Prophecy, Child of Earth (18 page)

Grunthor felt the nightmarish vision of smothering death sheet off him like water. He rose, the fire in his lungs instantly abating, and followed the music that permeated him.

It was coming from a single source, decidedly louder than the ever-present melody that always was at the edge of his consciousness. His skin flushed with warmth and tingled as it had so long ago, back when they first emerged from the Fire at the heart of the world. It was back; the unconditional, loving acceptance he had felt then. He never knew how much he had missed the feeling until it returned.

His sight cleared as he came nearer to it. He could see the source singularly, as if all the rest of the world had melted away into oblivion. There at the far side of the Loritorium's central square was a piece of earth shaped like an altar, a block of Living Stone. Grunthor had never seen Living Stone before, but had once heard Lord Stephen make reference to it in the Cymrian museum while discussing the five basilicas the Cymrians had built and dedicated to the elements.

This is the only non-Orlandan basilica, the church of Lord All-God, King of the
Earth, or Terreanfor. The basilica is carved into the face of the Night Mountain,
making it a place where no light touches, even in the middle of the day. There is a
hint of the old pagan days in Sorboldian religion, even though they worship the
All-God and are a See of our religion. They believe that parts of the earth, the
ground itself, that is, are still alive from when the world was made, and the Night
Mountain is one of these places of Living Stone. The turning of the Earth itself
resanctifies the ground within the basilica. It is a deeply magical place.

A deeply magical place. Grunthor came to a stop before the altar of Living Stone, choking back the pain and wronder that were clutching his throat. The great block of earth was radiating a vibration that soothed the last vestiges of his panic, whispering wordless consolation. It erased the pain that had been pulsing in his chest, easing his breathing. Somehow, without hearing any words, Grunthor knew the living altar was speaking his name.

He knelt down before it, as reverently as he ever had, and put his head down, listening to the story it told. After a moment he looked back up at Achmed. His eyes were clear with understanding, and sorrow.

'Something 'appened near 'ere. Something awful. You game to go deeper, find out what it was?" Achmed nodded. "Are you sure, sir?"

The Firbolg king's brow furrowed.."Yes; why do you ask?"

'Because the Earth says it was your death, sir. That you don't know it yet, but you will." iPeep within the Earth, the Grandmother woke again to the sound of the child trembling. Her ancient eyes, well accustomed to the lack of light in the Colony's caverns and tunnels, scanned the darkness furtively. Then she swung her brittle legs off the earthen slab that served as her bed and rose slowly, the grace of her movements belying her great age.

The child's eyes were still closed, but the eyelids fluttered with fear from whatever nightmare lurked behind them. Tenderly the Grandmother brushed her forehead and took a breath. From her highest throat the familiar clicking sound issued forth, a fricative buzz that sometimes helped to calm the child.

In response the child began to mutter incoherently. The Grandmother closed her own eyes, and wrapped her Seeking vibration, her
kirai
, around the child. The deepest of her four throat openings formed the humming question.

'ZZZhhh, zzzzhhh, little one; what troubles you so? Speak, that I may aid you."

But the child continued to mutter, her brow contorted in fear. The Grandmother watched in measured silence. This time would be no different than any time before; the prophecy would not be fulfilled. The child would not speak the words of wisdom that the Grandmother had been waiting for centuries uncounted to hear.

She caressed the smooth gray forehead again, feeling the cold skin relax beneath her long, sensitive fingers.

'Sleep, child. Rest."

After a while the child sighed brokenly, and settled back into deeper, dreamless sleep. The Grandmother continued her tuneless hum until she was certain that the worst of it was past, then lay back down again, staring into the darkness of the cavern high above her.

Cjrunthor recapped the waterskin and handed it back to Achmed, then leaned back against the stone altar and exhaled deeply, driving the last of the tension from his lungs. The Firbolg king's eyes watched him intently.

'Are you past it now?"

'Yeah." Grunthor rose and shook the grit from his greatcloak. "Sorry about that, guv."

Achmed smiled slightly. "Well? Care to enlighten me? What did you see?"

Grunthor shook his massive head. "Chaos. Swarms of people chokin' to death in tunnels filled with burnin' smoke. Like I was there. Smelt like a smithy does."

'The forges, perhaps?"

'Maybe." The sergeant ran a taloned hand through his shaggy hair. "Deeper than that, though. A place we never been. Oi don't think'twas part of the Cymrian lands."

'Do you think you can find it?"

Grunthor nodded absently. He was thinking about Rhapsody, and all the times he had held her as she thrashed about in her sleep, battling dream-demons as he just had. He had never understood the ferocity with which she fought until now.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he recalled the words they had exchanged upon parting.

You know Oi'd take the worst of them dreams for you ifOi could, Ter Ladyship.

I know, I know you would. And believe me, if it was within my power, I'd give
you the worst of them.

Perhaps she had. Perhaps that joking comment had evoked her Naming ability.

Perhaps that ability, tied to the truth, which had changed Achmed's name and broken him free of the demon's hold, had inadvertently done the opposite for him—had opened the door to whatever it was that gave her visions in her sleep, and sometimes even when she was awake. Maybe he had carried the burden of one of those nightmares for her. It made him miss her all the more.

'It'll take a good deal more tunneling," he said at last. "But distance-wise, it ain't too far. When you're ready, sir, we can 'ave at it." cA perfunctory canvass of the streets of the Loritorium yielded a detailed inventory of the defenses and traps that had been erected and built into the complex. Grunthor shook his head in amazement.

'Seems like overkill to have so many for such a small place," he said, a note of disdain in his voice. "One good explodin' side-to-side or a ceiling cutoff would 'ave done it. Plus the idiot didn't account for an escape route, by all appearances."

'Gwylliam may have been losing his grip on reality by the time the Bolg began to infiltrate Canrif," Achmed said, examining an enormous semicircular cistern that was carved into the western wall. He ran his fingertips over the wide channel that led up to a stone block in the center of the cistern wall, then smelled them, recoiling slightly at the harsh odor. It was the same as that of the thick residue in the channels that scored the half-walls with lampposts.

'This must be the reservoir of lampfuel," he said to the sergeant. "The manuscript describes how one of Gwylliam's chief masons discovered a huge natural well of an oily substance that burned like pitch, only brighter. They incorporated it into the lamppost system to provide light for the scholars to read by."

”Did it work?"

Achmed studied the stone block for a moment, then looked around the Loritorium. "The reservoir is up behind this cistern, not as far down as we are now.

Gwylliam devised a flow system to allow the cistern to collect the lampfuel until it was full, then distribute it into the channels that score the half-walls. The fuel ran up the hollow tubes in the lampposts and lit the wicks, burning continuously. The weights inside this main channel balance the outflow through this stone plug, so that if the cistern begins to overfill faster than the lamps are consuming the fuel, it closes automatically, opening again when the fuel level in the channels subsides.

The balance of the system is fairly important; the lampfuel is highly flammable, and only a little was needed to light the streets."

Achmed wiped his hands on his cloak and followed the main channel into the center of the small city. He stepped carefully into the dry reflecting pool, avoiding the gleaming silver puddle, and gingerly touched the wellspring of the plugged fountain, quickly withdrawing his hand.

'This wasn't a fountain of water, it was a firewell like that ever-burning flame in the Fire basilica in Bethany," he said. "Smaller, perhaps, but it has the same source.

It vents directly from the inferno at the center of the Earth. One of the great pieces of elemental lore that this place was designed to study. This was what Gwylliam used as the firesource that sparked the street-lamp system and kept it alight, as well as for heat."

'Blimey," said Grunthor. "What made it go out?"

'It didn't, I suspect. Looks like it was dammed, intentionally or otherwise. A piece of rubble from the ceiling is lodged in the vent. The heat from the wellspring is still there. Give me a hand, and we can unseal it."

'Per'aps we should wait for 'Er Ladyship," Grunthor suggested. "First off, she's apt to be mighty put out that we didn't wait for 'er like we said we would. Second, she seems to be immune to fire and the like; she can probably unplug it without burning 'er face off. Oi'm not so sure that's true o' you, sir, with all due respect."

'According to Jo, it might be an improvement if I did," Achmed said wryly. "Oi wouldn't worry about that, sir. Those pigs you've been fornicatin' don't seem to mind."

Achmed chuckled. "By the way, you did release her, didn't you?" "Yep."

'Good. Well, I think I've seen enough until Rhapsody gets here. Do you still want to search out whatever it was that gave you the vision?"

Grunthor regarded him seriously. "That's really more your call than mine, sir. I told you what I 'eard."

Achmed nodded. "Well, if I died and don't know it yet, I'd like to find out what happened. Where do we begin?"

Grunthor pointed toward the south. "That way."

The two Bolg gathered their gear and went to the southeastern wall of the Loritorium. Grunthor took a last look at the beautiful altar of Living Stone; walking away from it would be immensely painful. He swallowed, took a deep breath, then leaned into the stone wall as he had before, opening a tunnel before him as he faded away into the earth. Achmed waited until the initial rubble had fallen, then followed him.

They were too far away to notice the glimmering silver shapes, manlike bodies that rose from the pools in the Loritorium's silent streets like mist, hanging in the air for a moment, then disappearing again.

air in the underground caverns was warmer than the air of the world above. The change in heat was the first thing Achmed noticed when Grunthor broke through to the hidden complex of tunnels that lay deeper in the earth to the south of the Loritorium. It was a warmer, staler air with an age-old hint of lingering smoke, heavy and dry with no scent of must or mold, absent of any humidity, humming with static.

The second thing he noticed was the ancient woman standing in the tunnel before them.

Grunthor stopped in his tracks, jerking backwards in surprise. Until this moment the Earth had been singing to him, had drawn his attention to each crack, each unstable area, cautioning him of danger, alerting him to formations that were rare or unique. There had been no warning that another living creature was waiting for them on the other side of the rock wall.

And yet, there she stood, taller than Achmed, slighter than Grunthor, wrapped in a robe of brown cloth, her head covered, nothing showing but her face and thin, long-fingered hands. That glimpse was enough to tell Achmed what he needed to know.

The skin of her face and hands was translucent, wrinkled with age and scored with a network of fine blue veins, like iridescent marble. Though impossible to discern completely due to the hood of the robe, the woman's head appeared to taper from a great width at the top of the skull down to a slender jawline, with large, black eyes making up most of her face. Those eyes were heavily lidded and without apparent scleras; no white at all could be seen, rather they resembled two wide ovals of darkness, broken only by a large, silvery pupil. They glittered with unspoken interest and a keen intelligence.

Despite her obvious age, the woman's body was unbowed, tall and straight as the trunk of a heveralt tree. The wide shoulders, long thighs and shins, and gangly arms ending in strong, sinewy hands were unmistakable hallmarks, despite this being only the second time Achmed had ever seen one of her race. The woman's eyes twinkled in the light of their torch, though her thin mouth remained set in the same nonchalant expression as had been there the moment the ground crumbled before her and the two of them stepped into her realm.

She was Dhracian. Full-blooded.

Achmed's sensitive skin tingled again in the dry static of the air. Instantly he realized that he was wrapped in the woman's Seeking vibration, the electric hum that Dhracians emitted through the cavities in their throats and sinuses. It was a tool their race used to discern the heartbeats and other life rhythms of whomever they sought to find or assess. He had used it himself, mostly when hunting his prey in the old world.

The woman seemed amused, though her expression remained unaltered. She also seemed satisfied; she folded her hands patiently before her and waited. When neither Grunthor nor Achmed moved, she spoke.

'I am the Grandmother. You are late in coming. Where is the other one?"

Both Firbolg involuntarily shook their heads as the vibration of her voice scratched their eardrums. The woman was speaking in two different voices, each coming from one of her four throats, neither of which contained actual words in any language* either of them knew. Despite that, both of them understood exactly what she was saying.

The address that Achmed heard was a fricative buzz that formed a bell-clear image in his mind of the meaning of her words. In the manner she addressed him,