Songreaver

by Andrew Hunter

  The Girl in Brown lifted her foot and kicked hard, directly in the center of the doors, and they exploded open with a splintering crash as the obsidian bolt within disintegrated into a thousand tiny shards.

  A shrieking bleat erupted from somewhere high above them, and the Girl in Brown seized Garrett by the collar and shoved him inside the tomb.

  "We're inside!" Garrett shouted, as the Girl in Brown slammed the doors closed behind them, shielding them from the Guardian's wrath.

  Garrett reached into his pack to retrieve a torch with his right hand. His left hand felt stiff and throbbed with heat where he had touched the hot glass of the door. The torch flared to life at his command, and he saw that they stood inside a small antechamber between the outer doors and a stone wall with a single door of white marble. Carved into the surface of the door were the figures of a man and a woman embracing one another. The man wore mail armor and a short beard. The top of the woman's head reached only to the man's broad shoulders and her features were undeniably elvish. The man looked down at her with an expression of blissful adoration, and she gazed back with a sad sweet smile.

  "Let me look at that," the Girl in Brown said, taking Garrett's injured hand in her own.

  He looked down at his hand in the witchfire light and sucked air through his teeth. It was going to blister.

  The Girl in Brown undid the toggle fastener on one of her belt pouches and retrieved a small jar of balm and a roll of bandages. She smeared the white cream over the reddened flesh of his palm and then bound it gently with the soft, stretchy bandages.

  "Spider silk," she said, "It makes great dressings... only took me about fifty years to figure out how to weave the stuff."

  Garrett smiled at her. "Thanks," he said.

  "Thanks for getting that door open," she said.

  Garrett nodded, turning his attention back to the inner door.

  "I suppose the elvish tomb wasn't cheerful enough for Brahnek's tastes, so he added a little extra to it," the Girl in Brown said.

  "You mean the elves made this place?" Garrett said, "I thought elves kinda lived forever, unless somebody killed them."

  "They did... until the moon fell out of the sky," she said, "After that, the Masters went mad, and everything started to change. It became more and more common for elves to lose hope and fade."

  "Like Lampwicke?" Garrett asked, then he added, "You know who Lampwicke is, right?"

  She laughed. "Yes, Garrett, I've talked to her before... though she doesn't remember it."

  Garrett shook his head. "This is really strange for me... having a friend that I won't remember the next time I see her."

  "But you do remember... a little," she said.

  "What does that mean?" he asked.

  "I don't know," she said, "It's never happened before... I think I like it."

  Garrett smiled again.

  "We'd better get to work on this door," she said, putting away the unused bandages.

  "Yeah," he said.

  Garrett stood before the white door, running his hand along the edges, trying to find a latch or hinge of some sort. "I'm not sure how you open it," he said.

  At the moment he spoke, a loud clap sounded through the small antechamber, and the door fell inward, away from his hand. Garrett gasped, reaching out to try to catch it, but there was nothing to grasp, and he watched it topple over like a great white domino and strike the floor of the inner chamber with a tremendous boom that shook the whole tomb. He stared down at the broken door that lay with a long, vertical crack that parted it into two halves, separating the carven images of Brahnek and Queen Elaraenu.

  Garrett looked at the Girl in Brown. "What happened?" he whispered.

  She shrugged. "You must have said the magic word," she said.

  Dust swirled in the green light of Garrett's torch, obscuring the dark chamber beyond the broken door. Slowly, he was able to make out the dark shape of a long, obsidian sarcophagus, lying perpendicular to the doorway, and the body of an enormous man, kneeling beside it with his arms across the lid.

  "Huh?" Garrett said, "Why is he outside of his coffin?"

  "That's not his coffin," the Girl in Brown said.

  Garrett started to ask more when the body of the man suddenly creaked to life, lifting its head. A shining coronet glimmered atop the man's long, cobweb hair, and two cold blue lights shone from his eyes, sunk deep in his gray, withered face.

  "Who dares disturb the sleep of my Beloved?" hissed the man in the tomb.

  Garrett staggered back a few steps in horror as the man lurched to his feet with bits of rusty mail armor crumbling away as he stood up.

  "Brahnek!" the Girl in Brown hissed, "Garrett, it's him!"

  Garrett froze, unable to speak or even move.

  Brahnek Spellbreaker ripped the black-bladed sword from his belt, it's scabbard disintegrating into dust and shreds of dry leather as he did. The dead man advanced on Garrett, raising the sword to strike.

  Garrett fell to his knees before the creature and gasped, "Please! Please, King Brahnek, I need your help!"

  The man hesitated, cold eyes narrowing. He held the sword, wavering above his crowned head, still poised to cut Garrett down. "Who are you?" he hissed.

  The Girl in Brown hastily knelt beside Garrett, giving him a desperate glance.

  "Sir... I need to know how to break a spell," Garrett said, his voice trembling with fear.

  The sword wavered as the dead man swayed in his moldy boots. "What?" he rasped.

  "My friend is bound with magic, and I need to set her free, Mister Brahnek," Garrett said, "If I don't, she'll die."

  Brahnek lowered his sword. "You're only a boy," he said, "How did you break through the Wards?"

  "I didn't see any Wards, sir," Garrett said.

  Brahnek looked down at his feet where he stood atop the cracked white door. He moaned as he pulled the crumbling toe of his boot away from the carven marble face of the elven woman. His joints creaked as he turned to look back at the black coffin. "How long has it been?" he whispered.

  "Centuries, High King," the Girl in Brown said, "Everyone thought you long dead."

  Brahnek raised his left hand to look at it. His leather glove flaked to pieces as he closed his fist, leaving the pale gray flesh of his withered fingers exposed. "Dead I am," he sighed, "I died the day my heart took her leave of this cold world... I only wish I had been able to follow her thence."

  "Why is it that you cannot, High King?" the Girl in Brown asked.

  His eyes burned with cold fire as he bared his dry teeth. "I see through your guise, Wyrmkin," he said, "The Word is not yours to take! I guard it too well to surrender it to a false face. You could not bear its weight!"

  The Girl in Brown fell silent, lowering her head.

  "And you," he said to Garrett, "I would see the face of a boy so bold as to forfeit his life in search of the Spellbreaker!"

  Garrett straightened his back, still on his knees before the dead king. He reached up and pulled back his hood to uncover his head.

  The cold fire in Brahnek's eyes flared in surprise.

  "Dragonfire!" he hissed, "Are you a Slayer, boy?"

  Garrett shook his head. "No, sir," he said, "I haven't slain any of them... yet."

  Brahnek let out a dry, hissing laugh. "I admire your spirit, boy," he said, "Sorry I am to end such a life so soon after its start." he lifted the black sword again.

  "Wait!" Garrett cried, "Why do you want to kill me? I didn't mean to break your door. I just want to help my friend."

  Brahnek sneered. "This girl is no true friend, boy!" he said, jabbing his finger at the Girl in Brown, "Deceived you have been! I will free you from her spell with the gift of steel."

  "No!" Garrett said, "She's not the one who needs help!"

  Brahnek's eyes narrowed to icy slits.

  "It's for my friend Lampwicke," Garrett said, "She's a fairy, and she's locked inside a magic cage... Please, sir, she just wants to go home, but I don't know how to set
her free. If you could just tell me the word, I could set her free! If I don't, I'm afraid that she's going to die!"

  Brahnek tilted his head. "You did all this for a fairy?" he said.

  "Yes, sir," Garrett said, "She's my responsibility... and my friend. I don't want her to die."

  Brahnek laughed again. "All things die, boy... most things die. Do not flee from death, child... it is not... easy... to live beyond your time."

  "But please, let me set her free, so that she can see her home again before she dies," Garrett begged.

  Brahnek lowered his head. "Make peace with your gods, boy," he said, stepping forward and tightening both hands around the grip of his sword, "The secret of the Word shall not leave this tomb."

  "Wait! Wait, sir!" Garrett cried. He reached out and clutched at the Girl in Brown's sleeve. "If you tell her the secret, she won't be able to tell anybody else! She has some sort of... curse... People can't remember her after they talk to her. If you told her the secret, it would be safe with her. Even if she told someone else the secret, they wouldn't remember it."

  The Girl in Brown looked at him and then to Brahnek.

  "I cannot allow either of you to leave here alive," Brahnek said.

  "It's my fault that she's here. Please let her go," Garrett pleaded, "I told you that she can't tell anyone about you or the secret. I'm telling the truth!"

  "I know you are," Brahnek said.

  "Then please just tell her the secret and let her go so she can save Lampwicke," Garrett sobbed, "Kill me if you have to, but don't kill them for something I did, please!"

  "Tell her the secret?" Brahnek chuckled, "You do not understand what you ask."

  "No, I don't understand," Garrett said, "I just want to help my friend."

  Brahnek turned and looked back at his wife's sarcophagus. He was silent for a long moment. "A fairy..." he said. Then he began to laugh.

  Garrett looked at the Girl in Brown.

  She leaned close and whispered to him, "When he swings his sword, roll to the right. I'll hit him at the knees, and then we make for the door."

  Garrett swallowed his fear and tensed his body for action, his eyes on the black sword, still poised above the Spellbreaker's shoulder.

  Brahnek faced Garrett once again and let the sword drop to his side and then fall from his fingers. It clanged against the broken marble of the white door. Brahnek's thin lips stretched back in what might have been a smile.

  "For a fairy, you ask this?" he said.

  Garrett trembled in silence for a moment and then nodded. "Yes, sir."

  Brahnek threw back his head and filled the tomb with cold laughter. The laughter died away into a dry chuckle. "It laughed at me then too, you know?" Brahnek said, his hand going to his shoulder as though remembering an old wound.

  Garrett said nothing.

  "The... beast," Brahnek said, his cold eyes looking off into some ancient memory, "When all my men lay dead, and I lay dying, beneath its claws... it laughed when I told it why I had come. I did not understand then why it laughed..."

  Brahnek doubled over, as though wracked with some unbearable pain, and the blue fire blazed in his eyes and shone through his clenched teeth. He fell to his knees before Garrett. Garrett gasped and tried to pull away, but Brahnek seized his shoulders and pulled him close.

  "In the long years ahead, boy," Brahnek whispered, his burning blue eyes only an inch from Garrett's face, "remember one thing. This is the price I demand of you! Remember her name until the stars fall from the sky! Remember my beloved... Elaraenu!"

  Brahnek's jaws creaked open, and a bright blue light burned in his throat.

  Garrett struggled, opening his mouth to scream, but no sound could force its way past the sudden torrent of azure fire that poured from Brahnek's mouth into Garrett's throat.

  A burning ice filled Garrett's chest, wracking his body with pain. Spikes of agony drove through his temples and the back of his head.

  The Girl in Brown screamed.

  Garrett felt as though his whole body would shatter into icy shards at any moment, and then the pain pushed him beyond the capacity for thought. He simply was the ice.

  Strong hands pulled him backward and he fell away, awareness returning as the tide of icy torment withdrew. He lay on his back on the stone floor and looked up into the flawless brown eyes of the Girl. She was speaking to him, but he could not hear her words. Motes of light seemed to swirl around her body. He heard in his mind the words of a strange song, sung in a voice of thunder and fire, and he knew that it was her song. Then he blinked, and she was only the Girl in Brown.

  "Garrett! Wake up!" she cried, shaking his shoulders.

  "What?" he gasped.

  Her eyes widened, and she pulled him into a fierce hug. "I thought he killed you!" she sobbed.

  "Huh?" Garrett said. He sat up and looked around.

  The bones of Brahnek Spellbreaker lay in a pile of dust and rusty mail armor at Garrett's feet. Atop the pile lay the King's coronet, and beside it, his black sword.

  "What happened?" Garrett said.

  "The fire went out of him," the Girl in Brown said, "It went... into you."

  Garrett felt the fading chill inside his chest. The pain was gone. He got to his feet. "Let's get out of here," he said.

  "What about the word?" she asked.

  "I know it now," Garrett said.

  "What do you mean?" she said.

  Garrett gave her a bemused smile. "I can't explain... just, somehow I know."

  He picked up his torch and looked back, one last time at the powdered remains of Brahnek Spellbreaker. "Thank you," he said, "I promise I'll remember her name."

  Garrett strode to the black outer doors of the tomb and pulled them open with both hands.

  There on the threshold stood the Guardian. One of its twisted little forelimbs stretched out and touched Garrett in the center of his chest. A white-hot fire shot through his body, and he crumpled dead on the floor at the white goat's hooves.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Garrett looked down at his body, lying across the threshold of Brahnek's tomb. Looking at his own face, his first thought was, I look surprised.

  A sudden rush of horror and fear doubled him over, and he knelt beside his body, reaching out to touch it, with the thought of trying to shake himself awake. His hand would not quite reach, as if the space between his ghostly fingers and his lifeless corpse stretched away from him into a dizzying gulf.

  A wave of nausea swept over Garrett and he staggered to his feet again, away from his body. The Girl in Brown was there beside his body now, weeping and dragging him away from the thing in the door. Garrett looked at the Guardian. The creature burned like a shining white blot against the wavering gray atmosphere of the tomb. Even the walls seemed to ripple like smoke all around him.

  He looked down at the Girl in Brown, and he remembered everything. He remembered an afternoon spent with her at a little bakery on Willow Street. He had given her flowers, and she had smiled.

  He wanted to touch her hair as she knelt beside his body, crying, but he was afraid she might stretch away from him too, and he could not bear that.

  A feeling of utter hopelessness sank into Garrett's soul. I'm dead, he thought.

  "Wow, killed by a goat," a voice came from behind him, "That's... that's pretty weird,"

  It was a voice that Garrett thought he would never hear again.

  Garrett turned and stared, speechless, at his brother Grahm.

  Grahm wore plain brown leggings and a saffron yellow tunic. A breeze that Garrett could not feel tousled Grahm's dark curly hair. Grahm gave Garrett that same old crooked grin, and then they rushed together in a long delayed hug.

  "Where's Mom and Dad?" Garrett asked.

  "Not dead," Grahm laughed.

  "Really?" Garrett gasped. He wouldn't stop hugging his brother.

  "Yeah, they made it out of Brenhaven all right and headed south," Grahm said.

  Garrett finally let Grahm go and stepped
back to look at him. "You're all right!" he said.

  "Yeah," Grahm said, "turns out bein' dead ain't all that bad."

  "But, you're older now," Garrett said, "I thought you died at Brenhaven."

  Grahm shrugged. "You look how you wanna look," he said.

  Garrett laughed. "You really need to teach that trick to my friend Annalien."

  "Who's Annalien?" Grahm asked.

  "She's a ghost," Garrett said.

  Grahm shook his head. "You think I'm a ghost?"

  Garrett was confused. "Aren't you?" he said. Then he looked down at his own body. "I'm a ghost now too, right?"

  Grahm burst out laughing. "You really don't get it at all" he said, "Ghosts are like people waiting for a boat, and, when it shows up, they get halfway across the gangplank and then stop, thinking they left their luggage on the dock or something."

  "And you're already on the boat?" Garrett asked.

  "That boat already sailed," Grahm said with a grin.

  Garrett looked around the wavering gray tomb. "Where's my boat?" he asked.

  Grahm put his hand on Garrett's shoulder and lowered his head. "That's what I'm here to talk to you about," he sighed.

  "What's wrong?" Garrett asked, suddenly very afraid.

  Grahm patted his shoulder. "It's all right, little brother," he said, "You just have a very interesting decision to make."

  "Huh?"

  Grahm looked down at Garrett's body and the Girl in Brown kneeling beside it. "Who's the girl?" he asked.

  "A friend of mine," Garrett said, "Wait! Can you tell me her name?"

  Grahm looked at him. "How would I know her name?" he asked, "I thought she was your friend."

  Garrett shrugged. "I figured you'd know everything now," he said.

  Grahm cackled with laughter. "Where do you get your information, little brother?" he laughed.

  Garrett frowned.

  "It's all right," Grahm said, clapping Garrett on the back, "It's just hard for me to see the living now. I haven't been back more than a couple of times since... you know."

  A leaden weight settled in Garrett's heart. "So, you really are dead," he said, "You really died at Brenhaven."