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"Mother?" The quavering voice comes from a man old enough to be a father and grandfather in his own right, his snow white hair belied by an upright posture that bespeaks strength of character and an unwillingness to bow to the dictates of time. "How are you?"
Iolaire turned to her son with a smile. Four-score years sat lightly on her face, a thing streak of white in her red hair the only sign of the years that had changed her city, raised her children and stolen her wife from her. "A little better, now. This is what she wanted in the end." It had been a simple ceremony in the end, Roz's grandchildren gathered with their own spouses and children to witness her cremation.
"She was tired I think." Tobias said, stretching gently. "So many years, so many outbreaks of Blood Veil. Jane's death showed her that it was time."
"All things have their own time to die." Iolaire agreed, taking her elderly sons hand in her own. "We both know that all to well. But thank you for staying to check on your old mother. You always were a good boy Toby."
The old man blushed like a child at his mother's praise. "Thanks to you and Mama Roz, Mother. You both taught me how to be a good man."
"And you've passed those lessons on well." Iolaire replied with a warm smile, both turning from the funeral pyre on the crown of the hill to watch the crowd at the base. One figure, almost ethereally thin, stood out amongst the group of artisans, bakers and workers in their finest clothes.
"Do you want to come down?" Tobias asked, taking his mother's slender hand in his own larger one. "Sylvie would like to speak to you I'm sure. Jasper has been asking about you too, he wants some more tips on how you forge those swords with the wave pattern in the center. He's obsessed, his poor mother and I never get to talk about the grandkids, just whatever we can tell him about your methods." He gave a dramatic sigh. "He'll drive this old man to his pyre soon."
Iolaire's eyes dimmed a little. "Don't say that Toby. You are the last of my children. Don't remind me." Silence fell, broken only by the dying crackles of the pyre behind them - sparks fading into the darkness. "Roz spoke so often about Pharasma. About the necessity of death to follow life and the proper cycle. She found her true calling there but she didn't have to live it. Doesn't have to live it." A slow tear trickled across a smooth cheek - skin as yet unblemished by two hundred years and more.
Tobias said nothing, the hurts suffered by the loss of his siblings deep and real for him too. Alice and Jasper, killed too young in an arson attack on Iolaire's old shop. Isabelle, who died thwarting an attack by a norgorberite assassin as the Queen Consort lay near death in the palace and Charles, who had died four years prior after a full and busy life of his own.
"What are you going to do now?" He asked instead, trying to lighten the mood. "There's a wake planned at the shop. Most of the district have brought food. Everyone loved Mama. They'll want to see you."
"They'll want to see you." Iolaire replied, giving her son a gentle push. "You're the district elder, the respected one with devotees in the palace itself. Get going my son, stop hiding behind an old woman."
Tobias laughed, pressed a kiss into his mother's hair and started down the hill, only to turn around at the sound of Iolaire's voice. Honed reflexes lent him the speed to catch the object that came flying down to him on the wind - a cunningly wrought iron key.
"Give that to Jasper." His mother called. "The shop is his now. And tell him to get to know his forge well. Every inch of it. Then he might just uncover some of those secrets he's been after."
Finally alone Iolaire turned back to the embers of the pyre and the ash of her wife, now free. She traced a gentle finger through the remains until it caught on a thin chain. Pulling the trinket, unharmed by the flames, into her hand Iolaire raised it briefly to her lips.
"You were always a better person than me Roz." She whispered to the breeze. "You could forgive, forget, find the good in Sylvie and everything that came after. I don't have your strength. I can't let go. But I can do one last thing in your name." Her fist clenched tight around the last of Kazarvon's fangs, seeped with bile and dark power enough to curse the mightiest of beings. Even a goddess, should it reach her heart at the tip of a black-fletched arrow...
When Tobias reached the bottom of the hill he threw a last glance up before his family engulfed him in warmth and love. No-one stood at the top of the hill but a familiar tune whispered on the wind.
Do you hear the people sing
Singing their song into the night?
It is the music of a people
Who were born into the light.
For my love has left the earth
but there is a flame that never dies
Held deep within my heart
As the arrow flies!