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Instead he was watching her child in the darkness. He had laid the little boy down on his back; the floor of the dragon’s stone body was warmer than the ground of the forest would have been. The child seemed to like the position, waving his tiny arms aimlessly, breathing in the cool, sweet air that hung heavily above his head.

Rhapsody leaned back against the cavern wall, spent. She did not have the night vision that Achmed was blessed with, so, to dispel the darkness and cold from the place, drew her sword and rested it on the ground, allowing the cavern to fill with its warmth and light.

“The irony is threatening to choke me,” she said dully, watching her baby entertain the Bolg king.

“How so?”

“All Llauron wanted to do was to come to know this child, and to have the child know him. He made a sacrifice to save him, and us, that is unimaginable—like sacrificing your Afterlife along with your life. And here Meridion is trapped within the shell of his grandfather’s own body, a grandfather he will never know now.”

Achmed sighed dispiritedly.

“Don’t you Lirin Namers have something you are supposed to do when these sorts of things happen?” he asked pointedly. “Like singing a Song of Passage or something, rather than just freeform bemoaning? I find your current lyrics a bit tiresome. Llauron was a complicated man, a draconic man even before he gave up his human body for an elemental state. He never let anything stand in the way of what he wanted or thought was right, not the well-being of his family, or the safety of his allies, or any small consideration such as that. That he was willing to do whatever this was may have been the first truly noble gesture the man ever made. Why don’t you just do whatever you are supposed to do to elegize him, and leave your grief, and the grief you are borrowing for you child, out of it? Meridion may not even miss him.”

Rhapsody exhaled, then pushed herself up a little straighter.

“You’re right about the elegy,” she said shortly. “As a Namer, it’s the least I can do. But I don’t want to sing the Lirin Song of Passage for him; I did that once, when he tricked me into immolating him with the sword, that he might attain his elemental dragon state. I don’t think I could bring myself to do that again.”

“Fine,” said Achmed, shifting to find a more comfortable place in the dark. “Sing a bawdy brothel song, or one of Grunthor’s lewd marching cadences; I’ll bet Llauron would appreciate either of those.”

Rhapsody nodded, unable to smile. “You’re probably right. For all that he had a very proper exterior, he did have a raunchy sense of humor. When I first was studying with him, he used to sing me sea chanteys every night, and some of those would have curled his followers’ hair.” She stood and walked over to Achmed, then crouched down in front of the baby, who turned his tiny eyes in her direction. “Of course, my grandfather sang the very same songs.”

She hummed wordlessly for a moment, smiling down at Meridion, then wordlessly started to croon a song of the sea. After a few moments she added the words, singing one of Llauron’s favorite chanteys, a lonely tale of wandering the wide world, never able to rest, looking for peace in the sea.

Maritime lore held no interest for Achmed, but it had been a long time since he had heard her sing. He sat quietly in the flickering light of Daystar Clarion, whose cool radiance reflected Rhapsody’s somber mood, remembering their journeys together along the Root and overland on this new continent, just the two of them with Grunthor. He missed those times more than he realized.

A strange tone buzzed in his ear; he listened more carefully and realized the baby was cooing along to the chantey with her in harmony. Rhapsody noticed it as well; her voice became softer, and she carried the tune past its ending until the child began to whimper.

“I suppose he does know his grandfather after all,” she said as she lifted him to her shoulder, patting his back. The gesture was to no avail; Meridion continued to fuss, his whimpering turning to a cackling cry.

“Well, I believe he breathed in the last of his essence; that heavy air seemed to hang over him, almost as if Llauron wanted him to absorb it,” Achmed said, his brows drawing together as Rhapsody opened her shirt and positioned the baby on her breast. He turned away hastily, to Rhapsody’s surprise, keeping his back to her while she nursed the baby.

“You don’t have to turn your back,” she said, surprised, as she drew the swaddling blanket over the two of them. “I’m covered now, and I apologize if it bothered you.” She saw him shrug, but he did not turn back to face her. “After all, we lived on the Root for a thousand years or more, and in camping conditions after that. There’s not a shred of modesty left in any of us by now.”

Achmed stared above him at the interior of the dragon cavern, noting the curves of the thoracic cavity and spine. “Had it occurred to you that I might not want to witness you nursing another man’s child?” he asked bitterly.

The silence that answered him was heavier than the air had been.

He continued to examine the intricacies of the shell Llauron had left behind until finally he could hear her patting the child’s back against her chest, humming a wordless lullabye. He turned then, finally, to see her looking above her as well.

“Gods, we’re back on the Root again, in a way,” she murmured. “Trapped in a cavern with no exit, away from anyone who might find us. And it’s dark and close in here.” Unconsciously she wiped the back of her hand across her forehead and drew the baby nearer.

“Yes, but this time we don’t have Grunthor along to make it bearable.”

“No, you’re right, we don’t.” Rhapsody’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. “You have changed so much in a few short years, Achmed,” she said sadly, swaying the baby in her arms. “Even in the darkness, I barely recognize you.”

The Bolg king’s breath escaped his mouth in a hiss of sorts as he swallowed a laugh. He stretched out his legs and wrapped his arms behind his head. “Is that so?” he said. “Perhaps it does seem that way to you, Rhapsody, because you never have really understood what mattered to me. You have always assigned me altruistic motives where none exist, because you want to believe that we have the same priorities. At one time I believed we did as well. But who really has changed here?”

The child sighed in his sleep, a high, sweet sound, and she looked more sharply at Achmed.

Achmed leaned nearer, so that his words would carry the weight without the volume. “You risk your life, and the life of a child whose fate you cannot possibly be certain of, and all of the people who follow your vision, for whatever fancy moves you. I don’t remember you ever being careless with those things before. And I, who never felt an obligation to preserve anything other than my own neck, now guard a Child of Earth, and a people who no longer wander the world eating their enemies—oh, and a foolish queen whose husband seems unable to do it alone.

“Who has changed? I suppose we both have.”

The Lady Cymrian stared at him; Achmed noted with interest that her green eyes had now cleared of the draconic pupils. The baby drifted into soft clicking sounds, and then silence. Finally she spoke.

“When first we stepped forth into this new land, Achmed, you and Grunthor were consistently annoyed that I could not let go of the past. You had fled Serendair because there was no longer anything there that mattered to you, only death waiting to find you should you have remained. But I lost everything when you decided to drag me along with you. And then all you did was complain when I mourned. ‘Serendair is gone,’ you said. ‘Your life is here now.’ You were fairly insistent that I come to accept what had happened, put the Past aside and live in the Present.”