Rhapsody

  “Yes, but Namers have the ability to do that, too, in a way. We can attune ourselves to a specific note that picks up vibrations, at least occasionally anyway. It’s a skill.”

  Achmed smiled. “Well, that may be, but it doesn’t explain the fire.”

  Rhapsody looked up at him from her curled position. “What about the fire?”

  “You haven’t noticed the fire?”

  She was beginning to grow irritated. “Of course I have; I built it, you numbskull.”

  Achmed rose and held out his hand to her. “Come here.”

  Reluctantly she gave him her hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. He led her several yards away, then pointed at a large flat stone that jutted up at an angle from the snow.

  “Take off your scabbard and leave it there,” he said.

  Rhapsody unbelted the thin stone sheath that held Daystar Clarion and placed it carefully down on the stone, then turned to face the Dhracian, trying to contain her annoyance. “There. So what?”

  “Now have a look at the fire.”

  “I see it,” she said. The wood had caught fairly well, and was burning quietly, snapping occasionally as a wet ember splintered in the heat.

  “Good. Now walk slowly toward it.”

  Curiosity was beginning to replace her displeasure. She made her way carefully back to the camp, watching as the fire grew in intensity, rising as if to greet her. The emerald eyes opened in amazement; the flames leapt, roaring higher. Rhapsody backed away, and they settled down again.

  “Gods,” she whispered as her heart began to race, “what’s happening?”

  “It’s you, miss,” said Grunthor.

  At his words she panicked, and the fire burst from its circle and crackled skyward, roaring to the height of the branches some ten feet above. The wood she had fed it a moment before dissolved into white hot ash.

  The giant laughed aloud. “See? But if you don’t stop it, you’re gonna burn up my lit’le den ’ere, maybe set the whole forest ablaze.”

  Rhapsody glanced at him, and then at the bonfire that was flaming in front of her. “Calm down,” she directed, but the fire only grew more intense, reflecting her excitement. She took a deep breath and concentrated as she did before attempting something with her music. The fire responded immediately, settling down into a merry blaze again.

  Rhapsody closed her eyes and focused her mind on calm thoughts. A moment later she opened them to find that the campfire had diminished to a flicker no brighter than candlelight. She broke her concentration and set the fire free, watching it climb back to the level of a normal campfire, then tossed another pile of wood onto it to replace the fuel that had burned into dust a moment before. Rhapsody turned to Achmed again.

  “Do you think this is a factor of the sword?” she asked.

  “No, but it may be why the sword started to blaze when you touched it.”

  “The sword was glowing before I touched it. It almost blinded Grunthor.”

  Grunthor patted her back. “That might be because it was callin’ you, miss; it recognized its own element in you.”

  Rhapsody was beginning to tremble, partly from the significance of what they were saying, partly because, in her heart, she knew they were right. “And you think the sword tied me to the element of fire?”

  “I don’t know,” Achmed said. “I don’t know enough about this sword. I still don’t understand what it’s doing here on this side of the world. And I don’t know what causes it to burn as it does. When I knew of it, it glowed with starlight, but not flames. I’m fairly certain your tie to fire came when you sang us through the inferno at the Earth’s core. I think that’s when each of us changed. Certainly our bodies did.”

  “Maybe the fire just prepared us for the change,” Rhapsody suggested. “Or maybe it was from eating the Root; I often wondered if it was a good idea to be ingesting something so powerful. It’s possible that it changed us, made us susceptible to these elements. Perhaps you gained this—this path lore, or whatever it’s called, when you sought out the way along the Root. And Grunthor tied himself to the element of earth when he threw himself into smashing through the rock, and me when I picked up the sword.”

  “No,” Achmed said. “As soon as you stepped back through that fire you had changed. It was clearly visible, you had changed physically.”

  “’E’s right, miss,” Grunthor agreed. “You sure look different than when we first met you.”

  The conversation was causing Rhapsody’s head to pound. She looked around at the coming night, inhaling the sharp scent of the fire inside the shelter Grunthor had built. “Well, being unable to bathe for what seems like years, wallowing in the mudfilth, has not exactly made any of us more alluring. Trust me, you two don’t want to be presented at court any time soon.”

  “But that’s just it,” said Achmed, growing impatient, “you do appear more alluring, more intense. You radiate something that captures the attention.” He turned to the Bolg Sergeant. “Do you still have that signaling mirror?”

  Grunthor sat up straight, pulled his pack over, and began rummaging through it. “O’ course, sir, but don’t kid yourself. ’Taint for signaling. Oi only carries it so Oi can do my ’air.”

  Rhapsody laughed. Achmed took the small piece of silvered metal from Grunthor and handed it to her.

  “Here,” he said. “Take a look.”

  Rhapsody took the jagged metal scrap carefully. As with almost everything Grunthor owned, it had been sharpened to an edge that could be utilized as a razor.

  In the fading light of the sky she saw her image dimly reflected in the mirror, smeared with dried mud, clumps of dirt in her hair, which had darkened slightly, as it generally did in winter. Her lips looked chapped and sore from the bitter wind they had been walking into. She handed the mirror back in disgust.

  “Very funny.”

  Achmed left the glass in her hand. “I’m serious, Rhapsody; look again.”

  She sighed aloud, then gave it a final attempt. The detail available from the crude mirror in the dark was negligible. She could see a redness in her cheeks, but little else. Rhapsody shrugged, and gave the mirror to Grunthor. Then a smile of understanding came over her face.

  “I’ve got it now,” she said, humor returning to her voice. “No wonder you think I’m more attractive. I look like a Firbolg.”

  Achmed and Grunthor looked at one another, one thought passing unspoken between them. She has no understanding—it’s beyond her. Grunthor shrugged.

  Rhapsody scraped some of the dirt off her cheek with her fingernail. “I think I’ll melt some snow and try to wash my face tomorrow, and at least get one or two layers of grime off.”

  “Get some sleep,” Achmed said. A smile slipped across his uneven mouth as she settled into the back of the den for the night. She would have to learn the same way she had about the fire. She would have to see the results for herself. There was no question that, sooner or later, she would.

  The following morning found the three of them lurking in a well-hidden copse of trees, spying on the villagers in the nearest settlement. The day was warm for winter, perhaps portending a thaw, and the farmers seemed out in force, exchanging conversation and sacks of grain and roots. Rhapsody remembered how temperate weather had brought the farmers of the villages around Easton into town more for human contact than commerce. This seemed to be the case here, as well.

  To their surprise they found that many common words, notably tree, grain, and marriage, were the same as the words’ counterparts in their own tongue. Rhapsody seemed to pick up the rhythms of the language, growing more excited the longer she listened. By the time noon had arrived, Achmed and Grunthor drew her away into a more distant thicket and conferred with her for fear she would give them away.

  “It’s a form of our language, I’m sure of it,” she said when they were far enough away and certain there was no one nearby. “The main rhythms and cadences are exactly the same, and the word patterns are very similar.”
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  “Well, Serenne is a ship-trade language. I guess it’s not surprising that they speak it here as well. Or perhaps the farmers here are descended of settlers from a colony that had its roots on the same mainland as the people who colonized Serendair in the Second Age.”

  Rhapsody nodded. “Whatever the reason, we should look on this as a blessing. It means we may have a chance to understand the language eventually.”

  The chance came on their fifth day out of the Root. Grunthor and Achmed had gone about the task of procuring food, often by outright theft, and seeking information about the layout of the village and the surrounding settlements. While they were gone, Rhapsody had positioned herself in a hidden place on the outskirts of the town where she could hear the conversations of the travelers coming and going. On this particular morning, in addition to a few farmers consulting about their tactics in an upcoming haggle and a few women gossiping and cursing, she heard a song.

  It was by no means the first song she had heard in this place; the farmers commonly sang as a method of herding cattle or to make long, mind-numbing tasks seem to go more quickly. But this day the singer was a child, a young boy who was walking home with a stick in his hand, dragging it so that it drew a line in the snow. It was a simple country folk-tune, sung slightly off-key, but the melody struck her immediately, because it was the same song that she and countless other children in Serendair had sung in their youth.

  She listened intently, her stomach growing cold. The words of his song were about a milkweed seed from which the clouds had grown, just as they had been when she sang it as a child. The lyrics were in a strange but recognizable dialect, and as she listened to him sing, like breaking a code, she now understood the mutations and patterns of the language.

  Keeping to the tree line, Rhapsody shadowed the boy until he met up with a woman on the road, then listened to their conversation, understanding almost all of it. Her palms grew moist with excitement. She listened as long as she dared, then ran back to camp to tell Achmed and Grunthor.

  The next day the two Bolg joined her at the listening post, acquiring a little of the tongue under her tutelage. She translated three conversations before Achmed nodded in the direction of their shelter. They made for the camp with haste.

  “So what do you want to do, Rhapsody?” Achmed asked. “I can see you’re up to something.”

  “I think it’s time I met one or two and tried to talk to them. There’s no way to find a city unless we get directions. We can lurk in the woods forever, but if I don’t find a port city, I’ll never get home.”

  “The ramifications of a possible mistake are deadly for the two of us.”

  The winter wind blew the hair from her eyes, and Rhapsody nodded. “I know,” she said. “So you two remain hidden, follow me, and I’ll report back to you if I can.”

  “And ’ow are we supposed to get you out o’ there if somethin’ ’appens?” asked Grunthor. He was growing visibly upset.

  “You aren’t,” she said simply. “It’s a matter of survival now. I know this isn’t the best way for the two of you, but we have different goals. You plan to stay in this place; I don’t. I want to go home, and I’m willing to risk everything for that, but I don’t expect you to. Either way, the two of you should be all right. If there are no problems, we will meet up and I can pass what I’ve learned on to you. And if something happens, well, break camp and get out of here. Drink a toast to me every now and then, if you care to.”

  “Naw,” Grunthor muttered, “too risky. Can you speak that language, Duchess?”

  “Not yet,” Rhapsody admitted, “but I should be able to get by for a while until I pick it up.”

  “Just don’t slip and talk to them in Bolgish,” Achmed warned. “You want to learn about them, not for them to learn about us.”

  “Right.” She smiled at Grunthor, who was still shaking his head. “You realize it might take a while to get the information we need.”

  Achmed nodded. “Once we assess that you’re safe we’ll do some broader scouting, get some real information about this place.”

  “How will we get back together?” Rhapsody asked.

  “We set a time and place. If you’re not there, we go looking for you.”

  “And where would we meet? Here?”

  “No. I don’t want anyone trailing us back to the Root. Closed or not, I don’t want anyone knowing where we came from. Agreed?”

  Rhapsody rose in the darkness and came to Grunthor. She sat on his knee and wrapped an arm around his massive neck. “Agreed. We’ll pick a place near the next village along the road, and, if you decide it’s safe to leave, set up to meet in a few weeks. But don’t go leaving me until I give you a sign that I think it’s safe, too. I don’t want to be counting on you to come and rescue me to find that you’re twenty leagues away.”

  Grunthor sighed reluctantly. “All right, that makes sense. What’s the sign?”

  Rhapsody whistled a simple trill, and the two Bolg smiled. It was a tune she had hummed when they were able to walk upright in the tunnel, a sign that her mood had improved, if only for a while. “That’s the all-clear. Now, if you hear this—” She whistled again, an unmistakable sound of distress, couched in the tones of a larksong. “—it means come if you can and help me.”

  “Got it, miss.”

  They laid their plans late into the night. Morning would find them on the road to the next village, a place the two Bolg had determined in their scouting to be larger and more central.

  They blazed a marker that was clear and hard to miss, no matter what the weather brought. It would point to their meeting place. Then they settled in to wait. Rhapsody would approach a likely individual and try to make contact while the others watched for a few days or more. If they determined it was safe to leave her, they would meet in a little more than two months’ time, under the full moon.

  “You realize this is very dangerous,” Achmed said as she bade them goodbye. Once she had identified her contact, she would not come back.

  Rhapsody turned around and regarded them seriously. “I once was trapped with Michael, the Waste of Breath, for a fortnight, completely at his mercy and unable to escape. I survived that. This is nothing.”

  Achmed and Grunthor both nodded. They had known Michael. She was not exaggerating.

  18

  The thaw had progressed to a stage where the scents of the earth were hinted at in the air again. The snowpack was still deep, and showed little sign of abating, but the wind was a little warmer, and around the bases of the trees a thin ring of ground could be seen. Children were out more frequently, and the townsfolk of the villages along the road could be found making repairs to cottages and barns or gathering additional stores of wood in the forest before the return of bitter weather. The forays of the villagers into the woods made hiding more difficult.

  The three travelers stood in a shaded vale, obscured by thick vines that would be impenetrable in summer when in leaf, not far from the village entrance on the road. Grunthor had pointed out a number of children who were alone at times, but Rhapsody was uncomfortable approaching any of them for fear she might bring punishment on them. Finally, toward noon, a group of farmers congregated on the road, awaiting something coming from the west. The three moved closer to observe.

  As the sun crested the apex of the sky, one of the men looked down the road and pointed. The person approaching on a silver-gray horse was an older man, tall and barrel-chested, with a large, pocked nose and reddish-brown beard that was streaked with white. As he came into view more of the villagers assembled, some running forth to meet him, others hanging back to wait.

  The man was dressed in woolen robes that had been dyed the color of earth, probably with butternut hulls, Rhapsody noted. He carried a knotted wooden staff, and each person who greeted him did so with reverence, most of them bowing their heads as his hand came to rest on them. His arrival had generated a mild excitement that was tempered with warmth and respect; obviously the farmers knew h
im well. He dismounted slowly, showing some of the signs of age.

  It was clear from the brief benedictions he spoke and the blessings he conferred that this man was some sort of priest. His simple clothes and lack of adornment in Serendair would have indicated a cleric of lowly rank, but Rhapsody noted that the deference shown him was more on the level that would be offered to an abbot or another high-ranking clergyman. Her eyes sparkled excitedly.

  “He’s the one,” she whispered to the two Firbolg.

  “No,” said Achmed. “Listen.”

  Rhapsody strained to hear the conversation between the wandering priest and one of the men. It was about snowfall levels and augury of forest animals in predicting the growing season; the signs seemed to indicate that winter would return soon, and with a vengeance in a month or so. They also exchanged a few words about a diseased cow and an injury that the farmer’s son had sustained.

  Then the priest laid his hand on the farmer’s head, and spoke his blessing. Rhapsody’s mouth dropped open. Unlike the language they had exchanged in their conversation, the same vernacular she had been hearing all along, the benediction was in the tongue of the Island of Serendair, word for word. It was spoken with a strange accent, with the staccato breaks of a man not using his mother tongue, but speaking clearly and correctly.

  “Gods,” she said, swallowing hard.

  “I don’t like it.” Achmed’s bony hand encircled her upper arm, drawing her back into the thicket.

  Rhapsody turned to him in surprise. “Why not? Who would be better to talk to? He speaks our language.”

  “Perhaps, but I don’t want him to know that we do, remember? Bolgish. We speak Bolgish. He’s a priest. I don’t trust priests.”

  Rhapsody slid her arm out of his grasp. “Perhaps you’ve just known bad ones; dark priests, evil gods. One of my favorite people in all the world was a priest, and I knew several kind ones in Easton.”

  Achmed looked at her in disgust. “First off, all priests have a plan, a design, sometimes their own, sometimes their god’s. I am not serving any god’s design. Second, how do you know this man isn’t a dark priest?”