For a time Ishkinil sat upon the stone steps, Dirgesinger resting across her knees, beside the body of her fallen companion, resting to recover her strength after her ordeal. Once more silence had fallen upon the city, though now a faint wind touched the night’s air, carried in across the wastes that had been the Inner Sea, carrying with them hints of sand and dust. Stars shone brought in the cloudless sky and the sliver of the moon had risen high, dusting the silent buildings and plaza with its pale glow. The raven perched nearby, upon a rocky protrusion on the hill upon which the White Citadel had been built, where the stairs had been carved into it.
“It is done,” she repeated once more after a long period of quiet. The raven tilted its head this way and that, turning to gaze at her first with one white eye and then the other. “The darkness is lifting. I can feel it in my very bones, the return of life where once there was unnatural death.”
Slow she rose to her feet, aches and pains resting still upon her. Dirgesinger slide home into its sheath, the inner flame fading from it. She stood above the fallen winged-ape, looking down on its now still form. With its eyes closed, it looked almost as if it was at peace, the pains of its life no more.
“I could not have ended this without its help,” she said. “Noble it died, so that I could do what needed to be done. Greatly it suffered in life, yet Enkurgil will take it into his embrace, that it may know peace there, the travails of the world having come to an end.”
She began to clear away the bodies that had piled up around the base of the steps, removing those that had fallen upon the winged-ape and clearing a path through them. Each was laid out alongside each other, yet more innocent victims of the darkness that had befallen Iskor Yar. When space had been cleared, she started to move the winged-ape, to drag it away and prepare it for its eternal rest. She could not leave it there, not after all that it had done.
Near to where she had burned the corpse of Nakhurena, she laid it to rest in one of the dead gardens. Her arms ached from the effort, for it was a heavy burden to move. Laying it out, it arms folded upon its chest, she began to gather up fallen wood from the dead trees that had once grown across the plaza. High she piled them around and atop the body, and higher still so that it reached above her head. When the pyre was lit, it would blaze with such brightness in the night, a suitable remembrance for such a one as she honoured. Unknown they might have been, but she would honour it in a manner worthy of the greatest of men and kings.
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When at last she was done, she took up Dirgesinger and with the flames within it, she set it ablaze, the dried wood catching easily alight. She stepped back, watching the flames take, licking the wood and growing ever higher. Sparks danced up into the air, drifting ever higher and she felt the growing heat upon her face.
As the fires burned, she began to sing, a dirge of mourning for the fallen, a song of loss and of honour, of wonder and regret. In this she sang not alone, for the raven took up the song as well, a croaking of melancholy notes. Another voice too added to theirs, one as deep and sonorous as death, for Dirgesinger too took up the song.
Seldom did it do so, and only in times of great respect. In battle it croons were wordless, and never it simply spoke, but on rare occasion n honour of the dead it would give words to the dirge. Well named it was, for the dirge it added went deeper than the one given voice by Ishkinil, a dirge forged in the halls of Enkurgil who alone truly understood death and loss.
Long they sung until the fires burned low again. No more would the winged-ape fly above Iskor Yar. Forgotten by all it might be, but for Enkurgil and Ishkinil and so she sang on, in remembrance, in honour. Still she sang on as the fires reduce to coals, until a stirring began within them. They were pushed aside in the heart of the fire, and a bright spark rose from out of it, white hot, brilliant as a diamond shimmering in the light of the sun. It hung there above the pyre before a great hand reached out from the void and gently grasped it, drawing it in an away, Enkurgil taking the spirit of the fallen to his halls.
Ishkinil bowed her head, her song ending. Much the great beast had suffered in life and yet still it had sacrificed itself for a world uncaring. Its name remained unknown, its origins and its suffering, and none but she would know of its fate. Yet in the halls of Enkurgil it would not be so. There it would be known, and remembered, as all who Enkurgil gathered up were.
“It is time that we left this place,” Ishkinil sad. “We have done what we can for it, aye, and paid a heavy price for it in so doing Iskor Yar must stand now on its own, and if it shows but half the courage of our fallen friend then it shall be well. They know not what it did for them, but we shall remember, for it has shown what it means to be alive, to be human, despite all the savageries that ir received at the hands of men.”
Then spoke the raven, and his were the words of foresight, of one who could at times push aside the veil of time, to see what would be. “Legends will remain, and this will be so, that those that yet live will long speak of the winged shadow over Iskor Yar, and in time come to venerate it as guardian and protector.”
Ishkinil nodded with satisfaction, for when thus spoke the raven, its word came not from it alone, but as words of what was to be
Then did she depart, leaving the city behind her, but graven in her heart for ever more was the memory of the winged shadow that had flown over Iskor Yar.