Farthest Reach

EPILOGUE

It was a peaceful spot, a grassy sward high on a hillside, with the cool waters of Lake Sember glinting through the trees a short distance below. The wind sighed in the treetops, and the forest creaked, rustled, and breathed around Fflar, warm and alive with the summer. Insects buzzed and chirped in the noontime sun, and lances of golden daylight splashed the forest floor through hidden gaps in the canopy overhead.

At his feet a smooth stone marker showed the place where Sorenna’s spirit had been burned free of its mortal frame, five hundred years ago. She had outlived him by a century and a half, it seemed, there in the restful forests of Semberholme. Still, that was too young, was it not? She would have been a little more than two hundred years in age, with centuries ahead of her still.

Someone might have known her here, he thought. A few of the older moon elves who lingered in Cormanthor after the Elven Court Retreated. I hope it was a peaceful life. So much strife befell our city in the last decades, so much horror in the years of war. It would please me to think that she passed the rest of her days in peace. If I bought her a hundred years of life in Semberholme by spending my last days fighting on without hope, I would count it a bargain.

Fflar’s eyes strayed to the marker beside Sorenna’s stone, and he felt his heart break for the hundredth time that day. It was not his son. That would have been hard, but he would have been content that his child had lived with his wife even for a short time in Semberholme. But there was nothing there for Arafel, and he could only guess that their son had gone on to live out his days in some other place. He hoped so, anyway.

The second marker in the glade was the stone for Sorenna’s husband, Ildrethor. He laughed softly at himself, even as tears gathered in his eyes.

“I would have told her not to mourn me,” he said to the clearing. “I would not have wanted her to be alone for the rest of her days. But now I see that I wouldn’t have meant it.”

The strange thing was, he could almost remember a glimpse of Arvandor in his heart. He had been with her there, hadn’t he? And he had not known jealousy, or resentment, or anything other than love in the eternal glades of the Elvenhome… or had he?

He looked up into the daylight streaming down through the trees, and his tears ran freely.

“Is that why I came back?” he asked. “Is this the thing I am supposed to make right, Corellon? I am a warrior. That is all. Why have you done this to me?”

He stood there for a long time, trying to make sense out of something so strange, so bittersweet and sorrowful that he could not begin to fold it within his heart. But after a time his heart did not ache so much, and the sunlight on his face felt warm and good.

He looked down at the stone markers again, and he understood that his former life was no more. He had been given a new one, and he could not use it to live the old, could he? Not after six hundred years.

With a sigh, Fflar turned his back on the silent stones. The Crusade, battered and bloodied but still intact, was encamped not far off, and he would be missed before much longer. He picked up Keryvian and slung it over his shoulder, and he left Sorenna’s glade forever.