Prophecy: Child of Earth

9

The air in the underground caverns was warmer than the air of the world above. The change in heat was the first thing Achmed noticed when Grunthor broke through to the hidden complex of tunnels that lay deeper in the earth to the south of the Loritorium. It was a warmer, staler air with an age-old hint of lingering smoke, heavy and dry with no scent of must or mold, absent of any humidity, humming with static.

The second thing he noticed was the ancient woman standing in the tunnel before them.

Grunthor stopped in his tracks, jerking backwards in surprise. Until this moment the Earth had been singing to him, had drawn his attention to each crack, each unstable area, cautioning him of danger, alerting him to formations that were rare or unique. There had been no warning that another living creature was waiting for them on the other side of the rock wall.

And yet, there she stood, taller than Achmed, slighter than Grunthor, wrapped in a robe of brown cloth, her head covered, nothing showing but her face and thin, long-fingered hands. That glimpse was enough to tell Achmed what he needed to know.

The skin of her face and hands was translucent, wrinkled with age and scored with a network of fine blue veins, like iridescent marble. Though impossible to discern completely due to the hood of the robe, the woman’s head appeared to taper from a great width at the top of the skull down to a slender jawline, with large, black eyes making up most of her face. Those eyes were heavily lidded and without apparent scleras; no white at all could be seen, rather they resembled two wide ovals of darkness, broken only by a large, silvery pupil. They glittered with unspoken interest and a keen intelligence.

Despite her obvious age, the woman’s body was unbowed, tall and straight as the trunk of a heveralt tree. The wide shoulders, long thighs and shins, and gangly arms ending in strong, sinewy hands were unmistakable hallmarks, despite this being only the second time Achmed had ever seen one of her race. The woman’s eyes twinkled in the light of their torch, though her thin mouth remained set in the same nonchalant expression as had been there the moment the ground crumbled before her and the two of them stepped into her realm.

She was Dhracian. Full-blooded.

Achmed’s sensitive skin tingled again in the dry static of the air. Instantly he realized that he was wrapped in the woman’s Seeking vibration, the electric hum that Dhracians emitted through the cavities in their throats and sinuses. It was a tool their race used to discern the heartbeats and other life rhythms of whomever they sought to find or assess. He had used it himself, mostly when hunting his prey in the old world.

The woman seemed amused, though her expression remained unaltered. She also seemed satisfied; she folded her hands patiently before her and waited. When neither Grunthor nor Achmed moved, she spoke.

“I am the Grandmother. You are late in coming. Where is the other one?”

Both Firbolg involuntarily shook their heads as the vibration of her voice scratched their eardrums. The woman was speaking in two different voices, each coming from one of her four throats, neither of which contained actual words in any language either of them knew. Despite that, both of them understood exactly what she was saying.

The address that Achmed heard was a fricative buzz that formed a bell-clear image in his mind of the meaning of her words. In the manner she addressed him, “Grandmother” meant matriarch. He was not certain how he knew it, but there was no doubt of it.

Grunthor, on the other hand, had been greeted in a voice that was deeper, a more ringing tone that mimicked the speech pattern of the Bolg. The explicit image the Grandmother conjured in his mind was that of a maternal caregiver a generation removed from a child. The men looked at each other, then back at the Dhracian woman. There was no mistaking that the other person she referred to was Rhapsody.

“She’s not here,” Achmed answered, his own words feeling odd in his mouth. The elderly woman’s eyes twinkled again, and his face flushed with embarrassment. He swallowed his anger at the stupidity of his answer. “Obviously she’s not here. She’s traveling overland. She will be home soon, with any luck.”

“All three of you must come one day soon,” the Grandmother responded, again in her separate, clicking tones. “It is necessary. It was foretold. Come.”

The elderly Dhracian woman turned smoothly in the rocky tunnel, and walked quickly away. Grunthor and Achmed looked at each other, then hastened to follow her.

Jo muttered to herself all the way from the cavern entrance to the Blasted Heath above the gates to the Cauldron.

Her life as an orphan on the streets of Navarne’s capital had given Jo a number of skills, including the abilities to remain motionless for a long time while hiding in an alley shadow, to react with speed and agility in dangerous situations, and to belch and break wind silently.

It had also given her a vast and colorful vocabulary of curse words, improved upon immensely by her exposure to Grunthor and Rhapsody who, despite her mother-hen attitude, could make the Bolg blush with the vulgarity of the oaths she uttered when inspired—Rhapsody had spent her own time on the streets. Jo repeated many of those oaths now in the course of her grumbling.

It was fortunate that she had saved some of the choicest ones for last. As she rounded a corner of the mountain pass that led down to the Heath something grazed her head, catching her off-balance.

Jo ducked, miscalculated the muddy terrain, stumbled, and slid forward on her stomach, planting her face squarely into the excrement that had been hurled at her head. She lay, prone, trying to recapture the wind that had been knocked out of her. When she did, that wind had a repulsive stench that reached down into her blood and brought it to a boil.

As the initial shock began to abate, she could hear the tittering laughter of the Bolg children hiding behind the rocks. The Bolg as a race were not given to easy laughter, and the sound of it, harsh and shrill, was irritating to Jo’s ears under normal circumstances. Since something even more foul was now irritating her eyes and nose, she was even less inclined to appreciate it.

Jo raised herself out of the mud and swiveled to one side. A plethora of small dark faces, hairy and grinning repulsively, had sprouted from behind the rock slabs ringing the Heath. She recognized a number of Rhapsody’s adopted grandbrats among them.

A flood of red darkened Jo’s vision as fury roared through her. She let loose a howl of rage that reverberated up the rockwalls. The grins disappeared, followed a moment later by the heads.

“You misbegotten little bastards! Get back here! I’ll use your heads for target practice! I’ll strain your clotted blood through my teeth! I’ll flay you alive and salt you like hams!” She scrambled to a stand, sliding in the mud that caked her clothes and hair, then took off at breakneck speed after the scurrying children.

As she crested the rise of the rocks where they had been hiding she could see them disappearing in all directions, the older ones swifter and all but out of sight.

“I’ll suck your lungs out through your nostrils!” Jo panted, struggling to keep the slower ones in view. “Peel—your eyes—like plums and swallow them!” She drew her bronze-backed dirk, the thin, deadly dagger Grunthor had given her on the day he and the others had freed her from the House of Remembrance; it caught the sun, and the attention of the Firbolg children. The expressions on their faces dissolved from impish glee to panic.

Jo let loose a war cry and doubled her speed. She was bearing down on two of the slower ones now. One stopped and spun about, looking frightened, then leapt over a rockledge to escape. His scream trailed away as he fell, then was cut abruptly short.

Jo froze in horror.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “No.” She took a few slow, numb steps, then ran to the rockledge and peered over.

The Firbolg child was lying in a crumpled heap on a ledge that jutted from the cliff side quite a distance below. Even from above Jo recognized him as Vling, Rhapsody’s third youngest Firbolg grandchild. Her face tingled, then grew hot as nausea and remorse swept through her.

“Gods,” she choked. “Vling? Can you hear me?”

From down the cliff a muffled whimper rose.

Jo sheathed her dagger. She glanced around for a handhold, and found a long, dead root sprouting from the rocks of the cliff face. She tugged on it to test its strength, then quickly lowered herself down the embankment to where the broken child lay.

“Vling?”

There was no answer.

Jo was growing sick. “Vling!” she shouted, rocks crumbling beneath her as she slid down the cliff face to the ledge.

The child looked up as she bent beside him, an expression of undisguised terror on his dirty face, and tried to crawl away.

“Hold still,” Jo said as gently as she could. “I’m sorry I frightened you.” The child, who didn’t speak Orlandan as she did, shook his head violently and tried to inch away again, then collapsed against the ground with a moan.

Struggling to force back her dislike, Jo reached out and cautiously patted the child’s head. His eyes widened in shock, then narrowed suspiciously.

“All right, all right, you have every reason to doubt my intentions,” Jo muttered darkly. “I’ll admit I’ve considered tossing you into the cavern on several occasions, but I didn’t, now, did I? It’s my fault you fell, and I’m sorry, and I’m here to help you.” The glint in his eye did not recede. “Look, Vling, Rhapsody is going to kill me if I break one of her grandbrats.”

The child’s face melted. “Rhapz-dee?”

Jo exhaled loudly. “She’s not here.”

“Rhapz-dee?”

“I said Grandma’s not here, but she wouldn’t want you to stay out here, injured, and become food for the hawks.”

Vling sat up slightly. “Rhapz-dee?” he repeated hopefully.

“Yeah, that’s right, Rhapsody,” Jo said. “Come with me, and I’ll take you to her.” She put out her hand to the child, who recoiled slightly, then allowed her to help him stand. His arm was hanging at an odd angle, she noted. The sight of it made her feel dizzy, and her stomach surged into her mouth.

A look of pain shot across Vling’s face as he stood, replaced a moment later by the stoic, slightly sullen countenance of the Bolg race. Jo knew immediately what was crossing his mind. A show of weakness was a disgrace among the Bolg, who were still trying to absorb the concept that the injured could be healed. For millennia uncounted it had been common practice to leave the injured to die, no matter how valuable they might be, as a matter of honor. Lesser forms of the attitude still persisted in the Teeth, despite the changes instituted by Achmed at Rhapsody’s insistence. The Bolg child was going to lose face with his peers if she carried him in, or even if he was perceived to have been helped.

Jo grasped the vine again and hauled herself and the child back over the ledge, then sat down behind a large rock to think. Vling seemed to be holding on to consciousness, but she could tell he was in tremendous pain.

A thought finally occurred. Jo reached into her pack and pulled out a length of rope. She gave one end to the puzzled child, then tied the other end loosely around her own wrists.

“All right,” she said in her best approximation of Bolgish, through clenched teeth. “Let’s go. Take me to Grunthor’s barracks.”

The child blinked, then understanding spread across his face. He looked up at her and smiled wanly, then gave the rope a playful tug. He led her back to the Cauldron, swaggering importantly, clutching his arm and grinning as she howled mock threats the entire way, knowing what prestige he would be accorded when the other Bolg children saw what he had captured.