Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

As the caravan prepared to depart for the Cauldron, Rhapsody took Omet aside.

“Will you be all right?”

The apprentice smiled wanly. “I hope so. I don’t expect I’d make much of a meal, being on the thin side.”

“The stories about cannibalism are greatly exaggerated,” she said, running her fingertips affectionately over the fuzz that was beginning to darken his pate. “You will be safe among the Bolg. Ask to see Grunthor, and tell him I said to put you to work. Look him in the eye and stand your ground—he’ll respect you for it. Don’t limit the uses of your skill and imagination. I believe that you could become one of the great artisans of the Rebuilding.”

“Thank you.”

“But if you are uneasy, or you find living within the mountain is not to your liking, when I return I will see that you are escorted to wherever you wish to go.” Omet nodded. “In the meantime, please look after the boys for me.”

“I will.”

She turned him toward the southeast, where a trace of pink was just cresting the blue horizon.

“Somewhere in those mountains greatness is taking hold,” she said. “You can be a part of it. Go carve your name into the ageless rock for history to see.” Omet nodded, then climbed into the wagon with the slave boys, and rode away over the rocky snow amid a tumble of waving hands and shouted goodbyes.

Dusk found the travelers, four now in total, camped on a bluff overlooking the banks of Mislet Stream, a red tributary of the Blood River. The water was frozen now, cloudy pink in the coming darkness.

The campfire crackled in the bitter wind, filling the cold air with sparks. Rhapsody drew her winter cloak around her, seeking to hold the wind and the desolation at bay.

How much longer will it be like this ? she wondered, stirring the fire with a long, thin reed, dry and cracked from winter’s cold. How many more nights must I spend wandering? When will it end ? Will it end ?

Nine living children of the F’dor, and one yet to be born. They had two. In a little more than eight weeks the baby would be born south of Tyrian. How can we possibly find them all in time ? Rhapsody struggled to keep the panic from gripping her as her stomach knotted. The knowledge that Oelendra was waiting for them at the border of Canderre to take possession of the children they had found, and had been for three days, only made the queasy sensation worse.

A light, shaking sigh matched the whine of the wind, and she looked up from her contemplation. Aric had chosen to sleep near the horses, away from the adults and Vincane, who now dozed in herb-induced slumber near the fire. Rhapsody rose, feeling the cold in her bones, and went to the child, bending beside him to check his festering leg. She crooned a soft tune, aimed at easing his pain in sleep, then came back to her place near the fire beside Achmed.

He was staring into the western distance, his face shielded, his eyes clouded with thought. Rhapsody waited for him to speak. It was not until the bottom of the sun had sunk below the rim of the horizon that he did.

“We can’t make it to the carnival, or to Sorbold now before the birth of the last child.”

Rhapsody exhaled. As always, Achmed was giving practical voice to her thoughts. The oldest child of the Rakshas was a young man, a gladiator in the nation of the Sorbold, in the northwestern city-state of Jakar. Achmed had never been thrilled with the prospect of attempting a rescue of this child, but Rhapsody had been insistent, and finally he had granted the possibility as long as the timing allowed. Prior to their diversion back to Ylorc, had they followed the schedule, the gladiator, whose name was Constantin, could have been found outside Sorbold, at the winter carnival of Navarne. By the time they got there now, however, the carnival would be over and Constantin would have returned to Sorbold. It seemed the rescue of the additional slave children had been bought at the price of the gladiator’s damnation.

“The baby is due to be born in the Lirin fields to the south of Tyrian forest,” she said mildly, watching the sunset herself. “We’ll be in the area. We could go to Sorbold after Oelendra takes the baby off our hands.”

“No.” Achmed tossed some frozen grass into the fire. “It’s too much of a risk. If I’m caught while in Sorbold secretly, stealing as valuable a commodity as a gladiator, it will be an act of war. This mission, as I’ve told you from the beginning, was to gather these children for the blood we could get out of them, not to save their souls.”

“Perhaps for you.” Rhapsody’s gaze didn’t move. “How ironic,” she said, with a bitter tinge in her voice. “I suppose that means we are no better than the Rakshas, tying children up like swine and slaughtering them in the House of Remembrance. I guess blood is the means, whether you are well-intentioned or not.”

“Perspective is everything, Rhapsody.”

“I’m going after him,” she said mildly, still not moving her eyes from the vanishing sun. “I appreciate all that you have done, and will do, but I am not abandoning him. I understand your predicament, and I can’t ask you to risk your kingdom for this. But I’m going into Sorbold, even if I have to go in alone.”

Achmed exhaled. “I’d advise against it.”

“I can ask Llauron for help.”

“I’d advise against that even more.”

“You’re not leaving me many choices,” Rhapsody said, searching the sky for the earliest stars, waiting for their appearance to begin her evening devotions.

“Leave him. When this is over I will hunt him down and put him out of his misery; you know as a Dhracian I cannot abide anything tainted with F’dor blood being left alive.”

“You’ll be damning him to the Vault of the Underworld.” Her comment was rote; they had argued unproductively about this many nights before this one.

Achmed shrugged. “If you like I will sprinkle holy water on the cinders of his corpse for you.”

“Thank you, no.”

“Well, there’s always Ashe. He could round up the rest of them. You called him on the wind once, and he came.”

Rhapsody shuddered. “Yes, I did, but I was standing in the gazebo at Elysian, which is a natural amplifier. I don’t know if it would work in the open air. Besides, you know very well that I don’t want to tell Ashe about these children until I’m back from the Veil of Hoen.”

Achmed’s fists clenched more tightly, but his face did not move. “He doesn’t deserve the protection you are always wrapping around him like a child’s blanket,” he said bitterly. “Perhaps it would do him some good to fight his own battles, to be responsible for wiping his own arse once in a while. It is making me ill to watch you be his arse-rag.”

The light of the setting sun filled her eyes, making them sting with memory. “Why do you hate him?”

Achmed didn’t look at her. “Why do you love him?”

She stared silently over the endless fields to the horizon, darkening now. The rosy glow of sunset was deserting the clouds, leaving only hazy gray where a moment before there had been glory. Finally she spoke, her voice soft.

“There is no reason for love. It just is. And when it’s there, it endures, even when it shouldn’t. Even when you try to make it go away. It’s hard to make it die. I’ve learned it’s also unnecessary—and unwise. It only lessens you for it. So you accept it. You lock it away. You let it stay. You don’t deliberately kill love. You just don’t act on it.”

She glanced his way, noting his eyes fixed beyond the rim of the world, his folded hands resting on his lips, lost in thought. “But hate is different. If you’re going to hate, you should at least have a reason.”