Prophecy, Child of Earth (36 page)

'Llauron accepted this, and, as the Invoker, blessed the crown and the queen who made it before returning to Gwynwood. Since that time the crown has remained in this place, waiting for the coming of the Lord or Lady Cymrian to right the wrong that was done here."

'Why do you think Anwyn destroyed it?" Rhapsody asked, walking around the case to see the crown from all its sides.

'

'Twas the price she paid to be rid of her husband."

She looked up. "What do you mean?"

The look on Oelendra's face grew harder. "She struck a deal with the demon. It was actually the first confirmation I had as to what kind of evil had followed us, because F'dor are afraid of diamonds; they fear them, it seems, or are injured and weakened by them. I have never discovered exactly why, but I believe'tis because diamonds hold the light of the stars, as Daystar Clarion does, an element that precedes the existence of fire, and, as an older element, is more powerful. This was a diamond immense enough to capture and destroy the essence of even the greatest of the demon spirits.

'I knew that evil, and I hated it. It had been responsible for most of the trouble on our Island, had destroyed all I loved, killed my grandfather, killed my husband.

I knew it lurked somewhere, that it was hiding among us, clinging to the souls of innocents, staying always out of sight, always in the background, waiting for its power to rise and its time to be perfect.

'I had only suspected its presence by smell that first day when the First and Third waves reunited—F'dor have a ghastly smell in their true form, and you can sometimes catch a whiff of it when they are insinuated into a host—but I had no confirmation until the day the diamond was destroyed.

'But Anwyn knew. Anwyn had always known. She was the Seer of the Past. She knew it escaped the moment after it stepped on that ship; she knew which soul it clung to as soon as it took up residence. It could not hide from her, and had she told me who it was, we would have been done with that evil many generations ago.

But she was wyrmkin, a dragon's-child, and hoarded that information as she hoarded everything, certain that one day it would turn to her benefit. And surely one day it did, but, as with all things touched by F'dor, that benefit was twisted.

'After seven hundred years of war with Gwylliam, she turned to the only power she knew could defeat him, the one power in the world ancient enough to know secrets that were beyond even her gift to recall. She turned to the demon, and it offered a bargain: the F'dor would grant her heart's desire,'twould kill her husband, who was immortal, who to all other threats was invulnerable, and in return she would destroy the Purity Diamond, the one thing the demon feared even more than Daystar Clarion.

'She was a fool. She thought because she was of the mixed blood of two of the ancient races, Seren and dragon, that she could bargain with the F'dor and her knowledge of the Past would protect her. What she failed to understand was that the demon was not just descended from an elder race, but was itself from the Before Time, and knew things she could never dream of.

'She agreed to its terms, and who knows what else, and destroyed the gift that was surely one of our greatest weapons against the F'dor. In return, it killed Gwylliam, the last of the Seren kings, and so won the battle it had lost on the Island, in the old world. Then it destroyed the remains of the Cymrian alliance, disposing of the leaders of two of the houses, and breaking their tie with the Lirin, and the different Lirin factions' ties with each other. The F'dor destroyed the Cymrians as a unified people, and Anwyn had opened the door for it. Gwylliam may have started the war, but Anwyn lost it for us all.

'I spent the next few years hunting it. Anwyn refused to help me find it, because I had stayed out of the war, being unwilling to support either side in the destruction of the other. I also counseled the Lirin to stay out of it, but they turned a deaf ear and followed Anwyn, much to their eventual regret. I sought it everywhere, but the demon was far too clever to be found. It had gone to ground, biding its time, waiting until conditions were ripe to emerge again. Well, with war brewing, and border incursions on all sides, and racial hatred flourishing, th^t time can't be far off."

Even though she stood in a shaft of warm spring sunlight from the hole in the center of the dome, Rhapsody shivered. It was becoming horrifyingly clear what Oelendra expected of her. Since the destruction of the diamond, the only obvious weapon powerful enough to kill the F'dor was the sword she carried. It was no wonder Oelendra was willing to train her in its use.

cry good," Oelendra said, sheathing her sword.

Rhapsody collapsed onto the ground, her breath harsh and labored. "You must be joking," she said between gasps for air. "I've never been so humiliated in my life." She had not expected to hold her own with the Lirin champion, but she had hoped to spare herself outright embarrassment. Oelendra laughed and held out her hand, which Rhapsody stared at for a few seconds before taking.

'Oh, come now, you were wonderful." The older woman pulled the tired Singer from the ground, showing little sign of exertion herself. Rhapsody, by contrast, felt utterly exhausted. Her arm was numb and her fingers ached with the sting of the shocks that had resounded through her steel blade. She had not used Daystar Clarion in their first sparring, since Oelendra had wanted to see how well she fought without any special advantages.

'If I had been that wonderful in combat, my severed head would be decorating somebody's flagpole."

'Don't be so hard on yourself. You held your own, you didn't fall for any of my invitations to get in over your head, and you didn't let your guard down even though you were tired enough to drop. Most of all, you know how to move on the ground and are very good on the parries and dodges. That's the hardest part, you know."

'No, I didn't."

'Absolutely. You've had some good training."

'Thanks—I'll make sure to tell Grunthor."

'He's your Bolg friend you were telling me of on the way back from the city?"

'Yes, he was my first trainer in the sword."

'Well, that makes some sense. As I said, you've got a good start, but now we're going to train you to fight like our people do."

'Do you think that the Lirin way of fighting is better than that of the Firbolg?"

Rhapsody asked between breaths.

'Aye, at least for Lirin. The Bolg are big, strong, and clumsy, the Lirin are small, fast, and weak. Not every person of either race falls into those categories, but enough of them do that their fighting styles tend to reflect it. You rely too much on your strength, not enough on agility and cunning and, no offense, you just don't have the body mass to fight like a brute."

'No offense taken," Rhapsody said, picking up the weapon. "Where do we start?"

'We start by having a drink of water." Oelendra took a sip from a wineskin and passed it to her. "The first lesson is to listen to your own body. There are times you have to ignore it, and you've already shown me you know how to push yourself well beyond the point of normal endurance."

O

'Well, I've had to do a lot of that." Rhapsody took a deep drink.

'It shows," Oelendra said. Rhapsody looked for signs of ridicule or sarcasm in the warrior's expression, but all she saw was honest admiration. "Now'tis time to learn to listen to your body, to learn the rhythm that you move to, then learn to read that rhythm in others and match your movements to theirs. You are already a Singer, Rhapsody; now we will make you a Dancer." Oelendra drew her sword again, and they returned to the lesson.

They spent hours that day going through a basic series of attacks, defenses, and the motions to get between them, until, at the end of the day, Rhapsody could perform the ritual without effort. When the sun was sinking low and the clouds were touched with pink, she ran through the paces with Daystar Clarion, and the moves seemed much more fluid than they had before.

As she swung the sword through the brisk open air the flames of the blade seemed to pick up the soft pastels and touches of crimson that appeared in the sky, the silver hilt glistening gold in the deepening hues of the sun. Rhapsody felt moved by the dance, and as her arm swept through the last of the strikes, a slow slash from above, she felt a comforting sense of balance and strength. She took a deep breath on finishing the routine, and let it out slowly before turning to her teacher for her comments. Oelendra stood with arms crossed, a slight smile on her face.

'

'Tis a good start," she said, "Now, come with me."

She began to walk out of the clearing and down a forest path. Rhapsody followed, sheathing her sword. The air became more chilly with the promise of night as they passed beneath a series of trees whose ancient boughs stretched above their heads like the arches of a basilica. The bright leaves filtered the light of the setting sun into a peaceful shade of green, broken by the occasional glitter of gold.

They walked quickly, and Oelendra did not speak. At last they broke free of the forest, and came to a small bald hill, the sky around them rapidly turning a deep shade of orange, the clouds trimmed in scarlet.

'

'Twas your mother that taught you the evening song?" Oelendra asked as she made her way up the hill.

The question and the memory it evoked caught Rhapsody off guard. "Yes, in my childhood, that and the morning aubade and all the other lauds and songs of the Liringlas. My father used to joke that she had a song for every occasion."

'She probably did," Oelendra said seriously. " 'Twas the way of our people.

Would you mind if I joined you in the evening song tonight?"

'No, of course not," said Rhapsody, a little surprised. "As I told you last night, it will be wonderful to sing with someone who remembers the songs."

'I remembered them last night for the first time," Oelendra said, stopping at the rounded top of the hill, where the reddening sun was touching the western forest with the colors of fire and blood. "I had lost them when I came to this place. 'Twas you that brought them back to me, Rhapsody. You are probably the only person in the world who might be able to understand what not having them, and then getting them back, has meant to me." Rhapsody blinked, then smiled, and the ancient warrior turned away, scanning the horizon. " 'Tis time. You should draw Daystar Clarion, and hold it through the song. 'Tis, after all, bound to the stars as well as to fire, and through exposure to the stars that its power grows."

Rhapsody did as she was told, noting that the fires of the sword now matched the color of the sky. She closed her eyes and felt the sword's presence, became aware of its increasing power. The sensation tingled through her hands and into her being, as if Daystar Clarion was awakening, and as it did was awakening a piece of herself as well.

Then she heard Oelendra's voice begin the evening song. It was a voice that had been weathered by age and sorrow, but there was a sympathy to it that moved Rhapsody. It was like the voice of a grandmother singing to a well-loved child, or a widow singing the lament of the husband who had fallen in battle. It was a strange and sad voice, to which Rhapsody softly joined her own.

As they sang, the sun slipped beneath the western hills, the outer reaches of the sky turning from blue to orange to crimson to indigo. Above the western horizon a twinkling light became visible. The sun set, the evenstar appeared fully, and the flames of Daystar Clarion changed from hues that mimicked the sun to a silvery white.

As if in answer, Oelendra began to sing a new song, one with which Rhapsody was intimately familiar. It was a song to the star called Seren, the star that the Lirin of the old world believed had watched over their home, the Island that was no more. Rhapsody tried to join her, but quickly choked; Seren was the star she had been born beneath, the one Ashe had heard her call
Aria
. She could hear again, as clearly as if the memory were the Present, her mother's voice singing the laud, teaching her the song of her guiding star. Her eyes swam with forbidden tears, and Rhapsody's face became hot with the effort to hold them back.

Unwelcome images from the Past, the memories she had fought to keep in abeyance, flooded her mind; pictures of the last time she had seen Barney and Dee at the Hat and Feathers, Pilam the baker and the other townspeople in her daily life from the old times. She thought of the children she had played for at the fountain in the town square, Analise and Carli and Ali and Meridion, who used to ask her for same tune over and over.

The roaring flood of memories came more quickly now, thoughts of childhood friends dead a thousand years; images of her brothers, her father, her mother. As the picture of her mother's face formed, unbidden, in her mind, she looked up and saw Oelendra singing to the sky, her lined face silvery in the light of the stars.

The serendipity was too much for her. The tune was quickly abandoned; she lost her struggle as tears flowed freely down her face, and her body began to shake.

Achmed's mandate to her drowned in the sorrow she had held behind the dam that his harsh words had created in her soul their first night on the Root, a barrier that had withstood the loss of everyone she loved, the world she had known, the life she had been taken away from that night. Rhapsody bent over and clutched her waist, trying to invoke the fail-safe that had always been able to drive the tears back before, but the attempt was useless. She sank to the ground and dissolved into wracking sobs.

Darkness swallowed the hillside as she felt the touch of a hand on her shoulder.

Words were spoken in a kind tone near her ear, but she didn't hear them. She looked up into Oelendra's face, and the warrior spoke the words again.

'I know."

Tears from an even deeper well of sorrow came forth. Oelendra took Rhapsody into her arms and drew the young Singer's head to her strong shoulder as she wept.

The younger woman choked out words that were meaningless to anyone but herself. Oelendra slowly rocked her back and forth, gently stroking the shining hair that gleamed in the starlight.