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Suddenly the unicorn shakes itself and keeps on running, head low, black fire billowing in its wake. As it goes, carrying its song away with it, I begin to hear other things once more—the roar of the river, the wind in the grass. Taar’s voice in my ear crying out, “Ilsevel! Ilsevel, I’m here. Listen to me, zylnala.Don’t listen to her song, listen to me.”

Only now do I hear my own voice. Screaming. A high, wordless keen of pain, echoing across that empty landscape. How long have I been making this ungodly noise? It feels like ages. Tears pour down my face, and my whole body shudders uncontrollably.

“What happened to her?” The words tear from my lips, ragged and bloody. “What happened to them? What happened to their song?” Even now I feel their voices echoing inside my head, a chorus of pain and endless woe. My fingers dig into my scalp, as though I could tear that song from my mind. I would fall from the saddle into the waiting river if not for Taar’s hold on me.

But he presses me close to his heart. Suddenly his lips are at my ear, and he’s murmuring, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,zylnala.It’s about to get much worse.”

What happens next I could never begin to explain. Though my eyes are closed, there’s a sudden burning straight through my eyelids, like a bolt of lightning. Only this is not lightning—it is darkness. Absolute darkness. And it keeps on branching and branching, until it covers the whole of the sky.

It’s gone the next moment, long enough for me to catch my breath. I look up at Taar and whisper, “What was that?”

“The only thing the wild licorneir of Cruor fear,” he replies, his gaze turned heavenward, his mouth grim. “The one thing from which they flee.”

Elydark sends out one last sad bugle to the unicorns as they disappear on the far side of the river. He rears and splashes foam with his hooves. Taar leans forward, keeping his balance in the saddle even as he holds onto me. “Elydark!” he bellows.“Now!”

With a despairing shake of his head, the unicorn comes back down onto all four feet. Then he begins to sing. A sad, lonely, beautiful song, which begins in his soul and burns to the tip of his horn. There the song transforms into light and begins to glow, brighter and brighter. This is not the fire which burns across his flanks in the heat of battle. It spreads in an aura around us, a sphere of protection.

Only just in time. As the fleeing unicorns vanish from sight, darkness swallows the world.

6

TAAR

No matter how many times I experience thevardimnar, it always feels like the first. I’m like a child again, peering out through a small sphere of pale light, searching for a world that is simply gone.

There is only blackness. Not the blackness of nightfall, but of devouring. And if I let myself look too closely, if I allow my eyes to be drawn through the gentle songlight surrounding me, sometimes I see that darkness ripple, strain. As though something just on the other side is seeking to break through.

If it ever does—if it manages to pierce the fragile veil between it and me—I will be done for. Body and soul.

But Elydark’s song is powerful, a song of purity, of love, fueled by ourvelraconnection. Even thevardimnar, endless and hideous though it is, cannot break through such a shield. No more than it was able to all those years ago, when it was a different licorneir I rode, and my sister wrapped in my arms before me in the saddle.

I breathe out slowly, exhaling those memories, forcing myself back to the present moment. It isn’t Tassa who sits before me now. It’s Ilsevel. My bride.

She’s turned her torso and pressed her face into my chest, hiding. I cannot blame her. The darkness of Cruor is utterly overwhelming, even to those prepared to meet it. “Hold on to me,zylnala,” I whisper, bowing my neck and allowing my lips to brush the top of her head. “It will be over soon.” It might be true; it might just as easily be a lie. Thevardimnarcan last for manyhours at a time or only a few seconds. There’s no predicting it. But she doesn’t need to know that now.

Eventually her body relaxes. Her breathing, which has been so tight and tense, begins to ease. Finally she looks up at me, dark eyes searching. The light from Elydark’s song shines in their depths, as though glowing from the inside, not merely a reflection. “What is this?” she whispers so softly I’m obliged to read her lips.

“The nightmare of Cruor,” I answer. “The secret behind all the legends and tales which have crept into your own world.”

She peers out at the surrounding darkness before tucking her face back into my shoulder. “None of the tales I heard mentioned anything like this.”

A shudder runs down her spine. She’s so vulnerable, I cannot help the intense urge to hold her closer, to comfort and shield her. I know I should resist, but for the moment I cannot. “I’m not surprised,” I say. “One can hardly describe thevardimnarif one has not experienced it. And those who have would speak of it only under duress.”

“The”—she hesitates over the strange word— “vardimnar?”

I nod. “The Hand of Darkness.”

Another ripple rolls overhead, just on the far side of Elydark’s song. Glancing up, I glimpse that membranous movement, that sense of hugeness trying to push through. It won’t succeed; it never has in the last twenty-five years. Yet the terror of it is so great, I can do nothing but bow my head and let my soul sink into Elydark’s song, into the vibration of our spirit-bond. He never stops singing. Even with heartache beating through his veins, he carries on and on.

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you beforehand,” I say at last.

Ilsevel startles. Her fingers, resting on my arm, tighten to the verge of pain, but I do not shake her off. Her head bobs in a quick nod. “How did this happen?”

I want to tell her. I want to help her find a way to comprehend the horror surrounding her, to make some sense of it and, therefore, to find a ledge of sanity on which to stand in the midst of it. But how? How can I offer her what I, in twenty-five years, have not been able to find for myself?

“We call it the Hand of Darkness,” I say at last, “because of the spreading black fingers which flash across the sky moments before it falls. They are the foreshadowing, the warning. Were it not for them, there would be little hope for any of us out in the wilds of Cruor. Thevardimnarwould consume our souls.”

Ilsevel shivers again. “And what does that mean?”