Ashe nodded, then looked back over the Plain. “Consumption. It withered her away from the inside. His father was never the same afterward — took his spirit with her when she left. Stephen barely remembered her. Just like Melisande doesn’t remember Lydia.”
Rhapsody sighed. “I am not going to die, Sam,” she said, using the name she had once given him long before, in their own youth when they had met on the other side of Time. “Manwyn told you that as well. She said so directly, in fact — ‘Gwydion ap Llauron, thy mother died in giving birth to thee, but thy children’s mother shall not die giving birth to them.’”
Ashe shook his head slightly in the vain attempt to silence the words in his mind, recounted in excruciating detail by the dragon in his blood. It had been more than three years since he stood in the dark temple of the Oracle of Yarim, Manwyn, the mad Seer of the Future, who by a curse of birth was also his great-aunt, and shuddered at the odd inflection in her voice as she pronounced a prediction she had not been asked for.
I see an unnatural child born of an unnatural act. Rhapsody, you should beware of childbirth: the mother shall die, but the child shall live.
Rhapsody’s hand came to rest gently on his bare shoulder but he shrugged it off, trying to break the grip of other words in his mind, spoken in his father’s voice.
I assume you are aware of what happened to your own mother upon giving birth to the child of a partial dragon? I have spared you the details up until now — shall I give them to you? Do you crave to know what it is like to watch a woman, not to mention one that you happen to love, die in agony trying to bring forth your child, hmmm? Let me describe it for you. Since the dragonling instinctually needs to break the eggshell, clawing through, to emerge, the infant —
Stop.
Your child will be even more of a dragon than you were, so the chances of the mother’s survival are not good. If your own mother could not give birth to you and live, what will happen, do you think, to your mate?
Without looking at his wife he shook his head again, concentrating on the waving green sea of highgrass below him.
“I have seen too much death to risk it, Aria; I have known too many divinations that have been misheard, misunderstood. With the very last words of advice my father gave me he warned me that I should not trust prophecies, that their meaning is not always as it seems.”
“If you are discounting prophecies, then why does the first one worry you at all?” Rhapsody said, taking his hand. “It seems to me that you are giving credence to those that would prevent us from living our lives as we see fit, in order to avoid peril, but shun those that nullify those dire warnings. Either accept both, or neither, but do not choose to fear one and refuse comfort in the other.”
Ashe’s skin darkened in the light of the afternoon sun. “There are so many children in your life, Rhapsody, in our lives. Anywhere you go, from this very keep you live in to the mountains of Ylorc, from the Lirin forest to the Hintervold, you have ‘grandchildren’ to love and look after. I don’t think it is wise to tempt Fate by risking your life giving birth to the child of wyrmkin, an infant with dragon’s blood in its veins. There are enough motherless children to tend to without bringing another into the world.” His voice carried a bitter sting.
Rhapsody took him by the arms and turned him around, slipping into his embrace.
“I refuse to make my choices based on the maniacal rantings of your aunt,” she said humorously, “which is why I never use the hideous brocade table linens she sent us as a wedding gift.” Her tone grew more serious, and she caressed his cheek tenderly. “I want to make the life with you that we planned, Sam; I want to mix my blood with yours, to carry your children within me, to raise a family of your line and mine that is entirely our own. I thought this is what you wanted as well.”
Ashe did not break his gaze away from the windy plain. More than you can know, he thought.
“If there is good reason not to have children, I will yield the idea in a heartbeat, but in the face of two conflicting prophecies, I see no need to live in terror of something that she has told you will not happen. Besides, the prophecy you fear has already been fulfilled; it was not directed at me, but at the mother of the last child fathered by the F’dor we destroyed.” Her eyes darkened at the memory. “I witnessed the birth, and the death. The mother died. The child lived. It’s over. The prophecy was fulfilled.”
“You don’t know that for certain, Rhapsody.”
She threw up her hands in exasperation and turned away from him. “What do we ever know for certain, Ashe? Moment to moment, life is unsure — you can’t live in fear of it.” Another thought occurred and she turned back. “Manwyn cannot lie, can she?”
“Not directly, but she can obfuscate and evade, and she knows the distant future as well as the immediate, so she can give an answer to a question that qualifies as truthful, but may not be pertinent for a thousand years. She is not to be trusted.”
“But if she answers directly, yes or no, that cannot be false, can it?”
Ashe shook his head. “Supposedly not.”
“Well, then, since I am headed to Yarim in the next few days, and Manwyn’s temple is in Yarim, I will have ample opportunity to ask her directly, yes or no, if giving birth to your children will cause my death or permanent infirmity. Perhaps she can lay this ambiguity to rest then and there.”
Ashe’s face went pale, then red. “A moment ago I was grateful beyond measure that you had returned home,” he said stonily. “Now I wish you had remained in Tyrian, where at least you would be safe from your own foolhardiness. Rhapsody, didn’t you learn the last time we addressed Manwyn in her temple that it was an experience not to be repeated?”
“Apparently not,” she snapped, pulling away and turning back to the tower doorway. “Apparently I’ve also been wrong in assuming you shared my desire to have a child; if you did, you would not be deterred by so flimsy an excuse.” She started down the stairs, only to be caught by the arm and turned around.
Ashe stared down at her for a long moment. Rhapsody’s anger, white-hot a split second before, cooled at the sight of the pain in his dragonesque eyes, the depth of the agony she knew he had suffered, and the love that ran even deeper. Inwardly she cursed herself for the pain she was causing him now, the fear her selfishness had rekindled. She opened her mouth to recant but was stopped when he rested his forefinger on her lips.
“We will go together,” he said, cupping her face gently. “We will put the question before her, and I will try and live with her answer. It’s the only way to reclaim control of our lives.”
“Are you certain you want to do that?” she said, arching an eyebrow. “If memory serves, you were the one she attacked last time we were there. She didn’t give me any difficulty.”
“Well, she and I are family, after all,” Ashe replied, a hint of humor returning to his eyes. “If you can’t fight with family, with whom can you fight? Look at my grandparents. Their marital spat led to a war that took down an entire empire.”
“Hmmm. Perhaps we should reconsider adding to our family after all,” Rhapsody said. She looked off across the whipping highgrass and smiled as a brightly colored kite in the shape of a copper dragon caught the wind, streaking suddenly higher on a strong updraft. She waved to the tiny figure in the distance, and Melisande waved back.
Ashe exhaled. “No, you’re right,” he said at last. “If it is at all possible, I would dearly love to see the children of the House of Navarne and those of the lines of Gwylliam and Manosse playing in these fields once more.”
“Well, in a sense that decision is entirely up to you.” Rhapsody spoke the words gently, knowing that to do so heavily would sting; as a descendant of a Firstborn race, Ashe had to make a conscious decision to procreate. “But once you decide in favor of it, whenever that may be, I promise to make that decision worth your while.”
Ashe laughed and kissed her hand, then went back to watching Stephen’s daughter draw pictures in the sky wit
h her dragon kite, lost in memory.
TEMPLE OF THE ORACLE, YARIM PAAR
The darkness of the inner sanctum of Mawyn’s temple was broken intermittently by fires burning in decaying receptacles and the tiny flames of countless candles, thick with the stench of burning fat barely masked by pungent incense.
Mother Julia stared across the jagged well in the floor to the dais suspended above it, trying to hold the Seer’s gaze and failing; the eyes of the mad prophetess were perfect mirrors of quicksilver, devoid of any iris, pupil or sclera. They reflected the myriad flames, making Mother Julia’s head spin crazily.
“How — how long will I live?” she whispered, dotting her gray forehead with the colorful fringe of her shawl.
The Seer laughed, a maniacal, piercing sound, then rolled suddenly onto her back, pointing the ancient sextant in her hand at the black dome of the temple above. She began to swing the dais wildly over the jagged pit beneath her, singing in mad, toneless words.
Finally she righted herself and leaned over the edge of the platform, fixing her reflective gaze on the trembling crone.
“Until your heart stops beating,” she proclaimed smugly. She waved a dismissive hand at Mother Julia, her rosy golden skin, scored with tiny lines of scales, gleaming in the half-light.
“Wait,” the old woman protested as the doors to the inner sanctum opened. “That is no answer! I made a generous offering, and you have told me nothing!”
A blank look of confusion crossed the Seer’s face. Mother Julia turned away from the guards gesturing at her, realizing that she had phrased her objection incorrectly; Manwyn could not comprehend the Past, only the Future and enough of the Present to allow her a stepping-stone in Time. With a trembling hand she reached into the folds of her garments and extracted her last gold crown. She held it up; the light caught the surface and reflected in the prophetess’s eyes.
“You are not telling me anything. You will cheat me for Eternity if you do not provide me more of an answer. I will be forever a bad debt of yours.”
Manwyn cocked her head to one side, her tangled mane of flame-colored hair billowing in the updraft from the dark well; its metallic silver streaks caught the reflection of the candlelight for a moment and flashed, causing Mother Julia to wince in pain. Her lips pursed as she considered, then nodded briskly like a child.
“Very well. One more question. Consider carefully; I shall answer no more for you in this lifetime.”
The old woman shuddered, racking her brain to combine her questions into one which would suffice while the ancient Seer spun the wheel on the sextant beneath her fingers, humming tunelessly. Finally Mother Julia took a deep, ragged breath and squared her shoulders.
“Who shall tell me what the disk of blue-black steel is?” she stammered.
The prophetess looked into the sextant, then up at the crone again. When she spoke, her voice was plain and clear of madness or singsong.
“Your son Thait will tell you what you have been commanded to discover,” she said simply. “Five weeks and two days hence this night.”
From the depths of her belly the old woman sighed, relief glistening in her eyes and on her brow. She bowed to Manwyn, tossed the coin into the well, muttered her thanks, and hurried out through the heavily carved cedar door past the guards, eager to quit the temple as quickly as possible.
As the cedar door closed behind the woman, Manwyn looked up as if startled. She nodded to herself, then called softly into the darkness in the distance.
“He will whisper it to you through his tears as he sits beside your grave, arranging the stones.”
Indigo
Night Stayer, Night Summoner
Luasa-ela
6
PORT OF ARGAUT, NORTHLAND
The scent of fire in the wind was always an exciting thing, the seneschal thought, inhaling deeply. Pungent ash mixed with the tang of salt sea air was like a perfume to him, especially in the aftermath of morning, when the white smoke of the infernos gave way to the stolid gray miasma that hung like dirty wool in the wind above the smoldering coals, the dingy causatum of so much glorious flame the night before. It was an odor he had loved all his life, but in the last thousand years or so it had taken on a special appeal, particularly when laced with the olfactory undertones of human flesh, which added a pleasant causticity to it.
The previous night he had stood in the darkness of the reviewing stands, watching the burning pyres be lighted like signal flames along a giant battle wall. It had been an unprecedented inferno; the chorus of wailing, rising and falling on the summer wind, had been especially melodic, a symphony of pain that enflamed his soul with excitement.
The thrill had still not worn off, even in the bitter light of dawn observed now from the rolling deck of the Basquela on which he stood. The bonfires had burned down to seething ash, cooling, waiting for the farmers of the Inner Crescent to come and haul the detritus away, sowing it into their fields to enrich them.
The seneschal ruminated on that for a moment, the beneficial balance he had achieved since coming to power. The shipping lanes had never been so profitable; Argaut’s fleet was one of the most commanding and respected in maritime trade throughout the civilized world, plying the seas in extended cycles, braving some of the most dangerous coastlines in the process — the rocky archipelago of the Fiery Rim; the shark-infested waters of Iridu and the Great Overward, where the predatory fish could reach a hundred feet in length; the burning swells that still foamed over the watery grave of the sunken Island of Serendair in the south seas, its former mountaintops of Briala, Balatron, and Querel now making for treacherous pocketed reefs of boiling volcanic blasts.
The real danger in those places was not the natural phenomena that existed there, but the pirates who used them as hunting grounds. Privateers from deadly, centuries-old familial lines, their ships, swift and silent, plied the shoals and crosscurrents as if immune to the perils of the sea, mastering the wind with merciless efficiency. The remains of the vessels they plundered were never found, the able-bodied among the crew and passengers sold as slaves in a variety of ports around the world, most especially in the diamond fields of lower Heraat in the Great Overward, and the gladiatorial arenas of Sorbold. The old, the sick, and the weak were used as chum for the sharks.
The Brigands of the Sea Wind, as the pirates like to call themselves, were the scourge of the shipping lanes, the terror of the seas, and made the passage of travelers and the plying of trade hazardous at best. Even the nations that supplied military forces to escort their merchant vessels watched in hope that turned frequently to dismay for their return. Owning a strong, reliable fleet of swift ships that could run the privateers’ blockades, outsail them, and escape with their crew and contents intact was one of the greatest assets any merchant guild or nation could have. Argaut’s merchant fleet and navy were without peer in the world.
Because the Baron of Argaut, who owned the fleet, also owned the pirates.
It made for a perfect cycle, a very profitable way to suppress competition. The seneschal was extremely proud of the beautiful simplicity and interconnectivity of it all. The Brigands occasionally attacked ships in the waters near Northland, but by and large stayed far enough away from port to avoid suspicion. The slave trade fostered friendship in places like Druverille, the frozen wasteland to the north of Manosse, and Sorbold, a key nation in the western continent on the southern border of the Wyrmlands. The northern continental coastline of the Wyrmlands had been held in protection for thousands of years by the dragon Elynsynos, who allowed no ship to broach the misty shores. The slave traders of Sorbold were Argaut’s favorite trading partners, paying a high premium for captives who could serve in their famed gladiatorial arenas.
And so the cycle had continued, year after year, century after century. The shipping lanes filled Argaut’s coffers with the bounty of respectable trade by the merchant fleet and the booty of privateering by the Brigands. The slave trade provided an easy dumping ground for any
victims of piracy who would have survived to tell the tale; the less valuable captives were accused, along with the occasional local upstart, of being the pirates themselves and were burned in great bonfires that lighted the night sky, sating the righteous indignation of the population while convincing them of the efficiency of their government. The remains of the unfortunates were sown into the fields to produce a bountiful harvest, or rendered as fat for tallow candles, both of which in turn provided more products for the shipping trade.
And, above all else, they satisfied the bloodlust of the seneschal and the baron, both of whom craved the thrill of the fire.
Indeed; I have no wish to abandon this.
The seneschal whirled, caught off guard by the baron’s voice.
“M’lord —”
Disembark. We are not leaving.
The pleasant musings vanished, leaving the sensation of acid burning in the seneschal’s eyes.
“Forgive me, m’lord, but we are.” Involuntarily he winced at the stabbing pain in his head.
The voice, when it whispered again, was low and soft; the seneschal could barely make out the words over the waves of nauseating thrum in his head and the crying of the gulls.
In sixteen centuries you have only dared defy me once; remember what you wrought.
“Twice,” the seneschal corrected. He clutched his brow in agony, shaking his head like a boar shaking off the hunting dogs beset upon its neck. He glanced woozily in the direction of the dark hold where Faron waited, frightened, in his transplanted pool of gleaming green water. He had been secreted aboard in the middle of the night, carried in soft blankets, while the fires were burning down and the sea winds tugged at the moorings. The terror in the child’s eyes haunted at him again, and feelings of protective rage rose inside his breast. “And what I wrought is a lifeline for you; remember that.”
The threat in the reply was unmistakable.
You remember it as well.