Rhapsody: Child of Blood

23

Rhapsody heard the words Llauron had spoken: the Island of Serendair prior to its destruction. They slowly took up residence in her brain, settling in her mind like music from a distant orchestra. Its destruction.

A sense of calm descended on her; it was the physical reaction that occurred in her in the advent of great danger or panic. She fought to keep her face placid as the blood rushed from her head, cramping her stomach and leaving her feeling mortally weak.

With a practiced hand she picked up the map and carried it over to the chair she had occupied, and sat down again, balancing the scabbard across her knees and letting the fire warm her suddenly pale face.

“I’d like to hear more about the Cymrians, but will you explain two more lands to me?” she asked, her voice sounding exaggerated in her own ears.

Llauron sat in the chair opposite her. “Of course.”

She forced her eyes to focus on a land depicted in yellow to the south of Gwynwood and its southern neighbor, Avonderre. The land seemed to be part of the same enormous forest but, aside from being shown in a different color, was labeled Realmalir. “What is this?”

A smile flickered across the Invoker’s elderly face. “Those are the Lirin lands, the Great Forest of Tyrian. The word is Old Cymrian for ‘the Lirin kingdom.’ The Lirin were indigenous to this land. They were here when the Cymrians landed, and they are here still.”

“But not part of Roland?”

“No. During the Cymrian Age the Lirin were allies of the Cymrians, but the Great War changed that.”

“Great War?”

Llauron took a deep breath. “When you say you are from far away, I see you are not exaggerating. What is the other land you wanted to ask about?”

Rhapsody pointed numbly to the white lands to the north of Gwynwood and Roland. “What is this?”

“That is the Hintervold. It comprises all the lands to the north and east past the old Cymrian realm. I have some maps if you’d like to see them.”

She was beginning to grow nauseated. “Some other time, if you don’t mind. Tell me more about the Cymrians, please.”

Llauron glanced out the window into the darkness. “Well, I can tell you a little, but it’s a rather long story.”

“A very long time ago, the last of the Seren kings, whose name was Gwylliam, made the discovery that the island nation of which he was the rightful ruler was doomed to dissolve in fire. The ancient manuscripts I’ve studied are not clear on how he came to know this, but kings of Serendair were often gifted with foresight, and knew a great many things indisputably.” Numbness tingled at Rhapsody’s temples. She had never heard of Gwylliam.

“Centuries before, the Island had sustained widespread damage when a star fell from the sky into the sea,” Llauron continued. “It caused a great deluge which split the island and buried much of it beneath the waves. It was not hard to believe that something such as that could happen again.”

Rhapsody struggled to breathe normally. She was familiar with the legend of the Sleeping Child, the story Llauron was now telling her.

Her mother had told her the Lirin tale of two stars that were sisters, Melita and Oelendra; how Melita had fallen from the sky and into the sea at the land’s edge, settling below the waves but still churning with unspent fire. Islands to the north of Serendair, formerly mountaintops, became tropical from the heat, and the seas between them raged, making it treacherous for ships to sail near them.

The star at the bottom of the sea became known as the Sleeping Child. The Lirin believed that one day it might awaken and rise again, taking the rest of the island to the depths with it when it did. The sister star, Oelendra, was said to have fallen in despair, leaving its light still burning in the sky even after its death. She had thought the stories to be myths.

Llauron’s voice came back to her as if through a fog. “Gwylliam was, by nature and training, an architect, an engineer, a smith. He refused to accept his kingdom’s death knell, and instead decided to find a way to preserve the culture that his royal line had fought so hard to protect.”

“He undertook great plans to evacuate the Island, although some of his subjects, notably from the older races, such as the Liringlas, chose to stay behind rather than leave, even in the face of impending disaster. Others chose to travel to nearby landmasses within the shipping lanes that had been plied by Seren sailors for centuries.”

“But Gwylliam was not satisfied with either of those alternatives. He wanted to find a place where the Seren culture of all its races could be preserved, a sanctuary for his subjects where they could rebuild their civilization. To that end he chose a sailor, a man of Ancient Seren stock, who was called Merithyn—the Explorer. He was sent out in a small ship, alone, to find a suitable place to relocate the Seren who wanted to flee.”

“By the way, let me clarify the difference between Seren and Ancient Seren. Any citizen of what was at the time modern Serendair, regardless of race, was Seren, though since they came here they have been referred to exclusively as Cymrians. The Ancient Seren were a particular race, tall, gold-skinned people from long before the races of man colonized Serendair. They died out, for the most part, well prior to the era I am telling you about.” Rhapsody, herself Seren, nodded numbly.

“Eventually Merithyn came to this place, which at the time was the impenetrable realm of a dragon named Elynsynos; that’s much too long a story to get into tonight, but if you stay for a while, I will be more than happy to relate it to you.”

“At any rate, Elynsynos took to him, and sympathized with the plight of his nation, so she invited them to come and live within her lands, the places you now see, for the most part, in green on the map. Merithyn returned with the news happily, and the Seren came to this land in three fleets of ships.”

“Eight hundred and seventy-six ships set out, though considerably fewer landed, and they sailed in three Waves, which all left and landed at different times and in different places. It was harrowing, and difficult, but they survived, and eventually met up again, banding together to form the greatest nation this land has ever seen, and ushered in the most enlightened Age it has ever known. But that civilization has been gone for a very long time.”

Rhapsody tried to maintain her composure. “I still don’t understand why they were called Cymrians. Didn’t you say they were from Serendair?”

The Invoker stood up again and stretched, then crossed the room to a case where a strange, rocklike object was displayed under glass. Rhapsody followed him, fighting rising hysteria. He pointed at the rock, into which runes had been carved. She stared down at the words through the glass.

“Can you read this, my dear?”

Rhapsody nodded. It was written in a combination of what Llauron had referred to as Old Cymrian, the language of her father, the common tongue of her homeland, and the strange language of sailors and merchants that was universally used in shipping trade.

“Come we in peace, from the grip of death to life in this fair land.”

Llauron smiled approvingly. “Very good. This was Gwylliam’s command to Merithyn, the salutation with which he was to greet anyone in the new land he might find.”

“Gwylliam translated it into a universal tongue, to expand its chance of being recognized somewhere in the world. They were Merithyn’s first words to Elynsynos, words he carved upon her lair, with her permission, of course, as a signpost to any who might come after him.”

“When the Cymrians arrived, each fleet having landed in a different place, they left markers along the way as they traveled to find each other again and make their settlements. Those historical paths are called the Cymrian Trails, and they were the origin of the name Cymrian.”

“The indigenous people of the land, like the Lirin of the Great Forest of Tyrian, saw the words on the signposts or were greeted with the words upon meeting these refugees, and began to refer to them as Cymrians, which is why their appellation sounds like ‘come.’ So it has come to mean the people of the Lost Island, and their descendants, without regard to race or class, for all were represented on the ships.”

“I see,” said Rhapsody politely, but inside she was feeling the world spin. “How long ago was this?”

“Well, the fleets departed just shy of fourteen centuries ago.” Rhapsody gasped in spite of herself. “What?” Llauron smiled. “Yes, it may seem hard to believe, but fourteen centuries ago a civilization lived here that gave us many of our greatest inventions and contributions to our culture. They were, in some ways, even more advanced than we are now. It was the war that changed it, the war that ended the Cymrian Age and set us back many centuries. Are you all right, my dear? You look pale.”

“I—I’m really very tired,” Rhapsody said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course you are; how thoughtless of me.” Llauron went to the door and called into the study. “Gwen? Is our guest’s room ready?”

A moment later Gwen came into the office. “All ready, Your Grace. The bed has been turned down.”

“Good, good,” said the Invoker. “Why don’t you head up with Gwen, my dear? Have a good night’s rest and sleep in late. I’m sure you could use it after your long journey.”

Rhapsody nodded as if in a trance. She made a slight bow in Llauron’s direction. “Good night, and thank you.”

“Not at all. Sleep well.” His eyes twinkled merrily in the firelight as she left the room and followed Gwen up the stairs again, clutching the railing.

Her room was at the end of a long, crooked hallway. Gwen not only had turned down the blankets but had slid several warm stones under them to drive the chill from the sheets.

The room itself was simple and neat, with a chest, chair, and looking glass in addition to the bed, as well as a coat peg and sword rack. A small glass window looked out a different side of the house than she had seen, though nothing was visible in the dark. The woolen blankets on the bed had been woven with hex signs for protection from nightmares. Rhapsody wondered ruefully how potent they were. To spare her from her dreams would require nothing short of a miracle.

As the door closed behind her she sat down on the bed numbly, unable to allow the thoughts to come through sensibly. The Island of Serendnir prior to its destruction.

Llauron had said that Gwylliam had foreseen its ruin, but perhaps that had not occurred. Prophets made predictions all the time that never came to pass, like the soothsayer in the Thieves’ Market in Easton. Then she thought back to her nightmare on the Root, the image of the star falling into the sea, the burning walls of water enveloping the land, and knew that it had come to pass. It was a premonition; Serendair was gone.

Even if they had survived the catastrophe, even if they had been among the refugees who survived the voyage, no one she had ever known or loved would still be alive. Her heart twisted in misery at the thought of her parents and her brothers. Her father was definitely gone, dead for centuries, more than a millennium, if Llauron was to be believed. Her mother was Lirin, and therefore by race blessed with a longer life span; some Lirin had been known to live as long as five hundred years. But almost three times that length of time had passed. She was gone as well, and her brothers, too. Rhapsody felt her heart shatter under the weight of the agony.

She crawled into the bed and curled up like a baby in the womb, trying to remember her life before the nightmare of the Root. It would be easy to curse Achmed now, but it was really her own fault.

She had been headstrong and thoughtless as a young girl, running away from home. Some of the price of her foolishness she had paid herself; life on the street had been unspeakable in its horror for a while. But the worst part was knowing the pain she had caused her family, the despair they must have felt, wondering what had happened to her. The only salvation from the crushing guilt had been the intention and the knowledge that someday she would find a way to go home. And now that was gone, too.

One by one her brothers’ faces came into her memory, smiling and laughing. She could almost feel her father’s strong embrace, her mother’s gentle caress. All gone now. She’d never see any of them again, never fall asleep to the sound of her mother singing. Never feel truly safe again.

A lump of anguish took hold in her throat. The Past was too painful to contemplate, the Future more so. Exhausted and overwrought, Rhapsody fell into a troubled sleep.

Her dreams were even more terrifying than they normally were, visions of great walls of water crushing children beneath them as they consumed the land, tall golden people immolated by a bursting star, Sagia sinking slowly beneath the waves with the Lirin in its arms.

In the last of her dreams, she stood in a village consumed by black fire, while soldiers rode through the streets, slaying everyone in sight. In the distance at the edge of the horizon she saw eyes, tinged in red, laughing at her. And then, as a bloodstained warrior rode down on her like a man possessed, she was lifted up in the air in the claw of a great copper dragon.

Rhapsody woke, gasping for breath. She reached out for Grunthor, who had been her source of comfort from the nightmares, but the grinning green face was nowhere to be found. The room and the bed had grown cold while she slept, but as she came to consciousness her anguish roared back, and the fire within her raised the temperature of the air around her immediately.

It was almost morning. Gray light was filling the sky outside her window, signaling the approach of another dawn. Somehow the world seemed different today, although nothing had occurred in the night. The changes were centuries ago; the world had been inexorably altered while she was crawling within it. A great deal of time had passed. What she didn’t understand was how it had managed to miss her. She looked into the mirror to find a face not vastly older from when she had left, at least to her view.

Rhapsody went to the window and looked out into the wakening sky. Dawn would be coming soon; she needed to sing her morning devotions, wanted the comfort of the memory of her mother teaching them to her beneath the sky half a world away. She was afraid of being alone with the knowledge of the Island’s death, but had no one to share it with—no one living, at least.

Even if she could find Achmed and Grunthor, who were undoubtedly far away by now, neither of them would feel moved to any sadness at the loss. Achmed, in fact, having been hunted, would probably celebrate, and that would be more than she could bear. She made the bed, then walked to the coat peg and took down the hooded cape Khaddyr had given her.

Rhapsody made her way quietly down the stairs so as not to disturb the Invoker and his staff. She opened the heavy door slowly and nodded to the guards, who stared at her. They said nothing, so she passed between them, then through the snow-covered garden and over the fields to the Tree.

The dawn was just beginning to break as she arrived at the edge of the meadow. Rhapsody walked between a stately maple and a towering elm in the circle of guardian trees and came, for the first time, within clear sight of the trunk. The bark of the Great White Tree caught the first ray of the sun and glimmered in the morning air, heavy with fog. As the light touched it, the song of the Tree deepened, then soared, as if it too was greeting the dawn with music.

Rhapsody closed her eyes, feeling the tones of the Tree rumble through her. For the first time in as long as she could remember she felt small, insignificant in the presence of so much magnificence, of such inestimable power.

But there was also a familiarity to the lifesong that was humming within her. The melody of the Great White Tree was very much the same as the song of Sagia, a deep, abiding presence that spoke to her soul. It was a part of her; it would sustain her through her loss, even though her heart would never heal.

Softly she sang her morning aubade and, when the devotions were finished, whistled the all-clear, the signal for which Achmed was waiting. Then she left the ring of guardian trees and hurried back to the house.

She exited the tree-circle from a different place, taking the path between an enormous holly-berry bush and an engilder, a slender, silvery tree she had known from the old land. From where she now stood she could see a different side of Llauron’s keep, a winding side garden that led around behind the house.

In the distance she could hear the sound of the Filids beginning their day, tending to their labors. Still seeing no one in the meadow, she walked around to the back of the keep and found herself in expansive gardens for as far as the eye could see.

Llauron’s lands reached out to the forest again a mile or more away. In between the house and the woods were trees and ponds that dotted the landscape, around which beds of herbs and flowers had been built. Here and there marble benches stood where the leaves of the trees would cast shade in summer. The garden slept now in the depth of winter, the beds mulched and packed with snow.

Near the back of the house stood a young ash tree, tall and vigorous, beneath which grew a small sheltered herb garden. Llauron was sitting on the ground next to the tree, tending the plants in the beds, singing in a mellow baritone that sent shivers up her back. It was not the beauty of his voice that made her tremble, but the vibrations issuing forth from it.

He was using musical lore, the skills of a Singer, though it was clear from the occasional vocal wobble and the incorrect phrasing that he was not one himself. The song was a simple one, though she did not recognize the language. She opened her mouth to offer a few simple changes that would make the song work better; it was a song of warmth and healing, obviously meant to sustain the plants through the winter. She closed it again rapidly as Achmed’s words came ringing back to her.

And when we do make contact, let’s keep as much information as possible among ourselves until we agree to share any of it. It’s safer for all of us that way.

As she approached, the Invoker stopped singing and turned to meet her. A smile lit up the wrinkled face.

“Well, well, good morning, my dear. I trust you slept well?”

Rhapsody thought back to the terrifying nightmares. “Thank you for the use of such a lovely room,” she said.

“Not at all. I hope you will be staying for a while.” He began to get up.

Rhapsody came to him, forestalling his attempt to stand, and sat on the bench beneath the ash tree. The stone was cold, causing a shiver to race through her. “What was the song you were singing?”

“Ah, that. It’s a healing song intended for the plants, a piece of lore passed down from the Filids of Serendair. I use it to help some of my medicine garden through the nastier weather, keep it healthy. The more fragile plants I keep inside, of course, but there is only so much room, after all. Besides, Mahb here likes the music, too.” He patted the ash tree beside him.

“Mahb?” It sounded like the Serenne word for son.

“Yes, yes, he looks after the garden, keeps away any man or beast or malevolent spirit that might bring it harm, don’t you, old boy?” Llauron looked the young tree up and down, then leaned forward conspiratorially. “Confidentially, I don’t think he likes Khaddyr much,” he said, his eyes twinkling. Rhapsody smiled wanly. “Now, perhaps I could impose on you to add your lovely voice to my own, and do the plants some real benefit.”

Rhapsody looked surprised. “Excuse me?”

“Now, my dear, don’t be modest. I can tell you are a Singer of great skill, perhaps even a Namer, yes?” She blinked; the chilly wind blew over her body, suddenly moist with sweat, causing her to shiver. “When you speak, you make the day a little brighter by the sound of your voice. It’s really quite beautiful, my dear. I can only imagine how you sound when you sing. I hope you will not leave me guessing much longer. Come, favor my plants with a song.”

The dilemma of what to do next tied a substantial knot in her stomach. Llauron had already guessed something critically important about her. To deny it would be to lie, to dodge, to be rude. She sighed silently.

“If you’d like,” she said at last. “But I don’t know the song you were singing. Why don’t you begin, and I’ll join in when I have learned it.”

“Fine.” Llauron went back to his work, singing the odd song again. The pattern became obvious to her after a few bars, and tentatively she began to sing along, correcting the flaws in his musical line. As he noted the changes Llauron matched her, and when he was carrying the melody correctly, she threw in a harmonic line for good measure. When she looked back down at the medicine garden the plants appeared somewhat healthier, though the exact nature of the change was hard to detect.

Llauron nodded approvingly. “Excellent! I was right, wasn’t I, my dear? You are a Namer.”

Rhapsody looked off into the distance to avoid meeting his eyes. They were bright blue, with a sharp edge to them, and she knew if she wasn’t careful he would size her up even further. “I did achieve that status, yes.”

“I thought as much. Well, thank you. That should keep the garden quite nicely, at least until the end of this thaw. Come, let’s go inside. You’re cold, and I’m finished here anyway.” He rose with more agility than his age suggested and led her into the house through a back door.

The door opened into a vast kitchen, with an enormous hearth and brick ovens enough to feed an entire farm’s hands easily. A copper hook hung over the fire with a kettle steaming away. Llauron warmed his hands in the steam and then swung the kettle out, removing it from the hook with a thick, clean rag.

“I was expecting you might want some tea,” he said, filling a china pot that had been left on a central table. “Are you still feeling worn out from your journey?”

“A little.”

The Invoker smiled. “Well, then, we’ll just mix you a tea with some properties to revive you a bit. Have you ever taken mim’s lace internally?”

Rhapsody shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Llauron turned away and walked to a large storage cabinet, pulling forth many small sacks of loosely woven burlap. “I’m not surprised; it’s indigenous to this area. What about spring saffron?”

It suddenly occurred to her that Llauron might be using his tea inventory to isolate the place from which she had come by her knowledge of the herbs. “Whatever you’re having is fine, I’m sure,” she said hastily.

“Well, then, I think we shall mix some of that with dried orange blossoms, sweet fern, and raspberry leaves.”

“You have raspberry leaves in winter?”

“Yes, in the glass garden. Would you like to see it?”

“Yes, indeed. This smells wonderful, by the way.” She picked up the steaming cup Llauron set before her and followed him through a door in the kitchen into a structure that adjoined it.

Three walls of the room were made of glass, with a strange hearth in the center. The bottom of the hearth was filled with stones that glowed red with heat, over which two large copper kettles hung, filling the air with steam.

Between the kettles was a large iron brazier filled with granite-like stones, also heated red-hot. A metal cone hung from the ceiling above, dripping water slowly onto the coals, where it hissed into vapor. As a result, the room was heavy with warm moisture, which served to keep alive the thriving plants that filled the glass garden in rows, one on top of the other.

Rhapsody walked between the crowded banks of plants, enjoying the sense of false summer. She looked up at the dripping machine that was spattering droplets of moisture into the air. “What a fascinating device.”

“Oh, you like that, do you? Rather ingenious, I would say. I wish I could take credit for it, but it was my father who designed and built it as a gift for my mother. She loved orchids and other hothouse flowers.”

“You have some very interesting plants in here.”

“Well, as I said before, you’re more than welcome to stay here and learn the lore of the Filids, if you wish. There are many aspects of nature worship that I think you might enjoy, having a propensity for some of them already. I will tend to many of your lessons myself; it will be a nice break from my work.”

“I don’t want to take you away from your duties, Your Grace.”

The Invoker smiled. “Nonsense, my dear. The nice thing about being in charge is that you get to say when you can leave. And do call me Llauron, you’re making me feel old. So, what will it be? Can you stay? Or do you have somewhere else you need to be?”

Rhapsody looked up into the twinkling blue eyes that were watching her intently. An uneasy feeling came over her; it was as if Llauron could see inside her. Even the scholars at the music academy were not able to tell a Namer from his or her speaking voice. That this pleasant, elderly man seemed to know things about her that he shouldn’t made her feel even more vulnerable than she had that morning under the Tree. Still, she was here to learn more. She might as well be gracious about it.

“No,” she said finally. “There’s nowhere else I need to be, not for a while, at least.”