Rhapsody: Child of Blood

6

Rhapsody awoke in darkness. The moon was gone, having all but vanished the night before into dormancy, and the sky was overcast with racing clouds. Woozily she tried to sit up, then reconsidered as the pain that encircled her head stabbed her violently behind the eyes. She settled for rolling slowly onto one side and propping her head up with her hand, her elbow resting on the stony ground. The groan that wheezed forth from her chest came from a voice she didn’t recognize.

Immediately Grunthor was there with the waterskin, his hand behind her neck. Rhapsody drank gratefully, holding on to the skin with a shaking grip. When finally her thirst was slaked she sat up carefully and looked around her. Where before there had been nothing but open sky and highgrass all around them, now they were hiding within a thin copse of trees. A patch of night thicker than the rest of the air around her blotted out the dark horizon not far away.

“What’s that?” she asked. All she could manage was a whisper.

Achmed looked up from behind his hood. “The forest.” He smiled and looked away, but the Singer’s reaction was unmistakable anyway. Her heartbeat intensified angrily; he could feel the blood rise to her face in fury.

“You carried me? All this way? How dare you.”

“Yeah, she says that now. ’Ow come you didn’t protest at the time, eh?” Grunthor’s smile disappeared in the face of her building wrath. “Come on, miss, you didn’t think we could stay out in the fields, did you? Oi didn’t want to just leave ya there.” A thin hand with a grip like iron clasped her mouth, the scratchy voice low and deadly.

“Bad call on your end, Grunthor. Now listen carefully, Singer, and rest your throat; it will be to your advantage on many levels. We are alone for the moment, but not for long. We are in the scrub-tree line, almost at the outskirts of the Lirin forest. This barrier is far more heavily guarded than the fields.”

“Once inside the forest proper it is imperative that we get to the Tree as quickly as possible. Past the first major stand of trees to the southeast there is an outpost of twenty-four border guards. Being Lirindarc, forest Lirin, they are even more difficult to discern in daylight than the ones we met before you decided to take your little nap. What can you do to aid our avoidance of them and getting to the Tree?” He removed his hand, ignoring her withering stare.

“How do you know these things?” she spat. “Michael was not with the hunting party, which you knew somehow beforehand. The Lirinved—the In-between, if that’s what they were—saw me, and you knew it. You knew they were there from hundreds of yards away. Now you know the number of Lirindarc and where they are within the wood? How do you know this? And why on Earth would you need me to help you at all?”

The strange eyes regarded her coolly; then Achmed looked off into the distance, considering his reply. He had no intention of answering her question; his gift of blood lore, the ability to sense and track any heartbeat of his choosing, was something that only one friend and a few enemies knew of, although his prowess as an unerring assassin was legendary among the seedier element in the eastern lands. He was trying to determine how to craft his response to achieve both his goals: gaining her cooperation while returning her to a more placid state.

Under normal circumstances the anger or dismay of a hostage would mean nothing to him, but this one was decidedly different. In addition to her obvious power and potential, there was something soothing about her when she was calm, an almost pleasant rhythm to the vibrations she emitted. It had an agreeable effect on his skin. Perhaps it was the result of her musical training. He took a deep breath and measured his words.

“We don’t need you to help us at all. The Lirindarc do.”

Her face went slack in shock. “Why?”

“Because you may be the one thing that can guarantee their safety if they come upon us.”

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

The piercing gaze fixed on her again. “We have no need to harm these people. They, unlike the rest of the complacent fools in this land, are not asleep. The Lirin we met in the fields and the Lirindarc are attuned to the world around them. They know what is coming, or at least that something is.”

Even in the dark Achmed could see her go cold. “What’s coming? What do you mean?”

An ugly laugh came from beneath the veils. “How can a Singer not feel it, not hear it? Was it all the noise of Easton that drowned it out, kept you innocent, Rhapsody? Ironic; an innocent whore. Or are you just oblivious?”

Even in the dark Achmed saw her green eyes clear, and a hard, resolute look come into them. “Tell me.”

“No, Rhapsody; you tell me. The Lirindarc from the eastern outpost are making their way here now; they’ll be upon us shortly. Grunthor and I need to get to the Tree, and get there in all due haste. We will allow nothing—and I assume you know what I mean by this—to get in the way. Now, what can you do to ensure that no harm comes to them?”

The staunch expression on her face crumbled. “I—nothing. I’ve never been here before, I don’t know where I am. How can you expect me to ensure anything?”

Achmed turned east and sighted his cwellan. “I suppose I can’t. Grunthor, ready your bow.”

Horror replaced the confusion. “No, please! Don’t do this! Please.”

The robed figure turned and looked at her without dropping his weapon. “Once more, then, I’ll ask you: what can you do? After this afternoon, I would think you’d have a less pathetic answer.”

A large hand came to rest on her shoulder. “Come on, now, miss, surely you can think o’ somethin’. Think ’ard, now.”

Rhapsody took a deep breath and cleared her thoughts, one of the earliest techniques Heiles, her first mentor in the science of Naming, had taught her. After a moment she heard a voice in her mind, a voice that had told her the only tales of these woods she had ever heard.

Mama, tell me about the great forest.

It’s as wide as your eyes can see —bigger than you can possibly imagine —and full of the scent and sound of life. The trees within it grow in more colors than you have ever seen, even in your dreams. You can feel the song of the wood itself, humming in every living thing there. The humans call it the Enchanted Forest because many of the things that grow and live there are unfamiliar to them, but the Lirin know it by its true name: Yliessan, the holy place.

Achmed could see the change come over her face. “Well?”

The Lirin know it by its true name: Yliessan.

Rhapsody looked up at the stars. “Its name,” she said softly. “I know the name of the forest.” Her eyes cleared, and when she looked back at the two men her face was calm, the expression in her eyes deadly. “But let us be very clear, as we will be parting company shortly: I use it for their protection, not for yours.”

“Fair enough,” said Grunthor, grinning.

When the Lirindarc patrol passed directly in front of the three strangers a few moments later, they saw nothing unusual, heard only the sound of the wind singing in the trees of Yliessan, and continued on their way into the night.

By morning they had arrived at the outskirts of the Lirin forest. A gentle wind had picked up with the dawn, and Rhapsody loosed the black velvet ribbon in her hair, letting the breeze blow through it, cleansing her mind of the painful memories that lingered from the day before.

She stood before the unbroken wall of trees, her eyes trying to penetrate the forest edge and look into the greenwood, where in the distance she could see verdant leaves of every hue, dark and cool as the night even in daylight.

Her mother’s image was with her still. Rhapsody felt a catch in her heart as she tried to imagine her as a young woman, a girl really, at the beginning of her Blossoming Year, standing at the threshold of the forest where she was standing now.

Slight; neither Rhapsody nor her mother was particularly tall, perhaps her mother’s golden hair twined in the intricate patterns plaited by the Lirin for practicality and ornamentation. Dressed in a billowing tunic and borilla leggings made in accord with the old ways, the traditional woven leather mekva at her waist. Eyes gleaming in quiet excitement. Had she been happy then? Rhapsody wondered, knowing that if she had been, it did not last.

Her mother had spoken rarely of that time. Her pilgrimage to Sagia was made, in the tradition of her race, just as she was coming into adulthood. The time she had spent in the forest, learning its secrets, was a mystery to Rhapsody, as her mother had been loath to talk about it. It was only when Rhapsody was entering her teen years that she learned why.

Upon the completion of her Year of Bloom, the second year of her pilgrimage, her mother had returned to the fields to find her longhouse decimated, her family gone. It was only her absence that had saved her, and for many years thereafter she had mourned, wishing she had not been the sole survivor, the only one spared.

Had she been able to turn back Time, she would never have left the longhouse, would have preferred to die with them all, rather than face the world alone. Any happiness that she had found afterward had come in the wake of that memory, leaving Rhapsody to wonder if her mother had ever really gotten over it.

Now Rhapsody stood in the same place, feeling the same awe, the same anticipation that she supposed her mother had felt. Her Lirin ancestry had lain dormant in her for her entire life, though in recent years she had seen and come to know more full and half-caste Lirin than she had in childhood.

Easton was the thoroughfare of the eastern seaboard, so in her time there she had seen travelers of many different races and backgrounds. Perhaps now that she had come to Yliessan she would finally find welcome and acceptance among her mother’s people. Perhaps she would finally find the strength to return home.

By sunset they had come to the forest proper, the exterior copses of trees and thickets becoming dense in the transition to the greenwood. The three travelers waited until the night was in full flower before venturing in, watching intently for eyes glittering in the dark.

Many times in the course of coming this far Rhapsody had whispered the namesong of the forest, singing the roundelay over and over again: Yliessan. Yliessan. Yliessan. It had seemed to her that the branches had moved aside in answer, that the brambles and scrub of the forest floor had not sought to hamper them in any way, allowing them to pass quickly, silently, in the dark.

All around her, in the sound of the wind through the leaves and the birds in the tree branches above them, she felt the greenwood answer back, as if calling her to itself. Yliessan.A sense of welcome, innate and primal.

There was a richness to the air in the forest that Rhapsody had never felt before; she drank it in eagerly, filling her lungs and finding them cleaner upon exhaling. She wished they had been able to arrive in light, because she would have loved to see what the forest really looked like. Though it was a sacred place to the Lirin, and only the Lirin knew its name, the legends of the enchanted woods and the Tree were common even hundreds of miles away in Easton among people who would never see a forest in their lives.

Unlike the exhaustion that had consumed her after she had hidden herself and the two men within the highgrass, the sensation she felt during their disguise as part of the forest was invigorating. From the first moment she had matched their vibrations to the signature of the forest, Rhapsody had been filled with a bright, calm sense of home, a cool serenity that cleared her mind and spoke in gentle tones to her half-Lirin heart. Yliessan. Welcome, Child of the Sky. Yliessan.

“Any ideas?” The words, spoken softly by the still-unfamiliar voice, caused Rhapsody to jump a little. Achmed was speaking into her ear, though a moment before he was nowhere near her.

“What do you mean?” she whispered back.

“The Tree; do you feel where it might be?” The tone held a strong tinge of disgust.

She closed her eyes and let the night wind brush over her face, and listened again to the music it made as it passed through the branches and leaves all around them. The rustling was not unlike the sound of the sea down the coast of the city, far enough away from the port to be free of its noise.

After a moment of careful attention Rhapsody could hear a low, deep tone resonating through the ground and hanging in the air above it. It was clear and singular, with a faint harmonic around it, and the more she concentrated the more she could hear its voice. She had no doubt that it came from the Tree.

She pointed southwest. “There,” she said.

Achmed nodded; he had felt the tone as well. Silently they passed through the underbrush, making their way carefully in the dark. Eventually she found she was leading, but it was not a problem for her, as the tone was growing deeper and louder; she could now feel it through her feet.

The forest was vast. Rhapsody had assumed that they would not come to their destination before dawn, or perhaps even in that cycle of the moon. She was surprised to find the song of the Tree so nearby.

Finally, she began to see a pattern in the trees to the east, a thicker, darker line of evergreens forming an almost impenetrable barrier. The song was strong and clear, emanating from behind the treewall. Without a word both she and Achmed turned instinctually toward the sound and increased their pace. A few muttered curses were heard behind them, as Grunthor had to suddenly correct his course without warning. Apparently he could not hear or feel the song as they could.

The three crept to the tree line, feeling a presence of people in the distance around them, but seeing no one. Finally they reached it and stepped between the dark pines, trees thick with old needles and tall trunks, stretching up into the darkness so that it was impossible to see their summits. They passed between them with some difficulty; Grunthor in particular was hard-pressed to fit between the guardian trees. When they got around to the other side they stopped.

The leafy mulch of the forest floor gave way to pristine grass that even in darkness could be seen as neat and uniform; the light of the crescent moon reflected off it, touching the pale green carpet with silver. The lawn that began at the tree line stretched for a great distance, ending in another tree line, thicker than the first and composed of ancient, twisting oak trees.

As Rhapsody started forward across the smooth, open lawn she felt a light tug on the back of her vest.

“Wait.”

Achmed and Grunthor had fallen back against the tree line, and were conferring softly in their common tongue.

Rhapsody felt her feet begin to itch, her body protesting the halt. The song of the Tree was calling her now, filling her with an intense need to hurry, to come, an almost magnetic pull that was painful to resist.

“I thought you wanted to make haste and get to the Tree,” she whispered fiercely.

Achmed held up a hand to silence her and took one more look around. He was uncomfortable at the thought of crossing the wide lawn, open and unprotected by any tree cover or brush, but he and Grunthor could determine no way around it.

The grassy plain was a dry moat to the Tree, positioned between the two treewalls. He could see the immense branches hovering above them, forming a pale, unbroken canopy over this forest meadow.

Carefully he drew the cwellan out from behind his back and nodded. He could discern no heartbeats in the vicinity other than their own. The three travelers checked east to west as though about to cross the Kingsway, then broke into a brisk trot across the open lawn.

Past the next tree line they could see a deep vale, a glen filled with air even richer and sweeter than that in the rest of the Lirin woods. The noise of night in the forest died away as they crept through the oak trees into the glen; the stillness was palpable. Rhapsody looked before her but saw nothing for a moment.

An enormous shaft of moonlight had filled the glen past the oak tree line, making even the air before them seem white and solid. Then her eyes adjusted and she realized that what she was seeing was the Tree itself, the sacred white oak: Sagia, the Oak of Deep Roots.

Veins deep as rivers scored the surface of silvery-white bark, smooth as a pebble at the bottom of a riverbed. Rhapsody could see no branches, because the trunk of the Great Tree was so tall that the first limbs were high in the air out of sight in the darkness. Fallen leaves littered the ground, however, green and lush, with veins of gold running through them.

Her eyes could not behold all of the Tree at once, it was too mammoth. Its girth was such that she was not sure that should the three of them stand around it in different positions and shout they would even hear each other; eye contact would be out of the question. It would easily have filled the town square in Easton, a place where hundreds gathered for public events. Its sheer size held Rhapsody in awe, so much so that when she became aware again she no longer knew where her two traveling companions were.

She looked around for the giant and his cloaked partner, but they were nowhere in sight. The early symptoms of panic began to swell in her ears and fingers; her hands grew cold in the knowledge that she was no longer sure of their intentions. But the deep calm of the glen stilled the cramping in her stomach as a soothing, resonant hum filled her mind. It was the song of the Tree again, deep and abiding, and Rhapsody could feel the wisdom of ages past in its simple melody. She closed her eyes and listened, memorizing the sound. It was the most enchanting song she had ever heard.

As she stood, breathing in the song of the Tree, the knotting in her forehead and neck muscles that had been present for a fortnight since Gammon had come to the Hat and Feathers melted away. A sense of peace and rightness filled her, calling to parts of her soul that she had long forgotten.

She could hear her mother’s voice again as she had in her dream, speaking to her in the Lirin language of her birth, telling her old tales and singing the ritual songs that celebrated the wonders of nature, wonders like this immense Tree.

She did not know how long she stood, eyes closed, listening with her heart to the hypnotic melody, but she came harshly to awareness when she felt a hand grasp her shoulder roughly and a voice speak softly into her ear.

“Where have you been? Come, we’re waiting.”

Rhapsody turned in surprise. “Waiting for what? I thought we were here to pay our respects to the Tree. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Come around this side. I’ve found the main trunk root.”

Rhapsody shook off his arm. “So?”

“I am reluctant to shed blood here.” There was warning in his voice.

The panic returned, and Rhapsody went cold again, then grew hotly furious. “What does that mean? Is that a threat?”

Achmed held something up; she had to look away as the light it flashed seared her eyes. When she was able to look again she saw it was a key, made of something like bone but gleaming like burnished gold, and filmy, as though it was made of captured sunlight reflecting in the dark.

“Want to see how it works? Or are you just going to stand there like an idiot?”

“No, I suppose I’m going to have to follow you like an idiot.”

Angrily she trailed after Achmed around the side of the enormous tree. She looked up into its limbs again but could not even begin to gauge the top for the dark and the immense height of it.

When she came around it farther she could see a little of the first canopy of leafy branches in the vast reflecting pool that mirrored the Tree on the south side. Sagia’s song reverberated in the water, sending silvery chills through Rhapsody’s soul.

She tarried for a moment to drink in more of the beauty of the sight, and when she looked up Achmed was gone again. Hurriedly she ran around the southwestern side to where he had been headed, and saw him bent over in the shadows. She caught up with him and looked over his shoulder. He was reaching around near the ground, the key seemingly buried up to the handle in the base of the Tree.

“Watch,” he said.

With a violent twist, Achmed turned the key, sending a shower of iridescent sparks in a slender stream skyward from the ground. A thin outline of red light, the size and shape of a small passageway, gleamed for a moment, then disappeared.

Rhapsody backed away, her eyes wide. She continued to stare as Grunthor wrenched a huge rectangular section of the root up and away from the ground. Within the hole that remained was a darkness so complete that she felt it was about to spill out at their feet.

“What are you doing?” she cried before Achmed could cover her mouth.

“Shhhh; listen, and I will tell you. This Tree is the sign that this is one of the places where Time itself began. Its roots lead to everywhere the power of this Island touches.” He released her and turned her to face him. “We have to leave. We need to escape to a place of deeper power than even the demon who is chasing us—”

“Demon? ”

“—all right; perhaps demon is an understatement—the monster who gave me this key, has access to. This Tree holds immense magic; it is tied to the fabric of the world. It’s a metaphysical corridor. We need to go where the Tree’s roots will take us.”

Rhapsody glared at him. “So go.”

Achmed held out his hand. “You too; come on.”

“I can’t go; I don’t want to go,” she said, her voice beginning to shake. “Why on Earth would you think I’d go with you?”

“How would you like to see the beginning of Time? You could see the heart of the Tree, or of the world. What would any Lirin give to feel the beating heart of this tree?”

“No.”

Grunthor, who had peeled away a section of the Tree so that it looked like a doorway, looked up at her and grinned. “Tell ya what, miss. Come now, and you’ll be able to stop us from damagin’ the root. Leave us to our own devices and—”

Rhapsody gasped in horror. “You wouldn’t dare! This is a sacred oak, the seat of wisdom of the entire Lirin population, not just the ones that live in the forest. To injure it in any way—”

“—would not be too difficult, miss.”

Rhapsody’s eyes opened even wider as Grunthor disappeared into the dark hole. Achmed moved to the Tree and watched as the giant descended, blocking her view.

“Don’t you want to see what it looks like inside?”

Rhapsody did, despite her revulsion at what seemed a desecration, but the thought that these two marauders were entering Sagia made her stomach turn. Having seen their prowess in a fight she knew she had little chance to prevent it, but knew just as surely that she would gladly die trying.

“Stop,” she demanded, and drew her dagger. “Get out of there.”

“Last chance,” said the strange, dry voice as the cloaked man disappeared. “Good luck explaining the damage to the Lirindarc guards who will doubtless arrive any minute. I wouldn’t wait around here if I were you. Grunthor, you did bring your ax, didn’t you?” The question, obviously meant to prod her into compliance, echoed up from the darkness.

Rhapsody looked around. In the distance she thought she did in fact hear the sound of people approaching. Worse, Sagia’s song had changed, as if the sacred oak was in pain.

She ran to the place where the two men had entered to observe the damage herself, anxiously running a hand over the silvery bark and feeling the vibration in her fingers that she had felt before in her heart. As she was examining the Tree a hand shot out from the dark hole and seized her, dragging her inside.

Rhapsody screamed for help as Achmed passed her down to Grunthor and grabbed the key. He gave it a firm pull from the ground and spun to face her. As he did, the wall of bark closed behind him silently; then, with a final pulse of light, the key disappeared from his hand, plunging them all into total darkness.