Rhapsody: Child of Blood

3

The walls of the vast city could no longer be seen and darkness was swallowing the meadows that surrounded Easton long before the three travelers stopped to make camp. They had left the city by the eastern gate, down by the docks.

Easton was a port city, a thriving relic left over from the days of the racial campaigns in the Second Age. Though its original planning, and recent attempts at restoration, saw it as a great center of art and culture at the crux of the trade routes, during the wars it had been refitted for defense, as a walled fortress, surrounded on three sides by great stone bulwarks eighteen feet thick leading down to the wharf. The bustle of the seafaring traffic made handy cover for their escape.

Rhapsody had run through the back streets of Easton before, had even been dragged once or twice, but never as purposefully as with these two who half-led, half-carried her through the yards and cobbled alleys. She was able to keep up with them only because of her knowledge of the city.

When they cut through two abandoned buildings well after the point where she was sure they were out of tracking range, however, she lost her bearings. Certainly they had also lost anyone who might have identified them at the scene of the crime. In front of a busy portside tavern, the slighter man stopped.

“These will do,” he said, then stole two horses in broad daylight.

The giant lifted Rhapsody onto one of the horses, and they walked a few blocks before the men mounted and rode quickly out of town, across the fields south and along the sea.

The giant rode slightly behind, and Rhapsody could hear the horse working hard to keep up with the pace set by the man with thin hands. In fact, even though she rode in front of him, in the same saddle, she could not hear his breath. It felt only as if she were wearing a modestly heavy cloak instead of sitting in front of a person intent on escape, guiding the horse from behind her. The vibrations from the galloping horse hid her trembling.

They rode the entire afternoon. Rhapsody had never been outside of Easton’s southern wall before, and kept casting mournful backward glances at the great gray vista of mud-and-thatch buildings, decaying marble temples, ramshackle stone houses, and towering statuary receding more and more into the twilight with each moment. At dusk she could barely make out the high, twisting wall that led down to the harbor, where distant lights were twinkling; it was nothing more than a faint black line in the approaching darkness.

Once they were out of sight of the city, they slowed their pace, but it was clear that the two men intended to put as much distance between themselves and Easton as possible. Even as night fell and Rhapsody had to acknowledge to herself that she was lost, and might have been kidnapped, not rescued as she first thought, they pressed on.

For a while Rhapsody had felt it was dangerous to the horses to keep moving when no one could possibly see a safe path. Then, without a sign or warning, they stopped. The night had come into itself, and the riders were surrounded by darkness.

“Get down.” The voice seemed to come from the air.

Before she could react the smaller man quickly moved her from the saddle. He was down himself in an instant, and with a swift motion threw the reins to the other man.

“Grunthor, lose the horses.” The veiled man vanished into the night.

Rhapsody lost sight of him almost immediately. She turned to the shape that the darkness made even more huge, simultaneously backpedaling a step and reaching quietly for the knife in her wrist sheath.

Grunthor did not look at her, but dismounted, tied up the reins on each horse, and stepped back.

“Get on with ya,” he said, but the animals were so spent that they hardly reacted. As if he had anticipated this, the giant removed his helmet and moved to a spot directly in front of the horses, where both of them could see him clearly, even with all trace of twilight faded from the sky. He spread his arms and roared.

The sound rumbled and echoed through the horseflesh and through Rhapsody. For a moment the mounts were frozen, but after a breath they were reanimated and fled in the panic of prey in sight of the predator, wild-eyed and screaming.

Grunthor replaced his helmet and turned to Rhapsody. He took one look at the expression on her face and roared with laughter.

“’Allo, darlin’. Oi’m so glad to see it’s love at first sight for you, too. Come along.” He walked away into the night.

Rhapsody was not sure that it was wise to follow the giant, but was sure it was even less so to make him angry, so she took off after him. She struggled to keep up, trying to sort things out in her head. “Where are we going? Are we walking all the way?”

“Doubtful. We already been on forced march today.”

At the edge of the horizon the full moon appeared and began to rise, golden, blanketed in the fog at the edge of the sea. Its light did nothing to illuminate the darkness; impenetrable blackness hung, heavy as pitch, in the summer air. Rhapsody thought she had good night vision, but she was still moving along more by touch and sound than sight.

She trailed after the giant as he followed a path that was apparently only visible to him until she nearly stepped into a small fire. Grunthor had sidestepped at the last second and had to put his arm in front of her to keep her from putting her boot directly into the flames.

A camp was already made. She was not sure if she didn’t see it because he was in the way, blocking her view, or because of the darkness of the night, or the way the camp had been placed.

Grunthor moved to a spot upwind of the fire, took off his helmet, and drew a long breath before sitting down. He had paid little attention to her so far, and even though it would put her directly into his line of vision, Rhapsody went to the opposite side, keeping the fire between them, and dropped her pack to the ground. She wasn’t bothered by smoke, and thought the flames might provide at least a small barrier if necessary.

In the firelight she took a good look at the giant across from her. Sitting on the ground, he was easily still eye to eye with her, which meant that he was a minimum of seven feet tall and at least as wide as a dray horse.

Beneath his heavy military greatcoat she caught a glint of metal. His armor was foreign to her, and better-made than she would have guessed. It looked like a kind of reptile-scale leather banded by support joints of metal plate, but she had not heard any scrape or other resonance from it the whole time. She was slightly alarmed that she had not heard much from his many weapons, either. He wore an extremely large ax and several wicked-looking blades, and had a number of hilts and handles jutting out from behind his armor.

His face was even more frightening. At least one tooth protruded past his lips, and it was difficult to tell what color his hide-like skin was in the inconstant light. His eyes, ears, and nose were exaggeratedly large on his face, and Rhapsody guessed that he was able to see, hear, and smell her much better than she could him. At the ends of his massive hands were talon-like nails that more accurately resembled claws. He was the stuff of an adult’s nightmare. At the moment he was pulling food and something to cook it in from his pack, still ignoring her.

“Let me guess; you’ve heard of Firbolg but you never met one before, right?”

The sandy voice of the other man spoke directly behind her and Rhapsody jumped. She had not sensed his presence at all. She stared across the crackling flames at the giant. “You’re Firbolg? You don’t seem it.”

“And just what do ya mean by that?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,” she replied, her face turning red in the light of the campfire. “It’s just that, well, in my limited experience, Firbolg are thought of as monsters.”

“And in my not-so-limited experience, Lirin are thought of as appetizers,” Grunthor replied breezily, without rancor.

“I assume it’s your preference not to adopt either of those assumptions,” said the cloaked figure.

“Absolutely,” said Rhapsody, smiling and shuddering at the same time. She had a feeling the giant wasn’t kidding.

The thin man dropped a pile of rabbit carcasses near the giant.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Rhapsody. I’m a student of music. A Singer.”

“Why was the town guard chasing you?”

“Much to my surprise, and chagrin, they were in the service of an imbecile who was looking to have me brought to him.”

“Brought to him for what?”

“I assume for entertainment purposes.”

“Does this imbecile have a name?”

“He calls himself Michael, the Wind of Death. Many of us call him similar, if less flattering, things behind his back.”

The two men exchanged a glance, then the man in the cloak looked back at her again. “How do you know him?”

“I’m sorry to say he was a customer of mine three years ago when I was working as a prostitute,” Rhapsody answered frankly. “It wasn’t really by choice, but not much is when that’s your profession. Unfortunately, he became a bit obsessed with me, and he told me at the time he would return for me, but he was such a pompous windbag that I never was much concerned about it. The first of several miscalculations on my part. The second occurred today, when he sent one of his slimy minions to fetch me, and I refused to come. If it had been his regular lackeys, I could have eluded them, but he’s managed to enlist the aid of the town guard since I last saw him.”

“Why didn’t you just agree to meet ’im, and then go into ’iding?”

“That would be lying.”

“So?” said the cloaked one. “That would be living.”

“I never lie. I can’t.”

Grunthor chuckled. “What a convenient memory ya got there, sister. Oi seem to remember you tellin’ them town guards that you and we was related. Oi think you might look a bit out o’ place at our family gatherin’s.”

“No,” interjected the sandy-voiced man. His eyes were full of clear comprehension as they stared at her. “That’s why you asked us to adopt you first.”

Rhapsody nodded. “Right. My attempt to dissuade them from bothering me wouldn’t have worked if it wasn’t the truth, at least on some level.”

“Why not?”

“Lying is forbidden in the profession I have chosen; if you don’t speak the truth, you can’t be a Namer, the highest form of Singer. You have to keep the music in your speech on-key and attuned to the world around you. Lying corrupts those vibrations, and sullies what you have to say. It’s not an exact science, since truth is partially influenced by perspective.”

“That’s the academic reason. As a more personal philosophy, my parents always told me deceit was wrong. More recently, it’s because once I broke free of my old, uh, line of work, the thing I treasured most was the truth. There really isn’t any in being a whore—you are always someone else’s lie. And you have to bite your tongue and participate in other people’s fantasies, many of which you can’t stomach.”

“So now that I am free of that life, I couldn’t contain my loathing of Michael for one minute more. It was probably a mistake, but I’m not sure I could have done anything differently and still have lived with myself.”

“Well, there’s no ’arm done.”

“Yes there is. I just exiled myself from Easton. I probably blinded one of the town guard in my attempt to escape, and now I can’t go back.”

The smaller man laughed. “I doubt there are any eyewitnesses.”

“Maybe not that saw you,” said Rhapsody. “There were many more that saw me—they chased me for eight street corners.”

“Then you have a problem.” The cloaked man sat back, surveying the field as the smoke from the fire formed a twisted tendril that pointed to the stars. “You could simply choose not to go back. Have you a family you would leave behind, or perhaps one elsewhere on which you can rely?”

The utter indifference in his voice gave Rhapsody the feeling that this was an interrogation, not an attempt at friendly advice. She was fairly sure she had been able to persuade them that she was harmless and relatively valueless, but the fatigue of the flight and uncertainty of her situation was beginning to take its toll. By now the giant Firbolg had skinned the rabbits and arranged the fire to cook them. Rhapsody did not know whether to expect them to offer her anything, but she would hardly have been surprised to see the game eaten raw. When she first undertook to become a Singer, one of the earliest lessons was an epic song of Firbolg history that had left a grisly impression on her, and her two rescuers had done little to change it.

The men moved as though they had traveled together for a long time. There was a routine to the tasks of preparing the meal that spoke of practice and mutual respect. The thin man had killed the rabbits; the giant skinned them. The giant arranged the fire; the other man found fuel. The entire meal, from the meat to some root that also required cooking, was accomplished and the campsite laid out without a word, one to the other. They behaved almost as if she were not there at all. Grunthor did motion at her once, across the fire, with a skewer heavy with sizzling meat, but she shook her head. “No, thank you.”

For her part, she rationed out a small portion of the bread Pilam had given her, and stored it in a pocket of her cloak rather than return it to her pack. She was feeling more and more uneasy about her companions by the minute, and wanted to be ready to flee if necessary. Her pack was not within easy reach. Normally she would never have considered leaving her instruments, but when he stopped to eat, Rhapsody had caught sight of the thin man’s face.

She tried to look at first without appearing to look, but as horrifying as the giant was, she was unprepared for the shock of the slightly more human face.

In the whole expanse of skin on the front of his head there was not a single smooth spot. It was not lumpy, but scarred, pocked, and it was marked with traceries of exposed veins. She had seen diseased faces, and faces marred by time and weapons and other scourges, drink and worse, but here it looked as if the entire army of Destiny’s Horsemen had run roughshod over his face, sharply clipping flesh from his nose, thrusting the rest around with the force of their riding.

What truly caught her, though, were his eyes. As if plucked from two different heads, neither size, nor color, nor shape were matched in them, and their placement in this remarkable and terrifying face was not even symmetrical. He looked as if he were sighting down a weapon. Just then she became aware that he was staring back at her.

Rhapsody had been in the city long enough and was a quick enough reader of people to seldom be caught looking. Her recovery was swift, if fumbling: “So where are you headed next?”

“Off Island.”

She smiled uncertainly. “You must have irritated someone really important, too.”

A cloud passed over the moon. Rhapsody could vaguely tell that she should be aware of something.

She continued to stare at him through the fire, which seemed to have changed ever-so-slightly, and as she watched the thin man chewing, she saw the fire roar up and reflect in his eyes. She imagined that he was staring at her while chewing on her answers instead of the roasted rabbit she now felt foolish to have refused. Everyone deserves a last meal, she thought ruefully.

Somewhere in the deepest part of her, the part of her that was a Namer, a storysinger, she heard her own musical note ring through the roaring of the fire, through the silence of the men. The clarity of her Naming note, her touchstone of truth, told her that this was a trap, a trick of the fire. Then she saw the thin hands and the battlefield face step through the fire itself, and she knew it was too late to escape. She blinked with eyelids made heavy by more than exhaustion; the smoke must have contained a hypnotic herb with which she was not familiar.

He was angry, but he did not touch her. Instead, he grabbed her pack from the ground next to her and began rifling through it.

“Who are you?” the cloaked man demanded. His voice was a fricative hissing, his cloak still smoky from his leap over the flames. He waited for an answer.

“Hey, put that down.” She tried to stand but satisfied herself with shaking off the trance.

The giant stood up. “Oi wouldn’t do that if Oi were you, miss. Just answer the question.”

“I already told you; my name is Rhapsody. Now put that down before you break something.”

“I never break anything unless I mean to. Now, try again. Who are you?”

“I thought I got it right the first time. Let’s see; I’ll try again. Rhapsody. Isn’t that what I said before?” Her head was swimming, her answers seemed fuzzy. “What did you put in the fire?”

“I’m about to put your hair in it. How did you know who I am?” He grabbed her injured arm with fingers that behaved more like shears, cutting off feeling to her wrist and hand. Without moving, her muscle began to spasm. There was a small shock of painful interrupted bloodflow at each heartbeat.

Rhapsody did not react. One advantage she had always had was that she could stand a little abuse. She had also learned that hiding her pain and fear could keep her alive.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I have no idea who you are. Now let go.”

“In the alley you named me before those guards.”

Even though her fingers were going numb, Rhapsody remained steady. You gentlemen are just in time to meet my brother. Brother, these are the town guard. Gentlemen, this is my brother—Achmed—the Snake. Despite her drugged state, she felt embarrassment.

“I needed an ally at that moment, and you just happened to be there,” she said. “It was the first scary name that came into my head, even if in hindsight it was rather, well—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to presume.”

“That’s not the part ’e’s talkin’ about,” said Grunthor. “’Ow did you know ’e’s the Brother?”

“Whose brother?”

For a moment, Rhapsody thought it had gone too far, that she was going to pass out. With each question the sensation that he was severing her arm with his grip grew more urgent. Suddenly, he relaxed his hold on her and looked across the fire at his partner, then back at her.

“I certainly hope you’re only pretending to be this stupid.”

“No, I’m afraid not. I have no idea what you are talking about. Is your name supposed to mean something to me?”

“No.”

“Then could you let go?”

Grunthor moved to help her stand as the man with the nightmare face released her and returned to searching her bag.

“What ’e’s sayin’ is, those troops after you were nothing next to what’s chasin’ us. This is a serious business, miss. My friend wants to know ’ow you knew ’e is the Brother.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of the Brother, if that’s your name. I was trying to convince them that you were my brother. That’s why I asked if you would adopt me, so that it would be true. I guess this was an unfortunate coincidence. But I’ve already told you I never lie. So either believe me, or kill me, but do not break my instruments.”

“I’ll smash every one here if you do not tell me the whole truth. Perhaps you had well-meaning parents. Perhaps you were once a professional whore, perhaps you took a vow. Perhaps you now are the consort of some holier-than-unholy man who gets his jollies from your candor. Tell me now who you really are and how you knew to name me.”

“First, tell me who you both are, and what you intend to do with me.”

The piercing eyes regarded her sharply. “This is Grunthor. No one has concealed that.”

The giant glanced at her quickly. “Although you can always call me The Ultimate Authority, to Be Obeyed at All Costs,” he said lightly. “My troops always does.”

The joke had its intended effect. The robed man exchanged a look with the giant, then seemed to relax somewhat.

“At the moment, Achmed is as apt an appellation as anything for me, since that is what you chose to call me,” he said sullenly. “As to who I am, and your fate, both of those are yet to be determined. You spoke my name and then changed it. Normally this would only be an annoyance, but those who are hunting us can make the dead speak, and surely will if they feel they can learn something. Those dead idiots heard what you said. What is a trollop doing with expensive instruments?”

Rhapsody rubbed her shoulder, feeling the pain begin to abate.

“I am not a trollop. As I told you before, I am a student of music, and I have achieved the status of Singer of Lirin lore; our word for it is Enwr. My goal was to go on to become a Namer, a Canwr; it is a rare accomplishment but the skills are useful.”

“Four years ago I was accepted as an apprentice. I studied for three of those years with Heiles, a Namer of great renown who lived in Easton, but a year or so ago he vanished without a trace, and I was left to finish my studies on my own. I was completing my final research just this morning.”

“What can you do?”

Rhapsody shrugged, then held her throbbing hands closer to the fire.

“Assorted things. The main thing Singers study is lore. Sometimes lore consists of old tales or the history of a race or a culture. Sometimes it’s the knowledge of a particular discipline, like herbalism or astronomy. Sometimes it’s a collection of songs that tell an important story which would otherwise be lost.”

The man now known as Achmed stared at her. “And sometimes it’s the knowledge of ancient powers.”

Rhapsody swallowed nervously. The subject of lore was more akin to a religious belief than a science. It was the way in which the people of her race and profession derived wisdom and power from the vibrations in the life around them. Since in the Lirin creed Life and God were the same thing, the use of lore was a form of prayer, a kind of communion with the Infinite. It was hardly something she wanted to be discussing with a stranger, and especially not this one.

She looked up to meet his gaze and found an intensity in his eyes that stung her own. It was compelling her to speak, silently demanding an answer.

“Sometimes, yes, but that generally is something known to Namers and Singers of great experience. Even then, the reason a Namer can draw on the power of a primordial element, like fire or wind, or on a lesser element, like time, is that they have intimate knowledge of it; they know its story, in a sense. That’s another reason for the need for the vow of truth among Namers: if you should interject falsity into lore it dilutes its story, makes it weaker for everyone.”

The hooded man stuffed her burlap-wrapped harp back into her pack and cinched the drawstring savagely. “So I’ll ask you again, Singer; what can you do?”

Rhapsody hesitated. The man who had once been known as the Brother lifted her pack off the ground, balancing it precariously on one finger over the fire. It was as subtle a threat as she had ever seen.

“Not very much, outside of singing a rather extensive collection of historical ballads and epics. I can find herbs to throw into the fire to mesmerize people. Obviously that isn’t going to impress you much since you can, too. I can bring sleep to the restless, or prolong the slumber of someone who is already asleep, an especially useful talent for new parents of fussy babies.”

“I can ease pain of the body and the heart, heal minor wounds, and comfort the dying, making their passage easier. Sometimes I can see their souls as they leave for the light. I can tell a story from a few bits of fact and a good dollop of audience reaction. I can tell the absolute truth as I know it. And when I do that I can change things.”

Rhapsody pointed to her pack, and he handed it over. She reached inside without looking, and took out a shriveled flower from her morning study session. Gently, to avoid crumbling what was left of the dried petals, she placed the blossom on her open palm and spoke the name of the flower as it might be said in the humid summer day of its glory.

Slowly, but strongly, the petals drank life into themselves and, as long as she whispered the words, bloomed again. Grunthor touched the flower with the tip of one claw, and it bounced a little, as it might if it were fresh. Then Rhapsody fell silent, and the life evaporated into the darkness.

“In theory, I could also kill a whole field of these by speaking the name of their death, if I knew it. So, I suppose the explanation of this afternoon’s events goes something like this: We came upon each other in the circumstances you know. By happenstance I spoke your true name, for which I apologize most humbly, but it was, after all, an accident. And then I renamed you; now you really are Achmed the Snake, it’s your identity on the deepest possible level. I’m sorry if that was presumptuous. I had no idea I could actually do it yet. I suppose that makes you my first.”

“How ironic,” said the man she had called Achmed, with a sneer. “I wonder how many other men have heard you use those very words.”

“Only one,” she retorted without a hint of offense in her voice. “As I said before, and am tired of repeating, I don’t lie. Not knowingly, anyway.”

“Everyone lies, don’t be naive. I don’t know whether your party trick has shortened the time we have, or covered the trail.”

“Will you at least tell me who you are running from? I have told you all about what I was up to and who was chasing me, and here you have stranded me in the middle of gods-know-where, without a clue about who you are or where you’re going or whether you’re worse than what I left. I want to know if I should stay or take my chances back with the guards.”

“This presumes you will be given a choice.” Achmed turned his back on her and conferred quietly with Grunthor. For a very long moment she was stalled in her frustration and confusion. As her head cleared from the intoxicants she began to plot out how she might escape, and, if successful, find her way to somewhere she could survive. As she rearranged the displaced contents of her pack, Grunthor approached her. She turned quickly, but the other man was gone again.

“Miss, you should come with us.”

“Why? Where?”

“To return to Easton is death. If the Waste o’ Breath don’t get you, then our particular problem will. You won’t ’ave any chance to say you weren’t with us, and they’ll torture you until you tell what you know or die, whatever comes second.”

“I could go to another town. There are plenty of places to hide. I’ll be fine on my own, thank you.”

“Your choice, my dear, but leavin’ is better than stayin’.”

“Where did the other one go?”

“Oh, you mean ‘Uchmed’? Oi believe ’e went to scout for Michael, to make sure ’e ain’t picked up our trail yet.”

Rhapsody’s eyes widened in horror. “Michael? Michael is following us?”

“Could be; it’s ’ard to say. ’E was camped outside the nort’western wall when we left, so ’e probably ain’t too nearby yet unless ’e is particularly intent on findin’ you. Michael ain’t got no trouble with us.”

Rhapsody looked around in the darkness nervously. “Where are you going?”

“You can follow us as far as the forest, if you’d like.”

“The Lirin wood? The Enchanted Forest?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“I thought you said you were headed off Island.”

The giant rubbed his jutting chin. “Oh, we are, believe me. But we’re goin’ to the forest first.”

“What business do you have in the Lirin wood?”

“Actually, we’re on a bit o’ a pilgrimage, miss. We’re gonna go see the Great Tree.”

A look of awe came over Rhapsody’s face. “Sagia? You’re going to Sagia?”

“Yeah, that’s right. We’re gonna pay our respects to the great Lirin Tree.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You aren’t going to harm it, are you? It would be a tremendous mistake on your part.”

Grunthor looked offended. “O’ course not,” he said indignantly. “We intend to do a bit o’ paryin’ there.”

Rhapsody was mollified. “All right,” she said, lifting her pack. “I’ll go with you, at least to the wood.”

“’Ow many miles you got left in you today, miss?”

“Whatever I need to have, I guess.”

“Well, Oi’m afraid that makes you the only one. We been on the road all day, and we’re campin’ ’ere. Why don’t you get some sleep, darlin’? We’ll wake you in time to leave before daylight.”

“Will we be safe? From Michael, I mean.”

A look of utter amusement crossed the giant’s face. “Oh, very safe, my dear. Not to worry.”

“I can sit a watch,” Rhapsody offered. “I have a dagger.”

Achmed’s voice came from behind her in the darkness. “Well, I for one will sleep much better now knowing you’re protecting us, Rhapsody. Try not to hurt any small animals that might attack unless they’re edible.”

In the foothills of the High Reaches, within the Spire, the silent vault of obsidian that was its hidden seat of power, the red-rimmed eyes of the F’dor’s human host broke open in the darkness.

The chain had snapped.

Slowly Tsoltan sat up on the smoothly polished catafalque where he customarily took his repose. He passed his hands through the darkness, grasping futilely for the invisible ends of the metaphysical restraint that had held his greatest trophy in servitude. Nothing; not even a frayed thread of his former absolute control.

The Brother had slipped his leash.

As his anger mounted, the air around the demon-priest grew suddenly dry and thin, on the verge of tangibly cracking. Tsoltan rose quickly and strode down the long hallways to the Deep Chamber.

Sparks ignited behind him, combusting tapestries, altar cloths, and the robes of a few unfortunate priests along the way. His minions gasped for breath in the smothering air and shivered in the black light of the flames, recognizing the fire for what it was—the prelude to the venting of the demon’s wrath.

In fury he ascended the red-veined marble steps to the highest altar, his place of blood sacrifice. A solid block of obsidian, mined in the Second Age by the Nain of the Northern Mountains, it had once been the cornerstone of a temple to the All-God, the Deity of Life, built by the united races.

Now it rested at the top of the enormous staircase of concentric marble circles reaching to the unseen ceiling of the Spire, its leather limb restraints and metal collection vessels amusing testimony to how times had changed. It had seemed a fitting place to store the true name of the Brother, the Dhracian whose birthright had bequeathed him a link to the life’s blood of the populace of Serendair. The Child of Blood, as he was known in some circles.

Vast ceremonial braziers, standing cold and silent, roared to hideous life in a wide, screaming circle of black fire as he raged past. The smoky flames threw grisly shadows on the distant walls, twisting and writhing in grim anticipation.

Upon reaching the sacrificial altar, Tsoltan hesitated for a moment. He extended a shaking hand and gently caressed the symbols of hatred exquisitely carved into the polished surface, tracing the crusted black channels that laced the smooth top, curving downward into a brass well in the center.

Through this metal mouth he had fed the assassin’s captive soul the blood of the Brother’s own race, and, when the Dhracians were largely exterminated, that of other innocents, by way of keeping his unique blood bond alive even in slavery.

It had been especially effective in insuring the Brother’s cooperation in his master plan, though he had no illusions about the assassin’s allegiance. It would have been a coup just to secure his services; the Brother had a reputation, prior to the capture of his true name, for taking only those assignments that he selected himself. His enslavement changed all that. It had made him Tsoltan’s most effective weapon and his primary agent in the completion of the plan’s final steps.

The F’dor’s hands gripped the altar table more firmly now. He muttered the words of Opening in the ancient language of the Before-Time, perverse countersigns of power tied directly to the birth of fire, the element from which all of his race had sprung. The black stone altar glimmered for a moment, then glowed red as the fire within the obsidian burned, liquefying the stone into molten glass. With a hissing snap, the altar split in two.

Tsoltan tore through the layers of aqueous stone inside and reached into the hollow reliquary within the belly of the altar where the Brother’s name had been entombed. When the name had first been brought to the altar to be sealed in the coffer it had been the most singular moment of satisfaction the F’dor had ever experienced, at least in this lifetime.

It was the culmination of great search and great expense, first obtaining the name, and then capturing it. Finally, the greatest Namer in all of Serendair had been persuaded, after months of torture so excruciating that it bordered on artistry, to write the name in musical script on a scroll of ancient silk. Tsoltan himself had taken the scroll from the man’s lifeless hand and surrounded it lovingly with a whirling sphere of protective power, born of firelight and held in place by the spinning of the Earth itself. It had been a thing of great beauty, and securing it within the altar had left him strangely sad, almost bereft of the joy its capture had brought him.

Not, however, as bereft as he felt now. The reliquary held no radiant globe, no Namer’s scroll, only the fragments and crumbs of silk left over from what seemed to have been a small explosion. Feverishly Tsoltan gathered the pieces, searching for the musical script, but what few shreds remained were blank.

A howl of fury echoed through the mammoth chamber, cracking many of the obsidian walls. Tsoltan’s servants waited in dread to be called in, but heard no further sound. A moment later, their apprehension expanded into full-fledged horror. They could feel the darkness fall about them, palpable and cold as a mist on their shoulders.

Tsoltan was summoning the Shing.