“Sally—”
“I ’eard him. Tell him ta keep his stripes on; I’m busy feedin’ the new ’un,” she said harshly. She turned back to Faron, and the snaggletoothed smile spread over her face again.
“So sorry, my luvly; come back now. Here’s another.” She speared a second fish and held it up.
After a moment’s hesitation Faron returned to her and allowed her to continue to spear fish and hold them up to be eaten. She didn’t seem to mind the touch of the creature’s lips; in fact, took delight watching the wriggling fish disappear, sating its hunger. She spoke softly to Faron, crooning occasionally as a mother would to a child.
Her ministrations were so tender, so kind after so long being tossed about in the sea, abused on the land, that it brought a memory back to Faron’s mind, the recollection of the father that had tended the creature so gently, even though given to fits of rage and cruelty. Then there welled up a sense of loss as profound as Faron had ever felt, and a tear rolled out of one cloudy eye and down the loosely wrinkled cheek beneath it.
Duckfoot Sally’s grisly smile dissolved to a look of sympathetic consternation.
“There, there,” she said quickly, setting down the empty fishbowl and turning back to the weeping creature, “what’s wrong, luv? Ol’ Sally’s here, and she won’t let no one harm ye.” She extended her hand and carefully closed the talonlike nails into a fist to keep from scratching the creature, then ever-so-gently brushed the tear from its cheek with her knuckles. “Don’t cry my sweet little ’un, my fair ’un.”
Faron’s eyes snapped open, recognition clear for a moment in them.
Duckfoot Sally’s eyebrows shot to the top of her forehead at the reaction.
“What, luv?”
The creature’s gapped lips quivered, and its gnarled hands banged against its chest.
Sally’s brows now drew together in puzzlement. “ ‘Fair ’un’? That be yer name?”
Faron nodded enthusiastically.
The hag clapped her hands together in delight.
“Well, well,” she said brightly, reaching out to caress the creature’s cheek again with her knuckles, “pleased ta meet ye, Fair ’un. Be ye man or woman?”
The creature blinked, no understanding in its eyes.
Duckfoot Sally shook her head. “Never mind; doesn’t matter. There are many here that dun’ know, either. No worries, luv. Sally’s lookin’ out fer ye, and that’s all ye’ll need.” She drew closer, her tatters rustling as she pressed herself against the glass. “Jus’ ’member this, my Fair ’un: yer as good as any livin’ soul born in this wide world. They may pay to see folks like us, ta laugh and throw things, but mayhap where you come from, why, yer king of yer kind! Mayhap somewhere, in a distant sea, yer the lord above all the fish that swim, an’ all the clams; the oysters, too! And what are they that laugh at ye? Peasants, all of ’em. Mindless peasants who save up their miserable coppers to go hoot at others, all in the ’tempt to ferget that their lives are of no consequence.” Her smile brightened, and her voice grew warmer.
“But ye and me, my Fair ’un, we perform fer kings and queens! Kings and queens, ladies an’ lords, Fair ’un! We go to grand cities, and palaces the likes of which those wretches will never see. So never ye mind when they laugh at ye, my Fair ’un. It’s us, ye and me and our like, that will have the last laugh.”
The Monstrosity remained three more nights in Bethany, one night longer than they had planned. Each night the crowds swelled to capacity and overflowed in long lines, waiting to catch sight of the horrific fish-boy. Word had spread from the outer towns into the city proper, and there was so much interest that even the Ringmaster, who kept to a rigid schedule, could not resist the business.
But after keeping the sideshow open from dusk to the end of the dark hours just before dawn three nights in a row, the Ringmaster decided there was such a thing as too much good fortune. He called for his exhausted menagerie to pack up and put rein to horse.
An entire empire awaited, a harsh realm where trade and commerce of all sorts, honest and otherwise, flourished.
Sorbold.
11
HAGUEFORT, NAVARNE
Rhapsody was pale throughout the dinner in Gwydion’s honor. After the meal had been cleared away Ashe hoped that she would regain some of her stamina and that her stomach would settle, but she remained nervous and quiet, even when the toasting began.
Ashe had been worried ever since he had walked back into the Great Hall and found his wife conversing with Jal’asee. Rhapsody’s choice of professions, attuned to the music of life as it was, usually assured that the vibrations in the air around her matched her mood. For the most part, ever since she had been returned to her home and family, she had been at peace. But the dragon sense within Ashe’s blood told him now that behind the calm court face she was terribly distressed. Whatever the Sea Mage ambassador had said to her had unnerved her immeasurably, but she had declined to tell him what it was.
Now, as the various dukes of Roland rose, each in turn, and offered words of wisdom and congratulations to his young ward, Ashe reached over and silently took Rhapsody’s hand. It was blazingly warm, either from the pregnancy or the element of pure fire she had absorbed, long ago, on her trek through the belly of the Earth with Achmed and Grunthor. In addition, it was perspiring, the nervous sweat of panic. He leaned over casually and whispered in her ear.
“Do you want me to make a polite excuse?” Rhapsody shook her head imperceptibly. “Are you all right, beloved? You are frightening me.”
“I have to find the time and strength to speak with the Sea Mage ambassador,” Rhapsody murmured. There was very little air in her statement; Ashe heard it in his ear, a Namer’s trick.
“Tomorrow,” he said quietly in return. “I think you should offer your toast and then rest. I can ask Jal’asee to come to the garden after your morning devotions. Will that suffice?”
Rhapsody exhaled, then nodded reluctantly. Finally, when the dukes of Roland had finished saluting Gwydion, and toasts had been offered by Rial of Tyrian and the other ambassadors from members of the Alliance, she rose a little unsteadily and turned to her adopted grandson.
“Gwydion Navarne, you are the son of a great man and the namesake of another. You have carried both their names, and the honor that accompanies them, all your life. On the last day of autumn you will finally come into your own name. I have no doubt that when the Singers and the Namers of history record it, the tales they will tell will be songs of greatness; of nobility, honor, bravery, loyalty, leadership, and kindness toward your fellow men. You have shown all these traits, even before gaining your birthright. Carry that forward into your life, as a man, as duke of Navarne.” She paled, then reached for her husband’s hand. “I’m sorry—I—must go lie down now.” Ashe started to rise, but she waved him back to his seat. “No, no—please stay, all of you, and keep the merriment going. I want my grandson to be properly celebrated, even if I am not in appropriate voice as a Singer of lore tonight. My apologies, Gwydion, and congratulations.” She wanly lifted her glass to Gwydion Navarne, finishing her toast, then smiled and blew him a kiss. She gathered her heavy velvet skirts.
Ashe rose and took her arm. “I will return forthwith,” he said to the guests, “as soon as the Lady Cymrian is safely settled. Pray continue, ladies and gentlemen.” The dukes and ambassadors stood as the couple left, then returned to their dinner conversations.
“Are you in pain?” Ashe asked as the two made their way through the resplendent hallways of Haguefort toward the Grand Stair, past the lovingly displayed suits of armor, heraldry, tapestries, and other antique objects that Stephen Navarne, once the Cymrian historian, had collected. “More than usual? Is the baby in distress?”
Rhapsody slowed her steps as they came to the foot of the Stair, and shook her head.
“No,” she said, her face paling. “I think I am just unsettled by what happened earlier.”
“You can tell me about it once I have
you safely ensconced in bed,” Ashe said, slipping an arm behind her as she prepared to ascend, then reconsidered, lifted her into his arms, and carried her up the stairs. Her lack of resistance worried him; Rhapsody hated to be carried.
A palace guard opened the door to their tower chamber as Ashe approached, then closed it behind the couple and withdrew, leaving the hallway quiet.
Ashe carried Rhapsody to their bed and laid her down, drawing the bedcurtains around them in the candlelight. Then he sat beside her and looked deeply into her eyes, trying to assess her condition. He allowed his dragon sense, that innate part of his blood bequeathed to him by his lineage from Elynsynos, his great-grandmother, to wander over his wife, examining her on a level that was invisible to the eye.
Her breathing was shallow, a sign of the discomfort she routinely bore in the course of her pregnancy. The Seer of the Future, Manwyn, the Oracle of Yarim, had predicted her pain, but had offered a comforting reassurance.
The pregnancy will not be easy, but it will not kill or harm her.
Watching his wife now, struggling to breathe, clenching her jaw to maintain control over the pain, Ashe wondered angrily how broadly the Oracle defined harm.
Rhapsody’s green eyes, which darkened to emerald when angry, amused, or deeply touched, were blazing the color of spring grass. Ashe had noted that her blood was changing as the child grew within her; the dragon essence of their offspring was strong, palpable already, asserting itself, however innocently, by controlling the environment in which it was growing.
His stomach sank as he remembered the words of warning that Llauron, his father, had imparted about their marriage, and the death of his mother in childbirth.
I assume you are aware of what happened to your own mother upon giving birth to the child of a partial dragon. I have spared you the details up until now—shall I give them to you? Do you crave to know what it is like to watch a woman, not to mention one that you happen to love, die in agony trying to bring forth your child, hmmm? Let me describe it for you. Since the dragonling instinctually needs to break the eggshell, clawing through, to emerge, the infant—
STOP. His own voice had rung out in draconic tones.
His father’s eyes had held a stern light, but there was something more—a sympathy, perhaps. Your child will be even more of a dragon than you were, so the chances of the mother’s survival are not good. If your own mother could not give birth to you and live, what will happen, do you think, to your mate? I watched with horror the greatest sadness of my life in the face of what should have been my greatest joy. And I don’t wish for you to repeat my mistake, nor do I want to lose Rhapsody to our world.
Rhapsody had been unwilling to allow his father’s warnings to dictate their lives, however. She had insisted they visit his great-aunt, the Oracle, and ask about what her fate would be should they undertake to have a child. Manwyn, the Seer of the Future, was unable to lie, and her answers seemed quite clear. Rhapsody had indeed suffered in the throes of the pregnancy, but seemed to be getting better day by day. At least now she could see most of the time, where at the beginning her eyesight had been adversely affected. Ashe knew she was suffering, and hated it, but endured it, knowing that she had made her choice, was happy in it, and that the end result would be worth the discomfort she was routinely in.
For now, however, she appeared more distressed by whatever the Sea Mage had said to her than by anything that was happening within her. He squeezed her hand gently.
“Tell me.”
Rhapsody’s grip on him tightened. “He knows. Jal’asee knows about Achmed and Grunthor and me traveling through the Earth from Serendair.”
Ashe blinked, then considered for a moment. “All right,” he said finally. “What is the harm in that, Aria?” He addressed her by the name he called her in the most tender of moments, the Lirin word that meant my guiding star, in the hope that it would ease some of her distress.
Rhapsody released his hand and drew the pillows behind her. “It has always been a secret that we have held closely,” she said uncomfortably, as if the words pained her. “You are the only living person, outside of the three of us, who knows the details of how we got to this place—or at least we believed that until now.”
Ashe caressed her face, then began to unlace the bodice of her court dress, loosening the stays to allow her to breathe more easily.
“I can understand why learning what you believed is not so in this manner would upset you,” he said, pulling the cord from the holes, “but when you examine the impact of it, I think you will see that it was only a shock because you had believed it to be unknown. The knowing of it—where is the harm?”
Rhapsody exhaled as the garment loosened, pondering his words. “Achmed was always very specific about the need to guard this information closely,” she said, raising herself up to allow her husband to remove the heavy velvet outer dress, leaving her clad in the lighter white chemise beneath. “I think knowing that there is someone—someone from as distant and mysterious a place as Gaematria—that knows our past, our history, would make him angry, or at least suspicious.”
“When is Achmed ever not angry and suspicious?” Ashe said humorously, tossing her dress into a nearby chair; his dragon sense noted the inner flinch that resulted in Rhapsody, whose upbringing on a farm had engendered a sense of neat orderliness in her that he, the child of a royal line and the head of a religious order, had never learned.
Rhapsody smiled slightly. “True,” she admitted. “But it unsettles me as well.”
Ashe pulled back the crisp sheets and the duvet for her, then tucked them around her body, his hand pausing on the swell of her belly. “When the dinner is over I will ask Jal’asee to meet you tomorrow in the garden after your sunrise devotions,” he said, feeling the movement of the child within her and smiling. “Then you can ascertain what he knows, and whether it is a threat or not. The Sea Mages guard many secrets lost to time and the rest of the world. My guess is that yours is safe with him. But you can be the judge of that in the morning. In the meantime, there is nothing more to be done about it tonight.” He leaned forward and kissed her gently, then lowered his lips to her belly and pressed a kiss on their child as well, and rose. “Sleep now, beloved. I will return in a very short while.”
Rhapsody caught his neck and drew him into another kiss, then patted his face. “Very well,” she said. “Please make my apologies again to Gwydion for my poor attempt at a toast. When we name him duke in two months’ time, I will be in better form.”
“Rest now,” Ashe said, then extinguished the candles and left the room.
Rhapsody turned on her side in the dark and allowed sleep to take her. Her dreams were filled with unsettling images, recalled from the recesses of her mind. For what seemed like forever she was back in the darkness and cold, wet fear of traveling through the belly of the Earth along the Axis Mundi, the centerline of the world, crawling along the root of Sagia, the great tree her people worshiped as sacred. In her dreams she stepped forth from the ground, emerging into the world they had come to on the other side of Time, only to find it in the grip of war and terror; before her, people were running in every direction, screaming in fear, their voices swallowed in the cacophony of destruction that was burning all around them. What war is this? she wondered, walking through the devastation that encircled her, charred bodies littering the landscape. Is this the Seren War that tore my homeland asunder after we left, or the Cymrian War that shattered this new land while we were still traveling within the Earth?
In the distance the sky lit up with fire; Rhapsody strained in her dream to see what was illuminating the clouds. She thought she could make out the image of a winged beast circling, a billowing cloud of black-orange flame that smoldered of acid raining down from its maw. It’s Anwyn, she thought hazily, tossing in her sleep. This is neither war; it is a memory of the battle that took place three years ago at the Cymrian Council, when the wyrm called forth the Fallen of history from the dead to wage wa
r on us. She willed herself to breathe easier, reminding herself that the battle was over, that the wyrm was long dead. Ashe’s draconic grandmother lay buried in a grave outside of Ylorc, having been struck by starfire from the sky.
By Rhapsody’s hand, and the power of Daystar Clarion, the elemental sword of starfire she carried as Iliachenva’ar.
But the memory of Anwyn’s destruction did little to assuage her unconscious fears, did not drive from her mind the dreams of annihilation and death. It only permuted into the present, making her heart pound even more furiously, as images assaulted her unawake mind, pictures of herself running from a wave of caustic fire, her hands on her belly, shielding her child. In some scenes she was pushing the child before her, sometimes carrying it in her arms as a baby; sometimes it was within her still as she hid in darkness, calling to its great-grandmother, giving their location away. Each time she found a new place for them to hide, the dragon would find her; Rhapsody fled with the child, until at last she looked down to find herself alone, her arms empty.
Her dreams changed to visions of the sea roiling, of ships on fire and the coastline burning beyond the edge of the shore, of a continent, a world, at war. Great winged shapes circled above the land, strafing down suddenly on the dark human shadows that ran through the smoke, plucking them from the ground and taking them, writhing, back into the sky.
She was in a gray sweat by the time Ashe returned, muttering to herself in a low, panicked voice. He hurried to the bed and took her into his arms, gentling her down, quieting her as his dragon nature chased away the nightmares, banishing them from the ether that surrounded her. He whispered words of comfort to her in her sleep until her breathing deepened, her fever broke, and she slept dreamlessly on his shoulder.
He lay awake for a long time, stroking her damp forehead, caressing the silk of her golden tresses, wondering what could have caused the nightmares she had once suffered from, and from which she had been free for so long, to return so virulently. Perhaps it was the kidnapping she had lived through recently at the hands of a depraved man from the old world, who had long ago made a pact with a demon to ensure immortality, then had come to find her. Even her captor’s destruction, and her return to safety, could certainly not be expected to expunge all of the horror from her mind. Perhaps that was what was plaguing her.