The Brinn held a feast in the receiving hall of the palace, rejoicing in the silencing of songs that would never be sung again.
Yethyr did not celebrate. He could hear the revelry ringing through the walls as he stormed the palace corridors, hunting for clues to where the Council may have fled.
“You watched that.”
Jaetheiri walked beside him, serene while he fumed.
“I did.”
“Tell me I am mad. Go on, say it.”
“You are mad,” she said mildly. “But not in this.”
“My father is putting me on this hunt, removing me from the equation, and putting Yugrir in charge of my city.”
“He did not say he would put Yugrir in charge of it.”
“You’re right,” he huffed. “He wouldn't. But he mentioned Yugrir as a threat.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. The only proper way to undercut him is to find the council as soon as possible.”
“What do you think I am doing?”
“Sulking,” Jaetheiri said bluntly.
“My prince!” Yethyr turned to see a small entourage of soldiers come down the hall. “We were not sure what we were supposed to do with her, seeing as she represented…well…”
Several Brinn guards flanked an elegant dark eyed-woman. Dainty gold chains hung loose in long flowing brown hair that didn’t have a Brinn curl in sight. She wore a spun gold robe that sang songs from the forge of my birth.
She was Datrean.
Yethyr smiled and greeted her in that language. “Ah, Ambassador Unda.”
“Prince Yethyr,” she said coolly, a faint lilting accent to her Brinn words.
She represented Datrea during this war? I held in a scoff. She must have been terrible at her job.
“It appears you no longer have a city to represent at our diplomatic dinners.”
Unda betrayed nothing behind her frigid expression. “So it would seem.”
I imagined diplomacy with the Brinn and my annoyance became sympathy. What could she have said to these feral killers obsessed with the spoils of war?
I did not envy her job, not that she had a job anymore.
“You heard the choice I gave the people residing within Datrea’s walls.”
“Indeed. Your butchering of my language was as loud as it was grating.”
Every fiber of my being struggled not to cackle. I took it all back. Unda was the perfect spokesperson for Datrean sentiment.
Yethyr was less amused. He frowned and switched back to Brinn. “Then I will extend that same choice to you in my own language.”
She scoffed, cold as the night air. “Boy, I am under no illusions that my husband and our children were able to make it to the city outskirts in the measly hour you allotted. I know better than to think they even tried. Their lives hang around your neck and if it is all the same to you, I would like to join them.”
Yethyr was taken back. “Are you certain?”
“I am a mother.” Unda’s pristine manner cracked to reveal the raw grief beneath. “I was a mother. I will not serve my children's killer while I still draw breath.”
A strange feeling flickered through Yethyr. “Your life will serve me regardless, ambassador. Wouldn’t you rather it be under your own power—”
“Spare me your pretty songs,” she said in Datrean. “There is only one song I want from you, Deathsinger.”
Yethyr was hurt, offended even, although I could not place why.
“As you wish.” He gathered a prepared deathsong within himself. “Die.”
Ambassador Unda crumbled and I felt her life flow into the bone talisman around his neck.
Strangely, Yethyr felt even more hollow than before. He looked down at her and writhed with bitter resentment. I could not worm my way into his mind to understand where such a reaction was coming from.
Jaetheiri knew. I sensed her understanding through our bond.
“Leave us,” Jaetheiri commanded the surrounding guards. “Join in the revelry.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
They left and Yethyr still had not raised his head, but he could feel Jaetheiri’s wary eyes watching him.
He ground his teeth. “Not one word.”
She heaved a sigh and he glared.
“Not one sigh either.”
Jaetheiri contemplated, and then she said with deliberate lightness, “how frivolous you are with your privileges.” She spoke with humor, but she did not meet his eye. “There was once a time when my sighs were worth more than dragon horn.”
“Lucky me then, who now gets them for free,” he said flippantly, but Jaetheiri heard the weight behind the words.
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“Only you would call the price we have paid to stand here ‘free.’”
They looked at each other, a shared knowing in their hearts. Suddenly, Yethyr’s sullen face split into a smile. “What would I call such freedom if not free?” His bitterness was lightened, replaced by a cheer just as strange. “Come Jaethe. We are free to walk through these halls, and there are clues to find.”
They both continued down the hall and I was baffled. There was no song on her lips and yet, with words alone, Jaetheiri had effortlessly manipulated Yethyr’s mind more effectively than I ever had.
If I could only learn how she did it.
While I ruminated, they climbed steps to reach a room similar to the Deathsingers’ chamber. It overlooked the whole city. It was acoustically perfect, and it was littered with the bodies of gray-robed men and women.
The whole choir of Stonesingers, I realized. All dead at Yethyr’s feet.
“This must be the Hall of Stone,” he whispered. “Where for all 8 months of the siege, their Lithomancers held their walls together through sheer will and song.”
“And life,” Jaetheiri murmured. “They all died from the strain.”
“What waste. I do not understand it. If they had a Hellgate, why did they wait till two of their ruling orders were culled? Why did they not escape months ago?”
“Perhaps they were waiting for a salvation that never came.
“If so, then what? What was to be their salvation?”
Jaetheiri shrugged.
“I will ask them. Much time has passed. Their spirits are no doubt in Hell now, but there’s always a chance I could get lucky.”
Jaetheiri stepped back, as Yethyr’s deathsong curled out of him.
“Yethyr, son of Yevvar greets you, Stonesingers. I command you to speak.”
The corpses did not move. Instead, Yethyr was answered by a deep and terrible song from beneath his feet.
A familiar song.
Suddenly, a massive skull hovered in the air, hellfire burning in its eyes. Yethyr and I separately tried to temper our fear. We had seen it devour Mona’s spirit only several hours ago.
“You have much nerve, hound of Maethe, to knock on my door.”
Yethyr forced his voice to come out calm. “Z’krel, I presume. I am—”
“I know what you are. Spryne is so fond of his best donor.”
Yethyr flinched. “Donor implies that such things are by my will.”
“Your will is a meager thing. A mother though…” The flame burning in the demon’s eye sockets seemed to glean with mirth. “Mothers know best.”
The wrath that consumed Yethyr dwarfed every small rage I had felt from him before.
He swallowed down the deathsong lodged in his thrumming body with difficulty.
Z'krel chuckled. “Good boy. Smart boy. A song once sung cannot be easily taken back.”
Yethyr shuddered, but his words were careful and slow. “You have always had a fondness for the learned. You have taken the lives of these Lithomancers.”
“I have taken quite a lot more than that. The sun has risen on quite a feast that you have prepared for me.”
Yethyr scowled.“Not for you.”
“Who could it be for if not for me? You gave me the Great Daened. I should offer you a favor just for that.”
“You permitted him to speak to me.”
“Of course. I could deny my sweetling nothing, so full of wrath and hate.” Z’krel’s smile was pure flame. “What a demon he will make one day. The angels would tremble, have already trembled. I may make a bride of him yet.”
Yethyr furrowed his brow. “...you do that. The Council of Songs opened a Hellgate. Where did they go?”
“Who could say? It wasn’t my gate they opened.”
“Whose then?”
“Aztomag. Her hunger has always been…less discerning than mine. The Datreans knew her gate would come at much cheaper a price. They know that I desire them and not lesser sacrifices.”
“Is that why it appears they used the lives of my people as the price?”
Z’krel laughed. “Frightened, my fair frail prince? You should be. Your angels are abandoning you.”
“You would like that.”
“I do like it,” Z’krel said cheerfully. “Tell you what, child, you have fed me geniuses the world will never see again, caused the burning of knowledge that now only is remembered by me. You may step within my halls and take any spirit that answers your call. I will not stop you.”
Yethyr narrowed his eyes. “Who will stop me then?”
Z’krel clucked a tongue of flame. “So rude of hospitality. I welcome you to my hall and grant you a guest’s protection from my creatures and you spit it in my face.”
Yethyr raised his eyebrows. “You and yours truly would not touch me?”
“Today certainly. I would not dream of damaging my sweetling’s final work of art.”
I felt his burning gaze slip to me and my very steel shuddered
Z’krel laughed. “Daened did his profane work well.”
Yethyr considered
“My prince,” Jaetheiri hissed. “This voice from Hell obviously should not be trusted.”
“You can’t see it?”
“No, but I hear the thing just fine and it's obviously trying to trap you in Hell.”
“And deprive the world of sweet Daened’s greatest creation?” Z’krel sounded offended. “I would never.”
Yethyr glanced down at me in shock. “This is Daened of Datrea’s greatest creation by your reckoning?”
“By all of Hell’s reckoning,” the demon said, “and Heaven’s too, loathed as they would be to admit it.”
I had never felt more flattered and uncomfortable at the same time.
“I would not offend Daened by hoarding his masterpiece in my hall hours after its completion. What an insult to his last labor that would be. No. I will let his final song leave my hall and ring throughout the world, as he intended. Hold onto it tightly and you will leave as well.”
“And any spirit that comes with me,” Yethyr reminded.
The skull nodded. “Any spirit that answers you may follow and nothing will prevent them.”
Yethyr narrowed his eyes. “What do you gain from this favor?”
“I do not like feeling indebted.” Suddenly, blood from the Stonesingers’ bodies spilled forth, drawing a crimson circle on the stone floor. The air within shimmered and the iron lanterns along the walls flared to life.
A Hellgate. Different than the one I helped create, but there was that same hum in the air.
“This is a simple easy thing to clean the slate,” Z’krel said as an invitation.
“I don’t believe it,” Jaetheiri muttered. “This is just a ploy to get you somewhere I cannot follow.”
“I know.”
“Z’krel hungers for the scholarly and quick-witted, you yourself taught me this.” She clasped his forearm gently. “You are exactly the quarry it prefers. It’ll rip your brain straight from your body the first chance it gets.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” the skull said sharply. “I have promised not to touch your frail prince on this visit and I won’t. It is your kind that is an affront to godly truth.”
Jaethe glared in Z’krel’s direction although she was off by a few feet. “That thing may not attack you, but lesser demons can by those stipulations.”
“Jaethe, you don’t even know what lesser demons are,” he sighed. “You’ve never seen them. I see them every—” He looked at her. “This is my domain. I trust you with the hunt. I trust you with the spoils. I trust you with all things. Trust me with this.”
Jaetheiri’s eyes fell away. “I could never match your zealotry.”
Yethyr smiled sadly. “Why would you? That is my failing. Not yours. It is weakness to put faith in the weak.” He slipped from her grasp.
“But I am not weak in Hell.”
The Prince raised his chin, looked Z’krel in the burning eye, and stepped into the circle of blood.
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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