An acrid odor shattered her reverie and snapped her to awareness. Rhapsody turned away from watching the transformation the Child of Earth was undergoing to see Achmed raking his sword through the slender channels of the Loritorium’s street lamp system, as if driving a herd of small animals within the narrow arteries. The blistering odor brought water to her eyes and nose, and panic flashed through her as she recognized the smell.
He had unplugged the stone dam of the lampfuel. She looked behind him to see it was gushing from the reservoir, running in a great corpulent river from the center of the square to the tunnel into the Colony, filling the streets and pooling dangerously close to the firewell.
“Gods, what are you doing?” she cried. “Get away from there! It will ignite!”
Achmed continued to drag the blade through the channels, directing the thick ooze back to the halfwall closest to the tunnel leading back to Ylorc.
“That’s the idea.” He turned and stared at her as he shook the thick liquid from his sword and sheathed it again. “How else do you propose to kill the vine? You said yourself that fire cauterizes it. It’s already tapped into the power of the Axis Mundi, in case you couldn’t tell. If we don’t cut if off, burn it into oblivion here, now, that root will eventually reach all the way down to the other Sleeping Child.” He slammed the plug back into place and stared at her again. His mismatched eyes glittered ominously in the shadowlight. “Light it.”
“We can’t yet,” Rhapsody answered, feeling suddenly cold. “Grunthor and the Grandmother are still in there.”
Achmed nodded behind her, and she whirled around. The Sleeping Child’s body had become incongruously distended, swollen out of all proportion. An oblongated peninsula of earth-flesh grew large, stretching vertically, then horizontally. It surged upward in a smooth rolling motion, as if dividing itself, and rose to a monstrous height. The section made a final, twisting turn and then separated from the body of the child, now lying, significantly smaller and motionless, on the Living Stone slab.
The glowing light of the newly separated piece dimmed into the color of stone, then warmed before her eyes into gray-green skin, oily and hidelike. Instant by instant it took on a more delineated shape, taking on human lines where a moment before it had been a formless mass. Rhapsody’s eyes widened.
“Grunthor!”
The giant exhaled and stumbled forward, catching himself by clutching the altar of Living Stone. “Hrekin,” he muttered weakly.
Rhapsody started toward her friend, only to feel a viselike grip around her upper arm. She looked up into the eyes of the Firbolg king, burning with a fury hotter than the flames of the firewell. He pointed to the trail of lampfuel, a liquid fuse from the firewell into the darkened cavern of the Colony.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if he had been in there still. There’s no other choice anymore. Now light it.”
Rhapsody shuddered at the all-consuming anger in Achmed’s eyes, the hallmark of the unquenchable racial hatred his half-Dhracian nature held for the F’dor and all their minions. It was an animus that no love, no friendship, no rational thought could sway or defuse when it was in full rampage. “The Grandmother is still in there,” she said haltingly. “Would you leave her to die with it?”
Achmed stared down at her a moment longer, then closed his eyes and let the path lore he had gained in the belly of the Earth loose. His inner sight sped through the pale marble streets, following the flood of lampfuel through the hole in the earth-dam they had crawled under, over the broken walls and slabs of shattered stone that had once held the last colony of his kind. His mind flew over the crumbled archway and its scattered words, under the twisting vines and rootlets writhing with mounting strength. Even where he stood in the streets of the Loritorium he could smell the stench of the F’dor growing, see the clay of the Earth shuddering as it prepared to give way.
Within the ruins of the cavern of the Sleeping Child his second sight stopped. He could see the Grandmother there, surrounded by a veritable cage of hissing vines, poised to strike, one leg pinned beneath a fallen granite slab amid the buckled walls of the chamber. Her left hand was upraised, trembling with strain, her right one braced against the slab that held her captive. Rivers of poisonous lampfuel gushed over her, beginning to fill the cavern.
She seemed infinitesimal in size, dwarfed by the colossal vine that hovered menacingly above her, its massive offshoots swollen with rage, tangled within the remains of the chamber’s floor. Its roots were snarling now, coated with glistening lampfuel, lashing out at her, coming nearer to reaching her as she began to fail.
Then, just as his mind was absorbing the horror of the sight, the Grandmother turned toward him, and her eyes met his vision. A tiny smile, the only one he had ever seen her indulge in, came over the ancient face, wrinkled and lined with age and so many centuries of somber guardianship. She nodded to him, and with the last of her strength turned back to face the vine that was threatening to break the Thrall.
Achmed fought back the primordial rage that was singing through his blood in the presence of the race he hated with every fiber of his being. He choked back the bile that had risen to his constricted throat as the vision disappeared. Then he squeezed Rhapsody’s arm again.
“Light it,” he repeated in a low, deadly voice.
With a vicious tug Rhapsody pulled free from his grasp. “Let go,” she snarled.
Angrily Achmed grabbed for Daystar Clarion. “Damn you—” He pulled back in pain and shock as she drew the sword like lightning and raked it across his open palm, singeing the skin.
“Don’t ever attempt to wrest this sword from me unless you are prepared to draw your own,” Rhapsody shouted.
“Skychild?”
All three companions stopped, glancing around the Loritorium for the origin of the Grandmother’s voice. The fricative click, the sandy sound that Rhapsody had only heard in one other voice, was unmistakable. The single word came with great effort, spoken very softly.
It was Grunthor who found the source first. He gestured to Rhapsody.
“’Ere, darlin’.” He was pointing to the Sleeping Child. In a daze Rhapsody came to the altar of Living Stone where the child lay. She stared down at the smooth gray skin, the coarse brown hair so like highgrass in the heat of summer. Tenderly she ran her hand over the child’s forehead, brushing the clods of fallen dirt from her brow. She could feel a surge of power, a vibration issuing forth from the stone of the altar through the body of the Earthchild, tingling across the skin of her hand and speaking directly to her heart. She had to struggle to bring herself to answer.
“Yes, Grandmother?”
The Sleeping Child’s brow wrinkled with the effort of speech. Her eyes remained closed, grassy lashes wet with tears. Her lips formed the Grandmother’s last words.
“Light it.”
The ancient Dhracian’s voice had passed through the ground, as if the Earth itself had wished to serve as the stalwart guardian’s final messenger. It had traveled through the slab of Living Stone and through the Earth’s last living Child. The irony brought tears to Rhapsody’s eyes. The Grandmother would never hear the words of wisdom she had waited a lifetime for from the Earthchild’s lips. The only words the Sleeping Child would speak would be the Grandmother’s own.
Rhapsody looked up into the faces of her two friends. The men watched as her sorrowful expression hardened into a resolute one.
“All right,” she said. “I will. Get out of here.”
56
Without a word Grunthor gathered the Sleeping Child from the altar of Living Stone in his arms and nodded up the corridor that led back to Ylorc. He and Achmed ran a short distance up the tunnel.
When Grunthor was sure Rhapsody could still see him he turned toward the side wall, holding the body of the child in front of him, then stepped forward into the earth. The granite glowed for a moment as he passed through, then cooled into a rocky opening. Achmed followed Grunthor into the bunker the giant had made in the s
ide of the corridor. He leaned back, signaled to Rhapsody, and when he saw her nod he stepped back inside. Grunthor gave the wall a strong shove, and the rock that had been cleared away to form the bunker slid liquidly back into position, sealing off their hiding place.
Slowly Rhapsody turned in a full circle, surveying for the last time the Loritorium as it had been. The pools of glistening silver memory shone, torch-bright, in the street, reflecting the flame from the firewell. She struggled not to be swallowed by the despair she felt at witnessing the end of what had once been such a noble dream, such a worthy undertaking. Scholarship and the search for knowledge, dying on the altar of greed and the lust for power.
When she was sure that her friends and the child were all the way inside the earthen bunker with the rock-seal tightly in place she drew Daystar Clarion, whispering a prayer to the unseen stars miles above her that she was doing the right thing.
In the lore-heavy air the flaming blade roared to life, singing its clarion call. It sent a silver thrill ringing through Rhapsody and the cavern around her; for an instant she was certain that the Grandmother had heard the melodic shout, and had taken heart from it. Rhapsody closed her eyes and concentrated, thinking back to another ancient woman, a warrior like the Grandmother, who had stayed, alone and unacknowledged, seeking to protect the world from the F’dor.
I have lived past my time, waiting for a guardian to come and replace me. Now that I have someone to pass my stewardship on to, I will eventually be able to find the peace that I have longed for. I will at long last be reunited with those I love. Immortality in this world is not the only kind, you know, Rhapsody.
The words of ultimate wisdom from the lips of the Sleeping Child.
Light it.
Rhapsody fought to conquer the nausea that was swelling within her. It didn’t matter that she was doing as the Grandmother commanded, or how necessary the imminent act was. She was going to be the agent of the last Dhracian’s death. She would be burning her alive. There was something more to it, something about the act of immolation that tugged at the edge of her memory, but she could not recall what it was, as if it had been removed from her mind. Rhapsody shook her head to clear the thought and concentrated on the sword.
Deep inside her she felt a swell of power, and strengthening of her spirit, radiating from her hands where she gripped the hilt of Daystar Clarion. The doubt and sadness of the Grandmother’s impending death burned off like dew in the blaze of the morning sun. She and the sword were one.
It is you, Rhapsody; I knew it from the moment I saw you. Even if you weren’t one of the Three, I believe in my heart that you are the one to do this; the true Iliachenva’ar.
Rhapsody stared at the gleaming flame of the firewell, listening to its song. Once she had passed through the fire in the Earth’s heart, the same fire that was the source of this flame. The fire had not harmed her; it had seeped into her soul until it was part of her.
It was most of her.
It would not harm her now. It awaited her command.
Rhapsody pointed Daystar Clarion at the well of fire. In the rippling flame she could see her own eyes reflected, eyes burning green, blending into the fire’s many hues.
Light it.
“Vingka jai,” she said, calling on her deepest lore as a Namer. Her voice rang with authority, filling the Loritorium’s cavern. Ignite and spread.
She struggled to keep her eyes open against the fireball that ensued.
The licking flames from Daystar Clarion’s blade leapt forward angrily, righteously, blazing a gleaming arc from the sword to the fountainhead. When the flame from the sword touched the Earth’s fire they melded, forming a ray of light more intense than Rhapsody had ever seen, even in the starfire that had lighted Jo’s funeral pyre. A commingling of the fire with the Earth, the ether of the stars, and the purest of elemental fire’s flames, the burning ray blasted out of the fountainhead and torched the liquid fuse Achmed had made, sending a ferocious sheet of fire crackling to the upper reaches of the vaulted ceiling.
Then, with an earth-shattering roar, the fire and the lampfuel erupted, surging through the tunnel and into the remains of the Colony. As the mammoth fireball billowed forward, it filled the entire space, sending liquid heat and blinding light into every crevasse, expanding until it reached to the edges of the caverns and tunnels. It washed over Rhapsody, filling her with exquisite warmth and joy; in its passing she heard the song of the fire at the Earth’s heart, a song she had carried with her since the first time she heard it. It was like being reborn again, cleansed of the pain and grief she had been carrying for so long.
From within the ruins of the Colony a hideous shrieking issued forth, screams of demonic intensity that tore through the Loritorium, shaking its flame-scorched walls. Rhapsody gripped the sword harder, concentrating with all her strength on directing the fire through the broken tunnels, envisioning it burning the tangled vine into obliteration.
“Cerant ori sylviat,” Rhapsody commanded. Burn until all is consumed. The intensity of the flames increased in the distance, raising the moan of the enormous serpentvine to an earsplitting wail.
Above the fire’s roar Rhapsody began the Lirin Song of Passage, a dirge for the Grandmother. Though she had lived her entire life within the earth, the Dhracian Matriarch was also descended from the Kith, the race of the wind. Perhaps the wind would take her ashes now and set them free to dance across the wild world, a place she had never seen from above. The song cut through the cacophony and melded in harmony with the billowing flames.
And then, suddenly, the flames grew weak and extinguished, taking with them the last of the air in the cavern. A hollow silence thundered through the Loritorium, then diminished into an ominous hiss. Rhapsody fell to her knees, breathless and gasping for air in the lifeless smoke.
The one who heals also will kill.
The enormity of what she had done to the Grandmother overwhelmed her, and, choking, she retched.
Grunthor and Achmed covered their eyes and heads, shielding the Sleeping Child as the backwash of the flame roared up the tunnel past their bunker. Their clothes grew hot from the searing heat that radiated through the solid wall of rock, and their eyes locked. Achmed smiled slightly at the gleam of fear in Grunthor’s eyes.
“She’s all right.”
Grunthor nodded. They waited until the noise abated, but heard nothing.
“We’ll wait,” Achmed said. “She’ll be coming momentarily.”
“How can you be sure?” Grunthor asked.
Achmed leaned back against the rockwall. “I’ve learned a few of her tricks myself. Believe what you want to happen, expect that it will, and somehow, miraculously, it does, at least for her. It worked with singing her back to life. It will work now.”
Grunthor nodded uncertainly and turned his focus to the Earthchild. She lay in his arms in the dark, still for the first time, sleeping so deeply that he could barely see her breathe. He watched her silently take the air in, saw it ever-so-slightly slip back out, over again, and again, utterly mesmerized by the sight.
They had shared one body for a fleeting moment, the Child of Earth and he. From the experience he had gained an understanding of many of the Earth’s secrets, though he would have been at a loss to explain any of them. There was something almost holy about having felt the beating heart of the world pulsing in him, a surpassing vibrancy that left him feeling bereft now that it was gone.
He stared at the Earthchild’s face, roughhewn and coarse like his own, while still strangely smooth and beautiful, visible to him even in the absence of light. He knew there were silent tears running in muddy trickles down her polished cheeks, knew that she was mourning the Grandmother, holding a silent vigil behind her eyes. Now he understood what the Dhracian Matriarch had meant when she said she had known the child’s heart. Perhaps now he would know it as well.
It was not until Achmed shifted nervously and leaned closer to the rocks sealing their bunker that it dawned on him ho
w long Rhapsody had been gone. The king put his ear to the wall, then moved back, shaking his head.
“Anything?” Grunthor inquired hopefully. Achmed shook his head again.
“Can you feel her through the earth?”
Grunthor thought for a moment. “Naw. Everything’s all jumbled, like the ground is still in shock. Can’t tell anything.”
Achmed rose shakily. “Perhaps I can’t feel her heartbeat for the same reason.” Grunthor’s eyes glinted with fear. “We’ll give her a moment more, and if she doesn’t come, we’ll go after her.” He leaned against the stone, trying to make out any sound he could on the other side of the rockwall. He heard nothing.
“Rhapsody!” he shouted, the sound bouncing futilely back at him, to be swallowed a moment later by the earthen bunker. He turned to Grunthor, his dark eyes glittering.
“Open it,” he ordered tersely, pointing at the rocky barrier.
Grunthor carefully shifted the Earthchild in his arms and reached one hand into the wall. A sizable piece of it fell away before him. As if in reply, he heard Rhapsody’s voice calling to them from the other side of the stone wall.
“Grunthor! Achmed! Are you all right in there?”
The giant Bolg stood up and reached the rest of the way into the stone of the wall, tearing it away from the opening. When he broke through to the other side his face lit up with a tired grin.
“Well, well, Yer Ladyship, you certainly took your time, now, didn’t you? ’Ad us worried, you did.”
Rhapsody smiled and offered Achmed her hand, giving him a tug out of the bunker. “You’re a fine one to talk,” she said to Grunthor. “For the longest time I thought you were still in the Colony, buried under a mountain of rock.” Her smile faded as he stepped out of the hole in the rockwall, carrying the Sleeping Child. “I have to admit, when I saw her walking, I thought it was over. What did you do, meld with her the way you do with stone?”