Page 37 of HeartTorn (WarBride #2)

ILSEVEL

Taar!

My soul cries out at the sight of him, bound between those stone pillars but still very much alive. Until I laid eyes on him I simply couldn’t know for sure, despite the tension in the velra. But he’s here—he’s here and whole and seems to be unharmed.

And he’s got his one-time love gripped by the throat.

Diira and I rode through a small crowd of undead in the courtyard, who did not react or even seem aware of our arrival. But the dead inside the cavernous old manor are alert enough. Shanaera twists in Taar’s grasp, struggling to break free. Three other undead, two men and one powerfully-built woman rush to help their leader. Momentarily shocked at my sudden arrival, they all turn wide eyes to gape at me and the flaming beast on which I ride.

I don’t give them a chance to recover. Go! I sing into Diira’s head.

She responds with a battle cry that could shatter glass. Charging into that hall, her hooves beat a swift percussion on the paving stones, a tempo in time with the song rushing from my soul to hers. The undead scatter at her approach, but not before her horn pierces one through the side and, with a toss of her head, sends him hurtling across the room. Without pausing Diira pivots and thrusts again, this time straight through Shanaera’s chest. She screams obscenities, writhing, clawing, tearing at the unicorn’s face in her efforts to get free.

Leaving her to her struggle, I leap from the saddle and rush to Taar’s side. He stares at me like I’m a ghost. Which, considering my state of being at our last parting, isn’t a bad assumption on his part. There’s no time to explain just now, however.

“Are you hurt?”

I demand, reaching out to touch his bruised and bloodied face.

His eyes widen at the brush of my fingers. “You’re alive!”

he breathes.

“Yes. It’s a long story.”

I turn to look at the bindings securing his left wrist. “How are you—”

He catches my face with his freed hand, fingers slipping around to the back of my head. Before I can react, he draws me forcibly to him, presses me against his bare chest. I suck in a breath, my lungs suddenly far too tight.

“I thought I’d lost you.”

His voice is a growl, spoken into my hair.

My throat thickens. “Me too,”

I whisper. Temptation almost overwhelms me to rest there, to close my eyes, to let him hold me, let him protect and shield me from all the dangers surrounding us. But I didn’t come here to be rescued. This time I’m not the one in distress.

“Here, let’s get you free, shall we?”

I say, planting my hands on his chest and pushing back.

“Watch out!”

he roars. With a powerful wrench, he yanks me to one side just as a blade whistles through the air, missing my neck by inches. Still bound to the pillars, Taar pushes me roughly behind him. Quicker than thought he takes the length of dangling rope attached to his right wrist and lashes out with it. It wraps around the neck of the other undead woman. She drops her sword in surprise, both hands reaching to grasp the rope and pull it free. Taar yanks. She loses her footing, topples headlong to the floor. With a snarl, she starts to rise, one hand reaching for her weapon.

A hoof plants between her shoulder blades, flattens her to the floor. Diira’s horn flashes, pierces the corpse through the back of the neck. There’s a strangled cry, a brief moment of thrashing. Then the undead woman lies still.

Diira lifts her head, no blood staining her horn, and gives me a look. Are you hurt, Vellara?

I shake my head. She tosses her long forelock from her eyes, then whirls about, eager to pin down her next victim. I drag a breath into my lungs before pulling my knife from its sheath and turning back to Taar. He watches me, a stunned expression on his face. “What was that?”

he asks, as I set to work cutting his bonds.

I open my mouth to respond, then shut it again. There will be time enough to explain if we get out of this alive. My sharp blade cuts through the last rope binding Taar’s leg. Thankfully he doesn’t press his question but swipes the corpse woman’s fallen sword from the floor and, by some instinct developed over long years of training, raises it over his head.

Just in time—Shanaera’s blade connects with his. He meets her gaze and holds it as he rises from a kneeling position. The air shrieks with the sound of steel on steel.

“You should have let me give you the virulium, Taar,”

she says. With a heave of muscle, she pushes away from him, backs up several steps, and assumes a battle stance. “Now I’ll have to drag your sorry corpse back to the citadel untreated. You’ll be a hollow shell, like all your people.”

Taar’s teeth flash in a grimace. “Ilsevel,”

he says, without taking his eyes off his foe, “get Elydark.”

Then he lunges. Sword crashes against sword as he rains a series of powerful blows down on her. Shanaera blocks them, her feet moving as nimbly as a dancer’s, using her lighter build to her advantage despite his superior strength.

I don’t want to leave him. Gods save me, I just found him again! But I’m no use in a fray, and Elydark might give Taar just the advantage he needs. A curse on my lips, I turn away. Diira! I sing.

My unicorn meets the crash of an undead man’s sword with her horn then drives him back into the wall. He hits it hard, stunned, and she takes the moment to look back at me. I beckon. There’s a flash of resistance along our soul-tether; she hates to leave a fight. With a snort, she leaps to my side, once more kneeling so I can scramble onto her back. We’ve got to get Elydark, I sing.

She acknowledges this with another bugling cry as she surges back to her feet. I have just time enough to grab a fistful of mane before she leaps into motion, speeding back to the hinge-sagging door through which she just burst. We emerge into the glare of the setting sun, which casts long shadows across the courtyard.

Elydark sings out, drawing my attention to where he stands hobbled beneath a bare-branched tree. The four undead unicorns surround him, their hulking forms a terrible sight. They sway where they stand, unaware or uncaring of the fight taking place inside. Their lifeless eyes seem to stare off into realms and worlds far beyond this one, and un-song ripples beneath their flesh.

Elydark, by contrast, struggles against the evil black ropes binding his legs. He throws back his head, eyes rolling. “Quick, Diira,”

I say out loud, pointing. She turns her head, takes three steps.

Suddenly the dead surround us. All those lifeless, spiritless forms which had stood by in the courtyard without interest when we rode through, are now in motion, as though someone spoke the command to awaken them. Swords and knives in hand, they throw themselves at Diira, slashing cruelly. She rears, taken by surprise, then swings her great head, knocking one dead man into another so that they both fall to the ground. Another undead slashes at her neck while it’s bent. With a wordless cry, I swing as far as I can with my knife and manage to cut a rotten cheek.

The dead man turns his head sharply. His empty eyes cannot quite seem to fix on me, but he knows I am there. He knows I am his intended prey.

The next instant his hand latches onto my throat, and he yanks me from Diira’s back. I scrabble at his arm, trying to pry free of his grip, even as my feet kick and struggle to find the ground. Diira gallops on several paces before turning, head-down, ready to charge my captor. But five more undead throw themselves bodily at her, clambering on her back, her neck, tearing at her with nails and teeth. I reach for her with my mind, but then my whole vision is taken up with a dead man’s gaze.

He stares down at me, as though staring into my very soul. There’s no life in him, but there’s something else—something dark lurking behind the windows of his eyes. A spell or a spirit, I cannot say. Whatever it is, it isn’t him anymore, whoever he once was.

A face flashes across my mind’s eye: Ilanthor.

The fingers around my throat tighten. I don’t know if I can do what I must, not when I’m unable to breathe. But then my gods-gift was never about my voice, was it?

I open my mouth and let song pour forth. Not a song for the ears, but one of pure spirit. Instantly my connection with Diira flares, and a stream of power pours out from her soul into mine, strengthening the song. It’s like the one I sang with Elydark when we healed Taar. It’s like the one I sang for the dead Ilanthor on the brink of that cliff in the Wood Between. Most of all, it’s like the song Diira sang over my burnt body. A song without words, a song of pure force and spirit and life-giving energy.

The dead man blinks. For a moment I see only more death in his gaze. His fingers relax, tense again, tremble.

Then, to my relief, he releases me and staggers back five paces, shaking his head as though to ward off a swarm of bees. I keep singing, pouring that power straight from my heart, channeling everything Diira gives me. When I sang this song to Ilanthor, it was with my human voice, and the effect was brief and faulty. Now pure fire emerges from my throat, translating the music of celestial beings into a physical world. It becomes a whip of flame, which I lash around the undead man, wrapping him from head to toe, until the man himself is no longer visible.

Then he is there—not the undead with his unseeing eyes and that sense of otherness peering through. No, this man is clear-eyed, his face bright with sudden life, despite the decay spread across his tortured features. He stares around, confused, his mouth opening and closing slowly. His gaze lands on the dead attacking Diira.

Everything in him, as a true man of Licorna, reacts. He leaps forward with a bellow of rage, grabs the nearest undead, and flings him to the ground.

Encouraged, I intensify my song, let it spread farther, from one man to the next. Once I find the knack of it, it’s easy enough—song always wants to fill whatever space it enters. One by one the undead stagger away from Diira, looking down at their hands before turning to each other in mingled wonder and horror.

Diira, shuddering from the assault, bleeding from several wounds, but otherwise whole, shakes her body and trots to my side. You’ve called up their spirits from where they were buried, she says, her voice admiring and a little surprised. I’ve never seen such a thing.

Neither have I. I don’t understand it; in this moment, I don’t particularly want to try. Will they help us? I ask.

I don’t know. It can’t hurt to ask.

So I sing a new variation on the song, adding a note of question. Immediately the undead—at least fifteen strong—turn and, still moving with the awkward strides of dead men and women, hasten to Elydark, as eager to set him free as they were to save Diira from each other. But the dead unicorns stand in their way. Massive and menacing, they form an impassable wall, complete with spike horns aimed forward in defense, between us and the bound Elydark.

Help him! I sing.

As though responding to a command, the undead throw themselves at those corpse beasts. The unicorns toss them aside with violent thrusts of their horns, and their hooves gash flesh and smash skulls. But the dead men and women rise again. Red-light of Miphates spellcraft mingles with the fire of my song in a bizarre glare of magic force.

I can’t wait for the dead to break through that defense, however. Turning, I mount Diira, using all my strength to heave myself up onto her back. Go! I urge, and she leaps forward, dodging and weaving through the battle. One of those awful horns tears at her shoulder, but she pushes on until we reach Elydark’s side. I leap to the ground and make short work of the binding ropes with my knife.

The blast of fire from Elydark’s soul is nearly equal to that explosion from Nyathri which so nearly killed me. I throw up my arms in defense, but this time, there is no need. Diira’s fire surrounds me in protection, and the heat of Elydark’s pent-up power rolls over me, harmless. It does, however, knock flat both the dead warriors and the dead unicorns. They sprawl across the courtyard, like so many autumn leaves sent tossed in a hurricane gale.

Roaring, Elydark does not pause for thanks. With a heave of powerful muscle, fire lashing from his mane and tail in long tongues of flame, he leaps over the fallen unicorns and races across the courtyard.

Before he can make it to the manor door, however, four figures tumble out into the fading daylight. Elydark skids to a halt. My heart jolts in my throat. Taar!

Two of the undead grip Taar by the arms, dragging him between them out the door. Shanaera follows. She grips a sword in her hand and trails the blade behind her so that metal screeches against stone. She looks out at the mayhem in the courtyard, at all her fallen people.

“Enough of this!”

she cries. Hoisting the sword, she points the blade straight at me. “If you want your husband alive,”

she snarls, “you’ll surrender at once.”

I stand frozen, feet braced, my voice momentarily silenced. The two undead gripping Taar’s arms force him to his knees. Shanaera raises her sword above her head, eyes meeting mine. One stroke, and his head will roll.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,”

she says. “I want him whole. He’s useless to anyone chopped into little pieces. And I want you as well, little princess. Morthiel thinks your gift is the very key he’s been searching for to perfect his spell.”

While she speaks, four other figures appear in the doorway behind her: undead with blank faces. They were too far away to hear my song before. But now?

“If I present you to Morthiel,”

Shanaera continues, “he will be so grateful. And gratitude is a useful tool, as I’m sure you know. So why don’t we find a way to make this situation rather more tenable to all and sundry?”

I look at her again and see the un-song whorling through her spirit. Whatever she might once have been, whoever the woman was that Taar loved, she is long gone. Which is why I feel no compunction about what I do next.

GO! I sing.

A burst of soulfire explodes from my chest, my throat, my heart. Diira’s power surges through me, lashing out in tongues of purple that touch each of the empty souls in that courtyard. Including the four standing directly behind Shanaera. The undead lurch toward her from every angle. The four at her back grab her arms and yank them back before she can make the killing stroke.

Shanaera is no mean warrior, however. She wrenches her sword arm and lashes out at the dead. One blow strikes off two heads, which roll down the front steps even as the headless bodies disintegrate, By then, the other undead have crowded in. They hurtle bodily at the two figures holding Taar’s arms. His captors scream in horror as they are overwhelmed, torn to pieces. Taar shakes himself free and stands apart from the fray. His eyes flash to meet mine for an instant.

Then he throws himself at Shanaera.

She sees him coming. She sees something in his face and, perhaps for the first time in a very long while, she is afraid.

Springing free of the swarming dead she flees across the far side of the courtyard, shouting commands as she goes. The four dead unicorns, having risen once more, lumber into motion, galloping after her. Elydark, still raging, bears down on one of them. His horn pierces its chest, and it utters a terrible screech before disintegrating in a burst of black motes like ash. Diira takes down another with a similar blow, but the other two reach their mistress. Shanaera swings up onto the back of the larger, faster beast and bows low over its neck as it carries her from the yard.

“Vulmon, Elydark!”

Taar bellows, and his unicorn lopes to his side. Arm muscles rippling, he heaves himself into the saddle, and the two of them race after their prey.

“Taar, no!”

I cry and take ten running steps after him before coming to a stop. There’s nothing I can do but watch him disappear, chasing after her. After Shanaera.

Leaving me behind.