“I don’t know why you call yourself Ashe.”
“Because ‘Gwydion’ would get me killed. Stop stalling. What is it?”
“Be careful, Sam,” she said seriously. “A name is very powerful. My old name has never been spoken in this world. When that happens it should be in a special ceremony, something that will surround it with power, so it won’t be vulnerable to the old world demons. Like a wedding, for instance.”
He nodded, his playfulness subsiding. Rhapsody sensed his mood shift, and she climbed back into his lap.
“But,” she said, eyes sparkling with mischief, “if I told it to you in pieces, it probably would be all right.”
“Only if—”
“‘Rhapsody’ really is my middle name,” she interrupted before he could finish. “My mother was a skysinger; her name was Allegra.”
“Beautiful.”
“It would be a good name for a daughter, wouldn’t it?”
He smiled at her tenderly. “Yes; yes it would.”
“Anyway, my father named me after his mother, and Mama was not thrilled with the name. She thought it was staid and boring. I know because she told me once, in front of the fire, when we were alone, brushing my hair. She wanted to name me something Lirin, something with music in it, because she believed it would give me a musical soul.”
“She was a wise woman.”
“So that’s where ‘Rhapsody’ came from. Besides being a musical term, it denotes unpredictability, and passion, and wild romance. She hoped those things would counteract my first name.”
He kissed her forehead. “It suits you perfectly.”
“Thank you—I think.”
“So,” he said, wicked mirth in his own eyes, “what was your grandmother’s name?”
“Elienne.”
“Not the Lirin one, you brat. What was your father’s mother’s name?”
Rhapsody’s face grew rosier still, either from embarrassment or laughter. “Amelia.”
“Amelia? I like Amelia. Emily, short for Amelia. Has a nice ring to it.”
“My family called me Emmy,” she said. “My friends called me Emily. The only one who called me Amelia was—”
“Let me guess: your grandmother?”
Rhapsody laughed again. “How did you know?”
“And what last name, what patronymic, did the farm families in your village generally have?”
She played along. “Well, the one I knew best was Turner, as in Earth-turner. It signified that they were planters, and raised crops from the ground. Nice people; I was very fond of all of them. Now, if we’re done with the ancient history lesson, is it my turn? Do I get to ask my question now?”
“Certainly. Ask away.”
“I want to know who this other woman was that you were going to search out and marry; the one you discovered after the ring came into full power.”
“There never was another woman, Rhapsody; I was talking about you.”
Rhapsody shook her head in disagreement. “When you said you now knew who the right woman was, this Cymrian woman you became aware of, and certain of, to be the Lady—”
“You.”
“I see. And the woman you told me you were in love with, in the forest when we—”
“Also you.”
“What about—”
“You, Rhapsody. There is not, and never has been, anyone in my life but you. Until tonight I thought that constituted two, but, in actuality, since you and Emily are one and the same, it makes it astonishingly simple. I loved you then as Emily; I love you now, again, as Rhapsody, both very different and yet still the same. You are the only woman I have ever touched, ever kissed, ever loved. Just you.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Let’s keep it that way,” she whispered, smiling with him. “Is that selfish enough for you?”
His answer was lost in the kiss that followed; he cradled her face as their lips met, breathing her in like a spring wind, filling his soul with her essence. His hands slid up her back, his fingers caressing the crinkly silk of the dress, and carefully began to unbutton it.
Rhapsody pulled away gently. “Sam, please don’t.”
“What’s the matter?”
She took a deep breath, then looked at him steadily. “Perhaps, given that I won’t have any memory of this tomorrow, it’s a bad idea to become engaged tonight.”
Ashe’s face fell. “Emily—”
“Let me finish. There’s no point in making a promise to marry. Those are promises easily broken, and without the knowledge that it was made, there really is no point in it. After everything you’ve heard, do you still want to marry me?”
His heart was in his eyes. “More than ever.”
“And given the choice, assuming all other things are unimportant, would you rather leave here tomorrow as my fiancé—or as my husband?”
Understanding began to dawn on him, and Ashe started to smile. “As your husband—no question.”
Her eyes mirrored his. “Then marry me, Sam. Marry me tonight.”
Rhapsody awoke the next morning as the light began to filter through the curtains. She stretched in luxurious warmth and rolled over in her bed, coming face-to-face with the sleeping Ashe. She started, and her movement caused him to wake and open his eyes.
“Good morning,” he said softly, smiling at her. There was a happiness in his eyes the like of which she had never seen.
“Good morning,” she answered drowsily, returning his smile wanly and yawning. “I have to say I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you planned to be gone before I awoke.” As her awareness began to return, she realized in embarrassment that they were naked beneath the sheets.
“We talked late into the night. Do you remember anything?”
Rhapsody turned the thought over in her mind. “No,” she said, a trace of sadness in her voice. “Not after we went into the gazebo—that’s my last memory. It went well, then?”
His smile broadened, and he reached out and drew a lock of her hair across his throat. “Very well.”
Rhapsody’s face grew solemn, returning to her melancholy thoughts of the night before. “Why did you stay, really?”
Ashe looked at her seriously. “We wanted to spend as much time together as we could before I left. You agreed; honestly you did.”
Rhapsody sat up and saw her silk dress crumpled in a heap on the floor at the foot of the bed, his mariner’s clothes scattered across the room. Color rose in her cheeks as she lay back under the blankets once more and looked at him again.
“We made love, then?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
Rhapsody looked uncomfortable. “You—you did want to, didn’t you? I didn’t make you feel guilty or beg you, did I?”
Ashe laughed. “Not at all. As if you would ever need to.”
She turned away from him so he could not see the sorrow in her eyes. “I wish I could remember,” she said sadly.
Ashe took her carefully by the shoulders and turned her to face him, kissing her gently. “You will, one day,” he said. “I am holding the memory for you, Aria. One day it will be ours to share again.”
Tears began to form in the emerald eyes. “No,” she whispered. “It may be mine to keep someday, but it’s time for you to begin making memories with someone else.”
Ashe pulled her closer so she could not see him smile. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Today I am still here with you. Perhaps there is a way to make up for the loss until the memory is yours once more.” He laid her back down on the pillow and kissed her again, his hands caressing her breasts lovingly.
Fire, mingled with guilt, coursed through Rhapsody’s body as his lips moved lower. She quickly gave herself over to the passion, fueled by the pain of her imminent loss, and they made love again, clinging to each other desperately, as though they thought they would never see each other again.
When it was over, neither of them looked happy. Rhapsody lay quietly in his arms, in the throes of silent g
uilt. The pensive sadness in Ashe’s eyes was much worse; he had felt their souls touch the night before in ecstasy, and today it was gone, replaced by bitter regret, the pain of being so close to ultimate happiness and still having it elude them.
Finally, Rhapsody rose from the bed and gathered some fresh clothes. She disappeared into the bathroom, and while she was gone Ashe dressed in the clean garments she had left out for him on top of his pack. He cursed Llauron, he cursed Anwyn, he cursed himself, anyone and anything that had conspired to keep them apart and was to blame for any part of the sorrow in her eyes.
As he waited for her to come out again Ashe’s senses, then his eyes, turned to the threepenny piece lying unnoticed in the rug before the fire. He bent to pick it up, smiling. He looked in the pile of hastily discarded clothes and found her locket, then carefully replaced the coin within it. He had Emily back, and she was his wife. Now if he could only keep her safe and in love with him until she knew it.
54
Meridion slammed back in his chair, his pulsing aurelay twisting red and hot with frustration. He had been trying for hours; his eyes stung from the painfully close work. Deep grooves had been worn into the flesh of his fingers from gripping the instruments so tightly, but it had been to no avail. He could not catch another dream-thread.
Rhapsody was no longer any use for such a purpose. It had been an utter fluke the first time, even less possible now; there was no give in the fabric of her dreams now that they were inextricably bound to Ashe. Despite her loss of the memory of that night, she still had given her unconscious mind over solely to thoughts of him. His attempts to pry a thread free to attach elsewhere, where it needed to be, was only causing her pain and despair; he could see it in the restless terrors and fever that haunted her sleep the night after she and Ashe parted. Meridion threw down the thin silver pick in despair.
The end was coming. And there was no way to warn them.
All his manipulation of the Past had come to nothing; the result was going to be the same, after all.
Meridion put his head down on the instrument panel of the Time Editor and wept.
Beneath his face were fragments of time, splinters and scraps of film left over from the destruction of the original strand from the Past he had tried to unmake. He brushed them away dejectedly. One stuck fast to his sweating fingers.
Meridion shook his hand, but still the scrap clung to it. He held it up to the Time-Editor’s lightsource.
There was nothing left of the image; the heat of the Time Editor’s rending had marred the film irretrievably. The top edge was similarly rent, taking out the sensory information. The bottom edge of the film piece was the only part left intact, the piece that housed the sound from the Past. Meridion held it up to his ear.
At the edge of his hearing the Grandmother’s dry, insectlike voice whispered.
The deliverance of that world is not a task for one alone. A world whose fate rests in the hands of one is a world far too simple to be worth saving.
Meridion pondered the words. Not a task for one alone.
Not for one alone.
The idea flashed through him so intensely, along with the heat of excitement, that he felt hot and weak, almost dizzy.
Meridion reignited the Time Editor. The machine roared to life. Bright light flashed around the glass walls of his spherical room, suspended above the dimming stars, the heat from the boiling seas churning up a blanket of mist on the world’s surface below him.
There was another way, another connection that could be made with dream-thread. A path that had already been blazed, synchronicity that already existed.
A name that had already been shared.
When the machine was fully engaged, Meridion looked through the eyepiece again. Carefully he backed the film up one night, and repositioned it under the lens to another place in the dark mountains, in the night black as pitch. It took him a moment to find what he was looking for in the gathering storm, crystals of harsh snow beginning to form in the wind of the Teeth.
He caught the dream-thread easily, anchored it without difficulty. The warning was in place.
Now it was only a matter of seeing whether they heeded it.
A shaft of sunlight as golden as Rhapsody’s hair broke through the morning clouds. Ashe stepped into the glow, the mist from his cloak sparking into a million tiny diamond droplets, hanging heavy in the new-winter air.
From beneath her hood Rhapsody smiled. The sight was a beautiful one, a memory she would hold on to in the sad days to come. Standing there in the sunlight, even swathed in his cloak and mantle, Ashe looked like something almost godlike, here at the crest of the first barrier peaks, on his way to the foothill rise. Soon they would part company at the pass that led to the lower rim, and he would be gone from her life.
A billowing roar echoed through the Teeth, sending shivers through her. The sound echoed off the crags and over the wide heath, frightening the wildlife that still remained in the sight of winter’s coming. The sound was unmistakable.
“Grunthor!” Rhapsody spun around, searching blindly in the blaze of morning light for the source of the scream.
Ashe put his hand to his eyes, scanning the panorama of the crags bathed in the sun’s brilliance. He pointed to a pass in the guardian peaks, the barracks of the mountain guard.
“There,” he said.
Rhapsody put her hand to her brow as well. From the cave door that led to the barracks hall, figures were spewing forth like ash from a rampant volcano. The Bolg soldiers of the barracks scrambled to evacuate the corridor, taking shelter behind whatever outcroppings of rocks afforded them cover. Rhapsody shook her head.
“Grunthor must be having nightmares again,” she said, watching the Bolg scatter.
A moment later, her assumption was confirmed. A much bigger figure, still dwarfed by the mountain peak, emerged from the opening. Even from a great distance, his distress was unmistakable.
Rhapsody felt for a friendly gust of wind, making certain it would carry up to the top crag. “Here, Grunthor!” she called, wrapping her voice in the gust. A moment later the figure stopped and sighted on her, then waved frantically. Rhapsody waved back.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Ashe, who was leaning on his walking stick, his face shrouded once more by the hood of his mist cloak. “I have to go to him.” She ran her hand down his arm.
Ashe nodded. If he was annoyed, the mist cloak shielded any sign of it. “Of course,” he said, shifting his weight. “I’ll wait.”
Rhapsody patted his arm again, then hurried to the ledge midway up the peak. Even as she ran, she could see the wary soldiers, backs pressed against the mountain face, surreptitiously slip into the barracks corridor again once Grunthor was clearly away.
“Gods, what’s the matter? You look awful.”
The Sergeant-Major was disheveled and wild-eyed, even after his sprint. The enormous chest heaved so thunderously that Rhapsody grew frightened.
“Here, calm down,” she said in her Namer’s commanding tone. “What’s the matter?”
Grunthor measured his breathing, his panting diminishing somewhat. “We gotta get down there, Duchess. She needs us.”
“The Grandmother? Or the child? How do you know?”
The Firbolg giant bent over, his hands against his knees. “The Earthchild. Oi don’t know ’ow Oi know, Oi just do. I could see inside ’er dreams, and she’s panicking. From the feel o’ them, Oi don’t blame ’er a bit. You gotta sing to ’er again, Yer Ladyship. She’s terrified.”
“All right, Grunthor,” Rhapsody said soothingly. “I’ll go with you. I just need to see Ashe off first; he’s leaving.”
Grunthor stood, eyeing her sharply. “For good?”
“Yes.”
The sharp look mellowed into one of sympathy. “Ya all right, Duchess?”
Rhapsody smiled. She remembered when she first heard him use that expression, the first of many times. It was in the tunnel of the Root; he had been trying to ascertain w
hether she had fallen into the endless darkness. Each time she had responded in the affirmative, knowing that the answer was only partially true; safe or not, she would never be “all right” again. There was something sadly ironic in hearing it again now.
“I will be,” she said simply. “Roust Achmed, and get my armor. I’ll meet you on the Heath.”
Grunthor nodded, then patted her shoulder and headed back toward the Cauldron. Rhapsody watched him go, then returned to Ashe.
He was still there, as she had left him, leaning on his walking stick.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
Rhapsody shielded her eyes and looked up into the darkness of his hood. The sight tugged at her heart, but she swallowed the pain, hoping that the next time she saw him, probably from across the great Moot at his coronation, that he would be able at last to walk with his face to the sun, open to the sight of all men, without fear.
“My newest grandchild needs my help,” she said. “I’ll tend to her once we’ve parted at the foothills. Come; let’s be off.”
55
Achmed had expected Rhapsody to be late coming back from seeing Ashe off, so he had taken his time getting to the Heath. As a result, when he came over the top of the last rise he found two figures there, one enormous, one slight, both looking grim, and both waiting for him. Achmed cursed. She was predictable in her unpredictability.
“He’s gone, then?” he demanded, handing Grunthor the morning’s report from the night patrol. Rhapsody nodded. “Good.”
Grunthor shot him an ugly look, then put a hand on her shoulder. “When’ll ’e be back, darlin’?”
“He won’t,” she said shortly. “Perhaps I’ll see him at the royal wedding in Bethany, but that will be the last time I expect to. He’s off to fulfill his destiny.” She looked back into the sun rising over the crest of Grivven. “Let’s go fulfill ours.”
The tunnel to the Loritorium had echoed with their footsteps, and with the memory of voices.
Is she still there, sir?
Damn you, Jo, go home or I’ll tie you to a stalagmite and leave you until we return.