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. Arion's song
had marked my grandfather as a traitor, but it had preserved
the land, for what bandit or goblin would care to invade a
fire-blasted country? Orestes's song had rescued Alecto's
name, at the price of flame and ruin and his own life. So
when Arion's song returned again, I was ready to hear it, to
commit it to memory, to wander these caves until I
recovered the light, the fresh air, the vellum or hide on
which to write the lines that would save my father's line,
my line.
It did return, and I remembered each word, with a
memory half trained in the listening, half inherited from a
father with bardic gifts. For the first time in a long while,
perhaps the first time ever, I was thankful for who he was,
and I praised the gifts Orestes had passed on to me.
And then, with a whisper that drowned out all other
voices, at once the beast spoke. It was a dragon!
So HE HAS SENT ANOTHER FROM UP IN THE
LIGHT... O MOST WELCOME . . . THE STRUGGLE IS
OVER IS OVER . . . REST THERE REST... NO
CONTINUING ... NO ... NO ...
Oh. And it seemed not at all strange now to fall to the
monster without struggle or issue, to rid myself of the
shifting past and the curse of these scars and their burning,
and to rid all above me of the land's torture . . .
So I stood there, ridiculously clutching pen and ink,
and though it was already darker than I could imagine
darkness to be, I closed my eyes, and the alien heat
engulfed me, and with it the evil smell of rust and offal and old
blood
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