Singer: Songbird River Chronicles, #1

Singer

Cover Design © 2019 Deranged Doctor Designs

All rights reserved

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialog, and characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Frosty Owl Publishing

www.frostyowlpublishing.com

About Singer

A silent woman awakens on the edge of a dusty wasteland. A Lady Fencer leads a journey to claim a powerful sword. A young Guide-in-training takes his unwanted follower along while he attempts his master’s trial. Their goals all converge in the mysterious ruined city, from which no one has ever returned alive.

Prologue

All was lost.

All could not be lost, though. They couldn’t just give up now, not after coming so far. They had to keep going, keep pushing, and reach the center together. Everything would be okay as soon as they got there and finally met their goal.

But first they’d have to find one another.

Marcin checked himself over before standing shakily. Other than some nasty cuts and bruises, he declared himself not too badly injured and examined his new surroundings.

In the distance he could hear the grating, metallic roar of the flying beast that had thrown all three of them from the balcony it had caught them on.

Marcin had ended up in an alleyway of sorts. Tall buildings leaned in over him, casting dark shadows on everything. The stone of the road he stood on showed cracks and other signs of wear, not helped by the fallen blocks and sculptures that had smashed down from the buildings above. This alley had no more shelter from the destruction and ruin than the rest of the city.

He heard the creature roar again and crash into another building further away. He strained his ears, not sure if he wanted to hear the screams of his companions or not. He had to find them, but not by following the sounds of their demise.

Shasha, he thought. I have to find Shasha.

He stumbled out of the alleyway and looked for a way to higher ground. It would be more dangerous and exposed there, but he should be able to see more of the city that way. Maybe he could see where the girls had been thrown off to.

Climbing over some fallen beams, he eventually reached a stairway that led to the roof of a taller building. He stepped carefully, seeing signs of impending collapse along the path. He hugged the inside wall, sometimes even clutching at the stones for stability, and made his slow way to the top. Once he got there, he stood and regained his sense of balance for a moment.

This wasn’t the highest he’d been in the ruined city, but the view here still took his breath away.

The moon shone off the stone sides of the buildings, lining with a white glow the places where they had lost bits and had other parts smashed away. Higher up on the tops of some structures, old statues looked down, probably once fiercely, but now full of regret and sadness. Marcin wished he could ask them what had happened in this place so many years ago to make it this way now. He wished more that he could ask them to show him where Shasha was, though.

Shasha! Shaaaashaaa! he called.

He looked in every direction he could, and was soon rewarded with a sign. That light blue glow nearly blended into the moonlight, but Marcin still managed to pick it out. He knew it came from Iryssa.

The blue shimmer directed him to a point roughly southwest of his little tower lookout. He memorized the position and scrambled back down the disintegrating stairway.

He covered the distance as quickly as he could, but it still took him a good half hour to finally find them. He kept calling out, both Shasha’s and Iryssa’s names, but the only answer he would get was more of Iryssa’s light. A great cracking noise reverberated through the city, signaling the monster’s continued search for its prey. For them.

Iryssa knelt over Shasha’s broken body on a pile of crushed rock. Marcin thought of how cheerful Iryssa’d been throughout their journey together, ever since he and Shasha had met her in the wasteland outside of the ruined city.

Now, tears flowed freely down her cheeks when she turned to look at him. Her hands glowed the same light blue color as her guiding beacons had been.

She was trying to use her healing magic to save Shasha.

I’m sorry, she said. I’m trying.

Marcin stepped to her side and knelt down. Shasha’s eyes were open, but their glassy look told him she was already dead. Her body twisted at an odd angle. She’d probably smashed into the rocks and died in the fall. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself not to cry. It didn’t work.

Shasha… I promised you we’d make it to the center and back again, but now you’re…

He heard Iryssa straining beside him, pouring all of her power into his wife’s body. He turned and pulled the girl against him. Stop. She’s not coming back.

Iryssa sobbed. I tried. She was still alive when I found her, but…

Marcin stood quickly, pulling the healer with him. He made a decision. We are getting out of here. Now.

But, the center, we have to get there! That was the whole point!

No. I’m not going to let you die, too. You weren’t even a part of this stupid quest of ours. We shouldn’t have come here.

Iryssa was quiet, but she allowed him to pull her away from Shasha. He hated leaving his wife there like that, but he couldn’t do anything else. That monster was still out there, and he would not let it kill Iryssa, too.

The two of them scrambled along, looking for familiar landmarks to guide them back out of the city.

They had traveled for only a few minutes when the second creature came on them. A crawling machine, but still a Destroyer like the flying one that had killed Shasha. It caught them completely unawares. With a set of monotone beeps and clicks, it rushed at them, twenty legs flailing and gyrating grotesquely.

This way! Marcin shouted, tugging Iryssa’s arm.

Iryssa had decided to go the opposite way, though. They were separated in moments, and the thing came between them.

Marcin stood frozen, watching as the girl stumbled, tripped, and went down. The monster clicked over her, then struck.

It lashed out with a sharp front leg and shot a beam of green light from its middle eye. Iryssa let out a choked sound, hardly even a scream, and then flew apart into pieces.

Marcin realized he’d lost control of his legs and was now sitting on the ground. He tried to shuffle backwards, pulling himself along with his arms. He couldn’t manage it. He couldn’t even manage the energy to be sick.

The creature turned with more beeps and clicks. Its three eyes trained on him, the middle one still bright green.

Marcin closed his eyes.

Chapter 1

She awoke in a green grove full of gray dust. Large bushes and small trees surrounded her, and though she couldn’t see any birds or animals, she could sometimes hear them further in where the forest grew thicker. The fine, gray dust settled on the ground in a thin blanket, slightly piled up around the bases of the trees. A film of it lined each leaf with a silvery sheen.

The forest seemed so nice, so full of life and energy, that she wanted nothing more than to run through the foliage and dance with the birds. She even got up and tried to move under the larger trees, but she could take no more than a few steps before she became exhausted.

She lay in the dust and slept for a while. She thought she dreamed, but when she woke again, she couldn’t remember it.

She stood and shook the dust from her cloak. Happy to see that once the dust was gone her cloak was a vibrant mix of blue and red embroidery, she hummed a bit. She even had a piece of jewelry in the form of a small metal disc tied around her neck. The hem of her cloak had been torn at some point, but that didn’t matter much to her.

She wanted to try to make it into the forest again, but turned around instead. Before her, the trees dwindled away to nothing in the span of a few feet, giving way to the dust. Up close the dust looked like ash, but out there it looked like the drifting sands of some desert. It even formed dunes in the distance. Amongst these dunes, she could make out dark shapes low to the ground.

Upon seeing all this, she instantly felt a pull to travel in this direction, different from her desire to enter the forest. That was merely a thing that she wanted. This was a thing that she needed. She didn’t particularly like the idea of going into the dust desert. It made her feel old and weary.

There was no point in waiting, though. The longer she stood there in the trees, the more that pull became the only thing she could feel. She liked the feeling even less than the idea of walking into the desert, so she stepped forward.

Dust clouds rose in puffs with each step she took, clinging to her shoes and pants until she looked like a statue from the knees down. Eventually, the drifts became deep enough that she had to adopt more of a shuffling gait. Her feet sank a bit deeper into the dust, and she shook her cloak out more and more often.

She came closer to one of the dark shapes she had seen from the grove. It solidified as a bit of a low wall, broken and crumbled and alone out here in this gray wasteland. When she reached it she found smaller bits of stone lying on the ground around it. The far side of the wall had dust piled up around it. Under the film of dust that draped itself over everything, she could see the red color of the wall, and that it had once had some pattern adorning it. Wanting to see if she could make the pattern out, she swept her hand over the stone, but the wind and dust had worn it down until it had faded beyond recognition. She sighed in disappointment.

She climbed to the top of the wall and sat on the ragged edge for a moment, looking forward at the other dark shapes she could see. They must also be parts of buildings, or maybe whole buildings, she thought. Somehow, these signs of civilization didn’t give her the feeling that there might be other living things out here. She had left all chance of meeting even the smallest insect behind in the bright green forest.

She was alone.

She was lonely.

These thoughts made her sad. She had no choice but to continue further into the waste, alone.

As she shuffled along, she thought of the kind of companion she might like to meet. Perhaps a bird would be fun. She felt a certain affinity to birds, which was strange, since she’d never seen one before. She had no idea how she knew what a bird was, or an insect, or even that they were different things and different from herself. On the other hand, she had almost no knowledge pertaining to herself.

Maybe a snake would come along, or a lizard. She knew these kinds of creatures sometimes lived in the desert, but she couldn’t imagine that she would run into either of them in a place so barren and desolate as this.

By this time, she had been walking for nearly two hours. She had passed by three or four similar bits of ruined buildings, piles of stones tumbling into the dust. She couldn’t tell anymore if the faint colors on these bits stood out like beacons or if they simply blended into the overall gray color of the world, too washed out to be anything special anymore. The wind blew dust in her face as she walked beyond the most recent broken wall. This one had a set of wind-worn pillars leaning at odd angles beside it.

Ho, traveler! What might you be doing alone in a place like this?

She whipped her head around to the source of the voice, surprised. A figure stepped out from behind the crooked pillars into a shadow. She could make out that the figure wore a cape and appeared to have long hair tied up in a tail that flapped in the wind along with the cape. As she stood staring, the figure beckoned her closer.

Come, won’t you join us? My companions and I have food and tales to share, and plenty of room for one more.

She felt a swelling in her heart. The figure had companions, and more than one! It felt like a luxury in the wasteland, such a gathering of living things. Wanting nothing more than to not have to travel alone anymore, she stepped over to the figure in the ruins.

The figure turned out to be a lavishly dressed woman. Her long green cape billowed behind her, revealing a purple tunic covered with a leather vest and pants that must have once been brown, but were now mostly the ashy color of the pervasive dust. Her leather boots came up to her calves and still managed to shine a bit through their dusting. On top of her head perched a black hat with silver embroidery around its brim, which pointed in the front and back. A leather belt hung around her waist, holding a lovely rapier with a golden hilt against her right hip.

Welcome to our cheery camp, traveler, said the woman, sweeping her hat off and bowing with a flourish. My name is Katherina, hailing from Dorthin. I’m sure you’ve heard of me in the capacity of the Greatest Fencer in the Realm?

She looked at the woman curiously, feeling bad that she had not heard of her. She didn’t want to disappoint her new companion.

Katherina straightened and put her hat back on. You haven’t, then? Well, that is odd, but certainly not a crime. Come, what is your name?

She liked Katherina’s smile, a bit brash and full of boast. She opened her mouth to tell her that she didn’t know if she even had a name, and sang a loud note. Katherina’s smile turned into something more joyful at the sound.

Ah, a Singer, are you? We could do with a bard. Perhaps you can team up with our tag-along Historian and put his dry old stories to a tune! she said with a laugh.

Wanting to join in her new friend’s mirth even though she didn’t understand it, she tried to imitate the laughter. It came out as a quick succession of short, light notes that had a nice rippling quality.

Katherina smiled at her and turned to walk back into the ruin of pillars. She raised a hand and waved it in the direction she was heading.

You certainly are an interesting character. I like you, Singer. Come, this way. The others are waiting in here.

On the other side of the wall sat three men and their belongings. The one furthest away sat up straight, surveying the surrounding area, and played with some odd instruments he had strewn about him.

The second man sat against the wall, but hunched over a book. He wrote furiously, using the corner of his cloak to shield the pages from the dust blowing around.

The third man stood the moment she and Katherina rounded the corner. He also had a rapier at his side, but one of obviously lesser quality.

My Lady Katherina, he called in what he clearly thought of as a gallant voice. Who is this you have brought to us?

A Singer, the woman replied with a nod back to her. She was just about to tell me her name.

Katherina’s declaration caused the other two men to turn their attention away from what they were doing. All four of the little group looked at her expectantly, all but the first man appearing friendly. She looked at her feet for a moment, suddenly shy under all this attention, then quietly sang a few notes.

Ah, she said. Ah, ah.

That is lovely, Singer, Katherina said, not untruthfully, but do you know any songs with words?

Suddenly afraid that she had made the woman angry, she hid her hands in her cloak and looked at the other travelers. The young man who had spoken looked confused, and the man who had been writing looked curious. The other man just looked grumpy. She sang a few more notes sadly.

The writing man smiled and stepped forward.

My dear, would I be too far off at this point to assume that perhaps this singing is all you can, well, say, for lack of a better word?

She smiled brightly at his theory and sang some more in celebration. She even clapped her hands a bit.

Katherina chuckled and turned to the other swordsman. "A fine band we’ve got ourselves here, Farien. Our Guide who will be friends with no one, our Historian who is recording everything we do, and our Singer, who only sings."

She flung her arms out and spun around to face deeper into the wasteland. The wind blew her cape out to her left. With the sun shining almost directly in front of her, glinting off the golden hilt of her sword, she really did strike a dramatic figure.

What a grand, fun little quest we are having! Singer, you shall certainly have a place with us!

Singer smiled, sang her musical laugh, and danced circles around the Historian.

She wasn’t alone!

Chapter 2

We are traveling to the ruins of the Nameless City, said Shan Eyfish, the Historian. It is a journey of great historical significance! None has ever survived a complete journey to the center—

And we shall unquestionably be the first to do it, no problem! Katherina interrupted him with a flapping of her hand. What has or hasn’t happened to other explorers is of no consequence to us, so long as none of them has picked up that sword without telling anyone!

Standing away from the group, Henith, the Guide, snorted in derision. Don’t worry, Lady. If it had been picked up, you’d have heard. But you’re right about not caring what happened to past explorers. They died because they hired poor Guides, or none at all.

Ah, Singer sang. A creature losing its life was always cause for sadness.

Surely, though, Shan said pointedly. You can admit that knowing what misfortunes befell past explorers can help you to avoid them yourself?

A Guide finds his own path, with no help from others.

Enough, both of you, Katherina called. I have no interest at the moment in listening to you two argue about the importance of history. We were telling Singer about our quest.

Shan bowed a little from his sitting position. I apologize, my Lady. Yes, regardless of the historical importance of the venture, Lady Katherina has come to the Nameless City for a Purpose.

"The sword that cannot