“That’s it, Duchess, keep at it, now.” He parried her blow. She stripped Lucy the sword down the side of the Friendmaker, only to find him in defensive position again. “Come on, don’t give in, sweet’eart. Oi know you can do it. Knock me off the bloody Root. Do it.”
Rhapsody swung twice more, futilely. Grunthor was too fast for her. She stepped back and took a deep breath.
“STRIKE!” Grunthor bellowed, causing her to jump away even farther. “Get your pretty ’ead out o’ yer arse and pay attention, or Oi’ll rip it off and stick it on my poleax!” Rhapsody stared at him in astonishment. The giant’s eyes opened in surprise as well. He regarded her sheepishly.
“Sorry, miss, sometimes Oi slip back into my Sergeant Major role.”
Rhapsody bent over at the waist, trying to catch her breath. When she stood back up she was still laughing.
“I’m sorry, Grunthor. I guess I just wasn’t cut out to fight with a sword.”
“Perhaps,” came Achmed’s dry voice behind her. “But you should learn anyway. What you need to change is your attitude.”
Rhapsody regarded him between breaths. “Really? And what new attitude do you suggest I adopt?”
The robed man came and stood beside her, taking her hand and turning it over. “First, however you initially grasp the sword, change your grip a little, so that you focus on how you’re holding it. Don’t take your weapon for granted. Second, and far more important: tuck your chin. You’re going to get hurt, so expect it and be ready. You may as well see it coming.
“You’re spending too much time trying to avoid the pain instead of minimizing it and taking out the source of what will injure you further or kill you. If Grunthor weren’t holding back you would have been dead in the first exchange of blows. You should accept that you will be injured and decide to pay him back in spades. Learn to hate; it will keep you alive.”
Rhapsody threw her sword onto the Root. “I’d rather not live at all than live that way.”
“Well, if that’s your attitude, you won’t have to worry long.”
“I don’t want to act like that. I like Grunthor.”
The giant Bolg rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, the feelin’s mutual, miss, but if you don’t learn to take care of yourself, you’re worm-meat.”
The sense of irony that came over Rhapsody she had felt before, each time she considered her situation and realized that she was indeed in the company of two strange men of monster lineage, stuck within the Earth, crawling along a giant root. The sweet one, the one that looked at her from time to time in a wistful manner she could only interpret as thwarted appetite, was trying to convince her to attack him in order to save herself. The more human of the two, proving the deception of looks, was still treating her with consummate indifference. She picked up Lucy again.
“All right, Grunthor, let’s give it a few more passes and then we’ll stop.”
The Sergeant broke into a wide grin. “That’s it, miss, ’it me just once, and make it a good clean blow, now.”
When Grunthor was finally satisfied with her performance Rhapsody sank down to the ground, bruised, disheveled, and hungry. She rummaged through her pack, looking for the small sack in which she kept the remains of the loaf of bread Pilam had given her. She gripped the bag a little tighter and began to sing, chanting the name of the bread, as she had since the day the baker had given it to her. In her song she described it in music the best she could, flat bread, barley loaf, soft.
When the namesong was over she opened the sack and took out the bread, breaking off a sizable piece for herself, then offering the remainder to the men. After all this time there was still not a speck of mold on it, even in this humid place, and it was still able to be chewed. By rights it should be harder than a lump of coal by now.
“What was that, now, miss, a blessin’ o’ some sort?” asked Grunthor, taking the piece she held out to him.
“In a way. I called it by its name.” Rhapsody smiled at him, then proceeded to eat her portion. Achmed said nothing.
“And is that ’ow you got it to stay fresh?”
“Yes. It remains as it was when it was first baked.”
Achmed stretched out on the thick smooth flesh of the enormous Root. “Well, when we wake up, why don’t you call it something else? I’ve always liked the name ‘Sausage and Biscuits,’” he said. It was the first joke Rhapsody ever remembered him making.
“I can recall its original state, but I can’t change its nature,” she said, chewing her bread. “If I had that power, you would be a good deal more pleasant, and I would be home.”
Perhaps it was the pulsing power of the Axis Mundi beneath her head as she slept, but Rhapsody was now plagued incessantly with even more vivid nightmares.
The dreams that night were especially intense. Clearest among them were repeated visions of a man, drowning in darkness, smothering in endless pain. All around him was a blanket of mist. She tried to brush the vapor away, but it hung in the air, unwilling to be dismissed. Rhapsody struggled to wake, but the exhaustion was too great.
She moaned and wrenched from side to side, falling off Grunthor’s massive chest as the image changed. It was the picture of another man, his face formless except for eyes, rimmed in the color of blood. He was digging about in the darkness, passing his hands through the air, grasping after something that he could not find. Words formed in her mind, and unconsciously she whispered them aloud.
The chain has snapped, she said.
Achmed, lying on his back and staring into the darkness above him, heard her and sat up. He looked down at her face, contorted in the struggle with the torturous dreams; she looked like she was losing the fight. He tapped Grunthor, who sat up as well.
The man with the blood-rimmed eyes looked up at her, and the image of his amorphous face filled her mind. The eyes, the only identifiable feature, stared at her as though memorizing her face. She knew she should look away, but something held her in an iron-fast grip. Then, as she watched in horror, each of the eyes began to divide, replicating itself, multiplying over and over, until there were dozens, then scores, then hundreds in the formless face. All staring at her.
The Lord of a Thousand Eyes, she whispered.
One by one the eyes broke off the misty face, independent but identical. A cold wind blew in, catching each of them, carrying them across the wide world. And still they stared, unblinking, focused on her.
On the surface of the world above, war is raging, she murmured.
“What’s she on about?” Grunthor asked softly.
Achmed waved him into silence. He had heard her name the F’dor.
In her dream a handsome face appeared, gleaming with the patina of youth and moonlight. His cheek grazed her own as he embraced her, nuzzling her ear.
This is all I have; it’s not much of a gift, but I want you to have something from me tonight, he said. Then the gentle hands tightened their grip, and muscular legs forced hers apart as the soft breathing turned to the heightened panting of lust.
No, she moaned. Stop. It’s all a lie.
He laughed, and the clutching hands on her arms squeezed painfully. I would never, never hurt you on purpose; I hope you know that.
Stop, she sobbed. I want to go home.
Home? You have no home. You gave all that up, remember? You gave it up for me. Everything. Everything you loved. And I never even told you I loved you.
Gasping in the throes of the nightmare, Rhapsody began to choke on her tears. Grunthor, who had grown visibly more upset with each passing moment, reached over to help her. Achmed caught his arm.
“She might be prescient,” he said warningly. “She may be seeing the Future, or the Past. The information might be important.”
“Don’t you think keepin’ ’er from a fatal fit might be a lit’le more so, sir?” Achmed saw the angry look in the giant’s eye, and moved aside. Gently Grunthor took her arm and shook her awake.
“Miss?”
With a violent lurch Rhapsody sat up; t
hen she recoiled and belted him in the eye. It was a beautiful shot, innately aimed, with her entire weight behind it, and carried with it the impact of a blow from a man twice her size. Grunthor fell back on his rump with a thud.
Achmed chuckled. “See what being a considerate fellow buys you?”
Rhapsody, now awake, blinked back the tears and stumbled over to the giant, who was gingerly touching his eye as it began to swell.
“Gods, Grunthor, I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t know it was you.”
The Bolg looked up at her and grimaced with an expression that might, under different circumstances, have been a smile.
“That’s all right, miss. Quite a nice right cross you got there. Where’d you learn it?”
She was rummaging in her pack for her waterskin. “My brothers.”
“Oi see. Well, Oi guess since we adopted you, perhaps you would do me the favor of thinkin’ o’ me as one o’ your brothers, and don’t ’it me with that lovely right cross again, eh?”
A hint of a smile crossed her face as she dabbed his eye. “Who do you think I used it on the most?”
“Oh.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“No need to be, darlin’. ’Ere, put that away. Oi’m all right. Come and lie back down, and perhaps we can get a lit’le more rest.” Rhapsody obeyed sheepishly.
When they woke they gathered their gear and moved into the endless low tunnel before them.
12
Rhapsody had become so accustomed to crawling through cold, wet rock, had been chilled for so long, that she had forgotten what it was like to be dry, not to shiver. The musty smell of the earth and the stale water that pooled within it permeated everything.
Her clothes were constantly damp, and had been for as long as she could remember. At times it seemed as if there had been no other life but this, that her memories of the Past had only been dreams. This was the reality, this never-ending trek along the Axis Mundi.
They had been climbing, walking, and crawling on their hands and knees for so long now that they knew nothing else. Time had passed endlessly, and still they woke after each session of uncomfortable sleep to the same nightmarish reality.
Unlike the two Bolg, who seemed to have no fear of the depths of the Earth or enclosed spaces, Rhapsody still spent a good part of her waking hours silently battling her thoughts of suffocation and enclosure. Part of her routine consisted of driving out the realization of how far below the surface of the Earth they were, how precarious their air and space was, especially during the frequent cave-ins.
She was grateful that they avoided too much hands-and-knees crawling. Most of the time they were able to stand erect, or occasionally walk stooped over, which was barely better than crawling. Every part of her body, and especially her back and knees, ached with each step, each moment they moved along the sandy, rocky floor of the endless tunnel. There was little respite from the torture, even in sleep.
She still failed to understand how Grunthor was able to force his enormous body through the tiny crevasses by which she felt crushed. When Achmed finally declared they were stopping, usually once they had made it out of a tight, wet enclosure, she would sink gratefully into exhausted sleep, only to be wakened by her nightmares.
They grew in intensity the farther they traveled within the Earth, causing Achmed once to threaten to push her off the Root. When room allowed, she slept on Grunthor, finding some comfort in the strength of the massive arms, although waking to the grinning greenish face had taken some getting used to at first.
Achmed’s demeanor had changed. Once they had reached the Axis Mundi itself he became more reserved than usual, distracted even, as if he was listening for something just outside the range of sound. His voice had dropped to a near-whisper, though he had not opposed speaking or being spoken to, at least any more than he had before. His preoccupation was apparent to Rhapsody, so she tried not to disturb him, and instead directed most of her conversation to Grunthor.
When space allowed enough air to converse while traveling, the two men taught Rhapsody the Firbolg language, known as Bolgish, more to be polite than anything else. It was their common tongue, and to converse in it made it seem as if they were trying to exclude her. In return, in the rare moments when light permitted, she taught Grunthor to read. The lessons never lasted long.
Once Rhapsody had awakened from her sleep to find Achmed himself pale and clammy, muttering under his breath, much as she routinely did. The tunnel had been narrow for some time, through several stretches of travel, without respite, and several cave-ins had recently occurred.
Grunthor, who had cleared a large blockage of rock from their path a few hours before, slept through his friend’s nightmare undisturbed. She raised her head off the giant Bolg’s chest and watched for a moment, then rose slowly, and carefully climbed over her sleeping partner to the lookout spot where Achmed generally made camp for himself.
When she reached him she felt her own pulse quicken in concern. His eyelids were twitching rapidly; he was breathing shallowly and moaning intermittently. Gently she stroked his forehead and whispered to him.
“Achmed?”
The Dhracian struggled a moment more, and then his eyes snapped open, cleared from sleep.
“Yes?” His voice had an even drier edge than usual to it.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
She caressed the side of his cheek as she would that of a child in the night. “You seemed to be having a nightmare.”
The mismatched eyes glared at her. “You think you have an exclusive right to bad dreams?”
Rhapsody fell back as if slapped. His eyes had shot sparks at her the same way his cwellan flung forth its disklike missiles.
“No, of course not,” she stammered. “I’m sorry, I was just—never mind.” She crawled back over Grunthor, now awake, and settled back down against the absurdly muscular chest. She had planned to ask what he was dreaming about, but realized upon seeing his reaction that she did not want to imagine something that could frighten Achmed.
Beneath her, Grunthor closed his eyes and drove the thoughts from his mind. He already knew.
Finally Achmed seemed to find what he was looking for. They had followed the Root into a voluminous cavern, with walls so distant as to be indiscernible in the dark. The robed figure had slowed, then come to a stop.
“Wait here, and try to be quiet,” he said softly. “If I’m not back by the time you wake, go on without me.” Before Rhapsody could question him, he was gone.
When she turned around and looked to Grunthor for an explanation, she shuddered. The expression on the broad face was grimmer than she had ever seen.
“What’s he doing?” she whispered nervously.
The giant reached out a hand to her, pulling her silently down to the floor. The air was chillier than usual, and he opened his coat, offering her his shoulder for a pillow. Rhapsody lay down and he drew the great mantle around her. Slowly he let out a deep sigh, his eyes staring into the darkness at the distant ceiling overhead.
“Rest now, miss.”
Achmed cast a final look around the immense cavern before he began his climb across the Root to the passage he had finally seen. Unlike the other tunnels, it carried no branch of the Root but lay empty and silent, undisturbed in the darkness.
He had been following the low, flickering heartbeat for a long time. He had caught the first whispers of it just after they had climbed off the taproot onto the Axis Mundi. Swelling intermittently through the loud hum of the Tree, it was the echo of a low and distant thudding in the earth beneath his feet.
It had been his intention, when he and Grunthor first laid their plans of escape from Serendair, to avoid this place at all costs. What lay within the tunnel, coiled within the belly of the Earth itself, was the horrific destiny of the Island. The knowledge of its existence, and the plans for its awakening, had been part of the reason he had sought to leave, though he knew that something even more catac
lysmic was waiting for its time to come forth as well. Something he had seen with his own eyes in the desert beyond the failed land bridge.
That he had been able to find its pulse at all was still of some surprise to him. His blood-gift, his tie to men’s heartbeats, was a legacy granted to him as the first of his elder race to be born on the Island. This thing preceded him; it was from the Before-Time. And it was not a man. Perhaps the inadvertent choice of names that Rhapsody made that afternoon in the streets of Easton had something to do with it, had given him entry into its blood, access he would not normally have had.
The pulse was almost imperceptible, slow in the frozen depths below, but it was definitely there. By the volume of the blood that ran through its veins, there could be no mistaking that this was what he sought.
He stopped. For the first time that he could remember, Achmed felt paralyzing fear.
His own death was not a concern to him now, nor had it ever been. Death was his partner, something he had dispensed as the consummate master of his trade. The incessant vibrations of the world that irritated his physiology on a daily basis, that which others defined as life, was not something to be cherished, but often just endured.
Occasionally upon dispatching victims he had seen a kind of peace come over their faces, a sense of imminent rest that intrigued him. Certainly he knew that many deaths he delivered came as a relief to those who hired him.
Part of his birthright had been his judgment, his discretion. He was not a ravager, like a pestilence or a war. The death sentences he bestowed were, in fact, often the only sense, the only justice in the tangled strife of the world. He was not afraid to meet death himself. It owed him.
What frightened him was the breathtaking, mindless, incomprehensible scope with which that grim entity was looming. The devastation that would be visited upon the land was absolute; once the wyrm had extricated itself from the earth in which it hibernated it would devour everything it could find. It would eclipse him a million times over as the master of dispensing death. It would be worse than an eclipse, a dark sun of ultimate ruin, not making death the shadow, but bathing the world in itself.