SONG of EMBER

53

SNAIL-SKIN

PART II

🙜

The sword was unwieldy and the belt bit into the healing sores about her neck, but she traversed the cobblestone road in leaps and bounds, pausing only to catch a drifting scent or remember which path she had taken. When at last she approached the final turn, silence hung over the dark corridor. Snuffling quietly, Ky lowered herself toward the floor and crept along the wall, feeling the cracked stone with her fingertips… the souls yet sang behind it. She could sense their presence, taste their scintillating energy.

When she rounded the corner, the great door stood agape.

The pretty sword shivered against her spine as Ky burrowed her claws into the rock-hewn floor. Bluish light spilled into the corridor, illuminating a few curling tendrils of mist, and a soft, strained breath echoed from the cavernous room.

"Grrrhhmmmm…"

Ky forsook the safety of the shadows, sprinted the last few strides, and sprang through the door on silent feet.

The snatch roiled above her, a cloud of misery far larger and blacker than she remembered—and before the storm of darkness, arms stretched out against the wall and head thrown back in a silent cry—Ember. His toes hovered above the floor, heels pressed into the wall, teeth clenched. His hands formed shaking fists. Pale tear-trails tracked through the dust and grime, and his tunic clung to his body, drenched and dripping sweat.

Black words scraped from the swaying mist with dreadful resonance.

Fouler than any mortal tongue, more bewitching than any siren song.

The snatch fondled Ember's face, and fresh tears spilled from both eyes as his tongue moved soundlessly against a slackening jaw. Glimmers of light pulsed beneath the surface of his skin, trickling through the veins of his arms and the cords of his neck and gathering above his heart. Branching fingers entwined with luminous strands of soul—an unholy merging of darkness and light.

Faltering footsteps carried her across the floor.

Toward his heavy heartbeat.

Slow, dull, labored.

Like a drowning man.

The muffled thumping filled her ears.

The song pressed against her skin.

Her mouth opened.

Her riven soul trembled.

The exhaled essence of all mankind swirled before her…

…she had but to put out her hand, and claim it for her own.

And then the mist withered away, wrenching the perfect magic from his chest with fibrous talons. Threads of light between shadow and man pulled taut, and Ember's body convulsed. The scream that tore his throat was not a scream of mortal men, but a hoarse cry ripped from the lungs of a wild thing—the howl of a mortal creature sundered from thought and will, no longer even the master of its own voice.

Dark blood trickled from both nostrils and dripped into his gaping mouth.

Ember's blue eyes rolled white.

Ky yanked frantically at the swordhilt, but her arms were shorter than Ember's and for a heart-stopping moment it would not shake loose of the leather.

With a shivering hum—

It whipped free.

Icy runes blazed to life. She slashed the blade through the mass of writhing shadows, shrieking furiously. The demon split in half, wisps of smoke wafting away, but swiftly rejoined as if it had never been severed.

Again she struck true, and again the smoke gathered unto itself.

Chanting the darkest, oldest, deadliest curses known to the sons and daughters of Clan Veli, Ky battered the twisting apparition with sword and claw, each stroke wilder and ever more desperate, pretty sword blazing like a torch in the night. The short blade cleaved through mist where a neck, a head, a gut most certainly ought to be, yet the snatch never slowed and no innards spilled forth.

It was a spirit-being, no more of the mortal world than the sorrowed souls which sustained it. When her last weary stroke nicked the wall above Ember's shoulder, Ky stopped short, the tip of the blade clinking against the stone floor.

Remnants of Sil’s cruel laughter echoed from a distant past.

Half-wit!

She could no more harm the snatch than one could silence the wind in the trees or keep a wave upon the rocks; it was an unassailable force, and it—like the earth itself—would blow and billow wither it wished regardless of her doings.

Ember's scream cracked into a gasping wheeze.

Only a few scant threads remained, the swirling weave of magic swallowed by the mist. The perverse chanting of the snatch pried at her wits, feasted upon the vestiges of her sanity: this entity had never intended to keep its promise, and now it had taken her Ember.

Head eddying with the clamor of disembodied voices, Ky dropped the sword and wailed.

It impacted the stone with a resounding clang.

She stumbled forward.

Weeping songs swirled from the shadows. Ethereal, beckoning. Her swift movements brushed the mist aside, and four jars appeared at her feet.

Ky limply retrieved one of them, smoothing her fingers over the glass and casting a glance at the soul-snatch. Its back was to her, its attention fixed upon Ember. The blinding brilliance of his song was too bright for Ky’s siren eyes.

She squinted down at the jar in her hands.

The wretched soul within whispered frantically, jumbling human words and siren words and ancient words of shadow, and a desperate loneliness consumed her. And through the whispers, a familiar phrase…

…snail-skin…

Her heart shuddered.

And she cast the jar upon the ground.

Crystalline shards scattered in every direction, pelting Ky's bare ankles and skipping across the stone. The freed soul flared to life—a blinding burst of pure white light so magnificent that Ky cried out in pain and surprise—and then leaped up, leaving a trail of sparkling dust before vanishing into the ether.

The snatch hushed, its smoky wraith-form twisting in the air.

Wicked eyes of fire snapped from its writhing human prey to the sirena it had too-quickly dismissed, who now stood in the ruins of a glass prison. It reshaped its murky essence to match the new position of the eyes and observed her, still and quiet.

Ember gagged, head bowed, straining in anguished silence.

Drops of sweat rolled down his temples.

And a low, throaty creak guttered the room.

Ky bared her fangs at the snatch and whisked another jar from the shelf.

The fell-fire eyes flared darkly.

"Rivenssssssssoul!" it whistled, unleashing a gust of breath that sent her dark hair whirling.

Ky dipped her fingers into her bosom and took hold of the tree-stone, folding it into her sticky palm and concealing its faint glow within the woolen skirt.

She raised the jar.

With a sound like a muffled thunderclap, infinite strings of blackness snapped away from Ember's body and the great light of his soul thudded back into his chest, the space around him rippling. He sucked in a ragged gasp and collapsed to the stone, residual light flickering through his veins. Wide blue eyes stared sightlessly past her, body limp as death—not even a shallow breath lifted his ribs.

“EMBER!”

Glass exploded across the stone.

Screeching like a wounded owl, the snatch lashed out with spindly arms. Ky danced away and swept up two more jars, one after the other.

Two more souls flashed amid the scattered shards, squealing to life, and disappeared into the forbidden beyond. The snatch shook and spluttered as each vessel was destroyed, and Ky dared neither to take her eyes off her quarry nor pause her retreat as it approached, freeing the precious lights as she moved—dashing them from the wooden shelves or kicking them into one another.

It was a torment, but a torment with rhythm.

Rhythm was music, patterns, and light.

It sheltered her fragile sanity.

With every soul which flew beyond their grasp, the shadow shriveled.

Grasping fingers reached from the mist—

And the back of her foot pressed into the stony wall.

She could retreat no further.

As the vile being bent its blazing wrath upon her, Ky cupped the tree-stone in both hands, bringing it to her lips. She whispered softly to it, thanking it fondly for the many days it had accompanied them both…

Kindling its golden light…

And shouted the oldest siren word for breaking.

Deep cracks split the ceiling and shattered rock fell like rain.

Ky cast the resin down.

CRACK.

Fragments of tree-blood sprayed across the room with a sound of tinkling glass—and liquid sunlight burst from the resin, seeping between the cobbled stones.

The snatch released a furious roar which rattled the remaining jars. A gust of wind swept out from its presence. Ky curled away from the source, and even Ember's still form listed beneath the gale-strength of it; when at last it died to a breathless creak, she had fully retreated into a dusty corner, her exposed skin dry and blistered.

It burbled and shrank, wisps of smoke fluttering about like the wings of a drowning raven.

The whistling cries sank to a raspy whisper. Each time it swelled, gathering itself for an assault, the light of the sticky sap flashed vengefully and the snatch diminished with a desolate sigh. The stone yet remembered the Tree from whence it came.

Ky darted through the shards of glass and sprinted past both shadow and stone.

It guttered an incantation, but the grasping fingers brushed her ankles without harm.

"Ember!" Ky sang, her voice fraying as she crouched beside him. "Ember, Ember…"

Quickly rolling him onto his back, she bent low, listening for the hum of his soul—yes, he lived. But when she held a finger under his nose, no warmth of breath stirred. His skin was pale, damp, and chilled, eyes sunken and staring with the stare of the abyss.