Then a terrifying thought came to him. Perhaps the Seer did have a cruel way out, a way that would defy the implication of the prophecy while still being accurate.
Perhaps it was meant to end like this, with the child dying inside her, before it was born.
In his head he could hear his father’s voice.
Beware of prophecies, Llauron had said. They are not always as they seem to be. The value of seeing the Future is often not worth the price of the misdirection. Ashe cursed himself silently, having to acknowledge that his father might have been right.
“Help me,” he said to Achmed as he stripped off his cloak and tucked it around her. “You are the Child of Blood, are you not? Can you not stop her bleeding, at least?”
Achmed shook his head. “I don’t know how,” he said sullenly. “I have used my blood lore as a trained killer, not a healer.”
In the darklight of the cave, the beast’s head inclined slightly, causing all random noise to still. “If you have an elemental lore, you should be able to make use of both aspects of it,” the harmonic voice said. “Blood is an element, though not a primordial one. If you know how to let blood, you should be able to save it as well.”
Achmed stood still, but his dusky face grew more ashen. “I do not,” he repeated.
The iridescent eyes of the dragon narrowed in a solemnity that was unmistakable, and the artificial voice in which she spoke, fashioned from twisting the lore of wind, was soft with import.
“Hear me, Bolg king,” Elynsynos said. “Close your eyes, and listen to no sound but that of my words, and I will tell you how to use your lore to bind up the blood of mortal wounds, rather than spilling it.”
For a moment Achmed stood, rigid with indecision, in the quiet of the cave as Rhapsody’s lifeblood pooled at his feet. Then reluctantly he knelt beside her.
“Tell me,” he said tersely.
“All of the universe, Bolg king, is either Life, or it is Void. It is these two opposing forces that are forever at war, not good and evil, as man believes. Something is either creative, or it is destructive. And in each life, there is both creation and destruction.” The wyrm’s words grew warmer, as if the heat of the fire lore to which she was tied, along with that of all the other elements, was rising in her voice. “Those that are born with the gift of Lisele-ut, the color of red, are tied inexorably to blood, the river of life that runs through all creatures. If they invoke it in the name of force of Void, of murder, destruction, they are Blood-Letters, natural assassins, killers, as well as those who bring death respectfully when it is needed.
“But if that blood lore is invoked in the name of creation—with love—then it is a healing force. You and Pretty share the same connection to blood in many ways, but you have chosen to use your gift to spill it, often in the course of protecting what you believe to be right, while she struggles to contain it for the same reason. As a Namer she can heal, but she does not have the gift of Lisele-ut, nor do I; dragons are tied only to the five primordial elements. You alone are blessed, or cursed, with it, the natural tie to blood. It is not skill you need to save her, Bolg king—it is a reason. If you care for her, direct your tie to blood to heal instead of kill. The blood will obey you, as it has done countless times in the past. If your intent is to save, to heal, then that is what will happen.”
“She and I have not exactly been on the best of terms,” Achmed muttered.
“Your arguments, and the state of your friendship, do not matter now. All that matters is that you wish to aid her. If you do, then address the bleeding. If you do not, you should leave now.” A puff of acrid steam issued forth from the beast’s nostrils, a hint of menace in its odor.
Achmed stared at the growing red stain on Rhapsody’s garments, then stiffly removed the glove from one of his hands and let it come to rest on her abdomen near Ashe’s.
His mind wandered back, unbidden, to the tower rooms of the monastery in which he had trained. Achmed shook his head sharply, violently, as if to snap away the memory.
A shame you chose to leave the study of healing behind for another profession, Jal’asee had said. Your mentor had great faith in your abilities. You would have been a credit to Quieth Keep, perhaps one of the best ever to school there.
A hollow sting filled his ears at the recollection of his reply.
Then I would be as dead as the rest of the innocents you lured to that place. You and I do not have the same definition of what constitutes “a shame.”
Warmth crept through him, followed immediately by the chill and the flinching pain of recall, as he thought of a particular one of those innocents.
Beneath the sodden fabric of Rhapsody’s clothing, her belly moved, fluttering, then stretching, then subsiding immediately.
Achmed recoiled, his arm drawing back with a jerk.
The child within her was kicking, its effort listless.
Rhapsody moaned, and her eyelids flickered.
“I—this is not the first time I have attempted such a use of lore,” the Bolg king said haltingly. “The outcome was not good the last time.”
Elynsynos eyed him, the multicolored irises gleaming in the partial light of the cave.
“This time you have incentive, Bolg king,” the dragon said. “This time you are trying to stanch the blood of one of the only people you care for.”
Achmed snorted, but internally the irony was almost more than he could keep from giving voice to.
Now I see where Ashe comes by some of his most irritating traits, he thought as he rolled the sleeves of his shirt back to the elbows, revealing arms scored with surface veins. Dragons. They speak as if they are in sole possession of the world’s wisdom, when in truth they know nothing. Come to think of it, priests and academicians must be part dragon, also.
His irritation cooled upon touching Rhapsody again. The warmth in her body was fading quickly, ebbing with each heartbeat, as if she were expelling her life force with each exhalation of breath. Guilt, a sensation he did not normally experience, clutched at the outer recesses of his mind, then wound quickly through his viscera. It seemed impossible to believe that their argument had caused this, but perhaps it had.
“All right, Rhapsody, enough of this,” he muttered. “The last time you needed healing I had to sing to you, and believe me, nobody wants to repeat that.”
Rhapsody nodded incoherently.
“Nobody,” she whispered faintly in assent.
Achmed smirked in spite of himself. Somewhere inside this draconic woman was a trace of his friend still. He concentrated on the beating of her heart, one of the few rhythms he could still hear from the old world, and found it fluttering weakly within her chest. Achmed’s hand trembled slightly. There was no wound as there had been the last time; the bleeding was coming from within her.
“I don’t have a place to begin,” he said tensely. “There is no external wound.”
“Find the path,” said the dragon. “Blood flows through the body as water travels the pathways through the earth.”
The airy words reached back into the recesses of Achmed’s mind, drawing forth memories he had hidden there. Half a lifetime before he had climbed into the root of Sagia with the only person in the world he trusted—Grunthor—and a struggling hostage who had complicated his escape plans and turned his world on its ear. As unwelcome a companion as she had been at the beginning, over the timeless centuries they had traveled together she had become only the second living person to gain his trust. The three of them had crawled through the very belly of the earth, witnessing horrors that no living man had seen, surviving challenges that seemed insurmountable by remaining together, bonded in their odd triad, while time passed them by in the world above them.