Prophecy: Child of Earth

33

The Grandmother was waiting for them in the darkness at the tunnel’s end.

Her eyes ran over Rhapsody with interest, the silvery pupils expanded into thin oblong mirrors.

“Well met, Skychild,” she said.

Achmed and Grunthor looked at each other; in addition to the two voices which she had used to communicate with them, a third was now sounding, dry and sandy like Achmed’s own. This one, however, used words.

“You are late in coming.” The Grandmother’s words were full of accusation.

“I’m sorry,” Rhapsody stammered, taken aback at the brusque tone; she had not been expecting to hear spoken words, either. “I’ve been away.” She stared at the woman before her, all concerns of her own rudeness drowning in the amazement she felt.

In the Grandmother’s strange features she could see some decided similarities to Achmed; now, finally, she was able to assign to his Dhracian heritage what could not previously be seen in standard Bolg traits. They had guarded his Dhracian heritage as one of their closest secrets; she had never spoken the word to anyone save for Oelendra, not even Jo. The rare magic she could see before her explained far better than words could why it had been so important to keep the secret.

The woman was thin as a rapier, with skin that was more exposed vein than dermal covering. While in Achmed this trait had a nightmarish effect on most people, in the Grandmother it was a thing of beauty, like an ink etching or intricate body painting; at least it seemed so to Rhapsody. She reminded herself that she had never seen the woman in the light. Here in the dark, the woman was breathtaking.

Looking into the Grandmother’s eyes was much like staring into a mirror in a dark room. Black as ink but reflective, they stared back at her now, their silvery pupils drinking in the limited light. Then the woman looked at the two Bolg, and the loss of her gaze all but ripped Rhapsody’s breath away. The Grandmother’s stare was almost as hypnotic as that of Elynsynos.

In the sharpness of her features, the dryness of the air around her, Rhapsody was suddenly put in mind of animal races that were born of the wind, as the Dhracians were—crickets, with their brisk, scratching sound; raptors, with their gracefully quick movements; owls, with their unblinking gaze, best suited to the night.

The Grandmother nodded curtly, then turned and began to walk away.

“Come.”

The Three followed the Colony’s lone survivor down the dark tunnel and into the chamber of the Sleeping Child.

The large iron doors to the chamber were closed. The Grandmother paused before them, then turned to Rhapsody.

“You are a skysinger.” There was no question in her words.

“Yes.”

The Grandmother nodded. “First you will meet the Earthchild,” she said, nodding to the heavily banded doors. “Then I will take you to the canticle circle. You will find the prophecy there in its entirety. But first you must tend to the child.”

“How am I to tend to her?”

The Grandmother took one of the enormous door handles in her thin hand. “ ‘The wind of the stars to sing the mother’s-song most known to her soul,’” she recited. “That is the piece of the prophecy I believe applies to you. You must be her amelystik now. I will soon be too aged to do it.”

Rhapsody rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “I don’t understand; you are going too quickly,” she said.

The black scleras of the Dhracian woman’s eyes expanded explosively. “No; you are going too slowly,” she snarled in a voice full of sandy spit. “You are late, all of you. You should have been here long ago, when I was still strong, before Time broke me. But that did not occur.

“Nonetheless I have waited, waited alone these many years, these centuries, watching as the pendulum clock counted each hour, each day, each passing year. I have waited for you to come and relieve my watch; now you are here. “But even now, it is not as simple as the mere passing of guardianship from my hand to yours. The child has begun to dream, is tormented by nightmares. I cannot hear them; I do not know what bedevils her mind. Only you can free that knowledge, Skychild. Only you can sing her back to a peaceful slumber. It was written in the wind. It is so.”

The last words were spoken in a voice that trembled. Rhapsody’s chest tightened; she knew the fear in those words, recognized the vulnerability behind them. The Grandmother was more than the stalwart, solitary guardian of a invaluable tool that the F’dor prized; she loved the Earthchild as her own. It was the same sound that had been in Oelendra’s voice when the lute met its destruction. The same fear that had been in Lirin champion’s eyes when she bade her goodbye.

“I understand,” she said. “Take me to her.”

The iron doors opened with a metallic sigh, and the three companions followed the woman into the dark chamber. The Grandmother struck a spore against the cave wall, bringing forth a spark, then set about lighting the lamp over the catafalque.

Once the chamber was no longer completely dark, Rhapsody and the men drew nearer. The child rested, as she had when they first discovered the Colony, on her great stone altar, beneath a blanket of woven spider-silk as soft as eiderdown. Her smooth gray skin was still as cold-looking as stone, but there was a decided difference in her appearance since the men had seen her last. The roots and the length of her hair were green as summer grass, withering down to the dry brushy scrub ends that had once made up the entirety of her tresses. Summer was high, and the child of the Earth felt it; she was reflecting it in the only way she could here in her dark cave, away from the season of the sun.

Rhapsody rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to fend off a sudden chill. Slowly she walked around the Child of Earth’s catafalque, her eyes absorbing the sight in the darkness pooling around the muted light from the lantern above. The wonder on her face made Grunthor’s heart twist.

Elynsynos’s words echoed in her heart.

Since dragons could not interbreed with the races of the Three, they tried to carve a human-like race out of what few fragments of Living Stone remained after the vault was made. Rare and beautiful creatures were the result. Those creatures were called Children of Earth, and had a humanoid form, or at least as close to one as the dragons could fashion. They were in some ways a brilliant creation, in other ways an abomination.

“She’s beautiful,” Rhapsody said softly.

The Grandmother nodded. “She thinks well of you, too.” She pulled the cover over the child again. “She is calmed by your vibration, by the music in the air around you.” Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she stared at the Singer. “She wonders why you hold back tears.”

Rhapsody blinked self-consciously, trying to drive the water from the edges of her eyes, and cast a wry glance at Achmed. “Crying is forbidden in the Bolg king’s presence.”

“Why do you mourn?”

“I mourn for her,” the Singer answered. “Who would not? To be condemned as she is to a living death; to never wake? For so rare and beautiful a child to never have a life? Who would not mourn for her?”

“I would not,” said the Grandmother shortly. “You are incorrect that she is without a life. This is her life, her destiny; this is what it is, what it will always be. It is to be endured, to be appreciated, just as a life of solitary guardianship is to be endured and appreciated. Just as your life is, no doubt, sometimes to be endured, sometimes appreciated. That it is not recognizable as life to you does not make it so to her. Life, what ever it is, is what it is.”

“Ryle him” Rhapsody whispered. The wisdom in the Lirin adage settled on her softly, like the falling of snow, until it rested solidly on her shoulders. Finally she was coming to understand fully the meaning of the words she had been taught so long ago.

The Child of Earth’s lips moved silently, as if echoing the Lirin refrain. The Grandmother quickly bent down, leaning over the child as if trying to catch the soundless words. She waited, but no more was forthcoming. She sighed silently.

“Does she speak?” Grunthor asked.

“Not as yet,” the Grandmother answered softly, running her hands along the grassy hair that faded from summer’s green to winter’s blanched gold. “The last prophecy of the greatest Dhracian sage said that she one day would, but in all this time she never has.

“From the oldest days it has been recorded that wisdom resides in the Earth and stars. All else, the churning seas, the evanescent fire, the fleeting wind, all these are too ephemeral, too transitory to hold on to the lessons taught by Time. But the stars see all, though they don’t reveal what they know. The Earth alone holds the secrets passed down through the ages, and the Earth sings; it imparts this knowledge constantly, in the changing of the seasons, the destruction and rebirth of wildfire. There is much to learn in the repositories of the Earth.

“That was one of the saving graces of going In. Though it meant that we would never see the sky again, never read the vibrations of the wind, the Earth that was a prison to us as much as it was to the F’dor was also our teacher. The Zhereditck studied the Earth’s lessons, learned its secrets. And the wind, in bidding us farewell, gave us one last message: that ultimate wisdom would come from the lips of the Earth Child.

“I have been waiting all my life to hear what she has to impart, waiting for those words of wisdom. Through the centuries she has said nothing intelligible, has given not a single answer, not one clue. But though she has formed no words, I know her heart.” The long fingers that tenderly caressed the smooth cheek trembled a little.

Lines of worry puckered the old woman’s forehead as the child began to whisper more rapidly, her eyelids twitching.

“Now her heart knows fear,” the Grandmother said. “I just cannot put a name to it.”

“Can you do anythin’ for ’er, Duchess?” Grunthor asked anxiously.

Rhapsody closed her eyes and considered the question. The mother’s song most known to her soul, the prophecy had apparently said. She tried to summon the image of her mother in her mind, a picture that had one been clear as the summer sky, and now was almost impossible to call forth. It had been so ever since the last time she had heard her mother’s voice in her memory.

Fire is strong, her mother had said in the final dream Rhapsody had had of her. But starfire was born first; it is the more powerful element. Use the fire of the stars to cleanse yourself, and the world, of the hatred that took us. Then I will rest in peace until you see me again.

She could still remember the words, but not her mother’s voice. It was a loss she felt keenly.

Rhapsody moved closer to the catafalque, bending nearer to the child’s ear. Gently she rested her hand on the grassy hair, brushing away the stray strands that had fallen into her eyes as she tossed restlessly. The Grandmother made no move to stop her, but rather removed her own hand and slid it silently back into the folds of her robe.

“My mother had a song for everything,” she said quietly. “She was Liringlas, and every event had a song ascribed to it. I heard them all so often; it was like breathing the air. I don’t know which one is the mother’s song that the prophecy refers to.” Almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth a thought occurred to her. “Wait,” she said, “perhaps I do at that.”

“It is tradition among the Lirin that when a woman discovers she is with child, she chooses a song to sing to the growing life within her. It is the first gift she gives to the baby, its own song; perhaps that’s what meant by ‘mother’s-song.’ She sings it through the course of each day, through mundane events, in quiet moments when she is alone, before each morning aubade, after each evening vesper. It’s the song the child comes to know her by, the baby’s first lullabye, unique to each child. Lirin live outside beneath the stars, and it is important that the infants remain as silent as possible in dangerous situations. The song is so familiar that it comforts them innately. Perhaps this is what the prophecy meant.”

“Perhaps,” said Achmed. “Do you remember yours?”

Rhapsody swallowed the disdainful retort that rose to her lips, remembering that Achmed had never had a family and could therefore not understand. “Yes,” she said. “And it’s a wind-song, so perhaps it’s the one the prophecy refers to.” She sat down on the slab of stone next to the catafalque that served as the Grandmother’s bed and drew one knee under her, all the while leaving her hand on the child’s forehead. Closing her eyes, she sang the song from a lifetime ago.

When she finished, Rhapsody opened her eyes and looked at the Earth child. She had grown silent during the song, but as soon as it ended she began to twitch again, building quickly into thrashing movements; it seemed as if she was even more agitated then she had been before. Rhapsody looked on in dismay. Grunthor’s huge hand closed gently on her shoulder.

“Aw, don’t feel bad, Duchess,” he said. “ ’Twasn’t that bad-soundin’.”

The Grandmother was growing agitated as well; Achmed could tell by the electricity in her vibration. “Isn’t there something else?” he asked Rhapsody, who was making soothing sounds, trying to hush the child’s panic.

“My mother sang me hundreds of songs,” she answered, running her hand over the child’s flailing arm. “I have no idea which one the prophecy refers to.”

“Perhaps you’re interpreting it wrong, then,” Achmed said. “Maybe it’s not your mother the prediction means; maybe it’s hers.”

A note of clarity rang through Rhapsody’s head. “Yes, yes, you’re probably right,” she said nervously. “But how can I sing her own mother’s-song? I don’t even know who her mother was.”

“She had no mother,” said the Dhracian matriarch firmly. “She was formed, as you see her, out of Living Stone.”

“Perhaps the dragon that made her, then?” Rhapsody suggested.

“No,” said Grunthor quietly. “It’s the Earth. The Earth is ’er mother.”

The three others stared at him in silence. “Of course,” Rhapsody murmured after a moment. “Of course.”

“And you know that song as well, Duchess. ’Eard it over and over again, ya did; sang with it all the time we was travelin’ inside the Earth. Can you sing it now?”

The Singer shuddered. It took a great deal of effort to force herself to think back to those days on the Root, the living nightmare they had endured to escape Serendair. Rhapsody closed her eyes again and concentrated on trying to hear the hum, remembering the first time she had actually listened to it, the great, slow vibration that modulated ever so lightly in the endless cavern towering above them.

It was a song deep as the sea, thrumming in her skin, rumbling through her heart, though soft as the falling of snow, almost inaudible. It was more a feeling than a sound, rich and full of wisdom, magical and unique in all the world. The melody moved slowly, changed tones infinitesimally, unhurried by the need to keep pace with anything. It was the voice of the Earth, singing from its soul. And in the background, deep and abiding, was the ever-present beating of the heart of the world, a cadence that had steadied her in her moments of despair, that reassured her in the dark of the Earth’s belly. She heard it again now in her ear, as she had each time she had slept with her head against the ground.

Then the realization came. More often than not she had slept not with her head on the earth, but on Grunthor’s chest. The two sensations were very similar; the giant’s chest was broad and strong, solid as basalt, the beating of his heart matching the rhythm of the Earth’s song exactly. It rang through him, comforting her in her nightmares. Ton know Oi’d take the worst of them dreams for you if Oi could, Ter Ladyship, he had said. Rhapsody reached out and touched the Sergeant.

“Grunthor,” she said, “will you help me do this? Like you did with the wounded soldiers?”

A slight grin broke through the consternation on his face. “O’ course, miss,” he said. “You want a few choruses o’ that ol’ Bolg mother-song, ‘Maw’s Claws’?”

“No,” she said. “I just need you for percussion. Bend down so I can reach your heart.”

Grunthor complied amid the soft squeaking of armor, the rustic of his great-cloak. Gently Rhapsody ran her hand over his chest until she could feel his heartbeat, the slow, steady pounding she had come to know over what seemed like a lifetime. It was still the same, attuned to the rhythm of the Earth.

Rhapsody closed her eyes and cleared her mind of everything but that sound. It rang in her head, vibrating in her sinuses and through the roots of her hair, making her skull tingle. She took a deep breath and drank it in further, feeling it run down her spine and into her muscle, out to the very edges of her skin. When it had reached her fingertips she extended her free hand and touched the Earth child’s chest, slipping it inside the folds of the child’s garment until it came to rest on her heart as well. The rhythms matched exactly, though there was a tremolo to the child’s pulse that worried Rhapsody. She bent closer to the child’s ear, pressed her lips together, and began to hum.

She knew the exact pitch when she found it, because instantly her mind was filled with the musical images from that mystical, horrific time, the deep basso of miners singing as they carved their way through the depths of the world, the slow, melodic rumbling of the magma beneath the surface, peppered with the occasional staccato hiss or pop, the sweet, steady tune of the Axis Mundi that bisected the Earth, and the Root that had wound around it. It was an ancient symphony of earthsounds, wordless and almost just beyond hearing, but filled with power and awe.

She sang the earthsong as best as she could, keeping time with Grunthor’s steady heartbeat, only changing the tone subtlely, as slowly as it would within the Earth. In the near distance she heard Achmed exhale softly, and realized it was a signal; they must be seeing some effect, some transformation from the song.

Beneath her fingers the trembling vibration within the child’s heart vanished, replaced by smooth, steady tides of respiration. Rhapsody recognized the state; the Earth Child was finally sleeping dreamlessly, deeply and soundly. She felt the same state of calm come over herself, as if she, too, was sleeping deeply and soundly. So deeply, so soundly, in fact, that the hideous gasps that issued forth from Grunthor and the Grandmother did not disturb her at all.

It was the thudding sound of their bodies hitting the sandy floor that did.