Chương 421: 13.7

Mother was waiting for them in the courtyard of Fort Rochford, she knew, Jewel had sent a letter to warn her as soon as she arrived in Bledaten. Alexander in Blizzardwrath had spent most of the trip north flying, Jewel had joined them but between them hardly any words had actually been passed. Both could see the grief in the other's eyes, they shared the firm squeeze of a hand at the shoulder. Jewel had needed to use the twins for that. It was strange how much alike to them her and Alexander had been.

Like how Jewel's own spawn were when apart, not as closely but one in their grief all the same. There were no cheers to greet them as a victory march should have had, there was no parade, everyone knew, all of Rochford had been informed. The footmen of her family home stood at ready on either side of her as she, Blizzardwrath and Alexander approached Mother, the snow fell in sparse flecks and the cold bit at her spawn's flesh despite their cloaks and dresses.

Even though most of those men to either side of her had been marching with her all the way north to their homes they stood in honor of her Father, just like Mother they 'awaited' the news. Alexander marched ahead as Jewel came to a stop with Blizzard Wrath, the yet young Gryphon fretted and shifting from the unease its rider felt but could barely show, as heir it was her brother's place to announce the news, Jewel was his younger sister, and more so his soon to be liege.

His daughter she might be, but for now she had to be his Countess. Behind the matriarch of House Rochford were those women of Mother's weaving circle and the staff that she had arranged to join her for this moment. On one side Jewel recognized one of the girls that had attended Gwenn's birth, fully grown where before she had been a slight thing. Alexander walked up to Mother and drew from under his cloak the bundle of leather, just barely shorter than he was.

He held it out to her, as was expected, as was proper, as was tradition. at Mother's side Gwenn was failing to hold back her tears but no one was going to admonish her for it, for all her fierceness she was after all still young. Alexander held the bundle with palms open so that mother could slowly unfold it, under the pale noon sky of late autumn. Slowly the leather and cloth came undone, laid out over Alexander's bracing arms, revealing the familiar pale bone of the Rochford family bow.

Its grip the black scaled leather, its string of tendon left loose but just as limber as it had ever been. An artifact that had been in the family of Rochford for generations. A Dragon Bone bow. An Eagle Wyrm as the family legend told it, taken and shaped from a rib. Sinew of its wings, leather of its leg. Mother's fingers traced the lines of it, the instrument that had always been with Father for all of Jewel's life. That had been as much a part of him and his place in the world as his hands.

Now it seemed so lonely and incomplete without him. Jewel held back her tears, her face ached with the effort from all four of her faces. Eight eyes stinging with the effort to restrain herself. The chilled silence was broken by Alexander's words, her heart cracked to hear how steady he kept his voice uttering the words.

"My Father, Lord Rochford of House Rochford is dead, felled from the sky in battle with his steed Zephyrvam in honorable service to the lady in War Jewel of Rochford of house Rochford, Countess of Viznove." Mother took in a shaky breath, Jewel knew what was coming, she had read the tradition, she had seen it in small huddles in the temple before. More so she could feel the way that the world was being pulled, that the bow itself began to shift and flow with the flame of sorcery.

The way that even banished behind the clouds and sunlight of the day that the stars and heavens above stirred in interest. The sorcery pulled towards Mother, tightening around her head, filling her throat. Sorcery and tradition and patterns taking up in her very breath. Matriarch of the family of house Rochford, wife of the slain. She inhaled and exhaled. Alexander continued with the words.

"His vengeance was had, those that struck him down were felled. There is no curse or grudge, no injustice to right, he was burned with honor with his steed as a Gryphon Rider." Mother inhaled again then exhaled slowly, Gwenn took a moment to remember herself and take in a breath along with. Jewel joined them on the third breath. As always, her participation in the sorcery flowed into it with a force that turned the ephemeral into the solid. The faint billow of wind becoming a gusting fervor.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. But that was fine, she had held back the pain for days, for nearly all of the blood season. The next exhale from mother was shrill, slightly voiced, a warning for what came next, sorcery flecked on her breath, the heaven's attention shifted. On the next inhale Jewel's spawn and all the ladies which had come to join Mother in this last rite joined in.

The air stilled as they breathed it in, like the very life and motion of the world was being pulled out of the courtyard. And then with a heavy meaty thump echoing in that stillness the first blow from her mother's fist onto her chest began the wailing. Her voice followed, led them but soon despite every effort to not over shadow her mother's grief it was Jewel's voice that dominated, yet despite the volume of her throat and the shrillness of the cry none of their voices were lost.

Sorcery laced in Jewel's own will would not have only her cry be heard. A daughter's cry should now drown out her mother's! They screamed into the sky, they beat their chests, voices warbling into the air, Gwenn and Jewel, Mother, all of her ladies, Gem and the twins too. Their voices carried out into the sky and in her ears she heard echoing cries in the wind, were Rochford's women joining them? It was hard to say, her chests ached from fists beating against them, wyrm or spawn it somehow didn't matter.

Flesh and bone that could have taken the fist of a giant or a fall from the very sky unbroken felt like it was tearing and bruising from within as she pummeled her ribs and wailed. She could not see Alexander, she did not hear his voice but she could smell his tears. Standing before his mother as the voices of the women of Rochford screamed to the heavens. Warbling with the beating of drums made of living bodies.

It was a mother's grief for her husband, it was her voice that led them, but the longer Jewel cried out with them the more she heard the pain of more than that. Of mothers for sons, of sisters for brothers, of losses fresh that very year and deep, old wounds kept closed for a lifetime cracking open again like flowers, blooming into a grief just as fresh and painful as it ever was before. The overcast sky trembled at their voices, no longer overwhelmed by Jewel's throat but empowered, emboldened, strengthened.

Her voice, a fabric, a string, a hollow chamber to echo and spread the grief of her mother. Jewel's chest felt wrenched, like the cry she was making was a Wyrmslayer's spear catching between her ribs and pulling her apart! Mother took in a shrieking inhale, her voice not even sparing her the outpour of grief even to breath, simply going shriller and more painfully before her lungs were full enough to bellow again.

Jewel fell into the rhythm, the clouds above shook, the wind fell dead, the sound of them roared over the hills and against the mountainsides that sheltered the Valley of Rochford. The loss of men, children, fathers, sons, all the grieving pain of mothers fell like thunder over the late autumn snow. Jewel joined in the wailing and remembered her Father, Muriel, the terrified men ordered to their deaths into her flames.

She did not know how long it went on for, but at some point her mother's voice waned, grew still and her own voice followed the path it led. Jewel felt a raw pain in Gem and the twin's throats, all eight of her eyes needed to be blinked clear from tears, but for once there could be no shame in it. A wailing could never be a place of shame, not even for tears.

Looking to Alexander, glancing to the footmen, she saw not a dry eye among them, her brother's cheeks were glistening, but he had stood firm under the onslaught of his mother's grief, still holding aloft the bow of their Father and House. Among Gwenn and her mother there were the expected tracks of tears, blood shot eyes, deeply etched lines of pain, loss, grief. But with a shaking motion of her hand, the widow of Jonathan the Third of House Rochford signaled the end of the wailing.

Her fingers closed gently at first, then clenched until the knuckles turned white and she lifted the pale bow with its black leather grip up from her son's hands. Alexander comported himself well, folding the cloth and leather in a single motion as his arms could finally fall to his sides, settling with that motion into a kneel. Jewel's mother spoke, voice raw, thick with pain and grief.

"Lord Rochford is dead, but his heir lives, rise my son, Alexander the Second of House Rochford, Gryphon Lord of Rochford." Jewel waited in the cold as her Brother shakily rose from his kneel, reached out and took hold of the offered bow. Then her mother collapsed into the arms of her attending ladies, and finally they could all of them take shelter from the autumn chill.