Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

-

The Bolg king began to pace the rubble-strewn floor of the burnt-out repository.

“You have no understanding of what ‘nothing’ is, no idea how long ‘forever’ can be. You were never nothing. You were a farmgirl, a harlot, a harper; at your lowest, the most demeaned moment of your life, you were worth something , some cattle, some coin, some moment of attention. It may have felt damnably little, but it was a place, a hole in the world to land in. You think you have been nothing, but you haven’t, Rhapsody.”

She reached out her hand and stopped him in his pacing, turning him to face her. As she studied his face she saw something there she had never seen before.

“Emily,” she said softly. “My family called me Emily. And you’re right, Achmed—even in those times before I knew you, I never was nothing. Neither were you.” The light from the fire behind her leapt, and Achmed could see the green in her eyes before the shadows returned, coloring them gray again with darkness. “When I changed your name from the Brother, it was inadvertent; it wasn’t meant to devalue what you were then.”

The Bolg king’s gaze grew more intense, so piercing that it almost hurt to return it. He stared at her for a long time, then looked up at the pinnacle of the cracked domed ceiling above him.

“You were the second Namer to change my appellation,” he said heavily, as if each word cost him dearly. “It was my mentor that named me the Brother, because that’s what he said I was—Brother to all, akin to none. Had I followed his teachings, the path he laid out for me, I might have used my blood lore in the same way you use your music—to heal. He, too, believed that I was not nothing.” He laughed bitterly. “I seem to be spending my life proving that his faith was misplaced. Perhaps the name we are given at birth is the truest gauge of what we will be after all.”

“What was it?” Her voice held a reverence that made his throat tighten.

The Bolg king continued to stare at her through his mismatched eyes, both of them darkening with an old, all-but-forgotten emotion.

“Ysk—that’s my given name. It means spit, or venom, a discharge or insult, a sign of infection.” He exhaled slowly. “Imagine being born Bolg, yet like this.”

Achmed took the veil that shielded all but his eyes from sight and uncovered one side of his face and neck to reveal the blood vessels vibrating just below the surface of the dark olive skin, drawing in each sensation and word, as if he were covered all over with a sensile eardrum that quivered with even the misty, breath-soft touch of her glance.

“Every squint of resentment, every glare of fear, every silence of neglect. For a long time I believed that dark spirits watched over me, gleeful. If I had known what death was, I would have found a way to get to it, to inhale it into myself and be gone. I know what it is like to be nothing, Rhapsody—less than nothing. I don’t want your pity; I want you to understand that perhaps I understand these demonic children better than you do.”

Rhapsody shook her head. The flame in her hair highlighted the darkness around them, caught rainbow-golden sparks from the distant light in its ever changing dance. She softened the grip on his arm and gently moved her fingers up his shoulder and rested them along the line of his jaw.

“They didn’t know that you were also half-Dhracian, and wouldn’t have understood the significance even if they had known. The Bolg of your kingdom do not know, either, nor anyone in this world save you, Grunthor, and me—and Oelendra, who is as purposeful in the hunt for the demon as we are. Something no one knows about you will be our salvation, and the salvation of this land. It doesn’t matter what the Bolg who named you thought. You were never nothing, not even then.”

He inhaled very slowly, deeply, silently. “I was the special project of a very holy man. He tried to teach me to be a healer. Look what came of all his good intentions—and I haven’t a single drop of demon’s blood in me. The war to come will be terrifying. More terrifying is that I do not think I wish to stop it. The men of Roland or Sorbold will die from hatred of the Bolg, and except for the relish of justice, I don’t care. The Bolg will die as well. Add that to what Grunthor has suffered, and you, and this child, and all those demonic ‘children,’ and others. What did all that training come to? What did I ever heal? Who did I ever save?”

“You can’t blame yourself for any of those.”

“Then what difference have I made?” He was silent a long time.

“Who did you expect to save?”

Even before she finished the question, she felt doors open in him that she feared to approach.

Dark in the ruins of Gwylliam’s treasure vault, which would never hold any of Gwylliam’s treasure, in possession of the blood that might possess him, aware of the Finders yet unable to find them, Achmed looked at Rhapsody, just awakened from slumbering near the Sleeping Child, rested but not ready for all that was to come. He admired her water-smooth hair, the very glow of which washed away anger and despair and memory, breathed again through the boiling cold sensation of her fingers on his face, softly took her hand, kissed and cradled it in both of his own.

“Just one. One of those who might not even believe they need saving,” he said. “And the world in the process. I guess that means we have more in common than could ever be imagined by anyone looking at us. We are the opposite sides of the same coin, Rhapsody.”

“Well, if we are a coin we have value.” She picked up her cloak and pack. “I have to leave. I will send messages as often as I can. Before I go, will you answer one question for me?” Achmed nodded. “What have you really been trying to say since you came down here?”

“Don’t die.”

She squeezed his hand, the warmth of her touch radiating through the leather of his glove. “I don’t intend to. But the guiding principle of my life can’t be staying alive for Grunthor’s sake—or for yours.” She released his hand and leaned over to kiss the brow of the Earthchild, hearing his words behind her as she turned away.

“Then do it for your own.”

When she turned back he was gone.

The Hand

All but naked in the dark, with all the sounds of the labyrinth falling around him, Achmed carefully unsealed the hematite vial and examined the blood essence with his breath and skin.

At first he had been surprised at the lack of odor. He knew the stench of the F’dor, the ghastly smell of burning flesh in fire, and had braced himself for it. Instead there was a faint trace of stone; the hematite, which Rhapsody had said was silvery-black when the Lady Rowan gave it to her, now was mottled with streaks of green and brown, polluted veins striating the stone vial. Perhaps the stone itself had absorbed the stench, the burning, caustic properties of the demonic blood. He made note to destroy the vial once he was finished with the ritual in the fires of his hottest forge.

He covered the opening of the vial with his finger, then upended it, drawing out a drop of the black blood onto the fingertip. The very touch of it made his skin sting; he recoiled, feeling the needles of racial hatred coursing through his veins.

The blood was viscous, thick and opaque; not even a hint of light could be seen through it, no surprise in this place of darkness. Achmed could feel a deep pounding in his ears. The evil within the single drop on his finger was palpable, nascent; no prediction might be made about its effect on someone whose heart had for years bent more naturally to murder than mercy.

At the far distant reaches of his mind, he thought he could hear chanting, deep and harsh in tone, amid the crackling of dark flames.