SONG of EMBER

37

REFUGE

PART II

🙜

False fish!

Snail-Skin!

Tale-teller!

Ky hummed more loudly, muffling the accusations. They had not troubled her since her time apart from Ember—other songs had taken their place, of rock and stone and heart and bone and enchanted human treasures and water flowing underfoot—but the voice of her own conscience chided her.

Ever since her words with Ember.

She had not used so many words as, perhaps, she should have, and yet he seemed satisfied—for now. Therefore, she would continue to hoard them as long as she might, offering a drop here and there rather than the whole drink at once.

It might be too much for him.

It might drown him.

But this was not the first of her concerns, for Ky was burdened by the uncanny suspicion that they were being followed. A suspicion she had harbored since Ember had first come to find her, and of which she had become convinced only recently.

This watcher was much different from the presence of the Lonely Siren, whose scent and song yet haunted her, nor any thing of flesh and blood…

A flicker of starlight, breaking through the shadows. A faint ripple in the pools of forgotten spells–not a living song so much as the broken reverberations of a song. And sometimes a whispered word or two–human words–too soft to understand.

If an enchantment, it was unlike any which she had yet encountered, and what she did not understand could not be warded against. She could no longer sense its echo, but she wondered if it were watching them from afar…

Ky shivered and hissed, too softly for Ember to hear.

He did, however, notice that she had stopped humming and turned his head. She tossed her hair and gave him her most charming smile, watching him turn that pleasing shade of pink. She had begun to crave that soft look, that glimmer in his eyes. He seemed more her Ember than ever before… and she liked it.

He had pursued her, returned for her.

Been wounded by her, killed in her interests.

For once, Sil had been mistaken: there was surely a deep, deep magic yet lingering in humankind, and her Ember would surely prove it.

"Is anything the matter?" he asked, smiling ruefully back and pulling his hand free to scratch at his neck.

Is anything the matter…?

Ky chewed the inside of her cheek.

Yes, many things.

But none she wished to speak of, at present.

"The stone beneath us is singing much more loudly," Ky informed him instead, working a knot out of her hair with her fingers and enjoying the scent that his hands had left behind: salty sweat and linen and leather, and that peculiar fragrance which only humans possessed. She stamped her foot on the floor, directly over one of the glowing patches—they had reappeared not long after they left the winding hall, and this time lay much closer to the surface.

"Is it?" he murmured, pausing to look at the floor and then the glowing walls. "How so?"

"I am not sure… but it is more alive than other stone."

"Magic?"

"It is a wild magic, yes."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Wild magic."

"Magic that is," she tried again. "Not magic that is made to be."

"I think I see: it's the difference between Isabel’s herb garden, and that bunch of knitbone we found growing in the Sister’s Footstool."

"How far until the tree?" she asked, clasping her hands behind her back.

Ember obligingly pulled out the map, shaking it open and holding it at arms length from his face. He squinted, but there was no need for the stone-light: the hall had grown brighter.

"It might be another stone tree," he said doubtfully. "That symbol looks too big to be truthful, but it shouldn't take us more than… a short while of walking."

His brows dipped as he said short while, and she wondered if he was being entirely truthful. When he glanced at her she could see the worry in his eyes. Her own hunger was a dark shadow in her mind—a void, she knew, that would slowly spread until it began to consume all other voices, as it always did and always would. But she was forever hungry, and had been hungrier and lived.

"Come, then," she murmured, taking his hand.

Snail-skin…

Ky hummed.

❧

The further they walked, the more brilliant the light became.

It was a soft shift, like the brightening of a starry sky before the sun had risen, but it stirred something awake in Ember. Something he had half-forgotten ever since leaving the Oracle's Sanctuary; a longing for the open air, for fields and rivers and woodlands.

It felt as if they had entered a sacred place, a secret deep in the mountain, and Ember took care to tread lightly. Even Ky eventually stopped her humming again—and that's when he noticed the trembling in the air. He remarked on it, and she decided with some surprise that he must be hearing the stone's song. It wasn't so much a sound as the idea of a sound, like the lingering vibration after a loud echo. But an echo was the dying away of a noise, and this felt like the beginning of something, thriving and thrumming under the ground.

The stone glowed so brightly that Ember had to squint his eyes when Ky let out a startled cry and gripped his hand excitedly. Before he could ask any questions, she bounced once and started to run, pulling him along.

He needed no siren song to lend him strength, for the music in the stone refreshed him and his own anticipation of what might be to come gave him an invigorating rush.

Intense light flooded the hall.

He tripped and Ky let go of his hand, running as fast as she could. Ember staggered after her, winded and starving and desperate for the touch of the sun. The scent of fragrant leaves and summer harvests beckoned him onward.

A double door hung slightly open, a grand tree carved in bas relief on the ordinary stone. It was tall and thick, and heavy enough to crush them if it fell. As they drew nearer he could see scraggly branches reaching through the entrance.

Ky reached it first and ducked into the foliage, disappearing.

"Ky, wait!"

Ember panted, stumbling the last five steps to the bushes and shouldering his way in after her. Twigs scratched at his face and yanked on his curls, and he snapped several branches in his haste.

He glimpsed her pale form flashing in front of him, and brushed aside a few strands of her hair that had been snagged by the bush.

The light grew stronger still, and he blinked rapidly as his eyes adjusted.

Ky pulled away.

He reached out blindly…

And then she dropped out of view altogether, lost to the tangled thickets underfoot. He tripped over something soft and unyielding, but he was already moving too fast to keep himself from pitching forward.

Shoving the foliage aside with a surprised yell, Ember collapsed with a splash in shallow water.

"Aaow," he groaned, pushing himself up on his elbows and brushing tiny pebbles from his palms.

The siren patted her fingers in the water with a delighted cry, but Ember's attention had already turned to the bushes that lay just across the stream: they were loaded with giant purple berries, branches sagging under the weight.

"Food!" cried Ember.

Ky shouted a word in her own language, which sounded much the same.

They both splashed through the water and threw themselves down before the overgrown bushes, grabbing fistfuls of the purple clusters and shoving them heedlessly into their mouths.

The berries burst easily between his teeth, and he set about picking them and eating them as fast as he possibly could, ignoring the juice that dribbled down his chin. Flavors akin to blackberry and cherry and rich plum wine mingled on his tongue. He had never tasted anything so pure and so nourishing in his entire life. Ember was so hungry he hardly cared if they were poison, for at least he would die satisfied.

He laughed out loud, turning his gaze to the heavens in thanks—

And froze.

Tangled branches formed a roof over their heads, dark woods and light woods intertwined from an orchard of overgrown bushes and trees, but the light that filtered through was sharp and white and tinged with hues of amber and gold.

A hauntingly familiar sight.

Ember stared a moment longer, and then returned his attention to the berry bush. His stomach was aching to be filled; everything else could wait.

He forced himself to eat more slowly, wary of the cramps that often plagued him when food was scarce, but the berries were kind and all was well. He ate until his fingers were sticky with juice and his mouth was full of sugary sweetness and at last he could bring himself to eat no longer. When he was finished, he emptied the flask before refilling it in the stream. The water was surprisingly pleasing to the touch—neither too warm nor too cold—and he was so full and so strangely content with his lot in life, that for a few moments he simply rested upon the bank and watched it flow.

The twisted branches and scattered leaves above him created a striking latticework of shadows on the shallow stream, and pinpoints of brilliant light glimmered off the ripples here and there.

He looked up again, squinting.

Sunlight.

It had to be.

The unmistakable sound of smacking lips caught his attention, and he turned to see Ky crouched under a nearby bush. She was busily licking the juice from her fingers and claws.

"Ky?" He spoke in a whisper without knowing why. The garden seemed strangely alive, and he shivered at the thought of angering an ancient place steeped in so much magic. "Let's go further in. I want to know where that light is coming from."

She muttered a few words in the siren tongue, clearly distracted, and plucked another berry from the bush.

"Ky!"

"Hmh."

He knew he should wait for her to finish before wandering off, but the light was too intriguing, and she seemed in no hurry to accompany him.

If I encounter anything dangerous, I'll turn back right away, he thought, and it seemed to him a reasonable compromise.

The garden felt safe—almost as safe as the oracle's sanctuary—but he knew better than to bumble ahead without taking any precautions. Everything here had a wild, slightly feral appearance.

Getting to his feet, Ember drew Fishbiter with a metallic rasp (a sound which he now found very pleasing) and pushed past the initial web of branches, hacking his way deeper into the orchard. The sword glimmered dimly in the shadows, and every now and then he paused to be sure it was not damaged; whoever had enchanted the blade must have taken great care, or it would not have been in such good condition to begin with. Regardless, it pained him to use the weapon as a common tool.

Ember had passed too many of the twisted trees and tangled shrubs to count when a sunny glow broke through the leaves directly in front of him. With a final shove, he snapped a few weak branches and staggered out of the orchard, throwing an arm across his eyes to shield himself from the dazzling light.

Once his cave-dimmed eyes had recovered enough to peer upward, he realized that the radiance came not from the sun—but from a tree.

A giant tree, one so magnificently tall and girthy that Ember knew at a glance it would have taken him nearly a full minute to walk around the bole of it. It towered proudly in the center of the overgrown garden, ascending to such a height that Ember had to crane his neck to see it. Each bough was laden with what appeared to be liquid crystal, and the golden syrup glowed from within, each drop a glittering jewel fit for a king. When he shaded his eyes, he could distinguish a few faint swirls of wood beneath the thinnest layers of sap.

A secondary light source streamed from above: distant sunshine peering through a hole at the top of the domed cave. The light was faint, but refracted by broad green leaves. The branches appeared to be swaying slightly near the uppermost reaches of the cavern, but it might have been his imagination or his limited sight.

"Maker’s breath," Ember muttered.

As he spoke, he shivered, overwhelmed by the ponderous magic of the tree. It was, he thought, a good magic—though far beyond his ken. In its presence, he understood how very young he was. This entity had endured for centuries, and for centuries it would remain. The feeling of inadequacy and naivete slowly faded as he stared into its golden depths…

At last, he felt wiser simply for having seen it, and knowing it existed.