Delerium's Mistress: Tales of the Flat Earth Book 4 (62 page)

“Dear Father,” said the crone, “do not weep.”

He said, “That is the bane on me. I cannot.”

“Each word you have spoken,” she said, “was a tear.”

She was so bowed and shrunken that even as he knelt, his head
might lie upon her sunken breast. He laid it there, and so she held him, the
aged mother with her fourth handsome son, and she sang to him then, as the
Vazdru sang—for some mysteries had never been lost to her.

The substance of her song they do not tell.

Who does not know?