Authors: Elizabeth Haydon

Requiem for the Sun (38 page)

BOOK: Requiem for the Sun

7.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads

Rhapsody wrapped her arms around her waist, her eyes darting all around her.

One should beware the Past, lady. It seeks to have you; it seeks to aid you.

It seeks to destroy you
.

The seneschal saw her, and his face hardened into an angular, malevolent mask.

“There is no escape, Rhapsody. You have run out of excuses and diversions. This is going to happen now. Resign yourself to it; you know the way this works.” He pulled off his cloak and tossed it on the rocky ground.

“Spread out and block the wide edge of the precipice,” he said to the five remaining men. They moved into position in a straight line, blocking the area where the promontory connected to the land.

“Light, m'lord,” called one of the bowmen. He was staring down the path where the reeve had descended.

The seneschal tossed Rhapsody to the ground, her back to the promontory's edge, her face to the line of soldiers, then crossed to the south end of the promontory and looked over the edge to where a tiny flicker of lanternlight waved back in forth in the oncoming dark.

“Fergus has found the switchback,” he said to the men. “Good. All right
then.” He turned to take a step back onto the promontory.

Just in time to see Rhapsody lunge for the cliff's edge.

For a split second he and the others stood in shock as she bolted for the end of the promontory. Then a harsh sound of fury tore forth from his throat.

“Stop! Stop her!”

Caius fired; Rhapsody lurched forward, a few paces from the edge, the bolt lodged in her sword belt.

Bent over at the waist, wincing in pain, she saw the guards running toward her. She met Michael's eye for the last time.

Then threw herself over the edge of the cliff and into the sea.

F
or a long moment, the only sound that was heard on the promontory was the howl of the gusting wind.

Then, a moment later, a scream of rage, dual in its origin, rocked the cliff, the harsh tones of the thwarted demon blending discordantly with the rage of a psychotically cruel, unstable man who had been denied the prize he had crossed the ocean to reclaim. It was a sound horrifying enough to make more than one of the hired mercenaries lose control of their water.

The wind rose in response to the scream of anger, blasting the promontory, shaking loose a hail of rock and causing it to rain in great dusty sheets down into the roiling sea.

The seneschal ran to the cliff edge, his muscles thick and corded as he moved, and peered down into the crashing waves that were battering the base of the volcanic rockwalls a hundred feet below. There was no sign of her; he had hoped against hope to see her clinging to the rocks, or washing out to sea on the violent tide, but there was nothing but the endless ebb and flow of blue-gray water, foaming with turgid froth, swirling in the dark light of dusk.

He threw back his head and screamed at the sky.

Noooooooooooooooooo!

The malodor of the demon, the reek of burning flesh, rose into the wind, making the soldiers gag and tremble as sparks of black fire erupted into the air.

They peered over the edge of the precipice themselves, searching in the fading light for a sign of the woman below, but all they could see and hear was the relentless pounding of the angry surf against the rockwalls, the black tide swelling away from the volcanic cliffs, churning back to the sea in a wicked undertow.

The seneschal was clutching his head, writhing, as though locked in battle with an unseen spirit that was gouging at him. The soldiers, frightened now, hedged together, looking to each other for direction; in the absence of the reeve, there was no subleader to turn to.

Finally the seneschal jerked upright and glared at them.

“What are you waiting for?” he demanded, his voice crackling with rage. “Get down there, you fools! Comb the beach, search the rocks â find her!”

“M'lord â” one of the bowman began.

The wind shrieked in fury as the seneschal snapped his arm in the man's direction and made an angry, sweeping gesture toward the edge of the precipice; a gale-force gust swept the man up from behind and heaved him over the promontory's edge. His scream was lost in the cry of the wind as he fell. The others could not help but notice his body bounce off the jagged black rocks that lay about the bottom of the cliff below, the waves seething over them, to be sucked a moment later into the depths by the undertow.

The seneschal watched as well, studying the course the body took. Then he turned and eyed the men again.

“Find her
.”

The men scattered, hurrying down the path to the switchback that the reeve had lighted a few moments before.

Michael stood in the screaming wind, staring down into the roiling water. The waves undulated like the grass in the Wide Meadows had, the grass that for more than a millennium reminded him naggingly of her hair, prodding him with memories made all the more aggravating by futility.

For this we traveled across the world. What a colossal waste.

“Silence!” the seneschal screamed, clawing at his own face. “Do not torture me with your smug insights. You know
nothing.”

I see nothing as well, nothing but surf and rocks.

The veins in Michael's neck corded thickly, his face hot with fury.

“Would you care to see them close up?” he snarled, stepping closer to the cliff's edge. “For I have lost the only thing I wanted. Life unending has suddenly become a burden. Perhaps we should follow her into the sea. Would that please you, you self-satisfied parasite?”

The demon went suddenly silent.

The seneschal's eyes opened wider, and he stared down into the watery frenzy below, contemplating it. He could feel a sudden sweet madness take hold, a desire to throw himself onto the arms of the wind, to drift down, then plummet, ending the torment from the demon and the loss of Rhapsody in one swift, tumultuous leap.

No. Step back.

He shook his head violently, spattering the sweat from his brow into the cleansing wind.

She was not worthy of us. She despised you. Could you not tell that?

“I don't believe you,” the seneschal said lightly, but his undertone was menacing. “Did you see her face when she told me she thought I was dead?”

I saw it. I saw disdain.

“Nonesuch,” the seneschal snapped. “You saw remorse, and longing.”

You are not only blind, you are pathetic.

From below voices could be heard in snippets on the rising gusts of wind; the seneschal looked to the south, where lanterns were being lighted on the now-dark sand beach, their tiny flames spreading out wide, circling the edges of the sea, approaching the rocks but driven back by the force of the tide, sending ripples of light out over the black water.

The demon's voice in his mind changed; it took on a warm, sweet tone.

Go down, then, if you must. Search the shoreline. You will not find anything â no one could have survived those rocks. But search, for you will not be able to rest until you do. Then, once you have made your peace with her being gone for certain this time, let us return to the ship, and back to Argaut. Much is waiting for us to revel in back home.

Michael inhaled silently, watching the fallowing sea, until darkness had consumed the shore.

Come,
the demon wheedled.
Let us go down to the sea again. See for yourself. Faron is waiting.

The seneschal nodded reluctantly. “Yes,” he said aloud. “It's time.” He stared ruefully one last moment into Rhapsody's rocky grave of smoldering water, trying to blot from his mind the way she had met his eye before she jumped. The message had been unmistakable.

Death, even a violent and painful one, was preferable to being with him.

“Whore,” he whispered into the wind coming up from the rocks below.

“Miserable, rutting whore.”

THE CAULDRON, YLORC

T
he long ride home from Sorbold had given Achmed an interesting window into the woman he had hired.

At first, her somewhat slight stature and angled face had reminded him of strongly of Rhapsody, as well as her unwillingness to be disturbed in her work
or manhandled, even by her own family members. But the more he observed Theophila, the more intrigued he was by the differences between them.

Rhapsody had always been as transparent to him as clear glass. Her motives and intentions were obvious, and while she had subtleties and nuances to her character, for the most part she was as easy to read as the mile-high letters carved by river canyons into the cliff faces of the mountain passes in the High Reaches back in the old world.

Theophila, on the other hand, was more opaque than the stained glass she and her fellow Panjeri crafted.

For the vast part of the journey she had said nothing, preferring to ride in silence over the rocky steppes that edged the Manteid mountains from Sorbold northeast to Ylorc. She was even quieter once they entered the mountain passes, glancing above her every few minutes like a prey animal nervously watching for predators above.

While he found her silence to be preferable on balance to Rhapsody's prattle, there was something different about the vibration that emanated from her. While the natural music that surrounded Rhapsody was soothing to the sensitive network of nerves and veins that scored the surface of his skin, the Panjeri woman had more of a crackle to her, a sort of static that hung in the air that she passed through. It was fascinating, though it kept his natural defenses on a high state of alert.

On rare occasion he had even tried to engage her in conversation, or what to Achmed passed for conversation, terse and pointed questions about her training, her experience, her requirements. Theophila responded in short, clipped answers, preferring to keep her concentration focused on the unfamiliar terrain through which they were traveling.

When they camped at night, neither of them got much sleep. The level of understandable distrust had not subsided in the few days since they had met, and so each traveler tended to sleep upright, drawn, ostensibly to be ready to respond to any threat coming upon them from roving animals or brigands, but there was little doubt in either of their minds that the other was on the list of things of which to be wary.

On the few occasions that Theophila did speak, she had gone into great length about the type of tools and supplies she would need, despite not having seen the project site. She had brought a small bag with her, and in it he presumed there were a few hand tools: a saw, perhaps, tile nippers, and the badly balanced groziers and files he had seen her using on the glass windows of Sorbold. But the Panjeri owned the more significant tools and all of the supplies, she had said, and so he would need to be prepared to outfit her completely.

She's a tool-slut,
he thought in amusement, watching as she scrawled the list.
Like Rhapsody and her weakness for clothes
. Every woman he had known, no matter how formidable, had a secret obsession for something.

She also knew how to handle a horse. When she thought he wasn't looking, Achmed had heard her speaking to the animal he had purchased in Yarim, checking its hooves, gentling it with words in another tongue. Her hands were small but strong, and she employed them rather than her feet to direct her mount. It was a soft side that she gave him no view into when she knew he was paying attention.

Six days after they left the Rymshin Pass, the towering peaks of Grivven and Xaith came into view. Achmed watched Theophila from behind his veils, noting how quickly her dark eyes took in the sight of the multicolored mountains, rising, fanglike, in a multiplicity of colors and hues, blends of black and purple, green and blue above rolling mist that made it appear as if they were in the clouds above. Those two peaks had been hollowed out in the Cymrian era, and now had been restored and expanded into outposts that never slept, housing thousands of soldiers in watchtowers that could see for fifteen leagues across the Krevensfield Plain.

“Ylorc,” he said simply. Theophila nodded silently.

He brought her in through the main entrance to the Cauldron, giant arched gates hewn from the very stone fabric of the mountain, past giant ramparts and bulwarks fashioned on a scale as if for holding back gods. Achmed chuckled to himself at the look of undisguised wonder on her face, remembering how he, Grunthor, and Rhapsody had first entered Ylorc through a storm sewer drain, itself a massive architectural marvel, though obviously less grandiose. As ever, he had no need to examine his motives.

He had wanted to impress her, to overwhelm her. Even to frighten her a little.

Great brass bells rang at their approach, the martial sound echoing off the peaks of the Teeth and through the earthen walls, rattling the massive tapestries in the inner hallway. Two hundred Bolg soldiers, glowering in their dark leather armor, their greaves and vambraces forged of blue-black rysin-steel, lined the colossal corridor that led past gigantic statues left over from the Cymrian era, recently restored to glory, or at least cleanliness, by the Bolg artisans.

Theophila followed the Bolg king as he turned down the deep tunnel that led to the Great Hall, lined on both sides with uncounted pedestals, most of them mismatched, on which various items sat, gathering dust.

“What's all this?” she asked, her voice reverberating in the cavernous hallway.

“Gifts of state,” Achmed replied, walking past necklaces and pitchers, seals and other court treasures, all casually displayed. “Trinkets and frippery that various leaders of other nations sent as gifts when I took control of the Bolglands. Bribes. Appeasement. Dust collectors.”

The Panjeri woman's dark eyes glittered in the shadows from the torches that lined the halls.

“Some of them look priceless.”

“No doubt they are.”

“Well, then why are they so carelessly displayed?”

Achmed snorted. “Because I don't care about them. I would have sold the lot of them in the fish market, but my â minister of protocol insisted that they needed to be kept in case any of the fools came calling.”

Theophila smiled slightly. “Why don't the pedestals match, at least?”

Achmed shrugged. “You find a pedestal in an old closet somewhere, you haul it out, stick a bowl on it, and put it in the corridor. It becomes a diplomatic statement. They don't have to match.”

“Ah. And yet you are willing to spend two hundred thousand gold suns on stained glass. You have an interesting sense of aesthetics.” Theophila lapsed into silence and followed him up the corridor to the Great Hall.

S
haene was sifting a large pile of wood ash into a barrel amid the scattered shards of the many frit attempts that had failed when Achmed and the new stained-glass master entered the tower of Gurgus.

The Canderian artisan gaped for a moment, then closed his mouth quickly and made his way across the marble floor, his boot heels sounding in the highdomed chamber. He wiped his hands on his leather apron as he approached.

“Welcome home, Your Majesty,” he said with exaggerated politeness to Achmed. “I trust you had a good trip.” He smiled brightly at the woman, who met his gaze without registering a facial expression.

“Where is Rhur?” Achmed demanded brusquely.

“He and Sandy went to check the kilns.” Shaene's smile grew brighter and more obsequious. Achmed ignored him and went to one of the worktables, where many generations of test shards lay next to seven glass plates wrapped in burlap. Theophila followed him, her eyes taking in the tall, slender room, its lofty, tapering tower that reached into the sky above. He pointed to the circular domed ceiling, temporarily sealed with wood, divided into seven equal sections in rays around the centerpiece support.

“This is the project: I need to have that ceiling inlaid with seven colored panes of glass, all equal in size. The circle is to be divided up in eighths, each
section accounting for one eighth of the area, the last eighth accounting for the lead cames, the support sections that divide the colors one from another.” The Panjeri artisan nodded.

“The forges that are available to you here rival â no, best â anything you have ever seen before. There are four furnaces the size of three oxcarts in length, a fritting furnace, a melting furnace for working the glass, an annealing furnace for cooling, and a furnace for spreading the glass sheets. If you have need of another, or any other tools, I will have them made for you.

“Here is the challenge,” Achmed continued. “Each section must be precisely the right color â I have a gauge I will show you. Additionally, it must be strong enough to withstand the thin air and the battering winds at the top of this crag, but at the same time flawless, without bubbles or imperfections. And the glass must be translucent enough to cast a clear, colored shadow on the floor of this room; different colors will shine at different hours, depending on the position of the sun. If it's done correctly, a rainbow will arch across the floor at midday.”

“Do you have a schematic to indicate where each specific color goes?” the stained-glass master asked.

“Yes. Rhur has it now, most likely.”

Shaene shook his head. “Probably Sandy, actually.”

Achmed exhaled, remembering the nervous look on Rhapsody's face as she reluctantly copied the corresponding colors onto the diagram.

“I will make certain you have the plans,” he said to Theophila. He picked up one of the burlap-wrapped plates and pulled off the cover. In his hand was a small plate of glowing green glass, as thick as the length of his thumb.

“This is supposed to be a gauge of the correct green â there is one for each color,” he said, handing it to Theophila. “In addition, you can test the opacity by holding it up to sunlight. If the glass has the right translucency, supposedly some sort of rune appears, some kind of writing, that can only be seen if it's not too thin, not too thick.”

“I take it you have never seen the rune,” Theophila said, running her fingers absently through the multicolored shards on the table.

“No.”

“Not surprising. You are using the wrong materials.”

“Oh? And what should we be using?”

She picked up a shard, fingering it carefully, then held it up to the light.

“You are using the wrong type of wood for ash, for one thing. What concentration of ash to sand are you using?”

“One and one half parts ash to one part sand.”

The sealed master shook her head. “No. Two to one. You also need a finer mesh to sift it; this is still too coarse. And you need to be using different wood. This has too high a concentration of potash in it.”

Achmed swallowed, thinking. They had used the same wood that Gwylliam had used â the harvest of the deep forest glades to the east within the Hidden Realm of Canrif, past the dry canyon. “When the original tower was built, they used the same wood that we are using,” he said, picking up a blotchy yellow piece.

The artisan arched an eyebrow. “Are you certain?” she asked, looking through the test piece again. “There is wood of all different sorts around here. You've used the soft woods of the eastern forests, have you not?”

“Yes.”

She chuckled. “You should be looking west, not east. The foothills on the western side of your realm are full of cherry and, even better, beechwood, which has more sodium in it â much better in glass making. Additionally, you can find wormwood and nettles strewn all over the steppes â we passed enough of them to realize your brave boast about lining every mountain peak of the Teeth with stained glass. And finally, we can harvest the szeksos.”

“Szeksos?”

The artisan nodded. “Salt crusts that you find on arid land, such as that between here and the Sorbold border. Very commonly seen on steppes. They are probably the remains of ancient saltwater ponds. Whenever the Panjeri come across them, we harvest them. They make a wonderful additive.”

Achmed had been listening in an almost grateful admiration. Hearing the confidence in her voice, after so many months of failed trial and error, gave him renewed hope that his undertaking might have a chance after all.

“I've brought back barrels of minerals to use as colorants,” he said quickly, stepping over the broken glass and nodding to Rhur as he came into the tower. “I'm assuming you'll want manganese for the purple, copper for the red, iron for the yellow, cobalt for the blue â”

“Perhaps,” Theophila shrugged. “I may use the traditional metallic oxides, but I have my own recipes as well. Different types of ash make for different colors, different temperatures do as well.”

“What are the ingredients?”

The Panjeri woman did not smile. “Your two hundred thousand gold suns purchases my time and labor,” she said blandly. “It does not buy my secrets.”

BOOK: Requiem for the Sun

7.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads