A litany of sadness, all born of that one failed promise.
Merithyn’s promise.
Still thinking of Anborn, she remembered their time together around the fire, singing the song her mother had sung to her for him.
A noble tradition. Have you chosen one yet for my great-nephew or niece.
No, not yet. When it is right, I will know it.
It’s the song of the sea, she thought, the music of the endless waves, ever-present but ever-changing, eternal, endless.
Like love.
Touching all the kingdoms of the earth, but free to rove the wide world, home anywhere it went.
As I hope for you, she thought.
She wondered if some of the melodies she heard in the sea were endless vibrations put on the wind by Merithyn; there was lore in the waves that told of his love for Elynsynos, songs she resolved to learn and sing for the dragon one day.
And as the thought brought her warmth in the last light of the setting sun, the child’s name rang in her mind, a paean to the hapless explorer that was its great-great-grandfather, and to the man who would be its father.
“If he agrees, boy or girl, I will call you Meridion,” she said aloud to the child, wanting it to be the first to hear the name spoken. “Merithyn was the past; Gwydion is the present, but you, Meridion, you will be the future, with ties to all three.”
The ocean roared its approval; all else was silent.
43
From the southern tip of the cove where the Water Basilica stood, the fire spread northward, burning villages and small towns, open farmland and forest, leaving smoldering wreckage that continued to burn with the acrid taint of the Underworld.
The Filids of Gwynwood deployed their foresters all along the coast, the men and women who normally traveled the woods, serving as guides to pilgrims who were making their ways along the Cymrian trail, a historic path sites the First Fleet of refugees had established upon coming to this new land, That duty, and their countless other tasks of forest stewardship, were abandoned in the effort to contain the burnings, but the firestarters were elusive: occasionally one or two men, sometimes up to four at a time had been seen, traveling the winding roads or untrodden paths that led up the sea coast. The were looking for a woman, a yellow-haired woman, they said on die rare occasions they stopped; not long afterward, a crop of black fires, hissing and resistant to normal methods of extinction, would break out nearby.
Villagers began taking up arms, posting guards, in the effort to protect themselves from the purveyors of the dark fire; blacksmiths could often be seen, hammers in hand, lurking on the roads outside of town, or patrolling the outer edge of villages by day and night.
The demon that clung to the seneschal reveled in the intense heat and die heavy smoke at first, but as the days passed and the woman was not found, there was only so much joy to be had in the ashes.
We need to move inland, the incessant voice insisted, nagging at the base of Michael’s mind. Or south to Port Fallon, where there is more wood, more ships, more buildings, more people. There is nothing here along the desolate coast except for a few thatched hut villages, a tiny town here and there. There is not enough death. What good is fire without destruction, without murder?
The seneschal clawed at his skull in frustration.
“Have you failed to notice how very few of us there are?” he asked the demon angrily, feeling it bristle at the affront. “I have a handful of men. The coast is hundreds of miles long, which is the only reason we have not been captured yet. This is not Argaut; we are not in power here.”
Yet.
Michael glanced around, looking for signs of the longboats. In the distance over the waves he could see dim lights glowing diffusely in the semi-darkness, undulating on the waves.
He inhaled deeply, reveling in the scent of the fire that had consumed the dock here in Traeg, the tiny, windswept fishing village, the northernmost on the seacoast.
“I am going back to the ship,” he stated flatly, looking around to make certain that none of his men were near enough to hear him arguing with himself. “I must consult Faron one more time; perhaps the scales have scried something in my absence.”
The demon screamed in fury.
You execrable, accursed fool! Enough of this idiotic search! The woman is gone; she is not to be found. It is time to move to the next step; either set sail for Argaut, or turn and move inland. But we will wander no more in this vain exercise in futility!
“As ever, it is not your decision, m’lord,” the seneschal replied in a deadly tone. “You may come along, or you may exit now, but you may not direct. If there is a blacksmith or a dock whore you would like to inhabit, by all means go. But if you wish to remain with a more powerful host than the human rats available to you, you will cease your prattle and go back to seething sleep whilst we row out to the ship.”
Faron winced at the sound of the door to the hold opening, at the approach of the lantern that stung his eyes with unwelcome light.
Out of the darkness the seneschal stepped, carrying a burlap sack that twisted and writhed in the air.
“You’re in luck today, Faron,” he said, his voice barely hiding the raw edge that had been there since his conversation with the demon. “The deckhands have pulled in some lovely eels, the kind you favor; big ones with the heads still on.”
The hermaphroditic creature’s milky eyes lit up with excitement. The seneschal tossed Faron the bag; it fell short of the pool and landed with only its bottom in the glowing green water.
Faron stared at the bag in dismay, then at its own diminished hands, curled under and soft of bone. The creature looked back at the seneschal and mewed pathetically.
Michael stared at Faron coldly.
“You can’t do it alone? You need my help?”
Faron nodded slightly, a look of confusion turning to one of guarded alarm.
Without another word the seneschal swept the bag from the floor, tore open the drawstring, pulled forth the twitching sea creatures and ripped their head off, slicing the flesh thinly, then fed it off the knife to his child.
When the creature was sated, and the eels were gone, the seneschal patted Faron, then plunged his fingers deep into the soft tissue of the creature’s head.
“Where is she?” he screamed, digging his knuckles down to the bone, h bricating them with the blood that spurted out of the holes.
Faron gasped deeply, then shrieked in agony.
Michael twisted his fingers more deeply in.
“Tell me, Faron, or by the gods, I will pull your head from your shoulde and eat your eyes.”
The creature collapsed, moaning and twitching desperately.
The seneschal loosed the metaphysical ties and allowed his essence to floe in through the holes in which his fingers remained.
“Show me, Faron, look in the scrying scale and show me where she is!”
Faron’s body went rigid, then swelled with the influx of life. Michael’s corporeal form shrank away into its mummified state, its bony fingers still clingir stubbornly to the holes in Faron’s skull.
The seneschal stared down into the blue scale, the side with the cloud clearing from in front of the eye.
At first all he could see in the green water was the waves of the sea crashing against a rocky seacoast with no beachline. Then a moment later he recognized what he saw from the triangular shadow that was being cast on the sea.
It was the same promontory from which she had fallen.
With a savage twist the seneschal disengaged himself, leaving Faron bleeding and whimpering in pain. Once his body had rehydrated, he stared down the sobbing child without the pity he had once had in his eyes.