paean

 As the final silver leaf of the Teskegueros fell, in the night of the Fifth Hunt, Ashuwuan held the head of the Sparrow Knight in her lap as the Silent Walls of Guethiel burned around them. She looked a world away, wiping the blood and ash from his countenance, locks of night used as rag and tears as water. Bent and fastidious in her care, she looked not at the triumphant Kelzigah casting his sickly light upon the trench of Teskegueros’s root. 

He laughed a quiet dagger laugh and mounted the Great Tree’s bole to wrest his Thorn from its heart. With gentle unhurried grace, the Fell One unhinged his poison from the Tree, exultant and sure. Securing the Thorn to its forearm sheath, the Aelf descended to interrupt Ashuwuan’s mourning. 

“Be still, silver one, I have rescued you from your grand folly.”

A song began as if her hand on the fallen boy’s hair played a harp.

“I never took you prone to madness. And for the fate of a flea, no less.”

And the song crept up and danced her fair face as a body took shape.

The Fell granted her her broken wit as he took the thing his victory anthem, as the Grand Hall of Yrdas cracked and crashed into embers and flame behind them. He looked around at his silver dogs flitting across parapet and door, gnashing and thrashing anything once alive. He sucked the air of smoke in, savoring it. He had won.

Finally his gaze returned to the spoils. The song had built and words began to form. Kelzigah oriented himself to the language, thirsting for her grief. 

And he found a boy, humble and gracious. Bold and gentle. Of peace and protection. A boy who braved slander and sword for the good of the ungrateful. He suffered fever and wound for the fame of a faithless. A boy who stopped a bridge for three days against a tide of terror. A boy who sailed the mystery to solve the Riddle. A boy of no regard. And all her songs. 

Kelzigah waxed jealous seeing defeat on a field he could not besiege. Every victory burned as the walls of Guethiel burned about. And once more the Thorn was unsheathed. And doom hovered near.

But the True Song was revealed, weaved in every note of Ashuwuan’s worship. A power born of the Years was at her lips and in her hands. A fear climbed with the music into the Fell One’s eye and throat, sealing the one open and the other shut. He felt invisible hands holding him, imprisoning his lean form. The Thorn fell from his hand, blackening the grass at his feet. He strived his greatest to scream protest through his tongue’s arrest, but no sound but the Song could live.

The Song now lived outside of her and swam through the space of the courtyard. It pirouetted in grace and power touching the silver beasts of Nor into slumber. It rode the fires and danced the hallways. It ascended the tower of Excazod as It descended to the shore of Belt. It spread music to the mountain and even looked South. And then silence.

She said, “But you will never find him.”

And the heavens opened. 

Art by Justin Gerard