SONG of EMBER

50

A CROWN OF WEEPING STARS

🙜

The sleeping city of Northall—which he had at first glimpsed in ink and runes upon the tattered map—made all the dusty splendor which they passed before it fade from Ember’s mind like a noonday mist.

The polished floors were stained in mottled hues of blue and green, and he had to touch with a finger to assure himself it was indeed stone and not a still river of translucent glass. Intricate murals spanned the walls between monolithic pillars ringed in gold and runes, and brilliant gemstone lanterns dangled from the impossibly tall ceilings. He attempted to decipher those runes as they wandered, but they were ancient and unfamiliar, and he soon abandoned the effort.

At length, they came to a place where the polished columns and carvings blended smoothly into the natural crags of the mountain, and the mountain itself opened up before him. Thunder boomed, a ceaseless droning like cicadas in the summertime. The reverberations echoed so that it took him many moments to recognize their sonorous song…

A waterfall tumbled somewhere nearby.

They came to a place where the crags dipped steeply inward, and then parted to the light of a cool morning. Ember stopped to muffle a gasp, which would have been lost to the crashing falls even without his arm across his mouth.

Flat, chiseled steps sprawled up in a lazy twist toward a cleft in the mountain, pillars reaching to the heights. A faint mist drifted lazily over the floating spiral of stone. Not until they had moved close enough to peer through that mist did he notice the faces in the rock.

Ember stopped, gripping Ky’s arm.

“Wait!” he whispered. “What are those?”

She flinched, her startled hiss mingling with his intake of breath. They fell motionless, peering into the haze. Shadows streaked from each rocky pillar in alternating patterns of light and darkness, sunshine catching each droplet cast aloft by the raging torrent.

For a moment, the pillars at the top of the steps appeared to him as solemn giants, their grey faces set sternly or smilingly, grey hands clasping grey stone swords, clad in garments all of grey—standing guard over the falls. Upon each grey brow, some soft and some severe, rested a stony circlet shaped like leaf, twig, antler, or twisting wire, and one appeared as a crown of fresh spring flowers.

All bereft of color.

Yet Ember was convinced they should step forth from their posts at any moment, shaking out their hair and sumptuous garments with a ripple of vibrant tints and hues, and swiftly take up arms against these fools who dared set foot within their hollow kingdom.

“I hear no song of a beating heart,” Ky hushed. “They are only made of stone…”

As they crept into the brume which rolled forth from the falls, Ember noted that the pillars nearest the base of the stone steps were untouched by chisel or magic; not all had been given face and human form. The first step—and every step after—was broader than the whole width of his old cabin.

He glanced up at the pillars which disappeared into the mist from this perspective, already somewhat breathless at the thought of such a climb.

The wardens to his left hand seemed mostly men, and on the right stood mostly women. Both towered above him, but the ethereal figures to the right were shrouded in flowing robes and mystery, while the kings to the left—for Ember could think of no other name by which to know them—had been draped in stony fabrics, belts, and other luxurious trappings or pieces of armor.

They had not ascended more than ten of those steps when they came to the first statue.

This figure—alone of all the many sculpted faces which he could see—remained unfinished; it stood upon the right-hand side of the stone steps and faced the daylight streaming down through the spray.

She was not striking, not in the way which a siren’s beauty struck him, but there was a simpleness and honesty about the carven face which made it equally pleasing to the eye. The spray from the falls coalesced about her hair and stony gaze, darkening the stone.

Upon her gentle brow there rested a circlet of ethereal stars.

“She’s lovely,” Ember whispered.

Ky stepped beside him without a sound. Her head tilted faintly, hair swishing across her shoulder as she tipped her chin upward to gaze into that long-forgotten face.

“I think she is sad.”

He was taken, just then, by how old the sirena appeared. All her childlike wonder was gone, whisked away by the woes of an ancient creature, bearing the countenance of one intimately acquainted with mortal grief and suffering.

When he looked back to the statue, the fair stone mouth was still smiling.

But it was a smile which haunted him—and he knew the memory would linger long after their footsteps here had been lost to dust and time.

“Come, Ember!”

Ky’s sharp voice rang out above the crashing of the falls, bouncing off pillars and chiseled stone steps as she solemnly padded away.

Yet Ember hesitated, staring into the strangely familiar and strangely human face with a feeling of wistful emptiness; the emptiness twisted into nameless sorrow as beaded mist dripped from her chin.

They passed beyond the waterfall, and its row of silent watchers.