Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody - Child of Blood

Jo’s reluctant agreement had brought to light something odd, Rhapsody had noticed. It had been necessary for her to use many of the same arguments to dissuade Jo that the other two had tried, without success, on her. As a result, by the time Jo had finally acquiesced, Rhapsody was feeling far less certain of the wisdom of the undertaking than she had been, and more than a touch hypocritical.

The last day before their departure she spent with Achmed alone, going over plans and sitting in comfortable silence.

“Is there anything you especially want me not to tell him?” Rhapsody asked over the quiet dinner they shared in his chambers.

Achmed leveled a glance at her. “Everything.” A smile crept over his face. “Tell him whatever you want.”

Rhapsody was surprised. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I expect you will be judicious and keep our shared information to yourself unless you need to do otherwise.”

“Yes, I will. I’ll also keep an eye out for those strange incursions and record what I find.”

Achmed agreed. “Just be sure you stay out of harm’s way. And you might want to watch for any link between those raids and Ashe; I have long suspected that they might be in some way connected.”

Rhapsody looked startled. “What do you mean?”

“The Hill-Eye attacked just as he showed up. The last two incursions we’ve heard of from Roland were outside Bethe Corbair, just prior to us meeting him in the city, and shortly thereafter. Perhaps there’s a tie.”

She shuddered. “I hope you’re wrong.”

“So do I. It isn’t too late to change your mind.”

Rhapsody thought for a moment. “Better to take the risk now and influence the outcome than to hide and have it visited upon us,” she said simply. Achmed nodded; he understood.

The three that remained behind had come to bid her farewell as she and Ashe left before dawn on the fifth day. She embraced and kissed each of them, her eyes dry, reassuring them as best she could that she would be back, well and safe. And then they were gone.

“She’s never coming back, is she?” Jo asked tearfully as the two shadows disappeared over the far edge of the Teeth, too upset to maintain her normal disinterested demeanor.

“Now, there, lit’le miss, don’t think that way,” Grunthor said, draping an enormous arm around her thin shoulders. “The Duchess is much tougher than she looks. You ought to know that by now.”

Jo wiped her eyes fiercely. “She’s gonna die, and then I’ll be stuck here alone with you two. Wonderful.”

Achmed smiled slightly. “Well, it will certainly improve your social position among the Bolg; you’ll move up to First Woman, you can be the new Duchess of Elysian and take over the court role of Extraneous Blond Female, unless you have a better offer somewhere else. Then I suppose we can hold auditions.”

“Bugger yourself,” Jo scowled, and strode off.

Grunthor shielded his eyes from the rising morning sun, his expression dancing between thoughtful and worried. “Supposin’ she does die, sir? ’Ow’ll we know?”

Achmed shrugged, his hunter’s eyes scanning the western horizon for a vestige of her shadow and not finding one. “We won’t, though I suspect we might hear her last song on the wind; Lirin Namers have strange connections to music and death.” He sighed silently. Or he might hear her heartbeat, a rhythmic, reassuring sound that soothed his sensitive skin, wink out like a candle-flame in the distance. He shook off the thought. “Her work here is started and well in place. We’ll live without her as best we can. Did you notice when she said she’d be fine her voice didn’t have that Namer’s ring to it?”

Grunthor nodded. “That’s because she can only do it when she’s sure she’s tellin’ the truth.”

As she and Ashe reached the summit of the last of the crags before the foothills, Rhapsody turned and stared east into the rising sun, which had just begun to crest the horizon. She shaded her eyes, wondering if the long shadows were really the silhouettes of the three people she loved most dearly in the world, or only the hollow reflections of rock and chasm, reaching ominously skyward. She decided after a moment she had seen one of them wave. Whether or not she was right didn’t matter, anyway.

There was something deeply poignant about looking back on the mountains as they receded into the distance, fissured crags pointing, fanglike, to the brightening sky. Rhapsody struggled to quell the sense of loss welling within her, her throat and chest tightening as it had one night long ago. My family , she thought miserably. I’m leaving my family again .

Somewhere within the multicolored mountains greatness was being born, a history was beginning. The people she had once thought of as monsters were rising out of the darkness as they had once crawled forth from the caves in ages past, coming together to forge a new era. Only this time the mountain would serve them; they would become sharp, honed by the grindstone, under the hand of a master swordsmith who was one of their own.

She no longer feared the Firbolg. She feared for them. It was not just the bloodthirsty dragon lurking somewhere in the mists on the edge of the world that posed a threat to the primitive people under Achmed’s hand. As different as the humans of this new land were from the ones she had lived among in Serendair, in one frightening way they were the same: they thought of the Bolg as monsters, just as she had. And they sought to destroy monsters.

The wind whipped through the Teeth and whirled up to the summit of the last crag, cold and sweet, clearing the morning mist from her eyes and the doubt from her mind. A fondness beyond all reason surged through her, looking back at this place where her friends remained, where the Bolg were just beginning to awake.

Once she had hidden in the highgrass, not knowing with which of two sides to ally herself—the men who had pulled her out of harm’s way, or the people of her mother’s blood. There was no longer a dilemma.

Her father’s voice whispered in her ear, carried by the morning wind.

When you find the one thing in your life you believe in above anything else, you owe it to yourself to stand by it — it will never come again, child. And if you believe in it unwaveringly, the world has no other choice but to see it as you do, eventually. For who knows it better than you? Don’t be afraid to take a difficult stand, darling. Find the one thing that matters — everything else will resolve itself .

Wherever she might eventually come to live one day, the Bolg, and those that ruled them, would always have her allegiance. Any risk, any loss was worth the undertaking to keep them safe.

“Look,” said Ashe, his pleasant baritone shattering her reverie. Rhapsody turned and let her gaze follow his outstretched finger in the direction of another line of shadows, miles off, at the edge of the steppes where the lowlands and the rockier plains met.

“What are they?”

“Looks like a convocation of some sort, humans, undoubtedly,” he said after a moment.

Rhapsody nodded. “Ambassadors,” she said softly. “They’re coming to pay court to Achmed.”

Ashe shuddered; the tremor was visible, even beneath his cloak of mist. “I don’t envy them,” he said humorously. “That ought to shake up their notions of protocol.”

Rhapsody looked up into the darkness of his hood, seeing nothing but a thin trace of vapor. The edges of her scalp hummed for a moment as she sought in vain for eyes in which to gauge an expression. Ashe had seemed at ease among the Bolg, a polite, nonjudgmental visitor, but that was only the most ephemeral of indicators. The hood could be hiding something far more sinister. And even if she could see his face, she would not be able to look into his heart.