The Unfinished Song: Taboo (29 page)

Svego parted the door, calling, “Gremo?”

She held her breath.

He turned to her, puzzled. “It’s empty. Where are they?”

“Svego!”

Gremo appeared from the woods some distance from the hut. “There you are. We received word that the battle was over, and you had come to fetch us, but we must have missed you.”

“Yes.” Svego cupped his hand over his eyes to squint up at the inconstant moon. “It’s later than I thought. I don’t know how that happened…”

“We’re all tired,” said Gremo. He put his arm around Svego’s shoulders.

“Don’t muss the hair,” Svego said primly.

They walked away together, back toward the boats where the others had camped.

“Dindi!” Gwenika came from the woods, the same direction as Gremo had. She waited until the two Olani were out of hearing range, then asked urgently, “What happened? One minute, Svego was coming toward us and we knew we would never get the Shunned out of there before he saw them, then suddenly he seemed to be frozen in a glowing bubble with you, and we had all the time we needed. You used the corncob doll again, didn’t you!
”

“Yes, but I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I was trying to stop Svego and there it was, in my hand, and then the Vision…. You were right all along. I must destroy it. Will you help me?”

“Yes, of course!” Gwenika said. Then she chewed her lip. “Except…”

“You needn’t help if you don’t want to. I understand if you want no involvement in hexcraft, even to destroy it.”

“It’s not that. It’s much worse.” Gwenika gnawed her lip some more.

“Please don’t tell me you’ve told your mother about me.”

She snickered. “Nothing
that
bad. Dindi, it’s just that I… oh, mercy, this is terrible… I don’t think we should destroy the corncob doll just yet.”

“What!”

“I know, I know. I’m a Tavaedi; I should be setting a good example!” exclaimed Gwenika. “But right now there is something more important we have to do: help people. No Blue Waters Tavaedi will heal
these
Shunned, even though it’s not that hard. Gremo and I were able to do it. And we’re going to do it again. We both agreed. Every clanhold we pass through, every chance we get, anyone who asks. We will help all of them. But it must be secret. I think… well, Dindi, you have no magic, so you can’t help us.
Unless you use the doll
.”

At the edge of the eastern horizon, the sky had lightened to diaphanous gray.

“I already confessed to Kavio that I’ve used the hexed doll in the past,” Dindi whispered. “He asked me to destroy it. If I don’t… it would mean lying to him.”

Lying to him
again
. After I told him I would break no more taboos.

“Besides,” Dindi added. “The doll is hexed. There is always a price to be paid for using hexcraft, isn’t there? It isn’t a natural Pattern. Kavio called it a ‘tangle.’ He made all hexcraft sound evil and terribly dangerous.”

“The doll saved us,” Gwenika said. “Both during our Initiation, and just now, from being discovered. Can it be so bad? Do all hexed things have to be evil?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a Tavaedi. I just don’t want to lie to Kavio.”

“Not like that,” Rthan laughed, watching Kavio trying to keep his balance on the rolling canoe. “Dig in your toes and use the oar for balance. Watch!”

Rthan demonstrated with his own canoe. He had been taking advantage of their journey down the river to teach Kavio more of his people’s techniques for boating warfare. Unlike before, Rthan seemed to hold nothing back, but taught Kavio just as if they were members of the same Tavaedi society.

The peace party had stayed a few extra days in Jumping Rock to help the women folk repair their houses, and also to make sure Vultho and his kinsmen did not return. Then they continued down river.

The river was a feisty warrior in and of
herself
. Some days, she churned out waves so high they threatened to capsize the boats. Other days, she provided smooth, strong currents that pulled them along without the need to row. Rthan had names for all the river’s moods, which he taught along with the more vigorous techniques of fighting on boats.

Though he would never admit it to anyone, especially not to Rthan, Kavio loved river travel. Despite the danger, the ritual of supplication and permission they had to reenact at each new clanhold and the occasional bouts of shark wrestling, the journey allowed him much more time to himself than he usually could steal from his duties. The pace of their travel had to be slow, to placate the Blue Waters clans, and that left Kavio many an afternoon to sneak away to be by himself.

Or with her.

In the weeks that followed, Ka
vio drilled Dindi relentlessly.
Every time she performed what he gave her without complaint, he added on the requirements and increased his demands for precision. He wasn’t sure what compulsion drove him to push her harder. It was almost as if he wanted to find her breaking point.

And if you push her until she breaks, then what?
He didn’t want to wound her.
Then I’ll back off. Once I know her limits.
How he expected to know when she couldn’t take anymore, he wasn’t sure.
Perhaps something as simple as a verbal request.
Please, can I rest now? I’m so tired
.
Perhaps a trip or a stagger indicating that her energy reservoirs had flagged beyond safe continuance for the day.
A beginner had to take care not to pull a muscle or twist an ankle or faint from dehydration.

Dindi kept up as though to spend
hours
straight dancing were a matter of routine for her. If she suffered any cramps or aches, she stretched them out or nursed them along on her own, without any grumble.

Her capacity for new material also appeared insatiable. Kavio had intended to start her with a single dance, and see that she perfected it before he allowed her to move on to the next. And he had rather exacting standards of perfection. Yet, once she squelched her tendency to elaborate on the forms, and focused on performing each step unerringly, even he was hard pressed to find fault with her performance. She needed to see him model a move only once before she could copy him. It unnerved him, to be honest.

To keep up with her, he had to give her more dances, one after another. Each
time
she still grinned doggedly at him when he returned from
the hunt to check on her progress
.

“I finished
another
seven counts of seven of the Cat Creeps Across the Roof,” she said, “as you asked.”

Was he just projecting his competitive imagination onto her, or did challenge glint in her eyes whenever she reported to him?

“Show me.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

The Cat started curled up on the ground and unwound sensuously into a kneeling position with an arched back and outstretched arms. Dindi dropped in front of him and unrolled herself onto her knees in front of him. Round buttocks thrust up into the air behind her. Sweat damped her simple smock to her breasts and belly. She tilted up her head and licked her lips.

“Rrrrrrr,” she said.

His throat dried. He asked hoarsely, “Dindi, what are you doing?”
Are you
trying
to seduce me?
He forced himself to remember his promise. No more kisses.

She blinked at him, without rising. Her eyes were large and innocent, more like a fawn than a feline.

“I’m a cat,” she said, “So I purred.” She rolled her eyes, somewhat spoiling the seductive pose. “Don’t tell me even
that
can risk bad magic.”

“No,” he said.
It’s dangerous for entirely other reasons
. He realized that he had been so fascinated with the way her damp smock outlined her breasts that he hadn’t had the presence of mind to evaluate the quality of her Animal form. Asking her to do it
again,
was, however, out of the question. As it was, he had put off teaching her the Cat for precisely this reason.

Kavio cleared his throat. “We’re done for the day.”
And you’ve found my limits before I’ve found yours
, he congratulated her silently.
But I’m going to unravel this mystery
.

He’d brought her a jug of water, which he handed over to her silently once she stood up. Instead of sipping it, she poured the whole jug over her body,
then
shimmied off the excess water. Confronted with the sight of her flinging hair and soaking dress, he decided distance was the better part of valor and walked away to the end of the
practice  area
. She toweled off with a rag, but Kavio kept his eyes safely averted after she caught up with him.

“Follow me,” he said. “I found something while hunting, and I want you to see it.”

Dindi half skipped, half climbed to keep up with Kavio as he leaped easily from rock to rock up a steep incline. When he reached the top of the rise, he held his hands out and scooped her up by the waist. For a breathless moment she wondered if he would pull her into his arms, but instead he set her next to him. His aura shimmered brilliant blue.

“Look.”

She turned and gasped.

They stood on a cliff overlooking the sea. The beach below was rocky and the waves rough, but the Blue Vast itself was every bit as stunning as Dindi had heard it described. The sunset glittered on the waves, and the aroma of the wind lifting off the beach was wonderful, a heady mix of brine and wildflower.

“Have you ever seen the Vast before?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Not so close.”

“Nor I.” He inhaled deeply. “No wonder they call it the Blue Vast. No wonder they say the Blue Lady is the oldest and most powerful fae of all. Yet they say the sea was born not of her power but from her tears. Once it was fresh water, but long ago, the Blue Lady and all the Merfae wept for seven thousand days and turned it to brine. I can taste the salt on the air, can you?”

“What do fae have to weep about?”

“The annihilation of the Aelfae, their brothers and sisters. If the Last Aelfae disappears from the world, the Blue Lady has sworn to avenge herself on humankind and destroy the world in a flood. So my mother told me in the stories she sang to put me to sleep as a child.”

His mother
was
the Last Aelfae. Dindi wondered what
she
thought of humans. After all, she had married one, raised another. “Do you believe it could happen?”

“I never knew how much of my mother’s stories to believe. Yet…” A fierce gust of wind tousled his dark hair. He looked achingly handsome, almost inhuman in his perfection, and he gleamed with ice-cold blue light. At times, she forgot he was half-fae himself, but moments like these reminded her painfully. Then the wind subsided, his aura tamped down and he looked vulnerable and human again.