“Come with us,” she said, taking his hand in hers.
The gladiator shook his head. “No, I’m going to remain here.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “Why?”
“It’s not time.” His voice was gentle, deep as the sea.
Desperation crept into her voice, the Veil of fog was growing thicker. “Please come, Constantin; I’ll never see you again.”
All that remained visible were the clear blue eyes, piercing the fog like sapphire beacons.
“You will, one day.” He closed his eyes, and was lost to her in the mist.
She called his name, but the only sound was the wind in the trees of the forest. Rhapsody buried her face in her hands, feeling the icy sting of her own tears.
“Rhapsody, look! The sword!”
She looked up at the word; a few feet away she could see the blade of Daystar Clarion, the flames billowing up it in the wind. It was still embedded in the snow, point down. The falling iceflakes had dusted the hilt, covering it up to the pommel with a thin crust of white. Seven years had passed in the realm of the Rowans; it was as if she had been gone only for less than a day.
She thought of Constantin, of the look in his eyes that night as he held the image of her, of the same eyes disappearing into the fog behind the Veil of Hoen. The Veil of Joy, she mused sadly, remembering the dreamy days there, and the horrific nights. Above all else, may you know joy, the Patriarch had said. Perhaps now that she was gone Constantin would begin to find some of it.
A blast of wintry wind snapped her out of her reverie. She looked down at the small faces, looking up at her expectantly.
“Where are we going now, Rhapsody?”
She smiled at them. “Home. We’re going home.”
43
The House of Remembrance, Navarne
Even in the depth of winter, there were birds here now, Achmed noted.
He had left his horse in a clearing outside the area that was tainted the last time he had been in this place. It had not been difficult to find the boundaries of the corruption. This ancient forest grove, dark green stands of old wood stretching for miles across the rolling hills of Navarne, had a central sector newly grown over with white birches, poplars, and pale-barked pines, youngling trees whose sallow trunks made the area appear pasty, blanched, as if it were ill. More than a year had passed since the Rakshas had been routed here, since Achmed and his companions had put an end to the blood sacrifices of children it had been making on behalf of its master, the F’dor, but still there remained a heavy silence in the air, a palpable lack of life.
But at least there were birds, resilient little winterbirds who hopped about on the snow or issued a rare chirp from a tree branch, scavenging for food. If the birds were willing to eat the dried berries and frozen seeds of this place, the corruption, the evil taint that had seeped into the very soil of the forest, must truly be gone. The wildlife had been utterly absent before.
To the west he heard the crackle of the snowcrust breaking, a rustle of twigs, a disturbance caused by something the weight of a man, not a bird.
Rhapsody knew to wait in the courtyard of the House, he thought as the noises continued; the intruder came closer. He could sense her heartbeat farther up ahead; she was where she should be. Achmed sighted his cwellan.
He willed his breathing to slow, standing as silent and motionless as a shadow cast by the setting sun. Inwardly he cursed; in the old world, when he still had his blood lore, he would have been able to sense the heartbeat of this stranger, too, to know within a hairsbreadth where it was, and where it was vulnerable. Now, as he had been since coming to this new land, he was blind, relying only on his fighting skills for his survival.
And Rhapsody’s.
In the distance to his left he caught sight of something moving slowly through the pale trees, taking its time. The pulse in his gloved finger throbbed against the weight of the cwellan’s trigger.
Suddenly, a stone’s throw to his right, the brush of the forest floor parted.
Achmed wheeled, resighting the cwellan with speed born of centuries of experience.
The stag in the brambles ahead of him froze.
For an instant Achmed froze as well. Then, slowly, he lowered the weapon to his side, inhaling deeply.
The animal stared at him for a moment longer, then turned and bounded off into the depths of the forest, snorting furiously. To the west he heard the sounds of its mate crashing through the snowcrust, snapping branches as she fled with him.
Achmed inhaled again, blowing his breath out slowly, then hurried on to the House, up in the distance ahead of him.
A hundred yards before he reached the place where the House had stood Achmed could see the damage caused by the ball of fire that had ripped through this place. Snow had covered the piles of ash and cinders, so that with each step his footprints turned black against the white ground. The trees in the area were scarred, their bark burned away or striped with soot, degrading in layers the closer they had been to the House, from blackened hulls that had once been the outer ring of maples to the fine, sooty rubble that had been the birches nearest the outer courtyard. The House itself was gone, nothing more than a fragile, skeletal tower and mounds of scorched wreckage.
The white oak in the center of the courtyard had survived, however, a sapling of the World Tree, Sagia, protected by the endlessly playing music of the harp Rhapsody had left in its branches when they departed from this place. Even the inferno of elemental fire half a year later that had purged the tree of its polluted root, and ignited the House as well, had not burned a single leaf. It remained as if in perpetual summer, blossoms of white waving raggedly on the wind that whistled through its branches.
Rhapsody crouched beneath the tree, tossing something on the snowy bricks of the courtyard floor to a small flock of winterbirds that scattered when he came through the trees. She looked up, then stood, brushing her hands off on her trousers as she did.
Achmed’s skin began to sting fiercely as he looked her over. It had been humming intensely since he had received her note a week before, the message he had been awaiting from the moment they had parted on the Krevensfield Plain. The Bolg soldier who had brought the scrap of oilcloth to him had shuddered at his reaction, even though the king had not moved a hairsbreadth upon reading it. Apparently the look in his eyes had been sufficient to send the guard scurrying back to the aviary at double march time.
Achmed had stared at the scrap for hours; it was a simple piece of tattered oilcloth containing but one word: Yes. That one word was the key that the end was beginning.
It had been a battle of will from that time. The deep racial urge of destruction whispered relentlessly in his ear, demanding the hunt. It was all Achmed could do not to succumb to the blood rage, the compulsion anyone of Dhracian heritage felt innately: the all-consuming need to destroy F’dor. He had learned in his time that the primal instincts of his Dhracian blood worked as much against him as they aided him in his hunts. He measured his breathing, trying to maintain calm.
Rhapsody was watching him just as intently, hands on her hips. It had only been a few weeks since he had last seen her, but she seemed worlds changed. Her face was calm, but her eyes burned with a quiet intensity. Her hair, bound back as it always was in a black velvet ribbon, reached to her knees; when they had parted it had been merely down to the middle of her back. She was studying his face; finally she waved him over to where she stood, in the courtyard’s center, beneath the slender boughs of the young tree that had been brought from their homeland on the other side of the world.
He felt the heartbeat of the world thrum in his ears as he came to her, knowing what she had brought him.
“Blackberries,” she said as he stopped beneath the branches of the tree.
“What?”
She pointed at the ground where some of the birds had returned and were pecking guardedly.
“Blackberries. From the bushes in the clearing. When last we were here they were
tainted brambles, mostly thorn. I didn’t think they would ever see fruit. Perhaps it’s a good sign.”
Achmed nodded. “We can use all of those we can get. Where is it?” His voice came out harsher than he intended it to.
In response she unbelted Daystar Clarion and held it aloft, point up, perpendicular to the ground. Slowly she slid the weapon from its black ivory sheath; a quiet, silver sound like a restrained trumpet call whispered through the empty courtyard. Resting on the sword’s tip, the cork layer burned and blackened from the flames, was the strangely shaped hematite vial. Rhapsody reached into the fire and plucked it deftly from the weapon’s tip.
“Here,” she said, holding it out to Achmed. “Put it to good use.”
He held it up before his eyes. “This is all there is? From ten demon-spawn?”
“Yes. It’s been clarified down to its essence. There is nothing else in there, none of the mother’s blood, or even of the Rakshas. This is it—pure. There will be no mistake when you find the host.” Her emerald eyes sparkled with something that looked like excitement, but Achmed suspected it was closer to fear. “What are you going to do with it now?”
Achmed continued to examine the hematite vial. The stone was warm to the touch, perhaps a residual from the sword’s fire, but more likely generated from within. Sealed as it was, there was still something deeply resonant about it, soft voices chanting dark lauds in the crackling fires of the Underworld. He could feel its power, its evil, through the stone, calling to him, wheedling, commanding, taunting his Dhracian soul. The blood behind his eyes burned.
Open it. Let us out. Let us out of the Vault.
Achmed slid the hematite vial inside his shirt. “Nothing.”
The green eyes across from him widened dramatically
“Nothing? After all this? What do you mean?”
“You asked what I am going to do with it now—and I said nothing—Grunthor is not here, and we are not ready to go after the demon yet. We have to be together, I suspect; otherwise that dim-witted Seer has been babbling about the Three of us for nothing.” He cast a glance around the courtyard as the wind raced through, spinning the recently fallen snow into spiraling sheets of icy white. “I’ll wait until you get back to Ylorc before I undertake this; I need to be prepared for it.”
“Until I get back to Ylorc?” Rhapsody glanced around the courtyard as well. “Aren’t I going with you now?”
“Perhaps—but I thought you might need a few days’ delay.” Achmed reached into another fold in his robes, produced a cream-colored linen card with a broken golden seal, and handed it to her.
“What’s this?” Rhapsody asked, turning it over in her hand.
“Tristan Steward’s wedding has apparently been moved up. The ceremony is now three days hence, in Bethany.”
Rhapsody studied the invitation. “Yes; Oelendra told me when I returned from the Veil of Hoen. Rial is planning to attend. What does this have to do with anything? The wedding is trivial next to what we have on our plates. Surely there is nothing more important, nothing we have waited for longer, than going after the demon?”
“That’s true,” Achmed agreed, “there isn’t. But I have never done this before. It will take preparation, focus. It’s best done in the quiet, secrecy, and safety of the mountain. I have no idea how long it will take or what it will cost. It may be like fighting the beast ahead of time. I don’t know.
“What I do know is that Tristan will use any excuse to speak against the Bolg. We must be represented at the wedding; it’s an occasion of state.”
“You want me to go to the wedding.”
“Yes.”
“After all this?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to go to the wedding?”
“You think it’s better that I go?” Achmed snarled.
Rhapsody didn’t blink. “Of course not. I just thought we would send our regrets. I all but did that already, when the messenger came to deliver the invitation the first time.”
Achmed exhaled. “Much has changed since you’ve been gone, Rhapsody. War is looming, and the enemies are both without and within. The attack could come from anywhere; I’m beginning to understand that vision where you saw it coming from everywhere. The only thing that could have dragged me away from the mountain at this point was this meeting, though Grunthor certainly plans to make use of the opportunity.” Rhapsody said nothing, but looked at him quizzically. The Firbolg king scowled. “We’ve had a few problems with disloyalty and illegal commerce of Bolg weapons to Sorbold. It apparently first occurred when I was off hunting spawn with you.”
“Gods!”
“Yes, gods. May they help any Bolg foolish enough to try it again while I’m away; Grunthor’s lying in wait. If you see any body parts decorating the crags of Grivven when you return, you’ll know why.
“In the meantime, put in an appearance on behalf of Ylorc at Tristan’s wedding. You’ll buy us some time, at the very least. You may hear something about their preparations for war as well. Continue to behave as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening. I will send word to you when I am ready if you haven’t already returned.”
Rhapsody said nothing. Though the jangling thrum of the harp music in the branches of the young tree masked their words, she was not prepared to give voice to her feelings, knowing that there were ears listening to the winter wind. More than anything, she wanted to tell her friend of the Veil of Hoen, what she had seen, how long she had been away, what she had learned, about the threat to Life and the Afterlife, but she did not dare, not here, not in the open, beneath the sky. Better, as he had said, to wait until they were in the dark of the mountain, hidden away from prying eyes, their voices shielded from the wind.
She looked around at the ruins of the House of Remembrance, the place where their path had first become known to them. This repository of history, this outpost of the First Cymrian wave, had been built fourteen centuries before, with so much hope; it had been desecrated so brutally. The Rakshas had even sought to use the roots of Sagia’s sapling to reach within the Firbolg mountain and snatch the Sleeping Child. Such a horrific turn to what had started out as a story of great promise.
They had chosen this place to meet today, to forge a new beginning, for good or ill. The irony that here, in this place, where the demon had used the blood of children to its ends, she was giving the Dhracian the demon’s own blood, from the veins of its children, to find it, was almost too much for her to bear.
Rhapsody looked back at Achmed. He stood before her now, the reluctant savior, the key to their finding the demon, to its ultimate destruction, returning her gaze unblinkingly. Her stomach turned suddenly, and she felt the world begin to spin; he must have seen it, because he reached out and grasped her arm, bringing solidity again.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she whispered, unwilling to leave him now, now that the blood was in hand, and that the die was about to be cast. “I want to get it over with. I want to go home.”
The Firbolg king shrugged. “Can’t. You have to attend to this first. It’s all part of the design.” He leaned forward and spoke into her ear.
“It’s your destiny.”
The windy silence of the courtyard grew even stiller. Destiny—just the sound of the word made her weary. How many times have I heard that since coming to this place, this new land of demons and nightmares? she thought bitterly, biting back her anger. The words of the Grandmother, the Earthchild’s late guardian, came into her mind.
It is your destiny. Deny it, and it would be better to hurl yourselves into the abyss now.
It was a word employed to threaten; Oelendra had made use of it, too.
Your destiny is foretold, and you can shrug at it all you like, but you will kill the F’dor, or die trying. You have no choice.
Ryle hira, the Liringlas said. Life is what it is.
“Balls,” Rhapsody snorted. “Hogwash. We make our own destiny.”
Achmed smiled. Rhapsody laughed.
“You said that just to infuriate me, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It worked.”
“I know. So will you go to the wedding?”
Rhapsody threw up her hands in mock disgust. “I have nothing to wear to this event, Achmed. Last I heard it was a formal occasion.”
“You depleted my coffers by an obscene amount to buy the thousands of useless frocks you have stored down in Elysian, and you have nothing to wear? Spare me.”
“If the wedding is in three days I will have to ride directly from here. I didn’t bring any of those useless frocks with me.”
The Bolg king sighed. He reached into his robes again and pulled out a piece of folded leather, which he handed to her.
“Here’s some Orlandan coinage, and a few notes of tender. You can buy something to wear with this. Keep your ears open for anything you might hear about the Bolg or Bolg weapons at the wedding.”
“Somehow I doubt either of those topics will come up.”
“Perhaps not. Just your presence there may distract Tristan enough to delay him, if he’s the one plotting to attack. Try to find the ambassador from Sorbold; I worry much more about it coming from there. Do whatever you need to do, and then come home.”
“I will.”
“Good.” He turned to leave, then looked back over his shoulder. “It won’t be long now. All in good time.”
She smiled, her eyes gleaming in the fading light. “I know.”
“Travel well,” he said. He watched as she nodded and disappeared into the forest.
Then, with the loss of her innate musical vibration, the whispering voices returned, scratching at his ears, screaming in his veins.
Achmed pulled the hematite vial from its pocket within the shirt beneath his robes. He held the smooth silver bottle up to his eyes, absently running a finger over the slippery stone.
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