SONG of EMBER

16

THE DOOR

PART II

🙜

Ky lifted her chin, somehow managing to look down her nose at him. "I shall not."

He stared back, perturbed. "You think it's all my fault?"

"I did not say that."

"Well, it's either that or you're hiding something."

"This door has no right to a siren's secrets," Ky said evasively, glowering at him. "And I will not be made to play the fool."

"Then you played me for one," he snapped, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could reflect on the wisdom of speaking them at all. "I invited you into my nest, and now it's a heap of smoldering ashes. I climbed all the way up this Breathless mountain with you! Now I've read your runes at the top of this stupid door, just as you asked. What more do you want?"

Ky opened her mouth, nostrils flaring, and he caught the faintest glimmer of her fangs—just as another twig snapped on the opposite side of the clearing.

They both recited their lines again at the same time, Ember stumbling over the words in his haste, but nothing happened.

Ky pressed her hand against the stone, frantically searching the trailing vines and weathered runes as if they could provide her with an answer that had somehow eluded Ember.

"Open!" she demanded.

She then repeated the word—Ember assumed—in her own tongue.

Still nothing.

Crack.

Ky crouched, facing the trees and hills that rose up to their left. Ember stepped past her, glaring at the written proclamation. Had he misread it after all?

"Speak the truth, all you who come in peace, for none shall pass this door with malintent."

It sounds simple enough.

He reached out to touch the stone.

A catlike yowl broke his concentration and jolted the words from his head. Ky Veli answered the cry with an enraged owlish screech of her own and Ember ducked away from the awful clamor, putting a hand against the door to steady himself. It passed through with only a faint resistance, as if the mountain were made of thickened water.

"Ky!" he shouted—and before he could dwell on the unlikeliness of what he was about to do, he took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and ran right through the door.

When he opened them again, it was to a flood of pale sunlight spilling over roughly hewn stone and a flat, gritty cavern floor. Light glittered off tiny mineral deposits in the rock. Something crunched underfoot, and when he glanced down he realized with horror what he stood upon.

"Ahh—!"

He slid awkwardly to one side, kicking a fractured jawbone from the mound.

Loose teeth scattered and rolled across the floor.

"Ky!"

Ember found a spot of solid ground amid the bones and looked back to see the siren staring at him, her lips parted in silent surprise. He reached out a hand, but scraped his knuckles on what appeared to be thin air. Swearing, he shook out his fingers and pressed his other hand cautiously against the invisible barrier.

He shoved, but nothing happened.

It also became clear that Ky was not looking at him, but rather through him—and when her gaze began to wander the door he knew she could not see into the cavern.

"Ky, can you hear me?"

"Ember," she whispered, her buggish eyes widening. “Where are you gone?”

"Just run through the stone! The door is open!" He gave the unseen stone another shove. The idea of being trapped alone in a cavern full of corpses was more terrifying than being trapped in a cavern with the sirena. "I can't get back out, but you can get in.”

She pressed her hand against the wall a hair's breadth away from his, but was met with another barrier.

Her brow furrowed.

Before either of them could remark on it, a low hiss came from beyond the trees, and then a gentle laugh. It reminded him of a brook tumbling over stones in the spring, though there was a bitter iciness about it that made his flesh crawl… It was not a cold laugh, but he would have described it as lacking warmth: it was the absence of anything good or mirthful that made it so disturbing.

And he knew without a doubt that he would rather face a thousand goblins from his childhood nightmares than the creature which stood laughing at the stoop of the mountain's door.

Ky pounded her fist against the stone, and then scratched at it—a shrill sound which gave him an instant headache.

"Try saying it again!"

"My name is Ky Veli and I come in peace to seek the lost kingdom of men and all the treasures within!" She smacked her palm against the door but it remained a solid barrier. "Open! I beseech you, open!"

Nothing.

"Ky," Ember said lowly, creeping panic overwhelming him.

"It is the truth!" she shouted, her face paling more than Ember had even thought possible; she was as white as the bones under his feet. "I come seeking the lost kingdom of men!"

The bushes behind the hill rustled, as if something were quickly running up on the clearing. The lowest branches of the trees swayed gently, and Ember saw a pale blur.

Ky mumbled something in the siren tongue, and then repeated it more loudly, but again—nothing happened.

"Those runes are human runes," he shouted. "Say it again in human words!"

"My name is Kyveli…"

Ky trailed off, glancing over her shoulder.

A clawed hand dug into the turf at the top of the hill, pale and bony, and that wretched laughter echoed through the clearing. A pale shadow leaped into view, slender and quick and cloaked in a tangled haze of red—but as it did Ky leaned close to the door, her eyes downcast, and whispered something too low for Ember to hear.

She fell forward and Ember reached out to catch her as she stumbled over the pile of bones.

With an inhuman shriek, the creature leaped across the clearing and dove for the entrance, but Ember was already running down the hall with Ky Veli's hand clutched tightly in his. He did not stop until it was too dark to see where they were going and the entrance was only a pinpoint of light behind them.

When at last he glanced over his shoulder, he could just see the skulking form of their pursuer pacing back and forth before the door, still trying to find a way inside…

He knew, somehow, that this was the creature which had so cunningly lulled him away from the path, and shuddered to think what might have happened had Ky not followed him.

When he glanced back, he could no longer see the sirena.

She had let go of his hand, and he was suddenly stricken with an unreasonable panic that they would lose each other in the dark.

"Ky?"

A very faint glow alerted him to her location and he took a slow step in that direction, feeling before him with both hands. Soft shadow-fingers appeared, cradling a small round object; she had withdrawn the stone from her jerkin and was holding it in both hands. As she brought it closer to her face, her features slowly appeared as if from a dark and heavy mist.

In the odd light, she looked more inhuman than ever.

Ky blew gently onto the stone, sweeping her clawed thumbs across its glossy amber surface, and the glow intensified with a little flicker. She continued her ministrations, like a woman kneeling on a hearth trying to rekindle the coals from a burned-out fire…

They were standing in a very large hall, with a ceiling so high that it remained lost to shadows, and he could not tell how far it went. Corpses littered the ground beneath their feet, though fewer than there had been near the door. The golden tendrils of light swirled more quickly, as if stirred by her breath, and when the stone was shining as brightly as a little sun in her palms, they both glanced down at the ancient carnage.

The stone floor was stained a dark, ruddy color in places, and when Ember scraped the ground with his shoe a bit of dried blood flaked away. There were too many dead to count, and most appeared to be lying with their faces toward the door.

They were trying to get out.

It made no sense that such a door would be designed to more effectively keep people in than out—unless it had been twisted into some sort of trap.

"I wonder what killed them," he murmured, startled by the tremendous echoes that rolled around the corridor.

Suddenly it was not so pleasant to imagine these people were his ancestors; tales of war and wasted youth around a campfire stirred up far different emotions, he decided, than to see the remnants of a battle—however ancient—with one's own eyes.

Ky sniffed. Even that small sound rang out like a bell in the great hall. "I should not think that whatever manner of beast destroyed them is still alive after all these hundred years." Her cool logic comforted him somewhat, cleansing most of the fear from his soul. "Besides, what does a siren have to fear?"

"Then we go on."

"Yes." She calmly held the stone out to him. "If all these men could not escape, what hope have we?"

A bit of dust settled in her hair, and he glanced up at the invisible ceiling. So she, too, thought the door was a trap.

"A fair point."

He also had no desire to confront the creature lying in wait at the door, something neither of them chose to mention.

Ember held the amber stone as far above his head as he could manage, squinting up at the darkness. He thought he could make out the fraying threads of some sort of tapestry, but it was difficult to see much of anything so high above them. Ky had coaxed a fair amount of light from the stone, a bit more than a very good lantern, but it was not as bright as natural sunlight.

A shifting echo whispered before them, far away, and Ember held his breath for a moment, listening. Ky brushed some of the powdery debris from her hair and held out a finger.

"Dust," she said simply.

Ember swallowed and nodded, trying not to appear as unsettled as he felt. He knelt beside several mangled skeletons and held the amber stone as close as he could, examining the bones from all angles.

They had indeed been torn apart by something—perhaps not the towering, ravenous beast that Ember had at first imagined, but something vicious nonetheless. These bones were piled up rather strangely, and most of them had been cracked or broken. He spotted a few that seemed to be identical, including several smashed skulls. It reminded him of the little carnivorous stashes he'd found in various dens and nests around the valley.

Holding his breath, Ember pinched one of the rib bones in two fingers and held it up to the light.

Tooth marks.

He dropped it with a clatter, scrubbing his hands on his trousers, and glanced at Ky.

She had knelt across the hall and was turning a skull over in her hands, exploring its facets with her pale fingers. When he cast the light in her direction he noticed that the row of teeth included a pair of glimmering fangs.

Their eyes met.

She smoothed her palm over the skull and set it down gently, looking up at Ember all the while. They stared at one another in the dusky light of the stone for many minutes in near-perfect silence, disturbed only by the gentle echo of dripping water or falling dust from distant, winding halls. She crouched, a pale and ghastly figure among the bones. It was only with an extreme effort of will that he did not aim his fishing spear in her direction, or snatch his knife from his belt.

Instead, he slowly rose, holding out the stone-light and continuing to make his way through the corridor of dry bones.

The patter of bare feet soon caught up to him, but he made no effort to walk in step with her and she remained slightly behind. Ember glanced over his shoulder, and two black eyes gleamed in the shadows. He forced a tense smile and she smiled thinly in return, her fangs hidden behind pale lips.

He turned back to the endless corridor, gripping the stone-light in his hand.

The amber glow sputtered beneath his fingers, as if strangled by his grasp, and he quickly loosened his hold. He blew on it once, hoping it would flare up again, but it remained a dim flicker in his palms.

Whatever magic Ky Veli possessed, Ember son of Jarel most assuredly did not.