Requiem for the Sun

by Elizabeth Haydon

  Realization began to spread through the features of the councilors, leaving unpleasant expressions on the faces of the dukes of Roland.

  “Please tell me that you are referring to the Nain,” Martin Ivenstrand said.

  “I am referring to the Bolg, of course,” Rhapsody replied testily. “And I do not appreciate your tone or your implication. The Nain want as little contact with the Cymrian Alliance as is necessary to maintain good standing. The Bolg are full participants in its trade and support.” She turned to Ihrman Karsrick, whose face had gone an unhealthy shade of purple. “You seem suddenly unwell, Ihrman. I would think that this opportunity would bring you great joy and anticipation, not indigestion.” She glanced at the turkey leg again. “Though I am not surprised if you are suffering from that, too.”

  The Duke of Yarim coughed dryly. “Surely m’lady does not believe me so daft as to want to enter into dealings of some sort with the Bolg?”

  The expression on the Lady Cymrian’s face resolved into one of sharp observation.

  “Why ever not, Ihrman? There has been a trade agreement between Roland and Ylorc for four years now. You sell them salt, you buy their weapons, they are members of the Cymrian Alliance — why would you not seek their expertise in solving your greatest problem?”

  “Because I have no desire to be beholden to the Firbolg king, that’s why,” snapped Karsrick. “We share a common border. I do not wish to have him feel he can cross that border and take remuneration from Yarim at any time he wishes.”

  “I would never think that you would put yourself in such a position,” Rhapsody replied. “His doing so would not be tolerated. My suggestion is that you contract for the services of his artisans, just as you do with those of Roland, Sorbold, and even from as far away as Manosse. Do you have some objection to making use of the talents of Firbolg artisans?”

  “I do not wish to invite hordes of Bolg — artisans into Yarim, no, I don’t, m’lady,” Karsrick retorted. “The possible repercussions hold great horror for me.”

  “Surely that is not an unreasonable stance,” interjected Tristan Steward. “King Achmed does not look happily on Orlandan workers coming into his realm. The handful of them that have been invited to work on the rebuilding of Canrif have been subjected to unbelievably intense scrutiny, and even then only one or two have been hired. Why should we issue invitations to his people when he has not been particularly welcoming to ours?”

  “Perhaps the reason for King Achmed’s lack of hospitality may be that the last time your people came into his lands they were carrying torches and clubs, Tristan,” Ashe commented. He had been sitting back in his chair, hands folded in front of his chin, watching Rhapsody press her argument. “It will take some time for the Bolg to get over the annual Spring Cleaning ritual that was practiced, at their grievous expense, for so many centuries.”

  “If I recall, you took part in one of those raids yourself when you were a young man training with the army, Gwydion,” said Tristan Steward darkly. “We rode in the same regiment.”

  “Regardless, you are missing the point,” Rhapsody said. “The Bolg may be able to help restore water to Yarim, sparing it from the drought that now threatens your people. If there is any possible chance that they can, do you not have an obligation to seek their assistance?”

  “Do I not have an obligation to the safety of those people as well, m’lady?” asked Karsrick, a note of desperation in his voice.

  “Yes, you do,” Rhapsody replied, “and so do I. Therefore, I offer to take full responsibility for the comportment of whatever Bolg craftsmen, miners, or artisans come to Yarim to examine Entudenin, and for whatever work they do. I am well aware that this is, at least historically, a holy relic, and that you are greatly concerned with preserving it.”

  “Yes.”

  “So again, let it be on my head. I will take full blame for anything that should occur in this undertaking.”

  The Duke of Yarim threw his hands up mutely, then sat back in his chair with a dull thud. The other members of the council looked at each other in bewilderment. Finally Karsrick sighed in resignation.

  “Very well, m’lady.”

  Rhapsody smiled brightly as she rose from the table. “Good! Thank you. We will meet King Achmed and his contingent four weeks hence in Yarim Paar at the foot of Entudenin.” She looked around at the blank faces staring back at her. “Well, good councilors, if you do not have anything else pressing that needs to be attended to this evening, I think I shall commandeer my husband and leave you all to get some rest.”

  Ashe was on his feet in an instant. “Yes, indeed, thank you for your patience. I shall see to it that you are all able to sleep in late tomorrow; we will not be convening until the day after. At least. Good night, Gwydion.” He pushed the chair back under the table, bowed to his councilors, and his namesake hastily accompanied Rhapsody out of the library. On the way across the room he leaned down to her ear and spoke softly.

  “Well, darling, welcome home. It’s good to see that causing strife among the members of the council is still a family trait.”

  As they passed the large open hearth the flames of the fire roared in greeting, then settled into a quiet burn again. Rhapsody stopped and looked quickly over her shoulder.

  She stared into the fireshadows dancing on the colorful threads of the intricately woven carpet, then looked up to the balcony doors on the other side of the library, where raindrops dashed intermittently against the glass.

  “Did — did someone just come into the room?” she asked Ashe softly.

  The Lord Cymrian stopped beside her. His dragonesque eyes narrowed slightly as he concentrated, reaching out with his dragon sense to the corners of the vast library. His awareness expanded between two beats of his heart. Every fiber of carpet, every candleflame, each page in each book, the breath of each member of the council, each drop of rain outside the keep was suddenly known to him in detail.

  He detected nothing different. But now his blood ran colder.

  “No,” he said finally. “Did you feel something disturbing?”

  Rhapsody exhaled, then shook her head. “Nothing tangible.” She slipped her hand into her husband’s palm. “Perhaps I am just eager to quit this place and be alone with you.”

  Ashe smiled and kissed her hand.

  “As always, m’lady, I defer to your wisdom.”

  In a remarkable show of restraint, he waited until the doors of the library had closed securely behind them before sweeping Rhapsody off her feet and carrying her, in a few bounding steps, to their tower chambers.

  Inside the library, the damask curtains that lined the glass door to the balcony overlooking the Cymrian museum in the courtyard below fluttered gently, unnoticed by the councilors, who had immediately returned to their arguments, oblivious of the howling storm outside the library windows.

  A heartbeat later, they hung motionless, still as death, once more.

  Orange

  Fire Starter, Fire Quencher

  Frith-re

  2

  ARGAUT, NORTHLAND

  The night rain fell in black sheets, twisting into showers of dark needles on the wind before it spattered the muddy cobblestones of the streets leading to the Hall of Virtue, the towering stone edifice that housed the Judiciary of Argaut.

  The seneschal paused for a moment at the top of the marble steps of the hall, listening as if to distant voices in the turbulent wind.

  The streets of the city were silent, muted no doubt by the frigid wind and insistent rain. Even the wharfside taverns and brothels had doused their lamps, closing their shutters tight against the gale that blew in off the waterfront.

  The seneschal stared out over the harbor, to the far end of the cove where the lighttowers burned, even in the downpour, serving as guide to the ships at sea, their hulls battered by the pounding storm. We well may lose one tonight, the seneschal thought, pondering the signals from the tower; the light was flashing in broken beams, gleaming with increasing
brightness as more oil was added to the flame. He inhaled deeply. When death hovered in the sea winds, it was invigorating to the lungs.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and turned his face up to the black sky above him, letting the icy wind buffet his eyelids, allowing the rain to sting his skin. Then he opened his eyes once more, shook the water from his face and cloak, and climbed the last few steps into the Hall of Virtue.

  The great iron doors of the hall had been bolted against the night and the storm. The seneschal shifted the small burlap sack he carried to his lesser hand, grasped the knocker, and pounded; the sound thudded like a bell tolling a death knell, echoing for a moment, then was swallowed by the howl of the wind.

  With a metallic scream the enormous door was pulled open, flooding the opening with dim light. The guard stepped quickly aside; the seneschal patted the man’s shoulder as he passed from the fury of the storm to the warmth of the echoing quiet in the palace’s vast foyer.

  “Good evening, Your Honor,” the guard said as he closed the heavy iron door behind the seneschal.

  “Has my lord sent for me?”

  “No, sir. All is quiet.”

  The exchange was the same as it was each night, the soldier thought as the seneschal handed him his dripping cloak and tricornered judge’s hat. The lord never sent for the seneschal; he never sent for anyone, in fact. The Baron of Argaut was a hermit, living in an isolated tower, and tended to in gravest secret by only a trusted handful of advisors, chief among them the seneschal. The soldier had been standing guard duty in the Hall of Virtue for more than four years, and had never seen the baron even once.

  “Good. A pleasant evening to you, then,” said the seneschal. The guard nodded, and returned to his post by the door. He listened to the fading click of the seneschal’s boots as he crossed the polished marble foyer and made his way down the long hallway into the judiciary chambers. When the last echo had died away, the soldier allowed himself the luxury of breathing once more.

  The candleflames in the wall sconces that lined the long hallway to the Chamber of Justice flickered as the seneschal walked past, causing the light that pooled intermittently on the dusky slate floor to dance frenetically, then settle back into a gently pulsing glow again.

  At the end of the long central corridor he opened the door to the dark courtroom and stepped inside, his eyes adjusting quickly in the absence of light, then quietly closed the door behind him.

  The seneschal’s eyes burned at the edges as he gazed lovingly about the place where so many judgments were handed down, where so many men and women stood accused, then condemned. The prisoner’s docket, the barrister’s podium, stood silent now in the dark, the echoes of the wailing that had occurred here today, and every day before today, vibrating invisibly in the air, leaving behind a delicious hum of agony.

  The seneschal strode quickly across the floor of the shadowy chamber, past the empty witness gallery, pausing for a moment at the clerk’s desk, a two-compartmented, cagelike table with wooden slats above it. Draped over the slats was a long piece of parchment curled at the ends, stretched out to allow the ink to dry. Many names were neatly inscribed on the document, tomorrow’s court agenda, a list of condemned souls who did not know that their fate had been decided long before they had even been accused. The seneschal fingered the parchment with an air of bemused melancholy. No time for this. Ah, well.

  His mind wandered to the street wench he had killed earlier this night beneath the pier, her body doubtless being battered now against the pylons by the raging surf of the storm. His thoughts then shifted to the sailor who would burn for the crime tomorrow, at this moment sleeping off his evening’s rum, oblivious in his drunkenness, the blood of a woman he had never seen drenching his clothes, clotting in dark, sticky pools. It was bound to be an exciting trial, and an even more exciting bonfire, especially if the rum vapors were still fresh on the bewildered man’s breath.

  Such a shame that he would not be here to appreciate it.

  The seneschal exhaled sharply, refocusing, silencing the building din of dark voices calling in the depth of his ears.

  A slight movement in the burlap sack he carried brought him back to the task at hand.

  Framing the bench where he sat daily in judgment was a red curtain, heavy damask that smelled of mildew and earth hanging behind his chair. The seneschal climbed the steps to the bench, then drew the curtain aside, revealing the stone wall behind it. He ran a finger over an all-but-unseen crack, felt for the handhold, then turned the doorway aside and stepped into the darkness of the tunnel behind the wall, closing it carefully behind him.

  Down the familiar passageway he descended, his feet finding their way automatically in the blackness. A left turn, then three more to the right; his eyes closed to slits.

  His body flooded with warmth when the greenish glow in the distance became visible. His steps quickened as he called into the darkness.

  “Faron?”

  From the floor of the catacomb steam began to rise, thin tendrils of twisting vapor hovering over the glowing pool.

  The seneschal smiled, feeling the heat rise inside his own body.

  “Come forth, my child,” he whispered.

  The gleaming mist thickened, writhing in waves that reached outward, above, into the blackness that surrounded it.

  The seneschal peered into the vapor.

  Finally, from within the glowing pool bubbles of air crested the surface of the incandescent water. The meniscus roiled, then broke open, causing the ghostly mist to swirl and vanish.

  From the center of the pool a head emerged, human in shape though not appearance. Wide, fishlike eyes occluded with milky cataracts blinked as they came into sight from below the surface, followed by a flat, bridgeless nose; then the creature’s mouth, or near lack thereof, appeared, lips fused in the front, open over the molars, black horizontal slits through which small streams of water gushed. Its skin, golden, sallow, appeared almost a part of the pool from which it had been summoned.

  The gleaming water surged as the creature, with great effort, pulled itself up on forearms that curled and bent under the weight of its torso, its limbs misshapen and mutable, as though they were formed not of bone but only of cartilage. The silky garment that draped its body bulged slightly in spots to cover both nascent male and female bodily traits, set in a slight, buckling skeletal frame, grotesquely twisted and soft.

  A fond look came into the eyes of the seneschal, eyes that burned red at the edges in excitement. The demon spirit that clung to his physical form, recognizing the presence of its own, crowed in excitement, scratching at his ribs.

  “Good evening, little one,” he said softly. “I’ve brought your supper.”

  The creature’s cloudy eyes burned red at the edges in response. With a forward movement of its twisted arms it drew nearer, its lower body hovering in the shining green water of the pool.

  The seneschal drew forth the blade he wore at his side and opened the cloth sack. Reaching inside, he pulled out two marinus eels, blind, oily creatures, black of flesh and thick of heft, that bit wildly at his forearm, lashing about as they dangled over the pool. He tore the heads off and tossed them into the darkness, chuckling as the creature’s eyes widened hungrily.

  Then, with exquisite care, he sliced the still-twitching bodies into thin slivers and tenderly fed them to the creature through the side openings in its mouth, eliciting grisly popping and slurping sounds as the soft teeth ground the flesh to bits.

  When the creature had consumed the eels it backed away from the pool’s edge and began to sink slowly into the green water again.

  The seneschal’s hand shot out and caught its head gently under the chin; the layers of loose, wrinkled skin reverberated, sending ripples through the glowing pool.

  “No, Faron, tarry.”

  He stared down at this child of his creation, the end result of one of his favorite and most brutal conquests, an Ancient Seren woman who fell quite literally into his hands a tho
usand years before. The atrocities he had committed upon her still made his blood burn hot with pleasure; impregnating her had been well worth the diminution of power that he had suffered as a result. The innate magic she and all those of her race possessed — the element of ether left over from Creation when the Earth had been nothing more than a flaming piece of a star streaking across the void of the universe — burned in Faron’s blood, just as the fire from which his own demonic side had come did. There was a perverse beauty in their misshapen offspring, this denatured entity, its features at the same time old and young, all but boneless in its deformity, yet still his child, and his alone.

  The creature’s enormous eyes fixed on his face unblinkingly.

  “I have need of your gift,” the seneschal said.

  Faron stared at him a moment longer, then nodded.

  The seneschal released the mute creature’s face, caressing it gently as he did. Then from an inner pocket of his robe he brought forth a square of folded velvet and opened it carefully, almost reverently.

  Beneath the folds of cloth lay a lock of hair, brittle and dry like straw, hair that once was golden as wheat in a summer field, now yellow-white with years, tied with a black velvet ribbon that had decayed almost into threads of dust. He offered it to the creature floating in the pool of soft green light and watery mist.

  “Can you see her?” he whispered.

  The creature stared at him a moment longer, as if gauging his weakness; the seneschal could feel it searching his face, wondering what had come over him. He contemplated the same thing himself; his hands were shaking with anticipation, his voice carried a husky note of excited dread that he could not remember it having before.

  Probably because he had not considered the possibility in more than half again a thousand years that she might still be alive.

  Until this night.

  The creature apparently found whatever it was looking for in his face; it took the lock of ancient hair, then nodded again and slipped beneath the surface of the pool, reappearing a moment later.