“Yep. What do you think she is, if not stone?” Grunthor answered simply. “Didn’t think Oi could carry ’er safely out through all that mess. ’Twas the easiest way.”
Achmed gestured toward the Colony entrance. “Come on.”
The enormous tunnel was deathly silent save for the occasional pop or hiss from the ash that blackened the entirety of the walls and floor. Around and above them, where the vine had broken violently through the cavern, nothing remained except for scorched fragments of root and the twisting ruins of the tunnel it had carved in the earth.
Achmed bent down at what had once been the arch over the Sleeping Child’s catafalque and ran his sensitive fingers over the scattered letters of the words that had been carved there. Once they had warned a world that never saw them about the dangers of disturbing that which slept within it. Now they littered the floor of the cavern, broken into pieces of senseless babble.
Rhapsody’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Achmed nodded distantly. Somewhere here were the Grandmother’s ashes, mingled inexorably with those of the demon-vine, inseparable as the intertwined fate of Dhracian and F’dor. It saddened him to think that the end of Time would find them that way. He stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. He stared down the twisting tunnel from where the vine had come.
“This goes all the way back to the House of Remembrance, two hundred leagues or more,” he said, squinting into the darkness. “Not good. It will be a vulnerability, a passageway into the mountain for the F’dor.”
“Not for long,” Grunthor said cheerfully. He drew the Sleeping Child closer to his chest and closed his eyes, feeling the nearness of the Earth’s life’s blood to his heart. He reached out and laid a hand on the wall.
Rhapsody and Achmed leapt back as the tunnel swelled and collapsed, filling in the monstrous rip the vine had torn in the Earth. The Earth itself shrugged, reapportioning its mass, closing the doorway through which the F’dor had reached into the mountain.
Rhapsody looked above her. Despite the shifting of enormous amounts of earth, nothing rained down on their heads except for a little dust. She looked at Grunthor again. He was translucent, radiating the same glow that she had seen within the Earth when they were crawling along the Axis Mundi. The Child of Earth, she thought fondly.
When the glow diminished, Grunthor pulled his hand away from the wall, then turned and smiled.
“All closed.”
“All the way back to Navarne?” Achmed asked incredulously.
“Yep.”
“How’d you manage that?”
The Bolg Sergeant grinned down at the child in his arms. “With ’elp, sir.”
The cavern sealed, the three turned back toward the Loritorium. Rhapsody smiled at Grunthor and ran her fingers gently over the Sleeping Child’s forehead. The Earthchild sighed in her sleep.
“What are you going to do with her now, Achmed?”
“Guard her,” he said flatly.
“Of course. I was just wondering where.”
Achmed looked around what remained of the Loritorium, its artistic carvings cracked and scarred, the beautiful frescoes and mosaics blackened with soot, the pools of silver memory gone. “Here,” he said. “At first I considered bringing her back to the Cauldron so that it would be easy to keep an eye on her, but it would be too disruptive to her.
“This really is the ideal place for her. It’s buried deep enough that she won’t be disturbed by the Bolg. She can sleep on the altar of Living Stone; she seemed peaceful there.”
Rhapsody nodded. “Perhaps it will bring her solace.”
“Perhaps. We’ll need to reseal the tunnel we made coming down here and retrap the place. There’s enough lampfuel in that well to build our own volcano if we have to. Then, when he’s gotten his strength back, Grunthor can open a single passageway from the Loritorium to my chambers. If the F’dor is going to make another attempt at her, I want it to have to come through me personally. It will be an engineering nightmare, but I think we can pull it off.”
Rhapsody nodded as Grunthor gently laid the child on the altar. “It will try again, you know.”
“Of course. But I don’t think it will try again like this. It’s gathering an army to assault the Bolglands; I’m not exactly clear on how it plans to do it, but I’m certain of it. That’s why Ashe was its target to begin with—he was the convergence of the royal Cymrian lines, as well as the Invoker’s son. He could easily have assumed the throne of Roland, and most likely brought Manosse with him, as well as any nonaligned Cymrians from the early generations loyal to either side that might happen to still be around, like Anborn.”
“And possibly Tyrian as well,” Rhapsody added. “His mother was Lirin.” Oelendra’s words in front of the roaring fire came back to her. If the F’dor had been able to bind him, to command the dragon, I shudder to imagine how it would have used that power to control the elements themselves. “The whole world is fortunate that he was strong enough to get away.”
Achmed stared at the ruin around him. “The army Ashe could have raised might actually have been able to do what Anwyn could not—take the mountain. He would have been the perfect host for the F’dor, but he managed to get away and stay hidden from it these past two decades. Now that it knows he’s alive, it will undoubtedly be looking for him again.”
“That’s his problem to deal with,” Rhapsody said resolutely. “We’ve given him the tools he needs to survive. His soul is his own again, he’s whole once more and out of pain. He can go into hiding for a while if he needs to. He did it for twenty years. He’ll be all right.”
A wry smile crawled into the corner of Achmed’s mouth. “I can’t tell you how much good it does me to hear you talking like that,” he said. “Does this mean your assignation with him is over?”
Rhapsody looked away. “Yes.”
“What do you plan to do now?”
She stood a little straighter, and Achmed was struck by the warriorlike aspect that came over her face and posture. “First, I want to make sure Ylorc is taken care of, and give you and Grunthor any help you need in dismantling the Loritorium and getting the Earthchild settled. After that I need a day to mourn, to sing dirges and laments for all whom we have lost.” Achmed nodded, noting that the steady look in her eyes didn’t waver when she referred to her sister and the Grandmother. “Then, if you think you can be spared from the Bolglands for a bit, I could use your assistance in locating the various children of the F’dor.”
“Only if you’re planning to dispose of them,” Achmed said, a warning note entering his voice. “Somehow given your proclivity for children, Rhapsody, I can’t see you succeeding in that undertaking.”
“I have no intentions of disposing of them unless they make it necessary, and then I will do so in a heartbeat,” she replied. “This is no different than it was with Ashe. They are people with human souls, Achmed, with demon blood in their veins. They can be helped. They need to be helped.”
“How do you know they aren’t little demonic monsters like the Rakshas?” he demanded, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. He didn’t like the turn the exchange had taken.
“They were born of human mothers, and Ashe’s soul was present in the Rakshas. The presence of a soul in the parent bequeaths a soul to the child. They aren’t monsters, Achmed, any more than the Bolg are. They’re children, children with tainted blood. If somehow we can separate that blood out, they have at least some hope of avoiding an eternity of damnation.”
“No,” he said angrily. “It isn’t worth the risk. Any one of them might be bound to the F’dor already. We want to meet the F’dor on our terms, not on its own.”
Rhapsody smiled coldly. “Exactly. Your ability to sense blood from the old world will help me find the children, Achmed. If that part of their blood which is demonic can be extracted, I will give it to you. Then you will have the blood of the F’dor, a trail of scent for the hunt.” She looked over at Gruntho
r, who was listening. “We’ll finally be able to find it. It has given us the means.”
Blood will be the means.
The king and the sergeant exchanged a glance, then Achmed looked back at her.
“All right,” he said finally. “But make no mistake about it, Rhapsody. If there is even a split second when any of the demon-spawn pose even the slightest of threats, to any of us, I will cut its throat before it exhales, and dispatch it back to its father’s realm in the Underworld. This will not be open for debate or exception. Do you agree?”
Rhapsody nodded. “Fair enough,” she said.
57
It was eight days later when the Three finally emerged from the darkness of the crevasse that had once hidden the entrance to the Loritorium. It had taken most of that time for Grunthor to recover from the effort of sealing off all the passageways and the entire length of the tunnel he had burrowed. Without the contact he had had with the Earthchild the task had proven vastly more difficult, had taken a far greater toll on the giant, but not as much of a toll as leaving her behind in the darkness of the blackened vault, hidden away from all but Time.
The farewell itself was equally painful. Rhapsody had kissed the child’s stone-gray forehead as Grunthor covered her carefully with his greatcloak in place of the soft blanket of woven spider-silk that the Grandmother had always nestled around her. Achmed extinguished the street lamps, leaving nothing but the flickering fireshadows from the flame-well dimly lighting the Loritorium, once a great undertaking devoted to the pursuit of scholarship, now only the dark cavern that served as the Sleeping Child’s chamber.
As they left her to her repose, Rhapsody whispered a last lullabye, then followed her friends into the shattered entrance to the deeper realm.
White light
Yon comes the night
Snow drapes the frozen world,
Watch and wait, watch and wait
Prepare for sleep
In ice castles deep
A promise to keep
A year whose days left are dearth
Remembers the Child of the Earth
Before they sealed off the charred remains of the network of tunnels that had once been the Colony, they stood one last time in the Canticle circle together. Rhapsody sang a dirge for the Dhracians who had died so long ago in the Last Night genocide, and one for the woman who had stood a lonely vigil since then, guarding the Earthchild until they had come. As she was singing the underground wind fell silent, as if finally acknowledging the death of the Zhereditck, the Windchildren, and the civilization they had once made to keep the Earth from destruction.
When the lament was over, Rhapsody and Grunthor went back across the crumbling bridge, leaving Achmed alone in the circle. He stood within the carved runes, the symbols disappearing from the surface of the floor with the passage of time, and watched the pendulum clock swinging endlessly back and forth through the darkness.
The Earth says it was your death, sir. That you don’t know it yet, but you will.
Now he did.
Once back in the Cauldron Rhapsody checked in on her Firbolg grandchildren, then joined Achmed and Grunthor in the Great Hall to catch up on the news brought by the weekly mail caravan.
The soldiers and merchants of the convoy had sought an audience to share the report that came to them en route from Roland by avian messenger. Dual earthquakes, a great roar of heat followed by the trembling of the earth, had rumbled through the continent, the excited guards reported, disturbing the ground from the Teeth to the center of Navarne. Rhapsody cast a sidelong glance at Grunthor, who remained at unblinking attention, seemingly unfazed by the reverberations from the lampfuel fireball and his sealing of the demon-vine’s passageway.
No lives had been lost, the guards reported, and no real damage had occurred, with one notable exception, Rhapsody was tremendously saddened to hear that the terminus of the tremor was the House of Remembrance, which ignited in flames and was burned to ashes, along with a goodly portion of the tainted forest that surrounded it. The only saving grace was the news that the tree in its courtyard, the sapling of Sagia brought by the Cymrians from their homeland so many centuries before, had miraculously survived the conflagration. Rhapsody secretly hoped it would thrive now that it was purged of the demon-root that had despoiled it for so long.
After the messengers left she climbed through the deepening shadows of twilight to the wide Heath, the place which had borne witness to so much hope and despair. She sat down in the high grass, blanched and dry in the grip of frost, the sword across her knees, and watched as the evening stars emerged one by one in the firmament of the heavens. The winter sky was bell-clear and cold, deepening from a cerulean blue at its apex down to the inky blackness of night at the horizon.
Hovering over the easternmost peaks of the Teeth she saw Prylla appear, the star the Lirin had named for the woodland Windchild. It was the star that had lit Jo’s pyre, the marker of lost love. It twinkled in the clear air of night. Rhapsody watched it with dry eyes, listening to its song. Do not mourn, it seemed to whisper. Love has not been lost; it’s been found.
She sang her evening vespers softly into the wind, letting the breeze take the last of her sadness away with it as it whistled over the mountaintops and across the rippling plain. The elements of the races that had given birth to the Lirin, the ether of the stars and the whispering wind, shone down on her, wrapped around her, cleansing her spirit, making the fire within her burn steady and bright. She was all right. She was strong, ready for whatever was to come.
She was the Iliachenva’ar.
Far away, in the ruins of the House of Remembrance at the foot of the sapling tree, a hooded figure stood in the wind as well. He gazed up into its branches, awed by the sight.
There, amid the smoldering ash blending with the mist rising from his cloak, the tree was blooming gloriously, bright blossoms gracing its boughs even in the depth of winter. A small harp was nestled in its branches, stalwartly playing a ringing roundelay.
* * *
An excerpt from
Destiny
the triumphant conclusion to the Rhapsody Trilogy
* * *
FINALE
At the Edge of the Rrevensfield Plain
The seven-and-a-half-foot-tall monster in ringed mail threw back his head, bared tusklike fangs and roared. The bellowing howl of rage rang through the darkness that clung to the toothlike, mountainous crags, sending loose shalestone and clods of snow tumbling down into the canyon a mile or more below.
Achmed the Snake, king of the Firbolg, exchanged a glance with Rhapsody and Krinsel, the Bolg midwife who was helping her pack for their journey. He returned to his sorting, hiding a smile behind his face-veil at the shock in the Singer’s enormous green eyes.
“What’s upsetting Grunthor now?” she asked, handing the midwife a sack of roots. Krinsel sniffed it, then shook her head, and Rhapsody set the sack down again.
“He’s apparently displeased with the quartermaster and his regiment,” Achmed answered as a stream of Bolgish profanities rumbled over the heath.
“I think he’s more perturbed that he can’t go with us,” Rhapsody said, looking through the gray light of foredawn with sympathy at the terrified soldiers and their leader who were doing their best to stand at attention, withering under the Sergeant-Major’s violent dressing-down. The midwife handed her a pouch, and she smiled.
“Undoubtedly, but it can’t be helped.” Achmed cinched a leather sack and wedged it into his saddlebag. “The Bolglands are not in any state to be left without a leader at the moment. Do you have everything you need for the delivery?”
The Singer’s smile vanished. “Thank you, Krinsel. Be well while I’m away, and look in on my grandchildren for me, will you?” The Bolg woman nodded, bowed perfunctorily to the king, and then made a cautious exit, disappearing into one of the Cauldron’s many exit tunnels.
“I have no idea what I’m going to need for this delivery,” she said in a l
ow voice with a terse edge to it. “I’ve never delivered a child who is demon-spawn before. Have you?”
Achmed’s dark, mismatched eyes stared at her for a moment above the veil, then looked away as he went back to his packing.
Rhapsody brushed back a strand of her golden hair, exhaled and rested a hand gently on the Bolg king’s forearm. “I’m sorry for being churlish. I’m nervous about this journey.”
Achmed hoisted the snow-encrusted saddle bag over his shoulder. “I know,” he said evenly. “You should be. We are still agreed about these children, I take it? You understand the conditions under which my help is given?”
Rhapsody returned his piercing stare with one that was milder but every bit as determined. “Yes.”
“Good. Then let’s go rescue the quartermaster from Grunthor’s wrath.”
The newly fallen snow of winter’s earliest days crunched below their feet as they tramped over the dark heath. Rhapsody paused for a moment, turning away from the western foothills and the wide Krevensfield Plain to the black eastern horizon beyond the peaks of the Teeth, lightening now at its jagged rim with the paler gray that preceded daybreak.
An hour, maybe less, before sunrise, she thought, trying to gauge when she and Achmed would be departing. It was important to be in a place where she could greet the dawn with the ritual songs that were the morning prayers of the Liringlas, her mother’s race. She inhaled the clear, cold air, and watched as it passed back out with her exhalation, frozen clouds in the bitter wind.
“Achmed,” she called to the king, twenty or more paces ahead of her. He turned around and waited silently as she caught up with him. “I am grateful for your help in this matter; I really am.”