Requiem for the Sun (55 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Haydon

BOOK: Requiem for the Sun
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57
I
t had taken Rhur and Shaene only a few moments, after placing Omet on the floor of the tower chamber, to find the wheel they had tested in the closet where they had stored it. It stood, untouched, wrapped in oilcloth, propped up against the back wall.
It took a bit longer to get it into place. The last time the wheel had been installed Omet had helped carry it, had assisted in its hanging — had, in fact, headed the effort up. Two pairs of hands bearing the large steel-and-crystal artifact were decidedly less well suited for the task than three; still, the two glassmakers persevered, and after a few agonizing moments and several close calls, they finally managed to get the thing into place as it had been when they tested it as a threesome.
Shaene knelt over Omet while Rhur continually watched the wooden dome overhead.
“Omet,” he said gently, his voice filled with uncharacteristic certainty and wisdom, “hold on just a few moments longer. Soon the dome will be removed, and the sun will break out from behind the clouds; the colored glass you helped make will be reflected on the floor. Imagine how proud you will be then.”
Omet was still gray in the face and breathing shallowly, staring at the ceiling.
The two men, both artisans, one Bolg, one human, both friends of the young man dying on the floor, waited anxiously, watching the life slip from him breath by breath.
Finally, amid a great scraping and a thunderous jolt, the men looked up to see the wooden cover being slowly shifted away by a team of artisans outside the tower on the crag above.
The base of the tower, still awash in a messy array of pots, tools, beams of wood, and makeshift workbenches, took on the diffuse glow of early morning; the day had broken, the storm had passed, but it was still a few moments until full sun, when the rising orb cleared the horizon completely.
Shaene continued to whisper words of encouragement, his voice growing tenser and Omet grew paler.
A glimmer, warming to a rosy glow; the two artisans looked up to see the sky above beyond the seven-eighths-complete circle of exquisitely colored glass brighten to a clear, cloudless blue.
As Shaene watched, transfixed, Rhur went to the cooling rack in which one final experimental frit of violet glass rested, waiting to be tested. He searched through the piles on the workbench until he located the violet test plate, while Shaene futilely patted Omet's face.
As Rhur was heading back to where the young man lay, he heard a deep, ragged intake of breath from Shaene, and looked down.
Stretching across the stolid gray stone floor of the tower was a slice of glorious color, multihued and shimmering; the rich shades of light looked for all the world like pools of melted gems, precious jewels in liquid form, evanescent, gracing the dull gray of Ylorc with a momentary splendor of surpassing beauty.
Shaene stared overhead, gawking; Rhur held the test frit up to the light in front of the plate.
In the depth of the violet proto-glass he could see the runes, symbols he did not recognize.
Grei-ti,
violet. The New Beginning.
Shaene lumbered to his feet, gesturing toward the wheel.
“Come on, Rhur! Help me loose it!”
Together the men gave the wheel a push; at first, nothing happened. Then, with another shove, it starting gliding slowly across the metal tracks. As it traveled it slowed; a tonal vibration sounded, a clear, sweet note that caused the wheel to hover slowly in time with it. The vibrant light from the multihued ceiling above them caught in the crystal prismatic refractors, sending spinning flashes of color dancing wildly around the room, resolving as it slowed into a gleaming, pulsing arc of red light which came to rest on the floor where Omet lay.
Lisele-ut,
red.
Blood Saver.
Neither man recognized the tone, of course; it was Namer magic, ancient, deep lore from another time, another land. If they had thought about it, they might have realized that the precise notes Gwylliam had left directing the construction of all the pieces of the Lightcatcher, from the exact shades of colored glass to the varying thickness of the metal on the support rails which produced the differing tonal vibrations as it rolled, worked in harmony of light and color to tap the ancient power of vibration, a magic left over from the creation of the world, still extant in every living thing.
But they did not grasp the nuances of what they were witnessing. They only knew that Omet, who a moment before had appeared more dead than alive, now lay in the rosy light that had been caught from the sky above, attuned to a precise color and pitch; he was breathing in time with the music of the tone, as if it had filled him, adjusted his heartbeat, his tides of breath, all the vibration that was his living essence, to itself.
And in doing so it was healing him.
Shaene lost his composure. He bent over the young man, still in the clutches of fear that was now abating to relief, and wept. He felt Rhur squeeze his shoulder from behind and looked up to find the dour-faced Bolg smiling. It was the first time Shaene remembered seeing it happen.
They watched, transfixed, as the slowly moving wheel continued to hum, the tone deepening as it lost speed, the red light waning, warming to a brighter, darker orange.
As the shadow of the healing red light passed from his face, they could see that Omet's skin was hale again, filled with a natural, healthy color. His eyelids flickered, and his head moved from side to side, as if shaking off sleep.
The men listened, rapt, as the tone changed in time with the movement across the rails. The light on the floor shifted completely then, from the red of the first section of domed ceiling to a full shaft of the next color, orange.
Frith-re.
Firestarter.
Shaene exhaled deeply as the room took on a sudden warmth. He looked up into the glass rainbow arching above him, minus its violet end piece, to the clear sky beyond.
“What a magnificent day this looks to be,” he said to Rhur.
Which were the last words anyone in the room heard before the world exploded.
O
nce he had found the Earthchild to be sleeping still, resting undisturbed, Grunthor sealed the tunnel and hurried back to the Cauldron, making his way to Gurgus.
He could not get to within three corridors of it.
All around the section of the Cauldron beneath that peak the tunnels had collapsed, turning passageways into impenetrable walls of shale and rubble. Bolg soldiers were scurrying through the surrounding tunnels, evacuating the rooms that had not fallen in upon themselves, carrying out the injured and the dead, coughing violently in the encompassing cloud of dust.
“Criton!” Grunthor whispered, staring at the devastation. “What 'appened?”
No one around him answered.
Desperate now, Grunthor ran to the thick wall of detritus that filled the corridor to the top. He concentrated, reaching deep within himself to touch the elemental bond he had to earth, channeling it out through his hands and into the crumbled rock around him.
Summoning his earth lore, he tunneled into the wall of debris, feeling the shale and rock slip away from him as if it were melting at his touch. He dug in deeper, pushing his body through, making a passageway.
In the rubble he could see the wreckage of bodies, though at the outer edges at least there were none. He found two buried in the deeper in, recognizing them as he passed as Rhur and Shaene, both of whom had been crushed beneath tons of broken shale and enormous pieces of basalt, the remains of a large piece of the peak of Gurgus.
“Aw,
no
,” he muttered upon finding Shaene, who was compressed upright. “Dammit.”
He continued to press forward through the broken fragments of the mountain peak until he broke through, his eyes stinging from the dust, which was also collecting in his throat and nose, to an opening beyond the wall of rubble.
There, on the floor of the tower, in a sparkling rainbow of colored glass shards, Omet lay, his eyes closed, flecked with blood from the rain of glass, but otherwise spared. Grunthor was dumbfounded, judging by the pile of broken bits of glass, that the young man had not been sliced to ribbons.
He crawled carefully over the confetti that was all that remained of the beautiful domed ceiling, past the shattered workman's tables, and lifted Omet out of the pile of shards, hoisting him over his shoulder.
Omet moaned as his upper body hung down Grunthor's back.
“Grunthor?” he whispered, his long, straight hair inverted over the floor.
The Sergeant turned and headed back out through the wall of debris.
“What?”
Omet struggled to speak clearly, even though he was being jostled madly, and hanging upside down.
“Theophila — is really — the guildmistress of the — assassins and thieves' guilds of — Yarim.”
“Oi'm a head of ya on that one,” Grunthor replied, ducking to keep from scraping Omet's back on the ceiling above him.
The young artisan gestured with his arm.
“Rhur and Shaene; they're around here somewhere, I think. I heard them talking just before —”
Grunthor patted the small of Omet's back, his face impassive but his eyes raging.
“'Ush now,” he said firmly. “There will be plenty o' time for talking after Oi've gotten ya out of 'ere and you've 'ad a chance to rest.”
E
ight days later, the scion of the Raven's Guild received a package by way of the mail caravan from Ylorc.
Dranth broke the seals and tore off the parchment in which it was wrapped carefully; Esten had thus far only sent nonfragile articles and papers, but he wanted to take no risk of damaging the contents. By the odor issuing forth from it, the package might have already suffered some damage and spoilage from the heat of the mail carriages.
Upon pulling off the last piece of the carton, Dranth, the guild scion of the most soulless, deadly coterie of thieves and assassins in Roland, took a step back from the table, slapped his hand over his mouth, and then vomited all over the floor of the guildhall.
Grunthor had not even bothered to shut her festering eyes before shipping her head back to them.
Tying the Threads
The rolling backswell from the wave from the explosion beneath the surface of the sea unceremoniously disgorged the Kirsdarkenvar and the two who clung to him onto the black, unforgiving sand of the rocky beach.
The purchase of ground, even sandy ground that slipped and whispered into the sea as the breakers rolled over it, felt like a lifeline to Ashe. He let go of the sword and rolled quickly over onto his belly, checking to see that Rhapsody was breathing and, finding that she was, turned to the Bolg king, who was coughing his lungs up onto the sand.
The next wave that foamed up the beach was shallower, tracing echoes in the outline of the last, but not reaching where it had left them. As the water rolled back, it littered the shore with splinters of wood and rope, the detritus of the ruined ship. None of the pieces were more than the size of driftwood.
Ashe drew his wife into his arms and pressed her body up against his to impart to her what warmth he could. The dragon in his blood assessed her frantically, finding some of her body weight to be missing; her skin was sunken and pale from the salt and the endless exposure to the water during her time in the cave, her hair matted and dark, ragged in varying lengths from where she had sawed it off. He choked back tears at the thinness of her hands, her neck.
But she was home, returned to him from the sea.
And within her their child still grew, strong; he could feel its presence, vibrant.
He pulled her closer, speechless with relief, matching his breathing to her own, reveling in the ragged sound of life coming from her, and let his head fall back on the sand, his eyes blind in the sun above.
Beside him he felt the Bolg king rise, still clearing the sea from within himself, and wander down to the shoreline.
A
chmed stared down the windswept beach to the black, jagged bed of boulders over which the sea crashed, where MacQuieth had taken the beast into the sea. Where once there had been boiling steam and turgid froth was now peace; the sea had returned to its ever-violent pounding against the shore, the waves rushing in a great swell of white water, to hurry back out again, dragging the undertow with them.
Gingerly he put his foot in the water.
“Do you see him?” Ashe asked, rising from the sand and pulling Rhapsody up with him. “Do you see anything?”
Achmed squinted, then shook his head.
“Michael?” Rhapsody whispered, her voice harsh from the salt.
Ashe put his arm around her.
“MacQuieth,” he said. “It was he who found Michael, who took him into the sea, wrestled him off the precipice, perhaps even taking the demon into himself.” He fell silent, a sense of loss overwhelming him.
“Could he have survived?” Rhapsody asked, leaning closer to the water's edge and staring up the beach into the crashing surf. “There are thousands of places to be caught, to hide; believe me.”
Achmed exhaled sharply, then waded into the sea past the crest where the waves were breaking. Slowly he bent down until his skin-web was submerged, listening. After a moment he stood rapidly, shook his head, and strode back out of the sea.
“No,” he said. “His heartbeat is gone, as is the stench of the demon. I heard it once; it rang like a great bell. There is nothing here now but the sound of the waves.”
“Such an incalculable loss,” Ashe said softly. “Imagine what he has seen, what he could have told us. In just the few days we spent with him, I learned more of the Island, and of my line, than I have ever known in all the time before that. Now I can finally see the stock of soldier from which Anborn comes; both Kinsmen.” He shielded his eyes from the red glow of the sun at the horizon's edge, a bright slice of diminishing fire. “Anborn studied him endlessly, worshipped him; it was MacQuieth on whom his whole life's plan was modeled. Such an incalculable loss to us. And yet —”
His mind went back to the sight of the old man walking, blind, in the light of the morning sun, unable to see it, feeling its warmth, its glory just beyond his sight.
The All-God give thee good day, Grandfather.
If He were to do so, I would be gone from this life now. All of the years I have ahead of me, and all those behind, would I trade for but one day in which to see what has been lost to Time once more.
I understand.
Do you? Hmmm. I think not. But I suspect one day, a thousand years or more from now, you will.
“And yet what?” Rhapsody asked.
“And yet there is nothing to mourn,” Ashe said simply. “He is at peace.”
Rhapsody nodded, brushing the heavy snarls of her hair out of her eyes, remembering words she had spoken once to Elynsynos long ago, consoling her over the loss of her lost sailor.
Sailors find peace in the sea, just as Lirin find it on the wind beneath the stars.
We commit our bodies to the wind through fire, not to the Earth, just as sailors commit them to the sea. The key to finding peace is not where your body rests, but where your heart remains.
“I will sing a requiem for him,” she said.
“And for his son,” Ashe said. “Hector; the one who stayed behind in the Island's last days. MacQuieth could never bring himself to sing it; perhaps you could do it for them both.”
Rhapsody nodded, brushing the salt from below her eyes. She gathered what strength she had left and walked to the water's edge, Ashe's hand still in hers, and touched Achmed's shoulder.
The men stood silent on either side of her as she lifted her voice, harsh and brittle like a crone's, chanting the ancient vesper to the sun, the song of the funeral pyre, for the father and the son, both now resting in the sea.
She sang in the lore she had learned in her time in the cave, the ancient melodies the sea had taught her, blending the keening call of the wind with the rhythm of the waves, endless and enduring, in all the colors and subtle tones that had filled her ears while floating in its embrace. It was a song that resonated within her now, in her blood, from her grandfather who had left the lowlands to ply the sea, in her heart, from the lore she had learned, in the child she carried, steeped now and forever in the lore of the water world, the hidden mountains, the unseen splendors, the treasures that lay beneath the rolling waves.
She sang of the lives of two soldiers, one cut short, one lingering far beyond reason, both stalwart guardians, both now part of the never-ending rhythm of the sea, part of its lore.
Part of its song.
The ocean roared in time, the salt-flecked air above the churning waves buffeting her face, all the colors of light wrapped within its swirling, eternal dance. It was a symphony of time, an endless dirge, an elegy, a lullabye, a song of creation, of desolation, of quiet, relentless guardianship, of inevitability.
Time carries on
, the sea seemed to sing.
Live your human lives, however long; they are but a flicker in the eye of eternity.
She sang the sun down, then fell silent, her voice, like her strength, all but gone. She turned to her husband and spoke while she still had voice.
“Did Anborn live?” she asked tentatively. Achmed nodded. Rhapsody sighed deeply.
“Thank the One-God,” she whispered to Ashe. “Sam, please take me home. I need to see Anborn, to let him know that he did not fail me; and Gwydion. I need to make good on my promises to him. Then, if you will come with me, I still need to go to the dragon's lair.” She smiled slightly, remembering
the music of the Explorer she had learned. “I have some songs I have to sing for her. The silence of her cave will do me wonders. After all that constant noise, what I crave most is peace.”
Ashe drew her closer, his eyes sad.
“If I have learned one thing from this, Rhapsody, it is that men like Achmed and Anborn are right; there is no such thing as lasting peace, just lulls between episodes of strife,” he said softly. “But I mean to see that those lulls last as long as they can for you, and for us all.” He ran a hand over her ragged hair. “Now, come; I will take you home. On the promontory above there is a sword hilt glinting in the sunlight; I suspect we should gather it before we go. Tysterisk was once the weapon of Kinsmen; my namesake may have use of it one day.”
Rhapsody smiled weakly. “Thank you for helping me make good on my promise to return to him and Melisande,” she said, her voice a harsh whisper. “Let us get there with all due haste; I don't want them to suffer a moment longer.”
Ashe nodded, raising the back of her hand to his lips.
“There is a stop we should make first, a place we can eat and get some rest that I know you will like. There's someone there, an old friend of yours, who has been waiting a lifetime to see you again.” He put his arm around her waist to support her and led her up the beach to where the horses waited.
Achmed stared at the sea for one last moment, his eyes scanning the waves, which were still slowly washing up the broken debris from the ship, then turned and watched the bedraggled couple moving slowly along, arm in arm, allowing himself a wistful moment.
Then he shook his head and followed them up the coast.
“Why do I have a sickening feeling Barney will be serving mutton?” he muttered to himself.

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