Prophecy: Child of Earth

29

“Grunthor, stop hovering, I’m fine. Jo, make him stop.”

Jo gave the giant a playful smack across the back of the head. “She says she’s fine. Leave her alone.”

“Oi ’eard ’er,” said the Bolg indignantly, “and Oi can also see ’er neck, thank you, lit’le miss. You look like the loser in a game of Badger-in-the-Bag, Duchess. You got your charmin’ lit’le arse booted, didn’t you?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Rhapsody with a tone of mock offense. “I’ll have you know he did not draw one drop of blood on me, not one.”

“Not above the surface of the skin, anyway,” said Achmed with a smirk. “What do you think bruises are?”

“Aye, well, you should have seen him when it was over,” said Rhapsody, pushing the giant hand away from her throat again. “Will you leave me alone?”

“If the Patriarch is such an almighty ’ealer, why didn’t the old bastard fix your neck, miss? Oi like ’is mettle; if you’d come and stood by me, saved my ’airy arse, Oi would at least given you something for the pain.”

Rhapsody smiled at her friend, genuinely touched by his concern for her. “I didn’t give him a chance, Grunthor. I just wanted to get home as soon as I could. Besides, the bruises are much better. Ten days’ ride without incident does wonders for minor wounds.”

“Still say Oi don’t like it. We’re a team, you and me. From now on Oi don’t want none o’ this galavantin’ off by yourself. Got it?”

“We’ll see. I don’t intend to go anywhere anytime soon, but I do have something I need to discuss with you all.”

Achmed nodded; she had briefed him thoroughly before the other two had arrived, telling him all about what she had learned in her travels, and giving him her take on the situation in Roland, on the incursions and the future reunion of the Cymrian states. He caught Grunthor up quickly while Jo opened some of the gifts Rhapsody had brought back with her. Finally, when they returned to the massive table, Rhapsody took a deep breath and crossed her arms.

“I’ve decided I want to help Ashe,” she said. Jo smiled, Grunthor and Achmed looked at each other.

“

“Elp him what?”

“Help him get his soul back. Kill the demon that took it in the first place. Help him heal. Help him become Lord Cymrian, eventually, and help unite the Cymrian people.”

“Stop,” said Achmed. “Why?”

“I’ve had ten days to think about it, to sort things out. After being around him, and around the land, I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Are you knobbing him?”

“You’re a pig,” Rhapsody retorted, holding her hands over Jo’s ears.

“Too late; I heard him already,” said Jo. “Well, are you?”

“No,” said Rhapsody indignantly. “What’s the matter with you three? I’ve helped you all at one time or another, and I’m not knobbing any of you.”

“Well, it’s not for want o’ tryin’ on my part, Oi can assure you.”

“You be quiet. The Rakshas is going to be after us sooner or later, I expect, after the House of Remembrance and our confrontation in the basilica. And I can’t believe you don’t have the desire to hunt down and kill the F’dor, Achmed. I thought that was intrinsic to your race.” The Firbolg king said nothing. “As for uniting the Cymrians, I think it makes some sense for us to take a role in the healing of the people who came from the same place we did.”

“Well, that leaves me out,” said Jo, rising from the table. “I came from Navarne, and as far as I’m concerned they can all die of the pox there. I’m going to bed. Do whatever you want, Rhaps; you know you can count on my help.”

“Thanks, Jo.” Rhapsody blew her a kiss as she left the room. Jo had little stomach for long political arguments.

Jo turned out to be astute in her decision to leave, Rhapsody decided some hours later. They had argued and debated endlessly, getting nowhere. Even more than Achmed was suspicious of Ashe, he did not trust Llauron. Grunthor could not get past the idea of the Rakshas and Ashe being two separate entities.

“So you say this thing ain’t ’im, it just looks like ’im, right?”

“Right.”

“And ’ave you ever seen ’em together?”

“No,” she admitted. “I think if the Rakshas had found Ashe, he would be dead, or, even worse, his soul would be the F’dor’s entirely. Powerful as Ashe is, in a confrontation with the Rakshas he would be fighting against his own soul. He is damned either way, win or lose. That’s the main reason he hides behind the mist cloak, I think.”

“Ashe tole you this?” Grunthor asked suspiciously.

“No,” Rhapsody admitted reluctantly. “I’ve pieced it together from my own observations, and what Elynsynos and Oelendra told me. And my visions.”

“If you haven’t seen ’em together, then ’ow do you know it ain’t ’im just actin’ different?”

“I don’t know it for sure,” Rhapsody admitted again. “But I have seen them both, and watched them fight, and they seem very different.”

“Naw. Not good enough. Oi think they’re one and the same. Maybe Ashe don’t even know it, but perhaps the Rakshas is nothing more than ’is own evil side.”

“Let’s go over this again,” Rhapsody said, trying to maintain her patience. “There are two possibilities. The first is that Ashe and the Rakshas are one and the same; that Gwydion died, for all intents and purposes, and the F’dor was able to reanimate him somehow, and use him as its servant.”

“That would be my guess, miss.”

“And if that’s true, I just traveled safely across the better part of the continent with him, during which time he never once made a move to harm me.” Her voice caught in her throat as she remembered the scuffle where he drew his sword on her. “Well, maybe once, but he didn’t actually harm me.”

Grunthor’s amber eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“Nothing. It was a misunderstanding. And obviously he did what he said he would do—he took me to where I asked to be taken, and then he left. If he was this twisted, evil minion of the F’dor, why didn’t he just kill me when he had the opportunity, and thwart the prophecy?”

“Maybe ’e was following you to get an idea of your mission,” the giant suggested. “Might be spyin’ for the F’dor.”

Rhapsody swallowed her frustration. “The second possibility, the one I believe to be correct, is that there are two beings, Ashe and the Rakshas. Ashe is Gwydion, and, despite what Oelendra and Stephen think, he’s alive; he survived the F’dor’s attack. He is wandering the world alone, in pain, trying to remain hidden so that it doesn’t find him and take the rest of his soul. The Rakshas is a separate entity, a construct built around the piece that the F’dor took. It’s made from ice, earth, and the blood of the F’dor, and probably some sort of feral animal. That’s what the dragon said.”

“But she didn’t say Ashe and the Rakshas weren’t the same, now did she, miss?”

“No.”

“Then Oi think we can’t take the chance that they are.”

“Well, what would you have me do, then?” Rhapsody asked in exasperation.

“Oi say we kill ’im. And if we’re wrong, and another one shows up, we kill ’im too.”

Rhapsody paled; she knew the Bolg giant wasn’t joking. “You can’t go around killing people if you’re not sure whether you’re right.”

“And why not? Always worked for us before. Seriously, miss, this is too big to take chances with, if you’re not sure.”

“That’s ridiculous, Grunthor.”

“No, it’s not,” said Achmed. He had been quiet for the better part of the evening, taking in the arguments and sorting through them while Rhapsody and Grunthor had at each other. His silence had made Rhapsody occasionally forget he was even there. “What’s ridiculous is your insatiable need to reestablish the world you lost.

“Your family is gone, Rhapsody; we’re it now, Grunthor and Jo and I. Your town is gone as well; you live here, among the Bolg. The king your family honored is dead two thousand years; the leaders here could not hold a candle to him and his reign. He certainly never led an entire generation to its death over a domestic squabble. Those who came from Serendair to this place were shoddy examples of our culture. They don’t deserve another chance to get it right. And as for Ashe, why do you want to duplicate your old relationship with a twisted madman all over again? Do you really miss the Wind of Death that much?”

Rhapsody’s mouth dropped open. “How can you say that?” she sputtered. “Ashe has never hurt me, or tried to compromise me in any way. He’s hunted, Achmed—I would think you of all people could sympathize with that. A piece of his soul is the source that powers the Rakshas. It’s in the hands of what appears to be a F’dor of great power, which means damnation in both life and death. The wound where the demon ripped that piece of his soul from his chest has never healed; he is in unspeakable pain. Despite all that, he has never even asked for anything from me except that we consider being his allies. How can you even think to compare him to Michael? Michael was a bastard of the lowest order, and a liar.”

“And that is precisely the problem I have with all the Cymrians, Ashe included. They are all liars, too. At least in the old world you knew who sided with evil gods because they professed what they stood for. Here, in this new and twisted place, even the allegedly good ones are calculating users. The ancient evils could never wreak the level of havoc that the ‘good’ Lord and Lady Cymrian did. And you want to hand yourself over on a silver platter to the potentially biggest liar of all.”

Rhapsody had had enough. “Well, if I do, it is my choice to do so. I will take the risk, and live or die of my own volition.”

“Wrong.” Achmed rose slowly, anger evident in the tight, methodical movements of his body. “We may all suffer that fate, because you aren’t just compromising yourself, you are throwing all of our neutrality into the pot, and if you overbet your hand, we all lose.”

Rhapsody looked at him. His eyes were burning with intensity, his shoulders knotted with a rage she had not seen in a long time.

“Why are you so angry? Just because I want to help someone else doesn’t mean my loyalty to you is any less.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“I disagree.” She stood up and came to his side of the table where he stood, struggling to contain his wrath, and sat on the tabletop in front of him. “I think it does. And I might remind you that, in the course of helping you accomplish what you wanted in these lands, I have done a number of things that I was not sure about, or in fact was repulsed by. But I did them anyway, because you asked me to, and because you said it was right. I believed in you. Why shouldn’t I believe in him as well?”

“Because he has told you none of this. He has played mystery games with you, seeking information but giving none in return. He doesn’t trust you. For all you know, he might be the F’dor himself.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s reassuring. You are the worst judge of character in the world. Your intuition is suspect here as well.”

Angry tears sprang into Rhapsody’s eyes. “How can you say that? I love you and I love Grunthor. How many non-Bolg do you think would be able to see past your obnoxious behavior to the good in you?”

“None. And that’s because they would be reading us more correctly than you do. You have been misinterpreting my intentions since the moment we met.”

“What do you mean?” Rhapsody’s stomach knotted suddenly.

Achmed put his hands on the table on either side of her, and leaned forward until he was inches from her face, forcing her to stare into his mismatched eyes. “Do you remember the first thing I ever said to you?”

Rhapsody swallowed. “Yes. You said, ‘Come with us if you want to live.’”

“And you understood me to mean that I would save you if you came with me?”

“Yes. And you did.”

“Wrong again? Achmed spat. “Perhaps I should have worded it for you differently. Make no mistake, Rhapsody, no matter what has grown between us since then, no matter what I have come to feel for you over time, at that moment what I should have said to you was ‘Come with us or I will kill you.’ Do you understand now? You are too willing to believe that people are as good as you want them to be. On the whole, they’re not. Not me, not Grunthor, and certainly not Ashe. His soul is in the hands of an old-world demon—do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“Well, I do. You forget, I’ve been there.” He slammed both fists down on either side of her, making her jump. “Unlike you, I do understand what Ashe is going through. I know what it is like to have a piece of yourself in demonic hands. You will do anything, betray anyone, to keep from allowing the rest to be taken. I don’t fault him for that, Rhapsody; if it were me instead of him you were talking about, you shouldn’t trust me, either.

“I’ve told you before, F’dor can possess their victims in different ways. Ashe doesn’t have to be its actual host in order to be enslaved to it. Sometimes a F’dor plants a single suggestion in some unwitting person’s mind, just long enough to perform some act it wants accomplished. Sometimes it owns the victim, can see through him, or command him at will, but stops short of binding its spirit to that person’s body. That means anyone and everyone we meet in this place is suspect. Why can’t you understand this?

“It’s bad enough that you keep adopting orphans that may or may not have ever encountered the beast. The Firbolg and even Stephen’s children are most likely harmless, but we found Jo in the House of Remembrance, remember? She was the prisoner of the Rakshas. Who knows whether or not she has been bound to the F’dor?”

Rhapsody was trembling. ” know,” she said. “She’s not. You forget, Achmed, she was there to be sacrificed for her blood, along with all those other children. Why would the F’dor or the Rakshas waste their time, energy and life force possessing someone they expected to destroy?”

The furor in the mismatched eyes did not cool at all. “That is the only reason I allowed you to bring her along. It was a serious lapse in judgment on my part.”

“How can you say that?” Rhapsody demanded. “I thought you liked her.”

“I do like her, most of the time. And the fact that you keep bringing up such an inane point shows me that you do not even begin to understand the severity of what we’re dealing with. Love and friendship mean nothing here, nothing. It is worse than life and death when you are dealing with the F’dor.

“I know you love Jo, and Grunthor does, too. That notwithstanding, I am continually regretting that I didn’t kill her the first time she did something stupid to compromise us. She has done so repeatedly, in both your presence and your absence. I am beginning to believe it is a pattern, Rhapsody, that there is a reason for it we can’t see, and that she can’t help. If that turns out to be the case, the consequences for us, and for the Bolg, will make the destruction of Serendair pale by comparison. And those consequences are eternal—they will not end with death.”

“For gods’ sake, Achmed! She’s a teenager! Didn’t you ever do anything foolish or misguided when you were a teenager?”

“No. And that’s not the point. The F’dor or its minion can be a teenager, or a child, or the handsome young imbecile who passed you on the street and dropped a flower in your path. It can be anyone, Rhapsody, anyone.”

“But it can’t be everyone, Achmed. Eventually we will have to choose sides, to intervene. We just can’t hide, stay locked away in Ylorc for the rest of eternity. If any of the mythos is right, and we are destined to some hideous form of longevity bordering on immortality, sooner or later there’s going to be a confrontation with us. Besides, if you really believe that someone you care about might be tainted by the F’dor, don’t you think you have an obligation to try and spare that person from damnation? To reclaim whatever part of them is in its hands?”

Achmed turned away and ran an angry hand through his hair. “You’re not talking about Jo now, are you? You’re back to Ashe again. I hadn’t realized he had been elevated to the level of ‘someone we care about’.”

“We can help him,” she whispered. “We can find and kill the F’dor. We’re the only ones who can. Remember the prophecy Llauron told us of? Haven’t you figured it out yet? We’re the Three. You’re the Child of Blood; that’s obvious. Grunthor is the Child of Earth; you know that as well. And I am Lirin; that’s what they call us—Children of the Sky. It’s us, Achmed. Our coming was foretold in this place.”

He whirled and glared at her. “So we should merrily follow the prophecies because some insane Cymrian seer said so? You want to blithely go out and rid the world of this evil that these people brought on themselves by bringing them back into power? Where’s the guarantee? How do you know you won’t end up its next victim?”

“Where’s the guarantee that won’t happen anyway? Don’t you think it knows about us by now? It came on a Cymrian ship. Probably its original host, and many of its subsequent ones, were Cymrian. It attended the Councils; it knows the prophecies. And aside from the purely random chance that we will come up against it anyway, there is a good possibility that it will seek to destroy us just because some insane Cymrian seer said so. Forget about Ashe, forget about Llauron. We have to kill the damned thing anyway, for ourselves.”

“She’s right, sir.” Grunthor spoke up from the corner he had retreated to during the heat of their argument, causing both of them to start. “If it’s out there, and we’re the only ones ’oo can kill it, Oi say we do so and be done with it. Oi don’t want to spend the rest of my life lookin’ over my shoulder again.”

Achmed watched his sergeant for a moment, then nodded. “All right,” he acquiesced, still glaring at Rhapsody. “I suppose there is wisdom in us getting to it first, at least. So what’s your plan?”

“I’ll call Ashe to Elysian, alone, and give him the ring. Once he’s healed, we can go after the Rakshas and kill it.”

“Why not just call him here?”

Rhapsody thought about the distance Ashe always maintained. “Because Ashe will never agree to it. He will only come to a place he knows he can be safe. Elysian’s waterfall is perfect to shield his vibrational signature from anyone who might be able to find it.”

“No. That wouldn’t be safe for yon” Achmed muttered. “There’s no speaking tube down to Elysian. You wouldn’t be able to call for help if you needed it.”

“No, but the gazebo is there. It’s a natural amplifier. Believe me, Achmed, if I send you a signal you will hear it.”

“No doubt,” he said sourly, his eyes boring a hole through hers. “Is that before or after he has coerced all of our secrets out of you?”

“I would never give Ashe any help that I thought would make him a threat to you, Achmed,” she said, returning his stare with a mild expression. “My loyalty is, first and foremost, to my family.” She smiled at Grunthor, and breathed a little easier when she saw him hide a slight grin. “That’s part of the reason I’ve helped you subdue the Bolglands. Not that you couldn’t do it on your own, but with any luck the Bolg will turn out to be more within your vision of the nation you want them to be. The united Cymrians will pose no threat to diem, particularly if I’m right about Ashe. We’ll be allies. He will feel that he owes us. And if I’m wrong, I will kill him myself. I promise.”

“We’ll see.”

“But our help has to be freely given, otherwise it’s not worth as much.”

“You know, Rhapsody, sometimes I wish you wouldn’t treat strategy like a sale in the market. It is acceptable to not always get the most that something is worth from time to time.”

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “You’ll let me help him, then?”

“You are a grown woman, Rhapsody. I don’t have to let you do anything.”

“But you’ll help.”

A strange smile came over his face. “Yes. But not for him. Only for you. Now, before you invite that useless idiot into my lands, I would appreciate your help in taking care of something else first. Crack open whatever nice vintage you brought home with you, and Grunthor and I will tell you about the Loritorium.”