SONG of EMBER

28

REGRETS

🙜

The sword and pack weighed heavily on Ember’s shoulders as he shut the oaken door with a gentle thud. Ky stood aside, shoulders hunched with an unusual meekness—or weakness—that tugged at his heart. He wondered how much blood she had lost. His physical burden was no less ponderous than that of Ky’s presence and the unanswered question he would have to ask again, soon, if he was to restore any peace of mind where the sirena was concerned.

But above all he was conscious of the thin, pale lines on her face… like tear tracks. All that was left of his foolish mistake. He wondered how long it would take them to fade. Would they ever?

He rolled his shoulders, feeling his own newly healed muscles stretch and tighten. She offered a faint smile, the twin scars crinkling around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and he glanced away quickly, searching for a distraction and finding nothing that hadn’t been there when he first entered the maze of dwellings.

Although…

Ember shivered.

There was a draft.

That was new; it had always been cool under the mountain, but this was different—an icy coldness which wafted down the hall at regular intervals like the breath of a frosty giant. Whatever its source, it was not the direction in which they were bound, and it made him even more anxious to leave.

Without another word, Ember set off down the row of open doorways and Ky gingerly stalked after him. He kept two armlengths between himself and the sirena, and carried his spear between them as well, swinging it as he walked.

Thus they continued in much the same way they had ascended the Sister’s Footstool. The only marked difference was the pervasive silence: Ky did not hum at all, but cast quick, nervous glances into the darkest corners, and Ember was biding his time, rephrasing that singular burning question in his mind over and over until he was sure she could not help but give him an honest answer.

Her familiar scent lured him into a strange calm, which he found even more unsettling than the terror he had experienced while approaching the little door, not knowing what awaited him behind it; his only real comfort was the spare crystal hidden under his belt—and the sword slung across his back.

It was short, able to be drawn not elegantly but with little difficulty from that position after he’d made several tries at it. It had struck him at the time as a pleasing thing to have, and having no fangs or claws himself he thought “Fishbiter” a clever name for a clever weapon, but now it seemed an almost arcane thing to be carrying in Ky’s presence.

Until he had desperate need of it, in the scabbard it would stay.

“What do the runes say?”

He stumbled, missing a stride, before remembering what she meant: “Back there, in the cavern? You mean that oak branch?”

“Yes.”

He rolled his eyes back in his head, grateful for the distraction. “Contentment, I think.”

She padded silently across the hall for a moment.

“I am not knowing that word.” Another moment passed before she ventured, “It is… pleased, yes?”

Ember considered it. “I suppose it means… to be happy with who you are. And where you are, and what you have, even if you’re nobody at all, and you’ve no home nor any belongings to speak of.”

“Ah.” Her voice lilted downward, like a weary bird. She hopped once to match their strides and sidled closer, black hair swaying about her face. Then she looked up at him again, eyes glimmering green around the edges in the light of the stone. “As you were, in your nest.”

An old memory resurfaced and he broke away from her stare with an inward wince, bouncing his spear in his hand. He felt dishonest, but was compelled to nod absently.

Have I ever been content?

Maybe once, long ago, when his little family lived together. After his sister had married off, the cabin had lost some of its charm.

Tis not the hearth which makes a home, Isabel had confided.

It had been an early spring morning, and they stood together in the chilly dew beside a freshly dug grave which lay in wait for his mother’s lifeless body. She had been a source of hard-edged comfort to Ember; her youthful words were honest, and colder for it, but never cross or bitter.

It’s the folk who dwell within those walls. They are the ones who make your hearth a happy place to be. Remember that, Ember; you can choose your family, now. Choose wisely.

“Yes… as I was.” He left it at that, lost in the memories of his early childhood.

As he thought of his sister, his focus drifted to the vision the well had offered him, and the recent nightmare which still seemed all too real. He dared not inquire about the unfortunate Bren or Ky's intentions toward him, but he seized upon what seemed a canny way to draw her out of her shell again, and perhaps arrive at an understanding of whether he had indeed encountered the real Sil in his waking nightmare.

“I lived with my sister, until she went away. Do you have a sister?”

She looked at him sharply and stopped walking, her neck ridged and her hands deceptively soft.

Ember stopped as well. Fishbiter grew heavier, it seemed, and the leather strap dug into his shoulder. He cleared his throat and adjusted the belt, shifting his weight to the other foot. He had been too forward, too obvious.

Did she know what he had seen?

How could she?

She couldn’t.

But perhaps she suspected something, or perhaps the mere thought of her sister was enough to elicit such a reaction.

Fool!

“What for do you ask me this?” she demanded, plucking at a loose thread on her jerkin. Her lower left eyelid twitched up slightly.

“...nothing, really. My sister left a long time ago; married some cadger from Ridgefell.” He fumbled for words. “I just wondered…”

Ky stared at him like that for several moments more before resuming her slinking stride. “Yes. I have a sister.”

Letting out the breath he had been holding, Ember decided it was safe to pursue the topic a bit further. “Does she look like you?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” He knew that already, but he didn’t want to divulge anything he had seen; it gave him a way to judge how honest her answers were. “What’s her name?”

“Why are you wanting to know these things?” hedged Ky, her voice creeping closer to that sulking whine he had heard in the well’s vision. “What are they worth to you?”

Ember shrugged. He had no wish to torment her, but he was resolved to get the information he wanted one way or another, and she refused to answer him directly. “Unless you’d rather discuss why, exactly, you wanted me to open that door in the mountain—”

“Silveli.”

“Kyveli and Silveli?”

“Yes… Veli is our clan name.” Ky seemed more comfortable with this new line of conversation. "Silveli is always wanting more. More pretty things, more magic. She is wanting to become the leader of our clan... and when I see her last, she is ascending to the circle of seven."

Ember fell silent; there was a certain wistfulness to Ky's voice which caught him off guard. "And do you think she will become the leader of your—clan, someday?"

"If she wishes it." Ky chewed the inside of her cheek. "Whatever she wishes for... it is always hers, in the end."

“What does Veli mean?” he asked more softly.

“Fish.”

“That’s your clan name?” Ember hid a smile, but it faded quickly as he recalled the runes upon the blade he carried. “Fish?”

“Yes.” She ducked her head. “Ky means… to be little.”

He couldn’t help a short laugh. “Little fish! And Sil, then?”

Ky mulled that over for several moments, and then pointed at Ember’s shoulder. He frowned, bewildered, until she reached up and tapped the sword hilt with a claw. A clear, pleasant tink echoed off the shattered walls.

“It is like that,” she said cryptically.

“...silver?” Ember guessed, unsure.

A thoughtful hum.

“Shiny,” she amended. “Beautiful. Like sunlight on water.”

Ember remembered very vividly just how ‘pleasant’ Sil’s aspect—and how terrifyingly hideous her demeanor—and fought off a shudder. “You’re beautiful,” he protested awkwardly. He was uncertain how else to disagree with the misfit descriptor of a fiend which he had personally encountered, and despised.

Ky looked away, but he saw her visibly perk up, her flitting hands preening stray locks of hair. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

He let the echoes drift for several minutes, pleased with himself for lightening the mood and wondering what he could say that would coax a bit more information from the sirena. Before he could decide what, exactly, that might be, he glimpsed a sudden blur out of the corner of his eye.

Ky murmured something and Ember readied the spear.

"Did you see…"

Flash.

A wisp of darkness that flitted from one pillar to the next.

Ember's mouth dried out and he fumblingly removed the stone-light from his belt, passing it off to the sirena with shaking fingers. She whispered to it and it flared brightly, lighting up another five paces of hallway. Echoes and whispers permeated the entire mountain, but this was something new.

Flash.

Again—just a blur in the darkness.

And a faint snuffling, snorting sound, like a pig hunting for truffles or a watchdog's baleful snore.

"What is that?" Ember whispered, shaken.

Ky shook her head.

It was all the answer he needed to begrudgingly sling his familiar spear over his shoulder and draw the ancient sword. It came loose with a rasp and a short, ungainly tug, and he clenched it in his right hand with a grim swallow.

The runes flickered at his touch.

Her wide eyes glinted at the weapon, and then darted to Ember's face, but although a strained, pale hollowness touched her features she made no remark.

The snuffling faded away soon after, leaving them alone with the dripping echoes until at last Ember concluded that whatever it was had gone; but once they had settled down to rest, Ember with the fishing spear across his knees and Ky crouched several paces away, he thought he heard a strange whistling from far off—not quite a voice, though possibly lifted in song. The echoes were too distorted to understand. Against his will they lulled him into a state that resembled peace, and his grasp loosened on the sword…

But Ky never relaxed. She grew more and more agitated with every soft reverberation, and when at last he settled down against the wall to rest, she remained crouched like a coiled snake ready to strike at the slightest provocation.

His last coherent thought was to wonder if sirens ever slept.

❧

Ember awoke from feverish nightmares to a dry mouth and splitting headache. He was left with only vague impressions of misty trees, clambering up a forested hillside, and the fading silhouette of a womanly figure dripping with river water, but try as he might he could not remember them exactly—they were too hazy. He felt as he were recalling several dreams muddled into one.

Ky had shifted during his repose to kneel at the foot of a pillar, her head resting against the smooth stone and her eyes roving aimlessly across the hall. When he shifted, she started and glanced up at him.

"Hear something?" he asked with a wince, licking his cracked lips.

Her ears flickered. "Many things."

"That thing we saw last night?"

"No… It has not returned. Are you rested?"

Ember shrugged one shoulder, tilting his head back and forth and listening to the bones in his neck pop.

"Yes," he said after a moment, scrubbing dried sweat from his forehead. "Are you?"

She flicked her fingers, one ear twitching in annoyance.

He dug into his pack, looking for the last of the oracle's fruit.

Ky hummed nervously.

His hand encountered nothing but empty leather and a bundle of dried herbs he had ransacked from one of the kitchens—the only edibles which had not already been pilfered, and he had taken only those plants he recognized from his garden and the surrounding woodlands. Thyme, basil, mint, chamomile, borage, and the like.

She glanced at an open doorway, drawing her blue tongue once across her lips.

"Did you eat it?"

No reply.

"Ky," he mumbled, amused in spite of himself. "If you ate it, you ate it. From now on, though, we share everything. Yes?"

She shifted her stare to the bundle of herbs in his hands, and a pained hunger briefly sharpened her features. Ember's stomach sank. Ky, as he had witnessed, was a ravenous creature, always on the brink of starvation if her appetite was to be believed.

It's possible that she needs more food than I do.

He knew approximately how long he could forgo eating with few ill effects, but his winter fasting had usually been spent sitting huddled in a corner of the bed nook with a blunt needle and thread while cursing and muttering over some new hole he had worn in his trousers, or even lying flat on his back and only stirring to fetch water from the icy river if he had gone several days without sustenance. Never had he attempted walking from sunup till sundown on an empty stomach with only a few short naps to replenish his energy.

Sighing, he separated the dried herbs into two bunches and offered one to the sirena, keeping the hairy borage leaves and chamomile for himself: the chamomile would calm his nerves, and the village grandmothers insisted that borage gave one courage. Ember had once scoffed at the idea, but it would certainly do him no harm.

Ky snatched up the herbs without hesitation and crammed them into her mouth. Ember handed her the flask, praying she would not drink it all, but it was still half full when she handed it back.

He took a grateful swig. "Shall we go?"

The sirena swallowed and licked her lips once more.

"We shall."