The Hollow Queen (54 page)

Rhapsody rubbed her pounding temples with her fingers.

“Probably all of them—I don't remember any of them. Why do you keep calling me ‘Aria'?”

Tears welled in Ashe's eyes again.

“It's an endearment I have called you since the summer we became lovers,” he said quietly. “It means ‘my guiding star'—”

“I know what it means,” Rhapsody whispered. “I just don't remember you calling me that in the Past, though I can remember you doing so since we were reunited. But I can't even remember the ones you just told me—it's as if they refuse to stay in my mind.”

“Then I will say them to you again, and you should speak them immediately after I do,” Ashe said, panic beginning to rise up inside his viscera. The baby may have felt the change, because he frowned intensely and squirmed, settling down a moment later as Ashe caressed his downy head.

“All right. Let me replenish the Naming note first.” She hummed it again, and the air cleared around them once more. “Now tell me.”

“Amelia,” Ashe said.

“Amelia,”
Rhapsody sang hesitantly.

“Turner.”

“Tur
—
”
Rhapsody stopped and stared blankly at him.

“Turner,” Ashe said again. His voice shook from the effort of remaining quiet for Meridion's sake.

“Turner.”

“Good. Now, the nicknames?” She nodded. “Emily.”

“Emily.”

“Emmy.”

“Emmy.”
Rhapsody exhaled, then blinked. “Thank you—they're gone again already.” She touched the tiny pearl once more and whispered the words of Ancient Lirin, the commands for
release
and
return
.

She repeated the ancient words several times, then fell silent.

When she looked up at him, her eyes were dry, but the expression on her face was stricken.

“I'm sorry,” she said quietly. “I've done everything I know how to do. But I don't feel anything. Anything at all.”

 

64

“Look at him again, Aria,” Ashe urged. “Pause in your Naming lore for a moment, and let your instinct as a mother take over. Look at our son—”

“You don't understand. I—I can't feel anything; I have no instincts. He doesn't smell right to me. I don't even recognize him.”

Ashe was thunderstruck.

“What do you mean, you don't
recognize him?
He looks exactly like you! A stranger could discern which one he is out of a crowd of babies from one glance at you. How is it possible that his own mother cannot?”

Rhapsody lapsed into silence.

“How can you feel nothing?” Ashe demanded in a harsh whisper. “You're a Namer—potent and powerful enough of one to alter the fabric of Time, of the world itself. This is
your
name—your
child!
I cannot imagine it possible that it's not within your power to recall it, if it's important enough to you.”

Rhapsody looked steadily at him, though her eyes narrowed slightly.

“Perhaps that power is the problem; I didn't rename myself, I gave my name away. Maybe my own abilities have made it impossible for me to take it back.”

“So you can smile at Analise, but not at our son?”

“I knew Analise when I was just Rhapsody. Our acquaintance is from that time. But you, Ashe—you knew me by another name, the name I was given when I was forming my identity, when I learned to love. A name I pledged to you when we joined our souls in marriage. A name I don't remember on a level that surpasses the knowledge of my mind; it's been stripped from my very essence. I gave it to Meridion—I can't seem to take it back. I'm sorry—I don't know what to do.”

“Are you telling me you don't love him anymore? I have already had to adjust to the possibility that you will not love me always, as you have promised over two lifetimes to do, but our
child?
You don't feel love for our
son?
”

The angry tears in his eyes were not mirrored in his wife's, though her expression was sad now.

“Do you think for even a second, even a breath, that I want it this way?” she asked quietly. “Everything I've done since this war began, I did for our son, Ashe. You should understand this. You sent us away to the Bolg kingdom for our safety, knowing what the cost would be to you. A man who battles daily with his nether side should be better able than most to understand the loss of an intrinsic identity like a true name; your sacrifice for us made the dragon in you rampant. Do you not remember telling me that we could never be together again because of that, for fear that you might harm Meridion and me?”

Ashe stared at her, the vertical pupils expanding in his eyes. Then, as her words rang with truth within him, he dropped his gaze and nodded reluctantly.

“So you are uniquely qualified to understand how lost I am, how numb, I would wager.” She looked down at the baby again, then looked away.

“Even as lost and unfeeling as I am, I don't regret the choice I made,” she said softly. “I had to go to war; I had to leave him, for his sake and the sake of the continent. I gave him my name to comfort him, to spare him the loss of both of us, to assure him, no matter what happened to me, that he had my love, and yours, through me. If I had died, he would have had it. Now that I have lived, he has it still. If I am diminished for the rest of my life, at least it seems that what I hoped for came to pass. It was worth the sacrifice.”

“Perhaps,” Ashe said.

The baby stirred, his eyes still closed, making the soft sounds of awakening. When Ashe looked up again, his eyes were still gleaming with tears, but his anger was gone, replaced by something much deeper, much more desolate.

“What can we do? What can I do to help you, Aria?”

Rhapsody fixed him with a direct look. “You can tell me the truth,” she said.

There was a tone in her voice that resonated with Ashe; she was asking something that surpassed the ordinary meaning of her words. He nodded, holding his breath in dread of her question.

“You were a motherless boy who never knew the love of the woman who carried you and brought you into this world—you have said that was the source of a lifetime of loneliness for you before we met. You had a father who loved you, even if his love was odd and somewhat stunted by the lineage that was his heritage.

“I ask you this: if you had to assess and choose, which of these two choices do you think would have been better for you—to still have been motherless, but to have known your mother's love intrinsically, to have
owned
that love in as real a way as it is possible to have something, along with that of your father—or to have had your father's love and the living presence of a mother that did
not
love you, did not have any feelings for you whatsoever? To have grown up in her house, in her presence, feeling innately that you meant nothing to her? Would it have been better to have known such a mother—or to have never known her at all, while having her love to keep throughout your lifetime? Especially if your father had made your happiness his life's purpose, as I know you will for Meridion?”

All the sound went out of the windowless room.

Then, after a span of a hundred heartbeats, Rhapsody saw her husband's spirit break. He did not move, did not even breathe, but it was in his eyes. He bowed his head, his shoulders suddenly weighed down as if under a heavy burden. She turned away.

“I thought as much,” she said softly. “Thank you; I'm sorry. I will leave now, before he is aware that I was even here.”

She had caught a look of utter despair on his face and wondered dully if Ashe's own mother had seen a similar sight with her last breath: the image of her husband, Llauron, frantic, holding a squirming child he was ill-prepared to care for alone as the woman he loved departed from his life. Even as numb and unconnected to him as she was, Rhapsody could not bear the sight of such anguish.

She started toward the door as the baby in Ashe's arms stretched again and cooed. She came to a halt as her husband called to her in a voice that sounded as if it had been rent by shards of metal.

“Rhapsody?”

She turned back to him.

“Where will you go?”

“I don't know,” she said nervously, watching Meridion kick his blankets off in Ashe's arms. “Ylorc, perhaps, Tyrian, more likely. I can't think clearly now. But I can't let him see me; I will send word to you when I get to wherever I am going.”

Her voice grew softer.

“Goodbye, Ashe. I hope you will remember how much I loved you both when I still had my name, and that it brings you consolation.”

She turned again and hurried to the door.

Meridion opened his tiny blue eyes. The dragonesque pupils contracted as he took in the light in the room and his father's face. His small mouth puckered in interest, then opened as the soft clicking sounds of vocal exploration came out in a greeting that rang with recognition.

Ashe smiled weakly through his tears.
He remembers me, at least,
he thought.
After so little time together, and so much of it apart. Thank the One-God.

The baby turned his head toward the sounds of the opening door. He let out a squeal of glee.

“Mimen!”

It was a natural noise for a baby to make, and sounded for all the world like the burbling of any infant, but both of his parents recognized the meaning of the word in Ancient Lirin, the language of Namers.

Mama!

Rhapsody, her hand on the door handle, froze where she stood.

A wave of heat seemed to wash over her, leaving her light-headed.

Meridion let loose another squeal and a slew of meaningless babble.

His mother turned around slowly. Her face was white as milk and her hands went to her face, covering her mouth in shock.

Ashe coughed, then gasped, then laughed aloud. He gestured briskly with one hand to his wife, cradling their son in the crook of his other arm.

“Come,” he said encouragingly. “He's calling you, Aria.”

Rhapsody tried to comply. She took a step forward; then her trembling legs gave way, and she sank to her knees on the floor.

Where she proceeded to burst into tears, flowing in streams down her face, still shielded by her hands.

“Sam,” she whispered. “Oh, my God.
Sam
.”

Ashe came to her side and offered her his free hand.

“Do you remember?” he asked, his voice breaking. “Do you remember your name now?”

Rhapsody nodded as the tears continued to fall, but now they were tears of joy that caused her entire body to tremble.

“Emily,” she whispered. “Your Emily, Sam. I love you—I belong to you.” She locked eyes with her baby, grinning toothlessly at her in his father's arms. “And to you,
y pippin
.”

My baby.

Meridion squealed happily again.

The agony that had clenched his heart shattered; Ashe took Rhapsody's hand and pulled her gently to her feet. He attempted to put the child in her arms, but she backed away again.

“I'm afraid to hold him yet,” she whispered. “I want to, but I'm shaking so that I fear I might drop him.”

“Here, you hold him, and I will hold you both,” Ashe said, his grin matching his son's, but with teeth. “He wants desperately to be in your arms, Aria; I know exactly how he feels.” He took her hand again and led her to the sofa, where he sat, then pulled her onto his lap and carefully gave her the baby. He drew her tightly to his chest, wrapping his arms around them both, and loosed a sigh of deepest relief.

My family,
he thought.
Finally. My treasure has finally returned. I have my family back.

The dragon within his blood sighed as well.

Rhapsody looked down into Meridion's tiny face and smiled.

“Why, you little Namer, you!” she chuckled. “I've always said you'll be a great one someday, but I didn't know you could do it yet.”

She looked at his father, who was watching in awe, and her smile brightened, sending waves of cold thrill through Ashe's body. “How foolish of me, Sam. I should have known I couldn't take back the gift I had given him, but that he could return it to me if he wanted to. I am constantly underestimating this child.”

Meridion was watching her solemnly as she spoke to his father. He blinked when she looked back at him, then let out a resounding belch that rattled the furniture, as if in agreement.

The tearful parents broke into sweet, healing laughter. They smiled at each other; Ashe reached up with one hand and cradled Rhapsody's face, drawing her into a kiss that was, for the first time since they had reunited, met by the tenderness and warmth he had known before they parted. Her skin glistened beneath his fingers; the sparkle that had been lost from her eyes was there once again. The sharp angles of her face had resolved into the soft perfection he had missed so terribly. His wife had returned.
Thank the One-God,
he thought again, beyond grateful.

“What—what are you doing?” Rhapsody asked, looking down as her lips broke from Ashe's.

“Kissing you, I believe. It has been a
very
long time; I'm not surprised you don't remember.”

“I wasn't talking to you,” she said.

Ashe followed her gaze; Meridion had rolled up against her on his side and was gumming her shirt.

“I think he's trying to nurse; I'm surprised he still remembers how.”

“Oh, believe me, once a man has had his lips on your breast, he never stops dreaming of it, and trying to make it happen again, no matter how long it's been,” Ashe said wickedly. “Just wait until he's asleep again; I'll show you what I mean.” He received an elbow in the chest in response and laughed in delight at another sign of the return to normalcy.