The Hollow Queen (50 page)

The old man straightened the helm on his head, then nodded as the Lady Cymrian drew her sword again.

Together he and Rhapsody made their way down into the valley, past the distressed eyes of her guards, lighted only by the flames of Daystar Clarion, pulsing like a beating heart of fire.

*   *   *

As darkness approached the following night, the army of the Alliance began to gather in the valley of the canyon and on the heath above the Radashajn Pass in the glow of the newly lighted battlefield fires. In the light of day the wounded had been attended to, the destruction was beginning to be cleared away, burial and assessment of prisoners took place efficiently and quickly. Solarrs had commented that it was always a shame when such tasks became routine.

But when the sun began to set, the restoration ceased suddenly and silently. A separate unit of soldiers had been working on each of the neighboring peaks, and had signaled the completion of their duties as Rhapsody and Hjorst stood at the rim of the canyon overlooking the site of the flood of mine slag once more.

The towering pile of waste still stood, a new hill at the bottom of the canyon, the bodies of horses and of men being slowly recovered and committed to simple graves. The newly freed slaves and Faedryth's Nain army had joined in the recovery efforts and gathered now with the soldiers of the Alliance, spread across the floor of the canyon, looking up at the barrow of sticks, brambles, and sagebrush that had been carefully built at the rim above.

On the barrow was a rolled cloth, the Lady Cymrian's own cloak, carefully wrapped in a tight cylinder with a small distension in the center. It stretched across the kindling in military fashion, crossing another rectangle of cloth, the flag of the Cymrian Alliance.

Rhapsody stood, the Diviner at her left shoulder and behind, her face set in a serious but calm mien, pale in the light of the setting sun, whispering rites and chants of passage, of loss, of completion. Finally, when she had finished the rituals and liturgies taught to her long ago by her Naming mentor, she raised her eyes to the west, looking beyond the sunset in silence.

Then she drew Daystar Clarion and held it aloft.

The wind itself, whistling through the canyon, seemed to pause for a moment in respect.

The flames of the sword burned quietly, almost as if in respect as well.

Rhapsody leaned a little closer to the pyre.

“I will watch, I will wait,” she said softly. “I will call and will be heard.”

As if in assent, the wind picked up, blowing the tresses of her hair around her face.

The Lady Cymrian smiled. “Goodbye, Anborn,” she whispered in the tongue of her childhood. “May you rest this night in Damynia's arms. Thank you for everything.”

Then she stood erect once more and brought the tip of the burning blade to the barrow of sticks and sagebrush.

The pyre caught fire immediately, the brush and brambles gleaming along the lines of their stems, lacy for a moment, then exploding, ripping into flame.

From atop each of the peaks across the canyon fire answered, roaring to life, lighting the mountaintops with glorious radiance, crackling skyward.

From the depths of the canyon floor a shout of gladness arose, rumbling in the voices of men and women, soldiers and former slaves, a salute of fondness and respect that rang across the heath and up to the peaks beyond.

Distantly Rhapsody could hear the voices of the Nain of the Deep Kingdom begin the Chant of Honor, their highest salute to a fallen leader or comrade, but the music faded almost immediately into the wind that was sweeping around her now, rustling her garments and billowing through her hair.

Leaving her numb.

*   *   *

On the canyon floor, Evrit stood, a few paces apart from his fellow former slaves, watching the flames of Anborn's funeral pyre, and the signal fires on the surrounding mountaintops, burning down.

Numb.

A gentle tap on his shoulder nudged him from his reverie.

Evrit turned amid the leaping shadows to see what looked like his own eyes staring back at him.

Jarzben, his elder son, stood before him. Little more than a boy when they had been taken, he had grown into a lean and muscular man with the darkness of enslavement in his expression, which his face was struggling to cast off.

Smiling slightly, something he had not done since the night their gentle religious sect's ship, the
Freedom
, had sundered off the coast of Sorbold.

“Father.” It was the only word the young man could form.

Evrit stared at him a moment longer.

Then collapsed in his son's arms, weeping.

When, after a long time, he was finally able to gather himself, he pulled away and looked into Jarzben's face again.

“Selac and your mother?” he whispered. “Do you know anything of them?”

Jarzben shook his head.

“I've been advised to search the streets near the palace chimneys for him, and the linen factories for her,” he said, his speech hesitant from lack of use.

Evrit smiled wanly.

“Tomorrow we will set forth to those places and search until we know what has become of them,” he said.

And looked up again to the mountaintops, watching the smoke ascend.

Thankful.

 

59

LATER THAT NIGHT, ENCAMPED ON THE RIM

Ashe, who had finally arrived, could see her. She was almost close enough to touch.

Her vibrational signature, the unique pitch that his dragon sense could identify innately, was a beacon, like the great light tower of Tallono Harbor.

“Aria?” he whispered.

Rhapsody turned.

She was standing at the crest of a mountain swale surrounded and lit by pools of spattered torchlight. Her face was bruised, and the mail shirt of dragon scales Elynsynos had given her long ago was striped with blood, casting red-gold shadows onto the ground at her feet. Ashe's eyes stung at the sight of her golden hair gleaming in that light, his dragon sense making note of the missing fall of glistening blond tresses that had hung to her knees when he had last been with her. Her cropped locks had stripped some of the feminine aspect from her, making her appear the warrior he always knew her to have been. Daystar Clarion burned steadily in her hand; when she saw him, she gazed at him for a moment, her face solemn; then she sheathed the sword, causing the light around her to dim substantially.

He climbed the swale slowly, struggling to keep from seizing her and dragging her into his arms. Even from a distance, in the dark, he could tell that something was missing; he had known all along that this reunion would be painful, but until he was face-to-face with her, he had no idea how much his dual nature would be horrified by the change in her.

Her emerald eyes, gleaming in the firelight but absent much of their familiar warmth, met his own. When she spoke, her voice, at least, was as he remembered it.

“Are you all right? Are you injured?”

“Only slightly—it's nothing.” His own voice broke, and he reached out his hands to her. “Come to me—I love you; gods, I love you. Please come here.”

She stepped closer; Ashe sensed that she was uncertain, uncomfortable even. He struggled to keep his need in check.

“I love you,” he said again.

His arms remained empty.

The warrior in front of him looked down at the shadowlit ground and sighed.

Ashe's throat went dry, and his blood ran cold. “Can you not respond to me? Do you—do you still love me, Rhapsody?”

The woman slowly raised her eyes to meet his gaze, almost reluctantly.

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “I don't really know how to answer you.”

Ashe choked, and words he had wanted to restrain burst forth from his strangling throat. “The way you have unfailingly before. You have told me ‘always' whenever I asked it of you.”

“I—I am sorry. I barely know you. I have flashes of memory, of our travels together, most of which took place when you were cloaked in mist, hiding from the world—”

“You are my wife,” Ashe whispered. “The mother of my son. The other half of my soul. You gave our child a large part of your true name before you left him in the care of the Nain—”

“I believe you—I do. I can sense in your voice that you are speaking the truth—”

“But you do not remember?”

“No. I do not remember. I am sorry.”

Ashe turned suddenly away, overcome with pain.

“Are you all right?” Rhapsody's voice carried the sound of concern, but nothing more.

“No,” he said. “The only thing you have ever asked of me is honesty; I have honored that request each day, with each heartbeat, as best as I have been able. I am unwilling to lie to you; your answer breaks my heart. I know you cannot help that; I have understood from the day you told me of your plan to leave your name with our son that it might be painful to come back to you, only to find that you do not love me anymore. But until I heard the words from your mouth, with the ring of True-Speaking, I had no idea how much I would wish to die upon hearing them. I am by no means ‘all right.' I am sorry.”

Rhapsody stood silently, absorbing his words. Finally she spoke.

“If I cannot yet be the woman who loves you until we are reunited with our son, and I with my name, I can at least be the woman who wants you.”

Ashe exhaled, finally turning to look at her again. “That latter part sounds promising; it takes a bit of the sting away. Can you be more specific?”

“While I may not be able to feel love yet, I can still feel need. And I do—yours, as well as my own.”

“And how do you wish to meet this need?”

“Come with me behind the barracks and I'll show you.”

With a savage movement, she grasped the dragonscale mail shirt, bloody and brushed with soot, that shielded her chest and dragged it off over her head, tossing it to the ground at her feet, then nodded to the place she had indicated. When he just stared at her, she extended an impatient hand.

Ashe swallowed dryly.

“You—you're not proposing we—make love, are you? Now—here?”

“Love? No. To call it such would be untrue. But you have the right idea.” Her gaze hardened. “Are you coming?”

“Rhapsody, from its beginning, without exception, love of incredible depth has been present in our lovemaking—it's never been anything less than that. It has been, at its very least, a communion of hearts as well as of bodies. Since we wed, it has been one of souls as well. Much as I would dearly love to meet your need, and my own, if that love won't be present, I'd rather wait until my wife returns, if you don't mind.”

Rhapsody's eyes darkened, but her expression didn't change.

“As you wish,” she said evenly. “I feel pained to remind you, however, that there was, in fact, an exception—one night of nothing but need, in a howling wind, in the darkness of the Teeth, up against just such a mountain wall. Tonight, at least, I remember that pounding need being satisfied, and in my memory the man who granted me that release was you, I think. It wasn't what either of us really wanted, but it was enough at that moment.”

Ashe shuddered, remembering the incident she referenced.

“And, if you recall, that one exception led you to unspeakable pain, grief, and terror,” he said, “since afterwards you didn't know for certain that it had been me in the darkness. The demon manipulated you mercilessly because of it.”

“Maybe—I really don't remember that part, I'm sorry. It's not that dark. I can see you clearly now.” She shrugged. “But suit yourself. Take care of your injuries and those of your troops. I'll find other ways to sate my need.” She turned, snatched up her armor, and started back down the side of the swale.

Ashe's throat tightened as the dragon rose, avaricious, stripping the moisture from the air, making it hum with dryness.

“And with whom do you plan to sate this need, my love, if not with me?”

Rhapsody stopped and turned back to him.

“The quartermaster,” she said flatly. She paused, feeling the static filling the wind around her.

Unconsciously Ashe gripped the hilt of his sword.

“The
quartermaster
?” he demanded, the multiple tones of the wyrm rising in his voice. “Who is this soon-to-be-dead man—”

“I've no idea,” she interrupted, her Namer's tone slicing through the wind, causing his words to crumble and falter, “other than the soldier who will be responsible for helping me work to the point of exhaustion throughout this night and into morning, packing and provisioning for our journey to retrieve our child and, hopefully, my name—which is
how
I will sate my need. I said ‘in other ways,' not ‘with other men.' Spare the quartermaster; to kill him would truly be unwarranted, unless he refuses to move fast enough in bringing me the provisions. Then by all means, cut his head off.”

She climbed back to the top of the swale and gazed into his face, her eyes narrow and unblinking.

Ashe exhaled shortly.

“Sorry,” he said, the draconic tones fading from his voice. “My other nature is beside itself at the change in you; I don't know how to behave around you when you are like this. To avoid drowning in loss, the dragon reverts to jealousy.”

Rhapsody's eyes broke with his, and she looked at the ground.

“That part of me which thinks this aspect of you is endearing must still reside in the Nain kingdom,” she said after a moment. “What's left of me at the moment finds it annoying and peevish. But no doubt you are feeling the same way about the diminished me. I will take my leave from you now, then, so that we will not damage what we hold sacred when we are our true selves again. But understand this, Ashe; just because I cannot feel my love for you now does not mean that I have ever forgotten the vow I apparently made to you—
ever
.” She raised the back of her left hand to his eyes. “I did not even need this wedding band to remind me, at least most of the time. Your suspicion and lack of trust insults me. It's probably a good thing I can feel nothing; if I could, I would doubtless be hurt by your lack of faith in me. Go look in on your men and get your wounds dressed, even if they are minor. I will see you in the morning.” She turned and strode back down the swale.