“So I have come to discover this, Assassin King—are you more king? Or more assassin?” Achmed’s face was a mask of stoicism, but his mismatched eyes gleamed with an intensity that frightened Rhapsody.
His answer was drowned in a sudden squeal from within the mist cloak in her arms. The sound pierced the noise of the hive, drowned out the tricking of the brook, and resounded through the rains of the bath.
All three men started. Rhapsody’s eyes widened in panic; she jostled the bundle, reaching within to try and soothe the child, but the squeal only intensified into high-pitched shrieking, louder than she had ever heard before.
“Meridion, Meridion, shhhhhh, no, no,” she whispered, futilely trying to put the baby to the breast. “Gods, please, you’ll wake the dragon.” But the child continued to wail, his plaintive cries echoing off the cavernous chamber and shattering the low hum. Because, unlike his mother, he knew the beast was already awake.
33
The dragon had been coming to consciousness for some time before she actually heard the name.
In the lightness of her slumber the dreams she had been luxuriating in had grown less comforting; for all that there had been moments of celebration and acclaim in her long life, they had actually been few and far between when compared with the centuries of distrust and deception, rejection, plotting, war, murder, defilement, leading ultimately to even more centuries of banishment, exile, and solitude. Eventually the happy memories were used up, repeated too often to be of comfort.
She twitched in her sleep, fighting to keep the unpleasant thoughts at bay, but they were beginning to mass outside the gates of her mind, like rebel hordes eager for conquest. The honey and wax she had devoured, believing it to be healing sunshine, was cloying in her maw, coating her throat and making her gag. The bees that had attacked her had done little to damage her hide; she felt no pain from that, but the stings that landed in her eyes had left them swollen and sore, irritating her back into low-burning anger again. So when the name was spoken, even though it had been a great distance away in a different chamber of the bath, it went right to her ear and clanged like a cymbal against her brain. Rhapsody, step forward and aside, out of the sluice. The beast’s sore eyes opened wide in the darkness of the broken bath, casting an eerie blue light around the gloom. Rhapsody.
At first it was a struggle to waken; her mind, buzzing with the sound of the hated woman’s name, caught fire and began to hum with eager energy, but the body that had been torn and rent from the inside by the shards that still remained within her was slow to react, in need of more rest and healing. The wyrm steeled her will and began to assert dominion over her limbs; one by one she stretched her legs and forearms, extended her claws until her muscles tensed in the sweet pain of controlled movement.
She stretched slowly, not the languid extension of muscle and bone that had felt so sinuous and delightful in torpor, but the careful, calculating reinvigoration of a dormant body into motion again. At the same time she listened carefully, hoping to catch the name again, or some sign of where the woman was. This place of ancient magic, with its low abiding song of healing and the hellacious buzzing from the hive, left her senses jumbled and unclear; there was no way to allow her inner sight to scan the ruins.
She would have to do it with her own eyes.
When finally she adjudged her body to be working as well as it could, she slithered back into the streambed and made her way to the hole she had caused in the vault, her forked tongue tasting the air, seeking to banish the last vestiges of sweet honey and replace them with an altogether more enticing sartorial experience. Blood and bone, flavored with hate. The three men froze only for the briefest of instants. A second later they were in motion. The Dhracian, seemingly familiar with the ruins, ran at the lead, making his way over the broken vases and urns that had once held medicinal water and soothing oils, clearing a path as much as he could. Achmed snatched the light globe from Rhapsody’s hands and followed him, illuminating the path as Grunthor grabbed her and the baby up and carried them, knowing his stride was more than twice hers.
They crossed the floor of the ancient bath with alacrity, leaping and ducking to avoid the scattered ruins of the public bath, past enormous statues of smiling robed women with hands outstretched in blessing, around the pieces of what had once been beds for basking beneath a sheltering desert sky, all the way to the channel down which they had come, and began climbing back up to the sluice.
Just as they had reached the midpoint of the channel, the beast burst forth into the chamber through the hole in the shattered vault, bellowing forth a roar so filled with caustic hatred that could have melted glass.
The firmament of the vault rumbled in response, loosing a hail of sand and grit, followed by pieces of the hive that had been adhered to the ceiling.
Rhapsody ducked her head against Grunthor’s chest and pulled Meridian as much under her chin as she could, hoping to spare his head from the falling debris. The thudding of the giant’s massive heart as he charged up the channel was like thunder; she closed her eyes, struggling to keep the infant sheltered with her own body.
At that moment the hive shattered, sending a black storm of bees, thick as the dust wall of a sandstorm, cascading out and swirling angrily in every direction. The low drone became a ferocious scream, rising in volume, pitch, and fury.
At that moment, the Dhracian stopped where he was. He leaned forward on the channel ledge over the cavern and gestured to Achmed to pass him nearer to the wall. The Bolg king complied, holding the light aloft for Grunthor to follow, taking shelter in the sluice as a wave of angry insects swelled toward them.
Rhapsody, hearing the mounting buzz, took a comer of the mist cloak and swathed the side of Grunthor’s face nearest the cavern, holding it like a tent for them both. The giant barreled up the last of the channel and into the sluice, dropping her gently to the ground.
“Take cover, Duchess,” he said urgently. “Throw that thing over yerself.”
Achmed was watching the cacophony of the hive. Black currents of insects swirled and raged, their mutual anger communicated in a rising scream. He turned and looked behind to see the Dhracian still standing at the channel’s edge, his eyes closed, his long bony hand raised, palm out, to the cavern beyond. He was chanting, repeating a series of sounds over and over again. The words made no sense to Achmed; in his mind they sounded like a repeated series of hisses and buzzes. But in his viscera he knew what the man was saying. Enemy. Enemy. Enemy.
He also knew in his guts that the Dhracian was directing the bees toward the dragon, the way a hill of ants or a hive communicated with a common mind.
A moment later his intuition proved correct. The cyclone of insects ceased their random fury and swarmed down as of one mind toward the beast, swamping her, covering her from maw to the spike on her tail, coating her wings until they were black. The wyrm staggered in shock, then writhed as the stingers met her eyes again. Blindly she let out a roar of rage, then made her way, fighting the swarm, to the trickling stream. The Dhracian opened his eyes and turned to Achmed.
“Run,” he said in his low, sandy voice. “She will only be deterred a moment.”
The Bolg king turned and fled through the opening and up the sluice, where Grunthor was furiously digging out a tunnel from where the sandstorm had filled in the fissure. The Dhracian was behind him a moment later, his footfalls silent in the echoing scream of the dragon, growing louder and nearer, in the cavern beyond the opening. “Cover yerself and the baby, miss, Oi’m gonna push ya through,” Grunthor said, gulping air from exertion. Rhapsody checked the child, quiet since his shriek, pulled the end of the mist cloak in which he was swathed over her head, and nodded her readiness. The giant Bolg seized her and shoved her through the last layer of sand, where she stumbled out into the dusk of the desert wind, where a thin crescent moon hung ominously in the sky above them. “Make for the horses!” the Sergeant shouted, emerging a moment later behind her. Rhapsody obeyed, pushing back the cloak and keeping her head down, making for the ruins as quickly as she could, her heart pounding in her chest, trying to avoid dropping the baby at all costs. The Bolg king and the Dhracian were just emerging from the fissure when the sluice exploded.