Destiny: Child of the Sky

54

The faint molder of underdwelling, the scent of spore and sex and urine, faint and carried in the wispy dust. Grunthor had finally overcome the fear of the tunnels, after the flame that had burned all the way to the House of Remembrance. He had been used to the sweep of desert and the ability to throw weight and weapon against enemy. In the tunnels he was rarely unaccompanied as he was now.

There was something fey about the earth in this place, the index finger of the hand that was a nexus of five old Cymrian tunnels. This part of the mountain was so deep, so far from where the reconstruction was occurring, that it would have been years before anyone would have come down here, had he not been hunting for whatever the Earthchild had warned Achmed about. The tunnels were, more than likely, merely water drains for the sewage system that still lay, in the majority of the deeper parts of the Cymrian labyrinth, in disrepair.

He had been stumbling, all but blind, for hours, seeking something, anything, but had come upon nothing, not even a trace that the tunnels had been traversed. Even the footprints that might have been seen in the dirt of the earthen floor had been carefully covered, if they had ever been there at all.

Finally, at the end of the tunnel that took the position of the index finger of the hand he passed a dry cistern, one of many he had passed in this place. His skin hummed slightly as he passed it; he unhooded his lantern and held it up before his amber eyes.

In the wall, amid the crumbling lichen, was the convex relief of a hand.

Grunthor grinned widely, exposing his flawlessly maintained tusks to the fetid air.

“Why, thank you, darlin’,” he said.

He bent closer to the dry cistern. Its drawpipe was clogged, blocked irretrievably by years of vegetation and other obstacles shoved or hammered up the pipe. Grunthor set down the lantern and took hold of the crumbling stone of the cistern’s cover, giving it a mighty heave. The top moved aside easily, so easily in fact that he stumbled and almost dropped the heavy disk. Beyond the cover of the cistern was another tunnel, dark and clear. The Sergeant snatched the handle of the lantern and climbed inside.

It was a tight pinch, but after his journey along the Root, he was accustomed to such difficulties. Grunthor crawled out of the pipe, dragging the lantern ahead of him, and stepped out into a vast, cavernous room, doubtless once the cistern’s main holding tank.

The lanternlight revealed a hoard of objects both priceless and banal, a trove of relics and refuse from Gwylliam’s time. Mounds of coins struck in gold, silver, platinum, copper, and rysin, were swept into piles with almost the same care as fallen leaves, while displayed on makeshift stands were timepieces, hilts of broken swords, bedwarming bricks, rags of garments wrapped carefully, kept dry, the metal buttons polished; cutlery, brushes no longer bearing bristles, medals, rings, amulets of office, inkwells of black clay, golden goblets, book bindings, fragments of pottery and scores of other objects, some martial, some domestic, all with but one thing in common. They each bore the royal crest of Serendair.

Grunthor removed his horned helm and scratched his head in amazement. “What’s all this, then?” he murmured.

Placed slightly forward, as if in places of honor, were four objects, most likely newer or at least more recently found than the others—a ceramic plate, a coin like the thousands of others in the hoard, the scarred lid to a box made of blue-toned wood, and finally a chamber pot with a broken handle. “Blimey,” the Sergeant whispered.

He looked around carefully, finally discovering, back beneath a row of rotten barrels with the royal seal affixed to their taps, a heavy wooden object shaped somewhat like an hourglass. He lifted it carefully and turned it over. On the bottom was the crest wrought in tarnished silver, with dry fragments of wax still clinging to the gravures. A seal. A royal seal. Bring me the Great Seal. Quickly Grunthor gathered all the newly displayed items but the plate and tucked them into his pack. He crawled back out of the cistern, dousing the light as he did.

Silence, deep and profound, filled the ruin of the Loritorium, giving it the feel of a crypt, all but for the warmth of the flamewell that burned in the center of its broken wreckage of streets, a tiny flame of sun-bright intensity that cast weak, flickering shadows through the underground vault. The quiet was solemn, not somber; there was music of a sort, slow and sweet, even in the lack of sound.

The red winter flowers in Rhapsody’s hand gleamed in the inconstant light. She had gathered the last of the blossoms from the gardens of Elysian after closing up the cottage in preparation for her long journey. Now she stood over the Earthchild, marveling at the beauty and incongruity of her. Her skin was gray and polished smooth, like that of statuary, over a deeper flesh striated like marble with twisting swirls of brown and green, vermilion and purple. The heaviness of her features was balanced with a delicacy that was strangely poignant, grassy lashes resting beneath eyelids that were translucent as eggshells.

Gently she covered the Sleeping Child with a blanket of eiderdown she had brought from Tyrian, tucking the edges around the greatcoat Grunthor had left to keep her warm. She put the winter flowers next to the child on the altar of Living Stone atop which she slept, bent and kissed her forehead carefully.

“From your mother, the Earth,” she said softly. “Even in the coldest, darkest days, she gives us color for warmth.”

The edges of the Child’s lips twitched slightly, then settled back, slack again with slumber.

Rhapsody caressed the long white hair, brittle and dry as frost-bleached grain, remembering it golden with roots as green as summer grass when she had first beheld her. Like the Earth, dormant beneath its blanket of snow, she slept deeply, peacefully.

The words of the Dhracian Grandmother came back to her as she watched the almost imperceptible tides of breath.

You must tend to the child.

How am I to tend to her?

You must be her amelystik now.

“You miss her, I know,” Rhapsody said aloud, absently smoothing the blanket. “But her spirit is here with you—I can feel it around me in the cavern.”

The Child did not react, but continued her steady, hypnotic breathing. Rhapsody felt a warmth, a drowsiness come over her. Slowly, without thinking, she lay down on the altar of Living Stone next to the Child and gently laid her hand on her heart, as the Grandmother had taught her.

The sensation beneath her palm was a strange one; there was no real heart beat, but rather a vibration, perhaps from the forges and mines, ringing now in purposeful constancy, perhaps from the fire of the Earth’s heart below the flamewell, that sounded almost like breathing. As much as one might think she’d be cold to the touch or hard, the sense was much more secure; the Child was thriving in this warm place, on this slab of Living Stone. She in turn radiated warmth and history and the smell of farm earth as much as that of deep mountain stone; it was a rich, green smell, and it made Rhapsody, now asleep beside her, dream of her childhood.

For the first time in as long as she could remember old dreams came back to her, dreams of leaving the farming community of her childhood, of seeing the wonders of the world, of choosing her own way in that world. The youth, the innocence that had been hers then renewed itself in those dreams, eased the lines of worry from her brow, made her skin shine with the luminous excitement of a young girl on the threshold of life. With each moment that passed in sleep she was renewed. By the time Achmed found her, deep in slumber next to the Child, the cares of life had been all but erased from her face.

He stood over them both for a long time, musing in both melancholy and tender thought. He had known someone had come down to the Loritorium, had guessed who it had been, had watched her sleep in the unlit and still shadowy vault, and considered that in this place constructed to guard riches and had never held them, here were two great treasures of the world, two sleeping children.

As he watched he experienced a collision of memory and vision. The memory that throbbed in his mind was of her lying, near death, after their encounter with the Rakshas, where she slept, bloodless and clinging tenaciously but fragilely to life in the shadow of the friend she had slain. The vision was of the inevitable future, where, long-lived Cymrian or not, she would lie, no longer sleeping, but passed from this life as all must pass; stone, a shadow of herself. He had a rush of terror like the fireball that had consumed what had remained of the Colony, a fear that this was the only way he would ever have her to himself, in death. And he knew, even if all the world had to be sacrificed, he would do that to save her.

In all the world, he understood like no one else the compulsions of the F’dor, and knew why there was reason to fear.

When she woke Rhapsody felt him watching her, even before her eyes could discern him in the shadows of the Loritorium. She knew the feeling well; this was just another of thousands of times she had come out of sleep to awareness to find him observing her carefully, like quarry.

She sat up, careful not to disturb the Child, returned his gaze, and felt, as she often did, as if she were looking through the mirror of the world, she from the outside, at him within, not comprehending the darkness he lived in. In all their time together she still had no consistent window into his soul; his breath and sustenance were a mystery to her still.

In darkness, however, there was sometimes a keyhole, an eclipse-thin chink, a tiny crack he left open to his inner thoughts, the workings of what made him enigmatic. He felt safer in darkness; in daylight it was almost impossible to glean anything from his words, or actions, or expressions. Whenever she awoke thus, with him staring at her, she always wished for him to speak first, to illuminate something before the sun came up and made him utterly inscrutable again.

This time he did. “I knew someone had come,” he said, almost awkwardly. “I came to make sure it had been you.”

She looked at him, robed and armed, then nodded, stretched, and patted the Child of Earth as she used to pat the giant Bolg when he had guarded her in the tunnels. “Where’s Grunthor?”

“He had a matter of preparedness to attend to. Some missing weapons to account for.” He took out a wineskin and offered her a drink, but she declined, shaking her head.

“Have you made use of the blood?”

“Not yet. I am waiting for you to leave the mountain.”

“Why? I thought you were waiting until I returned to do it.” Her query was soft; there was something pensive about Achmed’s demeanor, and she wanted to tread lightly. The last time she had seen him thus they had been sitting on a crag ledge overlooking the long-dead canyon a half a league below them, staring eastward over the Blasted Heath, contemplating his army’s first great loss. What they faced now was so much greater in scope and sheer destructive power, she knew, that it could only be considered soberly.

“I don’t know what will happen,” he replied simply. “It would be preferable for you to be on your way to try and talk some sense into the Lirin when I begin the ritual. I am in a sense making it up as I go; I, like you, lost my mentor early. And he would never in his wildest dreams imagine what has come to pass in this world, and the last.”

Rhapsody sighed and wrapped her arms about her knees. “I still am not certain I can be of any help to the Lirin. It’s so far to travel if I’m not going to be of use.”

Achmed snorted contemptuously.

“Are we back to questioning your status as a Namer?”

“I’m not sure of my abilities. I don’t want them to fail me in the midst of something important.”

“They won’t. I would think reliving Gwylliam’s sorry death might have convinced you otherwise.” He stared for a moment at the distant flame from the vent at the Loritorium’s center, then fixed a steady gaze on her again. “That first night we spent by the campfire, I asked, ‘What can you do?’ You replied, ‘I can tell the absolute truth as I know it. And when I do that, I can change things.’ And that’s what you’ve done.

“The sense that a Namer is born or invested, like an albino or a virgin, and once changed can never again speak with the same power or conviction, is like assuming a healer must save every wounded or dying person she tries to help to remain a healer; that an assassin must never miss, must never be a tool or weapon for someone else’s purposes; that a Sergeant-Major can never lead again once his entire company has been slaughtered. You must know, Rhapsody, that in every profession there is at least a small bit of failure to be expected. Don’t be daunted by it; losing that confidence will surely drain the power that the demon could not have taken from you otherwise.

“The F’dor is in a way an Unnamer, it lies to bring the world to its end. Treaties, lives and deaths, even the form the demon takes are all subject to the way it tries to unmake the world, hide the lore, break the prison, make the Earth not a place where life goes on, but cosmic dust, nothing more than the scattered eggshell of some unimaginable beast. We have seen everything, there, in our trek through the world. We have touched what can not be imagined; we speak here, now, in the presence of a race as old as your oldest lore, nevertheless we do not tell all we know. We dare not. What would the Lirin do to explain, to defend, to survive the awakening of the wyrm? There is nowhere to go, no grove of safety in which to hide. How deeply must the Nain delve to protect themselves? Can any sailor sail far enough, any soldier train hard enough? When your own race decrees ‘Kyle him,’ Life is what it is, you choose instead to speak the truth that says that our individual lives mean something. Though it was not the truth of these shadows, of this child, it was truth enough to take you through the flame at the center of the world.” He turned to go back up the tunnel. “To see the world as it is surely leads to madness. Better to see the world you wish to see. I believe you are the one who first explained that truth to me.”

“And what world do you wish to see?”

He stopped, turned slowly to see her standing, adjusting the sword on her hip, shaking her hair straight. He chuckled soundlessly.

“I wish to see a world where F’dor are extinct, a legend in distant memory,” he said. “You wish to see a world where the Lirin are united. Perhaps we should both apply ourselves to making those worldviews ones which can someday be accurately expressed by Namers.”

Rhapsody was suddenly struck by the music in his tone, and what the subtext of his words was.

He didn’t know, once she left, if he would ever see her again. She crossed her arms, regarding him fondly. “Tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Grunthor told me a little bit about how and where you met.” Achmed looked at the floor and slowly shook his head. “Grunthor will say anything to get you to stay in the mountain. And though he is one of the cleverest men I know, he is also blessed with the gift of a certain amount of naivete. He’s had all these years to understand how he is cursed, and he will mercifully never understand.”

“Cursed?” Rhapsody asked, dumbfounded. “How can you suggest such a thing? Grunthor has such purity of purpose. He can’t be cursed.”

“Grunthor is cursed deeper than you are, with your nightmares and your purposeful blindness to things you don’t want to see. Grunthor has the curse of Earth, being its child.”

“I hate it when you say cryptic things like that. Explain.”

“Grunthor has a gift for guardianship, and the need for it. Surely you must have noticed; he’s been guarding your arse since the moment we met you in the back alleys of Easton. It was the same with Jo; it is the same with the Earthchild, with the Bolg soldiers that he bullies and loves. It was the same in the old land. It is and has always been the same with me. If he could hold every valuable thing inside his skin and put his blood and life around it, he’d find that guardianship easier, but here, now, everything tied to the Earth has a trace of the wyrm. Protecting you will one day kill him, with your wandering, your misplaced trust and affection. And he couldn’t bear to die because of the pain it would cause you. He’s damned, like the polluted Earth. She hurtles through the ether, bound even the gods don’t know where, carrying inside, deep in her heart, the first and last Sleeping Child, the burden whose birth may be its mother’s ending. Like the Earth, like the Grandmother, Grunthor will give his life in the guardianship of you.”

Rhapsody shook her head as she checked her gear. “No. There is no need to guard me anymore. I can tend to myself. Grunthor knows that better than anyone—he trained me.”

“I know. But you seem to be insistent on taking dangerous risks. If you are going to do that, at least do it in a worthwhile cause, so that if you die, and Grunthor does, too, in the process, that it will have at least been for a good reason.”

She looked into his eyes, meeting their steady gaze. “And what causes that I espouse do you consider worthwhile?”

“Helping build the Bolg into a nation of monstrous men.”

“I did that. You eradicated every contribution I made.” The Firbolg king rubbed his eyes. “Not every one. And that is only temporary, assuming we survive whatever attack is coming. There is also the unification of the Lirin—you should be safe among them, at least for a while. Forming a Cymrian alliance, while annoying, may prove to be useful as well.”

“So what risk have I taken that you don’t think is worthwhile?” He reached within his robes and produced the hematite vial, the smooth stone catching the light of the flamewell and gleaming dully. “You felt the need to save those creatures, those demon-spawn, even though it may have meant the end for all of us. The blood from one of them would have been enough; we should have executed the rest. But you were insistent; you put yourself repeatedly in harm’s way to rescue them, even though it may eventually be your undoing.”

Rhapsody shrugged. “I thought it more prudent to make sure that all the blood was collected, that you would have a better chance of catching the demon’s scent with more of it. If you recall it was you that said trying to trace the F’dor was like trying to catch a breath of perfume across a crowded bazaar. Sometimes you remind me of the Rakshas, Achmed; these children aren’t tainted receptacles of blood and nothing more. They have souls, immortal souls. It is heinous to use them for our own purposes and then discard them as if they were nothing. If we really are going to live forever, or have lives so long that it seems like forever, I don’t want that on my conscience. I don’t think you could abide it, either.”

-

The Bolg king began to pace the rubble-strewn floor of the burnt-out repository.

“You have no understanding of what ‘nothing’ is, no idea how long ‘forever’ can be. You were never nothing. You were a farmgirl, a harlot, a harper; at your lowest, the most demeaned moment of your life, you were worth something, some cattle, some coin, some moment of attention. It may have felt damnably little, but it was a place, a hole in the world to land in. You think you have been nothing, but you haven’t, Rhapsody.”

She reached out her hand and stopped him in his pacing, turning him to face her. As she studied his face she saw something there she had never seen before.

“Emily,” she said softly. “My family called me Emily. And you’re right, Achmed—even in those times before I knew you, I never was nothing. Neither were you.” The light from the fire behind her leapt, and Achmed could see the green in her eyes before the shadows returned, coloring them gray again with darkness. “When I changed your name from the Brother, it was inadvertent; it wasn’t meant to devalue what you were then.”

The Bolg king’s gaze grew more intense, so piercing that it almost hurt to return it. He stared at her for a long time, then looked up at the pinnacle of the cracked domed ceiling above him.

“You were the second Namer to change my appellation,” he said heavily, as if each word cost him dearly. “It was my mentor that named me the Brother, because that’s what he said I was—Brother to all, akin to none. Had I followed his teachings, the path he laid out for me, I might have used my blood lore in the same way you use your music—to heal. He, too, believed that I was not nothing.” He laughed bitterly. “I seem to be spending my life proving that his faith was misplaced. Perhaps the name we are given at birth is the truest gauge of what we will be after all.”

“What was it?” Her voice held a reverence that made his throat tighten.

The Bolg king continued to stare at her through his mismatched eyes, both of them darkening with an old, all-but-forgotten emotion.

“Ysk—that’s my given name. It means spit, or venom, a discharge or insult, a sign of infection.” He exhaled slowly. “Imagine being born Bolg, yet like this.”

Achmed took the veil that shielded all but his eyes from sight and uncovered one side of his face and neck to reveal the blood vessels vibrating just below the surface of the dark olive skin, drawing in each sensation and word, as if he were covered all over with a sensile eardrum that quivered with even the misty, breath-soft touch of her glance.

“Every squint of resentment, every glare of fear, every silence of neglect. For a long time I believed that dark spirits watched over me, gleeful. If I had known what death was, I would have found a way to get to it, to inhale it into myself and be gone. I know what it is like to be nothing, Rhapsody—less than nothing. I don’t want your pity; I want you to understand that perhaps I understand these demonic children better than you do.”

Rhapsody shook her head. The flame in her hair highlighted the darkness around them, caught rainbow-golden sparks from the distant light in its ever changing dance. She softened the grip on his arm and gently moved her fingers up his shoulder and rested them along the line of his jaw.

“They didn’t know that you were also half-Dhracian, and wouldn’t have understood the significance even if they had known. The Bolg of your kingdom do not know, either, nor anyone in this world save you, Grunthor, and me—and Oelendra, who is as purposeful in the hunt for the demon as we are. Something no one knows about you will be our salvation, and the salvation of this land. It doesn’t matter what the Bolg who named you thought. You were never nothing, not even then.”

He inhaled very slowly, deeply, silently. “I was the special project of a very holy man. He tried to teach me to be a healer. Look what came of all his good intentions—and I haven’t a single drop of demon’s blood in me. The war to come will be terrifying. More terrifying is that I do not think I wish to stop it. The men of Roland or Sorbold will die from hatred of the Bolg, and except for the relish of justice, I don’t care. The Bolg will die as well. Add that to what Grunthor has suffered, and you, and this child, and all those demonic ‘children,’ and others. What did all that training come to? What did I ever heal? Who did I ever save?”

“You can’t blame yourself for any of those.”

“Then what difference have I made?” He was silent a long time.

“Who did you expect to save?”

Even before she finished the question, she felt doors open in him that she feared to approach.

Dark in the ruins of Gwylliam’s treasure vault, which would never hold any of Gwylliam’s treasure, in possession of the blood that might possess him, aware of the Finders yet unable to find them, Achmed looked at Rhapsody, just awakened from slumbering near the Sleeping Child, rested but not ready for all that was to come. He admired her water-smooth hair, the very glow of which washed away anger and despair and memory, breathed again through the boiling cold sensation of her fingers on his face, softly took her hand, kissed and cradled it in both of his own.

“Just one. One of those who might not even believe they need saving,” he said. “And the world in the process. I guess that means we have more in common than could ever be imagined by anyone looking at us. We are the opposite sides of the same coin, Rhapsody.”

“Well, if we are a coin we have value.” She picked up her cloak and pack. “I have to leave. I will send messages as often as I can. Before I go, will you answer one question for me?” Achmed nodded. “What have you really been trying to say since you came down here?”

“Don’t die.”

She squeezed his hand, the warmth of her touch radiating through the leather of his glove. “I don’t intend to. But the guiding principle of my life can’t be staying alive for Grunthor’s sake—or for yours.” She released his hand and leaned over to kiss the brow of the Earthchild, hearing his words behind her as she turned away.

“Then do it for your own.”

When she turned back he was gone.