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. Three
times I heard "Song of the Rending" - once from a minstrel
in Solace, again in the city of Haven from a seedy,
unraveled bard who had forgotten entire passages about the
collapse of Istar, whereby his singing lost its sense, and
finally from a blind juggler wandering the depths of the
plains, whose version was wild and comical, a better story
by far than Arion's.
The minstrel and the juggler repeated Father's altered
lines word for word. But the juggler recited them with a
curious look, as though he was remembering words contrary
to those he was speaking. Although I asked him and asked
him again about it, he would tell me nothing. Faced with his
silence, I began to believe I had imagined his discomfort,
that it was only my hope and dreaming that had expected to
find the missing lines.
And so, back across the straits I sailed, in the summer
of my sixteenth year, and again the ferryman called me
Fire-bringer, cursing me and spitting at me as he took my
money.
On Solamnic shores once more, I started for home, but
discovered that no village would shelter me on the journey.
"Firebringer," they called me, and "Orestes the Torch,"
meeting me on the outskirts of the hamlets with torches of
their own, with stones and rakes and long peninsular knives.
Some even pursued me, shouting that the fires would
die with the one who brought them. Like the ferryman, like
Finn, they thought I was my father.
*****
To the north lay the great Solamnic castles - Vingaard and
Dargaard, Brightblade and Thelgaard and DiCaela
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