When at last the bier was complete, he rose and went back to the Seer’s body, unrecognizable in the arid heat of the canyon.
“There’s no Time like the Present,” he said wryly.
With an uncharacteristic level of respect and decorum, he hoisted the corpse from the cactus bed where he had set it, awaiting the arrival of this day, then carried the elderly Seer, Anwyn and Manwyn’s fragile sister, to her ceremonial blessing ground.
He tried to remember the words to the Lirin death ritual he and Grunthor had observed many times. Finally, when they refused to return to his brain, he resorted to using the words to one of Grunthor’s favorite marching cadences that the Sergeant-Major had used in the training and intimidation of his troops.
This may be the day you die
And if it is, that’s fine
It’s a very mealy apple that
Stays too long on the vine
Don’ be sad yer life ain’t long
Don’t wish that you could stay
’Cause everyone’ll take a turn
At dying anyway.
A smile crossed his face, imagining what the dreamy Seer would have said.
Then faded quickly, knowing that it would have been irritating, no matter what it was.
He stood a quiet vigil until nightfall. Just before night came he struck the tinder against a rock, then ignited the pyre.
It never ceased to amaze him how much a Lirin funeral pyre and funeral, something Rhapsody had given him careful training in, could make him reach back to the times in his life when he was lonely.
Those times had been few and far between as well, not because he had benefited from the love of many friends and happy acquaintances; Achmed had rarely bestowed the honor of friendship on anyone he had run into since coming to the Middle Continent. Rather, it took a major life event, the significant loss of someone or something that mattered to him, that allowed Achmed to feel anything at all sometimes.
He lowered the stick he had used to light the fire, then maintained his respectful silence and waited for the smoke to take the woman’s ashes into the sky.
It took less than the span of a dozen heartbeats.
Finally, when what had once been the Seer of the Present had been reduced to nothing more than ash and taken by the wind, the Bolg king waited until said wind had come and completely scoured that part of the canyon clean.
Goodbye, Rhonwyn, he thought. Irritating as you were, I am always grateful to have known you, because now I can go back to my life knowing that the Present is as fleeting as the wind in more ways than one.
63
UNDERVALE, THE DEEP KINGDOM OF THE NAIN
The better part of eleven days’ journey had them in sight of the Molten River.
Rhapsody had little to no memory of the place, so it was necessary for Ashe to use his dragon senses to guide them along the passageways, by which even he, with his superior sensing capability, was confused and disoriented.
Finally he was able to lead the way, through all the ferocious security checkpoints, to the chambers where her four friends had put their lives in abeyance in order to be able to help keep their child safe.
Just as they cleared the last checkpoint, Analise appeared at the end of the stone hallway.
A bundle was in her arms, not too much bigger than it had been when Rhapsody had said goodbye.
Ashe stepped forward eagerly, then reined in his excitement long enough to allow his wife to hurry ahead first. The wide smile that had come over his face faded at the look of stark terror on hers.
“Aria?”
Rhapsody stared down the hallway at her old friend holding her son. Then she inhaled slowly and gestured for Ashe to go on ahead.
Ashe looked at her for a moment, then made his way hastily down the hall. He took the blanketed baby gently into his arms, trying to ignore the look of surprise turning to shock on Analise’s face as she locked eyes with Rhapsody.
Then all else faded into oblivion at the sight of his sleeping son.
Ashe turned Meridion toward him and gazed down at him, allowing his dragon sense to assess him as gently as it could so as not to wake him.
The child had obviously been fed recently, and had slipped even more recently into a deep slumber. His golden curls had grown longer; with his eyes closed, he was a miniature of his mother, with long black lashes brushing his rosy gold skin, his tiny mouth with lips shaped like a curved bow. His face was free from care, though the dragon could tell that within a short time it would be wreathed in the comic scowl Rhapsody had shown him on several occasions when she had brought the baby to visit him through the scrying power of the Lightcatcher.
Then the dragon’s network of heightened awareness sensed warm saltwater on the surface of the child’s skin; Ashe blinked, and felt the swell of tears that had crept into his own eyes, unnoticed, that were beginning to fall on the baby. A fondness beyond measure rose in his long-tortured heart, followed by a tide of unbridled love long repressed that almost overwhelmed him.
“Hello, my son,” he said, too softly for the baby to hear. “I love you. You seem to have done a fine job of growing strong and healthy without getting too big too fast. I was afraid you would be riding a horse before I got the chance to see you again. I know that your forbearance will make your mama happy, too. Well done, Meridion.” His ability to resist shattered, and he pressed a gentle kiss onto the baby’s forehead, letting his lips linger there, breathing in the child’s sweet scent.
Meridion slept on, oblivious.
Finally he forced his gaze away from the little boy and looked back down the hallway at the child’s mother again.
Rhapsody no longer seemed terrified; her aspect had settled into a sharp look in her eyes set in a face that was otherwise expressionless. Ashe beckoned to her.
“Come, Aria—come see our boy.”
She swallowed hard, then pursed her lips, as if thinking intently. Finally she came slowly down the hallway, coming to a stop a few steps away from her husband and child. Ashe started to put the baby in her arms, but she stepped quickly away.
“You hold him for now,” she said quietly. “I’m still not sure what I have to do yet.”
“All right,” Ashe said, choking back his disappointment. “Take your time—we’ll be fighting over who gets to hold him soon enough.”
“Here,” Analise said, opening the door through which she had come. “Come in here, m’lord, m’lady; you’ll have privacy and safety in the rooms we have shared when taking care of your son.” Ashe followed her, as did Rhapsody a moment later, into a large room full of Nain guards and through another doorway, bound in brass, with sentries on either side who opened it.
Beyond the second door was another, much smaller room furnished handsomely with a beautifully crafted cradle. An interior chamber contained an adult bed and a small sofa and chair, human-sized, as well as everything needed for the care of an infant.
Analise stepped aside to allow the royal couple entry; as Rhapsody passed through the doorway, Analise touched her elbow. The Lady Cymrian stopped for a moment, and a smile flickered over her face as she exchanged a glance with her friend. Then the elderly Cymrian woman bowed and withdrew, closing the door and leaving the young family alone in the room.
Ashe brushed another kiss onto Meridion’s head as the baby stretched and yawned, then returned to sleep.
“He’s starting to make intermittent suckling motions, and the scowl is coming,” Ashe said gently. “Come, Aria—take back your name, so that you can be truly reunited with him, too, before he wakes.”
Rhapsody watched for several long moments. Then, tentatively, she put out her hand, struggling to keep it from trembling, and touched the tiny pearl in the baby’s earlobe.
Her index finger caressed the small jewel, and Ashe concentrated, waiting for the hum he had heard and the glow he had seen the last time he had watched her retrieve a memory in this way.
Nothing happened.
Rhapsody cleared h
er throat softly, turning away so as not to disturb the baby, then began to hum her naming note, ela, the sixth of the scale. Ashe smiled as it began to change the air around them ever so slightly, clearing it as if after a rainstorm. When her note was resonating strongly, she began to chant words in Ancient Lirin, then looked up at him.
“Do—do you remember my old name?”
“Of course I do,” he assured her, trying to keep his voice low. “Better than I remember my own. You warned me once to be careful uttering it outright, however.” She nodded. “So I will tell it to you in pieces, much as you once told it to me.” Rhapsody nodded again.
“‘Rhapsody’ is your middle name, given to you by your Lirin mother, a Lirin name, a musical name, because she wanted you to have a musical soul. But your human father wanted to name you after his mother, so the first name you were given was her first name also, ‘Amelia.’ Your family called you ‘Emmy’ for short, but your friends, and the people of Merryfield, where you lived as a child, called you ‘Emily.’ It was that name you gave me when I first asked who you were on the night we met in Serendair. And your patronymic, your family name, was ‘Turner,’ as in Earth-turner, you said—a farmer’s surname. I’m not sure which of these you gave to Meridion, however.”
Rhapsody rubbed her pounding temples with her fingers.
“Probably all of them—I don’t remember any of them. Why do you keep calling me ‘Aria’?”
Tears welled in Ashe’s eyes again.
“It’s an endearment I have called you since the summer we became lovers,” he said quietly. “It means ‘my guiding star’—”
“I know what it means,” Rhapsody whispered. “I just don’t remember you calling me that in the Past, though I can remember you doing so since we were reunited. But I can’t even remember the ones you just told me—it’s as if they refuse to stay in my mind.”
“Then I will say them to you again, and you should speak them immediately after I do,” Ashe said, panic beginning to rise up inside his viscera. The baby may have felt the change, because he frowned intensely and squirmed, settling down a moment later as Ashe caressed his downy head.
“All right. Let me replenish the Naming note first.” She hummed it again, and the air cleared around them once more. “Now tell me.”
“Amelia,” Ashe said.
“Amelia,” Rhapsody sang hesitantly.
“Turner.”
“Tur—” Rhapsody stopped and stared blankly at him.
“Turner,” Ashe said again. His voice shook from the effort of remaining quiet for Meridion’s sake.
“Turner.”
“Good. Now, the nicknames?” She nodded. “Emily.”
“Emily.”
“Emmy.”
“Emmy.” Rhapsody exhaled, then blinked. “Thank you—they’re gone again already.” She touched the tiny pearl once more and whispered the words of Ancient Lirin, the commands for release and return.
She repeated the ancient words several times, then fell silent.
When she looked up at him, her eyes were dry, but the expression on her face was stricken.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’ve done everything I know how to do. But I don’t feel anything. Anything at all.”
64
“Look at him again, Aria,” Ashe urged. “Pause in your Naming lore for a moment, and let your instinct as a mother take over. Look at our son—”
“You don’t understand. I—I can’t feel anything; I have no instincts. He doesn’t smell right to me. I don’t even recognize him.”
Ashe was thunderstruck.
“What do you mean, you don’t recognize him? He looks exactly like you! A stranger could discern which one he is out of a crowd of babies from one glance at you. How is it possible that his own mother cannot?”
Rhapsody lapsed into silence.
“How can you feel nothing?” Ashe demanded in a harsh whisper. “You’re a Namer—potent and powerful enough of one to alter the fabric of Time, of the world itself. This is your name—your child! I cannot imagine it possible that it’s not within your power to recall it, if it’s important enough to you.”
Rhapsody looked steadily at him, though her eyes narrowed slightly.
“Perhaps that power is the problem; I didn’t rename myself, I gave my name away. Maybe my own abilities have made it impossible for me to take it back.”
“So you can smile at Analise, but not at our son?”
“I knew Analise when I was just Rhapsody. Our acquaintance is from that time. But you, Ashe—you knew me by another name, the name I was given when I was forming my identity, when I learned to love. A name I pledged to you when we joined our souls in marriage. A name I don’t remember on a level that surpasses the knowledge of my mind; it’s been stripped from my very essence. I gave it to Meridion—I can’t seem to take it back. I’m sorry—I don’t know what to do.”
“Are you telling me you don’t love him anymore? I have already had to adjust to the possibility that you will not love me always, as you have promised over two lifetimes to do, but our child? You don’t feel love for our son?”
The angry tears in his eyes were not mirrored in his wife’s, though her expression was sad now.
“Do you think for even a second, even a breath, that I want it this way?” she asked quietly. “Everything I’ve done since this war began, I did for our son, Ashe. You should understand this. You sent us away to the Bolg kingdom for our safety, knowing what the cost would be to you. A man who battles daily with his nether side should be better able than most to understand the loss of an intrinsic identity like a true name; your sacrifice for us made the dragon in you rampant. Do you not remember telling me that we could never be together again because of that, for fear that you might harm Meridion and me?”
Ashe stared at her, the vertical pupils expanding in his eyes. Then, as her words rang with truth within him, he dropped his gaze and nodded reluctantly.
“So you are uniquely qualified to understand how lost I am, how numb, I would wager.” She looked down at the baby again, then looked away.
“Even as lost and unfeeling as I am, I don’t regret the choice I made,” she said softly. “I had to go to war; I had to leave him, for his sake and the sake of the continent. I gave him my name to comfort him, to spare him the loss of both of us, to assure him, no matter what happened to me, that he had my love, and yours, through me. If I had died, he would have had it. Now that I have lived, he has it still. If I am diminished for the rest of my life, at least it seems that what I hoped for came to pass. It was worth the sacrifice.”
“Perhaps,” Ashe said.
The baby stirred, his eyes still closed, making the soft sounds of awakening. When Ashe looked up again, his eyes were still gleaming with tears, but his anger was gone, replaced by something much deeper, much more desolate.
“What can we do? What can I do to help you, Aria?”
Rhapsody fixed him with a direct look. “You can tell me the truth,” she said.
There was a tone in her voice that resonated with Ashe; she was asking something that surpassed the ordinary meaning of her words. He nodded, holding his breath in dread of her question.
“You were a motherless boy who never knew the love of the woman who carried you and brought you into this world—you have said that was the source of a lifetime of loneliness for you before we met. You had a father who loved you, even if his love was odd and somewhat stunted by the lineage that was his heritage.
“I ask you this: if you had to assess and choose, which of these two choices do you think would have been better for you—to still have been motherless, but to have known your mother’s love intrinsically, to have owned that love in as real a way as it is possible to have something, along with that of your father—or to have had your father’s love and the living presence of a mother that did not love you, did not have any feelings for you whatsoever? To have grown up in her house, in her presence, feeling innately that you meant nothin
g to her? Would it have been better to have known such a mother—or to have never known her at all, while having her love to keep throughout your lifetime? Especially if your father had made your happiness his life’s purpose, as I know you will for Meridion?”
All the sound went out of the windowless room.
Then, after a span of a hundred heartbeats, Rhapsody saw her husband’s spirit break. He did not move, did not even breathe, but it was in his eyes. He bowed his head, his shoulders suddenly weighed down as if under a heavy burden. She turned away.
“I thought as much,” she said softly. “Thank you; I’m sorry. I will leave now, before he is aware that I was even here.”
She had caught a look of utter despair on his face and wondered dully if Ashe’s own mother had seen a similar sight with her last breath: the image of her husband, Llauron, frantic, holding a squirming child he was ill-prepared to care for alone as the woman he loved departed from his life. Even as numb and unconnected to him as she was, Rhapsody could not bear the sight of such anguish.
She started toward the door as the baby in Ashe’s arms stretched again and cooed. She came to a halt as her husband called to her in a voice that sounded as if it had been rent by shards of metal.
“Rhapsody?”
She turned back to him.
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know,” she said nervously, watching Meridion kick his blankets off in Ashe’s arms. “Ylorc, perhaps, Tyrian, more likely. I can’t think clearly now. But I can’t let him see me; I will send word to you when I get to wherever I am going.”
Her voice grew softer.
“Goodbye, Ashe. I hope you will remember how much I loved you both when I still had my name, and that it brings you consolation.”
She turned again and hurried to the door.
Meridion opened his tiny blue eyes. The dragonesque pupils contracted as he took in the light in the room and his father’s face. His small mouth puckered in interest, then opened as the soft clicking sounds of vocal exploration came out in a greeting that rang with recognition.