Sword Sirens

by Edmund Hughes

  “See,” said Rin. “I told you it would work. He may be stupid, but he isn’t weak. It was simply a matter of keeping him warm and giving his body time to fight through it.”

  “Nice to see you too, Rin,” said Ari. “I’m surprised you’re still here. I would have figured you to have taken off immediately after the windstorm.”

  All three of the women looked at each other.

  “It hasn’t ended yet,” said Kerys.

  Ari frowned as he realized that he could still hear the faint sound of it rushing and battering against the walls.

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  “A day and a half,” said Eva.

  “Windstorms can last for up to a week, on occasion,” said Rin. “It isn’t so unusual of a thing.”

  Ari ran a hand through his hair, trying not to let how discouraged he suddenly felt show on his face.

  “How much food do we have left?” he asked.

  “A day’s worth,” said Kerys. “Maybe two if we ration carefully. We have plenty of water, though.”

  Ari let out a slow sigh and nodded. He ran his fingers over where the vodakai had taken a chunk out of his arm, finding a carefully wrapped strip of clean leather tied over the wound. He started to climb out of bed, but Eva set a cautioning hand on his chest.

  “You should save your strength,” she said. “Rest.”

  “I think I’ve done enough of that, for the time being.” He cleared his throat as he started to slide his naked body out from under the blanket, and after a couple of seconds, the women took the hint and left the room.

  He dressed slowly, pulling his trousers and tunic on over sore and bruised limbs. Eva, Kerys, and Rin were waiting for him down in the common room. The sound of the windstorm was more intense on the first level, battering against the door and making the piece of wood they’d used as a drop bar groan under the strain.

  “Let’s talk strategy,” said Ari. “Rin, you seem pretty knowledgeable about the surface. What do you think we should do?”

  Rin shot him an amused look. She was dressed in the same style of clothing as the rest of the Ravarians Ari had seen, black leather leggings and a tight, somewhat revealing black and red bodice. The clothing had odd accents, little strips of cloth that he could imagine fluttering in the wind like streamers, trailing behind during flight.

  “We’re doing all that there is to do,” said Rin. “Which is nothing. There is a reason my cadre was in the midst of migrating when you found me.”

  “Where were they migrating to?” asked Ari. “Is it somewhere nearby? Somewhere we could reach?”

  “No,” said Rin. “The distance is simply too far, chala.”

  “Quit calling him that,” said Kerys. “It’s obnoxious.”

  “Think of it as a term of endearment,” said Rin, with a smile. “Your mate did save my life, after all.”

  “He’s not my mate!” snapped Kerys. “Furthermore, the only reason he saved you is because he thought you might have useful information.”

  “Must you insist on screeching at me?” asked Rin. “You’re like one of the spoiled children back in the flock.”

  Kerys glared at her. “You are one of the most insufferably toxic people I’ve ever met!”

  Ari cleared his throat and moved to position himself between them. “How about we turn our focus away from each other, and back toward the problem at hand? You know, so we don’t boil over and accidentally get violent?”

  Kerys and Rin scowled at each other, but neither of them said anything more.

  “Eva,” he said. “Do you think any of the tower’s interior wards might help us?”

  Eva seemed to think about it for a few seconds before shaking her head.

  “I cannot be entirely certain, but I do not think so,” said Eva.

  “We’ve been over most of this already, while you were unconscious,” said Kerys. “The simple truth is that we’re trapped here for now. We’re at the mercy of the weather.”

  “I’m not a huge fan of that conclusion,” said Ari, with a sigh. “But I guess it’s just reality.”

  “Best if we all try to keep busy,” said Eva. “Lord Aristial, may I suggest that you spend some time with the enchanting altar? I believe you still had some essence absorbed at the time of your injury.”

  “Oh yeah.” Ari flexed his hand, noticing the gentle hum of essence through his body that had slipped into the background of his awareness. “Thanks for reminding me.”

  Eva followed him up to the tower’s third floor and watched as he pressed his hand onto the ward that allowed him to deposit and absorb essence. Ari could sense the approximate amount still left inside, and he remembered that they still had the enchanted scrolls he’d found on his first foray into the labyrinth. They might be short on food, but they had an ample supply of essence to work with, at least.

  “Eva,” said Ari. “What do you remember about your old master? You said his name was Lord Mythril?”

  Eva tensed visibly, clenching her jaw and squaring her shoulders. Her expression was clouded and dark, and she closed her eyes for an instant and gave a tiny shake of her head.

  “I do not remember any specific details about him,” said Eva. “Just emotions. He was a man that I truly hated with every fiber of my being.”

  “You told me so much else, though,” said Ari. “About enchanting. About the Saidican Empire. How can your memories be so selective?”

  Eva looked away from him, and Ari could sense the turmoil that his question had stirred within her.

  “I do not know,” she said. “Perhaps the answer to your question is just another facet of what I have forgotten. I have started to remember, and I can only hope that through continuing to build our bond, more will come back to me.”

  She looked so vulnerable. Ari got the sudden, inexplicable sense that telling her about his vision and what he’d learned from it would be the wrong thing to do, at least until he knew more. If her hatred for Lord Mythril ran as deep as it appeared to, it might even be better for the knowledge of their relationship to be lost to the sands of time.

  “I have a request,” said Eva. “If it is alright for me to voice.”

  “Of course,” said Ari.

  “We are constrained to the tower’s interior at the moment,” said Eva. “It seems like the perfect time for me to give you some instruction, as we previously spoke of. Would you be willing to learn from me?”

  “Absolutely,” said Ari. “I would love that.”

  A shout came from the tower’s downstairs. Ari tensed, and then relaxed a little as he heard a second voice shouting in response, and he recognized the rhythm of Kerys and Rin arguing.

  “You know what?” said Ari. “I think they should join in, too.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Ari stood on the tower’s fourth floor with Eva, Rin, and Kerys. It was an open space that felt decidedly unfinished compared to the other levels. There was no furniture, no room partitions, and only the stairs and upper hatch that led to the rooftop. Which made it the perfect place for them to train their combat skills while stuck inside.

  “My people don’t favor swords,” said Rin. “It’s an impractical weapon to use midflight. Sword fights can’t happen in the air.”

  “We have a few longer pieces of firewood, which you can use, if you’d like,” said Ari. “I think this will still be valuable for you to learn. Especially since you won’t be flying anytime soon with your wing missing those feathers, right?”

  Ari realized that he’d let his mouth run a little ahead of him as he saw Rin’s expression waver in response to his words. She looked angry for a moment, and then embarrassed.

  “I’m fine with her opting out,” said Kerys. “I’d prefer it, actually.”

  “I’m sure you would,” said Ari, in a terse voice. “However, she has the most combat experience outside of Eva. I’d like her to be a part of this. If she wants to be.”

  “I suppose I could play along, chala,” said Rin. “For now.�
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  Eva had already picked out pieces of firewood to serve as their swords. They weren’t perfect training weapons, especially given the ease of which the dry wood imparted splinters into fingers and palms, but they were all the group had to work with.

  Eva walked them through several different basic sword stances, naming each one in Saidios, the Saidican language, before giving a translation in words that they could understand.

  “Defensive stance,” said Eva. “Keep your back leg crouched. Like this.”

  She slid a hand against Ari’s thigh and pulled back a little, widening his positioning. Ari was surprised by the ease with which the explanations came to her, and he again found himself wondering how she could remember so much about sword fighting and so little about herself.

  Eva set him up with Rin, to start. The Ravarian had settled for wielding a pretend sword, rather than a spear, but she still managed to seem more comfortable holding the weapon than Ari felt. Eva had them spar against each other in an alternating fashion, one of them defending and practicing the stance while the other attacked.

  “Watch the eyes,” said Eva. “They will tell you what your opponent plans on doing next.”

  Ari stared into Rin’s violet irises, struck by how pretty they were up close. She attacked while he was admiring them, striking him once in the wrist and once in the ribs.

  “Hey!” said Ari. “I wasn’t ready.”

  “That’s why I attacked you,” said Rin.

  Ari sighed, and tried again. This time, he had more luck, managing to respond to one of Rin’s attacks with a block that knocked her stick from her hands.

  “I think I’m starting to get it,” said Ari. “But this only makes sense against a human opponent. I’m not even sure if the fishers have eyes, and I expect that it’s near impossible to predict how the vodakai move.”

  “It can be done,” said Eva. “It is not something we can practice here, but it can be done. If you train your swordsmanship properly, there will be little difference between fighting humans and monsters.”

  They kept at it for close to three hours straight. It was a pleasant distraction from what was going on outside, even though Ari found it difficult to fight at full strength with his lingering fatigue and injuries.

  He took a perverse sort of pleasure in watching Rin and Kerys spar against each other with the sticks. Kerys was more capable than he’d been expecting her to be, and it seemed like a fairly even match, at times. Both women seemed to take out a little of their frustration with one another through the sparring, and they were dripping with sweat after their final bout.

  “That is enough for today,” said Eva. “There is a point where training becomes counterproductive.”

  “Good point,” said Ari. “Though I’d pretty much seize any excuse to avoid getting another splinter in my palm.”

  “Let me take a look at it,” said Kerys. She came over before he could answer, and carefully extracted a splinter between her fingernails.

  “Thanks,” said Ari.

  The four of them headed back down to the common room. The swirling dust and debris outside made it difficult to tell exactly what time it was, but judging from the fading light, Ari assumed it was nearing evening.

  “We might end up eating the last of our food tonight,” said Kerys. “There really isn’t much left.”

  She pulled out the remnants of the tower’s food stores. It was basically just a couple of potatoes and a small pile of carrots. Ari felt his stomach rebelling a little at the idea of a dinner consisting of a tiny portion of cold vegetables, and then he had a thought.

  “There is one enchantment that might help us, even if we are stuck inside,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He made a quick trip upstairs to the enchanting altar and pulled about half the essence contained within it out into his body. He grinned at Kerys and motioned for her to hold off on passing out the food as he made his way into the small kitchen on the first floor.

  “Remember this ward?” asked Ari. “Eva, you said it could heat up the stone surface of this table in order to cook food on it.”

  “That was my best guess,” she said. “It might not be wise to gamble essence on my assumption, however.”

  “Under normal circumstances, I’d agree with you,” said Ari.

  He pressed his hand against the ward carved into the stone table’s edge and willed essence into it, and after a couple of seconds, it flashed with light. Ari touched the ward a second time and then the surface of the table. His fingers shot back in reflex as they sensed the intense heat coming off of it.

  They spent a few minutes figuring out how the mechanism of the ward worked. Holding a hand against the unheated edge of it increased the amount of heat the cooking table’s center put out. Tapping it twice seemed to turn it on or off. It didn’t seem to make much difference whether the person operating the ward had a large store of essence within them or not, much to Kerys’ relief.

  “This is amazing!” she said. “We can use this to make a stew without needing a fire and stretch what little food we have even further. Aristial, you are a genius!”

  “I’ll remind you of that the next time you get mad at me,” he said.

  Kerys rolled her eyes at him, but she was still grinning. She filled the pot with water from the shower, set it on the cooking table, and slowly added the vegetables as the water boiled.

  “You use the old artifacts without any hesitance,” said Rin. “That’s… an unwise thing to do, chala.”

  “I don’t see any problem with it,” said Ari. “Especially if it gives us an advantage when it comes to survival.”

  He looked over at Eva and saw a curious expression on her face. She was watching Rin carefully, as though she half-expected the Ravarian to suddenly become violent or angry.

  “You don’t have a complete understanding of how these things work,” said Rin. “You’re take a risk by assuming you know more than you do.”

  She had a point, but at the same time, Ari found it hard to share her suspicion.

  “Is this a cultural thing?” asked Ari. “Do your people have rules about using Sai artifacts, or a taboo against it?”

  “We are not… how do you say… dogmatic, about such things,” said Rin. “We just don’t place value in the same ideals that the Saidicans held.”

  “This seems like as a good of a time as any for you to come clean about what else you know,” said Ari. “Remember our deal? I didn’t rescue you solely out of the kindness of my heart. What can you tell me about the surface, Rin?”

  Rin let out a small chuckle that drew a frown out of Eva. She shrugged and began preening the feathers of one of her wings with her fingers.

  “That’s an open-ended question, chala,” she said. “What would you like to know, specifically?”

  “What do you know about the Weatherblight?” asked Ari. “How is it that they can just appear like they do?”

  Rin let out a low sigh and flashed a tired smile.

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “That’s information that would be quite relevant, indeed. The Weatherblight have come to define the world that we live in, after all. I can tell you only of the legends of my people, and what’s been recorded in the early histories we have from the time we won our freedom from the Saidicans.”

  “It’s more than what we know right now, I’m sure,” said Ari.

  “The Weatherblight are an ancient curse brought about by the return of the Old Moon,” said Rin. “I’m sure you’ve seen it. The colorful one, with the blue and green surface.”

  “We’ve been calling it the Stray,” said Ari.

  “A fitting name,” said Rin. “It was not always in its current place, and some of my people claim that it will not remain there forever. The Old Moon has a corrupting influence over the surface, chala. Its curse taints the underlying essence of nature, using it as fertilizer for the Weatherblight.”

  “How could a moon have an effect like that?” asked Ari.

  “
You ask a question with an unknown answer,” said Rin. “Personally, I’ve always suspected the Old Moon to be more than just a celestial object. It could well be a cursed artifact, of sorts. Or a world of its own, one inhabited by those who consider us to be their enemy. But your guess is as good as mine, or any I’ve heard, chala.”

  “Are there places that are safe?” asked Ari. “And… Are there any cities left? Is everywhere like this, ruined and plagued by the Weatherblight?”

  “There are safe places,” said Rin. “This region is considered by my flock to be one of them. The weather is not as severe or constant here as it is elsewhere.”

  Ari stared at her, trying to keep his disappointment at her answer from showing on his face. If where they were now was considered to be a safe place, was there really any hope for them?

  “There are cities, too,” said Rin. “Though not many of them. Varnas-Rav is my people’s home. About ten thousand of us live there, in total, though we often have to leave our island during the stormy season.”

  “If we showed up there, as humans…” began Ari.

  “It would be very… ah, what is the word… awkward?” Rin shrugged. “If I vouched for you, you’d be welcome for a time. A few days, perhaps. Though it’s pointless to speculate.”

  “Why?” asked Ari.

  “Because we would have about as much luck as getting there as a robin escaping from a snake’s innards,” said Rin. “Traveling on foot just isn’t done. Too dangerous.”

  Ari exhaled through his teeth. “What about the other cities you mentioned? Are there any populated by humans? Or even Sai?”

  “Far to the north there is a Hume city,” said Rin. “It’s known as ‘Cliffhaven’ in both my language and the slave tongue. My people do not usually go there, but we occasionally trade with ships that come south into our waters.”