“Of course. I thought perhaps he might stay for a few days after you and the Bolg leave, get a good rest and have a chance to replenish his stock.”
“If he agrees, that’s fine; then I only need one more thing from you.”
Rhapsody moved deeper into the tent’s shade. “Yes?”
“When I have the Lightcatcher assembled, when I believe it is time to test it, or if I need your help determining what it does, will you come?”
Rhapsody inhaled deeply. “You do understand that I am uncomfortable with what you are doing? That I think you should have a greater hesitancy to make use of power you don’t fully understand?”
Achmed nodded shortly. “I do. And you do understand that I take nothing in life lightly; therefore, you should trust that I will never employ anything of this nature without absolutely needing to do so.”
“I do,” Rhapsody said quickly. She reached out and pulled the Bolg king into her arms and embraced him tightly. “And you understand that whenever you need me, I will come.” She kissed him on the cheek, hugging him more tightly. “Travel well, and put a little time aside to be happy, Achmed. I know that is something that won’t happen unless you specifically schedule it.”
Achmed chuckled and returned the embrace.
The noise from the townspeople of Yarim had grown into cacophony by the time the Bolg departed. Another division of Yarimese guards had to be activated to keep the corridor through the streets open; the Bolg rode out from under the tents, without looking back, leaving the lord and lady, the duke, and the giant Sergeant-Major behind.
Moments after the Bolg disappeared from view, a murmur ran through the crowd that was rapidly picked up by more and more voices, until the streets were full of chanting.
“Take down the tent!”
“Where is the water?”
“Show us Entudenin!”
“Water! Give us water!”
Ihrman Karsrick began to shake. He turned to the lord and lady in terror and fury.
“This is exactly what I feared,” he hissed. “They are going to tear us limb from limb.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ihrman,” Ashe said in annoyance. “Address them; tell them that we hope the water will return within a cycle of the moon, and that they must be patient.”
“I will not,” the duke retorted. “I am not certain that it swill, and I do not wish to be seen as an even greater fool than they already think me for bringing the Bolg to Yarim in the first place.”
“Life is an uncertain entity, Ihrman,” Rhapsody said. “They have lost nothing if the water does not return.”
“You are more than welcome to inform them of that, m’lady.”
Rhapsody sighed and turned to Ashe. “Perhaps I should.” Her husband considered a moment, then nodded. She squeezed his hand, then climbed to the highest place that remained in the stone wall surrounding the fountainbed, in front of the work tent.
Ashe leaned over to Karsrick as she reached the top and steadied herself.
“Watch this, and learn how it’s done by a master,” he said.
Rhapsody closed her eyes and began to chant softly, using her skills as a Namer, weaving the words of her song in and out of the tones she heard and felt around her in the marketplace. Over and over again, the volume increasing incrementally, she spoke the true name of silence, until the cacophony of the town square subsided.
She opened her eyes and regarded the townspeople with a direct, calm expression.
“Fellow Orlandans, people of Yarim, the Firbolg king and his craftsmen have finished their work here. They have ended the drilling to coincide with the lunar phases, because in its living time Entudenin’s cycle followed the moon as well. Whether the water returns to Entudenin, and to Yarim Paar, is in the hands of the All-God now. If it does, the drought will be averted, and life will most likely be easier, and more bountiful. If it does not, you will be no worse off than you were before the Bolg came. We must await the ruling of the Creator, and the Earth. Until then, we must be patient.”
The tone of her voice was melodic and clear, her face set in a straight, emotionless expression. Ashe smiled. She was using her Namer’s ability of True-Speaking to address the boisterous rabble, and it was working well; the crowd appeared bespelled, settling down into tranquillity, lulled by the music and the innate beauty of the fire that burned within her.
The musicality of Rhapsody’s voice changed; she was weaving a suggestion into her True-Speech.
“Return to your homes, or your labors. If the Fountain Rock awakens, you will not miss it. But your carts stand empty, your ovens cold, your houses unattended, while you wait here for something that may be a long time in coming.”
The crowd stood for another moment, absorbing the magic in her words, then quietly began to disperse.
Rhapsody climbed down from the tiny stone wall and took Grunthor’s arm.
“Return with us to the Judiciary,” she said fondly, smiling up at her friend. “The duke will make certain that the very best his kitchen has to offer will be prepared for your supper–and I do not mean any of the scullery workers.”
“Awwww.” The giant caught sight of the duke’s face out of the corner of his eye, and broke into a wide grin. “Why, that’d be lovely, Duchess. Maybe ‘e’ll even give me a lit’le tour o’ the place.”
At the front of the crowd, standing close to the rope corridor, a woman in the flowing, pale blue robes of a Shanouin priestess had been standing, watching every movement of the Bolg as they packed up their gear and made ready the wagons for leaving. While others around her had peeled off and joined in good-natured merrymaking, she had remained at the front of the line, struggling to see owing to her slight stature.
When the rysin-steel bit was brought forth and wrapped for its journey, she moved closer, forcing her way between two of the Yarimese guards for a better look. The guards, ordered by law to protect the Shanouin, glared at her but did not sweep her back into the crowd as they might have someone who was not a water priestess.
When the Bolg finally departed, she, along with most of the onlookers, followed them to the outskirts of the town, watching until they were out of sight. But when the other townspeople returned to the square to be addressed by the duke, she had continued on, to the rocky outer reaches of Yarim Paar, staring after the wagons and horses until they were swallowed by the distant horizon.
She reached into the folds of her robe, and pulled forth the cwellan disk; it caught the light of the sun overhead and flashed like a beacon.
She held it up to her bright, black eyes for a moment longer, then slipped it back into her slightly long robes.
Then she herself slipped back into the pleasant mayhem that was erupting as the town let go of its breath with the exit of the Bolg in the red streets of Yarim.
16
THE PALACE AT JIERNA TAL, SORBOLD
The evening lamps had been doused; the nightly cones of pungent incense and balms of sweet sandalwood were burning down to ash in their golden receptacles lining the hallways outside the cavernous bedchamber of the Dowager Empress as night crept in, silent, on a warm, moist breeze. The heavy silk damask curtains at the open window crackled slightly with its passing.
Within the opulent chamber Her Serenity, Leitha, Dowager Empress, daughter of Verlitz, the Fourth Emperor of the Dark Earth, was watching the night sky from the silken pillows of her mammoth bed as she was accustomed to do each evening. The full moon cast an illumination as bright as midday against a gray sky filled with visible clouds and scattered stars beyond the burning moonlight; it was a strange sight, magnificent in its clarity.
Outside the bedchamber, the palace servants moved quietly in the completion of their daily tasks: spiriting away the empress’s gowns for cleansing and pressing; discarding the still-fresh flowers in dozens of porcelain vases which would, in the morning, be graced with another crop of blooms; removing the trays containing the remains of the empress’s nightly bedtime repast — for a tiny, shrunken wo
man who weighed no more than a feather, the empress had an appetite that would shame a sailor or a gladiator — and sweeping the desert sand from the thick, densely woven carpets and tapestries that lined the high corridor walls. Several halls away, a string quartet played a sweet concerto, muted enough to spare the empress any disturbance while lulling her to sleep.
Despite the care the servants took in moving quietly, the empress could hear them. It was the curse of her dominion; the palace of Jierna Tal, with its high towers and thick ramparts, bulwarks and fortifications, had been so long under her rule, and the rule of generations of ancestors who handed the crown down to her, that it was part of her consciousness, just as everything that took place in the realm of Sorbold was. Indeed, she was even distantly aware of the changing of the watch, the entire column of soldiers whose sole duty was to guard her stronghold from the slightest disturbance. She sighed in annoyance and pulled the gleaming coverlet up around her wrinkled neck.
“Good evening, Your Serenity. I trust you are resting well.”
The voice, crisp and distinct, came from the darkness itself.
The empress sat up starkly, or tried to. Instead of her normal ease of movement, she found herself unable to do anything but straighten her back. Her arms lay, useless, at her sides, her hands, spotted and gnarled with age, motionless on the smooth edge of the thick coverlet. She opened her mouth to speak, but her jaw was clenched, rigid, unable to open.
At tiny glimmer of violet radiance caught her eye near the window, swallowed a moment later by the darkness.
In the shadows a figure of a man appeared, silhouetted against the bright light of the full moon. The empress could not distinguish his face at first; it was the same heavy-featured, bearded, swarthy face that most of her subjects possessed, but the eyes within it shone with an incandescence she had never seen before. Internally, she felt a tumbling rush of cold, though her body did not tremble or quake, but merely lay as still as death.
The figure approached her bedstead, pausing for a moment to examine the heavily carved mahogany bedposts, then came forward and sat down on the feather mattress beside her. His body made no impression in the plumped coverlet; it was as if he had no mass, no weight, at all.
The man leaned forward and gently tucked the coverlet around the empress, taking great care in folding the silken sheets under her motionless arms. Then he sat back and cocked his head to one side, observing her with interest, as though she were an objet d’art or an interesting exhibit in a menagerie. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft, and warm as the desert wind.
“In case you are interested, the bells you will hear shortly will be summoning the royal healers to the bedside of your useless son, the late Crown Prince.”
The eyes of the empress snapped open wide, the only movement still under her control.
The shadow man chuckled quietly.
“Yes, it’s true, your fair-haired, pasty-skinned boy is gone. But do not despair; you will be following him imminently into the Vault of the Underworld, so there will be no need to pretend to mourn him. I know you despise him every bit as much as the rest of the population of Sorbold does.”
The empress blinked rapidly, her breath shallow and rasping.
The figure moved, slightly, catching a ray of moonlight from the balcony window; backlit thus, the empress saw that he was filmy, the colors of his robe gleaming as the moonlight passed through them, through his skin, his hair, his face.
Now she recognized him.
Her heart pounded painfully, thudding loud in her chest and ears.
The filmy man noted her panic and genially patted her rigid hand.
“Calm yourself, Empress. This is to be a momentous experience for both of us. Your son — now, that was truly regrettable and unimpressive; I took his birthright from him, his scanty authority and lore, without a whisper of struggle; he was as disappointing in death as he was in life. But you, Leitha — if I may address you thus — you are a lioness, aren’t you? Your squamous claw here has held back Time itself, when death should have come for your decades ago. By sheer will you have clung to the throne of Sorbold, and life, in a magnificent show of spirit. I look forward to its testing!”
The tiny, shrunken body of the empress began trembling vigorously, but now it was more from fury than from fear. The man saw the change in her eyes, and smiled broadly.
“Much better! Gird your soul, Empress; I am come for it.”
The man relinquished the empress’s hand and rose from the bed. From his pocket he took forth a gleaming purple oval, the scale he had found so long ago in the wreckage of the Cymrian ship. It glowed in the light of the moon, the runes shining with a light of their own.
He stared down for a long moment at his prey, then seized the silk coverlet at the bottom of the bed, wrenching it off the Dowager Empress’s feet, clothed in white linen bedshoes. He took one of them in his hand, stripping off the slipper and cupping it as the empress shuddered.
“Ah, the heel that you kept on the neck of the populace all these years — strangely small for such a crushing force,” he mused, running his fingers gently over the thick yellow calluses, the ropy purple veins, the dry skin parched white with age. He held the scale up to the empress’s eyes, his own shining as brightly as the runes.
“This, Empress, is a New Beginning, the passing away of a dynasty before your eyes. The Divine Right of Kings your ancestor claimed three centuries ago passes now, like the light from a dying torch, to a new, stronger firebrand, one with sufficient fuel to blaze before the nations.”
The gleam in his eyes turned cruel.
With a savage twist he seized the empress’s heel and squeezed with a grip of iron.
The old woman screamed silently, her mouth unable to open, her throat to issue forth any sound, locked in an agonizing rictus.
The shimmering ripples of light cascading from the scale in his hand pulsed for an instant, then glowed more brightly.
From within the empress’s heel a thin wash of light emerged, diffuse as a dusty sunbeam. It hovered in the air, formless, for a moment, then arced with a sudden force into the scale.
The translucent man’s head arched back, his shoulders convulsed as well, as an expression of joy crept over his filmy features.
After a moment he righted himself again and looked back down at the quivering old woman. He released her foot; it fell to the bed with a graceless thump, the heel desiccated and hollow, powdery skin hanging loosely over a skeletal bone.
His eyes twinkled as he ran his fingers up the dowager’s leg, smirking as she groaned wordlessly. His hand came to rest on her knee, fingering the wrinkled skin which only a few hours before had been anointed with a balm of precious oils and ambergris.
“This knee, which never bent in supplication, even to the All-God — how much strength much reside there. Give it to me, for it is mine now.”
With a sickening pop, the kneecap crumbled beneath his hand, sending forth a burst of light, denser this time, flooding into the scale and the hand of the man who held it. His body rocked again as a jolt of power shot through him, making his muscles contract, his heart pound, as blood raced through him, leaving him flushed, tumescent, more solid than a moment before; it was a sensation of bliss so deep that he barely needed to witness the agony that racked the dowager to make his pleasure complete.
He closed his eyes, allowing his head to swim in the new sea of power that was engulfing him; it was a sensation almost painful in its sweetness. In distant thoughts he could hear his weaknesses, his lowborn failings, melting in the rushing sound of Divine Right as it entered him, filled him, made him whole.
He was jolted back to consciousness by sickening blow of a small, hard foot to his genitals.
The glory vanished, replaced instantly by a rush of cold that shocked him to the neck, nauseating him. His vision blurred for a moment; when it returned he looked down to see the wizened old crone glaring at him, the rigid muscles of her face struggling to contain the triumpha
nt smirk that shone clearly and without fetter in her eyes, fighting with the agony that gripped her, and emerging victorious.
A primal rage reared forth from the depth of him, to be suddenly quashed by a newer, higher-minded emotion, a sense of amused pity that tasted gloriously rich in the back of his mouth. Nobility, newly won. After his breath returned, the man smiled without more than a hint of a wince.
“Well struck, Your Serenity; I see I was correct when I predicted this would be a delightful struggle.”
He grasped the empress’s nightgown and jerked it up to her neck, laying her body bare. Without a hint of revulsion he fondled her sagging flesh, watching intently the look of horror and humiliation in her eyes, drinking it in, smiling broadly.
“These breasts never suckled, never gave life, nor joy, of any kind; there is no power to be harvested here, alas. You probably can’t feel much of this anyway, can you, Empress? You have been dead below the neck your entire life.”
Finally, when he was finished playing with her, his hand slid up her arm to her hand, the arthritic joints swollen and distended with age. He bent over her and raised the hand to his lips, brushing the palm with a kiss.
“This is the hand that has gripped the arm of the Sun Throne, has held the Scepter of the Sword in its grasp for far too long,” he intoned. “The Scales have weighed in my favor now, Serenity. Time to loose your grip.”
He turned her hand over and caressed the ring that adorned her middle finger, a large oval of shiny black hematite surrounded by a ring of blood-red-rubies from Sorbold’s eastern mountain mines, the Ring of State her father wore, and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him. Carefully he slid it over the distended knuckles and onto his own hand; he held it up to the light of the moon, causing the hematite to gleam brighter, the rubies to sparkle like dark fire.
He turned and held his hand up before her eyes, ignoring the blistering rage in them.
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