Chapter 7 Emory #3
“Give me the syrinx,” Clover said, “and I swear I will not harm your friends here with you.”
Emory only clutched the syrinx tighter. “What will you do with it?”
“Complete the ritual to summon and bind Atheia and Sidraeus to me.”
“And kill the keys in the process.”
Clover shrugged as if that was a small matter. “They were always meant to die.”
They were nearly the same words Sidraeus had told her, but Emory refused to accept them as fact.
There was a bloodcurdling scream upstairs—from who, Emory couldn’t tell. It was all it took for her to make her move.
Break the syrinx, part of her mind told her.
Wield it, the other part of her countered.
Emory brought the flute to her lips. She did not know how to play, did not have a single musical bone in her body, and for a moment she feared this magic wouldn’t be hers to wield, just as this world wasn’t hers to be in.
But she was a Tidecaller. Straddling the line between two magics, between two realms. Able to wield the ley lines that ran through all worlds, which coursed beneath her feet, concentrated in a knot of power here in the mountains.
She could do this.
And so Emory blew on one of the pipes.
The sound it produced was clear and true, drowning out Clover’s voice as he screamed, his mouth forming the word No.
It was the last thing Emory saw before billowing shadows erupted around her, knocking back Clover and all the ash-umbrae.
An oppressive swath of darkness rose around her, spinning like a hurricane, the wind so strong she thought she might rip apart at the seams. She was still blowing on the syrinx, the note dragging endlessly, and she could not stop, could not take the instrument away from her mouth.
All of a sudden, everything came to a halt.
The music. The feeling of not being in control of her body.
Emory held the syrinx away from her face, careful not to drop it.
The cyclone had stilled around her. It looked like she was trapped in the eye of a storm frozen in time, in the center of a great spiral of shadowy clouds.
Beyond, she could no longer see the temple—there was only impenetrable darkness with the faintest stars in the distance.
It was as if she was back in the dark, empty space of her nightmares where she’d found herself with Sidraeus.
Where it had felt like a thousand eyes were on her, ghostly voices whispering on a breeze.
And here they were again, calling her name.
Emory, Emory. Opener of doors, wielder of keys.
The words sounded layered, as if a thousand different voices were speaking in unison.
“Who are you?” Emory asked. Her own voice sounded odd to her ears, strangely muffled, as if she were underwater.
We are the dead. You summoned us, and so we answered.
“I…” Emory glanced at the syrinx in her hand. She supposed it made sense that the instrument was tied to the realm of death, if it was connected to the Soulless One—to Sidraeus.
What would you ask of us, Tidecaller?
There was warmth in that title, a note of familiarity. As if they knew her intimately, like all the ghosts her magic would call on whenever she used too much. And it didn’t scare her one bit. It felt like she belonged with them, and they with her.
“It’s not you I meant to summon,” Emory said after a moment, “but the one who rules over the realm of death. The one who used to ferry souls.”
Sidraeus.
The name was a hiss that slithered in endless echoes, spoken like a curse that grated against Emory’s every sense.
She felt all the blood leech from her face at the clear animosity the souls felt toward him.
“I need—I need him.” She hated to admit it, but it was the truth.
“He’s trapped in this realm without his body, a body he can only reclaim after another deity has been revived.
I thought this instrument would allow me to bring him back before that happens, but…
Please, I need his help if I’m to stop Clover.
If I’m to save the worlds of the living you all used to call home. ”
She was met with a heavy silence that set her on edge, the hairs on the back of her neck lifting as a ghostly breeze rushed past her.
Only those of us who were first wronged by him can grant such a request, the voices said at last. Those of us who were sacrificed because of him. Those of us whose magic runs in your veins.
“The first Tidecallers?” Emory breathed, eyes going wide. “Is that who you are?”
She knew now why these souls felt so familiar in such a strange way—and where she had heard their voices before.
Emory, Emory. Come find us, Emory.
These were the voices that had called her name in Dovermere all those months ago. All those times last year when she’d heard the Aldersea, the Belly of the Beast, whispering her name both in waking and dreaming, begging her to come find them…
She had thought it was those who’d been trapped beyond the door like Romie, at first. Then she had thought it was the keys calling to her from other worlds.
But it was them. The sacrificed souls of the very first Tidecallers, whose blood—whose magic and life force—had been used to seal shut the doors between worlds.
“Please,” Emory said. “I know Sidraeus had a part to play in your deaths, but if there’s any way for you to unbind him from his prison, to reunite him with his true form and secure his help…”
If you will it, Tidecaller, then we will make it so. But know this: his unbinding will come at a price. To no longer be tied only to the sleeping realm, he must be bound to another sort of prison. One of his own making.
“What does that mean?”
His essence will be tied to us, the souls of the sacrificed Tidecallers.
Through us, he will feel the pain he has inflicted, so that when an Eclipse-born is harmed, so too will he be.
The pain will be branded into his skin as a reminder of what he has done.
This is the bargain we offer, and as the true last remaining Tidecaller, it is yours to make if you wish it.
Emory’s stomach churned at the cruel images that flashed in her mind.
She understood now why Sidraeus had wanted her to destroy the syrinx.
What these souls proposed… they were after retribution for what Sidraeus had done to them, these first Tidecallers who’d been sacrificed to close the doors between worlds.
They wanted his guilt branded into his skin.
The pain of his creations forced onto him.
It was a reckoning.
And Emory had the power to decide if she allowed it or not.
She stared at the syrinx still in her hand.
If this was the price to be paid for stopping Clover…
If this was what it took to save Romie and Aspen and Tol and Orfeyi…
she had no choice but to accept. Her stomach was in knots thinking of what this would mean for Sidraeus.
He would pay the cost of her decision, not her, and the thought made her sick.
But she had to be willing to make tough decisions. She had to be okay with this, or her best friend would die.
Emory squared her jaw, her decision made. “Do it.”
There was a beat of silence before the cyclone of shadows around her spun wildly, pulling stars into its midst as it closed in on her. It felt like death coming to claim her, and all she could do was shield her eyes from it, hugging the syrinx close to her chest.
All at once, the shadows dissipated as if they had never existed at all. Emory was back in the temple, standing in front of a bewildered-looking Clover. It was as if he hadn’t moved while Emory had been with the souls of the dead, and now time had resumed.
Before either of them could react, an impossible bolt of lightning struck the ground between them, sending them both flying as the world erupted in brilliant indigo light.