Rhapsody

  Achmed said nothing; he watched Rhapsody’s face, waiting for his cue. She was thinking; she turned and looked at Jo, who could barely contain her excitement. Achmed saw Rhapsody’s brows furrow in puzzlement as she surveyed her new sister, and then she turned back to face the man who stood behind him. Her glance moved down to Achmed.

  “What do you think?”

  “If he was rude to you, send him away,” he said in an even tone. “He might do it again, and then I would have to kill him. I don’t want to have to defend your honor before I’ve had lunch; it gives me indigestion.”

  The man behind him chuckled; it was all Achmed could do to remain seated. Rhapsody smiled.

  “I think we can chance it,” she said, turning to Jo again. “What do you think?”

  “Yes, definitely,” Jo said, the words tripping over themselves.

  “Very well,” Rhapsody said, pointing to the place next to Achmed, “why don’t you sit there?”

  “What’s your name?” asked Jo, shifting eagerly in her seat.

  “Ashe,” said the stranger. He looked toward the inn; the tavernkeeper was approaching. “And yours?”

  “Jo,” she blurted excitedly. “And this is Rhapsody, and—ow!” Her words were choked off as her sister gave her a vicious pinch on the thigh.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jo,” said the hooded man. He turned to Rhapsody, who was glaring at Jo. “Rhapsody. What a beautiful name. Are you a musician?”

  “Yes, she—ow! Stop that!” Jo demanded as she moved her leg away.

  The man coughed into his hand for a moment; Achmed was sure he could sense a smile beneath the hood. “Is Jo short for something else? Joanna? Joella?”

  Jo turned red to the roots of her pale blond hair. “Josephine,” she said, her voice cracking.

  Rhapsody stared at her in amazement. She had been unable to coerce this information out of her newly adopted sister; now Jo was confiding it to a stranger.

  “Also a lovely name, to be sure. And you, sir? What may I call you?”

  Achmed turned for the first time to look at the man. He could see the very tip of an unkempt beard, but nothing else. “I think ‘sir’ will do just fine.”

  “Don’t be rude, Achmed,” said Jo, an annoyed tone in her voice.

  Achmed scowled at her. Her mouth was flapping, clearly unhinged from her brain. Jo understood the need to keep a name in reserve; she had done it herself. Before she could compromise them further, the tavernkeeper was at their table, asking what their pleasure was.

  Jo ordered the mutton, Rhapsody plain bread and cheese. Achmed and Ashe both ordered stew simultaneously, then looked at each other as if reconsidering their choice. The tavernkeeper had jumped when Ashe spoke; he would have overlooked him completely had he not spoken up.

  Achmed’s final glower seemed to have gotten the message to Jo at last; she sat in sullen silence during much of the meal. Rhapsody attempted to make up for the awkwardness by chatting charmingly with the stranger, who had both women laughing by the end of lunch. Achmed listened to him carefully; he found the man’s brand of easy banter annoying but without rancor or insistent prying. His stomach was roiling; the smell of Jo’s mutton ruined the stew. He couldn’t wait to be done.

  Finally the meal was over. Ashe and the women had discussed the thaw in the weather, the bells of the basilica, and their impressions of the quality and availability of goods in the marketplace; nothing of substance. Achmed stood up, pushing the bench back from underneath himself and Ashe, nothing the lightning-quick response of the stranger, who managed to rise and be out of the way before the seat disappeared from under him.

  “Where are you headed now?” Jo asked as the stranger pulled forth an oversized coin purse from the folds of his cloak; he held it up for a moment and Rhapsody laughed while Jo colored in embarrassment.

  Ashe threw two silver coins on the table, sufficient to pay for their meal generously. “South. And yourselves?”

  Before Rhapsody could stop her, Jo blurted again. “We’re going to live in Canrif.”

  The stranger shuddered visibly; Achmed made note. “Why?”

  “Well, I don’t know that we’re going to live there,” Rhapsody corrected. “We’re going to observe it. It seems an interesting place.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Ashe said dryly. “Do you expect to be there long?”

  “She just told you we don’t know,” Achmed snapped.

  “Why do you ask?” Rhapsody asked hurriedly.

  “Well, if you will be there more than a few months, I will be back in that area again. Perhaps I will drop by and see how you’re doing.”

  “Yes! You’d be welcome,” said Jo, then she quickly became silent under the glance from Rhapsody and the glare from Achmed.

  “We might be there still; it’s hard to say,” Rhapsody said, rising herself from the bench with Jo. “You’re welcome to check, of course, if you’re in the area anyway.”

  “I may do that. Well, good luck to all of you. I hope your journey is pleasant. Good day.” Ashe bowed to the women, nodded to Achmed, then turned and started away into the town square. After a few feet he stopped and turned to Rhapsody once more.

  “I hope I’ve made up for my rudeness in some small way. I apologize again.”

  “Accepted,” she said, smiling. “Please don’t think about it another moment.” The stranger bowed again, then disappeared into the crowd and was gone.

  Rhapsody turned to Jo and smiled. “See, things do turn around quickly, don’t they? It’s a good thing you didn’t get away with stealing his purse, Jo; otherwise we would have to pay for lunch ourselves.”

  Achmed sat back down and pointed at the other bench, indicating he wanted the women to do so as well. “At least you might have had enough left over to buy some heavy, strong thread, the kind suitable for sewing lips shut.” Jo flushed, looking mortified.

  “Shut up,” Rhapsody snapped. “Don’t talk to her like that.”

  “Fine; then I’ll pose my question to you. Who was that, and why did he follow you?”

  The women sat back down, Rhapsody’s brow furrowing in thought. “I don’t know any more than you do now, Achmed. We came across him in the street and he invited us to lunch.”

  “What did he say to you? What was this rudeness he mentioned?”

  Rhapsody looked at Jo, who appeared on the verge of tears. She took the girl’s hand under the table and stroked it comfortingly, turning Achmed’s question over in her mind, replaying their meeting point by point.

  She thought back to the events leading up to the moment when his attributes were in her hand. She had given the area in question a playful squeeze. They seem fine to me. Is the feeling returning yet?

  The feeling was never gone; that was not the problem. But you could say that it has changed. They really need a more thorough examination.

  She had laughed, apologized and started to walk away with Jo.

  Wait.

  Yes? She had felt a tingle pass along her skin. When this would happen to her as a child, her father would say that a goose had walked over her grave. The strange cloaked man invited them to lunch, and then insulted her. He presumed she was a courtesan, and she had taken offense; she left with Jo in a huff.

  “Nothing, really. He’s a flirt, Achmed, and a bad one at that. I don’t think there’s any more to it. I didn’t find his company unpleasant, even though you seem to have.”

  “And is he responsible for the earrings, too?”

  Rhapsody flushed; she had forgotten about the jewelry. “No, they were a gift from the merchant for helping him spare his wares during a street mishap with some oxcarts.”

  “Hmm. Well, let’s not belabor it. We have a few hours before we need to meet up with Grunthor. Let’s explore the city. I think it may teach us a great deal about Canrif, since much of Bethe Corbair seems to have been built in response to fear of the Firbolg.”

  “I thought the Cymrians built Bethe Corbair,” Rhapsody said, fol
ding her napkin. “Lord Stephen said they built the basilica.”

  “The city proper, yes. But if you look carefully, you’ll notice that, unlike the other provincial capitals in Roland we have seen, Bethe Corbair has an inner city, with fine architecture designed by artisans, and a newer, outer city, built almost entirely of stone and mortar, designed by soldiers as a livable barricade. There don’t seem to be many farms or villages on the outskirts of the city; the few settlements that do exist are right outside the city walls. It’s the outer city that should give us some answers.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll be right back,” Rhapsody said, rising once more. “I want to have a look at the bell tower before we go.” She patted Jo’s shoulder and trotted across the street to the southern side of the basilica.

  Jo watched her cross, then turned to Achmed. “She caused that accident, you know.”

  He gave her a sharp glance. “What do you mean?”

  “The oxcarts that ran into each other. I was across the street when it happened. People had been looking at her all morning, even with her hood up. Then she pulled it down to put the earrings on, and the drivers of those oxcarts stopped watching where they were going and smashed into each other. After that, men were dropping flowers in her path, trying to get her attention. She picked them up and handed them back, thinking the idiots had let them fall by accident. It was really strange.”

  Achmed nodded. He had seen the same thing ever since they had left the Root.

  “And she has no idea,” Jo said.

  “No. And I doubt she ever will.”

  The three who had gone into the city met up with Grunthor as the sun was setting over the thatched fields on the outskirts of Bethe Corbair. They exchanged information and impressions, then took stock of their supplies, which they had replenished in the city.

  “I’m now even more convinced a visit to Canrif is worthwhile,” Achmed said as they ate their evening meal. “It sounds like a substantial power base, heavy with resources, but lacking organization. What they need is leadership. They’re ripe for the picking, unless I miss my guess.”

  “What does that mean?” Rhapsody asked, wiping her mouth on her napkin.

  Achmed looked up into the sky. Night was coming, heady with promise and excitement. “The Bolg need a king; I know one who might be willing to take the job.”

  “You?” Rhapsody asked incredulously.

  Achmed looked at her. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked in mock offense.

  “I didn’t realize you were of royal blood.”

  Both the Firbolg laughed aloud. “Only the races of men believe in that preordained, divine-right-of-kings nonsense,” said Achmed. “Class structure means nothing among the Bolg. You rule when you’re qualified to do so, either by strength, or by ingenuity. I hope to offer both.”

  Rhapsody stared into the campfire in silence. Though his words made sense to her, they clashed with a deeply ingrained belief in the limits of her own class. But then, even that was topsy-turvy now. Llauron had called her a peasant in the same breath he had sent her to meet the duke.

  “I think it’s likely we’ll fit in very well there, even you two non-Bolg,” Achmed said.

  “Agreed,” mumbled Grunthor, chewing on a pork shank. “Oi think we might find a place to establish your own outpost.”

  “Among the Firbolg?” Jo demanded. Her demeanor had returned to normal. “I don’t want to be left alone among them. They’re monsters.”

  “Let’s see what it’s like and give it a chance,” said Rhapsody, watching her two companions from the old world. “There are a lot of myths about the Bolg that are greatly exaggerated. I’d be willing to wager they’re not monsters at all. We might even get to like them.”

  Achmed and Grunthor merely smiled and finished their supper.

  43

  The four companions camped that night on the northernmost edge of the Krevensfield Plain, the wide-open lands that stretched as far as the eye could see between Bethe Corbair and the Teeth, the mountains that formed the fortress barrier of the Bolglands.

  The field wrapped around the city on three sides, so the travelers headed east until Bethe Corbair and its surrounding settlements were no longer in sight. When the night came they were surrounded by an all-encompassing sphere of stars and darkness. It was a lonely sensation, as though they were the only living things in the world, and as a result they stayed up quite late, talking to each other as a means of warding off the desolation.

  Wrapped in darkness as she was, Rhapsody thought back to the emptiness she had felt during the endless journey along the Root. While that had been a constant struggle, a fear of giving in to her own feelings of panic, now she felt utterly alone, vulnerable, lost here among the stars.

  She drew her cloak around herself and thought of her grandchildren, as she often did when the night was loneliest. Were Gwydion and Melisande safe in their fortress of rosy brown stone, with their father’s army to protect them? All their wealth and privilege had not kept them from devastating loss; perhaps nothing could protect anyone from it. Rhapsody reached out and gently brushed a lock of pale hair off Jo’s forehead. Nothing.

  The fire had died down, the hot embers casting flickering shadows on the sleeping faces of her companions, the only friends she now had in the world. Rhapsody sighed brokenly, painfully, and continued her watch, trying to avoid looking up into the eternal blackness above her.

  The gray mist of dawn still found her solemn. Her companions rose sleepily, grumpy in the last vestiges of sleep. Rhapsody reached into the campfire, still merrily blazing.

  “Slypka,” she said, watching the fire snuff out in a thin wisp of smoke that vanished almost as quickly. It was a word she had learned early on in Namer training, roughly translated as extinguish. It eliminated every trace of fire or mist, or anything that hung, vaporous, in the air. She often wished the word could be applied to other things, such as bad dreams or haunting memories.

  When morning broke they started out as the snow began to fall again. Over the course of their journey the winter weather returned, making traveling difficult and tempers short. The howling wind was both a curse and a blessing; in addition to sparking some of their angry confrontations, it swallowed their verbal exchanges, sparing their friendships.

  Four days passed, and the wide plain of Roland, known as the Orlandan Plateau, began to take on a hillier aspect, with attributes that were more akin to steppes than open fields. These rocky fields were the precursors to the foothills of the Teeth.

  After more than a week the mountains themselves came into sight, rising above the steppes in the distance, jagged and sharp against the sky of the horizon. Gwylliam had called these crags the Manteids, the Seers, in honor of his wife and her sisters, but Time had erased that name, and now they were known across the land by their more fanglike description. It was an apt one.

  It took another three days before they were in the foothills, the mountains growing closer all the time. When she first sighted them Rhapsody thought they were uniformly brown, dark reaches that rose threateningly skyward.

  As they grew closer she could see that they were in fact a multiplicity of colors and hues, blends of black and purple, green and blue, stretching toward the clouds in many peaks and crags within each mountain. They were at once beautiful and forbidding, standing a silent watch between the world of men and the hidden realm of the Firbolg beyond.

  Finally, after two more days, they came to the feet of the mountains. They had been in the steppes for half that time, semi-hills that undulated across the now-rocky plateau, with steep rises and deep swales spanning the landscape. At the top of a particularly tall rise Achmed stopped; the others followed his lead.

  Below them, cloaked in snow, lay a great bowl-like amphitheater, cut into the earth by time and nature, enhanced, perhaps, by the work of men. It was vast in size and breadth, surrounded by rocky ledges and rimmed internally in gradated rings that leveled out onto a wide, flat floor, buried in snow and the debris
from centuries of neglect. Rhapsody recognized it instantly from the writings in the notebook.

  “This is Gwylliam’s Great Moot,” she told the others excitedly, her voice echoing off the sides and disappearing into the snowpack. “According to the writings, the Cymrians used to meet in council in times of need or celebration. The entire populace could fit within the Moot, which served as the meeting place. This is where Gwylliam and Anwyn held court with all their subjects in attendance.”

  “It’s a cwm,” said Grunthor, using the word from the old world for the crater formed by a glacier or volcano. He closed his eyes and inhaled the frosty air; it was snowing lightly, making it difficult to see. Through his feet he felt at one with the Earth here, even more than when he had just emerged from the Root. It was a place with layers of history, and the Earth whispered the secrets to him now in the silence of his heart.

  The base was the ancient time, long ago, when the Bowl was formed. The great Moot had once been a glacial lake, dug by the freezing and thawing of ice on the mountain faces of the Teeth when they were young. The glacier had carved the Bowl of the Moot as a vessel for the melting tears of the great wall of moving ice. As the land warmed, the lake had sunk into the earth or sent its water skyward, dried by the sun, leaving the amphitheater hewn into the mountainside. That was the first layer.

  Then came the layer of the old days, when man polished what Nature had carved into a gathering place for the people that came to live on the land. The power of the land, and the people who walked it, who gathered here, had melded, forming an Age the like of which the world had never seen, nor would it see again.

  And there was now, the sleeping time, when it lay, forgotten and desolate beneath the shroud of snow. Even dormant, there was no mistaking its immense power. Grunthor opened his eyes, returning from his reverie, looking around for the others.

  Achmed had located a pathway through the foothills, and was concentrating on finding the easiest route to where they wanted to go.

  As his mind wandered over the terrain, he could see a series of passes in the mountains, larger than mountain-goat trails but smaller than roads, that crisscrossed the landscape, providing somewhat accessible paths from crag to crag and through the twisting hills.