Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 3 of 37

Over the next few days, Lydia's song began to catch. A pair of merchants wandered in, then a lone shepherd, then a woman who had lost the road. Lydia fed on each one and grew strong. Her voice returned to full weight. The pond in the depths could rest now. But strength alone would not bring her the knight. She needed her cavern to work harder for her. She stood at the mouth of the pass and studied the stone. The echo here was good, but not perfect. When she sang, her call broke on jagged rock and scattered before it reached the road. A cleaner throat of stone would carry farther. It would make her voice sound sweeter, closer, harder to ignore. The knight would hear it from miles off and think a woman waited just inside. Lydia set to work. She dragged loose rubble from the passage and stacked it against the walls. She pried away the sharp edges that split her sound. Dust coated her arms. Her fine dress grayed at the hem, but she did not stop. She hummed as she worked, testing the shape of the air. Each stone she moved changed the sound. She listened, adjusted, moved another. By dusk the passage rang like a bell. Lydia stood in the center and sang a single low note. It rolled down the smooth stone, deepened, and came back to her doubled. She grinned. The cavern held her voice like a cupped hand and threw it far. Then she smelled it. Where she had cleared the rubble, an old smell rose from the deep pit. The trader's body still lay at the bottom, and days of rot had thickened the air. Her cleaning had opened the passage straight to it. The stench drifted toward the mouth on the same clean current that carried her song. Lydia's grin fell. She had built the perfect throat, and now it breathed rot onto the road. No traveler would follow a beautiful voice into a cave that smelled of death. A knight most of all would turn and draw his sword, not walk inside. She knelt at the edge of the pit and looked down into the dark. The pond lay somewhere below. The smell came from the trader she had let fall. She could not sing him away. She could not leave him there and lure anyone. Lydia wiped the dust from her hands and stood. Her cavern was ready at last. Its voice would reach the knight now. But before she could call him, she had to go down into the pit and deal with what she had left rotting at the bottom.