Requiem for the Sun (45 page)

Read Requiem for the Sun Online

Authors: Elizabeth Haydon

BOOK: Requiem for the Sun
4.13Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
41
GLASS WORKSHOP, THE CAULDRON, YLORC
“H
ow does the melt look, Shaene?”
The journeyman ceramicist peered in through the window of the enormous kiln.
“Red hot,” he said smugly.
The sealed master did not smile. “Dull, or bright?”
Shaene looked in through the window again, then shrugged. “Hard to say, Theophila. Fairly bright, I suppose.”
The woman pushed him impatiently out of the way and looked in herself. She exhaled in annoyance.
“One might think
you
would recognize
dull
, Shaene,” she said. “Sandy, increase the heat. I need it to glow like blood spurting from a pumping heart.”
“Lady!” Shaene groaned in pretend shock. “What a gruesome reference! And I can't say as it's a color I've ever had the opportunity to have seen. Honestly.”
Omet cranked the damper of the furnace open a little wider, allowing for more direct contact with the natural flamewell, averting his eyes, saying nothing. He had no doubt that the woman knew exactly the color of which she spoke.
The test frits had been fired, all save the last, the purple, and now lay on their racks, cooling, awaiting the comparison to the old plates. Omet went about his work, the dizzy sensation of fear that had been clutching his viscera mounting.
He knew that the colors were true by eye; whatever else she was, Esten was a skilled glass artisan, ceramicist, and tile artist. It was rumored her Yarimese father, who had traveled with the Panjeri in his youth, had taught her the nomadic glassworkers' secrets from childhood, before she killed him for the family's money to start off on her own. By the time she had become mistress of the Raven's Guild she had gained entry into the best schools and guild workbenches in the world, and she had made a life's work of it, employing the tile foundry as a creative outlet as well as an effective cover for the less savory workings of her business.
His hands trembled slightly as he turned the racks of the cooling frits. If
the colors were true, whatever rune was inscribed in the test plates would be visible. Omet had no idea what information that might reveal, but its mere presence would signal that the color formulas were correct. Once that was achieved, Esten was poised to fire the enormous rolls that would be cut into sheets of glass to be embedded in the tower's ceiling.
And what that would lead to, he had no idea.
Though the Firbolg king had said little about the purpose of the project, Omet had had enough exposure to the original plans to know that the tower was more than a mere work of art. The stained glass was the final piece that would make it into an instrumentality of some sort, some kind of funnel of power that must be very great for Achmed to be so insistent on it. Omet had no use for magic, especially when he didn't know what it would bring about, but that had mattered little while the king was in the mountain. Whatever ends Achmed was building his Lightcatcher for, Omet trusted they were not threatening to him.
Now, with the king gone, and a vengeful killer in control, that was no longer the case.
Black eyes were suddenly staring directly into his.
Omet jumped.
The eyes focused even more intently on him.
“Where did you learn to turn racks like that, Sandy?”
Omet struggled to keep from shaking visibly.
“Shaene,” he said simply. It was a lie, but safer than revealing that his technique had come from endless instruction by her own journeymen when he was indentured to her in the foundry of Yarim.
Esten watched him complete the rotation, then nodded, satisfied; she touched the rack and, determining it to be cool, took the red frit out and returned to the worktable.
“It's true to my eye. Let's have a look, then, and see if the test plate agrees.”
She held the ancient plate of glass up to the light of the open ceiling above, then carefully slid the newly cooled frit in front of it. She waited for the clouds overhead to pass, then eyed it, the other artisans hovering behind her.
Delight broke over her face as a beam of sun shone into the tower, glowing through the double layer of red glass.
“I see it,” she said quietly. “But I can't make out what it says. Can any of you? Come here and look while I hold it.”
Rhur and Shaene each looked over her shoulder at the pieces she was holding aloft, then shook their heads. “Don't even recognize the symbols,” Shaene said, returning to his work. “Those aren't any letters I've ever seen. Looks like scratchings or numbers of some sort. Sorry, Theophila.”
“Come here, Sandy,” Esten said, her eyes still on the test glass. “Do you recognize this writing?”
Omet set his tools down and came over quickly, not wishing to draw her notice further by dawdling. He peered over her shoulder as well, inhaling and holding it so as not to breathe on her.
In the translucency of the glowing red glass he could make out some old symbols in a language he could not read, but had in fact seen many times on the original documents. Until the Bolg king had gone to Yarim, no one had any idea what the symbols meant. Rhapsody had translated them, had scratched their meanings onto the diagrams next to the places the runes appeared.
This one was merely the symbol for red.
He shook his head, then walked quickly back to his workbench where the Bolg apprentices and journeymen where preparing the colorants to be added to the ash and sand in the huge vats near the furnaces.
Esten continued to stare at the symbols for a moment longer, then shrugged. She took each of the remaining test plates and held them up to the colored frits, seeing symbols in all but the last.
“Oh well. No time to be lost worrying about it. All right, Rhur, tell the furnace minders to set up the large sheets of frit in each of the colors except violet; we haven't got the formula right on that one yet. We'll get the fritting started on the other six. Once they're fired, grind them down and get them ready for the melt.”
“Grind them down?” Shaene asked incredulously. “You going to add something to the mix, lady, and remelt them? An enamel?”
Esten's eyes glinted sharply. “Yes, just a protective glaze, so that when they're annealed they will be stronger. I had it sent from Yarim — it's in those green barrels. No one is to touch them save for me. The glaze is expensive. Now, set about it. I want to have the ceiling installed before the king returns.”
O
met smoothed the surface of the wooden board on which the panes were to be cut, dusting it lightly with chalk. When the board was as white as his hands now were, he took the can of water and sprinkled it, then rubbed it down vigorously to make the surface reflective and easy to see.
Once the board was prepared, he looked at Esten, who was busy giving directions to the journeymen, and exhaled quietly.
He reached for the tin-tipped compass, the instrument with which she would draw the window sections, which he was expected to go over with red pigment, noting where the support cames, the leading that bordered each section, would go.
His hand was shaking. No matter how much he tried to control his terror, despite being blessed with a nonchalant aspect and a deadpan expression, there
were subtle signs of the fear — the gleam he could see on occasion in his eyes reflecting in the undulating glass, his mouth, dry as the sand and ash from which that glass was formed, the way his voice would occasionally refuse to come forth from his constricted throat.
His quaking hands.
Has she noticed
? he wondered, watching the masquerading guildmistress cutting pieces of other glass sheets with a red-hot iron cutter, trimming it with her shoddy groziers.
How long will it be before she realizes I belonged to her once, lived under her lash, languished in the inferno of her foundry, witnessed her send the bodies of the dead slave boys to the kilns, and hundreds of other crimes?
Amid all those wonderings, the one he had no question about was what would happen to him when she discovered him.
Please let the king return soon
, he prayed to whatever god might hear him.
He could feel the gaze from her black eyes on his neck.
“Sandy, get the stonemasons in here,” she said curtly. “It's time to measure for the tracery supports.”
Omet nodded without turning around, grateful as always to Shaene for his stupid nickname, and to Rhur, for his unwillingness to speak much. His true name was still guarded because of both of their idiosyncrasies. He rose from his workbench and left the room quickly, heading for the quarry where the masons worked.
He had considered telling Rhur, or Shaene, to be wary of the new artisan, not to use his name in her presence, to try and stall the work until the return of the king. But he could not do that. He had seen her in action, had watched her overtly tossing unfortunate boys who tried to escape into ovens, covertly assigning them to tasks that would inevitably drown or asphyxiate them, knew in the depths of his soul that to speak any of his terror out loud would only hasten his end.
He knew what everyone who knew her name knew.
No secret could be kept from Esten for long, let alone forever.
42
IN THE TIDAL CAVE
A
fter the first few days, Rhapsody managed to settle into a routine, trapped within the tidal cave.
She had made one valiant attempt to swim out with the ebbing current, only to confirm what she already knew — that the spiraling rip tide was too
strong for her to bear up against. She was caught almost immediately in the undertow and found herself fighting to keep from drowning.
So she had to look around for another means of exit.
The first thing that she knew she had to find, after warmth, was water. Drying herself during the times when the tide was low was easy enough; the elemental bond to fire in her soul allowed heat to come forth upon her command, and she took every opportunity to summon it, using the warmth to dry her hair and clothes, reveling in the comfort of not being wet until the next time the current flooded, keeping her body from losing too much heat.
Water had been more difficult to come by. A small amount of freshwater condensation could sometimes be gathered from the ceiling of the cave when the tide was high, but it was never enough to slake her thirst. She had to content herself with the blood of the eels that swarmed abundantly in the tidal cave, trapped when the current ebbed, then eating their flesh raw to preserve as much of the liquid as possible. Occasionally she caught a few oysters, fish, or sea urchins that got swept into the cave, but after a few nightmarish days the source of her nourishment hardly mattered.
We
will live through this together, you and I,
she had promised her unborn child.
She would do whatever she had to in order to keep that promise.
I am a Singer, a Namer
, she thought, caressing her abdomen while watching the gray sky turn pink from her perch on the natural ledge in the back of the tidal cave.
And also because I am your mother, I must tell you the truth
.
She closed her eyes, remembering Ashe's tender words to her on the night their child was conceived.
And what do you plan to give me for my birthday?
Someone to teach your morning aubade, your evening vespers to.
A tiny shaft of sunlight broke through the gloom at the horizon. Rhapsody cleared her throat, ragged from the salt, and quietly sang one of the ancient aubades, the love songs to the sky that Liringlas had been marking time with for as long as she knew.
Welcome sunrise
Touch the mountains with
Tentative light
Blend the clouds with gold
And gently disturb the dreams of the night
Welcome daybreak
Fill the silence with
Songs of the birds
Lift the sky-lantern to the sound of
Music that swells without singers or words
Welcome morning
Fire of dawn, light of the day
Warming the world with your glow
Awaken again we, your children
Who, chanting the aubade, know
That we have welcomed sunrise.
“Not my favorite,” she said to the unborn baby when she was finished, “but the first one your grandmother taught me. We must learn them in order; they have a pattern, as you will see.”
More and more she had begun to talk aloud to the child, her only regular companion in the prison of her tidal cave. The baby had become her touchstone, her reason for enduring the hours underwater, the thirst, the hunger.
During the times when the tide was high, she had stopped struggling, and instead viewed the hours as instruction in the music of the sea. While floating on her back, she could make out songs on the waves; at first they were wordless, mere melodies of swirling currents, rushing and ebbing along with the seawater. She tried to concentrate on floating, knowing her child was floating within her as well.
If you are not frightened in your small, dark cave full of water, I must not be, either.
Once she had banished the fear from her mind, she could hear it then, the lore of the sea, songs from all the shores that the ocean waves touched, some fragmented, some clear and long. She spent most of her quiet hours listening to the chanties of sailors, the call of the merfolk, scraps of lore from the ancient city of the Mythlin, now silent beneath the waves, the weeping of the families of those lost on the sea; it was an indescribably beautiful symphony of life, of history, sad, heroic, glorious, mystical.
And it was being sung to her, and to her baby.
How lucky you are in a way, my child, to have this time
, she thought one night as the moonlight was reflected on the low water of the cave, swirling in great silver ripples.
You are being steeped in elemental magic — the baptism of the sea, the fire that warms and dries us when the tide is low, the sheltering cave of earth that was formed in fire and cooled in water, the wind that blows through, singing its ageless song. One day you will make a fine Namer, if you choose to be one
. The thoughts were enough to help her keep despair at bay.
Most of the time.
O
ne afternoon, when she was not feeling so strong, and misery had taken a greater toll that it was usually allowed, Rhapsody looked up from her ledge to see bright eyes in a small brown furry face staring back at her.
She started, reeling back against the wall.
The animal started as well, disappearing beneath the surface of the water.
As she skittered back, her boots scraped for purchase on the ledge, sending a small hail of black rocks that had broken off from the wall into the swirling water.
Rhapsody watched, fascinated, as the black igneous formations floated in the surface, spinning in spirals. A moment later, the otter she had seen appeared, bobbing the volcanic rock in front of its nose, guiding it out of the tidal cave.
She pondered what she had seen that night as she floated with the rising tide, trying to think of a way she might make use of what she had seen.
By the time the tide had fallen, she had an idea.
Every few hours she would use the bolt tip that had lodged in her belt to scrape free pieces of the back wall of the cave, tying them within her shirt.
If I can bind them together with something, seaweed, strands of my hair, it would make for a tiny raft of sorts
, she reasoned, trying to keep from shredding her fingers too badly.
If I can use it to aid my floating when the tide is high, perhaps I can use it to obtain purchase, to work my way around to the front of the cave, so that when the tide falls, it will take me with it.
She patted her abdomen and silently corrected herself.
Take us with it.
E
ach evening that the tide was low, when the weather was clear, she would watch for the pink light that filled the cave, signaling that the sun was about to set.
Even more than the sunrise devotions, Rhapsody had always loved the vespers, the evensong that bade the sun farewell with a promise to be standing vigil until it rose again the next morning. It was a dual devotion, a requiem for the sun, marking the completion of another day as a requiem sung at a funeral pyre marked the completion of a life; it was a greeting to the stars, the sky guardians of the Lirin, as well.
I will not forget you,
she whispered as the light in the sky dimmed, disappearing beyond the horizon into night.
Please do not forget me.
The phrase rang in her memory, familiar; she pondered while floating where she had heard it before, then remembered as the water swirled around her ears, singing its ageless song.
They were the words, simple in their formation, spoken by her dear friend, the dragon Elynsynos, to her lover, Merithyn the Explorer, before he left her lands and returned to his king, Gwylliam, with the joyous news that there was a land, a verdant, beautiful land, that would take the refugees of Serendair in, would make them at home.
He had promised, and then died at sea on the way back.
As she watched the first star rising at the horizon, twinkling in the deep cobalt blue of the late summer night, Rhapsody wondered what might have come to pass if the sea had not taken him, had he made it back to her, to their children whom he would not live to see.
How different would things be now,
she thought, her hand, as ever, resting lightly on her belly.
She thought of their descendants, Manwyn and her two mad sisters, the Seers of the Past and Present, the first now dead, the second living a frail and harmless life, moment by moment, in an abbey in Sepulvarta. Edwyn Griffyth, Anwyn and Gwylliam's eldest son, a self-imposed exile in Gaematria, the mystical island of the Sea Mages. Llauron, Ashe's father, now lost in time somewhere, communing with the elements in a vaporous dragon form, one with them. And Anborn. Tears welled up in her eyes as her mind came to rest on him, remembering the sight of his body lying in the burning forest, his legs, lost in the effort to spare her three years ago, useless to save him.
A litany of sadness, all born of that one failed promise.
Merithyn's promise.
Still thinking of Anborn, she remembered their time together around the fire, singing the song her mother had sung to her for him.
A noble tradition. Have you chosen one yet for my great-nephew or niece.
No, not yet. When it is right, I will know it.
It's the song of the sea,
she thought, the music of the endless waves, ever-present but ever-changing, eternal, endless.
Like love.
Touching all the kingdoms of the earth, but free to rove the wide world, home anywhere it went.
As I hope for you,
she thought.
She wondered if some of the melodies she heard in the sea were endless vibrations put on the wind by Merithyn; there was lore in the waves that told of his love for Elynsynos, songs she resolved to learn and sing for the dragon one day.
And as the thought brought her warmth in the last light of the setting sun, the child's name rang in her mind, a paean to the hapless explorer that was its great-great-grandfather, and to the man who would be its father.
“If he agrees, boy or girl, I will call you Meridion,” she said aloud to the
child, wanting it to be the first to hear the name spoken. “Merithyn was the past; Gwydion is the present, but you, Meridion, you will be the future, with ties to all three.”
The ocean roared its approval; all else was silent.

Other books

The Trailsman #396 by Jon Sharpe
The Cipher Garden by Martin Edwards
Jurassic Dead by Rick Chesler, David Sakmyster
Nice Girls Don't Ride by Roni Loren
Vortex by Julie Cross
The Demonica Compendium by Larissa Ione
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler
Promise Broken (The Callahan Series) by Bridges , Mitzi Pool