The Siren's Cadence [short story]

A strange light turned the mist following the witch into the siren's cave filmy. Whether it was phosphorous or thaumaturgical in nature, it set the air aglow in soft, green hues too bright to feel natural, shimmering on the beads of water dripping off stalactites and rock surfaces wet with slime. At the bottom of a nearby stream the witch noticed a different glint, the rusted iron helmet of a hapless wanderer no doubt dragged off to drown by the siren's many children.

Though the witch didn't move, her shadow danced madly on the walls, as though the light constantly shifted. The tendrils of fog breaching in from the ship graveyard curled around her feet like fingers trying to coax her to turn back. Nessa had pleaded the same, to leave the siren be so as not to rouse her anger, but the way inland was found through the cavern. The witch had promised to try to get past peacefully, but were that not possible, she would fight. She had a city to burn and there wasn't a monster fierce enough to stop her from finding vengeance, but despite her determination refined with contempt, a chill raced up her foot the moment she touched the ground where the sand of the beach turned into stone. With a deep breath of salty air, she pressed on into the siren's lair.

Beneath the sound of water coursing in the rivulets beside her, slithering surrounded the witch. She stayed low and close to the walls, gaze darting every time her shadow leapt to a new direction. At times, she was certain it belonged to someone else, and every time she did a splash would follow. Where she was forced to cross the narrow passages over the streams, she glimpsed amorphous shapes of red and blue moving underwater, too fast for her to follow to determine whether they were only colourful fish. Her nerves made the witch reconsider the plan of leaving behind her army of the undead, whose limited cognisance made stealthiness difficult, but the cavern was brimming with angry spirits who'd answer her beck should she find herself in trouble.

The deeper she went, the more oppressive the pungent smell wafting in the cavern became. The witch covered her mouth and nose with a piece of cloth to ward herself against the stench of ocean's rot, of fish and seabirds and kelp all washed ashore for mould to feast on. Even with the veil, it was difficult not to gag, and she was dizzy by the time she came upon a ledge overlooking a heap of bones and carcasses, half-submerged in a rock pool. The remains of rhoa, gulls, even a few human skeletons rested beside deep sea monsters. As she peered closer, the witch recognised the bones of monkeys, though they were few—the siren and her spawn likely didn't hunt far outside that side of the cavern, but had gleefully taken in curious individuals who'd crept into their wet, foetid realm. The witch kept her distance from the feeding grounds, where she finally sighted the siren's offspring.

Despite all the resentful praise of the siren's beauty the witch had heard at Lioneye's Watch, she found the children had inherited none of her appeal. The three malformed creatures ravaging the latest kill—a shark rivalling the late prison warden in size—resembled slugs crossbred with cephalopods, with a dash of serpentine fluidity in their movements. They squelched and sucked as they swarmed around the shark, ripping off chunks of flesh and swallowing them at a pace that would leave the shark as one of the skeletons within a few minutes at most.

As she watched the flaying, the witch toyed with the thought of trying out the new gem with which Nessa had parted her. The gem in her glove responded by feeling warm against the back of her hand, bleeding an image of the mound of corpses exploding into a fiery blaze. The siren's spawn looked weak enough—and the mound enormous enough—not to survive the explosion, but though the desire to summon the fire tingled in the tips of her fingers, she resisted it for now. Even if she had slain the spawn before her, an explosion would only alert more. For now, trying to sneak past the siren seemed like the smarter option.

But, were she forced to retreat… This mound was suitably on the way out, if she found herself facing a horde of the slithering vermin. The gems slotted in her headband and on the brooch of her dress responded with their own visions: Raising the heap of meat and bone to fight for her, and sending the raging spirits still encircling their fleshly monument to rip apart the spawn like they'd done to the shark.

So great became her thirst to unleash the power in the gems that the witch let her guard drop. She started when a soft breath came against her ear.

"Come to me. I'm so lonely in your absence," the voice whispered. The witch wheeled about to find an apparition backing away from her, a ghostly representation of an Oriathan pit fighter she'd often admired with lust in her heart, hand raised toward her in a beckoning gesture. It faded even as she watched, flaking gold dust that disappeared before it touched the ground.

The whisper fell quieter, quieter, until it was a near-silent plea at the edge of the witch's hearing. It was difficult to focus on with the still-ongoing messy banquet behind her, but the witch thought there were two voices entwined: One for the fighter, one for what must've been the siren. Even a faint echo of her voice was inviting and mellifluous. It gave the witch a shiver that set her foot moving, a fearful one, mostly… but a part, she worried, may've been of desire not unlike what the gems evoked.

The spectres guided her way, changing shapes to show her all the old flames she'd yearned to stoke and long forgotten. Many were faces she'd only thought of in passing, some those who'd warmed her bed for a time. Behind the masks was always the siren's face, beneath their voices her irresistible crooning. Why the spawn didn't attack her, the witch didn't know—they were certainly aware of her, spying on her in the corners the strange light avoided. Out of respect for their mother's meal, perhaps.

At the end of the caverns, the witch's shadow landed on a new source of glitter. Coins, bangles, and jewelled coronets, treasures fit for kings and the noblest of ladies lay abandoned in piles outside the mouth of a tunnel. There the siren's magic manifested into someone whose hold on the witch was still so strong that, years later, seeing merely this phantom rendition was enough to make her heart ache.

"Come to me," he said. The spectre into golden smoke when the witch walked through it, but the voice continued speaking. It was only the siren's now, disembodied to sound as though it came from just behind the witch, yet at the same time echoing to fill the cavern. "I gave away my heart… on the promise of a lie… I gave away my love for nothing."

You seem to have done well enough for yourself despite that, the witch thought, picking up one of the crowns and turning it to study the etchings. She frowned at the odd feel of it, tapped one of the gemstones embedded in the points with a nail. It felt right, but sounded wooden. One more illusion. I suppose one needs the right sort of bait for the rare sailor who isn't lured in by the promise of a pretty face… or a greedy exile.

A song from the tunnels startled the witch into dropping the crown. She didn't notice it cracking into dried splinters—the aria replacing the whispers drew her full attention. If there were verses to the song, the language was smooth like the surface of the sea on a calm day, indistinguishable from humming. The witch straightened her back, shoulders relaxing as tension drained from her limbs. Her step lost the wariness that had marked her movements all the way here as the song enveloped her, at once as gentle as the touch of a surgeon and as certain as the strings guiding a puppet. The horror of wading into the siren's court without zombies to guard her flashed in her mind for only a moment, but the magic of the gem lost to the melodies of Merveil's voice.

The witch descended into the ballroom of a wonderful palace, where the ghastly light became the radiance of chandeliers and sunlight spilling in through windows touching a domed ceiling high above her head. Her feet became numb to the cold wetness of stone seeping through her slippers, convinced that she walked on a fine rug. The scent of wine and steamed goose pierced even her veil as a legion of golden dancers swirled into life around her, answering the call of the song with movements more refined than hers. Beyond their revelry stood the siren herself, singing and lounging on a pile of riches fashioned into a throne, a maiden most exquisitely beautiful wreathed in silks.

"At last," Merveil said. "I have so much I wish to share with you."

The scenery changed, the ghosts vanished the instant she ceased singing, but before the witch's senses returned and she realised she was in the deepest pit of the caverns, Merveil herself became a demoness of gill and scale, perfect ringlets transforming into a cascade of kelp as she dashed up from her seat and wrapped her fingers around the witch's throat. "It isn't often a meal wanders in of its own accord," the siren said, lifting the witch off her feet. She continued to speak in two tongues—a perfect cadence inlaid over the rasp of a throat unfit for speaking, much less for her haunting melodies.

Merveil tilted her head as the witch's struggling in her grip grew more frantic. The witch sliced her hands open on the siren's scaled arm, gasping, kicking and clawing for freedom, but the siren's grip held. She gave the witch a fanged grin, pressed a finger in the way of the trickle of blood running down her arm and licked it off the tip. "But look at you, a pitiful morsel. It's even rarer my children find something warm to enjoy. No, I think I'll offer you to them."

The witch's scream plunged underwater with her. The siren had cast her into the rapids and the stream took her away, battering her body with rocks along the way until she struck her head and blacked out.

The witch coughed herself awake, face down on sand. Her leg was on fire, and when she tried to roll onto her back, she found one of Merveil's spawn chewing at it. Her shriek startled it more than her strengthless kick, but still it released her with a hiss and let the witch scramble away. The spawn followed her, a gargle flowing out of an open mouth lined with leech-like rows of teeth. The witch threw her arm up, as if in objection, and a skeleton pulled itself out of the sand to answer her. The gargle died with the rusted blade of the dead sailor snapping off with one end buried in the spawn's brain.

Its duty fulfilled, the skeleton fell back into slumber. The witch lowered her arm, the power of her skill gem still tingling in the veins along it, and shuddered with a heavy sigh. It triggered another coughing fit as she climbed to her feet, pulling seaweed out of her hair.

The current had carried her out of the caverns and back to the ship graveyard. The mouth of the cavern loomed in the distance, a few minutes' walk down the beach.

The witch squinted at something moving in the mist between her and the cave. She couldn't make out what it was, but when she listened intently, the sounds of sucking and squelching gave her a shiver of recognition. There wasn't enough flesh on the spawn to fuse it together with the resting bones for a zombie, but the bones and spirits were eager enough to help her.

The witch wasn't the only body washed ashore that morning. The shrouded hull of the reef's fresh kill loomed in the distance, and the ill fortune of the ship's crew had saved her life. Merveil's brood devoured the dead sailors in a frenzy, fending off skeletal rhoa as they feasted. When one of the bone birds charged into the midst of the spawn, it struck one of them head-on.

The witch jumped from the ensuing blast. Instead of getting gored, the spawn had exploded—evidently not simply from the force of impact, for the bones of the rhoa rained around the spawn. Two more of Merveil's children sacrificed themselves for their siblings, slithering in the way of charging rhoa to blow them up.

With her concentration lost, the skeletons she had raised clattered into piles, the spirits winked back into their own world. She watched the spawn feeding in quiet thoughts, how unfazed they were of their exploding kin.

That, she thought, might be a problem… or very, very useful.

She raised her hand, drawing out the power of the gem in her glove. After hearing of the witch's fascination with repurposing corpses, Nessa had gifted her the gem with the warning it might be a little much even for her to stomach. If the images it presented to the witch were of any indication, this was the perfect opportunity. The energy trapped in the gem surged out, an invisible tether tying her will to the corpse.

And caused it to explode.

Only a red stain and cracked bones remained where the corpse had been. Tentacles thrown in the air from the impact flew all the way to the witch, but she ignored them, attention fixed on the orb of fire forming over the shattered ribcage of the sailor's remains. It intercepted a spawn rushing toward her, filling the air with the scent of grilled fish as the charred spawn fell down dead.

Two more exploding corpses killed much of the spawn and sent the rest fleeing into the sea from the orbs that fizzled against the surface. The witch surveyed the field of brief battle, then went to kneel by one of the corpses and ran a finger down a cracked rib, humming with thought. The spell had destroyed all usable tissue. She'd have to be conservative with it, but it was certainly useful.

Kneeling down made the wound on her leg throb. The witch sat down with a grimace, searching the folds of her dress for her potions. By some miracle, they'd survived the rush downstream. She emptied the contents of one to let a pleasant numbness settle in the leg as the bleeding stopped, then pressed the edges of the wound together. While she waited for the potion to work and close the wound, her gaze sought out the places where the clash of spawn and rhoa had made craters in the sand. It seemed some of the spawn held a gas or some other natural explosive compound within their bodies. Given the other spawn weren't bothered by it, the radius seemed very small.

Even so, it was an interesting concept—turning the expendable few into protection for the many. The gem in her glove began to warm up as she rubbed it with her thumb and pondered if it was the key to reversing that. She'd seen no corpses in the siren's lair… but that didn't mean she couldn't bring some of her own.

When her wound had mended, the witch got to work harvesting what flesh remained of her magical assault and reanimating it.

She returned to cave with three zombies as her cohort. They were her gruesomest creations yet, a hodgepodge of spawn skin with bone shards rattling in their bloated bellies. The skin had begun to blacken already, but for now the fire she'd trapped inside them with controlled explosions of intestines seemed to hold. Still, she did her best to keep at least a little cover between her and the zombies. The spell had made her minions unstable, but then, their purpose wasn't to survive against the siren.

The path to the siren's cave was clear, as though the spawn now avoided her as she had on her first entry. If Merveil spoke to the witch, she was impervious to her charms this time. While wrapping another veil to guard against the smell, she'd ripped apart a sailor's shirt to wind another wrapping around her ears. She had considered sneaking in to the greater pile to replenish her army, but now decided against it—her first creations wouldn't last long and would alert the siren if they exploded while the witch made more.

The siren waited in her lair, singing idly on her throne, balancing a sword sideways on her palm. Her sultry look shifted into curiosity when the witch came in view.

"So, the morsel returns," Merveil said as the witch removed her headwrap, clutching the sword by the handle and waving it at her. "And how rude of you to reject the invitation to my dream. Did you not enjoy your first visit? It was a world once mine, the mansion of a lord in Oriath."

"I'll be sure to visit the real one when I return to torch the city."

Merveil chuckled with the sound of waves grinding sand. "There's a spiciness to you. I like that. Maybe you'll make for a meal after all. I'm glad my brood spared you."

"How cute to think it was voluntary."

Merveil cocked her head with a questioning look that burst into wrath when the zombies shambled into view. "My children!"

Water answered her anger, surging out in streams that cracked stalagmites when the witch jumped away. "Go! Attack now!" the witch cried at her minions, and the zombies charged toward the siren. Merveil screamed wordless fury at them, and the witch peeked past the rock to see her lifting her sword to cleave all three apart in one swing. The zombies' gait had become lurching, the skin of their bellies black and smouldering.

The witch dropped to safety, covering her ears when blood and guts spattered on the wall above her and a deafening blast silenced Merveil's scream. When she peeked up again, Merveil had changed once more—from a demoness into a monster more a fish than a woman, whose familial resemblance with her children was now pitiably clear. The shrapnel the witch had stuffed inside the zombies had torn apart and through her scales and the soft flesh they protected.

It was impossible to tell what the black depths of Merveil's eyes found as their last view of this world, nor did the witch hear her last words over the ringing in her ears. Perhaps she returned to the ballroom, free to dance there forever with the love she'd lost. The witch gave it no thought. As she rose from her shelter, her attention was upon the piles of hay and debris lining the room. Even Merveil's throne had been only an illusion.

Everything that was left of her zombies covered the wall and ceilings. The gem in the glove pulsed with a curious growing and receding of warmth, as though imitated the rhythm of a gleeful cackle. Very, very useful indeed, thought the witch as she studied the damage done to the siren.

She noticed a curtain fluttering in a draft behind Merveil's transformed throne and gave the siren a last evaluating look. The folk at Lioneye's Watch ought to be pleased. They'll have nothing to fear from the sea for a while.

The witch parted the cloth and continued her journey.