Freedom

[RollinsCat]

By Ilsare's grace he had not thrown up, not yet.  Slumped by the front door, fighting a need to run after her and simultaneously run to Minu and most of all to get a drink.

That much, at least, he didn't have to worry about.  Michael was at the bar, leaving him be, letting him sit and cry.  The blonde kept his back turned and cleaned the countertops, pretending his employer wasn't a shattered emotional heap at the moment.  But he'd break his boss's arm if he so much as reached for booze.  Bless the kid.

Calm, he needed calm.  He'd sung so much tonight already, and he had to sing a little more.  One month, she said.  One month.  Sucking in the cool air leaking from around the door, not quite closed when she'd left, he tried to hum and almost heard himself, almost felt it, before the boy's face broke through the sonic walls in his mind.

Eyes like his, pulled up gently in the corners.  Skin like hers; darker than his own, dark as a coconut shell, baby-smooth.  His nose, his mouth but with a touch of the generosity of her lips.  A beautiful, beautiful boy.

His son.

Another wave of nausea.  One month.  He could have Elohanna or his child.  But not both.  And he had one month to decide.


[SIZE=10]//to be continued[/SIZE]

[Anamnesis]

Elly sat in the chair in her office with her head buried in her knees. With Thalia's words and the child she knew, part of her just knew and it tore at her so deeply all she could do was let her own tears fall.

For so many reasons she wished that it was a nightmare, and she would wake up from it. She simply could not bare the thought of losing Andrew but she had made a promise to him and one she would keep.

He deserved the happiness of knowing his son of holding his own flesh and blood even if it meant she had to give up the man she loved.

She knew the lady in the other room could give him what she could not and it tore at her deeply as she cried in the chair in her office.  

[RollinsCat]

Minu was asleep in her chair when he finally slid up the wall and took heavy steps to her office.  She'd been crying.

He'd told her everything of course, back when he'd first returned from his trip with the giants.  He'd told Thalia about her too, he remembered, but that seemed to have slipped the woman's mind; or perhaps she hadn't heard.  It didn't matter now.  He picked his elven lover up, the woman he thought Ilsare had chosen for him, and carried her to their bed.  She didn't wake - or pretended not to.  Tucking her in brought hot tears again.  His head hurt and he needed something to do.

Pacing downstairs, he found Michael still at the bar.

"I've got it, Michael, you can go home."

"Are you sure, Mister Reid?"

A distracting thought; he grabbed it.  "Michael, you're thinking of getting married, aren't you?"

"If she says yes."  A smile.

"And you're my business manager now, you run the place when I'm gone."  Michael nodded.  "Call me Andrew.  Please."

A blink.  "Okay...Andrew."  

A nod of thanks and Michael said goodnight and locked the door as he left.  As soon as the latch clicked the silence rushed in like a tsunami.  Emotions boiled behind and he shook, unable to process so much.  He needed something to do.  His hands, he needed to use his hands.  The harp.  Amaira.  He took long strides to the guest bedroom and the girl was on one bed, Heloise in the twin bed beside her, both in deep slumber.  At least one thing that had gone right, sort of, and was something to ruminate on that would not cripple him.  He closed the door quietly.

The harp sat strings akimbo as if it had tried to shed its skin.  He had a kit under the stage and snagged it on his way to the gold-leafed instrument.  He had replacements for all the strings from the double-wrapped bass wires to the thinnest sheep-gut and it was a good thing; Amaria had done a number when he’d augmented her emotions.  There were only eleven strings intact.  It was going to be a while to replace them all and that was just what he needed.

Number one C through number four G, first octave F, E, and D were fine, and the strings of the sixth octave untouched as well.  Everything else was blow by the immense intensity of the girl’s playing.  He started twisting a harpist's knot of second octave C, holding a half-finger bit of sixth octave wire in his mouth as he twined.  Insert through the loop, bite down on the wire, tug tight - his old teacher back in Huangjin would have thrashed him for using his teeth like that - thread, wind, check pitch.  Next string.

Amaria.  If she was eighteen he'd eat his red velvet coat.  Fourteen, fifteen maybe.  Why she was lying he didn't know but he'd find out.  At that age, running from a marriage maybe...

He leaned his head against the harp with a soft thunk.  Marriage.  He couldn't go there, not yet.  He would face the storm inside him, just not...not yet.  With a heaving sigh he plucked the few harp strings and listened to each ringing tone, tempering himself as surely as he did them.

Amaria was talented, he heard the bardic magic in her as clearly as she used to see it.  If he had to guess, it was puberty that had swallowed her song; that, and her own churning emotions, and right then he felt completely attuned to the girl.  But how to take a still-child and teach them when they didn't have any experience?  She was street smart or she'd have been a y?jo by now, especially if she'd been on her own for a year.  She had potential but no control, no knowledge of bardic magic, and only her wild, youthful emotions to steer her.

He'd have to write the Conductor and see if he could place her there.  He'd act as her patron, and he needed to find out about her family as well, but that was tomorrow, next week.  Right now she needed his calm to play and the fact that he'd been able to extend his own self to her, that he'd modulated his song in such a way to offer her that control, was a tiny bright spot.  Thank the Muse that happened before Thalia had shown up.

He'd be a fraud to teach her what he could not do right now, not successfully.  Bitter on his tongue were his words to this woman-child who sat on his stage and confessed her lack of inspiration; "just feel".  And here he was clinging to whatever temperance he could manage to not lose his mind with the choice he had to make.  Fraud.  He'd write the Conductor.

And he would have to face himself.  That scared him.  Another string slipped into place as he hummed desperately for control.  Behind the veil of sound was confusion, joy, searing pain, loss, desire, and a hefty dose of anger.  Inspiration stew, an old musician friend had once called those moments.  He would have to face it.  But not before he'd spoken to Minu.

There was one other thing he had to do, and when the harp was strung, he intended to do it until dawn's light; pray.  Ilsare had given him Elohanna or so he'd believed.  And here was the other thing he'd wanted with a bone-deep ache, and he could not choose between them.  He would pray.

[RollinsCat]

Hours of praying, singing until his voice was a reedy thread, and he came back to the same thing every time.  It was the wrong answer.  He would make the best decision he could and it would be wrong.  But at least, after falling so deeply into prayer that at some point past three he'd completely dissociated from his body and had good reason to wonder if he had died at the piano, he couldn't pretend he didn't know how he felt - and how he thought Ilsare felt - about Thalia and the child.

Elly was in her office just after dawn.  He never heard her come down.  She was crying again and that set him off and what should have been a deep and heartfelt conversation was instead a cuddling sobfest until Emwonk showed up.  Trust the halfling to have a nose for when he'd be most likely to be given current just to go away.  For some reason he told Em about the situation, and after some labored translation Emwonk's opinion came to: choose Minu.  Which didn't help, not then, and especially not after the emotional see-saw of non-sleep he was rocking on.  He went to bed.

He only rested a few hours.  When he woke Amaria was just taking breakfast.  His focus was blown and he gave Heloise a pouch of True and asked her to take the girl into town to buy her some clothing and necessities, counting on shopping to lure the young performer away for a while.  And if Helly got to know her while they hit the markets, all the better.  There was still an urge to lose himself in something, and his voice would not support any further song; he didn't have materials to start an instrument; and so he took a look around the kitchen and started roasting meat and setting up barrels of Black Knight and Big Rock Bock.

Minu came down later still and didn't seem too eager to talk.  Well, that was understandable.  But he knew and he had to tell her.  She was all bustle between the store room and the kitchen before he finally blocked the groove she was wearing in the floor.

"Love?"

"Yes, Tashe?"

"I'm not going to leave you."

She let out a shuddering sigh and he could see the corded muscles around her neck slack.  It was still the wrong decision.  But it was the one he'd made.  They didn't speak further as she rolled crusts and mixed fruit and he wrapped roasts in string, seasoned, pounded, salted.  The room smelled of flour and cooking meat and warm butter, the repetition was soothing; he was even able to hum a little.

Watching Minu cook set his mind drifting.  What had it been like for Thalia?  For a young human woman, pregnant, trapped in Prantz with a too-strict parent and no father for her baby?  Had she sent him a letter, one he’d never gotten?  She’d remembered the address or she would not have shown up.  

He hadn't looked for her.  After their time together they’d gone separate ways.  He didn’t sing the song he’d written for her anymore.  Minu had moved into his heart.

He couldn’t marry her.  It would be a lie to her and to himself and to Ilsare.  But then, he’d never know his son.

No good answers.  He yanked another roast truss, pulling the sides so tight he could imagine the meat screaming in pain.  No matter what happened, he’d lose someone.  Maybe it was easier to walk away from a child you didn’t know.  Men did it all the time, all over the world, pretending the dalliance meant nothing and of course they were not the father.  He would not and could not and it didn’t matter how honest that was, she wanted legitimacy, love, perhaps to mend her reputation.  He could not give that to her.  And for that he would lose.

More prayer.  If there was ever a time he needed Ilsare, besides every waking and sleeping moment of his life, it was now.

Please, my Muse, please.  Guide me.  Help me...

[RollinsCat]

He was restless.  Thalia, Elohanna, Amaria, and Rose.  Surrounded by women and choices to make about all of them.  He had an irrationally strong desire to find Cel and lose himself in a cloud of smoke but the Xeenite was gone, off doing...well, he couldn’t exactly say “whatever Xeenites do”.  He knew a little too much about that.

Besides.  He had no business losing himself in anything but music, when losing was what he needed.  That much he’d re-discovered the other night while watching Rose.  He’d not seen Amaria yet today and of all the things he had to do, she was the most challenging but the least stressful.  Helly had told him that the girl had been reluctant to shop, and took a dress and shoes more to end the trip than for want of the things.  Interesting.

He picked up a snack at the bar and found her on the stage with the small hand-held harp, not touching the strings but only holding it.  "Milady, I apologize for not having found you before now. I've had some things that needed immediate attention. I trust you and Heloise had a good day yesterday?"

She looked up from the harp. “Was good I guess, the city is big, I don't like it too much, I saw people following us...”  She nodded slowly at her words, and he felt a little coil of tension in his gut.  More security.  He’d need to get more security – muscle.  Edward might know some folks. “And worry not for the lateness, I understand you are well known and have your things to do.”  She smiled and he held back a joking 'not as well known as Willie the Bard, apparently’.  But the thought lightened his mood.

"It is a large city, yes; I grew up in Huangjin, though, and such a large place by the sea feels much like home to me. Are you originally from a smaller town?"

“Bydell Castle , Mister Reid.  Huangjin is far, isn't it?  I've heard of the big Toran's citadel that can be seen from the ships as you arrive to the city...?”

He bit into some of the sushi he brought over, using the stage as a table. "Far away, but always here."  He tapped his breastbone. "You can see the citadel from the ocean; it looks larger than the Mido's palace. I remember my mother complaining about that.”  She concentrated on him, her posture straightening and eyes wider at the tales of exotic lands, but he didn’t elaborate. “Bydell, you say? Not a far ride but one I don't choose to make often. Aragen and Ilsare don't care for each other you know." He stroked the silver, emerald-studded heart and clef necklace that lay on his upper chest, the bright metal a stark contrast to his dark skin. "Amaria, I am very impressed with your talent on the harp. You certainly are pulling from deep inside when you play...would you like to try again, with my accompaniment? I've restrung Goldie here." A quick gesture to the standing harp on the stage.  Only a few marks across the gilding were left of the snapping of strings that followed Amaria’s surge of bardic power.  Her gaze didn’t follow his hands and her expression was suddenly shy.  

“Er...are you sure?  I am not really that good.  If I were I would have not lost the ability to do it, don't you think?”  She looked at the instrument. “I don't want to break it again Mister Reid.”  Another look at him, another shy smile.

"I trust that you and I together won't break it. And yes, you are quite good. It is the nature of we who perform..." He gave her a glance with decades of experience behind it.  "...to be our own harshest critics.  As I said, I've stopped singing before; it isn't lost when this happens, but there is something you must learn from it.  And it's rarely an easy lesson.  But with help, and time, you get through."  He finished the last bites of fish and rice before speaking again. "You played the other night, after I found the right pitch to accompany you, with no problems. Let's try that again. And maybe after we can swap some stories of what we've seen, eh?"

Her smile shifted from that peculiar shyness indigenous in young teenage girls to a nervous twitch.  “Stories are good, a good performer must know lots of stories, not only songs.  I've heard that one should be able to entertain even to those who can't hear by telling stories by visual techniques...and...” A tilt of her head to the side.   “...like, light , smokes and mirrors if you get my idea.  I am not sure I am ready to play again Mister Reid.”  She held out her hands, bandaged hastily. “I tried again on my own.”  Lowering her head, looking at the harp in her wrapped hands, she refused to meet his eyes.

"Mmm."  He took one hand in his with deliberate slowness, unwrapped it to get a look at the cuts; really, Minu should look at it, but she'd been nervous about approaching the young woman, and the tension regarding Thalia had kept her preoccupied.  He closed his eyes a moment and hummed to center himself. "I would have done the same, in your shoes; the urge to express one's self is powerful. But for this..."  He looked again at her hand.  When Minu had felt Amaria's magic his lady had been drawn to it, and he'd felt it, seen it, but the girl had become so agitated when they'd suggested it was there in her...this would take some handling.  Kid gloves.

"Amaria, I'd like to show you something, and I will tell you about it first and let you decide before I do it."  He held the bandaged hand lightly. "My lady and I are both...attuned, one might say, to magic, and I am able to sing some spells as well as perform. A number of the song-spells I know are healing, as my Goddess favors me as a cleric when that is Her plan. I would like to sing healing on your hand, but I noticed you were set back by that topic the other night. Would you allow me to sing you healed?"

Her look would not have been out of place had he sprouted a third eye on his forehead.  “What are you talking about, I am not afraid of healing magic.  I mean I've gotten plenty of that, you know?  One day when I was younger I was healed for a book that hit my head, it was a big book, heavy too.”  A nod. “This elven lady in the temple healed me with expert hands and then she used a...”  Reaching for the word.  So not as familiar as she tried to appear. “...blessing to help the blood stop.”  She tilted her head. “If you are a cleric why aren’t you in a temple?”

He had to laugh. "Ilsare blesses me when She wills; most of the time I'm a performer, and an inn owner, and sometimes a trouble maker. I like to think that this tavern is a shrine to Her, though, for the music and art inspired within."  A quick song of light healing to close the abrasions and cuts on her hand. "Now. What would you say if I told you that you might learn to do that?"

She let her head tilt slowly.  “I am not cleric I assure you. I won't ask that, and I don't think that Ilsare would grant me that.  To tell you the truth, I don't feel much like an Ilsarian myself.”  A shrug.

He threw a leg up on the stage, running his thumb over his upper lip. "A point.  I was not referring to cleric magic, but I didn't make that clear.  Let me ask you this, then, as we've only just met.  You have landed here in your search for the inspiration you lost.  You told me that you want to play, and play you have.  Thinking on that, what is it you wish to do next?"

She looked down, thoughtful.  “Well I haven't exactly recovered the inspiration, you know?  It is still out of here.”  She tapped the side of her head then examined her bandaged fingers.  “So not sure about the next step really?”  Another shrug.

"I have a suggestion, then.  Perhaps we can help each other.  When I was singing with you, I was learning a little more about...about my music.  Helping you play helped me in fact.”  Again that little head tilt of hers – it seemed to indicate she was either thinking or listening.  He noted it.  “You have tremendous talent, things you may not even be aware of.  My suggestion is you stay here with us, my lady and I, and you and I can work together on your inspiration.  Because it seems you've been many places looking, but in all my years of traveling, in all my years of performing and searching, I've discovered that inspiration centers..."  He tapped his heart. "...right here.”  For that little speech, and not half bad he thought, he got a grin from her.

“Inspiration is in your coat?”  She giggled. “Kidding!” An easier smile than before.  He almost said yes.  Do not underestimate the power of red velvet.  “Well , certainly I don't think to go anywhere as long as I am able to stay here.  I will do so, I've been traveling for the last year and had not found it, so why not?  It would be a good try.”  She smiled again and he nodded to himself.

“Methinks you should consider comedy as well as music, Milady.” A wink to her and he stood up. “Let me show you a room you can stay in and we can discuss this further.”

It was much later that he realized what he’d done.  He’d become a father - the first time - in much the same way...

[RollinsCat]

Four hours at the piano.  Four hours of non-stop prayer.  No new insights, but he didn’t expect any; if he’d learned anything in the last two decades it was that She was almost never that direct.  Inspiration would guide him and he knew what both his heart and head were saying.  For now his motions on the keys were tense and controlled, recital-perfect form.  So intent was he that he was unaware of anyone else until gentle hands were placed on his shoulders.

“Minu?”  Why did he ask that?  Of course it was her.

“Yes my love?”

He stopped playing, abruptly, and pulled a hand around to kiss it.   “I haven't seen much of you, love.”  Slipping off the bench with a little smile, he rubbed her fingers against his new dark red velvet shirt.  

A wan smile from her. “I haven't been sleeping well.”

“No?  Should I rub your back for a while, to help?”

She placed both hands on his chest, looking him over in a way that left him strangely discomforted.  “I don't want to sleep right now.”  Another brief smile. “You look so handsome.”

He’d debated losing the jacket for quite some time.  A writer’s mark of sorts for him, but the shirt allowed freer movement and he was pulling off the look. “Thank you.  A little change of pace.  Come sit?  Oh - I like your new dress as well.”  Babbling to distract them both from the nine hundred pound gorilla in the room.  She tried to offer him a smile but it was strained and brief.  He took in a long, cleansing breath, wrapped her small hand in his large one, and led her to the fire.  Couch, cushions – no.  His chair.  One elven eyebrow arched as he guided her into the red velvet wingback and sat at her feet, tossing her the blanket from her chair.  She cocooned herself in it.  He fixed her with a stern look, trying for intimidating but unable to maintain it.

“Alright.  Talk.”

She shifted on the chair, took a breath, and blurted it out. “I know you have made up your mind, or think you have but I can't just let you give up your son.”  A moment of stunned silence.  He started to protest, stopped himself and waited for her to continue.  “It goes against who I am Andrew.  I know that my own Lifebringer will not allow me to give you such a blessing, and to take that chance away from you...”  She closed her eyes to his intense gaze.  “I could not live with myself.”

His voice was funeral quiet. “How do you propose to...to prevent me from losing him?”

“By... giving her what she wants Andrew.”

A blink. “Me?  Me, as a husband?  This inn that you and I together have made a home?”  His voice almost broke, looking around the cavernous tavern they’d decorated.

“She is set, she is determined and aside from taking her own free will away from her there is no other way.”

“If that is the person she is, as opposed to the woman I thought I knew, then I don't want to marry her.”  She raised a hand; he pressed on.  “She'd hate me inside two months.  She'd leave anyway.”

“Perhaps she needs to discover that?”

“Minu...if she comes, if you leave me so she can come, and then she leaves me anyway and takes Dom with her, what does that - I mean, I'll fall more in love with the child.  And then she'll take him away, again.  I would break.  I’m breaking now and I don't even know him.”  That gave her pause.  He swallowed a bitter followup.  “I have no rights.  I don't want to abandon him.  I will do everything in my power, honestly or not, to prevent that and make sure he has a good life.” Another swallow. “But I can't go against my heart.  I can't.  That would be spitting in Ilsare's face, after all She's done for me.”

He had to stop, catch his breath, hum for a moment.  “I can't do that love.  Not to you, not to Ilsare, not to Thalia.”  Elohanna pulled the blanket tighter around her and then buried her head in the cream wool.  “Minu, you can't have my babies, I know.  I've accepted that.  But you are my love.  You do own my heart.  We can't pretend that isn't so.  If...you want to leave for other reasons, I won't stop you.  But not for that.”

“I feel so lost Tashe.”

“I know you've prayed on it.  And you know I have.”

“I don't want to leave you!  I just can't stand our love hurts you like this.  Your heart is in pain and I can't do anything to fix it.

Oh, Muse, Minu, no...”Our love doesn't hurt.  It is not the cause of my pain, it's the reason I've come to peace with my decision. You can stay with me.  And understand me, as you always have.”  Elly slipped from the chair to his lap, dragging the blanket with her.  “If she and I can't come to accord over Dom...”  He sat back so she could settle into his legs, cat-like.  Tired cat-like.  “Then I will find a way.  I will find a way to make sure they're taken care of.  I will be someone else if I have to, a tutor, a fencing instructor.....I'll find a way love.  I'm not giving up on them.  Just on the idea that abandoning my lady's heart is the solution.  It's not.  Ilsare has shown me that.”  

She didn’t look skeptical so much as hopeful and he wrapped his arms around her.  “You have no idea how much prayer I've put into this...or maybe you do.  If you've been up at night.”

“How can you be so sure. Tell me my love because it’s all confused in my head right now.”  Barely audible; she looked so worn...

“I don't know how I'm sure.  I just am.” He held up a finger. “I love you.”  Next finger.  “I tell you nothing but the truth, no matter what.”  And the next. “You know me better than anyone else.  I trust you.  And you've never given me a reason not to.”  Hesitation, a little smile, and another finger ticked up.  “And yet you still love me....”  Last finger.  “And when we are together, we are more than the sum of our parts.”  He fixed her with a firm look.  “Since I’ve been with you, I've done more, been inspired to do more, to create more, to....Muse, to be more, than ever before.  The Muse approves.  How can I put that aside?  I have to follow my heart.  I have to.  And pray that Ilsare softens hers....it may not be in our hands any longer.”  His voice trailed off.

She reached up, placed a hand on his cheek.  “I love you so much Tashe.  I can bear anything so long as you are with me.”

A lump in his throat.  Big sap. “There you go then.”  She turned her head to look at him, half on and half in his crossed legs. “Pray to Aeridin.  I will continue praying to Ilsare.  Perhaps between us they'll decide its better he have a father who loves him.  But Ilsare has let me know for....Muse, how long now?  That you were the right choice.”

“I pray to my Healing Light to guide her heart and let her know how much love your son can have knowing his father.”

“And if she doesn't want me in his life, I will see to it that she's comfortable, somehow....” He was whispering and he didn’t know why.  “It's not a perfect answer.  But it's the one we have.”  He’d been calming himself throughout this conversation and he wasn’t the one who needed it the most, not right now anyway.  A few test notes and he sang for her.  Not just to amuse or entertain but to offer her some of his conviction.  He wanted to calm her, to soothe her, but his voice was rough and despite his strong words he was suddenly shaking.  

It took him by surprise, the shaking.  The effort to give her a connection to him through his voice and to share a sense of calm failed and it bothered him.  She only looked confused; he backed off, listening to himself.  Grasping.  He wasn’t as calm as he had been when he’d first sung Amaria past her block and it showed when he stretched his voice.  A lick of annoyance that he could not help Elly and a little backwash of fear.  

Was he this unstable?  Or had he learned to lie to himself?  He wanted that boy.  He wanted to be a father to his own flesh and blood.  Elly tried to wrap the blanket around them both, mistaking his trembling for cold.  He tugged it to his waist.  “I sound pretty sure don't I.”  His laugh was just shy of bitter.

“We will do this together my love.  I'll be right here beside you.  I promise.”

He kissed her.  “Good.  You'd better.”

After that, talk of Rose.  And freedom, small f, from the plague of doubts about his pleasures.  His ex-lover had, by virtue of being herself, set him right about who he belonged to.  A flashback to a basement.  A party; always a party.  Wine and smoke and other injestibles; women (and men) and endless nights.

And a statue.  He wished he'd kept it.  He was Hers and no sultry promise in purple could wrest him away.

It was only after sharing his epiphany that they'd gotten to the heart of her trouble sleeping.  Her nightmares.  The faces of those in Hlint she'd spent so long caring for and being cared for by.  His own memories of her disembodied voice on the other side of a fence were still fresh and he sang for her while she whispered her twisted dreams.

"I see faces of friends, on pyres of fire, begging for someone to save them. And I can't do anything to help them.  I feel as if I put them there as if I could have helped them sooner they would not be gone.  I left them Andrew, with no word of hope, with no explanation.  I abandoned them.  I promised them they would get better!  And they died in my arms...with all the strength in me I could do nothing to help them." Bleakly put in a whisper as bare as an empty room.  He tried again to sing calming to her.  Again he failed, but this time it seemed her lack of revery or sleep was the problem.  She needed something to hold on to, something positive.  Well, was he a storyteller or was he not?

Again her blank whisper. "I don't know what to believe."

"Believe you will return to them, and cure many of them, and help them rebuild.  Picture it in your head...that you are with the survivors and next to Ilsare's shrine is a shrine to Aeridin, and together you and they rebuild.  Replant.  Repopulate; think of the first baby born in a plague-free Hlint.  How much joy that child will bring."  Smooth, deeper than his normal speaking voice, rolling the words over her, planting them in her mind.  Something to hold to. "Close your eyes and see it, love.  You can make it happen."  

"I imagine it being so beautiful, the flowers growing all around the shrines."

He nodded. "Yes...a place where those who have scars on body or mind or heart from Hlint's suffering can come and find help."

Her eyes closed, not entirely of their own free will. "I imagine the warmth they feel from the breath of life and the warmth of love surrounding them..."

"And being able to leave the gates for the first time...seeing their loved ones outside - the sound of the gates creaking open and the tears of joy from family and friends.  You will be there when it happens, love."  She let out a puff of breath as he stroked her hair, her shoulders, her back.  She was going limp.  

"When you sleep, think of those things.  There will be dead, yes - but there will be living.  And you will be there for them."

"I have to be there for them...I have to let them know I was fighting for them..."  Faintly from the nest he'd made of his legs and the blanket.  She looked like a kitten.

"They will know, love.  They will know."

And finally, she slept.

[RollinsCat]

He walked up slow, one leg swinging loosely in front of the other in a kind of strut; maybe it looked languid and purposeful.  It was in fact him tired as hells but he thought he was pulling it off. “Milady.”

Amaria sat on the edge of the stage, where she sat most days.  The harp she held was a small one he’d made for the instrument chest, for anyone to try their hand at.  Fingers at.  Whatever.  The strings were broken – again.  Shades of that first night, but she had not touched the gold standing harp since.  

She’d restrung half of it already.  He waited; she hadn’t been seeking him out and he hadn’t rushed her.  She looked up and tried to hide the instrument behind her but he’d already seen the strings. “Er, yes?”

“How are you settling in?”  There was an art to conversation with skittish people.  Sit not too far to seem aloof, not so close as to force intimacy.  He judged right and she remained where she was, tilting her head at him in that particular way she did.

“Fine I guess.”

“Mm.”

A rueful grin as she brought the harp from behind her.  “Still breaking things.”

He chuckled.  “I have plenty of strings.”  

“Good.  I mean...”  A blink.  “...it’s good that you are careful with your instruments.”  Nervous talk.  Filling space.

“My sister plays harp much better than I do.  Aya, she'll come live here eventually.  Maybe.  So long as I don't make her pay.”  He grinned; she sighed and handed the half-strung instrument to him.  He did a quick survey of the damage done by her attempt to play, testing her repairs with one ear to the strings and his eyes momentarily closed.  “You’ve been taught well.  You don’t hold the string in your teeth do you?” A fast head shake and she gestured to a set of small iron pincers. “Good for you.  I do.  Used to get yelled at allll the time.”  With a smile he checked the next string's pitch.

“I don’t like the sting from a too stressed string.  It happened to me once, never again.”

“You have an ear, that's for sure.  Are there music schools in Bydell?”  And let’s see what I can find out about you, missy.

“Two ears, actually.” She reached up to wiggle both ears at him and stuck out her tongue.  “Music schools?”  That head tilt again. “No, not that I know of.”

“Ahh, a tutor then.”   Here, fishy fishy...

“Huh?”

“A tutor – a teacher?”

“There are plenty of tutors of everything you could possibly imagine there...”

He nodded.  ”I meant, you had a music tutor?”  He didn’t look at her, but listened as he strummed a tune on the upper strings she’d done.  Light, airy, relaxing.  She tilted her head.  He wondered if she’d injured her neck in the past or had tension there, and his mind wandered to Argos for some reason before he pulled it back.

 “Er...well, yes, kind of...how did you learn to play?”

Mmm hmm.  No tutor – not from money likely.  Deflecting, playing to his ego.  Hiding.  “My grandmother.”  He could not stop a wistful smile. “She was magical to me.  She played Bella, our violin, for me when I was a child.  And I begged and begged and so she taught me.”

“Sounds like a great woman.”

“She is.  Was.”  A quiet sigh.  “I still miss her.  Who taught you?”

“Sorry for your loss.”

He took a length of harp string, threading a rod with it.  “Long time ago.”

“Well, it’s a long story.  I learned from a lot of people really.  I was always at the festivals you know?”  He stayed quiet, stringing the harp.  Giving her room to talk.  “And with the help of the Aragenites and their books I was able to answer the questions I needed.”  

He kept his mouth shut about Aragenites but his cheek twitched.  “Mmm.” He timed a glance at her, returned to tightening strings.

“There was this old man who loved to play live tunes.  He made me smile a lot with his harp.  Emeret was his name.”  She nodded as if only just remembering.

“Ah?  Tell me a story of him.  We have not yet told stories.”

“Well. I don't remember much of him really...he was old already, but I remember having seen a lot of his harp work.  I learned by sight on his, he inspired me to learn, watching him was magical.  To see how he moved those fingers over the harp...was simply great to watch”. However restrained her words, a not-yet-adult enthusiasm snuck through the façade.  He could only nod – he remembered.  He remembered watching.  Watching and moving his own fingers in an uninstructed child’s parody, feeling the music and pretending it was him, wanting it to be him... ”It was that day that he was supposed to come to play again...the people at the temple said that he had gone.  Of course now I know that he died.  Overdose of some kind of beverage...figures huh?”  

And with that she was done, lost in the memory of music from an old man who’d touched her heart.  He let the silence stretch just to the point of uncomfortable before speaking in a measured tone. “He did?”  He tipped his head at her, mimicking her favorite expressional tic, shifting on the stage to face her.  “Ah.  Well, I know a bit about that.  An occupational hazard of the uninhibited.  I’m recovered...recovering...”

She smiled. “I've seen that.  You sell alcohol, but you don't drink.  You just glance longingly at the booze, but never take a drink.”

“Oh?” He returned her smile with a twist of wry.  “No. I do not drink. No longer, and Muse bless me, never again. There are memories, Amaria, that go beyond memory. Flesh memories. Like playing...the movements on a harp or violin.”  He plucked across the strings quickly, making the best of the wild tuning – and censored a few flesh memories.  She was still a kid, no matter how good she looked.  “Or riding a horse.  Or drinking.  You remember with your entire body, your mind, your tongue, your fingers. Everything.  You can never truly forget.”

Young or not, her nod was one of experience, which he found a little jarring.  “Yes.  It is our past that hunts us no matter where we go, huh?”

“I'm finding, more and more, that sometimes the only way to survive it is to be the hunter.  In other words, stop running from it.  Let it catch you - and deal with it.”  His tone was more astringent than he meant, and he drifted.  Not memories per say but feelings, gut feelings, when he’d run and should not have – or wanted to, but didn’t.  She hesitated, her fingers plucking at the skirt of the dress she’d bought with Helly in the market.

”Yes.  But sometimes...I would be asking why does one always have that tendency.  Facing what hurts you will hurt you again, isn't it?  And how do you hunt booze anyway?”  With a tilt of her head she giggled, distracting herself.

How do you hunt booze?  Oh, little lady.  Let me count the ways.  There was a moment where his frontal lobes debated and screamed and slammed down heavy tomes of pros and cons at each other, but in the end – to gain trust, you must offer it.  He told her about his drunken binge, about Ilsare’s intervention (with Paddy’s unwitting but expert help) and his recovery.  Her shock at his backslide was palpable, again the child peeking through adult curtains.  It sent her into a little tailspin of her own.

“You...you haven't told anyone I am here, right?”

“No.  I have not.”  Okay, a brief tailspin.  She didn’t try to hide her sigh of relief.  “I didn’t think you wanted to be found...”  Here, fishy fishy fishy.

She recovered with a flip grin.  “Don't want all those fans looking for me, you know.”  Nonchalant.  He finished the stringing of the small harp and began to check the pitch of the strings.

“Mmmhmm.  So yes, running is one solution.  But it gets old.  I ran from women, ran from my old life, ran from marriage once.  But after a while....”  He looked around the tavern. “You want to feel home.  Even if all you want to do is leave it, it's nice to have a place to come back to."  Which brought from her many questions, then – the subject of home.  Something he sensed she was missing on some level.  She asked about the inn, about his vision of it open to all, even compared it to the Breath of the Muse which made him smile.  Sitting on the edge of the stage, chatting while he tuned the harp, she began to ask more questions and for a little while was a sweet if slightly world-weary young woman.  Why was his inn different than the Ilsarian temple?  Why would a Voraxian not want to go there but would come here?  Would Emeret be allowed as an Aragenite?  Would nasty people be allowed in the Silver Buckle?  That last point was sticking.  She was running from someone or ones specific, he was sure of it now.  He remained patient, bantered, answered, stayed out of her space.  It was patience he would not have had if not for Jeb, and for Tyr’riel.  Even Tyra had taught him a healthy dose of his current unhurried calm.  For a moment he hoped her cell was at least comfortable.

Amaria’s hands stroked a pattern on the skirt in a brief, relaxed absence of conversation, and then she looked up at him.  ”You know...these last days...I’ve been trying to remember.”  He felt a prickle on the back of his neck. “But not much comes.  I keep dreaming about a tower.  It’s a tower that I remember well in Bydell."  Another prickle.  The harp was tuned and he began to strum to help her focus, much like he sang when he needed extra skill or in battle to aid his comrades.  As he watched her, she closed her eyes. “There is this tower of gold and silver.  Surrounded by the most pretty flowers you could imagine.  And there is this red door.  That is always closed.  I remember that I know what is on the other side, but I can't remember what it is if that makes sense.  But I know I know what is in there.  It’s somewhere in here...”  She pointed to her head. “I remember that I worked there or lived there.  Much of it is lost...”   Even with his gentle strumming her eyes pressed together and he fists curled.  A tear slid down one cheek.  He concentrated, trying to...trying to...like the first night she’d arrived...what was it he did?  Reached through, gave her a lifeline of his own music...dipping a toe in water, causing ripples...she was sobbing now.  He was screwing it up, and he didn’t know what 'it’ was.  He never had any control of it, always hit or miss – he needed to go back to the Resonance and ask – her lips pursed, her hands clutched her knees, and she cried.

Crying women.  It never failed to get under his skin.  Now what, jerk?

He scooted closer, still playing.  ” Amaria?...don't run from it.”  Almost as soon as he said the words, she fell forward and hit her head on the floor without putting out her hands or even reacting.  

“GAH!”  He slung the harp rapier-style in his belt and checked her, singing some healing and sliding his arms under her to pick her up.  Her hand rose so suddenly he jumped, and she touched his cheek.  He was muttering about the doors, her memory, the passing out, and moved seamlessly into an apology but as he lifted her to walk to one of the settees her expression shifted again.  From woman-child to eyes half-open and blank with an inviting smile.  He stopped right where he was and evaluated her face, wondering if she was possessed.  Wiggling her rear and pushing with her legs, she forced his arms down until she was standing.  Too close.  He started to kneel to get a better look, his insides cold, completely taken aback by her turnaround, and she jumped at him – playfully, sensually.  Slight as Minu, she was easy to catch and hold at arm’s length.  What the hells?  She gave him a daring look, up and down his length, flaring her eyes.

For a split second the animal part of his brain considered possibilities, and was promptly stomped under the boot heel of his humming for control.  He had to find out if she was possessed.  A little lie, a little challenge...”Amaria, do you remember what it was I suggested you wear right before you passed out?  Just a few minutes ago?  What did I say you should wear.”  Her expression changed again, from a look of seductive blankness to concern to fear to utter terror and pain.  She screamed and sagged forward.  Some late afternoon patrons craned their heads to see what was going on, not bothered before now by the innkeep and his...whatever she was.  He switched his balance from holding her away to holding her up.  “Michael, bar’s closed!  Please lock the door.”  Michael shepherded out the customers, citing an emergency and free beer later, and locked the door as requested.  

He carried her toward the burgundy couch by the fire.  She was unconscious now – he hadn’t noticed when she’d passed out.  Standing there, Michael’s eyes on him from the bar, he didn’t know what to do.  Half the time he tried to help her, she passed out!  He should have listened closer to Minu’s discussions on healing...

...pits with it.  He was a child of Ilsare.  He was a musician.  He was a bard, as was she when he could find a way to show her.  He would use what he knew.  With a deep breath he began to sing, tailoring the sound of his voice for the Amaria he’d seen earlier; the struggling young girl, looking for her lost inspiration.  The song had no immediate effect but her breathing steadied, slow and constant, more like natural sleep, and he laid her across the settee and pulled Minu’s white wool blanket over her.

Faintly, from his office, the ticking of a clock.  Muse, Edward had come through on his threat.  That thing had to go – no clocks in his sacred space.  But the metronomic sound did give him a chance to observe her in a way that felt kind of scientific, and she was not having pleasant dreams.  Or she was struggling against an inner demon, real or imagined.

Towers.  Doors.  Red doors...

He knelt and listened to her, whispering.  “A red door always closed...are you behind that door, Milady?  Have you forgotten yourself? Is your inspiration there, the music that fuels your blood?”  One arm flung out and her head turned toward the back of the settee with teeth clenched.  She could not hear him.  Another long breath, and he focused harder than he’d ever before.  Blanking out his fears and uncertainties.  Channeling his reactions to Tyra, Minu and Thalia, he pulled the harp from his belt and played Amaria's song.  Note by note, he played the song from that first night they together broke through her block.  He did not try to dip his toe into the Heartsong, rather he listened and let it calm him.  He could not help her in her current state if he was churned up.  It was not hard for him to find soothing.  Just being able to listen in that way lifted his soul every time he stopped to concentrate.  

Inner ear opened, the wild shifting notes of the living things around them forming a symphony, he focused on her.  He felt how he wanted to change the tapestry of vibrations, how he wanted her reactions to change it.  He pulled and stroked the strings of the harp with Amaria as the center of his world.

The girl moved when his emphasis shifted.  Moaning, crying, moving around on the couch and trying to burrow under the blanket.  From nowhere, he found words.

Gold and silver?  A door or a key?
She’s not here by accident, listen to me
The flowers are blooming, the entry awaits
She wishes and wants to see past the gates

Amaria’s writhing slowed, stopped, and her moaning faded.  Did he do that?  The very idea gave him a rush and his gut felt like a popped cork.

Frightened that’s certain but stronger than fear
Calm and collected, a mind set and clear
One step, two steps, three steps she’s there
Now past the gate, now on the stair

Fingers brush wood painted over with red
She knows what’s behind it - it’s all in her head
But knowing and viewing are quite different clearly
Her hand traces the door frame, she wants to see

Run down the door and finger the latch
Pressing and pressing to release the catch
A whispering click and all it will take
Is a push, one small push, to memories wake

Her arm moved under the blanket, hand lifting, palm out.  He was, for almost a stanza, speechless.  Did he do that?  Should he be doing this?  Muse, guide me...

Fingers that pull so much joy from the strings
And the butterflies who inside her take wing
Are aching to unleash inspiration’s wellspring
Let go of the terror that won’t let you sing

In a hesitant, breathy voice on the verge of being a contralto, she began to sing, still asleep. “But she might not be the same if she opens the door...”  Her hand, hovering out against a dream-door, trembled.

He sang back to her. “Each step changes you, each moment is change, the song always shifts and is never the same, but you swim with the changes or live life afraid...”  The outstretched hand still quivered, uncertain.  He continued – he felt odd in a perfectly normal way, his voice rippling along to her.

A statue or flesh?  A woman or painting?
The door is your key and there’s no time for fainting
You changed when you met me, you changed when you slept
You changed when you laughed and you changed when you wept

Her hand moved a little to one side.

I’ll be your anchor to face what’s behind
Hold to my voice and see what you find
Open the door girl, remember and see
What caused you to run and inspiration to flee
I’ll be your anchor...

A strangled sob – Muse – was this right?  It felt right, but he hated himself at her tears.  Lifting his chin he sang strength in a pulsing rhythm.

Don’t be afraid and don’t run anymore
Take a deep breath...and open the door!

She moved her hand as if back to a door handle and pushed.  Not a second later her voice rose in pitch and she yelled – ”No, Master!  Leave me alone!!”  Her eyes opened, she was soaked from a sudden flop sweat and the echoes of her full-bore yell echoed off the walls of the fireplace area.

“Shhh, Amaria, Amaria, you’re here...”  Terror.  Absolute terror on her face.  “Brave child, so brave – you looked.”  He stopped playing ripples into the Heartsong, if that was what he’d been doing.  Instead he relaxed the music, partly to give her space to recover without his influence and partly to hide a cramp from a bad kneeling position, and waited for her to speak.

“I...I...” Her cheeks wet with tears.  He nodded for her to go on.  She looked at him then away, once again shy. “I...I am tired.  If you would excuse me I want to go to my bed...”  He had a lot of things he wanted to say.  He shut up.  She stood, took the harp from his hands, and headed to the interior door. “Goodnight, Master Reid.” Master.  Maybe you don’t want to be calling me that...

“Goodnight, Amaria.”

Michael stayed doing a number of unnecessary cleaning things to the bar until Amaria was upstairs.  With a speculative, almost pensive look at his employer, he left.  The room fell into near-silence; timbers creaking and the drone of an insect were all, a fitting accompaniment to dust motes drifting in still air.

The how of how he’d done what he’d done, that he figured out.  The why of it – to help her start to unblock her inspiration, he hoped.  

But what if he hadn’t had her best interests in mind?  Or what if his idea to help her was wrong?  Dear Ilsare, that was a lot of power.  And it had been only a tiny bit of what Katrien Hommel had shown him, only a scrap of what he knew some of the Resonance members could do.  Stars and song, what was he capable of?  As one larger mote shivered downward in the tavern air, he understood why the Resonance was so restrictive.  He understood, a little more, why Franco had been dealt with the way he had, although he still considered the man a friend.

That was a LOT of power.  And its use was entirely dependent on the mindset of the person singing, influenced by their emotions and the ever-changing Heartsong.  Ilsare had entrusted him with a tiny, tiny bit.  He was honored, and awed, and not a little frightened.  

Was it the right thing to do niggled at him while he had a snack as part of his effort to regain weight lost in the war.  It followed him upstairs, poked at him to check on Amaria, which he resisted.  Laying down next to Minu, who was already asleep as she had a tendency to be since her curing, he stared up at the ceiling then over at their paintings and sparse furnishings.  Time became a shadow moving across the floor as a lamp burned down in the hall.  

It was an hour before he heard the first notes.  Then a few more, a chord here or there, then a melodic ballad from Ty’s room where Amaria stayed for now.  She was playing.  It didn't last long, only a few minutes, but it was her.

Lying next to his lover in the dark, he woke long enough to sing himself back to sleep with a prayer to the Muse and a smile on his face.

[RollinsCat]

The carriage left the Buckle's front door, symmetrical clopping marking distance.  For a few seconds shod hooves timed perfectly with the ticking of the clock in his office that he still had not gotten rid of.

Then, nothing.

He sat at a table by the stage.  He could no longer hear the clock over the pounding in his ears - his discordant heartbeat, not in time with anything, wild as the fragments of her heart as he'd heard it break.  Heard. It. Break.  Heard the swell of her across the song of life, and when he'd said he could not marry her, her notes see-sawing and changing, all over the scale, hissing like a fire in the rain.

His words had caused more pain than he could have imagined.  Dizzying, staggering pain, pain he heard clearly, her gamble unrealized.  Worse - rejected.  He'd followed his heart and it had led him to shatter another human being.  Possibly to condemn his child to a future of bloodshed and violence and following the rules of men and women and dwarves who did not care for nor consider the feelings of others when kicking in doors and making people vanish off the streets.  But mostly, it was the pain he'd caused.  How could Ilsare allow love to destroy the capacity to love?  How?

Should he have said yes?  To save her, to save his son?  He believed what he'd told her.  He still did.  A marriage that was compromised from the start, just to have access to his child was wrong.  It was not Ilsare's way; it was the opposite of passion, mockery of a bond meant for the deepest kinds of love.  Follow your heart - it was that simple.  He had.  He would.  He must.  He offered her choices; not him, and not the other man, but freedom to determine her own life.  She could not or would not see that there was life beyond becoming someone's wife.  She wanted protection and legitimacy.  He offered to help her, again, to support them, to accept his responsibilities.  Everything but that which the consecrated holy symbol around his neck prevented him from entering without all of his heart.

For that, his only biological child would be raised by someone else.  Would be groomed to become a soldier in the Raelian army.  Possibly an officer, as she'd said.  Were there any words in the world that could stab him deeper?

Amaria's voice broke through his thoughts and his staring contest with the table.  The table was winning handily but he hadn't noticed.  Amaria was a little bright sound, her voice new with confidence just beginning to bloom after the wintering of her soul.  She was speaking to someone, not him - who?  In answer, Minu knelt next to him.  Their guest Abi stood off from the table, uncertain as to what was going on.  That he'd been crying hard had to be plain to see.  They were talking - he was having trouble hearing.  He stood and turned the switch on his performer.  After three decades it was that easy.  Click!  'It was a pleasure to meet you, thank you for coming, I'm sorry about my sudden need to excuse myself, I'm not good company right now...'.  Click!  And he was past them and headed upstairs.

Stairs and hallway were gobbled by every inch of his long stride until he was in his room, sitting on the floor and leaning on the end of their platform bed.  The wall across from him was his next opponent in a test of wills, standing resolute despite the intensity of his gaze.  He replayed Thalia's words again.  And again.  Then once more in case the first seventeen times had failed to overturn that one nugget that would have softened her heart.

Nothing.  Nothing but voices, Thalia's, Minu's, Amaria's.  Life is not fair.  Life is not fair.  Life is not fair.  He left the wall to its victory and stared at his shaking hands.  Temporary insanity, was this it?  Without trying to calm himself he was fractured - at once planning how he'd meet the child, planning how he'd get a music tutor in the boy's life, despairing, crashing, holding the symbol he'd ripped from his neck - when had he done that? - and planning again, each thought a wave lasting no more than ten or fifteen seconds.  Drowning.  He was drowning without water.

Then, humming, controlling his breath but not his emotions - the sound was tritone and he wondered how he was making it, if he was only hearing himself in the Resonance, or if he was imagining it all.  Caught in mental undertow, it took a while to hear a pocket of calm but he found it - not the perfect calm of land but instead a plank to grab, a place to not drown but still at the mercy of both Thalia's and his pain.

Thalia wanted protection inside marriage.  She wanted him because in one short week, with only one long night of passion together in all those days, she'd fallen in love with him.  No, not him - her ideal of him.  Who she thought he was, because he'd told her about Minu, and he'd told her about Ty...a rapid tugging of guilt like a child trying to get a parent's attention...he marked the thought and kept singing.  The plank felt wider in his mind.  

She wanted more than he could ever given her.  Maybe when he'd told her how Minu would not marry him and had made it clear his elven lover never wanted to marry again, and double so because she still loved another and he still shared her with that elf without question...Thalia thought that meant he would marry her?  Did she even remember that?  

Focusing on Thalia was easier.  He could not think the boy's name, could not bear to conjure his face, not yet - and he realized that the plank he was singing to himself appeared in his mind's eye to be a red door.

Amaria's voice over his song: Don't fight it.  He didn't know if she was in the room or not.  Anger, fury that this woman would take from him what was half his - and a sudden wave of clarity in the form of a golden-eyed elf and the daughter he would never know.

Gods, Raz.  I'm so sorry...

Anger again, a lot of it, it was all he could hear for a moment and the red door began to spin.  One bloody night of sex and he had gained and lost everything.  Everything!  He could not give up hope that he'd find a human woman to love someday, to bear his children...but that meant leaving a piece of him open that Minu could not have...but she wouldn't marry him anyway...he felt sick and forced a change in the music, he was singing himself into a frenzy.  It wasn't as hard as before.  A few notes different and the spinning slowed, the sound's wild rises and falls becoming more pastoral.  And still there was a red door in his mind.

He'd sung Amaria through that door and now it was his turn.  It wasn't that the child would not know about him for years, maybe not ever depending on what Thalia told him.  It wasn't that the boy really needed him or that his life was going to be wretched without his father's influence.  

It was that he'd wanted it.  For so dammed long, he'd wanted it.  He loved kids.  He wanted kids.  The one thing, the only thing that he wanted that Minu could never give him.  

He put a hand on the doorknob.  Still singing, land under his feet.  The door stood in a gentle wind of song unattached to any structure and waited.

Now he had it, what he'd wanted for so long, and it would be forever out of reach - and he'd broken the mother, and so further damaged the child, all because he would not question the will of his Goddess.  Another surge of anger.

He started to push on the door but was weak, so weak it was as if he'd been hugged by a spectre – he changed the song, churning himself back up, door and ground spinning again.

The idea of his child wearing Rael's uniform and patrolling the streets for people to kidnap – the idea that there was only one thing he could have done to convince her to allow him to be a part of the child's life – stupid woman, stupid, selfish woman, the world is NOT that black and white.  Would she be a good mother?  Would his child be closed minded?  Did he still love her through all this fury?

His fingers slipped from the knob.  He had to see.  It was his worst nightmare and he had to see.  Wherever he was, dream, the Heartsong, his own gibbering mind, he had to see.  Switching to a prayer, singing for Her inside Her own heartbeat, he raised his voice and kicked the door down instead.

His song behind it was unbearably loud, ear-shattering.  It was mixed in the sounds of battle and men, women and horses screaming defiance and blood-choked agony.  He'd lived this, in Lor, in Sedera, for forty-three days solid in Fort Hope, all the way to Stormcry and back, in Hilm.

He was outside Lor.  Rael's armies - miles of them, glittering like the ocean at night, pressing toward the defenders at the walls of the city.  Adventurers that he knew and those he had only heard of, both alive and dead, formed a line - others shot arrows alongside the Lor army and still more crept around the edges, looking for important Raelite targets.  He was there, older, with a yew violin and a bow of light...a bottle of whiskey dangling from his belt, in a pack of fighters cutting a swath through the enemy army.  They moved in a flurry of blades and he in the center, singing...the song he sang now...he heard both, in his room and there on the battlefield, and saw their destination - a blockade, behind which were the officers and leaders of this battalion.  

Oh gods, no.

An officer in Rael's red and black.  Tall as his father.  Skin as dark as his mother's.  Eyes with the unmistakable slant of the island born, hair blacker than both of his parents - so black it was blue.

He wanted to stop but the song had a life of its own and the door was gone.  He had to watch.  The fighters engaged the last line, it would be a few precious minutes before any Raelite reinforcements could get to them, Vrebel in particular was a bladed machine, and the officers were running - except for the tall dark-skinned man.  That man stood, longsword out, singing to himself and giving his men time to flee.

Please don't kill him...

Another Lor fighter, battle-scarred and grey as stone – the Norseman, looking like a living statue - finished the last of the defenders by the officer's barricade.  It was them and the tall dark-skinned man.

In a play, something magical would happen.  In a book, there would be intervention of a kind that left to question that the gods watched their children; in his dreams, father and son would recognize each other in time.  Behind his red door and inside the song he didn't want to hear himself sing, his son was cut down in three strokes.  Older Andrew, instrument in hand, didn't stop to look – his job commanded constant attention to the cuts and bashes of his group mates.  Freedom lay dead, the group moved on, the song ended.  He'd never recognized the man his song had helped to kill.

He made it to the slop bucket in time to throw up.  He could hear Minu coming down the hall now and wondered how he'd talk to her.  His voice sounded as a knife over toast from all the crying and singing.  She'd be there in a minute.  No time for mourning, only a moment of regret as he moved a little piece of his heart aside, one that Minu could not have...but he would have a child again someday.  Somehow.  Until then, that piece would stay unclaimed.

And for his son, the child in Prantz he'd given up for Ilsare, a song.  The tune he already knew, he'd been singing it for the last...how long?  Didn't matter.  He had the tune and the words.  For Freedom, a song and a prayer, one he would sing every night for the rest of his life.  Please, Ilsare, keep watch if I cannot.

He said a lot in his scraping whisper, when Elohanna sat by him.  Most of it he did not remember.  But the next morning, that tugging at his mental sleeve...

"Minu.  It's time to get my son and your daughter.  Let's pack, the hells with all the subterfuge.  We'll get them in person."