The Lady Cymrian had wandered slightly to the south, as if following a call only she could hear. She crouched down as they watched, still listening. From within the billowing folds of the mist cloak they could see her reach out her hand and pass it over the ground. Then her arm withdrew into the cloak; she looked down at the baby, then turned to meet their gaze. “How’s your neck, Grunthor?” she asked.
The giant shrugged again, then reached up and patted it. A look of surprise came over his massive features.
“Good as new,” he murmured aloud. Rhapsody rose and came back over to them. She stopped in front of Achmed and pushed aside the folds of the cloak of mist to reveal the infant’s leg. The welt was gone, healed as if it had never been there.
She turned around, taking in the sight of the vast desert behind them, the mountains in the distance to the east, listening intently. “What is it?” Achmed asked. “Can’t you feel it?” she asked. “There’s a very deep vibration here, a vibrant song, but I missed it in the hum of the bees and the howl of the wind. It is ancient in tone, the musical note Lisele-ut, attuned to the color red in the spectrum.”
“Blood saver,” said Achmed. “Healing?”
“Yes. But I can’t even fathom how strong this is—it’s too deep to be audible; I can only feel it. Can you as well, Grunthor?” The Sergeant-Major nodded in assent. “We should stay ’ere tonight, sir,” he said loudly, watching Rhapsody as she wandered northward, her eyes closed, following the tone. Then he leaned over and spoke quietly to Achmed.
“Look at ’er, look at ’er face.”
As they had done once long ago in the light of a campfire, having just emerged from their long trek through the belly of the Earth, the two Bolg stared at Rhapsody. Then they were seeing the effects of the elemental fire she had absorbed in the Earth’s core, a purging of physical flaws, a brightening of her eyes and hair until it radiated the same warmth as the element. She had become hypnotic to behold, an experience similar to gazing into roaring flames on a hearth. Now what they saw was different, but similarly compelling. The woman who had ridden with them from Haguefort had been wan and pale, thin and listless from the difficulty of bearing a dragon’s child. Even though she had remained fair, she was waiflike, a shadow of herself, her health fragile, her vitality, so much a part of her before, weak and sapped. She seemed almost dry, bloodless, as though color had been drained out of her in childbirth.
As she passed northward, however, guided by the tune the Earth was singing in this place of endless arid clay and merciless cold sun, she seemed to rehydrate, as if she was drinking in the color from the world around her. The flaxen hair peeking from beneath the hood of the mist cloak was growing brighter, back to the gold of the old days, her pale skin turning rosier, her flesh gaining more solidity and heft the farther along she walked. Even her gait grew stronger; there was more vigor in her step, more energy in her movements. As she approached the fissure in the ground, the Sergeant started back to the horses. “Whatever this place is, sir, it seems to be ’ealing the Duchess. Oi think we oughta just settle ’ere until she gets a lit’le better; she was lookin’ about ready ta drop.”
Achmed watched as she knelt down next to the fissure, then nodded. “All right,” he called to Grunthor, “let’s see if we can find a sheltered spot within the ruins where we won’t be buried if another sandstorm blows through.” Then he walked over to where Rhapsody was kneeling and stood silently while she listened to the music only she could hear. At last she looked up, her face shining brightly in the light of the setting sun. “I think I know what this place may have been,” she said excitedly, her eyes shining green as the forest canopies in Tyrian. “When we were in Yarim Paar, drilling beneath Entudenin to restore water to the province, do you recall hearing a legend of a lost city named Kurimah Milani?” Achmed chuckled wryly. “No, when the Bolg artisans were in Yarim Paar we were not being accorded fancy hospitality and having legends related to us—we were digging every hour of the day and night, sweating blood and enduring the hostile stares and jeers of the imbeciles who we should have allowed to die of thirst in the heat. You, on the other hand, were the guest of mat idiot duke, Ihrman Karsrick, if I recall correctly, so I can see how you may have had a moment to indulge in the gathering of lore and legend.” He stopped, seeing her face fall, and remembering mat in fact she had arranged for better housing and treatment for the Bolg workers, which he had refused. “Tell me the tale.”
Rhapsody stood, cradling the baby close to her.
“I don’t know the tale, I only have heard snippets of the lore. In the oldest days, long before the Cymrians came to this continent, there was said to have been a marvelous city called Kurimah Milani somewhere around here, in the lee of the northern mountains. I’m not sure of the origin of the name, but the sounds it contains are all the musical notes that promote healing, much like the red spectrum of your Light-catcher is supposedly I heard fragments of the tales from the Shanouin priestesses, that tribe of well-diggers who alone were able to locate water in the desert clime of Yarim. The Shanouin are said to have been descended from the inhabitants of Kurimah Milani, but the city has been lost to the ages for so long that even they do not know if that is truth or fantasy.
“I know little else about it, except that it was said to be a place of hot springs rich in minerals, runoff from the Manganese Mountains to the north of the Teeth. The legends said that the hot springs imparted healing and other magical properties to those fortunate enough to bathe in or drink from them. That’s all there was; the lore is too old for anyone now living to remember. It may all have been a mirage of the mind, a fantasy that desert dwellers told each other in the hot seasons when water was scarce and they were made a little insane by thirst. “But somewhere beneath here a song of immense power is resonating, emanating from the One-God only knows what. It is a melodious tune, deep and slow, faster than the heartbeat of the Earth that we heard when we were walking within it, but regular, like tides of the sea; strange, all the way out here in the desert. The power is vibrating within the ground—can you feel it?” Achmed lowered his veil to allow his skin-web access to the open wind, then pulled the glove from his left hand. He crouched down and held his palm over the fissure. “I can,” he said after a moment. “Then perhaps these are the ruins of that place,” Rhapsody said. “Interesting, and potentially useful. I think Meridion needs changing.”
The Bolg king flinched against the wind as it roared through again, stinging his eyes. Grunthor jogged back to them, having settled the horses and the provisions in the shelter of the ruins. “Right nice spot, out of the wind,” he said cheerfully. “C’mon, Duchess, I got a place set up fer you an’ the lit’le one; you should be clear of the wind, most part.”