“You sought to replace my dynastic line with your own,” the dragon whispered.
“No,” the Lady Cymrian’s distant voice said again. “Of all the things you have said, about this you are the most wrong. I extended your dynastic line.” Anwyn’s gaze grew momentarily sharper and brighter. “I married your grandson. I gave birth to his child. Your line and mine are now one and the same.”
“Lies,” the dragon hissed.
“You know otherwise,” Rhapsody said. “I do not lie; you know this.”
A fluttering of tattered eyelids sent blue shadows around the darkness of the broken baths.
“I have seen no such child. If it existed, I would have been aware of it, would have seen it in the Past.”
“He was born at the turn of the year, in the cave of the Lost Sea, from which your eyes have been banished. He was delivered by your own mother. You almost killed him when you attacked me in Gwynwood—and as a result, you destroyed Llauron, your own son, the member of your family whose allegiance to you was the greatest. Your son gave his life in his grandson’s protection. And you would have done so again; he was with me when you attacked a fortnight ago. I have shielded my child from your eyes, for his safety. He has his own ways of doing so as well; he is not bound to your dominion of the Past. It has no power over him.”
Silence echoed throughout what remained of Kurimah Milani. After a long moment, a draconic whisper echoed fragilely through the vault.
“The Child of Time.”
Rhapsody remained still in the silence of the broken cave.
After a long moment, the dragon exhaled, spitting drops of black blood from the depths of her torn lungs as she did.
“Now I see,” she said, more to herself than to Rhapsody. “Small wonder he is hidden from my sight; his conception, his beginning, predates my own.”
“Your mind is fading,” Rhapsody said. “That’s certainly untrue. His conception took place but last spring. You are forgetful—it seems death approaches. You might want to prepare your last words, and whatever passes for a soul in you, if there is one.”
The dragon’s broken maw twisted in a hideous grin. In it was the shadow of triumph.
“Ah, m’lady, it is you that forgets,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You consigned me to only the memories of what had gone before me—and yet I know of the Child of Time, and of the prophecy.” Her grin became even more sinister. “How do you suppose that came to pass, if those things are not from long ago?”
“I’ve no idea. And I don’t care.”
“Oh, but you should,” Anwyn murmured, an evil amusement in her voice. “I know something you will want to know. Something of the Forgotten Past, as you named me—something that, when I have gone, no other eye will see again. Something that is vastly important about the Child of Time.”
The Lady Cymrian said nothing. The dragon’s words reverberated in the empty cavern.
And they rang with the tone of truth.
When silence had hung heavily in the subterranean air, the dragon’s parley unanswered, the beast spoke again.
“You have named me the Empty Past, the Forgotten Past. You do not even know the irony of this. Because of what you chose to call me, there is but one place in Time that I can see clearly now.” The dragon’s voice grew stronger, even as her scales began to pale beneath the coating of creosote. “It is an imperfection in the Weaver’s Tapestry, a place where history, Time itself, was altered—and it changed the course of your life specifically. I alone know this—when I die, this lore will die with me.” She smiled weakly; the dimming eyes grew brighter for a moment. “But I will tell you this lore—for a price.”
There was no reply.
“Surely you, a Namer, especially the Namer for whom the world was altered, crave to know what no longer exists in Time,” the dragon said. Hearing nothing, she stretched, feeling the scorched skin beneath her shattered hide of scales tear as she did, barely noticing the pain.
Knowing she had a bartering chip.
“What do you mean, ‘for whom the world was altered’?”
The dragon smirked.
“Ah, that got your attention. Yes, m’lady, insignificant as you are, apparently something happened to change the course of your life, as well as the rest of the world, and not by coincidence. You should be grateful to know that lore, as the original Past, the Past that was changed, erased, held a much grimmer road for you. For your child’s father as well.”
For a long moment, the dripping of water was again the only sound in the ancient bath.
“I am listening.”
The beast chuckled weakly.
“As I said, for a price.”
“What is the price?”
Anwyn’s eyes gleamed with a new light.
“Something as significant to me as this unknown lore will be to you. Something I do not wish to die without knowing.”
“What is the price? I tire of this game.”
“I want to know of Gwylliam’s end,” Anwyn whispered. “I, the victor in the Great—War, was cast out of my own domain, refused reentry to my own lands. I did not see my hated husband’s corpse, did not hear his last words, do not have the story of his death behind my eyes as the life flees my body. You—the Three—took possession of—Canrif, raped the mountain where I once ruled, supplanting the remnants of the great Cymrian civilization by turning it into a midden for monsters. But I believe you know what happened to Gwylliam. Is that true?”
Silence reigned once more.
“Well?” the dragon demanded. “Do you know or do you not?”
“I do,” Rhapsody said. Her words echoed in the cavern.
“Tell me, then,” Anwyn whispered. “And I will tell you what only my eyes have seen.”
“You first.”
The beast, her mind fading until the possibility of what she wanted to know had come within her grasp, considered. Her awareness had come roaring back with the nearness of the lore she had craved for centuries, along with the knowledge that the Namer would not deny it to her if she gave her word.
“Do we have a bargain?”
“If I am satisfied with what you say,” Rhapsody said. “I will not promise to tell you something as sacred as a king’s last words if I determine you to be lying, or if what you tell me is insignificant.”
Anwyn felt her life ebbing.
“I—can only tell you what I see,” she said, her failing voice harsh. “I do not fully understand it.”
“Tell me, or prepare to speak your own last words. You are wasting my time; I am needed in battle.”
“Time in the Past sometimes manifests itself as a thread of a sort, the—same thread that is woven into the tapestry of history by the—Weaver,” the dragon said with great effort. “For a reason I know not, there is a place in that tapestry where an imperfection, an alteration can be seen.”
“I know this already. What does this have to do with me?”
The dragon struggled to speak.
“I saw that flaw when my—grandson came to me as a youth and begged me to—look into the Past to find someone. He said he had been—thrown back in Time, for less than the span of a day, to Serendair, a millennia and a half at least before his birth, and had met a girl in Merryfield—at a foreharvest dance.”
She smiled triumphantly at the intake of breath she could hear, even in the heavy silence of the cavern.
“At his insistence, I looked through my—father’s spyglass to the place in Time he asked about. I witnessed your meeting, your repulsive rutting in a pasture—”
“Peace,” the Namer commanded. “Speak not of this; I do not wish to hear the words from your mouth—or rather, from the air you manipulate. It does not surprise me that you do not recognize the birth of love; you will never understand what you are void of.”
“True,” the wyrm admitted. “But I recognize the beginning of life—your child was conceived that night, m’lady; at least his soul was.”
“Nonsense.”
&
nbsp; The dragon’s maw twisted into a grim smile.
“On the night when you and my grandson met in the old world, after you let him tumble you in a field a few moments after you met, do you recall a sensation that caused you to stop walking, to need to sit for a moment—you, who could summit a hill in a dead run without breathing hard?” The beast chuckled at the silence that followed her words. “You were feeling the conception of the soul of the Child of Time. While it’s true that he may not have been incorporated in flesh until recently, his soul began that night—with that meeting. You carried that soul across two worlds—why else do you think you have seen the Future, a power none but my sister Manwyn should have had?”
“I don’t believe you,” Rhapsody said. “You may have witnessed our meeting, but you could not have seen a soul being created. But, regardless, it matters not.”
“In a way, you are right,” the dragon said, grinning even as her scales began to pale again. “What matters is that it should never have been able to happen—because, on the thread of Time as it had originally occurred, you were not a child of teenaged years when you conceived him, but an aged hag, in Tyrian, not Serendair. And Gwydion was a madman, broken by life and his battle with the demon.”
“What are you babbling about? What do you mean, ‘as it had originally occurred’?”
The dragon grinned wider with delight. “I have told you, history was altered for you. Though I do not know by what hand it occurred, Time’s threads were cut and replaced, so that your child’s conception and birth was changed. In the first occurrence of Time, that conception and birth was unnatural—and led to your rather gruesome death immediately thereafter, as was prophesied. You fared much better in the second iteration of Time, sadly for me. You are, after all, still here. So, no matter what the cost was to the rest of the world, your life was saved—and improved—by the manipulation of Time. Disgusting and outrageous and reeking of hubris, but true nonetheless.”
“How? And why?”
The dragon wheezed; the breath escaping her nostrils was staggered and shot with blood.
“I’ve already told you that I do not know this,” she said weakly. “I can only tell you that the Tapestry was altered, a thread removed that affected all of the rest of history. You have seen evidence of this yourself with your own eyes, but you were not able to make sense of it. The Nain king entrusted the only record of it to you.”
Utter silence took up residence again within the cave.
“I only know one last piece of lore, something heard and not seen as the time-thread of the—original Past melted into oblivion. A name that connected—you to another in your life, earlier than you came to know him or her in the second iteration of Time. The name of—someone you both cared for, and whose death brought you together. That name is Werinatha.”
“I know no such name.”
“Of course you—do not,” said the dragon impatiently. “It is from the Forgotten Past, which no—eye shall ever see again. But I have been able to regale you with stories in your own memory, a Past you yourself have forgotten until this moment. Now, I have—upheld my end of our—bargain,” Anwyn said with great effort. “Your turn—tell me what I—crave to know. Did you find Gwylliam’s body within the mountain?”
“Yes,” Rhapsody said. “Sprawled on his back on a table in the library.”
“Tell me what you were able—to divine about his ending.”
“I don’t know how he died, though I assume it was how you arranged it with the demon. I saw a vision of his last moments, through his eyes. He called repeatedly for the horn, to Anborn and someone named Bareth. He called to you, to his ‘good people,’ begging to be brought the Great Seal, and water.”
“And did you hear his last words?” the beast demanded.
“I did.” The Lady Cymrian’s voice spoke softly, respectfully in the darkness.
“Tell me,” Anwyn whispered.
An exhalation of breath echoed through the cave.
“I will speak them to you, in his voice, as I heard them,” the Namer said finally. “And then our bargain will be complete.”
The beast listened raptly. A moment later another voice filled the air of the shattered bath, a voice with deep timbre, filled with pain and fear. A man’s voice.
A voice she recognized immediately.
Ah, Anwyn, so at last you have vanquished me. What irony your sisters, the Fates, employ, that I die here, beneath the cruel visage of the great copper wyrm I had gilt in this place to honor your mother. Even in my last I am forced to see you—to leave this life with the image of you in my eyes. All for naught—all my great works, my great dreams, for naught. Hague, you were right. You were right. I stare into the Vault of the Underworld, but it is a vault of my own making. The Great Seal. Anwyn, forgive me. Forgive me, my people. The Great Seal—
The voice broke for a moment. Then, in a barely audible tone, it whispered Gwylliam’s great aphorism, the words he directed Merithyn the Explorer to greet any inhabitant of the continent that he met with.
The origin of the Cymrian name.
Come—we in peace, from the grip of—death to life in this fair—land.
Silence reigned for a moment.
“Gwylliam—asked my forgiveness?” the dragon hissed. “You lie.”
“You have heard his last words, in his voice,” said the Namer, her voice her own again. “You will hear no more words from me to convince you of what you already know to be true.”
The beast’s fragmented mind was racing. “You must—heal me,” she said, beginning to gasp. “There is so—much I can teach my great-grandson. And so much I can—learn from him.”
Finally, the darkness shifted, and the Lady Cymrian stepped out of the shadows near the dragon’s head.
“No,” she said simply. “That will never happen. It is time.”
“How disappointing,” the dragon spat. “You are so famous for your acts of mercy, for your forgiveness; you absolved the entire Cymrian Council of its misdeeds, rinsed the blood from their hands, by telling them they needed to—forgive each other and themselves, to let the Past go. How convenient. Where is that mercy now, m’lady? Why do you—deny it to the great-grandmother of your own child?”
“It is you that has brought me to this point,” Rhapsody said quietly. “There is nothing left of mercy in me; that part of me is gone. If I were to spare your life now, it would only be because it would serve my purposes to do so. That concept is not within my makeup. I don’t know how to manipulate a situation to my own ends. Therefore, at least just putting an end to the threat you bring is logical and sensible. Perhaps one day I will regret it, but if it keeps my son safe, I will have to find comfort in that knowledge and live with the guilt. Right now, I feel nothing but the desire to be rid of you and your vicious, random chaos.”
The wyrm sighed, hearing the truth in the Namer’s words and too weak to do anything to change her mind.
“Ah, well. Your loss. I know enough—of—the Future—to know that you—will burn with your—hatred of me. That gives me comfort.”
Rhapsody inhaled, then let her breath out slowly. When she spoke again, the Namer’s tone of True-Speaking was in her words.
“I harbor no hatred toward you, Anwyn—but your death at my hands will bring peace to more than just my mind. In the name of my sworn knight, I end your life. I know it will bring consolation of some degree to him.”
With great effort, the dragon’s lip curled slightly.
“And who—is this—knight, that my death—will console him? That bastard, the Bolg king? Your slobbering friend, the—giant freak? The—mudfilth—that crawled through—the Earth with you, like the vermin you are—?”
Rhapsody’s face darkened at the insults, but no wrath was evident as she drew her sword. The flames bellowed forth from her scabbard, burning with righteous anger. She stepped onto the wyrm’s neck, holding the draconic skeleton steady, and sought the pulsing vein near her feet.
“Hold still, and it
will be quick,” she said shortly.
“Answer—my—question,” the wyrm commanded in a strained whisper. “Tell—me. I deserve the knowledge as I die.”
The Lady Cymrian, the Iliachenva’ar, pressed her blade to the beast’s hide above the vein. She bent at the waist, so that she could speak quietly into the dragon’s ear.
“You deserve nothing, but I will tell you anyway. My sworn knight, my champion—my friend—is your youngest son, Anborn ap Gwylliam,” she said softly. “And, for whatever you did that turned him from a valiant young soldier to a merciless killer, for his suffering, for him, in his name, I take your life.”
She heard the voice of her first sword instructor sounding clearly in her memory.
’At’s right, miss. Make it a good, clean blow, now.
Then she struck. Cleanly, deeply.
At her words, just before she drove the blade of the sword into Anwyn’s neck, the beast’s eyes opened in shock, blazing blue fire in the darkness of the cavern. She wrenched her body to the side, slashing at Rhapsody with her undamaged claw. The Lady Cymrian stumbled off the wyrm’s neck, but the blade had bit deep, and she dragged it with her as she fell back, slicing the dragon’s throat open.
Anwyn’s larynxless voice, a manipulation of the lore of the air around her, snarled angrily even as acidic blood spurted from her neck, showering Rhapsody in black-red gore.
“Anborn? That—miscreant? That coward, that—”
“That hero,” Rhapsody interrupted, slapping the beast’s cheek stingingly with the blunt of her sword, driving her onto her back. “That guardian, that protector,” she continued as she drove the blade into the hollow below Anwyn’s throat, eliciting a shattering roar. “That leader of men, that defender, that Kinsman—isn’t that really what you meant to say?”
Panting with her own exertion now, she dragged the blade down toward the beast’s heart, as she had once done in Anwyn’s grasp in the air above the Great Moot, dodging the flailing claw and the geyser of bitter blood.
A gargling gasp was all that she heard in response.
“Your last breath is upon you,” Rhapsody said as the beast’s chest tore open, the flames of Daystar Clarion licking the three-chambered heart that was beating erratically below her feet. “Surely you don’t want your epic last words to be a hateful lie? Even Gwylliam knew to ask forgiveness in his final moments. Remember, though I am a Namer, I owe you nothing. I will herald what you say only if I consider it to be worthy of history. Otherwise, your words will be lost to it. I know that such an ignominious end, a consignment to a truly forgotten past, would be your own eternal damnation.” She let the blade of the sword of the stars and elemental fire hover in the dragon’s chest, the flames licking her ribs.