Meridion stared at her, devastation evident in his eyes. “I believe that. I guess I just had a higher expectation of what you are. My fault, apparently.”
He turned away from his heartbroken mother and made his way angrily to the staircase, descending as quickly as he could. He looked up when he made the first circular turn to see Rhapsody standing above him, watching him go.
He looked away and ran the rest of the way down.
* * *
The Lady Cymrian reached the doorway at the bottom of the tower just in time to watch her eldest son pull himself into the saddle of his mount and gallop away without looking back.
She ran after him, but had only made it to the circle of fire ash and devastated grass before he was all but out of sight.
She sank to the ground within the place where starfire had struck the Earth and wrapped her arms around her waist, unable to feel anything.
From the bristling air around her, she heard a voice, ragged and airy.
I will speak to him, Aria.
She did not even look up. “Leave me in peace.”
I love you—God, I love you more than I ever imagined possible.
For a moment there was nothing but the sound of the wind. Then, after a long pause, the voice in the air spoke again, and it sounded tentative, nervous.
Do you still love me, Aria?
Her reply was so soft that only an entity hiding in the wind could hear it. “Always.”
I’m so sorry.
“Leave me in peace,” she repeated. “Please.”
In the lack of an answer, it seemed to her that he had granted her request.
22
The great braziers were pulsing and roaring with angry life amid a host of dark shadows when Rhapsody finally managed to rise from the ground beneath Grivven Post and make her way back toward the Teeth, where Gurgus Peak hovered, the tallest of all the guardian mountains.
All around her, Bolg on foot and on horseback were rushing into formation, dragging wagons and giant ballistae into place, running past, cackling with the glee of rage. She had only walked a hundred paces when a Firbolg guard regiment took up positions around her, armed with barbed spears to keep any itinerant soldiers from crushing or injuring her in the dark, sent by the Bolg king on his way to the Lightcatcher.
She did not notice, lost as she was, her mind numb with grief.
The war toms were in full blast now, shaking the mountains with their violent cadences and echoing north and south through the stone. The noise of pending war was almost as brutal as that of war itself; though the arms and armor were yet to clash, the wood of wagons and the blasts of explosions were almost loud enough to make it seem as if the retribution for Grunthor’s death had already begun.
She was led into the relative quiet of the inner tunnels of Ylorc, to the Cauldron, Achmed’s seat of power, and through the Great Hall, where the ancient thrones of Gwylliam and Anwyn still stood, a horrifying reminder of marital strife leading to centuries of war, to the room beyond it, where the staircase and the funicular to the Lightcatcher stood. She ascended the staircase, still shaking violently, as the guard unit took up a defensive posture at the bottom of the steps.
Even from the hallway atop the staircase, Rhapsody could see that the room in which the instrumentality the Bolg king had called the Lightcatcher was ablaze with torchlight, shadows of patchy darkness pulsing from the enormity of it. Fraax, the Archon of the Lightcatcher, was lurking deep in the recesses of the room.
When she entered the cavernous tower room which housed the Lightcatcher, Achmed did not look up from calibrating the machine, but, sensing her heartbeat upon her arrival, motioned her closer. “Help me with this, will you?”
Rhapsody did not reply.
He turned after a moment, annoyed, to see her hovering near the outer edge of the circle of light in which the central table of the instrumentality stood, beneath the domed ceiling at the top of the mountain peak inset with a perfect circle of stained glass in the exact colors of the light spectrum. An enormous diamond was suspended above the table, glowing with undulating light absorbed from the sun through the interior clear circle in the center of the glass dome.
She was whiter than the diamond, trembling in the rags of what had been her dressing gown.
She was also smeared with the ashes of the circle in which she had called starfire down upon her husband, whose bodily remains were no doubt clinging to her now.
Irritated as he had been when she had not responded, Achmed took a breath and looked at her from behind his veils.
“Are you all right?”
Rhapsody said nothing.
Achmed extended his hand. “Come to me,” he said as gently as he could. “Come. I need your help with this.”
Slowly, the Lady Cymrian came into the circle of light, stepping over the circular track on which a tall metal wheel with a variety of openings in the center rested, waiting to be set into motion. The Bolg king waited until she was within reach, then let his hand encircle her upper arm in the attempt to still the violence of her shuddering.
“Remind me of the lore of the indigo part of the spectrum,” he said, his voice as low and quiet as his nervousness would allow. “I don’t recall the name for the note in the spectrum to which is it attuned—the fifth, is it not?”
“Sixth,” Rhapsody whispered. “Luasa-ela. The note to which I am attuned, my Naming note.”
“And what are the two powers of indigo called?”
Rhapsody swallowed silently.
Achmed’s eyes darkened in annoyance. “This may be the only chance you have to spare Roland from the wrath of my army, Rhapsody,” he said tersely. “In a reasonable world, your delay might be considered the cause for the war not being halted.”
“Night Stayer, the sharp of the note,” she said, her voice harsh and ragged. “Said to keep the night at bay. And Night Caller, or Summoner, the flat of it, said to bring it on.”
“What do you know of its effect?”
“Nothing. It has never been tried before, or, if it has, there is no record of it in the lore.”
Achmed nodded perfunctorily as he turned back to the instrumentality. “Then I would say it is risky to try to produce the sound element with the wheel,” he said, nodding at the enormous metal caster balancing on its side on the circular track. “You are going to have to sing the note.”
Rhapsody sighed dispiritedly. “Achmed—”
The Bolg king glared at her in fury. “Get over here,” he snarled. “The cavalry is set to ride without orders, believing Grunthor is commanding them to attack. The infantry has so many soldiers aligned and ready to march that they would not even see me were I to interpose my body between the army and the continent to the west. I know you are in shock, that you are grieving, but if you cannot rise above that, at least long enough to help me make use of the only tool we have to quell this war, the blood of your Alliance, and perhaps your children and their children, will be on your hands.”
He turned back to the machine, continuing the calibration.
Rhapsody tarried a moment longer, than exhaled and came to his side.
“Where are you directing the beam?” she asked quietly.
Achmed made a circular motion with his hand, his index finger extended.
“The whole of the Bolglands?”
“I see no other choice.”
“Very well. Do you have everything in alignment?”
“I believe so.”
“We will have to use the stored power in the diamond,” she said, “since waiting for daylight, and for the sun to travel almost to the other end of the spectrum, would not be viable.”
“Yes.” Achmed strode to the lever that opened the metal shield that separated the space leading up through the tower from the glass in the dome. “Are you ready?”
Rhapsody struggled for breath. She nodded, her haggard face ghastly pale.
Achmed threw the switch, manipulating the segmented cover until it exposed just th
e indigo slice of the spectrum. A horrific grinding sound echoed in the room below the light tower, raining the dust and grit of disuse down upon them.
“Sivigant,” Rhapsody said, her voice shaking. Activate.
The diamond’s quivering light expanded, gleaming ferociously, until it caught the dark blue light of the indigo glass.
Luasa-ela, Rhapsody sang. Even in her despair, the note was easy to find, the primal sound to which she was innately attuned at her very core.
A beam of rich, dense blue radiance descended from the dome of the tower through the suspended diamond to the calipers on the altar-like table, bathing the maps engraved in the tabletop in deep blue light.
Achmed watched the room beyond the circle of gleaming brilliance intently.
After several moments, it appeared as if the very air of the place was coated in deep blue radiance, thick and dense, heavy with moisture, almost as if it had been dipped into the deepest part of the ocean.
Achmed held up his hand, and Rhapsody let the note cease. He headed out of the tower toward the elevated hallway at the top of the staircase and went to the window, then looked out.
Below him, the bonfires and torches had dimmed dramatically, as if the air of the steppes was wrapped in an encompassing blue fog. The soldiers that moments before were saddling mounts and aligning into marching orders and battle formations seemed either to be stunned, looking around them in shock from the ground or atop their horses, or wandering aimlessly, confused.
A chill had settled on the mountain, cooling the flames of the torchlight inside the Cauldron and the Lightcatcher itself. Achmed took in a breath to find it heavy and cold in his lungs.
The cavern of the Lightcatcher was the only part of the mountains to be spared from the effects of its indigo light.
He turned back to the instrumentality to see Rhapsody on her knees on the floor again, her head in her hands, with Fraax in the distance, appearing confused.
“Fraax?”
“Hmmmmm?” The Archon blinked. “Majesty?”
“Step into the hallway—I’m going to bar and lock the door. If you are able, keep away anyone who comes except for me and the Lady Cymrian. Do you understand?”
The Archon cocked his head and looked at him strangely. Then he wandered in the direction of the hallway, taking his time, looking around at the high ceilings above him, until he stood outside the doorway.
“Well, I suppose this is what we asked for,” the Bolg king grumbled. He strode to the table where Rhapsody sat and took her hand, dragging her gently to her feet.
“Let’s go,” he said brusquely.
23
Achmed led her out of Gurgus Peak and back to the Cauldron in silence.
They traveled to the Inner Reaches, the place where the canyon separated the guardian mountains from the Blasted Heath and the Deep Kingdom beyond, dodging wandering Bolg that seemed to have been slowed to half or less of their reasoning, the anger that had rallied them to prepare for war doused, as with the coming on of night. The Bolg king and the Lady Cymrian returned numbly to the same tunnel where they had come to mourn earlier that day and sat in silence for longer than it felt comfortable. Finally Achmed ventured a joke.
“I just realized you burned Ashe,” he said. “Ashe—burn; ironic.”
Rhapsody’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m glad this is funny to you.”
“It is absolutely not. I know this was difficult.”
“Difficult?” Rhapsody’s face, pale with sorrow and exhaustion, flushed red with rage, and she began to shake. “You’re joking—difficult? Are you trying to torture me more, to punish me now for the heinous actions of men who used my husband’s thoughtless annoyance at Grunthor’s destructive boredom as an excuse to commit unconscionable evil?” Her voice began to rise in hysteria. “Do you blame me for his death as well? Do you?”
Achmed seized her shoulders and held her still.
“Of course not,” he said quietly.
“Well, you’re more than welcome to—I blame myself, you may as well blame me, too. If you do, by all means, please throw me into the chasm now,” she said, still trembling. “You will be doing me a tremendous favor.”
“Stop, stop, now. You’re in shock. Here, sit down.”
“Shock?” she said dully as he lowered her to the floor against the wall, then sat down in front of her. “Why would I be in shock? I’ve called starfire down upon my husband, blasting him into cinders. I’ve lost my son.” All sound of life had fled her voice. “Maybe all my children.”
Achmed exhaled slowly. “I doubt that.”
“Meridion told me I was dead to him.”
“He didn’t mean it.”
“He’s a Namer, Achmed,” Rhapsody said. She stared down at her trembling hands. “You have known one long enough to understand what their statements mean to them.”
“Even a Namer is entitled to a few un-thought-out words of rage after witnessing what he did,” the Bolg king said quietly. “Give him time. His status as the Child of it may mean that he can undergo a lifetime of healing in what would be a relatively short span of it for the rest of us.”
She thought about her husband’s ragged voice in the ether, and the need to confess bubbled up inside her, tickling her Namer’s sensibility.
“You may not believe me, but I gave Ashe what he wanted,” she said.
Achmed turned his mismatched gaze on her. “You may not believe me, but Ashe gave Grunthor what he wanted as well.”
Rhapsody looked at him blankly.
“Grunthor has been tired for a very long time, Rhapsody,” Achmed said. “A very long time. He never completely recovered from the injuries he sustained in the War of the Known World, in his battle with the titan. I have pondered on it for centuries, why he never came back to whole, to the point to which you and I have always recovered. I think there was something about the injuries that Grunthor, as a child of Earth, took at the hands of another child of elemental earth, and a demonic one, that never really healed completely.
“While we have all survived a thousand years, Grunthor aged in ways you and I have not yet. He had been bored with peace and exhausted with the routine of training men and women for battle that never came. Probably he inherited it from his mother’s Bengard blood, the call of the arena that craved glorious death in youth over a decrepit old age. While I blame your husband for whatever foolish thing he said, I have never known him to intentionally wish Grunthor harm. And I certainly don’t blame you for any of it. If there is an Afterlife beyond the Gate, I would like to believe Grunthor is at peace, at least.”
He looked around, then back at her, then stood.
“I need alcohol,” he said. “I think you do, too. Can I trust you to remain here and not throw yourself into the chasm while I’m gone?”
“I can honestly promise you nothing at this moment, Achmed.”
“Then I will forgo the alcohol and stay with you. I am unwilling to risk it—when a Namer talks of suicide, it’s a terrifying thing.”
Rhapsody looked up at him. His face, normally shielded with veils, was uncovered, revealing dark circles under his already hollow eyes, the veins and nerve endings on his face even more pronounced.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I’m being a brat. Go get us some wine. I will not do anything intentionally stupid.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He returned a few moments later, having raided the same vintner’s closet they had obtained bottles of wine from when first holding vigil for Grunthor. He gave a new one to her, then sat back down across from her and took a long drink from a bottle of brandy.
“It’s strange, this state of called night,” he said, wiping his mouth. “I don’t like the way it feels—the air is dead, thick with silence. The Bolg seem like they are in shock as well, waiting, confused. I hope they are able to recover from it.”
“I imagine they will. The power of the Lightcatcher is not perpetual; it has to be renewed either by exposure to sun
light, which will not happen as long as the artificial night from the indigo spectrum is in place, or until the memory of light that has been stored in the diamond runs out.”
“That could be a thousand years.”
“Or a thousand days. It may take that long for the rage to cool, for the Bolg to forget.”
“They will never forget,” Achmed said. “But they will lose the ability to remain primed for war. On balance, it was the only thing to do.”
“Agreed.”
“I regret that you were not outside the Lightcatcher, within Ylorc with the rest of them, when we called the night.”
Rhapsody paused in the midst of drinking from the bottle. “Why?”
“Perhaps it would have allowed you the same dull cooling of your pain. Perhaps by the time the morning finally comes, however long that takes, you would have finished grieving and be ready to live again. Instead, I suspect time will pass normally for us, and you will suffer at full strength for however long you choose to grieve.”
She looked down the dark tunnel behind them, lighted dimly by the pale remains of the stalk joints that the tunnel crew of Bolg had set on their last rotation through the corridors before the summoning of night. The torches glowed feebly, their fuel all but spent.
None of the routine movement of the inner mountain caught her eye, not even the skittering of rats she could hear in the distance or the flapping of tapestries in the wind off the canyon.
The voice within her called softly, thick in the intransient air.
Mimen. I am still waiting. Mimen, please.
Rhapsody choked on the bile that had risen in the back of her throat.
“I wish I could have had one last night with him,” she said dully. “Or even one final loveless knob in a darkened alley. Anything that would have given me his seed, as long as he had been willing to attach a piece of his soul to it.” She sighed dispiritedly. “It was the only thing he ever really refused me.”
Achmed closed his eyes as his forehead and nose wrinkled, his upper lip curling in disgust.
“What an utterly repulsive image,” he muttered, “though I have no doubt that Ashe’s rotten soul would make an appropriate companion to semen expressed in a back-alley fuck. Please spare me any further musings of that ilk. Neither my stomach nor my mind can take it tonight.”