The Song and the Serpent

Kian was buried on top of the hill where he had taken his stand at sundown. The survivors of New Esta lined both sides of the path between the main hall and the hill, paying their respects as Kian was carried to his final resting place. Each one of them held a stone in their hands.

The surviving village leaders, now only numbering eight, bore his body on their shoulders. Fagus had taken a mortal wound in the final charge against the Undelmans, and had died a battle-hero that very afternoon.

Of those among the dead, Fin had been slain in the forest, and Bolf, Nolt’s twin, had been shot by arrows on the wall.

Arfon had come before the burial with a handful of Othelli warriors and offered Adan a litter, to be carried at the fore of Kian’s procession. Adan wanted to walk on his own, but when he tried to get out of bed, the pain made his head swim, so he allowed himself to be carried to the great hall.

His friend lay in a wooden coffin, with his eyes and mouth closed, his bloodied clothing replaced with fine raiment, his sword on his chest, and his hands resting on the handle.

He’s gone.

Before the village leaders approached the box to lift Kian and carry him to the hill, a voice cried out in the gathered crowd.

“Wait!”

The figure of Kellessed the blacksmith approached the dais, limping on an injured leg.

“I did not forge that blade so that it could sit buried in the earth!” He said as he drew near. “It was made to be a weapon against our enemies, and it should be used as such, not as a decoration. Lord Kian was worthy to wield that blade, but he would not want it to lie wasted and rust after so little use.”

The village leaders looked from one to the other, wondering what to say. Many of them cast glances at Adan, as if expecting him to answer Kellessed.

“Who do you think is worthy to wield Lord Kian’s blade?” Hurst asked. “We have not chosen a successor, and no one would be so brazen as to take it for himself.”

“I will take it,” Kellessed said, stepping forward and gently moving Kian’s hands aside, “but not for myself.”

Many in the hall stirred uncomfortably at the sight, but no one stopped him. Once he had retrieved the blade and placed Kian’s hands back on his chest, he limped toward Adan’s stretcher. He held the weapon out, handle first, signaling Adan to take it.

“From what I have heard,” Kellessed said, “you took up this sword after Lord Kian’s death, although you didn not use it. Take it now, and keep it safe, until a successor is named.”

Adan wanted to refuse, but he felt that Kellessed was right. Kian would not want the sword to rust in the ground with his body.

“And it is only fitting that the man who rescued us from the Undelmans should keep safe the weapon her lord carried,” Kellessed added.

Adan took the blade by the handle and laid it across his lap. There it remained as Kian was lifted by the village leaders and marched slowly out of the hall. Adan sat up in the litter as he was carried behind Kian, with Layla by his side.

The rainfall from two days before had extinguished the forest fire, raising a steaming mist that covered the forest with thick fog. Now the sun had burned the mist away, leaving a fine layer of dew already covering the damp earth and grass.

Adan could see small plumes of smoke outside the city from stubborn fires that had survived the rainfall, and their gray columns cast dark shadows in the red light of the evening sun.

Kian was laid in a deep grave on the hilltop, and a large stone prepared to place over him.

Adan watched wordlessly, still unable to believe his eyes, as the lid of the coffin was placed over Kian and his body was lowered slowly into the grave.

The motionless form laying in that coffin was not Kian. They were not burying his friend, they were burying something other than Kian, an empty shell in a wooden box.

He’s gone.

“From the dust we were formed,” Hurst said, quoting the ancient rite, “to the dust we shall return.”

The warriors refilled the hole, burying the coffin, and placing the large stone on the loose dirt. Adan wished he could help the working warriors.

“Let us honor the one who united us,” Hurst said when the work was done. “Let us leave a memorial that will remind us of Lord Kian.”

Then all the people of New Esta began to carry their stones up the hill and place them, one by one, around the larger gravestone. Adan sat a few paces away and watched as men, women, and children, the young and the old, carried stones of various sizes for the building of Lord Kian’s Cairn.

Layla wept openly beside him. Adan remembered the last conversation the three of them had enjoyed, when Kian had been his old self again, for a short time.

The pile of stones rose up above the first large one, until it stood higher than the heads of the onlookers. As the pile became too high, it expanded outward, growing until it was nearly twenty paces in diameter.

Adan thought back on the dangers they had shared together, the burdens they had carried, and the ways that Kian had become the lordly man that his father had been before him.

By the time the last stone was thrown onto the pile, the cairn far surpassed the one that Adan and Kian had built in honor of the dead at Farel, rising high above the heads of everyone present.

“May he lie in peaceful slumber,” Hurst said, “until the final call of the Maker stirs the bones of the dead, and rouses him from sleep.”

Adan looked up at the sky.

The sunlight above the basin had faded into blue night, and the evening star shone bright above, an island of light in a sea of darkness.

“Thank you,” Adan whispered. “Thank you for everything, my brother. I will miss you.”

He had nothing else to say.

The End of Book One.