Destiny: Child Of Sky (62 page)

A glazed look of bewilderment came over Rhapsody's face. This cannot be, she said sadly. She squinted, staring blindly at the domed firmament above her where the copper scales of the dragon fresco glittered among the crystal stars in the cobalt-blue ceiling, its silver claws extended.

Ah, Anwyn. So at last you have vanquished me, Gwylliam's voice intoned softly, bemused. What irony your sisters, the Fates, employ, that I die here, beneath the cruel visage of the great copper wyrm I had gilt in this place to honor your mother.

Even in my last moments I am forced to see you—to leave this life with the image of you in my eyes.

The color was leaving Rhapsody's cheeks; her skin fading from the rosy blush of health to a deathlike ivory. As the tides of her breath became ragged, panic clutched at Achmed. He put down the vial and bolted around the table, followed a moment later by Grunthor, pulling her from the chair, patting her face with his left hand.

'Enough, Rhapsody,“ he said quietly. "Enough—let the vision go."

She looked past him, as if looking beyond the Veil of Hoen. Her lips were bloodless, pale and parched.

All for naught, she said dully, the light leaving her eyes. All my—great works, my great dreams. For—naught. Hague, you were right. You were right.

Achmed shook her gently, trying to break the vision's hold, but it had taken root inside her. Behind him he could hear Grunthor breathing shallowly, trying to remain calm.

'It's all right,“ he said to the Sergeant. "It just has to run its course."

'The end of that course is 'is death,'“ Grunthor snarled. "Come on, miss, snap to, now."

I stare into the Vault of the Underworld, the cracked voice whispered. But it is a vault of my—own—making. The Great—Seal. Anwyn—forgive me; forgive me, my—people. The Seal—

'Rhapsody-"

Come we in—peace, from the—grip of—death—to life in this—fair—land—

With a great shuddering gasp Rhapsody convulsed in Achmed's grasp, shaking violently. Then her body went slack, became still. She blinked, and her eyes focused. She looked up into the fear-contorted faces of her friends and exhaled deeply.

'I really have to find another hobby," she said.

Achmed scowled, giving her a shake for good measure, then released her and picked up the vial. “What do you suppose all that nonsense was about the Great Seal?"

Rhapsody shook her head. “I don't know—he was terrified, and that's all I felt; the blood was leaving his body with every beat of his heart, and he could feel himself dying by bits. What an awful sensation. I hope I go quickly." She thought of her request to the Lord Rowan, and his pledge to try and accommodate her; the memory calmed her. “I now have the Last Words of the Lord Cymrian."

Achmed nodded. “Bound to be useful one day."

Grunthor embraced her. “Ya sure you're all right?" As she nodded, he glared at her severely. "Well, that ought ta tell you something about your status as a Namer.

Kinda wish you were right and it was gone, but no, you're undoubtedly going to continue to scare the hrekin out of me with these damnable fits you 'ave."

'By 'Great Seal' do you think he meant the royal crest?" Rhapsody asked Achmed.

“And which one would it be? There are two in their bedchambers—the coat of arms of the Seren royal house, the same one that was on all the coins back in the old world, or the one above Anwyn's bed, the dragon on the edge of the world?"

'I don't know,“ he replied, heading for the door. "I have more important things to attend to. If you are heading to Tyrian, travel well. Send word when you are ready to call the Council—we'll keep the horn here until you come back. If you are planning to stay, remain out of sight. I want anyone who looks on the mountain with the thought of taking it to see nothing but a carcass, a shell. If they are foolish enough to make the attempt, let them have the true pleasure of discovering what's inside." Deep within the mountain, the Bolg had been listening to the king's announcement carefully, noting the changes in call-ups to the army and the other orders that he now imparted daily along with other military briefings.

When the orders, uttered in the Bolgish tongue, ceased, they went back to their tasks, ignoring the distant conversation that filtered down through the mountain corridors in the language of men, a tongue they didn't understand. King Achmed had the power to make the mountain speak, but he didn't always do it in their words. The Bolg knew nothing of the speaking tubes, the listening apparatus. They assumed that the king was the voice of the mountain, and its ears; he had established dominion over the earth beneath their feet, the air around them. Over time they had become accustomed to being ruled by a god.

And so most of the Bolg ceased to even hear the conversation between the king, the Sergeant-Major, and the First Woman as the sound blended into the cacophony of marching feet and ringing anvils.

Except for the Finders.

Each member of the secret society, each Bolg possessed of an inexplicable inner desire to collect the Willum belongings that bore the Sign, stood, transfixed, as the Voice began to speak for the first time in more generations than they could count.

Like the forefathers they knew only in ancient tales, they felt a resonance in their souls, a command in their blood, primal and deep to the bone, painful in its insistence, unable to be denied or understood.

Bring me the horn.

The faint molder of underdwelling, the scent of spore and sex and urine, faint and carried in the wispy dust. Grunthor had finally overcome the fear of the tunnels, after the flame that had burned all the way to the House of Remembrance. He had been used to the sweep of desert and the ability to throw weight and weapon against enemy. In the tunnels he was rarely unaccompanied as he was now.

There was something fey about the earth in this place, the index finger of the hand that was a nexus of five old Cymrian tunnels. This part of the mountain was so deep, so far from where the reconstruction was occurring, that it would have been years before anyone would have come down here, had he not been hunting for whatever the Earthchild had warned Achmed about. The tunnels were, more than likely, merely water drains for the sewage system that still lay, in the majority of the deeper parts of the Cymrian labyrinth, in disrepair.

He had been stumbling, all but blind, for hours, seeking something, anything, but had come upon nothing, not even a trace that the tunnels had been traversed. Even the footprints that might have been seen in the dirt of the earthen floor had been carefully covered, if they had ever been there at all.

Finally, at the end of the tunnel that took the position of the index finger of the hand he passed a dry cistern, one of many he had passed in this place. His skin hummed slightly as he passed it; he unhooded his lantern and held it up before his amber eyes.

In the wall, amid the crumbling lichen, was the convex relief of a hand.

Grunthor grinned widely, exposing his flawlessly maintained tusks to the fetid air.

'Why, thank you, darlin'," he said.

He bent closer to the dry cistern. Its drawpipe was clogged, blocked irretrievably by years of vegetation and other obstacles shoved or hammered up the pipe.

Grunthor set down the lantern and took hold of the crumbling stone of the cistern's cover, giving it a mighty heave. The top moved aside easily, so easily in fact that he stumbled and almost dropped the heavy disk. Beyond the cover of the cistern was another tunnel, dark and clear. The Sergeant snatched the handle of the lantern and climbed inside.

It was a tight pinch, but after his journey along the Root, he was accustomed to such difficulties. Grunthor crawled out of the pipe, dragging the lantern ahead of him, and stepped out into a vast, cavernous room, doubtless once the cistern's main holding tank.

The lanternlight revealed a hoard of objects both priceless and banal, a trove of relics and refuse from Gwylliam's time. Mounds of coins struck in gold, silver, platinum, copper, and rysin, were swept into piles with almost the same care as fallen leaves, while displayed on makeshift stands were timepieces, hilts of broken swords, bedwarming bricks, rags of garments wrapped carefully, kept dry, the metal buttons polished; cutlery, brushes no longer bearing bristles, medals, rings, amulets of office, inkwells of black clay, golden goblets, book bindings, fragments of pottery and scores of other objects, some martial, some domestic, all with but one thing in common. They each bore the royal crest of Serendair.

Grunthor removed his horned helm and scratched his head in amazement. “What's all this, then?" he murmured.

Placed slightly forward, as if in places of honor, were four objects, most likely newer or at least more recently found than the others—a ceramic plate, a coin like the thousands of others in the hoard, the scarred lid to a box made of blue-toned wood, and finally a chamber pot with a broken handle. “Blimey," the Sergeant whispered.

He looked around carefully, finally discovering, back beneath a row of rotten barrels with the royal seal affixed to their taps, a heavy wooden object shaped somewhat like an hourglass. He lifted it carefully and turned it over. On the bottom was the crest wrought in tarnished silver, with dry fragments of wax still clinging to the gravures. A seal. A royal seal. Bring me the Great Seal. Quickly Grunthor gathered all the newly displayed items but the plate and tucked them into his pack.

He crawled back out of the cistern, dousing the light as he did.

Silence, deep and profound, filled the ruin of the Loritorium, giving it the feel of a crypt, all but for the warmth of the flamewell that burned in the center of its broken wreckage of streets, a tiny flame of sun-bright intensity that cast weak, flickering shadows through the underground vault. The quiet was solemn, not somber; there was music of a sort, slow and sweet, even in the lack of sound.

The red winter flowers in Rhapsody's hand gleamed in the inconstant light. She had gathered the last of the blossoms from the gardens of Elysian after closing up the cottage in preparation for her long journey. Now she stood over the Earthchild, marveling at the beauty and incongruity of her. Her skin was gray and polished smooth, like that of statuary, over a deeper flesh striated like marble with twisting swirls of brown and green, vermilion and purple. The heaviness of her features was balanced with a delicacy that was strangely poignant, grassy lashes resting beneath eyelids that were translucent as eggshells.

Gently she covered the Sleeping Child with a blanket of eiderdown she had brought from Tyrian, tucking the edges around the greatcoat Grunthor had left to keep her warm. She put the winter flowers next to the child on the altar of Living Stone atop which she slept, bent and kissed her forehead carefully.

'From your mother, the Earth,“ she said softly. "Even in the coldest, darkest days, she gives us color for warmth."

The edges of the Child's lips twitched slightly, then settled back, slack again with slumber.

Rhapsody caressed the long white hair, britde and dry as frost-bleached grain, remembering it golden with roots as green as summer grass when she had first beheld her. Like the Earth, dormant beneath its blanket of snow, she slept deeply, peacefully.

The words of the Dhracian Grandmother came back to her as she watched the almost imperceptible tides of breath.

You must tend to the child.

How am I to tend to her?

You must be her amelystik now.

'You miss her, I know,“ Rhapsody said aloud, absently smoothing the blanket. "But her spirit is here with you—I can feel it around me in the cavern."

The Child did not react, but continued her steady, hypnotic breathing. Rhapsody felt a warmth, a drowsiness come over her. Slowly, without thinking, she lay down on the altar of Living Stone next to the Child and gently laid her hand on her heart, as the Grandmother had taught her.

The sensation beneath her palm was a strange one; there was no real heart beat, but rather a vibration, perhaps from the forges and mines, ringing now in purposeful constancy, perhaps from the fire of the Earth's heart below the flamewell, that sounded almost like breathing. As much as one might think she'd be cold to the touch or hard, the sense was much more secure; the Child was thriving in this warm place, on this slab of Living Stone. She in turn radiated warmth and history and the smell of farm earth as much as that of deep mountain stone; it was a rich, green smell, and it made Rhapsody, now asleep beside her, dream of her childhood.

For the first time in as long as she could remember old dreams came back to her, dreams of leaving the farming community of her childhood, of seeing the wonders of the world, of choosing her own way in that world. The youth, the innocence that had been hers then renewed itself in those dreams, eased the lines of worry from her brow, made her skin shine with the luminous excitement of a young girl on the threshold of life. With each moment that passed in sleep she was renewed. By the time Achmed found her, deep in slumber next to the Child, the cares of life had been all but erased from her face.

He stood over them both for a long time, musing in both melancholy and tender thought. He had known someone had come down to the Loritorium, had guessed who it had been, had watched her sleep in the unlit and still shadowy vault, and considered that in this place constructed to guard riches and had never held them, here were two great treasures of the world, two sleeping children.

As he watched he experienced a collision of memory and vision. The memory that throbbed in his mind was of her lying, near death, after their encounter with the Rakshas, where she slept, bloodless and clinging tenaciously but fragilely to life in the shadow of the friend she had slain. The vision was of the inevitable future, where, long-lived Cymrian or not, she would lie, no longer sleeping, but passed from this life as all must pass; stone, a shadow of herself. He had a rush of terror like the fireball that had consumed what had remained of the Colony, a fear that this was the only way he would ever have her to himself, in death. And he knew, even if all the world had to be sacrificed, he would do that to save her.