Rahn waited for her there, the Star white-hot on her finger, fury blazing in her eyes. Then Rahn grasped her daughter by the hair, and forced her to look deep into the Star, so that Endain was blinded. And she dragged Endain through the sea, back down into the Hall of the Dead, and cursed her anew. Endain alone of all the Waves was bound for the remainder of the nine hundred years to sit at the base of the Tree, forever plying the strings of her harp. And there she sits still, in darkness and sorrow, dreaming of her dark-eyed daughter.
But the sailor kept his promise, raising his daughter in laughter and light, far from the shores of the sea. Sometimes, the longing would take her, as it had taken her mother, but he did not explain that longing to her or what it meant.
Not until she was married, and had borne a child of her own, and that child had borne a child, did the sailor call her to him, for he was dying and could not let Endain’s story die with him. So he told her the truth—that in her veins flowed the power of Aigir and that part of her would always wish for the sea. But she must never go there, or Rahn would take her life. He had built a house on the shore where Endain first brought him, a house called the Ruen-Dahr, and he had appointed there a guardian to watch for Rahn and to be the last defense against her. He wove the house with the Words of the gods to strengthen it and choose for itself future guardians. He told his daughter that as long as she stayed away from the sea, she would be protected. One day, the house or its guardian might call her back again, but only in the greatest need. In the end, it could be that only Endain’s descendant and the guardian together would have the power to stand against Rahn.
So the sailor died at last, having lived a century alone on Endahr, without his Wave beside him. His daughter mourned and buried him, and passed on the knowledge of her heritage and the Ruen-Dahr to her own child. In time, her child told it to his children and so on down the years, until it was just a story claimed by a single bloodline, a story they swore to be true.
I am of that bloodline, and I feel the pull of the sea too strongly to dwell here on its shore. I came to see the house for myself, and the Words yet bind it with great power. We are protected still, but I do not know for how long. Rahn is returning, and I do not think a guardian alone will be enough to stop her.
I have penned the tale as best as I remember hearing it from my own grandfather. He is the fifth great-grandchild of Endain and the sailor, if my figures are correct, making me the seventh. I do not know where I will go. Perhaps to Enduena, if I can bear to make the voyage. I will have to be locked in chains belowdecks, for I do not trust myself not to leap into the sea.
I only pray to the gods that the yearning lessens for any who follow in my bloodline.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
IT ENDED THERE.
Talia looked up from the pages, a roaring in her ears. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe.
She jerked to her feet and dashed outside into the rain, leaving the papers where she’d dropped them. She ran out onto the moor behind the house, feet smacking hard against the soggy ground. Cold rain blurred her vision.
She felt the story in her bones, in her blood, in every stride she took barreling headlong a mile and a half over the moor to the sea.
It wasn’t true. It couldn’t possibly be true.
But she knew that it was.
She slowed her pace when she reached the bluff, following a worn track that wound down to the shore. There, the cliff sheltered her a little from the wind and the rain. But the mad pulse of her heart didn’t diminish.
She tore off her shoes and stepped up to the edge of the water, letting the sea lap over her bare feet and soak the hem of her dress. Music echoed out over the waves, louder than ever before, a cacophony of longing, of certainty, of power. It raced through her. Filled her up.
All at once she felt herself ripped out of time and space, the sky tilting above her, the sea roaring below. She blinked and she was looking through a different pair of eyes at a face she knew was dear to her: a dark-haired man holding a child. He was weeping, and the anguish in her soul almost made her turn back but she couldn’t. She had to protect him. She opened her mouth and sang to the sea, the song she shared with her sisters, the music that called men to their deaths. She would remember him forever, but she must leave him now.
The sea became her, and she became the sea, and the leagues of distance between her and her love were gone in an instant. She stood once more before her mother in the Hall of the Dead. She feared her more than anything, but she did not regret what she had done. Rahn did not rail at her, did not curse or scream, and that was the worst of all, for it meant her anger ran deeper than Endain had ever seen it.
“Bow before me,” came her mother’s voice, in her mind. She knelt in the dust, and the sea whispered over her shoulders. She stared into the Star as Rahn raised it to her face. She sang as Rahn blinded her, as the fire shot through her and burned down to her soul. And she thought only of her sailor and the daughter she had left behind.
The vision jolted Talia sideways, and she blinked up at a shoreline she knew: the bluff where the Ruen-Dahr stood, only it was not built yet. Broad-shouldered men were laying the foundation with newly hewn stone, sweating though the day was cold. The dark-haired sailor stood among them, speaking or singing—she couldn’t tell which—Words of power spooling from his lips in little glints of gold. They seeped into the stones, wrapped around them. Strengthened them.
She blinked and the house was whole, a woman dressed in blue kneeling before the sailor. A little dark-haired girl clung to his knees.
“Do you accept the charge?” said the sailor, wind flapping through his long cloak.
“I do,” returned the woman. “I will guard the house, and watch the sea until the end of my days.”
Then the sailor hung a gold medallion around her neck and gave her a ring of keys, and he and the little girl strode away.
Suddenly, the sailor stood in the cove where Talia was, though the sun was shining in his dark hair and he was alone. He seemed to be staring straight into her eyes. “I know you will come back one day,” he said. “My descendant, and hers. I want you to know you are strong, strong enough to find Rahn’s Hall, strong enough to defeat her. And I want you to tell Endain, when you find her again, that I love her, that I never stopped loving her, that though I am dead and gone I think of her still, and I’m waiting for her beyond the circles of the world. Break Rahn’s curse. Stop her before she comes to rule the world. Set Endain free. Set yourself free.” And then the sailor smiled, and vanished.
Talia staggered backward and almost fell into the sea, but she grabbed hold of the cliff and kept herself upright. Waves lashed against her and rain bit at her face.
If she’d denied it before, she couldn’t any longer.