Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody - Child of Blood

“Take your time, darlin’.” The gray-green face in her memory, grinning down at her. How many times had he said that to her, wanting her to be sure of her footing, not to fall? He had been so patient.

The voices seemed distant, hovering over her head.

“’Ow long she been down?”

“Since dawn. She sang through the night until the sun came up; then she collapsed.” Achmed’s sandy voice was more brittle than last she had heard.

Her throat was full of pain. Grunthor , she whispered. The word was spoken in another’s voice, the voice of an ancient man, a withered crone, a Firbolg.

“Oi’m ’ere, miss. Good as new.”

Rhapsody fought to open her eyes, and succeeded with one. Swimming above her was the gray-green face, and it was grinning. She tried to speak, but only managed to move her lips soundlessly.

“Don’t talk, Duchess. You fixed me up right nice, you did. Oi look a lot better than you do, you can be sure.”

She swiveled her head to see what the pressure was beside her. Achmed sat next to her, bandaged and patched, but whole. From what little she could see, there was not a scratch on Grunthor.

From across the room she could hear Jo exhale in relief.

“She’s awake? She’s all right? Let me see her.”

A moment later the teenager’s tearstained face appeared, hovering above her, her expression giddy and furious at the same time.

“Listen, you little runt—next time you go off on a fun expedition and leave me behind with your little brat grandchildren, I can guarantee you a severe thrashing when you get back. The little bastards tied me up and stole my stuff. If you hadn’t come back when you did, I would have been the first human to practice cannibalism on a Bolg.”

Rhapsody loosed a deep sigh, feeling the painful tightness in her chest ease a little.

“You’re really—all right—Grun—”

“Stop,” the Bolg commanded in a tone charged with ringing authority. “Don’t speak, miss. Oi told you, Oi’m just ducky. Oi am most assuredly grateful, Oi ’ope you know. Oi guess you must know me pretty well, bringin’ me back with a song, and me in such bad shape.” A smile cracked his otherwise solemn expression.

“Well, I should hope I do, we been sleeping together and all,” she rasped, then fell back into sleep to the sound of their laughter.

The wind whistled over the Blasted Heath, snapping their cloaks and hoods like sails on the high seas. Achmed and Grunthor were standing vigil in the wide field, waiting for Rhapsody to finish her study of the amulet. She had burned off an area of highgrass in a sheltered place, a rocky dell in which no wind was noticeable. The golden symbol lay on a slab of shale, its eye staring toward the dark sky.

The music she was humming had a high-pitched, fluctuating melody, a sound that set Achmed’s teeth on edge.

“Grunthor, I’ve found a new method of torture,” he said through gritted teeth. “No one could withstand that noise without cracking under the pressure. They’d tell even their deepest secret just to make her stop.”

The giant Bolg laughed. “Oi think that’s the idea, sir. She’s gettin’ the amulet to cough up its story.”

The golden hair caught the light of the moon, turning it a pale silver. She had been at the task now for more than an hour, approaching two, singing into the windless dell. Finally she stood up, brushing her skirts clean, and returned to them, taking Achmed’s arm as she walked.

“All right, this is the best I can determine. I’ve gleaned as many images as I can, using the musical vibrations of the amulet’s lore, its story. It has seen some grisly things, believe me, and I have chosen not to go too far back into the Past. Aside from the time that I don’t want to spend witnessing hideous memories, I’m not sure it wouldn’t eventually have a detrimental effect on me.”

“The amulet itself has no life of its own. It’s just an object that once belonged to someone very powerful, with ties to the spirit world, so some vestigial power remains, linked to his memory, nothing more.”

“Apparently what the Shing said was true. Tsoltan summoned the Thousand Eyes, a tremendous undertaking, and, in doing so, divided his demonic life force among them. They each took a little of his power, of his soul, if you will, with them. It was the energy that sustained them as they set out with one unwavering mission: to find the Brother, and bring him back.”

“Because you had successfully escaped, the Shing continued to roam the world, searching for you. The one we encountered was the only survivor because, unlike the others, it left the Island and crossed the sea to find you. The others never returned to Tsoltan, still obsessed with their directive. They combed the world, looking for someone who was no longer there, at least not on its surface. Even if they had found you, they would not have recognized you any more than the one we met did, because you were renamed.”

“So Tsoltan didn’t have you captured and returned, and he couldn’t recall the Shing. He lost the gamble. It left him weak, his demon side dissipated and committed elsewhere.”

“When MacQuieth finally met up with him, it was really only the human side that remained. The power of the F’dor had been split up into a thousand pieces, all of them gone. So when MacQuieth killed the human host, there was nothing much left of the demon. It died with its host.”

She began to shiver in the stiff wind, and Grunthor opened his greatcoat, wrapping it around her. Rhapsody chuckled from inside the deep garment.

“It’s very strange to be interviewing a piece of jewelry; its perspective on life is a little skewed, to say the least. At any rate, it seems MacQuieth tore the amulet from the dying priest’s neck and took it back to Elysian—the real one, the palace—with him, and presented it to the king as a trophy. I don’t know which king that was, the amulet can’t understand such things.”

“For generations it hung on display in the royal museum. And like many relics and artifacts put on display, gradually people forgot its origin and its meaning, until it was just another gallery piece.”

“Eventually the evacuation came, and when the Cymrians left, they packed the amulet in a box with other decorative treasures and carried it with them, as part of their cultural heritage. The box made it safely to Canrif, but never really was unpacked, its items left undisplayed. I guess there was more than enough grandeur and challenge in Gwylliam’s life and the lives of his subjects not to need a forgotten symbol of a forgotten lore. And a rather ugly one at that, if I do say so; it didn’t even have decorative value.”

“So it lay in a box, gathering dust. Eventually the war began, and when Gwylliam died, the Bolg overran the mountain. They found the amulet in the ruins of a village, probably Lirin or Gwadd, deep within the Hidden Realm. But they were afraid of it, and left it to rot in the box until Saltar, or whatever his name was before he touched it, came along.”

“Once the shaman worked up the courage to wear it, he found that it gave him power. I think initially that power was merely the fear the ‘fire-eye’ inspired in the other Bolg clans, and even among the Fist-and-Fire.”

“But not long after he began wearing it, the Shing showed up. It had been searching for the Brother, but once the call of the amulet from which it had been originally summoned was on the wind, it came looking for Tsoltan, or whoever had replaced him. The Shing told Saltar how to use the eye to see at great distances, and how to foresee another’s actions, like he did with you, Grunthor.”

“Puny lit’le shit,” the Sergeant muttered. “Oi would o’ cleaved ’im right down the middle if he’d been without it.”