smell of Endaf faded as I walked from the ruins on a rocky
and shell-strewn path, and as I trudged west I caught the
sharp smell of salt air and heard the faint cries of gulls and
cormorants.
*****
About a mile from the center of the village, Finn’s Ear
burrowed into a sheer limestone cliff overlooking the Cape
of Caergoth. Black gulls perched at its edge, the gray rock
white with their guano, loud with their wailing cries.
Steps had been chopped in the steep rock face, whether
by the bandits or by a more ancient hand it was hard to tell,
given the constant assault of storm and birds. I took my
place in the middle of a rag-tag group of beggars, farmers,
bards and would-be bandits, each awaiting an audience
with King Finn of the Dark Hand.
As I waited, the bards talked around and over me in
their language of rumor. The gold thread at the hems of
cape and cloak was tattered, frayed; each wooden harp was
chipped and warped, each bronze one dented and tarnished.
No famous poets these, no Quivalen Sath or Arion of
Coastlund. They were courtiers with trained voices and a
studied adequacy for the strings. Now, in single file on the
rocky steps, each encouraged the other, thereby
encouraging himself.
Being praise-singer to a bandit king was a thankless
and shabby job, they said.
Well, generally.
But Finn, they said, was different. Of course.
It was hard to keep from laughing. In the rationale of
such men, a bandit, a goblin, even a monster was
DIFFERENT when coin and a warm hearth were offered.
Finn, they claimed, had joined resolutely in the search
to lift a curse brought upon Caergoth and the surrounding
peninsula years ago by the fire-bringing Solamnics, Pyrrhus
Alecto and his son Pyrrhus Orestes. His search had entered
its fourth year, his seers and shamans telling him that the
curse would last “as long as Alecto’s descendants lived,” his
hirelings telling him always that they had just missed
catching Orestes. Desperate, Finn hoped that a
transforming hymn would lift the curse with its beauty and
magic.
The bards needled one another cynically, each asking
when they would write that certain song, make their
fortunes among the bandits. They all laughed the knowing
laughter of bards, then fell silent.
I leaned against the cold rock face, awaiting uncertain
audience. Pelicans and gulls wheeled over the breaking
tide, diving into the ardent waters as the sun settled over the
eastern spur of Ergoth, dark across the cape.
Carelessly, I touched the strings of the harp, felt in my
pockets for the poet’s pen and ink. I had traveled hundreds
of miles to this stairwell, this audience. The pain of my
scars rose suddenly to a new and staggering level.
The song of the bards around me was skillful and
glittering and skeptical . . . and empty of the lines I sought.
I would have to brave the echoing caverns below Finn’s
lair.
The druidess had told me that I could find the truth.
AND THE FINDING WOULD SAVE MY LIFE AND
MAKE THE PAST UNCHANGEABLE. The song had to be
here, or there was no song. And could the final pain of the
monster’s acid be any worse than this perpetual burning?
“You’ll have it, Father,” I muttered into the dark of my
hood. “REDEEMED AND CONTINUED. The past will be
unchangeable. Whatever you have, it will be the truth. And
whatever I have, it will be better.”
*****
Finn of the Dark Hand sat in a huge chair hewn from
the cavern wall. He looked hewn from stone himself, a
sleepless giant or a weathered monument set as a sign of
warding along the rocky peninsular coast. His right hand
was gloved in black, the reason known only to himself.
Around him milled his company of bandits, rough and
scarred like burned villages. They bared their knives as they
watched the singers, smiling wickedly one to another, as
though keeping a dreadful secret unto a fast-approaching
hour.
I hovered at the mouth of the cave, listening for an hour
to the technically brilliant and lifeless songs of the bards.