would someday be covered with grass and foliage. For now, however, it was barren, the freshly piled earth still soft. Sarene hadn't needed to lobby hard for its creation. They all now knew the debt they owed to the man buried within. Hrathen of Fjorden, high priest and holy gyorn of Shu-Dereth. They had left his funeral until the last.
Sarene turned to address the crowd, Raoden at their front. 'I will not speak long,' she said, 'for though I had more contact with the man Hrathen than most of you, I did not know him. I always assumed that I could come to understand a man through being his enemy. and I thought that I understood Hrathen-his sense of duty, his powerful will, and his determination to save us from ourselves.
'I did not see his internal conflict. I could not know the man whose heart drove him, eventually, to reject all that he had once believed in the name of what he knew was right. I never knew the Hrathen who placed the lives of others ahead of his own ambition. These things were hidden, but in the end they are what proved most important to him.
'When you remember this man, think not of an enemy. Think of a man who longed to protect Arelon and its people. Think of the man he became, the hero who saved your king. My husband and I would have been killed by the monster of Dakhor, had Hrathen not arrived to protect us.
'Most important, remember Hrathen as the one who gave that vital warning that saved Teod's fleets. If the armada had fallen, then be assured that Teod wouldn't have been the only country to suffer. Wyrn's armies would have fallen on
Arelon, Elantris or no Elantris, and you all would be fighting for survival at this moment-if, that is, you were even still alive.'
Sarene paused. letting her eyes linger on the grave. At its head stood a carefully arranged stack of bloodred armor. Hrathen's cloak hung on the end of a sword, its point driven into the soft earth. The crimson cape flapped in the wind.
'No.' Sarene said. 'When you speak of this man. let it be known that he died in our defense. Let it be said that after all else. Hrathen, gyorn of Shu-Dereth, was not our enemy. He was our savior.'
