Page 7 of HeartTorn

I land hard, breath knocked out of me. For a moment the noises of battle and mayhem retreat, and my ears are full of a ringing like music, sweet, almost serene. A little escape from the madness. Distantly Taar calls my name, transforming the lilting syllables to a war cry. I lie with my breath caught in my stunned lungs, head bursting with spinning lights. Have I fractured my skull? Perhaps—

A rotten face looms above me. I jolt up—discovering as I do so that all my limbs seem to be intact—and scoot backwards in the dirt, feet catching in my skirts even as my trembling hand goes for my knife. The dead Licornyn woman tilts her head, watching me.

“Why,” she says, “if it isn’t Mage Artoris’s little prize.” A hand, fingertips black with decay, stretches toward my face. “Don’t worry, little one. He will be glad to see you—”

She breaks off, startled by a sudden flash of steel. My knife cuts straight through those awful fingers, transforming her hand into a gruesome stump. The fingers fall to the ground, one after the other, and lie there like severed worms.

The dead woman takes a step back, looking idly at the damage. She does not cry out or even look disturbed. Merely curious. Red light whorls out from the little black wounds, twining in shining threads, reaching down to the fallen fingers. One by one, they evaporate, and when they have gone, the red light retracts into her hand.

I don’t understand what I’m seeing. The dead woman’s rotten hand is whole once more. She turns it this way and that,wriggling new fingers experimentally. Then she turns to look at me. There’s nothing but insanity in her cold eyes.

She lurches. A scream erupts from my lungs, but I manage to get one foot up and kick her in the stomach, hard enough to send her staggering back a pace. Perhaps as a corpse, she’s not as strong as she once was. She’s surprised by my defense, and that surprise grants me just enough time to get to my feet. I take three steps, intending to run, only to find myself on the brink of that awful cliff. Mist whorls below me. I skid to a stop, spinning my arms, and feel the pull of gravity ready to claim me. At the last possible moment I manage a single step back.

“Ilsevel!”

I turn to my left to see the mighty, flaming form of Elydark bearing down on me, Taar on his back, sword arm raised high. It’s such a shock, my mind cannot remember that they are my friends. I shriek with terror, crouch, and throw my arms over my head. Though more instinct than a choice, it proves lucky. Taar’s sword swings through the air above my skull.

There’s a sickening crunch. Followed by athunk.

Something rolls into my line of vision. I stare at it, uncomprehending. When it comes to a stop, two white eyes gaze up at me, and though they are dead, they seem for a moment to see me. The awful jaw moves, the tongue working behind blackened teeth.

Then the head of the Licornyn woman disintegrates in a tangle of red light-threads before vanishing entirely, leaving only a cloud of floating black motes. When I look around for the body, it’s already gone.

Taar pulls Elydark up and wheels the unicorn around. I catch his eye just as he shouts, “Ware! Behind you!”

Still crouched I look over my shoulder to find the first man—Ilanthor—lurching toward me. He’s too close, and Taar too far away. His hands reach for me, already closing around my neck.Just before they tighten, I do the only thing I can do in that moment, while I still have air.

I open my mouth and sing.

The song bursts from me, an avalanche of sound. I hardly know where it comes from—it’s no song I remember learning. It’s not in my language, or any language really, for there are no words, only sounds. Pure and clean and bright. If it reminds me of anything, it’s the song I sang with Elydark last night, when together we called Taar back from the virulium poison.

But this is not the same song. It’s higher, sharper. And there is no other voice joined with mine. It doesn’t really feel like my voice, more like the song itself has taken possession of my tongue. In that moment I am nothing more than an instrument, used for the sweet expression of someone else’s music.

I can almost see it: the power and resonance spilling out from me. It washes over my attacker in a wave, and he halts. His grasping fingers hover in the air, encircling but not quite touching my flesh. We are so close, I cannot look anywhere but into those dead eyes of his. As the sound surrounds and fills him, some of the emptiness seems to go out from that gaze. I feel as though I see him through a veil, glimpsing the truth as it once was and ought to be again. This man is a beautiful Licornyn warrior, brimming with fierce pride and unmatched valor, worthy to fight alongside a king like Taar.

He blinks once. His hands, still poised to grasp me, shake in midair. “Ulathyra,” he breathes. It’s the first word he’s spoken. As it falls from his withered lips, he blinks again, and that spark of life in his eyes blazes brighter.

Suddenly he looks over my head and cries out in a loud voice, breaking through even my song: “Taar!”

The next instant Elydark and Taar descend on us. The unicorn is in full flame, shining and terrible. A tiger-like roar issues from his throat. Ilanthor jerks back from me, creatingspace for them to come between us. I cannot see what happens next, but I hear the dead man cry out, “Taar! Tell Ulathyra! Tell her I remembered in the end!”

A sharp whistle in the air.

The crunch and thud of a skull hitting the ground.

I look down and see the dead man’s decayed head rolling in the dirt on the other side of the unicorn. His eyes, white-ringed, seek mine.

Is that . . . Oh gods, is that gratitude I see in his gaze?

Then, like Naerel before him, his remains disappear in twisting red light, leaving behind only a cloud of black motes which vanish like dust on the wind.

4

TAAR

Still gripping my blade, I dismount and take three long strides to Ilsevel’s side. “Are you hurt?” I demand. She looks pale as death, frozen where she stands. I see no sign of injuries, but her gaze remains fixed on that patch of ground where her attacker’s head rolled moments before. “Ilsevel?”

The sound of her name seems to pull her back from some faraway place. She stares up at me, eyes shining with strange light, weirdly similar to the sheen of fire still covering Elydark’s skin. She blinks, and that image is gone. I see only her own brown eyes gaping up at me in shock.

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