SONG of EMBER

45

DRY BONES

🙜

"Perhaps your map was mistaken,” Ky said quietly. For a moment the moaning wind seemed to hush at her voice, but commenced again the fiercer.

Ember unfolded the weathered parchment, holding it before them as it fluttered uselessly, and blinked up at the massive archway. Bits of rubble spilled out into the hall, and further back it reached as high as the ceiling. The entire tunnel had collapsed–or, he darkly suspected, had been collapsed.

A few white bones lay crumbled near the top of the pile, and he saw at a glance that it would be useless to try to dig through: the cracked stones were too large and cumbersome, nor was there room to squeeze through the chinks.

He couldn't imagine what horror had driven the wretch to attempt such a feat, and his heart sank at the sight.

"Well," said Ember, giving the map a cursory glance. "There should be another entrance not far from here."

"Hmmh," said Ky, but that was all.

He glanced sideways at her. "Is there magic here?"

"Hasty magic," she confided. "I am already saying this much beneath the mountain, but I will say it again: the voices are old and twisted. Humans are weaving magic quickly, sirens singing quickly. There are many whispers tangled here—and all are afraid."

Troubled, Ember stuffed the map under his belt and walked on. Ky stalked after him, reaching into the pack for a pear. She let out a few gentle coughs and ate it messily as they walked, wiping the juice from her lips with her fingers and rubbing it into her hands and face. The pack itself had grown considerably lighter; both of them required sustenance, but Ky's appetite seemed more ravenous than before, and only a few unripened fruits were left. The one she had selected appeared wilted and soft, and he wondered how quickly the heat would ruin them…

Instead of voicing his thoughts or asking if Ky were well, he simply unfastened the water flask from the pack and held it out to her. Without a word, the sirena snatched it and took three long gulps.

"Keep it. I'm not thirsty," he lied.

She narrowed her brows at him, blinking in the dust, and then shook a few drops onto her bare arms. The shimmering scale pattern that lay beneath her skin was half-hidden by patchy flakes, and did not appear so lustrous as before.

Ember could see well before they reached the next waypoint on the map that there was no hope of getting in that way, either. It, too, had been forcibly collapsed.

As they walked on the wind intensified and dust began to swirl higher in the air. Ky made no mention of it, but frequently uncorked the flask to slake her thirst, grunting and muttering odd words under her breath.

Her fretful voice made his skin prickle with dread, and at last he could no longer keep silent.

"Are you well?"

"I am well," she said sharply, coughing twice more.

When he glanced over his shoulder the sirena was shaking more water onto her fingers and dampening the most delicate parts of her face, ears, and neck. Her skin had turned pinkish around her throat and at the corners of her eyes, clearly inflamed.

It galled Ember that there must be a wellspring lurking behind those crumbled halls, perhaps in one of the kitchens, and he could devise no way of reaching it. The wind picked up with every barricaded road they passed, screeching and wailing through distant corridors, and the crumbled corpses became alarmingly frequent. White dust gathered thickly around their feet and occasionally Ember would trip over hidden bones.

Ky was in the middle of a particularly violent coughing fit when she interrupted herself with a choked cry. Before he could say anything, she reached down, grasping a handful of powder and letting it sift between her fingers.

It left behind a single sharp fang.

Her gaze darted up to Ember and she let out a groan. He stared at the fang, suddenly comprehending; the persistent wind, the growing warmth of the tunnel, the collapsed corridors, the dry bones…

The tooth fell from her hand and it was instantly lost to the blowing dust.

Ember coughed and covered his mouth and nose, horrified.

"Man-magic," Ky muttered, feebly wiping the dust from her lashes. Her voice was thick and muffled, as if she were speaking around a woolen rag. "Man-magic… yes…"

My people did this.

Each of these bones had once belonged to an ill-fated siren ensnared by heat and time. A clever trap, yet dreadfully simple; the morbid practicality made Ember sick to his stomach. It was, he reasoned, a very effective way to prevent any survivors from being followed.

Ky said these were hasty spells. Perhaps there were children among those humans. Children and women. Perhaps—no, don't think of it. It'll do no good now. His thoughts twisted, circling back to the sirena in a panic. I'd have done the same for my sister… my mother…

A little hissing voice whispered beneath the winds.

And for Ky? A thousand years ago, your peoples were at war. You would have torn her apart without a thought, and she would have slain you for the treasure she sought.

He pressed a hand against his forehead, struggling to think through the ceaseless noise and his own inner storm of scattered thoughts.

"Is there any way to end this—reverse the spells? Can't you sing something to counter it?"

"Alone?" she whispered.

It was not a question, but an answer.

Ember's heart began to pound.

Ky shivered and muttered a few more words under her breath, but they were lost to the wind.

"Stop," he said firmly, hands shaking. "Be still!"

But the dust swirled around them, heedless of his command. There was no dead oracle present to grant his words power—if Ky, with all her magical prowess, could not end this, what chance had the son of a simple fisherman?

Coughing twice, Ember strode to the nearest wall and braced his hand against it, fingers splayed.

"I am a man, and I command you to be silent!"

The winds whispered on.

"Be still!" he shouted again, pressing his hand into the wall until his fingers ached. "Stop, please!"

"It is no use, Ember," Ky hissed, in a tone that he had never heard before.

The sirena bowed under the wind, long arms wrapped around her ribs, head low. Her hair appeared more grey than black, streaked with the white powder, wispy ends tangling in the hot breeze.

"We'll turn around," he said frantically, catching her arm. "Go back to the garden!"

"Too far." Ky shook her head. "I should become a husk."

Her words were frighteningly forthright.

"Then we keep going. We'll get out of this somehow—we brought water with us."

Ky held out the flask, finally looking up at him. Her face twisted, lips curving downward, like a child close to tears. "Empty…"

He refastened it to his pack and fished out the last two pears.

"Eat these," he offered briskly, taking a few bites out of one to quench his thirst and stave off hunger a while longer.

She snatched the wilting fruit from his hands and Ember trotted ahead.

No footsteps scuffled behind him.

He hesitated, glancing back, and saw Ky standing in the middle of the dusty road with a pear in each hand. She stared down at the fruit, utterly still.

"Ky, come on!" he called, breathless.

Her arms trembled and her fingers curled, juice squeezing out beneath her claws. The blowing dust smothered the fruit, clinging to the ripe pears as it clung to Ky's sticky skin.

"Ky—"

With an awful squelch, the pears burst in Ky's hands.

Juice pattered on the stone floor, evaporating in an instant, and she let out a strangled howl. Ember threw his hands over his ears, crying out in fear, but before he could shout at her she had already sprinted the distance between them.

"Ember—please!" she croaked, snatching his shirt and tugging him down to her level. The scent of fermenting flower petals overwhelmed him, and he was afflicted by a singular horror at the urgency in her voice. "So close—so close—"

He coughed, wrapping his hands around her wrists as she gaped up at him, fangs bared, eyes squinched shut.

"What?" he shouted, leaning down to shelter her from the whirling dust. "What are you saying?"

A shudder ran through her from head to toe and she let out a rasping, throaty cough. It was a terrible sound, like a frail old woman upon eternity's doorstep.

"No! I cannot—ah—I cannot die!" Ky squawked, yanking so hard on his shirt that a few threads popped loose around his collar. "Not now—ahh, Ember—"

She babbled an otherworldly dirge of human and siren words, most of which turned to nonsense in his ears. Certain notes of the siren speech gripped his attention, however, for they—in their inherent power—required no translation: fear, loss, and sorrow.

"What!" he cried a second time, heart pounding in his ears, terrified that she would wither away right in front of him and crushed beneath the utter helplessness of it.

She let out a smothered sob and pounded his ribs with bruising force. The first blow was so forceful that he stumbled backward. Her powerful lamentation set his nerves afire with fear and the stinging dust plagued his eyes so that he could hardly see.

"Shut up!" Ember shouted, hacking into his sleeve. "Just shut up—I can't hear myself think!"

Her fingers opened, and Ky released him with a short, faint cough.

When he had expelled most of the dust from his lungs and his eyes were watering enough to see again, she stared listlessly through him, bits of dusty hair clinging to the corners of her gaping mouth while the rest of it whipped about her face in a frenzy.

Winded, Ember fell to his knees on the brittle stone floor and fumbled for the map, struggling to keep his shirt over his nose and open it with one hand. When that didn't work, he threw all caution to the wailing winds and flattened it against the stone with both hands, bending down and squinting to see the inked runes.

He needed guidance.

Ky needed hope.

Enough to keep going—enough to live on.

The dust seeped into his lungs and eyes, forcing him to blink rapidly, but he held in his coughing fit as long as he could and traced the tunnel with one finger. He was reasonably sure that all other side-trails were blocked, but this thoroughfare did branch into another series of smaller rooms.

Maker grant us breath!

A few dark lines caught his attention amidst the distant corridors—not the word for water, but a word rather like water—and he yanked the map up, holding that section as close to his face as he could. Frustrated, he sounded out the runes in between coughs.

It read:

SALT BATHS

"Ky!"

Ember folded the tattered map, struggling against the wind, and shoved it back under his belt.

"Ky, I know where we have to go!"

He glanced up, and any moisture that remained in his mouth dried up in an instant: she was gone. Movement danced in the corner of his eye, but it was only a ghost of blowing dust…

The hall was empty.

Ember, you fool.

Breathless, he hefted the leather straps of the pack and ran headlong into the wind, shielding his face with one hand. He had half a mind to arm himself for fear of what lay beyond, but he couldn't possibly draw Fishbiter and make headway—at the very best it would still slow him down, and at worst the sword would be both unwieldy and useless.

He had to catch Ky quickly, lest she encounter another trap without him. Surely the hostile atmosphere would slow her progress.

As he ran, the wind grew more savage, and twice he was cut by something that flew past him too quickly to comprehend it—shards of bone or rock, he thought. The walls were pitted by flying debris and the remnants of dead sirens crunched beneath his shoes. Small wind-chipped fingerbones rolled past him, others lodged in the rubble heaps from the barricaded corridors, rattling endlessly against the shattered rock.

A dreamlike quality shadowed the hall even in the midst of the chaos, for all reason assured him that this could not be real, even as he was pelted by granules of broken stone and another cut lanced his forehead. He drew a hand across his face, and found his fingers had gone too numb to feel it.

But it wasn't a nightmare.

The blowing dust in his eyes was real, the grit between his teeth was real, the red tint of blood on his hand was real, and each time he coughed it pained him so badly that he thought his ribs should break.

Nevertheless, he briefly entertained the fantasy of awakening beneath the golden tree, with Ky there beside him. She would apologize for letting him drift into darker dreams without her siren song to light the way, and all would be right with the world again.

That tranquil existence was lost to him forever.

Voices of the wind tricked Ember's ears, howling and hooting and shrieking all around him, and at times he did lay a hand on the swordhilt, convinced that an army of ghostly sirens was gathering to strike him down in vengeance. These imaginations, together with the heat and unbearable wind, forbade him from resting; he feared that if he did, he would find no trace of her…

Only more dry bones tap-tap-tapping on the walls, stripped of their flesh and forever entombed in a place which—to a doomed siren—must be as crushingly horrible as the deepest ocean depths to mortal men.