Rhapsody: Child of Blood

43

The four companions camped that night on the northernmost edge of the Krevensfield Plain, the wide-open lands that stretched as far as the eye could see between Bethe Corbair and the Teeth, the mountains that formed the fortress barrier of the Bolglands.

The field wrapped around the city on three sides, so the travelers headed east until Bethe Corbair and its surrounding settlements were no longer in sight. When the night came they were surrounded by an all-encompassing sphere of stars and darkness. It was a lonely sensation, as though they were the only living things in the world, and as a result they stayed up quite late, talking to each other as a means of warding off the desolation.

Wrapped in darkness as she was, Rhapsody thought back to the emptiness she had felt during the endless journey along the Root. While that had been a constant struggle, a fear of giving in to her own feelings of panic, now she felt utterly alone, vulnerable, lost here among the stars.

She drew her cloak around herself and thought of her grandchildren, as she often did when the night was loneliest. Were Gwydion and Melisande safe in their fortress of rosy brownstone, with their father’s army to protect them? All their wealth and privilege had not kept them from devastating loss; perhaps nothing could protect anyone from it. Rhapsody reached out and gently brushed a lock of pale hair off Jo’s forehead. Nothing.

The fire had died down, the hot embers casting flickering shadows on the sleeping faces of her companions, the only friends she now had in the world. Rhapsody sighed brokenly, painfully, and continued her watch, trying to avoid looking up into the eternal blackness above her.

The gray mist of dawn still found her solemn. Her companions rose sleepily, grumpy in the last vestiges of sleep. Rhapsody reached into the campfire, still merrily blazing.

“Slypka.” she said, watching the fire snuff out in a thin wisp of smoke that vanished almost as quickly. It was a word she had learned early on in Namer training, roughly translated as extinguish. It eliminated every trace of fire or mist, or anything that hung, vaporous, in the air. She often wished the word could be applied to other things, such as bad dreams or haunting memories.

When morning broke they started out as the snow began to fall again. Over the course of their journey the winter weather returned, making traveling difficult and tempers short. The howling wind was both a curse and a blessing; in addition to sparking some of their angry confrontations, it swallowed their verbal exchanges, sparing their friendships.

Four days passed, and the wide plain of Roland, known as the Orlandan Plateau, began to take on a hillier aspect, with attributes that were more akin to steppes than open fields. These rocky fields were the precursors to the foothills of the Teeth.

After more than a week the mountains themselves came into sight, rising above the steppes in the distance, jagged and sharp against the sky of the horizon. Gwylliam had called these crags the Manteids, the Seers, in honor of his wife and her sisters, but Time had erased that name, and now they were known across the land by their more fanglike description. It was an apt one.

It took another three days before they were in the foothills, the mountains growing closer all the time. When she first sighted them Rhapsody thought they were uniformly brown, dark reaches that rose threateningly skyward.

As they grew closer she could see that they were in fact a multiplicity of colors and hues, blends of black and purple, green and blue, stretching toward the clouds in many peaks and crags within each mountain. They were at once beautiful and forbidding, standing a silent watch between the world of men and the hidden realm of the Firbolg beyond.

Finally, after two more days, they came to the feet of the mountains. They had been in the steppes for half that time, semi-hills that undulated across the now-rocky plateau, with steep rises and deep swales spanning the landscape. At the top of a particularly tall rise Achmed stopped; the others followed his lead.

Below them, cloaked in snow, lay a great bowl-like amphitheater, cut into the earth by time and nature, enhanced, perhaps, by the work of men. It was vast in size and breadth, surrounded by rocky ledges and rimmed internally in gradated rings that leveled out onto a wide, flat floor, buried in snow and the debris from centuries of neglect. Rhapsody recognized it instantly from the writings in the notebook.

“This is Gwylliam’s Great Moot,” she told the others excitedly, her voice echoing off the sides and disappearing into the snowpack. “According to the writings, the Cymrians used to meet in council in times of need or celebration. The entire populace could fit within the Moot, which served as the meeting place. This is where Gwylliam and Anwyn held court with all their subjects in attendance.”

“It’s a cwm,” said Grunthor, using the word from the old world for the crater formed by a glacier or volcano. He closed his eyes and inhaled the frosty air; it was snowing lightly, making it difficult to see. Through his feet he felt at one with the Earth here, even more than when he had just emerged from the Root. It was a place with layers of history, and the Earth whispered the secrets to him now in the silence of his heart.

The base was the ancient time, long ago, when the Bowl was formed. The great Moot had once been a glacial lake, dug by the freezing and thawing of ice on the mountain faces of the Teeth when they were young. The glacier had carved the Bowl of the Moot as a vessel for the melting tears of the great wall of moving ice. As the land warmed, the lake had sunk into the earth or sent its water skyward, dried by the sun, leaving the amphitheater hewn into the mountainside. That was the first layer.

Then came the layer of the old days, when man polished what Nature had carved into a gathering place for the people that came to live on the land. The power of the land, and the people who walked it, who gathered here, had melded, forming an Age the like of which the world had never seen, nor would it see again.

And there was now, the sleeping time, when it lay, forgotten and desolate beneath the shroud of snow. Even dormant, there was no mistaking its immense power. Grunthor opened his eyes, returning from his reverie, looking around for the others.

Achmed had located a pathway through the foothills, and was concentrating on finding the easiest route to where they wanted to go.

As his mind wandered over the terrain, he could see a series of passes in the mountains, larger than mountain-goat trails but smaller than roads, that crisscrossed the landscape, providing somewhat accessible paths from crag to crag and through the twisting hills.

Mountain to mountain and beyond, over the heath at the top of the world and deep into the Hidden Realm, hundreds of roadways and bridges scored the land. Some clearly traveled, others forgotten by time, the trails opened up the high country that Nature had never intended to be accessible. The system was an engineering marvel, and looked like the work of mountain dwellers, the Nain of the old land, earth-movers and miners of incomparable skill. Gwylliam’s handiwork,he noted.

As his mind’s eye wandered over the land, he could see them. In the distance of his second sight, tiny figures, black in the morning light, traveled the paths, hiding in the shadows. Kin that he had never known, and planned to one day rule.

“This is the place that Gwylliam called Canrif,” he said to the others. “There are Firbolg scattered throughout the Teeth in roving packs; there seems little, if any, organization.”

“And that’s what you were hoping for, wasn’t it?” Rhapsody asked. “Ripe for the picking, isn’t that what you said?”

Achmed smiled. “Yes.”

For a race of beings that had sprung up from the caves, the Firbolg seemed oddly reluctant to journey outside at night. The four companions watched from half a league away, noting their movements and counting the intrepid ones willing to venture outside the Teeth, looking for food or prey. When twilight came, however, the Bolg became fewer and farther between until finally an hour went by with none in sight.

“Night blindness,” Achmed said; Grunthor nodded in agreement.

“How strange,” Rhapsody murmured, straining to see the mountain passes as darkness took the Teeth. “You would think cave dwellers would be especially good at seeing in the dark.”

“They are, underground, where there’s no light at all, not even the glow we had on the Root. It’s the darkness of the air in the world above that confounds their sight.” Achmed looked around to ensure that Jo had not heard him.

Rhapsody shuddered at the memory of the Axis Mundi, then returned to her watch. “Yellow roots and green-leafed vegetables.”

Grunthor gave her a strange look. “Eh?”

“Two of the cures for night blindness. One of the famous legends you learn when you study lore as a Singer tells of a great Lirin army that became invincible by changing its diet; it gained nightsight by eating certain foods. All its enemies were still night-blind, so the Lirin only attacked in the dark.”

Achmed nodded, making note. “Are there any other remedies beside vegetables?”

“Liver,” Rhapsody said. Jo made a gagging sound. “Maybe they’re not night-blind after all,” said Grunthor. “The Bolg ought to get enough o’ that just eatin’ their enemies.”

“What enemies?” Rhapsody asked, ignoring the cannibalistic comment. “Bethe Corbair is their nearest neighbor, and it doesn’t look like there’s been a raid there in the lifetime of anyone who lives there.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Achmed agreed. “And from what Grunthor gleaned from his reconnaissance, Sorbold, the kingdom on the other side of that mountain range, is effectively kept out by the Teeth and the rough terrain in between. So there doesn’t seem to be much external raiding. I imagine they prey on each other.”

Rhapsody shuddered again. “Wonderful. Are you sure this is where you want to live?”

Achmed smiled. “It will be.”

Snow had crept into the crevasses in the foothills and hardened, forming frosty stepping-stones on which it was difficult to maintain purchase. Jo had fallen half a dozen times, once almost tragically.

“How much farther?” Rhapsody shouted into the screaming wind. She stared down into the canyon below them, a sheer cliff stretching down several hundred feet to the floor of the steppes.

“Almost there,” Achmed called back. Leaning at the waist on the rock wall, he hoisted himself up onto a rocky outcropping, then crawled onto the ledge above. He lay flat and extended a hand to Rhapsody, hauling her easily over the ledge as well.

Rhapsody cast a glance around to be sure they were unobserved before joining him on the ground to help pull Jo up. She secured the rope while Achmed slid his hands under Jo’s arms, dragging her up to safety. The teenager was trembling with exhaustion and cold. Once she was firmly on the flat surface Rhapsody wrapped her cloak around Jo and concentrated on the fire within herself, trying to impart warmth to her sister.

A few moments later the spike on Grunthor’s helmet appeared, and with a smooth motion he pulled himself onto the ledge.

“Well, that was fun,” he said. “Ya all right, Duchess? Lit’le miss?”

“We need to get her to shelter, out of the wind,” Rhapsody answered, her own teeth chattering. She could no longer feel her fingers or the tip of her nose.

Achmed was bending down near them both, and nodded. “Take just a moment, Rhapsody, and look up. See what our fellow Seren have wrought, and destroyed.”

She turned and gazed around her. Rising out of the whirling snow was a mammoth stone edifice, carved into the very face of the mountain before them. It stood, black against the sky and nestled within the crags of the whole of the mountain range. Giant walls, hewn smooth and camouflaged to blend into the rock, led up to dark openings that appeared to be towers and ramparts, though of a size that was incomprehensible to her. Anything else they had seen since arriving in this land, the basilicas and cities, the keeps and castles, were dwarfed by comparison.

No wonder the populace thought of Gwylliam as a godlike figure, she thought, her eyes unable to take in all of the structure from her vantage point on the cliff. It was as though the hand of the Creator Himself had carved this out of the mountainside, this seemingly endless series of walls and crumbling bridges, barricades and roadways, tunnels and bulwarks stretching across the center of the mountain range and over the vast heath beyond. A city for giants, not men of Grunthor’s size, but of titanic proportions, hidden from sight among the Teeth. Canrif.

“Is there a tunnel you think might be safe?” she shouted over the whine of the wind. “Jo’s freezing.”

“Can you walk?”

“Yes.”

“All right, let Grunthor carry Jo, and you come with me. There’s a cave not too far from here, blocked by a boulder I’m sure Grunthor and I can force out of the way. The Bolg won’t go there. Take hold of my cloak so you don’t get lost if the visibility gets worse.”

Rhapsody nodded and grasped the edge of his cape, tucking her free hand inside her cloak, and grimly followed him out of the storm.

Once inside the tunnel, the howling wind diminished, leaving their stinging ears pulsing. Shards of falling rock and dust covered them, filling their eyes and nostrils, as Grunthor shoved the boulder back in place, leaving only the smallest of openings, so the Bolg would not detect their hiding place.

Rhapsody coughed and brushed the grit off her head and shoulders, then helped Jo do the same. The teenager was still bleary-eyed but coming around from the trauma of the climb.

“Where is this place, do you think?” she asked.

Achmed looked into the darkness of the huge tunnel. Smooth tiles lined the walls around and above, rectangles of ancient stone honed into perfect symmetry. Long trenches, probably gutters, scored each side of the tunnel, while a series of drainage holes were visible in the ceiling overhead, clogged now with centuries-old rust and debris.

“I’d guess it’s part of the aqueduct, probably a drainage tunnel. There were dozens of them within Canrif itself, diverting the rainwater and runoff from the mountain springs through the general water system, and carrying off whatever excess remained into the canyon below. Since wells would have been impossible this far up in the mountain, it provided a ready supply of water for drinking and other uses, while preventing flooding. The sketches in the Cymrian museum were very detailed.”

Rhapsody fumbled in her pack and pulled out the journal they had found in the House of Remembrance.

“This isn’t much help,” she said after a quick examination. “I wish I had paid more attention to what you were looking at in the museum.”

Achmed chuckled. “You underestimate the scope of this place, Rhapsody. Canrif wasn’t a mere citadel, or even a city in the mountains. It was a nation unto itself. The fortress within the Teeth is only a very small part of it. Beyond the canyon and the Blasted Heath is the bulk of it, forests and vineyards and mines and villages, cities and temples and universities, or at least that was what composed Canrif in the Cymrian days. I doubt the Bolg have kept it up, however.”

“I wasn’t able to see but a fraction of the plans. I could see there was a water system, and ventilation units to bring fresh air into the mountain, and great forges in the belly of the rock, whose residual heat they used for warmth. Whatever else Gwylliam was, he was a visionary, someone who could design and execute the building of a living, functioning world from nothing but solid rock and ingenuity. We could never have committed it all to memory if we had studied it for a month.”

Rhapsody crouched near a pile of crumbled stone, recently fallen. She laid her hands on the rocks and felt the fire within her swell, then directed the heat into the stone. “So what’s next?” she asked as the rocks began to glow red.

Achmed was dragging food supplies out of his pack. “After we’ve had something to eat, I’m going on a bit of a scouting expedition. Grunthor, you stay with them, and if I’m not back in a few days, take them back to Bethe Corbair.”

“Had it occurred to you that we might actually deserve a say in where we go, especially in your absence?” Rhapsody asked angrily.

Achmed blinked. “All right; if I don’t come back, where do you want be taken?”

Rhapsody and Jo looked at each other. “Probably Bethe Corbair.”

The Dhracian laughed. “And they say Bolg are unnecessarily contentious. Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I just want to pay a little visit to my future subjects.”