Requiem for the Sun

by Elizabeth Haydon

  “Tyrant?” Achmed queried.

  “Gwylliam is dead,” Ashe said.

  “Good,” the old soldier said, ignoring the spray that was pelting his face. “I thought he’d never die. With his elixirs and machines and engines. A thousand years from now, nothing left but his ego. No telling what there’d be left of me to fight it. Not even enough left to spit on. Here!”

  He heaved sword at Ashe.

  “You came to use it,” he said contemptuously. “Give it your best.” He stood stiffly, ankle-deep in water that alternately pushed and pulled the sand beneath his feet.

  With him standing now, his eyes clear, his body no longer looking so frail, or his mind so brittle, Ashe and Achmed finally had a good look at him. Though not nearly as tall as Grunthor, or as his legends had proclaimed him to be, MacQuieth was exceptionally large for a half-Lirin. What they originally thought were layers of ragged clothing was really his body underneath, both taller and broader than Ashe, with what once must have been black hair and eyes, both gray now, only slightly cramped hands, and either sufficient command of the sea or strength in his legs to be unmoved by the running waves.

  Achmed stood and stepped back, shaking his head.

  “No,” he said. It did not escape him that the old soldier had subtly, sagaciously manipulated both of them into the deeper water, that the beach was fairly close behind him, and that now that he had the sword, there was no way they were escaping without coming to whatever agreement suited MacQuieth, whose heart, he noted, still rang like a great bell.

  Ashe caught part of the hilt of the sword, and was so spared the indignity and vulnerability of fishing for it in the knee-deep water. He also stood and said, “No, m’lord.” Then he carefully wiped the blade on the upper part of his cloak and sheathed it.

  “We have come for nothing like that. We have come because we need to find Michael. We need to stop him and rescue someone he’s taken. We know only that he landed near here, but we cannot track him —”

  “And you can’t kill him if you happen to find him. You don’t know how to kill him as he deserves to be killed, as he needs to be killed, if he’s going to stay dead.” MacQuieth finished Ashe’s statement, and at last looked at him without the lens of combat in his eyes. “Are you Merithyn’s heir as well as Gwylliam’s?”

  “Yes, sir. And yours,”

  The ancient warrior scowled. “Nonesuch. None of my line would ever blend their blood with the spawn of that cur.”

  “Cynron ap Talthea did. She was my mother. Many generations removed from you, but undeniably of your line.”

  “How disappointing for both of us. And on whose authority have you come to hunt this creature, and disturb me?”

  “Our own,” Achmed said. “Few others know he is here.”

  As he stood in the receding current, Achmed thought that it looked as if the tide were taking out MacQuieth. He looked more drawn with every breath, more reduced or distant from the rush of battle and grip of the sword.

  MacQuieth fixed his gaze directly at the Firbolg king, but addressed the Lord Cymrian.

  “You know you travel with the Brother, the great assassin who, in his time and way, was more terrible than the one you seek?”

  “Yes,” Ashe said, “but a world away from his former self.”

  MacQuieth turned back up to the shore, apparently tired of the tide, tired of questions.

  “A world away? No. The world follows us in our travels. We’re there, no matter how far we’ve run; trust me.” He trudged slowly toward the shore, with the two younger men sloshing out of the waves behind him, then turned and glared at them again.

  “What do you want?”

  With no time to confer, neither of the sovereigns said anything for a minute. Then Achmed motioned to Ashe to speak.

  “Michael landed near this beach. He has been up and down the coast, burning villages mostly. We wish to get ahead of him, trap him somewhere.”

  “Stop. Who are you?”

  “Didn’t you just tell me who my ancestors were?” Ashe asked, growing desperate, not knowing what to say to answer the man’s questions without angering him, then giving up, realizing it would be impossible to know.

  “I can smell your blood,” MacQuieth said with a glower. “The sword has tasted it. Him, the sea knows, and I can tell by the way he moves who trained him. I have no idea what the world looks like now; most often I don’t care. Once a man passes his millionth day, they mercifully run together. But to find the bone in the soup, the oasis in the desert, the island, the killer, I have to know what the wind looks like, how many years have passed, whether this is a new road or an old wall. When my senses were young and on fire I could track a porpoise, a hawk.” He gestured at Achmed. “I was ready to track him before he was said to have died. Tell me what I really need to know.”

  Ashe straightened his shoulders, feeling the wisdom in his blood course through him.

  “I am Gwydion ap Llauron ap Gwylliam, tuatha d’Anwynan o Manosse,” he said simply. “Lord Cymrian by election. And long ago, before the exodus, before the real onset of the Seren War in which you fought for the life of the Island, before all that, a young girl came to you in the streets of Easton and asked if you had seen me. You had not, and you told her so, kindly, she says. Now, if she is still among the living, she may be in the clutches of the Wind of Death, the anti-Kinsman, he who would use the element of air to destroy armies, murder soldiers, rather than to aid them in their time of need. He is the host of a demon-spirit, though a strange permutation of the normal parasite relationship; apparently his loathsome personality was so strong, so evil, that it did not succumb to the monster’s will, was not subsumed by it, but rather coexists with it in the same body. So whatever murderous tendencies, whatever depravity lived within his mind when you fought him, still remain, only more powerful now.”

  “I did not fight him,” the elderly soldier said, turning away and walking up the beach toward the rockwalls of the cliffs. “I fought Tsoltan, his master. Michael ran. Had he been man enough to stay and fight, you would not be seeking him now.”

  The wind howled as the two sovereigns followed him around rocky outcroppings and hummocks of driftwood.

  “What were you drawing in the sand?” Ashe asked, hurrying to keep up with the old man.

  MacQuieth shrugged. “Whatever the sea tells me,” he said, and nothing more.

  On the north side of a large formation of boulders at the cliff face they saw what they realized after a moment was a small hut that never saw visitors. In front there was a battered shield that had been converted into a distiller for water and little else.

  The ancient hero disappeared into the rocky enclosure, reappearing a moment later with a wedding ring encrusted with diamonds in his hand, which he slipped onto his smallest finger.

  “Do you have horses?” he asked, examining the ring on his hand.

  “Yes,” Achmed said. “On the bluff.”

  Without a word MacQuieth walked away, heading to the path that led up to the top of the pass.

  Ashe glanced westward over his shoulder at the red sun hovering just at the edge of the horizon, ready to plunge into the rolling gray sea.

  “Did you wish to sing your vespers, Grandfather, the requiem for the sun?” he asked respectfully in the Lirin tongue.

  MacQuieth stopped abruptly.

  “No,” he said, then started up the path to town again. “I no longer remember how.”

  49

  At the top of the hill, at the outskirts of the village, four horses were waiting, three saddled, one packed with provisions.

  The healthy tinge MacQuieth’s skin gained when he held the sword in the sea had begun to recede. The farther he moved from both water and weapon, the grayer he grew, first in hair, then in face, and finally in eye. By the time they had reached the horses he had begun to look somewhat frail again.

  His will, however, seemed not to have diminished at all. He studied the horses for a moment, speaking in a stran
ge tongue to each of them, then summarily chose the one onto which Ashe had already begun to bind his gear, dumping it unceremoniously onto the ground.

  “Barney’s packed the wrong animal for dray,” he said, the wind whipping through his hair and the horse’s mane in time. “That horse is smarter than the one in the lead. The leader’s a stupid animal. He would lead better with his arse than his head.” He mounted the horse he had chosen with the fluidity and grace of a young man. “Must be a Cymrian horse. Think I’ll call him ‘Gwylliam,’”

  The two sovereigns smiled wearily.

  “Just the back end of him,” Achmed said.

  Those were the last words the ancient hero uttered that day. He turned his head to the wind, listening as if for the Kinsman call, then clicked to the horse and rode off to the north along the coastal road, seemingly unconcerned as to whether the others were following him or not.

  Achmed watched the process of the hunt with interest. Unlike his method of tracking heartbeats, the singular concentration on one specific trail, MacQuieth seemed instead to be looking for what was not there, searching in between the pockets of air to find a man-spirit that was using the element to wrap around himself, shielding him from normal sight and even his own extraordinary abilities and Ashe’s.

  They all but flew over the ground, Ashe and Achmed frequently looking at each other in surprise — surprise at their companion’s age, surprise at the toll the years had taken, surprise that he could still ride as well as his legends said he did. The greatest source of their surprise, without question, was that they had even found him at all.

  They rode through much of the night, stopping finally in a sheltered spot to sleep and sit watch.

  “The wind in which he hides is on the sea, but it is moving,” the ancient warrior had said before settling into a dark shadow cast by the light of their campfire for the night.

  The two sovereigns sat watch through the early hours, watching the coast and listening to the crashing of the dark waves against the shore below them; there was a shriek in the wind as it howled over the bluffs on which they were making camp, as if it were warning of something dire coming.

  Finally, after the midpoint of the night had passed into the next day, Ashe rose and stretched.

  “I’m going to sleep,” he said, reaching skyward with his arms to loosen his sore muscles. “Another long day of riding tomorrow.”

  Achmed continued to stare at the fire.

  “Sit down for a moment,” he said quietly. “I am about to repay you for rescuing me today.”

  The Lord Cymrian inhaled, then sat down again.

  “Rhapsody is alive,” the Bolg king said. “I heard her heartbeat in the sea.”

  Ashe sat up straighter. “You are certain of it? She’s alive?”

  Achmed scowled. “I was certain of it at the time. I don’t want to be held to what may have happened since. But when I was beneath the waves while you took your time to get to me, I heard it — impossible to gauge distance in all that godforsaken water. I never could have imagined that I would be able to hear it through the damnable element; it has always been a barrier to me before. Perhaps I should have MacQuieth stand on my head whenever I need to scry hereafter.”

  The Lord Cymrian lapsed into a grateful silence, contemplating his world.

  “Thank you,” he said finally.

  “We had best make plans as to how we are going to deal with Michael if MacQuieth is able to track and ultimately find him,” Ached said quietly. “In the old world Dhracians generally hunted F’dor alone, but the one we killed a few years ago was stronger, fiercer somehow; I don’t know if I am merely not as potent in the ritual as a full-blooded Dhracian would be, or if crossing Time has anything to do with it, but I do know if Grunthor and Rhapsody had not been there, I would have been lost to it.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “Once we get within striking distance, I will begin chanting the Thrall ritual,” Achmed said. “It ties a net of power around the demon, keeping it from escaping the host’s body, so that both die together. You will be able to tell if it has taken when I move my hand as if winding yarn about it; if the tether has hit its mark in the demon’s soul, the host’s body will lurch, as if being dragged.” Ashe nodded. “That is the moment when you want to strike.

  “As a Dhracian, I can hold the demon’s spirit in its body, keep it from escaping, while the host is being killed. Done properly, a Dhracian can do it alone; the vibration of the Thrall will eventually cause the host’s head to cave in. But we had best take no chances. I will get him into Thrall, and you drive the water sword through him. If you do it right you can gouge his heart out of his chest and throw it, still beating, onto the ground, so that we can watch to be sure he dies in body and soul.”

  “Poor technique,” MacQuieth muttered from the shadows where he lay. “You never fully extend until the blade is inside your target. Push it out his back instead.”

  Ashe was sleeping on his back by the remains of the fire when the dragon in his blood felt the dawn break gently over the sea.

  He sat up, stiff and sore, and looked over to the place where MacQuieth had been.

  Nothing was there.

  Ashe sat forward quickly, looking with his eyes, but allowing his dragon sense loose to find the old man.

  It only took a moment. The sensitive vibrations in his blood told him that MacQuieth was near the edge of the cliff wall that towered over the beach below.

  The Lord Cymrian rose, stepping quietly over Achmed, who slept fitfully next to the remains of the fire. He followed the path back to the overlook, his dragonesque eyes scanning for the ancient warrior.

  What he found was the feeble old man he had met the day before, the progenitor of his family back so many generations that it was impossible to count, a hero who had slipped with Time into a state bordering on dementia.

  The driftwood-gray had returned to his wrinkled skin, the color of extreme age mixed with a life led almost exclusively outdoors. He was wandering close to the edge, seemingly blind to the bluff that ran above the seacoast, on which he was walking.

  Ashe caught the urge to call out to him in his throat; he could tell, with the inner sight that allowed him to observe many hidden things, that MacQuieth was not playfully risking death by walking so close to the end of the land.

  He could not see anything.

  Ashe willed himself to be calm, to move with great deliberateness so as to not startle the blind old man. As his senses wandered over the hero, he thought he had ascertained the reason why he was suddenly sightless.

  The dragon had made note of the blood that had pooled in the back of MacQuieth’s eyes during the night; it had coated the back of the inner lens, leaving the man without sight. An hour, perhaps more, of being upright, and the blood would drain away from the back of his eyes, allowing him to see again.

  For the man who had carried Kirsdarke, carried the essence of the sword of water still, each awakening was a reminder of the drowned. When first he came to awareness he was paralyzed, frozen even beyond shivering.

  Blind.

  As if trapped beneath ice, the old man had to struggle to come to awareness, to awaken, a much more difficult battle to wage against exhaustion than any man of regular years faced. He deliberately, patiently melted the burden of time that he carried with each liquid-heavy breath, pushing his chest to make more breaths, tiny lapping waves to erode the years.

  Even so, it appeared as if he were losing his battle to awaken.

  Ashe felt his throat constrict. He waited until the old soldier had gotten his legs under him, then quietly drew Kirsdarke, the blade the old man had borne gloriously throughout so many centuries of life, and held it in outstretched hands, hoping that its ancient bond to MacQuieth would give him strength to draw on again now.

  “The All-God give thee good day, Grandfather,” he said deferentially, using the polite form of address that the young used to speak with their elders.

  As at the wat
erside the day before, the hero seemed to strengthen before his eyes, taking on the same patient, enduring power of the waves of the sea below them. The fragile old man shook the tangled mess that was his head.

  “If He were to do so, I would be gone from this life now,” he said soberly, without melancholy or self-pity. “All of the years I have ahead of me, and all those behind, would I trade for but one day in which to see what has been lost to Time once more.”

  “I understand,” Ashe said.

  The soldier cocked his head in the Lord Cymrian’s direction. “Do you? Hmmm. I think not.” An amused smile crossed his lips. “But I suspect one day, a thousand years or more from now, you will.”

  He turned to face the sea, letting the rising sun bathe his face with its light.

  “The sun — I can feel it,” he murmured, his eyes open in the intense glare, reflecting the burning light. “I know it’s there. Like the Island, sleeping now beneath the waves, its towers crumbled into great mounds of sand, the great seawalls that proved to be futile broken, strewn about the bottom of the ocean floor like the playthings of a child. I feel its warmth; but I see it not.

  “When the Second Fleet landed in Manosse, when my — duty was discharged, I stood in the sea and waited for the Island’s end.” MacQuieth closed his eyes to the golden light, lifting his face to the sky, following the path of the sun. “I felt it; it was many days, how many risings and setting of the sun I do not remember, but all that water, all that sun, all that salt burned the surface of my eyes. I did not care; I had no need of them. Anything that I had wanted to see was no longer visible.

  “But finally, one day, it was over; I felt the sea shudder with pain as the Sleeping Child rose, consuming Serendair and the islands north of it in volcanic fire, felt its depths burning.” The soldier ran the back of his hand across his eyes in memory.

  “You know the order of the birth of the elements? How the older they are, the more powerful they can be? Ether was first; it is the only one not born of this world, but came rather from the stars. That is why the F’dor fear certain types of diamonds, by the by — they are crystal formations not of this earth, but that fell from the heavens in a blaze of light, cooling and hardening into a prison of fire.”