Rhapsody: Child of Blood

10

“I see a break in the tunnel.”

Rhapsody and Grunthor awoke to the strange voice echoing slightly in the tunnel around them. The earth generally absorbed the sound, so the reverberation caught them off guard.

Rhapsody sat up, her hair blanketing the wide chest of the Firbolg Sergeant whom she had been using as a mattress.

Grunthor looked up. High above, barely in sight, he could see an infinitesimal change in the red glow, as if there was airspace above it. He nodded in agreement.

“Right, then, let’s make for it in all due ’aste,” he said, helping Rhapsody back onto the root above him.

They resumed their climb. It seemed to Rhapsody that the journey was less difficult now that the end might be in sight. She found new strength in her limbs and a more sure footing in her step just imagining being above the ground in the air again. She had tried hard to suppress thoughts of escape while climbing in the endless darkness; it caused feelings of panic and frustration to set in, making her abandon hope and crushing her spirit. Even now she exercised caution about being too excited.

It proved to be a wise move. Even with them climbing as long as they could without stopping to rest, the break in the tunnel seemed no closer. They made a sleeping camp, as was their custom when they had exhausted their ability to climb, and doled out the remains of the stores Achmed carried.

As she swallowed the dried beans and the pieces of Sagia’s root Achmed had harvested, followed by a cup of water droplets collected from one of the tiny, hairlike rootlets that were the tributaries of the taproot, Rhapsody felt a sense of desolation creep over her. She had been able to avoid thinking about her dream from the previous night, distracted by the prospect of the end being near and comforting herself with the knowledge that Michael would never find her now. Unbidden, her mind wandered back to the horrible memory.

The most disturbing thing about Michael’s behavior during those nightmarish two weeks was not the depth of its depravity, but its wild unpredictability. He would go for days sometimes, locking her alone in the room with him, refusing to let her leave, demanding constant attention. Then, for no apparent reason, he would drag her down to the dining room and take her on the breakfast table amid the cutlery and startled expressions of his lieutenants, who had little option but to watch or look away while their meal grew cold and congealed.

Sometimes his jealousy ruled him. She had seen him bloody one of his lackeys for looking in her direction. On other occasions he would force her service as many of his men as he could find, one after another. She had wished for death, but it had not come, and instead she comforted herself with the thought that at least the child was safe.

Finally the day had come when he was to leave. Rhapsody stood and watched him pack his horse; his mood was surprisingly jovial for once. His smile was broad as he took her face in his hands, kissing her goodbye with great care.

“Well, now, Rhapsody, it certainly has been wonderful to see you again. I can’t wait until this assignment is over. Will you miss me?”

“Of course,” she had said. The lies no longer made her choke.

“That’s my girl. All right, then, Karvolt, get Petunia and let’s be on our way, shall we?”

Rhapsody had felt shock ripple through her. “What? No, Michael, she’s mine; that was the bargain.”

“Yours? Don’t be ridiculous. I promised her dear father, right after I sliced his head through, that I would take care of her myself. You can’t expect me to go back on my word, now, can you?” Screams could be heard inside the house, and Karvolt emerged, carrying the girl.

Rhapsody began to panic. She knew it was certainly within the makeup of Michael’s character to have abused her under the terms of the agreement, and then break his word; the prospect was too awful to bear. He was grinning from ear to ear, watching the tears run down her face as he blocked her attempts to reach the girl. Finally, against her will, she gave in to sobbing.

“Please, Michael, no. Don’t break your word. Give her to me. Please.”

“Why should I, my dear? I have just had the most satisfying two weeks of my life; in fact, I think all the pleasure I have ever had put together could not compare to this time. I’m used to regular sexual exercise now; someone has to satisfy me. Petunia will do as a temporary substitute.”

Rhapsody grabbed his arm as he turned. “Take me, then, Michael; leave the girl.” She knew what his last words meant: the child was expendable. He would use her horribly and then kill her.

Michael’s face glowed with triumph. “How touching. Now, who would have believed you are the same girl that refused me before my men a fortnight ago? I guess my attention was enough to change your mind, eh, my dear?”

“Yes.” Rhapsody thought bitterly how true this was. Many things she had believed in had died in the intervening time.

“Well, what do you know? I’m even better than I thought. I’m sorry, Rhapsody, but I can’t help you. I doubt you will wait for me in the meantime, so I can’t very well be expected to wait for you. Saddle up, Karvolt.” He turned to go.

In a last act of desperation, Rhapsody pulled him back into her arms and kissed him. She could feel his heart beat faster as his surprise wore off, and he began to grope her enthusiastically. She drew him as near as she could stomach to and whispered into his ear.

“Please, Michael; would you do this to a woman who loved you?” She knew he would take her words as she meant him to, even though there was none of that meaning in them for her. It was a purely rhetorical question.

Michael pushed her away and looked into her face. “You love me? You, Rhapsody? Swear it, and I will leave her with you.” Behind him she could see Karvolt watching her with interest from the saddle, the screaming child tied roughly behind him.

“Take her down first, and give her to Nana, and I will swear it.”

“It will need to be a sincere oath, Rhapsody. I don’t intend to be toyed with.”

“It will be, I swear it.”

Michael motioned to Karvolt, and he untied the girl, swung her down, and led her to Nana, who rushed her back inside. Michael watched until they were out of sight, then turned to Rhapsody again.

“All right, my dear, what was it you wanted to say?” Rhapsody took a deep breath. “I swear by the Star, that my heart will love no other man until this world comes to an end. There; is that enough for you now, Michael?” His smile of victory made her sick. Michael bent and kissed her gently.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I love you as well, and there will be no other in my heart either; my bed, perhaps, but not my heart. I will be back for you, Rhapsody, and when I return we will be together always.”

She nodded dumbly, knowing that what she had just sacrificed had meant less than he thought. She had no heart to compromise, anyway. She had given it away long before, and it had died with the one who took it.

Rhapsody watched, her arms clutching her waist, as the contingent rode off, Michael’s broad smile glinting brilliantly in the sun as he waved to her. She waited until they were out of sight, then went behind the bushes and retched.

“Vermin.”

Rhapsody sat up in shock. Achmed must have been reading her mind. My sentiments exactly, she thought ruefully. Then she followed his extended finger in the direction he was pointing and gasped. Spilling down the root above them was a moving wall of pale, wriggling shapes, larger than her forearm, making their way toward the heat exuded by the three of them.

Trembling, Rhapsody nicked her wrist to draw forth her dagger. The length of the blade was only as long as her palm, with a hilt of half the size. These wormlike creatures were easily three times as long, which would mean that even while she was attacking them they would be on her.

Suddenly the wind was knocked out of her by a tight grip around her waist. Grunthor seized her around the middle and dragged her off the root, lowering her down to a position behind him. Then he climbed a little higher until he found a spot with a wide crevice in the root shaft where he could perch. Rhapsody followed his lead, locating a patch of thin roots that formed an outcropping sufficient to secure herself.

Above her she could hear the air being rent with the whispering sound of the disks from Achmed’s cwellan. She prayed he didn’t misfire; the missiles would fall on her or Grunthor.

“Draw,” he said in a warning voice to Grunthor. The vermin had moved at an astonishing speed, slithering down the root, over every surface and irregularity without a perceptible delay. They swarmed over him, covering his robes. As his hands slashed, lightning-fast, with a blade she could not see, the bodies began to fall, some of them contacting her as they pitched into the darkness below.

The vermin were larvae the color of the pale root, but with thin purple veins that scored their surfaces, and similarly colored heads engorged with blood. One fell into her hair, biting at her scalp with small, sharp teeth that were set in rows within its head. It was all she could do to refrain from screaming.

Grunthor had drawn an enormous sword, thin and long with a pointed tip, and was knocking scores of them off the root above him, precipitating another shower of writhing bodies.

With her reaction speed, born and nurtured on the streets of Easton, she quickly parried the falling larvae and turned her attention to the sluglike vermin that had swelled past Grunthor and were coming down the root at her. There were scores of them; she knew if this many had made it to her, the men above her must be engaging hundreds, if not thousands of them.

In between delivering sweeping blows to the tide of parasites, Grunthor cast a glance her way.

“’Ere, you can’t fight with that lit’le thing,” he said, kicking an enormous mound of wriggling flesh off the root next to him. Rhapsody barely had time to dodge out of the way of the falling lump. “’Elp yourself to one o’ my long weapons.” He shifted his body slightly to allow her to grab any one of the many handles that jutted out from behind his pack.

Rhapsody shook her head, attacking the two worms that were clinging to the root above her. “I don’t know how to use anything but a dagger,” she said, slashing off their heads and pushing their bodies off the taproot with two swipes of the knife. A third larva sank its teeth into her upper arm, causing her to cry out in surprise. She shook her arm violently, trying to dislodge it.

“Turn,” Grunthor ordered. Rhapsody obeyed. The giant Bolg leaned back and stretched his arm down, skewering the larva on the tip of his sword. He wrenched it off her with a twist of the weapon and she cried out in pain again as it took a small piece of flesh with it into the tunnel below. “We’ll ’ave to give you some lessons after all this, miss,” he said as he turned back to the larvae on him.

“If I live through this,” she muttered, striking the next batch of vermin off the root.

“All mine are dead,” called Achmed from above, turning and rappelling down the root to where Grunthor was perched.

“Oi only got this patch o’ little buggers; ’elp ’er Ladyship,” said Grunthor, stabbing at the last mass above him.

“Lie flat,” Achmed ordered. Rhapsody complied, pressing herself against the root, squashing a larva beneath her chest in the process. She closed her eyes as the cwellan disks whizzed by her, slicing through the vermin around her.

“You can open them now,” the voice, thin and sandy as river silt, said from above. She did, and drew in a breath at the face staring at her in the dark.

It had been a very long time since she had seen Achmed’s face. He generally traveled in the lead, while she took up the rear, and so she had forgotten how startling his visage was, especially in the dark.

“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice coming out like the croak of a crone. Then she noticed his forearm. “You’re bleeding,” she said.

Achmed didn’t look at the wound. “I suppose.” He looked up at Grunthor. The Sergeant nodded. Achmed started to climb back up into his position at the lead.

“Well, let me dress it before you go. Who knows if they have some sort of venom.” She spoke steadily, her voice belying the pounding of her heart as the reality of the attack caught up with her. Rhapsody had always found that in situations of great danger she was able to function calmly, almost detachedly, until the danger had passed. It was afterward that the symptoms of panic set in.

“I’ll live,” the robed man responded. Grunthor shook his head.

“She might be right, Sir. ’Oo knows where them worms came from. They might be servants of our lit’le friend.”

Achmed seemed to consider for a moment, then slid back down the root until he was positioned across from her in the outcropping. “All right, but don’t take forever about it.”

“You’re late for an appointment?” Rhapsody retorted as she opened her pack and drew forth her waterskin. She took Achmed’s forearm and turned it over in her hand. The wound was deep and bloody. Gently she poured some water onto it, feeling him tense but observing no reaction on his face.

Grunthor moved closer to watch as she opened a phial with a pungent smell of spice and vinegar. Rhapsody soaked a clean linen handkerchief with the witch-hazel-and-thyme mixture and applied it directly to the wound, wrapping it in filmy wool. Achmed twisted away.

“Hold still; I’ve never done this before,” she chided.

“Well, that’s reassuring.” He winced as the spice-soaked bandage began to drench the wound with its vile-smelling liquid, a dismal burning sensation beginning under the skin. “I hope you realize I don’t need both hands to kill you, if it was your intent to deprive me of one.”

Rhapsody looked up at him and smiled. Her face was bruised and bloody from the fight, but her eyes sparkled in the darkness. She was beginning to take to his sense of humor, and against his will Achmed felt an inner tug. Grunthor was right; she had a powerful smile. He made note of it for future reference.

She returned to her work, humming a tune that made his ears buzz. He imagined that the slight vibrating sensation was mirrored on his wounded wrist, which no longer stung.

“Stop that noise,” he instructed harshly. “You’re making my ears ring.”

She laughed. “It won’t work if I stop the noise, that’s the most important part. It’s a song of healing.”

Achmed looked her over as she continued to hum, and after a moment the wordless tune grew into a song. She sang in words he didn’t recognize.

“Oh, ’ow pretty,” said Grunthor from behind her. “Well, sir, if we can’t find work when we get out o’ this stinkin’ ’ole, maybe ’Er Ladyship ’ere will teach us some tunes and we can go on the road as a team of wanderin’ troubadours. Oi can see it now: Doctor Uchmed’s Travelin’ Snake Show.”

“Great idea,” Rhapsody said as the song came to the end. “Let me guess: you sing tenor, Achmed.” She received a surly look in response. Slowly she began unwrapping his wrist. “You know, you both really ought to have more respect for music. It can be a very powerful weapon, as well as whatever else you need it to be.”

“That’s true; my singin’ voice can be quite good at inflictin’ pain. At least that’s what the troops use ta tell me.”

Rhapsody’s smile grew a little brighter. “Go ahead, scoff if you want to. But music of one form or another will probably be what gets us out of this place.”

“Only if you annoy me so much with your singing that I use your body as an auger and drill us out of here.”

She laughed. “Music is nothing more than the maps through the vibrations that make up all the world. If you have the right map, it will take you wherever you want to go. Here.” She stopped unwrapping Achmed’s arm and opened her pack, pulling out a dried blossom.

“Remember this? You thought it was a parlor trick, but that was because you don’t understand how it works. Even now, after all this time, it can be made new again.” She ignored the sarcastic glance that passed between them, and put the flower into Achmed’s palm. Quietly she sang its name, and went back to unwrapping his bandage as she waited for his reaction with amusement.

Grunthor leaned over her shoulder and watched as the petals began to swell with moisture and uncurl, stretching to their full length again. Even in the acrid tunnel, the faint fragrance of the primrose was discernible over the stench of stagnant water and the sweat of their bodies.

“But it only works with flowers?”

“No, it works with anything.” She pulled the bandage away, and surveyed her handiwork. The wound was closed, and almost gone. What had a moment before been a deep, jagged gash was now a thin line of raised pink skin, and after a moment even that had vanished, leaving the forearm as it had been before the combat.

Even Achmed seemed somewhat impressed. “How does it work?”

“It’s part of what a Namer can do. There is no thing, no concept, no law as strong as the power of a given thing’s name. Our identities are bound to it. It is the essence of what we are, our own individual story, and sometimes it can even make us what we are again, no matter how much we have been altered.”

Achmed gave her a sour look. “That must be profitable in your line of work—how many times have you sold your own virginity? Does it bring a better price each time?” He watched her wince, and felt a twinge of regret. He didn’t like his own reaction, and so filled his voice with sarcasm. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Have I offended you?”

“No,” she said shortly. “There is very little you could say that I haven’t heard before. I’m used to men making jackasses out of themselves.”

“’Ey!” said Grunthor in mock offense. “Watch it, sweet’eart, I haven’t ’ad a good meal in a good long time.”

“Another example,” she said patiently. “You see, men have the upper hand in size and strength, and many of them have little compunction about using it when they can’t win with their wits. Who do you think came up with the idea of prostitution in the first place—women? Do you think we enjoy being degraded on a daily basis? I find it incredibly ironic; it is a service in great demand, and one that I can assure you few women go into unless they have to.” She dabbed a little of the healing tonic onto her own cuts and vermin bites, then offered the phial to Grunthor, who shook his head.

“Men are the ones who want it,” she continued. “They often go to great lengths and great expense to obtain it, and then turn around and insult the women who provide the salve for this overwhelming, insistent need of theirs. Then the men act as though such women are somehow to be ashamed for their actions, when it was the man’s idea in the first place; that’s what I cannot fathom.”

“Anyone can understand a starving person resorting to stealing in order to feed his family, but somehow a woman who is forced into that life by the same threat, or that of violence, is less than a person. Never mind the man who is making use of the service. He has nothing to regret, and in fact it is usually he who expects her to accept the scorn and derision as something she deserves. I say all of you can blow in the wind. I’m going to remain celibate.”

“Right,” Grunthor chuckled, “sell a bit here, sell a bit there—”

Rhapsody spoke another word, and the giant’s leering commentary was choked off in midword. The giant continued to move his mouth, but no sound emerged for a moment. His eyes widened with surprise, and he looked over at Achmed.

Achmed reached over and roughly took hold of her collar. “What did you do to him? Whatever spell you cast, take it off now.”

Rhapsody didn’t blink. “He’s under no spell; he can speak if he wants.”

“Oi doubt it—oh, Oi guess Oi can at that, now. Sorry, miss. Oi didn’t mean to be offensif.”

“No offense taken. As I told you, there’s very little you can say to insult me that I haven’t heard before.”

“Well, no one here will sit in judgment of you. We have sort of a ‘live and let live’ philosophy, wouldn’t you say, Grunthor?”

Grunthor snickered, then nodded. “Oh, yes, miss. Live and let live. Or, per’aps ‘kill and eat’ might be more like it. You got to remember, Oi’m a Sergeant Major by trade; Oi kills and eats folks as part of my job. Well, actually, just kills ’em; the eatin’ part is actually what you might call a side benefit. Countin’ coo, as it were.” Rhapsody just nodded and went back to rewrapping the bandages.

“So how did you take away his voice, then, if it wasn’t a spell?”

“I spoke the name of silence,” she said, “and it came, for a moment, anyway. It was the most powerful thing in this, well, this space, because it was in the presence of its name. How’s your wrist feeling?”

“Fine. Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome.”

“Oi ’ate to break up this lit’le love festival, but we ought to get movin’, eh?”

“You’re right,” said Achmed, rising from the taproot and brushing off the dead vermin that remained around them. “I’m running out of disks. We’ll have to make the best use we can of them from here on out if the vermin return.”

Rhapsody shuddered as the carcasses fell around her, covering her head to keep the pieces out of her hair. She repacked the flower and healing herbs, and followed Achmed back off of the outcropping and onto the root, to begin once more the seemingly endless climb to nowhere.