“It’s over,” she said simply. “Now the work begins.” the night passed Achmed and Grunthor sorted through the rubble of the fields with Rhapsody and Ashe, reassigning troops, destroying ghoulish remains that still quivered with malice, assigning healing units, working to calm the populace that was still in shock.
In the glow of the thousands of campfires now burning amid the devastation, Achmed came upon Tristan Steward. The Lord Roland was uninjured but silent, gazing into the distance at the Moot, his sobbing wife leaning on his arm for support.
The Firbolg king stared down at the regent, an expression close to pity in his eyes. Tristan Steward finally looked up at him.
“Do either of you require medical assistance?” Achmed asked. The Lord Roland shook his head. The Firbolg nodded, then turned to leave.
“Wait,” Tristan Steward said. His voice came out in a weak whisper. Achmed stood silently as the regent rose shakily, then brushed the grime from his hands. He stared at the Firbolg king without speaking. Finally Achmed grew impatient.
“Well?”
“The—the army—my army—
“Yes?”
The Lord Roland lapsed into silence.
“It was inspired that you brought them here in a gesture of goodwill,” Achmed said as pleasantly as he could. “Now that, like my army, their allegiance is to Rhapsody, it was good that they were here to witness her investiture. Is that what you were trying to say?”
Tristan Steward’s mouth dropped open, then shut resolutely.
“Yes,” he said.
“I thought so. Excuse me,” Achmed said. He turned and walked off into the night with Grunthor and his aides-de-camp.
Rhapsody moved among the injured with Krinsel, the Finder midwife, tending to the wounds of both human and Bolg alike. The Cymrians had largely been spared, thanks to the armies of Roland and Ylorc, and the work of Ashe and the soldiers he had enlisted to hold back the Fallen while the rest escaped.
She was tying up the broken arm of a dark Cymrian, a man of the race known as Kith, when Rial appeared at her side, a somber expression on his face.
“M’lady?”
Rhapsody glanced up at her viceroy and smiled, the expression draining from her face at the look in his eyes.
“What is it?”
Rial extended his hand. “Come, please, m’lady.”
She took his hand and followed him in the dark over the broken field to a place where the body of a beautiful black stallion lay, twisted back upon itself. At the stallion’s side bent Faedryth, the Nain king, beside Oelendra, also crouched on the ground. Rhapsody stared at the dead horse and began to tremble.
“No,” she whispered. “Oh, gods, no. Anborn.”
The king of the Nain looked up at her, blood oozing from a gash to his forehead. “He’s alive still, barely,” Faedryth said sadly. “His back is broken.”
“No,” she said again as she stepped over Faedryth’s legs and bent between him and Oelendra. “Anborn? Gods, what have I done to you?”
The Cymrian general was propped up against the chest of his friend, the Nain king, covered with Rial’s red cloak. His face was ghostly white beneath the dark hair of his beard, but he managed to feebly strain his arm toward her. She reached to take his hand.
“You’ve—redeemed me,” he said, his voice soft and ragged. “Through you Manwyn’s prophecy has—been fulfilled. I have found the slightest of my kinsmen. I caught the sky when it fell. You have helped me—mend both the rift within—myself, and the one I caused—so long—ago—among my fellow Cymrians. See? I am tended by both Lirin and Nain; who—would have thought it possible?”
Tears streamed down her face as she tenderly took the rugged hand between her own and rested her cheek on it. Anborn reached out with some pain and stroked her hair.
“I would gladly give my life—or my legs—in your service, m’lady,” he said with great effort. “It is my honor to be—sworn to you.”
“Rhapsody! Rhapsody!”
Ashe’s voice sounded over the crackle of the fire, the whine of the wind, carrying with it the sound of desperation and fear.
Anborn patted the side of her face.
“Go—to him,” he said.
“When I come back I will tend to you,” she said, rising. “I will employ every skill I have as a Singer to heal you.”
Anborn smiled and waved her off.
“Go,” he said.
Rhapsody looked over the fields of injured and dying, great splits of earth where the field had once been fallow. She followed Ashe’s voice on the wind, back toward the doors of the Moot where only a day before the Cymrians had processed in with so much hope.
Lying beyond the doors, in a place where many had fallen, Ashe was bent over the broken body of Lord Stephen Navarne, his best friend. Rhapsody hurried to his side.
“Help him—Aria, please; don’t let me lose him again,” Ashe choked. He patted Stephen’s face, trying to revive the duke, whose blue-green eyes stared into the next world.
Rhapsody sank to her knees on the gory earth next to the men. Her eyes went from Lord Stephen’s pale face to the hill above where he lay. Gwydion Navarne, her oldest grandchild, stood, a look of forced bravery on his face, his arms around his sister, Melisande, who wept as if her heart would break. Rosella stood with her arms around both of them, a look of terror in her eyes.
Rhapsody laid a hand on the duke’s chest, feeling for the beating of his heart.
“M’lord?”
There was no response; the skin beneath her hand was cold. Her fingers went to his throat.
“M’lord?”
The pulse was as weak as she had ever felt on a living man, in his eyes she could see the distant reflection of the mist from the Veil of Hoen.
“Aria—please—”
“Daddy?”
The sound of Melisande’s voice brought a memory back to Rhapsody. The last time she had spoken with Lord Stephen was outside of Haguefort, in the arms of a bitter wind, as she heralded Llauron’s supposed death. He had smiled in the way he always did, causing the corners of his eyes to crinkle affectionately.
-
Ton know, Rhapsody, we’re practically family. Do you think there will ever be a time when you might address me just by my first name’?
No, m’lord.
Rhapsody sat up straighter, thinking. She had once sung Grunthor back from the brink of death, though as far as she could see Stephen was even more grievously injured.
“Stephen,” she sang, leaving her hand over his heart. “Stephen; stay here, with us.” She turned to Ashe, whose eyes were gleaming. “What is his name, Sam? His full name?”
“Stephen ap Wayan ap Hague, thuatha Judyth.”
She repeated the name, singing in tune with the fragile beating of the duke’s heart. Stay your hand from him, m’Lord Rowan, she thought, singing with all the powers of her Naming ability. Leave him here, in this place, just a little while longer.
She chanted his name over and over again, singing until the sun rose, her voice hoarse and tattered. As the sword tip of dawn pricked the horizon, she focused straight into it, trying to draw the warmth of the sun into Stephen to keep his body from cooling, to keep his brightness with her in the world she knew. In that sliver of blindness Rhapsody caught the silhouette of the Lord Rowan. For her, he might wait, stay his hand, however broken and torn Stephen was, commute the death sentence of any of the Cymrians who had traveled from their lives in the present to face the resurrected feud. She could mend them, repair, rename, and spare them all. And she turned away in relief, to see still scattered among the wounded, being carried off like bits of firewood, the thousands that had been pulled from rest by Anwyn.
Her ministrations would be wholly different, could raise them to life for peace, resurrect them to higher service. She imagined them smiling, imagined Stephen at the door of the museum.