His muscles relaxed. Breathing with difficulty, he collapsed. Akilun let go his hold and fell beside him.
Generations had passed in the mortal world above as the brothers battled and then lay still. At last Etanun roused himself and turned to Akilun. “Brother, I have sinned,” he began, but the words vanished from his lips.
Akilun was dead.
His strength broken from his great struggle for his brother’s life, his spirit had flown across the Final Water to the Farthest Shore, where Hymlumé and Lumé sing before the throne of the Song Giver. But while his spirit flew free, his body lay in ruin beside Etanun.
Etanun wept. He wept at his folly, at the conceit that had led him and Akilun to this place. Even as he wept, the light of Asha rested upon him.
He dug a grave for Akilun on the Path to the Dark Water. He set a monument there, a stone carved with this legend:
Beyond the Final Water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling.
Though you walk the Path to Death’s own throne,
You will walk with me.
He set Asha atop the stone and left it there, saying, “May you be a guiding light, a hope to those who find themselves drawn by Death-in-Life’s foul work.”
Then he turned and marched into the deep places of the Netherworld, and fiends and phantoms fled at his footsteps. He found a place where the Final Waters flowed, spreading from the realms beyond into the Near World and into the Far. In that place he built a chamber. Above the flowing water, he set an uncut stone.
“There rest, Halisa,” he said, placing his sword atop that stone. “May you sleep a hundred years and more until Hri Sora returns to work her evil fire. Wake only when I or my heir comes at last to claim you.”
So Etanun left Halisa waiting in darkness. He himself journeyed from the Netherworld into the realms above, passing out of all legends and tales and histories. Until the time of Hri Sora’s return.
Until the time of her final death.
1
HAVE YOU EVER WATCHED AN IMMORTAL DIE?
You who have slain countless fey folk, tell me if you dare: Did you ever stand by and watch an immortal death? Did you see the blush of life fade to gray, the light of the spirit slowly wane? You have taken life, but have you seen it stolen from before your eyes?
I have.
Dawn in the North Country was beautiful, if chilly that spring, filled with birdsong and dew-shimmering flowers on the banks of River Hanna. The rising sun stretched out its rays to crown the high keep of Castle Gaheris. Tenant farmers, their tools over their bowed shoulders as they made their way to the fields, straightened momentarily, lifting their gazes to the sight. Their hearts swelled to see those austere stones glowing with morning glory, as though the sun itself bestowed a golden promise upon all who lived there.
The castle was home to Earl Ferox, who some said should be king.
The farmers smiled at this, their weathered faces cracking against the dawn chill, their breath wisping before their mouths. Honor though it was to be tenants of the most powerful earl in the North Country, how much greater would the honor be should they become tenants of the king himself?
So the sun rose and the farmers trudged on to their fields, and the servants inside Gaheris stoked fires in cold hearths and prepared for an important day, the day the envoy from Aiven should arrive. A day some might even call fateful.
And Alistair sat upright in his bed, screaming.
He realized what he was doing quickly enough, stuffed his fleece into his mouth, and bit down hard. He knew the servants had heard him, though. He could hear them in the chamber beyond . . . or rather couldn’t hear them, for they had frozen in place, afraid to move. He heard instead their silence.
He coughed out the fleece and, though his heart trembled and his limbs shook, forced himself to utter a great, noisy yawn. It would fool no one. But the servants took it as a signal, and he heard them resume their tasks, setting his fire and filling his basin with fresh well water.
They knew better than to enter his private bedroom. He bolted it against them in any case.
Alistair waited until he heard them leave. Only then did he slip out of bed, wrapping the fleece around his shoulders as he made his way to the window. He looked out upon his uncle’s lands: the fields, the hamlets, the groves, all of which he would inherit one day.
But he couldn’t see them, nor the growing sunlight that bathed them.
He saw only a pale silver glow shining upon a child’s face.
“Dragons blast it!” Alistair cursed and shook his head.
No more than an hour later, Alistair stumbled into Gaheris’s library, startling the castle chronicler, who was at his desk, copying out some ledger or history. The Chronicler looked up in some surprise at the young man’s entrance.