“They have already done so.”
He nodded and stood, excitement beginning to light his face. “Where do they wish me to meet them?”
“They don’t.”
Ashe stopped cold. “What do you mean?”
“ ’Tis their task, Gwydion; you would be of no help. Your soul still bears the scars of twenty years of domination. If you were to go, who knows what bonds that ancient evil might be able to lay upon you?”
Fury began to flush his face. “I know. There are none.”
“Perhaps. But even if that were the case, there is not time. They headed off to Bethe Corbair the day after I left Tyrian. If they traveled as they expected, the battle is probably raging as we speak.”
Ashe began to tremble, his voice shaking with anger. “She went alone? With them? Without me?”
Oelendra looked at him oddly. “Gwydion, ’tis their quest; ’tis their time, as was foretold centuries before your birth. You can be of no use there; this is what they were made for. Believe me, I wished to be there as well, more than you can imagine. But ’tis not our task to perform.” Her tone grew more solemn. “Besides, if they do fail, then we must have a second line of defense. Between yourself and your father—” She stopped. Ashe was becoming frantic.
“They cannot fail,” he said in panic. “I couldn’t stand it if she were to—I couldn’t bear it, not again. Why didn’t you tell me before? Why didn’t they send word? I have a right to be there!”
Oelendra’s eyes opened wide in anger, and she rose to face him, unbridled rage in her voice. “A right? You have a right? What right? If anyone has a right to slaughter that damnable beast it is me! I have endured more of its evil than anyone living. If I can pass up the right to slay it, who are you to claim it?”
His voice shook. “That’s not what I meant,” he said frenetically. “I don’t care who kills the blasted thing, as long as it dies. The right I meant was my right to be at Rhapsody’s side when she faces it, in case—in case she fails.” His words trailed off into a whisper.
“Why?” Oelendra asked incredulously. “What claim do you have on Rhapsody or her choices? You gave up those claims when you married another.”
He shook his head, burying his face in his hands, trying to calm himself. “I have not given up those claims.”
The Lirin champion’s voice grew cold. “I believe I now have my answer to the second half of the question. You are more like your grandmother than I feared. Do you expect Rhapsody to be tied to you forever in spite of your marriage to someone else, someone highborn?” Ashe looked up at her. “Obviously she would never tell you, but you have hurt her as much as the loss of your father, the loss of Jo, perhaps even as much as the loss of her home, her life before this. She loved you, and you threw that away for power; your own or your father’s, it matters not. You are right; you didn’t deserve her. You have driven her into a loveless marriage; that is really what I came here to tell you.”
His face went white. “What?”
“You do know she is Queen of the Lirin now, don’t you?”
“What?”
“You didn’t hear? You didn’t know?”
Ashe shook his head. “No; I have been hunting down Lark, and Khaddyr’s other followers, all the way to the far border of the Nonaligned States. I heard the Lirin had crowned a queen; I always hoped Rhapsody would take the crown, but I also heard—” His voice choked off.
“Heard what?”
“That the queen was accepting suit. I knew Rhapsody wouldn’t do that. It’s against everything she believes.” He closed his eyes in the pain of memory from a sweet summer night, a lifetime ago, in the old land. He could still see her, barely more than a child, crouched behind a row of barrels, hiding from the farm-lad suitors who were stalking her, hoping to win her in the village marriage lottery.
Doesn’t this all seem, well, barbaric to you?
Well, yes, actually. Yes, it does.
Well, then, imagine how I feel.
Oelendra smiled grimly. “What did you expect, that she would pine away for you, alone and unwed, forever? She has no choice but to marry, despite her wishes, just to placate the armies of her neighbors. Come, Gwydion, you know this drill; you were born into it. She needs a strong mate, and she has been left with a fairly grim choice, Anborn or Achmed. She has made that choice.”
The woods had grown very quiet. The air turned from chilly to cold. Oelendra looked into Ashe’s eyes and saw an unnatural glint, a light she recognized as the soul of the dragon, but it did not appear angry or ready to strike.
It was frightened.
She allowed her eyes to wander over the rest of his face, and saw the devastation of the human side of him as well. She had seen that look before; it was the face of a man who just realized he had lost everything.
Ashe stared blankly ahead of him, trying to drive the unbearable image of Rhapsody in Achmed’s arms from his mind. It was a picture that had haunted him every time she had made even a casual reference to the possibility.
You would never, well, mate with Achmed, would you? The thought has been churning my stomach for the last three hours.
You know, Ashe, I really don’t like your attitude. And frankly, it’s none of your business.
His stomach turned violently.
You never did answer my question about you and he.
What question?
About whether you would mate with Achmed—I mean marry him.
Maybe. As I told you, I don’t expect to marry anyone, but if I were to live that long, he is probably my best prospect.
“She—she cannot,” he said, trying to keep from retching.
Oelendra looked at him ruefully. “You have left her little choice. She needs an ally, a husband that none would dare to question. She has already spoken to Anborn and he has agreed. It will be a marriage with little love, a marriage of convenience. Unending agony for a woman like Rhapsody. Still, ’twill solve her political problems, though it might add to yours. After all, Anborn has as clear a claim on the Lordship as you do, at least the Lordship of the First and Third Fleets. With Rhapsody thrown into the mix, he might feel more eager to press those claims.”
“Anborn can have the blasted Lordship! It’s Rhapsody I care about.”
Her voice was blistering. “You should have thought of that before you married someone else.”
“I didn’t marry anyone else.”
Oelendra blinked. “You told Rhapsody you were married, why would you lie about something like that?”
Ashe began to pace in a frenzy of anxiety. “I didn’t lie. I couldn’t lie, not to her. I just didn’t tell her who I was married to. I couldn’t, knowing that I was going to face Khaddyr. Not with the F’dor still out there, still knowing the taste of my soul. I have been using myself as bait to lure it into the open. What if I were to fail? What if I died? They could use that bond to find her, and they would take her. As long as Rhapsody doesn’t know, the bonds of wedlock are not binding. If I am captured or killed, they can’t use them against her. She will be safe.”
Oelendra put out her hands and stopped him in front of her. “Are you telling me that the woman you are married to is Rhapsody?”
Ashe fought back tears. “Yes. That night, that night in Elysian, when I told her of my father and his plans, that night when we discovered who we were, who we had been—we married that night. We stood together in the gazebo and took our vows and joined our souls forever. That was the other memory, the one I told you she had a right to know before others did. The memory of our marriage, our union.
“I have had to remain silent about it all this time, knowing that no one else alive knew of it, not even my wife, while all the time I was longing to tell the world. No one else knew. And now you tell me she has gone to face the F’dor? That she might never know who I am? What we were? That she might die, thinking that I wed another? That I abandoned her again? That I might lose her again?”
Oelendra shook him gently. Gwydion’s eyes
cleared slightly. “What are you talking about?” she asked, a hint of compassion in her voice for the first time that night. “What do you mean, abandon her again? Lose her again?”
He sat down disconsolately on the log and ran a hand over his shining hair, wet with frantic sweat. Oelendra sat next to him, gently patting his forearm to calm him. When he finally had control of himself again he told her the entire story of their meeting in the old world, of his grandmother’s deception, and all that happened since. He related the tale in excruciating detail, with the minutiae that only a dragon could remember, the aspects that only a man deeply in love would care about. Oelendra listened sympathetically until suddenly realization came over her face. Her hand, resting gently on his wrist, became a clutching claw. Gwydion’s tale ceased immediately, choked off by the look on her face.
“The old world? You met in the old world? You and she fell in love in the old world?” The elderly woman was trembling violently.
“Oelendra? What’s wrong?”
The Lirin warrior rose, trembling, and stumbled blindly away from the fire ring. She ran to the first tree she reached in the darkness and rested her head against it, fighting the bile coming up from her stomach with the memory of herself and Llauron, standing before the Oracle with the mirrored eyes.
Beware, swordbearer! You may well destroy the one you seek, but if you go this night the risk is great. If you fail you will not die, but, as a piece of your heart and soul was ripped from you spiritually in the old land with the loss of your life’s love, the same will happen again, but physically this tune. And that piece it takes from you will haunt your days until you pray for death, for he will use it as his plaything, twisting it to his will, using it to accomplish his foul deeds, even producing children for him.
Oelendra felt her stomach rush into her mouth. As she retched she felt one strong hand at her neck, another supporting her back. She staggered away, Ashe still holding on to her, into the coolness of the air away from the campfire. The world spun hazily around her for a moment. Then she steadied herself and looked up into the face of the man smiling down at her kindly.
“ ’Twas you,” she whispered. “I thought she meant me, but ’twas you.”
His smile vanished. “What are you talking about? Here, come sit down.” Ashe led her to a snowy patch under a great elm and lowered her gently to the ground. He decided to inject a note of levity.
“If that is the way all of Rhapsody’s friends react to the news of our marriage, we won’t be giving many dinner parties.”
The older woman did not smile in return, but rested her hand gently on his cheek. “Forgive me, Gwydion,” she said softly. “I am to blame for your torment at the hands of the F’dor. I am so sorry.”
Ashe stared at her in disbelief. “What are you talking about? You saved my life.”
Oelendra shook her head, her eyes staring elsewhere, remembering different moments. Then she repeated the prophecy aloud, softly, to herself.
“‘Beware, swordbearer,’” she whispered faintly. “‘You may well destroy the one you seek, but if you go this night the risk is great.’”
“Is this a riddle?”
She nodded distantly. “A terrible riddle. A prophecy from Manwyn from long ago.”
Ashe took her hand in both of his, trying to steady it. “Was there more to it?”
Oelendra nodded again, her eyes locked on the crackling fire as it launched gleaming sparks into the cold night air. “‘If you fail, you will not die, but, as a piece of your heart and soul was ripped from you spiritually in the old land with the loss of your life’s love, the same will happen again, but physically this time.’” She began to shake even more violently.
“Rhapsody told me about your husband, Pendaris,” Ashe said gently. “I’m very sorry.”
“‘And that piece it takes from you will haunt your days until you pray for death,’” she continued, “‘for he will use it as his plaything, twisting it to his will, using it to accomplish his foul deeds, even producing children for him.’”
“Gods,” Ashe murmured. “What a hideous prediction. No wonder you were terrified.”
Oelendra blinked. Finally she turned back and looked at Gwydion. “Has your father ever told this augury to you?”
“No.” He was rubbing his arms as if to keep warm, but Oelendra could tell from the look in his eyes that he was coming to the same understanding she had.
“The ultimate vanity,” she said softly. “I assumed that because Llauron was the only other person there with me in Manwyn’s temple, and he does not bear a sword, that her curse was directed at me. But ’twas not me that she damned with her prophecy, Gwydion. ’Twas you. You were the sword bearer, the Kirsdarkenvar. I never even thought of you, nor anyone else save myself.”
“Of course you didn’t.” Ashe smiled wryly. “I’ve been the recipient of Manwyn’s prophecies. She cannot lie, but she does not have to be clear in her ran tings. She’s insane. One of the last things my father said to me before he—he told me to beware of prophecies, because they do not always mean what they seem.” He patted her arm. “He went with you, then? Why? I had always been under the assumption that you and my father did not get along, but I thought it was because he led Anwyn’s army in the Great War, and you chose wisely to stay out of it. Such grudges seem to be common among the elder Cymrians who had lived through the war.”
The Lirin champion sighed. “No, Gwydion. There was a time, long ago, when your father and I were quite cordial, before the war. He remained so to me despite the choice I made during it, though I can’t say I’ve forgiven him completely for the horrors he visited upon our fellow Cymrians, whether or not it was his choice. When you hear the full tale, I’m sure you will understand our present enmity.” She looked into the starry sky as wisps of clouds, blown by a cold wind, raced in front of the twinkling lights, dimming them for a moment.
“It had been centuries since my first taste of the foul air of the F’dor on the wind. I had trained endless champions to search for it; none had ever returned. I had failed to find the F’dor in any other way. I was desperate. I knew the beast was growing stronger. Your father was one of the few who believed as I did, that the F’dor still lived, lurking somewhere, hiding within a human host, biding its time. So Llauron and I went to see Manwyn together, in the hope that she could tell us where the F’dor would be, so that we might kill it once and for all time.
“We had to phrase the question like that, because Manwyn can only see the Future, not the Past or Present. She was most cooperative. She told us the exact time it would be here, in the House of Remembrance, planning to despoil the sapling tree.” She pointed to the thriving oak, its glossy leaves gleaming in the light of the fire.
“Manwyn said we were to go there on the first night of summer, when the Patriarch would be consecrating the year in Sepulvarta, while the Filids observed their holy-night rituals in Gwynwood. ’Tis a night of great power, a night when the One-God’s love is wrapped securely around His children.” Oelendra looked back into the fire as if looking into the Past. “A night the beast would be vulnerable.
“Your father, being Invoker, would need to be with the Filids of his order, leading their worship, so we understood that I would have to go without him. But finally we had the information we needed to kill it. Llauron and I looked at each other, unable to speak for the import of what we had learned. ’Twas to be our deliverance from the hand of evil.
“But then, as we turned to leave Manwyn’s temple, she spewed forth the other prophecy.” Oelendra’s eyes dimmed in the memory. “In my life I have never felt such fear as when I heard those words.
“For the first time I can remember in this world, I gave in totally to panic. You must understand, Gwydion, I had fought F’dor like this in the old world; they took from me everything that ever mattered, that I loved. My husband and I were captured by them; they killed him. They were not as kind to me.
“I misunderstood the prophecy. I took the sword bea
rer to be myself; it never occurred to me that it might be a sword other than Daystar Clarion. The prospect of bearing a demonic child—” Oelendra broke down, shuddering uncontrollably.
Ashe drew her into his arms, holding her against his chest to warm her. “Sshh,” he said gently. “Blot it from your mind. It’s over.”
“ ’Twill never be over,” Oelendra said hollowly. “Never.
“Instead of using the information she gave me, taking my one chance to destroy it forever, I bolted; I hid. I waited until dawn had come, and then I went for a walk to clear my head of the accusations that were pounding in it. I could not escape them. ’Twas my duty as Iliachenva’ar to have gone, no matter the risk to myself. So I steeled my nerve and went to the House, hoping it was still there, though its power would no longer be on the wane.
“That’s when I found you, Gwydion, broken and dying on the grass in the forest of Navarne. Llauron had said he might send reinforcements, but I had no idea ’twas you, or that you would go in alone when I didn’t come. ’Twas my cowardice that destroyed your life; ’tis my fault that you have lived in the agony you have, hidden from your family and loved ones, dead in the eyes of the world these twenty years. Those children that the Rakshas sired, that is because of me.” Tears began to fall from the silver eyes.
Ashe held her against his shoulder, trying to think of something to say that would impart comfort to her in her despair. “Rhapsody loves those children,” he said gently. “They gave Achmed the weapon to find the benison. I never would have lived this long if I had not been required to hide, pretending to be dead. Given my lineage, I would have been among the first it assassinated anyway. It was my own father that sent me against the demon; how can I hate you, and not him? I prefer not to, if you don’t mind. What is it you Liringlas say again? Ryle hira. Life is what it is. Forgive yourself; believe me, the world looks better when you do; I know. It is something Rhapsody and I learned together.”
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