He knew one thing, and that thing was a girl.
Power burst like dandelion spores into his consciousness, roiling and playful. Memories fractured into mirror glass beneath its unrelenting pressure. He was sweet and light. He was heavy and dark. He reflected a thousand selves, but the girl was always the one in the many. She was the sparrow at the top of the world.
Her split lips formed the shape of Tamlen, and then he knew two things.
The girl laughed in a burnished piece of memory glass, but he had no mouth for answering. She sang with an alabaster melancholy in another, but he had no ears for listening. She offered him meat and drink in a third, but he had no tongue for tasting.
When the power exploded into him again it came with bone-deep melody, and a mirror fragment shifted to allow its song to pass through him. The broken shard cut his soul as he fell inside of it. He was glad of the pain. Tamlen flashed and spun into the memory's center and stopped when he found night. There were trees and grass and the girl. She was small and anxious because the stars were full of danger.
"I love you," he said, but she didn't hear his ghost words. He frowned. This was not the right time, only the right love. Memories were always laid side by side, though he was all Tamlen together. He concentrated and made himself small to match her.
"Who are you?" he said.
"Lyna Mahariel," she said, and he knew three things. She flicked grass at him with her pale fingers. "You know me. Why do you always ask?"
"Because you could change, each minute, into a new thing. I never see you twice the same," he said. "What do the stars make you tonight?"
She looked puzzled, because he hadn't said the right words, but they were close enough to truth to suit. "They tell me troubles are coming to the world. Shemlen troubles that will be ours one day. Mine. I'll have to leave the Clan."
"You've been leaving since you entered my heart," he said. "One foot out and one foot in. Will you stay for me?"
She answered a different question. "They also say that you'll leave too, on a path that only goes one way. I don't understand what that means. But I won't let it happen," she said. There was a weapon in her voice that was angles and pain.
"Can you kill, beautiful Lyna?" he said.
She watched the sky without the right-sized ears for hearing. She took his hand that was only made small into hers which truly was.
The melody of the power floated into the world at her touch. He felt its redness slither through the cracks of the memory, flicking its tongue into the weak spaces and breaking it. It wanted him to sing, too. But now Tamlen knew four things, and none were the song.
"I want to kiss you," he said, and he slipped into a new shard. It was daylight. She was bigger and so was he. She smiled because the words were finally right and so was the time. Her hair fanned out on the grass like a rainbow of one color. He was hovering over her, the hawk to her sparrow, but she was the one who held him in her talons.
"Yes," she said.
Her smile was delicious when he tasted it. The skin of him sharpened with each breath they shared, and her hands were rough over his new points. He released words into her mouth that she wouldn't hear. "Will you stay for me? Can you kill? I love you," he said. He repeated them in a rhythm that pounded in time with his heart.
She was crying, but she didn't notice until he kissed the new, shimmering trail to her ear. "Why do you sorrow, little bird?" he said. This question was wrong, too, but the memory didn't notice.
"The stars say death will follow my love," she said, "and I never want to stop kissing you."
"Then don't love me. Possess me," he said.
Lyna laughed, a crystal sound in the trees, and he suited deeds to words and words to deeds. He made her dizzy spinning himself around her love, but he never touched it while he touched her. The noises she made were only noises, and the pleasure he felt was pleasure alone. Her eyes shone for him, his body burned for her, but it wasn't love. If her love was his death, they would never allow him to die.
After it was over, he whispered words of not-love into her ear while she trembled, leaf-like and frail. When he kissed her throat again, open and hungry, she hummed. It was the red-lined song, and there was only desperation in it. He pulled away and drew closer at the same time. He fluttered over her face, newly scored with angry, glowing marks.
"No," he said. "No, this is not for her."
The song indicated that it would take whichever elf it found, and he was being difficult.
"Then I submit," he said.
He fell into the underground city with stone pillars reaching out of sight to the cavernous heavens. His knees were sore from his worship, and still the song bore down on him, demanding more. The dragon in the center of things sang it without ceasing, an Elvhen chant that captured and enthralled. The blood in his veins howled in ancient harmony, no more controlled than water over stone, but there was a discord, faint and inexorable. Discord was not allowed in his new Clan at the end of the path.
Every time the song flooded his mind, he kept four bubbles of knowledge behind it, tucked in so close the dragon couldn't smell them. There was a girl. He was Tamlen. She was Lyna. Her mouth tasted of honey and home.
Eventually the dragon tired of his puzzle, and when the hordes rose to the surface in defiance, he stood with them, mindless in almost all ways. The village fell to his teeth. The travelers on the road had sticky blood that trailed behind in a rainbow of only one color. The old men with swords were weak under his fingers. Then the camp in the dark woods slaughtered his brothers, and he ran because Lyna's eyes were so sad.
She caught him on the edge of where misery would end. "I'm Tamlen," he said.
Lyna knew, but she couldn't believe. She wanted to know the whys and the wheres. He didn't answer the questions she draped across him. She was too beautiful to waste on explanations when he understood the words to use.
"I loved you," he said. "Always."
"I don't want you to die," she said.
"The song is strength without end, and I am weakness without beginning," he said. "I must leave."
"Will you stay for me?" she said. Her tears were silver and gold, but they shimmered an angry red when she spoke.
"The path only goes one way," he said. Denial of her want was deep effort. He pointed to the unshaded, truthful stars, but his hand found itself a claw before the motion ended. "Can you kill, Lyna?"
The dagger was copper and ice, and the angry red was on her hand. This was the red blood of his kin, but there was no glow in it. The melody had died in the unforgiving air.
Her knife's blood would be his if she stepped closer.
She did. "I love you, too," she said. The haze of dreamscape settled across them both, gauzy and ephemeral. Her sharp hand split him open while her soft hand cradled his cheek. She whispered his name.
When the honey sound of it reached his ears it changed to a sparrow tune, lifting him over the world and to the Beyond. He spiraled up freely, away from the song and the terrible underground city of monsters who were his Clan.
But an ever-smaller piece of him broke away as he rose. It flew back to the bosom of its master on hawk's wings. The piece embraced the dragon's melody like an anchor, keeping him tethered to the place where he could find her again. His heart would stay for her, like this, for as long as he could remember her glory. He would not remember much longer, he thought as he soared.
He knew one thing, and that thing was a girl.