One Small Echo (Shadowsong #1)

Chapter 1

A Flicker, A Flame

TEN YEARS OLD

One candle, two, three, and four.

Or they will come for you—knock, knock at your door.

The other children sang songs as they laughed, twisting around the brazier’s soaring, spitting flames, but Eiko wasn’t interested in their games. She had other, more important things to do.

A secret mission.

Her grandmother always said, “The brave survive the dark, but the foolish run to meet it,” and the words nipped at Eiko’s heels in the dirt as she ran, but she couldn’t help herself.

Even if her foolishness landed her in trouble, her thirst for adventure kept her up at night, too restless to sleep with all the possibilities that existed beyond Stonesigh.

All the shadowed forests, busy rivers, and sharp, colourful mountains.

The glittering ocean stones of Suntide and the screaming, howling peaks of Windspire.

All the things she might be able to see with her very own eyes, if only given half a chance.

And now, for the first time since the year of her birth, the entire world of Lyra was coming to her.

The royal family only travelled with the Kingsfete every ten years.

Eiko would be twenty when it happened again, and she simply couldn’t wait that long to see them.

She had heard so many stories of the King of All, his queen, and their three princes.

It didn’t seem real that those characters were all in Stonesigh.

In her Stonesigh. Fairy tales in the flesh.

Legends and lore touched by the same sky as her, warmed by the same fires.

If she were clever enough, she might even be able to see the King of All, who was said to have skin and hair like shredded, glittering gold.

Or his queen, who a sailor from the dockyard once described as the most beautiful woman in the world with eyes like emeralds.

Or the eldest prince, who was supposed to be a spitting image of his father.

Prince Corvan had all the girls of Stonesigh whispering and giggling—and quickly shutting up whenever Eiko tried to sneak close enough to hear what they were saying.

She would even settle for a glimpse of one of the younger sons, the princes Ceran or Chasin.

If she could be quiet, she might be able to get close enough to hear what she imagined to be the king’s loud, booming voice.

If she could be sneaky, she might go unnoticed, and nobody would drag her away.

She could brag about all the details she had noticed, just like the sailors did whenever they returned from a trip to the capital—except they were probably lying, and she would be telling the truth.

Everyone else was celebrating the Kingsfete, pooling around the long, winding train of carriages to partake in the delights each had to offer, but Eiko was too much of a fool—too curious, too busy running into the dark—to mingle and play like the others.

She skipped through another small crowd, waving away the billow of smoke that unfurled across her face from the fire.

She ignored the harmonious songs that howled and danced through the valley—though there was one that tugged at her more fiercely than the others, and she let the swell of sound fill her chest as she curved through the crowd, just as the mist twisted through the Fingers every morning.

A flicker, a flame, a spark in the night,

Let it die, let it die, don’t try to fight.

It was the Lord of the Stones who first sang the “Song of Shadows.” Eiko loved the way her older brother sang the famous tune most of all; the way he plucked the thin, frayed strings of his lute with such careless grace.

Kaito’s textured voice made the words eerie, his lips always pulling into a crooked grin, his eyes twinkling at her, like he knew that the song gave her chills all the way to her toes.

Quieten your cries, close your eyes,

Pray this night doesn’t steal your sight.

Don’t you see, it’s too late to flee,

Hear my voice, there is no choice,

For what you fear is already here.

The fires were spread out all over the Sigh, splattered throughout the stone valley, glittering like excited fireflies against the heavy velvet blanket of night, embers spitting into the air in bright sprays.

“No monster will come near with such a happy sight,” her grandmother had said last year, as they watched those spluttering flames from atop the hill where their cottage perched.

Not a single person would be without light when the Kingsfete was there.

It was the only night they spent outside, away from their lit hearths, precious candles, and flickering lanterns.

It was the only night they gladly celebrated in darkness instead of cowering in fear until the blessed sunrise.

Every year, the Kingsfete came, and every year they rejoiced, but this year was special.

This year was the royal Kingsfete.

“Eiko!” Kaito called out, waving her over. Her brother was with his friends, drinking and dancing and probably planning some mischief for when the elders tired themselves out and went to bed.

Kaito was just as wild and foolish as her, but there was nothing he loved more than a party.

He would not want to come with her. This would have to be a solo secret mission.

She pretended not to hear his calls and slipped further into the clutch of the Sigh as the valley branched off into the Fingers—a maze of narrow corridors cut through the mountain with looming stone walls on either side.

Just before she left the haloes of the many fires, she pulled a glitterstone from her pocket, sliding back the copper cover of the small globe until its glow spilled forth, bathing her face in a soft shimmer and lighting her path.

The glitterstones were made in Suntide, mined from luminescent rock found in the mossy beds deep in the ocean.

This one had cost her grandmother a small fortune and was strictly for emergencies.

The last time Eiko stole it, her grandmother had lectured her for so long that the sun went about setting before either of them had tended to the unlit candles on the kitchen sill.

It was almost night when her grandmother finally paused to take a breath—and then she was forced to launch into an entirely different lecture about the dangers of the dark.

Eiko handled the glitterstone treasure like she might finally get the spanking her grandmother always promised, as she looped it to swing from her neck on its tarnished copper chain.

She climbed one of the rocky outcrops of the Fingers, hearing her grandmother scolding her all the way up.

The older woman had heaved out one of her long-suffering sighs when Eiko appeared in the kitchen that afternoon, dressed in pants and one of Kaito’s old button-down shirts instead of the new dress that had been purchased for Eiko from the market the week before.

But it wasn’t her fault that the dress would hinder her secret mission.

It wasn’t her fault that her grandmother hadn’t even anticipated a secret mission.

It was just as Kaito always said: She was too cute to be at fault.

She was breathing hard when she reached the top, her pants and shirt covered in dirt.

She stared down the line of the Kingsfete as it slithered through the Fingers and spilled out into the valley of the Sigh.

The songs carried up to her, sweetly crooning on the wind, echoing through all the narrow, walled pathways beneath.

She caught her breath, taking in the sight.

Stonesigh had never looked so beautiful.

Not even when the sunrise peeked over the ocean and washed the greyish-blue stone of the surrounding mountain ranges in soft, warm, reassuring colours.

The sun rises on a sigh, and we sigh with it.

Another of her grandmother’s sayings.

Eiko sighed with the sun every morning and mourned the loss of its protection every night, as she was taught.

As they were all taught. But seeing the valley set on fire like this, full of song and laughter and music, embers stirring against the black velvet backdrop and smoke curling happily into delightful patterns … she might ask the sun to wait a while.

That was the magic of the Kingsfete.

Foolish little girl, her grandmother would affectionately chastise, her crinkled eyes rolling sunward even as her wrinkled lips tried not to smile. Silly little dreamer, her brother would tease, ruffling her hair.

Even in the dark, she could see the glittering metal of the giant steam train.

People said it was like watching a river of gold pour down the road, or down the mountain, or through the woods, or along the coast. She would kill to see the Kingsfete travel through all those places, like molten metal tipped into a blacksmith’s mould as it shaped to the land … but that would never be her life.

Eiko was stoneborn. A child of the mountain.

The stoneborn hated outsiders, and they never went anywhere.

Only the traders ever left the mountain, but their routes were restricted, and their delivery windows were tight.

There was no time for exploration when there was money to be made.

The Kingsfete was one of the rare exceptions when the stoneborn allowed foreign-born to travel through the Fingers without the famed Stonemen patrolling the mountains and menacing everyone who wove below.

The normal trains—the ones that bravely traversed the looping track through the main regions of Lyra—were not permitted to stop in Stonesigh.

They were forced to roll through the mountain without slowing, as faces pressed curiously against the foggy glass, trying to catch a glimpse of the stubborn-headed mountain people.

There.