Lydia the Siren's Arc

Chapter 4 of 37

The passage was ready. Lydia's voice would carry for miles now. But the smell of the dead trader poured up the same clean stone and spoiled everything. She stood at the pit's edge and made her choice. She would go down, drag the body up, and rid her cavern of the stench. She studied the wall. The rock dropped straight into black. No ledge, no stair. One slip and she would join the trader she had let fall. Lydia knelt and tested a jutting stone with her weight. It held. She lowered herself over the edge. Her bare feet found cracks. Her fingers gripped cold rock. Dust rained past her into the dark. She climbed down slow, testing each hold before she trusted it. Halfway down, a stone crumbled under her foot. Her body swung loose. She caught a seam with both hands and hung there, breath tearing at her throat. The smell thickened as she went lower. She breathed through her mouth and kept moving. At last her feet touched a wet stone shelf. The pond glimmered near the trader's body. He lay twisted where he had struck, his skin gone gray and slick. Lydia gagged and turned her face away. She could not haul him up the wall she had climbed. He was too heavy, and the holds were too small. But the pond fed somewhere. Water always found a way out. She waded in and felt along the rock at the far side. Her fingers slid into a gap below the surface, a channel where the water drained. Lydia dragged the body to the water. She worked it into the current at the drain. The channel was tight. She pushed with both hands, her feet braced on stone. The trader's shoulder caught, then slid. The water took him. He vanished into the gap and was gone, carried off through the rock to wherever the pond emptied. She stood in the cold water, shaking. The stench already thinned. The pond would wash the rest. She climbed back up the wall slower than she came, her arms burning, and pulled herself over the lip onto solid ground. Lydia lay on the stone and breathed clean air. Then she rose and walked to the mouth of the pass. She sang one low note down the smooth throat of rock. It rolled out toward the road and carried nothing but her voice now. No rot. No warning. She smiled. Her cavern was clean and ready. The knight would hear her at last. She drew a full breath and began to sing for him.