Prophecy

by Elizabeth Haydon

  She thought back to the Island for the first time in a long while, her memories no longer as painful as the reality of the Present. Harvest had been a season of great excitement, the air alive with promise and threat; it was a heady, romantic time, far more than summer, a time when every small thing had seemed of vast importance and the blood ran close to the surface all the time. Whatever your hopes are, catch them now, the Earth seemed to say as it dressed in its glorious funereal finery; time grows short. Winter is coming.

  “Ready, darlin’?” Grunthor’s booming voice broke the stillness and her reverie.

  Rhapsody glanced around at the fields, coming to light in the gray foredawn. Frost had come in the night, and the ground glittered in the light of Daystar Clarion. She sheathed the sword and patted her dragonscale armor.

  “Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  The sun was just cresting the top of the tallest crag when the Three reached the summit. They had scaled the Teeth with ease and in silence, their shadows blending in with the ones cast by the peaks themselves, long and fanglike, in the growing light of the valley below.

  From high above, the mighty canyon looked like a thin curved rope lying along the base of the mountains. Achmed stood among the racing clouds and cast his gaze over the range, staring out across the steppes and to the fields of Bethe Corbair beyond, unshaken in the howling wind. He turned in a slow circle, the world at his feet, as his eyes scanned the horizon. Then he sat at the highest point possible and cleared his mind.

  Rhapsody had been instructed to remain silent and as still as possible. Except for Grunthor, she was the only person ever allowed to observe Achmed obtain a trail, and the significance of the trust implicit in this was not lost on her. She held her breath, watching him close his eyes and open his mouth slightly, breathing in the thin air and the moisture of the clouds. In one hand he held her shirt, encrusted with the blood of the Rakshas. The other he held open and aloft, as if testing the direction of the wind.

  Achmed’s breathing became measured and deep, each intake of breath becoming slower and more expansive. When he had attained the right pattern, his attention shifted to his heart. He concentrated on its rhythm, on the pressure it exerted on the vessels and pathways through which his blood flowed, and willed it to slow, lowering his pulse to a level barely able to sustain his life. He drove all stray thoughts from his mind, leaving it blank except for the color red. Everything else faded, leaving nothing but the vision of blood before his mind’s eye.

  There had been a time when he would have been all but deafened by the sound and feel of millions of hearts beating. Now there were but a few thousand in the world he could still hear. Those of Rhapsody and Grunthor he knew at once, but the others were far away, flickering in the distance of his bloodsense.

  And then he heard it. Beating in the middle distance, not too far off. He could hear the pounding of the Rakshas’s heart, feel the pulsing of its blood through the fingertips of his upheld hand. Demon’s blood, blended with the blood of an animal. The blood on the shirt, the blood in those veins: they matched.

  Achmed held absolutely still, remained utterly silent. He loosed the pulse of his own heart in rhythm to that of the demon’s creation. Like trying to catch a flywheel in motion, he could only synchronize with one beat in every five, then every two, until each beat matched perfectly. Their hearts locked, and Achmed smiled.

  Slowly he opened his eyes.

  Rhapsody had been watching patiently, aware that it could be hours or days before he found the right heartbeat, if he even could. As a result, she was surprised when Grunthor suddenly seized his poleax and leapt to his feet. She could see no difference in Achmed, but the Sergeant obviously had. She had just enough time to stand when Achmed was off.

  He moved like a hunting dog on the scent, racing down the mountainside. In order to avoid losing his companions he stayed in the light and crossed the paths of the wind, instead of using those things to hide as his instinct dictated. He followed the beating of his heart, heading unerringly toward the Rakshas. Grunthor had followed him on the hunt like this once or twice before, so leading the others without losing the trail was not as great an effort as it had once been. He no longer needed to work alone.

  Rhapsody and Grunthor set a matched jog to follow behind him. Rhapsody was amazed at the speed at which Achmed moved, especially since he was not running. He sped down the broken path, to the steepest part of the slope, and began to descend the face of the hill like a spider. He slowed his descent when the others reached the slope so that they might keep up without falling, but once he was on the heath he traveled like the wind.

  Jo waited at the bottom of an adjoining ridge. Despite the care the others had taken to slip away without her knowledge, she had wakened in the night and pursued them silently. She did not follow them to the top of the crag; to do so certainly would have revealed her presence, and they would have to come down eventually, anyway. Instead she had crossed the ridge farther down at the first slope and watched the Three as they ascended the summit, tiny black figures lost in the glare of the sun.

  What are they doing? she wondered. What am I doing? Her actions no longer seemed to be her own; she was governed by an odd, purposeful feeling that twisted her stomach and made her light-headed and woozy when it came, making her move as if in a dream. It reminded her of the time when Cutter, one of her mentors on the street, had given her the bad toadstools, promising her happy visions and a hyperawareness of colors. Instead it had caused a nightmarish trance and paranoia that haunted her for hours. But this was much worse; the mushrooms had eventually worn off. This had not ended. She feared it never would.

  Strange thoughts plagued her waking moments, thoughts of murder and violence that tormented and fascinated her at the same time. A few days before she was delighted when two Bolg children had begun to fight, and was excited by the sight of their blood. When one of the combatants screamed in pain, his arm suddenly hanging at an odd angle, instead of feeling horrified, as she had when Vling was injured, she felt aroused. What is happening to me? she wondered, but once again she felt the twisting in her stomach and the question was pulled from her mind. When the Three descended the slope and began to cross the steppes, she followed them.

  Like a sleepwalker.

  For a week the Three followed the course that curved only as the Rakshas moved. They slept without a fire at night, and ran most of the day, stopping only when its trail remained motionless for long periods of time, and only then to take a moment’s rest. They hunted their prey relentlessly, across the foothills of the Teeth, over the grassy steppes and the wide plain of Bethe Corbair, onto the chalk hills of the Orlandan plateau, until Achmed stopped abruptly.

  He raised his hand to the wind for a moment, then slowly closed it. He nodded to the other two, then disappeared into the high fields just behind the crest of a hill. Grunthor and Rhapsody followed him, crawling on the ground until they reached the place where Achmed lay. He pointed down into the shallow valley before them, but need not have. The sight below was clear: a cluster of nine men, three with horses, being given orders by a mounted man in gray, a man with copper-colored hair.

  Rhapsody’s heart skipped a beat when she saw him; it was Ashe, or at least, at this distance, it was identical to Ashe. His hair did not have the same luster, and he was clearly visible, where Ashe would not be, but otherwise this was Ashe. He gestured to the men, who rode off quickly west, then turned to the northeast and set his horse to a slow walk.

  Achmed smiled as Grunthor backed away, still on his belly, and disappeared. What a clean cwellan shot this would make, he thought. Oh well. He turned to Rhapsody, and she returned his smile. Grunthor would be back with the horses of the men in a moment, and once the animals were secured and hidden they would be off again.

  They followed the Rakshas for a few hours, resting from the day’s run. He, and they, climbed a small hill and entered a wide wheatfield, laid low already from the harvest, the few sheaves that rema
ined standing frozen in the remnants of the morning’s frost. As he approached a small stream at the bottom of a dell, Grunthor tapped Achmed’s shoulder and nodded. Achmed held up his hand and closed it into a tight fist. At once Grunthor and Rhapsody began to circle to their positions. Achmed waited until they were in place, and then disappeared into the highgrass.

  The Rakshas rode slowly across the field. His eyes were set on the horizon before him, his mind wandering along the mechanical paths of torture and death that substituted for a living man’s daydreams.

  Dusk would come soon. He would consume this horse and use its blood to move, like a flame of night, closer to the mountain. As is the wont of those who dream vivid dreams before they are fully awake, the limited mind of the Rakshas was inventing delicious ways to see the king of the Bolg die.

  He had captured a soldier in the Bolg army, and had listened with amusement to the man’s horror tales of the Eye, Claw, Heel, and Stomach of the Mountain. Fool, he had mused while slashing the Bolg’s throat, leaning closer to drink deeply from his gushing arteries. I am the Eye, Ear, and Hand of one who has leveled mountains.

  The sun was high, and he kept his attention on the horse’s footsteps in case it stumbled on one of the slick patches of frost. He was therefore somewhat surprised when the animal suddenly crumbled beneath him.

  With the speed of the wolf in his blood he pitched himself from the saddle to avoid being trapped beneath his mount and rolled rapidly to his feet, sword in hand. His horse had been hit, killed with a single shot. He glanced around quickly to target the source of the missile, but instead his eyes beheld the mammoth figure with the immense poleax bearing down on him with a deadly speed. Adrenaline coursed through his artificial veins as he recognized the description the girl had given of Grunthor, and he knew instantly that it was a trap. He raised his hand in the direction of the giant, causing a wall of black fire to rise. The flames vanished instantly, quenched against his will. The shock of the fire’s disappearance was excruciating. He turned to run.

  “Hello, dear. It’s been a long time; I’ve missed you.”

  Rhapsody was no more than five feet away from him, the burning blade of Daystar Clarion in her grip. The Rakshas raised his arm to parry the killing blow he knew she would aim at his heart and was caught completely off guard when she slashed him across the knees instead. He could hear the pounding steps of Grunthor behind him and tried to bolt to the side, but his escape was thwarted by another slash of the firestar sword.

  “Going somewhere? I told you that you wouldn’t get by me.”

  She stood in his way, and engaging her in combat would leave him vulnerable to the charging giant. The Rakshas tried to maneuver into a better position, but like a falcon clawing at his face, the small woman sidestepped his blows and drove him back repeatedly. His eyes widened as his back, then his chest, erupted as Grunthor impaled him on the spearlike tip of his poleax.

  “Rhapsody!” he screamed as his flesh burst open, followed rapidly by the bloody point of Grunthor’s spear. “Gods, no! It’s me, Ashe! I’m not the one you seek! Help me, please!”

  As Rhapsody moved into closer position, he let out a moan of agony and reached out for her, driving the spike even farther through his chest. His eyes, brilliant and blue as the pinnacle of the sky, met hers, pleading for mercy. When none was forthcoming, the look in them hardened as unquenchable pain washed over his face. He took several shallow breaths, shuddering on the end of the pike.

  “Gods,” he whispered. “How can you be so stupid? It’s me, Rhapsody, your own lover!” Grunthor gave the poleax a savage twist, and he gasped aloud again.

  Despite everything she knew about this evil creature, Rhapsody felt her heart sink as she watched the Rakshas’s features, so much like those of Ashe, contort in pain as his limbs flailed wildly on the skewer of Grunthor’s pike. She could hear the hiss of acid as the blood hit the frozen ground, and the overwhelming stench she had encountered before billowed over the field, nauseating her. She looked up at Grunthor.

  “Are you ready?” she asked the man who had been her first sword instructor.

  Grunthor nodded. “Ready, Yer Ladyship. Make it a good clean blow, now.”

  She steeled herself and lunged, driving Daystar Clarion into the Rakshas’s heart, splitting it down the middle. He let loose a wild, keening wail, painful to hear, and writhed on the end of the poleax. Rhapsody wiped her blade on the ground, melting a patch of frost and leaving a deep burn in the frozen grass.

  “What an unholy mess,” she said.

  She torched the body with the flame from the sword, watching it go limp, then begin to melt as the ice and earth from which it was built came in contact with the purging flame of elemental power born of fire and starlight. The flame was golden and bright, Rhapsody’s own fire, not the black fire of the demon, and she could feel it burning away the evil as it consumed the Rakshas’s body. Great muddy rivers ran down the flaming form as it melted.

  Achmed was in position, waiting for the moment of death. Grunthor swung the flaming poleax over toward him and held the enormous pike steady.

  “Marshmallow, sir?” the Sergeant asked solemnly, jiggling the immense skewer slightly.

  Achmed choked back a laugh and cleared his mind, breathing deeply as he began the Thrall ritual. His instinct took over immediately, and the movements came as if of their own volition. Achmed closed his eyes.

  His mouth opened slightly. From deep within his throats came four separate notes, held in a monotone; a fifth was channeled through his sinuses and nose. It sounded as if five different singers had simultaneously begun a chant. Then his tongue began to click rhythmically, and the body of the Rakshas stiffened as if called.

  He raised his right hand, palm open and rigid, out in front of the Rakshas’s burning body, a signal of halting. His left hand moved slowly out to his side and up, his fingers pulsing gently, seeking the strands of the vibrations that he knew to be from the blood of the F’dor. Like spiderwebs floating on the wind he could feel them, strings of a nature born at the beginning of Time, fingerprints of an ancient evil that should have died with the Island, held in check by his right hand and his Dhracian blood. He could also feel the presence of another primordial spirit, one very different from the tainted nature of the demon. He slid his fingers into the metaphysical strands and drew them to his palm, then twisted his hand to wrap the strands around it. He could see the body jerk when he did, and he gave another firm pull on the invisible tether.

  His eyes narrowed as the Rakshas’s movements suddenly ceased. A glowing light emerged from the now-rigid body, rising from the golden flames, and Rhapsody gasped. It was the piece of Ashe’s soul, drawn by death out of the melting form and preparing to dissipate into the ether. Achmed held the demon’s blood in thrall, but the soul belonged to Gwydion, and, freed from its prison, it hovered for a moment, waiting for a warm wind to carry it to the light.

  Rhapsody pointed Daystar Clarion at the pulsating essence and sang Ashe’s name. The glowing piece of soul stopped moving. She ran to the flaming body and reached, unharmed, into the fire and grabbed the soul fragment, wresting it free from the grasp of death and clutching it to her heart.

  Grunthor watched in amazement as the light dissolved into her, illuminating her upper body and making it in that instant translucent, then subsiding to a faint glow before dissipating. Rhapsody’s hair gleamed red-gold for a moment, as though touched by a shaft of light from the setting sun, and then returned to its normal hue. The sergeant’s eyes went from Achmed, still intensely concentrating on the strange Dhracian death dance as the ice form melted red into the earth, back to Rhapsody, whose expression had gone from a look of ecstasy when the soul entered her body to a look of horror. She was staring behind Achmed.

  Grunthor’s eyes caught the movement, saw the figure lunge, but he was too far away to intervene.

  Rhapsody had recognized Jo immediately despite the inhuman expression locked on her sunken face, contorting it into some
thing demonic. She knew instantly Jo’s intention; the girl brandished the bronze-backed dirk that Grunthor had given her in the House of Remembrance. She was about to plunge it into the back of the Firbolg king, still in the midst of the Thrall ritual. There was no time to stop her, and Rhapsody’s heart froze as she realized what she had to do.

  She shouldered Achmed to the frozen ground, shattering the Thrall ritual and interposing herself between Jo and the Dhracian. Jo’s course turned, following the angle of Achmed’s fall; she was fast, faster than Rhapsody had imagined. The long dirk slashed through the air and drove toward Achmed’s heart. With her only chance to save him Rhapsody parried with the sword, swinging the fiery blade over her head and slicing through Jo’s abdomen with a sickening ease. Even before she could stand, she could see the wound was fatal.

  Jo dropped her dirk. Her mouth opened and she stood up, staring down at the chasm that had opened in her abdomen. It first appeared as just a rip in her shirt, then it turned black, then dark red, then it sprawled open, her vital organs beginning to bulge out. She looked at Rhapsody and fear took hold on her face, a face now recognizable and without the demonic mask. Rhapsody’s own face was whiter than death. She dropped the sword and reached out her hands to her sister.

  Blood pulsed from the mortal gash, and Jo’s intestines writhed, partially outside her abdomen, as her knees buckled under her. And something else; tucked among the coiled viscera Rhapsody could see a tiny green-black tendril like might be on a grape vine or a climbing bean, with what looked to be a thorn growing from it.

  Suddenly all the sound around her was swallowed up in a moment of absolute focus, and in the utter silence she remembered Ashe’s words: It was like a vine growing up my spine, wrapping itself around my essence, becoming part of me as gently as a breeze, spreading without hesitation until it reached through my entire chest cavity. The agony she was beginning to absorb—that she had surely killed Jo—gave way to an even greater horror.