For all that he was modest, and had not shared the information with Achmed, Rath was the most accomplished of all the Gaol, the single greatest hunter of the Brethren. In short, an Assassin King himself.
He could still smell its essence as he silently traversed the hallways of the underground city that the Cymrians had called Canrif, the word meaning Century in their now-dead language. It had been a very long time, but some traces of evil remained in stone, in water, in wood where great wrongs had been perpetrated, or great deeds of maliciousness formulated. Something of that ilk must have happened here, he reasoned. And in particular, he believed it had begun on the floor of the throne room. Still, the Three were inured to it. Even the Firbolg king did not notice as he trod the floors of the place, an action that made Rath almost sick with disgust. Only the Lady Cymrian avoided the place where the taint was emanating from, as if she had seen a vision there, or was made uncomfortable by the traces of memory.
What troubled Rath about that was the lack of racial memory. While the Lady Cymrian and the Sergeant could hardly be expected to do so, those of Dhracian blood carried within them forever the scent of the Mood of every beast they slew.
And Achmed had killed two of them in relatively short time.
It did not bode well that the Assassin King could even sleep within the walls of such a place, the place where the blood of a F’dor that had died at his hands still vibrated in the walls, the very floor of the place.
He followed his hosts silently around as they went about their business, to the corridor where his quarters were, to the hallway outside the mountain peak of Gurgus, where the Lightcatcher was being rebuilt, and even to the overlook of the underground city itself, still in the process of being restored. Everywhere he looked, he saw Firbolg artisans and soldiers, archons, educators, and masons, all working to restore what had been one king’s vision. It was clear to Rath that the Bolg were another king’s vision, a king who saw himself as building a people, not a mountain stronghold, a noble cause in the eyes of men, but a distraction for one who could be an even greater hunter than Rath. He would watch closely. When the two Bolg, Rhapsody, and Rath entered the room at the base of Gurgus Peak, a tall young man with a full beard and head of dark hair came up to the Lady Cymrian immediately, smiling broadly. “Hello, Rhapsody,” he said. “Welcome back; it’s wonderful to see you.”
Rhapsody stared at him, befuddled. “I’m sorry,” she said, “do I know you?”
The two Bolg and the bearded young man laughed.
“You don’t remember Omet?” Achmed asked mockingly. “And you were the one that insisted on saving him in the kilns of the Raven’s Guild.”
Rhapsody’s bright green eyes opened wide in shock. “Omet?” she asked in amazement. “You are twice as tall as you were the last time I saw you—and were you not bald?”
“I was,” said the young man agreeably. “But it was hot in Esten’s kilns, and it is cold here in the mountain.”
“Omet has taken the lead in the annealing of the glass and building the Lightcatcher,” Achmed said. “He’s one of the few artisans I allow alone in the room.” His voice fell away awkwardly; Omet had been gravely injured in the explosion that rocked Gurgus Peak, and it was the red spectrum of the Light-catcher itself that had saved his life. Rhapsody hugged the young man warmly. “I’m so very glad to see you,” she said. “Well, you’re the one that told me to go carve my name in the mountains for history to see,” Omet said, smiling. “I’m only doing what you told me to do.”
Rhapsody looked around. Any evidence of destruction from the explosion was no longer present; the room had been restored as if nothing had ever happened. A wooden dome covered the ceiling of the tower, beneath which she could see colored glass of all hues. “I look forward to you showing me what you’ve done,” she said. She looked behind her to see Rath standing beneath the dome of the ceiling, staring up into the circle of glass. “Are you all right?”
The Dhracian nodded. “I have seen this before,” he said, still staring up into the tower. “It was in such a place I first learned the Prophecy of the Decks.” The Bolg king inclined his head. “Care to elaborate?” The Dhracian finally broke his black gaze away and stared at Achmed. “You have not been told the Prophecy of the Decks?”
“No.”
“It is this,” Rath said. “ ‘That which was Stolen will be given freely. That which was freely Given will be stolen.’”
“It means nothing to me,” said Achmed crossly. Rath inhaled deeply. “I will tell you the tale. And then you will know what you are up against.”
38
In the Before-Time, a great battle was waged against the F’dor by the four remaining primordial races born of the elements,” Rath began. “Our race, the Brethren known to man as the Kith, banded together with the Serenel, the Mythlinus, and the Wyrmril, that which men call dragons. It was determined that unless these four races, separate and distrustful of one another, worked together and sacrificed some of what was most precious to them, the unbridled destructiveness of the F’dor would shatter the world. “Before this battle began, the F’dor managed to steal one of the first six eggs produced by the Progenitor Wyrm, the being that was mother and father to the race, and secreted the egg away in the bowels of the Earth beyond the fiery core, where it could never be found. The wyrmling from this egg was known to the dragon race as the First Child. The F’dor removed the heat from this wyrmling, allowing it to grow, unborn, perverting it, feeding it on the earth itself, until its mass began to become part of the heft of the world.”
“We have seen it,” Achmed said. “It still sleeps—Rhapsody wove a song of endless change around it, a pattern of confusion that she hoped would prevent any speaking of its name to be heard.”
Rath’s eyes of liquid black gleamed. “Let us hope you are right. From this Sleeping Child the F’dor harvested seven precious scales, and took the two more that served to protect its blind eyes. Because dragons have lore from each of the other elements, there was power in these scales that encompassed the entire color spectrum, the vibrations of light and musical tones that make up the magic of the universe. Each of the colors in the seven scales has a specific power attuned to its wave length, as well as a note in the scale, which are the visible and audible manifestations of those vibrations. As your Namer can tell you, there are many more manifestations that are neither visual nor audible. You know this yourself as well, Bolg king—you can feel them in your skin-web as each moment of the day passes. “The F’dor, therefore, were able to make use of these dragon scales to affect the material world which they otherwise could not be part of, because they were without form and noncorporeal. Thus, they had control of a complete color spectrum of seven, plus the two most powerful opposites, one black, representing Void, and one white, representing Life, from its eyes. They used these powers destructively, to scry, ignite volcanoes, shed blood, steal heat, and otherwise wreak havoc on the material world.
“It was for this reason the other primordial races joined together in the battle against the F’dor. For all that history relates this as if it were an obvious conflict, I can assure you that was not the case. While it may seem to you that the elements of starlight, earth, water, and wind are in opposition to that of fire, in fact they were all like siblings, more similar than they were disparate. This decision was undertaken in agony, not in triumph, nor in conquest; the pact to remove that which brought warmth and light to the world, and condemn those races to be less than they could have been in the mind of the Creator. For all that it was the only thing that can be done, we were all poorer as a result of it. This is lost lore, something that history, and even some who lived it, have forgotten.