The walls of the vast city could no longer be seen and darkness was swallowing the meadows that surrounded Easton long before the three travelers stopped to make camp. They had left the city by the eastern gate, down by the docks.
Easton was a port city, a thriving relic left over from the days of the racial campaigns in the Second Age. Though its original planning, and recent attempts at restoration, saw it as a great center of art and culture at the crux of the trade routes, during the wars it had been refitted for defense, as a walled fortress, surrounded on three sides by great stone bulwarks eighteen feet thick leading down to the wharf. The bustle of the seafaring traffic made handy cover for their escape.
Rhapsody had run through the back streets of Easton before, had even been dragged once or twice, but never as purposefully as with these two who half-led, half-carried her through the yards and cobbled alleys. She was able to keep up with them only because of her knowledge of the city.
When they cut through two abandoned buildings well after the point where she was sure they were out of tracking range, however, she lost her bearings. Certainly they had also lost anyone who might have identified them at the scene of the crime. In front of a busy portside tavern, the slighter man stopped.
"These will do," he said, then stole two horses in broad daylight.
The giant lifted Rhapsody onto one of the horses, and they walked a few blocks before the men mounted and rode quickly out of town, across the fields south and along the sea.
The giant rode slightly behind, and Rhapsody could hear the horse working hard to keep up with the pace set by the man with thin hands. In fact, even though she rode in front of him, in the same saddle, she could not hear his breath. It felt only as if she were wearing a modestly heavy cloak instead of sitting in front of a person intent on escape, guiding the horse from behind her. The vibrations from the galloping horse hid her trembling.
They rode the entire afternoon. Rhapsody had never been outside of Easton's southern wall before, and kept casting mournful backward glances at the great gray vista of mud-and-thatch buildings, decaying marble temples, ramshackle stone houses, and towering statuary receding more and more into the twilight with each moment. At dusk she could barely make out the high, twisting wall that led down to the harbor, where distant lights were twinkling; it was nothing more than a faint black line in the approaching darkness.
Once they were out of sight of the city, they slowed their pace, but it was clear that the two men intended to put as much distance between themselves and Easton as possible. Even as night fell and Rhapsody had to acknowledge to herself that she was lost, and might have been kidnapped, not rescued as she first thought, they pressed on.
For a while Rhapsody had felt it was dangerous to the horses to keep moving when no one could possibly see a safe path. Then, without a sign or warning, they stopped. The night had come into itself, and the riders were surrounded by darkness.
"Get down." The voice seemed to come from the air.
Before she could react the smaller man quickly moved her from the saddle. He was down himself in an instant, and with a swift motion threw the reins to the other man.
"Grunthor, lose the horses." The veiled man vanished into the night.
Rhapsody lost sight of him almost immediately. She turned to the shape that the darkness made even more huge, simultaneously backpedaling a step and reaching quietly for the knife in her wrist sheath.
Grunthor did not look at her, but dismounted, tied up the reins on each horse, and stepped back.
"Get on with ya," he said, but the animals were so spent that they hardly reacted. As if he had anticipated this, the giant removed his helmet and moved to a spot directly in front of the horses, where both of them could see him clearly, even with all trace of twilight faded from the sky. He spread his arms and roared.
The sound rumbled and echoed through the horseflesh and through Rhapsody. For a moment the mounts were frozen, but after a breath they were reanimated and fled in the panic of prey in sight of the predator, wild-eyed and screaming.
Grunthor replaced his helmet and turned to Rhapsody. He took one look at the expression on her face and roared with laughter.
"'Allo, darlin'. Oi'm so glad to see it's love at first sight for you, too. Come along." He walked away into the night.
Rhapsody was not sure that it was wise to follow the giant, but was sure it was even less so to make him angry, so she took off after him. She struggled to keep up, trying to sort things out in her head. "Where are we going? Are we walking all the way?"
"Doubtful. We already been on forced march today."
At the edge of the horizon the full moon appeared and began to rise, golden, blanketed in the fog at the edge of the sea. Its light did nothing to illuminate the darkness; impenetrable blackness hung, heavy as pitch, in the summer air. Rhapsody thought she had good night vision, but she was still moving along more by touch and sound than sight.
She trailed after the giant as he followed a path that was apparently only visible to him until she nearly stepped into a small fire. Grunthor had sidestepped at the last second and had to put his arm in front of her to keep her from putting her boot directly into the flames.
A camp was already made. She was not sure if she didn't see it because he was in the way, blocking her view, or because of the darkness of the night, or the way the camp had been placed.
Grunthor moved to a spot upwind of the fire, took off his helmet, and drew a long breath before sitting down. He had paid little attention to her so far, and even though it would put her directly into his line of vision, Rhapsody went to the opposite side, keeping the fire between them, and dropped her pack to the ground. She wasn't bothered by smoke, and thought the flames might provide at least a small barrier if necessary.
In the firelight she took a good look at the giant across from her. Sitting on the ground, he was easily still eye to eye with her, which meant that he was a minimum of seven feet tall and at least as wide as a dray horse.
Beneath his heavy military greatcoat she caught a glint of metal. His armor was foreign to her, and better-made than she would have guessed. It looked like a kind of reptile-scale leather banded by support joints of metal plate, but she had not heard any scrape or other resonance from it the whole time. She was slightly alarmed that she had not heard much from his many weapons, either. He wore an extremely large ax and several wicked-looking blades, and had a number of hilts and handles jutting out from behind his armor.
His face was even more frightening. At least one tooth protruded past his lips, and it was difficult to tell what color his hide-like skin was in the inconstant light. His eyes, ears, and nose were exaggeratedly large on his face, and Rhapsody guessed that he was able to see, hear, and smell her much better than she could him. At the ends of his massive hands were talon-like nails that more accurately resembled claws. He was the stuff of an adult's nightmare. At the moment he was pulling food and something to cook it in from his pack, still ignoring her.
"Let me guess; you've heard of Firbolg but you never met one before, right?"
The sandy voice of the other man spoke directly behind her and Rhapsody jumped. She had not sensed his presence at all. She stared across the crackling flames at the giant. "You're Firbolg? You don't seem it."
"And just what do ya mean by that?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude," she replied, her face turning red in the light of the campfire. "It's just that, well, in my limited experience, Firbolg are thought of as monsters."
"And in my not-so-limited experience, Lirin are thought of as appetizers," Grunthor replied breezily, without rancor.
"I assume it's your preference not to adopt either of those assumptions," said the cloaked figure.
"Absolutely," said Rhapsody, smiling and shuddering at the same time. She had a feeling the giant wasn't kidding.
The thin man dropped a pile of rabbit carcasses near the giant.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Rhapsody. I'm a student of music. A Singer."
"Why was the town guard chasing you?"
"Much to my surprise, and chagrin, they were in the service of an imbecile who was looking to have me brought to him."
"Brought to him for what?"
"I assume for entertainment purposes."
"Does this imbecile have a name?"
"He calls himself Michael, the Wind of Death. Many of us call him similar, if less flattering, things behind his back."
The two men exchanged a glance, then the man in the cloak looked back at her again. "How do you know him?"
"I'm sorry to say he was a customer of mine three years ago when I was working as a prostitute," Rhapsody answered frankly. "It wasn't really by choice, but not much is when that's your profession. Unfortunately, he became a bit obsessed with me, and he told me at the time he would return for me, but he was such a pompous windbag that I never was much concerned about it. The first of several miscalculations on my part. The second occurred today, when he sent one of his slimy minions to fetch me, and I refused to come. If it had been his regular lackeys, I could have eluded them, but he's managed to enlist the aid of the town guard since I last saw him."
"Why didn't you just agree to meet 'im, and then go into 'iding?"
"That would be lying."
"So?" said the cloaked one. "That would be living."
"I never lie. I can't."
Grunthor chuckled. "What a convenient memory ya got there, sister. Oi seem to remember you tellin' them town guards that you and we was related. Oi think you might look a bit out o' place at our family gatherin's."
"No," interjected the sandy-voiced man. His eyes were full of clear comprehension as they stared at her. "That's why you asked us to adopt you first."
Rhapsody nodded. "Right. My attempt to dissuade them from bothering me wouldn't have worked if it wasn't the truth, at least on some level."
"Why not?"
"Lying is forbidden in the profession I have chosen; if you don't speak the truth, you can't be a Namer, the highest form of Singer. You have to keep the music in your speech on-key and attuned to the world around you. Lying corrupts those vibrations, and sullies what you have to say. It's not an exact science, since truth is partially influenced by perspective."
"That's the academic reason. As a more personal philosophy, my parents always told me deceit was wrong. More recently, it's because once I broke free of my old, uh, line of work, the thing I treasured most was the truth. There really isn't any in being a whore—you are always someone else's lie. And you have to bite your tongue and participate in other people's fantasies, many of which you can't stomach."
"So now that I am free of that life, I couldn't contain my loathing of Michael for one minute more. It was probably a mistake, but I'm not sure I could have done anything differently and still have lived with myself."
"Well, there's no 'arm done."
"Yes there is. I just exiled myself from Easton. I probably blinded one of the town guard in my attempt to escape, and now I can't go back."
The smaller man laughed. "I doubt there are any eyewitnesses."
"Maybe not that saw you," said Rhapsody. "There were many more that saw me—they chased me for eight street corners."
"Then you have a problem." The cloaked man sat back, surveying the field as the smoke from the fire formed a twisted tendril that pointed to the stars. "You could simply choose not to go back. Have you a family you would leave behind, or perhaps one elsewhere on which you can rely?"
The utter indifference in his voice gave Rhapsody the feeling that this was an interrogation, not an attempt at friendly advice. She was fairly sure she had been able to persuade them that she was harmless and relatively valueless, but the fatigue of the flight and uncertainty of her situation was beginning to take its toll. By now the giant Firbolg had skinned the rabbits and arranged the fire to cook them. Rhapsody did not know whether to expect them to offer her anything, but she would hardly have been surprised to see the game eaten raw. When she first undertook to become a Singer, one of the earliest lessons was an epic song of Firbolg history that had left a grisly impression on her, and her two rescuers had done little to change it.
The men moved as though they had traveled together for a long time. There was a routine to the tasks of preparing the meal that spoke of practice and mutual respect. The thin man had killed the rabbits; the giant skinned them. The giant arranged the fire; the other man found fuel. The entire meal, from the meat to some root that also required cooking, was accomplished and the campsite laid out without a word, one to the other. They behaved almost as if she were not there at all. Grunthor did motion at her once, across the fire, with a skewer heavy with sizzling meat, but she shook her head. "No, thank you."
For her part, she rationed out a small portion of the bread Pilam had given her, and stored it in a pocket of her cloak rather than return it to her pack. She was feeling more and more uneasy about her companions by the minute, and wanted to be ready to flee if necessary. Her pack was not within easy reach. Normally she would never have considered leaving her instruments, but when he stopped to eat, Rhapsody had caught sight of the thin man's face.
She tried to look at first without appearing to look, but as horrifying as the giant was, she was unprepared for the shock of the slightly more human face.
In the whole expanse of skin on the front of his head there was not a single smooth spot. It was not lumpy, but scarred, pocked, and it was marked with traceries of exposed veins. She had seen diseased faces, and faces marred by time and weapons and other scourges, drink and worse, but here it looked as if the entire army of Destiny's Horsemen had run roughshod over his face, sharply clipping flesh from his nose, thrusting the rest around with the force of their riding.
What truly caught her, though, were his eyes. As if plucked from two different heads, neither size, nor color, nor shape were matched in them, and their placement in this remarkable and terrifying face was not even symmetrical. He looked as if he were sighting down a weapon. Just then she became aware that he was staring back at her.
Rhapsody had been in the city long enough and was a quick enough reader of people to seldom be caught looking. Her recovery was swift, if fumbling: "So where are you headed next?"
"Off Island."
She smiled uncertainly. "You must have irritated someone really important, too."
A cloud passed over the moon. Rhapsody could vaguely tell that she should be aware of something.
She continued to stare at him through the fire, which seemed to have changed ever-so-slightly, and as she watched the thin man chewing, she saw the fire roar up and reflect in his eyes. She imagined that he was staring at her while chewing on her answers instead of the roasted rabbit she now felt foolish to have refused. Everyone deserves a last meal, she thought ruefully.
Somewhere in the deepest part of her, the part of her that was a Namer, a storysinger, she heard her own musical note ring through the roaring of the fire, through the silence of the men. The clarity of her Naming note, her touchstone of truth, told her that this was a trap, a trick of the fire. Then she saw the thin hands and the battlefield face step through the fire itself, and she knew it was too late to escape. She blinked with eyelids made heavy by more than exhaustion; the smoke must have contained a hypnotic herb with which she was not familiar.
He was angry, but he did not touch her. Instead, he grabbed her pack from the ground next to her and began rifling through it.
"Who are you?" the cloaked man demanded. His voice was a fricative hissing, his cloak still smoky from his leap over the flames. He waited for an answer.
"Hey, put that down." She tried to stand but satisfied herself with shaking off the trance.
The giant stood up. "Oi wouldn't do that if Oi were you, miss. Just answer the question."
"I already told you; my name is Rhapsody. Now put that down before you break something."
"I never break anything unless I mean to. Now, try again. Who are you?"
"I thought I got it right the first time. Let's see; I'll try again. Rhapsody. Isn't that what I said before?" Her head was swimming, her answers seemed fuzzy. "What did you put in the fire?"
"I'm about to put your hair in it. How did you know who I am?" He grabbed her injured arm with fingers that behaved more like shears, cutting off feeling to her wrist and hand. Without moving, her muscle began to spasm. There was a small shock of painful interrupted bloodflow at each heartbeat.
Rhapsody did not react. One advantage she had always had was that she could stand a little abuse. She had also learned that hiding her pain and fear could keep her alive.
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I have no idea who you are. Now let go."
"In the alley you named me before those guards."
Even though her fingers were going numb, Rhapsody remained steady. You gentlemen are just in time to meet my brother. Brother, these are the town guard. Gentlemen, this is my brother —Achmed —the Snake. Despite her drugged state, she felt embarrassment.
"I needed an ally at that moment, and you just happened to be there," she said. "It was the first scary name that came into my head, even if in hindsight it was rather, well—I'm sorry. I didn't mean to presume."
"That's not the part 'e's talkin' about," said Grunthor. "'Ow did you know 'e's the Brother?"
"Whose brother?"
For a moment, Rhapsody thought it had gone too far, that she was going to pass out. With each question the sensation that he was severing her arm with his grip grew more urgent. Suddenly, he relaxed his hold on her and looked across the fire at his partner, then back at her.
"I certainly hope you're only pretending to be this stupid."
"No, I'm afraid not. I have no idea what you are talking about. Is your name supposed to mean something to me?"
"No."
"Then could you let go?"
Grunthor moved to help her stand as the man with the nightmare face released her and returned to searching her bag.
"What 'e's sayin' is, those troops after you were nothing next to what's chasin' us. This is a serious business, miss. My friend wants to know 'ow you knew 'e is the Brother."
"I'm sorry, but I've never heard of the Brother, if that's your name. I was trying to convince them that you were my brother. That's why I asked if you would adopt me, so that it would be true. I guess this was an unfortunate coincidence. But I've already told you I never lie. So either believe me, or kill me, but do not break my instruments."
"I'll smash every one here if you do not tell me the whole truth. Perhaps you had well-meaning parents. Perhaps you were once a professional whore, perhaps you took a vow. Perhaps you now are the consort of some holier-than-unholy man who gets his jollies from your candor. Tell me now who you really are and how you knew to name me."
"First, tell me who you both are, and what you intend to do with me."
The piercing eyes regarded her sharply. "This is Grunthor. No one has concealed that."
The giant glanced at her quickly. "Although you can always call me The Ultimate Authority, to Be Obeyed at All Costs," he said lightly. "My troops always does."
The joke had its intended effect. The robed man exchanged a look with the giant, then seemed to relax somewhat.
"At the moment, Achmed is as apt an appellation as anything for me, since that is what you chose to call me," he said sullenly. "As to who I am, and your fate, both of those are yet to be determined. You spoke my name and then changed it. Normally this would only be an annoyance, but those who are hunting us can make the dead speak, and surely will if they feel they can learn something. Those dead idiots heard what you said. What is a trollop doing with expensive instruments?"
Rhapsody rubbed her shoulder, feeling the pain begin to abate.
"I am not a trollop. As I told you before, I am a student of music, and I have achieved the status of Singer of Lirin lore; our word for it is Enwr. My goal was to go on to become a Namer, a Canwr; it is a rare accomplishment but the skills are useful."
"Four years ago I was accepted as an apprentice. I studied for three of those years with Heiles, a Namer of great renown who lived in Easton, but a year or so ago he vanished without a trace, and I was left to finish my studies on my own. I was completing my final research just this morning."
"What can you do?"
Rhapsody shrugged, then held her throbbing hands closer to the fire.
"Assorted things. The main thing Singers study is lore. Sometimes lore consists of old tales or the history of a race or a culture. Sometimes it's the knowledge of a particular discipline, like herbalism or astronomy. Sometimes it's a collection of songs that tell an important story which would otherwise be lost."
The man now known as Achmed stared at her. "And sometimes it's the knowledge of ancient powers."
Rhapsody swallowed nervously. The subject of lore was more akin to a religious belief than a science. It was the way in which the people of her race and profession derived wisdom and power from the vibrations in the life around them. Since in the Lirin creed Life and God were the same thing, the use of lore was a form of prayer, a kind of communion with the Infinite. It was hardly something she wanted to be discussing with a stranger, and especially not this one.
She looked up to meet his gaze and found an intensity in his eyes that stung her own. It was compelling her to speak, silently demanding an answer.
"Sometimes, yes, but that generally is something known to Namers and Singers of great experience. Even then, the reason a Namer can draw on the power of a primordial element, like fire or wind, or on a lesser element, like time, is that they have intimate knowledge of it; they know its story, in a sense. That's another reason for the need for the vow of truth among Namers: if you should interject falsity into lore it dilutes its story, makes it weaker for everyone."
The hooded man stuffed her burlap-wrapped harp back into her pack and cinched the drawstring savagely. "So I'll ask you again, Singer; what can you do?"
Rhapsody hesitated. The man who had once been known as the Brother lifted her pack off the ground, balancing it precariously on one finger over the fire. It was as subtle a threat as she had ever seen.
"Not very much, outside of singing a rather extensive collection of historical ballads and epics. I can find herbs to throw into the fire to mesmerize people. Obviously that isn't going to impress you much since you can, too. I can bring sleep to the restless, or prolong the slumber of someone who is already asleep, an especially useful talent for new parents of fussy babies."
"I can ease pain of the body and the heart, heal minor wounds, and comfort the dying, making their passage easier. Sometimes I can see their souls as they leave for the light. I can tell a story from a few bits of fact and a good dollop of audience reaction. I can tell the absolute truth as I know it. And when I do that I can change things."
Rhapsody pointed to her pack, and he handed it over. She reached inside without looking, and took out a shriveled flower from her morning study session. Gently, to avoid crumbling what was left of the dried petals, she placed the blossom on her open palm and spoke the name of the flower as it might be said in the humid summer day of its glory.
Slowly, but strongly, the petals drank life into themselves and, as long as she whispered the words, bloomed again. Grunthor touched the flower with the tip of one claw, and it bounced a little, as it might if it were fresh. Then Rhapsody fell silent, and the life evaporated into the darkness.
"In theory, I could also kill a whole field of these by speaking the name of their death, if I knew it. So, I suppose the explanation of this afternoon's events goes something like this: We came upon each other in the circumstances you know. By happenstance I spoke your true name, for which I apologize most humbly, but it was, after all, an accident. And then I renamed you; now you really are Achmed the Snake, it's your identity on the deepest possible level. I'm sorry if that was presumptuous. I had no idea I could actually do it yet. I suppose that makes you my first."
"How ironic," said the man she had called Achmed, with a sneer. "I wonder how many other men have heard you use those very words."
"Only one," she retorted without a hint of offense in her voice. "As I said before, and am tired of repeating, I don't lie. Not knowingly, anyway."
"Everyone lies, don't be naive. I don't know whether your party trick has shortened the time we have, or covered the trail."
"Will you at least tell me who you are running from? I have told you all about what I was up to and who was chasing me, and here you have stranded me in the middle of gods-know-where, without a clue about who you are or where you're going or whether you're worse than what I left. I want to know if I should stay or take my chances back with the guards."
"This presumes you will be given a choice." Achmed turned his back on her and conferred quietly with Grunthor. For a very long moment she was stalled in her frustration and confusion. As her head cleared from the intoxicants she began to plot out how she might escape, and, if successful, find her way to somewhere she could survive. As she rearranged the displaced contents of her pack, Grunthor approached her. She turned quickly, but the other man was gone again.
"Miss, you should come with us."
"Why? Where?"
"To return to Easton is death. If the Waste o' Breath don't get you, then our particular problem will. You won't 'ave any chance to say you weren't with us, and they'll torture you until you tell what you know or die, whatever comes second."
"I could go to another town. There are plenty of places to hide. I'll be fine on my own, thank you."
"Your choice, my dear, but leavin' is better than stayin'."
"Where did the other one go?"
"Oh, you mean 'Uchmed'? Oi believe 'e went to scout for Michael, to make sure 'e ain't picked up our trail yet."
Rhapsody's eyes widened in horror. "Michael? Michael is following us?"
"Could be; it's 'ard to say. 'E was camped outside the nort'western wall when we left, so 'e probably ain't too nearby yet unless 'e is particularly intent on findin' you. Michael ain't got no trouble with us."
Rhapsody looked around in the darkness nervously. "Where are you going?"
"You can follow us as far as the forest, if you'd like."
"The Lirin wood? The Enchanted Forest?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
"I thought you said you were headed off Island."
The giant rubbed his jutting chin. "Oh, we are, believe me. But we're goin' to the forest first."
"What business do you have in the Lirin wood?"
"Actually, we're on a bit o' a pilgrimage, miss. We're gonna go see the Great Tree."
A look of awe came over Rhapsody's face. "Sagia? You're going to Sagia?"
"Yeah, that's right. We're gonna pay our respects to the great Lirin Tree."
Her eyes narrowed. "You aren't going to harm it, are you? It would be a tremendous mistake on your part."
Grunthor looked offended. "O' course not," he said indignantly. "We intend to do a bit o' paryin' there."
Rhapsody was mollified. "All right," she said, lifting her pack. "I'll go with you, at least to the wood."
"'Ow many miles you got left in you today, miss?"
"Whatever I need to have, I guess."
"Well, Oi'm afraid that makes you the only one. We been on the road all day, and we're campin' 'ere. Why don't you get some sleep, darlin'? We'll wake you in time to leave before daylight."
"Will we be safe? From Michael, I mean."
A look of utter amusement crossed the giant's face. "Oh, very safe, my dear. Not to worry."
"I can sit a watch," Rhapsody offered. "I have a dagger."
Achmed's voice came from behind her in the darkness. "Well, I for one will sleep much better now knowing you're protecting us, Rhapsody. Try not to hurt any small animals that might attack unless they're edible."
In the foothills of the High Reaches, within the Spire, the silent vault of obsidian that was its hidden seat of power, the red-rimmed eyes of the F'dor's human host broke open in the darkness.
The chain had snapped.
Slowly Tsoltan sat up on the smoothly polished catafalque where he customarily took his repose. He passed his hands through the darkness, grasping futilely for the invisible ends of the metaphysical restraint that had held his greatest trophy in servitude. Nothing; not even a frayed thread of his former absolute control.
The Brother had slipped his leash.
As his anger mounted, the air around the demon-priest grew suddenly dry and thin, on the verge of tangibly cracking. Tsoltan rose quickly and strode down the long hallways to the Deep Chamber.
Sparks ignited behind him, combusting tapestries, altar cloths, and the robes of a few unfortunate priests along the way. His minions gasped for breath in the smothering air and shivered in the black light of the flames, recognizing the fire for what it was—the prelude to the venting of the demon's wrath.
In fury he ascended the red-veined marble steps to the highest altar, his place of blood sacrifice. A solid block of obsidian, mined in the Second Age by the Nain of the Northern Mountains, it had once been the cornerstone of a temple to the All-God, the Deity of Life, built by the united races.
Now it rested at the top of the enormous staircase of concentric marble circles reaching to the unseen ceiling of the Spire, its leather limb restraints and metal collection vessels amusing testimony to how times had changed. It had seemed a fitting place to store the true name of the Brother, the Dhracian whose birthright had bequeathed him a link to the life's blood of the populace of Serendair. The Child of Blood, as he was known in some circles.
Vast ceremonial braziers, standing cold and silent, roared to hideous life in a wide, screaming circle of black fire as he raged past. The smoky flames threw grisly shadows on the distant walls, twisting and writhing in grim anticipation.
Upon reaching the sacrificial altar, Tsoltan hesitated for a moment. He extended a shaking hand and gently caressed the symbols of hatred exquisitely carved into the polished surface, tracing the crusted black channels that laced the smooth top, curving downward into a brass well in the center.
Through this metal mouth he had fed the assassin's captive soul the blood of the Brother's own race, and, when the Dhracians were largely exterminated, that of other innocents, by way of keeping his unique blood bond alive even in slavery.
It had been especially effective in insuring the Brother's cooperation in his master plan, though he had no illusions about the assassin's allegiance. It would have been a coup just to secure his services; the Brother had a reputation, prior to the capture of his true name, for taking only those assignments that he selected himself. His enslavement changed all that. It had made him Tsoltan's most effective weapon and his primary agent in the completion of the plan's final steps.
The F'dor's hands gripped the altar table more firmly now. He muttered the words of Opening in the ancient language of the Before-Time, perverse countersigns of power tied directly to the birth of fire, the element from which all of his race had sprung. The black stone altar glimmered for a moment, then glowed red as the fire within the obsidian burned, liquefying the stone into molten glass. With a hissing snap, the altar split in two.
Tsoltan tore through the layers of aqueous stone inside and reached into the hollow reliquary within the belly of the altar where the Brother's name had been entombed. When the name had first been brought to the altar to be sealed in the coffer it had been the most singular moment of satisfaction the F'dor had ever experienced, at least in this lifetime.
It was the culmination of great search and great expense, first obtaining the name, and then capturing it. Finally, the greatest Namer in all of Serendair had been persuaded, after months of torture so excruciating that it bordered on artistry, to write the name in musical script on a scroll of ancient silk. Tsoltan himself had taken the scroll from the man's lifeless hand and surrounded it lovingly with a whirling sphere of protective power, born of firelight and held in place by the spinning of the Earth itself. It had been a thing of great beauty, and securing it within the altar had left him strangely sad, almost bereft of the joy its capture had brought him.
Not, however, as bereft as he felt now. The reliquary held no radiant globe, no Namer's scroll, only the fragments and crumbs of silk left over from what seemed to have been a small explosion. Feverishly Tsoltan gathered the pieces, searching for the musical script, but what few shreds remained were blank.
A howl of fury echoed through the mammoth chamber, cracking many of the obsidian walls. Tsoltan's servants waited in dread to be called in, but heard no further sound. A moment later, their apprehension expanded into full-fledged horror. They could feel the darkness fall about them, palpable and cold as a mist on their shoulders.
Tsoltan was summoning the Shing.
Rhapsody was already in the throes of a nightmare when the enormous leathery hand cupped her mouth, snapping her eyes open. Her heart, thrown into feverish racing, pounded so loudly she feared it would rip forth from her chest, but like the scream Grunthor's hand had stifled, it remained in place for the moment, unable to escape, careening off her ribs in panic.
"Sshhh, miss. Don't move. Stay 'ere, darlin', and don't make any noise, eh?" The giant's voice was soft. Rhapsody nodded slightly. Grunthor removed his hand and moved away.
Beneath her back she could feel the ground rumble. She strained to hear over the whine of the night wind, and after a moment thought she could make out the sound of distant horses, many of them, galloping hard.
With great effort she twisted onto her side, taking care not to rise above the grassy scrub where she had fallen into her troubled sleep. The fire was gone without a trace.
Grunthor knelt beside her in a shaft of moonlight, his enormous shape obliterating any other view she might have had. He was gleefully pulling weapons from his back and boot scabbards, fondly examining each blade in the muted light, humming softly to himself. Then, with surprising alacrity and silence, he was gone.
"You don't follow directions particularly well, Rhapsody." The silky voice came from directly over her. Rhapsody choked back a gasp and quickly lay flat again. Above her was nothing but darkness. "Grunthor told you not to move. It was for your own good."
Near her head she felt a slight movement of air, and the darkness twisted before her eyes. Achmed crouched beside her. "Of course, you're welcome to make yourself a target if you'd like. After all, these idiots coming momentarily are friends of yours."
"Michael?" Even in a whisper, the crack in her voice was clear.
From within the veiled hood, mismatched eyes stared down at her thoughtfully for a long moment, then looked up in the direction Grunthor had gone. She was aware of a faint hum, an almost insectlike buzzing; then Achmed looked down at her again. When he spoke his voice was soft and vaguely hoarse.
"His men. He's not with them."
"How can you know that?"
A low, distinct sound of irritation came from above her. "You're right. Why don't you stand up, wave your arms, and call out to him? I'm sure he'll be glad to see you if he's there."
"I'm—I'm sorry," she whispered, swallowing the choking knot of fear that had risen in her throat. There was no response. She waited a moment longer, then squinted. She could no longer see him. "Achmed?"
The warm night wind blew over her, whipping loose tendrils of golden hair and a few dried blades of long grass over her face. Rhapsody closed her eyes as the rumbling in the ground grew louder; the horsemen were coming nearer. She tried to keep them shut, but found herself involuntarily searching for stars in the sky above her, its blackness muted in the blistering light of the full moon. There was nothing she could do now but wait and listen.
Karvolt, Michael's lieutenant, reined his horse to a slow walk, signaling the others to caution. The scorched meadow grass was high in the peak of summer and undulated gently in the night wind; otherwise, there was nothing in sight for miles around, nor had there been since they left Easton.
Nonetheless he had sensed a hesitancy in his mount, an unwillingness in the gelding that usually signaled danger, although it might just as easily be the animal's exhaustion instead. They had been riding at a ridiculous pace, inspired by the ferocity of their leader's reaction to the discovery that his quarry had escaped. Each of the nineteen other men in the hunting party reined his mount to a stop in response.
Karvolt's black eyes scanned the dips and swales of the Wide Meadows again, listening to the clamor of the overheated horses coming to halt over the labored breathing and muttering of his men. The night wind blew through his matted hair, caressing his neck, but instead of drying the pouring sweat it only served to throw a chill through him. He shook it off; there was nothing in sight, just the waving high grass and the billowing shadows cast by the moon.
Absently he wedged his forefinger into the collar of his mail to ease the chafed welt that was rising there. His glance shifted to the men, some wearily leaning against the necks of their mounts, others uncapping their waterskins and drinking gratefully. He patted the gelding and felt it trembling still. Karvolt looked around once again at the wide panorama of darkness.
Nothing.
"Careful," he instructed in a low, clipped tone; Karvolt was a man for whom words came at great mental expense. "My horse's actin' afright. Anybody else's?"
As if in response, from the ground in their midst came an earsplitting, heart-exploding roar, a war scream that was equal parts anger and mirth, triumph and savagery. Ascending with it, equally fast, came its source.
The flickering shadows of the midsummer moon only illuminated part of the man-monster, a hideous mountain of snarling claws, tusks, and muscle wrapped in hide-like armor, both worn on his body and, worse, an intrinsic part of it. The beast was whetting two gleaming blades, one against the other. As it reached its full height it threw back its head and laughed uproariously, a sound even more gruesome than its initial roar.
To a one the horses reared, screaming, tossing and trampling their shocked riders in their fright. A maelstrom of panicking horseflesh swirled in the windy meadow, a few resorting to rolling on the ground or bucking the soldiers off like stinging flies, amid the shouts and cries of terror.
After a few initial seconds of snorting misdirection the animals broke free and dashed off, in a loose, frightened herd, to the west. One unlucky soldier, unable to disengage from his stirrups, was dragged along with them, his screams echoing for only a moment, choking off abruptly long before the horses were out of sight.
"I think that's a unanimous yes."
Karvolt, who had managed to rise to one knee after disengaging from his fleeing mount, turned slowly and looked behind him, panting.
Coming toward him was what appeared to be a moving slice of the night. As it got closer he could make out that it was a man, swathed in a cloak with a deep, veiled hood, whispering across the field like an ill wind, coming his way unhurriedly. Karvolt scrambled backward over the broken body of one of his men, grasping at the hilt of his weapon with a shaking, sweaty hand.
He glanced quickly over his shoulder and then ahead again, judging the distance of the fallen saddle and saddlebags behind him to be just a few paces too far to serve as cover. Off to his left he could hear the sickening ring of metal and the subsequent thudding of falling heads and bodies as the giant lopped away, still laughing aloud.
Karvolt backed away, trembling, struggling to hang on to his composure and balance. Around him, men who had lost the fight against panic were bolting, only to be decapitated or impaled with something thrown by the chuckling giant. In his darkest nightmares, and all his bloody campaigns with the Wind of Death, he could never have imagined this. He rose to an unsteady stance and drew.
The other soldiers, some motionless in injury, others in fear, were bringing forth their weapons as well. Karvolt limped slowly back, his eyes all the while on the moving shadow, its cloak dancing smoothly in the warm wind.
The man was coming rapidly, fluidly, stopping before each of the fallen soldiers, swiftly removing their weapons from their hands, deflecting their final charges, with a patient, almost professional air. Though he knew they were attacking to the best of their remaining ability, it seemed to Karvolt that the soldiers were almost handing over their weapons to him. The shadow man moved faster than his strained eyes could follow, slitting a throat, inserting a dagger into an ear, respectfully, almost kindly.
He passed between each of the remaining soldiers on the ground, gliding from man to man like an angelic spirit, offering a hand to one as to a long-lost kinsman, then moving the blade from the soldier's grasp to his own and returning it, with one near-invisible motion, into the pit beneath the man's arm. With an air that was almost gentle he held down a hand to leave a neck exposed, dispensing death more swiftly and efficiently than Karvolt had ever seen, switching hands freely, never pausing, but never pushing. For all that Michael might call himself the Wind of Death, this truly was seeing the wind itself.
Time slowed for Karvolt as the realization came upon him, like a comforting mantle, of the imminence of his own death. Detachedly he was aware of the tightness of the skin around his eyes and across his brow. He knew his face was fixed in the skull-like expression of utter terror he had seen so often in the faces of his own victims, though he felt little of the actual fear it must be displaying.
As the hooded man finished with the last of his remaining comrades and started on the final approach toward him, Karvolt wondered with the last of his abilities of supposition how all the mothers he had put to the sword over the years had managed to fight until the end, as they invariably had. All his years of training and experience in murderous slaughter and the reactions that came with them had deserted him utterly in the face of death.
Summoning the last of his will, Karvolt swung the triatine that had been his father's before him, knowing that it was in vain, and fell back. The man stood over him now. Karvolt was sure he was being looked at from within the dark hood with sympathy. His weapon was gripped by a thin, iron-strong hand that closed over his own trembling one. The voice that spoke in his ear was courteous, almost courtly. "Allow me."
As even deeper darkness surrounded him, Karvolt was vaguely aware of the subtle twist that repositioned the triatine, then thrust the thin, triple-bladed sword through his chest.
In his last moment he noted the surprising lack of pain, and the absence of effort that the shadow before him expended on withdrawing the weapon; the weight of his own body falling away drew him off it quite cleanly. His vision closed in on him, starting at the outer edges of his eyes. He only heard fragments of the words the giant exchanged with his executioner. "You certainly took your time gettin' to 'im, sir."
"He had an interesting blade. Add it to your collection."
Grunthor returned he found Rhapsody exactly where he had left her, motionless, staring directly above her. He pushed aside the body of one of Michael's soldiers who had fallen within a hairbreadth of her, extended an enormous hand, and dragged her gently to her feet.
"Ya all right, miss?" The Bolg followed behind her, watching her expressionless face as she surveyed the carnage in the field. Rhapsody nodded slightly, continuing her examination. She shivered in the wind and ran her hands over her arms as if chilled, but otherwise betrayed no outward sign of emotion.
"Quite a testimony to your charms," Achmed said, a grim half-smile visible even under his veiled hood. "I guess they were just dying to see you again."
Rhapsody stopped before Karvolt's body. The men watched as her slender back went rigid. She crouched down and took the corpse by the shoulder, turning it slightly to better see the face. Then, like a rolling wave, hate swam visibly through her muscles.
She leapt to her feet and aimed an impressively savage kick squarely at the corpse's head, then another, and another, with growing intensity. Between shallow breaths she began to mutter a string of inspired curses more vile than either of the men remembered hearing, much to Grunthor's delight.
"Balls! Not bad for a little sparker! She could teach me an oath or two, eh, sir? Figger she knows 'im?"
Achmed smiled. "What gave you such a notion? Give her another shot or two, then see if you can pull her off. We need to be heading on."
Smoke from the breakfast fire hung low in the heavy morning air, blending with the rising fog of dawn, as Achmed had intended. The girl was not back yet, having excused herself a few moments before and walked a short distance away, to the other side of a deep swale in the field, out of sight. He could feel her anyway, her heartbeat slow and steady, not as it would be had she been preparing to run. He stirred the fire and the clumping stew in the pot that hung over it.
Her words of courteous leaving were the first she had uttered all night, though she had not been given to speaking much before that, anyway. Grunthor had inquired several times in the course of their march if she was all right, and each time she had nodded politely, staring straight ahead as they walked. He knew that the giant felt her to be traumatized, but Achmed was more inclined to believe that she was traveling down old roads in her mind, roads much rougher than the rocky fields they were now crossing. It didn't matter to him in either case.
They would need to bring her along. It had been his belief and position from the first discussion with Grunthor after their exit from Easton, but he was even more sure of it now. Her safety was not of concern; her problems with the Waste of Breath were her own matter. Far more important was the insurance that having her alive would provide until he could determine what exactly had happened with his name.
The collar of his servitude, the invisible chokehold that he had worn since the F'dor had come into possession of his identity, was gone, broken from his neck as certainly as anything he had ever known. From the moment she had uttered her inane comment in the cool darkness of Easton's back alley he had been free of it, and more: he had actually become a different man. She had changed not only what he was called, but who he was, a dangerous power to be entrusted to one whose actions characterized her as idiotic. That power must be substantial, colossal, in fact, to subvert the will of the F'dor. A powerful idiot; marvelous. Achmed snorted in irritation.
The name change had not seemed to affect his birthright. He was still assailed by the pounding of the heartbeats of millions, drumming in his dreams and each waking moment as they had from the moment of his birth.
But the details of this new arrangement of identity remained to be seen. He would need to retain her, at least until they arrived at their destination, to insure that there was no unfinished business, no detail in the situation that he had not accounted for. The Brother, before his enslavement, had been the master of not only his own destiny, but the destiny of anyone else he chose. This Namer's actions might have returned him to that state, or might not have; he now knew nothing about himself whatsoever. Another man might have been grateful for the salvation. Achmed was merely annoyed.
In the distance he could hear a soft, bright tone rising on the morning wind, a sound that eased the age-old pounding in his blood and cleared his mind; the girl was singing. An orange ray of dusty sunlight had pierced the blue gloom of morning, illuminating the smoky haze around them. He turned quickly to look at Grunthor, who had just awakened and was staring off in the direction she had gone as if entranced. The giant then shook his head, as if shaking off sleep, and turned to meet his glance.
"What's that?"
The man now known as Achmed the Snake gave the pungent stew another stir.
"Devotions."
"Eh?"
He banged the metal spoon savagely against the side of the pot. "She's Liringlas, a Skysinger. The kind of Lirin that mark the rising and setting of the sun and stars with song."
The giant broke into a wide, pasty grin. "Lovely. And just 'ow do you know that lit'le bit o' fact?" Achmed shrugged but said nothing. Dhracians and Lirin had ancestral ties, but he deemed it a piece of information not worthy of explanation.
A moment later the sweet music ended, taking with it the fragile sense of well-being it had brought a moment before. By the time Rhapsody returned to camp, Achmed's hidden face was wrapped in a scowl again. By contrast, the grim expression that had beset her features the night before was gone, replaced by a placid, almost cheerful mien.
"Good morning," she said. She smiled, and the giant smiled in return.
"Mornin', miss. Ya feelin' better?"
"Yes, thank you. Good morning, Achmed." She didn't wait for a reply, but sat down next to her gear and began tightening the leather bindings on her pack. "Thank you for your—assistance last night."
The sun cracked the horizon behind her, bathing her in a shaft of rosy golden light, causing her hair to gleam brightly. She pulled a crust of bread out of the pocket of her vest, then brushed the crumbs from the long sleeves of her white muslin shirt, stained with grass and dirt. She held out the bread, offering to share. When the men ignored her, she took a bite, wiping her mud-brown wool trousers free of debris.
"Eat quickly," Achmed said, ladling the stew into two battered steel mugs. "We have a lot of distance to cover today."
Rhapsody stopped in mid-chew, then swallowed painfully. "We? Today? What do you mean?"
The Dhracian handed Grunthor a mug, then raised one to his own lips, saying nothing.
"I thought—Michael's men are dead."
Achmed lowered his mug. "Are all Namers given to such rash leaps of assumption? He has many men. That was only one contingent. Do you really think it was the only one he sent?" He ignored Grunthor's glance and raised the mug to his lips once more.
Rhapsody's face went white for a moment, then hardened into a considered, calm expression. "How far to the Tree?"
"Less than a fortnight, if the weather holds and field conditions don't worsen."
The Singer nodded again. "And are you still willing to let me come with you?"
Achmed finished his stew, wiped the remaining droplets out of the depths of the mug with his forefinger, and shook it out, upside down, over the fire. He tossed grass into the other utensils, spun them out as well, and stowed them away, her question hanging heavy in the air. Finally, when the equipment was packed, he shouldered his weapon and gear, slipping both beneath the black cloak.
"If you can keep up, and keep your mouth shut, I'll consider it."
They made their way at a brutal overland speed, traveling in long stretches, for a dozen nightmarish days, stopping rarely, barely pausing before moving on. Traveling time was not limited to either day or night, but rather to Achmed's scouting. It seemed to Rhapsody that he had some sense of inner warning about the presence of other beings, man or animal, that stood between them and the wood.
They might hide for hours, waiting for a group of unknowing travelers to move out of their path. When this happened, she would take the opportunity to doze, not knowing when it would come again. Or they might go for an entire day at a forced-march clip if the way was clear. The men were used to the pace, and she could keep up fairly well, only needing to stop when she found the sun in the same place it had been once more without a rest break. After a week she was able to match their pace, and they traveled quickly, and in silence.
Finally, at noon on the twelfth day, Achmed pointed directly south and stopped. The two exchanged soft words in a language Rhapsody had never heard except between them; then Grunthor turned to her.
"Well, miss, you up for a good ten-mile run?"
"Run? We haven't stopped for the night yet. I don't think I can do it."
"Oi was afraid you might say that. 'Ere, then." He crouched down and patted his shoulder. Rhapsody stared at him, exhaustion making her confused, then realized foggily that he wanted to carry her on his back, a prospect she particularly loathed. She shuddered at the sight of the many hilts and blade handles protruding from various moorings and bandoliers that crossed his shoulders. It would be like lying down in a field of swords.
"No. I'm sorry, I can't."
The cloaked figure turned to her, and beneath the hood she could see the irritation in his eyes.
"We're almost there. Choose now: shall we abandon you here, or are you going to be gracious about Grunthor's offer of help? The woods are in sight; those that defend them are not. These are bad days; they take no risks with wanderers strolling near their outposts."
Rhapsody looked around. She had no idea where she was, nor could she see the forest. As she had several times since beginning the journey, she considered staying put, hoping that whatever she encountered after the two moved on would be safer company. But, also as she had decided before, her traveling companions rescued her, had not tried to harm her, and looked out for her in their own way. So she swallowed her displeasure and agreed.
"Very well, I'll walk as long as I can first, all right?"
"Fine, miss, just let me know when you're tired."
She rolled her eyes. "I've been tired for days. I'll let you know when I can't go on."
"Fair enough," said the giant.
The moon was on the wane. It hung low in the sky, trimmed with blood-red mist, a silent observer of the answer to the F'dor's summons.
From deep within the dark temple the call had come, channeled out through the massive stone steeple above, standing black against the night sky.
The towering obelisk was an architectural marvel, a joint masterpiece of man and of nature. Thousands of tons of basalt base and obsidian shaft reached up into the darkness that surrounded its well-hidden cavern in the High Reaches, Serendair's forbidding northern mountain range. The actual spire of the mammoth fortress a mile below the ground, the shadowy monolith pierced the racing clouds, thrusting skyward proudly, almost insolently, tapering to a point in which was carved the image of a single eye. As the chant began, the scraps of vaporous mist that hovered in the humid air around the Spire dissipated instantly; the eye was clearing, readying itself.
The ancient words of Summoning, spoken by the dark priest at the altar of blood sacrifice, were not known in the language of this Age, or even the two Ages previous to it. They came from the Before-Time, the primordial era when the elements of the universe were being born, and symbolized the most ancient and essential of all ties: the link between the element of fire and the race that sprang from it, the F'dor.
Twisted, avaricious beings with a deceptive, jealous nature, the few surviving F'dor shared a common longing to consume the world around them, much like the fire from which they came. Also like fire, F'dor had no corporeal form, but rather fed off a more solid host, the way fire grows by consuming fuel, destroying it in the process.
The demon-spirit that clung to Tsoltan, high priest to the Goddess of Void in the world of men, had made its way to power slowly, patiently, over time. From the moment of its birth in the Earth's fiery belly it had taken a long worldview, planning its steps carefully, willingly attaching itself to hosts who were weak or inconsequential in order to give itself the time to grow into the fullness of its potential.
Even as it passed, through death or conquest, to increasingly powerful hosts, it held back, reserved the time of its revelation, to insure that nothing compromised its ultimate goal. The possession of Tsoltan had been an inspired one, achieved willingly, early in his priesthood. The duality of his nature served to make him doubly strong, leant a strategic composure to his innate desire to devour. Living at one moment in the world of men, the next in the dark domain of black fire, Tsoltan existed on two levels, both as man and as demon.
And neither of them had the power he needed over the Brother.
From the ground around the Spire dew began to rise, steamy mist ascending into the scorching air of the summer night. Hot vapors twisted and danced, forming clouds that in the light of the just-past-full moon grew longer, taller, then began to hold a human shape.
First one, then several, then many, then a multitude of glistening figures formed beneath the unblinking eye of the obelisk, robed like the Brother himself, but with utter darkness within their hoods where a face would be. The bodily frames on which the mist-cloth hung began as thin and skeletal, but as the chant continued they took on the appearance of flesh, of a sinewy musculature, of fire-tipped claws, unseen indications of the demon's substantial investment of power expended in bringing them into being. The thousand eyes of the F'dor. The Shing.
In the great vault below, Tsoltan watched them assemble through the obelisk's eye, trembling with strain and joy. They lingered motionless in the air, absorbing more and more of the heat their master had committed to them, stripping it from himself, growing stronger as his power ebbed.
Within their empty hoods a glimmer could occasionally be seen, perhaps a moonbeam reflecting off the mist, but more likely the reflection of the lens of the immense eye which they now formed. In the world of living men one moment, in the spirit world the next, flitting back and forth between the two domains, much like their master himself, the Shing waited. They were as ephemeral as the wind, but not as fleeting: when sent forth to seek their quarry, they were as relentless as Time, as unforgiving as death.
Tsoltan clutched the altar, his strength waning like the moon on the fields above. In a moment his thousand eyes would set forth, resolutely combing each pocket of air, each step of the wide world, searching endlessly until they found their prey. When they finally came upon him, the results would be horrific.
The demon-priest trembled as weakness washed over him. The Shing would be taking virtually all of his life force with them, a heavy risk. As one knee, then the other, crumbled out from under him, Tsoltan wondered if the Brother would appreciate the compliment. His head struck the polished obsidian floor as he fell, splitting his brow and staining the stone with blood, an appropriate sign.
"The Brother. Find him," he whispered hollowly.
Tsoltan, high-priest, man and symbiotic demon-spirit, rolled onto his back and stared into the blackness overhead. A mile above, a thousand Shing turned and set forth on the wind, under the unblinking gaze of one solitary eye.
On the rare occasions that Achmed deemed a campfire safe, Rhapsody made sure to sleep as near to it as possible. Despite the blistering heat of midsummer, which lingered on well into the night, she found the crackle and smoke comforting, a reminder of the home she hadn't seen in so long.
Near the fire the voices in her dreams changed. They no longer repeated the jeering words of Michael and his ilk, but rather harked back to a deeper, farther Past, earlier, sweeter days near a different fire, drawing those days, if only for a moment, into the Present. Wrapped as she was in the fitful sleep of the outdoors, memories in the dark brought warmth, instead of fear, to her soul.
"Mama, tell me about the great forest."
"Get into the tub first. Here, hold my hand." Soap bubbles glistening in firelight, spinning in round whirling prisms, hovering for a moment, then disappearing before her mother's smile.
Warmth closing in with the water and the hot air from the hearth. "What did you put in the water this time?"
"Sit all the way down. Lavender, lemon verbena, rose hips, snow fern—"
"Snow fern? We eat that!"
"Exactly. Why do you think the water is so warm? I'm not bathing you, I'm making soup."
"Mama, stop teasing. Please tell me about the forest. Are the Lirin that live there like us?"
Her mother sitting back on her heels, crossing arms with rolled-up sleeves, leaned on the edge of the metal washtub. Her face was serene, but her eyes clouded over with memory, as they always had when thinking about the Past.
"In some ways, yes. They look like us, at least more than the humans do, but their coloring is different."
"Different how?"
"Their coloring matches the forest more. Ours is a reflection of the open sky and the fields where our people, the Liringlas, live." The hair ribbon pulling free with a gentle tug. "Now, for instance, if you were of the forest, this beautiful golden hair that your father is so fond of would probably be brown or russet-colored; those green eyes might be as well. Your skin would be darker, less rosy; that way you could blend in, walk the greenwood unseen, as they do." A cascade of warm water; sputtering, blinking.
"Mama!"
"I'm sorry; I didn't expect you'd turn like that. Hold still for a moment."
"Do the forest Lirin have little girls, too?"
"Of course. And little boys. And women and men, and houses and cities; they're just different from the ones we live in."
"Will I see them someday, too? Will I have a Blossoming Year and go to the forest like you did?"
A gentle caress on her cheek, the sadness in her mother's eyes growing deeper. "We'll see. We live among the humans, child; this is our home. Your father may not want you following the customs of my family, especially if it means you would leave for such a long time. And who can blame him? Why, what would we do without our girl?"
"I'd be safe among the Lirin, Mama—wouldn't I? They wouldn't hate me because I'm part human?"
Her mother had looked away. "No one will hate you. No one." The opening of a wide drying cloth. "Here, stand up, little one, and step out carefully." The harsh chill of the air, the rough fabric rubbing briskly on her wet skin. The soft warmth of her nightgown closing around her along with her mother's arms. "Sit in my lap, and I'll comb your hair."
"Tell me about the forest, please."
A deep, musical sigh. "It's as wide as your eyes can see—bigger than you can possible imagine—and full of the scent and sound of life. The trees within it grow in more colors than you have ever seen, even in your dreams. You can feel the song of the wood itself, humming in every living thing there. The humans call it the Enchanted Forest because many of the things that grow and live there are unfamiliar to them, but the Lirin know it by its true name: Yliessan, the holy place. If you are ever lost, the wood will welcome you because of your Lirin blood."
The crackle of the fire, its flickering light on her hair, so like her mother's. "Tell me about Windershins Stream, and the Pool of the Heart's Desire, and Grayrock. And the Tree—Mama, tell me about Sagia."
"You know these stories better than I do."
"Please?"
A gentle hand running smoothly down her hair, the bite of the comb. "All right, I'll tell you of Sagia, and then it will be time for devotions."
"The Great Tree grows in the heart of the forest Yliessan, on the northern crescent. It is so tall you can barely see the bottom branches. You could never see the top unless you were a bird, because those branches touch the sky."
"The legends say it grows at one of the places where Time began, where the light of the stars first touched the Earth. Sagia is as old as the ages, and its power is tied to Time itself. It is sometimes called the Oak of Deep Roots, because those roots reach out to the other places on Earth where Time began."
"It is said that its trunk root runs along the Axis Mundi, the centerline of the Earth, and its smaller roots spread throughout the Island, tying it to all things that grow. I know this is at least true in the great forest—it is the power of Sagia that creates Yliessan's song, keeps the forest safe. Now, come; the sun is setting."
The chill of the evening wind, the smudges of inky clouds lining the horizon on the final edge of the pale-blue sky. The glow of the bright star, appearing over the fields and valleys of the wide, rolling land. The sweet clarity of her mother's voice, her own awkward attempts to match the tone. The single tear on her mother's translucent cheek.
"That was very good, little one; you're learning. Can you name the bright star?"
"Of course, Mama; that's Seren, the name-star of our land."
Her mother's embrace, warm, strong. "That is also your star, child; you were born beneath it. Do you remember how to say 'my guiding star' in our tongue?"
"Aria? "
"Good, very good. Remember, though you live in the human world, though you have a human name, you are also descended of another proud and noble people, you have a Lirin name as well. The music of the sky is in you; you are one of its children, as are all Lirin. Seren hangs in the southern sky over the forest Yliessan. When all else fails, you will be welcome there. If you watch the sky and can find your guiding star, you will never be lost, never."
The grip of the huge, taloned hand, the caustic smoke of the campfire. The sting of the morning air. The deep voice ringing in her ears, drowning out the sweet one in her memory.
"Miss? Ya 'wake?"
If you watch the sky and can find your guiding star, you will never be lost, never.
Rhapsody sat up, clutching at the air in one last attempt to retain the memory. It was of little use; the dream was gone. She choked on the loss that welled up from inside her, then rose to a stand, brushing grass and twigs off her cloak.
"Yes. I'm ready to go now."
They had been in sight of the Lirin forest for several days before Rhapsody realized what it was.
Initially when she saw it, across the Wide Meadows at the edge of her vision, she was certain they must have inadvertently traveled east, that the broad, dark expanse in the distance was the shoreline of the sea. Like the sea it radiated a shimmering, undulating pattern of heat above it, lending it a mystical air, even from tremendously far away. Her mother's teachings notwithstanding, she was unprepared for the immensity of the forest, and the power that vibrated in the air around it.
They were hiding in a grassy thicket at midday in the endless meadow when the realization of what the dark panorama really was first occurred to her. Without thinking she stood, as if enchanted, and looked in the direction of the vast wood. Immediately Grunthor's enormous hand grasped the back of her vest and dragged her down into the brush again.
"What's the matter with you? Get down."
Angrily she twisted free and cuffed his hand away. "Let go. What's the matter with you? There's no one in sight, and I want to see the forest."
"Settle," whispered the sandy voice next to her. Rhapsody's protest died in her mouth, her words choked off by the authority in Achmed's tone. He was staring off to the west, crouched low behind the highgrass, his palm open to the air, the forefinger raised at an angle. "They've seen you."
There was the slight rustle of the wind in the distance ahead, then nothing more. After several long moments Rhapsody glanced to her side and saw Achmed still frozen in his crouch, his eyes closed, listening intently. She looked west again and saw the highgrass of the field ripple beneath the hot breeze. Still nothing.
Then, closer than she possibly could have imagined, off to the southwest she saw a face rise infinitesimally out of the scrub, its colors matching the dry brush so completely as to be almost indiscernible. The brown-gold hair crowning its head flowed in crimped waves that blended into the highgrass, the face itself almost the same color, shaped in the slender planes and angles that made her throat tighten with memory.
The large, almond-shaped eyes, the high cheekbones, the translucent skin, the slight build of the body hidden within the scrub, long of limb and muscle—Lirin. Darker somewhat than her mother had been, and than the Liringlas she had met the one and only time she had ventured into the meadows west of Easton. Perhaps these were the people known as Lirinved, the In-between, nomads that were at home in either the forest or the fields, settling in neither.
Suddenly she was aware of many others, not too far behind the scout, spread out through the billowing highgrass of the meadow to the west. A cloud passed in front of the sun overhead, casting a shadow onto the field, and in that brief moment of darkness she saw the glitter from two score or so eyes. Then it was gone.
Unwilling to look away even for a moment, Rhapsody could see out of the corner of her vision a glint of metal in the grass beside her. Achmed had drawn the cwellan as silently as the cloud had passed; it rested in his thin hands, ready but not yet aimed.
Grunthor's grip on her had eased and disappeared. Rhapsody's heart sank in the knowledge that the giant Firbolg was undoubtedly armed as well. Panic coursed through her, though she was only aware of it when she felt her cheeks redden; she was too busy trying to think of a way back from the abyss on which they now found themselves.
The hooded man had held his fire, which she took as a hopeful sign that Achmed didn't want the bloodbath that she knew was looming before them. That notwithstanding, having witnessed her two companions dispense with Michael's men, she had no doubt that they were capable of surviving being outnumbered, and were intent on doing so. This was the Lirin's land, however. She had no idea what advantage they had because of it.
In addition, Rhapsody was not sure on which side of the impending conflict she was safer. Though her two traveling companions had rescued her and had not tried to harm her, she did not trust them. The slaughter of Michael's soldiers had instilled in her a deep sense of apprehension, bordering on dread.
The Lirin were, in a sense, her own people with whom she felt a soul-deep bond, but to them she was a stranger, possibly an enemy. The woods are in sight, Achmed had said. Those that defend them are not. These are bad days; they take no risks with wanderers strolling near their outposts. Either way, she knew she was expendable. She felt a silent click on her neck as the cwellan disks were loaded next to her.
A stalk of dry scrub slapped her face, buffeted by the wind. Rhapsody closed her eyes against the onslaught of tiny grains she knew would be released by the bleached seedpod; she had studied highgrass in her training as a Namer. Hymialacia,her mentor had called it. Meadow grass, the fodder of the open spaces of the world. Its true name.
Its true name. The sense of danger vanished in the clarity of the answer. Rhapsody cleared her throat, parched by the heat and the fear she had been holding within it, and began to whisper.
Hymialacia, she said, speaking in the musical language of her profession. Hymialacia. Hymialacia. Hymialacia. Her skin hummed as the vibration she emitted naturally altered into a new pattern, pulsating, reverberating in the air around her.
Beside her Achmed reached out and touched her back; there was a tenuousness to the contact that told her he couldn't see her. She had blended as smoothly into the meadow grass as the Lirin; more so—for all intents and purposes, she was the meadow grass.
Rhapsody reached a trembling hand behind her and felt for Achmed's hand. Carefully she slid her fingers into the thinly gloved fist, whispering the song of the grass all the while. It had become a roundelay, a repetitive melody.
I am the Hymialacia. Achmed the Snake is the Hymialacia.
Over and over she whispered their names, blending into the roundelay the song of the wind, the clouds passing overhead, the name of silence. The grip tightened and pulsed like a heartbeat. Achmed was signaling his understanding.
A moment later he whispered something in a language she didn't recognize, and Grunthor turned his head to look at her. This would be harder: she did not know Grunthor's true name. A rustle in the grass a few dozen feet ahead almost broke her concentration. The Lirin had closed the gap, were almost upon them, spread thinly but resolutely through the meadows, approaching silently, relentlessly. Rhapsody closed her eyes and touched the giant's shoulder.
Hummock, she sang softly. It was a word she had learned early in her training when studying herbal lore, a word she had known from her childhood treks with her father through the wide open fields, over the swales and hillocks of her homeland. A knoll, a clumped elevation rising above the ground like a mound of soil. Hummock.
Rhapsody opened her eyes, still chanting her namesong over and over. Before her where Grunthor had been crouched appeared to be a small grassy hillock, with thin saplings of scrub trees sprouting from the ground atop it. She ran her hand over the brush on the knoll. Hummock. Hymialacia. The wind. The clouds above. Nothing here but the meadow grass.
Through the brush in front of her she could see legs clad in fawn-colored leather boots and trousers, close enough to feel her breath. Hummock, she whispered, trying to keep her voice steady. Obstacle. Dangerous footing. Pit. Hummock.
The gait of the approaching legs slowed, never stopping, then stepped smoothly to the south, circumventing the place where she knew Achmed was. She could see nothing there herself but the waving grass of the meadow, hear nothing above her own chant but the rhythmic buzz of hovering insects, the faint crack of the ground beneath Lirin feet, feel nothing near her but the heat of the blistering sun, the whipping of her brittle hair in the dry wind. Hymialacia.
She chanted the roundelay over and over until the angle of the sun changed and moved into her eyes. Rhapsody blinked; midday had given way to afternoon, shafts of light now bathing the rippling fields of gold and amber grass. The namesong faltered to a stop, her voice dry and swollen from exertion.
On her left side the grass parted. Achmed released her hand and rose to a stand.
"They're gone, out of range," he said.
Rhapsody looked to her right. The small hummock in front of her flexed and uncoiled, growing tall before her eyes again. What had appeared as the saplings of brush trees took on a more solid form as Grunthor's myriad weapons rose with him, still jutting out from the bandoliers and scabbards on his back. The former hill turned and smiled at her broadly.
"Well, miss, that was impressif."
"Indeed," said Achmed wryly. "Are you going to tell us that was another 'first' for you?"
As Rhapsody opened her mouth to reply, the clouds lurched overhead and the sky tilted at a strange angle. Achmed's hand shot out and grabbed her elbow, assisting her shaking descent to the ground. Once down she lay on her back and stared at the pinnacle of the sky above her, noting the swimming blue circles that hovered in the air. "Water, please," she croaked, then slipped into throbbing unconsciousness.
Dusk settled over the field like a gray mist, and still Rhapsody had not awakened. She lay silent, without moving, in a state of deep sleep the men had rarely seen. The girl was given to nightmares, and over the course of their journey they had become grudgingly accustomed to her fretful whispering and the occasional moans, as she tossed and trembled in the grip of night terrors that sometimes ended in her bolting upright with a heart-stopping gasp.
"No wonder she gave up the bizness," Grunthor had commented after one particularly wrenching performance. "Oi imagine 'er customers didn't get much sleep one way t'other." Achmed had just smiled.
Now she shifted slightly on her side, then lay quiet. The sun disappeared beyond the world's far rim, and the night watch passed from Achmed to Grunthor, who had been busy tallying and repacking the remaining supplies they had pilfered from the saddlebags of Michael's soldiers.
The Dhracian handed the Bolg Sergeant the waterskin from which he had been giving occasional drops to the unconscious Singer, then lay down on the northern side of the camp to sleep.
As the twilight deepened, Grunthor squinted for a moment, then strained to look harder into the distant horizon. After a moment he shook his head and settled back into his watch, only to sit forward again. He extended a foot and nudged the sleeping Dhracian, who did not move but opened his eyes.
"Oi see somethin'."
Achmed rolled to his side and sat up, looking off in the same direction as Grunthor. His vision was generally superior to his companion's, especially in the open air, but he saw nothing. After a moment's concentration he could sense no heartbeat drumming in the distance, a more certain sign that they were alone. He shook his head.
Grunthor shrugged, and Achmed started to lie down again, only to freeze as the Bolg quickly stood up.
"There it is again, sir. Oi'm sure. Far off, but somethin's there."
Achmed rose to a stand as well and walked to the top of a grassy swale, the crest of a rolling wave of earth. He stared off northward into the night, still seeing nothing. He waited.
Then a moment later he saw it too, a host of flickering lights, barely visible in the gray half-dark. In a heartbeat they glimmered, then disappeared again. There were hundreds, perhaps a thousand of them, crossing the distant meadows, spread uniformly out in a endless, near-invisible line, moving slowly south. A search party ? he wondered. But for what? Who or what might be so important that so many men were sent out in the dark to find it, guided only by lantern-light, here in the middle of nowhere?
Achmed closed his eyes and threw back his hood to better allow the vibrations of the oncoming heartbeats to impact his skin. He held his hand aloft, one finger in the air, tasting the wind in his open mouth to try and ascertain the source of the thousand different rhythms coming toward him. But there was nothing on the wind, no taste, no rhythm, no heartbeat. Only silence and evening breeze.
Once more he opened his eyes and stared, and saw it again, an infinitesimal flicker a thousand times over, moving steadily toward them, still far away but closer than a moment before. Movement, a twinkling light, repeated a thousand times, then darkness. Nothing on the wind.
Now the heartbeat that filled his ears, bristled on his skin, was his own.
"Gods," he whispered. "Shing."
Like crows before the coming storm they gathered up the sleeping Singer and their gear and fled blindly in the direction of the great Lirin forest.
Rhapsody awoke in darkness. The moon was gone, having all but vanished the night before into dormancy, and the sky was overcast with racing clouds. Woozily she tried to sit up, then reconsidered as the pain that encircled her head stabbed her violently behind the eyes. She settled for rolling slowly onto one side and propping her head up with her hand, her elbow resting on the stony ground. The groan that wheezed forth from her chest came from a voice she didn't recognize.
Immediately Grunthor was there with the waterskin, his hand behind her neck. Rhapsody drank gratefully, holding on to the skin with a shaking grip. When finally her thirst was slaked she sat up carefully and looked around her. Where before there had been nothing but open sky and highgrass all around them, now they were hiding within a thin copse of trees. A patch of night thicker than the rest of the air around her blotted out the dark horizon not far away.
"What's that?" she asked. All she could manage was a whisper.
Achmed looked up from behind his hood. "The forest." He smiled and looked away, but the Singer's reaction was unmistakable anyway. Her heartbeat intensified angrily; he could feel the blood rise to her face in fury.
"You carried me? All this way? How dare you."
"Yeah, she says that now. 'Ow come you didn't protest at the time, eh?" Grunthor's smile disappeared in the face of her building wrath. "Come on, miss, you didn't think we could stay out in the fields, did you? Oi didn't want to just leave ya there." A thin hand with a grip like iron clasped her mouth, the scratchy voice low and deadly.
"Bad call on your end, Grunthor. Now listen carefully, Singer, and rest your throat; it will be to your advantage on many levels. We are alone for the moment, but not for long. We are in the scrub-tree line, almost at the outskirts of the Lirin forest. This barrier is far more heavily guarded than the fields."
"Once inside the forest proper it is imperative that we get to the Tree as quickly as possible. Past the first major stand of trees to the southeast there is an outpost of twenty-four border guards. Being Lirindarc, forest Lirin, they are even more difficult to discern in daylight than the ones we met before you decided to take your little nap. What can you do to aid our avoidance of them and getting to the Tree?" He removed his hand, ignoring her withering stare.
"How do you know these things?" she spat. "Michael was not with the hunting party, which you knew somehow beforehand. The Lirinved—the In-between, if that's what they were—saw me, and you knew it. You knew they were there from hundreds of yards away. Now you know the number of Lirindarc and where they are within the wood? How do you know this? And why on Earth would you need me to help you at all?"
The strange eyes regarded her coolly; then Achmed looked off into the distance, considering his reply. He had no intention of answering her question; his gift of blood lore, the ability to sense and track any heartbeat of his choosing, was something that only one friend and a few enemies knew of, although his prowess as an unerring assassin was legendary among the seedier element in the eastern lands. He was trying to determine how to craft his response to achieve both his goals: gaining her cooperation while returning her to a more placid state.
Under normal circumstances the anger or dismay of a hostage would mean nothing to him, but this one was decidedly different. In addition to her obvious power and potential, there was something soothing about her when she was calm, an almost pleasant rhythm to the vibrations she emitted. It had an agreeable effect on his skin. Perhaps it was the result of her musical training. He took a deep breath and measured his words.
"We don't need you to help us at all. The Lirindarc do."
Her face went slack in shock. "Why?"
"Because you may be the one thing that can guarantee their safety if they come upon us."
Rhapsody's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?"
The piercing gaze fixed on her again. "We have no need to harm these people. They, unlike the rest of the complacent fools in this land, are not asleep. The Lirin we met in the fields and the Lirindarc are attuned to the world around them. They know what is coming, or at least that something is."
Even in the dark Achmed could see her go cold. "What's coming? What do you mean?"
An ugly laugh came from beneath the veils. "How can a Singer not feel it, not hear it? Was it all the noise of Easton that drowned it out, kept you innocent, Rhapsody? Ironic; an innocent whore. Or are you just oblivious?"
Even in the dark Achmed saw her green eyes clear, and a hard, resolute look come into them. "Tell me."
"No, Rhapsody; you tell me. The Lirindarc from the eastern outpost are making their way here now; they'll be upon us shortly. Grunthor and I need to get to the Tree, and get there in all due haste. We will allow nothing—and I assume you know what I mean by this—to get in the way. Now, what can you do to ensure that no harm comes to them?"
The staunch expression on her face crumbled. "I—nothing. I've never been here before, I don't know where I am. How can you expect me to ensure anything?"
Achmed turned east and sighted his cwellan. "I suppose I can't. Grunthor, ready your bow."
Horror replaced the confusion. "No, please! Don't do this! Please."
The robed figure turned and looked at her without dropping his weapon. "Once more, then, I'll ask you: what can you do? After this afternoon, I would think you'd have a less pathetic answer."
A large hand came to rest on her shoulder. "Come on, now, miss, surely you can think o' somethin'. Think 'ard, now."
Rhapsody took a deep breath and cleared her thoughts, one of the earliest techniques Heiles, her first mentor in the science of Naming, had taught her. After a moment she heard a voice in her mind, a voice that had told her the only tales of these woods she had ever heard.
Mama, tell me about the great forest.
It's as wide as your eyes can see —bigger than you can possibly imagine —and full of the scent and sound of life. The trees within it grow in more colors than you have ever seen, even in your dreams. You can feel the song of the wood itself, humming in every living thing there. The humans call it the Enchanted Forest because many of the things that grow and live there are unfamiliar to them, but the Lirin know it by its true name: Yliessan, the holy place.
Achmed could see the change come over her face. "Well?"
The Lirin know it by its true name: Yliessan.
Rhapsody looked up at the stars. "Its name," she said softly. "I know the name of the forest." Her eyes cleared, and when she looked back at the two men her face was calm, the expression in her eyes deadly. "But let us be very clear, as we will be parting company shortly: I use it for their protection, not for yours."
"Fair enough," said Grunthor, grinning.
When the Lirindarc patrol passed directly in front of the three strangers a few moments later, they saw nothing unusual, heard only the sound of the wind singing in the trees of Yliessan, and continued on their way into the night.
By morning they had arrived at the outskirts of the Lirin forest. A gentle wind had picked up with the dawn, and Rhapsody loosed the black velvet ribbon in her hair, letting the breeze blow through it, cleansing her mind of the painful memories that lingered from the day before.
She stood before the unbroken wall of trees, her eyes trying to penetrate the forest edge and look into the greenwood, where in the distance she could see verdant leaves of every hue, dark and cool as the night even in daylight.
Her mother's image was with her still. Rhapsody felt a catch in her heart as she tried to imagine her as a young woman, a girl really, at the beginning of her Blossoming Year, standing at the threshold of the forest where she was standing now.
Slight; neither Rhapsody nor her mother was particularly tall, perhaps her mother's golden hair twined in the intricate patterns plaited by the Lirin for practicality and ornamentation. Dressed in a billowing tunic and borilla leggings made in accord with the old ways, the traditional woven leather mekva at her waist. Eyes gleaming in quiet excitement. Had she been happy then? Rhapsody wondered, knowing that if she had been, it did not last.
Her mother had spoken rarely of that time. Her pilgrimage to Sagia was made, in the tradition of her race, just as she was coming into adulthood. The time she had spent in the forest, learning its secrets, was a mystery to Rhapsody, as her mother had been loath to talk about it. It was only when Rhapsody was entering her teen years that she learned why.
Upon the completion of her Year of Bloom, the second year of her pilgrimage, her mother had returned to the fields to find her longhouse decimated, her family gone. It was only her absence that had saved her, and for many years thereafter she had mourned, wishing she had not been the sole survivor, the only one spared.
Had she been able to turn back Time, she would never have left the longhouse, would have preferred to die with them all, rather than face the world alone. Any happiness that she had found afterward had come in the wake of that memory, leaving Rhapsody to wonder if her mother had ever really gotten over it.
Now Rhapsody stood in the same place, feeling the same awe, the same anticipation that she supposed her mother had felt. Her Lirin ancestry had lain dormant in her for her entire life, though in recent years she had seen and come to know more full and half-caste Lirin than she had in childhood.
Easton was the thoroughfare of the eastern seaboard, so in her time there she had seen travelers of many different races and backgrounds. Perhaps now that she had come to Yliessan she would finally find welcome and acceptance among her mother's people. Perhaps she would finally find the strength to return home.
By sunset they had come to the forest proper, the exterior copses of trees and thickets becoming dense in the transition to the greenwood. The three travelers waited until the night was in full flower before venturing in, watching intently for eyes glittering in the dark.
Many times in the course of coming this far Rhapsody had whispered the namesong of the forest, singing the roundelay over and over again: Yliessan. Yliessan. Yliessan. It had seemed to her that the branches had moved aside in answer, that the brambles and scrub of the forest floor had not sought to hamper them in any way, allowing them to pass quickly, silently, in the dark.
All around her, in the sound of the wind through the leaves and the birds in the tree branches above them, she felt the greenwood answer back, as if calling her to itself. Yliessan.A sense of welcome, innate and primal.
There was a richness to the air in the forest that Rhapsody had never felt before; she drank it in eagerly, filling her lungs and finding them cleaner upon exhaling. She wished they had been able to arrive in light, because she would have loved to see what the forest really looked like. Though it was a sacred place to the Lirin, and only the Lirin knew its name, the legends of the enchanted woods and the Tree were common even hundreds of miles away in Easton among people who would never see a forest in their lives.
Unlike the exhaustion that had consumed her after she had hidden herself and the two men within the highgrass, the sensation she felt during their disguise as part of the forest was invigorating. From the first moment she had matched their vibrations to the signature of the forest, Rhapsody had been filled with a bright, calm sense of home, a cool serenity that cleared her mind and spoke in gentle tones to her half-Lirin heart. Yliessan. Welcome, Child of the Sky. Yliessan.
"Any ideas?" The words, spoken softly by the still-unfamiliar voice, caused Rhapsody to jump a little. Achmed was speaking into her ear, though a moment before he was nowhere near her.
"What do you mean?" she whispered back.
"The Tree; do you feel where it might be?" The tone held a strong tinge of disgust.
She closed her eyes and let the night wind brush over her face, and listened again to the music it made as it passed through the branches and leaves all around them. The rustling was not unlike the sound of the sea down the coast of the city, far enough away from the port to be free of its noise.
After a moment of careful attention Rhapsody could hear a low, deep tone resonating through the ground and hanging in the air above it. It was clear and singular, with a faint harmonic around it, and the more she concentrated the more she could hear its voice. She had no doubt that it came from the Tree.
She pointed southwest. "There," she said.
Achmed nodded; he had felt the tone as well. Silently they passed through the underbrush, making their way carefully in the dark. Eventually she found she was leading, but it was not a problem for her, as the tone was growing deeper and louder; she could now feel it through her feet.
The forest was vast. Rhapsody had assumed that they would not come to their destination before dawn, or perhaps even in that cycle of the moon. She was surprised to find the song of the Tree so nearby.
Finally, she began to see a pattern in the trees to the east, a thicker, darker line of evergreens forming an almost impenetrable barrier. The song was strong and clear, emanating from behind the treewall. Without a word both she and Achmed turned instinctually toward the sound and increased their pace. A few muttered curses were heard behind them, as Grunthor had to suddenly correct his course without warning. Apparently he could not hear or feel the song as they could.
The three crept to the tree line, feeling a presence of people in the distance around them, but seeing no one. Finally they reached it and stepped between the dark pines, trees thick with old needles and tall trunks, stretching up into the darkness so that it was impossible to see their summits. They passed between them with some difficulty; Grunthor in particular was hard-pressed to fit between the guardian trees. When they got around to the other side they stopped.
The leafy mulch of the forest floor gave way to pristine grass that even in darkness could be seen as neat and uniform; the light of the crescent moon reflected off it, touching the pale green carpet with silver. The lawn that began at the tree line stretched for a great distance, ending in another tree line, thicker than the first and composed of ancient, twisting oak trees.
As Rhapsody started forward across the smooth, open lawn she felt a light tug on the back of her vest.
"Wait."
Achmed and Grunthor had fallen back against the tree line, and were conferring softly in their common tongue.
Rhapsody felt her feet begin to itch, her body protesting the halt. The song of the Tree was calling her now, filling her with an intense need to hurry, to come, an almost magnetic pull that was painful to resist.
"I thought you wanted to make haste and get to the Tree," she whispered fiercely.
Achmed held up a hand to silence her and took one more look around. He was uncomfortable at the thought of crossing the wide lawn, open and unprotected by any tree cover or brush, but he and Grunthor could determine no way around it.
The grassy plain was a dry moat to the Tree, positioned between the two treewalls. He could see the immense branches hovering above them, forming a pale, unbroken canopy over this forest meadow.
Carefully he drew the cwellan out from behind his back and nodded. He could discern no heartbeats in the vicinity other than their own. The three travelers checked east to west as though about to cross the Kingsway, then broke into a brisk trot across the open lawn.
Past the next tree line they could see a deep vale, a glen filled with air even richer and sweeter than that in the rest of the Lirin woods. The noise of night in the forest died away as they crept through the oak trees into the glen; the stillness was palpable. Rhapsody looked before her but saw nothing for a moment.
An enormous shaft of moonlight had filled the glen past the oak tree line, making even the air before them seem white and solid. Then her eyes adjusted and she realized that what she was seeing was the Tree itself, the sacred white oak: Sagia, the Oak of Deep Roots.
Veins deep as rivers scored the surface of silvery-white bark, smooth as a pebble at the bottom of a riverbed. Rhapsody could see no branches, because the trunk of the Great Tree was so tall that the first limbs were high in the air out of sight in the darkness. Fallen leaves littered the ground, however, green and lush, with veins of gold running through them.
Her eyes could not behold all of the Tree at once, it was too mammoth. Its girth was such that she was not sure that should the three of them stand around it in different positions and shout they would even hear each other; eye contact would be out of the question. It would easily have filled the town square in Easton, a place where hundreds gathered for public events. Its sheer size held Rhapsody in awe, so much so that when she became aware again she no longer knew where her two traveling companions were.
She looked around for the giant and his cloaked partner, but they were nowhere in sight. The early symptoms of panic began to swell in her ears and fingers; her hands grew cold in the knowledge that she was no longer sure of their intentions. But the deep calm of the glen stilled the cramping in her stomach as a soothing, resonant hum filled her mind. It was the song of the Tree again, deep and abiding, and Rhapsody could feel the wisdom of ages past in its simple melody. She closed her eyes and listened, memorizing the sound. It was the most enchanting song she had ever heard.
As she stood, breathing in the song of the Tree, the knotting in her forehead and neck muscles that had been present for a fortnight since Gammon had come to the Hat and Feathers melted away. A sense of peace and rightness filled her, calling to parts of her soul that she had long forgotten.
She could hear her mother's voice again as she had in her dream, speaking to her in the Lirin language of her birth, telling her old tales and singing the ritual songs that celebrated the wonders of nature, wonders like this immense Tree.
She did not know how long she stood, eyes closed, listening with her heart to the hypnotic melody, but she came harshly to awareness when she felt a hand grasp her shoulder roughly and a voice speak softly into her ear.
"Where have you been? Come, we're waiting."
Rhapsody turned in surprise. "Waiting for what? I thought we were here to pay our respects to the Tree. That's what I'm doing."
"Come around this side. I've found the main trunk root."
Rhapsody shook off his arm. "So?"
"I am reluctant to shed blood here." There was warning in his voice.
The panic returned, and Rhapsody went cold again, then grew hotly furious. "What does that mean? Is that a threat?"
Achmed held something up; she had to look away as the light it flashed seared her eyes. When she was able to look again she saw it was a key, made of something like bone but gleaming like burnished gold, and filmy, as though it was made of captured sunlight reflecting in the dark.
"Want to see how it works? Or are you just going to stand there like an idiot?"
"No, I suppose I'm going to have to follow you like an idiot."
Angrily she trailed after Achmed around the side of the enormous tree. She looked up into its limbs again but could not even begin to gauge the top for the dark and the immense height of it.
When she came around it farther she could see a little of the first canopy of leafy branches in the vast reflecting pool that mirrored the Tree on the south side. Sagia's song reverberated in the water, sending silvery chills through Rhapsody's soul.
She tarried for a moment to drink in more of the beauty of the sight, and when she looked up Achmed was gone again. Hurriedly she ran around the southwestern side to where he had been headed, and saw him bent over in the shadows. She caught up with him and looked over his shoulder. He was reaching around near the ground, the key seemingly buried up to the handle in the base of the Tree.
"Watch," he said.
With a violent twist, Achmed turned the key, sending a shower of iridescent sparks in a slender stream skyward from the ground. A thin outline of red light, the size and shape of a small passageway, gleamed for a moment, then disappeared.
Rhapsody backed away, her eyes wide. She continued to stare as Grunthor wrenched a huge rectangular section of the root up and away from the ground. Within the hole that remained was a darkness so complete that she felt it was about to spill out at their feet.
"What are you doing?" she cried before Achmed could cover her mouth.
"Shhhh; listen, and I will tell you. This Tree is the sign that this is one of the places where Time itself began. Its roots lead to everywhere the power of this Island touches." He released her and turned her to face him. "We have to leave. We need to escape to a place of deeper power than even the demon who is chasing us—"
"Demon? "
"—all right; perhaps demon is an understatement—the monster who gave me this key, has access to. This Tree holds immense magic; it is tied to the fabric of the world. It's a metaphysical corridor. We need to go where the Tree's roots will take us."
Rhapsody glared at him. "So go."
Achmed held out his hand. "You too; come on."
"I can't go; I don't want to go," she said, her voice beginning to shake. "Why on Earth would you think I'd go with you?"
"How would you like to see the beginning of Time? You could see the heart of the Tree, or of the world. What would any Lirin give to feel the beating heart of this tree?"
"No."
Grunthor, who had peeled away a section of the Tree so that it looked like a doorway, looked up at her and grinned. "Tell ya what, miss. Come now, and you'll be able to stop us from damagin' the root. Leave us to our own devices and—"
Rhapsody gasped in horror. "You wouldn't dare! This is a sacred oak, the seat of wisdom of the entire Lirin population, not just the ones that live in the forest. To injure it in any way—"
"—would not be too difficult, miss."
Rhapsody's eyes opened even wider as Grunthor disappeared into the dark hole. Achmed moved to the Tree and watched as the giant descended, blocking her view.
"Don't you want to see what it looks like inside?"
Rhapsody did, despite her revulsion at what seemed a desecration, but the thought that these two marauders were entering Sagia made her stomach turn. Having seen their prowess in a fight she knew she had little chance to prevent it, but knew just as surely that she would gladly die trying.
"Stop," she demanded, and drew her dagger. "Get out of there."
"Last chance," said the strange, dry voice as the cloaked man disappeared. "Good luck explaining the damage to the Lirindarc guards who will doubtless arrive any minute. I wouldn't wait around here if I were you. Grunthor, you did bring your ax, didn't you?" The question, obviously meant to prod her into compliance, echoed up from the darkness.
Rhapsody looked around. In the distance she thought she did in fact hear the sound of people approaching. Worse, Sagia's song had changed, as if the sacred oak was in pain.
She ran to the place where the two men had entered to observe the damage herself, anxiously running a hand over the silvery bark and feeling the vibration in her fingers that she had felt before in her heart. As she was examining the Tree a hand shot out from the dark hole and seized her, dragging her inside.
Rhapsody screamed for help as Achmed passed her down to Grunthor and grabbed the key. He gave it a firm pull from the ground and spun to face her. As he did, the wall of bark closed behind him silently; then, with a final pulse of light, the key disappeared from his hand, plunging them all into total darkness.