Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody - Child of Blood

He was her guide, the one who might be able to lead her to the dragon’s lair, a necessary undertaking if she was to ensure the safety of the Bolglands. Whether or not she would make it there remained to be seen. But in any case, she would have to be wary of Ashe, for the sake of the ones she was leaving behind.

Ashe took up his walking stick again.

“Shall we?”

He looked off to the west, over the thawing valley and the wide plain past the foothills below them.

Rhapsody looked back at the panorama of the Teeth for a moment longer, then turned her eyes toward the west as well. A slice of the sun had risen behind them, casting a shaft of golden light into the gray mist of the world that stretched out below them. By contrast, the distant line of black figures moved through a jagged shadow.

“Yes,” she said, shifting her pack. “I’m ready.” Without looking back she followed him down the western side of the last crag, beginning the long journey to the dragon’s lair.

In the distance, a figure of a man touched by a darker, unseen shadow stopped for a moment, gazed up into the hills, then continued on its way to the realm of the Firbolg.

With a smoldering screech, the Time-strand broke and ignited, snapping off the spool. The projection on the viewing screen went blank as smoke began to rise from the lamp. A burning length of fragile film fell to the floor.

Meridion bolted forward and seized the spinning reel, patting out the gleaming sparks that clung to its broken edge. Quickly he passed a hand over the instrument panel of the Time Editor, and exhaled as it went dark, idle for the moment. Then he scooped up the strand of film from the floor and turned it over in his hands in dismay. Without even looking he knew the thread was irretrievably broken.

He sat back in the chair again, disconsolate, staring at the film fragment. Then he lifted it to the light.

He could almost make them out, tiny images of the small, slender woman with the gleaming hair tied back in a black ribbon, the hooded man in the gray mantle. Facing each other on the summit of the last of the crags before the foothills, illuminated by the rays of the rising sun.

Meridion sighed. How painfully ironic it was to leave them, frozen at the crest of a breathtaking valley, much as he had seen them that night in the Patchworks. At least he had brought them together again, on the same side of Time. Their souls were so scarred by its ravages that they didn’t recognize each other. But they would. They had to.

Meridion waved his hand over the instrument panel again, and the Editor roared with light once more. Gently he slid the burnt edge under the lens. He patiently adjusted the eyepiece, moving it up and down, trying to bring the crisp cinder where the film had snapped into focus.

Finally he gave up, exhausted and distressed. The image was now permanently shrouded in darkness, burnt beyond recognition. He hoped fervently there wasn’t something on those frames he had needed to see, an image that would have provided a clue to the F’dor’s identity. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to intervene again. They would be as much in the dark as the charred film of their lore-strand. Their story had been tragic enough. Without the clue he had been seeking, it was bound to only get worse.

He turned off the Editor again and sat back in the darkness to think.

The image within the burnt edge of the film, crisp with carbon ash, was shrouded in darkness as well.

Night was falling, but it didn’t matter. Darkness was a friend to him, his eyes accustomed to the absence of light, having come long ago from the realm of black fire.

The rims of the whites of those eyes, indistinguishable from any other man’s by day, now began to gleam with the tinge of blood. Had anyone been there to observe, they would have seen them darken at the edges to a scarlet hue. But, of course, no one was there. He was careful to hide his other side; it would not do to be unmasked now that he was so close to his goal.

In the distance he could see the ambassador coming, and he settled back in his chair and sighed. Finally, after all this time, the Three had come, he was certain of it.

The strange rumblings in Canrif, the whispered tales of the new Firbolg king and the advances of the monstrous population there, could only be evidence that his assessment was correct. Even the mighty Gwylliam had not been able to tame the Bolg. The question that now remained was what to do about it.

Things were going well, too well to be allowed to go awry now. Enough of the seeds of discord had been sewn to ensure the uprising at hand. The loss of the House of Remembrance had been a serious blow, but nothing that couldn’t be dealt with.

More critical to his plan was the upcoming interruption of the Patriarchal rite. Whether this new power in the land posed a threat to that or not was uncertain. If that power was ensconced in Canrif now, concerning itself with greedy conquest and the militarization of monsters, it would be too far away to intervene. This was important; too much depended on the assassination in Sepulvarta to allow it to fail.

He closed his eyes and tasted the death that hung, heavy with ripe anticipation, on the wind. The time was coming, and with it the sickening, thudding excitement that built, like a marching cadence, into the frenzy of war. It was the rhythm of growing hatred, determined and unstoppable, sounding in the distance as it came. It would be here soon, all in good time.

The knock on the door shattered his pleasant musings. He rose slowly and went to admit the ambassador, one of only two in the world he could entrust with the most critical tasks. This first task was assessing Canrif and its new sovereign. The second was assuring that the Three remained in the Hidden Realm of the Bolg and out of his way while he tended to more important matters.

After his emissary had left for the court of the Firbolg king, he settled back into his chair again.

“We shall soon see who really deserves to be called the Child of Blood,” he said, smiling to himself.

Only the darkness heard him.