Elizabeth Haydon - The Assassin King

Rhapsody stared at him, befuddled. “I’m sorry,” she said, “do I know you?”

The two Bolg and the bearded young man laughed.

“You don’t remember Omet?” Achmed asked mockingly. “And you were the one that insisted on saving him in the kilns of the Raven’s Guild.”

Rhapsody’s bright green eyes opened wide in shock. “Omet?” she asked in amazement. “You are twice as tall as you were the last time I saw you—and were you not bald?”

“I was,” said the young man agreeably. “But it was hot in Esten’s kilns, and it is cold here in the mountain.”

“Omet has taken the lead in the annealing of the glass and building the Lightcatcher,” Achmed said. “He’s one of the few artisans I allow alone in the room.” His voice fell away awkwardly; Omet had been gravely injured in the explosion that rocked Gurgus Peak, and it was the red spectrum of the Light-catcher itself that had saved his life. Rhapsody hugged the young man warmly. “I’m so very glad to see you,” she said. “Well, you’re the one that told me to go carve my name in the mountains for history to see,” Omet said, smiling. “I’m only doing what you told me to do.”

Rhapsody looked around. Any evidence of destruction from the explosion was no longer present; the room had been restored as if nothing had ever happened. A wooden dome covered the ceiling of the tower, beneath which she could see colored glass of all hues. “I look forward to you showing me what you’ve done,” she said. She looked behind her to see Rath standing beneath the dome of the ceiling, staring up into the circle of glass. “Are you all right?”

The Dhracian nodded. “I have seen this before,” he said, still staring up into the tower. “It was in such a place I first learned the Prophecy of the Decks.” The Bolg king inclined his head. “Care to elaborate?” The Dhracian finally broke his black gaze away and stared at Achmed. “You have not been told the Prophecy of the Decks?”

“No.”

“It is this,” Rath said. “ ‘That which was Stolen will be given freely. That which was freely Given will be stolen.’”

“It means nothing to me,” said Achmed crossly. Rath inhaled deeply. “I will tell you the tale. And then you will know what you are up against.”

In the Before-Time, a great battle was waged against the F’dor by the four remaining primordial races born of the elements,” Rath began. “Our race, the Brethren known to man as the Kith, banded together with the Serenel, the Mythlinus, and the Wyrmril, that which men call dragons. It was determined that unless these four races, separate and distrustful of one another, worked together and sacrificed some of what was most precious to them, the unbridled destructiveness of the F’dor would shatter the world. “Before this battle began, the F’dor managed to steal one of the first six eggs produced by the Progenitor Wyrm, the being that was mother and father to the race, and secreted the egg away in the bowels of the Earth beyond the fiery core, where it could never be found. The wyrmling from this egg was known to the dragon race as the First Child. The F’dor removed the heat from this wyrmling, allowing it to grow, unborn, perverting it, feeding it on the earth itself, until its mass began to become part of the heft of the world.”

“We have seen it,” Achmed said. “It still sleeps—Rhapsody wove a song of endless change around it, a pattern of confusion that she hoped would prevent any speaking of its name to be heard.”

Rath’s eyes of liquid black gleamed. “Let us hope you are right. From this Sleeping Child the F’dor harvested seven precious scales, and took the two more that served to protect its blind eyes. Because dragons have lore from each of the other elements, there was power in these scales that encompassed the entire color spectrum, the vibrations of light and musical tones that make up the magic of the universe. Each of the colors in the seven scales has a specific power attuned to its wave length, as well as a note in the scale, which are the visible and audible manifestations of those vibrations. As your Namer can tell you, there are many more manifestations that are neither visual nor audible. You know this yourself as well, Bolg king—you can feel them in your skin-web as each moment of the day passes. “The F’dor, therefore, were able to make use of these dragon scales to affect the material world which they otherwise could not be part of, because they were without form and noncorporeal. Thus, they had control of a complete color spectrum of seven, plus the two most powerful opposites, one black, representing Void, and one white, representing Life, from its eyes. They used these powers destructively, to scry, ignite volcanoes, shed blood, steal heat, and otherwise wreak havoc on the material world.

“It was for this reason the other primordial races joined together in the battle against the F’dor. For all that history relates this as if it were an obvious conflict, I can assure you that was not the case. While it may seem to you that the elements of starlight, earth, water, and wind are in opposition to that of fire, in fact they were all like siblings, more similar than they were disparate. This decision was undertaken in agony, not in triumph, nor in conquest; the pact to remove that which brought warmth and light to the world, and condemn those races to be less than they could have been in the mind of the Creator. For all that it was the only thing that can be done, we were all poorer as a result of it. This is lost lore, something that history, and even some who lived it, have forgotten.

“When the decision was finally made, it was determined that terrible sacrifice would be required from each of the four remaining races in order for it to come to pass. You know what it is that our race sacrificed, Bolg king—the sons of the wind had a unique ability to track and trace the movements of that which was noncorporeal, and so it was decided the tribe of Kith known as the Dhracians would serve as jailers, would give up their tie to the wind and their ability to walk the up-world, for the purpose of guarding the Vault. The Dhracians abandoned the wind that was their father, and moved forever to the black and airless quadrant of the Earth, a soulless, lifeless sector of the world to guard against that which would see the world in flames. “The dragons contributed most of the remaining Living Stone of the earth, their most prized possession, for the construction of the Vault to contain the F’dor. In the course of the battle, and the confinement of the F’dor, the scales were taken back from the demons. The Progenitor Wyrm, horrified at the desecration of his child, ripped seven similar scales from his own hide, for the purpose of being melded to the first set, to balance out their destructive power with the positive aspects of the same vibrations, the sharps to the flats of each note. The Progenitor sacrificed his life in the course of the battle, surrounding the fragile prison and Ending, becoming effectively a lead casing for the Vault, inert and totally devoid of any lore the demons could use. The seven colored scales were melded to the ones given by the Progenitor in the fiery core by the Seren who led the campaign. This group of scales, plus the white and black, became known as the Stolen Deck. “The remaining eggs hatched, producing the Five Daughters, known to the Wyrmril as the Guardians, the matriarchal wyrms who each protected one of the World Trees that grew at the sites where each of the five elements first appeared in the world. In order for the power of the Stolen Deck to be broken, each of these dragons was given one of the scales that had once been part of both their sibling and their father. The other four scales were given into the care of other beings in different parts of the world, to keep them as far apart as possible. This is referred to in the Prophecy of the Decks: That which was Stolen will be given freely’.” The Three exchanged a glance.