Rath nodded. His eyes took on a gleam.
“Do not agree too quickly, Rath. Guardianship of any entity below ground is like death for those of our race, accustomed to the buffeting of the wind and the freedom of the open air. It must have been so with our forebears that gave up their connection to the sky to live in the bowels of the world, standing guard over the Vault. I need you to vow that you will protect her with your life and everything you have, forever if necessary, until I return victorious, or at least until you know that the Vault is empty.” He smiled sardonically. “It will probably be an endless commitment.”
“You have my vow.”
Achmed nodded, looking suddenly older.
“When would this commence?” Rath asked.
The Bolg king picked up his pack and his weapons from the ground.
“Now,” he said.
He turned without another word or glance and made his way west down the mountain, through the heavy blue mist and into the light of the brightening day.
* * *
The next task Achmed undertook was the summoning, and the gathering, of the Archons.
It took far longer for them to arrive on the steppes than he had hoped, each of them called by name through the speaking tubes that wound throughout the mountainous realm, an innovative communication system that had been designed and installed initially within the Cauldron by Gwylliam in the first Cymrian era, then extended to the entirety of the mountain range in the thousand years of his own reign. By the time the last one, Zifhram, the Archon of Agriculture, had arrived, the Bolg king was beyond furious, struggling to keep his rage in check, knowing that it was by his own hand that his specialists were slowed.
He was standing at the far edge of the steppes, where the low scrub and short, dry swales transitioned to the open rolling grasslands of the Krevensfield Plain. A beautiful gray stallion waited quietly beside him, saddled and tacked by the king’s own hand, provisioned for a long journey. Across his back he wore a specially fashioned dual bandolier, a sheath that would hold two swords, and a hook at his belt for the cwellan, the strange, curved crossbow-like missile weapon that he had designed himself long before. In one of the sheaths of his bandolier, Tysterisk, the elemental sword of Air, rested.
The other was empty.
Achmed gestured impatiently for the Archons, the first rank of leadership below him, to come closer.
He looked at them, thirty or more generations removed from the original group of children Rhapsody had suggested he garner from each of the tribes that he had vanquished in the taking of the mountain, children who showed particular intelligence or promise in a variety of areas.
Idly he thought back to those original orphans, offered up in relief and disgust by the tribes, who then had discovered to their shock that those unwanted children were received into the king’s favor, trained and educated and given positions of power in his court. He had insisted on maintaining at least a modicum of wildness, a dose of demi-humanity, in the generations of Archons that came later, fearful that if he bred all the monster out of the race that they might devolve even further into a construct he could not stomach—the race of humans.
Normally it was a secret thrill to see them assemble, the fruits of a thousand years of his labor, the masterwork of each member of the Three, their hirsute faces dark, their eyes focused, their expressions calm. Now what was staring back at him was a loosely organized group, more cogent than the wandering hordes of soldiers and everyday Bolg citizens, but not as clear and attentive as they normally were. Still, they had managed to follow the instructions and so now stood at attention amid the brushy clumps of grass.
“By my command, you are to stand down from the war now,” he instructed, trying not to give in to the anger that was brewing behind his eyes at the docile, confused looks on the faces of his elite council. “I leave on the morrow—by the time you have shaken off the effects of the Lightcatcher, I will be far beyond your reach. I don’t know if or when I will return, so the council of Archons shall rule and keep order in my absence. You are the terminus of a thousand years of breeding and training. Continue that tradition, and keep the Bolglands safe.”
The Archons stared blankly at him, then nodded distantly.
Achmed exhaled. There was nothing more he could do.
Either the Bolg will stand in the trenches that Grunthor dug for them, operating in the systems I designed for them, farming the fields, educating the children, and healing the wounded as Rhapsody taught them, or they will return to the roving demi-human monsters they were when we came here a thousand years ago, he mused. The time has come to see what path they choose, but, in any case, it is their path now.
He sighed, letting the air in his lungs take any further sense of responsibility with it into the dusty wind of the steppes.
“Best of luck to you,” he said. “My children.”
He mounted his horse and rode away without even a glance behind him.
32
THE GREAT FOREST
The wind stayed at his back almost the entire way across the continent, rippling the manes of each of the Wings he rode.
When he came to the first of the stables of the elite horses, the one within his own livery at the outer reaches of Ylorc, the Archon of the Wings had the next mount groomed, fed, watered, and ready, in spite of being somewhat logy and disconnected himself.
“Dinn’t know if you’d need him, sir,” the Archon, one of Grunthor’s later-generation progeny, said, almost sleepily.
“Thank you,” Achmed said, taking the gelding from the paddock. He patted the Archon’s shoulder. “Good work. Stay ready.”
“Yezzir.”
He took down his veils when he was alone on the road, allowing the fresh air of the vanishing summer and the scent of hickory in the air to wash over his face. His skin had stung since Rhapsody’s death, burning caustically in the absence of the musical vibration that soothed his hypersensitivity to the thrum and jangle of the world around him. Now the rush of wind was providing a little relief, at least.
He was allowing himself as many pleasures as he could bring himself to partake in, having said goodbye to the satin sheets of his quiet bedchamber and his exquisitely aged reserve port; at the very least he should be able to take advantage of the beautiful horseflesh he had been cultivating for a thousand years.
The other advantage to having the wind at his back was that the smell of the sea took longer to arrive in his nostrils.
Achmed had hated the sea for as long as he could remember. His sensitive surface veins and nerve endings were clogged by the cacophony of its chaotic waves, and his skin-web was easily thrown off by the enormity of the water within it, the element he disliked the most.
It would be the perfect purgatory, the testing ground for his eventual destination that would either prepare him for his journey within the Vault, or kill him outright.
Achmed was not certain which he would prefer.
He rode, thundering along the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, utilizing the secret routes for which his mounts had been bred and trained, for the better part of two weeks, until finally he came to the northwesternmost stable beyond the Great Forest, where he kept his favorite Mondrians, white forest horses that had faultless footing and the smoothest canter in his Wing stable.
Riding one is a little like the experience of drinking an elegant brandy, Jorhan, his trainer four hundred or so years before, had said. Smooth, surprising, but consistent, able to answer your every question and attend to your every need. If only they bred whores like that instead of just horses.
Achmed, who had never indulged in one of those luxuries, had merely smiled.
“I won’t be returning her,” he had told Johran’s many-generations-removed successor. “She’s to be a gift.”
“Aye, Majesty,” the keeper of his Wing stable had said doubtfully; it was hard for a working man to imagine anyone to whom a Mondrian would not be an overly generous present.
The Bolg king had
mounted up and taken an enjoyable ride south down the coast until he came to the harbor of Avonderre, a place he found it easy in which to get lost, in all the best possible ways. He had already made inquires of his grooms about the most reputable of liveries, and sought out the one that each had suggested.
TACK, it was simply called, so noted by its signage.
Achmed had brought the Mondrian with him into the stable, watching to discern its comfort with the place. When she tossed her head and settled quickly, he began to look around for the stablekeeper.
He found her in one of the stalls, mucking it out.
“Are you the owner?” he inquired.
The dark-haired woman turned around and leaned on the paddock rake, assessing the horse.
“I am,” she said. “That’s a fine-looking animal.”
“Your propensity for understatement is unfortunate,” he said lightly.
She glanced back at him.
“I was addressing the horse about you,” she said in return. “She’s a magnificent creature.”
The Bolg king smiled behind his resumed veils.
“Indeed,” he said. “I am looking for a reputable stablemistress or master to present her to Laurelyn, the Invoker of the Filids, at the Tree Palace at the Circle, as a gift. I was assured by every groom and stablekeeper in my employ that this would be the place to find that person, and that her name would be Corinne.”
“Really?” said the woman, smiling broadly. “I can go get her, then.”
Achmed’s smile cramped into an expression of displeasure. “You’re not Corinne?”
“No. I’m the other owner, Corinne’s sister, Sadie.”
“Apologies,” he mumbled.
“No need. Corinne’s up the road a piece—”
“That’s not necessary,” Achmed blurted, “you’ll do.”
The woman laughed. “Well, that’s very kind of you.”
A headache began to buzz behind the Bolg king’s eyes. “Can you deliver this horse to the Invoker?”
“By all means. When?”
“Immediately.”
“Oh,” said Sadie. “Well, no, then.”
Achmed fell silent.
“You’ve obviously ridden her a great distance today,” Sadie said, putting the rake aside and coming out of the paddock. “’Twould be best to rest her, groom her, and pick her out, and take her gently to the Circle, so that she will be in fine shape to curry a little and then present, if she’s going to be a gift. Take three, four days—would that be sufficient?”
“Yes.” Achmed relaxed. “Thank you.”
“Will cost you, though,” Sadie said, reaching up and patting the Mondrian.
Achmed reached for his coinpurse. “How much?”
“Four silver suns.”
The Bolg king pulled forth the coinage and held it out in his gloved hand. Sadie took the coins and put them into the belt at her waist.
“Do you wish to send a missive along with the horse?”
Achmed considered, then shook his head. “Just tell the Invoker that she’s a present from her uncle in the east.”
Sadie nodded. “With love?”
“Excuse me?”
The stablemistress shrugged. “She’s just gotten married. Thought the horse might be a wedding gift. It’s always nice to add a pleasantry with a wedding gift, ’s all. Your choice.”
Achmed pictured Laurelyn in his mind, the blue-eyed image of her mother, and smiled slightly.
“Certainly,” he said, uncharacteristically jovial. “You may do that indeed.”
He patted the Mondrian himself, then turned and left the stable without another word.
AVONDERRE
He took a room at the Sailors’ Rest a few streets east of the harbor, a place he knew would ask no questions, and slept the remainder of the day away, letting the darkness wake him.
Then he wended his way through the streets of Avonderre, back to where Abbat Mythlinis, the elemental basilica of water, towered over the sand of the lagoon on which it stood.
Achmed stood for a few moments, taking in the sight of it in the dark, built from the enormous timbers left over from the shipwrecks of the First Fleet, set up to look like a broken ship on its side, lost in the memory of a previous visit.
It had occurred shortly after he, Grunthor, and Rhapsody had come forth from the Root into the new world, lost and confused about where they were in Time. Rhapsody had been left at the Circle to try to discern what she could there, while he and Grunthor had made a side journey to this place, to Avonderre. They had come in the dark and the rain, with the wind whipping the sea violently that night.
This time only darkness was present; the night wind was blowing off the sea, but otherwise the weather was quiet. Achmed glanced around, then made his way to the doors of the basilica.
They were locked.
He cursed quietly as he rifled his pockets for the thin piece of spun metal similar to the ones he had made use of, a lifetime before, as a lockpick, and carefully manipulated the lock until it sprang.
Haven’t lost the touch, he thought, unduly pleased with himself.
He opened the door of the basilica and slipped inside, closing it behind him.
Abbat Mythlinis looked just as it had the first time he and Grunthor and entered it, down to the salt spray coating the floor near the irregularly rising and falling fountain at the center of the basilica. Achmed skirted the fountain and hurried to the back doors he knew led to the annex.
He stopped long enough to look once more at the copper doors he and Grunthor had beheld a thousand years before, recognizing the symbol of Kirsdarke, the water sword that until recently had been carried by Ashe, and long before that by MacQuieth Monodiere Nagall, the great hero of the Seren War.
They still had the raised symbol of the water sword on each door, one pointed up, the other down, emblazoned on a background relief of a winged lion, the symbol of MacQuieth’s family.
He pulled on the door and found it just as wedged shut as it had been the first time, so he spat on his hands as Grunthor had and finally managed to drag it open wide enough for him to fit through.
Out in the wind again, he hurried across the walkway over the sandbar and the anchor that lay in the sand before the annex on the other side, open on all sides to the sea wind and salt spray.
Inside the open annex was an altar, a solid block of obsidian gleaming in the occasional light of a waxing moon. Attached to its front was a plaque, its inscription reading something about MacQuieth, as Rhapsody had translated once from a coal rubbing he had done of the plaque. Achmed shuddered; this altar stone had once been the centerpiece of the cursed underground temple known as the Spire in the old world.
His name had once been held captive within it.
In his memory he could hear Grunthor’s voice and his own as they first beheld the altar and its plaque.
This looks a little like the written language of Serendair, but only a little. I wish Rhapsody was here.
That’s twice in ten minutes you said that, and Oi’m gonna tell ’er.
She won’t believe you, or she’ll think I wanted to pitch her into the sea.
Embedded in the stone were two metal brace restraints which held Kirsdarke, the elemental sword of water Ashe had carried.
Achmed inhaled, oblivious to the salt spray buffeting his face.
Meridion had obviously been here to deliver the sword, as Rhapsody had commanded, and had then had attempted to pick it up again, and was refused, as he had told the Bolg king.
Achmed closed his eyes and listened to the crashing of the waves beyond the annex.
Then he crouched down in front of the altar, feeling ill at ease.
He put his hand on the plaque, allowing his gloved fingers to trace the runes commemorating the iconic bearer of the water sword, a man he had come across, along with Ashe, in the windswept northern fishing village of Traeg, in the ragged clutches of old age and worn-out immortality. He had traveled in MacQuieth??
?s company, wryly amused to meet someone more cantankerous and irritable than he was, and had witnessed his loss as the ancient hero took the demon clinging to one of his enemies from the old land to the bottom of the sea.
He had heard the hero’s heartbeat, which rang like a great bell, beneath the waves of the ocean, fall silent.
And he had stood vigil, remembering the man who had once, in the old world, been known as the black lion, the King’s Shadow, and who Achmed knew, had he not fled Serendair with Grunthor with Rhapsody in tow, would have come for his blood eventually.
He leaned his forehead against the stone, feeling his resolve weaken.
Where are you? he silently asked the other two of the Three. I can’t do this without you. I can’t do anything without you.
The sea wind blasted through again, filling his ears.
Achmed lifted his head eye-level with the blade of water, whose rippling waves had fallen silent and now appeared to be made of steel into which blue stone scrolling had been inset.
You are comprised of the element I despise, he thought to the sword. You were carried most recently by the man I despised even more. And the place into which I seek to bring you is the last place on the Earth that I desire to go. But I sense that without you, I will fail, and that failure could bring about the end of the world. So please, please come with me.
His head came to rest against the altar again, as his eyes closed once more.
He reached up his hand over the top of the stone and felt around for the hilt of the sword, which after a moment he had in his grip.
Then he stood and lifted the sword from the top of the altar as its braces opened.
Achmed exhaled.
I assume this is a sign that I have no choice about doing this, he thought. Oh joy.
He sighed, checked the bindings on his gear, and then slid Kirsdarke into the second sheath in the back of the bandolier.