18

WRATHWREAKING

🙜

Blood.

The air reeked of blood…

And magic.

Thick, putrid magic.

Ember’s leather-clad footsteps echoed in the hall for several moments, and then she was alone. Alone in the dark, with no company but the lingering scent of his bitter fear-sweat and the ebbing, flowing magic of that room.

Ky gingerly touched the twin gashes—a pair of invisible claws had rent her face, from the ridge of her eyes to the root of her chin; the fluids which gave her life and breath were trickling forth unhindered.

Curling her lip over a fang, she shifted her bleary gaze to the Book.

The Book which lay so peacefully upon that marble pillar.

Bad magic.

She had told him it would bring them to harm, yet Ember would not listen to her! It was not like Ember to be enamored with anything other than her siren charms…

The Book was wicked.

The Book had taken Ember.

And so, the Book must die.

It must be a sentient being to speak such clever words, and magic was considered to be alive in its own right; thus, there was surely a way to make it suffer for what it had done to her—to them. The sting of Ember’s words pricked her, again and again. Their Truth held a torch to her watery soul and a fire to her damp, dark heart. No sooner had she extinguished it than it returned, and all the brighter.

Squinting and blinking like a mole in broad daylight, Ky uncurled herself from her huddle on the stone and clenched both hands into fists—like Ember had.

Rage was a foreign affliction for Ky.

She was rarely driven to such unpleasant extremes. Fear, disgust, delight, contempt, curiosity. Those were her familiars. She had little concept of how to express rage.

But that is what Ember did.

Fist-clench.

He was angry with her.

Very angry.

Pursuing him would be of no use; he was certainly enchanted by the twisted spell-song here—for she had given him no reasons to leave her all alone. She must order the Book which had sent him away to fetch him back again.

With silent steps, Ky ascended to the pedestal. Being shorter than Ember, she found it necessary to rise onto the tips of her toes to obtain a clear sight of her enemy.

Through the haze of pain, she had glimpsed Ember struggling and failing to close the heavy Book, before the magic enchanted him. Yet it slammed shut once he had spoken those festering words.

She cowered within herself at the remembering of his eyes—no, must not think of that—and examined the magic-bound tome.

Would it open again?

I will make it.

Hooking a finger beneath the leather binding, Ky gave it a savage yank.

It was immobile.

Hissing between her fangs and tasting blood on her lips, she wriggled her fingers between the pages, slowly, insidiously, like a starfish endeavoring to unhinge an oyster: patience was often the key to a success.

For what seemed many hours, Ky persisted. She pried until her fingers ached, and tugged until her joints were stiff. When this did not avail her, she spat on the leather binding and hissed again.

A drop of blood fell to the cover of the Book.

It sizzled like a burning coal and Ky leapt back, tumbling off the pillar and onto the cold stone floor. Soft laughter murmured around the room.

A mere whisper at first, yet from that moment ever louder. Her own laughter. Lower in pitch, and more malicious. Just as Ember's voice was shaped by the wicked Book, so her own echoes were captured and flung back to her.

"Sing for us, Snail-skin, and we will tell thee all ye wish to Know…"

Ky remained very still, her eyes latched on the leather cover. She was not listening to the words; she was waiting.

And then the Book slammed open, pages flipping.

Like a flash of lightning, Ky jumped up from her place on the floor and leapt not onto the base of the pillar but onto the stand itself, thrusting her hand into the swirl of pages and grabbing, twisting, tearing, ripping. With each brutal yank, runes flashed under her fingertips, but before they could form cohesive thoughts she had snatched the pages away.

Eight pieces of torn paper were slashed from the leather Book; she crumpled them in her fist, staring down at her prey with angry eyes. It could not bleed, but she could deform it, as it had deformed her.

A whistling, inhuman shriek wailed around the cavern like a thousand dying falcons, and Ky smiled tightly as the torn pages twitched and quivered, flipping as best they might in their ravaged state. Each time the Book turned to a fresh, uncrumpled page, she reached down before it could summon more than one or two runes and indifferently plucked it from the binding, sparking another cascade of enraged whistles.

"Sing for us! Sing for us!" the angry not-her-words commanded.

"You take my dignity and my Ember, foul remnant. I will not sing for you," Ky proclaimed, conscious that her voice was bereft of an echo. It had a pleasing flatness, she decided, and she would not let it unnerve her. "But you will tell me what I wish to know—"

The Book hesitated before flipping another fresh, blank page.

Ky blithely ripped it out from seam to seam, and raised her voice to be better heard over the irate screams.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"—or I keep taking pages from this book until you do."

There must be a secret to the workings of the Book, as there was to all magical things. Ky supposed that it is not able to bite her face and bind her with invisible chains unless it knew of a similar punishment, perhaps written within that ledger long ago. She hoped very much that she had torn out those particular pages.

"Yes," her echo relented finally. "Come down from thy perch, Snail-skin, and we shall tell thee all ye wish to know."

Ky traced her finger across the ragged edges of the book and smirked, draping one elbow over her bent knees. No, she would not budge from her crouch on the pedestal.

"I stay where I am, and you will still tell me all. Try your tricks once more, with the writings in this ledger, and I continue to pluck pages until none remain. Then you will be nothing. Nothing at all."

The echoes wailed for a moment, chasing each other around the room before finally forming intelligible words.

"Assssss ye wish," they hissed, molding her voice into something truly savage. "As ye wish, Snail-skin. Assssk us anything, and we will give to thee the Truth and Knowledge that ye seek."

"I am in need of both," said Ky calmly, still tracing her finger around the defiled page. It shivered beneath her claw. "What have you done to Ember?"

"Enlightened him," the echoes said smoothly. "We showed him what thou art, and thine own heart’s true intent. That is Knowledge. That is Truth."

"No," growled Ky, quashing the sting of those words as one might quash a bothersome fly between their fingers. "You sing only words which surely frighten him away—half a truth is what men call deception, is it not?"

More hisses filled the chamber, as if it were a pit of snakes.

"Thou art liar, traitor, and thief. Man is soft of heart and doubtful of mind. It was easy to shatter his trust, Snail-skin. We know wherefore ye brought him here. We know—we know—we know!" The voice rose into a shriek of laughter, and Ky snarled until it quieted.

It knew.

The Book knew.

She would pluck every page.

She would tear it apart, tear it into a thousand pieces, and scatter its pitiful remains to the savagery of an ocean storm. Pounding rain, frothing surf, and countless hungry sea birds snapping at its pages. Yes. That would silence this Book of stolen voices.

The thought pleased her and she resumed her interrogation, somewhat mollified.

"What manner of spell is he under?"

"We are not so strong as ye believe," the echoes admitted, growing softer. "There is no spell but that of his own weak mind. And so shall we beguile thee…"

"Lies," Ky snapped. "I know what you are. This fish will never swim into your net."

The echoes laughed again.

Mournful, dark.

"Oh, but ye have… and ye shall never get out, little fish. Never, never, never, never. Mankind loathes thee. Mankind fears thee. The man who has left thee is desirous of thy death. Thou art defenseless in our halls. The Door is shut behind thee.”

"Stop speaking," Ky said, digging her claws into the few perfect pages that remained and tightening her lips. Something inside of her yearned to hear more—her own voice, the voice of a sirena, had enchantments of its own, and she was now frightened of being swayed by her own simple magic.

A drop of blood splatted on the paper with a sizzle of smoke. She didn't move as the heat seared her skin.

"Stop speaking or I will gut you like the fish you describe."

"Two entered our kingdom together," the echoes continued in a moaning wail. "Now thou art twain asunder. The one called Ember hates ye. Should ye not hate him in turn? If he finds thee again, he will not be the same… not the same… no, not him…"

Ky bared her fangs and dug her claws into the paper. There was a brief screech that died away quickly as she hesitated.

"You do not have him anymore. He is mine before he is yours," she couldn't help adding smugly.

"Ah, but there are other forces lurking here within our sacred halls. Be afraid, little fish… be afraid…"

"Be afraid?" Ky murmured.

She did not like those words, but they seemed somehow reasonable. She should be afraid—but not afraid of Ember. Afraid of the Book.

"Stop speaking," she repeated more slowly, curling her fingers, "Or I will do away with you."

"But we are not finished; no, not yet," whispered the echoes. "We know why thou art here. We know what ye came for. But he shall never return to thee now, little fish… ye must seek him out…"

Ky tried to respond, but her shoulder ached where Ember had grabbed her, and she shivered her skin, trying to think past the fog.

"Seek him out… and end him, quick… before the man kills thee…"

"End Ember?" The words slipped from Ky's lips in a desperate sigh. "I cannot."

"Thou hast killed before," her own echo whispered back to her. It brought her comfort; a guiding voice. "Thou hast supped the human blood. To whom dost thou belong? To the man, who now hates thy bones, or to thyself?"

Ky squinted, and then shut her eyes for a moment. The thought was backwards. Twisted. Upside-down. But at the moment, she could not place her finger on it; it was elusive as a prawn in murky waters.

Nevertheless, something was strange about this reasoning…

"Thou art a dweller of the dark and the deep," coaxed the voice. "He has nowhere to run."

A little thrill tickled Ky's spine like a scuttling spider, and her focus quickly shifted from the question of killing Ember to the question of the hunt.

"Too much murmuring magic here," she murmured, glaring down at the Book. She thoughtfully stabbed a claw through one of the last remaining pages, savoring its annoyed squeal. "Too much magic. He can hide from me."

"Sing," urged the echoes. "Sing for the man, and he must come."

It was very wrong to use those words in that way, but Ky was finding it difficult to think anymore in reasons, and finally abandoned her own faculties for this new logic which had been presented to counter the problem of Ember.

Hunt, kill, devour.

So simple.

"I cannot sing," she conceded slowly, still caught in the fear that something terrible might happen if she but lifted her voice in song, "but I can hunt…"

"Go," urged the echoes. "Find Ember."

Find Ember…

Ky dropped from the pedestal and landed in a crouch on all fours. She spread her sticky fingers across the tiles, sensing the dusty footprints where he had once stood. His scent was unmistakable: bitter and salty, musky and sweet, with a whisper of pine and old leather. That combination of smells—familiar and intriguing—was Ember.

His scent and the scent of her blood.

Two things that should never have been together.

And he had left her.

Ky licked her fangs, feeling the prick of each tooth and tasting the air with her tongue.

Find Ember.

All else faded.

Springing up onto her feet, Ky left the chamber and the echoes behind and set off down the hall, looking neither right nor left nor up at the glowing roof above her head. She only knew that there was enough light to see by and plenty of darkness to hide in.

Find Ember.

Ky smiled, and fresh blood trickled slowly down her jaw.

She would find him.

Oh yes, she would find him.

Nowhere to run…