Destiny: Child of the Sky

64

Oelendra sat stirring the embers of the fire with a large stick, watching the sparks fly up into the sky. The chilly air hung heavy with moisture, causing her old wounds to ache, but she had grown used to such pains and ignored them. Instead she thought of the old outpost that had so recently stood in this clearing. Now all that remained of it was the burnt-out shell of the tower, and scattered timbers that had once held up its frame.

In what had been the central courtyard the Tree still stood, beautiful and undamaged by the smoke and destruction that had consumed the house. A small harp rested in the crook of its main boughs, still softly playing a repetitive melody. Oelendra’s mind went back to when that tower was built, and the times it represented. She wandered down ancient pathways, and spoke to friends long dead. Distantly she asked the kings of old what had become of their noble line. She tossed the branch into the flames.

Her guest had arrived. He stood at the edge of the clearing, his visage hidden by his heavy mantle. In one hand he held a white wooden staff, in the other he carried Kirsdarke, the blue scrolled patterns visible in the ripples of its liquid blade even in the dark. Oelendra wondered how long he had been there. She smiled in welcome.

“Oelendra?” The voice of the shadowed figure was soft.

“You remember me, then?”

“No, not really,” Ashe admitted as he sheathed his sword and crossed to the fire. “Not clearly, anyway. Just your strength, and your kindness. I have carried those things in my heart for many years. I owe you a great debt, but I’m afraid I don’t remember much from those days aside from hazy, pain-filled dreams. I guessed who you were when I saw you. There are, after all, only so many people who know I am alive.”

“Until Rhapsody told me a short time ago, I was not one of them.”

Ashe sounded surprised. “My father did not tell you?”

“Nay, nor did the Lord Rowan.”

He stepped into the light that ringed the air around the fire. As the young man entered the circle of warmth he pulled back his hood, revealing both the shock of his coppery hair and the small crystal globe he wore about his neck. Cryndla’s candle, Oelendra thought, the ancient melding of fire and water, created by a long-dead queen of Serendair for her seafaring lover, now adorning the throat of another lost sailor, by the hand of another Seren queen. It glimmered through the mantle of mist like a beacon through the fog. He was more handsome than Oelendra remembered, but she was not surprised. He had been at death’s door when last they met.

“You look well,” Oelendra said as she gestured for him to take a seat. Her voice was terse; the smile of welcome had dimmed into one that was merely polite.

“You look worried.” He stepped over the trunk of a long-fallen tree and sat down on it, the firelight gleaming red-gold on his hair. “What’s wrong? Why did you call me here?”

“I thought the ruins of the old stronghold was a fitting, if ironic, place for us to meet.”

“Is there something I can do for you?”

The Lirin warrior looked him over thoughtfully. “Perhaps. I have come in service of my queen.”

Ashe smiled, recalling the infamous words the legends said she had uttered to his grandmother long before his own birth. “I thought you did not serve a monarch, but a people.”

“In my queen the two are united.”

He nodded. “Good. Maybe it’s a sign of changing times; it certainly would be a change for the better.”

“Indeed.” She took a drink from her water flask, then offered it to him. “I see you are no longer hiding yourself. Is that a sign you are preparing to take the Lordship?”

Ashe shook his head, declining the drink. “That title is granted, not taken.”

“That didn’t stop your grandparents.”

“I am not my grandparents.”

The Lirin champion studied the man across the fire from her. She did not look at him directly; she knew better than to stare into the eyes of a dragon. She was a little surprised that he was not attempting to catch her gaze, as his grandmother always had. Oelendra had often wondered how much the power of the Seer’s dragonesque eyes had to do with her selection as Lady. Anwyn had always looked people in the eye, always tried to draw them into herself, though few suspected it. Oelendra had been able to withstand that gaze, to endure both its beckoning and its hatred. She was pleased to see that he was not trying to put her will to the test, and looked away from him, turning once more to the fire.

“I hope so,” she answered after a time. “But I will have to see that for myself.”

“You have the right to doubt my line,” Ashe said patiently. “Certainly my family has never given you cause for confidence in it. I hope to prove myself to you by my own actions, if you are willing to judge me by them.” He blinked; her silvery eyes caught the light of the fire as they looked up at him directly, more than a trace of animosity in them. He waited for her to explain her hostile reaction, but she just watched him. He cleared his throat before speaking again.

“I have not come out of hiding to take the Lordship, but in the hope of flushing out the F’dor. The Rakshas is dead, Khaddyr is dead. Now all that remains is the last, the demon host itself. I hope that by walking openly I can draw it to me and kill it.”

“And you think you can do so alone? You certainly are sure of yourself.”

Ashe ran a hand down the back of his head to settle the hairs that had bristled at her tone. “Yes; I’m confident, but I’m not foolish. My father is seldom far away, and I hope to rejoin Rhapsody soon. Between us and her

Bolg companions I suspect we would be victorious over it.”

“Your father? I had wondered if he really was dead. Rhapsody had not said, but I suspected duplicity.”

“It was necessary.” Oelendra laughed bitterly.

“All right,” Ashe acknowledged quietly, “perhaps it would be more accurate to say it was necessary to him.”

“More accurate, and more honorable also, given who paid the price for that decision.”

Ashe looked away. “You’re right. But in one sense he did die. His human side is gone; he let it slip away to the rest it desired. I will not deceive you, however; in truth his death was a charade, designed to draw- his enemies out into the open and allow him to come into his dragon nature through the elements of ether and fire, much like I did. Now he is seldom far from me. He stays in the shadows, watching, waiting for the F’dor to make its move. Still, tonight he is not here. I would not allow him attend this meeting.”

“Allow him? ’Tis a change.”

Ashe stared at her; her face was tight in the reflected light, her eyes intense. There had always been a similar edge to his father’s voice when her name was mentioned, but he had not thought it particularly significant until now. He kept his voice steady, his expression mild.

“I suppose it is. It reflects a confidence in my own choices, something I learned from Rhapsody.”

“Did you learn that before or after you let her burn your father alive? Before she spread what she thought was the truth of his defeat at the hands of Khaddyr to the entirety of the Filidic order, and the nobility of Roland as well?”

Ashe’s eyes narrowed, the dragon bristled in fury. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to goad me into something, Oelendra? You are treading on fragile ground.”

Oelendra leaned into the firelight. “I am trying to decide whether or not I threw away the bond I had to Daystar Clarion, the piece of the star I gave the Rowans to sew within your sundered chest, on another manipulative spawn of Anwyn and Gwylliam. Make me understand, Gwydion. Explain why you would hurt the person I love as my own child like that; one whom, you supposedly loved as well.”

Rage had begun to course through Ashe at her words; he struggled to control his temper, knowing in his heart she was right. “Never doubt my love for her. Never,” he said, the fierce, multitoned voice of the dragon slipping into his words.

Oelendra didn’t blink at the sound. “If you loved her, why did you deceive her? Do you have any idea what the supposed death of your father, on top of everything else she has lost, did to her?”

Ashe’s ire fled, replaced by deep sorrow at the memory of Rhapsody sitting before the dark fireplace, staring at nothing. His heart twisted as he remembered the way she had pulled aside her collar, moving her locket out of the way of the blow she expected from him.

Please; end it quickly.

“Yes,” he said hollowly. “I think I know exactly what it did to her.”

“Then why did you do it? Why did you choose your father’s scheme for power, knowing the devastation it would cause?”

Ashe looked off into the darkness. “I didn’t choose it. She did.”

The Lirin warrior’s eyes tapered to slits of quicksilver in the firelight. “What do you mean?”

Ashe continued to stare off into the night, his mind in the Teeth, remembering a woman in the wind. Finally he rose and looked back at her. “I’m sorry, Oelendra,” he said, picking up the staff. “If you came to find out if you wasted your piece of the star, the answer is yes.” He turned and walked out of the fire ring.

“Stop,” commanded the Lirin champion. Her tone had the ring of a voice that had commanded armies; he obeyed involuntarily. “Come back here. I will decide that, not you. Sit down.” Ashe smiled in spite of himself, then returned to the log. “All right, explain yourself. What was her choice?”

“An unfair one, I’m ashamed to say. The only thing she has ever asked of me is the truth; I felt I owed her that above all else. On the night before I left I told her everything, all of Llauron’s plans and manipulations, among other things she needed to know.” His face grew darker with memory in the light of the fire. “She understood that we were powerless to stop the plans that had already been set in motion. She knew if she didn’t light the pyre that he would die, permanently, for nothing.

“That was all right as far as I was concerned; it was his own damned fault, not her responsibility to save him from the snare that was of his own making. But she decided to go ahead with it, knowing exactly what it would mean. Had I been the one to choose I would not have allowed it, but again, part of loving Rhapsody is respecting her right to make her own decisions about her life. I would have spared her if I could.” His voice broke.

Oelendra sat back and watched him thoughtfully, her anger dissipating a little. “Why doesn’t she remember this?”

Ashe looked back for the first time, his tone calmer. “Part of the price of the truth, I’m afraid. We went to see Manwyn sometime back; it was important to her, though she never had a chance to tell me why. I think now it must have been something to do with the children of the demon.

“During one of her insane ravings, the Oracle revealed part of Llauron’s plot to her. It left Rhapsody with information that made her vulnerable; in a way, she would have been duplicitous in the scheme just by knowing about it. There was something else she needed to know, so on our last night together I took a pearl my father had given me with his image in it; it was meant to be a keepsake of him in his human form. I decided it could be put to better use, so I expelled the image and gave it to her, asking her to keep the memory of that night in it instead, with the proviso that she could take the memory back immediately once she knew the entire picture if she wanted to.

“Then I told her the whole sorry story. In the end, she decided that her knowledge would lead to eternal death for Llauron, and she sacrificed many things to prevent it, including the memory. He didn’t deserve her.” He looked into the darkness again. “I didn’t deserve her.”

“Well, so far you’re at least half-right,” said Oelendra. “But I don’t understand why Rhapsody’s knowledge left her vulnerable. What else happened that night?”

Ashe sighed deeply. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Oelendra, as much as I would like to. It’s Rhapsody’s memory too; she has the right to know it before anyone else does.”

“I suppose I can respect that. When do you intend to give it back to her?”

“The instant that it is safe to do so; once the F’dor is destroyed. I hid the pearl in Elysian for safekeeping in case I die in the process of bringing the demon out and killing it. So far I have been able to destroy its followers easily, but I have lost to this monster before, as you know better than anyone. “I’ve been out of touch for a while, chasing down Lark and the other Filidic traitors. I am done with that now; I was on my way to Ylorc to see her when I received your call on the wind. Considering where you asked me to meet, I suspected the worst. Until I saw it was you, I thought I would be facing the F’dor again. That was the reason I came drawn; I don’t usually come to meetings with sword in hand.”

“And yet you came without your father’s protection?”

“He is not far away. He could be here in a moment if I summoned him. I am a great deal stronger than the last time I fought it. I might not be able to defeat the F’dor, but I could certainly hold it off until Llauron arrived. Together we would be quite formidable. Besides, Elynsynos is not far off, either, and I think that if I were to call, she would come as well.”

Oelendra stared into the fire, calculating something. When she looked up there was an expression of satisfaction on her face. “Three dragons, Kirsdarke, and myself. Fair odds as a second strike.”

“Excuse me?”

She looked into Ashe’s eyes. “Achmed has identified the F’dor.” Automatically his muscles tensed, his hand went to the hilt of the sword. “ ’Tis Lanacan Orlando, the Blesser of Bethe Corbair.”

Ashe’s eyes gleamed a brighter blue in the firelight, but outwardly all he did was nod. He released his sword and rested his elbows on his knees, intertwining his fingers, deep in thought. “Of course. The saintly bastard. Humbly blessing the troops, turning them into thralls for his purposes. Bethe Corbair—gods, he was right on her doorstep.” He shuddered. “No wonder the Rakshas could infiltrate Ylorc so easily—how disgusting. How many generations had the demon waited, readying itself for this? Blessing and binding armies. It would have taken Sepulvarta, Sorbold, and all of Roland.” He shook off his meditations. “Is that why you came? To tell me they are preparing to go after it?”

“They have already done so.”

He nodded and stood, excitement beginning to light his face. “Where do they wish me to meet them?”

“They don’t.”

Ashe stopped cold. “What do you mean?”

“

“Tis their task, Gwydion; you would be of no help. Your soul still bears the scars of twenty years of domination. If you were to go, who knows what bonds that ancient evil might be able to lay upon you?”

Fury began to flush his face. “I know. There are none.”

“Perhaps. But even if that were the case, there is not time. They headed off to Bethe Corbair the day after I left Tyrian. If they traveled as they expected, the battle is probably raging as we speak.”

Ashe began to tremble, his voice shaking with anger. “She went alone? With them? Without me?”

Oelendra looked at him oddly. “Gwydion,’tis their quest;’tis their time, as was foretold centuries before your birth. You can be of no use there; this is what they were made for. Believe me, I wished to be there as well, more than you can imagine. But ’tis not our task to perform.” Her tone grew more solemn. “Besides, if they do fail, then we must have a second line of defense. Between yourself and your father—” She stopped. Ashe was becoming frantic.

“They cannot fail,” he said in panic. “I couldn’t stand it if she were to—I couldn’t bear it, not again. Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t they send word? I have a right to be there!”

Oelendra’s eyes opened wide in anger, and she rose to face him, unbridled rage in her voice. “A right? Ton have a right? What right? If anyone has a right to slaughter that damnable beast it is me! I have endured more of its evil than anyone living. If I can pass up the right to slay it, who are you to claim it?”

His voice shook. “That’s not what I meant,” he said frenetically. “I don’t care who kills the blasted thing, as long as it dies. The right I meant was my right to be at Rhapsody’s side when she faces it, in case—in case she fails.” His words trailed off into a whisper.

“Why?” Oelendra asked incredulously. “What claim do you have on Rhapsody or her choices? You gave up those claims when you married another.”

He shook his head, burying his face in his hands, trying to calm himself. “I have not given up those claims.”

The Lirin champion’s voice grew cold. “I believe I now have my answer to the second half of the question. You are more like your grandmother than I feared. Do you expect Rhapsody to be tied to you forever in spite of your marriage to someone else, someone highborn?” Ashe looked up at her. “Obviously she would never tell you, but you have hurt her as much as the loss of your father, the loss of Jo, perhaps even as much as the loss of her home, her life before this. She loved you, and you threw that away for power; your own or your father’s, it matters not. You are right; you didn’t deserve her. You have driven her into a loveless marriage; that is really what I came here to tell you.”

His face went white. “What?”

“You do know she is Queen of the Lirin now, don’t you?”

“What?”

“You didn’t hear? You didn’t know?”

Ashe shook his head. “No; I have been hunting down Lark, and Khaddyr’s other followers, all the way to the far border of the Nonaligned States. I heard the Lirin had crowned a queen; I always hoped Rhapsody would take the crown, but I also heard—” His voice choked off. “Heard what?”

“That the queen was accepting suit. I knew Rhapsody wouldn’t do that. It’s against everything she believes.” He closed his eyes in the pain of memory from a sweet summer night, a lifetime ago, in the old land. He could still see her, barely more than a child, crouched behind a row of barrels, hiding from the farm-lad suitors who were stalking her, hoping to win her in the village marriage lottery.

Doesn’t this all seem, well, barbaric to you? Well, yes, actually. Tes, it does. Well, then, imagine how I feel.

Oelendra smiled grimly. “What did you expect, that she would pine away for you, alone and unwed, forever? She has no choice but to marry, despite her wishes, just to placate the armies of her neighbors. Come, Gwydion, you know this drill; you were born into it. She needs a strong mate, and she has been left with a fairly grim choice, Anborn or Achmed. She has made that choice.”

The woods had grown very quiet. The air turned from chilly to cold. Oelendra looked into Ashe’s eyes and saw an unnatural glint, a light she recognized as the soul of the dragon, but it did not appear angry or ready to strike.

It was frightened.

She allowed her eyes to wander over the rest of his face, and saw the devastation of the human side of him as well. She had seen that look before; it was the face of a man who just realized he had lost everything.

Ashe stared blankly ahead of him, trying to drive the unbearable image of Rhapsody in Achmed’s arms from his mind. It was a picture that had haunted him every time she had made even a casual reference to the possibility.

You would never, well, mate with Achmed, would you? The thought has been churning my stomach for the last three hours.

You know, Ashe, I really don’t like your attitude. And frankly, it’s none of your business.

His stomach turned violently.

You never did answer my question about you and he.

What question?

About whether you would mate with Achmed—I mean marry him.

Maybe. As I told you, I don’t expect to marry anyone, but if I were to live that long, he is probably my best prospect.

“She—she cannot,” he said, trying to keep from retching.

Oelendra looked at him ruefully. “You have left her little choice. She needs an ally, a husband that none would dare to question. She has already spoken to Anborn and he has agreed. It will be a marriage with little love, a marriage of convenience. Unending agony for a woman like Rhapsody. Still,’twill solve her political problems, though it might add to yours. After all, Anborn has as clear a claim on the Lordship as you do, at least the Lordship of the First and Third Fleets. With Rhapsody thrown into the mix, he might feel more eager to press those claims.”

“Anborn can have the blasted Lordship! It’s Rhapsody I care about.”

Her voice was blistering. “You should have thought of that before you married someone else.”

“I didn’t marry anyone else.”

Oelendra blinked. “You told Rhapsody you were married, why would you lie about something like that?”

Ashe began to pace in a frenzy of anxiety. “I didn’t lie. I couldn’t lie, not to her. I just didn’t tell her who I was married to. I couldn’t, knowing that I was going to face Khaddyr. Not with the F’dor still out there, still knowing the taste of my soul. I have been using myself as bait to lure it into the open. What if I were to fail? What if I died? They could use that bond to find her, and they would take her. As long as Rhapsody doesn’t know, the bonds of wedlock are not binding. If I am captured or killed, they can’t use them against her. She will be safe.”

Oelendra put out her hands and stopped him in front of her. “Are you telling me that the woman you are married to is Rhapsody?”

Ashe fought back tears. “Yes. That night, that night in Elysian, when I told her of my father and his plans, that night when we discovered who we were, who we had been—we married that night. We stood together in the gazebo and took our vows and joined our souls forever. That was the other memory, the one I told you she had a right to know before others did. The memory of our marriage, our union.

“I have had to remain silent about it all this time, knowing that no one else alive knew of it, not even my wife, while all the time I was longing to tell the world. No one else knew. And now you tell me she has gone to face the F’dor? That she might never know who I am? What we were? That she might die, thinking that I wed another? That I abandoned her again? That I might lose her again?”

Oelendra shook him gently. Gwydion’s eyes cleared slightly. “What are you talking about?” she asked, a hint of compassion in her voice for the first time that night. “What do you mean, abandon her again? Lose her again?”

He sat down disconsolately on the log and ran a hand over his shining hair, wet with frantic sweat. Oelendra sat next to him, gently patting his forearm to calm him. When he finally had control of himself again he told her the entire story of their meeting in the old world, of his grandmother’s deception, and all that happened since. He related the tale in excruciating detail, with the minutiae that only a dragon could remember, the aspects that only a man deeply in love would care about. Oelendra listened sympathetically until suddenly realization came over her face. Her hand, resting gently on his wrist, became a clutching claw. Gwydion’s tale ceased immediately, choked off by the look on her face.

“The old world? You met in the old world? You and she fell in love in the old world?” The elderly woman was trembling violently. “Oelendra? What’s wrong?”

The Lirin warrior rose, trembling, and stumbled blindly away from the fire ring. She ran to the first tree she reached in the darkness and rested her head against it, fighting the bile coming up from her stomach with the memory of herself and Llauron, standing before the Oracle with the mirrored eyes.

Beware, swordbearer! You may well destroy the one you deck, but if you go this night the risk u great. If you fad you will not die, but, as a piece of your heart and oul was ripped from you spiritually in the old land with the loss of your life’s love, the same will happen again, but physically this time. And that piece it takes from you will haunt your days until you pray for death, for he will use it as his plaything, twitting it to his will, using it to accomplish hi) foul deeds, even producing children for him.

Oelendra felt her stomach rush into her mouth. As she retched she felt one strong hand at her neck, another supporting her back. She staggered away, Ashe still holding on to her, into the coolness of the air away from the campfire. The world spun hazily around her for a moment. Then she steadied herself and looked up into the face of the man smiling down at her kindly.

“

“Twas you,” she whispered. “I thought she meant me, but ’twas you.”

His smile vanished. “What are you talking about? Here, come sit down.” Ashe led her to a snowy patch under a great elm and lowered her gently to the ground. He decided to inject a note of levity.

“If that is the way all of Rhapsody’s friends react to the news of our marriage, we won’t be giving many dinner parties.”

The older woman did not smile in return, but rested her hand gently on his cheek. “Forgive me, Gwydion,” she said softly. “I am to blame for your torment at the hands of the F’dor. I am so sorry.”

Ashe stared at her in disbelief. “What are you talking about? You saved my life.”

Oelendra shook her head, her eyes staring elsewhere, remembering different moments. Then she repeated the prophecy aloud, softly, to herself.

“

“‘Beware, swordbearer,’ ” she whispered faintly. “ ‘You may well destroy the one you seek, but if you go this night the risk is great.’”

“Is this a riddle?”

She nodded distantly. “A terrible riddle. A prophecy from Manwyn from long ago.”

Ashe took her hand in both of his, trying to steady it. “Was there more to it?”

Oelendra nodded again, her eyes locked on the crackling fire as it launched gleaming sparks into the cold night air. “ ‘If you fail, you will not die, but, as a piece of your heart and soul was ripped from you spiritually in the old land with the loss of your life’s love, the same will happen again, but physically this time.’ ” She began to shake even more violently.

“Rhapsody told me about your husband, Pendaris,” Ashe said gently. “I’m very sorry.”

“‘And that piece it takes from you will haunt your days until you pray for death,’ ” she continued, “ ‘for he will use it as his plaything, twisting it to his will, using it to accomplish his foul deeds, even producing children for him.’”

“Gods,” Ashe murmured. “What a hideous prediction. No wonder you were terrified.”

Oelendra blinked. Finally she turned back and looked at Gwydion. “Has your father ever told this augury to you?”

“No.” He was rubbing his arms as if to keep warm, but Oelendra could tell from the look in his eyes that he was coming to the same understanding she had.

“The ultimate vanity,” she said softly. “I assumed that because Llauron was the only other person there with me in Manwyn’s temple, and he does not bear a sword, that her curse was directed at me. But ’twas not me that she damned with her prophecy, Gwydion. ’Twas you. You were the sword bearer, the Kirsdarkenvar. I never even thought of you, nor anyone else save myself.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Ashe smiled wryly. “I’ve been the recipient of Manwyn’s prophecies. She cannot lie, but she does not have to be clear in her rantings. She’s insane. One of the last things my father said to me before he—he told me to beware of prophecies, because they do not always mean what they seem.” He patted her arm. “He went with you, then? Why? I had always been under the assumption that you and my father did not get along, but I thought it was because he led Anwyn’s army in the Great War, and you chose wisely to stay out of it. Such grudges seem to be common among the elder Cymrians who had lived through the war.”

The Lirin champion sighed. “No, Gwydion. There was a time, long ago, when your father and I were quite cordial, before the war. He remained so to me despite the choice I made during it, though I can’t say I’ve forgiven him completely for the horrors he visited upon our fellow Cymrians, whether or not it was his choice. When you hear the full tale, I’m sure you will understand our present enmity.” She looked into the starry sky as wisps of clouds, blown by a cold wind, raced in front of the twinkling lights, dimming them for a moment.

“It had been centuries since my first taste of the foul air of the F’dor on the wind. I had trained endless champions to search for it; none had ever returned. I had failed to find the F’dor in any other way. I was desperate. I knew the beast was growing stronger. Your father was one of the few who believed as I did, that the F’dor still lived, lurking somewhere, hiding within a human host, biding its time. So Llauron and I went to see Manwyn together, in the hope that she could tell us where the F’dor would be, so that we might kill it once and for all time.

“We had to phrase the question like that, because Manwyn can only see the Future, not the Past or Present. She was most cooperative. She told us the exact time it would be here, in the House of Remembrance, planning to despoil the sapling tree.” She pointed to the thriving oak, its glossy leaves gleaming in the light of the fire.

“Manwyn said we were to go there on the first night of summer, when the Patriarch would be consecrating the year in Sepulvarta, while the Filids observed their holy-night rituals in Gwynwood. Tis a night of great power, a night when the One-God’s love is wrapped securely around His children.” Oelendra looked back into the fire as if looking into the Past. “A night the beast would be vulnerable.

“Your father, being Invoker, would need to be with the Filids of his order, leading their worship, so we understood that I would have to go without him. But finally we had the information we needed to kill it. Llauron and I looked at each other, unable to speak for the import of what we had learned. ’Twas to be our deliverance from the hand of evil.

“But then, as we turned to leave Manwyn’s temple, she spewed forth the other prophecy.” Oelendra’s eyes dimmed in the memory. “In my life I have never felt such fear as when I heard those words.

“For the first time I can remember in this world, I gave in totally to panic. You must understand, Gwydion, I had fought F’dor like this in the old world; they took from me everything that ever mattered, that I loved. My husband and I were captured by them; they killed him. They were not as kind to me. “I misunderstood the prophecy. I took the sword bearer to be myself; it never occurred to me that it might be a sword other than Daystar Clarion. The prospect of bearing a demonic child—” Oelendra broke down, shuddering uncontrollably.

Ashe drew her into his arms, holding her against his chest to warm her. “Sshh,” he said gently. “Blot it from your mind. It’s over.”

“ ’Twill never be over,” Oelendra said hollowly. “Never. “Instead of using the information she gave me, taking my one chance to destroy it forever, I bolted; I hid. I waited until dawn had come, and then I went for a walk to clear my head of the accusations that were pounding in it. I could not escape them. ’Twas my duty as Iliachenva’ar to have gone, no matter the risk to myself. So I steeled my nerve and went to the House, hoping it was still there, though its power would no longer be on the wane.

“That’s when I found you, Gwydion, broken and dying on the grass in the forest of Navarne. Llauron had said he might send reinforcements, but I had no idea ’twas you, or that you would go in alone when I didn’t come. ’Twas my cowardice that destroyed your life;’tis my fault that you have lived in the agony you have, hidden from your family and loved ones, dead in the eyes of the world these twenty years. Those children that the Rakshas sired, that is because of me.” Tears began to fall from the silver eyes.

Ashe held her against his shoulder, trying to think of something to say that would impart comfort to her in her despair. “Rhapsody loves those chil dren,” he said gently. “They gave Achmed the weapon to find the benison. I never would have lived this long if I had not been required to hide, pretending to be dead. Given my lineage, I would have been among the first it assassinated anyway. It was my own father that sent me against the demon; how can I hate you, and not him? I prefer not to, if you don’t mind. What is it you Liringlas say again? Ryle him. Life is what it is. Forgive yourself; believe me, the world looks better when you do; I know. It is something Rhapsody and I learned together.”

At the mention of her name, his face changed, twisting into fear again. “Rhapsody. She’s probably fighting the F’dor now; gods, she may be dying, and I can do nothing to help her.” He began to tremble again.

Oelendra wiped her eyes. “ ’Tis difficult, is it not?” she said, resting her hand on his shoulder. “ ’Twas far easier facing my own death than to sit helplessly while someone I love faces hers. I wish I could go and do it for her, make certain she is safe. You have no idea how many men and women I have seen march off to meet their fate, Gwydion. One would think that after a time you would get used to it, but you never do. Not when’tis someone you love.”

His voice was full of pain. “How do you bear it?”

“The best way is to sit vigil with someone else who loves her. You can carry the burden together.”

Ashe looked up and Oelendra met his gaze. They took one another’s hands and sat together, waiting. After a while they began to tell each other stories of Rhapsody, sharing their love for her, their memories of her. Eventually the worry became too strong, and they grew silent.

Finally Ashe looked at the sky; dawn was coming, the stars beginning to fade in the lightening horizon. “Gods, it’s over, don’t you think?”

“

“Tis done.” Oelendra sighed, her eyes still on the darkness of the sky above her.

“It must be.”

They stood. Oelendra did so slowly, feeling the great aching pain in her knees. Ashe pulled up the hood of his cloak.

“I will go to Elysian and wait.”

“Do that,” Oelendra said, picking up her small pack. “She will be happy to see you. And please, send word.”

“I will.” A grisly thought occurred to him. “One way or another. If they didn’t make it—”

“If they didn’t, we will think of a way to lure the benison here, and then we will kill him.”

Ashe nodded silently and turned away.

“Gwydion,” Oelendra said as he stood at the edge of the clearing, “you remind me more of the Kings of Serendair than you resemble the Lord of the Cymrians. I am glad to see that the star was well placed.”

Ashe smiled at the ancient woman. “Thank you.” He took a step, then looked back again. “And I am glad Rhapsody asked me to guide her to you. She is lucky to have you for a friend.”

-

Oelendra smiled. “I suppose that makes me your friend-in-law.” Ashe returned her smile, then walked away silently into the woods. Oelendra went back to the dying fire and absently kicked dirt over the remaining coals. She looked once more at the shell of the House of Remembrance and walked off into the forest.