SONG OF POWER

Chapter XX: Ruins of Cyen

SONG OF POWER

CHAPTER XX:  RUINS OF CYEN

The sun rose the morning after Cyen was sacked, but not without protest.  It was a bleak, damp morning that begrudgingly greeted the still-smoking ruins of the small village.  Phrenon’s Lamp seemed reluctant to shed light on the ruins.  Seven figures moved through the village, clinging to each other, as if afraid to touch anything around them.  Samuel Evers lead the group, followed by the cringing Wisp Ignus, then Pantifer, and then the four wives; Aedre, Odette, Mayda, and Gertrude.  The procession halted near the great table and the bonfire, and seven pairs of eyes scanned the carnage without hope.

Yet hope came.

Under the great table, their wounds staunched with tunics pulled from the fallen, lay Trevor and Willa.  A sigh of relief escaped Wisp as Trevor and Willa crawled clumsily from beneath the table to greet their friends.

“You live!” Samuel exclaimed exuberantly.  “By the gods, you live.”

“Yes, though we are wounded,” Trevor replied, his hand going to the bloodstained bandage on his head.

“It looks worse than it is,” Willa grimaced bravely.

“Aye, indeed.  But this…this is worse than it looks,” Wisp replied gravely, motioning to the bodies of the townsfolk.  Not a one was spared—men, women, and children comprised the fallen, and too few goblins numbered among the corpses.

“The Pyretary,” said Samuel, and nothing more.  The men left their new brides alone near the dying bonfire and set to work dragging every last corpse to the Pyretary.  Their macabre work consumed the day in its entirety; it wasn’t until the night had matured that they were able to put flame to corpse and satisfy Cyen’s oldest tradition.  They stood for long hours watching the pyre burn, saying what prayers they knew and weeping over all that was lost until no more tears would come and each was numb from the heartache.

“We must leave,” Samuel said as they all were settling down to sleep in a lean-to they’d constructed near the Pyretary.

“Whither shall we travel?” ventured Odette in a trembling voice.  The other women quickly echoed her question.

“Well, there are other small villages nearby,” Samuel began, scratching the scruff on his chin.  “Surely they would grant us refuge.”

“Don’t be foolish, Sam.  If the goblins razed Cyen, don’t you think they might’ve struck the other forgotten villages nearby?” argued Wisp.

“True.  Fine, we could make for Draketon; Trevor, wasn’t your father born and bred in Draketon?”

“My father died far from home and this name is not one to be proud of in Draketon.  We may as well all grow beards and go live with the dwarves!” Trevor retorted.  He disliked speaking of his father.

“Fair enough.  Pantifer…” Samuel began, but fell silent.  They all knew that Pantifer had no family to speak of—he was abandoned, raised for a time among the church until he decided he wanted to live in Cyen on his own.  If he had any family, he did not know them.  Pantifer just shook his head, knowing words were unnecessary.

“We are all that’s left of Cyen,” Samuel said grimly.  His eyes reflected the defeated faces of his dear friends.

“What of Cipher?  And Rowena, and Ninthalsaya, and that shameless gypsy-sidhe?” asked Trevor, tracing squiggles in the dirt with a twig as if it were some gods-mandated task.

“Yeah, I saw them all run for the gypsy’s cart, and then ride like the dickens out of Cyen,” reported Pantifer angrily.  “They left us!”