The gray light of early morning flattened the panorama of the Teeth into thick shards of semi-darkness. As the sun rose it would illuminate the breathtaking sight, glittering on the millions of crags and fissures, the abundance of canyons and high forests, and the ruins of the ancient city of Canrif, the expansive edifice of a civilization that had been carved out of the face of the multicolored mountains. Now, however, with but moments of night remaining, the jagged range appeared flat and stolid, silent and dead in the sight of the world.
Rhapsody watched as the first tentative rays of morning sun cracked the black vault of night, favoring certain mountaintops with its purest light, a light that made the ever-present icecaps on the peaks of the Teeth glisten encouragingly. An interesting metaphor for the Bolg, she mused.
In the minds of the men of the surrounding realms, this primitive culture was considered monstrous, only demi-human, a scattered swarm of cannibalistic predators roving the mountains, preying on all living things. She had believed those myths herself once, long ago, before she had met Grunthor and Achmed, who by birth were half-Bolg.
Now she saw the Bolg as they really were. The tendencies for which they were feared were not totally unfounded—Firbolg were fierce and warlike, and, without the guiding hand of a strong leader, resorted to whatever means necessary to survive, including the consumption of human flesh. Given that strong leader, however, she had seen and come to admire, and eventually love, this simple race, these primitive survivors, the outcasts of Nature and of man who nonetheless kept their values and legends alive, even in the harshest of realities.
They were a simple people, beautiful and uncomplicated in their interactions, with a disdain for self-pity and a single-mindedness about fostering the continuation of their society. Bloodied warriors could lie on the battlefield and die of non-mortal wounds while medical attention was directed to a laboring woman, in the belief that the infant was the Future, while the soldier was merely the Present. Anything that was the Past did not matter, save for a few stories and the all-encompassing need to survive.
The first long rays of sun crested the horizon, making the thin snow-blanket of the Krevensfield Plain twinkle with the brilliance of a diamond sea. The light reflected off the brightening sky, revealing the many layers of the mountains in all their splendor. Silver streams of artesian water rippled in cascading ribbons down the faces of the crags, pooling into the deep canyon river. Dawn coming to the Teeth was a sight that always took Rhapsody’s breath away.
Softly she began her aubade, the morning love song to the rising sun that had been chanted at dawn by the Liringlas throughout the ages from the beginning of Time. The melody vibrated against the window, hovering in the frosty air beyond the glass, then dissipated on the wind as if scattered like flax over the wide fields and foothills below her.
When her song came to an end she felt Achmed’s hand on her shoulder.
“Close your eyes,” he said quietly. Rhapsody obeyed, listening to the silence of the hills and the song of the wind that danced through them. Achmed’s hand left her shoulder. She waited for him to speak again, but after a few moments heard nothing more.
“Well?” she said, eyes still closed. When no reply came, her voice took on a note of irritation. “Achmed?”
Hearing nothing still, Rhapsody opened her eyes. The irritation that had flushed her cheeks was swallowed by the horror of the sight in the valley below.
The wide expanse of the Krevensfield Plain, the undulating prairie that led from the feet of the Teeth westward through the province of Bethe Corbair all the way to Bethany, was rolling in waves of blood. The red tide began to surge up the side of the valley below them, splashing like a churning sea of gore against the rocky steppes and foothills that bordered the mountains.
Rhapsody gasped, and her eyes darted to the mountains themselves. The glistening waterfalls that scored the mountainsides were flowing red as well, raining bloody tears onto the heath and the canyon below. With trembling hands she gripped the sill of the window and closed her eyes again.
It was a vision, she knew; the gift of prescience had been hers even before she and the two Bolg left the old world and came here to this new and mysterious place, where the history was a paean to great aspirations destroyed by wanton foolishness.
What she did not know was what the vision meant; whether she was seeing the Past, or, far more frighteningly, the Future.
Slowly she opened her eyes once more. The valley was no longer crimson, but gray, as if in the aftermath of a devastating fire. But now, rather than the wide-open expanse that had been there a moment before, she saw the hilly farm country half a world away, the wide meadows of Serendair, where she had been born. A place in her youth she had called the Patchworks.
The hayfields and villages of her childhood were scorched, the pastureland smoldering, the farmhouses and outbuildings in ashes. The ground was razed and ash reached from the Teeth to the horizon. This was a sight she had seen in many a dream; nightmares had been a curse as long as prescience had been a gift. Rhapsody began to shake violently. She knew from experience what was coming next.
Around her she could feel intense heat, hear the crackling of flames. The fire was not the warm and pure element through which she and her companions had passed on their way here in their trek through the center of the Earth; it was a dark and ravenous inferno, the sign of the F’dor, the demon that they hunted, that was undoubtedly hunting them as well.
The walls and windows of the observatory were gone. Now she stood in a village or encampment consumed by black fire, while soldiers rode through the streets, slaying everyone in sight. A crescendo of screaming filled her ears. In the distance at the edge of the horizon she saw eyes, tinged in red, laughing silently at her amid the wailing chorus of death.
In the thunder of horses’ hooves, she turned, as she always had in this dream. He was there as he always was, the bloodstained warrior atop a raging steed, riding down on her, his eyes lifeless.
Rhapsody looked up into the smoke-fouled sky above her. Always in this part of the dream she was lifted up in the air in the claw of a great copper dragon that appeared through the blackening clouds to rescue her.
But now there was nothing above her but the unbroken firmament of rolling black clouds and showers of flaming sparks ripping through the sooty air.
The pounding clamor was louder now. Rhapsody turned back. The horseman was upon her.
A broken sword, dripping with gore and black flame, was in his hand. He raised it above his head.
With the speed born of her training by Oelendra, the Lirin champion, Rhapsody drew Daystar Clarion, the sword of elemental fire and ethereal light that she wielded as the Iliachenva’ar. It was in her hands as she inhaled; with the release of her breath she slashed the gleaming blade across the warrior’s chest, unbalancing him from the warhorse. Blood that smoked like acid splashed her forehead, searing her eyes.
Shakily the warrior rose, steadying his dripping weapon. Time slowed as he hovered over her, striding at her with a great gaping wound bisecting his chest. Within his eye sockets was darkness, and nothing more.
Rhapsody inhaled and willed herself calm again. She calculated the trajectory of his attack, and as it came, with excruciating slowness, she dodged heavily out of his way. Her limbs felt as if they were made of marble. With tremendous effort she raised her arms and brought Daystar Clarion down on the back of the sightless man’s neck, aiming her strike at the seam of his cuirass. The flash of light as intense as a star exploding signaled her connection.