Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

Achmed inhaled again, blowing his breath out slowly, then hurried on to the House, up in the distance ahead of him.

hundred yards before he reached the place where the House had stood Achmed could see the damage caused by the ball of fire that had ripped through this place. Snow had covered the piles of ash and cinders, so that with each step his footprints turned black against the white ground. The trees in the area were scarred, their bark burned away or striped with soot, degrading in layers the closer they had been to the House, from blackened hulls that had once been the outer ring of maples to the fine, sooty rubble that had been the birches nearest the outer courtyard. The House itself was gone, nothing more than a fragile, skeletal tower and mounds of scorched wreckage.

The white oak in the center of the courtyard had survived, however, a sapling of the World Tree, Sagia, protected by the endlessly playing music of the harp Rhapsody had left in its branches when they departed from this place. Even the inferno of elemental fire half a year later that had purged the tree of its polluted root, and ignited the House as well, had not burned a single leaf. It remained as if in perpetual summer, blossoms of white waving raggedly on the wind that whistled through its branches.

Rhapsody crouched beneath the tree, tossing something on the snowy bricks of the courtyard floor to a small flock of winterbirds that scattered when he came through the trees. She looked up, then stood, brushing her hands off on her trousers as she did.

Achmed’s skin began to sting fiercely as he looked her over. It had been humming intensely since he had received her note a week before, the message he had been awaiting from the moment they had parted on the Krevensfield Plain. The Bolg soldier who had brought the scrap of oilcloth to him had shuddered at his reaction, even though the king had not moved a hairsbreadth upon reading it. Apparently the look in his eyes had been sufficient to send the guard scurrying back to the aviary at double march time.

Achmed had stared at the scrap for hours; it was a simple piece of tattered oilcloth containing but one word: Tes . That one word was the key that the end was beginning.

It had been a battle of will from that time. The deep racial urge of destruction whispered relentlessly in his ear, demanding the hunt. It was all Achmed could do not to succumb to the blood rage, the compulsion anyone of Dhracian heritage felt innately: the all-consuming need to destroy F’dor. He had learned in his time that the primal instincts of his Dhracian blood worked as much against him as they aided him in his hunts. He measured his breathing, trying to maintain calm.

Rhapsody was watching him just as intently, hands on her hips. It had only been a few weeks since he had last seen her, but she seemed worlds changed. Her face was calm, but her eyes burned with a quiet intensity. Her hair, bound back as it always was in a black velvet ribbon, reached to her knees; when they had parted it had been merely down to the middle of her back. She was studying his face; finally she waved him over to where she stood, in the courtyard’s center, beneath the slender boughs of the young tree that had been brought from their homeland on the other side of the world.

He felt the heartbeat of the world thrum in his ears as he came to her, knowing what she had brought him.

“Blackberries,” she said as he stopped beneath the branches of the tree.

“What?”

She pointed at the ground where some of the birds had returned and were pecking guardedly.

“Blackberries. From the bushes in the clearing. When last we were here they were tainted brambles, mostly thorn. I didn’t think they would ever see fruit. Perhaps it’s a good sign.”

Achmed nodded. “We can use all of those we can get. Where is it?” His voice came out harsher than he intended it to.

In response she unbelted Daystar Clarion and held it aloft, point up, perpendicular to the ground. Slowly she slid the weapon from its black ivory sheath; a quiet, silver sound like a restrained trumpet call whispered through the empty courtyard. Resting on the sword’s tip, the cork layer burned and blackened from the flames, was the strangely shaped hematite vial. Rhapsody reached into the fire and plucked it deftly from the weapon’s tip. “Here,” she said, holding it out to Achmed. “Put it to good use.” He held it up before his eyes. “This is all there is? From ten demon-spawn?”

“Yes. It’s been clarified down to its essence. There is nothing else in there, none of the mother’s blood, or even of the Rakshas. This is it—pure. There will be no mistake when you find the host.” Her emerald eyes sparkled with something that looked like excitement, but Achmed suspected it was closer to fear. “What are you going to do with it now?”

Achmed continued to examine the hematite vial. The stone was warm to the touch, perhaps a residual from the sword’s fire, but more likely generated from within. Sealed as it was, there was still something deeply resonant about it, soft voices chanting dark lauds in the crackling fires of the Underworld. He could feel its power, its evil, through the stone, calling to him, wheedling, commanding, taunting his Dhracian soul. The blood behind his eyes burned.

Open it. Let us out. Let us out of the Vault.

Achmed slid the hematite vial inside his shirt. “Nothing.”

The green eyes across from him widened dramatically

“Nothing? After all this? What do you mean?”

“You asked what I am going to do with it now—and I said nothing—Grunthor is not here, and we are not ready to go after the demon yet. We have to be together, I suspect; otherwise that dim-witted Seer has been babbling about the Three of us for nothing.” He cast a glance around the courtyard as the wind raced through, spinning the recently fallen snow into spiraling sheets of icy white. “I’ll wait until you get back to Ylorc before I undertake this; I need to be prepared for it.”

“Until I get back to Ylorc?” Rhapsody glanced around the courtyard as well. “Aren’t I going with you now?”

“Perhaps—but I thought you might need a few days’ delay.” Achmed reached into another fold in his robes, produced a cream-colored linen card with a broken golden seal, and handed it to her.

“What’s this?” Rhapsody asked, turning it over in her hand.

“Tristan Steward’s wedding has apparently been moved up. The ceremony is now three days hence, in Bethany.”

Rhapsody studied the invitation. “Yes; Oelendra told me when I returned from the Veil of Hoen. Rial is planning to attend. What does this have to do with anything? The wedding is trivial next to what we have on our plates. Surely there is nothing more important, nothing we have waited for longer, than going after the demon?”

“That’s true,” Achmed agreed, “there isn’t. But I have never done this before. It will take preparation, focus. It’s best done in the quiet, secrecy, and safety of the mountain. I have no idea how long it will take or what it will cost. It may be like fighting the beast ahead of time. I don’t know.

“What I do know is that Tristan will use any excuse to speak against the Bolg. We must be represented at the wedding; it’s an occasion of state.”

“You want me to go to the wedding.”

“Yes.”

“After all this?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to go to the wedding? ”

“You think it’s better that I go?” Achmed snarled.

Rhapsody didn’t blink. “Of course not. I just thought we would send our regrets. I all but did that already, when the messenger came to deliver the invitation the first time.”

Achmed exhaled. “Much has changed since you’ve been gone, Rhapsody. War is looming, and the enemies are both without and within. The attack could come from anywhere; I’m beginning to understand that vision where you saw it coming from everywhere. The only thing that could have dragged me away from the mountain at this point was this meeting, though Grunthor certainly plans to make use of the opportunity.” Rhapsody said nothing, but looked at him quizzically. The Firbolg king scowled. “We’ve had a few problems with disloyalty and illegal commerce of Bolg weapons to Sorbold. It apparently first occurred when I was off hunting spawn with you.”