Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

Grunthor removed his horned helm and scratched his head in amazement. “What’s all this, then?” he murmured.

Placed slightly forward, as if in places of honor, were four objects, most likely newer or at least more recently found than the others—a ceramic plate, a coin like the thousands of others in the hoard, the scarred lid to a box made of blue-toned wood, and finally a chamber pot with a broken handle. “Blimey,” the Sergeant whispered.

He looked around carefully, finally discovering, back beneath a row of rotten barrels with the royal seal affixed to their taps, a heavy wooden object shaped somewhat like an hourglass. He lifted it carefully and turned it over. On the bottom was the crest wrought in tarnished silver, with dry fragments of wax still clinging to the gravures. A seal. A royal seal. Bring me the Great Seal . Quickly Grunthor gathered all the newly displayed items but the plate and tucked them into his pack. He crawled back out of the cistern, dousing the light as he did.

Silence, deep and profound, filled the ruin of the Loritorium, giving it the feel of a crypt, all but for the warmth of the flamewell that burned in the center of its broken wreckage of streets, a tiny flame of sun-bright intensity that cast weak, flickering shadows through the underground vault. The quiet was solemn, not somber; there was music of a sort, slow and sweet, even in the lack of sound.

The red winter flowers in Rhapsody’s hand gleamed in the inconstant light. She had gathered the last of the blossoms from the gardens of Elysian after closing up the cottage in preparation for her long journey. Now she stood over the Earthchild, marveling at the beauty and incongruity of her. Her skin was gray and polished smooth, like that of statuary, over a deeper flesh striated like marble with twisting swirls of brown and green, vermilion and purple. The heaviness of her features was balanced with a delicacy that was strangely poignant, grassy lashes resting beneath eyelids that were translucent as eggshells.

Gently she covered the Sleeping Child with a blanket of eiderdown she had brought from Tyrian, tucking the edges around the greatcoat Grunthor had left to keep her warm. She put the winter flowers next to the child on the altar of Living Stone atop which she slept, bent and kissed her forehead carefully.

“From your mother, the Earth,” she said softly. “Even in the coldest, darkest days, she gives us color for warmth.”

The edges of the Child’s lips twitched slightly, then settled back, slack again with slumber.

Rhapsody caressed the long white hair, brittle and dry as frost-bleached grain, remembering it golden with roots as green as summer grass when she had first beheld her. Like the Earth, dormant beneath its blanket of snow, she slept deeply, peacefully.

The words of the Dhracian Grandmother came back to her as she watched the almost imperceptible tides of breath.

You must tend to the child.

How am I to tend to her?

You must be her amelystik now .

“You miss her, I know,” Rhapsody said aloud, absently smoothing the blanket. “But her spirit is here with you—I can feel it around me in the cavern.”

The Child did not react, but continued her steady, hypnotic breathing. Rhapsody felt a warmth, a drowsiness come over her. Slowly, without thinking, she lay down on the altar of Living Stone next to the Child and gently laid her hand on her heart, as the Grandmother had taught her.

The sensation beneath her palm was a strange one; there was no real heart beat, but rather a vibration, perhaps from the forges and mines, ringing now in purposeful constancy, perhaps from the fire of the Earth’s heart below the flamewell, that sounded almost like breathing. As much as one might think she’d be cold to the touch or hard, the sense was much more secure; the Child was thriving in this warm place, on this slab of Living Stone. She in turn radiated warmth and history and the smell of farm earth as much as that of deep mountain stone; it was a rich, green smell, and it made Rhapsody, now asleep beside her, dream of her childhood.

For the first time in as long as she could remember old dreams came back to her, dreams of leaving the farming community of her childhood, of seeing the wonders of the world, of choosing her own way in that world. The youth, the innocence that had been hers then renewed itself in those dreams, eased the lines of worry from her brow, made her skin shine with the luminous excitement of a young girl on the threshold of life. With each moment that passed in sleep she was renewed. By the time Achmed found her, deep in slumber next to the Child, the cares of life had been all but erased from her face.

He stood over them both for a long time, musing in both melancholy and tender thought. He had known someone had come down to the Loritorium, had guessed who it had been, had watched her sleep in the unlit and still shadowy vault, and considered that in this place constructed to guard riches and had never held them, here were two great treasures of the world, two sleeping children.

As he watched he experienced a collision of memory and vision. The memory that throbbed in his mind was of her lying, near death, after their encounter with the Rakshas, where she slept, bloodless and clinging tenaciously but fragilely to life in the shadow of the friend she had slain. The vision was of the inevitable future, where, long-lived Cymrian or not, she would lie, no longer sleeping, but passed from this life as all must pass; stone, a shadow of herself. He had a rush of terror like the fireball that had consumed what had remained of the Colony, a fear that this was the only way he would ever have her to himself, in death. And he knew, even if all the world had to be sacrificed, he would do that to save her.

In all the world, he understood like no one else the compulsions of the F’dor, and knew why there was reason to fear.

When she woke Rhapsody felt him watching her, even before her eyes could discern him in the shadows of the Loritorium. She knew the feeling well; this was just another of thousands of times she had come out of sleep to awareness to find him observing her carefully, like quarry.

She sat up, careful not to disturb the Child, returned his gaze, and felt, as she often did, as if she were looking through the mirror of the world, she from the outside, at him within, not comprehending the darkness he lived in. In all their time together she still had no consistent window into his soul; his breath and sustenance were a mystery to her still.

In darkness, however, there was sometimes a keyhole, an eclipse-thin chink, a tiny crack he left open to his inner thoughts, the workings of what made him enigmatic. He felt safer in darkness; in daylight it was almost impossible to glean anything from his words, or actions, or expressions. Whenever she awoke thus, with him staring at her, she always wished for him to speak first, to illuminate something before the sun came up and made him utterly inscrutable again.

This time he did. “I knew someone had come,” he said, almost awkwardly. “I came to make sure it had been you.”

She looked at him, robed and armed, then nodded, stretched, and patted the Child of Earth as she used to pat the giant Bolg when he had guarded her in the tunnels. “Where’s Grunthor?”

“He had a matter of preparedness to attend to. Some missing weapons to account for.” He took out a wineskin and offered her a drink, but she declined, shaking her head.

“Have you made use of the blood?”

“Not yet. I am waiting for you to leave the mountain.”

“Why? I thought you were waiting until I returned to do it.” Her query was soft; there was something pensive about Achmed’s demeanor, and she wanted to tread lightly. The last time she had seen him thus they had been sitting on a crag ledge overlooking the long-dead canyon a half a league below them, staring eastward over the Blasted Heath, contemplating his army’s first great loss. What they faced now was so much greater in scope and sheer destructive power, she knew, that it could only be considered soberly.