This is an original work, copyright 2003 Jada.
"I will see their Majesties."
"But... but, sir knight... The business of the court..."
Glowing blue-green eyes regarded the functionary before them briefly before turning back to the carved golden oak doors. "I will see their Majesties."
"You cannot! The protocol involved..."
"Is no concern of mine. I have news they will wish to hear. Now."
Muttering to himself, the small seneschal slipped through the doors. Faintly, the knight who waited without could hear muttered conversation. After a few moments, the seneschal's round brown face appeared. "They have consented to see you, sir knight. Might I know your name that you may be announced?"
"I need no such thing." He strode into the hall, long razor sharp spear slung over one shoulder. The weapon a pompous shoaling at the gates had tried to take from him. Only a belted knight was allowed to bear weapons at the High Court and the fool, being unfamiliar with his orders' colors, had challenged him.
The boy was currently under the care of the healers. A sharp rap on the head with the butt of his spear being sufficient chastisement.
The knight stopped at the end of the blood red moth-silk carpet. To the surprise of the more learned members of the court, he doffed his helm and knelt on one knee before the dais. The seafolk rarely extended such courtesies to the landbound.
"Majesties," he spoke in the odd resonant tones of the seafolk, "The Hunter is dead."
A whispered murmur raced through the galleries, hushed when the woman on the throne spoke. "Thou art sure of this, sir knight?"
"Positive, my Lady. My knights found his body swept to our borders. His arms, his heraldry, what remained of his features, it was the Hunter."
"We see... And his shell?"
"Is cairned in the deeps, my Lady. Though he served the Christ and fought with iron, still, he slew many a Mad One. And those that saw him spoke only of a man driven by his fate."
She regarded the kneeling figure thoughtfully. Young by the Folk's measure, with the milk pale skin of the seafolk who never saw the sun. Burnished copper hair, freed by the helm's removal, flowed over his shoulders and the copper-green plates of his scale shirt. The shirt reached midthigh, leaving the long legs bared and he was unshod as all seafolk were. In all, the proper picture of a seafolk knight, save only the faintest tint of blue to his skin and his unusual height.
"Might we know the name of one that has brought such tidings?"
He looked up then, daring to meet the eyes of the shining figures before him as few landbound would.
"I hight Sir Kaelin, Majesties. Knight of the Cetaci, son of Sir Alaric Wavebinder and Lady Branwyn Jotunchild."
"An impressive heritage, Sir Kaelin, if an unusual one."
He drew himself up proudly at that. "Twas chance that my lady mother found a home with the seafolk and we were made richer for it."
The Queen shared a glance with her King then and turned back. "Our thanks for these tidings, Sir Kaelin. The Hunter, though no friend of the Folk, was in some way an unwitting ally. Still his passing is somewhat a relief, knowing that his masters bore no love for our people. Go in peace, Sir Kaelin."
He rose then, bowed and spun upon a heel, marching out of the hall. He met the small band of his knights left outside the palace gates and they turned as one to Avalon's sea cliffs.
A long plummet down the rocky cliffs ended with the cold shock of home. Gratefully, he and the others shed their clumsy landbound forms. With a flick of smooth skinned tails, they made haste for the depths.
***
Some time later found the knight at the Cairns, approaching the master stonewright. /It is almost finished then?/ he asked.
/Only a touch or two remains, my lord. It shall be completed before daytide./
/My thanks, master mason./ he said, floating close to the almost completely statue. It would join those adorning the cairns of their own brave knights, enchanted to resist the ravagement of the currents. It had taken much glamour to produce an image that the mason could work with. They'd wanted something heroic and noble. In the end, Sir Kaelin had selected the image.
The stone knight stood, clad in chain and surcoat with his blade resting wearily across a shoulder plate. The fine-boned face was still beautiful but the eyes were empty and pain-shadowed. That was the Hunter.
He rested his fingers on the stone cheek, cold even to those whom the iciness of the depths was meaningless, and wondered briefly.
What drove this cold mortal? Was it faith in his god that made him hurl himself against the darkness? Was it despair that stayed his hand from killing the pale darkling he was seen with now and then?
For the first time, he wondered what it would have been like to fight alongside another under the sun, And wondered why the red, sweet-scented landfolk flowers suddenly came to mind.
It was over.
For centuries the debate had raged, was it the Folk that inspired humans or did human belief sustain the Folk? Now it seemed the debate had been settled. The end had begun with the followers of the One God. It was finished by the god humans called Science.
The very old, those so steeped in the glamour of the deeps that they could no longer take landbound form, were the first to die. They, and those who were not truly of the seafolk. Many elders simply dissolved into foam as the seafolk sometimes did. The others... perhaps it was cowardly of him but he was glad to have not borne witness to his mother's end. To see the glamour fail, to see her crushed in an instant, would have been his undoing.
The very young were next, the laughing shoalings who darted through their city like little minnows, who should have stayed children for decades of mortal time. Their city was dying as well, the enchantment protecting the little coral builders fading, leaving them to die in the cold northern waters.
If he chanced to look he could see the graceful towers crumbling, eroding away under the relentless currents. Some few of the seafolk had fled, joining their selkie cousins above the waves. It was a pitiful half existence, he knew, doomed to a landbound life, intolerable to one who had embraced the deeps.
He turned from the crumbling ruin that was once the shining jewel of the seas. He was so very tired these days, feeling the weight of disbelief pressing on them all. So many others had perished, his loyal knights, his parents and friends... Perhaps someday, if the humans believed, the Folk would thrive again. For now, in this moment, belief was unreachable as the stars.
With weary strokes he turned towards the Cairns. If his time was near, he would join the best and bravest of company. The mounds for the newly dead were small, the work of but one pair of hands. For those who left no shell behind, there was still a monument to their names.
The litany of names, whispered one by one, trailed after him, the only honor he could give. There had been too many to mark alone and the other seafolk feared to come as though death were a disease that could be spread.
It would be soon for him. Even now, he could feel the sleek, smooth tailskin roughening, see the pale strands in current tossed hair.
Soon...
He would go, he decided, go to the mortal Hunter's cairn. He had believed. His god forbade the Folk's existence but he believed. He had needed to, to fight the horrors.
Kaelin made his slow way to the statue. It was still whole, made of sterner stuff than their home. His fingers traced the unmoving features again. He had been very beautiful for a human and the colors, what were they called?
Sunset... that was right, sunset hair and twilight eyes, Kaelin had seen a sunset once, centuries ago, when barely more than a shoaling himself. A nighttide... no, an evening spent with a lovely selkie lass and a pretty satyr lad. They'd watched the sunset together...
So strange... to feel so light and heavy all at once. He ignored the tingling as strands of bubbles formed in his hair. He looked instead to the Hunter's face, such weariness there, heavier than the seas pressing down.
Could blaze and waves have met?
He sank down, curling at the base of the monument. This was how it would end, with nothing to mark that Sir Kaelin, Knight of the Cetaci, son of Alaric and Branwyn, had ever been. But then, none remembered the Knight save the seafolk and perhaps one other.
/Very well then, my friend./ Kaelin thought, wrapping himself around the still form. /I shall carry thy memory with me, to whatever rest is granted to my people. And remember always.../
And for a moment, the statue was clothed in a shimmering robe of foam, dispersed soon through the seas...
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