“What is it?” Nikos asked Akahli. His friend knelt beside the figure sprawled across the path, forcing his two companions to halt.

“Shuen,” Akahli replied.

“Shuen?” Nikos’s voice rose in amazement.

Akahli sat back on his heels and looked up at the bard. “Definitely.”

“Never seen one,” Nikos admitted. “Never been that close to the sea.”

Akahli nodded vaguely, his eyes troubled. “Journeyed north a couple of years back. You can’t miss them when you have to cross the water.”

They both studied the sprawled figure lying beside the path. It was wearing very little, and its bone structure showed clearly through its bronzed skin. Its eyes were abnormally large, the face strangely empty without a nose. A slight bruise on its smooth head betrayed the part of its body that landed first when it finally collapsed.

“So what is it doing here?” Shuen lived at sea, rarely venturing ashore and never out of sight of the water.

“It’s cursed,” Gwynhaefar had been standing silently behind them while they examined the shuen.

Nikos shuddered. The word sent echoes through the music in his soul, struck chords of memory.

Akahli sighed. Understanding glimmered in his brown eyes, which, more often now, were blue.

“Shall we leave it?” Nikos knew already the sorrow this would cause the Ainghid Fas.

“No,” Gwyn said as she touched Nikos’s hand briefly in thanks for his unspoken concern. Her words were firm. “The shuen needs help. Bring him.”

Her two companions exchanged nervous glances. Nikos bent to help Akahli lift the unconscious figure–not a simple task, as it easily dwarfed both of them. Luckily it showed no signs of rousing as they manhandled it towards the inn.

---

The Bear’s Head was small and relatively empty. This close to the Suricles Mountains, villages were few and sparsely populated. The Thilans did not care to live so close to the double threat of bandit and giant, not to mention the recent tales seeping from nearby Burnaumen.

The innkeeper’s eyes lingered on the distinctive shape of Nikos’s harp case as he entered. The bard could expect a demanding crowd tonight. The prospect of harp music and the old tales would bring most out, however dark the night.

“Can we have a room?” Gwyn asked. “We have a friend who needs rest.”

The innkeeper rose from his crouch before the fireplace, wiping his hands on an already dirty apron. He was almost as wide as he was tall, with what was left of his white hair close cropped to match his short beard.  His eyes widened at the slim features of the Fae woman. “Yes, out the back,” he said with a quick nod. Nikos couldn’t miss the disappointment in the man’s voice, though the jovial features retained most of their smile.

“I will play for you once I have eaten,” he assured their host, who regained his humor, “but we would like to help our…friend first.” He wished–a frequent regret–that Gwyn’s heart was smaller, her compassion not so immediate.

The few individuals already seated at the short bar watched the strange procession with mild interest. Most seemed more interested in the bard’s harp than the unconscious shuen. Nikos wondered briefly whether the tales of strange events from Burnaumen would be added to retellings of that evening–stories of a giant, unconscious sea-man being found in the mountains.

They were shown past the end of the bar and a door which obviously led to the kitchen. Mouth-watering smells of roasting meat wafted out to them as they passed, reminding Nikos that it had been a long day of walking on an early breakfast. The innkeeper pushed open the next door along and ushered them in, then scurried off to arrange food and–most probably–spread the news of the bard’s arrival.

They laid the shuen on one of the beds in the large room at the rear of the inn. He showed no signs of recovery, his copper skin muddy and dull. Nikos stared at the still form in concern.

“Should we try to wake…” he paused, “him or her?”

“Him.” Akahli joined Nikos by the bed. “Leave him to rest. Let us eat and play, and then we can see.”

“The music?”

“May help. Try later.”

---

The inn filled to hear a young, white-haired harper sing the ancient tales of Baeg Tobar. Nikos sang alone. Akahli stayed with the unconscious shuen, and Gwyn rarely came to hear him play when he performed for others these days. He gave them tales of eastern Thila and its defiance against the threats from the Pilean Empire and, later, tales of romance and hope from those who’d built new lives in the south end of the continent.

At the end of a long evening, Nikos closed with the Ballad of Kivid’s Rest. It was the tale of the eashue, a group of shuen forever banished from the sea and left to search for a new home among the land dwellers. It seemed appropriate after having found the shuen. Its sorrow touched the listeners with deep longing, filling their hearts with the dream of a place to belong in all the wild, ocean-less spaces of the world. The harp twined in mournful harmony about the softly spoken words, but it was the music in Nikos’ voice that spoke to the heart and drew forth tears.

“Gifted by the marii,” said one listener.

“A note on the World Song,” agreed another.

Neither knew how close they came to truth. Nikos was gifted indeed, but his was a prize hard won–a ballad written by the songless Fae.

Nikos let it finish with sorrow, sending them home on a tale of loss so that they might better value the joy of their lives. And if some were caught by the deeper pain and found, upon looking, that they also had no place of the heart, then a bard could not answer for the questions his stories raised in another’s soul.

---

The shuen stirred when the harper returned from the bar. The creature sat up on the bed, his arms hugging his knees. He glanced at Nikos with curiosity as the bard placed his harp back in its case.

“You enhanced the last one,” Akahli said with a slight smile–not a question.

“I hoped it would get through.”

“It did.” Gwynhaefar sat on another of the single beds, her cloak wrapped tightly round her despite the warmth of the fire. She had drawn her knees up to her chest, mirroring the shuen’s sad, nervous pose.

Nikos perched on the edge of the shuen’s bed. “I am Nikos. This is Akahli, and that’s Gwyn,” he explained gently, the music still soft in his voice. “Would you give us your name?” He kept himself still and confident, as if dealing with a frightened animal.

“I have no name.” The words were stiff and mangled.

“Ushu,” Gwyn said, also speaking softly. “The shuen speak Ushu.”

Nikos sighed but Akahli disagreed. “They learn enough of the local tongues to trade. He should be able to tell us his name.”

“I have no name,” the shuen reiterated harshly, his voice slightly clearer. “I am Riku Chou now. I deserve no name.”

The three companions exchanged concerned glances.

“We need to call you something,” Nikos said.

“Kivid,” Akahli suggested, his thoughts doubtless on the lament Nikos had so recently finished.

“All right,” Nikos said with a nod, “Kivid. Can we call you that for now?”

The shuen’s dark green eyes stared back at him without emotion. “I will answer to it,” he said a few moments later. “I care not.”

“Can you tell us what happened to you, Kivid?” Nikos wasn’t sure the shuen had enough language to explain.

“I am Riku Chou,” he said impatiently. The soul-numbing despair in that simple sentence wasn’t something the harper knew how to encompass without music.

“Cursed to be land-locked,” Gwyn said, her voice barely a whisper. “Removed from the sea, marooned upon land.”

“The fate of the eashue,” Akahli agreed. “You sang more truly than you knew.”

The shuen flinched at Akahli’s words as if from a blow and turned his head to the wall.

---

Early the next morning Nikos and Akahli took a stroll through the village to check their path south. It had been a year since either of them had travelled the central regions, and the journey was not without its dangers-even for a bard and a man with Akahli’s mah’saiid heritage.

“What do we do about the shuen?” Nikos had been pondering the problem all night.

“Kivid,” Akahli reminded him–names mattered.

“Mmm, why has he come so far? There are places on the Ururo Bay which would take him in, where he could find others who have left the sea.”

“Sometimes the curses of the Osei Xio can be harsh indeed,” Akahli warned. “The hex placed upon the eashue is not used without cause. He could be dangerous.” Akahli spoke with the certainty of one who had travelled the sea and seen the floating cities at first hand.

“Equally, he may not be.” Nikos stopped walking and turned to his friend. “I sing the tales of the Osei Xio priests and their sea worship. I know what they can do.”

“So what would you have us do?”

Nikos walked on in silence for a while then stopped again and sighed. “Gwyn? This is something she shouldn’t handle.”

Akahli shook his head. “I agree, my friend. Here she cannot help.”

“She will try.”

“She will.”

They began to retrace their steps, neither of them happy or resolved upon a course, neither willing to commit to the shuen’s strange request.

“I need to come south with you,” he had explained haltingly in the deep watches of the night when it became clear to him where they were going. “You have to make sure I continue. I cannot do it alone.”

He had not explained where he needed to go so desperately, so far from the sea.

---

Kivid had recovered some of his composure when they returned. Gwyn sat holding his hand as they talked, offering sympathy and release.

“What have you done?” Nikos’ voice came out harsher than he intended, but his love for her ran deep.

Akahli touched his friend’s shoulder, but the Ainghid’Fas woman took no offence. “I took some of his pain, nothing more.”

“The curse?” Nikos asked quickly.

“I need his agreement, Nikos, you know that.” She was gently amused by his concern. It was an old argument–an old grief. “Besides, I would not do anything here.”

“I feel better,” the shuen said, “able to continue.”

“Continue where?” Akahli asked. “Where do you need to go?”

Kivid’s green eyes darkened in concern. “But I thought you knew. You sang of it for me–I saw it in your words.”

“Sang?” Nikos suddenly realized what he meant. “Kivid’s Rest? You want to go there?”

“There is nowhere else.”

“But I sang the legend, not…” Nikos looked to Akahli for support, but the Shuen would not be dissuaded.

“You can take me there,” he said firmly. “I know this.”

“You have no idea what you ask.” Nikos sat opposite the shuen. “The distances from here are impossible.”

“I have to go. There I can find a home.”

“There are other places, closer. The lakes of the Shoro or Bazul. There is much water inland.”

Nothing they could say would shake his faith or turn him aside. With a hunger born of desperation, his soul thirsted after Kivid’s Rest and a home for one left homeless. The best they could get was a compromise; that they would take him to the nearest water they knew and he could rest there.

So they departed the village, four where there had been three, and grief a constant companion. They would journey inland, each step an extra burden along the way.

End of part one.