Copyright ? 2026 by Saffron Honey. This is a work of fiction and fantasy that is (currently) being published exclusively on Royal Road. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE WAYFARER'S
LULLABY
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It came to me upon the heather-downs
As whistling went I past those mossy grounds
That it should fare me well to rest the past
And hie to seek some peace of my'n, at last.
- Hunter Nomanson
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DESOLATE SHORES
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Victory crunched between Iri-korai’s fangs, the marrow of it plenty flavourful, and he knew well to enjoy it while he might. The succor was ever-fleeting, this time bittered by disappointment. He had hoped for so much more—for a kingdom, no less—but he must quiet the chaos of his mind, until the hour was right.
The hour had been wrong.
Or perhaps, the place had been wrong.
There were many wrongs and few rights, and Iri-Korai had long been in the habit of curating them before taking risks. It was… irksome. That so many days and nights of careful planning had not seen his visions to completion.
An inarticulable pain, to have come so close to ascension, he thought, as he caressed the fine-featured, horrified face of his round-eared treasure. And lost it all. You understood this, I believe, before the end.
Her cry of rage and defiance, which so recently rang across the inlet, had gone forever—not even in his waking mind could he fully remember it—and he thoughtfully pricked a claw against her cold neck. One drop of ruby blood trickled forth, not yet congealed.
The tall, frosted grass rustled gently as a pale figure arose, breaking away from the circle of those gathered.
Iri-korai lifted his thumb to his lips. “You.”
Cool air shivered against his tattered throat, stitched pieces of a whole twined together—a slow and arduous healing it would be, and one that may never see full restoration. Such was the burden of his latest misstep.
But the air thrummed in solemn recognition.
He touched his tongue to the dampness of his finger and closed his eyes against the delight. It rushed in his ears like an ocean swell as each thread of his essence thrilled beneath the dissipating energy. Mere traces of the magic which yet lingered in her bones.
A long moment passed.
“I,” intoned Rosn of Clan Korai, formerly of Clan Na, sworn to brotherhood by fire and oath.
Iri-korai cracked open an eye, assaying the broad-shouldered figure which stood hunched across the clearing, in direct opposition to Iri’s chosen place. Rosn was in direct opposition to most things, as Iri understood them.
His heavy, serious features could not be said to possess the beauty typical to either clan: there was no perfect balance of the rugged and the refined. The beaded bracelets which adorned his clumsy wrists only brought more attention to this disparity, nor did he attempt to compensate for the nearly human structure of his high-set cheekbones by letting his tresses flow free. Instead, rough-hewn bangs fringed his broad forehead and slightly upturned eyes—small eyes, for a siren—and the longer lengths of hair trailed down his spine and across his shoulders, dyed a darker brown. His left ear, though tapered and webbed, was thick and undelicate. The right ear was a stump left from a previous battle.
Yes, even with his own neck torn asunder and stitched together crudely, like patched sailcloth, it was fitting that Iri-korai remained lovelier to behold the dullard of their circle, who would always be missing half an ear and had chosen the unthinkable sacrilege of shearing his locks with a knife.
Rosn was useful in a fight, and beyond that, little else. It could not be disputed that he was at his best when mute, like the clams which only cried and burbled as the waves lofted through them—no true song, merely the sounds of their brutish bodies in motion.
Lately, however, he had been noisome.
“What have you to sing for us all, Brother Rosn, which must needs delay our ritual of silence?”
“A word,” said Rosn.
His voice held less power than Iri-korai’s, but sank fathoms deeper.
Those small eyes shimmered like oil beneath his brow.
“You may speak it, Brother Rosn.”
“Respect.”
The grass crunched again as one of the sisters seated nearby shifted, further disrupting the circle.
Iri-korai smiled peaceably. “Respect, Brother Rosn?”
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Rosn’s flat chest rose slightly, and fell again, a stilted sigh. “She was a warden of her songless kindred. If not by trade, then by blood. She did not choose to walk this path but walked it bravely—has she not earned a mortal’s burial rites?”
It was the most words the blunt battler had strung together in three full moons. Iri-korai did not like it. Each time Rosn spoke, he liked it less. Owing to his usual silence, when Rosn deigned to speak, the others often listened. Questions were permitted. Encouraged, even.
But questions, like listening, had their uses and their dangers.
“We wait for moonset to partake, as it was agreed upon, for such is right and proper.” Iri-korai was superstitious. “Her blood and entrails will be hidden from the light of sun and moon. That is the most dignity which can be afforded to a mortal who disgraced our noble clan with such... violence.”
Iri refrained from touching a finger to the sewn hemp fibers holding his throat together.
The sisters had worked through the day and a long part of the night to mend him with their song, and it would take time, even so. The need for supplemental aid was rare; this mortal had wounded him well, but her sacrifice was greater.
Rosn considered. “Then… a siren’s burial, at least.”
Iri-korai caressed the edge of her slender jaw with his palm and wove his long fingers into her fair hair as it tangled with his—harvest moon and winter’s moon, threads of a preordained fate. He tipped his head, admiring the pallor of her skin. “And you wish what remains of her power to be sundered in the night, and shared amongst the fishes? No. We divide it among ourselves. So I have spoken, and so it shall be.”
“This is not as you wished for, in the beginning, nor as we were promised,” Rosn continued without heed, his protest dull but annoyingly clear—strong, in its own right. Strong enough to push the lingering resonance of Iri’s words aside, and threaten a conflict. “Perhaps, as you have failed in this, a vote. Such is the way of the other clans.”
Iri-korai looked up, with a slowness.
Brother Rosn was already observing him with round, oily eyes. Black, mostly, with a tarnish of crimson-brown around their fractured edges. The ruddy hue crept deeper into the center of his stare.
Iri’s upper lip curled.
“Failed…?”
Rosn licked a bead of river water from the tip of his broad, arched nose.
“Our calling has always been higher than that of the other clans. We are not bound of blood, but oath. Choose your next words carefully, Rosn-Na,” murmured Iri-korai, the words guttering past his scarified throat. “Lest you live to regret them.”
The use of Rosn's old clan name was not lost on the others, a few of whom slunk away, the circle breaking entirely. This ritual would now be less than perfect. And Iri required perfection. This, too, was irksome.
Rosn considered, again. “I meant, only…”
“You meant to usurp my authority,” Iri-korai finished, humming quietly. “But I understand. You were never the wisest of the seven.”
And he lay the lifeless woman to rest upon the barren soil, with all the tenderness of a lover. As lovers, indeed, they might have been were the moonlight kinder. It was shameful, what must happen now. But Iri understood—such was the risk of lifting voices against one another.
“Follow, Brother,” he whispered graciously, a ruined command which yet held enough persuasive magic to bring a mortal kingdom to its knees. “Walk with me.”
The gathering was silent, a circle of watching eyes. Not one arose to stand by Rosn’s side. And not one lifted their song to take his place. As it should be. None could refuse an edict from Iri-korai.
But Rosn—compelled by that tremendous force of will which had safeguarded their clan, yet which Iri often found so personally vexing—hesitated.
Perhaps he knew his fate; perhaps not.
Perhaps it was the hesitation which sealed it.
So it was that they departed, alone together, from the vigil of silence for a mortal none would mourn. And it was there, upon the moonlit strand, beneath the sheltering branches of a wind-twisted pine tree, Iri-korai saw to the end of a hundred years’ disagreement.
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Nothing remained to show for the petty grievances of Rosn-Na, but an empty shell. Upturned eyes tightly shut against despair. Shimmering mouth, cracked in a breathless wheeze. Mismatched ears lost to a tangle of seaweed-brown hair still adorned with tiny beads and the bones of the smallest songbirds.
Maybe, in a forgotten age, it would have saddened him.
But it was merely a curiosity for Iri-korai. That his fallen bride and his disgraced battler had been nothing alike in life, yet lay so near to one another in this inlet, unaware. Each a pebble underfoot, on a path from which he could not turn away.
He inhaled a trickling mouthful of the late-summer air, laden with spice and pine boughs and salt, and it scraped past the inner scar of his throat.
It reminded him of Rosn’s final words, coughed and wet. Iri-korai smiled with a lingering fondness, and gently opened those small, deep-set eyes with two claws, admiring the empty void where fear of the End once flickered. How that fear had snapped into a flame as the life left him, only to be quenched by the broken lullaby of Clan Korai.
He placed his hand upon Rosn’s disgraced head, shorn and matted, in calm benediction.
“You were fond of a petal-pink sunrise, were you not? Blooming beyond the edge of the sea. If a coward’s soul cannot survive the flight to his watchful gates, then enjoy the view from here… for however long your desiccating body may endure.”
Soft sea-breezes rustled the branches overhead, carrying an incense of brine and sweet husks of summer dune-grass, not yet awakened from their winter sleep. Iri turned his face away from the sight of yet another unravelled thread in his carefully woven plans, and into the faintest glow of an early spring.
He ought to give the ocean burial rites.
Tear the fool’s body apart, for the fishes.
But Rosn was a traitor, and must suffer a traitor’s fate.
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Iri-korai returned alone, treading along the strand near where the wavelets lapped. Damp footsteps whispered on behind him. Faint swishing, now and then, in the packed mud. When he stopped, a cold wind stirred his long, loose hair, shivering the nape of his disfigured neck.
But the siren sensed no song, malevolent or benign.
If he had, he might have glanced over his shoulder. And had he glanced over his shoulder, he would surely have witnessed the disappearing trail where his soles had melted through a thin layer of frozen mist. Footprints, quickly vanishing, recovered by the creeping frost with a crackling breath until no sign of his presence lead back to the twisted pine.
All that Iri knew was the rightness of the hour.
It was time to complete the ritual of consumption, and gather the brothers and sisters who remained to Clan Korai, and depart for the tower. The journey was far from over. They knew that, his circle of seven, when they set out together—all as one. Now they were five.
And their trial had only just begun.
HELLO, I AM BACK.
Thanks so much for checking out this story! I know some people skip the prologue altogether. THE TALE CONTINUES with our first glimpse of an unknown siren and his circle of five. You may be seeing Iri-korai again, and sooner than you think...
I am focusing most of my efforts toward my health these days. Because of this, I have to rest a lot. So I'll state up front that there will be no consistent upload schedule! The Wayfarer's Lullaby is a WIP and much of it will be drafted from scratch week to week, but I do have a working outline. Everything you see here is subject to change.
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For now, we're off on another strange adventure...
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