Throughout the city, lights were kindled. Tiny glass lights, smaller than a woman’s fist, burning without smoke. The Rivenlost placed them in fretted lamps; hung from doorways, in windows, on bridges, carried by hand. A thousand points of light shone throughout the city, as though Arahila the Fair had cast a net of stars over Meronil. And as the lamps were kindled, Ellylon voices were raised in song.

She had been right, it was a city meant for music. The sound was inhumanly beautiful. A thousand voices, each one as clear and true as a bell. Lilias rested her chin on one hand and listened. She was not alone. Even the Eagles of Meronil ceased their vigilant circling and settled on the rooftops to listen, folding their wings.

A city of Men would have sung war songs. Not the Ellylon. These were laments, songs of loss and mourning, songs of remembrance of passing glory. From each quarter of Meronil, a different song arose; and yet, somehow, they formed a vast and complex harmony. One melody answered another in a deep, resonant antiphony; the simple refrain of a third wound between the two, stitching them together and making them part of the whole. A fourth melody soared above the rest, a heartbreaking descant.

“And Haomane asks us not to envy them,” Lilias whispered.

One by one, the melodies died and faded into silence. In the lucid stillness that followed, she saw the first barge glide onto the Aven River and understood. The Pelmaran delegates had brought more than a pledge of aid in the coming war. Traveling in the wake of Aracus and his swiftmoving vanguard, they had come more slowly, bearing wagons in their train. They had brought home the casualties of the last war, the Ellylon dead of Beshtanag.

There were only nine of them. The Host of the Rivenlost was a small company, but a doughty one. They had fought bravely. Only two had been slain by her Beshtanagi wardsmen. Their faces were uncovered, and even from her tower chamber, Lilias could see that they were as serene and beautiful in death as they had been in life. The bodies of the Ellylon did not wither and rot with mortality as did those of Men.

Three barges, three dead to a barge. A single lamp hung from the prow of each vessel, their light gleaming on the water. The barges glided on a river of stars, moved by no visible hand. The bodies of the nine lay motionless. Seven of them were draped in silken shrouds, their forms hidden, their faces covered.

Those would be the ones Calandor had slain with fire.

Alone at her window, Lilias shuddered. “Why couldn’t you just leave us alone?” she whispered, knowing it was a futile question, at once false and true. They had come to Beshtanag because she had lured them there. The reason did not alter their deaths.