Prophecy

by Elizabeth Haydon

  “I suppose,” said Rhapsody, brushing a strand of hair off her face. “I never really thought of it that way before.”

  “There are many reasons, selfish and unselfish, that children are brought into the world. The F’dor wanted the Rakshas to do its bidding in the world of men. It is a toy, a tool to be used to accomplish its ultimate goal.”

  “What is that goal, Elynsynos? Is it looking for power? To rule the world?”

  Elynsynos chuckled. “You are thinking like a human, Pretty. To understand the motives of the F’dor you must think like a F’dor, as much as that is even possible, for they are forces of chaos and their intentions and actions cannot be readily predicted. F’dor use men as tools to achieve their ends as well. They do not seek to rise to power and rule over the masses or oppress their enemies; they are very single-minded. All they contemplate is ruin and death, and the friction of conflict that gives them power and pleasure. Their ultimate goal will destroy even themselves, as they seek to consume the Earth. They will then exist only in the Underworld, and in nightmares. As will we all.”

  11

  The words of the dragon echoed through the dark cave, leaving a thudding silence when the reverberation ceased. The flames that illuminated the chandeliers flickered across the Singer’s face, suddenly ghostly pale in the darkness.

  Elynsynos lowered her head slowly until she was eye to eye with Rhapsody. There was a look of sympathetic understanding in her eyes, though the expression on her enormous face was solemn.

  “What is it, Pretty?” she said softly, her voice as quiet as the hum of cricket’s wings. “What are you remembering?”

  Rhapsody closed her eyes, wrestling with the memory of the most frightening nightmare she had seen during her sojourn within the Earth. Achmed had woken her from her restless sleep, had taken her to a vast tunnel at the bottom of which he could hear an immense beating heart, pulsing in the slow serpentine rhythm of hibernation.

  Something terrible rests in there, something more powerful and more horrifying than you can imagine, something I dare not even name. What sleeps within that tunnel, deep in the belly of the Earth, must not awake. Not ever.

  He had been afraid to speak, to give voice to the words of the ancient story; it was the first time she remembered him not being insolent or arrogant. It was the first time she saw fear in his eyes.

  In the Before-Time, when the Earth and seas were being born, an egg was stolen from the progenitor of the race of dragons, the Primal Wyrm. That egg was secreted here, within the Earth, by the race of demonic beings born of elemental fire. The infant wyrm which came from that egg has lived here, deep in the frozen wastes of the Earth’s interior, growing, until its coils have wound around the very heart of the world. It is an innate part of the Earth itself; its body is a large part of the world’s mass. It sleeps now, but soon that demon wishes to summon it, and will visit it upon the land. It has the power to consume the Earth; that was the intent of the thieves who put it here. It awaits the demon’s call, which I know for certain is intended to come soon. I know this, because he planned to use me to help bring this about.

  What if it didn’t hear the call? she had asked. If we could obscure the call, keep the beast from hearing it properly, or feeling it, perhaps it would just stay asleep and not answer. At least for a little while.

  They had taken steps to prolong its slumber, had placed a musical web in the tunnel, spinning endless discordant melodies, aimed at interfering with the call of that demon. Achmed had warned her that the solution was only a temporary one.

  Even then, Rhapsody, you will only be buying time. You will never have the power to destroy it completely, nor I, nor any living soul.

  “It sleeps still,” said Elynsynos, shattering her thoughts and causing her heart to pound. The dragon had read her mind. The great beast chuckled at the look of panic that crossed Rhapsody’s face. “No, Pretty, I cannot discern your thoughts, except when you are thinking about the Sleeping Child.”

  Rhapsody blinked. “I wasn’t,” she said. “I was thinking about—”

  “Do not put words around what you were remembering; I know what you saw within the Earth. You were thinking about something just now that only dragons and F’dor know about, something infinite and ancient that is a holy abomination in the lore of my kind. You saw it by accident. You are now one of a very few living beings that even knows it exists.

  “The entity that was in your thoughts a moment ago is our antithesis of your Life-Giver. It was the First Child of our race, kidnapped as an egg and raised by beings that were our opposite—where we cherish the Earth and all its riches, the F’dor seek to consume it for the fulfillment of their own ridiculous lust. That child is no longer a wyrm; the F’dor have poisoned it, possessed it, much as they would a human host. It is part of the Earth now, a vast part, and will one day rise and claim that Earth as its own. If that is our destiny, then so be it. But it is a sacred mystery, one that no dragon gives voice to, except in the song of prayer. We pray that the First Child will remain asleep—that is what dragonsong is for. A lullabye to the Sleeping Child.”

  “The Sleeping Child,” Rhapsody murmured. “Those words had a different meaning in the lore of Serendair. In our legends the Sleeping Child was Melita, a star that fell from the sky. It fell into the sea near the Island, taking much of what was once land with it into the sea forever. But the sea did not quench it. Instead it lay beneath the waves, roiling in unspent fire, until finally it rose—” Her voice began to waver, and she stopped. When she could control herself again, she continued. “It rose and took all of the Island back to the depths with it, this time in a hail of volcanic fire.”

  “Perhaps that name, however it is used, foretells the death of our respective races,” suggested Elynsynos. “Merithyn used to sing me a song from your homeland that spoke of the Sleeping Child. Would you like me to tell you the words?”

  “Yes, please.”

  The great beast sat up straighter and cleared her enormous throat with a mighty cough. The sound rattled the chandeliers above them and sent backward waves of frenetic ripples across the lagoon, pounding in the same furious rhythm as Rhapsody’s heart. When the dragon spoke, her voice was no longer the harmonically diverse tone that she had originally addressed Rhapsody with, but a deep, melodic baritone, a sonorous voice the carried with it the sound of magic, the ring of ages past. Merithyn’s voice.

  The Sleeping Child, the youngest born

  Lives on in dreams, though Death has come

  To write her name within his tome

  And no one yet has thought to mourn.

  The middle child, who sleeping lies,

  ’Twixt watersky and shifting sands

  Sits silent, holding patient hands

  Until the day she can arise.

  The eldest child rests deep within

  The ever-silent vault of earth,

  Unborn as yet, but with its birth

  The end of Time Itself begins.

  The words echoed off the cavernous walls and hung in the stale air, reverberating in the silence. Rhapsody said nothing, fearing if she uttered a sound her own heart would shatter. Finally the dragon spoke.

  “When my daughters were born, their eyes were closed, like kittens,” Elynsynos said. Her multitoned voice had returned. “They seemed asleep, and I thought for a moment that they were the three children in the prophecy, but of course that could not be right. I knew what the eldest born was—as any dragon would. Merithyn had referred to the Sleeping Child off the coast of his—your—homeland. That would be the middle child, I presume.”

  “So there is another?” Rhapsody asked nervously. “Another Sleeping Child? The youngest-born?”

  “Apparently,” said Elynsynos, smiling. The sight of the massive maw wreathed in a grin, swordlike teeth glittering in the pale light, was both endearing and gruesome. “It would also appear that each of these sleeping children might become a tool of the F’dor, something to help bring about the end of the
world, to allow it to be consumed in one way or another.”

  “I had prayed that the ascension of the middle one, the Sleeping Child that took the Island, was the end of all that,” Rhapsody said. “We thought the F’dor that planned to summon—” her words choked off as a warning look came violently over the dragon’s enormous face. “We thought the F’dor Achmed had known of in the old world was dead. Its last remaining servant, one of the thousand eyes it had called the Shing, told us that before it dissipated. It said the F’dor was dead; man and demon spirit. And that meant what—what we feared it might do would never come to pass.”

  The massive serpent stretched, causing a hailstorm of lights to flicker off her millions of copper scales. “The demon he knew may well have been destroyed as you thought. That does not matter—any F’dor would know the secret of the Wyrm, would know how to summon it if it becomes powerful enough.”

  “And the other you spoke of, Elynsynos? Was that a different demon? Not the one Achmed knew of?”

  “I do not know. There may have been another that escaped when the star beneath the waves erupted. It is hard to say, Pretty. There are not many of them left over from the dawn of Time, but they come without warning, and hide within the host, biding their time, gaining strength as the host does. When they become powerful enough, they take on a another host with more potential, usually one that is younger than the body they currently reside in. A F’dor can only take possession of someone weaker than itself or similarly strong; it cannot subsume someone of greater power.”

  Rhapsody nodded. “Do you know who it is, Elynsynos?”

  “No, Pretty. It has changed hosts often over the years. I can sense it when it is near, but it has remained far away, probably knowing that. It could be anyone.

  “If there is but one thing you remember about what I have told you, let it be this: they are consummate liars, and that will work against you, as a Namer, since you are sworn to the truth. Their greatest power is in using their victim’s advantages against him; in our case, they were able to play upon the dragons’ naturally destructive nature and turn it from something benign into a weapon to achieve their own wanton ends. It will do the same to you, only what it will target will be your truthfulness. Beware, Pretty. They are like a guest in your lair that you cannot see has stolen from your hoard until it is too late.”

  “Llauron told me a prophecy Manwyn once related about an uninvited guest,” Rhapsody said. “Could that have been about the F’dor?”

  The air around the dragon hummed, signaling her intense interest. “I do not know this prophecy.”

  Rhapsody closed her eyes, trying to recall the night in the forest Llauron had related it to her. Achmed and Grunthor had been there as well. She rummaged in her pack and pulled out a small journal where she recorded some of the lore she had learned in this new world. “Here it is,” she said.

  Among the last to leave, among the first to come,

  Seeking a new host, uninvited, in a new place.

  The power gained being the first,

  Was lost in being the last.

  Hosts shall nurture it, unknowing,

  Like the guest wreathed in smiles

  While secretly poisoning the larder

  Jealously guarded of its own power

  Ne’er has, nor ever shall its host bear or sire children,

  Yet ever it seeks to procreate.

  Elynsynos sighed. “Manwyn always was the strange one,” she murmured. “I do not know why she does not just say what she means. Yes, Pretty, it sounds like the F’dor. There is a great deal of power and risk to a demon like that in undertaking to acquire progeny. Should it do so through the body of its human host it weakens itself, breaks its own life essence open and gives some of it up to the child. F’dor are far too greedy and power-hungry to give up any of their own power, which is why they have to resort to other means of procreation.”

  “Like creating the Rakshas?”

  “Yes, My Pretty Soul. In a way the F’dor is really no different than the ancient dragons where propagation outside their species in concerned. When we realized the mistake of refusing to take a form like the Creator’s we tried to rectify it. It is ironic, really; those few humans whose blood is mixed with that of dragons, rather than trying to become more human, generally seek to give up their humanity and attain dragon form, which is in a way tantamount to sacrificing their souls.

  “Since dragons could not interbreed with the races of the Three, they tried to carve a humanlike race out of what few fragments of Living Stone remained after the vault was made. Rare and beautiful creatures were the result. Those creatures were called Children of the Earth, and had a humanoid form, or at least as close to one as the dragons could fashion.

  “They were in some ways a brilliant creation, in other ways an abomination, but they were able to interbreed with the Three. Unlike the Rakshas, the Children of Earth had souls, because unlike the F’dor, the dragons were willing to commit some of their life essence to bring them into being. Their progeny, the Elder races they produced, are the Earthborn, those who seek to live within Her bosom, but whose souls touch the sky.”

  Rhapsody was writing furiously in her journal. “And what form do those races take?”

  “The offspring of the Children of Earth and the Seren were a race known as Gwadd, a small, slender people deeply tied to the Earth’s innate magic. A blending of earth and stars.”

  Rhapsody stopped writing and looked up sadly. “I remember the Gwadd from the old world,” she said wistfully.

  “They are my favorite of all dragon grandchildren,” Elynsynos said. “I am also particularly fond of the Nain. The Nain were the issue of the Children of Earth and the Mythlin.

  They are natural sculptors, miners, and molders of stone because from one parent they know the lore of the Earth, from the other the lore of the sea. To them it is as if granite is liquid, and yields willingly to their hand.”

  Rhapsody nodded and returned to making notes. “And the Kith? Did the race of air produce any Earthborn children?”

  “Yes,” Elynsynos said. “That pairing spawned a race known as Fir-bolga, literally, wind of the earth.”

  The Singer’s mouth dropped open. “Fir-bolga? Firbolg? The Bolg are descended of dragons?”

  “Well, in a way. They are more a sort of adopted grandchildren, since the Children of Earth were sculpted from Living Stone by dragons, not tied directly to their blood. The Kith were a harsh race, and so the Bolg are as well, but they love the earth genuinely, and I am very fond of them, despite their crude ways. Of all the Earthborn they have the most in common with their wyrm grandparents.”

  Rhapsody laughed. “I guess I really could be the soul of a dragon,” she said. “I’ve adopted a dozen Firbolg grandchildren myself.” Her face grew serious. “To that end, Elynsynos, I need to ask you something.”

  “What, Pretty?”

  “You don’t intend to punish the Bolg in any way for having the claw dagger in their possession, do you?”

  “Of course not. Just because I am a dragon does not mean I am totally wanton or specious in my revenge.” One enormous eye closed, and the dragon regarded her severely with the one that remained open. “Have you been reading that tripe, The Rampage of the Wyrm?”

  Rhapsody’s face grew red in the light of the ships’ wheel chandeliers. “Yes.”

  “It is nonsense. I should have eaten the scribe who penned it alive. When Merithyn died I thought about torching the continent, but surely you must be able to tell that I did not.”

  “Yes, I thought not.”

  “Believe me, if I were to rampage, the continent would be nothing but one very large, very black bed of coal, and it would be smoldering to this day.”

  Rhapsody shuddered. “I believe you. And I’m very glad to hear you don’t hold the Bolg responsible.” The faces of her friends and her grandchildren rose up in her mind. “And, as much as I would love to stay here forever with you, I really need to be returning to them.
”

  “You are going now?”

  Rhapsody sighed. “I should. I wish I could stay longer.”

  “Will you come back, Pretty?”

  “Yes, most definitely,” Rhapsody answered. Then she thought of Merithyn. “If I am alive, Elynsynos. The only thing that will keep me from visiting you is death.”

  The dragon began walking with Rhapsody back toward the tunnel. “You must not die, Pretty. If you do, my heart will break. I have lost my only love. I do not wish to lose my only friend.” She stopped before one of the ships’ figureheads, paint peeling and encrusted with salt. “This is from the prow of Merithyn’s ship.”

  Rhapsody looked at the wooden statue. It was of a golden-haired woman, naked from the waist up, arms outstretched, reaching out to nowhere. Her water-faded eyes were green as the sea.

  “She looks like you,” said Elynsynos.

  Rhapsody looked doubtfully at the figurehead’s ample bosom, then down at her own bustline. “Not even on the best day of my life, but thanks for the thought.”

  12

  The darkness in the underground series of tunnels was so complete that it was difficult to see the Grandmother as she led them even deeper into the earth. Occasionally Grunthor could make out a whisper of her robe or the crackle of the ground beneath her bare feet, but by and large her passage through the tunnel was silent and all but invisible in the dwindling light of their torch.

  The failing torchlight illuminated little of the tunnel walls, but what they could see caused Achmed and Grunthor to wish they were traveling more slowly with an opportunity to examine them. Unlike the newly hewn earthen walls of Grunthor’s burrowing passages, these corridors had been mined centuries before and bore the hallmarks of deliberate architectural planning, though very different from that of the Cymrians. They were smooth and even, carved with the vestiges of the ancient reliefs that had once adorned them, all marred with a heavy layer of dank soot and the smears of fire ash, the byproduct of forges where iron was smelted. However long it had been since they were despoiled, the odor still remained, now a permanent part of the stone passageways and the air they held within them.