Chapter 12: The Rites of the Salt
The sky above the **Solstice Channel** had bruised to a deep, sickly violet, the color of a fresh wound. On the main deck of the *Lion of the Stone*, the atmosphere was stifling, thick with the oily scent of coal-smoke from the funnel stacks and the metallic tang of incoming rain. The wind had a jagged edge to it, whipping the spray off the whitecaps and flinging it against the iron-plated railings.
In the center of the deck, the focus of every eye was a simple wooden plank positioned over the starboard railing. Upon it lay a bundle wrapped in heavy, unbleached white linen. It was a modest shape, small and deceptively light, but it was weighted at the feet with two smooth, heavy river-stones taken from the riverbeds of the **Highland Marches**. It was the traditional funerary custom of the Land Kingdom—an anchor of earth to ensure the soul did not wander—but here, on the open sea, it served a more practical purpose. It was a symbolic union of Land and Sea, a final courtesy for a woman who had spent her life straddling the border between them.
King Zirael stood at the prow, his back to his men. He looked less like a monarch and more like a mountain that had been forced into the shape of a man. His wolf-fur cloak, soaked through with salt-mist, fluttered violently in the wind, sounding like the snapping of sails. He did not look at the bundle. He could not. Instead, he stared down at his hands, which were encased in heavy gauntlets of blackened steel.
The metal felt cold, but beneath it, his palms were sweating. Against his hip, the **Stone of Recognition** was no longer merely glowing; it was thrumming. It was a soft, insistent throb that resonated through his armor and into his bone, like a headache that wouldn't go away—or a heartbeat that wasn't his own.
"The rites are prepared, My Lord," the High Priest of the Stone said, his voice barely audible over the roar of the engines. He stepped forward, clad in robes of slate-grey, carrying a shallow bowl of sacred, red-clay earth.
"Proceed," Zirael said.
His voice was like grinding gravel, stripped of any warmth. He stood rigid, his jaw set so tightly that the muscles in his neck strained. He didn't want to be here. He wanted to be back in his capital, surrounded by the familiar, unchanging certainty of stone and law. Every moment he spent on this ship, every league they traveled closer to the Aurelian heartlands, he felt his resolve crumbling.
The memory of Diana—the way her laughter sounded like bells in the surf, the scent of sea-foam and jasmine that had once filled his chambers—was tearing through the iron walls he had built around his heart. It had been sixteen years of silence. Sixteen years of convincing himself that the world was made of nothing but rock and shadow. If the girl in the hold was truly his daughter, then he had been a fool for sixteen years, chasing ghosts while his own blood was being raised in the dirt.
And if she was a shadow-spy? Then he was a fool now, letting a phantom lead his flagship toward disaster.
The Echo in the Deep
Three decks below, in the suffocating darkness of the silver-salt cell, Zira felt the shift in the ship's rhythm. The constant, thumping heartbeat of the steam-engines slowed, settling into a low, idling hum. The vibration changed from a frantic march to a mourning dirge.
She lay on the pallet, her forehead pressed against the cold, stinging silver of the wall. The **Salt-Bite** was intense today; the mineral seemed to be drinking more greedily from her, as if it sensed her grief. Her skin was mapped with thin, white lines where the silver had leached the moisture and light from her pores. She ignored the pain.
She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. Without the "First Glow" to light her way, she had to rely on the ancient, primal instincts Tama had whispered about during their long nights in the forest. She searched for the **Water** element.
Even through the iron hull and the repressive silver-salt plating, she could feel the vastness. It was an infinite, cold power pressing against the ship from all sides. To the sailors above, the sea was an obstacle to be conquered. To Zira, it was a living lung, breathing beneath her.
*I am the Peace,* she told herself, the words a mantra against the darkness. *I am the bridge.*
She didn't try to break the silver. She knew she wasn't strong enough—not yet. Instead, she tried to *flow* through it. She visualized her consciousness as a drop of water, sliding through the microscopic pores of the metal and the salt. She felt the molecules of the ocean outside, the deep, ancient currents that were calling for one of their own.
"Goodbye, Mami," Zira breathed. Her voice was so quiet it didn't even stir the dust in her cell, but in the water outside, a small ripple of silver light expanded from the hull of the *Lion of the Stone*.
The Burial
On the deck, the High Priest tipped the bowl of sacred earth over the linen bundle. The red clay scattered across the white fabric, looking like dried blood against the snow.
"From the stone we come," the Priest intoned, his voice rising against the gale. "To the salt we return. May the Earth hold her history, and may the Sea carry her spirit."
The King's Stone-Guard stood at attention, their spears held vertical, their faces hidden behind their visors. These were men who had known Tama before the Fall. They remembered her as the woman who had walked the palace halls with a basket of herbs and a sharp tongue. To see her now, a nameless bundle on a plank, felt like the final burial of the Golden Age.
Zirael finally turned his head. His eyes landed on the bundle. For a split second, he didn't see a linen-wrapped corpse. He saw Tama as she was sixteen years ago, standing at the foot of his throne, her eyes blazing with fury as she told him he was being a fool.
*"You cannot lock the world in a box, Zirael,"* she had told him the day the Queen vanished. *"Some things were meant to be free."*
"Tilt the plank," Zirael commanded, his voice cracking.
Two sailors stepped forward, their faces pale. They gripped the handles of the wooden board and lifted. With a sharp, sudden tilt, the bundle slid. It didn't roll; it glided, as if the sea were reaching up to pull it home.
The white shape hit the dark, churning water with a small, clean splash. The Highland stones did their work instantly, dragging the bundle down. It vanished into the turquoise-and-black depths of the Immortal Sea, leaving only a small ring of white foam that was quickly swallowed by the wake of the ship.
Zirael watched the spot until long after the foam had vanished. He felt a sudden, sharp pang of regret that tasted like ash in his mouth.
Tama had been his wife's most trusted friend. She had vanished the night the Queen was taken, and for sixteen years, Zirael had allowed his grief to turn into a poison. He had branded her a kidnapper. He had put a price on her head. He had called her a thief who had stolen his daughter's corpse to mock him.
Now, looking at the empty sea, he realized that Tama had been the only one of them who was truly brave. She had lived in the mud, in the cold, and in the shadows, all to protect a spark that he had been too broken to believe in.
"She was no traitor," Zirael whispered, the words lost to the wind.
The King's Descent
The rites were over. The engines roared back to life, the *Lion of the Stone* resuming its course toward the Iron Port—or so the crew thought.
Zirael ignored the Priest and his generals. He walked past them, his heavy boots echoing like drumbeats on the deck. He descended the stairs, moving through the secondary decks where the steam-piping hissed and the air grew thick with the smell of silver-salt and desperation.
The guards at the entrance to the Hold snapped to attention, their eyes widening. "My Lord! We didn't expect—"
"Open the cell," Zirael said.
"But Sire, the Inquisitors warned that the silver-salt saturation hasn't reached—"
"I said," Zirael's hand dropped to the hilt of his sword, and the Stone of Recognition flared with a blinding amber light, "open the door."
The heavy iron bolts screeched back. The door swung open on rusted hinges.
Zirael stepped into the cell. He had to duck his head to clear the low ceiling. The room was cold—unnaturally so. The silver-salt on the walls shimmered with a predatory light, and in the center of the gloom sat the girl.
She looked small. Smaller than she had on the deck. She was huddled in the corner, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her skin was mapped with those white, salt-bitten lines, and her silver hair was matted with grime. But when she looked up, Zirael felt as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning.
Her eyes. They were the color of the deep ocean just before a storm—a mixture of blue, silver, and a stubborn, earthy brown. They were his eyes. They were Diana's eyes.
Zira didn't move. She looked at the man she had called "Father" in her heart for years, but who was now a stranger in blackened steel.
"She's gone," Zira said, her voice a dry whisper.
Zirael didn't answer immediately. He looked around the pathetic cell, at the thin straw, at the silver-salt that was clearly causing her pain. The Stone of Recognition on his hip was vibrating so hard his entire leg felt numb.
"She was buried with the rites of the Land and Sea," Zirael finally said. He stayed by the door, his presence filling the tiny room. "She is with the salt now."
Zira let out a shuddering breath. "She told me you were a good man. Before the shadows came. She said you loved the mountains and that you once promised to build a bridge that would never break."
Zirael flinched. The bridge. It had been a childhood dream—a literal bridge across the Solstice Channel to unite the two kingdoms. He hadn't thought of it in twenty years.
"The midwife was a fugitive," Zirael said, his voice regaining some of its iron. "She kept you from your heritage. She kept you in a hut while your kingdom bled."
"She kept me alive!" Zira snapped, her eyes flashing with a sudden, momentary spark of the **Flare**.
The silver-salt on the walls hissed, sucking the spark away instantly. Zira gasped, clutching her chest as the drain hit her.
Zirael took a half-step forward, his hand reaching out instinctively, but he stopped himself. The fear was still there—the terror that this was all a grand illusion.
"The Council believes you are a weapon," Zirael said, his gaze fixed on her. "They believe Malakor has spent sixteen years perfecting a puppet to look like my lost daughter. They want me to put you to the Trial of the Stone the moment we dock."
"And what do you believe?" Zira asked. She stood up, using the wall for support even though the salt stung her palms. She stood as tall as she could, facing the King. "Do you see a puppet? Or do you see the girl you left behind?"
Zirael looked at her—really looked at her. He saw the way she held her chin, the way her hands trembled but stayed clenched in fists. He felt the pull of the Stone of Recognition, a gravitational force that was trying to drag him toward her.
"I see a ghost," Zirael whispered.
He turned and walked out of the cell without another word. The heavy iron door slammed shut, and the bolts screeched back into place.
Zira sank back to the floor. She pressed her hand against her chest, where the "Fourfold Pulse" was starting to warm again. The King hadn't hugged her. He hadn't called her daughter. But for the first time, he hadn't looked at her with hatred. He had looked at her with a fear that was born of love.
On the other side of the door, Zirael stood in the dark corridor, his forehead pressed against the iron. His gauntleted hand was shaking.
"She is mine," he whispered to the silence. "Gods help us all. She is mine."