Reluctantly, watching her carefully, Daerth and Metcenzerin let Kwanai up, but the southerner didn't try anything. She did not even attempt to reclaim her confiscated knife from Metcenzerin.

“What did you do to them?” Daerth's accusation was more then half threat, but Kwanai seemed not to notice the dark implications behind her tone.

“This,” she replied, gesturing broadly at the unconscious paladins, “was not my doing.”

“Oh, so the constant chanting for Ku'eb to come and kill us all was just for fun, was it?” snapped Metcenzerin, then glanced with disgust at the dagger in her hand. “Is this a ceremonial knife for human sacrifices? How many people have you killed with this thing?”

“Better embraced and consumed by Ku'eb then locked in Teru's nightmare,” Kwanai insisted calmly, and shortly. “It is merely a knife, no more or less. The whispers have passed, and they were neither mine nor Ku'eb's.” She closed her eyes. “Did you not hear his voice? He is calling us in.”

“Teru?”

Kwanai opened her eyes again but did not reply. She merely looked at Metcenzerin, and the musician frowned in thought.

“No,” she said finally. “Not Teru. I can still sense him watching faintly, but this feels...”

Kwanai nodded.

“We should get moving,” Metcenzerin suggested tensely. “Stitchdoctor, how long are they going to be knocked out?”

The doctor glanced down at her victims, then shrugged. Metcenzerin raised her eyes to the heavens in frustration.

“Of course it was the two biggest people wearing tons of heavy armor. Alright, let's get this over with. Daerth, you're sort of muscley. You and Kwanai try and get Raceel off the ground, and I'll help Stitchy with Eany. We've just got to make it far enough away from... whatever that whispering wind was that it won't hit again and find some shelter, then we can rest and try and figure out what to do with the paladins.”

A simple plan, but difficult to put into action. Daerth (feeling the aches and pangs from her fall creeping back) quickly recommended a stretcher. She recognized the task would be impossible without one, but even with a rough device made from her cloak and some branches, it proved useless to try to move both paladins at once. Halfway through trying to get Eany onto the thing, Daerth collapsed again.

The Stitchdoctor's potion had finally worn off, and Daerth couldn't move her leg at all without searing pain.

“Well, this is lovely,” said Metcenzerin with forced, fake optimism. “We are back to three people down, and the Stitchdoctor isn't going to be any help carrying anyone. Hey, Kwanai, do you feel like killing us all again, yet?”

The Stitchdoctor wandered off, apparently agreeing with Metcenzerin's sentiment, while Kwanai merely gave her a blank, unreadable stare. The bard shrugged. “Everything else is going wrong,” she explained. “Fate likes to pour it on thick, so why not add something else to the pile of problems?”

“You are very whiny,” grunted Daerth painfully through gritted teeth, “for someone who doesn't keep getting injured. How about you try and figure out some way to help, instead?”

The sound of snapping wood startled them, but it wasn't long before the Stitchdoctor wandered back out of the woods with a long branch, forked at one end, in her hands. She handed it to Daerth, then turned to stare at Eany, lying halfway onto the one stretcher they'd been able to make.

“Thanks a lot, doc.”

Daerth's breath hissed involuntarily as she tried to rise, but the stick was thick and solid, allowing her to brace before her lurching attempt to rise toppled her over again.

The Stitchdoctor pointed at Kwanai and Metcenzerin, then at the stretcher. “Drag, both of you,” she ordered roughly. “I'll guard,” and pointed at Raceel.

Kwanai grimaced, displeased by the need to come in close physical proximity with Metcenzerin, but side-by-side they were able to get the paladin moving. It wasn't easy and Daerth was no help, limping along slowly behind, but after a while they began getting into a rhythm. Metcenzerin was too breathless to sing, or she would have begun one of her favourite shanties to help pass the time.

They went in stages, fearing to leave the Stitchdoctor and Raceel too far behind. Daerth stayed with Eany's unconscious body while the others went back to get Raceel, then rejoined them while the Stitchdoctor waited behind again.

In this way, slow and exhausting, they made their way down the forest path. The drizzling rain and cloudy skies made it slightly easier by making sure the sun wasn't around to add to their sweaty work, but as the afternoon grew older, the rain began getting cold.

Daerth sat beneath a tree, trying to keep out of the rain, while she waited for the others to catch up again. Once, she thought she heard them coming, specifically Metcenzerin, but the faint singing faded after a minute and they didn't show up for a quarter hour afterwards.

“Let's... take a break,” suggested Metcenzerin once they all arrived, and then didn't wait for a response before collapsing against Daerth's tree. “Gods above, I hate this job...”

“If I went around playing my lute for a living, I'd probably hate hard physical labor, too,” snapped Daerth, tired and in pain and very short of temper. It said something about how tired Metcenzerin was that she didn't even bother coming up with a response.

“Shsh!” hissed Kwanai, raising a hand sharply. The others looked at her for an explanation, but then one by one they heard it, as well.

“That singing again,” muttered Daerth. Then, when they looked at her to explain, she added, “I heard it a bit ago, singing in the woods. That time it sounded a bit like you, Zerin, but this is different. Deeper.” She listened for a moment more, then sighed. There was a note of melancholy to the voice, and though she couldn't quite make out the lyrics, she wished she could. Kwanai, too, listened intently, and the piercing gleam of her eyes seemed almost to mellow for a moment.

Then the Stitchdoctor clapped her hands to gain their attention, and shook her head vigorously as if to dislodge the sound from her ears. “Siren song,” she rasped, and the very sound of the acid-damaged voice seemed to negate the effect of the distant singing. “Trouble.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Metcenzerin, glaring into the woods. “Come on, let's move.”

The cloudy sky began getting darker, their only indication of the growing dusk. As Daerth, Metcenzerin, and Kwanai made their slow way down the path (this time with Raceel in tow), the dark trees seemed to close in around them.

“Look, up ahead.”

Daerth pointed, and sure enough, further up the path, a dim light could be seen between black tree branches. They unanimously and silently stopped for a moment to peer at it and consider their options. Once again, very faintly now, they could hear singing, and Daerth picked out both the deeper voice they'd all heard and the higher one she'd heard alone.

“Stitchy called it 'sirens',” suggested Metcenzerin. “Perhaps it isn't far from the truth, but... if I had to make the bet, I'd say that's a building up ahead. The light's too high for a campfire.”

“The manor?” Daerth added, and they all fell to pondering again.

“I fear no building,” said Kwanai finally. “Let us go, retrieve our last companions, and then investigate. If something lives there that means us ill, I will show them true pestilence.”

Metcenzerin hid a smile at the foreigner's unintentional play on words and nodded. “Sounds reasonable to me. Keep an eye on Raceel and don't let yourself get called away, Daerth. We'll be back as soon as we can.”

Daerth nodded. She was already on guard for the music, so even when the deep voice called to her specifically, pulling at the part of her heart that loved the lonesome nature of forests and their animals, she merely closed her ears to it.

The Stitchdoctor, Kwanai, and Metcenzerin went together to look for the origin of the light after leaving Eany under Daerth's watch. The singing, now expected, grew closer as they advanced until they could all hear the lyrics woven within the two voices' wordless humming.

“... in the forest of green, far from the stone,

of high, beautiful Antanzali, our mountainous home.

Alas! Alas! The free winds bemoan,

Of the death of Antanzali,

Of the death of our home.”

Metcenzerin stopped in her tracks.

The others heard the mournful tune, the fair voices singing longingly for some unknown past, and they moved on. Metcenzerin recognized the song. She could hear the real lyrics in her mind, sung by ancestors she had never known in a language she rarely used. She knew what 'The Death of Antanzali' referred to.

And it made her angry.

She avoided Old Northern songs in her performances. They hadn't been written for Kingdomers, and Kingdomers didn't deserve them. Even translated into the lower tongue, they ignited the elements of her blood that still remembered. Her father's blood, and his father's, all the way back to the bones of the mountains...

It had nothing to do with sirens or magic, whatever the others might claim. This wasn't trickery – it was shared blood. And hers was beginning to boil.

The manor appeared up ahead, a dark building surrounded by high stone walls, just barely lit by the ambient light of dusk. Two windows on the second floor glowed with candlelight, and at the torch-lit gates stood two people, a man and a woman. They were the ones singing and, when they saw Metcenzerin, they raised their hands to their lips, extended them out to her without breaking rhythm.

Curse it.

They ended the verse and left their standing torch, approaching the group with friendly smiles.

“Friends!” declared the man cheerfully, spreading his hands to include them all in the classification. “We haven't seen anyone come from the village in ages – it is a pleasure to offer you entry.”

“Although, I must say,” added the woman more carefully, eyeing Kwanai, “you certainly don't look like you come from Woodsylane. May I ask how a sister-of-the-heights came to be all the way out here in such... distinctive company?”

Metcenzerin stepped forward to take control of the conversation (not that Kwanai or the Stitchdoctor would have fought over it). “Coincidence,” she declared. “A shared destination. Thank you for the invitation, but I must ask – is this your estate? How did a pair of Northerners gain access to a Kingdomer manor?”

The man chuckled at the question, shrugging lightly. “We are house guests, technically, but we have been with the owner for so long a certain sense of shared-ownership has slipped in.”

“Distant kin to distant kin, I can say with certainty that our host would be glad to have you stay the night,” added the woman with a slightly more reserved smile. Her eyes flicked over Metcenzerin briefly, sizing her up. “I can hear the old blood music in your voice. Your name?”

“Metcenzerin.”

The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise, but the man just nodded.

“My dear, suspicious blood-sister here,” he said with a crooked smile of good-natured teasing, “is Kedalimen'n, and I'm Arinimen'n. Would you like to come in? I have a fine turkey roasting and there is wine in the cellar; we can sit and eat in comfort while we talk.”

Metcenzerin hesitated, glanced back at the others, but Kwanai showed no hint of an opinion and the Stitchdoctor wasn't even looking at her. Turning back to the siblings, conflicted by the natural suspicion of eager hospitality and the Northern-draw of shared ancestry, she decided to throw the dice and raise.

“We are not alone,” she replied. “We have injured travel companions not far down the path who were not well enough to continue on.”

The woman, Kedalimen, raised her head sharply. “I'll hook up the carriage,” she said immediately, glancing at her brother. “Nelz won't mind.”

“Our host,” explained Arinimen, then, to his sister, “Good idea. And I will go see where she wants us to put our evening guests. How many are you altogether?” he added, back to Metcenzerin.

“Six.”

“By Iylihe, I'd better put more food on the fire.” Without another word, barely a glance at his sister, he turned on his heel and hurried through the gate and towards the manor. Kedalimen watched him go, then went to follow more slowly.

“I'll be back soon with the carriage,” she called over her shoulder to Metcenzerin. “When I do, one of you, at least, had better come along to show me where your friends are.”

Metcenzerin nodded, but did not say anything. She took a step back, lowered her voice, and asked,

“What do you think?”

“They are too eager,” Kwanai replied darkly. “I will be watchful.”

“Food and warmth,” added the Stitchdoctor, still staring after the two siblings, and again there was that somewhat unnerving eager tone in her words. “Good for injured.”

“Then I guess we're staying here tonight...”

Eany had regained consciousness by the time the carriage, pulled by two dappled horses, rolled around the turn in the path, and from the way he leapt to his feet, greatsword raised and ready for combat, he seemed to be feeling fine.

“It's just me, and a friend,” called Metcenzerin from her spot beside Kedalimen. “We've got a place to sleep tonight.”

Kedalimen had the horses stop beside the path, then eyed the group resting beneath the trees and whistled. “You travel with interesting folk, Metcenzerin'n,” she said quietly, adding the extra emphasis automatically. The two siblings had clearly not spent much time trying to introduce themselves to Kingdomers. “Let's get your metal soldiers back to the manor before the food gets cold.”