When his eyes finally cleared, he fixed them on Rhapsody for a moment, then turned back to the manuscript.
“I have seen something like this once before,” he said, his voice as sandy as the Yarim wind. “It was long ago, in another lifetime, long before we met in the streets of Easton in the old world.” He fell silent again.
Rhapsody pulled the green silken folds of her dusty skirt around her knees and waited.
“Someone I once served as guardian for — a rare and magical being — had an apparatus that looked very much like this. I only saw it once, but it would be impossible to forget such a thing. Like this, it was built into a tower in a clifftop monastery, though not in a mountain peak; Gwylliam had delusions of grandeur that made him feel he could mold the very Earth itself. In the language of its owner, the apparatus was called the Lightcatcher.”
“What did the apparatus do?”
Achmed shook his head, his eyes heavy with memory. “I am not certain. I do remember, however, that when the gravely injured were past the point of being healed by the monks or the priests there, they were taken to the Lightcatcher. Many of them returned, whole. When knowledge was being sought, the priests often asked —”He caught himself, his olive skin turning darker for a moment. “The one who possessed the machine was frequently asked questions that required the ability to see into the future, or across great distances, or into hidden places, and those questions were answered. There were other things as well–things that defy explanation that the Lightcatcher brought about. It was an instrumentality of great power. How it worked, and what its exact capabilities were, I am not certain. I have tried to follow Gwylliam’s directions in the reconstruction of the one he built, but I cannot get the colored glass in the ceiling to the right thickness and porosity.”
“You are rebuilding this?” Rhapsody asked. “Why?”
The Bolg king studied the drawings before him. “If the scant records of the Cymrian War that were preserved in the library of Canrif are to be believed, part of the reason that Anwyn was not able to assail Gwylliam’s stronghold for more than five hundred years was this instrumentality, and whatever powers it had. When she finally broached the mountains, the destruction of the instrumentality was her first objective. Such a powerful tool would aid in making the mountains secure.”
Hot as the day was, a sudden chill swept over Rhapsody. “Do you not believe the mountains to be secure, Achmed?” she asked, concern darkening her green eyes. “Is there a threat that is unknown to the Alliance?”
The Firbolg king shrugged. “There are always threats, Rhapsody. There is no such thing as a lasting peace, only long pauses between episodes of war.”
“Are you certain you and Anborn aren’t related?” Rhapsody asked jokingly.
“If I were to be related to someone in your husband’s odious family, I suppose he is the one I could endure with the least bad taste in my mouth. I respect his ability to not give a roasted rat’s damn what anyone thinks of him. But as for your question, remember that I guard a mountain, and a Child who is the key to the Underworld for the F’dor. Even if we are at peace, I can never be overly prepared. The risk is far too great. And since you were named as the Earthchild’s amelystik, you should be willing to do whatever it takes to tend to her as well, to assure her safety. Helping me in this regard will do that.”
Rhapsody sighed, then carefully separated the top pages of the sheaf from the older, more delicate page at the bottom of the pile, handing them to Achmed as she studied the last one. It was thin and cracked with age, the paper crumbling at its edges. The markings on it were in a script she recognized immediately, being the language in which Lirin Singers trained to become Namers: Serenne, the tongue of the Ancient Seren race, the progenitors of her homeland.
“There is a poem, or frontispiece of a sort here,” she said, studying the whisper-thin strokes of ink. “Serenne is based on musical script, and so it is somewhat hard to equate to spoken language.”
“Your best effort should suffice,” Achmed said impatiently.
“The poem is a sort of roundelay, a verse of a song, but the main lines read something like this:
Seven Gifts of the Creator,
Seven colors of light
Seven seas in the wide world,
Seven days in a sennight,
Seven months of fallow
Seven continents trod, weave
Seven ages of history
In the eye of God.
She turned the parchment slightly toward the light. “It’s graphed like a musical scale, which, by the way, is another seven — seven distinct notes in an octave, the eighth note being the same as the first. It looks as if this is just a part of the poem; the rest is missing.”
“Does it make any sense to you?” Achmed asked.
Rhapsody exhaled. “Not really, except that it is a list of significant sevens.” Her brow furrowed. “One of them seems out of place — the Seven Gifts of the Creator. I had always heard the elements referred to as the Five Gifts, fire, water, earth, air, and ether, so I am not certain what that means.”
“Can you read anything else?”
“There is a list of names beside the words for the different colors in the rainbow — shall I read them to you?”
“Yes.”
She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and bent closer to the parchment page.
“They are marked with the musical symbols for sharp and flat, almost like the signs for positive and negative, all but the last one.
Lisele-ut, or red, Blood Saver, Blood Letter
Frith-re, orange, Fire Starter, Fire Quencher
Merte-mi, yellow, Light Bringer, Light Queller
Kurh-fa, green, Grass Hider, Glade Server
Brige-sol, blue, Cloud Chaser, Cloud Caller
Luasa-ela, indigo, Night Stayer, Night Summoner
Grei-ti, violet, The New Beginning.
When she looked up again, Rhapsody’s face was pale.
“What have you found, Achmed?” she said nervously. “This is old magic, sacred and secret ancient lore; it worries me to see it out in the open like this. Only the most revered of Namers in the old world were allowed access to this sort of lore. These words are the basis of all vibrational code, which gives power to Singers’ music, spell-weavers, healers, and others from the old land that could manipulate power through the vibrations of the living world.”
Achmed said nothing. He made use of vibrational lore himself, in his elemental tie to blood, the tie that allowed him to track and distinguish heartbeats. It was a power that had made him an unerring assassin on the other side of Time.
“What are you going to do with this once you have reconstructed this instrumentality, Achmed?” Rhapsody asked, handing him back the parchment sheets with great care.
The Firbolg king smiled from behind his veils.
“The same thing you have asked me to do here in Yarim–make the lives of your subjects more secure.”
“Why don’t I believe that’s the end of it?” Rhapsody said, rising from the ground and brushing the dry red clay from her gown.
“Because, your choice in husbands notwithstanding, you are not a fool. Now, come. I’m sure there is some stew or gruel left from dinner that you can have, so that you can properly thank Ihrman Karsrick for his hospitality when you return this evening.”
AT OPEN SEA
The seneschal’s reeve spotted the continent even before the lookout in the crow’s nest had opportunity to do so.
“Land, m’lord,” Fergus called, lifting his voice to be heard over the gusting sea breeze.
The seneschal nodded, staring over the starboard bow to the dim gray at the horizon’s edge.
“How much longer?” he asked the captain, his voice dry and crackling in the wet air.
“We have to skirt the coast, m’lord; there’s a dangerous reef between that barriers the Lirin lands between Sorbold and Avonderre. Five days to a week ’til Port Fallon, I would hazard.”
The seneschal nodded, struggling to keep the impatient voice in his head at bay. He listened to the scream of the wind, the snapping of the sails as they filled and slackened, then filled again, bringing him, moment by moment, closer, ever closer. He closed his eyes and let the sun beat down on them from a cloudless sky.
Soon.
11
TOWN SQUARE, YARIM PAAR
Ihrman Karsrick’s efforts notwithstanding, when Achmed, Grunthor, and the Firbolg miners arrived in Yarim Paar that evening, the square was teeming with townspeople.
A fourth contingent of soldiers from the Yarimese army had been sent in to bolster the efforts of the three previously assigned divisions; they ringed the town square around the ancient obelisk and pushed the noisy horde back to the first ring of streets, away from the dry central fountainbed in which Entudenin stood. But word that the Bolg were coming had spread like wildfire throughout the capital, so as the afternoon waned to evening, more and more of the populace of Yarim Paar continued to crowd the dusty roadways, hoping for a glance. By the time Tariz and the other escort troops reached the city center, Yarim Paar was in a state of barely controlled chaos, a carnival-like atmosphere of waving firebrands, shouting and curious merriment bordering on pandemonium.
“Oh, lookee! A splendid buffet of fresh meat!” Grunthor said, loud enough for the escort to hear him, pointing to the clamoring throng. “Oi likes it when my dinner is ’appy, makes the taste sweeter. That Karsrick sure knows ’ow ta make a Bolg feel welcome and well fed. What an ’ost, eh, sir?”
Tariz, who rode at the fore, wheeled and stared at the giant Sergeant, then at the Bolg king.
“He’s speaking in jest, I take it, Your Majesty?”
“Probably,” Achmed replied. “Grunthor doesn’t tend to like dry meat, and Yarim has been without water for so long that you all seem a bit on the stringy side.”
“Too true,” the Sergeant agreed with a comic sigh. “Give me a nice, fresh Lirin! Now, that’s a juicy treat, moist an’ tasty. But ya never know. Ain’t too many Lirin around ’ere. Local cuisine might be just fine.”
The escort troops looked at one another, then halted and dismounted quickly.
“Send an advance guard up the Marketway to the town square, meet up with the second division and bring back enough troops to open a corridor,” Tariz ordered his soldiers. “Push the peasants back; try not to bloody the fools too badly.”
Achmed’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. His personal reasons for coming to Yarim, Rhapsody’s assumptions of his altruism aside, had been to seek her assistance with translating the manuscripts and to find a stained-glass artisan who was a sealed master. In a city known for its tile manufacture, he reasoned, it was not impossible that one might be for hire. He had been assured by Omet that there were many masters from the old school, now scratching out their livings in more humble labors, longing for a return to the days when Yarim had supplied the ceramics, tile, and glass for the great cathedrals and buildings of state, back before the Cymrian War had put an end to all such things. With the swirling chaos filling the streets, however, it would be nearly impossible to find the opportunity to locate such an artisan.
He looked back over his shoulder at his own troops. The Bolg were standing at attention in their simple garb, which seemed grotesquely primitive by comparison with the red tunics, articulated leather armor, and horned helmets of the Yarimese army. Every Firbolg face was set in a mask of stoicism, their eyes directly ahead, disregarding the uproar before them, but he could tell that they were unnerved by the wriggling mass of humanity crowding the streets, shouting and laughing and fighting for the chance to catch a glimpse of them.
Outside the enormous tents that surrounded Entudenin, Rhapsody was growing anxious.
“It’s a spectacle gone mad,” she said nervously to Ashe. “I am not certain they will be safe in the crowd, even with the guards. Right now the townspeople are just curious, but what if the atmosphere turns violent? If either group becomes more afraid than curious, there’s no telling what could occur. If the citizens swarm them, the Bolg may panic, and they will be crushed.”
Ashe nodded in agreement, then turned and pulled the tent flap open and went inside. He came back a moment later, a length of rope in his hand.
“Ihrman,” he said to the duke, whose eyes were glazing in alarm, his skin mottled with sweat, “there is quite a bit of rope in this tent. Lash the lengths together — probably at least four street lengths here — and give it to the soldiers to demark a corridor through the city; open it right through the crowd, wide enough so the Bolg can pass comfortably. Position the soldiers inside the rope, and make the closest townspeople help them hold it. Beg the Firbolg king’s pardon and indulgence; tell him we will have this problem cleared up in a few moments.”
The duke signaled to his captain of the guard, who carried the Lord Cymrian’s orders to the rest of the troops. Ashe turned to Rhapsody.
“Step back inside the tent, Aria. There will be a good deal of shifting and pushing for a moment, but it will settle into a controllable chaos shortly.” He pulled the tent flap aside.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s impossible to quell the curiosity that has been sparked by trying to hide the Bolg; they have become an irresistible attraction, thanks to Ihrman’s bungling. But we can use it to our advantage.” He turned to the captain of the guard unit that was forming a barrier between the dais on which they stood and the crowds. “Captain, summon your best hornsman.”
A chain of shouted orders rippled over the building din, swallowed as it moved through the air. Within a few moments a trumpeter had appeared.
“M’lord.”
“Hornsman, make ready,” Ashe addressed the soldier. “Play a volley of welcome for a head of state.”
As the hornsman prepared himself, Ashe turned to the Duke of Yarim again.
“Once the Bolg have come into the work tent, have the original contingent of soldiers continue to ring it, but keep adding as many as you can, gradually. If you gently insert a few troops here and there, the circle will expand slowly but resolutely, without necessitating any confrontation with overeager onlookers. Keep expanding the ring until the crowd is two street corners away from the work site. Then announce the times of the changing of each shift.”
Karsrick’s mouth dropped open. “Is that wise, m’lord? The townspeople will know when the Bolg are arriving and leaving, and will gather at those hours in these same unwieldy numbers.”
“Yes,” Ashe agreed, “and they will go back about their business during all the other hours. At first many of them will stay, hoping to catch a glimpse, but, being dissuaded that this will come to pass, they will settle for watching the changing of the guard. After a short time, even this will cease to be interesting to all but a few.” He clapped Karsrick on the shoulder encouragingly. “Buck up, Ihrman; this is temporary, though Rhapsody was right when she told you if you had just treated them like guests, instead of like monsters that needed to be guarded, and guarded against, this would not be a problem. Had you done that, you would never have incited this level of curiosity in the first place.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Karsrick muttered.
“All right, hornsman, set to,” Ashe instructed. “Play a lively tune that will make the Bolg feel welcome.”
Peering through the tent flap, Rhapsody chuckled.
“I suggest a rousing instrumental of ‘Leave No Limb Unbroken,’” she said. “Last I knew, that was their favorite march.”
Once the roped corridor was opened in the sea of onlookers, and the townspeople themselves enlisted in holding the barrier lines, the Bolg were able to hurry quickly into the work site without incident.
When the flaps of the enormous tents had closed behind them, muting the noise of the rabble, and the soldiers established in a ring around it again, Achmed turned to the Lord and Lady Cymrian and the duke.
“Perhaps I misunderstood the invitation,” he said angrily. “I was under the impression y
ou were hiring us to work on your dried-out shell of a geyser, in the hope that bringing our skills to bear on it might rescue your withering province from dying of thirst. Had I known you were recruiting for your menagerie, or a traveling circus, I would have remained in Ylorc and left you to shrivel in the heat. There are far more interesting freaks among your own subjects, Karsrick; you certainly don’t need our help to fill your sideshow.”
“My deepest apologies, Your Majesty,” the duke said, bowing from the waist and struggling to appear sufficiently contrite. “We could not have foreseen the interest that the townspeople of Yarim Paar would have in the arrival of their — neighbors from the southeast. Please forgive the rudeness of our welcome; it was not intended. Tell me what I can do to make it up to you.”
The Firbolg king’s expression shifted slightly in the flickering shadows from the torches outside the tent, the light changing in his mismatched eyes. He lingered for a long, uncomfortable moment in silence before the duke; then finally, when he spoke, his voice was calm.
“You can find me a stained-glass artisan, a sealed master, who is willing to be hired at an extremely generous rate to work on a project in Ylorc.” He turned away from the duke as he took a few steps toward the Bolg assemblage, then looked back over his shoulder. “No ninnies. I’ve had enough of those today.”
The Duke of Yarim exhaled, looking doubtful. “I will put the word out to the guilds, sire, though I can’t guarantee an artisan will come forward.”
Achmed walked over to Grunthor. “How do you want to proceed?” he asked the Sergeant.
The giant Bolg considered for a moment. “Clear the tent o’ all unnecessaries, and let me examine the dry wellspring.”
Achmed walked back to the royal couple and the duke. “Get everyone out of here,” he said curtly, “except for yourselves.”
Ashe nodded, overriding the protest that was bubbling on the duke’s lips. He turned to the Yarimese soldiers gathered under the tent.
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