SONG of EMBER

53

SNAIL-SKIN

🙜

Ember knew that Ky remembered something of his nightly landscape, even though she denied being able to see into his dreams—after all, it was she who spun those very dreams for him each time he lay his head to sleep. Her touch always brought a spark of life back to the ashen landscape of the forest—he glimpsed her presence in those things which he had never seen before. Colorful flowers which swayed to her song, strange birds with shimmering feathers calling out to him from the trees, and the ashy boles themselves had once appeared to take on craggy features which seemed almost human…

But tonight there was no trace of the sirena.

Dead flowers bowed beneath crystalline ice, and the river was frozen over, its babbling voice eerily silent. He glanced up into the skeletal trees, where Ky’s half-seen form sometimes crouched amidst a blooming bower of leaves, but the branches were cold and dead. He could not hear her singing, nor even the echoes of a song.

“I don’t suppose you passed out drunk and forgot to sing for me?” he muttered, shivering a little in the deadness of the forest.

Not for the first time, he wondered why it was here that he found himself each night, in these nameless dreaming woods, and why he now felt lost where he had always felt most at home. The forests of the valley had always provided him sustenance when he needed it; not bountifully, to be sure, but who was he to demand any measure of abundance?

He was only a fisherman’s son.

Ember glanced down—in his fingers, loosely curled, there rested a glowing stone.

The resin from the tree.

“Where is Ky?” he inquired, as if it could talk back.

The stone did not reply.

He lifted it and peered through its swirling amber surface, as if the makeshift lens could guide him back to his capricious companion. As he studied the honey-tinted trees, a wisp of a figure flashed within their midst.

Ember cried out and dropped the stone, darting up the slope.

“Hullo? Wait!” he shouted, with a desperation which escaped his understanding. “Who are you?”

Surely not the wicked sister come to plague him again, for she would never have run from him. Crackling leaves rushed around his ankles, skittering away from his frantic scrambling, but by the time he reached the top of the crest, the figure had vanished.

His sigh puffed into a swirling cloud of vapor that wisped across the forested landscape, and for a moment he thought he glimpsed that pale figure standing not far away upon the rise, but it was only his own breath.

He wrapped his arms around himself and glanced about, shivering bleakly.

“Am I alone?”

The words slipped from him without realizing, and the forest stirred around him in reply, frost creeping over the branches and ice cracking in the distance. He had been alone all his life; why was that thought so bothersome to him, now?

Had he changed so much?

Had she changed him so much?

A gossamer radiance drifted amidst the barren trees below, like a flicker of a campfire, and he wondered if he had glimpsed one of the orbs from the Sisters’ Footstool—but as he crunched through the crackling leaves and dead flowers, he noticed that it was more intricate than a simple sphere of light.

This entity was somehow both a tongue of golden flame…

And the figure of a man.

Ember swallowed hard, and decided the best course of action was to announce his presence with a smile, if he could summon one.

“Hullo,” he called again, and lifted his hand.

His heart pounded as the distant figure proffered a hand in reply—the greeting he had hoped for, yet hardly expected in this strange unreality. And so he descended the slope. As he did, another wisp of flame appeared behind the first… and then one appeared to his left amidst the scraggly underbrush… and then another, far off upon the frozen river…

The first appeared in the likeness of a man, and then a woman, and then another woman, and then a child. They were many, and soon they surrounded him.

But by the time he reached the bottom of the slope, and the figure who continued to offer his ghostly hand, he had lost all apprehension.

“Why are you here?” he whispered, though what he really wished to know was if Ky had sent them there, or if he had dreamt them in his present loneliness—but he could not deny the wild and reckless impulse their presence drummed up within his heart.

It was strangely alluring, and he wondered what would happen if he accepted the invitation.

So he did.

But as Ember put forth his hand, ice crackled the branches above and a damp grey mist swept through the frosted detritus, bringing with it a foulness… the odor of rotting corpses, musty mildew, and burning oil assailed his senses, and he instinctively glanced back for the comforting stone-light he had dropped.

He saw a faint glow beneath the leaves not far away. Before he could take a single step in that direction, its light diminished and was gone—snuffed out beneath the drifting shadow which had stolen over the woods.

Something was coming.

Something older than the wind, and older than the trees.

The grey mist descended, and a primal fear swept through him. He unthinkingly reached out to grasp the proffered hand of the spectral figure, and as he did, a tremendous pressure of undiluted sound blasted forth. A thousand thoughts and faces rushed into his mind, each one tumbling away again to make way for the next before he could grasp onto anything familiar—there were only disconnected memories and a thousand tortured voices screaming, crying, wailing, and dying.

As each voice crashed through his mind, for a fraction of a moment, he possessed the power to destroy with a single word, to heal with a single touch, and sensed the tempestuous pull of a thousand threads of possibility so real he could taste them on his tongue, feel them coursing through his veins, glimpse the fabric of reality which ebbed and flowed around them. Memories of tangible magic writhed beyond his reach.

Eons of esoteric knowledge.

An eternity of despair.

And as the mist enveloped them all, Ember felt his own voice leaving his body, his unheard scream echoing through an abyss of endless agony with all the rest of the nameless hoard of men.

❧

No light spilled onto the cobbled stone floor.

Ky was certain she had left the door propped open—and the tree-stone should be shining faintly from this distance.

Her steps slowed as she approached, and she listened for Ember's familiar presence. It was inaudible above the soft whisperings of the rock and gentle stirrings of the air. Perhaps the 'very aged wine' had dulled her senses, or hushed his song somehow…

Had she come to the wrong door?

No—

It was slightly ajar, just as she had left it.

Ky pushed the door open with a creak and a wooden groan, and peered inside. There was just enough light for her to see by and the place where he had rested by the barrels was empty. She hesitated, frightened of some trickery, and then glanced over her shoulder.

"Ember?" she whispered, stepping into the room.

The leather pack lay on the floor beside the empty wine bottles, and as she crept closer she saw the hilt of the pretty sword beneath it. He must be nearby, for he would not have gone far without his weapon. Red fermented berry juice pooled on the floor, staining the tiles. Ky knelt beside the pack and trailed her fingers across the hewn rock. His scent lingered, and the stone was faintly warm.

Then her claws tinked against something like glass, and she seized upon it.

The tree-stone—dark as a coal, its song diminished.

Ky cupped it to her lips and blew on the polished surface, rubbing some life and warmth back into the resin before rising to her feet. She gave the room another cursory glance, this time in the newly-kindled light. Wooden barrels and stone pillars and quiet emptiness.

No man.

He will not have gone far, said Ky to herself.

But her steps quickened as she flung open the oaken door and strode out into the hall again, peering first one way and then the other. A faint mist yet hung above the cobbles, but none of it—save the path she had trod—had been recently disturbed.

She reentered the room, casting the stone-light into every shadow, certain she had missed something.

All was still and quiet.

Battling a rising wave of panic, Ky sprinted back out into the hall, staring down the misty corridor the way she had come. Her lip trembled, but she opened her mouth and softly called him by name.

"Emmmberrr…."

She waited, listening to the pleasant echoes roll across the stone.

They tumbled into silence.

"Ember?" she cried again, taking two steps forward and pricking her ears. She held her breath, watching, waiting—if he was there, he would surely come to the sound of her voice—as he had always come, as he would always come.

He is coming. He is coming.

But he did not come.

Ky took three deep breaths, and then shrieked his name aloud, her voice breaking beneath the strength of her summons. Dust rained from the ceiling above and pattered in distant corridors, and the stone trembled underfoot, pebbles bouncing.

"EMBER!"

The halls resounded a thousand times over, calling the precious name back to her, and the combined power of the siren echoes would have been enough to bring the whole of the human clan he had forsaken running to her side.

She waited still.

Breathless, hopeful.

Silence.

A low wail pressed against her throat and prickling panic overwhelmed all reason.

She dropped to the stone, her eye falling upon a gleaming hilt.

The pretty sword.

Ky yanked Ember's weapon out from under the pack, the blade tugging loose of the leather, and her eyes were instantly drawn to the shining metal.

A few clear strains of music shivered through the air, shifting like moonlight on fractured ice as she tilted the mortal blade.

The surface shimmered.

She reached for the etched runes—

"Ah!" Ky stuffed a burned finger into her mouth, an unpleasant memory awakening.

Whistling a sharp note to clear her mind, she sprang to her feet.

The sword was heavier than it appeared, and began to shake in her hands, as if trying to loose itself of her grasp. Magic rippled across the blade, betraying the subtle spells imbued within the metal as human runes glowed menacingly in the dim light.

"No!" she cried out in frustration, smacking it against one of the barrels and splintering the ancient oak. "We must go to Ember!"

The sword buzzed peevishly as Ky clamped her fingers around the hilt, glancing upward to avoid the tempting shine. She stood fast for a moment, panting in indecision, and then snatched up the leather belt. But even then—even as she knew she must seek Ember at once—the pretty sword remained aloft before her.

Her mind slowed.

Ky stared, the cords in her wrist taut with effort.

At last, with a huffing breath, she quietly hid away the enchanting runes. The small yet wholly transfixing rays of blue light vanished one after the other as the etchings were consumed by the sturdy leather shell. With an inhuman quickness to accommodate for her lapse, she strapped the belt around her waist, though not without some difficulty. It was meant for a larger frame, but she tied off the ends in a few quick movements and snugged it between her shoulders.

Though she found it clumsy, the rebellious weapon had been subdued—and Ember's salty sweat clung to the leather… a scent she found comforting.

Rising swiftly, Ky tucked the tree-stone into the bosom of her dress and scampered into the hall, whispering little curses and comforts to herself. Green mist devoured her tracks, and the disembodied voices which had once lured her into the darkness were now strangely muffled, but her own musk left a lingering trail.

Find Ember.