Rhapsody: Child of Blood

21

As they came closer to the sea, the thinning snowpack disappeared altogether, leaving brown grass and bare trees in the grip of an icy wind that showed less mercy than the soldiers did. Achmed and Grunthor kept a wider barrier between themselves and any sign of civilization in order to be able to sleep near a sheltered campfire without fear of being spotted. They only approached empty houses or barns when they were acquiring supplies.

They were in Avonderre now. They had overheard enough conversation to deduce that it was the name of the province, and that it bordered the sea. The scent of salt in the air was now strong enough for Grunthor to detect it, and they followed their noses, moving closer to the ocean day by day, week after week, remaining always at the outskirts, avoiding any contact with the inhabitants of this new land.

The settlements and towns had become larger and closer as they approached the port city, eventually beginning to blend in with the wide expanse of buildings that lined the horizon. Where huts and kraals had once housed the populace, now homes fashioned of mud or fire-formed brick appeared, with doors carved from heavy wood and roofs of clay or sealed thatch.

The roadways widened into roads, and eventually streets, lined with ancient stone and cobbled. Grunthor had whistled at the expense that must have been incurred; back home cobblestone streets were only seen in the wealthiest sections of the largest cities, and then only in front of public buildings and temples. Here it appeared that each street of this sprawling city, at least three times the size of Easton, was paved.

Avonderre’s wharf was even bigger, stretching north-south along the coastline for as far as the eye could see. Fishing villages made up the extreme edges. Closer in were the docks, designed and built from gleaming stone and wood, with slips and moorings of shining metal. And in the dead center was the sheltered harbor, a colossal port with more ships than Achmed or Grunthor could count.

“Would ya just look at that?” the Sergeant murmured as they watched from a distance the off-loading of a hundred merchant vessels at a time, barrels and crates and horses and wagons working with the precision of an anthill.

“No,” Achmed said, tapping his friend on the shoulder and pointing skyward. “You look at that.”

Grunthor glanced up from the pile of oilcloth and lump coal he had been pilfering from behind a blacksmith’s shop, the most distant building on the city’s outer fringe. The sun was going down, and was taking the last of the unbroken sky with it, leaving in its place ominous storm clouds racing to the horizon, swollen with rain and charged with lightning. A moment later the wind picked up in the face of the oncoming storm.

“Blimey. Better get out o’ ’ere, then.”

Achmed had already scrambled over the low wall behind the smithy, heading north away from the wharf.

“There’re some rocky outcroppings at the outskirts of town. That’ll be a decent place to hide and find shelter at the same time. Come on. It’s going to be a rough one when it hits.”

They made their way beneath an angry sky, buffeted by the wind, to the guardian rocks that loomed forbiddingly up from the shore. The waves crashed and roared back into the wind, sending salt spray into the faces of the two men.

Darkness blanketed the sky all the way to the horizon, with rare breaks in the clouds allowing the light of the full moon a moment’s glory, then squelching it back again.

“Shall we find ourselves a cave, sir?”

Achmed squinted in the dark, but saw very little except the rocky crags and the roaring waves. Firbolg eyes were suited to the darkness within the Earth, not above the ground.

“Perhaps on the other side of that cliff,” he suggested.

Grunthor shook his head, spattering salt water and sweat.

“Naw. Nothin’ there—solid rockwalls for a few miles. But down near the shore is an enormous shelter o’ some kind.”

“You can feel all this through the Earth?”

“Yeah.”

Slowly Achmed and Grunthor climbed down until they finally reached the sand of the shoreline. Then both men broke into a run. Drops of rain had started to fall intermittently, stinging their eyes and skin like icy needles from the sky. The beach wound around a large bluff to the north, following an inlet that opened into a small lagoon; they had seen it from afar when they were still up on the precipice. The guardian rocks stretched up endlessly into the black wind above them, like mountain crags.

As they came around the cliff they saw a monstrous edifice surrounded distantly by four other buildings. In the dark and the whipping wind it was almost impossible to see its outline.

“It’s a temple,” Achmed shouted to Grunthor. “What kind of idiot builds a temple on sand ?”

The Sergeant barely heard him above the noise of the wind. “And so close to the water’s edge. Strange, eh? Want to look into it?” His heavy hair, blackened with spray from the pounding surf, hung wet in his eyes.

Achmed hesitated. Temples meant priests; he hated priests. But the towering building alone was dark. There were lights burning in the four more distant ones, undoubtedly the rectories where the clergy lived or places where supplies were stored. They would run less of a risk of being spotted in the basilica itself.

“All right,” he muttered, pulling the ragged edges of his hood closer to his face. “But any priest I run into better be able to swim.”

Until they came around the northern side of the rocky crags, neither of the men could see anything more than a vast expanse of stone towering in the air above the shoreline. Once on the other side, however, they stopped in their tracks involuntarily, oblivious of the rain.

The temple rose out of the darkness of the crashing wind and surf, its oddly angled spire pointing away from the sea. The base of the structure was formed from enormous blocks of quarried stone, gleaming gray and black in the shadows of the moon, irregular and purposefully shaped, mortared together around tall beams of ancient wood. Carefully tended walkways, formed by great slabs of polished rock embedded in the sand, led up to the front doors.

A shattering breeze ripped through, flapping their makeshift clothing. The rain clouds overhead whisked away from the face of the moon for a moment, and its light came to rest on the structure, illuminating the whole of the building.

The temple had been designed to resemble the bow of a great wrecked ship, jutting from the craggy rocks and sand of the beach at an ominous angle. The immense entrance doors, fashioned from planks of varying lengths with a jagged notched pattern at the top, appeared to depict a vast hole torn in what would have been the keel. The crazily angled spire was the representation of a mast. The colossal ship had been rendered accurately, down to the last nautical apparatus. The moorings and riggings, detailed in exquisitely carved marble, were a half-dozen times their normal size.

Farther off shore was another part of the temple, an annex connected to the main building by a plank walkway. Like much of the annex, the walkway was only visible at low tide, submerging into the sea when the tide came back in. This additional part of the temple evoked the wreckage of the stern. A gigantic anchor, lying aslant on the sandbar between the two buildings, served as its threshold.

Despite the architectural care that had been taken to elicit the feeling of an off-balance wreck unevenly resting on the sand, it was obvious that the enormous edifice was sound and solidly built. It stood, undisturbed, amid the churning waves of the raging sea. Grunthor let out a long, low whistle. “Criton. What ya make o’ that, guv?” Achmed was struggling to contain the dislike he felt for the water. In the old days, the sea could mask the heartbeats of his prey with its conundrum of conflicting vibrations and colossal power. It was the only place a victim could hide from him.

“Couldn’t say. Perhaps the local worshippers are merchants, or fisherman. Very rich fisherman; its design is superior to anything I’ve ever seen, and building it must have been a huge undertaking. It certainly took a fair amount of complicated construction. The event it is commemorating must have been very traumatic to have inspired such a monstrosity. Too bad Rhapsody’s not here; it might make more sense to her.”

“Yeah, Oi think ’er family must have been sailors or worked the wharves in Easton. One night in the Root she was mutterin’ about wantin’ to see the ocean.”

Achmed shook his head. “I doubt Rhapsody was born in Easton, or any other city. She may have picked up the skills to survive in the taverns and alleyways of Easton, but she’s not a child of the streets. I suspect she grew up in a farm village or settlement, probably poor, but not destitute. She doesn’t have the whetted edge she would if she had been born a guttersnipe.” The wind caught the sand from the beach and blasted it across their faces.

“Ya think she’s all right?”

Achmed began tying up the ends of his cloak. “Yes. Come on. Low tide won’t last long. I want to see what’s in the building farther out.”

“There comes the rain.”

They waited long enough to be sure no guards or worshippers came to the temple. After a few moments it was obvious that the darkness and the approaching storm would keep away anyone who might discover them.

The shrieking of the wind grew louder as sheets of rain began to fall, drenching both men to the skin. The ocean waves, even in ebb, crashed violently against the shoreline, frothing over the rocks at the temple’s base.

The light of the moon was now completely gone, replaced by black, racing clouds that muted the sky. Achmed and Grunthor scaled the guardian rocks and ran up the pathway leading to the huge doors of the temple. The tall hooded torches that flanked the entranceway had long since been extinguished by the wind.

Grunthor grasped the great brass handles and pulled; the left door opened without resistance. The men hurried inside, quickly hauling the heavy door closed behind them.

Dripping wet, they took in the cavernous basilica. Its ceiling towered above them, the distant walls arching up to meet it. Great fractured timbers of myriad lengths and breadths were set within the dark stone. It looked a little like the fragmented skeleton of a giant beast, lying on its back, its spine the long aisle that led up forward, ancient ribs reaching brokenly, helplessly upward into the darkness above.

Round windows in the design of portholes were set high in the walls, affording the temple light by day. A single line of translucent glass blocks of great heft and thickness had been inlaid in the walls, about knee-height on Grunthor. The churning sea was diffusely visible through them, bathing the interior of the basilica in a greenish glow. In daylight it would be magnificent; by night, in a storm, there was little Achmed could do to shake off the eerie feeling that had drenched him even more deeply than the rain had.

Grunthor shook his head, spattering the water from his dripping hair onto the floor. There were no benches or seats of any kind, except for a wide circle of marble blocks near the middle of the temple. Despite its proximity to the water and at least part of the floor and lower walls being actually built below water level, the temple was surprisingly dry. They noticed, however, that the surface of the stone that had been used to construct the floor was rough in texture, allowing for better purchase when wet.

Achmed nodded forward, and the two Firbolg started down the aisle, looking around and above them all the while. The immense timbers, though carefully preserved, had been worn and weathered in their previous life, undoubtedly when they were part of the hulls of ships. The variation in the color and condition of the wood seemed to indicate that it had been gathered from many different vessels.

At the midpoint of the aisle the ceiling opened into a tall shaft, a broad tunnel of blackness with small slits cut into the distant top of it. The wind and salt spray whistled through the slits and down the shaft, its howl echoing within the temple.

“Must be the mast,” Grunthor noted. Achmed nodded in agreement.

Beneath the opening in the center of the circular stone benches was a small, round fountain carved from blue-veined marble, with several larger basins of the same stone opening into ever-wider circles around it to catch its overflow. A pulsing stream of water bubbled from the font, spraying suddenly in the air, then subsiding again in rhythm with the pounding waves. Occasionally a violent jet would spurt forth, dousing the floor, but far enough from the stone benches for them to remain dry.

At the far end of the great building was another set of doors, wrought in copper and inscribed with patterns too distant to see. The Bolg circumvented the fountain and went to the back of the temple, their footsteps swallowed by the sound of the waves outside the walls.

Two wall sconces flanked the copper doors, their glass domes surrounding a wick of twisted metal. As they approached the door, they could see it was inscribed with runes, writing Achmed couldn’t read but in which he thought he recognized a few symbols. They were vaguely similar to the those in the written language of Serendair.

A raised relief of a sword had been wrought into the copper of each door, one pointing up, the other down. Scrolled designs ran down the blades, similar to ocean waves, and the points were flared in a similar pattern.

The background of the relief gave Achmed pause. It was an engraving of a winged lion, a crest he had seen before. It took him a moment to place it.

“This is the coat-of-arms of MacQuieth’s family,” he said, more to himself than to Grunthor, though the Sergeant had also known of the legendary warrior, the champion of Serendair’s king. “What’s it doing here, half a world away?”

Grunthor rubbed his chin and stared at the etching on the doors.

“Oi believe MacQuieth came from elsewhere. Didn’t they use to call ’im Nagall, the Stranger? Seems to me ’e sailed from some far-off place to come to the Island when ’e was young. Maybe this is where ’is family’s from.”

Achmed nodded, annoyed with himself. The churning frenzy of the waves around them was muddling his mind, keeping him from thinking clearly.

“Well, that may tell us where we are. I believe he came from Monodiere.” He grasped the handle of the left door and pulled, but it was wedged shut. He tried the other, to no avail.

“These must be the doors to the annex,” he said, rubbing his hand on his cloak to clear the moisture.

“Allow me,” said Grunthor, bowing politely. He spat into his palm and grasped the handle, wrenching the door open with one smooth tug. He stepped back quickly as the salt spray slapped his face.

On the other side of the door, its outer copper surface turned green-blue and corroded from the salt, was a wide stone step that led to the plank walkway. Already the path was beginning to be touched by puddles swelling before the returning tide.

The men shielded their eyes with their forearms and stepped into the gale, Grunthor’s hand locked on to Achmed’s shoulder. The walkway was long and narrow, crossing the sandbar, and littered with seaweed and the debris left behind when the tide ebbed.

They crossed as quickly as they could, struggling to remain upright in the whipping wind. Grunthor stopped long enough to extricate a large, oddly shaped shell that had gotten itself stuck in the rough wood of the planks.

As they approached the annex they could see it had no door of its own, but rather just a rough archway that left the annex’s hollow chamber open to the ravages of the sea and the air. When the tide returned, much of the annex would submerge again, the water high enough to crest Achmed’s head. In the sand before the archway lay an immense anchor, rusted and pocked, which served as the doorstep.

When they reached the archway they stepped over the anchor and hurried inside before looking around, then stared at what they saw.

Unlike the temple, which was an edifice built to look like a ship, the annex was a piece of a real one, wedged upright, bow skyward and aslant, in the sand. The ship had been a sizable one, judging by its wreckage, which appeared to be the better part of the stern and midship. Its deck had been stripped away, leaving nothing but the hull, which now formed the walls of the annex. Upon closer inspection, it was evident that the ship had been built of something other than ordinary timber, but the material was not something either of them had seen before. Also wedged into the sand in the center of the annex was a stone table, a block of solid obsidian, gleaming smooth beneath the pools of water that danced across it with each gust of the wind. Two brace restraints of a metal neither man recognized were embedded in the stone, their clasps open and empty. There was not a trace of rust on either one.

The surface of the stone had at one time been inscribed with deep runes that had been worn away over time by the insistent hand of the ocean. Now it was smooth, with only a bleached shadow marring the obsidian where the inscription once had been.

Attached to the front of the stone was a plaque, with raised runes similar to the ones they had seen in the copper doors. Like the braces on its horizontal surface, the marker was unaffected by the scouring waves.

“This looks a little like the written language of Serendair, but only a little,” Achmed said, bending to examine the marker. “I wish Rhapsody were here.”

“That’s twice in ten minutes you said that,” Grunthor answered, grinning, “and Oi’m gonna tell ’er.”

“She won’t believe you, or she’ll think I wanted to pitch her into the sea,” Achmed said, rising and slinging his pack off his shoulder onto the stone block. Quickly he took out the oilcloth and lump coal they had stolen and stretched the cloth over the runes. Then, with the coal, he made a quick rubbing of the plaque and returned both to his pack. “See—we didn’t need her after all. We’d better get out of here, the tide is coming in.”

Grunthor nodded. The water was up above his ankles now, which meant the sandbar would soon be barely visible.

Achmed shouldered his pack. As he did, his hand brushed the stone block, and his fingers vibrated gently. He crouched down once more, examining the stone itself. It was plain black obsidian, a slab of impressive size, but otherwise quite unremarkable. Nonetheless there was a hum to it when he touched it, a vibration that was both utterly unknown and oddly familiar. He looked up at Grunthor.

“Does this feel strange when you touch it?”

The Sergeant rested his palm on the stone, considering. A moment later he shook his head.

“Naw. Feels cold, like marble. Smooth from the sea ’ittin’ it all the time.”

Achmed took his hand away. The vibration ceased, leaving him feeling both relieved and strangely bereft. But there was no time to ponder the meaning of it; the tide was coming in.

They stepped into the screaming wind and waded back through the knee-deep water to the temple. Once inside, Grunthor shoved the copper door back into place. He sighed and looked at his friend.

“Well, whaddaya make o’ that?”

Achmed shook his head.

“No idea, but perhaps—” His words choked off and he glared, angry at himself.

Grunthor snorted with laughter. “All right, you don’t gotta say it, sir. Per’aps she’ll know.”

“We best be getting back there, anyway,” Achmed said, brushing the water off his shoulders as they walked back through the basilica. “We have a date to meet up with her. With all those strange attacks between here and there, the journey may take longer than it should.”