Rhapsody: Child of Blood tsoa-1

by Elizabeth Haydon

  "Each child, if it passes a test, will be given a gift. Choose well. Send soon. You have three days. For any who would doubt my resolve, hear this: I come. You will be part of this body, or you will be cut off and the tribe you sprang from cauterized like a stump—in fire."

  Achmed stared across the silent assemblage for a moment longer, smiling as he took in the sight of the frozen Bolg gazing down from their lofty perches. Then he turned on his heel and vanished from the ledge, pausing long enough in the tunnel to pluck the trembling Rhapsody from the shadows and take her back into the depths of Canrif with him.

  "That may not have been the single most repulsive thing I have ever witnessed, but it certainly was up there."

  Grunthor looked offended. "What are you talkin' about? It was great; no blood got spilt, and the Bolg are still out there now, pickin' their captains. We can start trainin' in the mornin'. Whaddaya mean, repulsive?"

  "I think Janthir might take issue with your assessment of blood not being spilled," Rhapsody said as she and Jo rolled bandages and packed medical kits.

  "Well, 'e might, but Oi don't think we'll 'ear the old boy too well, 'is mouth bein' down at the bottom of the canyon and all."

  "I can't believe you wouldn't let me come and watch," Jo pouted. "It sounds like a great time."

  Rhapsody started to answer, but reconsidered and said nothing. Both Achmed and Grunthor were reveling in their victory; it seemed unfair to deny them their celebration. "How long before we take the Heath?"

  Achmed looked up from the map he was drawing. "I'd say within two weeks we'll be well set to consolidate the Heath and the outer sections of the Hidden Realm in time to have a united front for Spring Cleaning. The experience the army will gain there will make it easy to take whatever stragglers have not already joined forces afterward." Rhapsody nodded and returned her attention to the bandages.

  * * *

  Saltar closed his burning eyes as the cold mist descended on his face and shoulders.

  The Spirit had come. He knew it would show up eventually, once he had heard about the new warlord's meeting in the canyon at the edge of the Heath.

  What do you see?

  "Nothing yet; still cloudy," Saltar said. As always, he heard the voice in his mind, the sensation akin to being violated.

  Look harder. Search the wind for one who walks between the gusts of air.

  Saltar closed his eyes, feeling the sting abate a little. He put his hand again to his chest, but saw no more clearly.

  "Nothing yet," he repeated. "But he will come."

  * * *

  "Keep your eyes closed, we're almost there." Rhapsody tried to swallow her anxiety. The excitement in Achmed's voice, so wildly out of character, had a compelling effect on her; she couldn't resist dropping whatever she was doing to see his newest discovery or solution. It was not compelling enough, however, to drive from her mind the ever-present thought that the Bolg recruits would be arriving in the morning, and they had not finished their preparations.

  "This is the last time I can do this, Achmed," she said, trying to keep from tripping on the uneven floor. Her head swam, knowing that when she opened her eyes, the darkness would still be there. The halls of Gwylliam's fortress conjured up too many memories of the Root. "I have to get the quarters finished."

  Achmed chuckled. "All right, if you don't want to see the Great Hall, we can just go ba—"

  "You found the Great Hall?" Rhapsody exclaimed, opening her eyes.

  "And something possibly more interesting, but if you have a pressing need to get back—"

  She grabbed his hand. "Show me. It can wait."

  "Somehow I thought that would be your attitude. Follow me."

  Rhapsody hurried behind him through the darkness. The tunnels were beginning to open in width and height, until they were four times their normal dimensions. The corridor finally emptied into a large entryway, where fragments of gold leaf still clung to the marble walls.

  Achmed rounded the corner, and stopped before an opening where two colossal doors had once been. One was there still, fashioned of hammered gold, embedded open in the wall next to it as if by the force of a violent storm. The other was missing.

  "The Great Hall," he said, making a sweeping gesture toward the room beyond the doorway.

  Rhapsody stepped over a pile of crumbled basalt and through the frame of the entrance. A round room stretched out before her, built in the same vast proportions as the rest of Canrif, with pillars of blue-black marble lining the white stone walls all around, leading up to a wide dais. The domed ceiling, though cracked and peeling, was an exquisite shade of blue, colored to resemble the sky.

  Blocks of clear glass had been embedded in a full circle around the top of the round ceiling, allowing daylight to enter. Rhapsody could see a bit of the real sky, and the shadows of mountains through the glass, and deduced that the Great Hall had been built near the summit of one of the crags of the Teeth, hewn inside the mountaintop.

  The floor, now littered with rubble, had once been patterned in colored marble as well, inlaid in huge designs of the Earth, sun, moon, and an enormous star. A chill ran through her; it was the symbol for Seren, her birth star.

  "Aria," she whispered.

  Unbidden, the voice welled up from her memory.

  If you watch the sky and can find your guiding star, you will never be lost, never.

  She choked back tears. A warm, strong hand gripped her shoulder.

  "What's the matter?"

  Rhapsody blinked rapidly and looked around again, stepping farther into the Great Hall. At the far end of the room, on the elevated dais, were two large chairs formed from the same polished marble, covered with grit from the cracked ceiling above. Blue and gold giltwork channels ran through each of them, up the arms to the backs, and ancient cushions still rested on the seats beneath the debris.

  In the center of the symbol of Seren was a hole where a small door had once been hinged, now gone. Rhapsody bent down and looked inside. In the space below the floor was a long, deep cylinder, with a grate at the bottom where a fire had once burned, fairly regularly from the look of it. Above the grate were a number of circular metal frames that once had held mirrors, judging by the shards of glass scattered across the fire grate. The broken glass had long since melded to the floor of the hole.

  "I've seen the drawings of this in the library," she said, half-aloud. She looked up at Achmed. "This is the device Gwylliam invented to both warm the floor of the Great Hall, and project light onto its ceiling. It gave the impression, if you want to take Gwylliam's word for it, of the sunrise, and the changing colors of the sky during the course of the day, fading, as the fire did, with the coming of night. He even had crystals inlaid in the ceiling to resemble stars; supposedly they glittered when the last of the light hit them. All controlled by the turning of the Earth. I wish I could have seen it in working order."

  "You will," Achmed said, examining one of the pillars near the two thrones. "I'd like to see that manuscript when we get back. Any mention of the pillars? There's one for each hour of the day."

  Rhapsody nodded, then stood and brushed the dust from her hands. "The design centered around the celestial observatory, which should have been directly above this part of Canrif. There was a spyglass of some size situated in the pinnacle of one of the tallest crags in the Teeth. The observatory was accessible from a stairway in one of the back rooms of the Great Hall." She pointed to doorways behind two of the pillars.

  "If there was a stairway there once, it's now part of the rubble," Achmed said. "It will have to go on the list for rebuilding." He left the pillars and walked over to the thrones, stepping over the largest pieces of wreckage.

  Rhapsody decided to join him. As she crossed the floor she came to the symbol of the sun and stopped. The room was suddenly warm, its heat rising to the surface of her skin, leaving her feeling light-headed.

  "Achmed," she called, but her voice came out in a weak whisper. His back was to her still; he ha
dn't heard her.

  The Great Hall seemed to sway a little as a tingle swelled through her. In her mind she recognized the physical feeling she was experiencing, but it made no sense. It was the sensation of passion.

  Wet warmth pressed against her throat, the feeling of a lover's kiss, and slid lazily down her neck. Pressure, like the touch of fingers, surrounded her waist, moving slowly up to her breasts, where it began to circle. Rhapsody struggled to break the vision.

  "Achmed, please," she called again. "Help." The sound of her own voice was very far away.

  The world grew darker, warmer, and she felt herself sinking to the floor, supported by invisible hands. The air around her closed in, caressing her body insistently; she could feel the shirt being pulled from her waistband. Her mind tried to fight it, to bring her back to the Present, but it was a losing battle.

  As much as her brain protested at what seemed a violation of her will, a stronger force, tied to the lore of Time that was part of the fabric of her soul, won out. Overwhelmed, her mind surrendered to the emotions of someone else, whomever's story it was that she was reliving. Instead of her own feelings she was momentarily consumed with lust, and passion. And anger, almost violent rage. Then, as suddenly as it came, the vision passed.

  Her eyes cleared. She was looking up into Achmed's dark hood.

  "Are you all right?" he asked, extending a hand. She took it, unsteady, and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

  "I've had more than enough of this nonsense," she muttered, brushing off the debris and smoothing her hair. Her shirt, though loose, was still tucked in the waistband of her trousers. "I'd rather not know these pieces of lore, thank you."

  "What did you see?"

  Rhapsody's face, already warm from the vision, reddened to an even deeper shade. "I didn't really see anything. It was more tactile than that."

  "Well, what did you feel, then? It might be important." Achmed was growing annoyed.

  "Let's just say I think this may have been the place where Anwyn and Gwylliam—er, consummated their union."

  Achmed chuckled. "Lucky you."

  "Excuse me?" The warmth of her face changed from embarrassment to fury.

  "You're fortunate that Grunthor wasn't here. If he had been, you would never hear the end of it, though the comments would have been choice, I'm sure."

  "Indeed. Does this mean I can count on you not to mention it again?"

  "Maybe. Do you want to go to the bedroom now?"

  Rhapsody felt her hands curl into fists, even as she reminded herself that Achmed's choices of words were often not the best. "By that do you mean that you found the royal chambers?"

  "Yes."

  She exhaled. "All right; let's get out of here before something like that happens again. Anwyn and Gwylliam were married an awfully long time. I'd prefer not to stay here if this is where they trysted after all the courtiers had gone home."

  "Well, if you want to avoid having another out-of-body sexual experience, it looks like Gwylliam and Anwyn's bedroom is the place to be."

  Rhapsody couldn't help but agree. The bedchamber had been designed in the same outsize proportions as the rest of Canrif, but had been divided severely into two separate sets of quarters, both grandly appointed, but neither imparting the feel of any real warmth.

  In one of the huge rooms an ornate fireplace and mantel had been carved into the stone of the mountain, its vents and the arched window above it in the same mountain wall as the outer side of the Great Hall. The window, filled with the same heavy glass as the apertures in the ceiling of the Great Hall, had grown cloudy and distorted with time, but was still intact, and offered what must have once been a magnificent view of the steppes leading to the Krevensfield Plain.

  Above the fireplace was a stone relief of a family crest, rendered in painstaking detail. In the foreground a rampant lion and a griffin faced each other, a star shining over their heads. Behind them was an image of the Earth, an oak tree growing on it, with roots that pierced through the bottom. Rhapsody recognized it immediately; it had been minted onto the back of every coin she had ever seen in the old land. "The coat-of-arms of the Seren royal family?" Achmed nodded.

  Rhapsody whistled. "It's becoming increasingly apparent to me why these people didn't get along."

  "Oh? Why?"

  She pointed to the crest. "Well, displaying the symbol of his dominion in the old land in prominent view of his marital bed does not seem to indicate that Gwylliam had much respect for Anwyn's heritage. Or much interest in putting her in a good mood."

  "She's got her own crest above the fireplace in the room next door. A dragon at the edge of the world."

  "And either way, if they were to share a bed, one would be winning, and the other would have to look at the evidence of it. So they probably didn't. I can't imagine, if I was a jealous half-dragon, not entirely comfortable in a human form in the first place, wanting to lie, night after night, beneath Gwylliam's sweating body as he pumped away, all the while being forced to stare at his family crest, knowing I was not a part of it."

  Achmed smiled as he looked down at the floor, shaking his head, before he turned away from the fireplace.

  "I'm very glad to know the experiences of your past have not soured your attitude toward sex, Rhapsody."

  On the opposite wall, facing the fireplace, was an equally ornate headboard, carved from the same blue-black marble as in the Great Hall, veins of white and silver running through it like tiny rivers. A matching footboard lay on the floor atop a shallow pile of ancient mulch and a wide stain that had probably once been the bedclothes.

  "Did the bed itself just decay here, do you think?" Rhapsody asked.

  Achmed chuckled. "Well, according to you it would be unlikely that they set it afire in a fit of passionate humping, so I would guess that, yes, it rotted here. Why?"

  She began to hum, trying to get a fix on the strange feeling she was picking up from the bed area. After a moment she gave him a direct look.

  "Can you feel anything strange here?"

  He concentrated for a moment, then shook his head. "No. What is it you feel?"

  Rhapsody looked down again. "I think it's blood."

  A dark expression crossed Achmed's face, but his voice did not change. "I don't sense anything."

  "Do you want me to try?" she asked. Achmed nodded. "Then we have to agree now that if I seem unable to break the trance, or if I become agitated, you'll intervene and make it stop."

  "I can carry you out. I'm not sure if that will bring you around, however."

  Rhapsody's face hardened. "Drag me; you know how I hate to be carried."

  "All right."

  She closed her eyes again, concentrating on the discerning pitch, the same tone she had used to check the ring in the Cymrian museum. An image formed in her mind, the body of a man lying on the bed, his head and neck askew. As the vision cleared, she could see another man, gray-bearded, wearing linen robes painted with gold, sitting on the bed next to the corpse, his face buried in his hands.

  Her skin grew clammy as she began to absorb the emotions of the scene—desolation, betrayal, guilt, anger, agony. One by one they washed over her, weaving a mantle of pain around her, until she could barely breathe for the sadness of it. Her heart thudded hollowly in her chest.

  "We have to get out of this place," she said. "I don't know what happened here, or if we ever will know, but it's no surprise that the mountain itself reeks of devastation. Violent, passionate sex on the floor of the Great Hall, death in the bed of the king, the king himself rotting in the library—what kind of monsters were these people? It's not the Firbolg who make the place feel ravaged, it's whatever the Cymrians did."

  Achmed laughed. "I could have told you that. Before we go, however, there's one more thing you might want to see."

  Anwyn's chamber was as huge and empty as Gwylliam's, except that the headboard of her bed had been wrought in gold and affixed to the wall. The footboard was missing, probably a casualty of looti
ng after the Cymrians fled Canrif.

  At one time the mantel around her fireplace had been gilt to match the bed, but now all that remained were a few flakes of gold leaf. Rhapsody stared up at the stone relief of the dragon sitting at the world's rim, the look in its eyes forbidding.

  The loss of home crept up on her unexpectedly, and caught her off-guard. What am I doing here? she thought miserably, the ache of missing her family and her old life consuming her. If I could have known that leaving Serendair would have meant ending up in this place of endless nightmares, might I have just surrendered to Michael?

  "Stop feeling sorry for yourself," Achmed said, reading her mind. His hand was on the door between the two chambers.

  Rhapsody's mouth dropped open in surprise. "What? How do you know what I'm thinking?"

  "You get the same pathetic look on your face every time, that's how. Perhaps one of the things your walk through the fire made you was transparent, although I seem to recall you've been that way all along. Come over here and have a look at this."

  Rhapsody followed him to the door and looked through the opening. Instead of being a connecting portal, it led into another room, unlike anything she had ever seen.

  The floor was tiled with small squares of polished blue marble, sanded roughly. Against the inner wall of the mountain was an enormous hexagonal vessel, much like the pool of a fountain but carved from marble as well. There were pipes that ran vertically up the wall, rusty and corroded, tapering down to a strange spout that was suspended over the pool.

  On the other side of the room, against the same wall, was a odd throne, carved from marble and attached to the same strange pipes. Its cushion had apparently been torn off or lost long before, leaving a substantial hole in the base of the chair, which was hollow. A thin tunnel no larger than a fox's den opened down below the base, bending out of sight.

  The back of the throne was high and straight, and formed from the same gleaming metal that composed the ventilation system. A metal chain hung from the top of it.