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Authors: Elizabeth Haydon

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Shrike stared sharply at him, but Anborn merely nodded.
“Did you find him? This Kinsman, was he there?”
Anborn exhaled, remembering the sound of the waves crashing against the black sand, the steaming mist from the sea swirling around the wreckage of ships from the old world, broken fourteen centuries in the timeless sand. The wind had fought for dominance with the sound of the sea, had faltered and drowned in its roar.
“No,” he said.
Gwydion Navarne lapsed into silence again. He turned away from the Cymrian soldiers and drew back, then loosed his arrow at the popinjay suspended from a pole at one hundred and fifty yards. The straw bird snapped back at the force of the impact, then swung wildly, eliciting subtle sounds of approval from the two men.
Feeling somewhat vindicated, the young duke-to-be turned back to them.
“Perhaps he was answered by another Kinsman,” he suggested.
“Doubtful,” Anborn growled. “Kinsmen were rare in the old land; in this world they are all but imaginary. I have met but two in the last seven hundred years. One was Oelendra, the Lirin Champion, who led the First Fleet of refugees from the Island itself, and passed from this life after the royal wedding. The other —” His words broke off and he smiled slightly to himself.
“Who, Lord Marshal?” Gwydion Navarne could not contain his curiosity. “Who was the other?”
The two soldiers exchanged a glance, and Anborn's smile broadened.
“Perhaps you should ask your ‘grandmother' the answer to that question,” he said.
“Rhapsody?” Gwydion Navarne's brows drew together above an incredulous expression. “Rhapsody is a
Kinsman
?”
“Perhaps I neglected to mention that Kinsmen come in all shapes and sizes, lad,” he said, echoing the words she had once used on him in the same incredulous state. “They come in all walks of life — some of them even are Singers, Namers.”
“Women can be Kinsmen?”
“Both the Kinsmen I have just mentioned were women. You think only men are willing to sacrifice for a greater cause?”
“I'd like to have one sacrifice a few hours, a few scrapes on her knees, and a sour taste tomorrow morning for the greater cause of my satisfaction,” muttered Shrike. “Are you finished here, Anborn?”
Gwydion Navarne ran a hand through his mahogany-colored hair. “This has been a curious day,” he murmured. He looked up at Anborn's man-at-arms. “Are you a Kinsman, Shrike?”
The elderly Cymrian snorted. “When you are one yourself, then you may ask me that,” he snapped. “Not until.”
“Sorry,” Gwydion said, but already Anborn was nodding in the direction of the black stallion. Shrike, obviously relieved to be quitting the conversation, wheeled the chair quickly over to the horse and took Anborn's canes, strapping them quickly to the saddle again.
“You really should reconsider the longbow, lad,” Anborn said as Shrike prepared him to mount. “A crossbow or stonebow penetrates better and is more flexible in war.”
“Yes, but we are at peace, and have been since the lord and lady ascended the throne,” Gwydion replied, looking at the ground as the man-at-arms lifted the ancient general with his shoulder from the wheeled chair and boosted him like a child into the saddle. “I don't expect to see war anytime soon, Lord Marshal. For now as an archer I only need to be proficient enough to penetrate a haybutt.”
The general paused in his ascent and stared down at him. “Only a fool thinks so, lad,” he said shortly. “Peacetime is good for but one thing: practicing skills to be ready for the next war. Your father knew this; you can tell by that wall he built. Woe unto your province if you don't know it as well.”
When the Lord Marshal had been hoisted back onto his mount, he gestured for Gwydion Navarne to bring him the longbow. The youth complied, fascinated, as the Cymrian general closed his eyes, drew the bow easily back to an anchor point well behind his ear, a draw length Gwydion had never seen on the bow before, and fired.
The arrow whistled past him; the wind on which it sailed tousled the young man's hair, blowing it into his eyes, but not before he saw the arrow slam into the direct center of the hay target, vibrating rigidly in waves he could feel in his teeth from one hundred sixty yards away.
Anborn opened his eyes.
“Did you hear it?” he demanded.
“The wind? Yes. It whistled like a teakettle.”
The general tossed him the bow impatiently.
“That was the
arrow,
” he said curtly. “Did you hear the wind?”
Gwydion Navarne considered, then shook his head.
“No.”
Anborn exhaled sharply. “Pity,” he said as he lifted the reins and Shrike mounted his own horse. “Perhaps you are not meant to, then.”
“Why did you tell me this?” Gwydion Navarne called as they turned to leave.
Anborn came alongside the young duke and leaned down as far as his fused vertebrae would allow him, steadying himself against his high-backed saddle.
“Because soon there will be no more Kinsmen,” he said quietly. “The brotherhood all but perished when the Island was swallowed by the sea. MacQuieth, probably the greatest of all Kinsmen, died soon after that; he led the Second Fleet to safety in Manosse, then waded into the sea, standing vigil for the death of the Island. When the cataclysm came, he walked into waves and drowned. What few remained in this place — Oelendra, Talumnan — all have passed from this life now. One day the legendary Kinsmen will be nothing more than that; a legend. I thought you might want to hear the lore while there was still someone qualified to tell you, lad.” He took up the reins. “I am sorry if I was mistaken. And if I
was
mistaken, then you, too, are sorry.”
“I am honored that you chose to tell me, Lord Marshal,” Gwydion said hastily as Anborn nodded to Shrike, preparing to depart. “But what about Rhapsody? She is a First Generation Cymrian, and therefore should be unaffected by the passage of time. As long as she lives, won't there always be Kinsmen?”
Anborn sighed. “Apparently you don't understand the meaning of the word,” he said, a touch of melancholy in his voice. “One cannot be a Kinsman alone.”
He clicked to his stallion, and cantered off over the glossy fields of highgrass bending in supplication before the late-afternoon sun.
8
HAGUEFORT, NAVARNE
R
hapsody raised her hand to her face to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun. The wind was gusting hot, even now, at dawn, the portent of a scorching day ahead.
The green fields of Navarne were silent beneath the sun, the dawn wind rippling the highgrass in waves beyond the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, the ancient roadway that spanned the length of Roland from Avonderre to the Manteids. The quiet hills looked in all their vast motion like a green-golden sea, ebbing and flowing with the gusts of the wind. They put her in mind of earlier days, other meadows, another world now long gone, and in the midst of the excitement brought on by the upcoming journey a pang of melancholy struck, resonating for a moment in her soul.
Peace reigned across the Cymrian Alliance, and had for three years now; it was both a fragile and a resilient accord, with the occasional flare of tempers and disputes, but by and large harmonious. She could see it in the faces of the people of the continent, from the Lirin of the western forest to the delegates from Bethe Corbair, the last Orlandan province before the Bolglands, a relaxation of a long-held guard. Even Ashe seemed to be relishing the end of hostilities that had gripped the land for decades. This formerly hunted man, who had spent twenty years hiding and alone, now walked the world openly, happily, his face to the sun. That a wyrmkin's dragon blood, notorious for its paranoia, was allowing him the optimism he was experiencing must surely be a sign that all was right with the world.
But there was something in the wind.
She could not really put her finger on what she felt; it was transitory, ephemeral as the wandering breeze itself. But a change was coming; she could feel it. And it made her skin prickle in cold, even beneath the growing heat of the summer sun.
The noise of preparation dimmed; she looked away for a moment from the soldiers making ready the horses, wagons, and supplies that would accompany them on their trek to Yarim and turned from the ocean of billowing grass westward toward the real sea, one hundred leagues away.
Is that
where
it's
coming from?
she wondered, trying in vain to find the thread in the wind, the change in the air, whatever alteration in scent or heat or
density that was causing her melancholy. Attuned as she was to the vibration in the world around her, in the tone of the music that life made, as a Lirin Singer, a Namer, she could seek such changes.
But she found nothing.
There had been no dreams, no nightmares that foretold of anything looming, warnings like the ones that had once nightly plagued her sleep. When she was wrapped in Ashe's arms, the bad dreams stayed at bay; a dragon guarding one's dreams was the most peaceful means to a night's rest. But even more, when she was away from him, in Tyrian or journeying back again, there had been no visions, no premonitions, no omen to give credence to this sudden change in the wind.
Perhaps she was only imagining it.
Yet as she stood, peering futilely into the distance, she felt another chill, a different one, this time at her back. The tiny hairs at the nape of her neck bristled and beads of sweat appeared, cooling a moment later in the morning breeze. Rhapsody turned quickly, staring over the battlements of Haguefort eastward, toward the ever-reaching expanse of the Krevensfield Plain, but the sensation was gone. Nothing met her eyes but endless swimming fields of highgrass.
She put her palm to her temple, seeking to dispel the throbbing that had arisen from deep within her brain; as she did, to the south she felt yet another quiver, like a tremor in the ground. She bent quickly and touched the earth beneath her feet, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
And then, as quickly as it had come, it too was gone.
“Aria?”
Rhapsody looked up to see Ashe, on the roadway below, watching her along with the guards, the soldiers, and Gerald Owen. She mustered a smile and shook her head, a gesture that sent everyone back to his appointed task except Ashe, who handed the chest he was carrying to one of the escort troops, then headed up the grade to her side.
“Is something wrong?” he asked as she stood and brushed the dirt from her hands.
“I'm not certain,” she replied, shielding her eyes again and looking around. Whatever had disrupted her thoughts, had given her pause, was gone now, if it had even been anything to begin with.
“I don't think so,” she said finally.
“We can still send an avian message to Achmed if you wish to stay home,” Ashe said, running a finger through a loose strand of her hair. “He won't be
leaving Ylorc for another day or more; Yarim is so much shorter a trek for him.”
Rhapsody took his hand and pulled him back toward the wagons. “Not at all. I am very much looking forward to this journey,” she said as they walked to the caravan. She stopped as a carriage marked with the royal standard plodded into the line, drawn by a team of bays. “What is that?”
Ashe bowed deeply. “M'lady's coach.”
“Surely you jest.”
The Lord Cymrian blinked. “No. Why?”
“You want me to ride in a carriage?”
“Why not?”
“Coaches are for — for, well —”
A wry look of amusement came into Ashe's blue eyes. “For what, my dear?”
“For — well, for nobility and the like.”
“You are nobility, Rhapsody. You're royalty now, as much as it pains you.”
She cuffed him playfully. “You're right, it does, but that's not the problem. Coaches are for the pampered, or the old, or the ill. I don't wish to be any of those things, not yet at least.”
“Are we never to overcome your distaste for royal amenities? It might afford us a private place to sleep.”
“I'm sure the regiment will appreciate that. No.”
Ashe gave a mock sigh of annoyance. “Very well,” he said, and gestured to the quartermaster. “We don't need the coach, Phillip. Thank you.”
“It would just slow us down anyway,” Rhapsody said, going to her roan mare and patting her affectionately. “And Twilla would be jealous.”
“Let it be noted that I attempted, indulgent husband that I am, to spare your hindquarters from the saddle, and you rebuffed my efforts,” Ashe said, attempting an injured air.
“Well, my hindquarters thank you, and please do not comment further on that statement,” Rhapsody said, patting the roan again. “Are we almost ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps we should find Melisande and Gwydion Navarne. And I wanted to be certain to bid farewell to Anborn.”
Ashe nodded in the direction of the crest of a hill. “He's over there,” he said. “I'll gather the children if you want to go say goodbye.”
Rhapsody kissed him appreciatively. “Thank you.”
She waited until he had ascended the steps of Haguefort before heading toward the hill he had indicated. She stopped halfway up, listening to the moan
of the wind again, but there was nothing in it out of the ordinary that she could discern. Finally she sighed and hurried up the hill face to the summit.
At the top of the hill Anborn sat, alone in his wheeled chair. His back was to her, but as she approached he spoke.
“It's coming from the west, I believe,” he said.
Rhapsody stopped where she stood. “What is it?” she asked apprehensively.
The ancient soldier didn't move. “I don't know,” he said.
Rhapsody slowly came forward until she was beside him. Even standing upright she was only slightly taller than the Lord Marshal was when seated. She waited, not wanting to disrupt whatever he was listening for. Together they stared out over the endless meadow to the horizon, brightening now with the full ascent of the sun. Finally the general spoke.
“I thought I heard the call,” he said.
“You had said. On the Skeleton Coast.”
Anborn turned his azure gaze on her. “No; again, last night.”
The chill returned, prickling her flesh, but this time Rhapsody knew that the source was the general's words. “Where?”
Anborn looked away again. “If I knew, I would be there.” He rolled his shoulders, the massive muscles rippling beneath his shirt, then straightened his useless legs with his hands.
“I heard nothing, though I sense a change in the air,” Rhapsody said, brushing the hair from her eyes as the breeze blew through again. “I have never heard the call of the Kinsmen on the wind, Anborn; I've only been the one to cry for help, and you answered. I thought that if a Kinsman called, and there was one within the hearing of that call, he would come; that the elements themselves would aid in bringing him.”
The general nodded. “That was my understanding as well.”
“So then how could this be?”
Anborn shrugged. “I have lived more than a thousand years, Rhapsody. If I live a thousand more, I will still not know the answer to every question you would have.”
Rhapsody smiled slightly. “Indeed that is true,” she said, putting her arm across his shoulder. “And even if you knew, I doubt you'd share the information. You cannot even deign to tell the buttery cooks what you want for supper.”
“Your new one is wretched, by the way. I've had better swill and hardtack in the belly of a cargo ship.”
The light words dissipated on the wind, leaving an image ringing in Rhapsody's mind.
“Could the call have come from the sea?” she asked. She felt Anborn's muscles tense slightly beneath her arm. “Llauron used to say that the wind over the sea sometimes caught sounds and spun them, like raveling wool, keeping them flying about forever, battered by the vibrations of the endless waves. Is it possible you are hearing a call that came from someone on the sea, maybe yesterday, maybe a hundred years ago?”
Anborn scowled. “If we are to debate all of what is possible, you will not arrive in Yarim in time to meet the Bolg king,” he said gruffly, though the affection was unmistakable in his voice.
“Perhaps that is why you are hearing it and I am not,” Rhapsody said. “Perhaps it came from a time before I was even here, before I became a Kinsman.” Her face colored slightly in the morning sun. “It is still so hard for me to believe that I am one; I haven't the lifetime of soldiering service that most have.”
Anborn shook his head. “Many lies are put on the wind, but the wind itself never lies. You called and I heard you, so whatever you did to obtain the status must have been worthy. Hard as it sometimes is to imagine it.” He pinched her hip playfully.
“What do we do, then?” she asked, slapping his hand and trying to keep the desperation she felt at bay.
Anborn shrugged again. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?
”
“Nothing.” The lines in the general's face crinkled as he squinted into the sun, then turned his gaze to the fields again. “You cannot save the entirety of the world, Rhapsody; no one can. If it is to be, if there is a Kinsman in distress, and he is able to be saved, the wind will see to it that he will be. I stand ready — well, all right, I
sit
ready.” He chuckled and patted her face gently, allowing his hand to linger on her cheek for a moment. “And I know you do as well. So we will wait and see what is to pass. In the meantime, go and live your life. Go to that dry red brick of a city and flood it; drown it, for all I care. It's a place of dry rot, and deserves to blow away in the wind, as far as I'm concerned, but if this is what you seek to do, by all means go do it. You cannot wait on destiny; it comes to you, usually when you are least ready for it.”
Rhapsody took the hand that rested on her face and kissed it, then bent and kissed the general's cheek.
“Thank you, Anborn. Are you staying in Haguefort for a while?”
“A short while, long enough to undo the miserable lessons my useless nephew has been giving the young duke. That boy doesn't even know how to spit properly; it's a crime.”
Rhapsody laughed. “Oh good. Well, I'm sure he will be a whole new man when we return.”
“Count on it. I may not be here to welcome you home, alas. You know how much I dislike staying in one place for too long.”
She nodded. “Yes. I will miss you, as always.”
The general waved a hand at her. “Go. The caravan was almost ready when I came out here an hour or more ago. They are doubtless waiting for you. Travel well.”
He waited until she had disappeared over the rim of the hill before he spoke.
“And, as always, I will miss you, too.”
THE CAULDRON
A
chmed marveled at how quietly the Bolg had assembled.
The caravan to Yarim had been stocked and made ready during the night, so as not to disrupt the morning muster or early maneuvers; the work had been accomplished in virtual silence, impressive because the wagons with the drill bits and gears were seven yards long, with four axles each, weighty, cumbersome equipment that clanked and groaned under the best of circumstances. It was a tribute to Grunthor's training and the natural grace of the Firbolg body, made flexible and stealthy by necessity.
Despite the efficiency of their actions, the king could see that the Bolg who had been selected to travel to Yarim were nervous.
The scars from the centuries-old tradition of Spring Cleaning still remained, four years after he had taken the throne, a hideous annual ritual in which the Orlandan army, drunk on power and better armed and trained, came to the foothills of the Teeth and laid waste to a Bolg village, thinking that their bloodthirsty actions were keeping the demi-human population in check and preventing the cannibalistic hordes from attacking the border provinces of Bethe Corbair and Yarim.
In their haste to destroy and hurry home, the soldiers of Roland had seemed to miss the fact that the site of their devastation was the same every year. The Bolg manipulated the situation masterfully; a ramshackle village was hastily constructed and populated with the castoffs of the semi-nomadic society — the old, the infirm, the sickly. The solution, to his mind, was pragmatic and clever; it kept the herd stronger, while appeasing the bloodlust of Roland, and prevented them from coming deeper into the Teeth where the Bolg really lived. The deception had been the convincing factor to Achmed that this populace,
the race of his unknown father's people, was worth his effort to protect.
From horseback he could see them now in the light of dawn, gathering their foodstuffs and weapons, hitching the dray horses to the wagons — oxen might have been better, but would never have survived in the Teeth. Bolg didn't care for the taste of horseflesh, and could be threatened into treating the animals as transportation, not food, unlike the four unfortunate teams of experimental oxen he had purchased from Bethe Corbair a few years back. He still occasionally saw Bolg pass him in the tunnels, their crude headpieces sporting the bovine's horns, usually just one from the center of the forehead or sprouting from their heads atop a helmet. He had once even seen one adorning a lesser commander's codpiece, and muttered a silent apology to the late ox.
So for all that the human inhabitants of Yarim would no doubt tremble at the sight of a cohort of the Firbolg army approaching from the east, they could hardly be as unsettled by it as the Bolg were at the thought of entering into the heart of the former enemy's territory in a small, sparsely guarded group. They had more justifiable reason to worry, in his opinion.
The ground rumbled to his right, and Grunthor appeared atop Rockslide.
“Oi think we are ready to depart, sir,” the giant said.
Achmed nodded and turned to Rhur, who wore an apprehensive expression, noticeable in the gray light. Since the aspect usually seen on Bolgish faces was taciturn, it was especially unsettling.
“As ordered, look to Omet for guidance in matters of Gurgus, and to Hagraith in administrative ones,” he said. “If there is something about which you are uncertain, await my return.” The Bolg artisan nodded.
Achmed took up the reins, signaled to the quartermaster, then urged the horse forward until he was at the head of the supply column. He cleared his throat.
“Ready?”
The dark faces and hirsute heads nodded silently.
“Very well, then. We'll be in and out quickly, so as not to have to endure these people any longer than absolutely necessary. Fall out.”
With a grinding scream of wood, the noise of the animals, and a flash of the summer sun on the blue-black steel of the drill bit, covered a moment later in canvas, the Bolg engineers set forth for the red clay of Yarim.
BOOK: Requiem for the Sun
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