Destiny: Child Of Sky (29 page)

Hagraith crouched nervously in the Thumb of the Hand, the eastern tunnel that led to the central area known as the Palm, where four other tunnels also met. Tucked beneath his jerkin was a bundle wrapped in tanned leather, his prize for admission to the brotherhood. He had discovered it quite by accident when on maneuvers deep within the Hidden Realm, and had felt its call intensely. Buried within a rotten crate in a peat bog that had once been the ruins of a Lirin city, the porcelain plate he was hiding in his jerkin was a miracle for many reasons; it not only bore the Sign quite clearly, but it was as yet unbroken, unmarred by Time. If he could will himself to stop shaking, it might remain that way long enough to be presented.

Krinsel, one of the most powerful of the Finders, and one of the First Woman's favored midwives, nodded to him in the dark. She was holding a wick of candle tallow at the end of which a tiny spark burned, the only light in the consuming darkness. Krinsel sat cross-legged in the Palm, where she could see the other Finders who cowered in the other Finger tunnels which fed into the central area.

Near her left foot were the ropes that would seal each tunnel if any sound came near other than the clanging of the forges in the distance above them.

When Hagraith did not move Krinsel's eyes narrowed, becoming slits in the darkness.

'Give."

Trying to keep his hands from shaking, Hagraith crept to the opening where the Thumb joined the Palm and carefully pulled the leather package from beneath his jerkin. He held it out to Krinsel, who took it with steady hands, the hands that had caught a generation of infants and more than a few treasures that bore the Sign. He skittered back to the recesses of the Thumb, panting.

With great delicacy Krinsel unwrapped the plate, holding it in one hand as she held the low-burning tallow up to examine it. Her eyes widened, and her face relaxed into a slight smile.

'It is the Sign,“ she said reverently. After a moment she turned her dark gaze on Hagraith. "Finder you are."

Hagraith bowed his head in relief, feeling the tightness in his abdomen abate.

Sweat that had been held back by fear now poured from his brow.

He could keep his testicle, the price of misinterpreting the Sign or presenting a false find.

Krinsel held the plate aloft in both hands and closed her eyes.

'This one it is, Voice?" she asked quietly. The other Bolg crouched in the Fingers closed their eyes, listening intently, but they heard nothing but the noise of the smithy, the hammers ringing steadily, slowly.

After a moment she opened her eyes and shook her head stoically. “For the hoard this is. Good, Hagraith. Finder you are." She turned to the tunnel that lay in the place of the Smallest Finger. “Give."

One by one she examined the objects—a coin like the thousands of others in the hoard, the badly scarred lid to a box made of wood with a blue undertone to it, and finally a pot that had been brought all the way from Sorbold with the Sign inscribed inside. Each item Krinsel pronounced as genuine, and held high for the Voice to recognize.

As always, there was no answer.

Smoothly Krinsel rose and nodded to the empty tunnel in the place of the Pointing Finger that led down an endless corridor to the hoard. The Finders followed her, bearing their treasures to the place such things were housed.

Night had fallen when Achmed returned to the Cauldron. The lamps had been lighted, filling the brightening hallways with thick smoke and the rancid smell of burning fat, which seeped quickly into his sensitive sinuses and nasal cavities. It made his bad mood even blacker.

The chandeliers in the Great Hall had been lighted as well; the renovations were almost finished. He took a moment, even in his fury, to stop and look around at the awesome sight of the polished marble columns, the newly restored symbols of the star Seren, the Earth, the moon, and the sun meticulously inlaid in the floor. Above him the domed ceiling was a dark cerulean blue, studded with tiny crystals that reflected the light of a mirrored device in the center of the floor, making it look like the firmament of the sky sprinkled with stars.

The illumination from the firepit in the floor that lighted those mock stars was the only light in the vast room, leaving many corners of it dark. Achmed stepped into a shadow, breathing evenly to slow his wrath.

Grunthor was sitting in one of the ancient marble thrones on the dais, one enormous leg slung over the arm of the stone chair. He was singing one of his favorite chanteys, fueled, no doubt, by the contents of the large flask that sat in a place of honor on the other throne.

When the sounds o' grim battle

Have long stopped their rattle

And the sweet smell of entrails and gore

Pass away on the wind

Salute me, my friend,

For Oi'll go a-rovin' no more.

I'll no longer tarry on

And leave to the carrion

The glory of well-wa-ged war,

When the killin's all done

What's the point? Where's the fun?

Oh, Oi shall go rovin' no more.

On that bittersweet day

With no more foes to slay

Our martial life naught but a bore,

We'll make us some thrones

Of their skulls and their bones,

And we'll go a-rovin' no more.

-

The fury exploded behind Achmed's eyes. Angrily he strode down the long aisle leading up to the dais.

Grunthor heard him coming at the beginning of the next song he was preparing to sing. He stopped, stood quickly to attention, and broke into a wide grin, which disappeared as the king came to a halt before the dais, slamming down his bundle of weapons on the floor. The crash of steel and the clang of metal jangled harshly.

Grunthor looked at him in amazement. “What's all this, then?" he asked.

Achmed crossed his arms.

'When I asked you to watch over the throne, I had not meant that you should be warming it with your considerable arse while someone sells the kingdom out from under me."

Grunthor, still standing at attention, went even more rigid. The muscles in his tree-trunk arms began to tremble with anger, and his face solidified into a mask of blind fury. Achmed waved at him dispassionately.

'At ease, Sergeant. I'd rather snarl at you as my friend than berate you as my Supreme Commander."

Grunthor assumed parade rest, his face now a stoic mask within which two eyes filled with fire burned.

'What's all this, then?“ he repeated steadily. "Sir."

'A cache of weapons I found among the bodies of a quarter-column of dead Sorbold soldiers,“ Achmed said, pushing the weapons around with the toe of his boot. "They're culls, fortunately—the Sorbolds are such mindless imbeciles that they cannot even see the flaws, the lack of balance. But they had them—any thoughts as to how that might have happened?"

'No, sir," the Sergeant replied rigidly.

Achmed watched Grunthor for a moment, then turned his back to him. It was time for the longtime ritual.

'Permission to speak freely?" said Grunthor rotely.

'Granted."

'I proffer my resignation, sir."

'Refused."

'Permission to speak freely?" the Sergeant repeated.

'Granted."

He listened, his back still turned, for the great relaxation of military discipline, for the enormous inhalation that came whenever Grunthor crossed from the realm of loyal soldier into the one of enraged equal. He braced himself as the great rush of air surged in through Grunthor's huge, flat nose.

The Sergeant-Major threw back his head and roared at the top of his lungs. The sound echoed through the Great Hall, making the columns vibrate.

A moment later from behind Achmed there came a rending of carpet and the cracking of iron bolts. One of the ancient thrones of Anwyn and Gwyl-liam, formed from solid marble and weighing in excess of three men in full armor, sailed through the air over Achmed's head and bounced off the polished stone floor, skidding over the image of the star and coming to a halt, with a tremendous thud, on its side. Silence reverberated in the Great Hall.

Achmed turned back to Grunthor.

'Feel better?"

The Sergeant was mopping his gray-green brow. “Yes sir, a bit."

'Good. Now, let me hear your thoughts."

'When Oi find out 'oo broke faith, Oi'm gonna stick every one of them weapons in

'is eyes, then roast 'im over sagebrush and serve 'im to the troops for the 'olidays on a bed of potatoes with an apple up 'is arse."

'Rhapsody does always say that you should celebrate special occasions by having friends for supper. Any other thoughts?"

The giant Bolg nodded. “It's got to be someone on the third shift—that's when the culls are destroyed."

'More than likely. But there are two thousand men on the third shift, and it will take an egregiously long time to discover which few are responsible. Agreed?"

'Yeah, but we 'ave to root out the traitors."

'Yes, but we have other, greater concerns. In the months I've been gone our most secret weaponry has made its way into the hands of a neighboring army. If Sorbold is to be the staging ground of the attack on Ylorc, they have far more knowledge of our workings than I am comfortable with. We have to respond quickly."

Grunthor nodded. "Am Oi still under the banner of 'permission to speak freely,'

sir?"

Achmed glanced over his shoulder at the throne of Gwylliam, sideways on its arm.

“Yes."

'Then Oi say if we're going to be in for this, let's be ready."

'Details, please."

Grunthor began to pace, concentrating. "If we're going to war, let's go to war.

Conscript every able-bodied adult and youth. Suspend the school, and train the brats to carry water, roll bandages, sling rations. Muster out every village, every enclave, women, men, everyone." He stopped long enough to meet Achmed's eye.

“The Duchess isn't gonna like it."

'Does that concern you?"

'Not in the least, sir."

'Good. What else?"

'Put the smithy on triple shift. Put the mountain guard on patrol there, mindin' the inventory and the cull pile. Belay the specialty stuff—concentrate on long-range missile weapons and heavy armaments for the crag catapults. Tap the anthracite veins more deep; mine the coal shale in all-day, all-night shifts. Boil down an ocean o' pitch. Take off the mantle of'men' and let's go back ta bein' monsters. If we're going to be in for this, let's make a stand that'll 'ave 'em writin' dirges for centuries to come. Oi want my name ta be set to mournful music and sung sadly by widows all the way to Avonderre."

A small smile came to Achmed's face. “Now, won't that be a beautiful thing. All right, Sergeant; gear up. Make the mountain impenetrable. We've known from the start this day would come. Whoever this damned demon is, if he wants Ylorc, if he wants the Sleeping Child, I want him to have to come through me to get them. But before he gets to me, let us make the mountains fall on everyone else who came with him."

_

Grunthor nodded, saluted, then strode out of the room, his rage converted to an even more deadly form—purposeful vengeance.

The voice of the Grandmother echoed in his ear.

You must be both hunter and guardian. It is foretold.

He pulled the pillow over his head and spoke the words of reply he had spoken then.

Bugger foretold.

A voice even older, Father Halphasion's voice, the mentor of his youth on the other side of the world, in a place that slept now beneath the waves of a restless sea.

The one who hunts will also stand guard.

Achmed blinked in the darkness.

Were you the one who spoke the prophecy into the wind? he asked hazily in his mind. All those years before—was it you, Father?

Nothing but the darkness answered.

Achmed had resolved centuries ago to avoid caretakership. Over the course of his long, strange existence he had found that love, life, and loyalty were ephemeral.

Therefore, choosing to protect or preserve anything, an eternally sleeping child, even a mountain, was a guarantee of failure, ruin.

He lay now on his silk-draped bed, the one true luxury he had allowed himself. The slippery softness of the bedsheets soothed the eternal itch, the irritating burn of his skin; that, coupled with the solid basalt walls, kept the vibrations of the world around him at bay, or at least they had once. Now, with the forges already ringing in frenetically accelerated rhythm, with the constant sound of running bootsteps passing by his doorway, there was no peace to be had in the advent of war.

Achmed rose slowly and slid into his clothes. He waited in the doorway of his bedchamber until the heavy footfalls died away, listening in the near-distance to the noise of martial buildup awakening in his orderly mountain. He did not have to hear the sound of the Sergeant-Major's voice bellowing commands to feel their results; the smooth ripples of air that routinely caressed the sensitive nerves in his skin-web had been replaced already by bristling shocks, frenetic energy that signaled the coming of war. He sighed deeply, feeling the work of Time upon his body and spirit for the first time since he had come to this dark and all-but-silent place.

He pushed open the sides of the the plainly fashioned cedar chest at the end of his bed and stepped into the hidden passageway, leaving the edges of the sheets to trail in the dirt at the edges of the tunnel beneath the bed for a moment. Then he closed the portal behind him.

He allowed himself a sigh as he crept through the secret bedchamber passageway, ruminating on the mysteries of guardianship. Grunthor had no need of his protection, or his scolding. Rhapsody was refreshingly, if maddeningly, independent and had absolutely no expectation of him being her protector.

Half his life had been spent in training to be the perfect guardian, and the other half spent on proving that nothing anywhere was safe. The king shook his head as he made the early turns toward what remained of the Loritorium; he was not at all certain which half had been wasted.

The people of these mountains, and the secrets, which once he thought to be his armor against an old nemesis, were weighing now upon him like armor, armor that sometimes protects but can be a hindrance or even a danger. He had fallen into a river from horseback once wearing such armor; the current had pulled him under, the armor dragging him down into the water that he so despised. His responsibility to the Bolg weighed on him similarly now. It was taking every speck of his resolve to stay here and build a battlement around those for whom he felt responsible. If his way were to be had, he would be out, alone, cwellan in hand, until it was over.