Alba's death heralded the darkest days in Lo's long and turbulent history. Blood flowed freely in the streets, gelling and clotting in great stagnant pools. Mothers and fathers set fire to the cradles where slept their pale-haired babies, or drowned their tiny sleeping bodies in slimy wooden cisterns; dark-eyed husbands ran through their Stranger wives and children with stakes and swords, or throttled them outright on the streets for all to see. Homes burned, throats slit, all love and compassion forgotten and torn asunder in the wake of the Strangers' betrayal.
No babe, no man, no woman of Stranger heritage was allowed to escape alive. Some discarded their human bodies and tried to make it back to Mount Ornithon on a literal wing and a prayer, but arrows and Cullen Marst's fire-tube cut them down with the first glimmering of hope.
The pungent, acrid smells of burned flesh and singed feathers still hung over the Agris days after the last Stranger breathed her last breath. There was no celebrating this victory - too many lives, too many loves had been lost, and too many tears had been shed for the betrayal of family and friends.
Now only one Stranger remained, cooling his heels in the dungeon where guards threw him only snakes and rats and bats to eat. They gave him rancid water that smelled green and dank, and made him sick when he could no longer bear the thirst. He kicked their 'offerings' away with a shudder of revulsion as they laughed, taunting him.
"You don't like it? I thought you creatures couldn't resist a nice fat rodent!" a guard bellowed jovially from the hall.
Garreth said nothing, only turned his face to the wall in misery. In sleep he fought the sight of Alba's broken body; in waking, he could not escape the nightmare of Isolde's tears, her bloodied hands as they cradled his little daughter. He closed his eyes and thrust his fists against his ears when Lyta's screams rang all around, but he couldn't block out the sound.
Garreth's trial made for a short, bitter punch line. He'd had no defense, no one willing or by this time able to testify on his behalf - all his friends had either died or abandoned him when they discovered what he was.
All but Colm, who sat beneath the Chancellor's stern glare, and he dared not speak even a word in his defense.
Isolde had been inconsolable, unable to even look at him as the Chancellor pronounced the mocking court's sentence.
At last it ended, and Garreth bore the stamp of a condemned man. His execution loomed on the horizon like a single ghost-ship lost at sea. In three weeks - time enough for the moon to grow fat and jolly for his condemnation - he would die on the Agris before all of Lo.
He knew Chancellor Tamlyn punished him as much for Alba's death as for revealing his avian heritage. She disguised her persecutions well, using Lo's law as shield and shade, but she needn't have bothered - he did a fine job of punishing himself every moment of the day and night. He hoped that his lonely death would bring a sense of rightness back to her world, and to Isolde's.
He crossed his arms over his thin chest, trying to keep his heart from breaking. Isolde had forsaken him, in spite of all their loving days, in spite of the family they had made - and lost - together. He had loved her so deeply that every day, and the next beyond that, convinced him that he would happily die if only it could be within her reach.
"Don't look so glum, friend. Come sunrise, none of this will matter."
Garreth stared at the face leering through the iron bars. He squinted and sat up. "It's come already, then?"
The guard nodded, her brunette curls bobbing through the bars.
"It's not soon enough," he whispered.
"You might not think so if you knew what the Chancellor's got in store for you," she offered cheerfully.
"It's bound to be something superbly painful. We've got a wager going over whether you're to be burned at the stake, drowned, or beheaded. Knowing the Chancellor, she'll probably do all three and then display your bones on the Agris."
"Thank you for that." Sickened, he lay back down and covered his eyes and waited for sunrise.
Isolde sat at her window, pale and gaunt. The heavy smell of violets floated in on the wind, curling up and through her nostrils, bringing her to tears; however, the violets had little to do with the oceans of tears she shed daily.
She had little room and patience for thought, as the buzzing in her head had grown steadily louder over the past weeks. Her daughter dead, her son missing, probably murdered by the crazed people of Lo - her people, though she felt no kinship with them now.
Her husband imprisoned for... For what? Trying to save their daughter?
Idiot! She scolded herself, striking her temples with closed fists. You know why! You saw what he became! You saw Lyta in the window, watched as she pushed your baby from the tower... But he hadn't done it; he had tried to stop it the only way he knew how...
She rocked back and forth in her window seat, the buzzing so loud it had begun to vibrate behind her eyes. She wrung her hands until they cracked and fresh blood spilled onto her black mourning robes.
"Iffy."
She could not bring herself to turn around at the sound of her father's voice. He sounded weak and tired and old, so very old, that she could hardly imagine he had ever been young and happy. Instead she stayed still as the dead and let the tears fall one by one onto her stinging hands.
"Will you talk to me?" He came to sit at her side, his bones cracking and groaning as he took the floor beside her chair. She glanced at him briefly and saw how hollow his eyes were, how ancient and gray he had become in just this short time. She wondered, too, how she looked. Was she still young? She felt worn and used up as dust. Had it only been bare weeks since she had lost them all?
"I've never been much to you," he said, his voice cracking at the edges.
"To my shame, I've spent my years - your years - drunk as a tavern dog and hiding from your mother. I always thought it easier to sit back as she made and enforced the rules. This includes you." He reached out and touched her bleeding hand lightly. "I knew nothing about being a father. I still don't. But Iffy, I was a good Appa. And Garreth was a good son to me."
Isolde sobbed at the mention of his name. She tried to pull herself together, to keep her lip from trembling, but all for nothing.
"I've spent my life in your mother's shadow. She's made all the decisions. She's forged all the alliances, and meted and doled reward and retribution alike. But these...these horrors that have happened to our town, to our world since Alba..." He wiped his eyes across his sleeve.
Isolde glared at him. Was he drunk? Did he know what he was saying?
"History tells us how the owls stole Lo's children. How they killed one - Thene, the Chancellor's daughter. But what happened to the others, Isolde? What happened to all those children?
"I've thought a lot about it. I've been thinking about it constantly since we found out about the Strangers. I've not let myself drink for three weeks now because I wanted to stay clear and focused, and I think I've figured it out.
"Somewhere along the line, something mixed the bloodlines. A love spell some stray fairy tossed out, maybe. A hag's curse. A love spring, even. I'm more inclined to believe it was fairy mischief, judging from the irony of it all..."
Isolde scanned her father's eyes for some sense or clarity. To her horror, he was more sober than she'd ever seen him.
"They didn't come here to start a war, Isolde. Maybe some did - like that damned Lyta - but I think the rest of them were just...curious. They wanted to live among us. Rejoin society, maybe. Rejoin humanity. But if we had known what they were..."
"Mother would have had them all killed at the start. She would never have allowed them to stay here."
"And no one would have argued with her. Look at Lo, Isolde. Look at Festival, and at the temple. Our world - our history and culture - has been built on hatred and loathing of all things owlish. But if they were to slip in, to marry our sons and daughters, gain our trust and work at our sides..." He stopped and ran a trembling hand through his thinning hair.
"A lot of people have died. Some innocent, some not so, but no one cares enough to sort them out. I don't agree, Iffy. I don't agree at all. Your mother went too far. She was wrong to sentence them all to die."
He came around to face her, blocking the view of the smoky Agris she'd become so accustomed to in the past weeks. "I'm begging you to wake up, Iffy. You've already lost your children and if you don't get up and do something, you'll lose your husband at sunrise."
She broke then, wailing and sobbing into his shoulder. He patted her on the back, stroking her hair and shushing her as though she were still his little girl.
"I've lost everything," she said, burying her face in his neck.
He took her by the shoulders and smiled sadly, but reassuringly. "You haven't. Not yet."