Aside from their involuntary shivering, the children remained motionless with the exception of one slightly older girl, perhaps sixteen years of age, bound hand and foot in the middle of the group. She struggled for a moment, glaring furiously at the door, then blinked as shock descended.
“Don’t worry, we’re here to help you.” Rhapsody gave them her gentlest smile as Grunthor and Achmed moved quickly through the room toward the far door. “We’re going to get you out of here and take you back to your homes.” The children stared at her blankly.
Rhapsody turned to Achmed. “Were there keys on either of the guards?”
“No time for that now. Let’s find whoever is running this little house of fun.”
“There are at least nine of them.” The comment came from one of the captives in the center of the room. It was the girl whose hands were bound. She looked uneasy as she spoke.
“Do you know where they are?” Rhapsody asked.
“No,” the girl answered. “But they come through that door.” She nodded toward the end of the hall the trio had not yet examined. Grunthor put down his poleax and drew his massive snickersnee. The two Bolg made ready to open the door.
“Thank you, and don’t worry,” Rhapsody said. “We’ll release you when we get back.” She gave the whole group another encouraging smile.
“Just don’t tell them who talked if you get captured,” the girl said acidly.
Rhapsody nodded in the direction of the two Bolg. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much. What’s your name, dear?”
“We’re ready,” Achmed called from the door.
“Well, it’s not dear,” the girl said with a glint of defiance in her eye.
“It’s Jo!” said a pretty girl of no more than six. “She told them when they started twisting her toes. I’m Lizette.”
Jo looked disapprovingly at the child, but the little girl did not notice. She seemed enraptured with Rhapsody, unable to take her eyes off the Lirin Singer.
“Are you finished?” Achmed asked.
“We’ll be back,” Rhapsody said to the children. She was using the Naming technique of speaking truly. After a moment she saw belief creep back into their eyes somewhat. She blew them a kiss and went to join her companions. The older girl muttered something under her breath, but Rhapsody could not hear it.
Her attention was now drawn to the sounds of shouting and the pounding of footsteps coming from the next room. She quickly took her place by the door, and within seconds it burst open. Two men armed with spears raced into the room to find themselves faced with Achmed and the cwellan.
Rhapsody heard the now-familiar hiss of the weapon firing, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the silver streak of tiny disks as they flew past the men in the doorway and beyond.
He’s shooting at people in the next room, she thought in distracted admiration; the speed and sureness of Achmed’s hands as he reloaded never ceased to amaze her. What had once been a blur was now slightly more visible to her.
She lunged as the guard on her side swung at Achmed, driving the burning blade of Daystar Clarion through the man’s back. He fell, writhing, pulling himself free of Rhapsody’s blade as he did. Grunthor’s great two-handed swing was but a moment behind her own, and his five-foot blade cleanly cut off the other man’s head. Rhapsody struggled to stay focused; the nightmare of what was happening had caused reality to recede into the distance, making her feel like a spectator in the fight.
Achmed ripped open the door. “Go,” he ordered. There was a moment where she and Grunthor nearly collided while both trying to enter the room, but she managed to dodge out of the giant Bolg’s way just ahead of being trampled.
Inside was another scene of carnage, but this time it was of their own making. Six bodies were strewn across the floor.
In the center of the room stood a woman, dressed in white, desperately shouting orders to a handful of men who were running down a great stone staircase, the only other entrance in the room. The room was massive and built completely of stone, its walls lined with book-and scroll-filled shelves. Armchairs and a few large desks were placed with care about the room.
Rhapsody and Grunthor rushed into the room, making certain to keep clear of the line of fire from the door. It took five strides for Grunthor to reach the center, bellowing at the top of his lungs. At the sight and sound of the screaming giant, the soldiers within the library froze in terror.
Rhapsody ran at the woman in white. The woman’s eyes were quickly torn from Grunthor and sighted onto her, glaring with a furious hatred.
The woman drew the only weapon she seemed to carry, a long, cruel-looking obsidian dagger, and took up a fighting stance. Rhapsody recognized the weapon as an implement of sacrifice, a tool used in the rituals of evil. Her own eyes took on a similar hateful fury as she realized this woman must have been the one who had mutilated the children in the courtyard.
Rhapsody swung her sword with all the rage that had built up within her, a strong swift swing that Grunthor would have been proud of. The woman sidestepped it and lunged with her own dagger.
Pulled off balance by the wildness of her own blow, Rhapsody could not dodge, and felt a sharp pain as the dagger pierced her left shoulder. She winced, and drew a painful breath, then struck with the flaming sword again. The woman did not have time to scream before Rhapsody drove the blade through her heart. Once more the air was filled with the acrid smell of burning flesh, but no blood fell to the floor. The wounds were instantly cauterized even before the woman’s life had fled her body.
Rhapsody followed in Grunthor’s wake and moved sharply to the side as more disks slid through the air, too close for comfort. She did not spare the woman a glance, instead looking up to see how her companions fared. They were fine; none of their opponents were left alive.
The human debris scattered about the bottom of that stair showed that Grunthor had killed at least two more of the guards. Other bodies bore the cleaner wounds of the cwellan. With a quick glance she counted fifteen and wondered if any others remained.
Grunthor stood at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes fixed at the top, waiting with grim determination for more to appear there. He had drawn a hand ax, almost the size of a battle-ax for most men, a weapon that Rhapsody had seen him hurl at vermin with deadly force before.
“I guess we won’t be questioning her,” Achmed said, looking down at the body of the woman.
Shame suddenly flushed Rhapsody’s face. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“What are you sorry about?” Achmed said, annoyed. “Who knows who or what she was; she had to be taken down. You did it. It would have been handy to torture a few answers out of her, but sometimes you just have to address the situation as it happens. Is it serious?”
“What?” Rhapsody asked, confused by the question.
“Your shoulder—is the wound serious?”
“Hmm? Oh. No, it’s not deep.” Rhapsody looked down at the gash. “It can wait.”
“Poison?” Achmed moved close enough to smell the wound.
“I don’t think so.”
“All right, let’s see if there’s any more company,” Achmed said. He lifted the crossbeam that leaned against the wall and barred the door to the room before heading to the stairs. “Just to be sure any unexpected guests have to knock first.”
They searched the rest of the tower, climbing the stairs quickly and quietly, but found no sign of any other occupants. The higher rooms were where the soldiers they had fought had quartered themselves, and on the top floor was a large suite which had undoubtedly been the home to the woman in white, though there were signs that a man also had been there.
In that room they found a small chest, securely bound, which they took downstairs to examine when they were certain the rest of the House of Remembrance was clear. A quick search of the rest of the structure revealed a series of cloisterlike rooms that had not been occupied, and a kitchen that had been used recently.
Rhapsody started look
ing for a key with which to open the children’s manacles, finally discovering one on a chain around the dead woman’s neck. She hurried back to the hall where they were imprisoned and quickly began unlocking them, speaking to them in low, comforting tones.
In the absence of the two Bolg the children seemed to warm to her quickly, except for the girl named Jo, who continued to eye her with suspicion. Rhapsody went from child to child, speaking quietly to them and humming, comforting them as best she could for the moment. It seemed to work, and eventually even Jo seemed to relax a bit.
Meanwhile, Achmed deftly picked the locks on the small chest they had found in the rooms above. In it he found a few baubles, which he passed to Grunthor, who kept their supply of tender and coinage; a small notebook; a sealed scroll; and a large brass key with four blades and strange teeth.
Carefully he opened the scroll and saw that it was written in an ancient script which he could not read, but its form and format was clear and familiar to him. It was a contract. He called to Rhapsody.
She entered the room with a long trail of children behind her. There were fifteen in all, mostly under the age of twelve. The youngest of them clung to her, and on entering the tower library hid behind her from the two large monsters that had been their rescuers.
“It’s all right, Feldin,” Jo said to a Lirin boy of about seven. “They may be ugly as shit, but they set us free. They can’t possibly do anything worse to us than was planned.” Grunthor snickered.
“We won’t do anything to you except return you home,” Rhapsody said with a smile. Looking into her radiant face, the quivering children believed her.
“Look at this,” Achmed said, walking over to Rhapsody. The children cleared out of his way quickly.
Rhapsody took the scroll and studied it for a moment. A frown came over her face, but it passed quickly.
“This is in Ancient Serenne,” she said. “Isn’t that odd? This is the tongue Llauron wanted me to learn; I didn’t bother to tell him I already knew a little of it. It’s a dead language. I mean, it was a dead language even when we left the Island. It was the tongue of the Firstborn, the Ancient Seren, the original inhabitants of the Island. But look at this scroll, the vellum is not really very old.”
“Can you read it?” Achmed asked.
“I think so,” Rhapsody said. “It’s a musical language, and my mentor taught me most of the fundamentals—wait. I was wrong. The letters are the old script, but it’s written in the language of men—I mean the common tongue of the people of these lands. Just give me a minute and I’ll read it through.”
Rhapsody walked over to one of the desks, sat down, and positioned two books to hold open the scroll. She took off her own pack, pulled out a piece of poorly tanned hide, and began jotting down notes on it.
As she did, the children swarmed around her, except for Jo, who moved over to the pile of bodies that Grunthor was quickly stacking in one corner of the room. Noticing this, Rhapsody considered moving the children into a different room, but quickly realized that, at least from this room, the bodies of the slaughtered children were not as visible as they were from some of the other rooms.
Only a day before, the greatest sorrow she had tried to assuage in a small child was the loss of the mother of Lord Stephen’s children. Now she had in her care children who had suffered unimaginable trauma. She swallowed the lump in her throat, hoping she would be up to the task of helping them heal once they were free of this place.
Achmed leafed quickly through the small notebook. Unlike the other, it seemed to be written in the common tongue of this land. The letters were similar to those he knew, and so with some difficulty he began to skim through it.
It appeared to be a journal, like the kind scholars and scribes used while jotting down notes. Its text was about a lost city, though he was uncertain he was reading it correctly. He was more interested in the map that had been sketched in the book, and the reference to the brass key.
A smile crawled across his face when he recognized the name Gwylliam, and saw a marker on the map in an area distinctly denoted as Firbolg lands. Canrif. They had a map.
“Achmed, Grunthor, I’ve got it,” Rhapsody said, holding up the sheepskin translation. “It’s a contact. It was signed in the first hour of the Equinox, in the one-thousand-three-hundred-and-ninety-sixth year since the arrival of the fleet; I’m not sure which one that means, probably the First Wave, I would guess.
“The parties involved are Cifiona—I guess that would be the woman with the big dagger—and someone called the Rakshas, and through him his master. That’s strange; his master is not referred to by name.
“She is apparently to receive, for services rendered, ‘life unending.’ I wonder if this really means immortality.” She looked up at her friends, and the expression in her eyes matched theirs; the nature of the contract and its participants was becoming clearer. “Apparently she also agrees to be bound to the master; maybe this is a sort of marriage contract.”
“I doubt it,” said Achmed. He had been the unwilling party of a contract like this once.
Rhapsody’s face was twisted in disgust. Grunthor was growing impatient.
“Well, miss? What else does it say?”
“‘Among those services shall be counted the commitment of the blood sacrifice of thirty-three persons of innocent heart and untouched body of human descent, and an equal number of Lirin or half-Lirin origins,’” Rhapsody read. She looked at Achmed. “I saw three in the courtyard. Do you think there were others?”
“No, I don’t think so,” he replied. “The amount of dried blood indicates the equipment is fairly new; I’d say this was the first round.” He watched her sigh in relief and go back to reading, ignoring Grunthor’s look of doubt.
“It has some nonsense about a particular undertaking, but doesn’t explain what that is, except that it’s what the blood is to be used for. I think this word is ‘sustenance.’ Then it sets the date of completion of service as the time of the Patriarch Rite of the following year, and the venue to be the House of Remembrance, of which this ‘the Rakshas’ person is apparently now considered Master. That’s nice; I wonder what those First Generation Cymrians would think of that.”
“Well, speakin’ as one myself, Oi can’t say Oi’m too pleased about it.”
“And here below it is signed: Cifiona—something—I can’t tell, and then simply ‘Rakshas,’ with these symbols next to it.”
Rhapsody showed them the two signs, the first of which appeared to be a character in an unknown language, which neither Achmed or Grunthor recognized.
“I think I’ve seen this one before,” Rhapsody said, pointing to the second symbol, a circle formed from a spiraling line.
“Where?” demanded Achmed. The sudden fury in his voice made her jump.
“It’s a hex sign on Llauron’s front door, or something like it.”
The sight of the second symbol had clearly unnerved the assassin. He took the document and placed it back in the small chest. Rhapsody tossed her translation in as well.
“Let’s get out of here,” Achmed said.
“Wait, there’s something I have to do,” Rhapsody said, pulling out her higen and a small bag that Llauron had given her.
“What, you’re going to compose a song about the beautiful things we’ve seen today?”
“No,” Rhapsody said with a touch of impatience. “I’m going to see if I can heal that tree.”
“Why?” Achmed’s tone was tinged with irritation.
“Because it is a Sagian Oak, or hadn’t you noticed? To me it’s sacred. Lord Stephen said it was planted from a sapling brought by the Cymrians from Serendair. That means it is a sapling of Sagia. Even though I have regrets about leaving the Island, I am grateful to the Tree that let us escape the death that came after. The least I can do is try to heal its child.”
“Not to be disrespectful, miss, but it’s not a child, it’s just a tree.”
“No,” Achmed said, looking in the dir
ection of the garden. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you,” Rhapsody said, surprised at his willingness. “Just look after the children for a moment and I’ll be right back.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, I can’t very well take them into the garden, can I?” Rhapsody whispered. “I don’t even want to go there myself; there are dead children in there.”
“That’s all right, miss; we’ll look after them.”
Achmed glared at Grunthor, but he did not disagree. As Rhapsody left the room, he sat on the edge of one of the desks and returned to reading the small black notebook. Grunthor continued to rifle the bodies for valuables and stack them in a pile in the corner. All the children, aside from the oldest girl, stayed together, anxiously watching the door through which the Singer had left.
Rhapsody had to fight down her rising gorge as she rapidly made her way across the garden to the diseased tree at its center. Even in its withered state, the silvery-white bark was unmistakable. She blinked back tears at the memory of the one and only time she had ever seen Sagia, this tree’s mother, whose story she had learned from her own.
When she reached the large oak she looked over its bark and the tips of its branches. Using the lore taught to her by Llauron as well as the knowledge from her own life, she quickly realized the tree was not dead, and began humming a tuneless song, its melody matching the whispers of a song that still reverberated from its ailing heart. It was the same familiar tune that had run through her soul all the while she had traveled along the Root. She opened the bag she had been given in Gwynwood and pulled out a tiny tube of ointment, then began to care for the dying oak.
Running her hands over the tree, Rhapsody uncovered three of the larger root trunks, and followed them down to smaller branchings, looking for the ends. Steeling her nerve, she crossed much of the garden, trying to avoid looking at the grisly sights, until she found some of the tiniest filamental roots. She coated the hair-thin strands with ointment, soaking the soil around them.