“Not for this,” said Quentin Baldassarre stiffly. “For all I know, your soldiers were attacked by wolves. You have given us no evidence to the contrary.”
“In my judgment, it would be a disaster that we would be bringing upon ourselves, especially in light of Achmed’s denial,” said Ihrman Karsrick. “If what the Firbolg king says is true, and you attack the mountain, you would be the aggressor who broke the accord. And then ten percent of Roland is forfeit, assuming the Bolg would even let you sue for peace again. I want nothing to do with this. It’s madness.”
Desperation and dark rage contorted the Lord Roland’s face, and he turned to his cousin, Stephen Navarne.
“Stephen, stand with me. Help me make them understand.”
Stephen sighed and looked away, catching the sympathetic eye of the Invoker. When he turned back to Tristan the expression in his green-blue eyes was direct.
“How can I make them understand when I can’t even comprehend your perspective myself? You have my loyalty and my life, Tristan, but not the lives of our innocent subjects. I cannot stand with you in this.”
A thick silence descended again. Slowly the Lord Regent rose from the table and walked brokenly to the tall library windows that looked out over his fair city. He leaned on the glass, lost in thought.
After a few moments, the dukes and benisons began to talk softly again among themselves. Philabet Griswold turned to Ian Steward.
“That was a very impressive display this morning, Your Grace. Would that I could command the sea as readily as you brought forth fire from the earth.” Ian Steward said nothing; he was watching his brother intently, a worried expression on his young face.
Stephen Navarne looked over at Llauron, whose face was impassive. Though the basilicas of the Patrician religion were dedicated to the five elements, in truth that lore was more or less lost in the faith as it was now practiced. Instead, the worship and manipulation of the lore of the elements was more akin to the practice of the Filids, who worshipped nature. It was his belief that the sudden roar of the fire was more likely the work of the Invoker than the Blesser of Canderre-Yarim, but Llauron betrayed no sign that he was even listening.
As the others dissolved into various discussions of different matters, Stephen rose and walked to the window where Tristan still stood, staring blankly over the city. He waited patiently for the Lord Roland to speak. Finally Tristan sighed.
“I wish I had been more available to you some years back, Stephen, when Lydia died,” he said. “I’m sorry.” His eyes remained locked on whatever old pathways of remembrance he was walking down.
“Who was it, Tristan? It wasn’t—it wasn’t Prudence, was it?”
Tristan only nodded and left the room, his absence scarcely noted by the chattering holy men and the other regents.
Trying to absorb the shock of Tristan’s answer, Stephen’s eye caught the crumpled parchment note the Lord Roland had left behind when he departed from the library. Stephen picked it up slowly and read the few words written on it in a spidery script.
I thought you had learned your lesson early. I see I was wrong. I told you the cost would be greater later on. And you paid the price both times for nothing—she still doesn’t know.
“I know your pain is very great, my son.”
Tristan looked up. He had not heard the door open. As he turned he caught a glimpse of his own face in the looking glass, a face that had never before borne the ravages of time quite so clearly. He was haggard, from the deepening lines around his mouth to the crevice that had been carved somehow into his forehead between his eyebrows. There was no hiding the redness in his eyes, born of grief and the lack of sleep that grief had caused.
The eyes that looked sympathetically into his own glimmered red for a moment as well, as if in empathy.
“Yes, Your Grace,” the Lord Roland murmured.
A hand came to rest gently on his head.
“The others, they do not understand,” the sonorous voice intoned without a hint of condescension. “They only see what is immediately before them. It is very difficult to be the one who alone comprehends the severity of the situation to come, who sees the danger when it is still down the road yet. The eyes of a visionary weep often over time, it is said.” The hand moved to Tristan’s shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze.
The Lord Roland exhaled brokenly and lowered his head to his fists, clutched on the table before him. The hand on his shoulder passed over his back, and then was removed, disappearing within the sleeve of the robe above it.
“This land is divided against itself, my son. After the Great War, your Cymrian forebears chose to allow Roland to remain divided thus, under these disparate houses, because they feared the chaos and death that Anwyn and Gwylliam’s union had wrought in its undoing. It was folly to believe that it could remain this way without even greater chaos following. Look at me.”
The last words had a ring of irritation to them, an undertone of threat, and Tristan raised his head to see kindly blue eyes staring intently back at him. For a moment he thought perhaps there was something else within them, something dark, something red, but then the holy man smiled, and Tristan felt warmth course through him for the first time that day, a day which had begun with such promise and had ended in such a debacle. It was a feeling of acceptance, of approval; of respect.
“You are the eldest, Tristan, the heir apparent of the Cymrian line.”
Tristan blinked painfully. “Your Grace—”
“Hear me out, m’lord.” The holy man bowed slightly as he uttered the last word, and deep within his soul Tristan felt the sickening gnaw of the morning’s humiliation miraculously abate. Something in the tone of the word had reached into that hidden vault of royalty within him, a place long denied in the attempt to maintain a friendly consensus with his cousin and the other Orlandan heads of state. It was the first pleasant sensation he had felt since Prudence had left his arms and ridden away to her grisly death. Involuntarily he smiled slightly, and was smiled at warmly in return. Tristan nodded for him to continue.
“The lines of succession may seem unclear to to you, because no one in those days after the War was willing to assume the throne. Indeed, if they had tried, the non-Cymrian population would have unseated them anyway, such was the hatred for all the descendants of the Seren, not just the line of Gwylliam.
“As you can see, now that war looms again, this fragmented system has yielded no real leadership. An obvious act of aggression has taken place, but the others are unwilling to band together to support you, even the dukes of Beth Corbair and Yarim, whose own lands border the Firbolg realm.
“What will happen, then, when the violence escalates? When the Firbolg swarm down from the Teeth and begin swallowing the lands of Roland? Will you and your fellow regents just sit back and watch while your subjects are devoured, literally, by those subhuman monsters?”
“Of—of course not,” the Lord Roland stammered.
“Really?” The warm voice grew instantly icy. “How do you propose to prevent it? You couldn’t convince them to join together before the slaughter begins. Once the mayhem starts, how do you expect to field an army that will be able to fend off the wave of death that will come with those cannibalistic demons? By the time the Firbolg reach the boundaries of your central lands, Tristan, it will be far too late to stop them. They will possess all of Bethe Corbair and Yarim, Sorbold too, perhaps. They will eat you alive, or drive you into the sea.”
An inkwell and several bound books fell violently to the floor, swept off the table by the force of the Lord Roland’s reaction. “No.”
The warmth returned to the holy man’s eyes as black ink pooled like dark blood from the shards of the inkwell, staining the floor.
“Ah, a hint of viscera. You see, I was right. You may be the one after all.”
Despite the warmth in the eyes locked on to his, and the heat lingering in the room from the angry dissension that had taken place there, Tristan felt suddenly cold.
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“The one for what?”
The screech of the legs of the chair as it was pulled back ripped through Tristan’s ears as the man sat down across from him.
“The one to return peace and security to Roland. The one to have the courage to put an end to the chaos that is the royal structure of this land and assume the throne. If you had dominion over all of Roland, not just Bethany, you would control all of the armies you sought in vain to bring together today. Your fellows, the dukes, can say no to the Lord Regent. They could not refuse the king. Your lineage is as worthy as any of the others, Tristan, more so than most.”
“I am not the one in need of convincing, Your Grace,” said Tristan bitterly. “In case this morning’s fiasco didn’t prove it, let me assure you that my fellow regents do not see the clarity of the succession scenario that you do.”
The holy man smiled, then rose from the table slowly. “Leave that to me, m’lord,” he said, the words soft, then-sound pleasant against Tristan’s ears. “Your time will come. Just be certain that you are ready when it does.” He walked slowly to the door and opened it, then looked back over his shoulder on last time.
“And m’lord?”
“Yes?”
“You will think about what I said, hmmm?”
The Lord Roland had nodded agreement. True to his word, when the dukes and religious leaders had finally left Bethany, he pondered the suggestion, endlessly, in fact. He thought of little else with each waking breath, almost as if he had no other choice, turning the sage words over and over in his mind, like an insistent melody. All other thought, other reason, was drowned in the noise of it.
The suggestion had wound around his soul like a cinnebara vine, a ropelike plant he had once studied that made an excellent trap, hanging loose and harmless until the victim sought to pull away. Then it clung with a strangling insistence until the animal caught within it stopped struggling. The sensation of pondering the suggestion was eerily similar.
It was only at night that he found respite from the words, in an older, deeper obsession—his insatiable hunger for the woman he had sacrificed everything for, including the only love his life had ever known. Even now, after all that had happened, he still dreamt of Rhapsody.
In his sleep she called to him, wrapped in a fiery warmth. He dreamt of making love to her, fiercely, passionately, looking into her face as the thunder rolled up inside of him to see an older, more familiar face beneath his, lined with age, the golden tresses replaced by strawberry curls.
Curls matted with black blood.
From these dreams he would wake in a cold sweat, shaking violently, willing her to leave his thoughts, wishing he could somehow exorcise this beautiful demon who still haunted his dreams.
The Lord Roland did not know that his obsession with her, deep and intrinsic as it had become to his soul, was the one thing saving him from being given over completely to the command of another, much darker demon.
36
The cold stone steps leading up to Elysian’s gazebo gleamed in the diffuse sunlight. It had taken a vast amount of effort to clean the centuries of grime and lichen off the marble columns, as well as the charred black soot, but it had been worth it, Rhapsody decided. The small pavilion glistened like a holy shrine in the quiet green of the underground cavern.
She had spent the morning puttering in her gardens, stalling. Jo and Grunthor had come to visit, Jo because Rhapsody missed her and had been longing to see her, Grunthor because Jo was utterly incapable of finding the underground realm of Elysian. She was even unable to locate Kraldurge, the area above the grotto that the Firbolg thought was haunted, or the guardian rocks that hid it, no matter how many times she visited. It had become a joke among the four of them.
They ate their noonday meal in the garden, the rich blossoms of Rhapsody’s many plantings filling the air with a heavy, sweet scent, the blooming colors a symphony to the eye. Jo said very little, but spent most of her time staring at the shady gardens and the cavern above her, amazed more by the alien nature of the place than the sheer beauty of it. The stalactite formations, the glistening waterfall, and the iridescent colors of the cave held both her eye and imagination. Grunthor caught Rhapsody up on all title gossip and they exchanged bawdy jokes, Jo laughing along.
It was a good and pleasant meal, and Rhapsody was sorry to see it end. But finally Grunthor stood up, wiped his tusked mouth politely on his napkin, and patted Jo on the head.
“Come on, lit’le miss, time we was gettin’ back. The meal was scrumptious, Duchess.” Rhapsody gave him a hug, and then Jo. They walked down to the banks of the lake, still chattering away.
While Grunthor made ready the boat, Rhapsody pulled Jo aside. “Well? Have you thought about coming here to live with me?”
“A little,” said Jo uncomfortably. “Don’t get me wrong, Rhaps, I miss you like crazy, but I’m not sure I could live down here.”
Rhapsody nodded. “I understand.”
“I can’t even find the place, you know. That could be a problem.”
“I know. It’s all right, Jo. I’ll try to come and see you more often in the Cauldron, unless Achmed gave my room away.”
“Not yet, but he keeps threatening to sell your clothes.” Jo smirked as Rhapsody laughed. “Give me a little while to get used to the idea,” Jo said. “Can I have the room with the turret?”
“Anything you want,” Rhapsody answered, hugging her again. She could see Grunthor was ready. ‘Take however long you need; we have all the time in the world.”
Jo smiled and gave her a kiss. Then she ran to where Grunthor was waiting, and got in, waving as they rowed across the lake. Finally, when the boat was out of sight, Rhapsody stopped waving and sighed. She had just run out of excuses.
The evening had come, and she could hear the birds singing in her tiny trees, planted recently. They had found their way underground, and occasionally she would see one in the garden or hopping on the grass. The sunlight was leaving the sky in the world above, so the darkness had already come below the ground in Elysian. Only the warmth of the evening air told her the night was still at least a few moments away.
Rhapsody took a deep breath and steeled her resolve. What she was about to do put many of the things she loved at risk—Elysian and its status as a safe haven among them. Far more important, her friends and their safety might be compromised if she was wrong, though what she had told Achmed about his strength and position she still believed to be true.
She walked through the gardens and around the benches, up the walkway to the gazebo. Rhapsody climbed the steps slowly, turning in a circle once she was inside to survey the glory of the cavern around her. She closed her eyes and listened to the music of the waterfall high above splashing into the lake below. Then she stood still, breathing shallowly, and concentrated on the face she had seen in the forest glen, the face that had smiled uncertainly. The face with the dragon eyes.
In a high, clear voice she sang his name, the tone sweet and warm. It was a long name, and it took a moment to get it all out, but once she had finished, it rang like a bell in the grotto. The natural podium that was the gazebo amplified her song and held it hovering above the lake, spinning in circles faster and faster. She sang it again, and again, then attached to it a clear directional thread, a note for him to follow. The lingering note would lead him to this hidden place, this place where, if he came, he would find healing.
When she was finished the song continued to hover for a moment, then rose and expanded through the cavern, permeating the walls and echoing for miles around. Then it dissipated, but she could hear it in the distance, ringing through the night on its way to the one she hoped would hear it.
Ashe woke from his dream of Rhapsody to the sound of her voice calling his name. He shook his head and settled back under the tree beneath which he had been sleeping.
He dreamt of her almost every night. In this dream she was dancing with the wind through the highgrass of the heath, her arms spread wide, like sh
e was flying. Then the wind took her; it blew her over the edge of the chasm and into the canyon below. He cried out her name, but his scream was swallowed up by the gale. He ran to the edge of the heath and looked down, but he could not see her.
Then he heard her voice calling him, and he turned to see her standing once more on the heath, attired in a dark dress and her signature black ribbon, the ever-present locket around her slender neck, holding out her hand to him. He reached for her in the darkness, and awoke to find himself alone, as he always did.
At first he had cursed the dreams. Waking itself was a painful enough process, the agony that was centered in his chest, radiating outward, returned full force once sleep was gone. But to have to endure the loss of her at the end of each night was depressing beyond belief.
Eventually, though, he took to looking forward to his nightly visits with her in his mind. In the realm of the Lady Rowan, Yl Breudiwyr, the keeper of dreams, the guardian of sleep, Rhapsody was his own on most nights. She knew of his feelings and returned them with joy, she slept in his arms, she made love to him without fear. Occasionally a nightmare would creep in and she would be cold, distant, or he would be unable to reach her. Once he dreamt that he had sought her endlessly to discover her in the bedchamber of the Firbolg king and had been unable to convince her to leave. From that dream he woke in a cold sweat and with a headache that lingered for hours.
Worst of all were the nights when no visions of her came to him in his sleep. Once he had not dreamt of her for three nights in a row, and he grew so despondent that when his mission was over he made a foray back to his small room behind the waterfall.
When he opened the door he could still smell the fresh, sweet scent of her; it lingered on the bedsheets and in the clothes she had washed and folded for him. Ashe stretched out on the bed, remembering their last night together, Rhapsody curled around the pillow like a dragonling. He grew wistful as he thought of how he had comforted her in her endless quest for a peaceful night’s sleep. That night he had dreamt of her again, singing to Lirin children, large with child herself.