The Sigil and the Song

  White lilies for birth, black lilies for death

  ‘Tween lilies I lie, mine spirit mid breath

  — unknown elven poet from the continent of Edan

  Aehyl awoke with a gasp, pain searing through her chest. She clutched at it instinctively, staggering upright as the world tilted around her.

  Her throat burned like she hadn’t drunk in days. Fever clung to her skin. Every limb ached with heavy fatigue, and it took all her strength not to collapse again. But something kept her moving—some vague, insistent fear.

  The storm had passed with the night, leaving behind a brittle silence. Through bleary eyes, she saw that the cliff wall they’d sheltered beneath had partially collapsed. Great sheets of stone and debris lay scattered across the ruin-strewn ground. Somehow, miraculously, their shallow cove had been spared.

  She didn’t understand how. Perhaps she didn’t want to.

  Stumbling forward, she found Portean lying motionless a few feet away. Panic surged through her.

  Dropping to her knees beside him, she fumbled at his neck, searching for signs of life. His breath was shallow but steady.

  His shoulder was badly injured, his left arm twisted unnaturally, likely dislocated from the impact of a falling bough or stone. She winced, imagining the force that must have struck him. Still, he was alive. That was something.

  Bracing herself against another wave of nausea and dizziness, she exhaled a shaky breath.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, unsure if it was meant for him or herself.

  Moving him into position took what little strength she had left. Her hands trembled, her vision pulsed at the edges. He didn’t stir, and for that, she was grateful.

  When it was done, she slumped against the cold stone floor and let herself sink back into the dark.

  “I’ll try a healing when I wake...” was her final thought before oblivion claimed her once more.

  She did not awaken for a long time.

  Through the bleary haze of passing days and nights, Aehyl floated in a fevered darkness. At times, she thought she heard hushed voices whispering above her. Occasionally, Portean’s voice broke through the fog, low, steady, and soothing. He spoke gently, as if trying to tether her to the waking world.

  Other times—always when she was certain she was alone—other voices reached her. She heard her father, long dead, murmuring comfort. You are strong enough for your fate, he told her, again and again.

  Some voices were stranger still, deep, ancient, and distant, like echoes from beneath the earth or stars. They carried on for what felt like hours, speaking in a language she didn’t understand before vanishing like mist.

  Now and then, she felt a damp cloth pressed to her forehead, or a hand clasping hers with quiet urgency. Between those flickers of care, she drifted through alternating storms of sweat and cold.

  She babbled when she woke, briefly and incoherently, muttering of endings, of fate, of the age itself unraveling. Her hysteria never lasted long. But the world made little sense in those moments, and neither did the dreams that followed: terrible and wondrous visions that pulled her deeper each time she slipped away.

  After three days, Aehyl awoke, weak as a lamb, her expression clouded with confusion.

  She lay in a small shelter fashioned from vines and boughs. Above her, the roof was woven from the great lobed leaves of titansnoose, their waxy surfaces catching the soft glow of filtered daylight. In the center of the circular space, a small fire pit crackled gently, its smoke drifting lazily upward through a jagged hole in the ceiling.

  Near the low doorway, a cape, one that looked suspiciously like her spare, hung from a bent branch lashed in place with vine, forming a crude but functional doorframe. The opening was narrow enough that even she would need to wiggle through it.

  Her backpack lay nearby, opened and clearly rifled through, but it was dry, which meant some time had passed since the storm.

  The only other possession within the hut was Portean’s bedroll, stretched from one side of the shelter to the other. It lay empty.

  Bleary-eyed and desperately thirsty, Aehyl found a full waterskin beside her. She propped herself upright with effort, then drank ravenously.

  Waves of dizziness washed over her, but she managed to dig through her pack until she found her pouch of herbs. As her fingers moved through the familiar textures, she became increasingly aware of the sharp, searing pain on her chest.

  The tea forgotten, she gasped and pulled her shirt aside.

  Branded over her heart was a small sigil, seared into her reddened skin like a rune or ward. It was shaped like a teardrop, deep crimson in color, as if drawn in blood.

  At the sight of it, fragmented memories of the storm and the creature came rushing back. The impossible light, the voice, the unbearable intensity, she clutched her head with both hands and curled into the folds of her bedroll, overwhelmed and trembling.

  Frightened and shaken, she took time to breathe, forcing herself to calm. After a few moments, she redressed.

  It helped to stay busy. Aehyl set about boiling water over the fire, her hands trembling slightly as she worked.

  The cape, masquerading as a door, flapped open, and Portean squirmed inside. The ranger struggled only slightly, his left arm slung tightly against his chest with strips of cloth.

  “Ah, by Faune, you’re up!” he breathed, relief and worry mingling in his voice.

  Grunting, Aehyl feebly tried to lift the kettle from the flames, but Portean quickly intercepted her with a gentle rebuke, managing everything deftly with his good arm.

  Once her tea was steeping, Portean set a small skillet on the fire. “I found a roosting colony of cliff gulls about a half-mile north,” he said, lowering his pack carefully to the ground. “We have eggs! There are also gostrich deeper in the ruins, but I didn’t want to risk robbing one of their nests… in my current condition.” He pulled a face.

  Gostrich were massive, flightless birds with hatchet-like bills that haunted the forest’s most remote corners. Predators by nature, they were not to be taken lightly.

  In addition to their deadly beaks, gostrich had long, muscular legs ending in three taloned toes, capable of unleashing devastating bursts of speed. As one of the forest’s top predators, they kept the populations of wild boar, elk, and deer in check.

  In Vistadora, certain craftsmen even prized their enormous feathers for a variety of practical uses.

  After a meal of hard biscuits and runny gull eggs, Aehyl felt better—though her chest still burned uncomfortably. As they sat in silence, she drifted into her thoughts.

  Portean sensed her somber mood and did not disturb her.

  She could feel his unspoken apprehension, his worry lingered just beneath the surface.

  Unsure how to approach the memory coiled inside her, Aehyl finally spoke.

  “Do you…” she began cautiously, “do you remember anything from the night of the storm, Portean?”

  Even saying it aloud sent chills up her spine.

  “I remember the storm clouds. And I remember the pelting rain,” Portean said flatly.

  “And then…” His voice grew uneasy. “Then I remember a streak of lightning spiraling down, straight at us. I remember it hitting you, Aehyl. I remember you screaming.”

  “I threw myself at you. I pushed you back against the stone wall, but then something heavy struck me, and everything started going black.” He hesitated, face reddening. “I thought I saw you glowing. White-hot. Like… like a beacon in the night.”

  Aehyl visibly flinched. Seeing her reaction, Portean’s next words came in a tumble.

  “But, maybe I imagined it,” he said quickly. “Who knows what that rock did to my brain.”

  Wincing, he brushed back his long blond hair, revealing a swollen, discolored lump behind his left ear. Below that, at the junction of his neck and shoulder, a deeper bruise bloomed in dark purples and greens.

  “I’m lucky it didn’t crush my fool head,” he muttered.

  He looked down. “When I came to, you were slumped over me. Burning up. You were running a nasty fever.”

  His voice cracked. “For a while there, I… I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

  He licked his lips, suddenly unsure. “You were mumbling, going on about all sorts of horrible things. But I suppose when someone gets that close to death, they’re bound to speak of it.”

  “I was talking about death?” Aehyl asked, her voice tight with anxiety.

  “It was hard to make out everything,” Portean admitted, sheepish now. “You… tore at your clothing. And I saw what that lightning left on your chest.”

  His red ear turned redder still, but Aehyl had already guessed he’d seen the mark.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Unconsciously, Aehyl brought a hand to her chest. The sigil still burned.

  “Do you know what it is… what it means?” she asked quietly.

  She was growing tired again, but forced herself upright, propped on one elbow. She watched him closely.

  “No,” Portean answered—too quickly.

  “At least… I don’t think so,” he amended.

  “But you’ve seen the mark before,” she pressed, voice steady despite the fatigue. She could tell, he was holding something back. He was a terrible liar.

  Portean sighed, his gaze drifting.

  “I don’t remember exactly what it is… or what it means,” he admitted. “But yes, I’ve seen it. A long time ago.”

  He paused before continuing, his voice quieter now.

  “When I was young, I spent a lot of time in my father’s study, rummaging through old relics and scrolls from his expeditions. You know I was born with only the faintest spark of arcane talent, barely enough to light a candle. My formal training lasted just under two years.”

  He looked at her, troubled.

  “But somewhere in that study… I saw that mark.” His brow furrowed. “I’ve been wracking my brain for days, trying to remember where. What it meant. Why it was important.”

  His jaw clenched. “But it won’t come.”

  Aehyl sighed, frustration and fear vying for space in her heart.

  At last, she collapsed back onto her bedroll and drifted into sleep almost instantly.

  Portean remained seated by the fire. He added a few more sticks to the flame, the dry wood crackling in the quiet. Then, methodically, he cleared and cleaned their gear, moving with the mechanical stillness of a man burdened by thought.

  Finally, he lay down atop his own bedroll, troubled furrows etched into his otherwise smooth brow.

  In his mind, he searched every dark recess for the memory of the sigil, the teardrop-shaped mark. He knew it. He was certain he knew it. But the exhaustion of the past days, physical and mental, dragged at him like a weight.

  Eventually, sleep took him as well, uneasy and incomplete.

  Outside their small shelter, silence settled once more. Daylight faded into dusk, and the twin moons, Else and Solse, slipped quietly across the star-scattered sky.

  By morning, Aehyl insisted she was well enough to travel, at least a short distance.

  Despite Portean’s protests, she even managed to provide a weak healing for his shoulder. When the channeling ended, the bruise at his collarbone and the egg-sized lump behind his ear were still present, but faded and less severe.

  Portean argued she should rest for the remainder of the morning, but Aehyl refused. She was tired, yes, but she was far more tired of lying still.

  In truth, she was sick of thinking about the storm… and even more exhausted by the constant burning in her chest.

  Admittedly, she had attempted to heal the mark—to erase it from her flesh entirely.

  The attempt had gone poorly. The pain had been immediate and overwhelming, seizing her body with a force she hadn’t expected. After that, she’d resolved to leave it alone. Let nature take its course.

  If nothing else, the short hike would distract her, from the dreams, from the sigil, from the lingering dread that lurked in every quiet moment. For now, that was enough.

  After a relatively large breakfast of hardtack and eggs, they broke camp. Portean had pitched it a few hundred feet from the washed-out overhang, where the storm had ravaged the cliff face.

  Though the rockfall had littered the slope with broken stone and shattered boughs, it had also eased the grade of their climb, making parts of the ascent marginally easier.

  As they passed the ruined overhang, Aehyl slowed. Her eyes lingered on the place where she had seen the being, the creature. The memory of its hand on her chest, of fire and frost coursing through her, rushed up again.

  Had it really happened?

  Portean had seen a light… but that was before…

  She shook herself and forced her gaze upward, quickening her pace. Better to leave the ruin behind. Better to move forward than drown in the uncertainty of memory.

  With Portean’s quiet encouragement, she soon found herself on a narrow ledge that wound up the cliffside, each step carrying her further from the storm, and deeper into the unknown.

  Their footing was tricky at times.

  Portean insisted on tethering them together with rope. He was, at least, polite enough to lie about his reasons.

  Claiming his arm wasn’t as strong as it needed to be for the climb, he argued that tying off was in their mutual interest. Aehyl saw through him, of course, but she appreciated his sensitivity and agreed without protest.

  By midday, they were striding away from the ledge. In the air, a faint trace of sarcococca drifted. Whether it was the fragrance, the exertion, or simply her imagination, Aehyl felt the weight inside her begin to ease. With every step putting distance between her and the cliff, the burden seemed to lift, if only slightly.

  That night, the two made camp beneath a young Crystal-Mist Oak. The mood of the forest had lightened since entering the domain influenced by the ancient tree. Even so, scholarship on the Great Oak remained patchy and incomplete.

  Though many druids had devoted their lives to studying its origins, none had sufficiently explained the sudden appearance, or the strange evolution, of the Crystal-Mist Oaks.

  As dusk deepened, Aehyl brooded silently, listening to the quiet melody that Portean coaxed from a small kati he always carried on his forest outings.

  The kati was a narrow, seven-stringed wooden instrument—a remnant of Elvish culture that had traveled with the forest folk when they first came to this continent. They came in many shapes and sizes, and this one was among the smallest Aehyl had ever seen.

  Some musicians modified their kati, adding or, more rarely, removing strings. Others adjusted the neck or lengthened the body to alter its tonal qualities. Portean’s customizations had given his kati a thinner, higher pitch than was typical, but it still produced a pleasant, if somber, tune.

  “I thought your pain would keep you from playing,” Aehyl murmured, her voice heavy with fatigue.

  The somber tune drifted through the night air, threading between the raucous chirping of crickets in the trees. Listening, Aehyl realized just how utterly spent she was. Her journey had already become something far different than she expected.

  She had come seeking ancient truths, hoping to uncover long-buried secrets of the Mother Tree. But now, she was tangled in mysteries of her own, adrift and unfocused, far from the path she’d imagined.

  Portean only shrugged, his fingers gliding over the neck of the kati, gentle as a lover’s touch.

  “Your healing is… surprisingly potent,” he said softly.

  But Aehyl wasn’t listening anymore.

  A host of scattered thoughts stirred in her mind as she stared into the flickering red and orange glow of the fire.

  What was the meaning of the brand now seared into her flesh?

  Was it tied to the Great Oak?

  To the Chimera Blight threatening all of Avonmora?

  What, or who, had the specter been, that appeared in the storm? Would it return? And if it did… would it mean to harm her?

  She shook her head, frustration tightening her features as she tried to thread the questions together.

  “I’m not going mad,” she whispered fiercely, though the doubt crept at the edges of her mind like a gathering fog.

  Somewhere in the distance of her thoughts, a memory stirred, hazy and ungraspable. A flicker of something half-forgotten, hidden behind years of disuse.

  And yet… it mattered. She knew that much. If only she could hold onto it. If only she could focus her mind for just one moment….

  But clarity never came.

  It was like waiting all day on the edge of a revelation, breath held, hoping for the moment that never arrived.

  “I’m sorry, Aehyl, I didn’t catch that. Were you saying something?” Portean looked up from his kati, eyes watchful.

  The ranger’s hearing was uncanny. Almost reflexively, his practiced fingers slowed, the notes of his instrument softening into the night. The gentle plucking blended with the forest’s chorus of crickets, as though his music had always belonged there.

  “It’s nothing,” Aehyl murmured, self-conscious. She didn’t take her eyes off the fire.

  “I’ve just been thinking, Portean.”

  Her voice held a distant edge, more thought than speech.

  “You said you’d seen this rune before. And after brooding on it for most of the day… I think I have too. But I can’t recall where. It’s as if…” she paused, groping for the image, “as if a dark fabric were wrapped around my head, clouding my vision, dulling the memory. I see only glimpses. Partial shapes. Fragments of shadow, and scatterings of light.”

  She exhaled slowly.

  “I’m chasing something in the dark… but no matter how close I get, I can’t quite see it.”

  Portean nodded silently, watching Aehyl with his usual quiet intensity.

  Without a word, he shifted the melody on his kati, easing into the mournful strains of the Ballad of El-Arlyn. His head dipped gently with the rhythm, eyes occasionally closing as the music overtook him. It was clear the song pulled at something deep within.

  Aehyl frowned, pausing mid-thought. The music was… distracting. Too evocative. Too personal.

  It was an ancient dirge, one that spoke of betrayal, and of death in their ancestral home, the Moran Wood. Elves were born with memory in their bones. Even after centuries, the sorrow in that song stirred something old and aching in her.

  She could feel the weight of her people’s legacy: the time before the Sundering, before the split between the Avonmora and the Moalarlyn. Before even the Keenan, those who knew no death.

  Long ago, the elves of Moran Wood had been wild and cunning, savage, even. The melody called out their losses in haunting refrain.

  That pain had followed them from continent to continent, and still it clung like ghost-chains to every elf that survived. Even now, Aehyl bore it. They all did.

  Across the fire, Portean sat in silence, his fingers moving automatically over the strings. The music lived in his hands even as his mind remained on her.

  “Portean,” she said at last, her voice low but firm.

  His eyes lifted.

  “Tomorrow we reach the Great Oak. And though we’ve always found sanctuary and peace beneath its boughs, I have a feeling…” she faltered, then pressed on, “no—a certainty. Tomorrow, something changes. Something fundamental.”

  She leaned toward him, her voice quiet but resolute.

  “I’ll need your trust. No matter what happens, you must follow my lead, even if I ask you to do the unthinkable. Do I have your word?”

  For a moment, only the fire answered. Then Portean looked up, not with words, but with song:

  Through wood, over water,

  in storm, under fire—

  I obey with my blood and my life.

  The ranger sang breathlessly, still caught in the spell of the ballad. Aehyl knew he’d heard her request, it was just like him to answer with a line from El-Arlyn.

  She felt it too, that strange, intoxicating pull of memory and melody. Overcome, she lifted her voice and joined in. Her tone was high, strong, and haunting as it pierced the cool night air:

  Yeah, my soul is a-flyin’

  Aye, my blood is a-dryin’

  Moran Wood calls me to die

  Breathe your last, heave and gasp,

  Comin’ closer, ever closer

  To that endless ebb of time

  Moran calls—heed your father

  Life is bother, but we strive and we die

  Through wood, over water

  In storm, under fire

  Mind your blood and your vow

  For your father lay dying

  And your mother fell plying

  Blade and blood for your Moran Wood bough

  They could have gone on—the full ballad would take all night—but both fell silent at the mention of Moran Wood.

  The weight of it was too much.

  Even the forest around them seemed to fall still. The crickets ceased their chorus, and the fire’s crackle dulled to a hush, as if it, too, feared to intrude. Perhaps it was unwise to sing of such things in a place this old.

  After all, the ancient forest, Moran, was a wood they could never truly know. And yet, their souls ached for it. A distant homeland. A forgotten belonging. They were the disinherited heirs of a bloody schism.

  On the old continent of Edan, they were known as oathbreakers.

  Long ago, the forebears of the Avonmora had turned from the Maker, Aric, Father of Light. They followed Killian the Verdant, a prophet of the forest, and began to revere Faune, the Goddess of the Wilds. What began as devotion soon became division. A rift opened wide, tearing at the heart of elvish society, and culminating, in time, in war.

  Many Avonmora and Moalarlyn perished before the Keenan, the undying ancients, intervened. They brokered peace between their children through the Treaty of Eth, and for a time, it held.

  But zealotry cannot be silenced forever.

  Three centuries later, the Thousand Year War erupted. The land was devastated. The Avonmora were cast out, expelled from Edan, their ancestral home. The ancient ways were broken.

  And yet, even now, something within them remembered.

  Their souls still longed for Moran Wood, more than they would ever admit.

  Over time, Alissia had become their home.

  The bitterness of defeat—the ache of exile from their beloved Moran Wood—had dulled, though it had never vanished. The Avonmora had adapted. They had grown roots in this new soil. But they would never forget the ancient woods that had once cradled them like children.

  Someday, all Avonmora knew, their people would return. Reconciliation, and with it, redemption, still beckoned from across the sea.

  The ballad of El-Arlyn left both elves in a contemplative silence that night. Talk was sparse. And before long, Aehyl found herself lying beneath the open sky, her eyes fixed on the twin moons, Else and Solse.

  This year’s summer solstice would be a rare and sacred one.

  The sisters were drifting ever closer in the heavens. By midsummer, they would align with the sun in a triple convergence, a phenomenon unseen for thousands of years. It would not occur again for generations.

  As Aehyl watched them inch toward each other, a chill ran through her.

  She thought of the strange occurrences in the Crystal-Mist: the sudden plague that struck the Avonmora… the plants and beasts turning wild and violent… the unease in the land. Could it all be coincidence?

  Or was something deeper at work?

  Her thoughts turned to the reptilian beast they had slain. Was it a harbinger of some new threat? And what of the sigil now burned into her skin? The memory of pain returned with it. The sense of being marked.

  Finally, her thoughts settled on the Great Oak.

  Something inside her whispered that this pilgrimage would change everything. Not just for her, but for all Avonmora. The feeling gnawed at her. She had voiced it to Portean, and still it remained, stubborn and cold in her chest.

  She prayed to Faune that she was wrong.

  But as she drifted into a fitful sleep, the stars above offered no comfort.