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Excerpt From: "The Snake Heart"

The water billowed softly under the wind's touch, as though it were liquid silk. Words trickled over stones and cut a channel through the valley, a gleaming jagged channel that shone brighter than quicksilver in the moon light or molten copper in the early morning sun.

Occasionally, a solitary twig would drift lazily downstream or a leaf that seemed to be dipped in gold would spiral its way across the water's glassy surface.

Water splashed up grooves in the bank worn away by time and weather, to some it was the rhythmic song of water but to Sarochiel is was whispers of the spirits of sea and rain and mist.

He heard the naiad's laughter as they swam over pebbles and sprayed silver mist into the air when they dove deep into the river's rush.

As a child he had read poetry to them, amusing them with his strange accent and exciting them with tales of playful mermaids and murderous sirens, both of whom where akin to the shy water spirits.

He remembered a woman, beautiful and quiet.

His mother.

She was his link to the water, a halfblood naiad. With her life, he remembered her unnatural death. The destiny of one marked as a witch; to be hung by the neck until dead.

His father, the one who had reported her for dabbling with black magic, had gone one step further. He personally slit her throat insuring, he claimed, that the "Devil's pawn" would not survive if her neck had not been broken by the fall.

Soon after, he was confronted as to why he seemed to take such relish in seeing his wife hang, to watch the crimson rivulet of her blood zigzag over the cobblestones.

He had replied that he had no pleasure in seeing his wife be put to death, but that he was relieved to see such a public threat.....removed. The lovely young woman who was his wife, he had worshiped and adored to the point of obsession. This new evil that had taken hold of her and worn her face, he had no emotion for and therefore was not affected by the sight of her lifeless body.

When questioned as to why he married a powerful witch in the beginning, surely he would have felt the searing darkness that her soul emitted, he replied evenly that she had enchanted him with a very effective love potion.

He stated that before their marriage, he had no special feelings towards her but that one day she had made him a herbal brew, of her own creation, and made sure he ingested the entire serving. He could have pretended to drink it and later pour it out.

'No,'

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