A geyser of steaming blood shot skyward, spattering her again and burning hideously. The warrior’s neck dangled awkwardly; then his head rolled forward, separated from the broken flesh of his shoulders, before thudding to the ground at her feet. The sightless eyes stared up at her; within them she could see tiny flames of dark fire fizzle, then burn out.
Rhapsody stood, hunched over and panting, her hands resting on her knees. In the light of Daystar Clarion’s flames she watched the headless body list to one side, preparing to topple.
Then, as she watched, it righted itself.
The headless corpse turned toward her again, sword in hand, and began to walk toward her once more. As it lifted its sword purposefully, she heard Achmed’s voice far away, as though calling from the other side of Time.
Rhapsody.
She turned to see him standing behind her, watching her from inside the observatory tower, then quickly glanced over her shoulder again.
The headless soldier was gone. Nothing remained of the vision.
She exhaled deeply and put a hand to her forehead. A moment later the Firbolg king was beside her.
“What did you see?”
“I’m fine, thank you, really I am,” she muttered distantly, too spent to muster much sarcasm.
Achmed took her by die shoulders and gave her a firm shake. “Tell me, by the gods,” he hissed. “What did you see?”
Rhapsody’s eyes narrowed to emerald slits. “You did this intentionally, didn’t you? You brought me up here, into this place heavy with magic and ancient memories, intending to spark a vision, didn’t you? That’s what you meant when you said I might see something I couldn’t from the Heath or Griwen Tower. You unspeakable bastard.”
“I need to know what you saw,” he said impatiently. “This is the highest vista in die Teeth, the best possible place to see an attack coming. And one is coming, Rhapsody; I know it, and you know it. I need to know where it’s coming from.” His unnaturally strong hands tightened their grip ever so slightly.
She slapped them away and wrested free from his grasp. “I am not your personal vizier. Ask first next time. You have no idea what these visions cost me.”
“I know that ultimately without them the cost may be your life, at the very least,” Achmed snarled. “That, of course, is if you are lucky. The alternatives are far more likely, and far worse. And far more widespread. Now stop acting the petulant brat and tell me what I need to know. Where is the attack coming from?”
Rhapsody looked back out the window at the glistening plain, the mountains coming to rosy life in the light of dawn. She stood silently for a moment, breathing the frosty air and listening to the silence broken only by the occasional whine of a bitter wind turning ever colder.
“Everywhere,” she said. “I think it’s coming from everywhere.”
h off, from his vantage point in the Future, hanging between the threads of Time in his glass globe observatory, Meridion stared in dismay at the people he had changed history to bring to this place in the hope that they would avert the fiery death that was now consuming what was left of the Earth.
He put his head down on the instrument panel of the Time Editor and wept.
was breaking over the whole of the Krevensfield Plain as Achmed and Rhapsody departed, cloaked, gloved, and hooded, riding the mounts Grunthor had provisioned for them through the light snow that had come on the morning wind.
The path that led down from the foothills to the steppes was a rocky one, and necessitated a slow passage. Rhapsody scanned the sky thoughtfully, her thoughts darker than the hour before dawn. It was impossible not to notice that she had grown quiet and pensive, and finally Achmed broke the silence.
“What’s troubling you?”
Rhapsody turned her emerald gaze on him; her walk through the pure Fire at the Earth’s core had caused her to absorb the element, making her hypnotically attractive, like the element itself. When she was excited, she was breathtaking; with an undercurrent of worry in her features she was absolutely captivating. Achmed exhaled. The time was coming when his theories about the power of her beauty would be put to the test.
“Do you think the Earthchild will be all right while we’re gone?” she asked ; finally.
Achmed looked into her anxious face, considering the question solemnly. “Yes,” he said, after a moment. “The tunnel to the Loritorium is finished | and all the other entrances sealed. Grunthor is moving out of the barracks while I’m away and sleeping in my chambers to guard the entranceway.”
“Good,” Rhapsody said. She had stood at the tunnel entrance in the darkness of early morning and sung to the Sleeping Child, the rare and beautiful creature formed from Living Stone that slumbered perpetually in the vault miles below Achmed’s chambers. It had been hard to keep her voice steady, knowing that the F’dor they were seeking was in turn seeking the Child.
Let that which sleeps within the Earth rest undisturbed, the Dhracian sage had said. Its awakening heralds eternal night. Of all the things she had learned in the time they had been in this new world, one that frightened her the most was that such prophecies often had more than one meaning.
Ta-rim, she thought miserably, why did the first demon-spawn have to be in Tarim? The province lay to the northwest, on the leeward hollow of the arid plain that abutted the northern Teeth. She had been to the rotting, desolate city once before, with Ashe, looking for answers in the crumbling temple of Manwyn, the Seer of the Future. Those answers had led them to the journey they were now undertaking. Rhapsody shook her head to clear her memory of the madwoman’s maniacal laugh.
“Are you ready?” Achmed’s voice shattered her thoughts. Rhapsody looked around; they had reached the steppes, the rocky foot-lands at the base of the mountains. She clucked to her horse. “Yes,” she said. “Let’s finish this.”
Together they eased their horses into a steady canter. They didn’t look back as the multicolored peaks of their mountainous home faded into the distance behind them like a memory.
In the shadows of Griwen, one of the highest peaks of the Teeth and the westernmost military outpost, four sets of Bolg eyes, night eyes of a race of men who had risen up from the caves, followed the horses until they had crested the steppes and had disappeared into the vastness of the Orlandan Plateau.
When the Bolg king could no longer be seen, one turned to the others and nodded slowly. Four men exchanged a final glance, then disappeared into the mountains, traveling in four different directions.
Weridion watched them go as well, struggling to contain his despair.
Light from the Time Editor, the now-dormant machine before him, spilled over the glass walls of his spherical tower, suspended here among the stars. Below, the world was growing dark, the black fire that was consuming it nearly at land’s end.
Soon it would consume him as well. In light of the rest of the devastation, that hardly mattered.
He leaned back against his aurelay, the vibrational field generated by his namesong, shaped now like a cushioned chair, and folded his hands, trying to remain calm. All around him the lights of his laboratory gleamed, standing ready.
Meridion sighed. There was nothing more for him to do. He reached forward and snapped the lever that closed off the blinding light of the machine’s power source from the Editor’s main bay. Nothing more.
In the new dark he could see only the viewing screen, the ghostly projection of the last strands of the timefilm he had cobbled together, using threads from the Past. He had spliced them, hoping to avert the disaster that loomed below him. It never occurred to him, in the face of the coming nightmare, that his solution might be even worse than the original problem.