“Yes, completely. But—”
“Good; then listen to me. Promise me you won’t make a decision until I get back.”
“What if there is a demand or a martial challenge?”
“There won’t be; I won’t be gone that long. Have Rial send missives to each place represented, telling them you are considering the many attractive offers, and that you have gone into seclusion to weigh the value of each suitor.”
“I would have to do that, then. I don’t want to lie about it.”
“Fine; you might learn some interesting things about your allies and enemies. Just don’t race blindly into the arms of Achmed or Anborn until I’ve had a chance to do as you’ve asked. I will help you, but you must give me the time in which to do so.”
“Very well, I will. I promise. Take whatever time you need. Before I can deal with any of this, I have to confront and kill the F’dor. Achmed and Grunthor are coming any day now to plan the sortie and go after him. But I must ask you—what is it about Anborn that gives you pause? He seems like a good man.”
“There are many reasons, dearest. The Lirin hate Anborn. He fought very successfully against them in the war, and he was a brilliant general; his attacks on Tyrian strongholds were devastating.”
“That’s the Past, Oelendra; I thought that you wanted me to help heal it and reconcile the people who hate each other. If the Lirin cannot accept him as my husband, I will step down.”
“Listen to what you are saying, Rhapsody; you’re not thinking clearly. You are considering marrying Anborn in the first place because you are the Lirin queen and as such need a husband, even one you don’t want or love, to stave off a challenge from your neighbors. Now you are saying that you are willing to abdicate if the Lirin object to your choice. What are you going to do then—marry Anborn anyway? Then you will have given yourself in marriage to a man you don’t love, for no reason. That doesn’t make any sense.
“You asked what was wrong with you marrying Anborn; what is most wrong is that you know very little about him. You are doing that deliberately; you think if you only know a part of him you can’t care as much about him as you did about Gwydion. Muddled thinking again—there are things you might not want to see, but they are there nonetheless.
“Do not forget that even more than Llauron sided with his mother, Anborn sided with his father. He was Gwylliam’s champion and his assassin; he is more like Achmed than you might care to recognize, Rhapsody. And he has a legitimate claim to the Cymrian Lordship, in some ways as legitimate a one as Gwydion does, at least with the Second and Third Fleets. By marrying him, you might just guarantee that Gwydion never ascends that throne, or that another war might come about. Think carefully, darling. And now, let me go look around. I won’t be long.”
Rhapsody nodded, wiping the remnant of tears from her eyes. “I love you, Oelendra,” she said gratefully. “Thank you. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Oelendra was at the weapons rack, belting a sword and taking up the strange curving white bow. She blew Rhapsody a kiss as she took her high-collared gray cloak from its peg and opened the door onto the garden.
“Aye. You can be sure to lock up when you leave, Your Majesty.” She closed the door behind her.
Rhapsody wandered to the hearth, bending down to check the coals. A moment later Oelendra opened the door again, and entered the cottage, a scroll in her hand.
“Well, Oelendra, you’re certainly a woman of your word; you weren’t gone long at all.” Rhapsody’s mild smile faded at the sight of Oelendra’s face. “What is it?”
Oelendra held out the scroll. “ ’Tis from Achmed.”
Rhapsody snatched the paper, broke the seal and unrolled it. The spidery script was unmistakable, the approximated spelling of the Firbolg language couched in their ancient code. The queen read the document as quickly as she could decipher it, then sat down on the couch before the fire.
“What is it?”
She did not look up. “I’m to leave for Bethe Corbair in the morning.”
64
House of Remembrance, Navarne
Oelendra sat stirring the embers of the fire with a large stick, watching the sparks fly up into the sky. The chilly air hung heavy with moisture, causing her old wounds to ache, but she had grown used to such pains and ignored them. Instead she thought of the old outpost that had so recently stood in this clearing. Now all that remained of it was the burnt-out shell of the tower, and scattered timbers that had once held up its frame.
In what had been the central courtyard the Tree still stood, beautiful and undamaged by the smoke and destruction that had consumed the house. A small harp rested in the crook of its main boughs, still softly playing a repetitive melody. Oelendra’s mind went back to when that tower was built, and the times it represented. She wandered down ancient pathways, and spoke to friends long dead. Distantly she asked the kings of old what had become of their noble line. She tossed the branch into the flames.
Her guest had arrived. He stood at the edge of the clearing, his visage hidden by his heavy mantle. In one hand he held a white wooden staff, in the other he carried Kirsdarke, the blue scrolled patterns visible in the ripples of its liquid blade even in the dark. Oelendra wondered how long he had been there. She smiled in welcome.
“Oelendra?” The voice of the shadowed figure was soft.
“You remember me, then?”
“No, not really,” Ashe admitted as he sheathed his sword and crossed to the fire. “Not clearly, anyway. Just your strength, and your kindness. I have carried those things in my heart for many years. I owe you a great debt, but I’m afraid I don’t remember much from those days aside from hazy, pain-filled dreams. I guessed who you were when I saw you. There are, after all, only so many people who know I am alive.”
“Until Rhapsody told me a short time ago, I was not one of them.”
Ashe sounded surprised. “My father did not tell you?”
“Nay, nor did the Lord Rowan.”
He stepped into the light that ringed the air around the fire. As the young man entered the circle of warmth he pulled back his hood, revealing both the shock of his coppery hair and the small crystal globe he wore about his neck. Crynella’s candle, Oelendra thought, the ancient melding of fire and water, created by a long-dead queen of Serendair for her seafaring lover, now adorning the throat of another lost sailor, by the hand of another Seren queen. It glimmered through the mantle of mist like a beacon through the fog. He was more handsome than Oelendra remembered, but she was not surprised. He had been at death’s door when last they met.
“You look well,” Oelendra said as she gestured for him to take a seat. Her voice was terse; the smile of welcome had dimmed into one that was merely polite.
“You look worried.” He stepped over the trunk of a long-fallen tree and sat down on it, the firelight gleaming red-gold on his hair. “What’s wrong? Why did you call me here?”
“I thought the ruins of the old stronghold was a fitting, if ironic, place for us to meet.”
“Is there something I can do for you?”
The Lirin warrior looked him over thoughtfully. “Perhaps. I have come in service of my queen.”
Ashe smiled, recalling the infamous words the legends said she had uttered to his grandmother long before his own birth. “I thought you did not serve a monarch, but a people.”
“In my queen the two are united.”
He nodded. “Good. Maybe it’s a sign of changing times; it certainly would be a change for the better.”
“Indeed.” She took a drink from her water flask, then offered it to him. “I see you are no longer hiding yourself. Is that a sign you are preparing to take the Lordship?”
Ashe shook his head, declining the drink. “That title is granted, not taken.”
“That didn’t stop your grandparents.”
“I am not my grandparents.”
The Lirin champion studied the man across the fire from her. She did not look at him directly;
she knew better than to stare into the eyes of a dragon. She was a little surprised that he was not attempting to catch her gaze, as his grandmother always had. Oelendra had often wondered how much the power of the Seer’s dragonesque eyes had to do with her selection as Lady. Anwyn had always looked people in the eye, always tried to draw them into herself, though few suspected it. Oelendra had been able to withstand that gaze, to endure both its beckoning and its hatred. She was pleased to see that he was not trying to put her will to the test, and looked away from him, turning once more to the fire.
“I hope so,” she answered after a time. “But I will have to see that for myself.”
“You have the right to doubt my line,” Ashe said patiently. “Certainly my family has never given you cause for confidence in it. I hope to prove myself to you by my own actions, if you are willing to judge me by them.” He blinked; her silvery eyes caught the light of the fire as they looked up at him directly, more than a trace of animosity in them. He waited for her to explain her hostile reaction, but she just watched him. He cleared his throat before speaking again.
“I have not come out of hiding to take the Lordship, but in the hope of flushing out the F’dor. The Rakshas is dead, Khaddyr is dead. Now all that remains is the last, the demon host itself. I hope that by walking openly I can draw it to me and kill it.”
“And you think you can do so alone? You certainly are sure of yourself.”
Ashe ran a hand down the back of his head to settle the hairs that had bristled at her tone. “Yes; I’m confident, but I’m not foolish. My father is seldom far away, and I hope to rejoin Rhapsody soon. Between us and her Bolg companions I suspect we would be victorious over it.”
“Your father? I had wondered if he really was dead. Rhapsody had not said, but I suspected duplicity.”
“It was necessary.”
Oelendra laughed bitterly.
“All right,” Ashe acknowledged quietly, “perhaps it would be more accurate to say it was necessary to him.”
“More accurate, and more honorable also, given who paid the price for that decision.”
Ashe looked away. “You’re right. But in one sense he did die. His human side is gone; he let it slip away to the rest it desired. I will not deceive you, however; in truth his death was a charade, designed to draw his enemies out into the open and allow him to come into his dragon nature through the elements of ether and fire, much like I did. Now he is seldom far from me. He stays in the shadows, watching, waiting for the F’dor to make its move. Still, tonight he is not here. I would not allow him attend this meeting.”
“Allow him? ’Tis a change.”
Ashe stared at her; her face was tight in the reflected light, her eyes intense. There had always been a similar edge to his father’s voice when her name was mentioned, but he had not thought it particularly significant until now. He kept his voice steady, his expression mild.
“I suppose it is. It reflects a confidence in my own choices, something I learned from Rhapsody.”
“Did you learn that before or after you let her burn your father alive? Before she spread what she thought was the truth of his defeat at the hands of Khaddyr to the entirety of the Filidic order, and the nobility of Roland as well?”
Ashe’s eyes narrowed, the dragon bristled in fury. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to goad me into something, Oelendra? You are treading on fragile ground.”
Oelendra leaned into the firelight. “I am trying to decide whether or not I threw away the bond I had to Daystar Clarion, the piece of the star I gave the Rowans to sew within your sundered chest, on another manipulative spawn of Anwyn and Gwylliam. Make me understand, Gwydion. Explain why you would hurt the person I love as my own child like that; one whom you supposedly loved as well.”
Rage had begun to course through Ashe at her words; he struggled to control his temper, knowing in his heart she was right. “Never doubt my love for her. Never,” he said, the fierce, multitoned voice of the dragon slipping into his words.
Oelendra didn’t blink at the sound. “If you loved her, why did you deceive her? Do you have any idea what the supposed death of your father, on top of everything else she has lost, did to her?”
Ashe’s ire fled, replaced by deep sorrow at the memory of Rhapsody sitting before the dark fireplace, staring at nothing. His heart twisted as he remembered the way she had pulled aside her collar, moving her locket out of the way of the blow she expected from him.
Please; end it quickly.
“Yes,” he said hollowly. “I think I know exactly what it did to her.”
“Then why did you do it? Why did you choose your father’s scheme for power, knowing the devastation it would cause?”
Ashe looked off into the darkness. “I didn’t choose it. She did.”
The Lirin warrior’s eyes tapered to slits of quicksilver in the firelight. “What do you mean?”
Ashe continued to stare off into the night, his mind in the Teeth, remembering a woman in the wind. Finally he rose and looked back at her. “I’m sorry, Oelendra,” he said, picking up the staff. “If you came to find out if you wasted your piece of the star, the answer is yes.” He turned and walked out of the fire ring.
“Stop,” commanded the Lirin champion. Her tone had the ring of a voice that had commanded armies; he obeyed involuntarily. “Come back here. I will decide that, not you. Sit down.” Ashe smiled in spite of himself, then returned to the log. “All right, explain yourself. What was her choice?”
“An unfair one, I’m ashamed to say. The only thing she has ever asked of me is the truth; I felt I owed her that above all else. On the night before I left I told her everything, all of Llauron’s plans and manipulations, among other things she needed to know.” His face grew darker with memory in the light of the fire. “She understood that we were powerless to stop the plans that had already been set in motion. She knew if she didn’t light the pyre that he would die, permanently, for nothing.
“That was all right as far as I was concerned; it was his own damned fault, not her responsibility to save him from the snare that was of his own making. But she decided to go ahead with it, knowing exactly what it would mean. Had I been the one to choose I would not have allowed it, but again, part of loving Rhapsody is respecting her right to make her own decisions about her life. I would have spared her if I could.” His voice broke.
Oelendra sat back and watched him thoughtfully, her anger dissipating a little. “Why doesn’t she remember this?”
Ashe looked back for the first time, his tone calmer. “Part of the price of the truth, I’m afraid. We went to see Manwyn sometime back; it was important to her, though she never had a chance to tell me why. I think now it must have been something to do with the children of the demon.
“During one of her insane ravings, the Oracle revealed part of Llauron’s plot to her. It left Rhapsody with information that made her vulnerable; in a way, she would have been duplicitous in the scheme just by knowing about it. There was something else she needed to know, so on our last night together I took a pearl my father had given me with his image in it; it was meant to be a keepsake of him in his human form. I decided it could be put to better use, so I expelled the image and gave it to her, asking her to keep the memory of that night in it instead, with the proviso that she could take the memory back immediately once she knew the entire picture if she wanted to.
“Then I told her the whole sorry story. In the end, she decided that her knowledge would lead to eternal death for Llauron, and she sacrificed many things to prevent it, including the memory. He didn’t deserve her.” He looked into the darkness again. “I didn’t deserve her.”
“Well, so far you’re at least half-right,” said Oelendra. “But I don’t understand why Rhapsody’s knowledge left her vulnerable. What else happened that night?”
Ashe sighed deeply. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Oelendra, as much as I would like to. It’s Rhapsody’s memory too; she has the right to know it be
fore anyone else does.”
“I suppose I can respect that. When do you intend to give it back to her?”
“The instant that it is safe to do so; once the F’dor is destroyed. I hid the pearl in Elysian for safekeeping in case I die in the process of bringing the demon out and killing it. So far I have been able to destroy its followers easily, but I have lost to this monster before, as you know better than anyone.
“I’ve been out of touch for a while, chasing down Lark and the other Filidic traitors. I am done with that now; I was on my way to Ylorc to see her when I received your call on the wind. Considering where you asked me to meet, I suspected the worst. Until I saw it was you, I thought I would be facing the F’dor again. That was the reason I came drawn; I don’t usually come to meetings with sword in hand.”
“And yet you came without your father’s protection?”
“He is not far away. He could be here in a moment if I summoned him. I am a great deal stronger than the last time I fought it. I might not be able to defeat the F’dor, but I could certainly hold it off until Llauron arrived. Together we would be quite formidable. Besides, Elynsynos is not far off, either, and I think that if I were to call, she would come as well.”
Oelendra stared into the fire, calculating something. When she looked up there was an expression of satisfaction on her face. “Three dragons, Kirsdarke, and myself. Fair odds as a second strike.”
“Excuse me?”
She looked into Ashe’s eyes. “Achmed has identified the F’dor.” Automatically his muscles tensed, his hand went to the hilt of the sword. “ ’Tis Lanacan Orlando, the Blesser of Bethe Corbair.”
Ashe’s eyes gleamed a brighter blue in the firelight, but outwardly all he did was nod. He released his sword and rested his elbows on his knees, intertwining his fingers, deep in thought. “Of course. The saintly bastard. Humbly blessing the troops, turning them into thralls for his purposes. Bethe Corbair—gods, he was right on her doorstep.” He shuddered. “No wonder the Rakshas could infiltrate Ylorc so easily—how disgusting. How many generations had the demon waited, readying itself for this? Blessing and binding armies. It would have taken Sepulvarta, Sorbold, and all of Roland.” He shook off his meditations. “Is that why you came? To tell me they are preparing to go after it?”
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