Under Fallen Stars - Mel Odom [97]
"Do you know of Faenasuor?" Taareen asked.
"I've heard of it," Pacys replied. "The city was thought lost when Aryselmalyr was destroyed."
He had heard songs of the elven empire's destruction when an undersea plateau shoved up without warning from the sea bottom and killed nearly eighty thousand inhabitants. The city lay covered over at the bottom of the Sea of Fallen Stars for a thousand years, until it was excavated seventy years ago.
"I've never been there," Pacys said.
"No," Taareen replied. "As a culture, the sea elves are friendly enough to humans, but only relate to them when there is need."
"Doesn't sound much different than elves anywhere ye go," Khlinat offered.
"I wouldn't know. I've never left Seros." Taareen's eyes fell on Pacys's yarting. "May I?"
Pacys nodded, then rose and passed the yarting over.
The sea elf took it gratefully. His hands searched out the strings a little unconfidently, then he fit his fingers into the frets and stroked the strings. Music filled the campsite, and it was clear and true. After a moment, evidently feeling more at home with the instrument, Taareen lifted his voice in song.
The words were alien to Pacys's ears. He knew some of the elven dialects and languages, but this one wasn't familiar to him. Still, the emotion of the song was raw and throbbing, speaking of loss and redemption, of brighter days ahead. He finished quietly, but the words still echoed through the trees, vanishing the way the bright orange embers from the campfire did when they tried to touch the sky.
"That was beautiful," Pacys said.
"Aye," Khlinat said, tears glittering in his beard. "I've not had the pleasure of hearing the like before. Ye may be an elf, Elf, but ye have the heart of a dwarf."
Taareen bowed his head in thanks, then glanced up at Pacys. "That was your song, Bard Pacys. The song of the Taleweaver's arrival in Seros."
"You just composed that?" Pacys asked in astonishment.
"No. I've but mean skills, and songcrafting takes me a long time. That song is ancient," Taareen said. "It is one of the few things that was carried from Aryselmalyr when so much of our history was lost."
A feathery chill touched Pacys between the shoulder blades. "How could they know all those years ago?"
"How could they not?" Taareen asked. "The Taker existed thousands of years before that. Knowledge of him has not come to us only recently, as it has to you."
"You said you knew me by my song." The thought troubled Pacys. "Does that mean the song is not new as I thought it to be?" The possibility of him simply rewriting a song that had already been in existence ate at his confidence.
"No, your song is new," Taareen answered simply. "In our stories, it was said the Taleweaver would appear near reclaimed Faenasuor. Imagine the horror of those who lived then who realized that Faenasuor would first have to be lost in order to be reclaimed."
Pacys did, and the weight was staggering.
"When the empire was lost, it was believed that by leaving Faenasuor buried beneath the rubble the Taker wouldn't be allowed to return to the world." Taareen shook his head and his fingers began to pick out a soft, low tune on the yarting. "As if that would seal him in whatever limbo he'd been in."
"They realized in the end it was a false hope at best," Khlinat said.
"Yes, but the Taker wasn't the only reason they left Faenasuor buried. Part of it was because no one wanted to see what had been lost. They didn't want to remember. After a thousand years, the realization that if Faenasuor didn't exist, if the archives that were buried there weren't reclaimed, the Taleweaver would never be able to arrive there."
"But just hearing my song," Pacys said, "that couldn't be the only thing that led you to believe I was the one legend names as Taleweaver."
"Do you have your doubts about who you are?" Taareen asked.
Pacys thought about the question. To answer no was almost