Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

Time was growing short, Meridion knew.

The seven-and-a-half-foot-tall monster in ring mail threw back his head, bared tusklike fangs, and roared. The bellowing howl of rage rang through the darkness that clung to the toothlike, mountainous crags, sending loose shale stone and clods of snow tumbling down into the canyon a mile or more below.

Achmed the Snake, king of the Firbolg, exchanged a glance with Rhapsody and Krinsel, the Bolg midwife who was helping her pack for their journey. He returned to his sorting, hiding a smile behind his face-veil at the shock in the Singer’s enormous green eyes.

“What’s upsetting Grunthor now?” she asked, handing the midwife a sack of roots. Krinsel sniffed it, then shook her head, and Rhapsody set the sack down again.

“He’s apparently displeased with the quartermaster and his regiment,” Achmed answered as a stream of Bolgish profanities rumbled over the heath.

“I think he’s more perturbed that he can’t go with us,” Rhapsody said, looking through the gray light of foredawn with sympathy at the terrified soldiers and their leader, who were doing their best to stand at attention, withering under the Sergeant-Major’s violent dressing-down. The midwife handed her a pouch, and she smiled.

“Undoubtedly, but it can’t be helped.” Achmed cinched a leather sack and wedged it into his saddlebag. “The Bolglands are not in any state to be left without a leader at the moment. Do you have everything you need for the delivery?”

The Singer’s smile vanished. “Thank you, Krinsel. Be well while I’m away, and look in on my grandchildren for me, will you?” The Bolg woman nodded, bowed perfunctorily to the king, and then made a cautious exit, disappearing into one of the Cauldron’s many exit tunnels.

“I have no idea what I’m going to need for this delivery,” she said in a low voice with a terse edge to it. “I’ve never delivered a child who is demon-spawn before. Have you?”

Achmed’s dark, mismatched eyes stared at her for a moment above the veil, then looked away as he went back to his packing.

Rhapsody brushed back a strand of her golden hair, exhaled, and rested a hand gently on the Bolg king’s forearm. “I’m sorry for being churlish. I’m nervous about this journey.”

Achmed hoisted the snow-encrusted saddlebag over his shoulder. “I now,” he said evenly. “You should be. We are still agreed about these children, I take it? You understand the conditions under which my help is given?”

Rhapsody returned his piercing stare with one that was milder but every bit as determined. “Yes.”

Good. Then let’s go rescue the quartermaster from Grunthor’s wrath.”

-

The newly fallen snow of winter’s earliest days crunched below their feet as they tramped over the dark heath. Rhapsody paused for a moment, turning away from the western foothills and the wide Krevensfield Plain to the black eastern horizon beyond the peaks of the Teeth, lightening now at its jagged rim with the paler gray that preceded daybreak.

An hour, maybe less, before sunrise , she thought, trying to gauge when she and Achmed would be departing. It was important to be in a place where she could greet the dawn with the ritual songs that were the morning prayers of the Liringlas, her mother’s race. She inhaled the clear, cold air, and watched as it passed back out with her exhalation, frozen clouds in the bitter wind.

“Achmed,” she called to the king, twenty or more paces ahead of her. He turned around and waited silently as she caught up with him. “I am grateful for your help in this matter; I really am.”

“Don’t be, Rhapsody,” he said seriously. “I’m not doing this to help you spare the spawn of the F’dor from damnation. My motives are entirely selfish. You should know that by now.”

“If your motives were entirely selfish, you would not have agreed to accompany me on this mission to find them, you would have gone alone and hunted them down,” she said, untangling the strap of her pack. “Let’s strike a bargain: I won’t pretend your intentions are altruistic, and you won’t pretend they’re selfish. Agreed?”

“I’ll agree to whatever makes you hurry up and get ready. If we don’t leave before full-sun we run the risk of being seen.”

She nodded, and the two of them hurried over the remainder of the heath and down to the lower tier of battlements, where Grunthor and the quartermaster’s troops were waiting.

“You’re a disgrace to this regiment, the ’ole lot o’ ya,” Grunthor was snarling at the trembling Bolg soldiers. “One more missed instruction, Oi’m gonna flay ya, filet ya, and fry ya in fat for my supper, every last one o’ ya. And you, Hagraith, you will be dessert.”

Achmed cleared his throat. “Are the horses ready, Sergeant-Major?”

“ ’Bout as ready as can be expected,” Grunthor grumbled. “Provisions will be in place momentarily, as soon as Corporal Hagraith ’ere gets ’is ’ead out of ’is arse, cleans the hrekin out of ’is ears, and gets them rolled bandages Oi requested two hours ago .” The soldier took off in a dead run.

Rhapsody waited in respectful silence as Grunthor dismissed the rest of the supply troops, then came up behind him and wound her arms around his massive waist, a sensation similar to encircling a full-grown tree trunk.

“I’m going to miss your troops tromping by my chamber and singing me awake,” she said jokingly. “Dawn just won’t be the same without a few choruses of ‘Leave No Limb Unbroken.’”

The giant’s leathery features relaxed into a fond grin. “Well, ya could always stay, then,” he said, mussing her glistening locks, which shone with the brilliance of the sun.

It never failed to amaze him, looking at her thus, how much she resembled the Great Fire they had passed through together, in that journey so long ago. While crawling along the root of Sagia the World Tree, that had wound itself around the centerline of the Earth, he had come to respect this tiny woman, even though his own race had preyed on hers in the old world.

Rhapsody sighed. “How I wish I could.” She watched his amber eyes darken sadly. “Will you be all right, Grunthor?”

A sharp sound of annoyance came from over her shoulder. “Safeguarding the mountain is child’s play to Grunthor.”

“Nope. Oi vaguely recall enjoying child’s play. Don’ like this at all,” the Firbolg giant muttered, his fearsome face wreathed in a terrifying scowl. “We almost lost ya once to a bastard child of the demon; Oi don’t especially want ya riskin’ your life—and your afterlife —again, miss. Wish you’d reconsider.”

She patted his arm. “I can’t. We have to do this; it’s the only way to get the blood we need for Achmed to finally track and find the host of the F’dor.”

“’ E may need to do it, then,” Grunthor said. “No need for you to go along, Duchess. ’Is Majesty works best alone, anyway. We already lost Jo; Oi don’t see no reason to risk losing you as well.”

The reference to the death of the street child she had adopted as her sister made Rhapsody’s eyes sting, but outwardly she betrayed no sign of sorrow. She had sung Jo’s final dirge a few days before, along with the laments for the others they had lost along the way. She bit back a bitter answer, remembering that Grunthor had loved Jo almost as much as she had.

“Jo was little more than a child. I’m a trained warrior, trained by the best. Between you and Oelendra I believe I am fully capable of defending myself. Besides, since you’re ‘The Ultimate Authority, to Be Obeyed at All Costs,’ you can just command me to live, and I suppose I will have to do so. I wouldn’t want to risk your wrath by dying against orders.”