Songreaver

by Andrew Hunter

  Garrett smiled and gave Lampwicke a little wave. Her cage sat nearby, atop a moldy crate that Warren had dragged in from somewhere. The book of Fae magic that Max had given him, recently rediscovered in one of the auction house crates, lay beside her cage. The little fairy waved back, glowing a rosy pink at the sight of him.

  "Thanks for bringing Lampwicke," Garrett said, nodding at Warren, "I didn't think I was gonna be able to make it home and back before class."

  "Yeah, no problem," Warren said. He pulled a flask from Caleb's bag and worked the nozzle open, sniffing at the glowing liquid inside.

  Garrett walked over to Lampwicke's cage and pulled the scrap of parchment from his shoulder bag and showed it to her. "I found this in the library today," he said, "Do you think it will work?"

  Lampwicke's shining eyes followed along the lines of text that he had transcribed from the book. She smiled then and shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe work," she said.

  Garrett grinned. "I guess I'll try it first," he said.

  Garrett turned to face the scorched millstone in the center of the room and cleared his throat. Diggs, who was trying to stick his long tongue down the nozzle of his essence flask, suddenly looked up and scurried out of the line of fire.

  Garrett held up the scrap of parchment and studied the words he had written. He made a guess at their pronunciation. "Ghe'haalan jegro thu'uhla," he said, then looked at Lampwicke for confirmation.

  "Jheghaaro the'Uhla," she corrected him.

  Garrett whispered the words again under his breath, committing them to memory. He focused his concentration on the old millstone and pulled the essence flask from his bag.

  "Ghe'haalan jheghaaro the'Uhla," he shouted, thrusting his free hand out toward the stone.

  Suddenly a cloud of green butterflies erupted from his fingertips, dancing away toward the target stone. As they moved away from his hand, they changed in color, shimmering in blue and yellow with flashes of red and purple. Many of them landed on the stone, fluttering their bright wings, as others disappeared through the dark windows of the old mill into the darkness of the ghoul city beyond.

  Garrett gasped in surprise even as Lampwicke clapped her hands together, chattering with laughter.

  "My turn!" Diggs cried, shouldering Garrett aside, "What's those words again?"

  Garrett repeated them, again and again, until the ghoul seemed able to parrot them back with a passable Fae accent.

  Diggs's hairy face twisted with concentration as he shooed Garrett away and brought the essence flask to his lips and took a long drink. The ghoul shuddered as the glowing green essence ran down his throat, and a shiver ran across his brindle fur.

  "Ghe'uulan ziggaro Thualla!" the ghoul shouted, and a cloud of green mist belched from his jaws, coalescing into a swarm of dirty green moths that flew away in random directions.

  Warren, Scupp and the other ghouls hooted with laughter as Diggs wiped his lips with a shaggy forearm.

  "That was wicked!" Diggs said, baring his long teeth in a wide grin.

  "Pretty good," Garrett said, fighting back a wave of nausea. He was still not used to the ghouls' technique of drinking the essence first. Still, it seemed the only way they were capable of wielding its magic. He had tried for a week to show them how a human sorcerer could draw the magic directly from the essence through the metal of the canister, but none of them could do it. He had been about to give up altogether when Diggs had gotten curious and decided to taste the rendered beetle essence within the flask.

  "So, how is that supposed to help us fight a demon?" Warren asked.

  Garrett shrugged. "I don't know," he said, "I'm just trying to teach you guys magic as I figure it out. I just wanted to try something new."

  Warren raised his eyebrows. "Well, I guess coughing up bugs is a neat trick," he said, "but I really just want to learn how to kill bad guys."

  Garrett frowned. "All right," he said, "Do you guys just want to practice your faefire?"

  "Yeah," Warren said, "unless you've got something on that paper about flying swords of death or something."

  "No," Garrett said, "just butterflies."

  "So fire then," Warren said.

  Garrett nodded and went over to climb up beside Lampwicke on the crate. The old wooden box creaked a little beneath him, but it held. He sat and watched as the ghouls took turns lighting up the old mill with bursts of rainbow flame, banishing the eternal chill of the buried city with its unnatural heat. Lampwicke had taught them that, how to make the flames burn hot. Garrett did not care for that version of the spell. He preferred his flames a bit less dangerous.

  A tiny cough drew his attention, and he looked down at Lampwicke. "Are you sick?" he asked.

  Lampwicke smiled up at him, stifling another cough. "I just am... house-sick," she said, "since a little while I was staying at river man's home."

  "Homesick?" Garrett said.

  "Yes... homesick," Lampwicke said, her eyes turning again to the practicing ghouls. She giggled at Diggs as he yelped and tried to beat out the tongue of green flame that was swiftly epilating his tail.

  "How far away is your homeland?" Garrett asked, "I could try to find a way to take you back."

  Lampwicke looked at him, her blue eyes flashing with a sudden hope, then their light faded as she looked away. "No, Garrett," she said, grasping the bars of her cage, "If see my forest again, and not fly free... I would die. I know this."

  Garrett fell silent, watching the ghouls practice their magic, but his mind drifted, searching for a solution to Lampwicke's curse.

  "Hey," he said, "I know someone I'd like you to meet."

  ****

  A chill ran through Garrett as he walked through the last tunnel before he reached Annalien's house. A dim glow of sunlight spilled through the tunnel's mouth ahead, and with it, the faint sound of music and the laughter of many voices. He stopped, clutching Lampwicke's cage tightly in his hands, and looked back at Caleb for reassurance.

  The zombie bumped into him before coming to a stop as well. Caleb narrowed his milky eyes and moaned questioningly.

  "I don't know," Garrett whispered. He cocked his head, straining to hear. He thought he caught snatches of words in a language that sounded like Fae, but not quite. The music grew louder, and the light flared, filling the tunnel with golden light.

  "Dae'saanera, Garrett!" Lampwicke cried, "A party!" She tugged back and forth at the bars of her cage, and pointed, urging him forward.

  Garrett gave her a weak smile and nerved himself onward.

  When they reached the end of the tunnel, Lampwicke and Garrett shared a gasp.

  Ghostly dancers wheeled around the floor of the vast chamber surrounding Annalien's house, filling the empty gloom with sparkling, golden apparitions. Elven men in tall-collared coats and ladies in gowns like silken flowers twirled and bounced across the floor to the music of an unseen orchestra. The ghosts smiled and laughed and danced, their steps leaving no trace in the thick dust on the floor.

  Garrett looked down at Lampwicke and shook his head in confusion, but she would not take her eyes off the dancers. The little fairy ran from one side of her cage to the other, trying to get a better glimpse of the ghostly festival.

  Caleb made a grumbling noise.

  "Maybe this is a bad time," Garrett said.

  "Go!" Lampwicke shouted, pointing toward the dancers.

  Garrett took courage from the golden light that spilled from the windows of Annalien's house and stepped out onto the dusty floor, sidestepping to avoid a pair of elvish dancers as they spun past.

  "Hi," Garrett said, "Have you seen Annalien?"

  The dancers swept away, their lambent eyes lost in each other's gaze.

  Garrett hugged Lampwicke's cage and made his way across the floor, dodging ghostly couples as they reeled by.

  Caleb groaned angrily as an elven lady in a bustle gown passed through his body. Garrett opened his mouth to try to reassure him, but then another ghost danced directly into Garrett.


  He gagged as the ghost's body passed through him. It felt like walking through warm cobwebs. He sputtered and wiped at his face with one hand, but the feeling had passed, and the dancer spun away, oblivious and seemingly unaffected by her journey through the young necromancer.

  "Gah!" Garrett shuddered, and he quickened his pace, dodging between the dancer's bodies as he reached the tight inner ring of the dance floor.

  "Annalien!" he shouted as he dove inside her little house. The scent of flowering things washed over him in the golden light within.

  Lampwicke made a little cry of delight at the sight of Annalien's garden.

  "Annalien?" Garrett called out, scanning the room as he pulled Caleb safely inside. The zombie was pawing at his shoulder where a ghostly gentleman had recently intersected with him.

  Garrett saw Annalien then, kneeling beside the pool in the center of the room with her back to the doorway, her pale, translucent form nearly invisible against the sunlit gem that gave this place life. Her narrow shoulders swayed slightly in time to the music that seemed to come from all around them with no visible source, and she hummed softly along with the tune.

  Garrett lowered his voice as he approached, "Annalien?"

  Suddenly the music stopped as Annalien the ghost started from her dream. A great, solemn silence fell over the garden, broken only by the gentle bubbling of the fountain and Annalien's voice as she spoke.

  "Garrett?" she whispered, turning to look back over her shoulder at him.

  "I'm sorry, Annalien," he said, "I didn't mean to intrude... I just wanted to introduce you to my friends."

  Annalien lifted the stump of her wrist to her face, as though to brush away a strand of her wispy hair. She smiled and got to her feet, straightening her robe. She gave Caleb a nervous nod, but her eyes brightened as they fell on Lampwicke. "Alan'nae verenaame," she said, "I never thought I would see another fairy again."

  Lampwicke giggled.

  Annalien's face darkened. "Let her out of that cage at once, Garrett!" she scolded.

  Garrett's face fell. "I don't know how," he said.

  Annalien looked confused, then her eyes hardened with realization. "Oh, they go too far!" she hissed. She pointed her wrist at a nearby stone pedestal and instructed Garrett to set Lampwicke's cage down and step away.

  Annalien stepped in front of the pedestal and lifted her arms to either side of Lampwicke's cage. She began to whisper fervently in Elvish.

  Lampwicke gave Garrett a worried look, and he gave her his most reassuring shrug.

  Annalien's voice grew louder as she chanted and waved her forearms over Lampwicke's cage. Garrett's breath caught in his throat when he saw the bars of the cage start to glow red.

  "You're going to burn her!" he gasped, but then he saw that it wasn't the bars glowing after all. Swirling runes of fiery red energy shimmered like a shell around the outside of Lampwicke's cage. He realized that this must be the magic of the vampiric spell that bound Lampwicke inside, made visible by Annalien's magic.

  Annalien bared her teeth, almost cursing with frustration as she spat out the Elvish words of her counterspell. The vampire runes sizzled and hissed, throwing off glittering red sparks, but weakening not in the slightest.

  Lampwicke screamed as the red runes crackled and flared, and Annalien relented, falling silent.

  Annalien's shoulders slumped in defeat, and the red runes faded into invisibility once more.

  Lampwicke stretched her tiny hand out through the bars, hopefully, and then snatched it back as a crackling pop enforced the perimeter of her prison. Lampwicke stuck her singed fingers into her mouth and mumbled something impolite in Fae.

  "Yes," Annalien sighed, "The dung-headed blood-suckers have done their work on this one."

  "Is there anything you can do to help her?" Garrett asked.

  Annalien gave a rueful laugh. "You've brought me a real puzzle this time," she said, "I suppose you want me to bring your satyr friend back to life when I'm done setting the fairy free?"

  "Huh?" Garrett said.

  Annalien nodded at Caleb. "Your dead friend there," she said, "Someone put a satyr's ghost in him. They shouldn't have done that."

  Garrett blushed. "Yeah," he said, "I guess I did that. My uncle had the essence of a satyr thief, and we used it to make Caleb."

  Annalien shook her head. "I suppose you'd stick a pig's tail on a unicorn if you thought it was funny," she scoffed, "Humans!"

  Garrett winced.

  "In any case," she sighed, "I don't think I can help either one of them very much."

  "But isn't there something..." Garrett began.

  "I didn't say that I wouldn't try," Annalien interrupted, "I just don't want you getting your hopes up. The best thing you can do for... Caleb there is to pull that essence out of him and pour it out onto green earth. Set him free, Garrett. You don't own him."

  Garrett looked at Caleb, for the first time ashamed of what he'd done.

  "As for the fairy," Annalien said, "What is her name?"

  "Lampwicke," Garrett answered.

  "As for Lampwicke," she said, "I'm not sure that there is anything that I... or anyone else can do to set her free."

  "But there has to be some way!" Garrett said, "There has to be!"

  "This is old magic, Garrett, older than me," Annalien said, "These are the very Laws of Nature you're trying to oppose. I can't speak against them. Do I look like the Songreaver to you?" She waved her ghostly arms in frustration.

  "The what?" Garrett asked.

  "The Laws of Nature?" she said, "The words that called us into existence?"

  "No, the other thing you said."

  "The Songreaver?"

  "Yeah," Garrett said, "What's that?"

  Annalien's eyes widened. "You've never heard of the Songreaver?"

  "No. Is that something that would help us?" Garrett asked.

  Annalien laughed. "Never mind," she said, "The important thing is that I will do what I can to help Lampwicke, but I want you both to know that this may be something that she is going to have to live with for the rest of her life."

  Lampwicke's eyes fell, and her glow faded a bit.

  "Don't worry, little one," Annalien said, kneeling to peer inside Lampwicke's cage, "I'm going to find a way to make your life better, no matter what. I promise you that."

  "Thank you," Garrett said, "I really appreciate you helping her."

  Annalien smiled at him.

  "If you don't mind though," Garrett said, "I would like to know what a Songreaver is."

  Annalien sighed. She turned away from Lampwicke's cage and mulled her words before speaking again. "The Songreaver was a man," she said, "a human who found some way to break the power of the old magic. He used this power to overthrow the ancient races of the Fae and drive them from this land. He is the reason why humans rule here now, and my people are faded away... only memories now."

  A wild hope sprang up in Garrett's breast. "Then that means there is a way to..."

  "No!" Annalien cut him off, "What the Songreaver did was an abomination, a sin against Nature. When he spoke, the words came from his lips like gray frost, killing everything that was green and beautiful in the world. His voice was the voice of Undoing, Unmaking. It was wrong, Garrett, and we are lucky that he was only a mortal man, and the power left this world with him when he died."

  "But, if he..." Garrett said.

  "No!" Annalien shouted, and Garrett fell silent.

  Annalien gave him a sad smile. "I know you would do anything to help your friends, Garrett," she said, "That makes you special. You are the only human I've ever liked... not that many of them have ever found me here... but that is all the more reason why you should turn away from the horrors of your people's past. You can't solve every problem by smashing it apart with your fist... sometimes... sometimes you have to accept that there are things you can never change." She lifted her arms before her, imploring him with her missing hands.

  Garrett lowered his head and kept his
silence. He was too busy committing the name of Songreaver to memory.

  The rest of his visit passed quickly. He soon made some excuse to be on his way, but Lampwicke begged him to be allowed to stay a while longer. He agreed to leave her in Annalien's company for the time being, at least until the next magic class with the ghouls.

  He bade them both goodbye, and he and Caleb took their leave, grateful that no more dancing ghosts littered the floor between Annalien's house and the tunnel.

  He lit his witchfire torch and passed into the shadows, his brain fevered with the possibility that, somehow, the old magic that held Lampwicke prisoner could be broken. Again and again, he silently whispered the name, Songreaver.

  "Leaving already?" a girl's voice spoke from the shadows ahead.

  Garrett jumped, stopping suddenly. He lifted his torch to bathe the girl in the greenish witchfire glow.

  A girl in a brown cloak and simple clothing leaned against the wall of the tunnel ahead. She smiled at him, and he felt he must know her from somewhere, though he had no idea what a human girl would be doing alone here, so far beneath the streets of the city.

  The girl in brown pushed away from the wall and started to speak, when she seemed to take notice of the way he was dressed. "Why are you wearing a Templar's tunic?" she asked.

  Garrett shrugged. "I'm studying to be a Templar," he said, "Do I know you?"

  She laughed. "Do you?"

  "I think I do," he said, "but I'm afraid I can't remember your name. I'm sorry."

  "You'll have to guess it then," she said, and then quickly added, "but it's not Darcy, Brynn, Suzie, Kelli, Macy, or Priss."

  "Why would I guess those names?" Garrett asked.

  "I don't know," she said, "Why would you?"

  "Are you mad at me about something?" Garrett asked.

  The girl in brown sighed. "No," she said, "Just guess and get it over with."