SONG of EMBER

🙞 RECAP FOR SONG OF EMBER 🙜

I’ll be doing my best to post the most relevant information and excerpts from Acts I and II, which will be relevant to Act III and the ending of this book. No direct spoilers, although because I’m highlighting important moments, there are some inferences to be made about upcoming plot points…

Really enjoyed putting this together for you, and I hope this is helpful to everyone who voted ‘yes’ on the recap poll.

Do note: this is AN IN-DEPTH SUMMARY, about the length of 3-4 satisfactory updates and meant to be read at a leisurely pace, so I've divided it into three spoiler sections for phone scrolling. Tried to find the right balance between shortening it as much as possible without losing the cohesion of the narrative, but if you're looking for a slightly quicker recap, you can always skip the quotes (although I shortened most of those, too).

As always, thanks for reading!

❦

PART 1

RIVER-FOLK

A lonely fisherman's son who lives in the valley below Sister's Mountain awakens to an unexpected rain, a leaky cabin roof, and a pile of nets and baskets which are in dire need of mending: something with claws (or very sharp teeth) has been pilfering his catch. Nonetheless, Ember Jarelson heads out along the river path to the market square to sell the few fish he caught for a bit of coin. There, he finds an old wayfarer named Hunter recounting the tale of two travelers who recently disappeared, and warning the townspeople to be wary of the river.

While Ember indulges in a mug of cider at the tavern, he hears some of the farmers whispering about Hunter's warning and the recent rumors of ‘river folk’ roaming the woods, and decides to prove their superstitions wrong by setting a trap for the thief with a few of his mended nets.

As darkness falls, he hears a strange birdcall in the bushes, and awakens before sunrise to something splashing in the river…

It was a pale creature, long and gangly, and even from this distance it appeared to be human. One finger reached through the cords, the rest of the body hanging awkwardly in the net, bound and bent at odd angles.

And then a bird flapped out of the reeds near the old oak, squawking its displeasure and shattering the eerie silence. The net bounced to life, thrashing like a fish aground.

Ember seized the moment and sprinted through the tall grass before his courage failed him.

“Stop!” he shouted, splashing to a halt just a few paces from the net and jabbing the spear forward. “Who are you? What are you doing here? You thief! You—”

He broke off mid-sentence as a single eye met his through the netting, wedged between a shoulder and a bent elbow. The eye was inhumanly large and round, and almost entirely black with pupil.

He stumbled sideways in the water, not sure what he was looking at.

It stared at him in unblinking rage.

Or fear.

He realizes that he has caught one of the river-people and can’t bring himself to kill the fantastical creature; instead, he looses the net. It dives into the river and disappears. Shaken, he tracks down Hunter Nomanson to inquire about the river-folk.

Hunter tells him that such entities have long existed and long been obsessed with mankind, and that they can bespell any man with the power of their voice, imitating waterfalls, birdsongs, and even some human ballads. He confides that the sailors along the coast have their own legends about a race of sea-dwellers.

"Sailors from the Northlands, the merchants down south, and all other manner of seafaring kind have their own legends about a race of sea-dwellers… They call ‘em sirens, but they're much the same as our river-folk.”

“And they resemble us in figure, if not speech? Man and woman, I mean?”

Ember thought back to the glimmering mirage he had seen—its form had been bound in such a fashion as to obscure any distinguishing features, but regardless, there had been no mistaking the feminine curvature of the creature. He blushed faintly and scrubbed at his cheek, hoping Hunter hadn’t noticed.

He was abashed to see the wayfarer staring keenly at him.

Hunter’s beard twitched faintly. “Siren and sirena—if one cares to be proper about it. Which, generally speaking, I don’t.”

“I suppose they’re both unfriendly,” Ember hedged awkwardly.

“Never heard of a friendly siren—only a hungry one.”

When Ember returns home, he finds a mysterious pile of fish and berries on his doorstep. Thus begins an exchange of gifts, though the creature never shows itself again. For the next few weeks he attempts to establish a friendship with the mysterious visitor while making further inquiries about the river folk in town.

His unrequited crush and a friend of his older sister, Isabel, invites him to her house for tea and biscuits, with the ulterior motive of warning him that the townspeople are spreading rumors: he’s been too careless with his questions and is drawing too much attention to himself.

Ember denies her implications.

She sends him off with an admonishment to come the back way next time to avoid being seen, but makes it clear that he is welcome to return for another cup of tea.

In a moment she was beside him, pressing a cloth bundle into his hands. A bit of brown hair had come loose from her braids, and her distinctive scent washed over him; he noted how different it was from the strange floral aroma which hung about the river of late. She was real and warm—like bread, earth, and spices. He glanced down at the lump of cloth.

The rest of the biscuits.

“Do try to take care of yourself.”

Before he could respond, she had whirled away, and the door thumped shut.

While weeding his garden, Ember glimpses a pair of inhuman eyes peering out his cabin window, and flees toward the deeper woods. Footsteps patter out of the cabin and a fair voice cries out for him to stop, but he covers his ears, chanting a scrap of poetry:

There is no escaping

From a demon in the night,

For it lives in shades of shadows

And we live in shapes of light;

Fly beyond the hills and fields,

Fly beyond the moors,

It will find you, it will come—

Through fastened bolts and doors…

Ember trips and falls, striking his head on a stone and losing consciousness. He awakens in bed to find sticky footprints on his floor, and a slender-bodied river woman standing on his stoop, wearing men’s trousers and a worn jerkin; he asks her who she is.

Light shifted through the trees overhead, gleaming on wet black hair and pale bare arms. Her face was shadowed but two familiar eyes shimmered darkly at him, black and green. She held one of his rough woven baskets, and a bit of sunlight caught and yellowed the leaves of fresh edibles from his garden.

One ear twitched errantly, as if bothered by a tiny insect.

Ember swallowed hard and blinked twice, waiting for the vision to disappear. Instead, it entered the one-room cabin without so much as a pat of a foot on the floorboards and carefully placed the basket on the table. "Hello, Ember…"

The sirena introduces herself as Ky of Clan Veli, and they have a tense conversation while munching garden greens. She departs shortly after, but hints at a request, and leaves him one final gift…

A glowing fragment of stone.

Within it swirled a soft yellow light, awakening distant memories and begging him to touch…

The very next morning Ember awakens to tapping on his window-panes.

Before he opens the door for Ky, he asks if she has ever killed and eaten anyone; she claims she has not. Over a strange meal of wine and honey, Ky explains that she would like him to translate human runes on a door she has found, hidden somewhere on the nearby Sisters Mountain.

He tries to turn her down over the next few days, but she continues to make supplications, and at last tells him that she will be leaving whether he accompanies her or no. Their conversation is interrupted by a rare visitor from town—a farmer named Wilifrey, who glimpses Ky and runs away. Ember chases after him, attempting to persuade the man that he didn’t see what he saw and then pleading for him to refrain from telling the rest of the townsfolk.

In the end, he decides to accompany the sirena.

They set off toward the mountain path at nightfall, but Ember hears Isabel calling him from the woods; she warns that the villagers were riled up by the tavern-keeper Alden after Wilifrey claimed Ember brought a river creature to their valley. She is proven right as rocks are thrown and threats are shouted.

Ember and Ky flee.

The landscape blurred around them as he ran, leaving only two points of focus: the end of the hill where the road met the starry sky, jagged trees rising up on either side, and the shadow of the sirena sprinting beside him on silent feet.

With some magical assistance from Ky’s otherworldly voice, Ember manages to outrun the torch-brandishing townsfolk, but when he looks back from the bluff he sees a trail of smoke from his burning cabin. He is devastated by the loss. Ky does not seem to understand the cause of his grief, only that he is sad.

THE SISTERS' FOOTSTOOL

Ember and Ky continue their trek to the mountain and the forested hills below, colloquially known as the Sisters' Footstool, and Ky claims the polished glowing stone came from the mountain; she also reveals that the mountain is hollow, and that men used to live there who were able to wield magic, and made many wonderful things.

"You will not understand them," she said loftily, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye and lifting her chin. He felt rather offended, but also wondered if the remark was a front for her own ignorance. "There is no magic left in your people, but there is magic in the mountain. Beautiful things are hidden there."

"And what do you want with these 'beautiful things'?" he challenged. "What right to them do you have? If this… mountain really belongs to men, shouldn't men decide what to do with it?"

She snuck a few wilted leaves out of his basket and munched on them, savoring each bite.

"That is why you are here," she explained around a cheekful of greens.

Ky counts to 102 years old on her fingers, and Ember sheepishly admits that he is only 21. They sit down for a few hours beside a mossy waterfall and share some honeyed bread. As darkness falls, glowing spectral lights in the form of orbs appear to follow them through the trees, twinkling in the branches, and when they stop to rest for the night, Ky tells Ember about the ocean.

“It is great and cold, and deep and wide, and blue like a darker sky. You could never live there, Ember, for all the men who visit its hidden depths do so against their will, and they do not live long enough to appreciate its darkest reaches where there are tasty fish to snatch. Your people call those reaches fathoms. Many far fathoms down, they are. The ocean tries to devour the shore, crashing upon the dust of the earth again and again, but cannot reach far before it is drawn back unto itself. It is…”

The ebb and flow of her words paused as she searched for the right one.

"…relentless. It sends more waves, seeking to claim the land for its own. On stormy days and stormy nights the ocean pounds and pounds and pounds, but it can never attain its desire. It is forever in want of more, and forever it shall hope in vain."

A strange cry echoes across the valley beneath the moonlight, but Ky hushes Ember and tells him to go back to sleep. In the morning, they continue up the side of Sisters Mountain. Ky picks Ember some unusual flowers, and tells him that she needs to always be near water or—like the plucked flower—she too will wither and die.

They come to a place where the trail splits, and a recent landslide has blocked off the main path; Ember suggests they try the other, even though Ky says it smells like rot and treachery. An unexpected encounter with a hidden pit and a shadowy monster injures them both, and Ky leaves to fetch an herb called knitbone for Ember.

While she is gone, he hears someone else calling out to him in the woods.

He took a step forward, craning his neck, and glimpsed a slender shadow melting behind a tree. The scent intensified. It was not unlike the scent which followed his traveling companion, but now he noticed that it was more herbaceous than floral.

There was a swift flash of red—like a bird in flight—but it was gone a moment later.

"Don't play games with me," begged Ember, aiming the spear where he had last seen the elusive figure. His hand shook. "Do you have the knitbone or don't you?"

Ember enters an unconscious state and wanders off in search of the voice, alongside many of the spectral orbs from the Sisters' Footstool, but Ky finds him and yanks him out of the dreamworld; she tells him to shout nonsense to shield himself from the treacherous song:

Down, down, to the sea we shall fly

Down where the salt winds blow;

Mortal soul, come, sup with me,

Where the white waves froth below.

As they run away, Ky dashes through a false mirage of stony cliffside, and they fall into the clearing where the mountain door is hidden. Ember struggles to read the runes engraved into the stone, but is hastened by the approach of the singing creature on the other side of the mirage.

Ember plopped down on a tussock of grass and squinted up at the faded lettering, scratching his chin. He had never been a very good reader; he prided himself on more practical skills, and though he knew a great many spoken words and could usually sound them out on paper, his literary prowess was hardly boastworthy. Each time he moved his lips to mutter some sound or other Ky would stare at him, doubtless hoping he was ready with an answer.

The runes say to “Speak the truth, all who come in peace, for none shall pass this door with malintent.” Ember places his hand upon the door and says that he has come to open the door for Ky Veli. He stumbles through and finds himself standing upon a pile of human remains. He cannot go back through the door to Ky.

After some coaxing, she finally whispers her reasons for wishing to pass through the barrier (too quietly for Ember to hear), and is able to join him on the other side just as the howling creature leaps for the door. Once they are beyond the reach of its deadly voice, Ky creates a light source with the glowing stone she placed on Ember's stoop.

Ky blew gently onto the stone, sweeping her clawed thumbs across its glossy amber surface, and the glow intensified with a little flicker. She continued her ministrations, like a woman kneeling on a hearth trying to rekindle the coals from a burned-out fire…

They were standing in a very large hall, with a ceiling so high that it remained lost to shadows, and he could not tell how far it went. Corpses littered the ground beneath their feet, though fewer than there had been near the door. The golden tendrils of light swirled more quickly, as if stirred by her breath, and when the stone was shining as brightly as a little sun in her palms, they both glanced down at the ancient carnage.

The stone floor was stained a dark, ruddy color in places, and when Ember scraped the ground with his shoe a bit of dried blood flaked away. There were too many dead to count, and most appeared to be lying with their faces toward the door.

They were trying to get out.

Ember sees that most of the bones have been gnawed and cracked, and Ky retrieves a yellowed fang from the stone floor: not all of these remnants are human—some are of the river-folk. Left with no path but forward, they venture deeper into the mountain, guided by the light of the stone.

REFLECTIONS

Ember and Ky encounter a grand pedestal, and upon the pedestal a blank book; when Ember touches the pages, words appear: “Speak aloud that we may know thine own heart’s true intent, for withyn our sacred halls no man may speak a lie.” When he speaks, it echoes after him. He stops reading when Ky begins to panic, but it’s too late. The echoes of his voice roll on…

"Our Holy Writ has told of those who dwell below in waters deep, accurs’d and stricken by their deeds, no sacred Breath nor Light to keep. Snail-skin, beware thy past and reckon with thine murderous deeds. Thou lyest to the friend thou swore were’t thicker than the water weeds. Blood for blood of brethren spilled we warn thee nowe he may decide, and in this act of ‘venging flesh wolde be forever justified."

When he glanced down at Ky, two red streaks trailed from her lower eyelids to a fingers-breadth above her jawline, like crimson tear-trails. But they weren’t tears; they were wounds. Dark, thick blood dripped to the floor.

Disturbed by the words of the book and enchanted by the magical echoes, Ember grabs Ky and demands that she deny she has ever eaten anyone of his people, remembering that ‘withyn our sacred halls no man may tell a lie.’ She remains silent. He feels betrayed that she deceived him, and leaves her there alone.

Furious, Ky seeks revenge on the book, tearing out its pages one by one in exchange for information, but is eventually ensnared by the echoes and leaves to hunt down Ember…

They encounter one another again, each of them bespelled, and she chases him.

Some way, somehow, it all circled back to the book. He hated the memory of it—the words which had hurt Ky Veli and made her bleed. And then he remembered grabbing her, shaking her, threatening her with his spear.

With each new memory he flinched.

The sirena watched him, her eyes glimmering like black marbles in the dark. The corners of her mouth turned down and he could see her gums. Quick as a frog's tongue—her arm shot out and she snatched the spear, twisting, pulling.

It was wrenched from him with petrifying ease.

Flung aside.

The wooden spear clattered into the darkness.

And then she lunged.

Ky claws his back, tearing through his shirt and wounding him. After a tense game of cat-and-mouse in a hall of reflective mirrors, Ember is given away by the sound and scent of his own dripping blood, but sprints toward a magical door at the end of the hall and stumbles through, where he beholds a luminous golden-haired woman dressed all in white.

She asks him how goes 'the war,' and he loses consciousness at her feet.

Ember awakens surrounded by crystals and books, in a sanctuary that reaches all the way to the sky above the mountain, and starts to drink from the flowing water nearby. The lady stops him, warning that their 'enemies' have poisoned the well. After telling him how to heal himself with one of the crystals growing from the stone, she directs him to a pitcher and fruiting vines in the bedroom.

Above the stone steps at one end of the room, there is a well, and the lady tells him it used to speak to the 'oracles,' showing them the past, the present, and sometimes the future. He seeks wisdom and counsel from its depths, to no avail.

He lowered the candle almost to the water's surface, leaning as close as he dared, but only his own face glared back at him, haggard and pale.

"Help me," he tried again, too tired to speak above a whisper. "How do I get out of here?"

The candle flickered under his breath, but the water remained unmoved. Ember opened his mouth to ask the lady if she might try for his sake, but the alcove steps had lapsed into shadows and his strange hostess was nowhere to be seen.

Ember awakes from a nightmare to the roar of a thunderstorm. He washes his bloody clothes in the basin, beneath the untouchable sky, and within the murky water glimpses a reflected figure and a flash of red far above. When he looks up, it’s already gone.

The lady refers herself as a servant of the oracles, and continues to inquire about the ‘war.’ He decides to read by the light of forever flickering candles in the sanctuary, and learns more about the river-folk and mountain, as well as the enchanted lady herself and what might be lurking beyond the door of the sanctuary.

She bestirred herself, and for the first time since their meeting he saw the entirety of her being flicker faintly—betraying the illusion of life. "My apologies, son of man. There are many foul forces and mislaid spells which wander freely beyond these walls, and I can hear more of their mutterings today. It is possible that you granted them access when you entered this sanctuary. It has been so long since a warrior has sought refuge here."

Ember glanced around the entire room as a shiver touched his spine. "I... I'm sorry. I didn't know..."

"Such blame is not yours to take," she intoned firmly. "Many dark things awakened when the Enemy stormed our mountain."

"What... sort of dark things?"

She stared at him blankly, and flickered again. "I do not know, but I do not wish for them to know you."

One book called ‘The Shaping of Magic’ contains the following passage:

Manie have attempted to reason with the siraens and, to my knowledge, all have failed. There be wrytten no accounts of any such success by means of our magic, and no manner of persuasion can dissuade them from their hunger. They seek and devour the hearts of men, and to this end I drede that there can be no reconcilyng. It is a peculiar thing, that they have such a bynt toward the gnawyng of human bones, whan there are many creatures of the sea and land alike who do not make such fight as we, the sons of men.

Against the lady’s wishes, Ember tricks the magic by making his request immediately before cracking a bone of the long-dead oracle upon the stones of the well. He demands that it tell him what he wants to know, and is caught up into a lifelike vision of a younger Ky and a red-haired sirena in the midst of an unfamiliar wood.

He turned, and saw the dying embers of a fire, over which rested a small simmering pot of stew. It was a homely but delicious-looking meal that Ember wished he could smell, but the dusty air of the atrium remained as it had always been.

It was neither the stew nor the fire which commanded his attention.

A woman was seated before it, clothed in nothing but the shifting light… and thick red hair, the color of a rich wine. It spilled across her shoulders in sumptuous waves and tangles, like a blood waterfall: abundant, trailing down well past her bare feet had she been standing, carefully cultivated and, from the way she had arranged it about her shoulders like a winter cape, no doubt a source of great pride. She bore up under the weight as if it were nothing.

A taught frame and chiseled shoulders bespoke her strength, but drooping oily eyelids and a slow smile countered that with a peculiar laziness, as of one who enjoyed leisure more than the earning of it.

PART 2

SHATTERED TRAIL

He realizes that he has been given a window to a past moment between Ky and her elder sister, Sil, but he is invisible and altogether powerless, merely an onlooker in this fragment of the past. They are speaking the convoluted siren tongue, but he finds he can understand their speech, perhaps translated by the magic of the well. Ky is ultimately tricked by her sister into eating soup with 'man' as an ingredient, and she is devastated when she realizes it was a man she had 'befriended.'

“We spoke for some time as he prepared his supper; what a shame he never got to taste it. All is not lost for us, however! He shall sate our appetites far better than the last bony wastrel you found,” chortled Sil, digging her fingers into the pot. “Besides, I think this shall make for a beautiful adornment when I attend your ceremony… don’t you?”

And she quietly reached into her tresses, twisting a strand which Ember now saw had been braided and looped around a tarnished silver ring. It flashed in the firelight.

At this, Ky’s head snapped up, as if someone had yanked her by the hair.

“Oh, yes, we had a lovely conversation.” Sil glowered from over the pot, her thin smile doing nothing to soften the expression. It chilled the marrow of his bones. “His name, his profession, where he walked yesterevening—and whom he hoped to meet tonight. He told me everything, you see.”

A shiver ran through Ky from her shoulders to her toes, which she curled and tucked beneath herself, retreating inward.

“He did?” she whimpered, her cheeks still bulging with stew.

“He did.” Sil stuck a finger in her mouth and sucked it thoughtfully—though Ember guessed it was only the pretense of recollection, and she was instead deciding which details would elicit the most entertaining reaction from her sister. Her eyes narrowed. “Bren was his name, I believe.”

Ky retches and crawls into the bushes, but her sister’s voice is more powerful than her fear and fury. Although she eventually manages to flee, Sil follows, and as Ember tries to speak to Ky through the memory, the vision warps. The past image of Sil is suddenly very real, and looking directly at him in the present.

“Oh.”

The sirena licked one corner of her mouth.

“How interesting.”

Her mouth matched the sonants; she no longer spoke in the siren tongue, but that of his own people. They were familiar words, half-buried in a thick, tangled accent. When he tried to turn his head, those fell black eyes held him firmly in place.

“I know your voice,” crooned the sirena, tilting her head. “How came you to this place? And where is the dark-haired one?”

Ember tries to get away from the savage sister, but trips and tumbles down the alcove stairs, ending the vision; erstwhile, in another place not far from the Oracle's Sanctuary, Ky attempts to blot out all the songs and melodies of the mountain and forget what she has done to Ember.

She wished she could devour the fractured spells so that they would cease their chattering, but there was no way to swallow such voices; they whispered unabated. Songs of the seas and the earth were familiar to her, but these—these were man-wrought and siren-wrought, echoes of the past which pressed against one another in a torrent of ceaseless whispers, awakening memories not her own and threatening to unravel her reasons.

Ky shifted her cold-hot feet beneath her and touched the cold-hot wounds on her face. He had put them there, with his cruel words—

No, the Book had—

And then she—

Forget.

Forget.

Forget.

She smacked her palm thrice into the blood-soaked floor.

Ember confronts the oracle’s servant with the dark truth of what happened to the mountain kingdom's inhabitants, and decides to look for a map that might show him a way out. He finds one, and the enchanted lady tells him to take two healing crystals from a basket before he leaves. He asks her to come, but her form wavers and she admits she is bound to the sanctuary.

“You asked me which of these books and scrolls I preferred, when you arrived here. I did not understand your meaning then. Now, I have decided that I prefer that which has brought hope to the last of our children.”

A knot formed in the back of his throat.

The last of our children…

"If there’s nothing left here for you anyway, couldn’t you accompany me?”

Her eyes unfocused and she flickered faintly. “Like the basin and the pitcher, my source is bound to this room; if I leave here, the weaving will unravel.”

He tells her his name and steps out into the darkness, crunching across a sea of shattered mirrors and following the trail of Ky’s bloody footprints. Along the way he stumbles across the sight of an age-old skirmish, and the body of a fallen warrior and dead siren. Within the siren’s ribcage is lodged a shortsword emblazoned with magical runes: FISKBITR.

“It is a rare pleasure to make your acquaintance, Fishbiter,” he said formally; and then blushed a little at his own foolishness. “My name is Ember Jarelson, and I do promise to wield you bravely... though I confess I have never touched a weapon so fine in all my days.”

As he spoke, the filigree shimmered along the length of the runes, and Fishbiter hummed. Only once the spark of blue had reached the end of the etchings did the weapon fall dark and quiet once more.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that the sword had returned his greeting.

Ember has a dream of wandering through a dark and tangled wood, where he is confronted by the apparition of Sil Veli, who appears to have found a way into his dreams or been pulled there by some outside source.

“This is my dream,” he declared very firmly. “And you aren’t in it.”

A cold breath chilled his face, and she chuckled—a whispering sound, like water tumbling over stones in the autumn. “Am I not?”

Ember turned and ran—faster, further, stumbling downhill, surrounded by the deadness of his own waking dream–but he had not gone more than a handful of paces before he tripped, pitching forward with a strangled cry and falling to the forest floor.

At last, Ember finds Ky’s place of refuge, and offers her one of the healing crystals. He has acquired some supplies, including the map, and finds a path which might lead them to the other side of the mountain. When they step outside, a cold draft sweeps through the tunnels, and Ember is unsettled.

He rolled his shoulders, feeling his own newly healed muscles stretch and tighten. She offered a faint smile, the twin scars crinkling around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, and he glanced away quickly, searching for a distraction and finding nothing that hadn’t been there when he first entered the maze of dwellings.

Although…

Ember shivered.

There was a draft.

That was new; it had always been cool under the mountain, but this was different—an icy coldness which wafted down the hall at regular intervals like the breath of a frosty giant. Whatever its source, it was not the direction in which they were bound, and it made him even more anxious to leave.

They depart together with a fragile trust renewed.

A PRETTY SWORD

As they wander through the abandoned tunnels and caverns, Ember goads Ky into talking a bit more about her sister—that she is 'wiser' than Ky and ascending to the rank of a clan leader. When they are attacked by a flurry of shadow-birds, Ky dispels them with the power of her song.

He forced his legs to move, one step at a time, until he glimpsed a pale form through the cloud of shadow-birds: she stood in the center of the hall before him, hands upturned and eyes half-closed. A hoard of the wicked things flapped about her body, chittering and clacking and screeching and scolding. But as Ember stumbled across the hall he saw that they were not touching her. Several fresh cuts laced her arms, but the chatter began to cease and he slowed his stride, confused.

A quiet hum became audible as the shadows dispersed.

Several glided past Ember, but seemed to have lost their taste for human flesh.

He understood: her humming had eased his hunger with a single note, soothed the pains in his empty stomach. He felt fulfilled.

Satisfied.

They hear a distant echoing hum which makes the runes of Fishbiter glow; Ember is repulsed and incapacitated, but Ky is allured by the sound and suggests that perhaps something else has heard her summons. Afterwards, Ky becomes sullen and withdrawn, and Ember is annoyed. She remarks that his sword is "pretty" and touches the runes, but it "bites" her finger.

Ember contemplated the state in which he had found the blade—lodged between the ribs of a long-dead siren—and the uncanny way in which it had illuminated Ky’s bloody footprints in the hall.

Fishbiter, he thought, rather bitterly. Of course…

This must be a weapon—designed and enchanted—solely to hunt and kill sirens.

Ky frowned at the sword, opening her mouth to say something angry, but after only a few moments the expression softened and her tongue twisted slightly to form a different sonant.

"It is," she relented quietly, "a pretty sword."

"You said that already."

"Did I?" she murmured, her fingers twitching toward the blade.

They encounter a magical door that is forever opening and closing in the heart of the mountain, and stop nearby at a waterfall in the middle of the ruins to refresh themselves; every now and again, a pungent scent haunts their steps. Ember finds recent claw marks in the moss, and wonders what made them—the breadth is the size of his own hand or a little larger.

When he sleeps, Sil comes to him once more in his dreams, singing the same song she tried to lure him away with in the Sisters' Footstool:

Down, down, down and away,

Where mountains kiss the sea—

Of all the men who ever have lived

Most favored you shall be…

“How know you my name?” Sil demanded, lacing the words with a note of urgency. "Did my sister tell you this?"

He swallowed against the compulsion, biting his tongue and thinking hard before he spoke again. Even in dreams, the desire to prostrate himself before her and confess everything he knew was almost enough to overwhelm him…

But perhaps her power was weaker in this ‘other-place,’ for he managed to keep his composure.

“I know many things,” Ember said cryptically, crossing his arms and looking her up and down; even that was a lapse in judgment, for his gaze lingered too long on the curves beneath her waterfall of hair, and he hated himself for it.

He tries to question her about Bren and her sister, but it ends in disaster and he awakens with a fright.

THE REMNANT

Ky and Ember come upon a hall of statues which turn out to be men and sirens encased in the same amber material as the glowing stone. When Ember touches one of the statues, it triggers a chain reaction, slowly freeing the rest of the human combatants. Spells clash and the entire hall begins to crumble.

Thousands of tiny stone-shells clattered all around her, their quiet taps and rhythms ascending into the chorus of a rushing waterfall. Man-voice had gone quiet, and another rose up to take its place—the familiar, ancient song of her people. Sorrow, wroth, and vengeance.

Ember ran beside her, his strides long and quick for a man but Ky, in her haste, found them clumsy: he had awakened an old, old spell, and in so doing had caused the spell itself to awaken a much deeper and darker thread of magic which had been cleverly woven into the fabric of the first some time later. The intricacies were beyond Ky's understanding, but its magnitude frightened her.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry!"

Ember is angry when Ky uses her siren magic to keep him from going back to save one of the freed soldiers, and the ceiling caves in behind them. As they continue on, they encounter more shadow-birds chittering above them, and find a long hall piled high with treasure, as well as a macabre monument of human skulls and an engraving in the siren script, which Ky translates:

"Here, beneath the two-head mountain, they lie… the bane of the deep-dwellers. Buried together, fates entwined. We wish their bones will find no rest in the lands beyond—no sacred rites, nor mourning of their kin. Death is come to this place of curses, and death abandons us. We spare them none, for they are jealous of their hearts. We, the deep-dwellers, must forever eat their songs."

A thrill of awe ran through him at the unusual words. "How can one eat a song?"

Ky squirmed and made a soft sound of annoyance. "There is… no word in your tongue. Only if you are a siren will you understand."

At the end of the hall is a mountain of plundered gold, and as Ky takes a drink from a nearby fountain, Ember realizes that something is amiss... he helps Ky climb the treasure pile, moments before another siren approaches.

The dread odor that seeped into his nostrils would have sent Ember to his knees, had he been standing. His mouth dried out and all will to flee left his body.

A hooded specter crouched near the pool, thin white arms submerged in the fountain, like a ragged ghost. As stooped and bony as the creature appeared, he could still tell it would stand head and shoulders above even Alden, the burly tavern-keep, if it were upright. The tattered cloak was a dark moldering green, unnaturally preserved in its miserable state. Worn trousers were strapped in place by the blackened leather straps of rusting armor. Bits and pieces of scavenged metal covered the miserable creature, accentuating its inhuman appearance. Gnarled black claws protruded from its scarred bare feet…

A man, yet not a man.

Ky is drawn out of hiding by its voice and scent, but when it mistakes her for its long-dead sirena lover named 'Mohe'na' and suggests consuming Ember's 'life's blood,' she finally shakes free of the enchantment and attempts to lure it away. After a brief struggle with the wicked siren, Ember is deafened by the thunderous power of their voices combined; by the time he has recovered himself, they are both gone. He climbs over the pile of treasure and tumbles down through a tunnel into the darkness, and finds that Ky has climbed up the side of the wall to escape the siren's clutches. He slays it after a brief but exhausting battle.

Gathering up what remained of his strength, Ember hefted the sword one final time and lunged, driving Fishbiter above the broken spear-haft where he thought the creature’s heart should be.

It stared through Ember, uncomprehending.

That black-ice eye rolled.

Blood bubbled on pale lips as they moved to whisper one last word…

Mohe’na.

The beast toppled, and Ember fell down with it. They were bound by the sword—the dying siren and the man who held the hilt. A terrible intimacy pressed upon him: the powerful rush of taking a life, and the grim knowing that what he was doing had consequences which would ring into eternity.

It gurgled, but Ember mercilessly stabbed Fishbiter deep into that sunken chest, crying out with effort and the repugnance of his actions, then—bracing one foot on the ground and planting a knee on his torso—pried it loose and slashed the blade across the siren’s throat.

Gore spattered him from head to toe.

He knelt there panting for a moment, watching in morbid fascination as the siren wriggled in its death throes. Only when the body had ceased all movement did Ember dare relax his hold on the sword.

All was silent, as before…

But the ground no longer trembled, and he could feel his own heart beating again.

After Ember and Ky share the last of the healing crystals from the Oracle's Sanctuary, she promises to tell Ember the truth about why she came to the mountain: she is seeking a 'treasure' which was lost to her people long ago, and is magical in nature. She believes it is what gave men their great power when they built their nest in the mountain.

NOTE: If you re-read any chapter in its entirety I highly recommend Chapter 48 (HUNGER), but I'll include the most relevant excerpt here!

“This elder has seen so many seasons pass that not even he can be remembering them all.” She paused for thought, and then said gently, “But he is… before he is dying, I mean… both wise and good. And he tells me a story about this mountain. A story which is giving me hope, that what I seek is not gone from us forever.”

“The treasure, you mean.”

“Yes.” She resumed her wriggling, and Ember was hard-pressed not to grab her arm to make her stop. “He sings to me then, Ember. He sings a song as old as the world itself. Older than time. If only you are hearing his voice, you will surely know why I wish to find the mountain’s door. For I, too, have a hole that cannot be filled—an empty place—though until then I am not knowing it. His song… makes everything so clear. It is… ah, I cannot describe it to you, nor sing as he can, for my voice is as dust to his, and the words are slipping from my memory. It is like a bright light breaking through clouds in the sky, or flashing through the crest of a wave.”

A lump formed in his throat. He had no clear idea of what she meant, but a memory glimmered in her eyes and the longing in her speech was plain enough. He saw that yearning etched on her face—the way she had looked at him those many days ago while he stood on his doorstep to watch her leave.

She whispers that she is always feeding, forever hungry, and never satisfied.

PART 3

THE MOUNTAIN'S BLOOD

Ember has another nightmare where he relives killing the wicked siren; Sil questions his courage and motivations in doing so, and he awakens in a cold sweat to find Ky watching him closely. She wonders why he makes faces in his sleep, and is surprised and wistful to learn it is true that men can dream. He admits that he has been having 'bad dreams' ever since she brought him to the mountain. Stricken, Ky offers to sing him to sleep, and weave a more peaceful night's slumber for him.

He awakens much later to find her resting beside him... dreamless.

When his eyes finally opened, the daisy field was gone. A shadowy ceiling arched far above, dripping echoes whispered from a distant hall, and the bluish dusk of the mountain settled over him, chill as an early spring morning.

The only warmth came from the yellow light of the stone which sat on the floor… between himself and Ky Veli.

The sirena lay very close, as still as a corpse, pale and wet and cold. He stared at her ribs for a moment to be sure she was breathing, and then tried to see her face through her hair; a few glossy black strands moved when she exhaled. Her eyes were shut, motionless, lashes long against her cheeks, and her lips were soft and void of all emotion.

He found the sight so unsettling that he closed his eyes again, and did not open them until he heard Ky stirring awake.

Near to starving, Ky and Ember happen upon a room full of berry bushes and overgrown orchards; after eating to their heart's content, Ember sets out to do a bit of exploration, and finds that the garden is guarded by a giant glowing tree, dripping with golden sap.

A secondary light source streamed from above: distant sunshine peering through a hole at the top of the domed cave. The light was faint, but refracted by broad green leaves. The branches appeared to be swaying slightly near the uppermost reaches of the cavern, but it might have been his imagination or his limited sight.

"Maker’s breath," Ember muttered.

As he spoke, he shivered, overwhelmed by the ponderous magic of the tree. It was, he thought, a good magic—though far beyond his ken. In its presence, he understood how very young he was. This entity had endured for centuries, and for centuries it would remain.

Ky glimpses two of the shadow-birds in the branches: the creatures are stuck in the glowing syrup of the tree. Ember notices that it shines with a very familiar light. He holds up the glowing stone that Ky placed upon his doorstep and concludes that they are one and the same.

After a tense moment, Ember realized it couldn’t move—for the tree had the wicked thing firmly in its clutches. Half of the shadowy mass was lodged in sticky golden sap, and as it fluttered its size diminished slightly and the light of the tree branch intensified.

It was trapped, like a fly in a honey jar.

He found the spectacle oddly disturbing, and the memory of Hunter’s words rang in his mind. There's magic in the very air we breathe—some of it foul, I grant you, but some of it fine.

Ember smoothed his thumbs across the polished stone, and then held it up to the sunlight.

He knew at a glance where it had come from.

They both bathe separately, and Ky decides to hunt for fish. They remain in the peaceful garden for two days, but when Ember expresses his weary desire to remain there together for the rest of his days, Ky rebuffs his suggestion; in a fit of rage, he calls her a coward, laments the loss of the life he left behind, and threatens her with Fishbiter.

"You know, that’s the worst of it… sometimes, I think I understand you—or at least, I want to!”

He drew Fishbiter with a loud rasp.

She flinched, shuffling off the stone and splashing back into the stream.

"You’re a thief. And worse than a thief, you’re a liar!" Ember gestured sharply with the sword for emphasis.

Ky hunched her shoulders at the sudden movement, clutching at her neck.

"Who stole my catch and ruined my nets? Who came into my cabin uninvited, and helped themselves to my food? You showed yourself to Wilifrey and they ran me off like a mangy wolf! You’re selfish, and cruel!" He paused, breathless; his face was flushed and his shoulders shook with repressed emotion. "How can you say that we’re friends, and then take everything I ever loved from me? My beautiful river, my livelihood, my cabin, my woodlands… Isabel!”

Ember slashed with the sword again, allowing himself a strangled yell of frustration. It echoed long among the twisted trees, and the ancient runes pulsed with a cerulean hunger.

Ky is allured by the magic of Fishbiter, but Ember frightens her away and she runs into the forest; for the first time since finding one another again, they sleep alone beneath the mountain. The next morning Ember heads out into the tangled orchard to find her, and catches a glimpse of the ravenous 'hunger' she spoke of...

The sirena knelt on the ground beneath one of the oldest pear trees, near its tangle of roots, and smashed the fruit into her mouth. Fangs snapped, tongue flashed, juice spattering the ground. Bits of fruit and dirt clung to her claws, and her lips were glossy with drool and juice.

He stared in wide-eyed wonder as she finished off the pear and furiously licked her fingers, her palms, all the way up to the crook of her elbow.

Slavering.

Desperate.

Starved.

She emitted a choked sob, beating at her breast until her skin was bruised.

Ember started forward, but then hesitated, retreating further into the tangle of trees as she snatched more of the rotting fruit from the leafy soil and stuffed it into her mouth. She gulped and chewed with gluttonous abandon, covered from head to toe in slimy nectar.

A chill shivered down his spine.

STONE AND SALT

They come to a mutual decision to continue on together, and plot a new path on the map, but as they progress down the hall, the air becomes drier and a sourceless wind forces Ky to drink the rest of their water supply. She disappears into the windstorm, afraid that she will panic and kill Ember for his blood with no other means of survival. Ember chases after, and nearly misses her altogether in the blowing dust.

Ember stumbled toward the edge of the path, reaching for the wall and leaning down to catch his breath.

He tripped over something.

Something soft.

A curled figure blanketed by white powder, almost entirely obscured from view. Bleached, broken ribs jutted toward the unseen sky like skeletal fingers, poor shelter from the windstorm, but the sirena huddled between the bones and the stone wall. Blistered hands covered her nose and her eyes were tightly shut.

“Ky!” he cried hoarsely.

She hunched her shoulders, lashes fluttering. One hand twitched toward the sound of his voice, and he glimpsed a trickle of dried blood upon her chin. Ember kicked a few protruding ribs out of the way, which shattered to pieces, and dropped to his knees on the stone.

Ember carries the unconscious sirena to a place on the map called the Salt Baths, removes her clothes, and submerges her in the subterranean pool; in the dark stillness, sleep comes to him again, but he finds that the bleak forested landscape of his dreams has grown colder and more unfriendly than before. Without Ky's song, Sil reappears to enact her revenge for being shut out of his mind.

“I am,” he whispered, “a hopeless fool.”

A faint wisp hung in the air before him as he exhaled deeply.

Why was he so cold?

He shivered, putting his arms around himself; two glimmering reflections floated directly in front of his face: a pair of eyes in the darkness. Ember opened his mouth to speak Ky's name, but the eyes moved suddenly much closer.

A strand of hair brushed his brow, damp lips grazing his nose.

“Yessss,” came the hissing whisper. “You are a fool…”

He shouted, his breath mingling with hers, and dodged–not fast enough.

Bony fingers snatched and grabbed.

“Fool to trust my wretched sister!” shrieked Sil.

His back slammed against something unyielding—petrified bark scratched and tugged at his tattered clothes as he slid down the bole of the tree, but the sirena pinned him in place by the neck. He weakly tugged at her wrist, too stunned to fight back.

The fog of their breath swirled together as the ashen forest brightened around them, and he could just make out the riverbank behind her—it appeared to have iced over at the edges; frosty leaves crunched and crackled underfoot. And Ember blearily acknowledged that he had slipped into dreams without Ky’s song or the grace of the tree to shelter his weary mind.

When Ky awakens, Ember confesses to her that he has been dreaming of Sil on the nights when she does not sing him to sleep. Ky tells Ember more about her clan, explains that men possess some magic within the 'song' of their existence which feed the sirens' hunger, and finally admits that she herself has consumed human flesh, even though she has never killed a man.

“We who have no voice must fight for what remains, after the hunters devour the hunted, and content ourselves with the echoes of their song. I tell you before, I am never killing any man—for I take what Sil leaves for me, then. The voiceless are not permitted to eat while the blood runs warm and the song is fresh... not until the becoming.”

Ember stared at her, aghast.

“What… is your becoming?” he demanded, his voice croaking.

When she spoke, it was quick, with grim resolve.

“To enchant a man, tear out his heart while he yet lives, and consume it before all the clan.”

He looked into her eyes, wide with fear—and glimpsed his own shocked reflection pooled within them, his much harsher features faintly aglow in the scant golden light of the stone.

“Ky does not lie to Ember,” she gasped suddenly, snatching his wrist. “Not killing! Only eating! Please believe Ky… she does not lie! Never lie to Ember!”

Not killing.

Only eating.

There was a frantic fervor to the words, as if they rendered her somehow less culpable for knowingly gnawing the bones of his kin. But it was true; she had not lied.

Bile soured his tongue… the illness inclined toward bitterness, which swiftly became disgust. She had lived long amongst a fiendish folk who celebrated the desecration of mankind—indeed, not only celebrated, but it seemed almost a necessity. They were drawn to it for some unholy reason, desperate to taste these songs which so delighted them.

He remembered the look in the undead eye of that ancient creature, peering out from beneath his dark cowl with an insatiable hunger. Lusting after Ky's immortal beauty and the song of Ember's flesh.

And then he bleakly wondered what she wished most to hear.

It doesn’t matter?

I forgive you?

Thank you for telling me the truth?

In the end, all he could manage was a strangled: "I know."

Ky touches Ember's neck where she grabbed him when she was starving of thirst, and it's cold and bruised; Ember doesn't remember her grasp as being bruising, and wonders briefly if it was her sister who was able to inflict harm upon him through his dreams. Ky hums a healing song to herself, trying to distract from her thoughts; she laments that she has not the talent to heal him as well.

As they wander through this part of the underground city, they find a waterfall guarded by watchful stone pillars caved into the likeness of elden kings and queens. Ky senses straggling echoes of old magic, and glimpses a spark of light and a feminine figure wisping behind a statue.

She wonders if they are being followed.

Some of these magical echoes manifested into frustrating glimpses of movement amidst the stone silhouettes… a spark of light which blinked in Ky's periphery, only to disappear as soon as she turned her head. Once she noticed a few golden strands, like pale hair, wisping around a stone figure—but when she peered behind it, there was nothing to be sensed or seen; only a familiar and effeminate energy which whispered past her grasping claws before that, too, ebbed into darkness.

Perhaps I should speak of this figment to Ember.

She wondered yet again if they were being followed, and glanced back to her companion.

Ember stared down at the rune-marked parchment as he walked, muttering to himself. Occasionally he put out a hand to brush a drifting cobweb or stone pillar from his path; the cobwebs fluttered and disappeared, and he angled his steps away from the pillars when he encountered them.

His wanderings reminded Ky of a little wooden boat she had once set loose from its mooring, for nothing more than the amusement of watching it bob about the rocky harbor.

“Ember!”

“Hm.”

She stamped a foot.

He glanced up, scratching his bristly chin.

“Hullo?”

“Are you seeing something?” she demanded.

He took an anxious glance about and turned a full circle. “Seeing what?”

“I do not know…”

“Is it magic?”

“I know not…”

“Where?”

“It is gone now.”

“Then how am I to see it?” he sighed, shaking out the map again.

As they continue through the ruined kingdom, Ky begins to hear the song of men, but different—clearer than before, and many. She is tempted to seek them out, but Ember distracts her with a storage room and a feast of honey and alcohol. When he falls asleep, drunk on berry wine, Ky sets off to find the source of the many voices for herself...