The Weaver's Lament (20 page)

“This was always my home, too.”

Achmed nodded, putting his shovel aside. “So it is. Even more now.”

He took her hand and led her toward the barrier.

“I want to be drunk,” Rhapsody said wanly. “I want to be stinking, bloated, embarrassingly drunk, if it will make this pain go away. I want—”

“Shhh,” Achmed commanded. He was looking behind her.

Rhapsody turned and looked over her shoulder.

Emerging from the earth, growing like a giant plant at an accelerated but leisurely speed, was an enormous obelisk of Living Stone, twisting like an awl as it grew.

The Lady Cymrian spun around in shock.

The ground itself was glowing red-orange, like the color of clay or steel in fire. The obelisk was bending and twisting as it rose, until it was almost the height of two men standing atop one another, as if it were being sculpted by the hands of the Earth itself.

Once it had reached its ultimate height, the clay began to depress in many areas, some parts of it sinking into long, deep lines, while other parts rose and fell in tiny, complex patterns, until it resolved into the very image of the man who slept beneath it, whole again, proud and tall, clothed in earthen representations of the armor he had always worn, the cloak that had perennially hung from this shoulders.

And then the molten ridge of clay along the back of the statue, in one final explosion, rose into the form of the massive bandolier of hilted weapons, jutting merrily up over his shoulders like the feathers of a resplendent peacock.

His face, without defilement or injury, smooth with clay, his eyes open wide, was grinning, while at the same time sporting a look in the earthen eyes that she had seen make Firbolg soldiers lose their water in terror.

Rhapsody brought her hands to her mouth, covering it.

In the statue's left hand was a clay representation of Lucy, the short sword he had used to teach her to fight long ago as they traveled through the Earth along the Root. In his right hand, a shield above it at the elbow, was Sal, the polearm he had nicknamed, short for
Salutations
. Taller even than Grunthor had been in life, it was a monstrous effigy, a monument to guardianship and military honor that could not be misread.

It stood at the base of the Sleeping Child's catafalque, between her and anything that would threaten her.

Rhapsody turned and buried her face in Achmed's chest.

They stood thus, silent for a long time. Finally the Bolg king patted her back, idly caressing her tangled hair.

“We need to get back,” he said quietly, turning toward the tunnel. “I can feel the very mountains above us thundering with the preparations for war.”

Rhapsody opened her mouth, but no words came out. Instead, she just exhaled and followed him over the barrier.

Please,
she thought, her brain rattling with the words that had refused to come through her lips.
Please don't kill the rest of the world now, Achmed.

 

19

THE CAULDRON

The campfires on the Heath were roaring excitedly when Achmed and Rhapsody returned to the Cauldron, Achmed's seat of power in the kingdom of Ylorc, just as the sun had signaled its descent for the night.

Throughout the kingdom, hammers rang out the sounds of smithing and bellows roared; horses were being groomed and outfitted in record efficiency, and celebratory shouts of glee rose in the air, the overture of battle to come.

Rhapsody was shaking at the sound of the buildup rattling through the corridors, so Achmed took her by the arm and led her to one of the vintners' closets where the reserve wines were kept. He grabbed three bottles, opening them all with the corkscrew in the closet, and headed for the corridors behind his quarters that led to the tunnels of what had once been an unfinished series of drains opening out onto the great chasm between the guardian mountains, where the Cauldron was, and the Blasted Heath, the meadow at the top of the world beyond it.

They had sat in these tunnels many times before, looking out on the mountains to the east, usually in times of defeat or devastation.

Now that what little comfort had been imparted by the edifying circumstances of Grunthor's interment had worn off with a return to the reality of his loss, it seemed an appropriate place to mourn, one of the only private places in a mountainous fortress gearing up for battle of titanic proportions.

They walked to the edge of the tunnel opening, seeing the Blasted Heath lit up in martial glory to the northwest, and sat down on the tunnel ground, just inside the opening.

They said nothing to each other, just watched the sky change color as the sun set on the other side of the mountains, quickly drinking two of the bottles of wine dry.

The wind roared through the chasm below them, accentuating the silence.

Finally, when the despair was too heavy to carry on her shoulders, Rhapsody leaned back against the rocky mountain wall.

“A thousand years ago, on the night we killed the first F'dor, the one that clung to Lanacan Orlando, do you remember that I asked you if there was a limit to what you would do for me?”

“Yes. And the answer now is the same as it was then—no.”

She looked across the darkening heath. “I asked you if you would be willing to employ your professional skills to take my life if I needed you to.”

“Yes.”

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Achmed. I was so lost and caught up in my own pain and fear that it never occurred to me what such a request might cost you.”

The Bolg king's brow furrowed even more deeply than it had from the moment they had begun the funeral procession down into the chamber of the Sleeping Child.

“That didn't matter,” he said. “Being as well acquainted as I am with death, knowing what it takes for someone to ask for it, I consider it an honor to serve in that purpose.” He took a swig from the last bottle, then handed it to her.

She took it without looking at it. “Perhaps. But it was cowardly of me nonetheless. If I am to seek death before it claims me in its own time, I should do it by my own hand.”

“
Now
this is costing me,” the Bolg king said quietly. “I have just lost one of the only two friends I have had between two worlds. My skin burns, Rhapsody. I cannot begin to calculate the loss of Grunthor already. Please do not force me to contemplate any more than this; I am not equipped to do so.”

Rhapsody's eyes cleared, and she looked at her friend for perhaps the first time that night, seeing the agony on his face. She took his hand, gnarled and marked by time and weapons use, but thin and sensitive with traces of nerve endings and exposed veins, and she felt that it was trembling. She raised it to her lips and kissed it softly. “I'm sorry,” she said again.

Their eyes met, and silence took up its place between them.

“You're shivering,” he noted finally. “Is it sorrow, or the cold?”

“Both,” Rhapsody said, letting go of his hand and wrapping her arms around herself in the ragged remains of her dressing gown. “When I ordered the quartermaster to provision the wagon, he packed water and food, but I did not think to ask him for clothing in my size. The wind blows through what I have on, chilling me to the bone, even at summer's end.”

“You must have clothing down in Elysian,” Achmed said, stretching out his legs and leaning back against the rock wall. “I've never known its closets to be sporting less than two dozen gowns and other ridiculous froufrou, either before Anwyn destroyed it or after I rebuilt it for you.”

“Yes, there is clothing down there, I suspect.”

“If you want, I can accompany you to retrieve it,” Achmed said after taking another swig from the last bottle. “It would not be wise for you to go alone among the Bolg preparing for war.”

She shook her head. “Thank you, but I don't want to go down to Elysian,” she said. “It's a place I completely associate with Ashe; it was very special to us. We fell in love there, married in secret there—Allegra was conceived there—”

“Stop,” Achmed said sourly. “Unless you wish me to head right now, unprepared, into battle with your imbecilic husband, rather than being ready, do not tell me anything else about him. The very words make my head pound.”

“Of course, I'm sorry.”

The Bolg king leaned forward and stared at her, a mist of alcohol in his eyes. “I could never understand what you saw in him, Rhapsody. You never seemed the shallow type, able to be won by a handsome face or an athletic build with nothing but sawdust in its brain. What was it that made you allow him into your life and between your legs? His wealth, his family stature—his forked dragon tongue? His scale-covered dragon tarse? Hmm. Perhaps that explains it—”

“Shut your hateful mouth,”
she snarled, rising from the stone floor. “How dare you insult me like this, today, of all days? I left him, and my family, behind to bring Grunthor home to and with you. It has torn my heart from my chest; I cannot breathe, Achmed, I can't feel anything but sick. Do not torment me.”

The stare became colder.

“I'm going to kill him,” he said quietly, almost cruelly. “I am sure you are aware of this, yes? Because I don't want to discuss it when the time comes. You have allowed this interloper into our friendship, and into your cock-alley, and while I'm rather fond of the children he put inside you, I can't believe you were foolish enough to let him.

“You almost died giving birth to Meridion; I had to seal the blood draining from your womb with my blood lore or you surely would have followed Ashe's mother into the place in the Afterlife where foolish women who attempt to give birth to the children of dragons go. Why, Rhapsody? Were we not enough, Grunthor and I, and the Archons, the midwives, the Bolg children you coddled so disgustingly? Did you miss the company of your own races so much that you needed to leave us all behind and become his seed-catcher, his courtesan? Because
we had you first
. And you abandoned us to follow that—that idiot. That man who loved you enough to risk your life
six times
.”

Rhapsody was shaking with rage and cold.

“I have but two things to say to you about this, Achmed, and listen well, because I will never discuss this with you again,” she said, her voice heavy with her Namer's lore. “First, each time that man ‘risked my life' so that we might have a child, it was at
my
request—
I
am the one who can hear a soul waiting to come through into this life from the realm beyond. There is nothing I have ever done, no contribution I have ever made to the world, not the training of the midwives, not the uniting of the Cymrians, not even my part in the killing of F'dor, nothing that can even
begin
to compare to what he and I have given the world in the lives of our children.
Nothing.

“And second, though you think him to be an interloper, someone who found me in the new world and dragged me away from you and Grunthor and the Archons and the midwives,
I have known him longer than you
. I have told you this, obliquely, before, but you haven't paid attention. I knew him in the old world, if only for a night, because he was somehow able to be brought across Time to meet me. I don't know if it was all the wishes I had made for someone to come to take me away from my provincial farm village and its marriage lottery, or something more deliberate, but in either case,
I knew him in the old world
. We fell in love
in the old world
. Before Easton, before I met you in its alleys, before you kidnapped me and dragged me through the bowels of the Earth,
I knew him
. So stop tormenting me. I came back here with you, rather than stay with him. I don't know what else you want of me.”

Just as her rant was ending, the signal sirens and alarm bells began to toll, beginning with those atop Grivven Post, the farthest western guard tower in the kingdom, to be picked up, moments later, in a rising wave flowing west to east.

They clanged urgently, interrupting the splendid noise of the leadup to war and turning it into a sour forewarning.

 

20

Before she could look a second time, Achmed was gone.

“Wait!” she called as she hurried up the hallway behind him. “Please, wait for me, Achmed!”

The Bolg king paid her no heed, vanishing around the tunnel corner.

Rhapsody steeled herself and took off in as fast a run as she could manage, her speed something she had once been known for in the hallways and mountain passes of Ylorc.

She caught him meeting in the central confluence chamber with a cohort of Firbolg soldiers from the Eye clans, the spies who ascended the fanglike peaks of the Teeth to watch the surrounding mountain passes and the wide-open prairie of the steppes below and the Krevensfield Plain beyond. They were conferring in Bolgish, but she could still follow it well enough to catch the main thrust of their report.

Horseback—two Alliance—flag of truce—wagon—approaching from west—

Achmed ordered two horses to be made ready at the main gate, and an alert to be sent to Grivven Post, the farthest western outpost that towered above the breastworks, the underground tunnels in the plain leading up to Ylorc.

Then he turned to Rhapsody and sighted her down.

“Bring me the cwellan,” he said to his aides, watching her intently.

Rhapsody inhaled deeply, and allowed her pain to settle in her gut.

“Let's go,” she said directly.

*   *   *

They rode together, followed by two mounted regiments, across the dark steppes toward the outpost. As they approached Grivven, Rhapsody turned and looked behind her.

An enormous squad of Bolg cavalry had formed and were following them, torches in hand. The commander was waiting at the westernmost part of the assembly. Achmed paused on horseback beside him.