57

THE EMPTY THRONE

🙜

When Ember awoke, it was to the pleasant sensation of cool, soft fingers on his wrist, and the sleeping darkness faded further and further away. His bones were brittle and his muscles ached, but much of the confused pain which festered in his soul had quietly drifted away while he rested…

A gentle floral essence reminded him whom he had to thank for that.

He yawned, rubbing his cramped neck, and then sat up blearily.

“Ky?”

“I am here.”

And her words brought with them the shadow in the dark, and the foolish kiss that never was, and the flashing fangs of the sister—and some of the forgotten pangs returned. Ky hummed beside him, lifting her hand and combing knots from her tresses; she had poured more of their meager water supply over her head recently, and her scarred skin shimmered like dragonfly wings.

Skeins of her oily black hair were amusingly ruffled, and she appeared to be in the process of restoring them to their usual array. He lifted a hand to self-consciously tidy his own unruly hair and was overwhelmed by the scent of crushed flowers. Their tangled embrace in the bower of earth and roots returned to him, too; he flushed, distracted, and it took him a moment to realize that Fishbiter lay bare upon her knees.

Ember blinked at the sword, surprised to see the weapon and the sirena so close to one another, without the former having impaled the latter. The enchanted runes glinted like laughter, as if they now possessed a secret which eluded him.

He quickly decided that he was too tired to question it.

“I’m glad,” he murmured, glancing up at her. “Ky, about the other day… when I… and in the dream… well… there’s no use in it… I want you to know… that I want—you.”

He meant to add something else to that thought.

Some thing he wished for her to do, to be, to him—but he could not name it, if such a thing there was. He only knew…

I want you.

Ky sniffed, looking down at the sword, and tinked it with a claw.

“You think this,” she hissed, “now, but you will not be thinking so in time.”

“I won’t change my mind,” he said firmly. “Do you—want me, too?”

He was aware of the audacity of the question.

Even simple desire felt a presumptuous ask of a sirena.

Few enough men had likely ever lived to ask it.

She did not reply, and he wished they were still dreaming in the bower, so he could better gauge the color of her emotions. It had been so easy there, easy enough that he now knew her silence was not a complete indifference to those desires. Only the refusal to confront them—however twisted and snarled her own feelings might be.

“After we leave this mountain, Ky, I’ll have an answer from you.” The forcefulness with which he spoke surprised him, and she twitched, the sword clattering to the stone. “Be I your friend, or… or something else. But we don’t have to decide what we are to one another, until then—when we have touched daylight again, maybe it will become clearer.”

Ky glanced up at him, her eyes big and unfathomable.

He cleared the awkward hesitance from his throat. “Agreed?”

Ember’s weary heart beat rapidly as he anticipated her usual slight.

Instead, she nodded solemnly. “Agree.”

The pounding in his chest only quickened. Shoving his own desires and the dusty blankets away, he pulled the tattered map out from under his belt and flattened it against the floor.

“Where’s the stone?”

Humming, Ky dragged her claws through a particularly stubborn knot, breaking off a few strands of hair.

“The tree-stone. Where is it?”

“I lost it, Ember,” she whispered. “I am sorry.”

“What?” he said numbly, his voice much lower than he had anticipated.

“I…” Ky tilted her head, smoothing another loop of hair. “I lost it.”

A lump formed at the base of his throat. For a moment he stared at her in disbelieving silence, but she did not look at him, nor did she bother to clarify her remarks. A cold anger blurred his vision, dredged up by the devastating loss, her stubborn coldness, and the disturbing idea that he had become so attached to the little stone; it was a piece of the Tree, the garden she had persuaded him to leave, and he could not believe that Ky had been careless with it.

Ember snatched the sword away from her and held the shimmering blade over the inked runes. It didn’t illuminate them as the stone-light would have, but it was better than nothing. Flicking a fragment of the decaying map aside, he bent low and squinted in the dim light. The parchment had been slowly falling apart ever since he had taken it from the Oracle’s sanctuary; rough handling, sweat, and grime had left it torn and soiled.

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“Today,” he sighed, after a few minutes’ scrutiny.

Ky glanced at him and hummed in question.

“If we walk all day we might reach the door by late afternoon… assuming it’s morning.”

“It is,” she assured him.

He didn’t ask her how she knew. She was Ky, and that was explanation enough, especially in his sleep-addled state. As he folded the map again—more pieces flaking off beneath his unsteady fingers—he wondered how long they had been wandering below the mountain. How long had it taken him to become so familiar with the fey river woman he had caught in his fishing net? And how long would it take him to shake those desires she had stirred up in his soul if she left him?

They sat in mutual silence for a while, neither speaking. Ember kept his thoughts to himself for fear of an outright rejection; Ky, if he flattered himself, merely because she enjoyed his company. But nothing was ever so simple about the sirena, and something more than his foolish fancies yet weighed on her… it was plain in her bearing. No doubt the treasure she had once hoped to find.

If the Plains Gate was impassable, they would be trapped in Sisters Mountain forever, left to drink their sorrows away with aged wine and gorge themselves on honey until there was no more, or it killed them with its sticky sweetness.

A half of him was frightened to know whether fresh air or an eternity of solitude awaited them, while the other half was dying to find out—dying to live again, to breathe freely, to bathe in the warmth and light upon his skin.

Tangled whispers slithered down the hall, like a cloud rolling across the sun…

He shivered, glancing into the darkness.

Hunger… grahhh… the pain…

Ember shivered again, putting a hand to his forehead and shutting his eyes.

Unfamiliar words echoed in his mind, bending reality. For an instant he once more felt those icy fingers gripping his heart, tearing the breath from his lungs, sucking the blood from his veins. They were not his thoughts, but the voice was a voice he knew, and nausea roiled in his gut at the touch of it: the shadow was near, and it desired him. It called to him. It had been robbed of its beautiful ones, and it desired him greatly, and it wished to unravel the one who had come for him… the… the… rivensoul…

“Ember.”

He sucked in a breath and found himself staring into Ky’s large black eyes.

“Are you well?”

“I… I don’t know…” He hesitated, glancing down the hall again, but all was quiet. “Is that—do you hear that?”

She made no reply.

“Is that demon—is it still here, with us?”

“No, Ember.”

“But I hear it,” he groaned. “I can still hear that voice, in my head.”

A wince softened her features, and Ky shifted slightly, pulling the blanket away from him with two fingers. “It is there.”

“Where?”

“In the room where I—where you are—when I am finding you.” She stood abruptly, folding the blanket in her arms and hugging it to her chest. “Come, let us leave it behind.”

Ember sat on the floor, gazing at the sword and hearkening to the unholy whispers. At last, he shook his head. “What if someone else wanders through here and—and finds that thing?”

“Who will be coming?”

“I don’t know! Suppose the door on this side of the mountain is still passable?”

They argued back and forth for what seemed an unreasonable length of time, but when Ember finally turned and marched into the darkness, Ky scampered after him with a little hiss. He reached the oaken door, placed his hand against it, and swallowed hard.

…graahhh…

It creaked open slightly beneath his gentle shove.

Ky fidgeted and muttered many sharp-tongued curses under her breath as he peered inside, drawn by a curiosity that he could not explain. He wanted to see this thing, the creature which had yanked his soul inside-out and wormed its way into his mind, before it was shut away forever.

A quivering blot of darkness hovered above the stone tiles, reminding him of the ink which had been spilled in the great halls. Below it, glowing like the coals of a forgotten campfire, were scattered the broken shards of the tree-stone.

Ember observed them both for a moment, speechless at the sight.

His eyes found hers in the shadows.

Her lips parted.

The inky blot grumbled a tangle of coarse black words, and Ember yanked the door shut with a stuttering thud, his hand nearly slipping from the latch. He stood there, sweating in silence and blinking in the near-darkness.

Then he drew Fishbiter.

“What are you to be doing with that?” Ky demanded, sounding somewhat alarmed.

Thinking of a scrap of rhyme he had once thought to warn of the river-folk, and knowing it better now, he placed the tip of the sword against the polished oak and took a breath. “I need to warn anyone else who might wander this road one day.”

It took him almost an hour in full—not only to maneuver the unwieldy sword without ridding himself of his own fingers, but to recall the runes which made up the words he required—but when he was finished, this dire message had been rather amateurishly scratched into the oaken door:

BEWARE

the shades of shadows

for there is no escaping

from a demon in the night

DEATH to all mortal men

KEEP TO THE PATH

To the Ember of old, it would have seemed an extravagant waste of his faltering letters.

To the Ember who now stood before the door, it seemed hardly warning enough to turn his back and leave—for only one who had been devoured and spat out again by such a creature could fathom the eternal anguish of such a fate.

As he had hoped, Fishbiter had suffered not a scratch, and he silently marveled at the enchanted blade. Perhaps it was not indestructible, but it came closer than any other tool or weapon he had encountered. Skilled fingers had crafted the blade, and a skilled shaper had woven those spells. It was his sword now, and he had no intention of leaving it behind to gather dust in the mountain. Village folk and travelers might ask him about its unusual nature if they saw the runes, but he could keep it hidden always unless he had desperate need of it.

Heartened by the thought, he turned his back on the oaken door, and the shadow and the shattered stone which lay behind it, and trudged toward the Plains Gate—and freedom.