Destiny: Child Of Sky (64 page)

'You can't blame yourself for any of those."

'Then what difference have I made?" He was silent a long time.

'Who did you expect to save?"

Even before she finished the question, she felt doors open in him that she feared to approach.

Dark in the ruins of Gwylliam's treasure vault, which would never hold any of Gwylliam's treasure, in possession of the blood that might possess him, aware of the Finders yet unable to find them, Achmed looked at Rhapsody, just awakened from slumbering near the Sleeping Child, rested but not ready for all that was to come. He admired her water-smooth hair, the very glow of which washed away anger and despair and memory, breathed again through the boiling cold sensation of her fingers on his face, softly took her hand, kissed and cradled it in both of his own.

'Just one. One of those who might not even believe they need saving," he said.

“And the world in the process. I guess that means we have more in common than could ever be imagined by anyone looking at us. We are the opposite sides of the same coin, Rhapsody."

'Well, if we are a coin we have value.“ She picked up her cloak and pack. "I have to leave. I will send messages as often as I can. Before I go, will you answer one question for me?“ Achmed nodded. "What have you really been trying to say since you came down here?"

'Don't die."

She squeezed his hand, the warmth of her touch radiating through the leather of his glove. “I don't intend to. But the guiding principle of my life can't be staying alive for Grunthor's sake—or for yours." She released his hand and leaned over to kiss the brow of the Earthchild, hearing his words behind her as she turned away.

'Then do it for your own."

When she. turned back he was gone.

All but naked in the dark, with all the sounds of the labyrinth falling around him, Achmed carefully unsealed the hematite vial and examined the blood essence with his breath and skin.

At first he had been surprised at the lack of odor. He knew the stench of the F'dor, the ghastly smell of burning flesh in fire, and had braced himself for it. Instead there was a faint trace of stone; the hematite, which Rhapsody had said was silvery-black when the Lady Rowan gave it to her, now was mottled with streaks of green and brown, polluted veins striating the stone vial. Perhaps the stone itself had absorbed the stench, the burning, caustic properties of the demonic blood. He made note to destroy the vial once he was finished with the ritual in the fires of his hottest forge.

He covered the opening of the vial with his finger, then upended it, drawing out a drop of the black blood onto the fingertip. The very touch of it made his skin sting; he recoiled, feeling the needles of racial hatred coursing through his veins.

The blood was viscous, thick and opaque; not even a hint of light could be seen through it, no surprise in this place of darkness. Achmed could feel a deep pounding in his ears. The evil within the single drop on his finger was palpable, nascent; no prediction might be made about its effect on someone whose heart had for years bent more naturally to murder than mercy.

At the far distant reaches of his mind, he thought he could hear chanting, deep and harsh in tone, amid the crackling of dark flames.

He examined the blood again. Perhaps, rather than it being a tool for him, it might transform him into one instead. Chief among the dangers would be if, before he had savored it over his heart, memorized its sticky silkiness firmly into every fingerprint, it sated him. He might become unable to distinguish its scent from his own, feel it only as part of the ambient breeze of the room, instead of the tang of demon, the nettle of skinless spirit, the swollen tongue of a choking sentience. He swallowed the fear. It was time.

Gently he inhaled the blood's bouquet and, taking a firm hold of the vial, gingerly splashed it into his nostrils, tasted it, kneaded drops of it into the pores of his cheeks, along the ridge of bone, to better impress it into his awareness.

His heart began to race, his skin to prickle in excitement. His own blood flowed freely through his veins, making him tumescent, causing the surface of his skin to come alive with heat. He anointed his skin-web, the network of sensitive veins and nerve endings that spanned his neck and chest, feeling a scream of ecstatic agony rise up from inside him, to escape raggedly through his hoarse throat.

As the initial pain subsided Achmed came to clarity again. He was mostly naked in the center of the Hand, a gore-covered pixie in a stone palm. Painted dusky red in deliberate swaths from his forehead and earlobes nearly to his knees, he could still taste the blood's acridity and smoke. He spit into the vial to rinse the last drops of the F'dor's essence and imbibe them into the warmest crevasse of his soft palate.

Finally, when every last drop of the demonic blood had become part of him, he closed his eyes, feeling the rhythm of his own heart, a rhythm that would one day match itself innately to the beast. In between cadences, he spoke aloud to it, his prey, his quarry; his brother in blood.

Just as I have your blood on my hands now, one day I will have it so again.

The cowl Rhapsody had given him lay on the floor beside him. Slowly he bent and picked it up; it took all the effort that he could muster. The bloodstain on it was unfamiliar, had no resonance to him; he tossed the scrap of fabric aside. As they had suspected, Khaddyr was not the demon's host. Achmed closed his eyes, and willed the blood deeper into his skin.

He had lost count of how much time had passed. An hour, perhaps five, of drying without evaporation, absorbing focus as he wrestled with the monster he had taken into himself. There were remnants of each child whose blood had contributed to the aggregate; had he been of an evil nature, this might have been a way to make another Rakshas. Distantly he retasted the sand around Entudenin, the frost-hardened clay of the Hintervold, the pitch of Tyrian pines, and saffron -laced sawdust from an arena he had never seen, all seasoned with dark flame.

When the breath he drew was finally wholly his own again, and the dried blood merely red dust, he came, exhausted, into an awareness of sounds that had been gathering for some time, sounds of multiple approach.

Outside the reach of his vision, the Finders were assembling.

Shakily Achmed crouched to the ground and reached for the skinning knife; his knees buckled beneath him and he fell forward, striping his hands with his own bright blood. He was weak, weaker than he ever remembered being, and vulnerable; should the Finders, whoever they were, be of hostile intent, he knew there was little he could do to defend himself against them.

He pushed feebly against the ground, trying to stand, but there was no strength in his muscles. It took all his stamina just to pull himself into a crouch to protect his abdomen.

Achmed raised his head. In the distance of the tunnels he could make out the glimmer of eyes, hundreds of them, or so it seemed to his fading mind. Inwardly he cursed, knowing that he had calculated foolishly, allowing himself to be caught alone after taking the caustic blood into himself, rendering him powerless. What difference have I made? he thought silently. can now recognize the F'dor's host. A shame, then, that I am about to die at the hands of a few hundred of my own people, timid cave-crawlers who would run at the mere sight of me if I were not so compromised.

His head dropped to his chest as he heard them approach; with great effort he tried to stand again, but to no avail. His breath emerged, ragged and shallow, as one by one the shadow-forms at the end of the tunnel emerged from the complete darkness, staring at him as the wolf pack stares when encircling an injured hind.

-

He knelt before them, more than half disrobed, all but weaponless, painted grisly with the sacrifice granted from the Veil of Hoen.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see the new glint of weapons, hear the ratcheting of crossbows being loaded. His head became too heavy to hold erect; he struggled to raise it high enough to stare them in the eyes, light eyes that gleamed in shades of blue within dark silhouettes; they had brought some light source with them, though he could not tell what it was. He made note of the oddity; most Bolg had eyes as black as the cave darkness from which they had come. He tried to speak, to command them to withdraw, but he could not even find his voice.

The unmistakable sound of metal coming forth from leather sheaths blended with more ratcheting. Achmed cursed again, not at his impending death but at the sheer waste of it all.

As the mass of Finders took a step forward, a horrific scream rent the air of the tunnel, a roar that chilled Achmed's blood as much as it warmed his heart. From the index finger tunnel of the hand came the earthshaking sound of pounding boots and weapons clanking loudly; it was a sound of muscle in motion, fed by alarm and anger. Another shout, this time with words. “What's all this, then?!"

In a twinkling the Finders scattered, disappearing back down the tunnels from which they had cautiously emerged. Achmed managed to lift his head high enough to see the oncoming form of the Sergeant-Major, almost as tall as the tunnel itself, and wide as a dray horse, barreling toward him out of the darkness. Within a moment Grunthor was there, in the Palm, staring down at him in a mixture of amazement and horror. “Ya all right, sir?"

Achmed nodded slightly; it took all his remaining strength to do so. Without a word, Grunthor picked him up, slung him across his back, and carried him up into the relative light and warmth of the mountain chambers ofYlorc.

-Varm enough?" Grunthor asked.

Achmed nodded testily. “Thank you." He struggled to sit up amid the black silk sheets of his bed, slipping slightly. “Show me your haul."

Carefully the Sergeant unloaded the items he had taken from the Finders' hoard.

Achmed rifled through them, stopping at the pot with the broken handle.

'A chamber pot?“ he said disdainfully. "They sold out my kingdom for a chamber poi"

'Bolg don't know what a piss-pot is,“ Grunthor said, running his index finger over the gravures of the seal. "All they know is it's got the crest.“ He handed the wax seal to the Bolg king. "So why do ya think oP Gwylliam was callin' for this in his death throes? Think he wanted to issue a proclamation before he went to sod?"

Achmed shrugged. His strength was returning slowly, along with his sense of self.

Hidden deep below, in his unconsciousness, however, he could feel the blood bond, the imprimatur that tied him to the still-discovered host of the F'dor, lurking somewhere west of the foothills of the Teeth.

'He called for it in the same breath as he called for the horn,“ he said, pushing up against the pillows. "Hand me that manuscript about the horn that I pulled out for Rhapsody. Maybe there is a connection of some sort."

Grunthor rose and collected the scroll from the king's desk, and brought it to his bedside.

'Per'aps you should get some rest now, sir,“ he admonished. "Oi'm sure you need it; Oi know Oi do, after be'olding you in all your splendor. In fact, Oi don't expect to recover any time soon."

For the first time since they had returned from the tunnels Achmed smiled.

'Just a quick scan, Sergeant," he said, unrolling the scroll. Grunthor sighed and settled into the chair next to him; in his experience a quick scan lasted a minimum of two hours.

He had long since nodded off to sleep when he felt a change in the air of the room.

He sat up immediately and turned to Achmed, who was sitting now at his writing desk, poring over the ancient parchment.

Grunthor stretched deeply. “Well?" he said in mid-yawn.

The Firbolg king's eyes were bright with excitement as he turned around.

'I found it," he said.

'And?"

'The horn—it is the Great Seal. It is the testament, the witnessing certification, of the covenant he forced all of them to enter in exchange for their new lives in this land.

'When the Three Fleets set sail, they did so with the understanding that they were traveling across the world for the purpose of keeping their Seren culture alive.

This, presumably, in Gwylliam's mind, was a culture that would maintain his birthrights. He didn't want to just save his subjects, he wanted to save his own royalty in the process."

He held the scroll up in the candlelight for Grunthor to see. The Sergeant peered over his shoulder at the illustrations of the horn and the docks of three port cities of Serendair.

'Apparently the price of gaining passage on the ships that left the old world ahead of the cataclysm was an oath, a promise to come in response to the call of this horn. Each refugee placed his hand on it as he boarded the ship, swearing fealty to Gwylliam, for himself and his heirs, throughout Time. The horn is the Seal of that promise. It must have been similar to Rhapsody's Naming powers—the most solemn of oaths in the presence of unimaginable power, the rising of the Sleeping Child in the waters off the coast of the land where Time began, spoken by the high king of that land. That's why the Cymrians, all generations of them, feel compelled to assemble in response to its call. All those ancient, powerful people, who have either sworn fealty on the horn, or whose ancestors did, will be tied, blood-deep, to the Summoner, with the most profound of loyalty oaths." Grunthor nodded.

Achmed sat back in his chair and chuckled.

'And what's so funny now, sir?"

The king rolled the manuscript up sharply and slapped it on the table.

'Rhapsody is going to sound it."

-

From the earliest days of memory the legends told of the of the rampage of the wyrm Elynsynos, the tale of her laying waste to the western continent in her wrath upon the landing of the First Fleet.

When the Fleet disembarked, and Merithyn, the dragon's explorer lover, was not among them, the stories said, Elynsynos gave vent to a great fireball of rage, roaring from inside her coppery belly, full of anger and destructive fury. The flames of that angry breath torched the primeval forest that surrounded the Great White Tree, igniting Gwynwood into walls of endless fire, destroying everything to the seacoast save for the Great White Tree itself, the upper branches of which were rumored to still contain the signs of soot and blackening fire.