Rhapsody

  Suddenly Grunthor screamed, sending a bolt of terror through Rhapsody. It was not his war scream, the sound he made to frighten horses and men, or the uproarious laugh that issued forth when he was enjoying the mayhem he was wreaking.

  It was a scream of agony.

  He spun away from where he had been standing, a brutal, smoking slash across his eyes, delivered as if from the air itself. Rhapsody leapt to his aid and was hurled backward, as if by the force of the wind.

  “Grunthor!”

  The Sergeant lurched blindly backward, blood pouring from his eyes, his chest and shoulder bearing two more deep slashes. His cloak ignited, ripping into flame.

  Achmed seized his friend’s shoulders and pushed him to the ground, rolling him to snuff the flames as once Grunthor had done at the Earth’s core for him. The Dhracian’s neck snapped back with the force of the invisible blow that slashed across his chin, as the fire began to consume Grunthor.

  Rhapsody struggled to her knees and held the sword before her, panting. She took in a deep breath and cleared her mind, then concentrated on making the fire vanish.

  “Slypka,” she whispered.

  The flames disappeared. Grunthor’s charred body, face down on the cavern floor, jerked again. A cruel wound ripped his back open from his waist to his neck. Rhapsody, staring in horror, gasped aloud.

  “Achmed, look!”

  In the light of the sword they could make out the shadow of something bending over Grunthor. All but invisible, it hovered above him, vaporous hooded robes hanging on skeletal arms with fiery claws at the ends. The silhouette glimmered in the darkness, barely there, whispering between the world of living men one moment and the spirit world the next. Within its hood was total darkness, glinting momentarily when it caught the light of the sword. Then it was gone.

  Grunthor’s body pulsed once more, then lay still. The flames from Daystar Clarion caught a shadow moving away, turning toward them.

  “Shing,” Achmed whispered, his voice choked. “Gods.”

  “Shing? What’s that?” Rhapsody asked, her voice barely audible.

  “An eye of the F’dor. And it’s coming this way. Parry if you can. Back up slowly, then run. I’ll hold it off as long as I can.”

  Still crouched, Rhapsody backed up. “The F’dor? You said there was nothing there.”

  “I couldn’t find the vibration on him,” Achmed muttered furiously, his eyes glancing around in panic. “But it’s here. It’s Tsoltan’s servant. Saltar must have been the host; it must have been him.”

  It’s not what he is, it’s what he wears.

  Rhapsody’s back straightened. She could hear the words in her mind as clearly as if her mother had been standing beside her. She repeated them again.

  “It’s not what he is, it’s what he wears.”

  Achmed’s head snapped back, his shoulder slashed open, on fire. Grunthor moaned as his friend stumbled backward and fell, his huge hand flexing in agitation. It was the only movement he made.

  It’s not what he is, it’s what he wears.

  Her eyes went instantly to the amulet. Rhapsody reached out a trembling hand and grabbed the talisman.

  “No,” Achmed gasped, clutching his shoulder. “Don’t touch it!”

  Grunthor’s body was flipped onto its back.

  “Stop!” Rhapsody commanded, holding the amulet aloft.

  From across the room, she heard the word in her mind. It was muffled, muted.

  Tsoltan?

  Rhapsody shook her head, trying to break free from the feeling that her mind was being prodded, violated.

  Achmed raised himself up as much as he could.

  “Rhapsody, run,” he choked. “It will kill Grunthor, then start on me; it won’t be diverted until it’s sure its victim is dead. Get out of here.” His face went slack with horror. “Gods, Rhapsody, your eyes!”

  In the reflection of the amulet eye she could see her own green ones, now rimmed in the color of blood.

  It’s not what he is, it’s what he wears.

  “It’s the amulet,” she said softly. She turned and held it up again, looking in Grunthor’s direction. “The Shing is not bound to the shaman. It’s bound to the amulet.”

  She turned back to the hovering shadow, flitting from moment to moment in the darkness. “Get away from him,” she ordered. A faint glimmer appeared above Grunthor’s body. “What do you want?”

  I seek the Brother.

  “Did you hear that?” Rhapsody turned to Achmed, still propped on his elbow on the floor. He shook his head. “It seeks the Brother.”

  Shakily Achmed rose to a stand and picked up his sword. “Tell it,” he said softly in Bolgish.

  “No. It can’t see you. You’re Achmed the Snake now.”

  “Tell it,” he repeated. “It’ll return to Grunthor if you don’t. It will kill you. Tell it.”

  “No.”

  Achmed clutched his shoulder and stumbled forward.

  “I’m the Brother!” he screamed. “Me! I’m who you seek! Take me!”

  “Achmed, no!”

  Achmed’s back straightened, his arms tight against his sides. Rhapsody watched in horror as he jolted, writhing in the grip of a glimmering shadow with flaming claws. The specter clutched him, pulling him off the ground. His body was lifted, then dragged, twitching, over to her, where it fell at her feet. Achmed lay there, not moving.

  The Shing hovered in the air before her. Deep in her brain she could hear it speak again.

  I have found the Brother. I have delivered him as commanded. Release me now.

  Rhapsody clutched the chain of the amulet, the sweat from her hands making it slippery.

  “Where are the other eyes? The rest of the Thousand?”

  Gone, long dissipated on the wind in the heat of the Sleeping Child. I alone remained, having crossed the wide ocean in search of him. I alone succeeded. Release me now.

  Achmed stirred, but didn’t sit up. “Ask it about its Master.”

  “And he who called you forth? Where is he now?”

  He is dead, man and spirit, his name all but forgotten. I was the last of his essence, of his fire. He is dead. Release me now. The voice was growing fainter.

  Rhapsody looked down at Achmed. “It demands release.” Achmed nodded. She looked back to where she had seen it last.

  “Show yourself fully, and I will release you.”

  A faint glimmer appeared. Rhapsody could see the outline of the hood and robes, its frail clawlike hands glowing feebly, no longer burning. The frame on which the robes hung was skeletal, brittle. No light at all was visible within the hood.

  “Are there any other demon-spirits? Any other F’dor?”

  The Shing grew fainter, its voice silent.

  “Slypka,” she said. Extinguish. The shimmering apparition vanished.

  She bent and summarily checked Achmed, who waved her away, then ran to Grunthor. Tears poured down her cheeks, unnoticed, as she saw the hideous wounds that had mutilated his face and body. He was breathing shallowly, his tattered eyes glassy, staring at the ceiling above. The pallor of death was in his cheeks.

  In a faltering voice she began to sing the difficult Bolgish name, with its whistling snarls and glottal stop. Child of sand and open sky, son of the caves and lands of darkness, she sang. Grunthor didn’t move.

  Bengard, Firbolg. The Sergeant Major. My trainer, my protector. The Lord of Deadly Weapons. She was starting to weep uncontrollably. The Ultimate Authority, to Be Obeyed at All Costs. Grunthor, strong and reliable as the Earth itself. My friend; my dear, dear friend.

  Outside the cave, the sun was setting.

  59

  “Yer Ladyship?”

  Throbbing pain across her eyes, a familiar voice in her ears. Swimming white circles in the blackness.

  Rhapsody struggled to waken, but slipped instead back into the dream, a place where she could believe Grunthor was not dead. He smiled down at her, jostling her into awareness after a nightmare on the Root, com
forting her as he had so many times.

  “Take your time, darlin’.” The gray-green face in her memory, grinning down at her. How many times had he said that to her, wanting her to be sure of her footing, not to fall? He had been so patient.

  The voices seemed distant, hovering over her head.

  “’Ow long she been down?”

  “Since dawn. She sang through the night until the sun came up; then she collapsed.” Achmed’s sandy voice was more brittle than last she had heard.

  Her throat was full of pain. Grunthor, she whispered. The word was spoken in another’s voice, the voice of an ancient man, a withered crone, a Firbolg.

  “Oi’m ’ere, miss. Good as new.”

  Rhapsody fought to open her eyes, and succeeded with one. Swimming above her was the gray-green face, and it was grinning. She tried to speak, but only managed to move her lips soundlessly.

  “Don’t talk, Duchess. You fixed me up right nice, you did. Oi look a lot better than you do, you can be sure.”

  She swiveled her head to see what the pressure was beside her. Achmed sat next to her, bandaged and patched, but whole. From what little she could see, there was not a scratch on Grunthor.

  From across the room she could hear Jo exhale in relief.

  “She’s awake? She’s all right? Let me see her.”

  A moment later the teenager’s tear-stained face appeared, hovering above her, her expression giddy and furious at the same time.

  “Listen, you little runt—next time you go off on a fun expedition and leave me behind with your little brat grandchildren, I can guarantee you a severe thrashing when you get back. The little bastards tied me up and stole my stuff. If you hadn’t come back when you did, I would have been the first human to practice cannibalism on a Bolg.”

  Rhapsody loosed a deep sigh, feeling the painful tightness in her chest ease a little.

  “You’re really—all right—Grun—”

  “Stop,” the Bolg commanded in a tone charged with ringing authority. “Don’t speak, miss. Oi told you, Oi’m just ducky. Oi am most assuredly grateful, Oi ’ope you know. Oi guess you must know me pretty well, bringin’ me back with a song, and me in such bad shape.” A smile cracked his otherwise solemn expression.

  “Well, I should hope I do, we been sleeping together and all,” she rasped, then fell back into sleep to the sound of their laughter.

  The wind whistled over the Blasted Heath, snapping their cloaks and hoods like sails on the high seas. Achmed and Grunthor were standing vigil in the wide field, waiting for Rhapsody to finish her study of the amulet. She had burned off an area of highgrass in a sheltered place, a rocky dell in which no wind was noticeable. The golden symbol lay on a slab of shale, its eye staring toward the dark sky.

  The music she was humming had a high-pitched, fluctuating melody, a sound that set Achmed’s teeth on edge.

  “Grunthor, I’ve found a new method of torture,” he said through gritted teeth. “No one could withstand that noise without cracking under the pressure. They’d tell even their deepest secret just to make her stop.”

  The giant Bolg laughed. “Oi think that’s the idea, sir. She’s gettin’ the amulet to cough up its story.”

  The golden hair caught the light of the moon, turning it a pale silver. She had been at the task now for more than an hour, approaching two, singing into the windless dell. Finally she stood up, brushing her skirts clean, and returned to them, taking Achmed’s arm as she walked.

  “All right, this is the best I can determine. I’ve gleaned as many images as I can, using the musical vibrations of the amulet’s lore, its story. It has seen some grisly things, believe me, and I have chosen not to go too far back into the Past. Aside from the time that I don’t want to spend witnessing hideous memories, I’m not sure it wouldn’t eventually have a detrimental effect on me.

  “The amulet itself has no life of its own. It’s just an object that once belonged to someone very powerful, with ties to the spirit world, so some vestigial power remains, linked to his memory, nothing more.

  “Apparently what the Shing said was true. Tsoltan summoned the Thousand Eyes, a tremendous undertaking, and, in doing so, divided his demonic life force among them. They each took a little of his power, of his soul, if you will, with them. It was the energy that sustained them as they set out with one unwavering mission: to find the Brother, and bring him back.

  “Because you had successfully escaped, the Shing continued to roam the world, searching for you. The one we encountered was the only survivor because, unlike the others, it left the Island and crossed the sea to find you. The others never returned to Tsoltan, still obsessed with their directive. They combed the world, looking for someone who was no longer there, at least not on its surface. Even if they had found you, they would not have recognized you any more than the one we met did, because you were renamed.

  “So Tsoltan didn’t have you captured and returned, and he couldn’t recall the Shing. He lost the gamble. It left him weak, his demon side dissipated and committed elsewhere.

  “When MacQuieth finally met up with him, it was really only the human side that remained. The power of the F’dor had been split up into a thousand pieces, all of them gone. So when MacQuieth killed the human host, there was nothing much left of the demon. It died with its host.”

  She began to shiver in the stiff wind, and Grunthor opened his greatcoat, wrapping it around her. Rhapsody chuckled from inside the deep garment.

  “It’s very strange to be interviewing a piece of jewelry; its perspective on life is a little skewed, to say the least. At any rate, it seems MacQuieth tore the amulet from the dying priest’s neck and took it back to Elysian—the real one, the palace—with him, and presented it to the king as a trophy. I don’t know which king that was, the amulet can’t understand such things.

  “For generations it hung on display in the royal museum. And like many relics and artifacts put on display, gradually people forgot its origin and its meaning, until it was just another gallery piece.

  “Eventually the evacuation came, and when the Cymrians left, they packed the amulet in a box with other decorative treasures and carried it with them, as part of their cultural heritage. The box made it safely to Canrif, but never really was unpacked, its items left undisplayed. I guess there was more than enough grandeur and challenge in Gwylliam’s life and the lives of his subjects not to need a forgotten symbol of a forgotten lore. And a rather ugly one at that, if I do say so; it didn’t even have decorative value.

  “So it lay in a box, gathering dust. Eventually the war began, and when Gwylliam died, the Bolg overran the mountain. They found the amulet in the ruins of a village, probably Lirin or Gwadd, deep within the Hidden Realm. But they were afraid of it, and left it to rot in the box until Saltar, or whatever his name was before he touched it, came along.

  “Once the shaman worked up the courage to wear it, he found that it gave him power. I think initially that power was merely the fear the ‘fire-eye’ inspired in the other Bolg clans, and even among the Fist-and-Fire.

  “But not long after he began wearing it, the Shing showed up. It had been searching for the Brother, but once the call of the amulet from which it had been originally summoned was on the wind, it came looking for Tsoltan, or whoever had replaced him. The Shing told Saltar how to use the eye to see at great distances, and how to foresee another’s actions, like he did with you, Grunthor.”

  “Puny lit’le shit,” the Sergeant muttered. “Oi would o’ cleaved ’im right down the middle if he’d been without it.”

  “Undoubtedly. The amulet imparted that gift of sight, which caused the red eyes that Saltar had when he wore it, and I experienced when I was holding it. Anyway, I think that’s the entire story, or at least as much of it as I was able to discern. There is one more interesting aspect, however, and it has to do with your name, Achmed—your old one, that is.”

  “Oh?”

  Rhapsody fumbled in her pack and dug out a scrap
of oilcloth with a smudged charcoal rubbing.

  “Do you remember this?”

  “Indeed.” His strange eyes gleamed with intensity in the dark.

  “You said the plaque you took this off of was adhered to a block of obsidian.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Grunthor interjected.

  “And we postulated that it might be the altar stone of the All-God’s temple that the inscription refers to.”

  “Yes.”

  “The altar stone was captured when Tsoltan destroyed that temple in the name of his goddess, the Devourer, the deity of Void, long before he captured your name. He used the stone as an altar of blood sacrifice.” Rhapsody examined his face, looking for indications of emotion, but none were apparent. “I believe it was within that stone that your name was once imprisoned.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I assume this means that the victorious forces in the Seren War reclaimed the stone, and rededicated it to the God of Life, which I think was an earlier name of the All-God, though of course the amulet has no recollection of that. I did get a clear image of Tsoltan’s panic when he discovered you had slipped the lead. I’m sorry I couldn’t have shown it to you; it would have been a source of great amusement for you, I’m sure. Maybe someday I will write a comic ode about it. So, are we ready, then?”

  The king and the Sergeant looked at each other, then nodded. Together the three walked back to the windy meadow where the amulet lay, staring blindly at the stars.

  “Do you know what you’re doin’, Duchess?” Grunthor asked.

  “Nope.”

  The giant Bolg blinked. “All right; Oi suppose there’s somethin’ to be said for wingin’ it.”

  The Singer smiled. “I thought you might see it that way.” As the wind settled on her she closed her eyes, then drew the sword from her belted scabbard, a steel sheath wrought in Achmed’s forges and lined with the black stone stalactite in which she had found it. As Daystar Clarion came forth it sang with life, a sound that sent silver chills down each of their spines.