“I—I thought I healed him,” she said brokenly.
The Bolg king lowered his hands.
“You did,” he said.
“But—what happened?”
Achmed rose silently and came to the bedside, stopping behind her.
“The battle with the titan took more out of him than we knew,” he said quietly. “The shattering of his bones, the metaphysical assault was not the kind of damage you could sing back to wholeness, Rhapsody. You did heal him; he’s not injured or bleeding internally, he’s not sick or feverish. He’s alive; he’s just asleep most of the time—ironic, given his stalwart vigil of the Earthchild has made him more like her than ever could have been imagined.”
“Oh God,” she murmured, losing the battle to keep back tears. “It’s as if he has aged all the years that our trek through the Earth seemed to hold at bay—as if Time has finally caught up with him.”
The Firbolg king exhaled.
“This is the cost of it all,” he said. His voice carried a little more of its sandy tone. “The wager that did not pan out, the bet that lost. You, he, and I have been thwarting Fate for a very long time now, and paying very little for it. I have almost lost both of you before, and yet somehow between us we have managed to haul each other back from the abyss, back from the brink of the unimaginable, to full health and vigor. The real tragedy is that death would have been a perfectly reasonable outcome for him. He has been facing it all of the time I have known him with no more fear of it than of falling asleep. But this—infirmity, this diminution, this is something he never would have wanted. You cried for the Earthchild when you first met her, and the Grandmother took you to task for it, telling you that her existence was what it was meant to be, that her path was nothing to be mourned. Perhaps that’s true—but not for Grunthor. This loss is incalculable. I assume you agree.”
Rhapsody nodded, her tears now falling like rain.
“Has he been awake at all?”
“Yes,” Achmed said. “He is awake intermittently. If you want, I can wait until he has opened his eyes and seen you.”
“Wait?” The tone in the Bolg king’s voice caused her face to flush hot while her blood simultaneously took on a chill colder than the frost that had coated the ground of the Bolglands that morning. “Wait for what?”
A bony hand, sheathed in a leather glove, came to rest on her shoulder.
“We made a promise to each other a lifetime ago,” Achmed said, his voice returning to the quiet state of a moment before. “We would never allow capture, or torture, or our own diminution—”
“You plan to kill him?”
“Well, when you say it like that, you make it sound like a bad thing.” There was a note of humor in the otherwise toneless voice. “No, Rhapsody, I could never kill him, especially not once he survived being dragged back from the abyss, unless he was in agony, dying, and begging me to do so. Or thinking he might have been possessed, or carrying the equivalent of a demonic pregnancy, like you were when you asked me to do the same thing for you.”
Rhapsody’s terror of the moment before turned to cold shock.
“I—I never told you why I asked if you would—”
“You didn’t have to. I saw your face when you were locked in a battle of wills with the F’dor in Bethe Corbair.” Achmed smiled slightly at the expression on that face now. “You forget, we are the opposite sides of the same coin. I know you far better than you think I do—better in some ways than you know yourself.”
The Lady Cymrian exhaled. “I do not doubt that.”
The hint of a smile faded. “I plan to take him down to the Loritorium, and put him beside the Sleeping Child. He can sit vigil of a sort, keeping her company; it will ensure that I see her more, as I will need to go each day to bring him sustenance.”
“But he’s not an Earthchild,” Rhapsody said, her voice clogging with emotion. “He wasn’t conjured into life, as she was; he has lived in the world, Achmed. He was born of parents, he has friends—troops, who love him—”
“What we did promise each other is that we would not allow the other to live in a diminished state in the sight of the rest of the world,” Achmed interrupted gently. “We witnessed that in the old world, and we each agreed, in a blood pact, not to allow the other to suffer that way.”
“Let me take him home to Highmeadow,” Rhapsody said through her tears. “He will have complete privacy, and care, and—”
“I know you think you are helping, Rhapsody, but you are not even listening to yourself. Grunthor is Firbolg—a son of the Earth. I know that you feel oppressed being inside the mountain, and you put a good face on being here, but you know how trapped you are in Ylorc. It is the same for Grunthor; being in the forest, in the loose air of the upworld, while not objectionable for a short time, can begin to make a cave dweller’s skin itch after a while. Stop trying to make this better; it isn’t going to get better. This is what it is. This, as I said, is the cost of war. Sometimes your card doesn’t come up, and when it doesn’t, the game is over.”
A gentle knock on the door shattered the silence that followed.
68
Rhapsody lowered her head to the bed while Achmed crossed to the door in annoyance. He opened it a crack, then closed it again quickly.
“Your husband and brat are here,” he said angrily. “I may have to strip Harran of her Archon status.”
“Best of luck in training her replacement if you do—it took me three years to train her, and I’m a Namer. It will take you the rest of your immortal life.”
Rhapsody rose, wiping her eyes, and went quickly to the door, opening it wide.
Standing in the hall, wearing the same expression of mild shock on their faces, were her husband and baby son, the younger of whom was leaning back against his father’s chest, chewing on his own hand. Rhapsody took Meridion quickly into her arms and kissed her husband, then turned back into the room. Ashe closed the door behind her, remaining out in the hallway.
“And, perhaps, rather than brat, a term you know I despise, the word you are looking for is actually Grunthor’s godson.”
“Rhapsody, I told you I sent for you to have time with him alone, undisturbed. This is exactly what I was hoping to avoid.” The Bolg king’s voice carried the unmistakable ring of threat.
“If you are going to shut him away where no one who loves him will ever see him again, the least you can do is allow those people to say goodbye.”
“I just told you, that was exactly what we both vowed to not let happen to the other.”
The Lady Cymrian caressed her son’s curls as she carried him to the bed and sat down again, ignoring the Bolg king’s exhalation of annoyance.
“You remember Grunthor?” she asked Meridion softly. “Our sleeping partner, when we came to this place? Your godfather? Do you remember curling up against his neck, under his beard?”
Meridion let out a soft squeal, followed by a series of babbling sounds as his arms bounced up and down in excitement. Even without looking behind her, Rhapsody could feel Achmed’s eyes smoldering.
She swallowed hard and gently laid the baby on the giant’s chest at his neck, under his chin.
The infant giggled. He stretched languorously and waved his tiny hands about, then curled slightly against Grunthor’s throat, patting clumsily at the ragged beard.
“You really feel the need to torture him more, Rhapsody?” Achmed said acidly.
Grunthor sighed raggedly, but his eyes remained closed.
Rhapsody sat back down on the bed, put her hand on the Sergeant’s shrunken paw, and cleared her mind. She hummed her Naming note, ela, then began to softly chant the closest approximation she had to his true name, a harsh Bengard appellation full of whistling glottal stops and the abrasive sounds of the desert in which he had been born.
She closed her eyes, trying to evoke the starry sky of Serendair; she sang of the twisting canyons and the dry rocks of his birthplace, sculpted by the wind and a long-dead river in glo
rious colors and amazing shapes hidden within thin chasms, of the joys of the gladiatorial arena that had been his mother’s domain, of the Earth through which they had passed together, melding his name into the song that still resonated, forever, within all of the Three.
It was the same healing she had attempted on the Skeleton Coast, in the foam of the rising breakers, in the trembling of the earth beneath the sand, in the screaming wind and the rolling thunder, but this time in the dark quiet of the inert stone of the mountain, the caves that Grunthor had loved, the tunnels he had paraded his troops endlessly through, singing bawdy marching cadences enthusiastically and grotesquely off-key.
She opened her eyes and looked at him.
There was no change.
Struggling to keep the song going as her throat tightened in despair, she glanced over to her son, whose eyes were fluttering on the verge of sleep. She caressed the top of his head with her fingers as she sang, sick at the loss of the man who had been so vibrant, so full of life, the godfather that her son would never know.
Meridion sighed as sleep took him.
Rhapsody sat up a little straighter. She looked at Achmed, whose posture had stiffened as well, and as their eyes met, a thought passed between them.
The baby had sighed in the exact tone as Grunthor had a moment before.
Rhapsody kept singing, her voice stronger now.
Achmed leaned over Grunthor and gently pulled aside the sheet that covered his chest. His shirt, vastly too wide for his now-skeletal body, was open at the neck and the top of his chest, close to where the baby lay. He took the candle from the bedside table and held it aloft as he pulled the shirt gently aside.
The skin nearest the sleeping infant had taken on the color of old bruises again.
The Bolg king nodded at Rhapsody, then withdrew his hand and stood erect, watching.
Slowly, as the song continued, the giant Bolg’s breathing began to match the tides of the infant’s breath, the rattling receding until his chest was rising and falling with the ease of that of the sleeping baby.
The greenish tone of his skin seemed to spread out from where Meridion lay, rejuvenating the parchment hue bit by bit. It slid down the length of one arm, and as it came to the end of the wrist of the hand that Rhapsody was still holding, she looked at her son again and gasped, dragging the namesong to a faltering halt.
Meridion’s tiny hand was pale as parchment.
She looked down at Grunthor’s hand.
The sagging and discolored skin was tightening somewhat, the color returning to it as blood spread through the capillaries. As Grunthor’s hand lost the dry, pale coloring, Meridion’s hand returned to the rosy skin of youth it had had since birth.
In silence now, she leaned over the Sergeant’s chest and could hear the namesong, blending with the song of the Earth, resonating in the tides of his breath. With each inhalation, his body seemed to rehydrate, reinvigorate a little, clearing away some of the aspects of withering age that had been present the moment before.
“Grunthor?” she whispered as she watched the hollows beneath his eyes fill in somewhat, his cheekbones sink back into flesh that rose beneath the hanging skin that had covered them moments before. “Can you hear me?”
The Sergeant-Major did not move.
Rhapsody reached out her hand, shaking violently, and as it moved through the air it slipped without looking into the open palm of the Firbolg king, sheathed in the thin leather glove. She cast a glance to the right to see him, staring down at his oldest friend, lost in thought.
Grunthor’s forehead, a moment before pocked and sunken, had begun to regain some of its tissue, its musculature, and those muscles wrinkled at his brow.
His lips, thin as paper a few moments before, swelled back into something resembling those that had for many years sat just above his jutting jaw, below his polished tusks, and opened slightly, moving as if in the attempt to form a word.
Both Rhapsody and Achmed leaned nearer.
“Rrrrr,” the giant Bolg whispered. “Rrrraaaaa.”
The baby beneath his beard slept on, oblivious to its thickening and losing some of its gray to mossy red streaks that spilled like ink from his chin to the ends of the coarse tufts of whiskers.
“What do you suppose he’s trying to say?” Rhapsody asked Achmed softly. The Bolg king shook his head, raising a finger to his lips.
The tusked mouth opened again, forming a grotesque cave from which the smell of salt and blood and decay emerged.
“Ro—rocky,” the Sergeant said softly, his voice harsh and ragged.
Achmed squeezed Rhapsody’s hand, trying to quell its trembling. They waited silently.
Finally, Grunthor spoke again; it was a sound that, in the most imaginative of ways, resembled a song, deadly to the ears, agonizing in its slowness.
Rocky-boye, baby
So—tiny an’ sweet
Don’t fall from yer—cradle
You’ll damage—the meat—
Against her will and her better judgment, the Lady Cymrian let loose a sound that was half chuckle, half choking noise. The Firbolg king smiled in relief for the first time since he had returned from the Skeleton Coast.
Eyes still closed, the Sergeant continued his painfully protracted lullabye.
’Ave—a nice morning
Enjoy all yer play
You’ll be in—my—gut
By the—end of—the day
As the last plodding, off-key note sounded, the great amber eyes opened slowly, the lids thin and wrinkled, the scleras shot with blood.
Rhapsody’s left hand, still trembling violently, came to rest on the hair of her beloved friend’s head.
Grunthor’s mouth pursed again as he prepared to speak.
“Sir?” The deep-timbered voice was a little stronger, though it still sounded costly to his throat.
“Here,” Achmed said, releasing Rhapsody’s right hand and bringing his own to Grunthor’s wrist, which he encircled.
“Do—me—a favor?”
“Name it.”
The Sergeant-Major cleared his throat; it sounded as if he had swallowed rocks.
“If you—please, sir, don’—be callin’ the lit’le—prince a—brat no more,” he said carefully. “After all, ’im and—Oi been—sleepin’ together—”
Rhapsody burst simultaneously into laughter and tears.
“As you wish,” Achmed said in what for him could be construed to be a pleasant tone.
They both smiled at their friend, whose color had returned to the hue they had always known, whose hollowed features had thickened somewhat, whose hair and beard had taken on some of their previous shades, but who still seemed wan and spent, far older than he had been when the Three had parted in the advent of war. There was no mistaking the toll his battle with the titan had taken on him, likely aging him by a generation.
But the pallor of death was no longer in his cheeks, with much of the weight returned to his heavy-boned frame, his hands the broad-palmed paws they had once been, the claws opaque once more.
Child of Earth.
The Child of Time, curled beneath Grunthor’s red-brown beard with streaks of gray, stretched languidly and opened his cerulean-blue eyes, scored by vertical pupils.
And let loose a squeal of delight.
His mother quickly gathered him up and turned him vertical, holding him so that Grunthor could look up at him.
“’Allo, my lit’le friend,” the Sergeant said fondly.
Meridion answered in a slew of cackles and buzzing sounds from the back of his throat, to the Sergeant’s delight.
“Oi think—’ealing me must—be a—family tradition wi’ you,” he said as if the words pained him.
Achmed’s brow furrowed. He looked at Meridion, who met his gaze solemnly.
“My thanks,” the Bolg king said with equal seriousness.
The child stared at him for a long moment.
Then opened his mouth and belched resoundingly.
The recuperating Sergeant and the Lady Cymrian both laughed as the Firbolg king turned away in disgust.
“I had best get my little Namer back to his father,” Rhapsody said, wrapping his blanket more securely around him. “Ashe will be none too pleased with what might seem like a risk I have just undertaken if I don’t return him shortly.”
“He would be right to be displeased,” said Achmed evenly and under his breath as he took her elbow and led her to the door. “You had no idea what sort of damage your son could have incurred, even if he did bring Grunthor back somewhat from the brink. While I do not question your maternal instincts, I suggest that you consider whether the loss and return of your true name and your experiences in battle may have left your judgment slightly impaired.
“Go home, Rhapsody—go back to Highmeadow, to your family, to your realm, to your responsibilities for this battered Alliance. You have earned your happy ending; go enjoy it. Leave us to our aftermath; we will retrench within the mountains, rebuild, and take advantage of an extended period of silence from the ways of those who live in the upworld. Thank you for your ministrations to Grunthor, and those of your son. Go home.”
The Lady Cymrian stared at him in shock. Then her eyes narrowed. She opened the door and handed Meridion to Ashe, who was pacing in the corridor, and who took him eagerly. She signaled that she would return in a moment, then closed the door and went back to the Sergeant’s bed, where she whispered his true name one last time, then bent down and pressed a warm kiss onto his forehead.
“I love you,” she said softly. “I love you. I love you.”
Beneath her the giant Sergeant-Major smiled.
“Feelin’ is mutual, miss.”
“I will be back to see you no later than spring, or at Second Thaw if you need me earlier. You know how to reach me on the wind if there is a pressing need or something urgent; otherwise keep in touch with me by bird. If for any reason you want me here, let me know and I can be back in a sennight, now that I know all the liveries where Achmed keeps his Wings.” Grunthor nodded as she squeezed his massive hand. “And any heartfelt poems you would like to exchange, I am more than happy to return in kind, but please, no more shrunken heads. The ones you sent me for my birthday two years ago were enough to last me the rest of my life.”