Ashe stood above her. Even in the dark, his silhouette showed the signs of unbridled rage. With a vicious twist of the wrist he pressed the sword tip deeper into her neck, just before the point of breaking the skin. Within his hood two points of intense light gleamed furiously.
“Get up,” he said, kicking her boot savagely.
Rhapsody rose, following the lead of the sword. It pulsated with a blue light, a light she had seen out of the corner of her eye in battle, but never up close before. It was a bastard sword, a weapon of broader blade and hilt and greater length than her own. The sword was scrolled in gleaming blue runes that decorated both the hilt and blade, but these patterns were not the most hypnotic aspect of it.
The blade itself appeared to be liquid. It hovered in the air, rippling repeatedly toward the hilt like waves in the sea crashing to the shore. The watery weapon emitted a vaporous mist that rose, like steam from the fires of the Underworld, forming a column of fog before her, a moving tunnel at the end of which was a stranger with murder in his eyes. She knew this without seeing those eyes clearly. He would never have made a weapon of this power known to her unless he expected her sight of it to be momentary.
A deadly calm descended on Rhapsody. She stared into the vaporous tunnel in the direction of the cloaked man at the other end. He was silent, but his anger was palpable, she could feel it around her in the air.
When he didn’t speak after another endless moment, she decided to do so.
“Why did I have to get up? Are you too much of a gentleman to kill me in my sleep?”
Ashe said nothing, but pressed the blade even deeper. The world blackened for a moment before her eyes as the blood to her head was stanched. She summoned all the remaining strength she had and glared in his direction.
“Remove your sword immediately, or get on with it and kill me,” she ordered coldly. “You’re interrupting my sleep.”
“Who are you?” Ashe’s voice was thick with murderous intent.
Rhapsody’s mind leapt at the words; she had heard them before, uttered by another cloaked stranger. Her introduction to Achmed had been much the same. The tone in his voice had been similarly murderous as he rifled through her pack, while Grunthor held her stationary in the shadows of the first of many campfires they had shared.
Who are you?
Hey, put that down.
Oi wouldn’t do that if Oi were you, miss. Just answer the question.
I already told you; my name is Rhapsody. Now put that down before you break something.
I never break anything unless I mean to. Now, try again. Who are you?
She sighed inwardly. “I seemed destined to repeat this conversation for all of eternity to men who want to harm me. My name is Rhapsody. You know this already, Ashe.”
“I know nothing about you, apparently,” he said in a low, deadly voice. “Who sent you? Who is your master?”
The last word stung, bringing back a brisk explosion of memories forged in the agony of the streets, of degradation and forced prostitution. Rhapsody’s eyes narrowed to gleaming green slits. “How dare you. I have no master. What are you insinuating?”
“That you’re a liar, at best. At worst you are evil incarnate, and about to die for the suffering and woe you have inflicted throughout Time.”
“Whoa! What woe?” Rhapsody asked incredulously. “And don’t you call me a liar, you cowardly ass. You’re the liar; you told my friends I’d be safe with you. If you were looking to kill me, I would have fought you in the venue of your choice. You didn’t need to lure me out here to the woods so you could do it with impunity, you craven piece of Bolg-dung.”
Ashe stood up a little straighter; the sword did not move. It was as if his anger had tempered a little. Rhapsody was not sure how she knew this, but she was certain of it.
“Confess who sent you and I will spare your life,” he said, a slightly more reasonable tone in his voice. “Tell me who the host is, and I’ll let you go.”
“I have no idea what you are blithering about,” she retorted angrily. “No one sent me.”
Ashe gave her throat another savage jab. “Don’t lie to me! Who sent you? You have ten seconds to come up with the name if you want to live.”
Rhapsody thought for a moment, knowing he was utterly serious. It would be simple to make up a name in the hope that he would leave her to find whatever host he was babbling about. Living wasn’t worth the lie. Time slowed around her, and she thought of the family with which she was about to be reunited.
“Save yourself the time,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I won’t lie just to live.” She raised her throat to an easier angle of attack to facilitate his strike. “Go ahead.”
Ashe remained frozen for a moment, then pulled the sword away from her neck with a sweep that spattered drops of water over her face and into the fire, where it hissed angrily. He continued to look at her from beneath the misty hood.
After a few moments of returning his stare, Rhapsody spoke. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you. Maybe your brain has been curdled by that skunk urine you call coffee.” She took a deep breath and used her true-speaking lore as a Namer. “In any case, your behavior is inexcusable. I am not a liar, nor am I evil incarnate. I don’t know why you’re angry at me, but I have no master, I am no one’s whore, and I don’t know anything about a host. Now get away from me. I’ll find the dragon without you.”
Ashe considered her words. “What was that comment about my heart supposed to mean?”
Customarily I’d cut your heart out, although it’s fairly obvious someone already has.
Rhapsody looked puzzled; it had been a joke. “That you’re heartless, rude. Willing to insult the dinner I made you, to spit my tea out, to be unduly offensive. You’re an insufferable pig. You have no respect for anyone. You can’t take a joke, but you expect others to. You’re cranky. Shall I go on? When I said it I was teasing. I no longer am.”
Ashe’s shoulders uncoiled, and Rhapsody heard a deep exhalation of breath from within the hood. They stared at each other for a few moments more. Then the cloaked figure lowered its head.
“I’m very sorry,” he said softly. “Your assessment of me, in all its parts, is correct.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Rhapsody said, her heartbeat slowing slightly. “Now, back away. If you still want to fight, I’d be happy to oblige. Otherwise, be on your way.”
Ashe sheathed his sword. The glen they were standing in became immediately darker in the absence of its light. The fire had been roaring in time with her anger; it had settled down somewhat as well, having expended much of its fuel in its fury.
“If you wanted me to leave, why didn’t you just make up a name? I would have left you here, unharmed. You’re lucky. You took an awful risk.”
“What risk?” Rhapsody snapped. “You asked me a question. There was only one possible answer, and it did not consist of making up a name. What if I had and it belonged to some poor innocent whose only crime was being unfortunately titled?”
Ashe sighed. “You’re right. These are bad times, Rhapsody. I know you deserve to hate me forever, but please don’t. I thought you were someone you’re not, and I beg your forgiveness. Many of my friends and countless other innocent people have died at the hands of something sinister that is causing these raids. For a moment I thought it was you.”
“What a coincidence. Achmed thinks it’s you.”
Ashe’s words were soft. “He’s wiser than I thought.”
Rhapsody blinked in spite of herself. There was a poignancy in his words she felt in the depths of her soul. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly, “nothing at all. This was a misunderstanding.” A wry tone came into his voice. “Possibly brought on by that skunk urine, as you so charmingly have named it.”
Rhapsody sat back down by the fire. “You know, Ashe, most people have misunderstandings on a slightly different scale. They argue, they call ea
ch other names. My neighbor once threw a plate at her husband. They don’t usually draw weapons on each other. Generally I don’t think what just happened qualifies as a misunderstanding.”
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “Please tell me what I can do to make it up to you. I swear it won’t happen again. I know you may not believe this, but it was an over-reaction to what is happening across the land. War is coming, Rhapsody; I can feel it. And it makes me suspect everyone, even those without any hand in it, like you.”
She could hear the truth in his voice. Rhapsody sighed and considered her options. She could drive him off, refusing to spend another moment in his presence, which would leave her alone and lost in the woods. She could agree to go on with him but remain wary, setting up precautions to avoid further mishap. Or she could take him at his word.
She was too tired to do anything other than the last. “All right,” she said finally. “I guess I can get past this, as long as you promise not to draw on me ever again. Swear it, and we’ll forget this happened.”
“I do,” he said. There was amazement in his voice, and something else that she couldn’t put her finger on.
“And throw away that coffee. It addles your brain.”
In spite of the grimness of the situation, Ashe laughed. He reached into his pack and drew forth the sack.
“Not into the fire,” she said hastily. “We’ll have to evacuate the woods. Bury it in the morning with the waste.”
“All right.”
She tossed another handful of sticks on the fire. It was burning low, apparently tired, too. “And you take the first sleep rotation.”
“Agreed.” Ashe crossed to his spot within the camp and pulled out his bedroll, slipping into it rapidly, as if to show his trust that she would not retaliate on him in his slumber. “Good night.”
“Good night.” In spite of everything that had happened, Rhapsody felt a smile come over her face. She sat back and listened to the nightsounds of the forest, the music the wind made and the song of the crickets in the dark.
Shrike cursed and spurred his horse again. The Orlandan ambassadorial caravan was several days ahead, and he was not making any gains in his quest to catch up with it. Shrike had no need of their company nor any desire for it; by and large he considered the ambassadorial class of Roland to be a pathetic collection of doddering old men incapable of forming a direct statement, let alone a coherent thought. Puppets, he mused sourly, every one of them. Off to pay homage to the new Lord of the Monsters.
His master’s words came back to him as he galloped along the muddy pathway that in drier times was the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, the roadway built in Cymrian times bisecting Roland from the seacoast to the edge of the Manteids. Anything and everything you can find out about Canrif and what manner of insanity is going on there. Everything, Shrike. The depth of the voice made the inherent threat in the words even more obvious.
Shrike could feel that threat in the wind as well, despite the sweetness that filled the air at Spring’s return. Canrif was a ruin, the rotting carcass of a long-dead age; it should have remained that way, left to the scavenging monsters that roamed the peaks and the wind that had not cleansed the memory of what had happened there, even all this time past. He was uncertain as to what he would find when presented at the skeletal court of Gwylliam the Abuser and Anwyn the Manipulator, but whatever it might be, Shrike was fairly certain he would not like it.
2
Sir Francis Pratt, the emissary from Canderre, blinked several times and swallowed nervously. When this duty had been assigned he had pled rheumatism and an unreliable bladder in the attempt to get out of it, believing that the possible curtailment of his career as an ambassador was preferable to a posting to Ylorc. His attempts had fallen on deaf ears, and now here he was, following a subhuman guide to the head of the jumbled line waiting with grim anticipation to see the new Firbolg king.
His colleagues in the ambassadorial service were as agitated as he was. No chamberlain was present to greet them or to organize their interviews into any semblance of appropriate placement. Instead, emissaries of high-ranking provinces and duchies milled about in confusion, attempting to devise a self-invented pecking order of sorts. This was causing more consternation among the powerful ambassadors than the lesser ones; tempers were running very near the surface as the emissaries from Bethany and Sorbold argued about who should be standing nearer the door. In any civilized court the two men would never have even been invited on the same day, let alone left to sort out their differences themselves.
Canderre, Pratt’s homeland, was a region of little political influence. Among the provinces of Roland it was seen by and large as a low-ranking region, populated primarily by gentlemen farmers, craftsman, merchants, and peasants. None of the more famous of the Orlandan lines lived there, although several of the dukes held Canderian estates, and Cedric Canderre, the province’s duke, came from a House that was considered a reputable one. Therefore it was a major discomfiture to him when the Firbolg guard had come into the room, demanding to know who was there from Canderre. He had considered stepping behind a tapestry but had determined that such an action would cost him his life, not because of its evasiveness but rather due to the hideous stench of the heavy wall hangings. What lay behind them could not possibly be conducive to one’s continued good health.
So he owned up to his role and found, to his horror, that the guard planned to bypass all the waiting emissaries in favor of presenting him now, first, to the Firbolg court. He could feel the astonishment and furor of his colleagues, invisible daggers piercing his back as he followed the grisly man into the Great Hall.
He breathed an initial sigh of relief upon entering the enormous room. Contrary to the whispered rumors, there was no throne of bones, no dais trimmed with human skulls. Instead there were two enormous chairs carved from marble, inlaid with a channel of blue and gold giltwork and padded with cushions of ancient manufacture. His eyes roamed over them in wonder. Undoubtedly they were the legendary thrones of Gwylliam and Anwyn, unchanged from the days when this was the Cymrian seat of power, the place Gwylliam had named Canrif.
In one of these ancient chairs sat the Firbolg king. He was swathed in black robes that covered even his face, all but the eyes. Sir Francis was grateful; judging just by the eyes, if more was visible he would undoubtedly be trembling. The eyes stared piercingly at him, assessing him as though sizing up a brood mare or a harlot.
Standing behind the occupied throne was a giant of immense proportion, a broad-faced, flat-nosed monster with hidelike multitoned skin that was the color of old bruises. His shoulders were as broad as the yoke of a two-ox plow, and he was attired in a dress uniform trimmed with medals and ribbons. Sir Francis felt his head swim. The room was taking on a nightmarish quality that made everything seem surreal.
The only apparently normal person in the room sat on the top stair next to the unoccupied throne. It was a teenage girl with long, straw-colored hair, her face unremarkable. What drew the eye was the game she was playing; she was engaged in a solo round of mumblety-peg, using a long, thin dirk, absently stabbing in between each of her extended fingers that rested on her knee with an astonishing speed and obvious accuracy. The impressive feat of manual dexterity caused Sir Francis to shudder involuntarily.
“What’s your name?” demanded the king. His Firbolg blood was not immediately visible, but then nothing was except those unsettling eyes. The emissary decided he was probably of mixed race, as his physical frame did not resemble that of any of the gruesome specimens of the citizenry he had encountered thus far. Obviously standard court etiquette was not going to be the rule of order here.
“Sir Francis Pratt, Your Majesty, emissary from the court of Lord Cedric Canderre. It is an honor to be here.”
“Yes, it is,” said the king. “I doubt you know it yet, but you will. Before we get to points, do you have something you are supposed to say?”
Sir Francis swallowed his rising ire. “Yes, Your M
ajesty.” There was something inherently repulsive about having to address a Bolg by the title that had not been used since the last true king occupied that throne. “Lord Cedric sends you his congratulations on your ascendancy, and wishes you a long and joyous reign.”
The king smiled; the expression was clear even beneath his cloaked face. “I’m very glad to hear that. Here’s how he can assure that my reign is joyous: I want Canderre to perform an economic experiment for me.”
Sir Francis blinked. He had never been addressed so bluntly before. Generally the art of diplomacy involved a respected, complicated dance full of ritual and intricacy, like a courtship of sorts. In his youth it had been a game he relished, but as he grew older he had tired of it, and tended to place more of a value on plain-spokenness than he had when he was younger. He found the directness of the monstrous king surprisingly refreshing.
“What sort of experiment, Your Majesty?”
The Firbolg king gestured, and two of his minions came forward, one bearing a beautifully carved chair fashioned in a dark wood the color of black walnut but with a deeper, richer luster and an almost blue undertone. The other held a silver tray on which rested a goblet. There was something oddly amusing about the delicacies in hairy Firbolg hands. The chair was placed behind him, the glass before him.
“Sit.”
“Thank you, Sire.” Sir Francis sat and accepted the goblet. He sniffed it surreptitiously, hoping to be subtle, but he could see that the king had noticed what he had done immediately. The wine it contained had an elegant bouquet.
To make up for his rude action he took a deep drink. He had swallowed before the flavor caught up with him; it was surprisingly good, with a rich, full body and a tang that was barely perceptible. Like most nobles in Canderre, Sir Francis knew wine, and he was impressed by the king’s choice. He took another sip. It was a young wine, undoubtedly just a spring pressing, one that needed a little time to reach full maturity, but a bellwether of vines that would produce excellent grapes in a year or two.