“Who did Anborn neglect to kiss goodbye that never came home?” she asked when they finally reached the door to their chambers.
Ashe looked blank, then took the handle and opened the door.
“I’ve no idea,” he said, gesturing for her to enter first “Anborn has lived a long time, and through some terrible days. I imagine he has lost many people he has cared for, though no one special comes to mind except perhaps Shrike, and I don’t expect they did much kissing.”
Rhapsody went to the candelabra on the table near the bed and touched the wicks, sparking them into flame.
“His wife, perhaps?”
Her husband closed the door. “I would doubt that. Estelle was a fairly horrid woman, and when she died a decade or so ago my father told me Anborn was more relieved than anything else. I was in hiding then, so I don’t really know much about what has gone on in Anborn’s life. He has an oft-stated fondness for tavern wenches and serving girls; I don’t think it’s impossible that he may have lost one or more that he cared for.”
Rhapsody shook her head and came into his arms.
“I don’t think that’s the answer, though you are probably right that it was not Estelle.” She thought back to a frozen glade at the forest’s edge in Tyrian, on the night Constantin had made reference to in the council meeting, when the Lord Marshal had come in answer to her Kinsmen’s call on the wind to find her and the then-gladiator lost and freezing to death. Anborn had rescued them both, had taken her, frostbitten and all but naked, into a hidden shack that had served as a way station for him, where he tossed her a soft wool tunic of fern-green, long of sleeve, pointed at the wrist, to cover herself.
This doesn’t look like it would fit you too well, Anborn. To whom does it belong?
It belonged to my wife. She won’t mind you wearing it—she’s been dead eleven years now. It looks far better on you, by the way.
I’m very sorry.
No need to be. We didn’t like each other very much. We didn’t live together, and I rarely saw her.
But you must have loved her once.
No. For such an intellectually gifted woman, Rhapsody, you can be charmingly naive.
Then why did you marry?
She wasn’t an unattractive woman. Her family was an old one, and she was principled; if she ever cuckolded me, I never knew it, and I believe I would have. I was loyal to her as well, until she died.
The honest cynicism had stung her.
That’s all? Why bother? she had asked him.
A fair question, to be sure. I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for you.
Did you have children?
No. I’m sorry to disillusion you, Rhapsody. You obviously know what my family is, and so know that we don’t have the most romantic history. From the very beginning, sex and mating in our family has been about power and control, and it has remained thus. And I can’t foresee a time when that will change—dragon blood is pervasive, you know.
The brutality of the observation had not been lost on her.
Ashe pulled her closer. “In these last moments before we part, forgive me if I say that I couldn’t care less about whoever Anborn kissed or did not kiss—except that it was quite disturbing to witness it being you.”
She shook her head to clear it of the memory and smiled up at her husband.
“We only have a few fleeting moments—either the quartermaster will declare the provisions and mounts ready, or the baby will wake, screaming, in Grunthor’s arms, and we will need to rescue them both. Perhaps we should forget about Anborn for the present and just be alone together, while I am still here.”
“Agreed,” the Lord Cymrian said. Without another word he swept his wife from her feet and laid her carefully down on their marriage bed, then lay down beside her. He took her small face in his hands and stared down at it, as if to commit to memory every feature again, as he had done each night into each day that they had been together for the last four years, the vertical pupils in his eyes shrinking in the candlelight, the cerulean blue irises gleaming with an intensity surpassing that of an ordinary man.
It was the dragon within his blood that was assessing her now, Rhapsody knew, a nature both alien and familiar to her that obsessed over each thing or being that it considered to be treasure. She could feel her skin prickle beneath the vibration of his inner sense as it memorized the length of each of her eyelashes, the number of breaths she took, the beating rhythm of her heart. She could feel his anxiety rise and knew that he also perceived how weak she still was from childbirth, how much blood she had lost, how fragile her health had become. The dragon Elynsynos, to whose lair Ashe had originally guided her during a sweet spring long ago, had provided most of the insight she had into this side of the man whose soul she shared.
Wyrms are not avaricious—we do not desire much, Pretty, only what we believe is rightfully ours. We are each part of a shield that protects the entirety of the world, and yet we do not wish to own everything in that world. That which is part of our hoard, our treasure, is not our prisoner; we guard it jealously, but only because we love it with everything that is in us. What humans see as possessiveness, dragons believe to be the purest form of love. This is true whether the treasure is a single coin, a living being, or a whole nation of people.
Independent as her own temperament was, she had come to understand that element of his nature, all the while knowing that he battled it, grappled with it, struggled against it every day, endeavoring to keep from letting the draconic side of himself frighten or subsume her. As she looked back into his eyes now, she could see straight to his soul, and within her own she felt an overwhelming sense of impending loss; she had learned to treasure him in the same way.
Ashe saw the tears glinting in her eyes, perceived the lump in her throat, and slid his fingers deeper into her hair, cupping her head and covering her mouth with his. Time became suspended as they shared a breath, the musical rhythm of inhalation and release that was the song of their joined lives.
When their lips separated he saw that her wan face was wet with the tears she had fought so long to hold in check; his dragon sense had registered her weeping, but the sight of it always squeezed his heart more than he was prepared to withstand. There was something within him that perceived her as even more beautiful in tears than when she was smiling, and the thought disturbed him greatly. He pulled her closer as she buried her face in his shoulder, secretly glad to be rid of the sight.
“A quarter hour, no more,” she murmured. “Why does it always seem that we are limited in our time together? We are barely in each other’s presence more than the span of a few heartbeats before we are once again parted. And how can you withstand losing our child again? I am afraid, Sam—genuinely afraid that this will be more than you, man or dragon, will be able to withstand. I know I would not be able to bear it were it you that was leaving, taking him with you.”
The Lord Cymrian exhaled slowly; he had been contemplating, with dread, the same thing.
“I will hold on to the few scraps of comfort that remain—the knowledge that, with what is to come, you and Meridion will be safe. I will continue to remind myself, as the dragon grows impatient and angry, that I have never deserved you or the happiness you have brought me from the start.” He put his hand over her mouth to quell the protest that threatened to spill out. “For all that I know you love me, Rhapsody, you really don’t know how much I love you; the inadequacy of my tongue prevents me from putting it into words. Each wrong I’ve done you, each error I’ve made, each time I have allowed pain to touch you, digs a deeper hole of regret that has, like all other vessels within me, filled up yet again with more longing to be with you. Sometimes I think that if ever I were to hurt you, even inadvertently, the breath would turn to ice within me. To do anything other than to commit you to Achmed and Grunthor’s protection and get you both as far from the coming hostilities as possible would be to risk that hurt—and that is what, more than anything, I would be unable to bear. So,
for the sake of the One-God, do not endanger yourself or our child, I beg you—the knowledge that you are safe as the world begins to fray and come apart is the only thing that keeps me from following my father into the ether—or perhaps to an Ending not unlike his.”
Rhapsody went rigid. “Gods, don’t even say something like that aloud,” she choked, but in his eyes she could see the veracity of his words, and knew that he was not exaggerating.
Ashe smiled, and ran his calloused hand through her shining hair.
“Oh, and one other thing—I still have to make good on the promise I made you long ago: that when all of this is past, and others come forward to take over the burden of leadership, on that day, and not one day more, I will take you to the forest of your choice, to the glen of your choice, and build for you the goat hut you have long desired, where we can live simply, raise our children, and forget that the world exists beyond our hedgerow.”
Rhapsody relaxed beneath the warmth of his smile, though the understanding unspoken between them of what might be a fatal outcome for either or both of them was clear.
“Done,” she said.
A polite knock came at the chamber door.
“Ready, m’lord,” came the quartermaster’s muffled voice.
The lord and lady rose quickly from the bed and headed, as if of one mind, to each of their dressing rooms, returning a moment later, holding objects in their hands.
Ashe extended his arms first, in which he held a battered cloak, gray on the outside with a blue interior. A shadow of mist, like fog hovering above a lake in morning, seeped out from between the folds.
Rhapsody smiled. This was the cloak of mist that had hidden him from sight and other forms of detection all the years he had been in hiding, walking the world mostly unseen and unnoticed by those around him. It was in this garment she had first beheld him, at least on this side of Time, in the course of a botched pickpocketing that had caused uproar in the streets; the memory of the scuffle that had ensued was both bittersweet and comic. The mist had been imbued into the cloak by Ashe’s command over the element of water, as bearer of the sword Kirsdarke; he had worn it so long that the mist remained, clinging to the fabric, shielding the wearer from prying eyes and scrying.
“Take this with you, Aria,” he said briskly. “It’s more than large enough to hide both you and the baby; if the prophecy was right and there are eyes watching him, this should blind them, at least while he is within it. Try to keep him within its folds at least until you reach Canrif, and perhaps beyond.”
Rhapsody nodded and took the cloak. “I will, thank you, Sam.” She extended her hand in turn, her fist closed, and held it over his. She opened her hand, and into his palm fell a pearl, luminescent and shining as the glowing moon. In it was contained the memory of their first wedding, a ceremony of their own making conducted without witness in the grotto of Elysian, her hidden underground home within the Bolglands. It was a memory that only they had shared, in a place where she had always felt safe. “And you keep this, to remind you of happy times, and better times to come when this is over.”
He squeezed the pearl and nodded in return.
“You know the dreams will return,” he said.
“Yes.”
Ashe regarded her sadly. On the night they had met in their youth, on the other side of Time, she had told him of her disturbing dreams. When they had come to know each other again on this side of Time, those prophetic, prescient dreams had evolved into night terrors, causing her to thrash about violently in her sleep, even as they sometimes provided a key to what would come to pass in the Future, or what had happened in the Past. He, dragon that he was, had the ability to chase her nightmares away, had been able to provide a protective vibration that kept the nightmares that had once tortured her at bay while she slept. Over the years he had finally seen her at rest, at peace in his arms. “Who will keep you from the nightmares now, Aria?” he asked softly.
“The nightmares are the least of it, especially if they help foretell what may come,” she said. “I suppose the answer is that you still will, Sam. In a way, the sacrifice you are making—we are all making—may be the only chance we have of keeping from being consumed by far more terrifying nightmares that do not go away upon waking.”
Her hand came to rest lovingly on the side of his check. “But I will come to you in dreams, if I can,” she said softly.
“You are ever there, Aria.”
She shook her head. “No, I mean that I will try to visit you, to be with you in a way that is more than dream, but less than the flesh. Being alone with Elynsynos for months, studying ancient texts of primal lore, I have come to understand much more about how Namer magic works than I ever knew before. And one thing I may be able to do is visit from time to time, in a way where we are both aware. Especially after Achmed has finished his project.”
Ashe kissed her, then opened the door.
“Either way, you are ever there.”
Both of their backs suddenly straightened, as if shot with an arrow.
“Meridion is crying,” they said to each other in unison.
Ashe stood back to allow Rhapsody out the door first. As they hurried together down the hall, he looked down at his wife.
“There is no possible way you could have heard that,” he said fondly. “You must be developing a dragon sense of your own. I must be rubbing off on you.”
Rhapsody snorted and doubled her speed, beating him to the stairs by four strides.
“Hardly. Every new mother is a bit of a dragon.”
Ashe watched her descend the stairs two at a time.
“Hmmm. That explains the ferocious mood swings.”
The quartermaster had readied and provisioned four horses, two light riding, two heavier war horses. One of the war horses was of enormous size, and packed with very little weight; Grunthor examined it and nodded in approval. The other of the two heavy horses and one of the light riding horses bore most of the equipment and supplies for their long journey.
The other light riding horse had been equipped with an extra long saddle.
“I think at least at first you should consider riding with Achmed,” Ashe told Rhapsody gravely. “Your ordeal in the forest of Gwynwood, Meridion’s birth, and the long journey back here have taken their toll on you, Aria. I am not certain that in the current state of your health you can withstand the rigors of the swift ride, especially holding the baby swathed in the mist cloak. Therefore, I think wisdom dictates that you and Achmed share a saddle, at least for the first portion of the trip. I will rest easier knowing that you are unlikely to fall from the horse.”
Rhapsody smiled and kissed him.
“You will always be in my thoughts, as I know we will be in yours,” she said. “Each night before I go to sleep, I will try and visit you in your dreams. Remember the songs I sing to you when we are together and know that I will be singing to you even while we’re apart, and to Meridion; keep that picture in your mind, and we will never be far away from you.”
Ashe smiled sadly in return.
“Now I can count every one of your eyelashes, and each beat of your heart. I know how you are breathing, and how you shape the currents of air where you stand, how they change as you move. Once you are outside a range of five miles, it will be as if you are lost to me forever,” he said. “Just keep yourself and our son safe, my love. Knowing that you are doing so is the only chance that I have to hang on to sanity.”
Rhapsody embraced him, knowing that he spoke the truth.
“Piece o’ news Oi thought you might want to know, sir,” Grunthor said quietly as Rhapsody and Ashe were saying their final goodbyes. “While you were away, ol’ Ashe’s grandma, that bloody dragon, Anwyn, made ’er way to the Bolglands and tried to get in. No worries, sir; we repelled ’er easily enough.”
“How did you manage that?” Achmed asked incredulously. “I have the only weapon in the whole of the Bolglands capable of piercing dragon hide, and it was with me. What did you do
to drive her off?”
“We backed up the sewage cistern and blasted ‘er out of the tunnels with the hrekin,” Grunthor replied. “About an ’undred thousan’ gallons of the former contents of Bolg arses; seemed an appropriate enough weapon. Besides, dragons are extra sensitive to all the senses, if I recall correctly. Stunned ’er, it did. Left an ’eck of a mess as well, which we thought about cleaning up before you got ’ome, but decided instead it made a lovely battlement. So we just sort a shaped it into a barricade and left it to stink up the place right nicely. Don’t expect she’ll be comin’ back anytime soon.”
“And you neglected to mention this at the council of war?” Achmed said, amused.
“Yes, sir,” Grunthor said. “If ’e ’ad known that the dragon had already broached the Bolglands, there was a possibility ’er ’usband would not let her go. And in my judgment, sir, dragon or no, she’s safer with us anyway.”
“Agreed,” Achmed said, mounting his horse. “It should be interesting to see her reaction to your new barricade; Rhapsody considers cleanliness to be a sacrament. Let’s be on our way as soon as he can tear his lips off her and the squalling brat.”
14
At the crossroads, eastern Navarne
The cohort of the Second Mountain Guard of Sorbold came to a halt at the place where the road leading north into the province of Canderre crossed with the forested trader’s route heading east from the wooded lands of Navarne to the capital city of Bethany.
The wind was cold, but the sky clear; darkness and the absence of travelers in winter had covered their journey from their southern homeland with but minimal exception. Each stray merchant or farmer had been easily dispensed with, with no major outcry or notice in the sparsely settled area, just as they had planned.
Now, as they approached the keep and the surrounding walled village that was Haguefort, the commander gave quiet orders to more surreptitiously travel the forest road, to cling to the fringe of the woods for cover, in single and dual file, to keep from attracting notice of any of the patrols that were most likely stationed throughout the area, guarding the home of Gwydion of Manosse, the Lord Cymrian.