“True,” Achmed assented. “And I gave you a project that you seemed to relish—helping to end the atrocities that Roland was committing against the Bolg, and to assist in building them into a kingdom of men, albeit monstrous ones. I gave you a duchy in my kingdom, paid for all the useless trinkets you could possibly desire—there are still two dozen gowns in Elysian, rotting quietly in the grotto.” He sat back heavily against the wall and exhaled. “Perhaps I should commandeer them and pass them out to Bolg women to wear while they are skinning game and rendering tallow.”
“By all means, do,” Rhapsody said, caressing her son’s cheek. “They can wear the skirts around their necks, the way they wore the horns of the unfortunate oxen you brought into the kingdom as codpiece decorations. But don’t avoid your own point—you are happy to see me living in the Present as long as by doing so I am achieving your ends. Should I choose to turn my attentions to other matters which you do not value as readily, such as the Cymrian Alliance or the kingdom of Tyrian, or raising a family, that is not sufficient to assuage you. In your twisted mind, I have ‘changed’ because I am no longer doing what you want of me. Perhaps it is audacious of me to expect it, but I would like to live my life as I see fit, and not by your command.”
The Bolg king snorted. “Neh,” he said. “You’d only bollix it up.”
For the first time since the Ending Rhapsody smiled slightly. “No doubt,” she acceded. “But it is mine to bollix up, Achmed. If anyone has been in support of that belief, it would be you. You have always told me that I have the strength to do things that need doing, to lead when I don’t want to, keep on when I want to give up. But you never share your reasons for anything you do, so I can’t understand them. You support me unfailingly, and feel betrayed when I can’t do the same for you as well.”
“Something like that.”
“So explain it to me,” she insisted. “Tell me why you are so set on building this damnable thing, so willing to risk so much for it. Maybe if you could make me understand your willingness to experiment foolishly with primordial magic, I might be able to help you.”
For a long time Achmed was silent. He continued to look above him, gazing around at the interior of the cavern. Finally he spoke.
“Did I ever tell you what I was running from the day Grunthor and I were unfortunate enough to run into you in Easton on Serendair?”
Rhapsody shook her head. “I know that you were enslaved to a high priest who was the host of a F’dor demon,” she said, rubbing the baby’s back gently. “I thought you were running from him.”
“I was,” the Bolg king said dully. “But do you remember the key I used to open Sagia, to allow us to pass into it in the first place?”
“Yes—it was made of Living Stone, as if it were the rib of a Child of Earth.”
“Did it ever seem strange to you that I had such a key? Did you ever wonder where it came from?”
Rhapsody thought for a moment in the darkness. “Not really. There are so many things about you that are secretive, odd, or difficult to grasp that it never occurred to me to wonder about that. I always supposed that if you wanted to tell me, you would.” She looked above her in the darkness and sighed. “After fourteen hundred years, I’ve learned to live with knowing that you probably wouldn’t.”
Achmed sat quietly, listening to the echoes of sound inside the hollow shell. He saw the expression in Rhapsody’s eyes as they wandered over the ossified corpse of her father-in-law, a man she had loved despite his manipulations and betrayals. The expression on her face was one he had seen before, long ago, on the day they had first emerged from the Root, only to discover how far away from home they had traveled, how lost in time they were.
How long dead everyone she had loved was.
“The demon priest you mentioned gave me that key,” he said finally, in a voice that was dry and soft at once. “He sent me to the northern coast of Serendair, across the straits to the Northern Islands of Balatron, Briala, and Querel, where a failed land bridge once stood. The key was meant open a door in the base of that bridge, so that I could bring back an associate of his from the other side.” He met her eyes in the darkness. “You do understand that Tsoltan was the host of a F’dor?”
“Yes.”
“So do you understand where it is that he sent me, and what I was to do?”
She thought for a moment, her eyes growing wider in the darkness.
“You went to the Vault?”
Achmed nodded.
“The actual Vault? It exists in the material world?”
The Bolg king exhaled deeply. “A gateway to it does. ‘The fabric of the world is worn thin there’; that’s what Tsoltan said when giving my instructions.”
Rhapsody’s eyes were glinting now; Achmed knew she was growing nervous.
“And did you open it?”
He nodded. “I did. I looked into the Vault of the Underworld itself. And what I saw there so defies description that I have never really seen fit to attempt it. But it was enough to abandon everything I had, and everything I was, to risk running, because even a cold-blooded assassin like me, even a reprobate with no use for God or man, and no compunction about administering death as if it were a sacrament, has a limit over which he can be pushed. That experience was the limit.”
“I can believe it,” Rhapsody said.
“Then maybe you can believe that now, as a result, everything I do, every chance I get, is an opportunity to safeguard the world from repeating my mistake. You think I am taking unnecessary risks, Rhapsody, but in truth, I am only taking every opportunity to keep that Vault sealed for all time. It is an endless task; like trying to constantly reinforce a dike of sand against the tide of the sea. There are a limited number of F’dor, it’s true, left over from the dawn of Time, but there are enough of them still out there who escaped the Vault in the first cataclysm, ceaselessly endeavoring to get a key like that one and open it, releasing their fellows. I don’t mean to insult you when I say that even you, a Lirin Namer, cannot fathom what that would be like. I have been the dispenser of death myself, in truly horrific ways sometimes, and even I could not have fathomed it had I not seen it with my own eyes.
“You mentioned when you ripped my skin from me, metaphorically speaking, that the Nain had objected to my building of the instrumentality for which you translated the schematics. There is a reason I didn’t confess all that the Nain said. Do you wish to know how they were aware of our construction? They have already built one of their own.” He took some satisfaction at her intake of breath.
“And I wish you wouldn’t lecture me about primordial magic. I know several things about primordial magic that you don’t. It is not immutable, it is fragile; it can die. The death of Sagia left a huge hole in what was possible for primordial magic. The tools we have now are diminished, the weapons denatured. We lost so much constructive power, so much magic from the world when the Island died. I am trying with all my strength to build up our arsenal in this last, greatest battle of all, in every front.”
“But if your fear is that a F’dor will find the Earthchild, and take her rib to use as a key, and release the F’dor, who will then waken the Wyrm, what good is any of your guardianship if your use of the Lightcatcher bypasses all of this and merely wakes the beast up itself?” Rhapsody asked, holding her baby tighter.
Achmed sat up straighter, shaking a cramp out of his neck. Then he met her eyes.
“On the highest peak of Serendair, guarded at its highest pass in air so thin the winged lions who patrolled it could not fly, could barely whisper, was a Lightcatcher. I saw it, Rhapsody. I saw it used, or at least I saw the results. I spoke with the guardians.
“The reason it was built atop the highest peak was so that the power it drew on was the star, not the earth. Every time Faedryth spies on me he tickles the Wyrm; he roots his movable Lightforge near a vein and rattles the world. The Sea Mages undoubtedly take calculated risks with tremors all the time, which is why the currents near their island run amok.” The intensity in his voice made the cavern walls tremble. “But I know, I know that if you ignore the workings of the earthbound navel examiners like Faedryth and Gwylliam, who only looked to the depths for their power, that I could light a flame with the sun. It wouldn’t draw as quickly, it doesn’t draw on a whim, but it doesn’t reach toward annihilation every time you turn it on, either. I need the information in those scrolls to know what I have to do to make sure my peak is not just a Lightforge, but a Lightcatcher. Taking power not from the Earth, but from beyond it. From a star, from the sun—from before the element of Fire was ever born. I can use that instrumentality to see where I cannot now see, to defend where I am vulnerable, to hold the wall of the world stronger than I can without it, and perhaps, just perhaps, we can keep that Vault sealed if we do not disrupt the earth in which it lies.”