Prophecy: Child of Earth

28

Madeleine Canderre, Lord Cedric Canderre’s daughter, was the sort of woman genteel people often described as “handsome.” Her face was pleasant enough, its features correctly balanced into the perfect aristocratic aspect that only centuries of exclusive breeding could produce. The skin of that face was dewy and fashionably pale, the eyes a famous shade of hazel. The hue was an allowable variant on the traditional azure blue or aquamarine of the Cymrian royal and noble lines. While the color of those eyes was attractive, the shape of them, and the expression they usually held, was not particularly so. Small and closely set, Madeleine’s eyes routinely seemed to be conveying displeasure. Perhaps this was because, as a rule, she was routinely displeased.

That displeasure was more than slightly evident this morning, even as she sat in her carriage, preparing to return to her father’s lands. Tristan Steward sighed. He had come down to bid her goodbye an hour before, and still she was here, methodically listing all the problems that needed to be worked out before that auspicious moment a few months hence when she would join herself, inexorably, to every aspect of his life for Time Immemorial. The idea was causing him to grow more nauseated by the moment.

“I still don’t understand why you won’t go to Sepulvarta and see the Patriarch yourself,” Madeleine whined, rifling through the many pages of her list of notes. “Surely he will make an exception and marry us; after all, you are the only Prince of the highest House in all of Roland. What could possibly be more important, Tristan?”

“I believe the man is dying, dearest,” Tristan answered as patiently as he could. Would, that the- same could be said—he thought bitterly.

“Nonsense. Word all over is that he just survived an assassination attempt in the basilica on the High Holy Day. If he’s hale enough to live through his own murder attempt, he can stand in front of the altar, perform the Unification ritual and bless the most important marriage in the land.”

Tristan swallowed angrily. He, of course, was familiar with the news, but from different sources, and for different reasons. The Patriarch’s rescuer had been a slight, slender woman, according to the gossip among the prostitutes who serviced his guards, or so Prudence had said. A woman with the face of an angelic spirit, with the warmth of a raging fire in her green eyes. He had no doubt there could only be one.

“I’ll consider it, Madeleine,” he said curtly, snapping the carriage door shut. He leaned in through the open window and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Leave your list with the chamberlain, and I’m sure he’ll see to your other concerns. Now, travel well. We don’t want to keep your father waiting; you know how he worries.”

Tristan turned his back, too late to miss the shock that flooded his fiancée’s face, and gestured to the quartermaster, who whistled to the coachman. The carriage lurched forward, Madeleine’s startled expression visible only a moment longer before the coach jolted away out of view.

“I thought you were never going to come.”

“Prophetic words, no doubt. Once I’m married I can assure you that I never will again, at least in the manner I do with you.”

Prudence tossed a pillow at the Prince, smacking him squarely in the chest. “It’s not too late,” she said, smiling. “Madeleine’s finger is still ringless, as is her neck. Wring one and not the other.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

The gentle smile faded from Prudence’s face. “Stop whining, Tristan. If you can’t stomach the thought of spending the rest of your life with that—woman, grow a spine and break the engagement. You’re the bloody Lord Roland. Nobody’s forcing you to marry her.”

Tristan sat heavily on the edge of his massive bed, and began pulling off his boots.

“It’s not that simple, Pru,” he said. “The marital pool from which I can draw is very limited. Lydia of Yarim had promise, but she also had the very bad taste to fall in love with my cousin Stephen Navarne and marry him; lost her life in the process.”

A painful shock ran up his spine to his neck as Prudence’s foot connected with his back.

“An ugly thing to say, Tristan, and beneath you, even when you’ve spent a month with Poisonous Madeleine and are toxic as a result. Lydia was killed in an unexplained incursion, as so many others have been over the years. It could happen to anyone; it does all the time, in fact. To imply that Stephen was in any way at fault—”

“All I’m saying is that it is ridiculous for a duchess to be traveling with so small a contingent, in pursuit of a pair of baby shoes for Lady Melisande. I didn’t say Stephen was at fault. I just think he could have taken better care of his family, of the woman he loved.”

“Hmm. Well, what about that Diviness in the Hintervold—what was her name? Hjorda?”

Tristan dropped the other boot to the floor and began to unlace his trousers. “Not Cymrian.”

“So? I thought all you needed in your fiancée’s background was royalty, nobility, or even landed gentry. The Diviner is royalty in the Hintervold. What difference does it make if his daughter is Cymrian or not? That might actually work to your advantage, given what most of the population thinks about you Cymrians, no offense.”

Tristan rose and slid his trousers off, then turned to face her. She was propped against the gauzy white pillows, beneath the drapes of royal blue velvet that hung about his bed. Her strawberry ringlets cascaded over the shoulders he noticed had grown bonier with time, as age stretched her skin and reap-portioned her flesh from the silhouette of a young girl into the shape of an older woman. It was a sight that never failed to make his throat tighten with many emotions, none of them pleasant. He looked out the window.

“Madeleine is the daughter of the duke of Canderre and the cousin of the duke of Bethe Corbair,” he said, staring at the fields beyond the courtyard, ripe and green in the heat of summer. “Stephen Navarne and I are cousins. Unce we are wed, I will have family ties to every province in Roland except Avonderre.”

“So? Why is that important? You’re the Lord Regent now without it.”

I want to be prepared, in case there is a call to reunite the provinces of Poland under a Lord Cymrian again. There are those who feel it might be a way to end the violence that is plaguing the realm from the coast to the Bolg-lands, and in Tyrian and Sorbold as well. There might be a call.”

Prudence rolled her eyes and sighed. “There might be a call to have the sky painted yellow, too, Tristan, but I wouldn’t saddle myself with a woman who is the stuff of nightmares in anticipation of it if I were you.”

The Lord Roland smiled in spite of himself, and pulled his long tunic off, dropping it to the floor on top of the pile of rumpled clothing. “Madeleine’s not that bad, Pru.”

“She’s as cold as a war-hag’s tit, and twice as ugly. And you know it. Open your eyes, Tristan. See clearly what you are enrolling in, and for what purpose. Whoever you marry will become Cymrian just by virtue of being your wife, may the All-God help her. It’s not as though the line is pure, anyway. Marry someone who will make you happy, or at least who won’t make your life a misery. If you are so lucky as to become Lord Cymrian, or king, or whatever, no one will care who she was, just who she is now.”

The clarity of her words loosened the muscles in Tristan’s forehead, which had been clenched from the moment he had heard of Madeleine’s arrival. There was wisdom in Prudence’s words, as there always was.

He tore off his knee-length undergarments and grabbed the coverlet, tossing it and the satin counterpane aside, then swept Prudence up in his arms. The warmth of her skin felt comforting against his chest. He had missed her this last month.

“I think I should behead Evans and make you my chief counselor and ambassador,” he said, his hands sliding down her back and clutching her buttocks. “You’re infinitely wiser. And far more beautiful.”

Prudence shuddered comically. “I should certainly hope so. Evans is seventy if he’s a day.”

“Indeed. And he doesn’t have exquisite golden hair.” The Lord Roland ran his hand down her locks, tangling his fingers in her ringlets.

Prudence broke free from his embrace and sat back, pulling the covers up over her breasts.

“Neither do I, Tristan.”

“Of course you do,” he stammered, lightheaded, his stomach suddenly turning cold. “Red blond, I meant. It’s sort of gold.”

“Spare me,” she said, looking out the window. “You’re thinking of her again.”

“I was not—”

“Stop. Don’t you dare lie to me, Tristan. I will not be played for a fool. I know who you’re thinking of, and it isn’t me.” Prudence smoothed the sheet over her legs. “And I don’t mind, by the way. I just want you to be honest about it.”

Tristan sighed. He stared at Prudence for a long moment, his expression flickering between guilt for the hurt he knew he had caused her, and amazement that she was always so willing to forgive him any transgression. In his life there would never again be anyone who accepted him so unconditionally, fully cognizant of his faults, loving him nonetheless.

When he saw a hint of a smile creep back into her eyes he pulled down the covers, carefully this time, and slid into the bed beside her. Gently he drew her into his arms, bringing her head to rest on his shoulder.

“I really don’t deserve you, you know,” he said, something approximating humility in his voice.

“Yes, I know,” she said, her face buried in his chest. It was smooth and broadly muscled, humming with the youth and vitality that Tristan’s Cymrian heritage had bequeathed him, along with an extended life expectancy that Prudence herself would not enjoy.

“There is something I want you to do for me.”

Prudence sighed and lay back on the pillow. “What?”

The Lord Roland lay back as well, staring at the ceiling. This was so much easier at night, after lovemaking, the time they usually discussed his obsession with Rhapsody. Then the darkness cloaked the room, held in by the bed curtains, keeping any decent feelings of shame at bay, allowing him the candor he would have had with his confessor, had he been able to talk to one.

But where the royal rank had its privileges, it also had its curses. The only clergyman of suitable station to hear his crimes and channel his prayers for absolution to the Patriarch, other than the Patriarch himself, was his bother, Ian Steward, the Blesser of Canderre-Yarim. It was becoming more and more likely that Ian would be performing the Unification Blessing of the marriage ritual, Madeleine’s wishes notwithstanding. As a result he was left with no other confidant to hear his adulterous thoughts than the servant woman in his bed, his childhood friend, his first lover. The only person in the world he was certain he loved.

He covered his eyes with his forearm, affording himself some dimness in the absence of the night.

“I want you to go to Canrif—er, Ylorc, as the Firbolg call it.” He could hear Prudence exhale beside him, but she said nothing. “I want you to deliver the Firbolg king’s wedding invitation—and, uh, the one for his emissary.”

“Emissary? Come now, Tristan, surely you can do better than that.”

“All right! Rhapsody. Are you happy now? I want you to take the invitation personally to Rhapsody. Gauge her reaction. If she seems open to it, try and get her to come back with you to Bethany, or to at least come soon, so that I can see her once, alone, before I throw my future away, before I wed the Beast of Canderre.”

“For what purpose, Tristan?” Prudence’s voice was soft, without a hint of accusation. “What do you hope to gain?”

He sighed again. “I don’t know. I only know that if I don’t I will live in agony for the rest of my life, wondering what she might have said. Wondering if there had been a chance that I never took, that I never even knew about.”

Prudence sat up in the tangle of sheets and pulled his arm away from his eyes.

“A chance for what? Do you love her, Tristan?” Her dark brown eyes searched his face, interested but otherwise expressionless.

He looked away. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. It’s more—more—

“Desire?”

“Something like that. An overwhelming, inexplicable need. Like she is a bonfire in the depths of winter. It’s like I’m wandering, shirtless, in the snow, and have been since I first beheld her. You’ve been right about my attraction to her all along, Prudence. I lost my head and committed a full brigade of my own soldiers to a grisly death rather than let her walk away from me. And, if you can believe this, she doesn’t even know it; at least that’s what the Firbolg king said.

“You knew better, of course, Pru, but I couldn’t let myself believe you. Poor Rosentharn had orders to bring her back with the army when the Firbolg were crushed.” He blinked rapidly at the memory of the Firbolg warlord, sitting on the edge of this very bed, playing with the crown of Roland like a child’s toy, calming dispensing the news of the slaughter of Tristan’s army.

Don’t worry; the cloaked monster had said in a sandy voice that whispered of death. She has no idea that she was the one who inspired they massacre. Of course, I do. Why do you think I sent her to you’? You are a man of free will. If you had genuinely desired peace, you would have greeted my offer, and my emissary, with open arms, no doubt. Any man, especially one who is betrothed, with less-than-honorable intentions toward a woman, would be untrustworthy as a neighbor as well. It’s just as well that you threw two thousand lives away trying to win her attention now. You learned your lesson early. The cost would have been far greater later on.

The man-shadow had risen silently from the chair as the Firbolg king prepared to make his exit.

I’ll leave you now to get ready for the vigil you will no doubt want to hold for your men. The Lord Roland saw no more of the monster’s departure than he had of his arrival.

It had taken Tristan Steward almost twelve hours before he was able to speak again, another six before his speech was even vaguely coherent. A caustic, burning sensation had ripped through his gullet, swamping his mouth, with acid he could still taste now, these many months later. The death of his army had left him terrified and aghast.

But not aghast enough, apparently, to shake loose the image of the woman which still clutched his mind. Tristan lay back against the pillows and let out a painful sigh.

“I don’t know what it is, this hold she has over me, this craving that makes me stupid, incapable of sensible thought,” he admitted. He closed his eyes, blocking out the image of his tertiary infantry and horsed crossbowmen, and the poor unfortunates that had been unassigned to other duties that morning, their bodies never found, rumored to have become a grisly feast for their monstrous vanquishers. “It’s more than carnal, but I don’t know that it’s love, either. I think part of what’s driving me is the need to find out just exactly what it is.”

Prudence watched his face a moment longer, then nodded.

“All right, Tristan. I’ll go. That bonfire must be spreading; now I have an inexplicable need as well. My curiosity won’t be satisfied until I see this creature for myself.”

He grasped her face and pulled her to him, kissing her gratefully.

“Thank you, Pru.”

“As always, anything for you, m’lord.” Prudence twisted free from his hands and rose, walking to the dressing table where she had left her clothes, ignoring the look of blank shock on his face.

“Where are you going?” he stammered.

Prudence slid her dress over her shoulders, then turned to face him.

“To make preparations for my trip to see the object of your erection. Where else?”

“That can wait. Come back to bed.” He opened his arms to her.

“No.” Prudence drew on her undergarments, then turned to the looking glass, running her fingers through her tangled curls.

“I mean it, Prudence, please come back. I want you.”

The servant woman smiled. “Well, had it occurred to you that perhaps the feeling is not mutual, m’lord? And if you’re mortally offended by my rejection, perhaps you should considering beheading me and taking Evans to bed.”

She left the room, Tristan’s astonished face vanishing from view as she closed the door soundly.

Rhapsody slept beneath lacy shadows cast by the moon through the leaves of a brindled alder, the tallest of the trees in the thicket where she had sought shelter for the night. The wind rustled through the thicket from time to time, and the chestnut mare snorted occasionally, but otherwise there was silence at the western edge of the Krevensfield Plain.

A sweetness was carried on the wind that cleansed her dreams, making them more intense in the summer heat. Rhapsody turned on her side and inhaled the scent of the clover beneath her head, breathing in the fragrance of the green earth. It was a scent she remembered from childhood, when on nights like these she and members of her family sometimes fell asleep in the pasture under the star-sprinkled sky.

She sighed in her sleep, wishing that the memory would turn to dreams of her mother, but Rhapsody had not been able to conjure up her image since before Ashe came to the mountain. Her mother had come to her then, one last time it seemed, and showed her a vision of her birthstar, her Aria, the star called Seren.

She relived that dream again now, though without her mother’s soothing voice narrating it as she once had. Rhapsody sat up in her sleep and stared through the slender trees to the Plain beyond them. In the darkness of the field she could see a table, or an altar of some kind, on which the body of a man rested. The figure was wreathed in darkness; she could discern nothing but his outline.

Above her in her dream Seren winked in the night sky, shining large as it once had on the other side of the world. A tiny piece of the star broke off and fell onto the body on the altar, causing it to shine incandescently. The intense brightness gleamed for a moment, then resolved into a dim glow.

That is where the piece of your star went, child, for good or ill, her mother had said in the dream. If you can find your guiding star, you will never be lost. Never.

Other voices filled her head. She could hear Oelendra speaking, the sadness permeating her words.

In the end, when nothing was working, and Gwydion was in mortal agony, I took a piece of a star from the sword’s hilt and gave that to the Lady Rowan. I offered it to them in the hope they could use it as a last effort to save him, and they did, but he was too far gone. ’Twas a desperate gesture, and one that did not work, but I don’t regret trying.

“Oelendra, is that what I’m seeing?” she murmured in her sleep. “Was it the attempt to save Gwydion’s life?”

That is where the piece of your star went, child, for good or ill.

Above the image of the body hands appeared, disembodied hands she had seen in a vision while in the House of Remembrance. They folded together, as if in prayer, then opened as if in blessing. Blood poured from between them into the lifeless form, staining it red as it filled.

Words, absent of any voice, spoke in her ear next to the ground.

Child of my blood.

The multitoned voice of the dragon spoke in the other ear, the ear turned toward the wind.

A Rakshas looks like whatever soul is powering it. It is built of blood, the blood of the demon, and sometimes other creatures, usually feral animals of some son. Its body is formed of an element, like ice or earth; the one made in the House of Remembrance was made of earth frozen with ice. The blood animates it, gives it power. If the demon is in possession of a soul it can place it within the construct and the Rakshas will take the form of the soul’s owner, who of course is dead. It has some of the knowledge that person had. It can do the things they did. It is twisted and evil; you must beware of him, Pretty.

With a shudder Rhapsody woke and sat upright. She was still in the thicket, the mare beside her, alone and unnoticed except for the touch of the night wind. She shivered and ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to warm herself.

“What are you, Ashe?” she asked aloud. “What are you really?”

The only answer was the warm breath of the wind. She could not make out what it was trying to tell her.

Seventy leagues to the west, the wind blew warm through the open gates in the ancient stone walls of the House of Remembrance, rustling the leaves of the tree that stood in the center of its courtyard. A figure, garbed in a heavy gray cloak with the hood pulled close about the face, stood at its base, gazing thoughtfully up into its branches.

At eye level, planted resolutely in a crotch above the first hollow of the trunk, was a small musical instrument that resembled a harp. It was playing a roundelay quite unlike any he had ever heard before, a simple melody that filled the entire courtyard, humming through the age-old stones. The man reached up to touch the instrument, the cloak falling away from a hand whose newly formed thumb bore only the slightest sign of red, healing skin. The fingers of the hand hovered for a moment over the strings, then withdrew quickly.

It would do no good to try to remove the instrument, the Rakshas decided. It had become an intrinsic part of the tree itself, playing its namesong, the repeating melody sustained by the life within it. The will of the sapling was now tied to the same source as its mother, Sagia, had been, its vestigial roots sunk deep within the Earth, wound inextricably around the Axis Mundi. The song of the harp had broken his master’s hold on the young tree, had healed it from its desecration. There was no doubt in his mind about who had put it there.

Slowly he lowered his hood, letting the wind whip through the shining curls of red-gold hair, while he pondered what to do next. The one who was his master, his father, had been very specific about the need to monitor the Three and keep them contained, not to try to destroy any of them yet, at least up until the confrontation in Sepulvarta. That debacle had proven how badly they had misjudged the situation, thinking that each of the Three was occupied at the time of the assassination attempt. Its failure had been a serious setback, even more serious than the rout that had occurred here, at the House of Remembrance.

The Rakshas turned away from the tree and slowly paced the courtyard, trying to focus his limited powers of reason. Something nagged at the back of his mind, perhaps something from before his rebirth, something he had experienced when he was Gwydion. He couldn’t put a context around the thought, so he returned to the place where that rebirth had occurred.

At the western edge of the garden stood a long, flat table fashioned of marble, the altar on which he had first come to awareness. He closed his eyes again, recalling the first words he had heard as his father prayed above him.

Child of my blood.

The pulse of light, the pain of rebirth.

Now shall the prophecy be broken. From this child, will come forth my children.

The Rakshas closed his crystalline blue eyes, as he had then, against the intensity of the light in his memory. When he opened those eyes again, they were gleaming with that same light, but now the light was that of inspiration.

Quickly he crouched down in a feral stance, like the wolf whose blood had been added to his father’s own to form him, and scratched at the earth beneath the altar. He dug for some time until he finally came upon it, a root from the tree that still bore the pocked scars of its original pollution. The tree’s savior had not found all the tap roots—she had probably not even looked beneath the altar when she had done whatever anointing she had undertaken to heal the tree. The Rakshas threw back his head and laughed aloud.

There was one left, one root still desecrated.

It was enough.

He glanced around quickly and scowled for a moment. Stephen Navarne’s men had stripped down the slaughtering equipment, the vats that had been carefully erected to collect the blood of the children he had stolen. That blood had fed the tree then, had twisted it to his master’s whim. There was no longer any here to be found—the place had been scoured clean of it.

His master had committed a good deal of his life’s essence to bring him into being, he mused. It had been a blood sacrifice on the demon’s part as well, and more; it was a substantial commitment of precious power that could wink out if it was not jealously guarded. By nature F’dor were only smoke, ephemeral spirits that clung desperately to a human body. The more power, the more will they expended, the more tenuous that hold became. With his limited abilities to reason, the Rakshas felt honored at the life offering his master had made to give him existence.

The Child of Earth that the legends of ancient demons said slept beneath the mountains of the Teeth was one of the two tools most critical to his master’s plan. The sapling’s root had been the F’dor’s way in—fed by the blood of innocents, connected to the power of the Axis Mundi, the centerline of the Earth itself, pulsing with ancient magic of incalculable strength. That root system ranged throughout the world, even into the flesh of the unassailable mountains. And it could be manipulated, or so his master believed. Surely reestablishing control over this holy tree’s root was worth the commitment of more of his, and his master’s life essence.

He tried to concentrate, tried to force his circumscribed intelligence to calculate the right answer. The repetitive music of the small harp jangled his thoughts, making focus impossible. He eyed the instrument angrily, then, as dawn crosses a valley, a smile spread slowly over his face, lighting each of the features it touched until it came at last to his eyes.

He had his answer.

With an arrogant flip of the wrist, a dagger was in his hand, a hand that no longer bore any sign that it contained a new thumb. Quickly he slashed his forearm twice, drawing deep, bright bands of red across the skin, and then turned his arm over to allow them to drip onto the exposed root. There was no real pain; such a trifling injury could not compete with the agony that constituted his waking life.

As the blood splashed the ground smoke began to rise. Scarlet and black against the night sky, it twisted into a tendril, then a spiraling column, catching the wind.

The ground began to smolder, then to burn. The Rakshas closed his eyes, listening to the deep voices begin to whisper, then to chant darkly, ominously, speaking in obscene countersigns, murmuring in pain.

The agony surged, roaring through him like hot lightning; he felt his head crackle with the intensity of it. The odor of burning flesh in fire crept into his nostrils, and he clenched his fists, knowing that the spilling blood was taking some of his master’s power with it into the earth.

Bloody light filled the darkness, dancing frenetically to the chanting voices of F’dor spirits imprisoned in their deep vault within the Earth. The Rakshas struggled to stand upright in the waves of power pouring from his pulsing heart like blood from the artery he had opened. I am merely the vessel, he thought, pleased, as the ground beneath his trembling feet turned crimson. But I am a, capable vessel. He lost the battle with gravity and stumbled forward from his crouch, kneeling in his own burning blood.

When the root and the soil around it was soaked into red mud the Rakshas exhaled in exhaustion, then held the skin-flaps around his wounds together for a moment, sealing them shut again. He carefully reburied the root, whispering the words of encouragement he had routinely spoken over it when he was still Master of this house.

“Merlus,” he whispered. Grow. “Sumat.” Feed. “Fynchalt dearth kynvelt.” Seek the Earth child.

He stood slowly and watched in delight as the root swelled, engorged with tainted blood, then withered, dark and vinelike, before it slithered back into the ground and disappeared. He pulled up his hood, casting one last look around the old Cymrian outpost, and went to meet up with the one who was waiting for him.