Rhapsody stared at him for a long moment, then closed her eyes and sighed deeply.
“I appreciate that you are trying to comfort me,” she said slowly, “and there is no one other than you with whom I can mourn Grunthor, so I am very glad to have had you to get drunk with and to listen to me lament the other things in my life that I’m grieving. But I’ve told you, all sad joking aside about fucking on the floor or cocks in the streets, that I don’t want to conceive a child without the presence of love.”
“I am aware. My offer still stands.”
“You don’t love me in that way.”
Achmed snorted wryly.
“What would you know of my love for you? You have never correctly understood anything about me, not from the moment we met in the back alleys of Easton in Serendair two and a half millennia ago. You recall my first words to you—‘come with us if you want to live’—you believed for years that meant Grunthor and I were seeking to help you, to rescue you from the Waste of Breath.”
Rhapsody’s eyes flashed, then kindled to a deep emerald.
“You disabused me of that notion long ago, Achmed. I remember, believe me—you were really telling me that you would kill me if I didn’t come with you. I may be stupid, but I am not forgetful.”
“What I haven’t explained to the other side of my coin is the other side of that coin.”
Rhapsody’s head was spinning sickly. “I beg you, spare me the riddles. I don’t have the heart for them.”
Across the hall from her, Achmed gestured in frustration.
“Your accursed husband is not the only man in the world who has loved you. Now that he is gone, and Grunthor is gone, you still are not without love.”
She fell intensely quiet. “What are you saying to me?”
Achmed sighed. “I have told you for a thousand years that I would always be right behind you, that there is no limit on what I would do for you. What else do you need to hear from me? If this—this child is something you need, ask it of me, and I will grant it if I can.”
“Why?”
He looked up at the tunnel ceiling, then back at her. “Because I want you to be happy, or at least not tormented for the rest of your life by a child’s voice you will never hear in the wind of the world. Because you are one of the few things, between two worlds and over the course of a very long lifetime, that has ever mattered to me. Because, whether you believe it or not, I do love you. In that way. And have for as long as I can remember. In fact, even though I know there was one, I can’t recall a time when I didn’t.”
Silence again filled the tunnel.
When Rhapsody finally spoke, Achmed could barely hear her.
“I am so sorry. I never realized this.”
“Of course you didn’t. Because I never said the words to you, or told you in a way you would understand.”
“Why?”
Achmed looked out into the night, to the Blasted Heath, where the torchfires had all burned out.
“Because every time you kissed me, as you have on a very few occasions, every one of which I remember, over the endless years of our lives, Ashe was always there to snatch you away again. Or it was moments before a battle neither of us expected to survive, or after living through said battle. Or because your intention was unmistakably platonic. Or you were comforting me or thanking me as you would any friend. Because you have told me you love me more times than I can count or remember, but you never meant it in ‘that way.’”
He let all the breath out of his lungs, and when he took air in again, he used all of it.
“Because I thought I would only ever have you to myself in death.”
Tears began to run down Rhapsody’s cheeks, but she said nothing.
“You said once that you thought we build our own paradises in the Afterlife, that it didn’t necessarily require that the rest of the world cooperate. I have built a tiny, pathetic paradise with you here, in this life, one-sided, odd, imperfect, certainly, but it has always been almost enough, Rhapsody. You allowed me to be your friend, which in and of itself is a rare gift, given that I began as your hated kidnapper. You told me that you were the other side of my coin, and that, because we were a coin together, we had worth—so I did. You adopted me as your brother, as your children’s uncle, their guardian. I told you long ago that Jo and Grunthor and I were your family now—the one you have allowed me to be part of is of great value to me, even if I had to endure Ashe being part of it as well. So if you hear one more child that needs you, and if you need me to help that come to pass, please let me.”
“I—a small part of me feels as if I am betraying him,” she said. “But the larger part is so fixated—so desperate to make this—this pleading I hear inside me stop—it’s killing me, Achmed, killing me.”
“Don’t talk to me of Ashe and betrayal,” Achmed said bitterly. “While I know his part in Grunthor’s death was unintentional, that does not absolve him of it utterly.”
“I have finally come to realize something I could not understand before.” She looked down at her clenched hands. “Every time I told Ashe that I could hear the tone of one of our children, waiting in the ether to come into this world through us, he was always surpassingly happy—his face would shine like the sun. Except for this last time. He seemed exhausted when I told him, and put the subject off—”
She paused, the words heavy to utter.
“Almost as if he knew that he wasn’t meant to be this child’s father.”
“Perhaps he did.”
Rhapsody raised her eyes slowly to meet his disturbing gaze.
“I know this may seem stupid, but—do—do you feel anything?” she whispered. “Is there anything inside you that—I don’t know how it would feel for a man, or for someone other than a Namer, because for me it is overwhelming, insistent; I feel it in my mind, behind my eyes, in my heart, in my womb—but, can you feel even the slightest thing, the smallest sense that—you—that you might want—?”
“No,” Achmed said quietly. “There is not the slightest or smallest sense that I might want this myself,” he said, wincing as tears formed again at the edges of her eyes, which in his memory had never been so dark or so compelling. “My sarcastic nature has made it seem like I am doing you a favor, silencing the tone in your mind for your sake. It’s a lie, and unfair, not to tell you the truth. Here it is—there is an enormity to that sense, Rhapsody; it’s something I desire deeply, and have for as long as I can remember.”
He could barely hear her now. “You want to be this child’s father? Actually want to be, not are willing to be, but—”
“I have told you, yes.”
The tears spilled over.
Rhapsody put her palms to her eyes and rubbed them with the heels of her hands.
She took her hands down and opened her eyes again, looking at Achmed with new ones, and smiled sadly.
“I am so tired,” she said softly. “So tired.”
“I’ve offered you my bedchamber. You may have it to yourself.”
“Well,” Rhapsody said slowly, “that would probably be best for you, because, as you know, I am often beset by terrible dreams, which will undoubtedly come back now that the dragon who used to guard me from them is gone. They can be quite disturbing.” She inhaled as Achmed nodded and stood.
“But,” she continued as she followed him to a stand, “if you need to sleep as much as I do, and we are the only two people in this mountain that are not sleepwalking, I imagine it would be good to have someone who I’ve just discovered loves me in ways I didn’t know share that bedchamber, just to be safe. I am very confused and broken, Achmed, and I don’t want to do anything that would make this a day that is even worse than it already has been. So, if you are ready for sleep, I will go with you. Please stay with me.”
The Bolg king nodded.
“However,” Rhapsody said drowsily, “if you are looking to fuck on the floor—”
“Not tonight,” Achmed said, smiling slightly. “Come with me.”
He reached out his hand, absent the thin glove, naked and vulnerable, and she took it.
Then he led her past wandering Bolg and sleeping rats to a place where she would be safe.
25
ACHMED’S BEDCHAMBER, YLORC
The night in the dark, stolid room had been quiet and calm for the most part.
Rhapsody had fallen asleep in her dressing gown amid the black satin sheets, exhausted beyond the point of being able to even say good night. Achmed had been perplexed about what to do, and had remained sitting on the edge of the bed for almost a quarter hour before she rolled over and opened her eyes halfway.
“Are you coming to bed?” she murmured sleepily.
“I had thought so,” he replied. “But then I wasn’t sure.”
Rhapsody opened her eyes all the way, blurry.
“You and I slept beside one another for almost fifteen hundred years,” she said. “We crawled along the Root, endured camping conditions once we got out—even though Grunthor, not you, was my mattress.”
“I don’t want to do anything that would make you even in any small way more sad than you already are, Rhapsody.”
Rhapsody blinked. “Thank you,” she said, genuinely touched. “I know you understand how deeply I am mourning. And how much I still love my husband.”
Achmed sighed but said nothing.
Rhapsody put out her arms to him.
“Please come and hold me,” she said softly. “There is nothing I need more tonight than that.”
The Bolg king exhaled, then complied.
For much of the rest of the night he remained awake, listening to the tides of her breath as she slept on his chest, whispering sibilant sounds of comfort to her when her dreams were torturing her.
In the process, he was also absorbing the song that emanated from her that had always soothed the sting of life that irritated his sensitive nerves. It was a song that he had listened to, as she had said, every night for a millennium and a half, and she had no idea how deeply he resented her taking it from him when she had married Ashe and left the mountain.
So while he still was in the throes of agony at the loss of Grunthor, and was irritated and distraught about the buildup to a war that seemed would not happen now, at least he had the secret pleasure of feeling the music that came out of Rhapsody when she was breathing.
Especially when she was curled in his arms when doing so.
* * *
When he woke the following morning, she was watching him intently. She smiled slightly, and it was, for a moment, as if the sun itself had penetrated the dark stone and the black satin of his intentionally dark bedchamber.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning, I suppose.”
“Do you still wish to do this?” she asked nervously. “I realize that yesterday was odd and terrible and confusing, and I don’t want to ask you to do something that you are not comfortable about. I don’t want you to regret your decision.”
Achmed shrugged. “I told you I was willing last night. I am still willing today. I would say that makes it your decision.”
“I—I do still want to,” Rhapsody said nervously. “But the process by which I would like to undertake this is a magical summoning, not—not—”
“Not the tunnel floor among the wandering Bolg and the rats?”
“No, not that.” She watched for his reaction, but he merely shrugged.
“So what would I have to do?”
She exhaled, relieved. “I would need to have a birthing cloth; there is one that would do, with an appropriate blessing, in the linen closet. We need to put ourselves in the proper frame of mind, open, accepting, welcoming. I will sing the invocation—you don’t have to do anything there. Oh—and you have to rest your hand on my heart, if that is all right with you.”
Achmed nodded again.
“Then,” Rhapsody said, even more nervously, “if you want to, I think you should kiss me. It’s not part of the actual ritual, but there’s no reason we can’t.” Her eyes grew soft, with the glimmer of tears. “And this time, if that happens, I promise you I will be kissing you with no one waiting to sweep me away, no battle we don’t expect to survive, no comfort of a friend in mind, even though we are and always will be friends. If you kiss me this day, you will be kissing the mother of your child.”
Achmed’s gaze deepened, and he nodded.
Her smile faded slightly as her stomach turned in the throes of what felt like betrayal.
“There is something I need to tell you about Ashe,” she said hesitantly.
Achmed held up a single finger and brought it to rest on her lips.
“I’m going to make a selfish request of you,” he said, looking pointedly into her eyes. “This is a day, to be followed by a night, that may be the only one I have had that wasn’t utterly terrible since I heard your voice on the wind, screaming my name from the Krevensfield Plain. Therefore, I beg you, please don’t mention his name again before the sun comes up tomorrow, Rhapsody. Whatever you have to say about him, let it wait for the morning. Or for a fortnight. Or, even better, for a lifetime.
“A short time ago I was preparing to rend this continent, to commit mass murder to avenge Grunthor and take your miserable husband down. And now, I find myself free of him, by your hand, without having to have innocent blood on my hands, ready to do something that is not in my nature—open my soul and help you silence the insistent call in your mind—and father your child. This could very well be the best day and night I have ever had—though, if we had done it the other way, sharing it with the rats and such, it might have been even better—as long as I do not have to share it for even one moment with the thought of that loathsome man. He was privileged to do this with you six times, and while I’m willing for it to be a multiple experience in the future, as long as the first one works out, the only one I’m guaranteed is tonight. So, I beg you—expunge his name from your lips from this moment until tomorrow at least. I don’t want to taste him on them if you’re going to let me kiss you. I’ve never done that before, you know—you have only ever kissed me.”
She smiled. “Then give me a few moments in the privy—I don’t have to change clothes, since these are all I have. But I would like to wash my face and brush my hair for the child’s arrival.”
She rose from the bed and started for the door, then turned around and smiled at him, the first real smile he had seen since she had left him at the border of Tyrian, before the world had gone to smash.
“Thank you for doing this, Achmed,” she said softly. “I will never be able to thank you enough.”
He waited until she closed the door behind her.
“That’s what I would have said to you.”
THE TUNNEL OVERLOOKING THE HEATH
They met a few moments later in the place they had been the night before, the tunnel opening over the chasm that separated the Cauldron and guardian mountains from the Blasted Heath.
The sun had still not yet risen, but the sky had begun to lighten, shedding rays of pink and gold across soft strands of clouds that looked like spun sugar.
There was an unmistakable sense of magic in that place, the place where they had mourned so many times, none worse than that which had occurred the previous night. But on the wind of morning, a feeling of good news blew in, bathing the opening of the cave tunnel with rosy light and fresh air.
Rhapsody knelt on the floor just inside the opening, the morning breeze playing with her golden tresses, hanging loose around her dressing gown. She hung the birthing cloth over her arm.
“Are you certain you still wish to do this?” she asked him.
“Yes. Please don’t ask me again.”
“All right.” She swallowed, looking at him intently, solemnly, then slowly pulled the outer bodice of her dressing gown open, her eyes never leaving his.
“I have no breasts to speak of, as you know,” she said. “But there is no need to hide what I do have from you.”
 
; The Bolg king locked eyes with her, their mismatched color and placement in his face as direct a connection as it was possible for any to have.
Rhapsody slid the top of her dressing gown over her shoulders, laying her upper body bare.
She glanced down at her heart, silently indicating where he needed to touch her.
His eyes followed hers.
“Then I will never speak of them,” he said, a hint of awe in his voice. “There aren’t words worthy to do so.”
Rhapsody smiled. “Give me your hand,” she said.
Trembling, he obeyed.
She took his hand in hers and drew it to her lips, then kissed it gently, allowing her lips to linger on the distended veins, the traces of nerve endings.
“Are you certain you want to do this?” she asked quietly. “To make and share this child with me? I’m not questioning you, it’s part of the ritual for me to ask you.”
Achmed could not speak coherently, so he merely nodded.
“You have to say it,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back.
Rhapsody drew his hand closer and placed it on her chest between her breasts, directly over her heart.
“Then close your eyes, and together we will put ourselves in a state of willingness, of creation, of the desire to bring forth a soul into the world through the offering of a piece of each of our own.”
The Bolg king obliged as much as he could.
After a moment, he heard Rhapsody begin to sing. With his eyes closed it seemed to him that she was singing a purple melody, much like the color of the sky at the end of a brilliant sunset or just before dawn, and the sound made his sensitive skin hum with a comforting buzz.
Then the song went indigo, rich, dark, and encompassing blue that weighed heavily but coolly on his eyes like the thick light with which the instrumentality in Gurgus Peak had painted the Bolglands, simmering the hot rage to something baffling and slow. It was a calm sound, like a lullaby to a fussy baby or a sensible solution to preempt a duel.
He listened to the Namer’s incantation change colors across the whole spectrum of the rainbow, evoking each of the powers of the lore of light. I wonder what sort of magic it might impart to the child, he thought from behind his closed eyes.