Rhapsody turned away from him and stared into the fireplace. The flames settled down into a calmer burn, the flashing light that had been splashing off the golden tresses of her hair glowing more gently. She let her breath out slowly, recalling all the times over the course of their marriage she had contended with the alien element of the man who shared her soul. She had become almost expert at it, though even after a thousand years she still did not understand it fully. She adopted a soothing musical tone in her voice.
“But most likely it will not come tonight.”
Only silence answered her.
“I have another thought,” she said quietly, not looking at him.
Behind her, Ashe sighed deeply again. “Yes?”
Rhapsody exhaled. “The dragon in your blood was dormant when you were younger, as it was in Llauron’s, was it not?”
Her husband crossed the small room until he stood at her back. He ran a shaky finger, its knuckle broken and distended from a thousand years of life and battle, through a lock of her hair. “You know that it was,” he said in a low voice. “On the night I crossed Time to meet you in Serendair, I was utterly human, was I not?” The last phrase rang with an almost humorous irony, mirroring what she had said a moment before.
She turned at last to him, and her face was wreathed in a warm smile of fond memory.
“You were,” she agreed, finally meeting his gaze; her eyes sparkled, emerald in the firelight. “Utterly human, and utterly enchanting.”
Her husband drew more of her hair into his scarred palm. “And utterly lost to you, even then, at fourteen. I can still recall exactly how you looked that night, Emily, in the moonlit shadows beneath the willow tree in your father’s meadow. And exactly how it felt to be inside you for the first time, as pathetic as the performance must have seemed to you then.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; the glorious memory of it lasted until we met up again, and still remains, even through all the years.” Rhapsody took his face in her hands, trying to see past the lines of age and the graying of his hair to the cerulean-blue eyes that still looked at her with the same wonder they had on the night in question. She kissed him slowly, then looked deep into those blue eyes, regarding him thoughtfully.
“What if we could return you to that mostly human state, the dragon all but dormant again?”
The night wind whistled through the eaves of the turf hut, accentuating the utter silence that answered her.
THE NONALIGNED STATES, THE FORMER EMPIRE OF SORBOLD
Grunthor had been tucked away at a table in the corner of the Seaside Grogshop, a pub in the coastal province of Hacket, for the better part of the evening.
Under normal circumstances, a tavern such as the Grogshop was not the friendliest place for clients who stood almost eight feet tall and wore more weapons in a leather bandolier on their backs than resided in the possession of an entire coterie of town guards, but the Sergeant-Major was a known quantity at the establishment, which catered largely to military types. He had, despite his height and monstrous status, received prime hospitality as he had on several other occasions, his tankard never being left more than half full at any point in the evening.
In fact, his favorite waitresses and serving women were finding him rather morose and quiet this night, in contrast to his prior visits when he had flirted outrageously with every woman of any age in the tavern, or had happily held the place hostage to his drunken singing.
This night he sat quietly at his table and addressed his tankard, minding his own business. Had he not been of the proportions of a dray horse in a crowd of jackasses, he would most likely not even have been noticed.
But, in spite of his highly inebriated state and gloomy disposition, something seemed out of place to him.
Even though the Grogshop had a clientele that frequently wore the nation’s uniform, there seemed to be a greater number of soldiers in the place this night, he thought. Under normal circumstances, he would have felt compelled to do at least a preliminary assessment of the premises, but again, he was distracted and tired, two conditions that would have normally caused him to remain in his billet, rather than seeking potables.
He had all but fallen asleep, bent over the table, when the subtle sounds of bending wood and bowstrings creaking caught his ear.
Grunthor raised his head from the table board and looked around.
Standing in front of him, hedging the shadows that clung to the furniture and cabinetry, were two men, armed and wearing the colors of Ashe’s regiment specifically, with the base uniform of the army of the Alliance.
Behind him, his clouded perceptions, still in rare form from three thousand years of training, could sense several more lingering.
And there was an even larger contingent, probably armed with crossbows, behind that.
He smiled as widely as his inebriated state would allow.
Those in his field of blurry vision appeared to be watching him intently.
Grunthor grinned broadly at them.
“Well, ’allo, gents. What brings you all down ’ere to the seaside? Oi ’ope yer on ’oliday.”
The men in the shadows looked at each other, then turned away, draining their tankards.
Grunthor’s head made the descent back to the table again.
It lurched slightly to the right as he felt a dull thudding at the base of his neck.
Grunthor sat up a little straighter in surprise, reaching his enormous arm over his shoulder and patting randomly at his back. His arm swung surprisingly wide, then hung limp, even as his legs began to go numb.
“Wha—?” he mumbled as the two men before him tossed their empty tankards aside and sprang from the shadows, thick short swords in their hands.
“Yer kiddin’ me,” the Sergeant muttered as he groped for a weapon from his bandolier, but could not bring his arm high enough to draw one. He rolled into a ball as he fell heavily from the chair, his back beneath the table.
A volley of crossbow bolts went wide above his head, all missing but one, which pierced his right shoulder.
“Hrekin,” the Sergeant cursed. He waited hazily under the table, gripping the legs of the fallen chair, unmoving, with his eyes closed, as one of the soldiers approached, his blade drawn and ready, until the man was just above him. Then, with as much strength as he could summon into his injured arm, he slammed the chair directly into the man’s knee, off-balancing him, seizing the calf of his other leg.
“Jus’ one o’ you, that’s all Oi want, jus’ one,” he whispered as he dragged the startled soldier onto his back and grabbed him by the greave on his leg. He could hear the approaching footfalls, his foggy mind counting and assessing, then jerked the soldier, who was struggling fiercely, forward until his hand gripped the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe. “’Twould be a shame not to get at least one trophy.”
By the time he was finished, he’d racked up thirty-seven.
The Grogshop had to be closed for the better part of two months for repairs.
11
THE TURF HUT
Ashe blinked.
She waited silently.
“What do you mean, Aria?” he asked finally.
Rhapsody’s hands caressed the slackening skin of his face and neck as she ran them down to his chest, where they came to rest over his heart. She let them linger there, warming the skin beneath his shirt, then gently pulled the collar wider, revealing the light starlike pattern of the veins below the skin over his heart.
“The piece of the star that the Lord and Lady Rowan sewed within your chest, that fragment of Seren from Daystar Clarion’s hilt, saved your life when your chest and heart were torn asunder by the F’dor long ago, before I came to this world,” she said softly.
Ashe eyed her warily. “It did.”
“And, consequently, that elemental power awakened the wyrm in your blood, stirring it from dormancy into, well, a more equal partner with your human side.”
“Yes.”
She considered her wo
rds for a moment before speaking them to try to minimize the sting. “Perhaps you have not needed that elemental ether for centuries, Ashe. You were healed more than a thousand years ago; perhaps that is why the dragon has continued to grow stronger within you. It has been feeding off power that is no longer necessary to keep you alive, battling your human side for dominance.”
He stared at her for a long time. “Go on,” he said finally.
She swallowed hard. “What if we could remove that piece of the star from your chest now, and put it back in the sword? If you don’t need it to remain alive, perhaps the absence of all that elemental power would return the wyrm to dormancy. You would be mostly human again.”
“And elderly, even more bent and broken than I already am,” Ashe said in a toneless voice. “Or perhaps I would die outright. The presence of the wyrm in my blood is doubtless responsible for my insane longevity.”
“Not necessarily,” his wife disagreed. “You are a third-generation Cymrian; your grandfather was not only immortal, he was all but invulnerable—your grandmother had to bargain with a demon of a Firstborn race, or she would never have been able to kill him. You have Seren blood as well as the legacy of MacQuieth, who lived at least two thousand years. You could have survived all this time just as a result of the human element in you that is Cymrian.”
“So you want to reach into my chest and remove the piece of elemental ether that was sewn into my heart to heal it when it was torn? Rather a rash risk to take, wouldn’t you say?”
“Rasher than undergoing a strike of starfire in the attempt to convert you into an elemental wyrm, formless and noncorporeal, assuming you live through it?”
Ashe’s expression grew thoughtful.
“Perhaps not,” he said.
Rhapsody slid her hands around to his back and drew him into her arms, pressing her face against his shoulder so that he could not see it.
“If it works, you might live out your days in a human state, with the wyrm at the edge of your awareness, rather than having to struggle with it for control.”
A dryness in the air signaled a rising of his draconic nature.
“You wish to extinguish the dragon?”
Rhapsody pulled back and looked at him. The vertical pupils within his eyes were expanding in a peevish anger. “I wish for the dragon to be at peace within you, rather than fighting your human side for dominance,” she said simply and directly. “Do not let the wyrm take insult from my suggestion; it is a part of you I have loved dearly for a thousand years. But if you are living in constant fear of a rampage, this could help.”
“Or it could kill me.”
“It could,” Rhapsody acknowledged. “But you would die in my arms as a man, not a wyrm, and therefore your human soul would remain intact, traveling through the Gate of Life behind the Veil of Hoen, into the Afterlife.”
“Separating us forever.” The angry tone in his voice took on a tinge of pain.
Rhapsody shook her head and quickly took his hands. “No.”
“Yes,” Ashe said. “Aria, the main reason for my desire to transition into an elemental state is your immortality. You may think me selfish for wanting to achieve elemental wyrmdom rather than dying outright in human form, but at least living among the elements I would have an extended longevity, like Elynsynos or the other dragons that have gone into the ether rather than keep a corporeal body. While I would no longer be a human man, at least I could be with you in some form. If I die outright, we will be separated on either side of Life and the Afterlife.” He stopped speaking abruptly before his next words spilled out.
Leaving you at last to Achmed, who has been patiently waiting for you all this time, though you have never understood this.
Rhapsody shook her head again as a dazzling smile broke over her face, reminding Ashe of a sunrise at sea.
“I would go with you,” she said, squeezing his hands. “I have no desire whatsoever to remain in this life without you. When whatever longevity you are granted by Fate is over, I will go to the Rowans with you. The Lord Rowan has promised me that he would take me, would come for me one day if he could. I expect that they will welcome me, just as they will welcome you when the time comes, just as Oelendra went in peace to join her husband Pendaris when the F’dor was finally dead, the Council reunited.
“Had you died, in battle or otherwise, while our children were young, I would have remained here, widowed, until they were old enough to fend for themselves and establish good and happy lives. Then I would have followed you to the Veil. But that’s not an issue anymore, unless—”
The music in her voice changed so abruptly that Ashe’s grip on her hands tightened.
“What is it, Aria?”
Rhapsody’s face went solemn, but her eyes gleamed even brighter.
“I hear another tone,” she said softly. “As I’ve told you. It grows stronger each day.”
Ashe sighed. They were words he had heard her speak a half dozen times before, words that had always been a source of great joy to him, though he had not heard her speak them for a very long time. Each time they had undertaken to conceive one of their children, it was in response to just such words, Rhapsody’s inner sense that a child was waiting out in the ether, preparing to come through the doorway that was their love for one another, into the material world. She had, in fact, spoken these words to him several times over the last few decades, but had refrained from bringing them up after he had started to inquire about the strike of starfire from Daystar Clarion. He held out his hands to her, hands that trembled slightly with age.
“I am too old to do this again,” he said wearily. “I’m sorry, my love.”
Rhapsody’s glowing expression faded.
“I—I—but there is a child waiting, Ashe, a person, an entity, a living soul waiting to be born of our love. Our last child.”
“We are great-grandparents,” Ashe said. “Most of our grandchildren are grown. Time may not have marked a day on you since you stepped forth from the Root into this world, but even if my Cymrian lineage prevents it from showing, I am an elderly man.”
“I can assure you that you still knob like a boy of fourteen.” Her voice was light but strained. “In all the good ways—your stamina is stellar.”
“Be that as it may, I cannot imagine putting you, or both of us, through another pregnancy. You have given me the six most beautiful, wonderful children in the world, and they in turn have given us precious grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They are inestimable treasure, both to the human and the dragon side of me. We have so much to be grateful for already.”
“You are missing the point,” she said archly. “You do not need to tell me to be grateful for our children; words do not exist that sufficiently describe how much I am grateful. But there is another soul, a unique entity, that is waiting to be born. We can’t ignore it; I can hear it. I have tried not to push you on this, because you have been so insistent upon your own transformation, but we have a daughter or a son who needs us, who has been waiting for a very long time.”
“I’m sorry, Emily,” Ashe said as gently as he could. “I truly am. I understand that you are, in the eyes of Time, a young woman still. But I am not a young man; I can feel myself declining more each day. I have dearly loved each time you have made me a father, but I am too old to do it again.” He felt her agitation rising and reached for her but she pushed him away.
“What—what am I supposed to do, then, Ashe? The presence of this tone is haunting; on nights when you fall asleep before me it hounds me, ringing within my soul. How do you expect me to live with that knowledge, that we have a child waiting for us that you have decided not to bring into the world?”
“The same way any other parents live with the knowledge that they might have had more children, but have decided not to.”
“Other parents cannot hear their children calling before birth the way Namers can. Once we conceived each of our children, joined pieces of our souls to make them begin, once they took r
oot inside me I could perceive glimpses of their personalities; I knew Meridion would be a Namer, that Laurelyn would be in love with the Earth, that Allegra could lead armies, that Joseph was tied to fire. They were not merely possibilities to me, Ashe, nor is this one that has been calling for so long; you do not understand what you are decreeing by telling me you will not give me another child. It would be as if a child we had deliberately made had died within me.”
Ashe turned away dispiritedly.
“You want me to father another child, a child I will not live to see grow up, while I disintegrate into a useless wreck, or spin madly into a rampage which may kill him, or you?”
Rhapsody exhaled, her face absent any internal light. “I no longer know what to say. I have no words.”
Ashe watched her for a long time, seeing the fire on the hearth diminish behind her. Finally he crossed the small room to where she was standing and took her into his arms again.
“How about this—what if this child is, well, meant to be like a farewell gift? I could break open my soul one more time, could help you conceive him or her; then, when the baby is born, or at least once you are pregnant, you could finally grant my request.
“If I am transitioned to wyrm form, I suppose I could help at least with a young child’s training. It would not be the same for this child as it was for the others, and you would have to ponder whether or not that would be acceptable to you. You would have to decide if you could be the only parent with arms to hold him or her, and whether having a father that is a noncorporeal dragon would be too scarring. The other children would help you raise their sibling, I’m certain, and I would be as present in the child’s life as it is possible for me to be. But the risk you run then is that he or she will be more dragon than human, because that is the makeup of my blood now, as opposed to when I sired our other children.”
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