From what he could remember of Siyeth’s death, Omet looked worse. He had no comprehension of how much time was passing now. Rhur returned with Krinsel, the midwife, who was the chief of the Bolg healers, and several of her assistants; they had ministered frantically to Omet, only to see him edge closer to death.
“Come on, lad, come on,” Shaene muttered, patting the young man’s forearm impotently. He turned to Krinsel, who shook her head, then to Rhur, who watched, as always, stone-faced, but with eyes that held deep worry.
Suddenly Shaene sat up straighter, as if struck.
“Rhur — the tower! We can take him to the tower!”
The Firbolg artisan’s brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Do you recall the wheel? Sandy said that the tower and the wheel worked together for healing, I think.”
Rhur shook his head. “We know not how it be used, Shaene,” he said quietly in the common tongue tinged with the harsh accent of the Bolg.
“It can’t come to harm, though, can it? We’ll put him below the glass ceiling and set up the wheel.” Desperation rose in Shaene’s voice. “We can’t just stand here while he burns to death from fever!” He gestured toward the healers. “Send them to the journeymen, the apprentices, and tell them to get take the wooden cover off the dome. You and I can make a litter out of his cot, and carry him.”
Krinsel and Rhur exchanged a silent glance, then a few words in their native tongue, and finally a nod.
Shaene exhaled deeply. “All right, then.” He patted Omet’s arm again. “Hold on, boy. Perhaps all your efforts are about to be repaid.”
56
Esten stared down into the dark passageway, struggling to decide what to do.
Something of grave import must lie at the bottom of this tunnel, she thought, patting the pocket of her shirt where the key was concealed. There is nothing in the king’s bedchamber itself that requires the level of guard he has posted, or the concealment of the door, or the traps. Any thief stealing his way into this place would be bitterly disappointed.
And yet there was a passageway hidden at the foot of the king’s own bed, a sign that when he was in the mountain, he himself was the last line of its defense.
It was tempting, difficult to resist.
And yet Esten’s time in the mountain had taught her that such passageways could go on for days, could misdirect, lead into other twisting hallways, designed to confuse, to cause the traveler to lose his way. It was possibly a journey for which she was not prepared. She just did not have the time to risk it.
A prickle ran over her skin, a shiver that she cursed, because it denoted a weakness in her she could not abide. The tunnel recalled the one she had been digging in Yarim beneath Entudenin, or, more accurately, her slave boys had been. While she was not averse to going to check their work, to correct their direction, there was a limit to the length of time she was comfortable remaining underground.
Living within the mountains of Ylorc had been difficult, but it was a difficulty she could abide. Esten was accustomed to back alleys, to dark buildings, to sewers beneath city streets, to the shadows in which all of her people lurked, hidden, waiting for the time to emerge, then blend quickly back into the darkness again. The tunnels, passageways, and rooms of Ylorc reminded her more of those alleys, those sewers; they had been built for men, after all, in the Cymrian era.
But this tunnel was different. If she was going to traverse it, she would need supplies and light.
She shut the chest and carefully reset the traps, meticulously following the order in which they had been originally laid.
Esten slipped out of the secret door and closed the entrance, when a great shadow appeared at the end of the hallway.
She glanced up, started, to see a giant there, a brutish man seven and a half feet tall, a cache of hilts and weapon handles jutting from a bandolier across his back. His skin was the color of old bruises; his horsehide-brown hair and beard dripped with rivulets of rainwater.
And his broad, tusked face was wreathed in a horrific scowl.
“’Oo are you?” he demanded, his thunderous voice echoing off the basalt hallway. “And what are you doing ’ere?”
Esten’s mind, finely honed from years of nefarious trade and knife’s-edge situations, focused quickly. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled back.
“My name is Theophila, Grunthor,” she said, taking a calculated risk that there could only be one fitting the description the Bolg king had given her. “And I am here because I sleep here now.”
The ferocious anger melted into a look of shock that resolved into mere surprise, dimming finally into embarrassment.
“Oi do beg yer pardon, miss,” the giant Sergeant said sheepishly, running an enormous paw through his dripping hair. “’Is Majesty did mention you to me, o’ course. Oi just didn’t realize you were, er —”
“Knobbing him?” she said playfully, relaxing her stance visibly so as to mask the motion of drawing her blade. “Good. He promised to be discreet.”
Grunthor cleared his throat awkwardly.
“My apologies again,” he mumbled, then, seeing no anger or retribution in her eyes, broke into a wide grin. “‘Is Majesty asked me ta make certain you got everythin’ you need. What say you we go to the mess hall and have some grub? We can get ta know each other better.” He gestured down the feeder tunnel toward the soldiers’ dining hall.
In return he received a glittering smile.
“That would be nice,” she said simply, walking to meet him as he turned away from the hall toward the feeder tunnel. She manipulated the blade into her palm.
Kidney, she decided. Such a large target, and he’s giving me a clean shot at it.
She increased her speed infinitesimally, holding her blade point-down, raising it just as she moved within range to strike, watching the movement of his soft leather jerkin over the vulnerable area of his back.
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she concentrated, aiming her blow between the moving muscles of his back.
Which continued to shift more than she expected as Grunthor swung fully around with the hand-and-a-half sword she had never seen him draw, separating her head cleanly from her shoulders with one beautiful, fluid motion.
Faster than anyone of that bulk should ever have been able to move.
Esten’s dark, bright eyes had just enough time to blink open in shock before her head fell away from her shoulders; her body pitched forward on the ground, shuddering, while the head tumbled end over end, dousing the black walls with spurting blood, to land, spinning, on the floor just past the Bolg king’s door.
The Sergeant-Major crouched down beside the body. He rolled it over onto its back; as he did, the blade fell from her lifeless fingers. Grunthor picked it up and shook his head, clucking in mock disapproval.
“Lesson One,” he intoned in his drill instructor voice, “when you’re in ’and-to-’and combat, always go for distance.” He held up the slender knife beside his sword. “No matter what they tell ya, size does matter.”
He searched the headless body quickly, uncovering several phials and odd coins, and, hidden in the inner pocket of her shirt, the key that had been the rib of an Earthchild. The amusement on his face drained away as he rose and strode down the hall to where the head lay.
He picked it up by the hair and stared into the wide eyes.
“Sorry, miss, but I knew you just weren’t ‘is type,” he said solemnly. “’Is Majesty tends ta favor a woman that can keep ’er ’ead about her in a crisis.” And only one alive at the moment, he thought. The king would never ’ave compromised the Sleeping Child for you, darlin’.
As the head tilted to the side, a pair of thin silver picks fell from the flaccid mouth.
Grunthor winced in mock dismay.
“My, you would have been a real pleasure in sack, wouldn’t ya? Makes my privates shudder ta think about it.”
He jogged back up the hall and dropped the woman’s head onto her belly, then summoned
the guards on duty down the hall.
“Wrap this thing up in a cloak and take it to the armory,” he ordered. “Be careful; she’s a real treasure trove of all sorts of ’idden things, some of which might kill ya. Carry ’er by the cloak. And get a new quartet of guards on duty.”
He waited until the soldiers had removed the body before opening the door to the king’s chambers.
As he did, the floor and walls around him rocked with the reverberations of a violent explosion.
Instinctively Grunthor threw his arms up to shield his head, as debris and sand rained down on him. His head jerked in the direction of the sound, then turned back to the doorway.
Faced with the horrific choice of intervening at the Loritorium or the Cauldron, he pulled open the secret entrance and made his way in haste down into the cavern of the Sleeping Child.
57
It had taken Rhur and Shaene only a few moments, after placing Omet on the floor of the tower chamber, to find the wheel they had tested in the closet where they had stored it. It stood, untouched, wrapped in oilcloth, propped up against the back wall.
It took a bit longer to get it into place. The last time the wheel had been installed Omet had helped carry it, had assisted in its hanging — had, in fact, headed the effort up. Two pairs of hands bearing the large steel-and-crystal artifact were decidedly less well suited for the task than three; still, the two glassmakers persevered, and after a few agonizing moments and several close calls, they finally managed to get the thing into place as it had been when they tested it as a threesome.
Shaene knelt over Omet while Rhur continually watched the wooden dome overhead.
“Omet,” he said gently, his voice filled with uncharacteristic certainty and wisdom, “hold on just a few moments longer. Soon the dome will be removed, and the sun will break out from behind the clouds; the colored glass you helped make will be reflected on the floor. Imagine how proud you will be then.”
Omet was still gray in the face and breathing shallowly, staring at the ceiling.
The two men, both artisans, one Bolg, one human, both friends of the young man dying on the floor, waited anxiously, watching the life slip from him breath by breath.
Finally, amid a great scraping and a thunderous jolt, the men looked up to see the wooden cover being slowly shifted away by a team of artisans outside the tower on the crag above.
The base of the tower, still awash in a messy array of pots, tools, beams of wood, and makeshift workbenches, took on the diffuse glow of early morning; the day had broken, the storm had passed, but it was still a few moments until full sun, when the rising orb cleared the horizon completely.
Shaene continued to whisper words of encouragement, his voice growing tenser and Omet grew paler.
A glimmer, warming to a rosy glow; the two artisans looked up to see the sky above beyond the seven-eighths-complete circle of exquisitely colored glass brighten to a clear, cloudless blue.
As Shaene watched, transfixed, Rhur went to the cooling rack in which one final experimental frit of violet glass rested, waiting to be tested. He searched through the piles on the workbench until he located the violet test plate, while Shaene futilely patted Omet’s face.
As Rhur was heading back to where the young man lay, he heard a deep, ragged intake of breath from Shaene, and looked down.
Stretching across the stolid gray stone floor of the tower was a slice of glorious color, multihued and shimmering; the rich shades of light looked for all the world like pools of melted gems, precious jewels in liquid form, evanescent, gracing the dull gray of Ylorc with a momentary splendor of surpassing beauty.
Shaene stared overhead, gawking; Rhur held the test frit up to the light in front of the plate.
In the depth of the violet proto-glass he could see the runes, symbols he did not recognize.
Grei-ti, violet. The New Beginning.
Shaene lumbered to his feet, gesturing toward the wheel.
“Come on, Rhur! Help me loose it!”
Together the men gave the wheel a push; at first, nothing happened. Then, with another shove, it starting gliding slowly across the metal tracks. As it traveled it slowed; a tonal vibration sounded, a clear, sweet note that caused the wheel to hover slowly in time with it. The vibrant light from the multihued ceiling above them caught in the crystal prismatic refractors, sending spinning flashes of color dancing wildly around the room, resolving as it slowed into a gleaming, pulsing arc of red light which came to rest on the floor where Omet lay.
Lisele-ut, red.
Blood Saver.
Neither man recognized the tone, of course; it was Namer magic, ancient, deep lore from another time, another land. If they had thought about it, they might have realized that the precise notes Gwylliam had left directing the construction of all the pieces of the Lightcatcher, from the exact shades of colored glass to the varying thickness of the metal on the support rails which produced the differing tonal vibrations as it rolled, worked in harmony of light and color to tap the ancient power of vibration, a magic left over from the creation of the world, still extant in every living thing.
But they did not grasp the nuances of what they were witnessing. They only knew that Omet, who a moment before had appeared more dead than alive, now lay in the rosy light that had been caught from the sky above, attuned to a precise color and pitch; he was breathing in time with the music of the tone, as if it had filled him, adjusted his heartbeat, his tides of breath, all the vibration that was his living essence, to itself.
And in doing so it was healing him.
Shaene lost his composure. He bent over the young man, still in the clutches of fear that was now abating to relief, and wept. He felt Rhur squeeze his shoulder from behind and looked up to find the dour-faced Bolg smiling. It was the first time Shaene remembered seeing it happen.
They watched, transfixed, as the slowly moving wheel continued to hum, the tone deepening as it lost speed, the red light waning, warming to a brighter, darker orange.
As the shadow of the healing red light passed from his face, they could see that Omet’s skin was hale again, filled with a natural, healthy color. His eyelids flickered, and his head moved from side to side, as if shaking off sleep.
The men listened, rapt, as the tone changed in time with the movement across the rails. The light on the floor shifted completely then, from the red of the first section of domed ceiling to a full shaft of the next color, orange.
Frith-re.
Firestarter.
Shaene exhaled deeply as the room took on a sudden warmth. He looked up into the glass rainbow arching above him, minus its violet end piece, to the clear sky beyond.
“What a magnificent day this looks to be,” he said to Rhur.
Which were the last words anyone in the room heard before the world exploded.
Once he had found the Earthchild to be sleeping still, resting undisturbed, Grunthor sealed the tunnel and hurried back to the Cauldron, making his way to Gurgus.
He could not get to within three corridors of it.
All around the section of the Cauldron beneath that peak the tunnels had collapsed, turning passageways into impenetrable walls of shale and rubble. Bolg soldiers were scurrying through the surrounding tunnels, evacuating the rooms that had not fallen in upon themselves, carrying out the injured and the dead, coughing violently in the encompassing cloud of dust.
“Criton!” Grunthor whispered, staring at the devastation. “What ’appened?”
No one around him answered.
Desperate now, Grunthor ran to the thick wall of detritus that filled the corridor to the top. He concentrated, reaching deep within himself to touch the elemental bond he had to earth, channeling it out through his hands and into the crumbled rock around him.
Summoning his earth lore, he tunneled into the wall of debris, feeling the shale and rock slip away from him as if it were melting at his touch. He dug in deeper, pushing his body through, making a passageway.
In th
e rubble he could see the wreckage of bodies, though at the outer edges at least there were none. He found two buried in the deeper in, recognizing them as he passed as Rhur and Shaene, both of whom had been crushed beneath tons of broken shale and enormous pieces of basalt, the remains of a large piece of the peak of Gurgus.
“Aw, no,” he muttered upon finding Shaene, who was compressed upright. “Dammit.”
He continued to press forward through the broken fragments of the mountain peak until he broke through, his eyes stinging from the dust, which was also collecting in his throat and nose, to an opening beyond the wall of rubble.
There, on the floor of the tower, in a sparkling rainbow of colored glass shards, Omet lay, his eyes closed, flecked with blood from the rain of glass, but otherwise spared. Grunthor was dumbfounded, judging by the pile of broken bits of glass, that the young man had not been sliced to ribbons.
He crawled carefully over the confetti that was all that remained of the beautiful domed ceiling, past the shattered workman’s tables, and lifted Omet out of the pile of shards, hoisting him over his shoulder.
Omet moaned as his upper body hung down Grunthor’s back.
“Grunthor?” he whispered, his long, straight hair inverted over the floor.
The Sergeant turned and headed back out through the wall of debris.
“What?”
Omet struggled to speak clearly, even though he was being jostled madly, and hanging upside down.
“Theophila — is really — the guildmistress of the — assassins and thieves’ guilds of — Yarim.”
“Oi’m a head of ya on that one,” Grunthor replied, ducking to keep from scraping Omet’s back on the ceiling above him.
The young artisan gestured with his arm.