"Oh," Eislyn says, with barely the force of a breath behind it, chest broken anew, the cruel clutch of a great clawed hand closing within it, grasping around—
And beneath the black and drowning water, her head slumped onto a treacherous facsimile of Annen's shoulder, eyes dimming, Eislyn shivers with the tiniest, lungless motions of laughter.
"Oh," she mouths. "That's not there."
The sorceror-king flexes his hand harder inside her flesh; she gags and twitches in agony, but his clutching only rustles leaves; the smell of crushed greenery rises around them.
"Did you think me a fool?" The paladin jolts to the carve of talons against the inner sides of her bones, turning her face into the shoulder she rests on. "I came walking into your seat of power, all alone, exactly what you desired; did you think that faerie would allow that?"
"Where is your heart," the sorceror-king says, in a voice which is not quite Annen's.
"It walked away." Eislyn smiles, despite everything. "And without it, I die here; without it, you die here, too — because I am the poison."
"No," the sorceror king says. "No — I am here and there; I will kill her and take hers—"
"I think not." From somewhere within herself, cracked and painful and quiet, Eislyn finds the means to begin to hum. The sorceror king attempts to wrench out his hand and fling her aside, but she wraps her arms around the false-Annen's back, trapping his arm between them, within her ruined form, and he cannot wrestle it free.
She brings forth music, no matter how broken; and faerie blossoms forth around her a ballroom, dark and drowned and deserted.
"No," the sorceror-king says vehemently, but no matter how violently he tugs, Eislyn's agonised pauses and stumbles are only woven into a slow and wavering dance, and he cannot free himself. False-Annen's gown flows and billows — streaming wrack, bridal whites, a shroud — and the moon-pale light, the lure that drew Eislyn here, dims and narrows with the weakening of her humming and the slowing of her steps, with the ebb of life, until the water is black and vast and cold and empty, miles deep above their heads, the dancefloor lit barely at all by fleeting gleams in the water.
Eislyn, a sluggish dead weight against the false-Annen's chest, is only barely humming still. Only barely living, still. And the sorceror-king is as slow and cold and stumbling as she, noosed in music and might, dragged down into the dark.
"No," he murmurs through the false-Annen's lips, head fallen weakly against Eislyn's.
"Yes," she mouths back, and gives the tiniest sigh; and the last glints of light fail as her humming dwindles finally into an utter silence.
The ziggurat is silent and still, and there is only one way inside it; Annen and the changeling very easily, if gingerly, descend to the chamber with the altar, where once Eislyn broke the sorceror-king's evil and stole the golden heart. And once they find it, there's still nothing; no heart, no sorceror-king, no movement or sound; until, suddenly, there is.
There is no warning; the place is simply a dark if sinister room in the light of their lantern, and then in the next instant the shadows heave, and it's a battlefield, the dark twisting into shapes.
Annen isn't certain what shapes they are; they seem uncertain themselves, suggesting skeletons from some angles, great reptiles from others, ambiguous sketches of things. Always, they are dark and wet, and seem caught midway between solidity and mere shade. Annen shouts wordlessly and sets about her with her sword; it's more like poking at soggy peat than hewing at a person. The things are single-minded and many, but fall apart almost without her violence.
Single-minded indeed; she catches a glimpse of the changeling pushing one over to break apart into no more than dampness and dark on the floor. Neither it nor its fellows seem to even notice her, set entirely on shambling at Annen.
And then, as abruptly as it began, there are no more, the last splattering at Annen's feet, sliding off the end of her blade.
"What!" she wheezes, raising the sword and whirling to glare at all angles of the room.
"It's time," the changeling says, and walks sure-footed to the altar, which is running with water.
"What is that," Annen says. "Come away from it!"
"Annen," the changeling says gently, raising the lamp and looking down at what's happening, face soft, "this is why I'm here."
Above the altar — where once the heart hovered in place, unsupported — dark water is pouring from thin air, bubbling forth as if from a crevice in rocks; and it's impossible to say, but Annen has the throat-seizing certainty within her that what substanceless crevice this springs from, she knows the shape of it. A hole, from here to some other there.
"Let this be an end to it," the changeling says, climbing up with a knee on the altar's edge; and cups a hand in the air, around the bubbling water-source. "Goodbye, Annen," and lets herself fall, even as she clasps the hand to herself, water spraying as the source is caught between palm and breast; and then there is only the still form of a woman, tumbling from the altar to a boneless heap on the floor, no hole in the world or water or heart, and Annen swears she feels a shiver go through the ziggurat, like a last breath.
"Eislyn!" she shouts, as the lantern clatters into the water already on the floor and gutters out. "Eislyn!" but nobody answers, and the changeling's body is as cold and still as if it had lain dead for hours already, and she clutches it to her and stumbles for the stairs — upward and out of the pitch dark, weeping.
There's nothing for Annen to do but fall to the sweet dark grass and lay the still form down. "Aiya, woman!" she cries. "You promised—" and shakes shoulders that seem so much smaller and frailer, now. The head lolls; dark and gold-flecked water runs from the mouth. "No, you hear me? No."
She rolls the body over and presses on its back, loosing an improbable tide from the lungs, running thicker and thicker with glittering flakes, until it seems more as though she's squeezing a paste of gold out than simply letting out water. Finally even that stops, and she scoops the dregs from the still mouth as best she can with shaking fingers. "You promised!" she accuses, tiny and wobbly, and casts a pleading look around, as if there's someone else to appeal to. "She promised."
And perhaps, after all—
The still shoulders hitch, abruptly, a choked noise struggling from the throat; cold limbs convulse. Annen cries out sharply and hauls the shaking form into her lap, through wretched heaving, weakly but repeatedly vomited seawater, and blue-faced coughing enough to half kill a healthy person.
"Eislyn?" Annen says, thin and desperate, and the paladin claws a weak hand into the front of her clothes, croaks wordlessly, and begins to shiver.
