“Who is this?”
“Titactyk, m’lady,” said Dysmore, breathing heavily and struggling to settle the crowd of soldiers behind him. “Leader of the Sorbold assault force, second-in-command to Fhremus Alo’hari. He was caught fleeing with what was left of the second cohort after the rout here in Vornessta.”
Suddenly an image formed in her mind, one she had seen in her nightmares, and the Lady Cymrian nodded. “Are you the man who led the raid on the Abbey of Nikkid’sar?” she asked.
The captive said nothing. He glanced around nervously, his eyes glittering.
“He was apparently heard boasting about it in brothels and some of the taverns in the border towns, m’lady,” said Dysmore. “This has been repeatedly verified by the scouts.”
“That’s not true—” the man blurted. “Please—”
“What do you have to say for yourself?” Rhapsody asked. “This is your chance. Be honest.”
“I am innocent,” the man said quickly. “Please, m’lady—mercy—”
The Lady Cymrian nodded again. “You are actually a liar, not an innocent,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice, in the frequency of your tone; there is no truth in it. That was a grave mistake.”
She turned on her heel and strode back to the Diviner, who was standing, frozen in silence, his eyes the only moving part of him. She stopped in front of him and, with one smooth overhead arc of her arm, drove the tip of the bastard sword into the ground at his feet.
“That is for you,” she said to the Diviner. “I would not soil Anborn’s blade with the blood of his like.”
She looked back at Titactyk as she pulled forth the coiled tongue whip from her side.
Both men’s eyes widened.
The Lady Cymrian left the weapon wedged in the ground and walked purposefully back to the chained captive.
“Kneel,” she commanded.
“M’lady—”
Rhapsody nodded; Dysmore and three of the soldiers behind him stepped forward rapidly and seized the man by the shoulders and head, slamming him to the ground on his knees.
“Please, m’lady, do not put me to the lash,” the Sorbold soldier whispered. “You are dressed as a medic, well known for your mercy—”
“That must have been before I read the field report from Nikkid’sar,” Rhapsody interrupted harshly. “Long before, actually. I do not remember a time when I felt sufficient mercy to pardon anyone, let alone a man who would sanction, commit, and lead the rape and murder of powerless women, the gang-sodomizing of a woman of the cloth, and the flinging of infants, live, into the sea by catapult in a game of sport. You are no soldier; you are a criminal, an animal. Your atrocities have violated my dreams; I have seen your perversions in visions that have left me shaking.”
“Please—”
“Spare me your whining and your family the embarrassment. Until the Lord Cymrian returns, and with the death of the Lord Marshal, I am, unfortunately for both of us, your judge. For that raid, and any other crimes you have committed, I sentence you to death.”
“M’lady—”
“Silence. You gave no heed to the pleas of innocents; I do not wish to hear another word from you.” In a vicious sweep, Rhapsody drew Daystar Clarion; the blade roared forth from its scabbard, its flames rippling angrily, its call ringing clearly. “Move back,” she said to Dysmore and the three other soldiers; they stood and stepped away quickly as she advanced.
In one last desperate move, Titactyk lurched, trying to rise.
Just as he did, Rhapsody snapped the tongue whip with her left hand, encircling Titactyk’s neck and dragging him to her feet. Then she leapt into the air, swinging the sword over her head, and brought it down solidly on his neck, the blade of elemental fire and ether slipping like a hot knife through the butter of his skin and skeleton, severing his head cleanly from his shoulders. It spun to the ground, where it landed with a thud, its eyes still wide, the jugular vein pulsing as it gushed blood onto the dirt behind it for a moment until the wound sealed, cauterized by the flames of the sword.
A gasp rose from the group of soldiers, then resolved into a raucous cheer.
“Silence,” the Lady Cymrian commanded quietly again; her tone rang through the air of the encampment, bringing the celebration to an abrupt end. “Bind up the body and remove it as you would any other enemy soldier, with respect in death.”
Dysmore bowed slightly and signaled to specific troops as she sheathed her sword, re-coiled the whip, and turned back to the Diviner, whose heavily browed and bearded face was white in the shadows of the torches.
“I will not beg, nor will I resist,” the Diviner said. “His sniveling was appalling. I will not dishonor my people in that way.” He knelt before her.
Rhapsody’s eyes kindled to a deeper green in the light of the torches.
“I was telling you of Anborn’s sword,” she said, equally quietly, looking down at the ruler of the Hintervold. “While he was a man of fastidious taste when it came to horseflesh, he did not aspire to carry an elemental weapon, or even a particularly fine one. He felt the advantage in battle was in the skill of the soldier, not the superiority of the blade, though he did have a standard beneath which he generally did not choose to go in selecting a sword. I know he carried this one for at least a century.”
She lapsed into silence.
“So you are telling me that you will execute me with a common blade, in spite of my office?” said the Diviner dully. “I do not object—it is no more than I deserve.”
Rhapsody crouched down until she was balanced, on the balls of her feet, at eye level with him.
“I am not going to execute you at all,” she said. “You are going to help me find him.”
The Diviner blinked.
“Find him? Who?”
“Anborn—the Lord Marshal.” She glanced in the direction of the valley below the encampment, where the body of her friend was buried in the mountainous detritus of battle along with those of Sorbolds, slaves, horses, and soldiers of the Alliance, human, Lirin, Bolg, and Nain alike.
“How—how do you expect me to do that?”
“You will begin by rising now.”
The Diviner complied slowly as the Lady Cymrian rose with him. She exhaled when she was standing erect again.
“Did you not tell me when I came to visit you in the Hintervold several years ago, every time you were in your cups, if I recall correctly, the story of how you found Jurun’s grave in Cariproth?”
The cloud of nerves and worry in the old man’s eyes cleared.
“I may have,” he said grudgingly. “I had accomplished that a year or so before.”
“You used a silver willow branch that King Jurun had held—I believe it was thought to be the last thing he had so held, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this sword is the last object that Anborn held—he threw it to the ground before he charged down into the valley. That’s what I meant when I said it was for you—I ask that you help find whatever—whatever part of him you can, if anything can be recovered, so that I might properly mourn and bury him. I am a Namer, Your Grace; burial rituals are a major part of my training, my earliest training. He was sworn to me; if there is any link between the two of us that you can divine, or between him and his bastard sword, I ask you to find it, and locate whatever remains you can. I will commit them through the funeral pyre to the wind that he served as a Kinsman.”
The Diviner stared at her for a long moment. Then he bowed his head.
“I would be honored to be allowed to attempt it,” he said. “But there is likely little, if anything, left to find. And, unlike Titactyk, I will not lie to you, deceive you. If I am not certain the remains are his, I will not pretend that they are, even if it would save my life.”
“That is all I ask. Your life is not forfeit at this time; all of us have been unfortunate enough to experience Talquist’s deceit and manipulation to our own loss. Come, and I will escort you into the valley, unless you ne
ed to wait until sunrise.”
“Actually, no,” said the Diviner. “The echoes, if any remain, will be easier to divine in the dark.”
The Lady Cymrian signaled to the soldier who held Hjorst’s tiger helm, and the man hurried over, returning it.
“Very well,” she said, dismissing the solider and handing the Diviner Anborn’s sword. “Let us go down into that valley of death together, Your Grace. We will be silent; eventually, when you have done what you can, I need you to explain to me how Talquist tricked you into believing that your neighbors sought to invade your realm.”
The Diviner’s eyes began to shine.
“I fear I must also confess to you, m’lady, that I performed a divination for him about your child,” he said, his face colored in shame. “I may have given him the means to find your baby.”
Rhapsody nodded. “I know.”
“You—you know?”
“Yes; I watched you.”
“How—how—”
“Come, Your Grace,” she said impatiently. “There will be time to speak later, of things I do and do not remember, as well as those things that I wish to always be able to recall. This task is one of those last things.”
The old man straightened the helm on his head, then nodded as the Lady Cymrian drew her sword again.
Together he and Rhapsody made their way down into the valley, past the distressed eyes of her guards, lighted only by the flames of Daystar Clarion, pulsing like a beating heart of fire.
* * *
As darkness approached the following night, the army of the Alliance began to gather in the valley of the canyon and on the heath above the Radashajn Pass in the glow of the newly lighted battlefield fires. In the light of day the wounded had been attended to, the destruction was beginning to be cleared away, burial and assessment of prisoners took place efficiently and quickly. Solarrs had commented that it was always a shame when such tasks became routine.
But when the sun began to set, the restoration ceased suddenly and silently. A separate unit of soldiers had been working on each of the neighboring peaks, and had signaled the completion of their duties as Rhapsody and Hjorst stood at the rim of the canyon overlooking the site of the flood of mine slag once more.
The towering pile of waste still stood, a new hill at the bottom of the canyon, the bodies of horses and of men being slowly recovered and committed to simple graves. The newly freed slaves and Faedryth’s Nain army had joined in the recovery efforts and gathered now with the soldiers of the Alliance, spread across the floor of the canyon, looking up at the barrow of sticks, brambles, and sagebrush that had been carefully built at the rim above.
On the barrow was a rolled cloth, the Lady Cymrian’s own cloak, carefully wrapped in a tight cylinder with a small distension in the center. It stretched across the kindling in military fashion, crossing another rectangle of cloth, the flag of the Cymrian Alliance.
Rhapsody stood, the Diviner at her left shoulder and behind, her face set in a serious but calm mien, pale in the light of the setting sun, whispering rites and chants of passage, of loss, of completion. Finally, when she had finished the rituals and liturgies taught to her long ago by her Naming mentor, she raised her eyes to the west, looking beyond the sunset in silence.
Then she drew Daystar Clarion and held it aloft.
The wind itself, whistling through the canyon, seemed to pause for a moment in respect.
The flames of the sword burned quietly, almost as if in respect as well.
Rhapsody leaned a little closer to the pyre.
“I will watch, I will wait,” she said softly. “I will call and will be heard.”
As if in assent, the wind picked up, blowing the tresses of her hair around her face.
The Lady Cymrian smiled. “Goodbye, Anborn,” she whispered in the tongue of her childhood. “May you rest this night in Damynia’s arms. Thank you for everything.”
Then she stood erect once more and brought the tip of the burning blade to the barrow of sticks and sagebrush.
The pyre caught fire immediately, the brush and brambles gleaming along the lines of their stems, lacy for a moment, then exploding, ripping into flame.
From atop each of the peaks across the canyon fire answered, roaring to life, lighting the mountaintops with glorious radiance, crackling skyward.
From the depths of the canyon floor a shout of gladness arose, rumbling in the voices of men and women, soldiers and former slaves, a salute of fondness and respect that rang across the heath and up to the peaks beyond.
Distantly Rhapsody could hear the voices of the Nain of the Deep Kingdom begin the Chant of Honor, their highest salute to a fallen leader or comrade, but the music faded almost immediately into the wind that was sweeping around her now, rustling her garments and billowing through her hair.
Leaving her numb.
* * *
On the canyon floor, Evrit stood, a few paces apart from his fellow former slaves, watching the flames of Anborn’s funeral pyre, and the signal fires on the surrounding mountaintops, burning down.
Numb.
A gentle tap on his shoulder nudged him from his reverie.
Evrit turned amid the leaping shadows to see what looked like his own eyes staring back at him.
Jarzben, his elder son, stood before him. Little more than a boy when they had been taken, he had grown into a lean and muscular man with the darkness of enslavement in his expression, which his face was struggling to cast off.
Smiling slightly, something he had not done since the night their gentle religious sect’s ship, the Freedom, had sundered off the coast of Sorbold.
“Father.” It was the only word the young man could form.
Evrit stared at him a moment longer.
Then collapsed in his son’s arms, weeping.
When, after a long time, he was finally able to gather himself, he pulled away and looked into Jarzben’s face again.
“Selac and your mother?” he whispered. “Do you know anything of them?”
Jarzben shook his head.
“I’ve been advised to search the streets near the palace chimneys for him, and the linen factories for her,” he said, his speech hesitant from lack of use.
Evrit smiled wanly.
“Tomorrow we will set forth to those places and search until we know what has become of them,” he said.
And looked up again to the mountaintops, watching the smoke ascend.
Thankful.
59
LATER THAT NIGHT, ENCAMPED ON THE RIM
Ashe, who had finally arrived, could see her. She was almost close enough to touch.
Her vibrational signature, the unique pitch that his dragon sense could identify innately, was a beacon, like the great light tower of Tallono Harbor.
“Aria?” he whispered.
Rhapsody turned.
She was standing at the crest of a mountain swale surrounded and lit by pools of spattered torchlight. Her face was bruised, and the mail shirt of dragon scales Elynsynos had given her long ago was striped with blood, casting red-gold shadows onto the ground at her feet. Ashe’s eyes stung at the sight of her golden hair gleaming in that light, his dragon sense making note of the missing fall of glistening blond tresses that had hung to her knees when he had last been with her. Her cropped locks had stripped some of the feminine aspect from her, making her appear the warrior he always knew her to have been. Daystar Clarion burned steadily in her hand; when she saw him, she gazed at him for a moment, her face solemn; then she sheathed the sword, causing the light around her to dim substantially.
He climbed the swale slowly, struggling to keep from seizing her and dragging her into his arms. Even from a distance, in the dark, he could tell that something was missing; he had known all along that this reunion would be painful, but until he was face-to-face with her, he had no idea how much his dual nature would be horrified by the change in her.
Her emerald eyes, gleaming in the firelight but absent much of their familiar w
armth, met his own. When she spoke, her voice, at least, was as he remembered it.
“Are you all right? Are you injured?”
“Only slightly—it’s nothing.” His own voice broke, and he reached out his hands to her. “Come to me—I love you; gods, I love you. Please come here.”
She stepped closer; Ashe sensed that she was uncertain, uncomfortable even. He struggled to keep his need in check.
“I love you,” he said again.
His arms remained empty.
The warrior in front of him looked down at the shadowlit ground and sighed.
Ashe’s throat went dry, and his blood ran cold. “Can you not respond to me? Do you—do you still love me, Rhapsody?”
The woman slowly raised her eyes to meet his gaze, almost reluctantly.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I don’t really know how to answer you.”
Ashe choked, and words he had wanted to restrain burst forth from his strangling throat. “The way you have unfailingly before. You have told me ‘always’ whenever I asked it of you.”
“I—I am sorry. I barely know you. I have flashes of memory, of our travels together, most of which took place when you were cloaked in mist, hiding from the world—”
“You are my wife,” Ashe whispered. “The mother of my son. The other half of my soul. You gave our child a large part of your true name before you left him in the care of the Nain—”
“I believe you—I do. I can sense in your voice that you are speaking the truth—”
“But you do not remember?”
“No. I do not remember. I am sorry.”
Ashe turned suddenly away, overcome with pain.
“Are you all right?” Rhapsody’s voice carried the sound of concern, but nothing more.
“No,” he said. “The only thing you have ever asked of me is honesty; I have honored that request each day, with each heartbeat, as best as I have been able. I am unwilling to lie to you; your answer breaks my heart. I know you cannot help that; I have understood from the day you told me of your plan to leave your name with our son that it might be painful to come back to you, only to find that you do not love me anymore. But until I heard the words from your mouth, with the ring of True-Speaking, I had no idea how much I would wish to die upon hearing them. I am by no means ‘all right.’ I am sorry.”