The door opened, and eight of his military commanders crowded into the rooms. The Sergeant went over to confer with them about troop position and casualties, while the Archons began quietly conferring among themselves.
Finally, when he turned back to them, they were standing, the light of inspiration shining from their faces.
Grunthor eyed them suspiciously.
“All right,” he demanded, “what are ya thinkin’?”
The dragon was too lost in the search for a name, too intent on finding the woman from the grotto, to pay much attention to the movement of the Bolg. She was aware of it, of course, in infinite detail; the minutiae of the inner realm of the Cauldron, everything else within five miles, was apparent to her. But her mind, fractured and limited as it was, obsessed as it was, considered the movements nothing more than the pathetic scramblings of the equivalent of insects. She had destroyed hundreds of them with little more than a breath; she would destroy more before she was done, but whatever meaningless attempts they were making to defend against her wrath were not worth the diversion of her attention from the search for the woman.
She could sense a rush to retrieve the dead, the movements of the old and the young to deeper bunkers, lower ground, an effort that amused her. Moreover, she did not sense the presence of many weapons. The bows and crossbows had proven useless against her, a fact that had sent her already-insane sense of invulnerability even higher.
Had she been more cognizant, more aware of her surroundings, she might have noticed the ruins of an ancient instrumentality that she had loathed in another life almost as much as she loathed the golden-haired woman in this one. When she was in human form, the ruler of a great nation and the champion of a mighty army, her first order in war had been to destroy that artifact; it had taken her soldiers almost five hundred years to accomplish that directive.
But that memory, along with most of the others she had made in her long lifetime, was buried deep in the recesses of the Past, where she could not find it.
Where is she? the dragon demanded of the evanescent winds. Where is the woman I seek? And her name! I want her name!
The wind howled around the mountain crag, saying nothing; very few words were spoken close enough to the summit to linger there, and those that were had blown away, off into the wide world.
Her fury returning, the beast rained fire down again from the mountain summit; no Bolg were above ground by now, so she had to content herself with the destruction of a few outposts and watchtowers, taking little satisfaction in watching them burn.
Perhaps I’m not able to hear because I am hungry, she thought, remembering with pleasure the feast in the Hintervold, not just the satisfying fullness of meat, but the joy of destruction, the orgiastic sensation of utter fear and helplessness in the faces of the hunters. Those few on the Heath were but appetizers. Well, we can rectify that.
Her dragon sense told her that the majority of the population on the western side of the canyon was cowering in bunkers deep within the mountain, but that a substantial cadre had remained behind, large enough to provide a decent meal.
She slithered down the crag, toward the tunnels leading into the Cauldron.
The first shaft she came to was narrow; she did not know it, but it was merely a ventilation duct, used to circulate the heat from the forges into the tunnels to warm them in winter, and the cool wind of the mountain to bring fresh air in all other seasons. She considered squeezing through, but noticed another, wider tunnel nearby, one that led to a central duct system, through which she could chase down anything that she wanted.
Quite a bit of the remaining prey was at the end of it.
She crawled across the lip of its ledge and into the tunnel, her eyes gleaming with blue fire.
Grunthor could sense the change in the earth as soon as the dragon entered the tunnel, stripping the lore from the land as she did.
“Ya bloody ’arpy,” he muttered under his breath. “Thought Oi’d buried ya three years ago. Well, keep comin’, darlin’. Oi’ll kill ya as often as need be.”
He waited until she had come to the first bend before turning to Kubila, who was waiting beside him, ready to deliver his orders.
“Now would be good,” the Sergeant said casually.
The messenger nodded, and sped off like an arrow on the string.
Down the empty corridors and tunnels he ran, his route planned out to the footstep. His destination was almost a quarter mile away, but Kubila could cover that distance in a little over a minute.
He could see the light in the open doorway; the others were awaiting his signal.
“Now!” he shouted, still a few paces outside the central tunnel.
The Archons waiting past the door heard and nodded to each other.
Trug, the Voice, echoed the Sergeant’s order into the central speaking tube, the instrument through which his words would be heard throughout the mountains.
“Now!”
Dreekak, Master of Tunnels and responsible for the network of vents through which the beast was traveling, seized the great valve and turned the wheel with all his might until it opened the floodgates.
All over the Cauldron, his tunnel workers were doing the same.
The dragon felt a shift in the air of the tunnel as the vacuum was released, but too intent on her prey to be distracted, she continued crawling forward until her sensitive nostrils were suddenly, viciously assaulted with the stench of raw sewage.
Which had been released in one enormous flood from the central cistern and all the collection pipes simultaneously.
And was heading, with all the force the ventilation system’s pumps could muster, directly for her.
Shock flooded the dragon’s awareness; she was overwhelmed with nausea, made even more acute by the sensitivity of her dragon sense. What to an ordinary being would have been revolting, vomitorious, was utterly incapacitating to the wyrm. All of her senses, her motor abilities, and her equilibrium were immediately unbalanced by the onslaught of offal and excrement that was rolling in a great, odious wave toward her.
She tried to right herself, to turn in the tunnel and escape, to burrow into the earth, even, but the tunnels built originally by her long-dead, much hated husband had been fashioned from and reinforced with steel, and so did not yield to her. She could only roil helplessly, twisted in a tangle of draconic arms and legs to which she was still not totally accustomed, when the sea of filth blasted around the turn and swelled over her, choking her, threatening to drown her.
In hrekin.
Gasping in horror, swallowing and vomiting simultaneously, the beast was subsumed in the mudslide of Bolgish waste, made even more foul by the vagaries of their diet. She struggled to breathe but her nostrils were filled with feces; she kicked her taloned feet, trying in vain to gain purchase on the tunnel wall, finally being flipped ignominiously onto her head as a great plug of sewage formed around her, obstructing the tunnel completely.
For a moment.
Then the pressure from the ventilation system backed up sufficiently to blast the clog of dragon and a kingdom’s worth of waste out of the tunnel and into the canyon below.
Whereupon the mountain guards, under the direction of Yen the broadsmith, Greel the master of the mines, and Vrith, the lame accountant, unleashed a hail of glass-shard-imbued boulders down on her.
Sickened and bruised, the beast lay at the bottom of the canyon for a moment, trying to return to consciousness. In the distance, her dragon sense noted weakly that the catapults on the ledges above her were training upon her again.
Heedless of direction, with the last of her strength, the beast burrowed hastily into the ground of the canyon floor, following the long-dead riverbed out of the kingdom of the Bolg to the north, where she collapsed in pain and exhaustion.
She was too far away, or perhaps just too spent, to hear the shouts of victory and the songs of jubilation, chanted in harsh bass voices, ringing off the canyon walls and up into the winter night.
>
Grunthor lifted a glass and toasted the Archons.
“Well, Oi’ve always told you lads to use what ya got, and use what ya know. Oi guess this proves ya all know hrekin.”
38
THE CAVE OF THE LOST SEA, GWYNWOOD
Ashe ran his hands over his wife’s forehead. The skin beneath his palm was cooler, but papery thin, dry. Her lips were pale, almost the same color as her skin, having lost a good deal of their redness with the loss of so much of her blood.
“Dry,” she whispered. “My throat is so dry.”
Ashe looked at Krinsel. “Is the baby any closer to coming?” he asked the midwife quietly. The Bolg woman shook her head.
The Lord Cymrian glanced from Rhapsody’s face to those of the others standing in the dark cave. Each aspect, each being was utterly different, and yet they all bore the same look of bewilderment, of quiet despair, as if there was nothing to be done in the world save for watching this woman labor and die.
Quickly he took off his cloak of mist and covered his wife with it, hoping the cool vapor would ease the dryness she was feeling. With a shaking hand he drew his weapon, Kirsdarke, the elemental sword of water; the blade came forth from its scabbard, waves of billowing mist running along it like the froth of the sea. He held it in his left hand, allowing his right to rest on her belly, and concentrated, willing the water to seep into her, to sustain her, to bring hydration and healing where the water within her blood was lost.
“How can we get the baby out?” he asked the midwife again.
Krinsel shook her head. “There are roots I have—buckthorn and evening primrose, black lugwort—can open the womb, but it may kill one or the other. You will need to choose which to save.”
“If you are going to resort to such extremes, allow me to help.”
The multiple tones of the draconic voice filled the cave, along with a sudden glow of scattered light that danced over the walls like the evening sun on the moving water of a lake.
Achmed and Ashe turned to see a woman standing behind them, a tall woman, taller than either of them, with skin the color of golden wheat and similarly colored eyes that twinkled with the radiance of the stars. Her hair, silvery white, hung in rippling waves to her knees, and her garment was a filmy gown that seemed woven from fabric more starlight; it cast an ethereal glow around the dark cave.
Achmed looked for the dragon.
She was gone.
Ashe was staring at the woman, a smile lighting his face for the first time since he had entered the cave.
“Thank you, Great-grandmother,” he said.
Rhapsody, half conscious, stirred at the change in the dragon’s voice.
“I thought—you had given up your human—form,” she whispered.
The glowing woman smiled broadly and bent to kiss her on the forehead.
“Shhhh,” she said, resting her ethereal hands on Rhapsody’s belly. “I have. Bolg woman, open the womb.”
Krinsel was staring, her eyes glazed slightly over. She shook off her reverie and reached into her bag, drawing forth the evening primrose oil, into which she dipped a small piece of cheesecloth and held it to Rhapsody’s lips for her to drink.
The two men watched the ministrations of the midwife in silence, uncertain of what they were seeing. From time to time Rhapsody’s forehead wrinkled as if in pain, but she made no sound, nor did she open her eyes, but Ashe was certain that she was at least partially awake.
His eyes went from his wife’s face to that of his great-grandmother, who in all the elegance of her regal beauty wore the plainly excited, childlike expression he had often seen her wear in dragon form. He continued to watch in a mix of fear and awe until he felt Rhapsody’s hand clutch his.
“Sam,” she whispered.
“Yes, Aria?”
She reached up falteringly and rested her hand on his chest.
“I need the light of the star within you. Our child is coming.”
Ashe bent closer to her and rested his hand atop hers.
“Whatever you need,” he said soothingly, though he had no idea what she meant. “How can I give it to you?”
She was struggling for words now, her face contorted in pain.
“Open your heart,” she whispered. “Welcome your child.”
All Ashe could do was nod.
Softly she began to sing the elegy to Seren that Jal’asee had taught her, the baptismal song that she had never had conferred upon her before the Island was lost. As she sang she wept; the midwife and the dragon were moving about her, touching her belly, whispering to one another, but she did not hear them. Rather, she was listening only to the music radiating from within her husband’s chest, the pure, elemental song of the lost star.
Come forth, my child, she sang, her voice strong in the skills of a Namer, quavering in the emotion of a mother. Come into the world, and live.
From within her belly she could feel a warmth radiate, the warmth of elemental fire she had carried within her soul for longer than she could count. Blending with it was the cooling rush of seawater, the water she had been steeped in not long before, and lore that came not from within her but from the child’s father. She closed her eyes and listened now to the whispered words of the midwives, the deep song of the Earth that came from Ashe as well, and the whistle of the wind from which her own race was descended, a symphony of the elements coming to life from within her, baptized in the light of the star that had been all but lost.
She continued to sing until the pains grew too strong; now she groaned in the contractions of labor, her song the story of the pain she accepted, as all mothers accept it, to bring forth life from within her body.
Elynsynos conferred one last time with Krinsel; when the Bolg midwife signaled her readiness, the dragon in Seren form raised her hands in a gesture of supplication, then reached into Rhapsody’s belly from above, her hands passing through as if they were made only of mist and starlight.
Rhapsody moaned aloud, her song faltering, as Krinsel squeezed her hand, but regained it as Elynsynos drew back her hands, and lifted aloft a tiny glowing light, pulling it gently from her body.
“Name him, Pretty, so that he can form,” the glowing woman said, smiling brighter than the sun in the darkness of the cave.
Rhapsody reached for Ashe with her other hand. When his fingers had entwined with hers, she whispered the Naming intonation.
Welcome, Meridion, Child of Time.
For a moment, nothing remained in her hands but the glowing light. Then slowly a shape began to form, a tiny head, smaller hands held aloft, then waved about. A soft coo erupted a moment later into a full-blown wail, and suddenly the cave was filled with the ordinary, human music of a crying infant.
Krinsel set about finishing the delivery as Rhapsody’s head fell back against the cave floor, spent. Elynsysnos glided over to Ashe, who was still staring in wonder at the entire sight, and gently placed the baby in his arms.
He stared down at the screeching child, transcendent joy twinkling in the vertical pupils of his eyes, eyes that matched the tiny blue ones that were staring up at him now. Then he grinned at his great-grandmother.
“Now, as never before, I understand,” he said to her.
Elynsynos cocked her head to one side, as she was wont to do even in dragon form.
“Understand what?”
Ashe looked down at his son again, unable to take his eyes away for more than a moment. He bent and brushed a kiss again on Rhapsody’s brow, then reluctantly turned away again to meet the dragon’s eyes.
“Why Merithyn lost his heart to you upon seeing you,” he said simply. “You are truly beautiful, Great-grandmother.”
The glowing woman smiled broadly, then disappeared, replaced a moment later by the ethereal form of the wyrm once more.
“Thank you,” she said as Krinsel indicated that the delivery was complete.
And while they stood, drinking in the miracle, the cave of the Lost Sea resonated with the elegy to the lost sta
r, the intonation of a new name, and the song of life beginning.
In the only dark corner of that cave, Achmed alone remained silent, watching.
39
In the red clay desert of Yarim, outside the city of Yarim Paar, Manwyn, the Seer of the Future, waited in the bitter winter wind.
While she awaited the arrival of her sister, which she knew was imminent, she passed the time crooning a soft melody to herself, and absently tangling the snaggled tresses of her flaming red hair, tinged with streaks of gray at the temples. In her other hand was a tarnished sextant, a relic from the old world given to her mother by the Cymrians of the First Fleet in memory of her explorer father, who had used it to travel the wide world, but she had no concept of its history, only that it served to help her see into the Future.
From a distance she might have been seen as a handsome, if bedraggled woman; she was tall and slim, with a well-sculpted face and long, slender hands. Additionally, she had a regal bearing, as had all the triplet daughters of Elynsynos. But closer examination would have revealed a single physical characteristic that set her decidedly apart from the ranks of average handsome women. One look into her eyes revealed only the aspect of the person beholding her, for her scleras were silver reflective mirrors, the irises shaped like the tiny hourglass mark a black widow carries on its belly.
Also like her sisters, she was mad. Cursed with the ability to see almost exclusively into the future, she had gained a reputation as a valuable oracle that she did not deserve, because her predictions, while often accurate and always truthful, contained at least a drop of her own madness.
Sometimes more than just a drop.
She had foreseen Anwyn’s arrival but did not remember coming out into the night to meet her; the Past was her sister’s realm, and it did not hold any sway over her. So she continued to wait, confused and disoriented, and more than a little afraid, as she had always been intimidated by her younger sister. Manwyn had been born first, followed by Rhonwyn, and finally Anwyn, but the sisters of the Present and the Future quickly learned that, while they saw into realms that foretold of what was to come or understood the moment as it was unfolding, it was the Past that held the power of history. Since neither of them could hold on to time save from moment to moment, or as a prediction of what was to come, passing from each of their memories a second later, it made the one who could keep Time the dominant one.