The world was beautiful. My city was conquered and I was in the hand of its conqueror, but away from the smoldering ruins of my birthplace, under the open sky, I briefly forgot my pain.
The world was beautiful. Beyond the devastation caused by the Brinn’s prolonged siege and entrenched war camp, the grass was green. An endless field stretched to the southeastern horizon. Jagged mountains could be seen cutting up the northern sky.
I could see Datrea from a distance now. Carved into the southernmost mountain, it looked like a grand monolith, an impenetrable fortress whose shadow loomed over the entire countryside.
Now the smoke that rose from it loomed larger.
I wondered for a time how Yethyr had managed to surround the city with a Death Circle at all. Datrea at least looked incapable of being surrounded.
But as Yethyr and his party marched northwest, presumably toward the river that would carry them further, I eventually could see that there was a great gorge between Datrea’s mountain and the rest of the mountain range. It was as if someone had cleaved the peak in two, creating a grand trade road, walled by canyon cliff sides too smooth and too straight to be natural.
A Datrean stonesinger of old had clearly made it. It was an arcane marvel, a breathtaking feat…and it had doomed the city.
I could see Yethyr’s Death Circle snake down the stone road like a black scar. Had the mountain been connected, Yethyr would never have been able to draw it.
Thousands and thousands of people would be alive and my grief came back all at once.
And my anger.
Datrea eventually went out of view. Hours and hours passed as Yethyr and his string of followers moved further and further away. Kvelir and Tular spearheaded the front, notably determined to make as much distance as possible, and Yethyr was all too happy to encourage them. He made no small talk, but everyone else seemed to. Dathari in particular clung to Jaetheiri’s side and chatted endlessly.
Jaetheiri was some sort of hero of hers, that much was obvious and it was practically an open secret that she had joined this hunt specifically to shadow her.
No one approached Yethyr with such fervor. He walked silently and the party gave him a wide berth.
I could hear his mind lie to himself and say that he preferred it that way.
The same pattern followed when the sun started to set. The others began to make camp and he set himself apart, sitting on a rock a ways off from the rest. Jaetheiri shook Dathari off long enough to join him.
“Jaethe.” He looked up at her. “Your warfang.”
She unsheathed it without question and gently laid it across his lap. “Don’t break this one.” She slumped down onto the nearest boulder. “I’d rather not fight someone for a new blade today.”
“No promises.” Yethyr withdrew a delicate scalpel and carefully began to etch into the red enamel of the fang that made up the blade.
Deathsong.
I could feel it. He was writing deathsong notation with slow even precision. The world fell away as Yethyr focused. He could not allow even a stray distraction to shake his hand. Even a small mistake could kill him.
After a time, he leaned back and rested for a moment, his work incomplete. His neck was aching especially badly tonight.
He tried not to think of Spryne and why his neck ached.
“What is it you do?”
Yethyr blinked. Standing over him was Wes. With his black robes fluttering in the evening gusts and his hood over his skull, he looked like a hellish specter.
Yethyr was happy to see him. “Carving deathsong into this warfang,” he said in Datrean. “Jaetheiri’s last warfang was destroyed with your master’s hellish laughter. I intend to reproduce the work I had done on this one.
Wes cocked his skull. “But…why are you doing it like that?”
“Like what?”
“The form is all wrong!” Wes was indignant. “You always work with the shape of your edge, not against it. Your composition is not in line with the natural rhythm. No wonder your blade broke at my master’s laugh.”
Yethyr wrinkled his nose. “The blades made by your own forge shattered too.”
“Perhaps,” Wes said stubbornly, “but I bet yours shattered first.”
Yethyr opened his mouth to argue but then thought better of it. He switched to Brinn. “Jaethe, take a walk.”
“Take a what?”
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“The steelsinger and I are going to play with deathsong. He has never done it before. You don’t want to be near if his inexperience rears its head.”
Jaetheiri frowned. “I’m staying right here.”
To my surprise, Yethyr was deeply relieved by her insubordination. He smiled. “Thank you.” He switched back to Datrean. “Very well. Show me. How would you do it?”
Wes’ confidence evaporated. “Well, I don’t know. This is deathsong and the Brinn technique—”
“Yes,” Yethyr agreed. “This is deathsong. One wrong note can kill you…well, kill you again.” He straightened. “But this is also the Brinn technique and you will never sing to steel again if you do not learn it.” He patted the spot beside him. “Come. We can teach each other.”
Wes thought a moment before sitting down beside him. He pulled back his hood and I wanted to gasp.
The metal from what once had been Wes’ earrings had finally cooled and melted into bone. Copper and gold now streaked through his white skull, at once both gruesome and beautiful.
Wes ignored Yethyr's gawking. “This is not steel of course, but the principle is the same: to make the material sing how you want it to sing. See your notation here.” He pointed to the warfang, calling attention to the bands of gold, brass, and copper that were now melted into his finger bones. “The fang is reading your notation and changing its natural melody to accommodate it. It is better to work with the subject's nature to reach the desired result. This puts unnecessary strain. See? Here and here as well.”
Yethyr listened intently. “How would you do it then?”
“I don’t know how to translate it to your notation. The Datrean way is to sing to your material until its voice joins yours. If you do it correctly, the subject will continue singing your song, even after you stop singing yourself.”
“And the steel or the stone or the bone will remember the song, even without notation to remind it?”
Wes could no longer smile, but it was clear that he wanted to. “‘A good song can never be forgotten.’”
Clearly, it was a common Datrean saying. I felt the lives churning within me stir at the words.
“The Brinn way, to me, implies a lack of confidence I find unsettling.”
Yethyr huffed out a laugh. “It has nothing to do with a lack of confidence.”
“Why do you not sing then?”
“Singing is the art of angels and God. We do not presume to think ourselves among them. Instead, we let the thing itself do the singing in our stead.” Yethyr held out his bone-gloved hand. “I am encased in bones I have carved myself. They sing reactively to my movements and my words because of the notation I have written and they in turn sing to other dead that I encounter in my stead. I can conduct them all without ever opening my mouth.”
“If that is your opinion,” Wes said wryly, “you must find my entire civilization very blasphemous then.”
“I do.” Yethyr was solemn. “I admire it, but I do. Your master especially.” He leaned forward. “When I spoke to Stonesinger Jezad, in Hell, he told me Daened used Godly music to make Bonesong, from tomes that are usually forbidden even by your lax Datrean standards.”
Wes shuddered. “...yes.”
“What did he sing?”
“Fatesong.”
Yethyr frowned down at me. “That is preposterous.”
“That is the truth.”
“My prince?” Jaetheiri was frowning at whatever she saw in Yethyr’s face. “What is wrong?”
Yethyr switched into the Brinn tongue. “The sideromancer says the sword was made with fatesong,” he swallowed to find his throat dry. “It may be a ploy or he may genuinely believe his words to be true, but they are not. I hear no fatesong coming from the blade.”
Jaetheiri huffed. “You wouldn’t know either way.”
“Of course, I would. I know exactly what fatesong sounds like and this sword sounds nothing like it.”
She rolled her eyes. “You didn’t hear fatesong”
“I heard it, Jaethe!” This was clearly a very old argument.
“My prince, you were being attacked. Tempers were high—”
“I know what I heard!”
“Yes, the blood rushing to your ears.”
Yethyr ignored her and switched back to Datrean. “You heard this ‘fatesong?’”
“I did not hear it. I was not involved in that part of Bonesong’s creation.” Wes hugged his knees. “But I know of it. The First Archivist gave my master permission to delve to the lowest levels of the library under the condition that he be bound and gagged during his reading in case…in case of cosmic consequences. He was down there for two nights and then, presumably, after the archivists deemed him of sound enough mind, they released him.”
Yethyr held his breath. “And then? Was he different?”
“Yes,” Wes whispered, “but not in the way you would expect. He was…triumphant. The despair that had come over him since you razed and sacked the town of Pavrea had been transmuted into fervor. He saw a path forward. His every act was with an artisan’s certainty that their masterwork was not just a dream, but inevitable.”
“And that masterwork was this sword?”
Wes shook his head. “His masterwork is the doom it shall cause. That was always the puzzle. How can a single hunk of metal be capable of delivering our revenge? It was a task that required more than steelsong, more than deathsong. The very melody of fate had to be tampered with. Can you not see it in everyone’s eyes? Can you not feel it in your own heart? All who look upon it are cursed; all who touch it are cursed.”
“Cursed with what?”
“Greed. A desire to wield Bonesong. An inevitability that it will bring them to ruin.”
“I can handle greed.”
Wes laughed. “Respectfully, my prince, as someone whose entire society collapsed due to your greed, I don’t believe that.”
I didn’t either. Yethyr’s own confidence in his self-control would be his downfall. I had no idea what this “fatesong” was—if I really was made with it or if Wes had made it up to convince Yethyr to destroy me—but regardless, Yethyr’s fate was sealed.
Just as I thought that, timed to almost comical perfection, there was a deafening screech from above. Yethyr looked up to see dark shapes in the fading light of dusk.
And the glint of talons.
Thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate all the support I have gotten during the transition to move this story to Royal Road. Do tell me what you think! I love comments and often respond to them
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