Prophecy: Child of Earth

10

Her dreamless sleep in the arms of the dragon was the best in Rhapsody’s memory. She slumbered for hours, uninterrupted by nightmares or the need to sit watch, and awoke refreshed and happy.

The face of the dragon sleeping next to her made her heart skip a few beats upon wakening, but her gaze was immediately drawn to her own chest. A small blanket of shining copper scales was draped across her midsection, glimmering in the half-light of the cave. She picked it up carefully. It was a mail shirt, light as air and made of thousands of intricately connected dragon scales. It gleamed in her hands.

“It is yours, Pretty,” said Elynsynos, her eyes still closed. “I made it for you last night, while you slept. Try it on.”

Rhapsody stood and untied her cloak, laying it on the ground. She slid the shimmering armor over her head and pulled it down like a vest. It fit perfectly. She had heard legends of the detail of dragon sense; now she could see the reputation was warranted. Her hair caught the light reflected by the scales and sparkled with a red-gold sheen.

“Thank you,” she said, touched by the thoughtfulness, and something more. If she had feared that the dragon would not let her go when she first agreed to stay, she no longer did. The gift of armor proved that Elynsynos expected her to go back into the world again. She leaned over and kissed the enormous cheek. “It’s beautiful. I will think of you whenever I’m wearing it.”

“Wear it often, then,” said Elynsynos, opening her eyes. “It will help keep you safe, Pretty.”

“I will. You asked me a question I was too tired to answer last night; what was it?”

“Why you went to the House of Remembrance.”

“Oh, yes.” Rhapsody stretched her arms above her head, enjoying the whisper of the dragonscale armor, then sat back down on the overturned rowboat. “We went to the House of Remembrance at Lord Stephen’s suggestion, because it was the oldest standing structure that the Cymrians built. We found a number of children being held hostage, and equipment to drain them of their blood. Tangled a bit with the forces of a man who wielded dark fire as a weapon against us.” Her face went sallow in the demi-light of the dragon’s cave. “It was the first time I ever killed anyone.”

Elynsynos snorted and cuffed Rhapsody playfully with her tail, knocking her off the rowboat and onto her rump on the golden sand.

“And you call yourself a Singer?” she said humorously. “That was the worst telling of a tale I have heard in seven centuries. Try again, and take your time. Details, Pretty, details. Without them a story is not worth hearing.”

Rhapsody brushed the sand from her clothes and climbed shakily back onto the rowboat. When she had caught her breath she told Elynsynos the story, in excruciating detail, from Llauron’s suggestion that they go to learn more about the Cymrians at Haguefort, to the aftermath of returning the stolen children of Navarne and adopting Jo. It took a long time to relate, because even with the level of detail she provided in the retelling, Elynsynos still interrupted her for clarification of the smallest of points. After it was finally over, the dragon seemed satisfied. At last she stretched herself and raised up to her full height.

“What did the man who attacked you at the House look like?”

“Truthfully, I don’t know,” Rhapsody said. She was staring at the plate of hard rolls and raspberries that had appeared when the dragon sat up. “I didn’t really see anything but a flash of him running by, nor did Grunthor. The only one who engaged him was Achmed, and even he didn’t get a good look at his face. He wore a shielded helmet.”

“Eat.”

“Thank you.” Rhapsody picked up a roll and broke it in two. “Are you having some?”

“No. I ate three weeks ago.”

“And you’re not hungry yet?”

“Six stags take a long time to digest.”

“Oh.” Rhapsody began to eat.

“It must have been the Rakshas that you met.”

She looked up at the dragon’s face; Elynsynos was watching her inquisitively. “Can you tell me about the Rakshas?” The dragon nodded slightly. “Who is he?”

“The Rakshas is an it, really. It is the plaything of the F’dor.”

A chill went up Rhapsody’s back. “The demon you told me of last night? The one Anwyn gave power to?”

“Yes. The F’dor created the Rakshas in the House of Remembrance twenty years ago. A shame, really; it was such a beautiful memorial to the brave Cymrians, in those days before Anwyn’s war. And then he poisoned it, took it over. The sapling of Sagia was the first thing to suffer desecration. It was a branch-child of the great Oak of Deep Roots, the holy tree of the Lirin of Serendair that the Cymrians brought with them from the old land and planted in the House’s courtyard. I could feel the tree screaming, even this far away.”

“I tended to it while I was there,” Rhapsody said, wiping the crumbs from her lips with her pocket handkerchief. “I left my harp playing in it, renewing the song of its healing. It should have bloomed this spring, but I wasn’t there to see it.”

“It did.” The dragon chuckled. “Along with the leaves, there were white blossoms, like starflowers. A nice touch, Pretty.”

“What do you mean?”

The dragon laughed again. “The sapling is an oak tree. In your land did you ever hear of an oak tree with blossoms?”

Rhapsody’s throat went dry. “No.”

“Of course, every oak flowers a bit in the fall to produce acorns, but the flowers are generally too tiny to see with eyes like yours. These were fluffy and white and covered the tree like snow. In your song you told the tree to bloom?” Rhapsody nodded. “Well, I am impressed. It is an honor to have a Namer of such power visit my lair. How often does a beast meet someone who can successfully command an oak tree to blossom? I am sure the Rakshas was livid, after all it had done to despoil the tree—or at least its master was.”

“Please tell me more about this Rakshas. You said the demon created it—but it looked and acted just like a man.”

“A Rakshas looks like whatever soul is powering it. It is built of blood, the blood of the demon, and sometimes other creatures, usually innocents and feral animals of some sort. Its body is formed of an element, like ice or earth; I think the one made in the House of Remembrance was made of earth frozen with ice. The blood animates it, gives it power.”

“You said something about a soul?”

“A Rakshas made just of blood is short-lived and mindless. But if the demon is in possession of a soul, whether it is human or otherwise, it can place it within the construct and the Rakshas will take the form of the soul’s owner, who of course is dead. It has some of the knowledge that person had. It can do the things they did. It is twisted and evil; you must beware of him, Pretty.”

Rhapsody shuddered. “And that person—that thing—that we fought, are you certain that was the Rakshas, the one made by the F’dor?”

Elynsynos nodded. “It must have been. And hear me: it is very close to here now, nearby. When you leave, be careful.”

Cold acid began to bubble in Rhapsody’s stomach. She put down the rest of the hard roll. “Don’t worry, Elynsynos. I have the sword.”

“What sword, Pretty?”

“Daystar Clarion. I’m sure you know what it is.”

The dragon looked puzzled. “You have it at home?”

Rhapsody shook her head. “No, I’m carrying it now. Shall I show you?”

The dragon nodded, and Rhapsody drew the sword forth from its scabbard. The leaping flames glittered off the reflective scales, sending millions of rainbows dancing around the cavern in the darkness. The flames in the ships’ wheel chandeliers roared in greeting when it came forth.

Elynsynos’s eyes opened wide, sending undulating waves of enchantment coursing through Rhapsody. She tried to look away but stood, transfixed, as the giant serpent bent her head to examine the sword momentarily. Then she ran a claw over the scabbard at Rhapsody’s side.

“Of course,” she said, her massive face relaxing a moment later. “Black ivory. No wonder I could not sense it.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Rhapsody stammered, struggling to break free of her trance.

“Black ivory is the most effective shield known to beast,” said Elynsynos.

“It is a misnomer, not really ivory at all, but a form of rock akin to Living Stone. It can be fashioned into boxes or scabbards, or other containers, and the object kept within it becomes undetectable, even to the sense of a dragon. That is good, Pretty. No one will know that you have it unless you draw it.

Where did you find it?”

“It was hidden within the Earth. I found it on our way through from the old land.”

“You came through the Earth, not on a ship?”

“Yes.” Rhapsody’s face flushed at the memory. “We left long before the Cymrians did. We only arrived recently.”

Elynsynos laughed. Rhapsody waited for her to explain, but she didn’t. Instead the dragon looked at her intently.

“Have you been to see Oelendra?”

The name on Serendair was legendary for a celestial occurrence. “The fallen star?”

Elynsynos looked confused. “No, she is like you, Lirin. She used to carry the sword.”

Rhapsody’s face brightened, remembering the name from Llauron’s tale. “Is she still alive?”

The dragon seemed to think for a moment. “Yes. She lives in Tyrian, the Lirin forest to the south. If you go to her, she might agree to train you in its use. She does that, I believe.”

“How would I find her?”

“Go to Tyrian and ask to see her. If she wants to see you, she will find you.”

Rhapsody nodded. “Is she nice?”

Elynsynos smiled. “I met her but once. She was kind to me. She came with the one who held the position of Invoker that Llauron now holds to tell me of what befell Merithyn, to give me his gifts and a piece of his ship. Then I knew he had tried to return, but he died. He was so fragile; I miss him.” Great tears formed in the spellbinding eyes once more. “I gave the man a gift. It was a white oak staff with a golden leaf on top.”

“Llauron carries it now.”

The dragon nodded. “I would have given Oelendra a gift, too, but she would not take one. But you w)ll keep the shirt, Pretty, yes?”

Rhapsody smiled at the beast. She was such a contradiction, powerful and vulnerable, wise and childlike. “Yes, of course. I will keep it next to my heart, where you are.”

“Does this mean you will remember me, Pretty?”

“Of course. I will never forget you, Elynsynos.”

The dragon smiled brilliantly, displaying rows of swordlike teeth. “Then perhaps because of you I shall achieve a little immortality after all. Thank you, Pretty.” She chuckled as Rhapsody’s brows drew together in uncertainty. “You do not understand what I mean, do you?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

Elynsynos settled into the floor of the cave, her iridescent skin catching the fleeting light of the chandeliers and flashing in the dark.

“Dragons live a very long time, but not forever. There is no time within the Earth, the element from which we come, so our bodies do not grow old and die. In this you and I have something in common: Time has stopped for you as well, Pretty.” Tears glinted in Rhapsody’s eyes, mirroring Elynsynos’s own, but she said nothing. “This makes you sad. Why?”

“How I wish that were true,” Rhapsody said, her voice clogged with emotion. “Time went on without me, and took everything I loved with it. Time is my enemy.”

The dragon eyed her pragmatically. “I think not, Pretty,” she said, a hint of humor in her voice. “I know Time well, and she rarely chooses sides. She will smile on those who embrace her, however. Time may have gone on around you, but it has no power over you anymore—your body, at least. Unfortunately, Time always has power over the heart.

“You come from Serendair, the island where the first race, the Ancient Seren, originated. That was the first of the five birthplaces of Time. You have come here, to the last of those birthplaces, where dragons, the youngest race, originated, crossing the Prime Meridian in the process. You have tied the beginning of Time to its end, as the Cymrians did, and more: in the completing of that arc you traveled within the Earth, a place Time has no dominion. In doing so you have defeated Time, broken its cycle. It will never scar your body again. This prospect does not make you happy?”

“No,” said Rhapsody bitterly. “It doesn’t.”

The dragon smiled in the dark. “You are wise, Pretty. Longevity that borders on immortality is as much a curse as it is a blessing. Like you, time has stopped for me. There is a substantial difference between us, however. Unlike me, you are immortal.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You have a soul,” the dragon said patiently. “It sustains the life within you, because the soul cannot die. As long and endless as your life might seem, you will go on after it is finally over, because of your soul. It will remain even after you decide to give up your body and go on to the light, to the Afterlife. That will not happen for me.”

Rhapsody swallowed hard to choke down the knot in her throat. “Everyone has a soul, Elynsynos. The Lirin believe that all living things are part of one universal soul. Some call it the Life-Giver or the One-God, others just call it Life, but we each have a piece of it. It binds us to one another.”

“And that is true for the Lirin,” Elynsynos said. “It is not true of dragons. You are a special kind,of Lirin, are you not? Liringlas?”

“My mother was.”

“What does that mean in your tongue?”

A faint gust of wind rose from the cave floor, heavy with sand, and settled on Rhapsody’s cheeks, drying the unshed tears in her eyes. She smiled involuntarily at Elynsynos’s gesture of comfort. “It means Skysinger. Liringlas sing their devotional prayers to the rising and setting sun, and mark the appearance of the stars in the sky at dusk.”

“And Lirin in general? What do men call them?”

“We are often known as Children of the Sky.”

“Exactly.” The great beast shifted importantly in the sand of the cave floor. “You are a Singer, and part of the lore Singers learn is about the passage of the soul, yes?”

“Yes,” said Rhapsody. “Sometimes, during the dirges we sing, a Singer can actually see the soul leave a body on its way to the light. But I did not learn much else, and I know there is much more to the lore of the soul.”

“Well, then,” said the dragon, “I will tell you a bit more of the lore of the soul, Pretty, and the story of the Earth-born. Perhaps you know parts of it already.

“In the Long-Ago, the Before-Time, when the world was being born, the one you called the Life-Giver painted all of what exists with the Five Gifts, that which we know as the elements of Ether, Fire, Water, Air and Earth. You know this lore, yes?”

“Yes,” Rhapsody said.

“Each of these Gifts, these elements, gave birth to a race of primordial beings known collectively as the Firstborn. From the stars, the Ether, came the Ancient Seren, like Merithyn.” Elynsynos cleared her throat, a titanic rumble that rattled the rowboat on which Rhapsody sat. “From the sea the Mythlin were born, and the Wind gave birth to the race known as the Kith, from whom your own race is descended.” Rhapsody nodded in agreement. “The Earth-Mother brought forth my race, the Wyrms, dragons, which of course are the masterpiece of the Creator, which is why he made us last.” Elynsynos chuckled as she caught the glimmer of Rhapsody’s hidden smile.

“Second-born among the primordial races was that of the F’dor, the children of Fire. But from the very beginning, the F’dor longed for nothing more than the destruction of the Earth. I suppose that is to be expected; fire consumes whatever feeds it, for without that fuel it burns out into nothingness. But, as also can be expected, the other Firstborn races could not allow this to go on unchecked, as it would mean that the Creator’s Gifts would all vanish from the eye of Time, leaving nothing but Void again. So the other races, the Seren, the Kith, the Mythlin, and of course the dragons, formed an uneasy alliance to force those demonic spirits into the center of the Earth where they could be contained.

“Needless to say, we dragons were not particularly pleased with this plan from the beginning. It was abhorrent to us that the Earth, our Mother, was given the task of imprisoning those monstrous, evil entities within Her heart, but we were also aware that the escape of the F’dor would mean the Earth’s destruction.

“Our contribution to the effort to contain the F’dor was the building of the vault that became their prison. Dragons carved it from our most sacred possession, Living Stone, the pure element of Earth, the one substance we knew was powerful enough to contain them. This was a tremendous sacrifice, Pretty. It is one of the reasons that dragons are bad-tempered and territorial; we feel we have more invested in the lands we consider our own, since we have had to sacrifice the sanctity of those lands to protect them.”

“I believe that characterization in the mythos is exaggerated,” Rhapsody said, smiling. “I haven’t found dragons to be particularly bad-tempered unless you skimp on the details of a story.”

A look of profound fondness came into the dragon’s prismatic eyes, replaced a moment later by a more solemn aspect. “The primordial races in the alliance that had bodies like your own, and Kith, Seren, and Mythlin, became known as the Three.”

Rhapsody sat up quickly, almost falling off the rowboat in the process. “The Three?”

“Yes.”

“Llauron told us a prophecy about the Three, how three known as the Child of Blood, Child of Earth, and Child of the Sky would come, and be the only means by which the rift between the Cymrians could be healed and peace returned.”

Elynsynos laughed. “Your time perspective is a bit off, Pretty. At the time of which I speak there were only five races in existence, the Firstborn. Their children, the Elder races, were not even in existence yet. The Cymrians were by and large Third Age races, children of the Elder races. This name, the Three, is from very long ago, millions of years. You cannot comprehend this yet, because you are so young, but one day you will. You may even live to see a history of this scope yourself. After a few thousand years, you will begin to understand.” She laughed as Rhapsody shuddered.

“The Three all had bodies that resembled, at least in some way, the modern human form,” Elynsynos continued, “while dragon form was serpentine and the F’dor had no bodily form at all. The reason for this is that that the Creator showed his image to the Three at the time of their origination, and the forms they assumed were inspired by that image. Dragons were shown the Creator’s image as well, but chose to ignore it; you have heard how much we hate being told what to do. As you can also imagine, F’dor were never given the opportunity to see it. The Creator knew that the bastard children of Fire were innately evil, and refused to share this knowledge with them. This may be why the F’dor are without physical form.

“This leads me to the lore of the soul. You say you traveled within the Earth on your way from Serendair to here?”

“Yes,” Rhapsody said.

“How did it feel to you? Were you, Lirin as you are, comfortable there, within the Earth, separated from the sky?”

Rhapsody closed her eyes, struggling to keep the memory that continually lurked at the edges of her consciousness at bay. “It was like a living death.”

Elynsynos nodded. “The sky is the connection to the soul of the universe, to the Creator, and those that would seek to be part of the collective soul have to be in contact with it. Without it, they have no connection to their fellows in life, no immortality after death. Your race is descended of the wind and the stars; they were born with that understanding. That is why you can hear the singing of the universe, why you add your own voice to it: you are part of that collective soul. Those who do not become part of the sky, part of an eternal Afterlife—for them, after death, there is only the Void, the great Nothingness. “Because they chose to live away from the sky, dragons, F’dor and even Mythlin have no souls. The Mythlin chose to reside within the seas, staying apart from their fellow races, just as dragons remain within the Earth. The sea children who eventually came from the Mythlin, mermaids, merrows, the sea nymphs and their like, live for millennia, but when they die their souls do not ascend to the stars; they turn into foam on the waves of the sea and disappear, their only immortality in the memories of those who knew them.

“And so it will be with me. When finally I tire of living, when the pain of it has gotten too much to bear, I will lie down to rest with no will to rise again; that will be my ending. Then my body will decay here, within my lair, my blood seeping into the earth and one day forming the veins of copper that men will mine and form into coins and bracelets.

“Do you like copper, Pretty? It is really nothing more than the spent blood of dragons of my kind, just as the vein of gold that formed your locket once ran in the veins of a golden dragon. Emeralds, rubies, sapphires—nothing more than the clotted life’s blood of ancient dragons of various sub-races, various colors. It is what we leave behind in the hope that Time will maintain our memory, but it never does. Instead, it serves only to adorn the breasts of women and the empty heads of kings.

“But if you remember me, Pretty, really remember me, not the legends, not the history, then in a way I will go on, at least a little. I will achieve a little of the immortality, the eternity, that I did not gain because I am without a soul, because I stayed within the Earth and did not touch the sky.”

The words of the great beast were spoken wistfully, with only a trace of melancholy, but to Rhapsody’s enchanted heart they were the saddest she had ever heard. Grief welled up within her, consuming her, and without thinking she leapt from the rowboat and threw her arms around Elynsynos’s foreleg, weeping.

“No,” she choked, strangled by the strength of the pain in her heart. “No, Elynsynos, you are wrong. You shared a soul with Merithyn; I’m sure a piece of it is with him now. You had children; surely that is a form of immortality. And you have touched the sky; you are touching a child of it now. You have touched my heart so deeply that the bond will always remain. I’ll be your soul if you need me to be.”

Tenderly the dragon caressed the Skysinger’s golden hair with one of her foreclaws. “Careful, Pretty; you do not want to rename yourself. There is a power in you that might make it real, and then you would be enslaved to me. But I am glad to know that I do have a soul, and that it is so Pretty.”

The dragon patted Rhapsody again, and the Singer sat back down on the boat. “You are right about my children,” she continued, “though they seem so distant, so alien that I hardly think of them as my own, especially Anwyn.

“The races without souls sometimes have a great desire to have progeny of some sort, because it grants them a form of immortality. That is why the F’dor made the Rakshas. It wanted progeny, but of course the Rakshas is a bastard child, because the F’dor would have had to break open its own life essence to make a child totally its own, and that would have weakened itself more than it was willing to allow. Is that not the way with every parent? One trades a piece of one’s soul to achieve a little immortality?”

“I suppose,” said Rhapsody, brushing a strand of hair off her face. “I never really thought of it that way before.”

“There are many reasons, selfish and unselfish, that children are brought into the world. The F’dor wanted the Rakshas to do its bidding in the world of men. It is a toy, a tool to be used to accomplish its ultimate goal.”

“What is that goal, Elynsynos? Is it looking for power? To rule the world?”

Elynsynos chuckled. “You are thinking like a human, Pretty. To understand the motives of the F’dor you must think like a F’dor, as much as that is even possible, for they are forces of chaos and their intentions and actions cannot be readily predicted. F’dor use men as tools to achieve their ends as well. They do not seek to rise to power and rule over the masses or oppress their enemies; they are very single-minded. All they contemplate is ruin and death, and the friction of conflict that gives them power and pleasure. Their ultimate goal will destroy even themselves, as they seek to consume the Earth. They will then exist only in the Underworld, and in nightmares. As will we all.”