Prophecy: Child of Earth

15

The rain continued, unabated, for most of the following day. By the time it began to let up the sun had gone down again, leaving the darkness silent except for the dripping of water from the leaves onto the pool and 1 relentlessness of the downpour had left Rhapsody strangely tired, so they stayed one more night in the hut to allow the ground the opportunity to dry out somewhat.

They had passed the day in pleasant enough conversation, mostly in regard to plants and trees, wars that Ashe had fought in, tales of the subdual of the Firbolg, and things he had heard from companions about training with Oelendra. A formidable warrior and a legendary hero, she had a reputation as a stern and humorless teacher, an occasionally brutal taskmaster, but was regarded as the best in sword instruction, he had said. He himself had not trained with her, had only met her once and they had not spoken.

Rhapsody was beginning to feel a creeping sadness that she could not fully place taking root in her soul. She felt it each time Ashe smiled at her, or passed in front of her, so she knew it had something to do with him, but why her heart tugged at her she did not know.

That she had grown somewhat fond of him was no secret, either to her, or, she assumed, to him; they were at a comfortable place. He reminded her a great deal of her brother Robin, the second oldest, of whom she had also been very fond but with whom she was not particularly close. She did not understand Robin, nor did she understand Ashe. Perhaps one day she would, but the comparison to Robin made the sadness deepen. She had run away from home just as they were finally getting to know one another, much the way she and Ashe were parting now. She never saw Robin again. She wondered if it would be that way with Ashe as well.

He had been kind to her, for the most part, and had done a great deal for her, extending himself more than any other had in this new land. Unfortunately, she knew there was something beneath the surface of his generosity, something calculating that pressed for personal information but refused to share any, that sought her trust but did not offer his own. He was using her in some way, she knew. She just hoped that it would not be fatal, or worse.

They stayed in the hut that night, waiting for the rain to clear and the night wind to dry the ground. He had insisted that she take the bed, and, upon finding resistance futile, she thanked him and slipped into it, tired suddenly from the lack of the exercise she was accustomed to and the prospect of what was to come.

Her dreams were haunted by images of demons and destruction, of a blind Seer with no irises in her eyes that reflected the image of her own face. She felt a chilling cold, a cold that reached down into her blood and drank it, like the root of a poisonous willow, stripping her of her heat and her music, leaving her without a voice with which to even cry out for help. She woke gasping in Ashe’s arms and clung to him, holding on as if he were the only person in the world who could hear her now that her music was gone.

He stretched out beside her on the bed, staying on top of the covers, and held her until she stopped trembling. It took more than an hour, but eventually she quieted and slept dreamlessly. When he was sure she was truly asleep he wistfully removed her arm from his waist; she had placed it there to avoid the wound, he knew. With great difficulty he stood up and looked down at her, curled around the hay pillow like a dragonling around its treasure; perhaps her visit to Elynsynos had left some residual effect. He stood over her a long while, at last returning to his chair, wondering if anything in his life had been as difficult as leaving her in that bed alone.

The passageway down which the Grandmother led them opened up into a vast vertically cylindrical cavern almost the size of Canrif City that stretched out of sight above and below them. Circular ledges ran around the interior perimeter of the cavern, forming stone rings the size of wide streets. The rings encircled the inside of the cavern at various heights above and below the ledge on which they stood, punctuated with hundreds of dark openings that appeared to be tunnels like the one they had come down. There was something about the cavern’s size and shape that vaguely reminded Achmed of the tunnels that sheathed the Root of Sagia that ran along the Axis Mundi, the centerline of the Earth. It reached up into the darkness, a mute memorial to the civilization that had once pulsed through its tunnels.

A crumbling stone bridge stretched out before them across the enormous open space of the cavern. In the center of the great cylindrical space stood a giant rock formation that resembled a pedestal; its flat surface was roughly the size of the Great Hall in Ylorc. The drop on either side of the bridge caused Grunthor to shudder involuntarily. From the depths of the colossal cave a dank wind rose, stale and heavy with the odor of wet earth and desolation.

The Grandmother said nothing, but stepped out onto the bridge and crossed, never looking down into the giant circular ravine that it spanned. The dead wind rippled her dark robe, causing it to snap ominously. The two Firbolg followed her across the ravine toward the great flat formation in the center of the vertical tunnel.

As they came closer to the central rock formation they could see something suspended above it from an immensely long strand of what appeared to be spider-silk, anchored to the ceiling above out of sight. The object at the thread’s terminus swung slowly back and forth across the rock plateau in a measured gait, like the slow rippling of lake tides or a sleeper’s heartbeat. It glinted in the dark.

Once they stepped onto the flat surface the wind from the belly of the cavern increased; the sound of it was as heavy as the dust that hung thickly on its currents. Involuntarily Achmed drew his veils about his face; there was something within the gusts and eddies of that lifeless wind that whispered of death. The Grandmother pointed to the floor on which they stood.

Carved into the canter of the stone floor was a circle of runes in the same language that formed the words over the arch of the Earth Child’s chamber. Within the circle was a large faded inlay, once beautifully rendered in exquisite detail, now stained with soot and marred by time. The symbols on the floor depicted the four winds, the hours of the day, and the seasons. Achmed closed his eyes, remembering his upbringing in a monastery in the foothills of the High Reaches of Serendair. Those symbols had been carved into the floor there as well.

He looked up to the long thread and its slowly moving weight and recognized the device as a pendulum clock; the swinging weight was silently marking the moments, the hours, the seasons of a long-dead realm, each pass of the pendulum counting another fragment of endlessly passing time. “This is where the Thrall ritual was taught, where training took place, where dedications were consecrated,” the Grandmother said. The multiple voices had reduced to one, the thin hiss with which she had been addressing Achmed. Apparently she determined it was not necessary to impart the information to Grunthor. “In the old days, this was a place of much traffic, great noise and distraction, of myriad vibrations to sort through. It made for a good environment in which to teach the discerning of the right heartbeat, the exclusion of the world’s other sounds in the hunt for the F’dor.” Achmed nodded.

The Grandmother dark eyes ran over the giant Sergeant-Major. When she spoke again her voice was duotoned as it had been before. “Once these mountains housed our great cities, our council chambers. The tunnels were the veins of the Colony through which its lifeblood flowed. We were that lifeblood, the Zhereditck; the Brethren. This place was our Colony’s heart.”

“How did the fire start?” Achmed asked.

“There was no fire.”

The two Bolg stared at the Grandmother, then looked at each other. Grunthor’s vision had been frighteningly clear, and the hallmarks of smoke and soot lingered still, the odor of smelting fumes still hanging, rancid, in the air around them.

The Grandmother’s face remained unchanged, but her eyes glittered as if in amusement. “There was no fire,” she repeated, looking pointedly at Achmed. “You are Dhracian, but you are not Zhereditck, not Brethren. You were never part of a Colony.”

“No.” Bile rose in Achmed’s throat. The Past was entombed in his memory; he had no desire to exhume it. He steeled himself for more probing about his history, but the Grandmother merely nodded.

“None of the Brethren would have used fire, even in the smallest of ways. Fire is the element of our enemy. There was sufficient heat in the pools from the wellspring.” The spoken vibrations against their skin caused an image in the minds of the two men of sulfurous ponds and hot springs bubbling in muted hues of green and lavender, of pockets of steam rising from streams that ran off from the ground beneath the Loritorium on the other side of the wall of rock. It was the same source as the darklight, the underground glow that illuminated the cavernous passageways with an mute ambient radiance. It had been the same in the tunnel along the Root.

“

The Grandmother pointed to the ground. “Sit,” she said in her fricative, hissing tones. “I will relate the tale of the death of this place.” As the two men complied, she stared at Achmed, then looked off into the darkness again. “It is only right that you should hear it in its entirety, since in a way it is the tale of your own death as well.”