“I am well aware. Thank you, Dranth. Did you perform the tests on it that I asked of you?”
“Yes. Glass, being a liquid, holds it in a liquid state, if it is applied after the annealing. Until it is dried by intense heat again. The remaining acid is housed in green barrels and will be delivered by the caravan at sunrise.”
“Very good.” Esten set the chest down, then reached into the folds of her garments.
“In exchange, here are the maps I’ve drawn, the stockpiles I’ve noted, and my analysis of the Bolglands’ infrastructure, as well as their obvious treasury, manpower, armed capabilities, and the like,” she said, handing the papers to Dranth. “Disseminate them. For the right price, of course.”
“Yes, Guildmistress.”
“They are still keeping a tight rein on me, but I have managed to charm one of them, an idiot artisan from Canderre, into bringing me what I need or describing some of the areas that I have not been cleared to go into yet. Though he has yet to tell me where the Bolg king sleeps.”
The guild scion’s face twisted with a hint of concern, ironic as it was.
“Do you want us to infiltrate the mountain, mistress? So that you are not alone?”
Esten smiled wickedly.
“Do not fret about me, Dranth. When the Bolg king finally returns, I will be the only one left alive in all of the godforsaken mountain.”
She waited until his shadow had been swallowed by the night before climbing the misty hilltop, being buffeted by an insistent wind as she pulled herself over the ridges, and making her laden way across the dark mountain fields of rock and scrub to the warmth and light of the Cauldron once more.
39
THE NORTHERN SEACOAST
The tide was rising again, Rhapsody knew.
The first time it had happened she had panicked, had believed for more than a few moments that she would drown as the tidal cave filled to the top with caustic brine, churning relentlessly in circular torrents, spinning violently out with the current as it flooded.
She had been asleep that first time, drowsing in exhausted half-slumber on the one solid spot in the cave, the ledge onto which she had crawled. Her hands were free; it had taken but a moment and the true name of corn silk — tesela — to soften the rope that had been wrapped cruelly tight around her wrists to the point where she could break it.
The crossbow bolt that the archer had fired had lodged in the leather sword belt at her waist; by sheer luck it had hit the joint between the belt and the scabbard, missing her kidney, but nonetheless leaving a wicked bruise and a deep scratch in its passing, both of which stung to the point of agony in the swirling salt water. She had taken the belt off and was working the bolt loose; without her sword, the tip was the only sharp metal implement that was on her when she fell.
Despite her chanting, she had hit the water harder than she realized at the time. The only mercy in her plummet was that she missed the rocks; between the fall, the impact, the seawater, and the lack of balance she had already been experiencing, she had been all but unconscious when swept into the tidal cave by the incoming tide.
After the first time the tide fell with the ebbing current, leaving the cave half full of water breaking against the back wall, she had taken the opportunity to feel around, still virtually blind in the half-light. There were cracks in the back wall of the cave through which gusts of air could be felt while the tide was low, but little else. In addition, she could see the ocean current that swirled in the cave, that had caught her and pulled her inside, sparing her from being battered against the rocks; it was a spiral current with a cross-undertow. She knew that it would be almost impossible to bear up against it if she tried to swim out, being compromised in both strength and mass. I have to find fresh water, she thought, her mind fuzzy from exhaustion, and food. If I grow any weaker, I will die in here.
But first I must sleep, and in sleeping, heal.
The slumber into which she had fallen was so deep, so dreamless, that when the first wave broke over her she didn’t feel it.
It was not until a rolling breaker doused her, drenched her again, that she woke with a start, fear permeating her to the depths of her being.
The tide turned quickly, rushing into the cave with a force that frightened her even more. Rhapsody was submerged almost instantly, again being battered about the cave but never swept out of it, held in place by a relentless current. She braced her now-free hands against the rocky ceiling as the waves bobbed her up to it, tilting her head back to keep her eyes and nose out of the brine.
As she hovered in the water, feeling the slimy rush of seaweed pass her, she slapped it aside, trying to remember her father’s words, spoken to her as he taught her to swim as child in a deep pond a lifetime before.
She called on the memory now, trying to make use of the lore to calm her racing heart.
Too deep, she thought. It’s too deep.
Stop flailing.
Her father’s voice rang in her memory, as clear and authoritative as it had all those years before.
She stopped flailing, remaining motionless, letting the current lift her.
The water of the pond had been cold, as the sea was cold; green scum floated on the surface as the seaweed floated past her now. She could not see the bottom of the pond, just as she could not fathom the depth of the cave.
Father? she whispered, her lips tasting of salt.
I’m here, child. Move your arms slowly. That’s better.
It’s so cold, Father. I can’t stay above it. It’s too deep. Help me.
Be at ease, her father had said. I’ll hold you up.
Rhapsody took a quick breath, and felt the tightness in her lungs slacken a little. The memory of her father’s smiling face, his beard and eyebrows dripping, rivulets of water rolling down his cheeks, rose up before her mind’s eye as it had from the surface of the pond so long ago. It was an image she had concentrated on before, in the belly of the Earth, making her way along the Root of Sagia, the World Tree, in a place as foreign to her soul as this one.
The water won’t hurt you, it’s the panic that will. Stay calm.
It’s so deep, Father.
A spray of water as he spat it out. Depth doesn’t matter, as long as your head is above it. Can you breathe?
Ye-e-ss.
Then never mind how deep it is. Concentrate on breathing; you’ll be fine. And don’t panic. Panic will kill you, even when nothing else wants to.
Rhapsody closed her eyes as another wave crested over her face.
Panic will kill you, even when nothing else wants to.
No, she thought, I will not panic. I didn’t throw myself off a cliff only to be vanquished by something that means me no harm.
She tried to float on her back, and managed it for a while, bracing herself against the cave walls with one hand, holding her other elbow close against her side to minimize the exposure of the grazed skin to the salt. She cleared her mind, listening to the rhythm of the flooding current, the rising tide, and heard a music in the water, a cadence and tone she could concentrate on to maintain her calm.
After time uncounted, the current ebbed, and the tide fell again.
As the ledge became visible Rhapsody contemplated her options. She thought to call to Elynsynos, the dragon whose lair had not been far off when she was taken by Michael’s men; but discarded the notion, knowing that the beast could not sense her through water. Her eyes stung with salt, knowing that Merithyn, Elynsynos’s lover, had perished for that reason.
She had also considered shouting the Kinsman call for aid as once she had done, summoning Anborn to her side in her hour of need. But Michael was master of the element of air; if the wind betrayed her, he would find her.
There was nothing to be done but to use her own wits, her own survival skills.
No one could come to her aid but herself alone.
Rhapsody made her way to the ledge once more and stared down into the green swirling water.
Below the
surface she could see movement, a slithering motion that made her skin go cold.
Snakes? she thought hazily. No, eels. The cave was full of them, black, oily ones, swept in on the last tide, not yet pulled out again with the ebbing current. A source of food, and of water. Choking back her disgust, she untied the closures of her torn shirt, pulled it off, then retied it into a snare of a sort.
I will live through this, she thought, running her hand over her abdomen. We will live through this together, you and I. And we will get out of here.
The wind whistled through the cave, then fell silent.
The seneschal did not wait for the last longboat to land before he began kindling the black fire.
Each of the oared vessels sported a lantern at the prow, hanging over the edge of the ship to light the shoals and reefs over which the longboats skimmed on their way to shore and ship and back. Now the demon in man’s flesh seized hold of the first, wresting the handle free with a savage twist.
An exposed rim of sharp wire gleamed in the sun. The seneschal ran the edge of his finger along it, drawing blood that hissed with fire from another world.
He unhooded the lantern and held up his finger, allowing the blood to drip into the well of the lantern.
From the drops tiny tendrils of caustic smoke rose, kindling a moment later into sparks that caught a breath of life in the air. A sliver of flame, black and liquid, twisting and transforming in a gloriously malevolent pattern of color, heavier than that which burned in the air of the upworld, caught the wick of the lantern and glowed.
The flame suddenly darkened, snapping evilly, then sprang to a more intense, more rampant light.
Michael turned to the fresh coterie of soldiers and sailors who had come ashore with him. He handed the lantern to the leader of the first group of four men, reaching for the next lantern to light in the same fashion.
“Comb the coast,” he ordered as his reeve divided the men up into smaller raiding parties. “Check every privy in every hut in every fishing village. If you find her, drag her out, then burn the house of whomever has been sheltering her.”
His blue eyes shone wildly in the dark.
“If you don’t find her, burn everything in sight.”
As the troops and raiding parties were saddling up and dispersing, both on horseback and on foot, the seneschal drew Caius, his trusted bowman, aside.
“I have a special assignment for you,” he said, his voice betraying excitement tinged with anxiety. “Quinn says she made her home a few days’ ride inland from here, in the first stronghold along the transcontinental roadway, in a keep known as ‘Haguefort’ in the province of Navarne. See if she has crawled home. And be sure to leave it in ashes, whether she has or not.
“If you come across her husband in the confusion of the evacuation, make sure you dispense with him first,” he continued, his bony face hardening, its sharp angles delineating the aspect of the demon that dwelt within him. “But cut off something as a souvenir; make sure it’s something she will recognize.”
“How will I know him?”
Michael shrugged. “If he is old or young enough to walk without assistance, assume any man you find in her house is her husband. Be thorough. Kill everyone you can, children too, Caius. Everyone.”
Caius nodded and pulled himself up on his mount.
“Remember, even though you are shooting in your brother’s memory,” Michael said with a sudden jolt of jollity, “try and limit your kills to one bolt. Any more than that, even to honor poor, sausage-handed Clomyn, and you will find yourself outnumbered and out of ammunition.”
Caius’s eyes narrowed at the offhand mention of his heart twin, but he said nothing, just nudged the horse east toward the thoroughfare that would lead him to Navarne.
40
Under the best of circumstances, the Bolg king and the Lord Cymrian would not have made easy traveling companions.
Under the worst of circumstances, in which they now found themselves, they discovered a surprisingly fluid pattern of companionship that was born of necessity.
Neither man had any need of or tolerance for camaraderie or conversation. Achmed spent his waking moments fending off the myriad vibrations in the wind, combing each pocket of air for a flicker of Rhapsody’s heartbeat, a trace of the stench of whatever F’dor spirit was now feeding off of Michael, a man he had loathed in the old world, but had never tracked before. Ashe, with the minutiae of awareness of the dragon in his blood, was unconsciously sorting through the infinite pieces of information that assaulted his senses, most of it banal and inconsequential, none of it indicating that his wife was still present in the world of the living.
As a result, they traveled in a mutual silence that suited them both.
They rode the borderlands between Roland and Tyrian, staying far enough off the road to avoid notice and the interference of the human and animal traffic that traveled the thoroughfare there, stopping at the first Lirin outpost in Tyrian long enough to send a coded message to Rial in Tomingorllo, the hilltop palace in the forested capital city.
More than the endless days and nights of silence, another unspoken synchronicity seemed to develop between them. Achmed’s blood rage, the propensity of hatred for F’dor present in the makeup of all of the Dhracian race, was simmering beneath the surface of his conscious control, a volatile anger that drove him to the hunt to the exclusion of everything else. No diversion, not the need for rest, or hunger, or even the desire to rescue a treasured friend, the woman who was the opposite side of his own coin, could break the concentration fomented by the primal need to seek and destroy that was driving his every waking breath.
Ashe, too, had fallen into a primal state that was just barely on the inside edge of containment. The dragon in his blood, awakened from dormancy and invigorated by the ministrations of the Lord and Lady Rowan in the effort to save his life, was lurking at the edge of his reason, whispering constantly in his mind, but it was not singular in its purpose as Achmed’s blood rage. It was easily led off the path by other things it desired, difficult to rein in, seeking and coveting endless items that led away from the path Ashe was pursuing.
So both men were fighting inner battles in preparation for an outward one, Achmed trying to keep from falling into the bottomless chasm of single-minded concentration that blood rage demanded, his entire essence locked on his prey; Ashe from being driven insane by the multiplicity of the dragon’s rapidly shifting focus.
Both men had relegated the hunt for the Lady Cymrian to the back of their minds. While there could be no question that each considered her to be the primary object of his search, the looming threat of a F’dor loose on the continent, lurking somewhere in the Wyrmlands, subjugated the need to save a single human life to secondary focus, even a life that was as precious to them both as hers.
They both knew, without discussing it, that she would agree.
Northwest, following the setting sun, they rode, leaving the open lands of way stations, farming villages, and tiny towns along the thoroughfare, to the sea cliffs, two weeks’ ride encumbered, ten days by their estimates, not knowing where they were to look, just hoping to start with the coastline north of Port Fallon and continuing up the beach until they found one of the things they were looking for, knowing the other would not be far away.
If she was still alive, or hadn’t been taken away by sea.
It was this thought that had both of them in the clutches of unspoken fear. The sea, like the wind, was a great source of masking vibration; if Michael had taken her aboard a ship and sailed away with her, Rhapsody’s heartbeat would be lost in the endless churning turbulence of the waves.
“How useless to have such powers, such gifts as we have, when they cannot be employed in the sparing of Rhapsody’s life, the saving of the continent from the scourge of another demon,” Achmed had mumbled in a rare moment of speech at the campfire’s edge one night.
Ashe sat silently for a long time, watching the twisting patterns of the flames.<
br />
“We shall just have to employ the tools of ordinary men, our wits, our endurance, and our luck, should we be fortunate enough to have any fall from the sky into our laps,” he said, his voice dull with exhaustion. “For in the end, our titles, powers, and lands asides, that is all we are — ordinary men.”
“Speak for yourself,” Achmed retorted, draining his battered tankard and settling down to sleep that was less than restful.
By the eighth day of their journey from Sepulvarta, those tools, both ordinary and extraordinary, were put into use: Achmed’s skin-web sensitivity to vibration feeling the change in the air, a sort of dusty heaviness on the already-thick summer wind, Ashe’s dragon sense picking up the newly caustic feel of the world around them.
And both of their noses inhaling the scent of fire, rancid, odious fire that reeked of the Underworld.
HAGUEFORT, NAVARNE
Gerald Owen burst through the doors of the Great Hall, startling the Lord Marshal from his paperwork, with Gwydion and Melisande close behind.
“Lord Anborn! There is smoke hanging in the air over Tref-y-Gwartheg! Word has come from the coast in north Avonderre that two of the fishing villages are in flames, and that the fire is moving this way. Word also has it that armed men have been seen up and down the coast, just before each of the blazes has broken out. They are burning wantonly, starting at the shoreline and moving inward toward the forest.”
The General turned his upper body toward the tall windows behind the chair.
In the distance he could see it as well, the gray haze that hung over the treetops at the horizon, a bellwether of encroaching fire. He had seen it before.
But never with the dark tint it left in the sky.
There was something more ominous than the obvious warning signs of a moving brushfire that was spreading to a forest. Something about the fire.
He turned back as quickly as he could.
“Owen, evacuate the keep,” he said, reaching his strong hand out to Melisande; the trembling girl ran to him and buried her face in his shoulder. “I will deploy our forces to assist the Invoker in containing the fires, and hunting down whoever it is that is setting them. Send word to Gavin by avian messenger.”
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