Midnight tides

She looked down at the sword in her hand, at the blood and snarled hair along the notched edge where it had struck the man’s head. Disgusting. But they’ll expect it to be wiped away. To make the iron clean and gleaming once more, as if it was nothing more than a sliver of metal. Disconnected from its deeds, its history, its very purpose. She didn’t want that mess cleaned away. She liked the sight of it.

They left the bodies where they had fallen. Left the lances impaled in flesh growing cold. Left the wagon, apart from the food they could transport – the refugees coming up on the road could have the rest. Among the dead were five youths, none of them older than fifteen years. They’d walked a short path, but as Halfpeck observed, it had been the wrong path, and that was that.

Seren pitied none of them.

BOOK FOUR MIDNIGHT TIDES

Kin mourn my passing, all love is dust The pit is cut from the raw, stones piled to the side Slabs are set upon the banks, the seamed grey wall rises Possessions laid out to flank my place of rest All from the village are drawn, beating hides Keening their grief with streaks in ash Clawed down their cheeks, wounds on their flesh The memory of my life is surrendered In fans of earth from wooden shovels And were I ghostly here at the edge of the living Witness to brothers and sisters unveiled by loss Haunters of despair upon this rich sward Where ancestors stand sentinel, wrapped in skins I might settle motionless, eyes closed to dark’s rush And embrace the spiral pull into indifference Contemplating at the last, what it is to be pleased Yet my flesh is warm, the blood neither still in my veins Nor cold, my breathing joining this wind That carries these false cries, I am banished Alone among the crowd and no more to be seen The stirrings of my life face their turned backs The shudders of their will, and all love is dust Where I now walk, to the pleasure of none Cut raw, the stones piled, the grey wall rising.

Banished

Kellun Adara

CHAPTER TWENTY