Prophecy, Child of Earth (88 page)

Above the fire's roar Rhapsody began the Lirin Song of Passage, a dirge for the Grandmother. Though she had lived her entire life within the earth, the Dhracian Matriarch was also descended from the Kith, the race of the wind. Perhaps the wind would take her ashes now and set them free to dance across the wild world, a place she had never seen from above. The song cut through the cacophony and melded in harmony with the billowing flames.

And then, suddenly, the flames grew weak and extinguished, taking with them the last of the air in the cavern. A hollow silence thundered through the Loritorium, then diminished into an ominous hiss. Rhapsody fell to her knees, breathless and gasping for air in the lifeless smoke.

The one who heals also will kill.

The enormity of what she had done to the Grandmother overwhelmed her, and, choking, she retched.

runthor and Achmed covered their eyes and heads, shielding the Sleeping Child as the backwash of the flame roared up the tunnel past their bunker. Their clothes grew hot from the searing heat that radiated through the solid wall of rock, and their eyes locked. Achmed smiled slightly at the gleam of fear in Grunthor's eyes.

'She's all right."

Grunthor nodded. They waited until the noise abated, but heard nothing.

'We'll wait," Achmed said. "She'll be coming momentarily."

'How can you be sure?" Grunthor asked.

Achmed leaned back against the rockwall. "I've learned a few of her tricks myself. Believe what you want to happen, expect that it will, and somehow, miraculously, it does, at least for her. It worked with singing her back to life. It will work now."

Grunthor nodded uncertainly and turned his focus to the Earthchild. She lay in his arms in the dark, still for the first time, sleeping so deeply that he could barely see her breathe. He watched her silently take the air in, saw it ever-so-slightly slip back out, over again, and again, utterly mesmerized by the sight.

They had shared one body for a fleeting moment, the Child of Earth and he.

From the experience he had gained an understanding of many of the Earth's secrets, though he would have been at a loss to explain any of them. There was something almost holy about having felt the beating heart of the world pulsing in him, a surpassing vibrancy that left him feeling bereft now that it was gone.

He stared at the Earthchild's face, roughhewn and coarse like his own, while still strangely smooth and beautiful, visible to him even in the absence of light. He knew there were silent tears running in muddy trickles down her polished cheeks, knew that she was mourning the Grandmother, holding a silent vigil behind her eyes. Now he understood what the Dhracian Matriarch had meant when sh said she had known the child's heart. Perhaps now he would know it as well.

It was not until Achmed shifted nervously and leaned closer to the rock sealing their bunker that it dawned on him how long Rhapsody had been gon< The king put his ear to the wall, then moved back, shaking his head.

'Anything?" Grunthor inquired hopefully. Achmed shook his head again.

'Can you feel her through the earth?"

Grunthor thought for a moment. "Naw. Everything's all jumbled, like tt ground is still in shock. Can't tell anything."

Achmed rose shakily. "Perhaps I can't feel her heartbeat for the same reason Grunthor's eyes glinted with fear. "We'll give her a moment more, and if si doesn't come, we'll go after her." He leaned against the stone, trying to mal out any sound he could on the other side of the rockwall. He heard nothin

'Rhapsody!" he shouted, the sound bouncing futilely back at him, to 1

swallowed a moment later by the earthen bunker. He turned to Grunthor, 1: dark eyes glittering.

'Open it," he ordered tersely, pointing at the rocky barrier.

Grunthor carefully shifted the Earthchild in his arms and reached one hai into the wall. A sizable piece of it fell away before him. As if in reply, he hea Rhapsody's voice calling to them from the other side of the stone wall.

'Grunthor! Achmed! Are you all right in there?"

The giant Bolg stood up and reached the rest of the way into the stone the wall, tearing it away from the opening. When he broke through to'tother side his face lit up with a tired grin.

'Well, well, Yer Ladyship, you certainly took your time, now, didn't yc 'Ad us worried, you did."

Rhapsody smiled and offered Achmed her hand, giving him a tug out the bunker. "You're a fine one to talk," she said to Grunthor. "For the long time I thought you were still in the Colony, buried under a mountain of rocl Her smile faded as he stepped out of the hole in the rockwall, carrying'tSleeping Child. "I have to admit, when I saw her walking, I thought it v over. What did you do, meld with her the way you do with stone?"

'Yep. What do you think she is, if not stone?" Grunthor answered simj "Didn't think Oi could carry 'er safely out through all that mess. 'Twas 1 easiest way."

Achmed gestured toward the Colony entrance. "Come on." enormous tunnel was deathly silent save for the occasional pop hiss from the ash that blackened the entirety of the walls and floor. Aroi and above them, where the vine had broken violently through the cave nothing remained except for scorched fragments of root and the twisting n. of the tunnel it had carved in the earth.

Achmed bent down at what had once been the arch over the Sleep Child's catafalque and ran his sensitive fingers over the scattered letters of words that had been carved there. Once they had warned a world that never saw them about the dangers of disturbing that which slept within it. Now they littered the floor of the cavern, broken into pieces of senseless babble.

Rhapsody's hand came to rest on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

Achmed nodded distantly. Somewhere here were the Grandmother's ashes, mingled inexorably with those of the demon-vine, inseparable as the intertwined fate of Dhracian and F'dor. It saddened him to think that the end of Time would find them that way. He stood and brushed the dirt from his hands. He stared down the twisting tunnel from where the vine had come.

'This goes all the way back to the House of Remembrance, two hundred leagues or more," he said, squinting into the darkness. "Not good. It will be a vulnerability, a passageway into the mountain for the F'dor."

'Not for long," Grunthor said cheerfully. He drew the Sleeping Child closer to his chest and closed his eyes, feeling the nearness of the Earth's life's blood to his heart. He reached out and laid a hand on the wall.

Rhapsody and Achmed leapt back as the tunnel swelled and collapsed, filling in the monstrous rip the vine had torn in the Earth. The Earth itself shrugged, reapportioning its mass, closing the doorway through which the F'dor had reached into the mountain.

Rhapsody looked above her. Despite the shifting of enormous amounts of earth, nothing rained down on their heads except for a little dust. She looked at Grunthor again. He was translucent, radiating the same glow that she had seen within the Earth when they were crawling along the Axis Mundi.
The Child of Earth
, she thought fondly.

When the glow diminished, Grunthor pulled his hand away from the wall, then turned and smiled.

'All closed."

'All the way back to Navarne?" Achmed asked incredulously.

'Yep."

'How'd you manage that?"

The Bolg Sergeant grinned down at the child in his arms. "With 'elp, sir."

The cavern sealed, the three turned back toward the Loritorium. Rhapsody smiled at Grunthor and ran her fingers gently over the Sleeping Child's forehead.

The Earthchild sighed in her sleep.

'What are you going to do with her now, Achmed?"

'Guard her," he said flatly.

'Of course. I was just wondering where."

Achmed looked around what remained of the Loritorium, its artistic carvings cracked and scarred, the beautiful frescoes and mosaics blackened with soot, the pools of silver memory gone. "Here," he said. "At first I considered bringing her back to the Cauldron so that it would be easy to keep an eye on her, but it would be too disruptive to her.

'This really is the ideal place for her. It's buried deep enough that she won't be disturbed by the Bolg. She can sleep on the altar of Living Stone; she seemed peaceful there."

Rhapsody nodded. "Perhaps it will bring her solace."

'Perhaps. We'll need, to reseal the tunnel we made coming down here and retrap the place. There's enough lampfuel in that well to build our own volcano if we have to. Then, when he's gotten his strength back, Grunthor can open a single passageway from the Loritorium to my chambers. If the F'dor is going to make another attempt at her, I want it to have to come through me personally. It will be an engineering nightmare, but I think we can pull it off."

Rhapsody nodded as Grunthor gently laid the child on the altar. "It
will
try again, you know."

'Of course. But I don't think it will try again like this. It's gathering an army to assault the Bolglands; I'm not exactly clear on how it plans to do it, but I'm certain of it. That's why Ashe was its target to begin with—he was the convergence of the royal Cymrian lines, as well as the Invoker's son. He could easily have assumed the throne of Roland, and most likely brought Man-osse with him, as well as any nonaligned Cymrians from the early generations loyal to either side that might happen to still be, around, like Anborn."

'And possibly Tyrian as well," Rhapsody added. "His mother was Lirin."

Oelendra's words in front of the roaring fire came back to her.
If the F'dor had
been Me to bind him, to command the dragon, I shudder to imagine how it would
have used that power to control the elements themselves
. "The whole world is fortunate that he was strong enough to get away."

Achmed stared at the ruin around him. "The army Ashe could have raised might actually have been able to do what Anwyn could not—take the mountain. He would have been the perfect host for the F'dor, but he managed to get away and stay hidden from it these past two decades. Now that it knows he's alive, it will undoubtedly be looking for him again."

'That's his problem to deal with," Rhapsody said resolutely. "We've given him the tools he needs to survive. His soul is his own again, he's whole once more and out of pain. He can go into hiding for a while if he needs to. He did it for twenty years. He'll be all right."

A wry smile crawled into the corner of Achmed's mouth. "I can't tell you how much good it does me to hear you talking like that," he said. "Does this mean your assignation with him is over?"

Rhapsody looked away. "Yes."

'What do you plan to do now?"

She stood a little straighter, and Achmed was struck by the warriorlike aspect that came over her face and posture. "First, I want to make sure Ylorc is taken care of, and give you and Grunthor any help you need in dismantling the Loritorium and getting the Earthchild settled. After that I need a day to mourn, to sing dirges and laments for all whom we have lost." Achmed nodded, noting that the steady look in her eyes didn't waver when she referred to her sister and the Grandmother.

"Then, if you think you can be spared from the Bolglands for a bit, I could use your assistance in locating the various children of the F'dor."

'Only if you're planning to dispose of them," Achmed said, a warning note entering his voice. "Somehow given your proclivity for children, Rhapsody, I can't see you succeeding in that undertaking."

'I have no intentions of disposing of them unless they make it necessary, and then I will do so in a heartbeat," she replied. "This is no different than it was with Ashe. They are people with human souls, Achmed, with demon blood in their veins. They can be helped. They need to be helped."

'How do you know they aren't little demonic monsters like the Rakshas?" he demanded, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. He didn't like the turn the exchange had taken.

'They were born of human mothers, and Ashe's soul was present in the Rakshas.

The presence of a soul in the parent bequeaths a soul to the child. They aren't monsters, Achmed, any more than the Bolg are. They're children, children with tainted blood. If somehow we can separate that blood out, they have at least some hope of avoiding an eternity of damnation."

'No," he said angrily. "It isn't worth the risk. Any one of them might be bound to the F'dor already. We want to meet the F'dor on our terms, not on its own."

Rhapsody smiled coldly. "Exactly. Your ability to sense blood from the old world will help me find the children, Achmed. If that part of their blood which is demonic can be extracted, I will give it to you. Then you will have the blood of the F'dor, a trail of scent for the hunt." She looked over at Grunthor, who was listening. "We'll finally be able to find it. It has given us the means."

Blood will be the means.

The king and the sergeant exchanged a glance, then Achmed looked back at her.

'All right," he said finally. "But make no mistake about it, Rhapsody. If there is even a split second when any of the demon-spawn pose even the slightest of threats, to any of us, I will cut its throat before it exhales, and dispatch it back to its father's realm in the Underworld. This will not be open for debate or exception. Do you agree?"

Rhapsody nodded. "Fair enough," she said.

«-,'t was eight days later when the Three finally emerged from the darkness of the crevasse that had once hidden the entrance to the Loritorium. It had taken most of that time for Grunthor to recover from the effort of sealing off all the passageways and the entire length of the tunnel he had burrowed. Without the contact he had had with the Earthchild the task had proven vastly more difficult, had taken a far greater toll on the giant, but not as much of a toll as leaving her behind in the darkness of the blackened vault, hidden away from all but Time.

The farewell itself was equally painful. Rhapsody had kissed the child's stone-gray forehead as Grunthor covered her carefully with his greatcloak in place of the soft blanket of woven spider-silk that the Grandmother had always nestled around her. Achmed extinguished the street lamps, leaving nothing but the flickering fireshadows from the flame-well dimly lighting the Loritorium, once a great undertaking devoted to the pursuit of scholarship, now only the dark cavern that served as the Sleeping Child's chamber.