Rhapsody, Child of Blood (38 page)

The door to the study was open, and she leaned into the doorway. "Hello?" she called.

-

Llauron's voice answered her, but seemed distant. "Ah, you're done. Come in, my dear."

Rhapsody walked into the study to find the room empty. On the wall that abutted the fireplace was a door she had not seen, standing open. She crossed the room, noting the embers on the hearth leaping in greeting as she walked past, and went into the adjoining room.

It was very similar to the study except for the central piece of furniture. A messy, ornate desk took up much of the room, covered with papers and scrolls that seemed piled randomly on it. Another hearth, a smaller one, was visible between two paned windows. Glass was a luxury that Rhapsody had seen only rarely in the old world and only in this house since arriving in the new one. Llauron rose from the large chair behind the desk and smiled at her.

'Well, now, are you feeling better?" She nodded. "Good, good. Did you recognize the herbs?"

Rhapsody thought for a moment. She did—lavender, fennel, rynlet, lemon verbena, and rosemary—but she was unsure how to say the words in this dialect, and didn't want to speak them in the old language. "Yes," she said.

The Invoker laughed. "Very good. You're something of an herbalist, then?"

She shook her head. "No, I know a little about plants, but not much."

'Well, if you are interested in learning more, this is the place to do it. Our chief herbalist, Lark, is Lirin also, though not Liringlas."

'Perhaps. I'm sure it would be very interesting."

'Indeed. Customarily I have Gwen put rock salt in the bath as well. It soothes sore muscles, or at least I hope it did."

Rhapsody smiled. "Yes, thank you. I feel worlds better."

Llauron opened his hand in the direction of a soft-looking chair. "Khaddyr made his apologies; he is needed at the hospice. Perhaps you'd like to ask me some of the thousand questions you must have, and I admit I have a few of my own. Have a seat by the fire, my dear, and help yourself to the supper tray."

Rhapsody complied, breathing deeply to keep the fire from reacting to her nervousness. It was of little use; the flames leapt to life as she sat in the chair. Llauron didn't seem to notice.

'What is this place?" she asked carefully, trying to keep within the dialect.

Llauron smiled. "You are in the home, the keep, of the Invoker—that's me, of course—of the Filids, the religious order that worships the One-God, the Life-Giver, by tending to the various aspects of nature. My home is at the crest of the Circle, the community where our order lives, trains, and tends the Great White Tree—I imagine you saw it on your way here, it's difficult to miss." Rhapsody nodded. "The name of the holy forest in which it grows, and we live, and you presently are, is Gwynwood."

Rhapsody sat back in her chair. She had never heard the names of any of those places or things before.

Llauron saw her disappointment. "Can you read maps?" "Fairly well. Mostly sea charts."

'Excellent. Then come over here." The old man rose and led her to a strange orb in the corner suspended from a hinged floorstand. On the orb a map had been painted, showing the landmasses of the known world. He took the round map in his hands and spun it, locating a northern continent with a long, irregular western seacoast.

'This is where we are," Llauron said, pointing slightly inland from the coast.

Rhapsody blinked but said nothing. She had seen this landmass before in her studies, but it was thought to be uninhabited.

The Island of Serendair was in the southern hemisphere on the other side of the world. Though she had anticipated this possibility, her throat tightened nonetheless.

She was much farther from home than she had hoped.

'May I see the round map?" she asked hesitantly. Her vocabulary was failing her occasionally.

'Certainly. It's called a globe." Llauron swung it over to her on the,'stand.

Rhapsody turned the globe slowly, making note of some of the places she had seen before, and many more that she hadn't. Carefully she examined each part of the world, trying not to be obvious, her heart pounding. The language with which it was labeled was similar to that of her homeland, but with a few characters she didn't recognize.

Finally she was able to turn it to the place where Serendair was, and found the Island in the correct place, on the opposite side of the Earth and sea. But instead of being labeled by its actual name, it was rendered in gray and annotated as The Lost Island.

Her hands grew cold. The Lost Island? It didn't surprise her that the mapmakers of this place were unfamiliar with the geography on the other side of the world, just as the Seren cartographers had been unaware that this place was inhabited. But why call it lost?

Her eyes scanned the globe quickly. She noticed that in addition to its strange appellation, Serendair was also the only landmass colored in gray. She swung the map back to the place Llauron had indicated they now were.

The Invoker was watching her in interest. "Here, let me show you a little of the geography." He went to the high pile of maps on the sideboard and rummaged through them until he came to the one he was looking for, unrolling it for her to see.

'The Tree is here, in the central forest region near the southeastern border of the forest. Gwynwood itself is a religious state, and as such is not aligned with Roland, our neighbor on the southern and eastern sides."

Rhapsody followed his finger, and saw that the seaside province to the south of the forest was labeled Avonderre, and the eastern one Navarne. Across the wide ocean to the left was an area depicted in green, as the areas he was now showing her all were.

Part of the mainland across the sea, the other green area was labeled Manosse.

'Avonderre and Navarne are part of Roland?"

'Yes, as are the provinces of Canderre, to the northeast, Yarim, east of that, Bethany, due east of Navarne, which is the Regency seat, and Bethe Corbair, east of Bethany."

Rhapsody studied the map with interest. Avonderre, Navarne, Bethany, Canderre, Yarim, and Bethe Corbair were the provinces of the country of Roland, but were not the only lands depicted in green. The color was used only in the section of the world Llauron was indicating, and nowhere else on the globe.

From the map it appeared that Roland encompassed part of the western seacoast, great rolling hills to the south of Gwynwood, and spread eastward into a vast, wide plain that was labeled The Orlandan Plateau.

It stretched further eastward to the foothills of a sharply broken mountain range, cut by a deep valley. The mountain range was labeled The Manteids. At one time the land around the Manteids had been noted as Canrif, but that had been neatly crossed out and replaced by the hand-written word Firbolg. Rhapsody swallowed hard upon reading the word.

She pointed to a country to the south that bordered on Bethany and Bethe Corbair.

It seemed to be mostly composed of the same mountain chain as the Manteids, stretching south into a wide, high desert. This land was also depicted in green. "Is this part of Roland, too?"

'That's Sorbold. It is not part of Roland, but a nation unto itself."

'And this?" She indicated the area labeled Firbolg.

Llauron laughed. "Goodness, no. Those are the Firbolg lands. That's a dark and treacherous place, if ever there was one."

Rhapsody nodded; she could believe that of a land occupied by Firbolg. Her finger traced along the southern edge of the country of Roland, the final area shaded green, unlabeled. "Why does this area seem to have no name?"

Llauron uncurled a corner of the map as it rolled closed. "These are the nonaligned states that were once part of the Cymrian lands." His voice was matter-of-fact, but he watched her intently as he said the word.

Rhapsody's face was blank. The word meant nothing to her. "Cymrian lands? The green ones?"

'Yes, all of Roland and Sorbold, as well as those states that are currently nonaligned, Manosse, on the other continent, and the Firbolg Waste were once part of the lands settled by the Cymrians, spelled with a 'y,' though pronounced as a 'u.'"

'Who were the Cymrians?"

A flicker of surprise crossed Llauron's face. "You've never heard of the Cymrians?"

'No." Her hands began to tremble slightly. Llauron noticed, and patted one comfortingly.

'The Cymrians were the refugees who fled the Island of Serendair prior to its destruction." cKhapsody heard the words Llauron had spoken: the Island of Serendair prior to its destruction. They slowly took up residence in her brain, settling in her mind like music from a distant orchestra. Its destruction.

-

A sense of calm descended on her; it was the physical reaction that occurred in her in the advent of great danger or panic. She fought to keep her face placid as the blood rushed from her head, cramping her stomach and leaving her feeling mortally weak.

With a practiced hand she picked up the map and carried it over to the chair she had occupied, and sat down again, balancing the scabbard across her knees and letting the fire warm her suddenly pale face.

'I'd like to hear more about the Cymrians, but will you explain two more lands to me?" she asked, her voice sounding exaggerated in her own ears.

Llauron sat in the chair opposite her. "Of course."

She forced her eyes to focus on a land depicted in yellow to the south of Gwynwood and its southern neighbor, Avonderre. The land seemed to be part of the same enormous forest but, aside from being shown in a different color, was labeled Realmalir. "What is this?"

A smile flickered across the Invoker's elderly face. "Those are the Lirin lands, the Great Forest of Tyrian. The word is Old Cymrian for'the Lirin kingdom.' The Lirin were indigenous to this land. They were here when the Cymrians landed, and they are here still."

'But not part of Roland?"

'No. During the Cymrian Age the Lirin were allies of the Cymrians, but the Great War changed that."

'Great War?"

Llauron took a deep breath. "When you say you are from far away, I see you are not exaggerating. What is the other land you wanted to ask about?"

Rhapsody pointed numbly to the white lands to the north of Gwynwood and Roland.

"What is this?"

'That is the Hintervold. It comprises all the lands to the north and east past the old Cymrian realm. I have some maps if you'd like to see them."

She was beginning to grow nauseated. "Some other time, if you don't mind. Tell me more about the Cymrians, please."

Llauron glanced out the window into the darkness. "Well, I can tell you a little, but it's a rather long story.

'A very long time ago, the last of the Seren kings, whose name was Gwylliam, made the discovery that the island nation of which he was the rightful ruler was doomed to dissolve in .—fire. The ancient manuscripts I've studied are not clear on how he came to know this, but kings of Serendair were often gifted with foresight, and knew a great many things indisputably." Numbness tingled at Rhapsody's temples. She had never heard of Gwylliam.

'Centuries before, the Island had sustained widespread damage when a star fell from the sky into the sea," Llauron continued. "It caused a great deluge which split the island and buried much of it beneath the waves. It was not hard to believe that something such as that could happen again."

Rhapsody struggled to breathe normally. She was familiar with the legend of the Sleeping Child, the story Llauron was now telling her.

Her mother had told her the Lirin tale of two stars that were sisters, Melita and Oelendra; how Melita had fallen from the sky and into the sea at the land's edge, settling below the waves but still churning with unspent fire. Islands to the north of Serendair, formerly mountaintops, became tropical from the heat, and the seas between them raged, making it treacherous for ships to sail near them.

The star at the bottom of the sea became known as the Sleeping Child. The Lirin believed that one day it might awaken and rise again, taking the rest of the island to the depths with it when it did. The sister star, Oelendra, was said to have fallen in despair, leaving its light still burning in the sky even after its death. She had thought the stories to be myths.

Llauron's voice came back to her as if through a fog. "Gwylliam was, by nature and training, an architect, an engineer, a smith. He refused to accept his kingdom's death knell, and instead decided to find a way to preserve the culture that his royal line had fought so hard to protect.

'He undertook great plans to evacuate the Island, although some of his subjects, notably from the older races, such as the Liringlas, chose to stay behind rather than leave, even in the face of impending disaster. Others chose to travel to nearby landmasses within the shipping lanes that had been plied by Seren sailors for centuries.

'But Gwylliam was not satisfied with either of those alternatives. He wanted to find a place where the Seren culture of all its races could be preserved, a sanctuary for his subjects where they could rebuild their civilization. To that end he chose a sailor, a man of Ancient Seren stock, who was called Merithyn —the Explorer. He was sent out in a small ship, alone, to find a suitable place to relocate the Seren who wanted to flee.

'By the way, let me clarify the difference between Seren and Ancient Seren. Any citizen of what was at the time modern Serendair, regardless of race, was Seren, though since they .came here they have been referred to exclusively as Cymrians. The Ancient Seren were a particular race, tall, gold-skinned people from long before the races of man colonized Serendair. They died out, for the most part, well prior to the era I am telling you about." Rhapsody, herself Seren, nodded numbly.

'Eventually Merithyn came to this place, which at the time was the impenetrable realm of a dragon named Elynsynos; that's much too long a story to get into tonight, but if you stay for a while, I will be more than happy to relate it to you.

'At any rate, Elynsynos took to him, and sympathized with the plight of his nation, so she invited them to come and live within her lands, the places you now see, for the most part, in green on the map. Merithyn returned with the news happily, and the Seren came to this land in three fleets of ships.