There was an expression that he recognized on the dead soldier’s face, one that he had seen many times on that of his best friend. Occasionally over the years he had known Grunthor he had caught a glimpse of longing, for what Achmed had never been certain, but clearly something other than what they were undertaking. It would disappear as fast as it came, as the stoic expression that came from military training returned.
Just as it was doing now on a face that was largely not even there.
Jarmon looked steadily forward, but it seemed to Achmed that his head was inclined slightly, as if listening to something on the underground wind.
“You hear a call?” he asked the skeletal man quietly.
Jarmon nodded slightly. “Aye.”
“Go, then,” Achmed said.
The soldier shook his head.
“Go,” Achmed said, a little more strongly. “Your service is over, to Hector, and to me. You said you would lead me through the Vault, and you have. That Vault is now empty, and we are beyond the door. If you hear a call, follow it. Thank you for your aid.”
Jarmon turned slowly and looked at the Bolg king.
“You are trapped here, you know,” he said sadly. “You passed through the Vault, but not over the threshold of death. I can’t leave you alone here; it wouldn’t be right.”
“Nonetheless, your service is ended,” Achmed said, smiling slightly. “Go. I hope you find peace.”
Jarmon’s sunken, broken eyes fixed on him sadly. Then he lowered his head, resigned.
“Dismissed, soldier,” Achmed said. He gave him an uncomfortable salute.
The animated corpse that was Jarmon chuckled in spite of himself. He put the vial of glowing fluid between his broken teeth, returned the salute with his remaining arm, then turned and walked away into the darkness, where he disappeared, dissolving almost before the Bolg king’s eyes.
Leaving him alone in the emptiness of the bowels of the Earth.
* * *
For a very long time, Achmed stood in the tunnel, lost in memory.
He was ruminating about the time he, Grunthor, and Rhapsody had spent, somewhere in the depths of the world, crawling along the Root of Sagia, known in Serendair as the Oak of Deep Roots, which had grown to gargantuan lengths, wound around the Axis Mundi, the line of power that was the centerline within the Earth.
One night, or rather, the sleeping time they observed in a place of endless night, he had awakened Rhapsody, after assuring himself that Grunthor was deep in slumber, with the same words Meridion had greeted him with the last time they had been in each other’s company.
I have a story for you, he had said to the Lirin Singer, who was struggling to awaken from her nightmarish repose. Its ending isn’t written yet. Do you wish to hear it?
He had taken her hand and led her to a place where the ceiling of the tunnel was toweringly high, and pointed into the darkness.
Over there is a tunnel unlike the others we have followed. There have been many like it, but I doubt you’ve noticed them. The tunnels were not carved by the Tree’s roots, but have been here long before its acorn was ever planted.
His eyes stung, remembering the look on her face in the shadows. He knew from her heartbeat that she was terrified and confused, but she had adopted a solemn, thoughtful expression, and merely nodded, listening.
Deep within that tunnel is a beating heart. You have asked repeatedly how I know where I am going. The answer is that I can sense almost any pulse in my skin. I know that what I am saying frightens you, because even though your outward expression has not changed, your heartbeat has quickened. If you become lost within this place, if you fall down a root shaft or are buried alive by a cave-in, I can find you, because I know the sound of your heart.
Her eyes had glistened in the glowing light of the Root, the only illumination below the ground, but he could see she understood what he was saying.
Achmed winced and closed his own eyes, remembering the panic and desolation of her death, of how in the end he had been able to do nothing to save her, his promises notwithstanding.
Listen to me, he had continued. I’ve been following a pulse. First it was that of the Tree itself, but once we found the Axis Mundi it changed; now I have been following that other heartbeat to this place. Something terrible rests in there, something more powerful and more horrifying than you can imagine, something I dare not even name. What sleeps within that tunnel, deep in the belly of the Earth, must not awake. Not ever. Do you understand me? You once said that you could prolong slumber—
Sometimes, she had cautioned.
Yes, he had continued softly. I understand. This must be one of those times.
He had quietly continued to tell her the tale of the first of the race of dragons, the Progenitor Wyrm whose neck and head he had so recently seen in the Vault, of the theft of one of its original eggs, a wyrm-child that the demons had stolen away and kept, deep in the frozen wastes of the Earth’s interior, growing until its coils had wound around the very heart of the world. It was now, he had explained, an innate part of the Earth itself, its body a large part of its mass.
It sleeps now, he had told her, but soon that demon wishes to summon it, and will visit it upon the land. Rhapsody, I can’t explain its size to you, except to say that Sagia’s trunkroot was a mere piece of twine in comparison to the taproot, yes?
Yes, he could still hear her whisper.
And the taproot was a thread compared to the Axis Mundi. The Axis Mundi is like one of your hairs in comparison to this creature. It has the power to consume the Earth; that was the intent of the thieves who put it here. It awaits the demon’s call, which I know for certain is intended to come soon. I know this, because he planned to use me to help bring this about.
He had to admit a grudging admiration when she had nodded rather than panicking.
You named me Achmed the Snake because it sounded frightening to you, didn’t you? he had asked her.
Yes, she acknowledged. I told you that a long time ago. And I’ve been embarrassed about it ever since.
Perhaps you shouldn’t be. It may have been the only thing that allowed me to find the tunnel. When I was the Brother, I was tied only to the blood of men and women. It may have been the serpent name you gave me that helped me hear this beating heart.
He had led her into the dark, frozen tunnel, where the demons, he had explained to her, had taken the element of Fire with them when they went upworld, to keep the wyrm in hibernation. They wanted it to grow to its greatest possible size before setting it free, he had said.
He had been unable to relay much more information to her, because by this point he was freezing to death from the inside, except for the last fact he shared—that the tunnel wall which towered above them and off into the endless dark was but a scale in the skin of the wyrm.
A sense of warmth rushed through him now, his eyes still closed in memory. He could still see her, sitting down on the ground and taking up her harp, clearing her mind and attuning herself to the diffuse music in the frigid air around them.
She had begun to sing a slumber song, a simple roundelay, while he watched her from within the frozen prison of his body. She was staring at his eyes, having arranged for him to blink once for a normal maintenance of the rhythm he was hearing, or twice should that rhythm change, adding harmonic elements, raising the pitch of the song slightly in the attempt to mask the demon’s call when it eventually came.
After what had seemed like hours, while he stood rigid in frozen pain, she had risen, still playing the harp, and walked back to the entrance of the tunnel.
Samoht, she had said to the instrument. Play on endlessly.
The harp had obeyed, continuing the lullaby, even as her fingers left the strings. Over and over the roundelay played, repeating the same complex melody. Rhapsody had set the instrument carefully on the floor of the tunnel near the entrance, then stepped back. On it played, endlessly.
Samoht.
His memory of what had hap
pened after that was cloudy; he recalled her whispering his name anxiously, pulling at him, unable to bring him to motion or response, after which she had disappeared into the darkness, leaving him alone in the tunnel. After some time and considerably more pain Grunthor had arrived with her and carried him, unable to bend, away, until Rhapsody had taken his hand and given his arm a solid pull, as if to test the strength in his muscles. He recalled bending forward slightly and whispering in her ear.
Look.
When she turned around, she saw, as he and Grunthor had, that the tunnel was slowly filling with slender threads of light, like the gossamer of a spider’s web. Each new repetition of the melody had formed a new strand, attaching itself in a circular pattern to the cavernous walls of the tunnel.
The song is freezing in place, she had murmured.
With each new round the threads grew thicker, the sound of the song louder. Its key was now up three notes from where it had been when she started, different enough, with any luck, she had said later, to jangle the namesong when the demon eventually spoke it. The roundelay, something Singers learned early in their training in order to be able to sing harmony with themselves, continued on, creating more strands of glowing spider-silk.
After a while it’s going to be cacophony, Rhapsody had said as they left the tunnel.
Achmed opened his eyes.
He was wondering whether that cacophony had ever come to pass.
Then he decided, given a lack of other pressing social obligations, he should go and find out what the status of that larger Sleeping Child was now.
“Achmed the Snake,” he said quietly in the depths of the world, renaming himself. He loosed his kirai, his seeking vibration.
Then he concentrated on his own heartbeat, and that of the wyrm he had once sought here.
For a long time he heard nothing but silence.
Then, for a moment, a distant flicker tickled his skin.
The Bolg king locked his heartbeat on it, catching the trail like a bloodhound, and followed it through the maze of twisting tunnels, like a beacon.
Until, at a juncture of a tunnel, he stopped suddenly, astonished to hear a familiar sound—a sound of the wind in the world above.
Ancient and deadly.
43
Achmed froze.
The sound beyond the juncture was a discordant whistling in multiple voices, shrill and whining, an ancient song known at the very core of his being, inherited from his mother’s race.
The Thrall ritual.
It was a rite he had known for millennia, taught to him by his mentor, Father Halphasion, in the early days of his life, when he was leaving behind the nightmare of his father’s race, the Firbolg of Serendair, and being shown that of his Dhracian mother. Later, the Grandmother, the Earthchild’s amelystik, her guardian and caregiver, had polished his technique in the depths of the ancient Colony where they had first found the sleeping entity.
Within your mind, call to each of the four winds, the Grandmother had instructed.
Chant each name, then anchor it to one of your fingers.
Bien, Achmed thought now, holding the waning light of the tube higher, trying to expand its scope of radiance. The north wind, the strongest. Jahne, the south wind, the most enduring. Leuk, the west wind, the wind of justice. Thas—the wind of morning; the wind of death.
“In the name of the four winds, I call to you—come forward!” he shouted in the language of his ancient race.
The whistling noise stopped, leaving nothing but its diminishing echo.
The light wavered.
“Come forward!” Achmed called harshly again.
Slowly, from around the tunnel opening’s sides, shadows appeared, familiar forms swathed in robes of heavy cloth.
Achmed caught his breath.
Dhracians; more than a dozen of them. They hung back, their hands upraised in front of them, in the pose of the Thrall ritual.
“Peace,” he whispered in their ancient tongue. “The Vault is empty.”
The band of Dhracians glanced at one another but said nothing. Finally, one among them spoke in the hissing, fricative voice that Achmed himself shared.
“Ysk?”
Achmed swallowed, trying to contain his contempt.
“A misnomer,” he said, his hand with the glowing tube returning to his side. “How do you know this name?”
The Dhracian who had spoken came forward, his scleraless eyes black and liquid in the dim light.
“If you are Ysk, your coming was foretold long ago, when the Vault was broken open by the falling of the Sleeping Child,” he said in his sandy voice. “We have been waiting since that time—are the Unspoken all dead?”
“So it seems. You are the guardians, then? Those of our race who have been here since the Before-Time, standing watch over the door of the Vault, to keep the F’dor locked away?”
The shadows nodded slightly.
“Why are you not of the Common Mind, Ysk?” the lead Dhracian asked suspiciously.
“I am Uncounted,” Achmed said irritably. “And I am called by another name now. How have you lived down here all this time?”
“We consume the Root—it is our nourishment.” The Dhracian looked at his fellow guardians, lapsing into an awkward silence.
“Your guardianship has come to an end,” Achmed said, signaling behind him. “The door into the Vault is open, as you know, or you would not have beset upon me with the Thrall ritual, assuming the F’dor had broached it. I suggest you make your way back to the upworld through it. You can search the Vault and make certain it is empty, though I would not have come through the door if I believed that any remained alive.”
He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled forth the rib key.
The Dhracian guardians reared back in shock.
“Take this with you,” he said, holding it out to the one who had spoken. “When you get all the way to the top, there are two doors that open, once unlocked, into the depths of the sea.” He smiled slightly. “You will have to swim if you wish to get back to the world of air.”
He could only see the smallest glimpse of their faces, but by their stance and the way the dozen Dhracians glanced at each other, he could unmistakably feel their disgust.
It was a disgust he wholeheartedly shared.
Achmed shook the key impatiently at the leader once more, and the robed man quickly took it from his hand.
“Leave the doors open wide, and let the sea drown that place,” he said, reaching back to his dual bandolier. He drew Kirsdarke from its sheath, then Tysterisk. As the air sword came forth, a breath of wind rose up from the loam of the dirt floor, filling the tunnel with a spinning breeze. He held both of the swords out horizontally, parallel to the ground.
“Take these with you—Kirsdarke, the sword of elemental water, and Tysterisk, that of elemental air. Both will allow you to breathe beneath the waves of the sea until you are able to rise into the wind. I suggest whomever is most displeased at being in the water hold on to that sword; it will help you become accustomed to the sea until you can catch an updraft.
“I have but one last request of you,” he continued, annoyed that the guardians still seemed shocked by his arrival. “Go, upon getting your bearings, to the land of Ylorc on the Middle Continent, known in your time as the Wyrmlands, where the Great White Tree stands at the place where the element of Earth was first known to have appeared in the world. Travel east into the rising sun until you come to fanglike mountains, jagged and beautiful—this is the land of Ylorc, my kingdom.
“Within the depths of Ylorc, the homeland of the Firbolg, whom you are not to harm, as they are my subjects, is the last of the known Earthchildren, a Sleeping Child whom the F’dor have long sought. Standing guard over her is one of the Brethren named Rath. He, unlike me, is of the Common Mind, and a well-respected hunter of the escapees.
“Tell Rath that his guardianship is also now at an end, that the Earthchild may be allowed to sleep, alone and in peace
, in the safe place she occupies, where an amelystik named Laurelyn the Invoker can tend to her from time to time. Ask him to return the swords to the altars at the elemental basilicae where they belong. And then, when you have completed this quest, I suggest you all go back into the wide world and allow the winds to take you wherever they will, at their whim. You deserve the pleasure of the element of our race washing you clean of the dust and the memories of this place.”
The leader stared at him. “You are not coming with us, Ysk—?”
“No,” the Bolg king said, gathering his gear. “I have another Sleeping Child to check on.”
* * *
When the Dhracian guardians were long gone, and Achmed could no longer hear even the slightest whisper of sound coming from the passageway above him, he sat down and listened again for the serpentine pulse in the distance.
Again, he heard no rhythm, but after a seemingly endless wait caught a familiar flicker, followed by silence.
He struggled to make the connection to the faint noise, a single tap echoing very far away, and finally caught the memory of it. When he had last heard it, it was a deafening sound, and regular; he could sense the beast move as it stretched in its slumber, or settle back down into deeper sleep. But then he had been standing at the entrance to a tunnel where the wall was a scale in its skin, all but on top of it. Its heart must be very far away now to be so difficult to hear.
A long journey through the Earth. Again. The Bolg king exhaled, suddenly exhausted.
He looked down at his hands and was dully surprised at how thin and bony they had become. They had always been somewhat so, but now they were almost skeletal, the sensitive nerve endings and veins protruding like mountain ranges with deep canyons between them where his flesh and skin had sunken against the bone.
Idly he ran his fingertips over his face and discovered, to no real surprise, that it had sunken drastically as well. He had eaten the rations he had brought along with him when he remembered to do so, but the drive of his will had been so intense that he rarely did over the course of his journey. The elemental sword of water had kept him hydrated, but it, like the one of wind, was now gone, making their way, in the hands of the Dhracian guardians, back to the upworld and the altars of their elemental temples.