He had nodded, not having any idea why.
Thank you. She had turned back to the town guards who were chasing her. What an extraordinary coincidence. You gentlemen are just in time to meet my brother. Brother, these are the town guard. Gentlemen, this is my brother—Achmed—the Snake.
The crack of the invisible collar had been inaudible, but he had felt it in his soul. For the first time since the F’dor had taken his name the air in his nostrils cleared, dispelling the hideous odor from his nose and mind. He was free, released from his enslavement and the damnation that would eventually follow, and this stranger, this tiny half-Lirin woman, had been his rescuer.
She had, in her own panicked moment, taken his old name, the Brother, and changed it forever into something ridiculous but safe, giving him back the life and soul over which he had lost control. He could see in his memory even now the look of shock in her clear green eyes; she had had no idea what she had done. Even as he and Grunthor had dragged her overland and into the root of Sagia, the immense tree sacred to the Lirin, her mother’s people, she was still suffering the notion that in their escape they were trying to save her from the Waste of Breath. To his knowledge she was still under that mistaken impression.
So if the F’dor should come upon her and bind itself to her soul, it would be easy to discern. She would no longer be able to act as a Namer, would lose her powers of truth once she was the host of a demonic spirit that was an innate liar. It was small comfort, given all the other dangers that were lying in wait for her out there somewhere, beyond his lands and his protection.
Achmed shivered and looked at the hearth. The last of the firecoals had burned down, vanishing in a thin wisp of smoke.
Deep within the barracks of the Firbolg mountain guard, Grunthor was dreaming, too, something he did not tend to do. Unlike the Firbolg king, he was a simple man with a simple outlook on life. As a result, he had simple nightmares. His bad dreams, however, tended to cause more collective suffering.
Grunthor, like Achmed, was half-Bolg, but the other half was Bengard, a giant race of grisly featured desert dwellers with oily, hide-like skin that held back the effects of the sun. The Bolg-Bengard combination was as unappealing to the eye as Rhapsody’s human-Lirin mix was pleasing, even to the sensibilities of the Bolg, who held Grunthor in high esteem dwarfed only by their utter fear of him. It was an attitude that pleased him.
As Grunthor muttered in his sleep, whispering through the meticulously polished tusks that protruded from his jutting jaw, the elite mountain guard captains and lieutenants who shared his barracks remained still. To a one the Bolg soldiers were afraid that any movement might in some way disturb the Sergeant-Major or set him off, which undoubtedly qualified as the last thing any of them wanted” to do. It seemed that neither Grunthor nor any of the Bolg who shared the sleeping corridor with him would be getting any rest that night.
Grunthor dreamt of the dragon. He had never seen one before, except for a rather bad statue of one in the Cymrian museum, so his visions were limited to the scope of his imagination, which had never been vast. His only knowledge of them came from Rhapsody, who had told him dragon tales during their endless journey along the Root, stories of the great beasts’ physical might and power over the elements, as well as their ferocious intelligence and tendency to hoard treasure.
It was this last characteristic that was giving him nightmares. He feared that once Rhapsody was within the dragon’s lair, it would seek to possess her and never let her return to the mountain. This was a loss he could not contemplate, having never before cared enough about anything to miss it.
Unconsciously he patted the wall next to his bunk, whispering in Bolgish the words of comfort he had imparted to Achmed not long after they had emerged from the Root, seeking to console his longtime friend and leader about the loss of his blood gift. Grunthor had known him in the days when he was the Brother, the most proficient assassin the world had ever known, so called because he was the first of his race born on the Island from which they had come.
Serendair was a unique land, one of the places Time itself was said to have begun. As the Firstborn of his race in that unique land, the Brother had a bond to the blood of all who lived there. He could seek out any individual heartbeat with the skill of a hound on the hunt, matching his own to it and following it with deadly accuracy, relentless in his quest until he found his quarry. Watching him seek and find his prey was a marvel to behold.
All that had changed when they came forth from the Root into this new land on the other side of the world. Achmed’s gift was gone; now the only heartbeats he could hear were the ones that had come from the old world of Serendair. Even though Achmed had said nothing, Grunthor had felt his despair, and so knew that there were things in life that brought sorrow when they were no longer there. It was the first time he had ever had this realization. He was now experiencing the feeling himself. Rhapsody was Lirin; a slight, frail race upon which the Firbolg in the old land had preyed very successfully, though what Lirin lacked in strength they generally made up for by being sly and swift. They were a race he had even consumed a few of himself, though not as many as he had teasingly led her to believe.
In many ways Lirin were as opposite to the Firbolg as he. himself was to Rhapsody. Lirin were sharp and angular where Bolg were sinewy and muscular. The Lirin lived outside, in the fields and forests beneath the stars, while the Bolg were born of the caves and mountains, the children of the dark of the earth. In Grunthor’s opinion Rhapsody had benefited from being sired by a human; her appearance was still slight but not frail, the sharp angles giving way to slender curves, high cheekbones and softer facial features than her mother undoubtedly had. She was beautiful. No doubt the dragon would think so, too.
At the thought Grunthor roared in his sleep, sending his lieutenants scram up the roughhewn walls of their chamber or out of their bunks entirely. Wood of his massive bed screamed and groaned as he thrashed about, rtine and growling, finally settling onto his side in silence again. The only sound in the room for a few moments afterwards was the quickened breathing of his unfortunate bunkmates who huddled against the barracks walls, their eves glittering and blinking rapidly in the dark.
Unconsciously Grunthor pulled his rough woolen blanket up over his shoulder and sighed as the warmth touched his neck, a sensation similar to being near Rhapsody. He had initially been reluctant to leave the Root once they had arrived here. He had been bound to the Earth by the song of his name that she had sung to lead them through the great Fire. Grunthor, strong and reliable as the Earth itself, she had called him in his namesong, among other descriptions. From the moment he had exited the Fire he had felt the beating heart of the world in his blood, a tie to the granite and basalt and all that grew above it. The Earth was like the lover he had never had, warm and comforting in the darkness, a feeling of acceptance he had never known, and it was inextricably linked to Rhapsody.
In a way he did not miss being within the Earth, or the earthsong that still hummed in his ears when he was wrapped in silence, because she was there. He could still see her smile in the dark, her dirty face gleaming in the glow given off by the Axis Mundi, the great Root that bisected the world that had been their path away from Serendair and to this new place.
He had been her protector from the very beginning, had comforted her in her night terrors, let her sleep on his chest in the dank chill of their journey along the Root, kept her from falling into nothingness during the arduous climb. It was a role so far removed from any he had ever played before that he hardly believed himself capable of it. It had taken every resource of self-control that he had to keep from locking her in her chambers now and driving her guide from the mountain. How he would deal with a double first loss—Rhapsody herself, and the memory she kept alive of being within the Earth—was more than he could imagine. If she were to die, or just never come back, Grunthor was not sure he could go on.