The Unfinished Song: Taboo (38 page)

A shudder traveled through Kavio’s body, as if the strength went out of him, and at the same moment, he pierced Rthan with such disappointment that Rthan doubted himself.

“I wanted to make peace,” he said, “as my father did.”

“Your father conquered whole tribes, Kavio.”

“But that was not what made him proud.”

Rthan jerked the rope again, and Kavio screwed his eyes shut, expecting another dunk. Instead, Rthan reached out and dragged Kavio to the ledge. The young man collapsed on the wet wood, unable to catch himself. Rthan put a dagger to his throat.

“I promised Nargano I would deliver you to a slow, painful death at dawn,” said Rthan gruffly. “But I can spare you that with one slice. Whatever your reasons, or your ultimate plots and schemes, you treated me fairly when I was your captive, for all I was your foe. I owe you a clean death, at least.”

“I’d prefer a boat.”

“No jokes, nephew.” Rthan swallowed a lump. “A fast death or slow? It’s all I can offer.”

Quick as an eel, Kavio struck out with both legs, though they were bound together, and knocked Rthan off his feet.

“Sorry, I really had my heart set on the boat.” Kavio stomped on his stomach with both feet, and rolled onto the other side.

Rthan regained his breath just as Kavio grabbed the dagger and cut his feet free. He struggled to turn the knife to the ropes around his hands next, but Rthan tackled him. They both slid on the wet wood. Rthan punched him in the face several times,
then
Kavio used the cord binding his hands to garrote Rthan. Kavio flipped up again, but Rthan was ready with his own roundhouse kick and another quick jab and cross. Back and forth they skittered on the slippery way, and must have exchanged a dozen blows before Rthan saw his opportunity. A huge swell rushed toward them and Rthan drew on all his power, crying, “Merfae! To me!”

A dozen sinuous arms reached out of the water to yank Kavio under the huge wave as it broke against the cliff.

The greedy Merfae almost dragged Kavio with them on the undertow. Rthan fell on the unwinding end of the rope just in time to drag Kavio back into the air. He kicked the wind and hacked out water.

“Lady! To me!” cried Rthan.

On the next wave
she
arrived, in one of her terrible forms: a huge blue hand, made of water, whose curled fingers the tube of the wave and whose claws formed the spray. The immense blue hand grasped Kavio like a doll and squeezed. Light pulsated over his body. He screamed in raw agony, until an immense blue finger closed over his face and plunged him into sudden silence. Horribly, Rthan could see through the clear water of the hand to see Kavio’s face contort like that of a drowning man.

How long the hand of water squeezed him, Rthan couldn’t say. He himself felt he could not breathe; yet he heard his own panting.

Abruptly, the water fist unclenched. Kavio vomited water. He shivered and convulsed violently. His face had turned ashen and his whole flesh looked pale and bluish with cold. Not a glimmer of light remained in his aura that Rthan could see, and he suspected there was nothing left in any Chroma. Indeed, for a moment, he worried Kavio had died. Then the young man met his eyes, and they were filled with terror. Kavio had finally met something he feared.

A little blue girl sniffled at his side. Meira slipped her tiny hand into Rthan’s, a soft pressure.

“Don’t worry, Daddy,” she smiled up at him sweetly. “That bad boy won’t give us any more trouble.”

The peace party still slept under the protection of the Peace Staff, though Dindi suspected she was not the only one who slept poorly. Gwenika cried most of the night. She didn’t know where her mother was, and she felt personally responsible for what had befallen Kavio.

“If I hadn’t healed the Shunned, Svego wouldn’t have tried to speak on their behalf, and Nargano wouldn’t have become angered with them, and Kavio wouldn’t have defied Nargano, and the peace bargain wouldn’t have broken, and my mother wouldn’t be a captive who knows where…”

“Hush,” Dindi cautioned. Though they had not been harmed, they were still under guard. “The less we say, the better.”

Gwenika bit her lip to hold back a fresh flood of tears. She nodded.

“None of this is your fault!” Dindi said, softly but fiercely. “I’m convinced Nargano never wanted to make peace and he deliberately set Kavio an offer he could not accept.”

In the morning, they all returned to the plaza, which was overcast with a sullen gray fog. Brena joined them. She ignored Gwenika’s questions about where she had spent the night, but she seemed unharmed. Apparently, only Kavio’s life was forfeit because as the leader, he bore the responsibility for rejecting Nargano’s offer. The rest of them would be allowed to return to Yellow Bears unmolested. Neither Rthan nor Svego would return with them, however. Rthan had resumed his place with the other honored warriors in Nargano’s retinue. Svego knelt with the Shunned. Like them,
his neck was bound by a rope
, and his hands were tied behind him.

The Blue Waters warriors brought Kavio out last of all. Whatever torment they had inflicted on him during the night had left him weak and pale with exhaustion. Worst of all was the stark despair in his mien. Yesterday, he had expected to defy his captors and escape, she was sure of it. Today, for some reason, she was just as sure he had no hope left. Yet even stumbling with pain, even stripped down to a loincloth and prodded along at spear point,
he looked proud and magnificent to her.

She felt so helpless. What could she do to save him? She had already offered her secrets up to no avail. Zumo had just tossed the corncob doll back at her, and her body had not even tempted him. No wonder. She tried to think of some way she could use the Visions of the doll to save Kavio, but it didn’t work that way. She had neither beauty nor power to use on his behalf.

They made him stand in the center of the dancer’s stage,
all alone
. For the first time, he looked up at Dindi, and smiled. An unlived world of lost possibilities blossomed and died in that brief, sad smile. She knew he smiled for her alone, and that he was telling her what he could not say in words.

Farewell
.

Nargano, hateful man, of course had to give a nasty little speech to dig in the knife before he sent Kavio to die. He insulted Kavio’s parentage, and gloated in the usual way. Then just when Dindi thought he had finished, he added:

“In the end, your attempt to spare the lives of your fellow Imorvae only revealed your true allegiance, and you would have been wise to kill them and secure the peace. For now you have lost any chance at peace and still lost their lives. Did you really think I would let them live? They are
Shunned
but dared to stand before me and demand to be treated like real people. I cannot let that go unpunished. They will die with you, in the tide pools.”

The Shunned began to keen and wail.

Gwenika and Dindi exchanged a horrified glance, then, as the same thought occurred to them both, they both sneaked a peak at Gremo. His face turned white; his gaze remained fixed on Svego.

“Take me too!” Gremo blurted. “I am
Shunned
too, as was my father before me. He was one of your own, and so poisoned by what you made him that he knew no better than to spread hate. I am his son as much in that as in anything. Take me too!”

“There’s always room for one more fish on the beach,” said Nargano. “Let him die with the rest if he is so eager.”

Kavio, the Shunned, and Gremo were all dragged roughly down a hidden path, the entrance to which Dindi could not see. She only caught sight of them again through the hole in the floor of the amphitheater. Each prisoner was bound to a wooden stake plunged into a tide pool. Apparently at Gremo and Svego’s request, the two men were tied to the same stake. Then the warriors withdrew.

As the tide receded, large creatures scuttled into view. They were crabs but the size of weasels and bluish white in color, similar to the white and gray sand. Several of the Shunned screamed, Kavio steeled himself for their advance with bleak resolve, and Gremo and Svego kissed one another farewell.

Svego’s tears watered our kiss. His lips tasted like almonds, salted and honeyed.

“I love you,” I whispered against his neck, my husky voice pitched for his ears alone. I knew other eyes were on us, but nothing would make me ashamed of my love for this beautiful young man.

“You bastard.” His voice broke. “Why did you have to love me? I could have survived anything but that.”

Svego’s face was a rictus of agony.

I panicked; I cursed myself. I didn’t want him to die hating me. How could I have thought it would be so easy to cure someone of a lifetime of pain—hadn’t I mocked the efforts of a dozen Healers who had tried to take my rock from me, and always kept myself bound to it in the end? And after everything, I was powerless to treat the one diseased soul closest to me, my own. So why had I thought I could do any better for him?

Because you loved him, fool
.

“I failed you. I told you I would heal you and instead I destroyed you.”

“You haven’t destroyed me,” he said. “It’s knowing that I’ve wasted my life before I met you that is destroying me. Why did I waste so much of my life? You at least had the excuse that you were dragging a stone in circles. I was serving a lie. Love isn’t enough, sweetling. It isn’t stronger than the spear. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I sold my freedom before I ever met you, and now that my life is finally my own, it’s too late.”

As if to prove him right, the blue-gray crabs click-clacked over the rocks, closer to us. Not far from us, one darted in and snipped at one of the other hapless prisoners. As if that were a signal to the rest, dozens of the ugly things appeared from out of the rocks. They skittered toward us. I hardly felt the first pinches of their claws. But more and more of them came, and they grew more aggressive. One of them raced at us, climbed
half-way
up the post and grabbed Svego’s cheek—he shrieked—before I knocked it off him. The torn skin bled like a tear. The loathsomeness of this death sentence sank in; I was going to have to witness my lover’s flesh torn off bite by bite before my own pain became unconsciousness to relieve me of the spectacle. It would take hours, and every minute would just be worse than the last, until the very end.

I twisted in the ropes, but our enemies had bound them securely. As usual, they had left me the rock tied to my back. Caught between the bindings I had put on myself and the bindings put on me by others, I was helpless. More crabs darted forward. They were fighting each other for access to our flesh, and it emboldened them.
The rock at my back was the only place the crabs could not hurt.

Svego leaned into my arms, and I embraced him as well as I could.

“I love you,” he said.

Something broke inside me.
I will not let this man die. Not because of me
.

My power has always been born out of rage and hate. It blossomed out of rage now too—but rage fused with love. Can love ever be rage? Can love denied be anything
but
rage? The rock at my back glowed red hot and exploded.

“Gremo! Look at you!” Svego’s eyes grew to the size of eggs. “It was not a rock that you’ve been pulling behind you all your life. It was your wings!”

Kavio
sagged against the stake where he had been bound.  His wrists were raw from hanging all night above the tide pools. He felt cold to the bone. Exhaustion drenched him, and fear prickled like salt and sand rubbed raw into his flesh. He needed to endure a little longer, to die without screaming in pain, without wetting himself like a child, or falling into a fit like a fae. Though he had been defeated, humiliated and beaten, he was keenly aware he still had more to lose. The way a man met death was the last and most precious gift life gave him. Kavio must not let his enemies take that too.

In the dawn light, he could see what darkness and pain had concealed from him during his torture: a fleet of huge war canoes lined up on the beach just past the tribehold.