Rhapsody: Child of Blood

15

The exhilaration of passing through the fire diminished quickly as the three travelers repeated the steps they had made, trudging and crawling over the Root that seemed to stretch into Time itself, endless and unyielding. The journey was only slightly less arduous because of the knowledge that they had passed through the center, and now were at least more than halfway to the potential end.

Perhaps the despair, bordering on insanity, from the first part of the journey had been a factor of the pulling away from the old life. Now, though the trek was every bit as endless, though time passed with same agonizing lethargy, there was hope at the end of the tunnel, at least most of the time. As the wall of fire receded into distant memory the light had gone with it, and now they walked in darkness again, talking occasionally if only to stave off madness.

Their clothes and leather goods were ragged and worn, their boots gone, the knees of their trousers nothing but holes in tattered fabric. Grunthor had sacrificed the caplet of his cloak and Rhapsody the spare strings for her harp to make new footwear for them. They tied the cloth around their feet and legs to protect them from the jagged stone of the basalt tunnel, buttressing the soles with strips of leather cut from what had once been their boots. Even with the improvised footgear, by the end of a traveling session their feet were often bloody and bruised.

Rhapsody had taken to singing her devotions to the stars again, though day and night had lost their meaning, and she was as far away from the sunrise and the night sky as it was possible to be.

She began to interpret dawn as the time of their rising from sleep, and sang the aubade, the morning love song, as she dressed and attempted to comb the snarls out of her gleaming tresses. When they stopped, worn out, and made camp, she would sing her nightly vespers, sometimes falling asleep from exhaustion in the middle of the song.

Grunthor and Achmed had taken to listening to her, silent in the dark, never speaking until she had finished. Often they would pass a few more moments in dismal conversation, making plans they knew might upset her were she awake.

Strangely enough, time had exhibited no physical manifestation on any of them. The fire had taken away their scars, and some of the wrinkles and lines the men had achieved as hallmarks of battle and a difficult life. If anything, the three of them looked younger than they had when entering Sagia an eternity before.

Rhapsody seemed to glow more as each day passed. An aura of attraction, almost like a magnetic field, was evident around her even in the darkness, though generally her face was not visible. The perpetuity of their mutual youth seemed to belie the endlessness of their journey. The thick coating of mud that covered them made their actual appearances hard to discern, anyway.

Eventually it became clear that they were traveling closer to the surface of the Earth. They had climbed and crawled through consistently uphill passageways, scaling another towering taproot like the one they had first ascended.

The tunnel had become horrendously wet and slippery again. The chill had returned to Rhapsody’s bones, along with the aches in her joints. It became a matter of routine for them to struggle through waist-deep patches of water or mud. On more than one occasion they had been besieged by a flash flood that almost drowned them all.

Finally they entered a horizontal cavern, drier than the previous tunnels had been. The ceiling was higher here, and they could walk erect amid the dripping stalactites that hung ominously from the ceiling above them. Stalagmites had formed as well, jutting up from the tunnel floor like the lower jaw of a great beast within whose grisly mouth they were traveling.

They walked with great care beneath the rocky outcroppings. Grunthor had sustained several wounds from bumping into them, rubbing against them, or having the vibration of their footsteps occasionally jar one loose.

They entered one section of cavern where a long, thin stalactite hung at an odd angle, jutting down from the side of the passageway wall near the ceiling. Owing to its precarious position, Achmed had walked by it cautiously, taking pains not to disturb it.

As Rhapsody passed beneath it a sudden brightness filled the tunnel. The glow was muted by the earth that surrounded the stalactite; nonetheless, the three travelers squinted in unison. Their eyes, used to an eternity of darkness, were unaccustomed to the brightness that even the dim glow produced. Grunthor muttered curses in the language of the Bolg—his head had been closest to the rock outcropping when it began to shine.

Rhapsody reached up and touched the glowing formation. It was just barely within her reach, hanging at a slanted angle from the wall, unlike the millions of other stalactites they had passed. As she did, some of the rock crumbled from the point and fell to the bottom of the tunnel. A blazing beam of light and flame broke forth from the rock, causing all three travelers to cry out in pain and shield their eyes.

“What is that?” snarled the harsh voice in the lead. Rhapsody peered through her fingers. The tip of the stalactite was burning, tiny flames licking up the shaft of the formation. She stared at it in wonder, then put her hand out to it again. As her fingers neared the flames they intensified and the light grew radiant. When she pulled back, the fire returned to its former state, burning quietly inside the rock.

With the same certainty that led her through the fiery core, she carefully began brushing away the crumbling outside of the stalactite. The rocky matter fell away easily in one piece that tumbled to the ground, leaving a gleaming shaft of burning light, flames traveling up it while the base glowed ethereally. Rhapsody caught her breath.

“It’s a sword,” she said softly.

The Firbolg looked at each other. She was right; emerging from the slime-covered wall was a flaming sword blade, its shaft beneath the flickering fire glowing intensely blue-white and engraved in intricate patterns.

“Can you pull it out, miss?” Grunthor urged.

“Do you think she should?” asked Achmed.

“I don’t think I can reach it,” Rhapsody replied, looking at the ground for some sort of natural elevation. Grunthor bent down on one knee and patted his thigh.

“Up ya go,” he said, grinning at her.

Rhapsody returned his grin. She rested one hand on the enormous shoulder and climbed up onto the ledge he had made with his leg.

The top part of the stalactite was now in reach. She grabbed it where it met the rock wall and gave it a wrenching pull. The sword came loose with no more resistance than if it had been hanging by a thread. Rhapsody would have lost her balance and fallen on her back had Grunthor’s massive hand not shot out and steadied her.

She climbed off his knee and sat down on it instead, holding the sword by the blade despite the flames that ran up and down it, so her companions could see it. It was made of something that resembled silver, though its sheen was different. Beneath the glowing light and the flickering flames the blade was slender and lightweight, with intricate runes adorning it.

The hilt was made of the same white-silver metal, beautifully fashioned, with a crosspiece that, along with the pommel at the base, was made to look like a star. Within the hilt was a setting from which a gem, or something like it, had been pried; it was empty now, the prongs bent outward uniformly. It rested in her hands, burning brightly, without harming her at all. Achmed removed a glove and held his own finger near it, withdrawing it quickly.

“Oi think it likes ’er, sir,” Grunthor said.

“No accounting for taste,” muttered Achmed. Rhapsody laughed. There was a look on his face that almost resembled a smile.

“Kinda makes you wish we’d slapped a few o’ these pointy things down, don’t it, just to see what’s inside. Oh well, looks like you got yourself a fine sword, Yer Ladyship. Oi hope can use it with some credit to your instructor.”

“I’ll practice next time the tunnel widens,” Rhapsody promised, handing Grunthor back the sword he had loaned her. “Thanks for letting me borrow Lucy.”

“It may be unwise to say so, but I believe we’re coming to the end of the Root,” Achmed said quietly. “What do you think, Grunthor?”

“Well, we’re nearer the surface than we ’ave been since we started down this stinkin’ ’ole,” the giant replied, looking around. “’Oo knows, we might be only a few miles away from the air.”

“That’s comforting,” said Rhapsody. She was still staring at the sword. Fragments of distant images tugged at the outskirts of her consciousness, but nothing she understood. She blinked, and the fragments vanished.

Achmed bent down and picked up the black piece of the rock cylinder in which the sword had been encased.

“This might do for a scabbard until you find something else. I don’t think leather or anything like it would work.” He took a small broken piece of the rock and dropped it in the top of the makeshift scabbard, plugging the hole that she had made in the bottom.

Rhapsody resheathed the sword, plunging the tunnel into dark light again. “Did you want me to keep it out for light?”

“Not until we have a need of something brighter than we have,” said Achmed. “Let’s press on. I want to see where this trunk root goes.”

Rhapsody and Grunthor brushed off the sediment from the stalactite. Once their eyes had adjusted, they followed him into the never-ending passageway yet again.

“We’re very near the surface; I know it.”

They had been crawling for an agonizingly long time, the fissures in the rock growing smaller and smaller, leaving them nothing more than a burrow tunnel sized for a large animal to squeeze through. Grunthor had gotten stuck several times, requiring him to be dug out.

Rhapsody felt her heart leap at Achmed’s words. She had been fighting the feeling of suffocation for so long that she feared she might lose what slight grip she still had on reality.

She came to a halt behind Achmed, who had stopped in his tracks, rolled over onto his back, and pulled off one of his thin gloves. He ran his hand over the rock wall above and around him in the silence of an ancient memory.

The fabric of the Earth is worn thin there.

He craned his neck and turned back to Rhapsody. “Draw that thing; I need some light.”

She complied, lying on her back as well and pulling the sword out of its makeshift scabbard. Carefully she handed it to him by the hilt.

Achmed held the sword above his head and up to the wall like a blazing torch, feeling his way, using his heels to move himself along. Suddenly he pulled the weapon back in front of his face. In the flickering firelight he examined the handle, his eyes glittering as he turned the weapon over in his hands.

“Gods,” he whispered.

“What’s the matter?” Rhapsody asked in alarm. She felt Grunthor squeeze forward and press his head up to above her knee, balancing on his palms, which he had positioned on the ground to either side of her thigh.

“Daystar Clarion,” Achmed said, his voice a little louder. Grunthor made a sound of disbelief.

“What?” Rhapsody asked, panic beginning to set in. “What does that mean?”

“Are you sure, sir?” asked Grunthor.

“No question.”

“What are you talking about?” Rhapsody shrieked. The sound of her own voice frightened her; it was past the edge of rationality.

Achmed tossed the sword onto the tunnel floor past him and clutched his head with his hands, muttering obscenities in Bolgish. Grunthor exhaled in resignation and moved away a little. He patted her leg awkwardly.

“It’s a famous sword from the Island, Duchess,” the Sergeant said despondently.

“From the Island? From Serendair? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Achmed snarled. “It’s unmistakable, though I don’t know why it’s on fire. The gleam of the starlight is still there, as are the runes on the hilt. It’s definitely Daystar Clarion.”

“So that means—”

“We’re back where we started. We may as well have never left.”

Rhapsody tried to absorb the sense of despair that filled the tunnel. Unlike her Bolg companions, her heart leapt in joy. They were home. It hardly seemed to make sense, but, nonetheless, they had managed to take a wrong turn somewhere and end up where they had begun. The excitement that was welling up within her beat down the fury she felt at having spent so much time in agony, separated from her loved ones, only to wind up here again. She was home.

“We have to get out of here,” she said. “Keep going.”

Achmed sighed. “This is the end of the tunnel. The trunk root’s tunnel is too small to go any further.”

Rhapsody’s heart froze. “How are we going to get out?”

“With the key, I guess.”

Cold waves of panic washed over her. “We don’t have the key, remember? It vanished when the door in Sagia closed.”

“You know, you really are gullible.” Achmed pulled his hand out from behind his back and gesticulated; in it appeared a black bone key, no longer glowing as it had.

Rhapsody’s face went blank with shock.

“You bastard.”

Grunthor’s hands shot out and grabbed her by the shoulders, correctly anticipating her furious lunge at Achmed. She struggled violently, futilely, to break free of the giant’s grip, clawing at the air between them.

“You bastard. You lying, scum-sucking, manipulative bastard !”

“Technically true, but there’s no real need to insult my mother.” Achmed ran his hand over the ceiling again, ignoring the heat that was beginning to radiate from the white-hot rage building in the tunnel behind him. His fingers sensed the rip in the fabric of the universe, a thin metaphysical opening, directly above him.

He inserted the key, or tried to. Nothing happened. A resounding clinkechoed through the tunnel as he met with solid rock. He tried once more and still met with no success. In disgust he threw it to the ground, lay back, and cursed again.

Rhapsody’s anger vanished. “What’s wrong?”

“It doesn’t work.”

“Excuse me?”

“It doesn’t work,” he repeated softly. “I guess we weren’t the only things remade by the fire.”

His hand returned to the ceiling, and as he did a vision formed in his mind. It was related to the sense of direction he had had all along, a rapid soaring through the rock, through layers of earth and clay and dry grass and snow until his mind’s sight burst into the sunlight. He gasped aloud and closed his eyes in pain.

Rhapsody reached for him. “Are you all right?” Achmed shrugged her away. “Leave me alone. I’m fine, except that I’m back where I started and trapped at the only place we can get out. The gods must be laughing themselves sick right now.”

“’Ow far to the surface, sir?”

“I don’t know. Several hundred feet.”

Grunthor stretched his massive frame along the floor of the tunnel, sighing as his cramped muscles uncoiled. “Is that all, then? ’Ave out o’ there, if you please, sir, and Oi’ll start diggin’.”

Rhapsody tucked her knees under her and twisted to look at him. “Grunthor, didn’t you hear him? He said we’re still several hundred feet underground.”

“Then we better get to it, eh? You got somethin’ better to do, Yer Ladyship? ’Ere, move out o’ there.” Rhapsody stared at him as he pulled out a small retrenching tool, known unimpressively as Digga. She picked up her sword and did as he asked, followed a moment later by Achmed.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Grunthor?” she asked nervously as she crouched in an indentation in the tunnel.

“Nope.”

She blinked, then looked to Achmed, who shrugged. “All right,” she said finally, “I suppose there’s something to be said for winging it.”

Grunthor lay down at the head of the tunnel. Taking the small shovel in both hands, he coiled and then thrust it into the wall with all his weight and might. There were sparks, but no visible impact on the stone. He repeated the motion, and a few chips of stone flew. Then again. And again.

Soon he slipped into a rhythm, smashing the tiny tool into the rock over and over. The iron began to bend, but he continued relentlessly. Rhapsody and Achmed set up in the tunnel behind him, passing back the debris from his digging, shoving it behind them to avoid blocking the passageway.

“Isn’t this an excellent way to bring the ceiling down on our heads?” she asked the Dhracian as he handed her a good-sized rock. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of Grunthor’s strikes.

“Not really,” he replied, turning away to gather more stone shards. “If you want him to accomplish that, I’ll ask him to dig straight up.”

“No, thanks,” she replied hurriedly. Achmed had a look of quiet anger in his eyes; she wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or sincere. The latter was far more frightening.

As the hours passed, several things became clear to the two companions who crawled behind Grunthor as he chiseled his way out of the earth. The first, and most obvious, was that there was no longer any way to stop him; the giant Bolg was unresponsive to their calls to slow down, to rest. It was as if he had taken on a life-and-death struggle with the Earth itself, refusing to give in, even if it would mean his demise.

That prospect seemed somehow unlikely. Another conclusion the two others had come to was that Grunthor was more than a man possessed, he was becoming part of the Earth as he worked.

He now aimed unerringly for the tiny fissures and faults in the granite, sending large chips flying off the rockface. Each crack, each weakness made itself apparent to him in a way that filled the tunnel with the sound of ringing metal and crumbing stone.

Rhapsody watched him work with a smile of wonder on her face. Grunthor, strong and reliable as the Earth itself, she had called him in his namesong, among other descriptions. She was seeing the truth in her words before her.

The last revelation they had mutually come to was that, for better or worse, they would either succeed here or die now. The tunnel behind them was filling with the rubble from Grunthor’s efforts, blocking any escape back down the way they had come.

The understanding of this had been exchanged wordlessly. Rhapsody had looked back at the wreckage to find Achmed staring in the same direction. Their eyes had met, and both had smiled with the look of shipmates clinging to the last piece of a storm-ruined ship.

Grunthor stopped only once, long enough to turn Digga at a different angle. Then he began shearing sheets of rock off the wall before them, his trajectory changing slightly. He was as a gem-cutter, seeing intrinsically the perfect place to strike the stone. The more he dug, the more refined became whatever gift of sight into itself the Earth had given him. He seemed to see not only the cracks in the wall but how those cracks stretched into the surrounding bedrock, and where the bedrock eroded away into the soil far above it. He now had to break the debris he was passing back to Rhapsody and Achmed into smaller pieces, as it was growing too large for them to move.

His sense of conscious thought receded; he fell deeper and deeper into himself. Whatever awareness of the world around him that remained vanished, along with dreams of the Future and the memory of the Past. There was only Grunthor and the Earth, and then just the Earth. He could feel the element as if it were his own body. It was all that remained of the universe, and he was part of it, just the soil, and the clay, and the rock. And then there was no more rock.

Grunthor stumbled out into the air in shock. The wind around him stung his eyes and nose with its freshness, making him feel strangely morose. The blood that had been pumping in great volume from his racing heart slowed suddenly, leaving him faint. He staggered into the new darkness and pitched forward on his face. The earth that a moment ago was entwined around him with a lover’s warmth bit painfully, coldly into his eyes.

Immediately behind him Rhapsody and Achmed emerged into the freezing night air. The Singer was on him a moment later, clutching his shoulders in alarm.

“Grunthor! Are you all right?”

He nodded numbly; it was only nominally true. The sensation of being ripped from the bosom of the Earth, expelled from the warmth into the icy wind, was worse than the separation of birth, worse than the pain of death. Grunthor raised himself up onto his hands and knees. His palms and fingertips stung in the snow.

Rhapsody watched him stand and exhaled in relief. Then, her mind assured of her giant friend’s safety, she looked around her and stopped, thunderstruck.

She stepped all the way out of the hole in the ground as if she were stepping into paradise. The air around her was clean and bright in the light of a waxing moon; they were in a forest clearing at night. She laughed shortly, and turned around as Achmed emerged fully from the tunnel. Another giggle escaped her; then she was overcome with shuddering sobs and fell to the ground, at once crying, laughing, rolling in the snow.

Achmed helped Grunthor rise, then walked off to the edge of the clearing, taking in the sights around him. His compatriot stared blankly into the distance, the amber eyes clearing as he returned piece by piece to the realm of himself.

Their hostage, the woman they had brought along and kept alive only because he had not been certain if she would be necessary to recall his old name, having been the vehicle herself of its change, gibbered like a lunatic, digging her hands into the snow beneath her.

Sour bile rose in the back of his throat. If they were back, if this was Serendair, then he had forfeited his birthright. Instead of the beating of a million hearts on the wind, the sound he had known all his life, the air was strangely quiet. The only rhythm came from the slowing pulse of Grunthor and the quickening one of Rhapsody. It was as if no one else in the world was still alive but the three of them.

Rhapsody began to gasp, still in the throes of her tearful laughter. The sound echoed through the forest. Achmed looked suddenly around them. Then he strode to the giddy Singer and grasped her by the arm, hauling her roughly to her feet with a jolt. The look of ecstasy vanished from her face, replaced by one of stunned amazement.

“If your orgasm is over, do you think you might be quiet?” he barked. Rhapsody stared at him, then pulled her arm free, her face hardening into a glare.

“Shut up,” she said angrily. She walked away from him and looked up into the heavy canopy of forest branches where a sprinkling of stars glimmered down at her. Her rage melted away instantly at the sight and she glanced above, looking for a break in the tree limbs where she might be able to see them without obstruction. She started to make for the clearing’s edge when Achmed’s firm grip closed on her shoulder.

“Hold up.”

She twisted furiously away. “Don’t touch me.”

He ignored her command. “Don’t go running off until we make some plans. We have no idea where we are, and who lives here.”

Rhapsody pulled her arm free, but already she was beginning to see the wisdom of his statement. “I’m not going far,” she said sullenly. “I need to see the stars. Don’t try to stop me.”

Achmed’s eyes ran over her face. It was very different in the dark night air than it had been an eternity ago when they had entered the primeval forest of the Lirin. In addition to the strange physical perfection that had seemed to come over her in the fire, there was a commanding air, a charisma unlike anything he had ever seen or experienced. He looked back to Grunthor, who was walking back to the hole from which they had come.

“All right; be careful,” he said, then turned and jogged to catch up with their companion.

Rhapsody waited until Achmed was out of the area, then cleared her mind as best as she could from the jangled cobwebs that the horror of the trip along the Root had woven into it. The stars gleamed above her, shining like the scattered pieces of the soul of the sky. She was vaguely aware of forbidden tears that welled up, only to freeze, unspilled, at the edges of her eyes.

Slowly, as if in a dream, she drew forth the ancient sword she had found within the Earth. Its flames billowed up the blade, licking the glowing steel but conducting no heat through the hilt; the weapon’s handle remained cool and dry in her grip. Then, as if directed by a voice only her hands could hear, she held the weapon aloft.

Instead of her view of the stars diminishing in the light of the flames, they seemed to grow brighter, though perhaps it was the blurring of her unshed tears that made it seem so. Rhapsody opened her mouth but no song came forth. She swallowed, fighting down the pain that had risen from her depths. Then she tried again, singing the vespers of the evening star, the song of Seren, for which the Island had been named, the star of her birthplace.

The sweet notes rose slowly up into the sky, captured by the wind that was blowing tattered clouds around the stars.

Far off to the south, in the heart of different forest, another woman woke from sleep to a vibration hidden from her by the passing of many years. The sword has returned, she thought, but there was more than that on the wind. It was a longing she didn’t understand but thought she had felt before, a sorrow that clung to the outer edge of remembrance. Like a shadow on the face on the moon it passed over her, then was gone. A frown touched the ancient Lirin face.

Grunthor looked back down the tunnel. He was slowly returning to himself, though the bond with the Earth remained, solid and reassuring, resonating up through his feet.

Every sinew was on fire, every muscle ached with a weariness he had never known before, not even as he and Achmed had made their desperate escape from the hand of the demon. He shook his limbs. He had one more task to perform before he could give in to sleep.

Grunthor closed his eyes and leaned on the edge of the earth-hewn tunnel. His hand ran along the entrance lovingly, sensing, as he had while digging, each strength, each flaw in the ground. He steeled his resolve and struck the ground with all his might at the precise points of greatest weakness. The exit from the Earth collapsed in a rising cloud of fine dirt and crystals of snow. The giant sank to his knees on the ground.

“No exit now.” Achmed’s voice came from behind him.

Grunthor raised his head at Achmed and grinned, an action that took the last of his remaining strength. “We knew that ’ad to be when we came,” he said. “We knew we weren’t goin’ back.”

Achmed chuckled sardonically. “Back? We never left.”

Grunthor laid his head down on the snow-carpeted earth, feeling the comforting rhythm of its beating heart beneath his ear. “Not so, sir,” he muttered. “This ain’t where we came from. We’re on the other side o’ the world now.” Exhaustion took him and he fell into a dreamless sleep that brought him a deeper knowledge of the land born of his bond with the Earth.

Achmed didn’t need to confirm what the giant had said; a moment later he heard a deep sob from the edge of the glen. Rhapsody had seen the stars. She knew.