Destiny: Child Of Sky (63 page)

In all the world, he understood like no one else the compulsions of the F'dor, and knew why there was reason to fear.

Wnen she woke Rhapsody felt him watching her, even before her eyes could discern him in the shadows of the Loritorium. She knew the feeling well; this was just another of thousands of times she had come out of sleep to awareness to find him observing her carefully, like quarry.

She sat up, careful not to disturb the Child, returned his gaze, and felt, as she often did, as if she were looking through the mirror of the world, she from the outside, at him within, not comprehending the darkness he lived in. In all their time together she still had no consistent window into his soul; his breath and sustenance were a mystery to her still.

In darkness, however, there was sometimes a keyhole, an eclipse-thin chink, a tiny crack he left open to his inner thoughts, the workings of what made him enigmatic.

He felt safer in darkness; in daylight it was almost impossible to glean anything from his words, or actions, or expressions. Whenever she awoke thus, with him staring at her, she always wished for him to speak first, to illuminate something before the sun came up and made him utterly inscrutable again.

This time he did. “I knew someone had come," he said, almost awkwardly. “I came to make sure it had been you."

She looked at him, robed and armed, then nodded, stretched, and patted the Child of Earth as she used to pat the giant Bolg when he had guarded her in the tunnels.

“Where's Grunthor?"

'He had a matter of preparedness to attend to. Some missing weapons to account for." He took out a wineskin and offered her a drink, but she declined, shaking her head.

'Have you made use of the blood?"

'Not yet. I am waiting for you to leave the mountain."

'Why? I thought you were waiting until I returned to do it." Her query was soft; there was something pensive about Achmed's demeanor, and she wanted to tread lightly. The last time she had seen him thus they had been sitting on a crag ledge overlooking the long-dead canyon a half a league below them, staring eastward over the Blasted Heath, contemplating his army's first great loss. What they faced now was so much greater in scope and sheer destructive power, she knew, that it could only be considered soberly.

'I don't know what will happen,“ he replied simply. "It would be preferable for you to be on your way to try and talk some sense into the Lirin when I begin the ritual.

I am in a sense making it up as I go; I, like you, lost my mentor early. And he would never in his wildest dreams imagine what has come to pass in this world, and the last."

Rhapsody sighed and wrapped her arms about her knees. “I still am not certain I can be of any help to the Lirin. It's so far to travel if I'm not going to be of use."

Achmed snorted contemptuously.

'Are we back to questioning your status as a Namer?"

'I'm not sure of my abilities. I don't want them to fail me in the midst of something important."

'They won't. I would think reliving Gwylliam's sorry death might have convinced you otherwise.“ He stared for a moment at the distant flame from the vent at the Loritorium's center, then fixed a steady gaze on her again. "That first night we spent by the campfire, I asked, 'What can you do?' You replied, 'I can tell the absolute truth as I know it. And when I do that, I can change things.' And that's what you've done.

'The sense that a Namer is born or invested, like an albino or a virgin, and once changed can never again speak with the same power or conviction, is like assuming a healer must save every wounded or dying person she tries to help to remain a healer; that an assassin must never miss, must never be a tool or weapon for someone else's purposes; that a Sergeant-Major can never lead again once his entire company has been slaughtered. You must know, Rhapsody, that in every profession there is at least a small bit of failure to be expected. Don't be daunted by it; losing that confidence will surely drain the power that the demon could not have taken from you otherwise.

'The F'dor is in a way an Unnamer, it lies to bring the world to its end. Treaties, lives and deaths, even the form the demon takes are all subject to the way it tries to unmake the world, hide the lore, break the prison, make the Earth not a place where life goes on, but cosmic dust, nothing more than the scattered eggshell of some unimaginable beast. We have seen everything, there, in our trek through the world. We have touched what can not be imagined; we speak here, now, in the presence of a race as old as your oldest lore, nevertheless we do not tell all we know. We dare not. What would the Lirin do to explain, to defend, to survive the awakening of the wyrm? There is nowhere to go, no grove of safety in which to hide. How deeply must the Nain delve to protect themselves? Can any sailor sail far enough, any soldier train hard enough? When your own race decrees ''Kyle him,' Life is what it is, you choose instead to speak the truth that says that our individual lives mean something. Though it was not the truth of these shadows, of this child, it was truth enough to take you through the flame at the center of the world.“ He turned to go back up the tunnel. "To see the world as it is surely leads to madness. Better to see the world you wish to see. I believe you are the one who first explained that truth to me.“ "And what world do you wish to see?"

He stopped, turned slowly to see her standing, adjusting the sword on her hip, shaking her hair straight. He chuckled soundlessly.

'I wish to see a world where F'dor are extinct, a legend in distant memory," he said.

“You wish to see a world where the Lirin are united. Perhaps we should both apply ourselves to making those worldviews ones which can someday be accurately expressed by Namers."

Rhapsody was suddenly struck by the music in his tone, and what the subtext of his words was.

He didn't know, once she left, if he would ever see her again. She crossed her arms, regarding him fondly. “Tell me something." “What do you want to know?"

'Grunthor told me a little bit about how and where you met.“ Achmed looked at the floor and slowly shook his head. "Grunthor will say anything to get you to stay in the mountain. And though he is one of the cleverest men I know, he is also blessed with the gift of a certain amount of naivete. He's had all these years to understand how he is cursed, and he will mercifully never understand."

'Cursed?“ Rhapsody asked, dumbfounded. "How can you suggest such a thing?

Grunthor has such purity of purpose. He can't be cursed."

'Grunthor is cursed deeper than you are, with your nightmares and your purposeful blindness to things you don't want to see. Grunthor has the curse of Earth, being its child."

'I hate it when you say cryptic things like that. Explain."

'Grunthor has a gift for guardianship, and the need for it. Surely you must have noticed; he's been guarding your arse since the moment we met you in the back alleys of Easton. It was the same with Jo; it is the same with the Earthchild, with the Bolg soldiers that he bullies and loves. It was the same in the old land. It is and has always been the same with me. If he could hold every valuable thing inside his skin and put his blood and life around it, he'd find that guardianship easier, but here, now, everything tied to the Earth has a trace of the wyrm. Protecting you will one day kill him, with your wandering, your misplaced trust and affection. And he couldn't bear to die because of the pain it would cause you. He's damned, like the polluted Earth. She hurtles through the ether, bound even the gods don't know where, carrying inside, deep in her heart, the first and last Sleeping Child, the burden whose birth may be its mother's ending. Like the Earth, like the Grandmother, Grunthor will give his life in the guardianship of you."

Rhapsody shook her head as she checked her gear. “No. There is no need to guard me anymore. I can tend to myself. Grunthor knows that better than anyone—he trained me."

'I know. But you seem to be insistent on taking dangerous risks. If you are going to do that, at least do it in a worthwhile cause, so that if you die, and Grunthor does, too, in the process, that it will have at least been for a good reason."

She looked into his eyes, meeting their steady gaze. “And what causes that I espouse do you consider worthwhile?"

'Helping build the Bolg into a nation of monstrous men.“ "I did that. You eradicated every contribution I made.“ The Firbolg king rubbed his eyes. "Not every one. And that is only temporary, assuming we survive whatever attack is coming. There is also the unification of the Lirin—you should be safe among them, at least for a while. Forming a Cymrian alliance, while annoying, may prove to be useful as well.“ "So what risk have I taken that you don't think is worthwhile?“ He reached within his robes and produced the hematite vial, the smooth stone catching the light of the flamewell and gleaming dully. "You felt the need to save those creatures, those demon-spawn, even though it may have meant the end for all of us.

The blood from one of them would have been enough; we should have executed the rest. But you were insistent; you put yourself repeatedly in harm's way to rescue them, even though it may eventually be your undoing."

Rhapsody shrugged. “I thought it more prudent to make sure that all the blood was collected, that you would have a better chance of catching the demon's scent with more of it. If you recall it was you that said trying to trace the F'dor was like trying to catch a breath of perfume across a crowded bazaar. Sometimes you remind me of the Rakshas, Achmed; these children aren't tainted receptacles of blood and nothing more. They have souls, immortal souls. It is heinous to use them for our own purposes and then discard them as if they were nothing. If we really are going to live forever, or have lives so long that it seems like forever, I don't want that on my conscience. I don't think you could abide it, either."

-

The Bolg king began to pace the rubble-strewn floor of the burnt-out repository.

'You have no understanding of what 'nothing' is, no idea how long 'forever' can be.

You were never nothing. You were a farmgirl, a harlot, a harper; at your lowest, the most demeaned moment of your life, you were worth something, some cattle, some coin, some moment of attention. It may have felt damnably little, but it was a place, a hole in the world to land in. You think you have been nothing, but you haven't, Rhapsody."

She reached out her hand and stopped him in his pacing, turning him to face her.

As she studied his face she saw something there she had never seen before.

'Emily,“ she said softly. "My family called me Emily. And you're right, Achmed—even in those times before I knew you, I never was nothing. Neither were you."

The light from the fire behind her leapt, and Achmed could see the green in her eyes before the shadows returned, coloring them gray again with darkness. “When I changed your name from the Brother, it was inadvertent; it wasn't meant to devalue what you were then."

The Bolg king's gaze grew more intense, so piercing that it almost hurt to return it.

He stared at her for a long time, then looked up at the pinnacle of the cracked domed ceiling above him.

'You were the second Namer to change my appellation,“ he said heavily, as if each word cost him dearly. "It was my mentor that named me the Brother, because that's what he said I was—Brother to all, akin to none. Had I followed his teachings, the path he laid out for me, I might have used my blood lore in the same way you use your music—to heal. He, too, believed that I was not nothing." He laughed bitterly.

“I seem to be spending my life proving that his faith was misplaced. Perhaps the name we are given at birth is the truest gauge of what we will be after all."

'What was it?" Her voice held a reverence that made his throat tighten.

The Bolg king continued to stare at her through his mismatched eyes, both of them darkening with an old, all-but-forgotten emotion.

'Ysk—that's my given name. It means spit, or venom, a discharge or insult, a sign of infection.“ He exhaled slowly. "Imagine being born Bolg, yet like this."

Achmed took the veil that shielded all but his eyes from sight and uncovered one side of his face and neck to reveal the blood vessels vibrating just below the surface of the dark olive skin, drawing in each sensation and word, as if he were covered all over with a sensile eardrum that quivered with even the misty, breath-soft touch of her glance.

'Every squint of resentment, every glare of fear, every silence of neglect. For a long time I believed that dark spirits watched over me, gleeful. If I had known what death was, I would have found a way to get to it, to inhale it into myself and be gone. I know what it is like to be nothing, Rhapsody—less than nothing. I don't want your pity; I want you to understand that perhaps I understand these demonic children better than you do."

Rhapsody shook her head. The flame in her hair highlighted the darkness around them, caught rainbow-golden sparks from the distant light in its ever changing dance. She softened the grip on his arm and gently moved her fingers up his shoulder and rested them along the line of his jaw.

'They didn't know that you were also half-Dhracian, and wouldn't have understood the significance even if they had known. The Bolg of your kingdom do not know, either, nor anyone in this world save you, Grunthor, and me—and Oelendra, who is as purposeful in the hunt for the demon as we are. Something no one knows about you will be our salvation, and the salvation of this land. It doesn't matter what the Bolg who named you thought. You were never nothing, not even then."

He inhaled very slowly, deeply, silently. “I was the special project of a very holy man. He tried to teach me to be a healer. Look what came of all his good intentions—and I haven't a single drop of demon's blood in me. The war to come will be terrifying. More terrifying is that I do not think I wish to stop it. The men of Roland or Sorbold will die from hatred of the Bolg, and except for the relish of justice, I don't care. The Bolg will die as well. Add that to what Grunthor has suffered, and you, and this child, and all those demonic 'children,' and others. What did all that training come to? What did I ever heal? Who did I ever save?"