“I’m to be a lamplighter?”
Oelendra laughed; it was the merry, bell-like sound that her mother’s voice had made in happy times, and Rhapsody felt her throat constrict suddenly. “Well, the sword would certainly make that job easier. You are suited to this role perfectly, Rhapsody. The Iliachenva’ar seeks to bring light into places and situations that are tainted and despoiled by evil.”
Rhapsody shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “I’m not so sure, Oelendra. I don’t know if I would recognize evil if I saw it. You see, my judgment is not always the best. People who are generally considered monstrous or subhuman are some of the people I love the most, while I seem to be distrustful of those in regal positions and of honorable reputation. I’m not good at discerning who I should trust and when I should keep my mouth shut. I could be very dangerous in a position like that. In fact, perhaps I should just give the sword back to you.”
“Oh? To do what with?”
Blood rushed to her cheeks. “I—I don’t really know; I mean, you were the Iliachenva’ar before.”
“And you think I should be again?”
“I guess that’s for you to decide, Oelendra. I didn’t mean to be presumptuous.”
The Lirin warrior smiled. “You’re not being presumptuous, Rhapsody, you’re misinformed. That’s easily correctable; you just need information.”
Rhapsody sighed. “Of all the things I have been searching for since I’ve been in this land, Oelendra, I find that information, honest information, is the hardest commodity to come by. People are unwilling to part with it as if it were the family silver. That and trust.”
“You’re more discerning than you think, Rhapsody. Let me tell you three things. First, I understand completely how you feel, and will accommodate you in any way I can as far as information goes. Ask me anything you want, and I will tell you everything I know about it without hesitation.”
Rhapsody’s breath came out in a whistle. “Thank you. I’m not sure if I can handle that or not.”
“You can. Second, what you see as the inability to tell the difference between what everyone else sees as good and evil is uncommon wisdom. Not everything that is good is beautiful, and not everything that is beautiful is good. Generally, that rule is imparted in childhood to keep pretty girls from becoming vain, and make those less blessed feel better. The truth of it goes far deeper; what is good and valuable is not always visible to the eye. That goes for evil as well.”
“Are there specific duties to being Iliachenva’ar, other than just brightening a room and scaring off unspecified evil?”
Oelendra laughed again. “Well, traditionally the Iliachenva’ar acts as a consecrated champion; that is, an escort or guardian to pilgrims, clergy, and other holy men and women. The sect does not matter. You are to protect anyone who needs you in the pursuit of the worship of God, or what someone thinks of as God.”
Rhapsody nodded. “And the third thing you wanted to tell me?”
Oelendra’s face lost its smile. “Daystar Clarion chooses who it wishes to carry it, not the other way around. It has chosen you, Rhapsody. I can’t be the Iliachenva’ar, even if I wanted to, which I do not.”
“Why did you stop being the Iliachenva’ar, if you don’t mind my asking?”
The older woman stood up slowly and went to the hearth; she bent as stirred the embers beneath the pot of dol mwl. From a barrel beside the fireplace she ladled water into a dented kettle and hung it beside the dol mwl. Rhapsody could see the muscles in her brawny back tighten as she stood back up and turned to face her. A sharp look was in her eyes.
“I’ve never told anyone the story before, Rhapsody. I suppose I do owe it to you, however.”
“You owe me nothing, Oelendra,” Rhapsody blurted, her face flaming red. “I’m very sorry to have pried into something that was none of my business.”
“No one else has ever asked, largely because they think I’m insane.” Oelendra came back to her chair and sat down heavily. “I had been railing at them for centuries, trying to tell them what was living in their midst, what had followed them from the Island, but they refused to listen.”
“The Cymrians?”
“The Cymrians, at first, then the Lirin.” Oelendra disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a pair of knives and a black cast-iron pot filled with potatoes and onions. She put it on the pine table and went to the bins by the door, rummaging and coming up with dried meat, carrots, and barley, which she deposited next to the pot. Rhapsody rose and came to the table. She pulled out a chair next to the one Oelendra had sat down in and picked up one of the knives. With a practiced hand she set about peeling the potatoes while Oelendra sliced onions savagely, an outward manifestation of the look in her eyes. When she spoke, however, her voice was calm.
“You see, Rhapsody, when the Cymrians left Serendair, I was the protector of the First Fleet, the people who were sent initially to settle and build up the place Merithyn had found. He reported that the land he had discovered was uninhabited, except, of course, for Elynsynos, the dragon.
“Gwylliam, the last of the Seren kings, the Visionary, kept the army back until the third and final sailing, since they wouldn’t be needed in an uninhabited place. He had no desire to make the dragon feel threatened, or to appear that we intended to fight or invade its land. We had been invited, and so we had come in peace, the architects, the masons, the carpenters, the physicians, the scholars, the healers, the farmers. Our passage was difficult, we lost Merithyn and many others along the way, but the land welcomed us and, once we found our home, the plight of the First Fleet was easy, certainly compared to those who came later.” Oelendra tossed the onions into the pot with the potatoes Rhapsody had peeled and chopped, then began to strip the meat.
“’Twas more than a year before they landed, the Third Fleet, almost fifty more before we met up again. That was a day of great celebration; it wasn’t until later that the hard feelings emerged. And in all the revelry and jubilation of being reunited with our countrymen, I felt suddenly uneasy. Deep within me I could feel it, the smell of the same kind of demon that had been responsible for the Great War, that had almost destroyed the island centuries before. You have heard of F’dor?”
“Yes, a bit, but please tell me about them anyway.”
“The F’dor were one of the Firstborn races, like dragons; one of the first five to walk the earth. They were naturally tied to fire, dark fire, and innately evil, a deeply twisted, spiritlike people who sought only destruction and chaos, the masters of manipulation, spending eternity trying to figure out ways to get around the limits of their own power. They are gifted liars, able to take pieces of the truth and mix them in with half-truths and outright lies, and be convincing with the whole. Because they are noncorporeal they can bind themselves to the souls of men and women, becoming an intrinsic part of their host.
“Sometimes the binding is slight and temporary; the victim performs some act he is not aware of and is never bothered again. Sometimes they bind to a soul, owning it for the Future, payable upon the death of the victim.
“And then, by far the worst kind, there is the taking of a true host, the individual who it becomes. It is more than possession, it is a complete insinuation of the demon into the victim. It lives in that body, growing stronger as the host does, taking on other forms as it grows more powerful or when the host dies. And it is, to most, including myself, indiscernible. I had suffered greatly at the hands of these creatures, Rhapsody, as did many that I loved. And as soon as we met up with the Third Fleet I knew that one had come with them. It had bound itself to someone on the last ship out. Gwylliam had failed in his guardianship. ’Twas his task to keep the evil from following us. But no one believed me.”
Rhapsody shuddered. “That must have been terrible. What did you do?”
“When the Lord and Lady were chosen to rule over the reunited Cymrian people, I warned both Gwylliam and Anwyn of what I felt. They dismissed it, and nothing particularly bad happened, so my warnings were laughed
off as paranoia.
“What they didn’t understand was just because something like that is out of sight, doesn’t mean it’s gone. More than likely ’tis hiding in the dark, festering, growing stronger. But Anwyn and Gwylliam seemed to feel their wisdom was borne out. The F’dor never surfaced; they ruled in relative peace for three centuries, until it all fell apart one night in Canrif, the place now called Ylorc. Whether the demon played some part in that, or if ’twas just their own folly, will never be known. The war came, and it went on for centuries, Rhapsody, more than seven hundred years. All along I had been training champions, sending them forth to find the demon. None of them ever returned.” Oelendra threw the meat into the pot and began to clean the barley.
“And that by itself wasn’t enough to convince them?”
“During the war, the loss was insignificant; soldiers disappeared all the time. And after the end of the war, in the relative peace that followed, ’twas eventually assumed that I was somehow responsible for the loss of the champions myself. The Cymrians, and then the Lirin, began to believe I was insane, chasing this demon that didn’t exist. Even I began to wonder myself if somehow I had just misread the signs, had just been so lost in the pain of the Past that I had imagined it all. Slowly, the Cymrian families stopped sending their sons to me to learn the sword, fearing I would bring about their deaths with my wild goose chase. I sought the F’dor endlessly myself until I finally decided they were right.”
Rhapsody went to her pack and pulled out one of the pouches of spice. She threw a handful of dried herbs and some wild horseradish into the pot. “What made you realize they weren’t?”
“Finding Gwydion.”
At the name, Rhapsody looked up. “Gwydion of Manosse?”
“Aye. You know of him?”
“I’ve heard his name once,” Rhapsody admitted. “That barely even qualifies as knowing of him. It was in the keep of Lord Stephen Navarne, in a place Lord Stephen keeps a few remembrances of him.”
“I hardly knew him either. I had only seen him once, at his naming ceremony when he was an infant. I did know Stephen, however; he studied with me. Stephen and Gwydion were childhood friends, but were raised in different provinces until they met up again when Stephen came to Gwydion’s father for further training.”
Rhapsody retrieved the dented kettle of boiling water and began pouring it into the cast-iron pot. Oelendra stared at her hands, unshielded from the red-hot iron. Rhapsody felt her glance and looked up at her, smiling.
“So who was Gwydion’s father?”
“Llauron, the Invoker of the Filids, in Gwynwood.” Oelendra moved rapidly out of the way to avoid being burned by the steaming water as Rhapsody dropped the kettle on the table. Rhapsody quickly mopped up the water with one of the towels hanging beside the drysink.
“I’m terribly sorry. Are you all right?”
“Aye, are you?”
“I’m fine. Did you say that Gwydion of Manosse was Llauron’s son?”
“His only son, only child, only heir. Llauron’s Lirin wife, Cynron, died giving birth to him.”
“How sad.” Rhapsody absorbed Oelendra’s words slowly. She felt grief for her gentle mentor; it was no wonder that he buried himself in his work. The trappings of Cymrian royalty obviously couldn’t replace what he had lost, so he kept to himself, to his studies, tending to his garden and his followers, and eschewing the riches and titles of his lineage. It also explained his close friendship with Lord Stephen, his son’s best friend. “What do you mean, you found Gwydion?”
Oelendra’s eyes took on a distant look. “Twenty years ago I came upon Gwydion, broken and bloodied, hovering near death, outside the forest of Gwynwood, in Navarne, not far from the House of Remembrance. He had gone after the demon; he is the only one I know of who ever did and escaped. But in spite of getting away he was grievously wounded, his entire chest cavity torn asunder, a piece of his soul ripped open. I knew he was dying the moment I saw him, and I knew what had killed him.”
Rhapsody hung the pot over the fire and watched the flames crackle as she came near them. “The F’dor?”
“It was obvious. His soul was hemorrhaging; he was surrounded with a bloody light that pulsed in a way I will never forget. The soul is thought of as an ethereal thing, something with no physical form, but the F’dor had succeeded in slashing it open. ’Twas a hideous sight.”
“I can’t even imagine. What did you do?”
“I panicked, but not from fear for Gwydion. I had seen enough death in my time to be unaffected by it. What frightened me, Rhapsody, was knowing how powerful the F’dor had become. Gwydion was a formidable opponent. He had grown up wandering the wilds of Manosse, he had sailed to distant and dangerous lands with the Sea Mages and was a veteran of more than one war. But more than that, the powers and Rites of Command he had received through his lineage were unparalleled.
“From Gwylliam, his grandfather, he had been given the bonds to the land that only those of ancient royal blood inherit, the lineage of kings. From Anwyn, his grandmother, he had the blood of Elynsynos the dragon and Merithyn, who was Seren, another of the five Firstborn races, races sprung from the elements which make up the fabric of the universe.
“And on his mother’s side of the family he had the lineage of MacQuieth. He was the Kirsdarkenvar and the Chief of the House of Newland, the most senior of the Manossian houses. And despite all that, the crown prince of the Cymrian dynasty was reduced to a quivering pile of bleeding meat. If it could destroy Gwydion of Manosse, its power had grown beyond what I could hope to defeat alone. That was twenty years ago, Rhapsody; I shudder to think what it can do now.” She looked up at her new pupil and her brows furrowed.
Rhapsody was trembling.
“Gwydion was the Kirsdarkenvar?”
“Aye; he carried the elemental sword of water, Kirsdarke, handed down to him through the generations. Through the rights of blood and rite of passage, he had wielded that sword with as much power as anyone ever had. And if he, using a blade that was forged specifically to kill evil beings just such as this, could be slain, I knew the time had passed when any but the Three could destroy it. Rhapsody? What’s wrong?”
She was staring out the window into the fading twilight that had crept up on them while they were conversing.
Are you tied to water yourself, or just through the sword?
It’s hard to say, really. I’ve had Kirsdarke for so long now that I can’t remember that element not being a part of me.
Rhapsody thought back to the hidden glen, the unexpected sight of Ashe after his bath, naked from the waist up, the grisly wound festering in the filtered red light. Unexpectedly her memories shifted to another hidden glen.
It must have been the Rakshas that you met. The F’dor created the Rakshas in the House of Remembrance twenty years ago. A Rakshas looks like whatever soul is powering it. It is built of blood, the blood of the demon, and sometimes other creatures, usually innocents and feral animals of some sort. A Rakshas made just of blood is temporary and mindless. But if the demon is in possession of a soul, whether it is human or otherwise, it can place it within the construct and it will take the form of the soul’s owner, who of course is dead. It has some of the knowledge that person had. It can do the things they did. It is twisted and evil; you must beware of him, Pretty. And hear me: it is very close to here now, nearby. When you leave, be careful.
Cedelia had stared at her.
Have I done something to offend you, Cedelia?
You were seen with a man in a hooded gray cloak five days ago at the Outer Forest lip. A man in a hooded gray cloak led a raid on a Lirin village on the eastern edge of the Outer Forest lip that same night. The settlement was burned to the ground. Fourteen men, six women, and three children perished in that raid.
She remembered the look in Achmed’s eyes as she read to him from the contract they had found in the House of Remembrance.
The parties involved are Cifiona and someone called the Rakshas, and th
rough him his master; that’s strange—his master is not referred to by name. 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?” Oelendra’s strong hands closed around her upper arms.
Rhapsody turned around. “Yes?”
“What are you thinking?”
Rhapsody looked back out the window and swallowed; the night was coming.
“We can talk more after supper, Oelendra. We have to hurry now, or we’ll miss devotions.”
“Devotions?”
She looked at the ancient Lirin warrior in surprise. Surely she must have been familiar with the songs of the rising stars and the setting sun; Oelendra was full Liringlas, a Skysinger. But she was staring at Rhapsody in what seemed to be confusion. Perhaps she knew them by another name.
“Here, Oelendra, come with me. We can do them together. It has been so long since I’ve had someone to sing with who knew the songs.” She took Oelendra by the hand and together they left the cabin, hurrying toward the nearest clearing in the advancing twilight.
21
The twilight was already darkening to the deepest of blues when the two women came into the clearing. The daystar had set, and one by one the others were beginning to come forth, glimmering in momentary uncertainty before claiming their places in the night sky, shining through the wisps of cloud that passed before the rising moon.
Rhapsody cleared her throat and her mind. She was rushed, having allowed the afternoon to slip away unnoticed, and so took a few moments to place herself in a calm and reverent frame of mind. The horrifying things Oelendra had related to her were forgotten for now, lest they interfere with the age-old ceremony she practiced as the last vestige of communion with her mother. As the last ray of sun disappeared over the edge of the horizon she began the first note of the farewell vespers, the evensong that bade the sun Godspeed in its journey through the darkness and reaffirmed the promise to greet it in the morning with joy.