“Yes,” she said, and her voice was soft, barely audible, from the tears that had clogged her throat. She coughed, unhappy with the way it had sounded. “Yes.” she said again, her tone clearer, surer; Ashe’s face began to transform before her, her words bringing warmth to his cheeks and making his dragonesque eyes glisten with light. The abject fear that had been hiding beneath the calm exterior began to evaporate, and she saw happiness start to take hold.
“Yes!” she shouted, using her naming lore to add irrevocability to it. The tone rang through the gazebo and echoed off the rockwalls, swirling around the lake where it danced in the waterfall, laughing as it spilled over the brim. With the dancing echo came heat, and light; like a comet careening within the grotto her word flashed through the air, illuminating the cavern with the radiance of a thousand shooting stars. The tone picked up to other harmonics as the places it touched affirmed the tightness of her answer, and a song rang in the air around them, a song of gladness.
The fires of Elysian roared their agreement, and the grass, which had begun to dry and stiffen in sleep turned green again, as if touched by the hand of spring. The blossoms of her garden held fast to the last of their brilliance, and bloomed along with the red winter flowers that had graced their table. As the shooting light-tone touched them it absorbed their colors, and spun them skyward, exploding into shimmering fireworks as it impacted with the dome of the firmament.
Ashe watched the explosion in amazement, then looked down at her face, turned skyward as well, the reflection of the colors above them glittering in her magnificent eyes.
“My,” he laughed. “Are you sure?”
Rhapsody laughed with him, her mirth freeing her from the clutching tightness of duty and solitude she had felt for so long. Like wind chimes in a high breeze she let it come forth, and the sound of her laughter joined the tone of her assent, filling the giant cave with music the likes of which it had never held.
Ashe took her face in his hands, studying it in the throes of joy, and burned the image into his heart. He would need this picture to get through what was to come, he knew. Then he bent and touched her lips with his, drawing her into a kiss so tender that he could feel the tears well up in her again.
They stood, lost in each other and in the passion of their kiss, until the light had begun to fade and the music slipped away, leaving a ringing tone that eventually quieted, then disappeared. As the warmth left the air she pulled back, looking up at him with eyes that had calmed, but still held a quiet contentment that made him tremble.
“I’m sure,” she said simply. He took her in his arms, holding her as tightly as he could, trying to keep the moment fast in his heart. The magic still needed to survive what he had to tell her.
52
Ashe finally released her, Rhapsody sat back down on the bench.
“Well, that was interesting,” she said, smoothing her silken skirt. “I can’t wait for the encore. So what is it you have to tell me?”
Ashe shuddered. He knew how difficult the news he needed to break would be to hear, and he wasn’t ready to give up the glow they were sharing, not yet.
“Will you sing for me, Rhapsody?” he asked, sitting down at her feet.
“You’re stalling,” she scolded. “I have a feeling this is going to be a late night; we have a lot more to discuss, plus the renaming ritual. I have to leave early in the morning, so I’ll make you a offer: you tell me what it is you need to, and I’ll make my request of you, and then we’ll rename you and I’ll sing to you afterward. Fair enough?”
Ashe sighed. “Very well,” he said, trying not to let his disappointment show. “Please understand I would rather die at this moment than tell you what I am about to.”
Alarm crossed Rhapsody’s face. “Why?”
Ashe rose and sat beside her again, taking her hands. “Because I know what I am going to tell you will hurt you, and you must know by now that I seek to avoid that whenever possible.”
Calm returned to Rhapsody’s expression. “All right, Ashe. Just tell me.”
“In a little while my father will approach you and ask if you’d like to accompany him on a journey. I don’t know the destination; it’s insignificant anyway. You will never get there.”
“What are you talking about?”
Ashe’s eyes met hers for a moment. “Please, Rhapsody; this is far too difficult as it is. Just listen, and then I’ll explain. And if, after all this, you want to revoke your permission for me to keep this memory, I will understand and yield to your decision.”
Rhapsody squeezed his hands supportively. “Just tell me,” she said gently.
“In the midst of your travels with Llauron, the two of you will be confronted by Lark and a band of renegade followers. She will challenge my father to mortal combat, one of the rites of passage for Llauron’s seat of power. Llauron will have no choice but to accept, and in the course of the combat Lark will kill him.”
Rhapsody leapt from the bench in shock. “What? No. That will not happen, Ashe. I will not let that happen.”
“You won’t be able to prevent it, Aria. You will have been bound by an oath to my father not to intervene in any circumstance. Your choice will be between watching him die, or violating your holy word, and surrendering Day-star Clarion. I’m sorry; I’m so sorry,” he said brokenly, watching horror creep into her face, the face that only moments before had been transfixed in happiness.
Rhapsody turned away from him and wrapped her arms around her waist, ready to vomit. Ashe’s senses felt the blood drain from her face and hands, leaving her pale and shaking. Finally she turned to him again, a look of disbelief in her eyes that choked his heart.
“I refuse to believe,” she said slowly, “that you are in league with Lark, that you would plot with her to assassinate your own father.”
Ashe hung his head. “You are half right,” he said softly. “I am not in league with Lark.”
“Then who? Who are you in league with?”
Ashe turned away, unable to meet her gaze. “My father.”
“Look at me,” Rhapsody commanded, her voice harsh. Ashe looked up, his face filled with shame. “What are you talking about?”
“My father has planned, almost from the moment you arrived, to use you to help him achieve his goals. The first was flushing out the F’dor, though I think that has pretty much succumbed to the second.”
“That being?”
“Llauron has grown weary of the limits of his existence in human form,” Ashe said hollowly. “His blood is part dragon, but that nature is dormant. He is aging, and in pain, and facing his own mortality, which is closer than you might expect. He wants to come into the fullness of his wyrm identity. If he can do that he will be almost immortal, and have the elemental power that you, and your Firbolg companions, and even I, wield now, but on a much greater scale. He will become one with the elements, Aria; where you affect or command the fire, he will be the fire. Or the water, or the ether; it doesn’t matter.”
“Like Elynsynos?”
“Exactly. And like Elynsynos, to achieve this he needs to forswear his mortal form, and assume an elemental one, but without dying, before he can move on to the elemental existence he craves. Once he discovered that Lark was plotting against him, long ago, he has been laying plans to turn the situation to his advantage. This last part—your part—is his final manipulation in getting what he wants.”
Rhapsody’s eyes broke the lock with his, and looked off over the gardens and the lake, assimilating what he was saying. “But you just said he would be killed.”
Ashe winced. “Everyone will believe so—even you, Rhapsody. He will bring herbs and tonics to induce a deathlike state in himself, and so when you and Lark examine his body, you will both believe he has died.”