After a few sea chanteys she stopped singing and let the music continue through the lute alone, a haunting melody that made him feel immensely sad. He felt on the verge of tears himself when a discordant note rang out, jarring him out of his reverie. Rhapsody blinked, then played the passage correctly, continuing on until the next wrong note. Then she stopped altogether.
Ashe sat up and looked across the room at her. She was asleep in the chair, her fingers still on the lute strings. He thought about carrying her to the bed, but the scene at the Tar’afel rose quickly up in his mind, and he discarded the thought immediately. Instead he got up and slid the lute out of her hands, setting it on the table, and then covered her with one of the blankets. She sighed in her sleep and turned over on her side in the chair.
Ashe looked at the black velvet ribbon. He longed to unbind her hair, but decided that would be intrusive as well. So he put another log on the fire, now burning quietly and steadily, then went back to the chair where Rhapsody slept. He stared down at her for a long while, enjoying the picture of her, asleep in the firelight. After almost an hour he felt exhaustion overtake him. He gave her a soft kiss on the head and slipped in between the covers of the bed, knowing it would not be long before she woke in the night, sobbing in her sleep.
When she did, he went to her in the dark and whispered words of comfort until she grew quiet again. The pounding storm had given way to a steady, insistent rain. Reluctantly he returned to bed and left her to her unsettling dreams.
15
The rain continued, unabated, for most of the following day. By the time it began to let up the sun had gone down again, leaving the darkness silent except for the dripping of water from the leaves onto the pool and hut. The relentlessness of the downpour had left Rhapsody strangely tired, so they stayed one more night in the hut to allow the ground the opportunity to dry out somewhat.
They had passed the day in pleasant enough conversation, mostly in regard to plants and trees, wars that Ashe had fought in, tales of the subdual of the Firbolg, and things he had heard from companions about training with Oelendra. A formidable warrior and a legendary hero, she had a reputation as a stern and humorless teacher, an occasionally brutal taskmaster, but was regarded as the best in sword instruction, he had said. He himself had not trained with her, had only met her once and they had not spoken.
Rhapsody was beginning to feel a creeping sadness that she could not fully place taking root in her soul. She felt it each time Ashe smiled at her, or passed in front of her, so she knew it had something to do with him, but why her heart tugged at her she did not know.
That she had grown somewhat fond of him was no secret, either to her, or, she assumed, to him; they were at a comfortable place. He reminded her a great deal of her brother Robin, the second oldest, of whom she had also been very fond but with whom she was not particularly close. She did not understand Robin, nor did she understand Ashe. Perhaps one day she would, but the comparison to Robin made the sadness deepen. She had run away from home just as they were finally getting to know one another, much the way she and Ashe were parting now. She never saw Robin again. She wondered if it would be that way with Ashe as well.
He had been kind to her, for the most part, and had done a great deal for her, extending himself more than any other had in this new land. Unfortunately, she knew there was something beneath the surface of his generosity, something calculating that pressed for personal information but refused to share any, that sought her trust but did not offer his own. He was using her in some way, she knew. She just hoped that it would not be fatal, or worse.
They stayed in the hut that night, waiting for the rain to clear and the night wind to dry the ground. He had insisted that she take the bed, and, upon finding resistance futile, she thanked him and slipped into it, tired suddenly from the lack of the exercise she was accustomed to and the prospect of what was to come.
Her dreams were haunted by images of demons and destruction, of a blind Seer with no irises in her eyes that reflected the image of her own face. She felt a chilling cold, a cold that reached down into her blood and drank it, like the root of a poisonous willow, stripping her of her heat and her music, leaving her without a voice with which to even cry out for help. She woke gasping in Ashe’s arms and clung to him, holding on as if he were the only person in the world who could hear her now that her music was gone.
He stretched out beside her on the bed, staying on top of the covers, and held her until she stopped trembling. It took more than an hour, but eventually she quieted and slept dreamlessly. When he was sure she was truly asleep he wistfully removed her arm from his waist; she had placed it there to avoid the wound, he knew. With great difficulty he stood up and looked down at her, curled around the hay pillow like a dragonling around its treasure; perhaps her visit to Elynsynos had left some residual effect. He stood over her a long while, at last returning to his chair, wondering if anything in his life had been as difficult as leaving her in that bed alone.
The passageway down which the Grandmother led them opened up into a vast vertically cylindrical cavern almost the size of Canrif City that stretched out of sight above and below them. Circular ledges ran around the interior perimeter of the cavern, forming stone rings the size of wide streets. The rings encircled the inside of the cavern at various heights above and below the ledge on which they stood, punctuated with hundreds of dark openings that appeared to be tunnels like the one they had come down. There was something about the cavern’s size and shape that vaguely reminded Achmed of the tunnels that sheathed the Root of Sagia that ran along the Axis Mundi, the centerline of the Earth. It reached up into the darkness, a mute memorial to the civilization that had once pulsed through its tunnels.
A crumbling stone bridge stretched out before them across the enormous open space of the cavern. In the center of the great cylindrical space stood a giant rock formation that resembled a pedestal; its flat surface was roughly the size of the Great Hall in Ylorc. The drop on either side of the bridge caused Grunthor to shudder involuntarily. From the depths of the colossal cave a dank wind rose, stale and heavy with the odor of wet earth and desolation.
The Grandmother said nothing, but stepped out onto the bridge and crossed, never looking down into the giant circular ravine that it spanned. The dead wind rippled her dark robe, causing it to snap ominously. The two Firbolg followed her across the ravine toward the great flat formation in the center of the vertical tunnel.
As they came closer to the central rock formation they could see something suspended above it from an immensely long strand of what appeared to be spider-silk, anchored to the ceiling above out of sight. The object at the thread’s terminus swung slowly back and forth across the rock plateau in a measured gait, like the slow rippling of lake tides or a sleeper’s heartbeat. It glinted in the dark.
Once they stepped onto the flat surface the wind from the belly of the cavern increased; the sound of it was as heavy as the dust that hung thickly on its currents. Involuntarily Achmed drew his veils about his face; there was something within the gusts and eddies of that lifeless wind that whispered of death. The Grandmother pointed to the floor on which they stood.
Carved into the canter of the stone floor was a circle of runes in the same language that formed the words over the arch of the Earth Child’s chamber. Within the circle was a large faded inlay, once beautifully rendered in exquisite detail, now stained with soot and marred by time. The symbols on the floor depicted the four winds, the hours of the day, and the seasons. Achmed closed his eyes, remembering his upbringing in a monastery in the foothills of the High Reaches of Serendair. Those symbols had been carved into the floor there as well.
He looked up to the long thread and its slowly moving weight and recognized the device as a pendulum clock; the swinging weight was silently marking the moments, the hours, the seasons of a long-dead realm, each pass of the pendulum counting another fragment of endlessly passing time. “This is where the Thrall ritual was taught
, where training took place, where dedications were consecrated,” the Grandmother said. The multiple voices had reduced to one, the thin hiss with which she had been addressing Achmed. Apparently she determined it was not necessary to impart the information to Grunthor. “In the old days, this was a place of much traffic, great noise and distraction, of myriad vibrations to sort through. It made for a good environment in which to teach the discerning of the right heartbeat, the exclusion of the world’s other sounds in the hunt for the F’dor.” Achmed nodded.
The Grandmother dark eyes ran over the giant Sergeant-Major. When she spoke again her voice was duotoned as it had been before. “Once these mountains housed our great cities, our council chambers. The tunnels were the veins of the Colony through which its lifeblood flowed. We were that lifeblood, the Zhereditck; the Brethren. This place was our Colony’s heart.”
“How did the fire start?” Achmed asked.
“There was no fire.”
The two Bolg stared at the Grandmother, then looked at each other. Grunthor’s vision had been frighteningly clear, and the hallmarks of smoke and soot lingered still, the odor of smelting fumes still hanging, rancid, in the air around them.
The Grandmother’s face remained unchanged, but her eyes glittered as if in amusement. “There was no fire,” she repeated, looking pointedly at Achmed. “You are Dhracian, but you are not Zhereditck, not Brethren. You were never part of a Colony.”
“No.” Bile rose in Achmed’s throat. The Past was entombed in his memory; he had no desire to exhume it. He steeled himself for more probing about his history, but the Grandmother merely nodded.
“None of the Brethren would have used fire, even in the smallest of ways. Fire is the element of our enemy. There was sufficient heat in the pools from the wellspring.” The spoken vibrations against their skin caused an image in the minds of the two men of sulfurous ponds and hot springs bubbling in muted hues of green and lavender, of pockets of steam rising from streams that ran off from the ground beneath the Loritorium on the other side of the wall of rock. It was the same source as the darklight, the underground glow that illuminated the cavernous passageways with an mute ambient radiance. It had been the same in the tunnel along the Root.
The Grandmother pointed to the ground. “Sit,” she said in her fricative, hissing tones. “I will relate the tale of the death of this place.” As the two men complied, she stared at Achmed, then looked off into the darkness again. “It is only right that you should hear it in its entirety, since in a way it is the tale of your own death as well.”
16
In the night, Oelendra woke from a dream of deep darkness. She stood as she had twenty years before with Llauron, the son of Anwyn, at the feet of her sister, Manwyn, the prophetess of the Future. She trembled in her bed as the words of the madwoman came back to her.
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 time. 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 bolted upright in her bed. The fur blankets were wet with sweat and tears; she was shaking violently. Slowly she crawled out of bed and made for the fire. It was dying quietly on the hearth, with but a few infinitesimal embers remaining, clinging to the gray ash. Oelendra blew on the embers; they gleamed red-orange for a moment, then settled back into the impotence of the overly weary. There is nothing left, they seemed to say. Admit it; there is a limit to even the most raging fires eventually. This is what it looks like. Oelendra did not need the reminder. She had seen the same thing each morning in the looking glass.
She had not had the dream in years, a decade even. Why now? The sword had returned; she had felt it when it came forth from the earth, only to feel its fire drift farther and farther away until it was gone. But now she could sense it once more, at sunset and with the rising sun; it was very near. Oelendra looked into the dark fireplace and sighed as the last spark burned out. She rested her head against the mantel and closed her eyes.
“I’d like to alter our route to Tyrian a bit.”
Ashe craned his neck forward hear her voice better. She was dressing in the small closet, her words muffled by the ever-present timpani of the rain water dropping from the forest leaves.
“Oh?”
The curtain pulled back, and Rhapsody came into the room, lacing her boot leggings. “I’d like to go by way of the Filidic settlement at Gwynwood. Since you trained at the Circle, I assume you can find it again—yes?”
The wind around them died down suddenly, leaving a pulsing silence. Ashe was silent for a moment as well. “I believe so,” he said finally. “My training was a very long time ago.”
Rhapsody blinked in surprise at what sounded like uncertainty in his voice. He had led her all the way from Canrif through Bethe Corbair, Yarim, and Canderre, into the northern part of the forest of Gwynwood itself to the lair of the dragon without a map or a misstep of any kind. He traveled the virgin woods and endless fields that reached to the horizon in all directions as if he were some vagabond lord and they were his own lands. It seemed strange that he was unsure of the way to enormous Filidic settlement at the foot of the Great White Tree, which in her estimation was somewhere nearby.
“Well, if you can’t find it, I’m sure I can,” she said, shifting her pack to the other shoulder. “I imagine if I were to concentrate I could hear the song of the Tree from here. In fact, I think we are very near the outer ring of huts now. Are we in Navarne now, or actually in Gwynwood?”
There was a long moment before he spoke. “Gwynwood.”
Rhapsody pulled the other bootlace taut. “I thought so. I believe I’ve been through this part of the forest with Gavin.”
“I can find the Circle,” Ashe said; there was a slightly terse tone to his voice. “Why do you want to go there?”
“I need to send a message back to Ylorc, to let them know my plans have changed. I can’t go off for several months of training and not at least let them know I’m safe and where I am. Llauron has messenger birds. He would send a missive to Achmed if I asked, I believe. But if this is a problem for you, I certainly understand. As I’ve already said, I don’t want to impose.”
Ashe shook his head. “I’ll take you to the Circle; I don’t wish to broach it, however. I will wait for you in the forest to the south while you send your message, and then escort you the rest of the way to Tyrian.”
Rhapsody smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m grateful.”
Ashe turned over in the chair and sighed. He stared at the tiny window for a moment, then closed his eyes.
“If you are, you can show it by letting me go back to sleep. It’s not dawn yet.”
The next morning the sun was back and the forest floor had dried sufficiently. They set out, closing the door on the little hut regretfully, and slipping in front of the waterfall once more.
They walked in near silence. Ashe’s hood was up again, and it seemed to swallow his thoughts as well as his countenance. Rhapsody’s own thoughts were roaming far and wide, scattering themselves before her like leaves in a high wind.
She closed her eyes and listened for the song of the Tree; she heard it almost immediately, deep and resonant, humming in the earth and the air around her. It was a slow song, full of dormant power, with much the same timbre as a yawn and stretch after a long sleep; a song of awakening.
A thrill shot through her, resonating in her skin. There was a sense of rebirth all around her, and she felt part of it, here in this place of spring. She was smiling for the joy of it when a thought occurred to her. She stopped and turned quickly to Ashe.
“You took your forester training here? From Gavin?”
“Yes.”
Rhapsody looked off through the trees to the south. “There’s a waymarker blazed in a small-leafed linden tree to the south of the Circle lands, about halfway to Tref-Y-Gartweg,” she said. “Do you think you can find it from that limited description?”
“Yes,” Ashe said again. She thought she heard a slight smile in his voice. Having seen his face, and found it to be pleasing, picturing him smiling was more pleasant than it had been before when it was left to the supposition of her imagination.
“Well, then, why don’t we plan to meet there tonight? It’s about three foot-trod leagues from here, so I should be able to make it if they don’t delay me.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“Only until tonight. If I don’t come, go on without me. I don’t want to be responsible for keeping you from your love one more moment than necessary. I’m sure there are foresters heading south to Tyrian into whose company Llauron can put me.”
Ashe shook his head. “Don’t do that,” he said; the warmth had left his voice. “The fewer people who know where you are going, the better, Rhapsody. I wouldn’t even share that information with Llauron if you don’t absolutely have to.”
Rhapsody sighed. “You know, you and Achmed have a lot more in common than I ever realized,” she said, pulling up her hood. “All right. I’ll be discreet. Goodbye, Ashe. If I don’t see you this evening, thank you again for your aid.”
“You’re welcome. I will walk you as far as the hostels before we part. And you will see me this evening.”
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