Free Requiem for the Sun by Elizabeth Haydon

reached into the glowing water and touched the back of her neck, where the golden hair he had dreamed about for more than a thousand years hung in a silken fall. He drew Faron’s gnarled finger through the ripples in an awkward caress.
    Half a world away, she froze. A look of revulsion, or perhaps fear, washed the smile from her face, leaving it blank, pale. She glanced over her shoulder, then put her hand to her throat, as if shielding it from a bitter wind, or the maw of a wolf.
    His touch had made her recoil.
    Again.
    Whore, he whispered in his mind. Miserable, rutting whore.
    His anger exploded, causing Faron’s body to jerk and quiver with the physical manifestations of rage. With a furious sweep of his squamous hand he slapped the surface of the water, sending the scale spinning out of the pool and into the dank darkness of the catacomb.
    He breathed shallowly, trying to regain his focus.
    When reason returned, he closed his sky-blue eyes, concentrating on the metaphysical threads that bound him to Faron’s human form, loosing and retying them once more.
    As the demonic essence rushed back into the seneschal’s body, the withered mummy swelled with life again, the angry light returning to his dried-out eye sockets. Faron’s body, by contrast, grew supple and twisted again until it collapsed under its own weight.
    The seneschal breathed shallowly as he pulled his remaining fingers from the soft skull of his child, stanching the blood that dripped from the holes. Tenderly he gathered Faron, who wept silently, deformed mouth gasping at the edges, into his arms and caressed the wisps of hair, the quivering folds of skin, gently kissing the creature’s head.
    â€œI am sorry, Faron,” he whispered softly. “Forgive me.”
    When the creature’s soundless moans resolved into light panting, the seneschal cupped its face in his hand and turned it so that he was staring into its
eyes, now cloudy again, though still the same blue as his own.
    â€œI have wondrous news for you, Faron,” he said, stroking its flaccid cheeks with his fingers. “I am going on a long voyage, far across the sea —” He pressed his forefinger to the creature’s fused lips as panic came into its eyes.
    â€œAnd I am taking you with me.”

    T he dark staircase that led to the Baron of Argaut’s tower was built, except for the last few steps, of polished gray marble veined in black and white. The stairs, like the passageway itself, were narrow; the noise of footsteps ascending or descending was reduced to soft, ominous clicks instead of the echoing cadence that walking through the other corridors in the Hall of Virtue produced.
    At the top of the staircase the last few steps were hewn from blood coral, a stinging calcified sea plant — a living creature when in the sea, it was said — that formed poisonous reefs thousands of miles long near the Fiery Rim, many ocean leagues away. It blended with the marble of the steps, forming a deadly barrier to anyone not immune to the bite of fire, the sting of venom.
    The seneschal climbed the last stair and stopped before the black walnut door bound in steel. He knocked deferentially, then opened the door slowly.
    A rush of dank wind and consuming darkness greeted him.
    He stepped quickly into the chamber and closed the door behind him.
    â€œGood evening, m’lord,” he said.
    At first no sound replied except the skittering movements of mice and the flutter of bat wings in the eaves above.
    Then, deep within his brain, he heard the voice, words burning his mind like dark fire.
    Good evening.
    The seneschal cleared his throat, casting his eyes around the black tower room, the darkness impenetrable. “All is progressing well in Argaut. We had another successful day in the Judiciary.”
    Very good.
    He cleared his throat again. “I will be leaving tonight on an extended voyage. Is there anything m’lord requires before I