Don’t worry; the cloaked monster had said in a sandy voice that whispered of death. She has no idea that she was the one who inspired they massacre. Of course, I do. Why do you think I sent her to you? You are a man of free will. If you had genuinely desired peace, you would have greeted my offer, and my emissary, with open arms, no doubt. Any man, especially one who is betrothed, with less-than-honorable intentions toward a woman, would be untrustworthy as a neighbor as well. It’s just as well that you threw two thousand lives away trying to win her attention now. You learned your lesson early. The cost would have been far greater later on.
The man-shadow had risen silently from the chair as the Firbolg king prepared to make his exit.
I’ll leave you now to get ready for the vigil you will no doubt want to hold for your men. The Lord Roland saw no more of the monster’s departure than he had of his arrival.
It had taken Tristan Steward almost twelve hours before he was able to speak again, another six before his speech was even vaguely coherent. A caustic, burning sensation had ripped through his gullet, swamping his mouth, with acid he could still taste now, these many months later. The death of his army had left him terrified and aghast.
But not aghast enough, apparently, to shake loose the image of the woman which still clutched his mind. Tristan lay back against the pillows and let out a painful sigh.
“I don’t know what it is, this hold she has over me, this craving that makes me stupid, incapable of sensible thought,” he admitted. He closed his eyes, blocking out the image of his tertiary infantry and horsed crossbowmen, and the poor unfortunates that had been unassigned to other duties that morning, their bodies never found, rumored to have become a grisly feast for their monstrous vanquishers. “It’s more than carnal, but I don’t know that it’s love, either. I think part of what’s driving me is the need to find out just exactly what it is.”
Prudence watched his face a moment longer, then nodded.
“All right, Tristan. I’ll go. That bonfire must be spreading; now I have an inexplicable need as well. My curiosity won’t be satisfied until I see this creature for myself.”
He grasped her face and pulled her to him, kissing her gratefully.
“Thank you, Pru.”
“As always, anything for you, m’lord.” Prudence twisted free from his hands and rose, walking to the dressing table where she had left her clothes, ignoring the look of blank shock on his face.
“Where are you going?” he stammered.
Prudence slid her dress over her shoulders, then turned to face him.
“To make preparations for my trip to see the object of your erection. Where else?”
“That can wait. Come back to bed.” He opened his arms to her.
“No.” Prudence drew on her undergarments, then turned to the looking glass, running her fingers through her tangled curls.
“I mean it, Prudence, please come back. I want you.”
The servant woman smiled. “Well, had it occurred to you that perhaps the feeling is not mutual, m’lord? And if you’re mortally offended by my rejection, perhaps you should consider beheading me and taking Evans to bed.”
She left the room, Tristan’s astonished face vanishing from view as she closed the door soundly.
Rhapsody slept beneath lacy shadows cast by the moon through the leaves of a brindled alder, the tallest of the trees in the thicket where she had sought shelter for the night. The wind rustled through the thicket from time to time, and the chestnut mare snorted occasionally, but otherwise there was silence at the western edge of the Krevensfield Plain.
A sweetness was carried on the wind that cleansed her dreams, making them more intense in the summer heat. Rhapsody turned on her side and inhaled the scent of the clover beneath her head, breathing in the fragrance of the green earth. It was a scent she remembered from childhood, when on nights like these she and members of her family sometimes fell asleep in the pasture under the star-sprinkled sky.
She sighed in her sleep, wishing that the memory would turn to dreams of her mother, but Rhapsody had not been able to conjure up her image since before Ashe came to the mountain. Her mother had come to her then, one last time it seemed, and showed her a vision of her birthstar, her Aria, the star called Seren.
She relived that dream again now, though without her mother’s soothing voice narrating it as she once had. Rhapsody sat up in her sleep and stared through the slender trees to the Plain beyond them. In the darkness of the field she could see a table, or an altar of some kind, on which the body of a man rested. The figure was wreathed in darkness; she could discern nothing but his outline.
Above her in her dream Seren winked in the night sky, shining large as it once had on the other side of the world. A tiny piece of the star broke off and fell onto the body on the altar, causing it to shine incandescently. The intense brightness gleamed for a moment, then resolved into a dim glow.
That is where the piece of your star went, child, for good or ill, her mother had said in the dream. If you can find your guiding star, you will never be lost. Never.
Other voices filled her head. She could hear Oelendra speaking, the sadness permeating her words.
In the end, when nothing was working, and Gwydion was in mortal agony, I took a piece of a star from the sword’s hilt and gave that to the Lady Rowan. I offered it to them in the hope they could use it as a last effort to save him, and they did, but he was too far gone. ’Twas a desperate gesture, and one that did not work, but I don’t regret trying.
“Oelendra, is that what I’m seeing?” she murmured in her sleep. “Was it the attempt to save Gwydion’s life?”
That is where the piece of your star went, child, for good or ill.
Above the image of the body hands appeared, disembodied hands she had seen in a vision while in the House of Remembrance. They folded together, as if in prayer, then opened as if in blessing. Blood poured from between them into the lifeless form, staining it red as it filled.
Words, absent of any voice, spoke in her ear next to the ground.
Child of my blood.
The multitoned voice of the dragon spoke in the other ear, the ear turned toward the wind.
A Rakshas looks like whatever soul is powering it. It is built of blood, the blood of the demon, and sometimes other creatures, usually feral animals of some sort. Its body is formed of an element, like ice or earth; the one made in the House of Remembrance was made of earth frozen with ice. The blood animates it, gives it power. If the demon is in possession of a soul it can place it within the construct and the Rakshas 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.
With a shudder Rhapsody woke and sat upright. She was still in the thicket, the mare beside her, alone and unnoticed except for the touch of the night wind. She shivered and ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to warm herself.
“What are you, Ashe?” she asked aloud. “What are you really?”
The only answer was the warm breath of the wind. She could not make out what it was trying to tell her.
Seventy leagues to the west, the wind blew warm through the open gates in the ancient stone walls of the House of Remembrance, rustling the leaves of the tree that stood in the center of its courtyard. A figure, garbed in a heavy gray cloak with the hood pulled close about the face, stood at its base, gazing thoughtfully up into its branches.
At eye level, planted resolutely in a crotch above the first hollow of the trunk, was a small musical instrument that resembled a harp. It was playing a roundelay quite unlike any he had ever heard before, a simple melody that filled the entire courtyard, humming through the age-old stones. The man reached up to touch the instrument, the cloak falling away from a hand whose newly formed thumb bore only the slightest sign of red, healing skin. The fingers of the hand hovered for a moment over the strings, then withdrew quickly.
It would do no good to try to remove the instrument, the Rakshas decided. It had become an intrinsic part of the tree itself, playing its namesong, the repeating melody sustained by the life within it. The will of the sapling was now tied to the same source as its mother, Sagia, had been, its vestigial roots sunk deep within the Earth, wound inextricably around the Axis Mundi. The song of the harp had broken his master’s hold on the young tree, had healed it from its desecration. There was no doubt in his mind about who had put it there.
Slowly he lowered his hood, letting the wind whip through the shining curls of red-gold hair, while he pondered what to do next. The one who was his master, his father, had been very specific about the need to monitor the Three and keep them contained, not to try to destroy any of them yet, at least up until the confrontation in Sepulvarta. That debacle had proven how badly they had misjudged the situation, thinking that each of the Three was occupied at the time of the assassination attempt. Its failure had been a serious setback, even more serious than the rout that had occurred here, at the House of Remembrance.
The Rakshas turned away from the tree and slowly paced the courtyard, trying to focus his limited powers of reason. Something nagged at the back of his mind, perhaps something from before his rebirth, something he had experienced when he was Gwydion. He couldn’t put a context around the thought, so he returned to the place where that rebirth had occurred.
At the western edge of the garden stood a long, flat table fashioned of marble, the altar on which he had first come to awareness. He closed his eyes again, recalling the first words he had heard as his father prayed above him.
Child of my blood.
The pulse of light, the pain of rebirth.
Now shall the prophecy be broken. From this child will come forth my children.
The Rakshas closed his crystalline blue eyes, as he had then, against the intensity of the light in his memory. When he opened those eyes again, they were gleaming with that same light, but now the light was that of inspiration.
Quickly he crouched down in a feral stance, like the wolf whose blood had been added to his father’s own to form him, and scratched at the earth beneath the altar. He dug for some time until he finally came upon it, a root from the tree that still bore the pocked scars of its original pollution. The tree’s savior had not found all the tap roots—she had probably not even looked beneath the altar when she had done whatever anointing she had undertaken to heal the tree. The Rakshas threw back his head and laughed aloud.
There was one left, one root still desecrated.
It was enough.
He glanced around quickly and scowled for a moment. Stephen Navarne’s men had stripped down the slaughtering equipment, the vats that had been carefully erected to collect the blood of the children he had stolen. That blood had fed the tree then, had twisted it to his master’s whim. There was no longer any here to be found—the place had been scoured clean of it.
His master had committed a good deal of his life’s essence to bring him into being, he mused. It had been a blood sacrifice on the demon’s part as well, and more; it was a substantial commitment of precious power that could wink out if it was not jealously guarded. By nature F’dor were only smoke, ephemeral spirits that clung desperately to a human body. The more power, the more will they expended, the more tenuous that hold became. With his limited abilities to reason, the Rakshas felt honored at the life offering his master had made to give him existence.
The Child of Earth that the legends of ancient demons said slept beneath the mountains of the Teeth was one of the two tools most critical to his master’s plan. The sapling’s root had been the F’dor’s way in—fed by the blood of innocents, connected to the power of the Axis Mundi, the centerline of the Earth itself, pulsing with ancient magic of incalculable strength. That root system ranged throughout the world, even into the flesh of the unassailable mountains. And it could be manipulated, or so his master believed. Surely reestablishing control over this holy tree’s root was worth the commitment of more of his, and his master’s life essence.
He tried to concentrate, tried to force his circumscribed intelligence to calculate the right answer. The repetitive music of the small harp jangled his thoughts, making focus impossible. He eyed the instrument angrily, then, as dawn crosses a valley, a smile spread slowly over his face, lighting each of the features it touched until it came at last to his eyes.
He had his answer.
With an arrogant flip of the wrist, a dagger was in his hand, a hand that no longer bore any sign that it contained a new thumb. Quickly he slashed his forearm twice, drawing deep, bright bands of red across the skin, and then turned his arm over to allow them to drip onto the exposed root. There was no real pain; such a trifling injury could not compete with the agony that constituted his waking life.
As the blood splashed the ground smoke began to rise. Scarlet and black against the night sky, it twisted into a tendril, then a spiraling column, catching the wind.
The ground began to smolder, then to burn. The Rakshas closed his eyes, listening to the deep voices begin to whisper, then to chant darkly, ominously, speaking in obscene countersigns, murmuring in pain.
The agony surged, roaring through him like hot lightning; he felt his head crackle with the intensity of it. The odor of burning flesh in fire crept into his nostrils, and he clenched his fists, knowing that the spilling blood was taking some of his master’s power with it into the earth.
Bloody light filled the darkness, dancing frenetically to the chanting voices of F’dor spirits imprisoned in their deep vault within the Earth. The Rakshas struggled to stand upright in the waves of power pouring from his pulsing heart like blood from the artery he had opened. I am merely the vessel, he thought, pleased, as the ground beneath his trembling feet turned crimson. But I am a capable vessel. He lost the battle with gravity and stumbled forward from his crouch, kneeling in his own burning blood.
When the root and the soil around it was soaked into red mud the Rakshas exhaled in exhaustion, then held the skin-flaps around his wounds together for a moment, sealing them shut again. He carefully reburied the root, whispering the words of encouragement he had routinely spoken over it when he was still Master of this house.
“Merlus,” he whispered. Grow. “Sumat.” Feed. “Fynchalt dearth kynvelt.” Seek the Earth child.
He stood slowly and watched in delight as the root swelled, engorged with tainted blood, then withered, dark and vinelike, before it slithered back into the ground and disappeared. He pulled up his hood, casting one last look around the old Cymrian outpost, and went to meet up with the one who was waiting for him.
29
“Grunthor, stop hovering, I’m fine. Jo, make him stop.”
Jo gave the giant a playful smack across the back of the head. “She says she’s fine. Leave her alone.”
“Oi ’eard ’er,” said the Bolg indignantly, “and Oi can also see ’er neck, thank you, lit’le miss. You look like the loser in a game of Badger-in-the-Bag, Duchess. You got your charmin’ lit’le arse booted, didn’t you?”
“I beg your pardon,” said Rhapsody with a tone of mock offense. “I’ll have you know he did not draw one drop of blood on me, not one.”
“Not above the surface of the skin, anyway,” said Achmed with a smirk. “What do you think bruises are?”
“Aye, well, you should have seen him when it was over,” said Rhapsody, pushing the giant hand away from her throat again. “Will you leave me alone?”
“If the Patriarch is such an almighty ’ealer, why didn’t the old bastard fix your neck, miss? Oi like ’is mettle; if you’d come and stood by me, saved my ’airy arse, Oi would at least given you something for the pain.”
Rhapsody smiled at her friend, genuinely touched by his concern for her. “I didn’t give him a chance, Grunthor. I just wanted to get home as soon as I could. Besides, the bruises are much better. Ten days’ ride without incident does wonders for minor wounds.”
&nbs
p; “Still say Oi don’t like it. We’re a team, you and me. From now on Oi don’t want none o’ this galavantin’ off by yourself. Got it?”
“We’ll see. I don’t intend to go anywhere anytime soon, but I do have something I need to discuss with you all.”
Achmed nodded; she had briefed him thoroughly before the other two had arrived, telling him all about what she had learned in her travels, and giving him her take on the situation in Roland, on the incursions and the future reunion of the Cymrian states. He caught Grunthor up quickly while Jo opened some of the gifts Rhapsody had brought back with her. Finally, when they returned to the massive table, Rhapsody took a deep breath and crossed her arms.
“I’ve decided I want to help Ashe,” she said. Jo smiled, Grunthor and Achmed looked at each other.
“’Elp him what?”
“Help him get his soul back. Kill the demon that took it in the first place. Help him heal. Help him become Lord Cymrian, eventually, and help unite the Cymrian people.”
“Stop,” said Achmed. “Why?”
“I’ve had ten days to think about it, to sort things out. After being around him, and around the land, I think it’s the right thing to do.”
“Are you knobbing him?”
“You’re a pig,” Rhapsody retorted, holding her hands over Jo’s ears.
“Too late; I heard him already,” said Jo. “Well, are you?”
“No,” said Rhapsody indignantly. “What’s the matter with you three? I’ve helped you all at one time or another, and I’m not knobbing any of you.”
“Well, it’s not for want o’ tryin’ on my part, Oi can assure you.”
“You be quiet. The Rakshas is going to be after us sooner or later, I expect, after the House of Remembrance and our confrontation in the basilica. And I can’t believe you don’t have the desire to hunt down and kill the F’dor, Achmed. I thought that was intrinsic to your race.” The Firbolg king said nothing. “As for uniting the Cymrians, I think it makes some sense for us to take a role in the healing of the people who came from the same place we did.”