Siren’s Song
Father’s song was never his.
The Bardic College at Regium gave me his notes. There a were several songs there, some known, several of his own works, some complete, some not. One drew the eye, though, or the ear. It seems one of the Grey Isles’ moors sang a sad tale, one that drew him, haunted him, and to some extent came to haunt me.
At first I didn’t understand. He was in love with an echo? I came to call the singer his paramoor. Still, the song was not one of love, but of sadness, a long and sundered sadness.
It was Desna that led me to the singer, over an unusual and mystic path. I have long danced my dances to the stars. This once and once only the dance ended far from where it began, a relatively short distance in space, but many years in time. How far in the past I am even now not sure, though I am guessing I visited the eventful time or my birth, Tiberius’s and Auld’s. I visited father’s last days, and spoke with a siren carrying a bauble that was a burden.
The sadness was for the siren’s daughter. Enchanted beings of her power bear children seldom, and form deep bonds when they do. In this case, the daughter had not the strength within her to bear immortality. The mother knew this, but never the less could not let her go. The Siren’s Song was a song of mourning for a love that was supposed to last forever. The song filled him, yet he couldn’t sing it properly, long though he tried.
The siren said this was because he was male. No male can feel the love a mother feels for a child. He was pretentious even to listen, let alone to try to sing it. If it is any consolation, there was at least one female that father never charmed. He ended up fleeing from her, splashing across the moor, losing his lute in the journey.
She told me where it lies. Someday I may try to retrieve it. Surely, a more glorious song is worth some mud and some wet?
But the siren left me a larger and more urgent quest. In her youth… Nay, when she was an avian equivalent of a toddler, she was fascinated by an earring. I can’t blame her. I have held the earring, and it fascinates me. Oh, does it fascinate me. The earring is part of a royal regalia. It is meant to be worn by a queen of fey, to attract, to draw a following, and to do other things. How could a mystical infant not be drawn to such a thing?
It is the queen’s action that surprised. She gave one earring to the little siren, separating the pair, rendering a major piece of the regalia useless.
How does one knows how great queens think? Still, the gift was given at a feast ending a conflict between elves and sirens. For many centuries the alliance that grew from said peace has held, and not because of a royal beguilement. It held out of a true trust, so much more real than a spell trust. The infant grew up, became a mother, the mother who watched her daughter slowly die.
I may have been the last to speak to her. Desna brought me to her as her time of mourning neared completeness, when all that was left was her death. I was given the earring, and asked to return it to its owners. I was told it should be freely given.
As I danced my way to the past, I danced my way home. I’d like to claim some credit for the dance. I couldn’t begin to repeat it. I am no mistress of time. I found myself back on the beach, enchanted by a gem and a bit of twisted metal.
Why to people think I’m a questing beast? Sink that pirate ship! Slay the fey-demon! Free the shrine! The thing was useless, and likely priceless. If I happened to be of the correct royal blood, and I happened to have the other one as well, perhaps then I could rule with grace and wisdom. If if if if if. So, the quest was to get rid of the thing, the sooner the better, but with respect to the siren, the queen, and the daughter.
If there was one consolation, it was useful in sedating small fey. Littlefey was eager to stare at it four hours, half tranced, half high and half dizzy. (I must admit not being much better, perhaps a third tranced, a third high, a third dizzy.)
Fortunately, I had two possible paths to getting rid of the thing. First, there was a group of elves on the island, wandering the wild near Gris, stumbling into various types of trouble. In our travels, we had encountered the remnants of their gear, their corpses, and one survivor. They seemed to be looking for something. I guessed it was the earring they were pursuing. If so, perhaps I would not have to sail three of the seven seas in order to get The Thing home.
Second, I had a story staff, a piece of gear the elves had lost in one of their skirmishes. I don’t know, perhaps it was as old as the earrings, but it wrote upon itself the earring’s story. Alas, it wrote upon itself in an archaic script. While Tiberius and I attempted translation, the work was never complete and never entirely certain.
Never the less, the last bit of the staff’s prophecy (or preemptive history) seemed real enough. An elf maiden was to be given the earring by the siren. She would encounter three elves. One would try to take the earring. One would try to kill her for the earring. The third was the proper keeper of the earring, the one who should properly bear it.
OK. Wonderful. Why couldn’t that somebody try to kill Auld? I mean, he’s built for that sort of thing. He’e be all enthusiastic about trying to return the favor. Why me?
But that sort of doom wasn’t to be passed away so easily. Promptly enough, one came to take the earring, a sorceress, a potent one by local standards, who stole the staff easily enough, though not the earring. I went into pursuit, chasing down the staff stealer in a mild comedy of errors. I thought I was pursuing though darkness and wild a friend turned thief. He turned out to be a kidnapping victim, so I rescued him instead of accusing him. Anyway, I never had to confront the sorceress. Auld and Tiberius were so certain that she was an agent sent by the old legate that they confronted her for me. She teleported away in frustration rather than try to explain that she was pursuing an entirely different nefarious plot.
I almost didn’t have the heart to explain it to Auld and Tiberius.
With the one trying to take the ear ring gone, that left the one who would try to kill me for it. No sweat. I would just be full time fearful and paranoid. I checked for him hiding behind the nearest tree, then cautiously approached the next nearest tree…
But it turned into me going to him rather than him to me. We knew the elves had landed near Cranberry. This was one of several reasons to visit Cranberry. Of course, we learned our fathers had been there before us, and got to see the small cage where the grey witch had imprisoned them. The hobbits thought this funny. They had liked our fathers, but seemingly liked the grey witch more.
We learned a bit more of the witch’s tale. There had been a power play in Regium at the time the witches were defeated. We had heard the version of the tale the victors had gotten to write. The witches might not have been quite so evil as we had heard. We learned Cranberry’s protectors, the witch and a powerful druid, had vanished about the same time as our fathers. We’ve begun to wonder if they all vanished trying to deal with the same threat.
We also returned to Cranberry’s church a well made lute made for a small one’s hands, and received a gift in return.
And we learned where the elves where, at the Red Shoals, a small island group a short sail away. Fine. The shoals were more or less on the way to Regium, which was our next stop. In the best of all possible worlds, I could return the ear ring and sail away before the guy looking to kill me could find me.
We also made preliminary plans for Cranberry and Gris to work together. Trade would be established and the road patrolled. The could call on us if they discovered a threat lurking in the woods. If funds needed to be raised for defense or trade, they might resume old tax traditions. Lord Auld mentioned being Warden of the Grey Marshes, but didn’t try to push great authority. He handled it as I thought he ought, providing aid in defense and in economic matters rather that seeking authority or tax gathering rights.
The hobbits of Cranberry seemed to be traditionalist. They remembered being part of a proper nation and seemed ready to return to that role.
Finally, it was decided that nasty dangerous tree branches overhanging the road between Gris and Cranberry, branches hanging at the height of an elf maiden riding a horse, must certainly be cut down. They provided a hazard to life and self respect that needed to be dealt with.
Very important.
Branches aside, we were off the the Red Shoals. We knew much about what was to come, but the tale the prophecy staff told was incomplete. It told of a modestly sized elf maiden carrying the ear ring. It did not mention a single thing about dragon turtles. Now, I would not say why they are called dragon turtles, except they are big like a dragon and hard like a turtle. Most impressive. Fortunately the one we met on the way to the Red Shoals was more chatty than hungry. He liked music and enchanted trinkets. He had no great fondness for pirates. The encounter turned quite mellow, and we persuaded him to provide aid should the elves on the Red Shoals require it. He did not, however, specify the precise nature of the aid. Otherwise, we might not have been quite so pleased with ourselves.
It turns out, the elves required aid.
We approached the shoals at dusk and observed a siege in progress. The pirates had a catapult mounted on their ship. The elves were defending an old tower. The catapult seemed to be winning. With the dragon turtle no where to be seen and the captain of our own ship not eager to sail in range of the catapult, we loaded a relief party in our small boat. Our quiet plan was to row quietly up to the pirate ship and quietly take out the catapult, then consider quietly moving inland to quietly break the siege.
The dragon turtle apparently doesn’t do “quietly”. He preferred quickly. As we approached the ship, the surf came up, and we found our plans speeding up considerably. Let’s just say that the reputed slowness of turtles is vastly exaggerated, or at least so it seems when one’s boat is suddenly out of the water, balancing on shell back. There was a great crash as we reached our intended destination, the starboard side of the pirate ship. There was a second slightly lesser crash as we reached the port side. There was then a splash as we reach the ocean again, a shallow part, the small gap between the pirate ship and the beach. The last crash seemed slightly less jarring than the prior three. We didn’t significantly damage the island.
And so the order was given. “To the rear…. charge!” Turtles. I figured that if we pretended that everything was going exactly as planned the pirates would be impressed. At least on the shore side of the ship, the pirates had left nice convenient gangplanks for us to storm up. There was some serious swordplay. We were less disoriented and confused than they, though not by a lot. Excepting the catapult engineer, their best men were attacking the castle. In short order we had ourselves a ship and a catapult.
We couldn’t resist playing with the catapult. We divided our meager forces, myself among a group moving quickly inland while several thought to lob a few stones inland before joining us. As it turned out, they did rather well with one of the three shots they got off. One stone landed squarely in the middle of the enemy’s left flank.
Somehow, perhaps because I am a little faster than the others, I was the first to reach the enemy rear. Where to go? The left had been catapulted. The center seemed to have their best people, including a cleric, a mage and a drow. The right seemed to have one swordsman who could afford better clothing than the rest, but was mostly ordinary seamen. I figured I wasn’t up to charging solo into their central command group, so I went right.
The rest of our merry gang seemingly decided I needed to be rescued. Everybody went right, following me, leaving their main body unengaged.
It worked. Sort of. Tiberius won a spell duel with their mage. We were able to significantly weaken their right flank before reinforcements came in from their center. They couldn’t seem to get through Lord Auld’s armor. With everyone clumped together, the catapult had no target. Thus, our detached catapult crew soon joined the melee. I resolved to cut down as many as I could while keeping my mouth shut.
I didn’t care for the prophecy that someone would try to kill me and take the ear ring. I had deduced that the drow was the one who had this role. In a true Great Tale I would announce that I had the ear ring, we would exchange dire words, then there would be a great sword duel decided by a final clever twist of a blade.
Fortunately this wasn’t a Great Tale. The drow seemed to be having as much trouble as every one else getting through Auld’s armor. Things seemed rather nice from my perspective with the drow blissfully ignorant of the ear ring’s location. I’m confident that one day I’ll have another opportunity to sing of a Great Tale, preferably one where someone else is the center of the prophecy and the swordplay.
It turned out to be the oracle’s prophecy, the leader of the elven band. While in the end we triumphed, it was not before the elven leader took an arrow that couldn’t be healed. The elven way seems different from the human. After a human triumph, there seems to be much great cheering, a feast, and perhaps they try to knock themselves off horses with sticks. We elves seem to shed tears as a great one dies. I was able to giver her the ear ring. My quest was complete. I told her the siren’s tale, and sang her the Siren’s Song.
Three deaths. The siren mother, the siren daughter and the elven oracle who had given the ear ring away ever so long ago. I had not thought to complete the Siren’s Song, or at least a lesser shadow of it that a lesser being might almost sing. Now I will have to. The prophecy staff crumbled to dust on the ear ring’s return. It can no longer tell that tale. I think I must.
The elves took custody of the drow, one of the few pirates that survived the battle. I thought briefly to gloat, to tell him how and why he failed. I wasn’t in the mood. Of what import was he? I had a song to write, to be set loose upon the world. This seemed more important than glory or taunting.
They gave me a blade, a blade that had been carried by one who had fallen. I suppose I must now do it honor. For now, though, it seems of less import than the ashes of prophecy and a song not yet sung.