He had met her twice in life, and seen her thrice, the second time at the Cymrian Council where Ashe and Rhapsody had been chosen as Lord and Lady, the third time at their wedding, where he had not spoken to her.
But the first time he had ever seen her was in an abbey in the holy city of Sepulvarta, where he had traveled with Rhapsody to get some answers about the children of a demonic construct known as the Rakshas.
Rhapsody had been trying to find out where on the continent these children, products of horrific rape, could be found. Rhonwyn’s gift as one of the Seers, the three triplet daughters of Merithyn the Explorer and Elynsynos the dragon, was all-encompassing knowledge of the Present. Unfortunately, the realm of the Present to Rhonwyn was a span of approximately seven or eight seconds, after which the Present became the Past, and beyond her sight. She had driven Achmed almost insane with her prattle, until Rhapsody finally determined how to speak to her successfully, so by the time they had left her abbey his head had been throbbing with a headache beyond all proportion.
He could still hear in his mind the last exchange she had shared with Rhapsody, after hour upon hour of insane conversation.
Thank you, Grandmother. Rest now.
The Seer had looked at her dreamily.
You are called Rhapsody, she had said. What do you ask?
The same words she had greeted her with, hours before.
Achmed’s head hurt with the memory.
And then another memory formed in his mind, painful in a different way.
It was a memory from a meeting that was held in secret, a council of war, really, which took place immediately after he, Grunthor, and Ashe had brought Rhapsody back with her newborn son from Elynsynos’s cave in the forest of Gwynwood, where the child had been born. They had descended into a hidden cellar room and spoken in secret with Anborn and Constantin, the Patriarch, as well as Gwydion Navarne, who had just been invested as duke of his province.
The Patriarch had been the one to break the news.
Much is missing—much more than you can even imagine.
Tell us, Ashe had commanded.
Many things are missing, but I will begin with the one closest to your own family. Rhonwyn, your aunt, Lord Marshal, your great-aunt, Lord Cymrian, the Seer of the Present, has been taken from the Abbey of the Sun in Sepulvarta.
While he had always suspected Talquist was responsible or at least complicit in her disappearance, it had never occurred to Achmed that anyone would be foolish enough to murder the most helpless and harmless of the three Seers, known as the Manteids, for which Gwylliam originally named the mountain range known as the Teeth.
Women who had been vested with the deep lore of vision into the Past, Present, and Future.
Epic figures in history.
Gods, he thought as he looked at the body now with new realization. Gods; he must have thrown her from the tower.
He looked above him, where the tower stood.
And knew he was right.
As much as Rhonwyn had annoyed him with the necessity of her form of speech, Achmed found himself nauseated at the thought of her death, imagining her last moments and the utter confusion she must have suffered.
One more reason to add to the list, Talquist, he thought bitterly.
He thought back to the morning months before when he had left Ylorc to begin this mission, the first solo assassination he had undertaken since coming to the new world.
He had been in the Great Hall of Ylorc packing in preparation for his journey to Sorbold when Grunthor appeared. The Sergeant-Major had sized up the situation instantly, but had felt the need to ask the question anyway.
Where is it you will be goin’, sir?
After Talquist. As soon as she’s gone.
Achmed had ordered the Sergeant-Major to activate the Archons, his most trusted advisors after Grunthor himself. The Sergeant had nodded and turned to leave, then looked back at the Bolg king.
I’m never goin’ to get that image out of my ’ead, he had said quietly.
Achmed had nodded in silent agreement. He had been thinking the same thing from the moment he had come into the Great Hall.
He shook his head now to try to drive Rhapsody’s voice out of his ears, unsuccessfully as always. She had uttered the sentence that was burned in his memory after discovering that Talquist had had dealings with the baron of Argaut, a man the Three had all known in the old world as Michael, the Wind of Death, who had been especially brutal to Rhapsody. Until that moment, however, Achmed had not realized exactly how much.
Occasionally, when I inadvertently crossed him in a way he did not find stimulating, or when he was merely bored, his favorite pastime was to encourage—no, actually, command—his entire regiment to rape me while he watched. Every one of them. Repeatedly.
Given that Michael had been the voluntary host of a F’dor demon, the possibility that Talquist had been compromised, might even be a demonic thrall, was certainly enough of a reason to hasten his decision to go after him. But, in truth, it was really the unwanted picture now in his mind that had been the impetus for him to finally leave the mountain, to narrow his focus to the singular intent of putting an end to the life and plans of the Merchant Emperor of Sorbold.
He had almost spat the explanation at Rath when the Dhracian demon hunter had objected to his targeting of Talquist at the expense of his participation in the Primal Hunt, the tracking and extermination of the loose F’dor in the world that the ancient Brethren practiced to the exclusion of every other priority.
You may not understand this, Rath, but not every evil in this world is conceived and executed by elder races. The F’dor may have brought the forces of destruction and chaos into this world at its beginning, but they no longer are the exclusive owners of the concept. A man wants something: a child, a woman, immortality, sadistic satisfaction—and if he has a crown, he thinks he can have whatever he wishes, and do whatever he wants with them. He doesn’t have to be of an elder race. He doesn’t have to be part of a larger design, he doesn’t have to desire the unraveling of the world. Your lore disregards the wretched sadist, the petty manipulator, the cruel abuser, the power-mad despot—not everyone who needs to die is a demon.
Especially someone who might be carrying on the legacy of the maniac who had degraded one of his only two friends in the world in such a terrible way.
Now he had a concrete image of one of the nightmares that had tormented her constantly, terrors he had witnessed every time the Three had slept on their endless trek through the root of Sagia, along the Axis Mundi, through the depths of the world. More often than not, when his sleep was peppered with dreams, that was what he saw.
It was as if he had inadvertently taken Rhapsody’s nightmares on himself.
It was the top entry on his imaginary list of reasons to snuff out Talquist’s life.
Now he was looking at another one.
He stroked the woman’s mummified hand, then took the compass and held it up before his eyes.
“I wish that you could explain to me one nagging mystery,” he said aloud to the corpse, almost absently. “If what your sister Anwyn said to Rhapsody was true, then the prophecy about death in unnatural childbirth has already occurred, in the Past. But, if I’m not mistaken, the Seer that uttered that prophecy was Manwyn, the Seer of the Future. Mayhap when the Past is changed, whatever replaces it is the Future of a sort. I wish you were still alive to explain this to me. Though no doubt you would just stare at me and babble something about the Present.”
He brushed a spider off the Seer’s mummified forehead that had started to crawl into what was left of her hair.
“I must leave you here, I’m sorry. One day, when this is over, if the continent is still in one piece, I will come back for you and get Rhapsody to do whatever it is she does by way of burial rituals. But I will take your father’s compass back to your family. It shouldn’t be left here. I’m sure you would agree if you were able.”
He thought a moment longe
r.
“Of course, seven or eight seconds later, you would forget that you had.”
The last light left the sky, plunging the world, and the depths of the canyon, into total darkness.
22
PROVINCE OF BETHANY, ON THE WAY TO THE CAPITAL
The column of mounted soldiers thundered down the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, four abreast, displacing enormous amounts of earth into the hot summer air.
In the center of the front rank rode the Lady Cymrian atop a barded warhorse, her chest similarly armored by a mail shirt of red-gold dragon scales, her green eyes gleaming in the clear wind of the Middle Continent. Upon her head was the smallest helm that the Bolg had ever smithed; the Sergeant-Major had presented it to her solemnly a number of years before, telling her that if it was too big to suitably protect her skull, he could use it as a codpiece to protect his genitals. Then he had shaken his head.
Naw. Would be too tight.
Beside her to the left was Knapp, Anborn’s longtime man-at-arms. She was well aware by the vibrations emanating from him that Knapp had resisted being deployed with her, even if she could not hear what he had said when conferring with the Lord Marshal prior to Anborn’s leaving Canderre. Rhapsody did not take offense at such things; she had been short of stature compared to her compatriots in all endeavors since childhood, and had long since learned to ignore being underestimated. The initial resistance had not resolved, as it generally did, but rather baked into a sullen, silent mien set across the face of the First Generation soldier.
It did not bother the Lady Cymrian whatsoever.
They had encountered a cohort of scouts that had breached the Threshold fifteen leagues from the capital of Bethany, and a party of chase had made short work of the men, capturing their horses and taking three of the six prisoner while slicing down the other half in an exchange of bolt fire. A quick conference had found the three commanders and Knapp to be in agreement as to the origination point of the cohort, but the Lady Cymrian had disagreed, citing the false notes she could hear in each of their confessions.
She had dismounted when the men were brought before the front rank, their hands bound behind their backs, and made her way impatiently through the line of guards until she stood directly in front of them.
The sternness of her expression was something Knapp, who had known her since her ascension to the Ladyship, had never seen before; there was a palpable fury in her emerald-green eyes that made it seem almost as if they were on fire. Her golden hair, shorn to the nape of her neck, had a distinctly masculine aspect to it, an effect so unlike how she had always appeared. The sharpness of her features and the coiled musculature in her stance made the ancient soldier unsure as to whether the cold chills sweeping his body, and clearly those of the three surviving members of the sortie, were signs of terror or arousal.
With a ringing sweep she drew Daystar Clarion, pulling it forth from its scabbard in roaring flames. The intent in the grip with which she clutched the hilt was deadly.
She looked at the other two captives, and with a decisive tilt of her head, she silently commanded the guards to remove them from the proximity.
The soldiers quickly obeyed.
“From whence did you deploy?” she demanded in the Sorbold tongue to the remaining soldier when the other two men were out of sight.
“Sepulvarta,” the Sorbold said.
The vibration of his words rang false against her ear.
The Lady Cymrian seized the hilt of the sword with both hands and, two-handed, slapped the man square across the face with the burning blade, lighting his beard on fire. When he reared back, wide-eyed, she grabbed his shoulder and slammed him to the dirt of the roadway, facedown in the grit, where she snuffed the flames by rubbing his chin in the dust of the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare.
“Again,” she said, her voice calm but her body betraying her rage. “From whence did you deploy?”
She signaled to the nearest guard to flip the man over onto his back.
She stared down into his face; it was striped with tears of terror. Her expression of anger receded, and her aspect became thoughtful. She bent down on one knee and leaned over the supine man, looking directly into his eyes.
“You will tell me the truth,” she said softly, the tone of True-Speaking in her voice.
“You are—demon,” the man whispered. “Painfully beautiful, but with an evil heart.”
A small smile took up residence on the Lady’s face.
“Had I been a demon, I would have slashed you across the eyes horizontally instead of slapping you with the blunt edge of my blade,” she whispered in return. “I would have let your face burn off and enjoyed listening to you scream, rather than snuffing the fire. I would have eaten your soul, but I assure you, if you had one when you crossed the border, you still do. It is you who are trespassing in my lands, not I in yours. From whence did you deploy?”
Something in her gaze was so intense, so compelling, that the soldier staring into her eyes felt as if he were looking directly into a roaring inferno. Against his will, a word formed on his lips and spilled out.
“Mvekgurn,” he said.
Rhapsody blinked. “Mvekgurn?” she demanded. “You came in through the Hintervold?”
The man nodded weakly.
The Lady Cymrian looked up at Knapp and the commanders, whose faces bore all varying degrees of shock. Her stare returned to the Sorbold on the ground at her feet.
“How many? How many are coming?”
“I—I—”
The ancient sword of fire and ether was at his throat. “How many?”
“Thirty thousand Icemen,” the Sorbold soldier whispered.
“How many men of the Sun?”
“I do not know.”
The tiniest hint of a smile came back to the corners of her mouth. The Sorbold soldier’s body stiffened on the ground.
“I don’t believe you,” the Lady Cymrian said softly. “One more time—how many men of the Sun?”
The swarthy man swallowed.
“I—do not know many details,” he said in the harsh language of his nation. “But I heard Titactyk say that he was commanding one hundred and twenty thousand men.”
For a moment the only sound on the thoroughfare was the ripple of a light wind.
The Lady Cymrian looked at him thoughtfully a moment longer, then nodded. She patted his face gently.
“Sorry about the beard,” she said. “I do hope it will grow back quickly.”
Knapp cocked his head. The guards seized the Sorbold and took him into the lines of the caravan. The Lady Cymrian returned to her horse and mounted again.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” commented Decken, one of the field commanders assigned to her battalion.
“I wonder where Talquist has been quartering them,” Knapp said, as if to himself.
“Perhaps he transported them on the blockade ships, and dropped them off in the north on their last seemingly legitimate run before the assaults,” Rhapsody suggested. “Let’s get on to the capital city; time is even more of the essence than it was a few moments ago.”
* * *
When they arrived at the western gate of the city’s edge, Rhapsody signaled to Knapp, indicating that she wanted him to follow her off the road a short way from the rest of the regiment. The First Generation Cymrian had not spoken even once during the remainder of the journey, but silently nodded and obeyed.
When the noise had receded enough to hear, she took off her helm and ran her fingers through her short hair, clearing it of sweat and tangles.
“I am not certain what I have done to annoy you, Knapp,” she said directly. “You have been very withdrawn and short with me, even more so than usual, since we left Canderre. If you are displeased with Anborn assigning you to serve with me, I’m sorry about that, but—”
The ancient soldier looked suddenly older.
“Not at all, m’lady,” he said stiffly. “It is to you that I must apologize.”
“For what? I certainly take no offense at my comrades being quiet or short—it’s a vast improvement over what I get from my Firbolg friends. I just want to make certain we are not carrying silent problems around when we are about to be defending our Alliance’s capital.”
Knapp looked away. Then he sighed and met her gaze again.
“In the old world, being a human soldier, I occasionally took part in that custom you mentioned back in Canderre,” he said quietly. “The, er, harvesting of Lirin women’s—I am sorry, m’lady. I hope you will forgive me.”
Rhapsody did not blink, but absorbed his words.
“Do you remember me? From that time?”
Knapp looked away again. “No, indeed,” he said stonily. “If I ever saw—someone’s face, I don’t remember it; I tend to recall that I never did.”
She nodded. “Is that all?”
Knapp looked back at her in surprise. “All?”
“Is there anything else bothering you?”
“No, m’lady—I am, well, have not thought about those days in more than a millennium, I am ashamed to say.”
She nodded. “Very well. Let us get back to the regiment.” She took the reins in hand and clicked to the warhorse.
Knapp sat up in surprise. “M’lady?”
“Yes?”
“Can—you see fit to forgive me? Whether it was you or not?”
Rhapsody exhaled.
“No,” she said shortly. “I’ve forgotten how. If it consoles you, Knapp, I probably left the Island long before you were born. If it doesn’t, ask me again after the war, if we both survive, and if it still matters to you. I will probably need to know how to forgive myself for things I’ve done as a soldier by then as well.”
She clicked to the animal again and made her way back to the first rank of the regiment, Knapp a few heartbeats behind.
As the battalion set off into the capital city, the Third Armored Garrison of what Anborn had named the First Front.
THE IRON MINES, VORNESSTA, SORBOLD
The monstrous caverns of the volcanic deposit in which countless slaves toiled without ceasing were ringing in the unending cacophony of hammers and diamond-edged trowels, the maddening noise vibrating through Evrit’s blood. Evrit had long become accustomed to that cacophony, having been surrounded by it for so long he could not remember what quiet actually felt like.