Ashe’s voice was hardly above a whisper. “I will not be a party to this.”
The reply was as sympathetic and warm as the bristling fire. “Too late, my boy; you already have been.”
The biting wind that rustled the papers on Llauron’s desk was the only sign that Ashe had gone.
22
“Good morning,” Oelendra greeted Rhapsody as she emerged from her room, blinking the sleep from her eyes. She set a mug of tea at the place at the table where Rhapsody had sat the night before. “I hope you slept well.”
“Very well, thank you,” Rhapsody responded, yawning. She was wrapped in the red silk robe embroidered with an ornate image of a dragon that had been left at the foot of her bed. It was far too large for her, and would no doubt have been too large for her host as well. She took her seat and sipped the tea as Oelendra returned to her kitchen. The warrior was already dressed, and had likely been up for hours. She returned with a plate of fruit and a pastry-like bread in the shape of a waxing moon.
“First a little breakfast, then a chance to stretch; we can take a walk up to the city. After we get back I would like to see how you handle yourself with a sword.” Oelendra gave Rhapsody a plate and joined her at the table. They ate in comfortable silence, while Rhapsody stared out the window at the garden, drinking in the songs of the birds. The feeling of magic she had experienced during her first lovely hours alone in Tyrian was returning.
When they had finished breakfast, Oelendra showed Rhapsody around Tyrian City. It was laid out along a series of hills, the tallest and steepest of which was called Tomingorllo and served as the court of the king. It was the wall near this north-central hill which Rhapsody had passed that first day. As they came through the gates now they walked down an underground hallway and out into a great bowl in the center of the rise that formed the Garden of Tomingorllo. The sides of the bowl were wall-like, much like the outer slopes of the hill, so that ascending or descending them directly would be nearly impossible.
The only ways into the Garden were through the underground halls they had just come through or a well-hidden path by which Oelendra led her out of the Garden. The actual seat of the king was in the fortress castle in a vast courtyard at the highest point of Tomingorllo, and could be reached only through the great halls that lay beneath the massive hill’s surface. The fortress was visible from any clearing in the city. Rhapsody watched it in delight as they passed along the pine-laden slopes of the Garden, before descending into the rest of the city. It was a great round building with many pillars and a dome of silvery marble that seemed to glisten in the morning light.
The rest of the city was more akin to the Lirin cities of home, and more like what she had seen in the villages Cedelia and she had passed. Most of the buildings were of simple design, with high roofs and short walls, built along avenues created by the forest itself. Here and there, in the largest of the trees, were high platforms or structures, some smaller ones in the mighty oaks, other, larger buildings built between several trees. Between them ran rope bridges that connected a second series of avenues high above the woodland paths. Goats, sheep, and pigs ran through parts of the city, but for the most part, the animals who wandered the streets were forest creatures that lived harmoniously among the Lirin.
The defenses of the city were less obvious. There were blind and hidden guard posts, designed to catch invading forces unaware and trap them in a deadly crossfire. There were sudden ditches which would have broken any organized charge.
There were more conventional, human-style defenses as well. Each of the six outer hills was crested with a walled defense, and between these was a series of palisaded ramparts and ditches, each one taller or deeper than the one before. At the bottom of each ditch was set a series of sharpened sticks that made falling deadly. These ditches were crossed by bridges, which could be easily collapsed from inside the ramparts. Rhapsody wondered what Achmed or Grunthor would have made of these defenses, and took note of them for possible use in Ylorc.
It was the life of the city, however, that really interested Rhapsody. Tyrian was a bustling place, brimming with activity and foot traffic. The Lirin, though reserved with outsiders, were warm and friendly within the city walls, and Rhapsody found herself laughing merrily with people to whom she had been introduced just moments before. She was greeted with affection and cordiality wherever Oelendra took her.
They ate the noonday meal in an outdoor café, dining on spiced venison, olives, and delicious nuts that Rhapsody found hard to stop eating. Crowds of children ran through the streets laughing, stopping to stare for a moment as they passed by her table, occasionally reaching out to touch her or to drop a flower in her lap before they broke into a run again.
The people of Tyrian, with their large, almond-shaped eyes and whimsical appearances, gladdened Rhapsody’s heart in ways she didn’t fully understand. This must be what Elynsynos meant about the Cymrians, she thought, finding herself smiling continuously as she watched them. I can see now how someone can come to think of a people as treasure. She grinned at two little girls who stood before their table.
“If you’re finished, I’ll show you the castle,” Oelendra said, digging in her pocket. She held out her open palms to the children and nodded. Both girls grabbed for the contents as Oelendra’s hands closed, rapid as the recoil of a snake. They examined their results, both of them squealing with delight and each popping a red kiran berry into her mouth, the trophy of defeating the speed of the Lirin champion. Rhapsody laughed and applauded the victors.
“Yes; that was delicious.” She rose and folded her napkin, waving to the children as they ran off, giggling. “Lead on, Oelendra. I will follow you anywhere.”
“This is the Court and Throne of Tomingorllo,” Oelendra said as she swung open one of a pair of heavy oak doors. Beyond the doors was an enormous marble rotunda with an overarching dome held up by pillars that stood ten feet from the wall. The dome had a large hole in the middle of it, leaving the center of the room open to the cloudless sky.
On the other side of the room was a large throne carved of black walnut, far less ornate than Rhapsody had expected. It was instead austere, with pillar-like arms and a low, even back. Two great stone fireplaces, wider than the whole of Oelendra’s house, stood dark and cold at each of the other directional points in the circle.
Running along the walls of the round room was a wooden bench that circled the room unbroken, except for the gaps for the doors and the throne. In the center of the room itself was a small glass case on an ornate silver stand that did not seem to match the austerity of the rest of the room. A balcony encircled the room above, looking down on the center display case. The only other decorations in the room were the four star-shaped grills that were part of the floor. The air in the room was clean and cold.
“This is where the king would sit, if there was one, and where the first alliance of the New World was made, and broken. Come over here.” Oelendra walked toward the odd display in the center of the room. Rhapsody joined her and looked within the glass case.
“The Crown of the Lirin Kingdom,” Oelendra said.
“How beautiful.” Rhapsody stared down at the diadem that lay in the case before her. It was made of countless tiny star-shaped diamonds. Eight similarly-shaped larger stones formed the center ring of the crown. They glimmered in the sunlight that shone down from the opening overhead into the throne room. Rhapsody had never seen their like before.
“The fragments that make up this crown were once the Purity Diamond, a stone the size of a man’s fist that shone with the light of the stars. We brought it from the old world and gave it as a sign of friendship to the Lirin tribe Gorllewinolo, the first indigenous people we met here, aside from the Seers. They were the ancestors of the people who live in Tyrian now, and together with some of the Lirin of our Island, they founded this city, the main hill of which bears, in part, their name.”
“Tomingorllo: tower of the Gorllewin, the people of the west,” Rhapsod
y said to herself.
“Aye. Over the years the name changed, but the city and the people remained the same.”
“But what happened to the diamond? You said that these pieces were once a single diamond. Did they break it?”
“Nay, they did not. Anwyn did.”
“I don’t understand. Why would she do such a thing?”
“No one understood. The Lirin of this land were our friends and allies. They had stood by us when all others had failed, and they supported Anwyn throughout the war, even when her own people deserted her. The alliance between the Lirin and Anwyn was older and deeper even than that of Anwyn and the Cymrians, who had chosen her centuries before as their Lady. The Purity Diamond was a symbol of that alliance to the Lirin. At the time her actions made no sense. It was not until years later that I began to suspect the reason. I should have guessed right away, I suppose.” Oelendra ran a finger absently through the fine layer of dust that had built up on the case.
“It happened just before her scheduled meeting with Gwylliam, the one which he did not live to attend. She came into the throne room and to this place, where the diamond was on display. Raising her hands, she called starfire down from the sky and spoke words of deep power that shattered the stone into thousands of pieces, driving the light it contained out of it forever. Then, without a word, she left.
“It was because of that act that the Lirin, and indeed many of even her staunchest supporters, refused to recognize her claim to the sole leadership of the Cymrians after Gwylliam’s death. She had destroyed the gift that the First Fleet of Cymrians had given to the Lirin of this place, the very symbol of the peace and unity with the land they believed their way of life represented.
“To the Lirin, ’twas the breaking of the treaty, the greatest betrayal, but to her own people ’twas just the final one. She returned to the Tree to find that, not only had the Lirin turned their backs on her, but her own people denied her as well. So she left, having accomplished what she had set out to do, destroy Gwylliam, but at the cost of the prize she sought. In the end she simply sat alone to let her hatred fester, until at last none visited her but her son and a handful of pilgrims who sought answers to questions about the Past.
“When Llauron came years later in an attempt to repair the damage, offering himself in a marriage of alliance to the Lirin queen, she showed him this crown, made of the shards of what had been a gift of peace. ‘Can you repair this?” Queen Terrell asked him. Llauron acknowledged that he could not. ‘Then what makes you think you can repair the alliance so easily?’
“Llauron explained his desire to right the wrongs his parents had inflicted on the Cymrians and the Lirin, and the wish to see them united as they had never been before. Queen Terrell declined both his offer and his marriage proposal, but told him that when and if he, or anyone, could restore the stone to life, could make it shine with the light of the stars as it once had, that the Lirin would recognize that person as Chieftain of the Cymrians and Lord of both peoples. Until such a time, the Lirin would remain separate, following their own monarch.
“Llauron accepted this, and, as the Invoker, blessed the crown and the queen who made it before returning to Gwynwood. Since that time the crown has remained in this place, waiting for the coming of the Lord or Lady Cymrian to right the wrong that was done here.”
“Why do you think Anwyn destroyed it?” Rhapsody asked, walking around the case to see the crown from all its sides.
“’Twas the price she paid to be rid of her husband.”
She looked up. “What do you mean?”
The look on Oelendra’s face grew harder. “She struck a deal with the demon. It was actually the first confirmation I had as to what kind of evil had followed us, because F’dor are afraid of diamonds; they fear them, it seems, or are injured and weakened by them. I have never discovered exactly why, but I believe ’tis because diamonds hold the light of the stars, as Daystar Clarion does, an element that precedes the existence of fire, and, as an older element, is more powerful. This was a diamond immense enough to capture and destroy the essence of even the greatest of the demon spirits.
“I knew that evil, and I hated it. It had been responsible for most of the trouble on our Island, had destroyed all I loved, killed my grandfather, killed my husband. I knew it lurked somewhere, that it was hiding among us, clinging to the souls of innocents, staying always out of sight, always in the background, waiting for its power to rise and its time to be perfect.
“I had only suspected its presence by smell that first day when the First and Third waves reunited—F’dor have a ghastly smell in their true form, and you can sometimes catch a whiff of it when they are insinuated into a host—but I had no confirmation until the day the diamond was destroyed.
“But Anwyn knew. Anwyn had always known. She was the Seer of the Past. She knew it escaped the moment after it stepped on that ship; she knew which soul it clung to as soon as it took up residence. It could not hide from her, and had she told me who it was, we would have been done with that evil many generations ago. But she was wyrmkin, a dragon’s-child, and hoarded that information as she hoarded everything, certain that one day it would turn to her benefit. And surely one day it did, but, as with all things touched by F’dor, that benefit was twisted.
“After seven hundred years of war with Gwylliam, she turned to the only power she knew could defeat him, the one power in the world ancient enough to know secrets that were beyond even her gift to recall. She turned to the demon, and it offered a bargain: the F’dor would grant her heart’s desire, ’twould kill her husband, who was immortal, who to all other threats was invulnerable, and in return she would destroy the Purity Diamond, the one thing the demon feared even more than Daystar Clarion.
“She was a fool. She thought because she was of the mixed blood of two of the ancient races, Seren and dragon, that she could bargain with the F’dor and her knowledge of the Past would protect her. What she failed to understand was that the demon was not just descended from an elder race, but was itself from the Before Time, and knew things she could never dream of.
“She agreed to its terms, and who knows what else, and destroyed the gift that was surely one of our greatest weapons against the F’dor. In return, it killed Gwylliam, the last of the Seren kings, and so won the battle it had lost on the Island, in the old world. Then it destroyed the remains of the Cymrian alliance, disposing of the leaders of two of the houses, and breaking their tie with the Lirin, and the different Lirin factions’ ties with each other. The F’dor destroyed the Cymrians as a unified people, and Anwyn had opened the door for it. Gwylliam may have started the war, but Anwyn lost it for us all.
“I spent the next few years hunting it. Anwyn refused to help me find it, because I had stayed out of the war, being unwilling to support either side in the destruction of the other. I also counseled the Lirin to stay out of it, but they turned a deaf ear and followed Anwyn, much to their eventual regret. I sought it everywhere, but the demon was far too clever to be found. It had gone to ground, biding its time, waiting until conditions were ripe to emerge again. Well, with war brewing, and border incursions on all sides, and racial hatred flourishing, that time can’t be far off.”
Even though she stood in a shaft of warm spring sunlight from the hole in the center of the dome, Rhapsody shivered. It was becoming horrifyingly clear what Oelendra expected of her. Since the destruction of the diamond, the only obvious weapon powerful enough to kill the F’dor was the sword she carried. It was no wonder Oelendra was willing to train her in its use.
“Very good,” Oelendra said, sheathing her sword.
Rhapsody collapsed onto the ground, her breath harsh and labored. “You must be joking,” she said between gasps for air. “I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.” She had not expected to hold her own with the Lirin champion, but she had hoped to spare herself outright embarrassment. Oelendra laughed and held out her hand, which Rhapsody stared at for a few seconds before taking.
/> “Oh, come now, you were wonderful.” The older woman pulled the tired Singer from the ground, showing little sign of exertion herself. Rhapsody, by contrast, felt utterly exhausted. Her arm was numb and her fingers ached with the sting of the shocks that had resounded through her steel blade. She had not used Daystar Clarion in their first sparring, since Oelendra had wanted to see how well she fought without any special advantages.
“If I had been that wonderful in combat, my severed head would be decorating somebody’s flagpole.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You held your own, you didn’t fall for any of my invitations to get in over your head, and you didn’t let your guard down even though you were tired enough to drop. Most of all, you know how to move on the ground and are very good on the parries and dodges. That’s the hardest part, you know.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Absolutely. You’ve had some good training.”
“Thanks—I’ll make sure to tell Grunthor.”
“He’s your Bolg friend you were telling me of on the way back from the city?”
“Yes, he was my first trainer in the sword.”
“Well, that makes some sense. As I said, you’ve got a good start, but now we’re going to train you to fight like our people do.”
“Do you think that the Lirin way of fighting is better than that of the Firbolg?” Rhapsody asked between breaths.
“Aye, at least for Lirin. The Bolg are big, strong, and clumsy, the Lirin are small, fast, and weak. Not every person of either race falls into those categories, but enough of them do that their fighting styles tend to reflect it. You rely too much on your strength, not enough on agility and cunning and, no offense, you just don’t have the body mass to fight like a brute.”
“No offense taken,” Rhapsody said, picking up the weapon. “Where do we start?”
“We start by having a drink of water.” Oelendra took a sip from a wineskin and passed it to her. “The first lesson is to listen to your own body. There are times you have to ignore it, and you’ve already shown me you know how to push yourself well beyond the point of normal endurance.”