Hot as the day was, a sudden chill swept over Rhapsody. “Do you not believe the mountains to be secure, Achmed?” she asked, concern darkening her green eyes. “Is there a threat that is unknown to the Alliance?”
The Firbolg king shrugged. “There are always threats, Rhapsody. There is no such thing as a lasting peace, only long pauses between episodes of war.”
“Are you certain you and Anborn aren’t related?” Rhapsody asked jokingly.
“If I were to be related to someone in your husband’s odious family, I suppose he is the one I could endure with the least bad taste in my mouth. I respect his ability to not give a roasted rat’s damn what anyone thinks of him. But as for your question, remember that I guard a mountain, and a Child who is the key to the Underworld for the F’dor. Even if we are at peace, I can never be overly prepared. The risk is far too great. And since you were named as the Earthchild’s amelystik, you should be willing to do whatever it takes to tend to her as well, to assure her safety. Helping me in this regard will do that.”
Rhapsody sighed, then carefully separated the top pages of the sheaf from the older, more delicate page at the bottom of the pile, handing them to Achmed as she studied the last one. It was thin and cracked with age, the paper crumbling at its edges. The markings on it were in a script she recognized immediately, being the language in which Lirin Singers trained to become Namers: Serenne, the tongue of the Ancient Seren race, the progenitors of her homeland.
“There is a poem, or frontispiece of a sort here,” she said, studying the whisper-thin strokes of ink. “Serenne is based on musical script, and so it is somewhat hard to equate to spoken language.”
“Your best effort should suffice,” Achmed said impatiently.
“The poem is a sort of roundelay, a verse of a song, but the main lines read something like this:
She turned the parchment slightly toward the light. “It’s graphed like a musical scale, which, by the way, is another seven—seven distinct notes in an octave, the eighth note being the same as the first. It looks as if this is just a part of the poem; the rest is missing.”
“Does it make any sense to you?” Achmed asked.
Rhapsody exhaled. “Not really, except that it is a list of significant sevens.” Her brow furrowed. “One of them seems out of place—the Seven Gifts of the Creator. I had always heard the elements referred to as the Five Gifts, fire, water, earth, air, and ether, so I am not certain what that means.”
“Can you read anything else?”
“There is a list of names beside the words for the different colors in the rainbow—shall I read them to you?”
“Yes.”
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and bent closer to the parchment page.
“They are marked with the musical symbols for sharp and flat, almost like the signs for positive and negative, all but the last one.
Lisele-ut, or red, Blood Saver, Blood Letter frith-re, orange, Fire Starter, Fire Quencher Merte-mi, yellow, Light Bringer, Light Queller Kurh-fa, green, Grass Hider, Glade Server Brige-sol, blue, Cloud Chaser, Cloud Caller Luasa-ela, indigo, Night Stayer, Night Summoner Grei-ti, violet, The New Beginning.
When she looked up again, Rhapsody’s face was pale.
“What have you found, Achmed?” she said nervously. “This is old magic, sacred and secret ancient lore; it worries me to see it out in the open like this. Only the most revered of Namers in the old world were allowed access to this sort of lore. These words are the basis of all vibrational code, which gives power to Singers’ music, spell-weavers, healers, and others from the old land that could manipulate power through the vibrations of the living world.”
Achmed said nothing. He made use of vibrational lore himself, in his elemental tie to blood, the tie that allowed him to track and distinguish heartbeats. It was a power that had made him an unerring assassin on the other side of Time.
“What are you going to do with this once you have reconstructed this instrumentality, Achmed?” Rhapsody asked, handing him back the parchment sheets with great care.
The Firbolg king smiled from behind his veils.
“The same thing you have asked me to do here in Yarim—make the lives of your subjects more secure.”
“Why don’t I believe that’s the end of it?” Rhapsody said, rising from the ground and brushing the dry red clay from her gown.
“Because, your choice in husbands notwithstanding, you are not a fool. Now, come. I’m sure there is some stew or gruel left from dinner that you can have, so that you can properly thank Ihrman Karsrick for his hospitality when you return this evening.”
The seneschal’s reeve spotted the continent even before the lookout in the crow’s nest had opportunity to do so.
“Land, m’lord,” Fergus called, lifting his voice to be heard over the gusting sea breeze.
The seneschal nodded, staring over the starboard bow to the dim gray at the horizon’s edge.
“How much longer?” he asked the captain, his voice dry and crackling in the wet air.
“We have to skirt the coast, m’lord; there’s a dangerous reef between that barriers the Lirin lands between Sorbold and Avonderre. Five days to a week ’til Port Fallon, I would hazard.”
The seneschal nodded, struggling to keep the impatient voice in his head at bay. He listened to the scream of the wind, the snapping of the sails as they filled and slackened, then filled again, bringing him, moment by moment, closer, ever closer. He closed his eyes and let the sun beat down on them from a cloudless sky.
Soon.
11
Ihrman Karsrick’s efforts notwithstanding, when Achmed, Grunthor, and the Firbolg miners arrived in Yarim Paar that evening, the square was teeming with townspeople.
A fourth contingent of soldiers from the Yarimese army had been sent in to bolster the efforts of the three previously assigned divisions; they ringed the town square around the ancient obelisk and pushed the noisy horde back to the first ring of streets, away from the dry central fountainbed in which Entudenin stood. But word that the Bolg were coming had spread like wildfire throughout the capital, so as the afternoon waned to evening, more and more of the populace of Yarim Paar continued to crowd the dusty roadways, hoping for a glance. By the time Tariz and the other escort troops reached the city center, Yarim Paar was in a state of barely controlled chaos, a carnival-like atmosphere of waving firebrands, shouting and curious merriment bordering on pandemonium.
“Oh, lookee! A splendid buffet of fresh meat!” Grunthor said, loud enough for the escort to hear him, pointing to the clamoring throng. “Oi likes it when my dinner is ’appy, makes the taste sweeter. That Karsrick sure knows ’ow ta make a Bolg feel welcome and well fed. What an ’ost, eh, sir?”
Tariz, who rode at the fore, wheeled and stared at the giant Sergeant, then at the Bolg king.
“He’s speaking in jest, I take it, Your Majesty?”
“Probably,” Achmed replied. “Grunthor doesn’t tend to like dry meat, and Yarim has been without water for so long that you all seem a bit on the stringy side.”
“Too true,” the Sergeant agreed with a comic sigh. “Give me a nice, fresh Lirin! Now, that’s a juicy treat, moist an’ tasty. But ya never know. Ain’t too many Lirin around ’ere. Local cuisine might be just fine.”