SONG of EMBER

32

AGE OF MEN

🙜

Gradually the moisture began to recede. After wandering dry, dusty halls for so long (or perhaps it hadn’t been long at all, and the magic had already begun to warp his sense of time), Ember would have thought he’d be happy to linger in such a place. But the grim garden of moss had only convinced him that men were never intended to live so far underground. In ancient days it might have been a pleasant place, but now the environment was far more suited to a siren than a human.

They only encountered one path on their way out of the damp corridors which had been completely walled off by rubble, but the map—after some grumbling and squinting on Ember’s part—had provided them with an alternate route.

Now they stood at a crossroads, and Ember had spread the map upon the floor. Ky knelt beside him, peering over his shoulder, her long hair brushing his knuckles and trailing over the lower left corner of the parchment.

“What does that say?” she would ask, pointing at one of the runes, and Ember would answer as best he could. She seemed particularly interested in rooms that contained words like 'heart' or 'magic,' of which there were a few, and even inquired if they could visit them on their way.

"Too far," Ember replied quickly, shaking his head. He tapped the other side of the map. "We have to get to the Plains Gate as soon as possible."

"Why?"

He turned his head to stare at her, so close his nose almost brushed her webbed ear, but she was staring at the map.

"What do you mean, 'why'? This mountain is a death trap! Clearly!"

"But why must we be hurrying?" she hedged. “We will come to the gate soon enough.”

Ember felt a new fear growing in the pit of his stomach, and frowned at her. "Each moment we linger here is a chance for something terrible to happen."

"Hmmm."

"If you would just tell me what you're looking for," he hinted, rather darkly, "we'd have a much better chance of finding it."

She sat upright, petting her hair and pressing it against the back of her neck.

"Well?"

"You would not understand," she said nervously, her fingers twisting into her locks.

Ember knew then that whatever it was, she found it not only imprudent but uncomfortable. This revelation made her secrecy even more disturbing.

"So you can tell the door in the mountain what you're looking for, but not the one who read those runes for you?" He reached for her arm but she ducked away and sprang to her feet, moving swiftly down the hall. "You owe it to me! I came back for you, didn't I?"

Her footsteps faltered, giving Ember enough time to fold up the map and hurry after her. But no matter how he plied her, she only hummed and shrugged.

Only once did she respond to him with words, and that was when he snapped, rather thoughtlessly, "You said I was your friend!"

That must have struck a chord with Ky, for she fell silent and looked away.

"Ky?"

"No harm will come to you, Ember."

The same charmed words she had uttered on his doorstep.

He shivered, and realized that he almost believed her.

Be careful, Ember… be careful.

❧

"Hm."

A soft, small noise of surprise.

It was enough to make Ember glance up at her. "What?"

The siren was staring straight ahead. "Do you see them?"

His blood ran cold and his heartbeat slowed.

"Who?" he whispered.

Ky glided forward, pointing her elegant finger down the hall. He bounced his spear once in the palm of his hand and hurried after. It was too dark and dusky to see much, similar to the way the forest felt at twilight, but he didn't have to wonder long.

Another gilded doorway awaited them, slightly smaller than the width of the corridor, but beyond it lay the broadest hall which they had yet encountered—indeed, it was not so much a hall as an expansive room within the mountain. Pillars lined each side, with one row down the middle. Every detail had been chiseled from the mountain with inhuman precision, countless runes decorating the stone columns. A thick layer of filth covered everything, but gold and gemstones glittered here and there.

Yet what captured his attention was neither the pillars nor the carvings—but the sculptures.

Scattered far and wide across the hall, some in groups and others standing alone: flowing amber figures without any distinguishing features, each one protruding from the stone and covered in debris. Cracked and crumbling rock bulged around their bases, and deep crevices split the polished floor, glowing faintly beneath the grime. And there were hundreds of them. If he flipped the scene upside down, they would have appeared as drops of molten rock seeping through the ceiling—or golden rain falling from a darkened sky.

Ky hummed a short, breathy tune that reminded him of a burial lament he had heard as a child. The sight chilled him down to the marrow of his bones.

What happened here?

The ground buckled throughout the hall and several of the grand stone pillars had been smashed to rubble. Some powerful force had erupted far below, blasting the floor to pieces. But the sculptures were undisturbed; smooth, polished, formless yet familiar.

They descended the short, broad flight of stairs together, but Ember hesitated at the bottom as broken tiles scraped loudly underfoot. Ky drifted on through the forest of statues, a pale ghost among the looming stones.

Ember stumbled slowly around the sculptures, putting away his spear and carefully drawing the short sword instead. He felt that it was somehow more appropriate; and though his skill with it was lesser, it was without contest the more durable and stab-able armament.

"Ky," he whispered, tapping one of them with the end of his sword.

A sharp ping rang out like a tiny bell, mingling with the echoes of his voice.

But the sirena said nothing, and when he turned around he saw her slinking between the odd formations. Her black hair hid her face, sweeping the dusty floor as she moved. She paused occasionally, tilting her head as if hearkening to some sound that Ember could not hear.

He followed, wary.

The hall reeked of magic. Ember had no inward concept of magic, only what he had seen, heard, felt, and tasted—and all his senses prickled with warning. It was at once both old and ominous, an ancient happening that entranced and mystified him.

A particularly splendid figure caught his eye. The sculpture was slightly taller than he was, and he circled it for a moment. There was no voice, no hum, no whispering invitation, but there was something about it which drew him in until his hand came to rest on one of the cold, smooth curves of amber. It was dark, but he could see something darker still within the glassy substance. Curious, he smoothed his thumb across it.

Dirt pattered on the floor.

After a moment's thought, Ember held the sword aside and swept his entire hand over the polished surface, ages of dust and decay falling away beneath his fingers—revealing a perfect face beneath the stone.

Two black eyes glared out at him, wide with fury.

Ember let out an involuntary cry of surprise and stumbled backward, catching himself on another sculpture. He pointed Fishbiter at the figure for several moments before coming to his senses.

Twin fangs glittered hungrily at him from behind their glassy stronghold; a curling blue tongue, a wicked snarl, whitish tresses that flowed like water, each hair held aloft around her fearsome face. Pale skin that glittered with tiny facets of abalone hues completed the portrait. Beautiful and macabre.

They were not sculptures at all.

Heart pounding frantically, Ember turned at once and scrubbed his fist across the shorter statue he had fallen against. A masked soldier knelt in the ruined stone, perfectly encapsulated by golden rock. Droplets of blood hung suspended before his shielded face. A broken sword lay at his knees, shattered into useless slivers of metal.

Ember shifted his feet and glimpsed a few rusty shards which had been overlooked by the stone bubble and fallen between the fissures.

He swallowed hard and glanced up at the furious siren bearing down on them both, frozen forever in her rage.

"What… what are these?" he whispered, his voice failing him.

There was no answer.

A glance over his shoulder revealed an empty corridor—empty, save the statues.

"Ky!"

Panicked, Ember ran a few short steps forward, gaze flickering between the lumps of stone. The wild idea that she may have been swallowed up by the amber stone like the rest of the figures flashed through his mind, and cold sweat prickled the back of his neck.

He did mistake her for a statue at first glance.

Ky stood in the middle of the hall, nose-to-nose with a leaning figure. She had cleared most of the debris from the polished amber, and he held his breath for a moment.

Another of the river-folk.

Ember approached somewhat apprehensively. Black eyes, pale skin, fair hair. Too feminine to be a human man but too masculine to be a sirena like Ky or Sil. A hooked nose dominated his features, a visage which Ember immediately disliked and yet knew he would never forget so long as he lived: it was too striking, too abominable.

Abominable in its inhuman perfection—and in the way it commanded Ky's attention.

"It is a shame…" she murmured.

Ember shifted his focus to a shorter statue nearby, frowning at the jagged stone. Instead of a smooth surface like the rest, the head portion had been slightly chipped, dust settling into the cracks. He knelt before it, setting Fishbiter aside for a moment so that he could use both hands to clear away the grime.

"How did this happen?"

Her reply was preceded by more sorrowful humming. "Powerful magic. Many voices. Stone is twisted here."

"But…" Ember paused as he beheld the face behind the stone, distorted by the imperfections. It was a young boy, his piecemeal armor too big for his frame, pale and frightened. Both eyes were tightly closed as if he expected death at any moment and did not wish to meet it.

Ember's chest tightened as he wondered who had tried to free him from his stony grave. A grieving mother, perhaps, or a desperate father—if they had survived.

Or a hungry siren.

His stomach turned.

"But they're all trapped!" he growled at last. "What fool would doom both sides of a battle?"

"I do not know," she sighed, and he felt that all the sorrows of the forsaken battlefield were held within that single quiet breath. "But if it is a comfort to you, I do not think the one who shaped the stone survived."

"Hardly," Ember grumbled, dusting off his hands and snatching up the sword again. His skin crawled. "What a horrible thing to do."

"Hmmmm." Ky wiped a bit more dirt from the siren's face, very tenderly, and frowned up at him. Her thin eyebrows drew together. "I wonder if they are still…?"

She didn’t need to finish her thought.

The suggestion stunned him.

"Is that possible?"

She pressed her hand above the siren's cheek, wrinkling her nose in thought. "I… do not know."

They stood together beneath the towering statue, gazing and wondering. The prospect of a hundred angry sirens waking from their centuries-old sleep was not a comforting one.

"Someone already tried to free them," Ember said at last, gesturing, "and failed. Imagine what it would be like if they woke up only to suffocate in that stone? Or what if the open air… turns them to dust?"

"You know this?"

"I know nothing about magic," he mumbled. "But if we don't know how this happened—"

"It is a man."

He turned to her, struck by the solemn wonder in her words.

"What?" he asked in disbelief.

"A man makes this so… long ago. I can hear his voice in the air here."

"How?"

She trailed her fingers across the stone, staring into the eyes of the other siren. "His fingerprints are in the stone and his voice is in the air. More than that I cannot tell you. I thought at first the magic is decaying, or become twisted, but now I sense…" Her voice took on a breathless quality. "…that this is the doing of men. If this is a true thing, then the power within this mountain is great indeed."

Ember looked hard at her, but she appeared to be in earnest.

"The spell is getting louder. I can hear many more voices now."

"Maybe," he suggested uneasily, "we should leave."

She blinked at the statue. "Perhaps. But—"

A faint crumbling noise interrupted her. It was quiet, but both of them turned as one to look back toward the stairs. Nothing moved, but dirt was falling somewhere in the hall.

Ember swallowed silently and readied Fishbiter.

And then his eyes fell upon the second statue he had encountered upon first entering the hall—the kneeling warrior.

Bits of amber stone had flaked off and dusted the crumpled ground, and a strange sound—one which reminded Ember of thawing ice in the spring—brushed something deep inside his soul.

Ky's ears flickered and she glanced up at Ember.

"I—I touched it," he whispered, shaken. "All I did was touch it…"

A faint crack echoed behind him, and he turned, slack-jawed, as the stone surrounding the young boy began to shift. Dust pattered to the floor.

"Ember," she said tightly. "What have you done?"

Another soft sound came from the opposite side of the room, and then another, until they were surrounded by crackling, shattering, crumbling stone. The sirens remained entombed in amber—only the crystallized prisons of the human warriors were shifting.

Excitement and terror whirled in his mind.

They're waking up… they're all waking up…

Of course. Whoever had enchanted them must have provided for someone like himself—another man—to come and retrieve his lost comrades.

"I don't know!" Ember stepped back as more dust plinked to the floor. Fishbiter gleamed in his hand, and his grip nearly failed him. "How do I stop it? Should I—? Should we?"

"I am not understanding the nature of this spell!" Ky hissed, her bug-eyes wide and her face deathly white. "But I can assure you that they will not be pleased to see me!"

"Can't you reassure them?"

Ky began trotting toward the set of stairs leading up and out of the hall, and he followed close behind. "I can make them sleeping, but I cannot change their thoughts of me without altering their minds—and that I will not do."

"What about a temporary sleep?" he pressed, frantic. "Just something to—"

Before he could suggest anything else, Ky stopped and whirled around, gripping his arms as the air trembled around them. Her claws dug into his flesh and he froze, stunned.

"Siren song," she hissed.

"What?"

"Run."