Page 24 of HeartTorn

Elydark shakes his head, uneager to draw nearer. I do not try to force him. Slipping from the saddle, I land hard on the ground and first stagger, then run, up the incline to that place of death and memory.

A sword protrudes from the ground. A Licornyn sword, planted in the dirt, blade down. The hilt is wrapped in leather but decorated with a swath of tablet weaving in a pattern and colors I immediately recognize. I know whose sword this is.

“Kildorath,” I whisper.

Shanaera’s brother rode with me even after the death of his sister, his loyalty unquestionable. He was with me for this recent venture into the human world and did not hesitate to voice his fury when I returned to our camp at the Grimspire, a human bride in tow. But he obeyed me when I sent him and the others ahead through the gate.

I take hold of the sword, draw it from the earth. It shows no sign of either bloodstain, which means it saw no battle before it was placed here. Neither is there any trace of rust. Whoever planted it did so not long ago, perhaps earlier this very day. I spin in place, searching the earth around me for signs of what took place. There’s been a struggle here—skid-marks andmuddled footprints, all partially covered by wind and debris, just visible to my trained eye.

Then I spy it: a scrap of crimson fabric. Cut from a cloak and left discarded. Stained with old, dried blood.

Elydark,I sing out in spirit, even as my jaw remains clenched tight.Our people were here. They were attacked by—

A sudden squeal splits the air. I pivot in shock to see Elydark reared up on his hind legs, Ilsevel clinging desperately to his back. My licorneir comes down hard, hooves tearing into turf, and immediately turns his head about and sets off at a gallop.

“Elydark!” I shout, both aloud and along our soul-thread. My body lurches into motion, taking several swift-running steps. Then pain shoots along thevelracord, up my arm to explode in the back of my head. I gasp, stagger, suddenly overcome with weakness.

The world around me spins, and I drop to my knees.

11

ILSEVEL

I sit upright in the saddle, gripping a handful of unicorn mane, as Taar strides away from me and climbs that slight rise in the terrain to where a sword protrudes from the earth. He takes hold of the hilt, draws it free, staring at it with an expression such as I never would have believed possible on the face of one so fearless. He looks as though he’s seen a ghost.

Elydark paces underneath me. The soul-song between him and his rider is alive with tension. It’s dark and elusive, and had I any choice in the matter, I would simply shut off my awareness of it, go back to the woman I was mere days ago, before I’d ever heard the song of a unicorn.

No sooner does that thought cross my mind, when a sudden cacophony of sound bursts in my head like a clap of thunder. I nearly scream, but choke on the sound when Elydark reacts in the same moment. Rearing, he tears at the air with his hooves, and only the fact that I’d already latched hold of his mane keeps me in the saddle. He comes down hard, jarring all the breath out of me.

Before I have a chance to make sense of what has happened, he turns his great head about, puts his horn down, and gallops. Somewhere in the back of my awareness, I hear Taar’s voice calling out after us, but I can’t pay attention to that. Nor can I offer any but the faintest heed to the sudden tightening about my forearm, the painful stretch of thevelraas I am forcibly dragged away from him. My whole being is suddenly consumed in another burst of broken sound, quaking through my bones.

I know that sound. The realization comes over me in the silence that follows, a brief pause which gives my addled brain a chance to think. I’ve heard it before, once, on the banks of the river on the very edge of this world. Only then it had been multitudinous and distant, a chorus of devastation sung from many broken hearts. This sound is singular. And not nearly distant enough.

Elydark comes to a halt, lungs heaving. His soul reverberates with painful song which I can barely hear above the tumult of broken sound now erupting in my mind again and again. I shake my head, desperate to clear my mortal perceptions, to make sense of the world around me once more. The magic-stricken fields come back into hazy focus, the little clusters of surviving brush, the skeletons of trees, the riven furrows and spell-burnt patches.

And the dead woman.

I see her first, lying broken on the ground not ten yards from where we’ve stopped. From this distance I cannot discern if she is young or old, fair or ugly. Only that she is dead. The song of her soul is shattered, gone from this world. I blink and look again, this time taking in the Licornyn armor she wears. For a wild moment I wonder if she is Shanaera, come hunting for her prey. But this corpse does not rise and move, the living soul forced back into its decayed habitation. She is truly dead.

A fresh burst of broken song hits me like a blow, nearly knocking me from the saddle. I scream and throw up both hands to cover my ears, but it does no good. This song is not heard with the ears, but the heart alone. And it’s enough to break my heart in two. I lift my gaze from the dead woman and see that which stands over her. Shimmering, almost invisible, as though shifting in and out of this reality, uncertain how to hold on.

It’s a unicorn. Not quite as large or powerful as Elydark, but delicate-boned, almost dainty in her proportions. Her fleshseems to be falling away from her skeleton, burning up in the heat of the broken song which explodes in radiating waves from her core.

Nyathri.The word sings out from Elydark, rippling through the ether between us and that beast. Again and again he sings that same word—a name?Nyathri, Nyathri.

It’s like he’s reminding her of who she is. He takes a step nearer, cautiously, his head lowered, ears cupped forward. The burning unicorn looks up from the corpse. Though her skeletal head is monstrous to behold, I cannot seem to feel the horror such a sight should inspire. My heart is too full of her song. A song so broken and yet . . . and yet . . .

And yet I think I hear how it might be made right.

“Stop!” I don’t know if I speak the word out loud or sing it. Either way, Elydark pulls up sharply, his eye rolling back to look at me, shocked, perhaps, that I would issue him a command. “You’re going to drive her off,” I say a little more gently.

I’m not wrong. I can sense flight building up in her soul. She does not wish to leave behind the dead woman’s corpse, but she will not let Elydark approach her. She’s poised, on the brink of making a break, her savage song whirling around her in rapid burst after burst of brokenness. This must be thevelrhoar—the hearttorn state which Taar described. The same fate which befell all the wild unicorns I saw across that river. The same fate which took Mahra when the queen of Licorna died. It is truly horrible—worse than I could have imagined. Hearing that song is like feeling my own flesh being slowly blistered and burnt away, unable to withdraw my hand from the fire. To endure it must be a torment fit for hell itself. No wonder Taar said death was a mercy for such creatures.

But what if she might be healed? He did also say that, sometimes, a hearttorn unicorn could be bound to a new rider. Could we not calm her enough to bring her with us, back toTaar’s city? Surely there are people there fit to bring wholeness to this broken song.

Before conscious thought has a chance to catch up with the rest of me, I slide from Elydark’s saddle. The unicorn looks sharply at me, but something in my face makes him hold his peace. He watches as I step forward, slowly making my way across the barren dirt toward the dead woman and the burning beast. The nearer I come, the worse the heat grows. I stop in my tracks, halfway between her and Elydark, uncertain how to continue. Self-preservation urges me to retreat.

But when I look into that creature’s eyes—into Nyathri’s eyes—I see such pain there. And I understand it.

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