Prophecy: Child of Earth

56

Without a word Grunthor gathered the Sleeping Child from the altar of Living Stone in his arms and nodded up the corridor that led back to Ylorc. He and Achmed ran a short distance up the tunnel.

When Grunthor was sure Rhapsody could still see him he turned toward the side wall, holding the body of the child in front of him, then stepped forward into the earth. The granite glowed for a moment as he passed through, then cooled into a rocky opening. Achmed followed Grunthor into the bunker the giant had made in the side of the corridor. He leaned back, signaled to Rhapsody, and when he saw her nod he stepped back inside. Grunthor gave the wall a strong shove, and the rock that had been cleared away to form the bunker slid liquidly back into position, sealing off their hiding place.

Slowly Rhapsody turned in a full circle, surveying for the last time the Loritorium as it had been. The pools of glistening silver memory shone, torch-bright, in the street, reflecting the flame from the firewell. She struggled not to be swallowed by the despair she felt at witnessing the end of what had once been such a noble dream, such a worthy undertaking. Scholarship and the search for knowledge, dying on the altar of greed and the lust for power.

When she was sure that her friends and the child were all the way inside the earthen bunker with the rock-seal tightly in place she drew Daystar Clarion, whispering a prayer to the unseen stars miles above her that she was doing the right thing.

In the lore-heavy air the flaming blade roared to life, singing its clarion call. It sent a silver thrill ringing through Rhapsody and the cavern around her; for an instant she was certain that the Grandmother had heard the melodic shout, and had taken heart from it. Rhapsody closed her eyes and concentrated, thinking back to another ancient woman, a warrior like the Grandmother, who had stayed, alone and unacknowledged, seeking to protect the world from the F’dor.

I have lived past my time, waiting for a guardian to come and replace me. Now that I have someone to pass my stewardship on to, I will eventually be able to find the peace that I have longed for. I will at long last be reunited with those I love. Immortality in this world is not the only kind, you know, Rhapsody.

The words of ultimate wisdom from the lips of the Sleeping Child.

Light it.

Rhapsody fought to conquer the nausea that was swelling within her. It didn’t matter that she was doing as the Grandmother commanded, or how necessary the imminent act was. She was going to be the agent of the last Dhracian’s death. She would be burning her alive. There was something more to it, something about the act of immolation that tugged at the edge of her memory, but she could not recall what it was, as if it had been removed from her mind. Rhapsody shook her head to clear the thought and concentrated on the sword.

Deep inside her she felt a swell of power, and strengthening of her spirit, radiating from her hands where she gripped the hilt of Daystar Clarion. The doubt and sadness of the Grandmother’s impending death burned off like dew in the blaze of the morning sun. She and the sword were one.

It is you, Rhapsody; I knew it from the moment I saw you. Even if you weren’t one of the Three, I believe in my heart that you are the one to do this; the true Iliachenva’ar.

Rhapsody stared at the gleaming flame of the firewell, listening to its song. Once she had passed through the fire in the Earth’s heart, the same fire that was the source of this flame. The fire had not harmed her; it had seeped into her soul until it was part of her.

It was most of her.

It would not harm her now. It awaited her command.

Rhapsody pointed Daystar Clarion at the well of fire. In the rippling flame she could see her own eyes reflected, eyes burning green, blending into the fire’s many hues.

Light it.

“Vingka jai,” she said, calling on her deepest lore as a Namer. Her voice rang with authority, filling the Loritorium’s cavern. Ignite and spread.

She struggled to keep her eyes open against the fireball that ensued.

The licking flames from Daystar Clarion’s blade leapt forward angrily, righteously, blazing a gleaming arc from the sword to the fountainhead. When the flame from the sword touched the Earth’s fire they melded, forming a ray of light more intense that Rhapsody had ever seen, even in the starfire that had lighted Jo’s funeral pyre. A commingling of the fire with the Earth, the ether of the stars, and the purest of elemental fire’s flames, the burning ray blasted out of the fountainhead and torched the liquid fuse Achmed had made, sending a ferocious sheet of fire crackling to the upper reaches of the vaulted ceiling.

Then, with an earth-shattering roar, the fire and the lampfuel erupted, surging through the tunnel and into the remains of the Colony. As the mammoth fireball billowed forward, it filled the entire space, sending liquid heat and blinding light into every crevasse, expanding until it reached to the edges of the caverns and tunnels. It washed over Rhapsody, filling her with exquisite warmth and joy; in its passing she heard the song of the fire at the Earth’s heart, a song she had carried with her since the first time she heard it. It was like being reborn again, cleansed of the pain and grief she had been carrying for so long.

From within the ruins of the Colony a hideous shrieking issued forth, screams of demonic intensity that tore through the Loritorium, shaking its flame-scorched walls. Rhapsody gripped the sword harder, concentrating with all her strength on directing the fire through the broken tunnels, envisioning it burning the tangled vine into obliteration.

I

“Cerant ori sylviat,” Rhapsody commanded. Burn until all is consumed. The intensity of the flames increased in the distance, raising the moan of the enormous serpent- vine to an earsplitting wail.

Above the fire’s roar Rhapsody began the Lirin Song of Passage, a dirge for the Grandmother. Though she had lived her entire life within the earth, the Dhracian Matriarch was also descended from the Kith, the race of the wind. Perhaps the wind would take her ashes now and set them free to dance across the wild world, a place she had never seen from above. The song cut through the cacophony and melded in harmony with the billowing flames.

And then, suddenly, the flames grew weak and extinguished, taking with them the last of the air in the cavern. A hollow silence thundered through the Loritorium, then diminished into an ominous hiss. Rhapsody fell to her knees, breathless and gasping for air in the lifeless smoke.

The one who heals also will kill.

The enormity of what she had done to the Grandmother overwhelmed her, and, choking, she retched.

Grunthor and Achmed covered their eyes and heads, shielding the Sleeping Child as the backwash of the flame roared up the tunnel past their bunker. Their clothes grew hot from the searing heat that radiated through the solid wall of rock, and their eyes locked. Achmed smiled slightly at the gleam of fear in Grunthor’s eyes.

“She’s all right.”

Grunthor nodded. They waited until the noise abated, but heard nothing.

“We’ll wait,” Achmed said. “She’ll be coming momentarily.”

“How can you be sure?” Grunthor asked.

Achmed leaned back against the rockwall. “I’ve learned a few of her tricks myself. Believe what you want to happen, expect that it will, and somehow, miraculously, it does, at least for her. It worked with singing her back to life. It will work now.”

Grunthor nodded uncertainly and turned his focus to the Earthchild. She lay in his arms in the dark, still for the first time, sleeping so deeply that he could barely see her breathe. He watched her silently take the air in, saw it ever-so-slightly slip back out, over again, and again, utterly mesmerized by the sight.

They had shared one body for a fleeting moment, the Child of Earth and he. From the experience he had gained an understanding of many of the Earth’s secrets, though he would have been at a loss to explain any of them. There was something almost holy about having felt the beating heart of the world pulsing in him, a surpassing vibrancy that left him feeling bereft now that it was gone.

He stared at the Earthchild’s face, roughhewn and coarse like his own, while still strangely smooth and beautiful, visible to him even in the absence of light. He knew there were silent tears running in muddy trickles down her polished cheeks, knew that she was mourning the Grandmother, holding a silent vigil behind her eyes. Now he understood what the Dhracian Matriarch had meant when sh said she had known the child’s heart. Perhaps now he would know it as well.

It was not until Achmed shifted nervously and leaned closer to the rock sealing their bunker that it dawned on him how long Rhapsody had been gone. The king put his ear to the wall, then moved back, shaking his head.

“Anything?” Grunthor inquired hopefully. Achmed shook his head again.

“Can you feel her through the earth?”

Grunthor thought for a moment. “Naw. Everything’s all jumbled, like tt ground is still in shock. Can’t tell anything.”

Achmed rose shakily. “Perhaps I can’t feel her heartbeat for the same reason Grunthor’s eyes glinted with fear. “We’ll give her a moment more, and if si doesn’t come, we’ll go after her.” He leaned against the stone, trying to mal out any sound he could on the other side of the rockwall. He heard nothin

“Rhapsody!” he shouted, the sound bouncing futilely back at him, to be swallowed a moment later by the earthen bunker. He turned to Grunthor, 1: dark eyes glittering.

“Open it,” he ordered tersely, pointing at the rocky barrier.

Grunthor carefully shifted the Earthchild in his arms and reached one hai into the wall. A sizable piece of it fell away before him. As if in reply, he heard Rhapsody’s voice calling to them from the other side of the stone wall.

“Grunthor! Achmed! Are you all right in there?”

The giant Bolg stood up and reached the rest of the way into the stone the wall, tearing it away from the opening. When he broke through to ’t other side his face lit up with a tired grin.

“Well, well, Yer Ladyship, you certainly took your time, now, didn’t you? ’Ad us worried, you did.”

Rhapsody smiled and offered Achmed her hand, giving him a tug out the bunker. “You’re a fine one to talk,” she said to Grunthor. “For the long time I thought you were still in the Colony, buried under a mountain of rock.” Her smile faded as he stepped out of the hole in the rockwall, carrying the Sleeping Child. “I have to admit, when I saw her walking, I thought it was over. What did you do, meld with her the way you do with stone?”

“Yep. What do you think she is, if not stone?” Grunthor answered simj “Didn’t think Oi could carry ’er safely out through all that mess. ’Twas the easiest way.”

Achmed gestured toward the Colony entrance. “Come on.” enormous tunnel was deathly silent save for the occasional pop hiss from the ash that blackened the entirety of the walls and floor. Aroi and above them, where the vine had broken violently through the cave nothing remained except for scorched fragments of root and the twisting n. of the tunnel it had carved in the earth.

Achmed bent down at what had once been the arch over the Sleep Child’s catafalque and ran his sensitive fingers over the scattered letters of words that had been carved there. Once they had warned a world that never saw them about the dangers of disturbing that which slept within it. Now they littered the floor of the cavern, broken into pieces of senseless babble.

Rhapsody’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Achmed nodded distantly. Somewhere here were the Grandmother’s ashes, mingled inexorably with those of the demon-vine, inseparable as the intertwined fate of Dhracian and F’dor. It saddened him to think that the end of Time would find them that way. He stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. He stared down the twisting tunnel from where the vine had come.

“This goes all the way back to the House of Remembrance, two hundred leagues or more,” he said, squinting into the darkness. “Not good. It will be a vulnerability, a passageway into the mountain for the F’dor.”

“Not for long,” Grunthor said cheerfully. He drew the Sleeping Child closer to his chest and closed his eyes, feeling the nearness of the Earth’s life’s blood to his heart. He reached out and laid a hand on the wall.

Rhapsody and Achmed leapt back as the tunnel swelled and collapsed, filling in the monstrous rip the vine had torn in the Earth. The Earth itself shrugged, reapportioning its mass, closing the doorway through which the F’dor had reached into the mountain.

Rhapsody looked above her. Despite the shifting of enormous amounts of earth, nothing rained down on their heads except for a little dust. She looked at Grunthor again. He was translucent, radiating the same glow that she had seen within the Earth when they were crawling along the Axis Mundi. The Child of Earth, she thought fondly.

When the glow diminished, Grunthor pulled his hand away from the wall, then turned and smiled.

“All closed.”

“All the way back to Navarne?” Achmed asked incredulously.

“Yep.”

“How’d you manage that?”

The Bolg Sergeant grinned down at the child in his arms. “With ’elp, sir.”

The cavern sealed, the three turned back toward the Loritorium. Rhapsody smiled at Grunthor and ran her fingers gently over the Sleeping Child’s forehead. The Earthchild sighed in her sleep.

“What are you going to do with her now, Achmed?”

“Guard her,” he said flatly.

“Of course. I was just wondering where.”

Achmed looked around what remained of the Loritorium, its artistic carvings cracked and scarred, the beautiful frescoes and mosaics blackened with soot, the pools of silver memory gone. “Here,” he said. “At first I considered bringing her back to the Cauldron so that it would be easy to keep an eye on her, but it would be too disruptive to her.

“This really is the ideal place for her. It’s buried deep enough that she won’t be disturbed by the Bolg. She can sleep on the altar of Living Stone; she seemed peaceful there.”

Rhapsody nodded. “Perhaps it will bring her solace.”

“Perhaps. We’ll need, to reseal the tunnel we made coming down here and retrap the place. There’s enough lampfuel in that well to build our own volcano if we have to. Then, when he’s gotten his strength back, Grunthor can open a single passageway from the Loritorium to my chambers. If the F’dor is going to make another attempt at her, I want it to have to come through me personally. It will be an engineering nightmare, but I think we can pull it off.”

Rhapsody nodded as Grunthor gently laid the child on the altar. “It will try again, you know.”

“Of course. But I don’t think it will try again like this. It’s gathering an army to assault the Bolglands; I’m not exactly clear on how it plans to do it, but I’m certain of it. That’s why Ashe was its target to begin with—he was the convergence of the royal Cymrian lines, as well as the Invoker’s son. He could easily have assumed the throne of Roland, and most likely brought Manosse with him, as well as any nonaligned Cymrians from the early generations loyal to either side that might happen to still be, around, like Anborn.”

“And possibly Tyrian as well,” Rhapsody added. “His mother was Lirin.” Oelendra’s words in front of the roaring fire came back to her. If the F’dor had been Me to bind him, to command the dragon, I shudder to imagine how it would have used that power to control the elements themselves. “The whole world is fortunate that he was strong enough to get away.”

Achmed stared at the ruin around him. “The army Ashe could have raised might actually have been able to do what Anwyn could not—take the mountain. He would have been the perfect host for the F’dor, but he managed to get away and stay hidden from it these past two decades. Now that it knows he’s alive, it will undoubtedly be looking for him again.”

“That’s his problem to deal with,” Rhapsody said resolutely. “We’ve given him the tools he needs to survive. His soul is his own again, he’s whole once more and out of pain. He can go into hiding for a while if he needs to. He did it for twenty years. He’ll be all right.”

A wry smile crawled into the corner of Achmed’s mouth. “I can’t tell you how much good it does me to hear you talking like that,” he said. “Does this mean your assignation with him is over?”

Rhapsody looked away. “Yes.”

“What do you plan to do now?”

She stood a little straighter, and Achmed was struck by the warriorlike aspect that came over her face and posture. “First, I want to make sure Ylorc is taken care of, and give you and Grunthor any help you need in dismantling the Loritorium and getting the Earthchild settled. After that I need a day to mourn, to sing dirges and laments for all whom we have lost.” Achmed nodded, noting that the steady look in her eyes didn’t waver when she referred to her sister and the Grandmother. “Then, if you think you can be spared from the Bolglands for a bit, I could use your assistance in locating the various children of the F’dor.”

“Only if you’re planning to dispose of them,” Achmed said, a warning note entering his voice. “Somehow given your proclivity for children, Rhapsody, I can’t see you succeeding in that undertaking.”

“I have no intentions of disposing of them unless they make it necessary, and then I will do so in a heartbeat,” she replied. “This is no different than it was with Ashe. They are people with human souls, Achmed, with demon blood in their veins. They can be helped. They need to be helped.”

“How do you know they aren’t little demonic monsters like the Rakshas?” he demanded, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. He didn’t like the turn the exchange had taken.

“They were born of human mothers, and Ashe’s soul was present in the Rakshas. The presence of a soul in the parent bequeaths a soul to the child. They aren’t monsters, Achmed, any more than the Bolg are. They’re children, children with tainted blood. If somehow we can separate that blood out, they have at least some hope of avoiding an eternity of damnation.”

“No,” he said angrily. “It isn’t worth the risk. Any one of them might be bound to the F’dor already. We want to meet the F’dor on our terms, not on its own.”

Rhapsody smiled coldly. “Exactly. Your ability to sense blood from the old world will help me find the children, Achmed. If that part of their blood which is demonic can be extracted, I will give it to you. Then you will have the blood of the F’dor, a trail of scent for the hunt.” She looked over at Grunthor, who was listening. “We’ll finally be able to find it. It has given us the means.”

Blood will be the means.

The king and the sergeant exchanged a glance, then Achmed looked back at her.

“All right,” he said finally. “But make no mistake about it, Rhapsody. If there is even a split second when any of the demon-spawn pose even the slightest of threats, to any of us, I will cut its throat before it exhales, and dispatch it back to its father’s realm in the Underworld. This will not be open for debate or exception. Do you agree?”

Rhapsody nodded. “Fair enough,” she said.