e had been a difficult man. Isida could vouch for it everyday. She sat on her chair and watched him in the fading twilight; a certain slackness had stolen over his features. The little wren had snuggled into his hand at his side. An hour ago she thought the bird had been sleeping, but now its head drooped to the side, its eyes open and observing nothing of the physical world. So went the servant, surely so would follow the master. It was a matter of time now as the curse spread from limbs to heart and lungs. It had been coming for some time now, and no poppy and no prayer could stop it.

“Jael?”

He didn’t respond nor had she expected him to respond. He had not spoken for two days now and the pain wracked him in his dreams and waking hours. There was nothing she could do for him. Alone in her cell or at temple in prayers she had stormed for him, angry with the gods for condoning his torment. What he had done wrong he had done for the love of a woman, he had not resurrected a great evil. He was not a murderer or a thief, but a mortal with failings. Yet he had flouted the rules, and a single lie to a god meant more than a life otherwise well lived.

Yet he had never boasted and talked endlessly about how he had loved his students, all of them dead and alive. He had grown old and seen most of them perish in the searing while he lived on. In the evenings she had seen the haunted expression of his face. Was it the curse what always tormented him, or the memories of the people he had lost? What must it be to be trapped in a little room when you had once been among the chosen, swift as the four winds and terrible in your strength?

She opened her hand to look at the red arrowhead he had given her. Jael had recovered it from the remains of Galyew, along with an amber orb that had not burned away in the conflagration. What was she supposed to do with these insignia of power? She did not like the blood red arrowhead and its law breaking power, and the amber orb was not the bright honey of sunlight, but a dull smoky gold that reminded her of the dead skies over the temple. Both things were ruinous and she desired neither of them, but Jael had entrusted them to her as if they were rare gifts.

She looked up and saw that Jael’s chest was not moving. Isida perfunctorily checked for a pulse one last time, closed his staring eyes and folded his hands over his chest with the little bird clasped within them. Bury them together man and beast; the undertaker could not deny them their curious unity in death. She opened the shutters. She imagined Jael and the wren flying away together towards the mountains he had so loved. He’d had a long life and the end in some ways had not come soon enough. She’d miss his salty language and his rare moments of gratitude, but she could not grieve for him; so many had died and the sweetness of the land itself had passed away.