Rhapsody: Child of Blood

16

The breeze picked up just before dawn, blowing a shower of fine ice crystals across Rhapsody’s face.

She woke with a start and sat up, shaking off her dream to find that she hadn’t been dreaming. The air had gained a bitter edge in the night, and the sky was now perfectly clear, the stars beginning to fade but still glimmering, as if reluctant to leave. The dawn was coming, bringing with it a wash of violet light barely visible through the trees.

One of the crude camp blankets they had used for warmth, with minimal success, on the Root had been placed over her. She had been sleeping beside Grunthor, who was still unconscious. They were in a sheltered copse of thick brambles. A small fire crackled a few feet away, overhung with a spitted rabbit, roasting in the flames.

Achmed sat across from her under the bare branches of a forsythia bush, watching her silently. He nodded to her as she pulled off the blanket. Involuntarily she smiled at him in return. Then she turned to the sleeping mountain snoring beside her and checked him over. Grunthor seemed none the worse for his heroic undertaking.

“He’s fine,” Achmed said over the sounds of the fire.

“Good,” she replied, and stood slowly. Her muscles had stiffened in the night, leaving her sore and feeling her age, whatever it now was. “Excuse me a moment.”

She walked toward the east, grateful for the ability to sense direction again, and found a clearing from which she could view the coming dawn.

As she had the night before she drew the sword, marveling at the coolness of the hilt below the flames that rippled up the blade, burning more intensely than the campfire. Faint tones of purple and rose touched the fiery weapon, turning the flames the color of the sunrise. Rhapsody could feel the heat on her face as she stared at the sword, entranced by its beauty.

Daystar Clarion, Achmed had called it. It had a musical ring to it, like the sound of a trumpet call at dawn. She held the weapon aloft, closed her eyes, and began her morning song to the sunrise, the aubade with which the people of her mother’s family had bade the stars farewell with the coming of day. She sang softly, not wanting to call attention to herself.

Her thoughts cleared; she could see the blazing weapon hovering before her in her mind’s eye, could hear its song, and noted in amazement that it changed its pitch, its vibration, to match hers. A surge of power swept through her unlike anything she had ever felt and she panicked, dropping the sword in the snow.

Rhapsody opened her eyes and gasped, sweeping the weapon from the ground. The fire had not been extinguished by its brief contact with the cold, wet earth; in fact, it was glistening even more brilliantly when it came back into her hand. She shuddered and sheathed it quickly, then walked back to the camp, where Grunthor was just coming to consciousness.

Achmed had been watching Rhapsody carefully. She cast a small, lithe shadow, standing at the rise in the clearing, her eyes searching the sky in the east. When the first ray of light crested the horizon it caught in her hair and set it aglow, gleaming brighter than the sun itself would a moment later.

The shimmering gold of her hair crowned her face, rosy in the dawn, emerald eyes sparkling in the morning light. She was sending forth vibrations like nothing he had ever felt before, radiating the intense purity of the fire through which she had walked. It seemed clear that she had absorbed some of that element in the course of passing through it, tying it to herself in song. The compelling call of the flames burned in her now; she was mesmerizing, hypnotic to behold. All imperfections of the flesh now burned away, she had become beautiful beyond compare by human standards. The prospect fascinated him, as did all opportunities to tap or harness power.

After she had finished her devotions she came and bent down next to Grunthor, who was stretching in obvious pain and fighting off wakening. Rhapsody rested her hand lightly on his shoulder and sang softly into his ear.

Eyes still closed, Grunthor broke into a vast, pasty grin at the sound of the Seren children’s song. He rubbed his crusted eyelids with his thumb and forefinger, sitting up with a groan.

“Oi smell food,” he said, wrapping an arm around Rhapsody.

“I hope you’re referring to the coney,” Rhapsody said, looking over at the fire. “O’ course.”

“Well, one can never be certain with you, especially in your grasp. How are you feeling?”

“On top o’ the world, miss,” he said with a laugh. “Oi certainly likes it a lot better up ’ere than down in its bowels.” His enormous eyes took her in. “Duchess, ’ave you done somethin’ with your ’air?”

Rhapsody laughed. “Yes. I’ve smeared it with mudfilth and grime and left it unbrushed for time undetermined. Do you like it?” She jokingly pulled at the edges of a mass of tangles, a flirtatious look of humor on her face.

“Actually, yeah. Oi guess grime suits you, miss. Maybe more women ought to try it.”

She gave him a playful shove and walked over to the fire, where the rabbit flesh was cooking. As she approached, the embers leapt into new flames, charring the outside of the meat. “I think this is done, Achmed; if we don’t get it out of there it will be ashes. Here, Grunthor, can I have the Friendmaker for a moment?” Grunthor drew forth the wicked-looking spike and handed it to her. Without a thought she reached into the fire and plucked the meat from the spit with it, then pulled her arm out of the flames and gave the spike to Achmed. Grunthor whistled. “That was nice.”

“What?”

“How does your arm feel?” Achmed asked her. She was looking at Grunthor in confusion.

“Fine. How is it supposed to feel?”

“Well, judging by what you just did, I’d say charred.”

Rhapsody shrugged. “The fire’s not that hot; I was only in there for a moment. Well, come on, are you going to share? Grunthor’s hungry, and I have a vested interest in seeing him fed.”

Achmed slid the rabbit off the skewer and tore it asunder, handing half to Grunthor, then dividing the remainder between himself and Rhapsody.

They ate in silence, the men watching in amazement as Rhapsody devoured her portion. She had rarely eaten meat in the time they had known her. Perhaps the endless slivers of the Root had given her an appetite for something a little more substantial, or just different.

When the meal was over and the gear repacked, Achmed threw snow onto the fire. Rhapsody stood and cast a glance around, then shouldered her pack. “What’s the plan?”

Achmed looked up at her from the ground and smirked. “You seem to have an idea of where you’re going.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to stay here. I have to find whatever settlement there is in these parts and make my way to the nearest port city.”

“You’re heading back, then?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have left if I’d had a choice.” Her jaw set, but both of the men noticed the flicker of a muscle in her cheek. The journey on the Root had left them with no sense of how much time had passed. It seemed almost as if a century had gone by, though that was not possible given their apparent lack of aging.

The prospect that her friends and members of her family might have died in the intervening time had always been a real one for Rhapsody, but she had not allowed herself to think about it while crawling along the endless tunnel. To contemplate it would have been to become unable to go on.

“All right,” said Achmed, “I suppose that’s fair enough. Grunthor and I will see you as far as the nearest major town. Then you can determine if you need our help in getting to the port. We owe you that at least.”

“Thank you,” Rhapsody said sincerely. “I feel safer knowing you’ll be traveling with me for a while.”

“But if you’re going to travel with us, you have to observe the same rules we do. Bolg generally have to abide by a higher standard of caution.” She nodded in agreement. “Then let’s start with language. We’ll speak only in Bolgish. You’re proficient in it now. Serendair had some major ports, and the language of men and the Lirin that lived there undoubtedly was used in sea trade, but no one except the Bolg speak Bolgish.”

“Very well,” Rhapsody said in the language. Grunthor laughed.

“You just told ’im he did a good job,” the Sergeant said. Rhapsody shrugged. “It takes a while to get the usage issues of a language, and to learn the idioms if it isn’t your native tongue. Most languages are easy to pick up the basics in, if they have a consistent base, which most do. It’s like a musical pattern.”

“Well, if we’re agreed on the language, let’s talk strategy. We have no idea where we are, or what lives here. We are obviously not at the base of whatever Root Twin was connected to Sagia; we must have left the main trunk root when we started digging. That’s probably a good thing, since we know Sagia was guarded. It’s a fairly safe bet that there are people somewhere around here and we don’t want to meet them, at least not yet. We want to know as much as possible about them and the area before they even know we’re here.”

“Agreed,” Rhapsody said. Grunthor nodded as well.

“And when we do make contact, let’s keep as much information as possible among ourselves until we agree to share any of it. It’s safer for all of us that way.” The Singer nodded quickly. “Oh, and one more thing: Rhapsody, I suggest you keep that sword of yours under wraps until and unless you really need to draw it, or at least try to be sure no one sees it who doesn’t need to. It’s a powerful artifact; I don’t have any idea how it came to be here, on the other side of the world, wedged in the Earth. I doubt it’s a good sign.”

“All right. Can we go now? The sooner we get on the road the sooner we’ll get to port.” Rhapsody danced with impatience.

Achmed and Grunthor exchanged a look. They had nothing but time. It was a heady feeling.

After an hour of brisk marching Rhapsody began to shiver. When they left Easton it had been the height of summer, and she had been dressed for it. Now the rags that had once been her clothes were worn thin and full of holes. Even in prime condition they had not been adequate for wintry weather.

Rhapsody had hoped the pace of the walk would keep her warm, but the bitter wind that blew through the forest chilled her as the dampness of the tunnel never had. Despite its continuous state of sogginess, the heart of the Earth was warm for the most part. Here, above, outside its skin, the cold was debilitating.

“’Ere, missy, ’old up,” Grunthor commanded.

He unbound two of the wool blankets they had slept beneath the night before, prized possessions they had dragged with them along the Root. Then he drew Lucy, and with a quick slash ripped a hole in the center of each blanket. He tossed one to Achmed, who pulled his head through the hole and draped the blanket around him like a tunic. Then he gave the other to Rhapsody as he sheathed the sword.

Grunthor smirked as she put it on. The makeshift covering was much larger on her, hanging down over her wrists.

“I hope you don’t have to fight anything like that,” Achmed said in amusement.

“I hope so, too,” she said. “Given the sword I’m using, I’d probably light myself on fire.”

“Well, then, you wouldn’t be cold no more, would ya?” said Grunthor as they took up the trek again.

The snow was deep in places, but Achmed seemed to be able to tell just by looking at the lay of the land what path to take to avoid the drifts. It was almost as if he was following a map laid out in his mind.

Grunthor also seemed to have a natural understanding of the land. He knew where the drifts were unstable, where creeks were hidden under the blanket of snow, and where, far from view, they would find walls of thorns or deadfalls that they needed to avoid. From time to time he would point these things out to Achmed, who would immediately adjust their course. For men who were in unfamiliar territory, Rhapsody noted, they seemed to know the land as if they had traveled it before.

Mid-afternoon the sky began to darken. The day seemed to have been too short, even for the dead of winter. Rhapsody had heard that in the southernmost parts of the Island of Serendair the sky darkened very early and that dawn came quite late during the winter. As a child, she had been told by her grandfather that out at sea, on the few small islands that lay even farther south, the nights were even longer. She began to wonder if in fact they were in some southern land, where the winter nights seemed endless but the summers were blessed with long days.

She was about to comment about this when Grunthor suggested a quick course change due east, which brought them to a narrow roadway that ran north-south. Its age was hinted at by the size of the great oaks and ashes that lined the edge of the road and formed an arch of branches high above, giving it the look of an ancient basilica. It was well maintained, with slight ruts on its rocky surface from wheels of wagons and carts. The snow along the route had been tramped into icy brown mush. They stared in silence at the road for several moments.

“Well, I guess we’re not alone,” Achmed said at last. Rhapsody felt a momentary glimmer of exhilaration at the realization that a road like this might lead to a city, and that even if it were not a port city, she could likely find her way to one from there. But her excitement was held in check by the understanding that the road also might belong to hostile people, or might be thousands of miles from the sea. Still, it was a start, and would eventually be the first step in finding passage back to Serendair.

After some hours Achmed stopped short.

“What’s going on?” Rhapsody asked, only to be silenced by a curt hand motion.

He had heard a noise, a sound that was outside his range of hearing. Unbidden, a picture of the place they stood formed in his mind’s eye; a moment later, the scene was moving. His vision was racing down the road at an incredible speed, accelerating. The trees became a blinding blur; the swiftest of the turns and bends in the roadway sent his balance spinning.

He had always been blessed with an unnatural sense of direction, which he had utilized on the Root to find the way through the Earth. The fact that Daystar Clarion, something from Serendair, had been waiting for them on the other side was a paradox he had yet to fathom. But now, since he had passed through the fire, seeking the right passage or path had become the dizzying experience that was now occurring. Grunthor’s hand shot out and grasped him by the shoulder, steadying him.

“Ya all right, sir?” Achmed nodded, bending over and resting his hands on his knees, hanging his head down to regain his balance. “Was it like it was on the Root?” He nodded again.

“There’s a herd of animals coming, and a thatched hut down a bit. The road itself forks after that, but then the vision faded. This new ability I seem to have been blessed with will probably prove useful, but it’s going to take some getting used to.”

The sound of braying could now be heard in the distance. The three travelers scanned the horizon. Grunthor pointed and led them to a well-hidden gully below a deep snow bank that provided good cover and a clear view. They crouched down behind an ice-covered log and waited.

Achmed shrugged the cwellan from his back into his hands and held it at the ready. As his vision had sped down the road he had seen a child traveling with the beasts; now he tried to lock his heartbeat on to the boy’s. Like a wild shot, a misspent arrow, he sought in vain, finding nothing. The world darkened in his mind for a moment. He had lost his bond to blood, just as he had feared.

The thought of the lost gift struck him like a missile from his own weapon. His abilities to hit targets at ridiculous distances, to feel the changes in the rhythms of the world were still there, but no longer as intense as they had been.

Where once he had heard the deafening sound of millions of hearts beating, now all he heard was relative silence punctuated by the sound of Grunthor’s ferocious, thudding pulse and the slow, steady rhythm of Rhapsody’s. His unique ability, his lock on the heartbeat of his prey, had been the price of his freedom. The loss of it was worse than being blinded, being maimed. The implications of his deprivation began to take hold, making him weak with nausea.

The herd came into view on the roadway. Shaggy, thickly built cattle with great arching horns, they plodded the ground with a sound not unlike thunder.

Driving them with a long, flexible stick was a young boy, in his teen years undoubtedly, wearing the simple clothes of any Seren farmboy. He was whistling an odd tune that Rhapsody had never heard before. By his side was a black-and-white herding dog, much like the ones her father had owned while she was growing up.

She turned to Grunthor and nodded at the young man, but the giant shook his head. She returned to watching the child and the animals until they were out of sight.

Once the roadway was clear again, she looked to Achmed. Even with his face partially hidden, she could still see what resembled devastation in his eyes. “What’s the matter?”

The Dhracian said nothing, but Grunthor seemed to know at once what was wrong. The two Firbolg had discussed the possible effects leaving the Island might have on Achmed.

When he was the Brother, his gift had been tied to the Island, as the first of his race born there. Child of Blood, the Dhracian sage had said, Brother to all men, akin to none. By the look on his face Grunthor knew what they had feared had come to pass. The bond was broken, the blood lore gone. Brother to none. He rested a hand on Achmed’s shoulder. The assassin merely shrugged and, after checking the road again, climbed over the log and back onto the path.

They made their way down the road to the farm Achmed had seen in his vision, an animal barn and a simple hut with a small garden cleared from the forest.

The larger of the two buildings, where the cattle were housed, was little more than a roofed kraal, but the farmhouse was much better built, a design that utilized the least amount of material possible to the greatest effect.

Set above the doorway was a hex sign similar to the ones Rhapsody had seen her whole life. If the pattern of this one was the same as those in Serendair, to which it was strikingly similar, it was set to ward off fire and disease. She passed this information along to the others in a whisper. Again they hid and watched.

A man came out of the house as the boy approached it, and greetings were passed, but none of them understood the words. The two farmers carried on a pleasant exchange as they penned the animals, returning finally to the farmhouse. Once they had gone inside, the three companions relaxed.

“Did you recognize the language?” Rhapsody asked.

“No, but some of the words sounded familiar,” Achmed said. Grunthor shrugged. “Did you?”

“No. I don’t know how to explain it, but it seems to have the same cadence as our own tongue, only with slightly different rhythms and word patterns.”

Grunthor chuckled. “Maybe all you ’umans talk alike,” he said.

“Maybe. What do we do now? Shall we knock and ask for shelter?”

The two Firbolg laughed simultaneously.

“Oi don’t think so, Yer Ladyship.”

Rhapsody looked indignant. “And why is that such a stupid idea?”

Achmed sighed. “Well, in our experience, Firbolg don’t generally get the best of receptions when we knock on doors. You might be welcomed. In fact, I’m sure you could get a bed for the night, but I doubt it would be empty, if you take my meaning.” Rhapsody shuddered. Achmed chuckled. “Of course, it’s really up to you. I don’t know how much you’re craving a warm night.”

“Not that much. What do you suggest?”

“Well,” Grunthor began, “to the north, there are a number o’ farms like this one. To the south the road comes to some kind o’ village. It ain’t exactly large, but it’s pretty well built. Beyond that, the road goes on for some way.”

“But Oi’ll tell ya what—about ’alf a mile into the woods, just to the southeast, there’s a nice lit’le dell, with a tree fallen over it. If we was to throw a few more branches on that tree, we could build a fire, and ’ave a cozy lit’le den that no one could see.”

Achmed and Rhapsody stared at him for a moment. They looked at one another, then stared at the Sergeant again.

“Precisely how do you know this?” Achmed asked.

“Oi don’t know. Oi just do. Oi got a feelin’.”

“I see. Well, let’s see how right your feeling is.”