor. One way or another.”

Beneath the ravening, beneath the horror, that small, worm-like part of me that is my mortal soul coils up in dread, knowing what is to come. I have not given that hunger what it demands, so it will take from me instead. I’ve seen it happen before; I’ve seen the corpses of those who went too far into virulium’s madness to be reclaimed, the husk-like shells of their remains lying in pools of their own liquified innards. Worse still, however, is what waits on the far side of that agony. For how can a soul so corrupted hope to be claimed by the Goddess? No, it is not to Nornala’s light that I will go after death.

Hell will claim me. It will feast on my heart for eternity.

I stagger blindly, my eyes dark to the world around me, my soul deadened to all but the screaming clamor in my ears. Some distant part of me is aware of the rush and roil of water, and I stop, recoiling from that flow, as all those maddened by virulium do. Unable to progress, unwilling to retreat, I drop to my knees.This, then, is where I will meet my doom. My body burns inside, my blood boiling, sweat mingling with the foulness pouring from my mouth and eyes, from my nose and ears. Not much longer now.

Vellar.

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