“Only if you’re planning to dispose of them,” Achmed said, a warning note entering his voice. “Somehow given your proclivity for children, Rhapsody, I can’t see you succeeding in that undertaking.”
“I have no intentions of disposing of them unless they make it necessary, and then I will do so in a heartbeat,” she replied. “This is no different than it was with Ashe. They are people with human souls, Achmed, with demon blood in their veins. They can be helped. They need to be helped.”
“How do you know they aren’t little demonic monsters like the Rakshas?” he demanded, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. He didn’t like the turn the exchange had taken.
“They were born of human mothers, and Ashe’s soul was present in the Rakshas. The presence of a soul in the parent bequeaths a soul to the child. They aren’t monsters, Achmed, any more than the Bolg are. They’re children, children with tainted blood. If somehow we can separate that blood out, they have at least some hope of avoiding an eternity of damnation.”
“No,” he said angrily. “It isn’t worth the risk. Any one of them might be bound to the F’dor already. We want to meet the F’dor on our terms, not on its own.”
Rhapsody smiled coldly. “Exactly. Your ability to sense blood from the old world will help me find the children, Achmed. If that part of their blood which is demonic can be extracted, I will give it to you. Then you will have the blood of the F’dor, a trail of scent for the hunt.” She looked over at Grunthor, who was listening. “We’ll finally be able to find it. It has given us the means.”
Blood will be the means.
The king and the sergeant exchanged a glance, then Achmed looked back at her.
“All right,” he said finally. “But make no mistake about it, Rhapsody. If there is even a split second when any of the demon-spawn pose even the slightest of threats, to any of us, I will cut its throat before it exhales, and dispatch it back to its father’s realm in the Underworld. This will not be open for debate or exception. Do you agree?”
Rhapsody nodded. “Fair enough,” she said.
57
It was eight days later when the Three finally emerged from the darkness of the crevasse that had once hidden the entrance to the Loritorium. It had taken most of that time for Grunthor to recover from the effort of sealing off all the passageways and the entire length of the tunnel he had burrowed. Without the contact he had had with the Earthchild the task had proven vastly more difficult, had taken a far greater toll on the giant, but not as much of a toll as leaving her behind in the darkness of the blackened vault, hidden away from all but Time.
The farewell itself was equally painful. Rhapsody had kissed the child’s stone-gray forehead as Grunthor covered her carefully with his greatcloak in place of the soft blanket of woven spider-silk that the Grandmother had always nestled around her. Achmed extinguished the street lamps, leaving nothing but the flickering fireshadows from the flame-well dimly lighting the Loritorium, once a great undertaking devoted to the pursuit of scholarship, now only the dark cavern that served as the Sleeping Child’s chamber.
As they left her to her repose, Rhapsody whispered a last lullabye, then followed her friends into the shattered entrance to the deeper realm.
Before they sealed off the charred remains of the network of tunnels that had once been the Colony, they stood one last time in the Canticle circle together. Rhapsody sang a dirge for the Dhracians who had died so long ago in the Last Night genocide, and one for the woman who had stood a lonely vigil since then, guarding the Earthchild until they had come. As she was singing the underground wind fell silent, as if finally acknowledging the death of the Zhereditck, the Windchildren, and the civilization they had once made to keep the Earth from destruction.
When the lament was over, Rhapsody and Grunthor went back across the crumbling bridge, leaving Achmed alone in the circle. He stood within the carved runes, the symbols disappearing from the surface of the. floor with the passage of time, and watched the pendulum clock swinging endlessly back and forth through the darkness.
The Earth says it was your death, sir. That you don’t know it yet, but you will.
Now he did.
^—We back in the Cauldron Rhapsody checked in on her Firbolg grandchildren, then joined Achmed and Grunthor in the Great Hall to catch up on the news brought by the weekly mail caravan.
The soldiers and merchants of the convoy had sought an audience to share the report that came to them en route from Roland by avian messenger. Dual earthquakes, a great roar of heat followed by the trembling of the earth, had rumbled through the continent, the excited guards reported, disturbing the ground from the Teeth to the center of Navarne. Rhapsody cast a sidelong glance at Grunthor, who remained at unblinking attention, seemingly unfazed by the reverberations from the lampfuel fireball and his sealing of the demon-vine’s passageway.
No lives had been lost, the guards reported, and no real damage had occurred, with one notable exception, Rhapsody was tremendously saddened to hear that the terminus of the tremor was the House of Remembrance, which ignited in flames and was burned to ashes, along with a goodly portion of the tainted forest that surrounded it. The only saving grace was the news that the tree in its courtyard, the sapling of Sagia brought by the Cymrians from their homeland so many centuries before, had miraculously survived the conflagration. Rhapsody secretly hoped it would thrive now that it was purged of the demon-root that had despoiled it for so long.
After the messengers left she climbed through the deepening shadows of twilight to the wide Heath, the place which had borne witness to so much hope and despair. She sat down in the high grass, blanched and dry in the grip of frost, the sword across her knees, and watched as the evening stars emerged one by one in the firmament of the heavens. The winter sky was bell-clear and cold, deepening from a cerulean blue at its apex down to the inky blackness of night at the horizon.
Hovering over the easternmost peaks of the Teeth she saw Prylla appear, the star the Lirin had named for the woodland Windchild. It was the star that had lit Jo’s pyre, the marker of lost love. It twinkled in the clear air of night. Rhapsody watched it with dry eyes, listening to its song. Do not mourn, it seemed to whisper. Love has not been lost; it’s been found.
She sang her evening vespers softly into the wind, letting the breeze take the last of her sadness away with it as it whistled over the mountaintops and across the rippling plain. The elements of the races that had given birth to the Lirin, the ether of the stars and the whispering wind, shone down on her, wrapped around her, cleansing her spirit, making the fire within her burn steady and bright. She was all right. She was strong, ready for whatever was to come.
She was the Iliachenva’ar.
Far away, in the ruins of the House of Remembrance at the foot of the sapling tree, a hooded figure stood in the wind as well. He gazed up into its branches, awed by the sight.
There, amid the smoldering ash blending with the mist rising from his cloak, the tree was blooming gloriously, bright blossoms gracing its boughs even in the depth of winter. A small harp was nestled in its branches, stalwartly playing a ringing roundelay.