SONG of EMBER

61

RETRIBUTION

PART II

🙜

With a final shove, Ember crashed through the last swinging branches of the forest and stumbled onto a pebbly bank. Before him reached the wide expanse of a lake, ringed by woodland on all sides. Little wavelets lapped at the shoreline, half-hidden by weeds and rushes and cast-off branches, and the moon's bright reflection glinted on the dark waters.

Ember stood still for a moment, panting heavily.

He had never seen anything of the like, except for the pond below Willifrey’s orchard, and that seemed hardly large enough to compare.

Mist drifted across the calm waters, and he drew his sword as swiftly as he dared.

If the sirena which had summoned him was anywhere near this lake, it already knew exactly where he was. There was no risk in drawing further attention to himself—if it wished to devour him, it was otherwise occupied basking in the lull of its own voice, or else it had other plans…

“Hullo!”

Ember shouted as loudly as he might. If Ky was nearby, he hoped his own voice would lure her out—if not, it might at least prompt the other creature to reveal itself.

It must be her, but I wish it wasn’t—I would rather face the lonely siren a hundred times over again. Is Ky with her? What if—?

His eyes roved the tall weeds on the opposite side of the lake, and glanced twice over his shoulder as the ominous knowing of being watched sank its claws into his spine. A few night birds scattered into the trees, forsaking the rushes for a safer refuge, but if anyone returned his cry he could not hear it. He had made sure of that…

The lake was very still, and nothing moved apart from the waves which advanced in a ceaseless rhythm upon the shore. Behind it—to his left—rose the great peaks of the Sisters, looming over him in relative disinterest. They no longer seemed so foreign nor frightening as they had from his cabin stoop, yet they had lost none of their grandeur; the cliffs were not so gentle as the rolling hills near his river, which he had once thought sheer, and the two heads were bowed against a sky full of stars.

“Breath,” he muttered.

And that was when he noticed the shadow in the rushes.

It stood at least fifty paces from where he crouched—a tall, human-like figure among the cattail stalks. Tendrils of mist curled around the entity, and he wondered why he had not seen it before…

Because it was not there before.

Ember swallowed hard and curled his muddy fingers around Fishbiter.

Clouds shifted overhead, and the moonlight brightened, revealing a woman—or the body of a woman—standing upright in the shallows of the lake. A great mane of blood-red hair hung about her shoulders, thinly draped across her curves and swirling around her waist in the murky water.

He felt the wrongness.

A deadness.

As if it were not a living thing, but a statue of a bygone age.

She stretched out her arms and the hair trailed across them like a veil. Ember could not look away—could not even entertain the thought of it—for her wet skin glittered like all the treasures of the mountain hoard, and her fangs flashed wide in a knowing grin, but it was the eyes which chilled him.

Like two black stones.

Her mouth moved and an unheard reverberation echoed across the lake, rippling the water and shivering his bones—but Ember clenched Fishbiter’s cold hilt and took another breath to steady himself. Sweat prickled his backbone.

She beckoned with a finger.

Come…

He saw the word upon her lips. She lowered her head, black eyes bent upon his form as she brazenly devoured him from head to toe, bloodless tongue flashing at the corners of her mouth.

Ember took a single step forward, water sloshing around his ankles.

“Why—” His voice cracked, and he struggled to project his words across the lake; the mere presence of a fiend he had encountered only in dreams stifled his waking thoughts. “Why did you call me?”

Her head tilted slightly, both eyes falling into shadow behind strands of oily hair.

Come…

The shining lake blurred and his knees felt weak. Suddenly it was very difficult to remember why he was standing there. He had come with a purpose—to find someone he cared for. Yet this figment bid him come. And why shouldn’t he? Was he not a very great fool to—

Fishbiter shook in his hand.

Ember twitched and lofted the short sword, lake water dripping from the end of the blade.

“Well?” he shouted, his sense of fear reawakening. “What do you want? Where is your sister?”

If Sil was here, Ky couldn’t be far—and Ember shuddered to think what had become of her. She should have appeared by now, unless she had truly abandoned him to this fate, or else had been persuaded to finish her ‘becoming’ after all this time.

Yet if that were so, why had she not summoned him herself?

This makes no sense.

Nevertheless, panic gripped his heart. Sil was singing to him, likely the very song she had sung for Bren on a wicked night—perhaps this very night—ten long winters ago. Though not so long, he thought, to the river-folk.

Her head tilted in confusion.

Come! she commanded, gesturing sharply.

Ember took two more steps into the lake, brandishing Fishbiter.

“Sil,” he greeted her then, using only the first of her name; perhaps such casual address was frowned upon by outsiders, as it was in his village, but he had no designs upon formalities. It felt like the turning of an age had slipped past since he first glimpsed the pair of sisters in a broken vision, and he realized with a sickening sensation that since then she had become almost as familiar to him in the realm of dreams as Ky was now familiar in his waking reality.

And now, here she stood.

And he was not dreaming.

“I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you force my hand. Tell me, where is Ky?”

He could not have heard any reply, but this concerned him little, for he did not expect one.

Sil straightened at once, her soft curves hardening and her fingers clenching against empty palms. For a thousand nights in a moment, she stared at him, silent and still. Faint breezes wafted her veil of hair. And then she approached him with all the assurance of a fabled warrior in full armor, though her form was bare and pale under the moon; the wispy remnants of past nightmares come to haunt him in the flesh.

A hungry gleam livened her gaze.

He knew that look; it was the look the Lonely Siren had given him in the treasure room—no doubt deciding which of his limbs to feast upon first. But there was a menace beneath it which the former had not…

A clandestine intent.

“Answer me, witch.”

Her tongue curled in a hiss, but Ember dashed Fishbiter against the lake in a silent warning. The runes cast a blue reflection into the ripples. His body pounded with anticipatory dread as Sil hesitated, now less than twenty measured paces away.

She tilted her head yet further, the sword glimmering in her eyes, and her tongue flicked out again like a snake tasting the air.

Ember took one more step.

Then three.

Then two.

Yet Sil did not move, though her head tipped further and further to one side. So Ember remained where he was and cast his glance about for any sign of Ky. A branch bobbed near the opposite shoreline, and he noted that the water was somewhat disturbed. Withered roots jutted out of the embankment, torn violently from the forest floor during a winter storm, and the drowned tree sloped gently into the lake.

He stepped sideways through the shallows, weighing every option.

Perhaps it would not come to a skirmish after all.

Perhaps, if she was so enamored of the weapon—

But no sooner had the thought entered his mind than she swished toward him again, bony fingers reaching. Her mouth formed a few siren words, though no power escaped from them. He could guess what they were: A pretty sword…

The light of the runes danced in her gaze and he followed her every slinking movement, captivated as a moth was captivated by a flame. His legs trembled and his heart skipped a beat.

As she lifted her chin, he saw her—understood, somehow, only then, that she was real. Her nose was bashed and crooked, though the blood was washed away, and three significant furrows he had not seen before marred her cheekbone. Ember’s chin trembled at the memory, and he thought it a great pity to have brought such a beautiful being to harm.

He had braced himself for a fight, for her to descend upon him in a furious gale with the wind whipping up around them, the way she had accosted him in the last of his dreams.

How could he destroy her, when she had come to him so quietly?

Would Ky ever forgive him?

Can I forgive myself?

“I know why it is that men follow you to their deaths,” he whispered, half a ploy and half in earnest. “I know… why they surrender themselves to your song…”

Her attention flitted briefly away from the sword, mouth curled upward.

It pleased him to please her.

He hated that.

His hands shook as the space between them diminished, and an herbal musk devoured him, bittersweet and tainted with lake water. Her pale fingers drew near to the glowing runes and she widened her empty eyes at them, enthralled.

“I can’t lift a finger against you, looking at you, here… like this…”

Her smile bloomed, and the raked claw-marks distorted across her cheek.

Ky, he thought softly, suddenly.

And his trembling lip curled into a snarl.

“That’s why…”

Before Ember could blink, her fingers closed around the blade.

A hellish shriek pierced the muddy clay he had packed over his ears. She staggered back, the sudden current pulling him off-balance, and he yanked the sword away with a cry. A few drops of blood fell from her palm, and she held her shriveled hand before her face, hissing in horror.

When her gaze lit upon Ember, his heart chilled at the furious betrayal in her aspect.

Siren words tumbled from her full lips, inaudible to Ember, but it seemed as if a weighted fishing net had settled over him… his limbs grew heavy and the air thinned. To his disgust and fascination, a part of him desperately wanted to bring back that fell smile. To reach out and welcome her nakedness beneath the light of the moon.

She would gather him into her cold embrace, and together they would slip beneath the shining lake, never to be seen by man nor river-folk again, for the darkness would keep their secrets until eternity’s end. Her scent was intoxicating, lovelier, even than… than… well, that didn’t matter. If there ever was another, anything beyond the vision which filled his eyes, he could not remember her now.

No, that wasn’t right.

Hadn’t he been searching for another all this time? Shouting her name in the darkness? She must be important—he had to find her. It suddenly occurred to Ember that he hadn’t taken a breath since she had touched the blade, and he gasped as the fantasy flew from his mind.

He took another step back, uncertain…

Fishbiter shook in his hands.

The runes flashed brightly.

Ember struck out, the blade whistling in delight.

It was then that Ember began to comprehend the nature of its enchantments—it craved siren blood as sirens craved the blood of men. As they were afflicted with a soul-hunger, so it hungered for the riven things, the wrongness about them.

Fishbiter wanted blood.

He wanted blood.

It was a startling realization, but not one which he had much time to question as he swung the shortsword, hacking and slashing at Sil’s retreating form, splashing ever-deeper into the lake.

He wanted more than blood. He wanted vengeance. He wanted peace. He wanted power. For too long he had been tossed about by magic and madness—unable to vanquish the demon which had wrung his soul inside-out—unable to drive Sil from his waking dreams—unable to do anything but flee before the townsfolk who had shown him nothing but kindness until the night they burned his cabin—unable to inflict any wrath upon her in the garden, for bringing all these evils down upon his head with her charm and ignorance, besides the shouting of his angry words, and that a poor recompense.

But here—

Now—

Whish.

Sil bent like a willow sapling beneath the final blow, but the blade snagged on a strand of her hair, and she stumbled away with a cry that shivered the mud he had packed over his ears. Ember retreated several steps, winded, as he realized how deep he had waded.

Wavelets lapped against his thighs.

The sirena clenched a rigid hand about her shoulder, hissing furiously as dark liquid leaked between her fingers. He had struck her. Triumph and remorse tangled together beneath his ribs…

Something glittered across the lake, droplets scattering through the air near the bobbing driftwood. He glanced over Sil’s wounded shoulder, startled.

A familiar figure arose from the shallows of the opposite shore, tattered garments and snarled hair clinging to her form. Even from such a distance, blood bloomed across her forehead, trickling down her temples and staining her cheeks with a ruddy blush. She lifted both hands, clenching fistfuls of her own dark tresses. They had been torn out by the roots, uneven patches brushing her shoulders—hair which had once fallen well below her waist.

Their eyes locked.

Ky screamed and dashed a palmful of water, flinging it wildly and uselessly across the lake as bony fingers squeezed his wrist.

Ember sloshed backward, trying to wriggle out of Sil’s grasp.

Too late.

The hilt slipped through his mud-slickened fingers as Sil’s mouth opened in a triumphant bugle. She gripped it in a tight fist and stabbed with the weapon as he once wielded his old fishing spear—yet even that untrained movement was swift, fluid, strong. The tip of the blade shuddered to a halt below his chin, metal thrumming with imbued magic.

A surprised gleam tempered Sil’s glare. Her lip curled as she muttered inky words, the tendons in her outstretched arm twitching with effort.

Water parted around Ky like liquid glass as she crossed the lake, and a faint glow reflected in the rippling waves as she, too, began to speak. Many lights appeared far above—though Ember could only glimpse it in his periphery, it felt as if the stars themselves were descending from the heavens.

Sil swept the sword away as Ember made a wild grab for it, emboldened by the reminder that the blade would not bite him. Yet as she swung for his head again, he flinched reflexively, lifting an arm to shield himself and glancing upward.

The sky over the mountain was lit with a thousand glowing orbs.