Elizabeth Haydon - Requiem for the Sun

“Lesson One,” he intoned in his drill instructor voice, “when you’re in ’and-to-’and combat, always go for distance .” He held up the slender knife beside his sword. “No matter what they tell ya, size does matter.”

He searched the headless body quickly, uncovering several phials and odd coins, and, hidden in the inner pocket of her shirt, the key that had been the rib of an Earthchild. The amusement on his face drained away as he rose and strode down the hall to where the head lay.

He picked it up by the hair and stared into the wide eyes.

“Sorry, miss, but I knew you just weren’t ’is type,” he said solemnly. “ ’Is Majesty tends ta favor a woman that can keep ’er ’ead about her in a crisis.” And only one alive at the moment , he thought. The king would never have compromised the Sleeping Child for you, darlin’ .

As the head tilted to the side, a pair of thin silver picks fell from the flaccid mouth.

Grunthor winced in mock dismay.

“My, you would have been a real pleasure in sack, wouldn’t ya? Makes my privates shudder ta think about it.”

He jogged back up the hall and dropped the woman’s head onto her belly, then summoned the guards on duty down the hall.

“Wrap this thing up in a cloak and take it to the armory,” he ordered. “Be careful; she’s a real treasure trove of all sorts of ’idden things, some of which might kill ya. Carry ’er by the cloak. And get a new quartet of guards on duty.”

He waited until the soldiers had removed the body before opening the door to the king’s chambers.

As he did, the floor and walls around him rocked with the reverberations of a violent explosion.

Instinctively Grunthor threw his arms up to shield his head, as debris and sand rained down on him. His head jerked in the direction of the sound, then turned back to the doorway.

Faced with the horrific choice of intervening at the Loritorium or the Cauldron, he pulled open the secret entrance and made his way in haste down into the cavern of the Sleeping Child.

It had taken Rhur and Shaene only a few moments, after placing Omet on the floor of the tower chamber, to find the wheel they had tested in the closet where they had stored it. It stood, untouched, wrapped in oilcloth, propped up against the back wall.

It took a bit longer to get it into place. The last time the wheel had been installed Omet had helped carry it, had assisted in its hanging—had, in fact, headed the effort up. Two pairs of hands bearing the large steel-and-crystal artifact were decidedly less well suited for the task than three; still, the two glassmakers persevered, and after a few agonizing moments and several close calls, they finally managed to get the thing into place as it had been when they tested it as a threesome.

Shaene knelt over Omet while Rhur continually watched the wooden dome overhead.

“Omet,” he said gently, his voice filled with uncharacteristic certainty and wisdom, “hold on just a few moments longer. Soon the dome will be removed, and the sun will break out from behind the clouds; the colored glass you helped make will be reflected on the floor. Imagine how proud you will be then.” Omet was still gray in the face and breathing shallowly, staring at the ceiling. The two men, both artisans, one Bolg, one human, both friends of the young man dying on the floor, waited anxiously, watching the life slip from him breath by breath.

Finally, amid a great scraping and a thunderous jolt, the men looked up to see the wooden cover being slowly shifted away by a team of artisans outside the tower on the crag above.

The base of the tower, still awash in a messy array of pots, tools, beams of wood, and makeshift workbenches, took on the diffuse glow of early morning; the day had broken, the storm had passed, but it was still a few moments until full sun, when the rising orb cleared the horizon completely.

Shaene continued to whisper words of encouragement, his voice growing tenser and Omet grew paler.

A glimmer, warming to a rosy glow; the two artisans looked up to see the sky above beyond the seven-eighths-complete circle of exquisitely colored glass brighten to a clear, cloudless blue.

As Shaene watched, transfixed, Rhur went to the cooling rack in which one final experimental frit of violet glass rested, waiting to be tested. He searched through the piles on the workbench until he located the violet test plate, while Shaene futilely patted Omet’s face.

As Rhur was heading back to where the young man lay, he heard a deep, ragged intake of breath from Shaene, and looked down.

Stretching across the stolid gray stone floor of the tower was a slice of glorious color, multihued and shimmering; the rich shades of light looked for all the world like pools of melted gems, precious jewels in liquid form, evanescent, gracing the dull gray of Ylorc with a momentary splendor of surpassing beauty.

Shaene stared overhead, gawking; Rhur held the test frit up to the light in front of the plate.

In the depth of the violet proto-glass he could see the runes, symbols he did not recognize.

Grei-ti , violet. The New Beginning.

Shaene lumbered to his feet, gesturing toward the wheel.

“Come on, Rhur! Help me loose it!”

Together the men gave the wheel a push; at first, nothing happened. Then, with another shove, it starting gliding slowly across the metal tracks. As it traveled it slowed; a tonal vibration sounded, a clear, sweet note that caused the wheel to hover slowly in time with it. The vibrant light from the multihued ceiling above them caught in the crystal prismatic refractors, sending spinning flashes of color dancing wildly around the room, resolving as it slowed into a gleaming, pulsing arc of red light which came to rest on the floor where Omet lay.

Lisele-ut , red.

Blood Saver.

Neither man recognized the tone, of course; it was Namer magic, ancient, deep lore from another time, another land. If they had thought about it, they might have realized that the precise notes Gwylliam had left directing the construction of all the pieces of the Lightcatcher, from the exact shades of colored glass to the varying thickness of the metal on the support rails which produced the differing tonal vibrations as it rolled, worked in harmony of light and color to tap the ancient power of vibration, a magic left over from the creation of the world, still extant in every living thing.

But they did not grasp the nuances of what they were witnessing. They only knew that Omet, who a moment before had appeared more dead than alive, now lay in the rosy light that had been caught from the sky above, attuned to a precise color and pitch; he was breathing in time with the music of the tone, as if it had filled him, adjusted his heartbeat, his tides of breath, all the vibration that was his living essence, to itself.

And in doing so it was healing him.

Shaene lost his composure. He bent over the young man, still in the clutches of fear that was now abating to relief, and wept. He felt Rhur squeeze his shoulder from behind and looked up to find the dour-faced Bolg smiling. It was the first time Shaene remembered seeing it happen.

They watched, transfixed, as the slowly moving wheel continued to hum, the tone deepening as it lost speed, the red light waning, warming to a brighter, darker orange.

As the shadow of the healing red light passed from his face, they could see that Omet’s skin was hale again, filled with a natural, healthy color. His eyelids flickered, and his head moved from side to side, as if shaking off sleep.

The men listened, rapt, as the tone changed in time with the movement across the rails. The light on the floor shifted completely then, from the red of the first section of domed ceiling to a full shaft of the next color, orange.