The Weaver's Lament (22 page)

“Meridion, please—whatever you may believe, your father was the other half of my soul, and I would lay down my life in a heartbeat for him.”

Meridion began to pace, running his hands through his sweaty hair, much the way his father used to. “But you would not forgive him?”

“I do,” Rhapsody said, rising, her voice sounding as if she had swallowed shards of glass. “I do forgive him. I know you do not understand now, but one day you will.”

“What is
wrong
with you?” he shouted in return. “You, my mother, the foundation of my very life, the teacher of my morals, my idol—you—you murderous
bitch
.”

“Meridion, you don't understand—”

“You are bloody right about that!”

The sting of the words served as the equivalent of a slap across the face. Rhapsody stood a little straighter and stanched her tears, adopting a Namer's tone.

“Meridion ap Gwydion ap Llauron ap Gwylliam tuatha d'Anwynan o Serendair, hear my words,” she said, strongly but calm. “I command you, in my last act as Lady Cymrian, to speak the following names and give them these instructions.

“Take your father's sword back to the exterior Altar of Water at the basilica of Abbat Mythlinis in Avonderre and leave it on the altar in its metal bindings. I bid you to attempt to lift Kirsdarke from the altar once you have delivered it there; it will either choose to come with you or it will not. I will bring Daystar Clarion to the Fire Basilica in Bethany in the same way; therefore, tell Joseph to undertake the same thing. If the swords refuse either one or both of you, it will be up to the swords themselves to select new bearers. Then return to Highmeadow and speak the names of those who will either lead now, or transition to the new leadership. To Stephen, the crown of the lordship; to Allegra, the crown of the ladyship, until the council meets next year to choose the new sovereigns.

“Ask Elienne to go to Tomingorllo and see if the diadem of the Lirin chooses her to wear it, and Laurelyn to offer her services to Achmed as the
amelystik
to the Earthchild. Herald that our reign is over, but say
nothing else,
I beg you—you do not know what really happened here.” As the Namer's command came to an end, she began to sob again. “You are a Namer; you cannot afford to spread misinformation. Please, Meridion—”

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” he demanded.

“For the moment, until you speak the words I gave you, I am your sovereign. Thereafter I am only your mother.”

Meridion's eyes were blazing with angry fire. “Nonesuch. My allegiance to you ended in both cases when you killed the Lord Cymrian—my father. How could you
do
that?”

Rhapsody turned and pointed at the Teeth, where already units of soldiers were beginning to prepare for battle, milling about in agitation. “Look behind me, Meridion. Can you feel the bloodlust burgeoning?”

“Of course—”

“Did you think that it would be sated with something less? Did you imagine the surrender of Kirsdarke was going to spare the continent of this rage, the pain and despair at the murder and despoliation of Grunthor? Your
godfather
? Half a million soldiers and millions more Bolg citizens are roiling in blood fury. Even now Achmed is bringing on the night to cool that rage; elsewise there will be a retribution of death and destruction all the way to the sea.”

“So to spare the continent you sacrificed my father's life? You, who stood with him through
everything
that both of you did over a thousand years of history? I thought Anwyn was evil; compared to you, she was holy.”

Rhapsody was shaking violently now. “Meridion, please—”

“Enough! I will herald your words, the end of your reign, and speak the names of those who will replace you both. And then I will forget you,
Rhapsody;
I do not want your name in my mouth or your memory in my mind from this moment forward.”

“Meridion—”

“You are dead to me.” The words rang with a Namer's tone as well.

The Lady Cymrian froze. “I love you with everything that I am, Meridion.”

Meridion stared at her, devastation evident in his eyes. “I believe that. I guess I just had a higher expectation of what you are. My fault, apparently.”

He turned away from his heartbroken mother and made his way angrily to the staircase, descending as quickly as he could. He looked up when he made the first circular turn to see Rhapsody standing above him, watching him go.

He looked away and ran the rest of the way down.

*   *   *

The Lady Cymrian reached the doorway at the bottom of the tower just in time to watch her eldest son pull himself into the saddle of his mount and gallop away without looking back.

She ran after him, but had only made it to the circle of fire ash and devastated grass before he was all but out of sight.

She sank to the ground within the place where starfire had struck the Earth and wrapped her arms around her waist, unable to feel anything.

From the bristling air around her, she heard a voice, ragged and airy.

I will speak to him, Aria.

She did not even look up. “Leave me in peace.”

I love you—God, I love you more than I ever imagined possible.

For a moment there was nothing but the sound of the wind. Then, after a long pause, the voice in the air spoke again, and it sounded tentative, nervous.

Do you still love me, Aria?

Her reply was so soft that only an entity hiding in the wind could hear it. “Always.”

I'm so sorry.

“Leave me in peace,” she repeated. “Please.”

In the lack of an answer, it seemed to her that he had granted her request.

 

22

The great braziers were pulsing and roaring with angry life amid a host of dark shadows when Rhapsody finally managed to rise from the ground beneath Grivven Post and make her way back toward the Teeth, where Gurgus Peak hovered, the tallest of all the guardian mountains.

All around her, Bolg on foot and on horseback were rushing into formation, dragging wagons and giant ballistae into place, running past, cackling with the glee of rage. She had only walked a hundred paces when a Firbolg guard regiment took up positions around her, armed with barbed spears to keep any itinerant soldiers from crushing or injuring her in the dark, sent by the Bolg king on his way to the Lightcatcher.

She did not notice, lost as she was, her mind numb with grief.

The war toms were in full blast now, shaking the mountains with their violent cadences and echoing north and south through the stone. The noise of pending war was almost as brutal as that of war itself; though the arms and armor were yet to clash, the wood of wagons and the blasts of explosions were almost loud enough to make it seem as if the retribution for Grunthor's death had already begun.

She was led into the relative quiet of the inner tunnels of Ylorc, to the Cauldron, Achmed's seat of power, and through the Great Hall, where the ancient thrones of Gwylliam and Anwyn still stood, a horrifying reminder of marital strife leading to centuries of war, to the room beyond it, where the staircase and the funicular to the Lightcatcher stood. She ascended the staircase, still shaking violently, as the guard unit took up a defensive posture at the bottom of the steps.

Even from the hallway atop the staircase, Rhapsody could see that the room in which the instrumentality the Bolg king had called the Lightcatcher was ablaze with torchlight, shadows of patchy darkness pulsing from the enormity of it. Fraax, the Archon of the Lightcatcher, was lurking deep in the recesses of the room.

When she entered the cavernous tower room which housed the Lightcatcher, Achmed did not look up from calibrating the machine, but, sensing her heartbeat upon her arrival, motioned her closer. “Help me with this, will you?”

Rhapsody did not reply.

He turned after a moment, annoyed, to see her hovering near the outer edge of the circle of light in which the central table of the instrumentality stood, beneath the domed ceiling at the top of the mountain peak inset with a perfect circle of stained glass in the exact colors of the light spectrum. An enormous diamond was suspended above the table, glowing with undulating light absorbed from the sun through the interior clear circle in the center of the glass dome.

She was whiter than the diamond, trembling in the rags of what had been her dressing gown.

She was also smeared with the ashes of the circle in which she had called starfire down upon her husband, whose bodily remains were no doubt clinging to her now.

Irritated as he had been when she had not responded, Achmed took a breath and looked at her from behind his veils.

“Are you all right?”

Rhapsody said nothing.

Achmed extended his hand. “Come to me,” he said as gently as he could. “Come. I need your help with this.”

Slowly, the Lady Cymrian came into the circle of light, stepping over the circular track on which a tall metal wheel with a variety of openings in the center rested, waiting to be set into motion. The Bolg king waited until she was within reach, then let his hand encircle her upper arm in the attempt to still the violence of her shuddering.

“Remind me of the lore of the indigo part of the spectrum,” he said, his voice as low and quiet as his nervousness would allow. “I don't recall the name for the note in the spectrum to which is it attuned—the fifth, is it not?”

“Sixth,” Rhapsody whispered. “
Luasa-ela.
The note to which I am attuned, my Naming note.”

“And what are the two powers of indigo called?”

Rhapsody swallowed silently.

Achmed's eyes darkened in annoyance. “This may be the only chance you have to spare Roland from the wrath of my army, Rhapsody,” he said tersely. “In a reasonable world, your delay might be considered the cause for the war not being halted.”

“Night Stayer, the sharp of the note,” she said, her voice harsh and ragged. “Said to keep the night at bay. And Night Caller, or Summoner, the flat of it, said to bring it on.”

“What do you know of its effect?”

“Nothing. It has never been tried before, or, if it has, there is no record of it in the lore.”

Achmed nodded perfunctorily as he turned back to the instrumentality. “Then I would say it is risky to try to produce the sound element with the wheel,” he said, nodding at the enormous metal caster balancing on its side on the circular track. “You are going to have to sing the note.”

Rhapsody sighed dispiritedly. “Achmed—”

The Bolg king glared at her in fury. “Get
over
here,” he snarled. “The cavalry is set to ride without orders, believing Grunthor is commanding them to attack. The infantry has so many soldiers aligned and ready to march that they would not even see me were I to interpose my body between the army and the continent to the west. I know you are in shock, that you are grieving, but if you cannot rise above that, at least long enough to help me make use of the only tool we have to quell this war, the blood of your Alliance, and perhaps your children and
their
children, will be on
your
hands.”

He turned back to the machine, continuing the calibration.

Rhapsody tarried a moment longer, than exhaled and came to his side.

“Where are you directing the beam?” she asked quietly.

Achmed made a circular motion with his hand, his index finger extended.

“The whole of the Bolglands?”

“I see no other choice.”

“Very well. Do you have everything in alignment?”

“I believe so.”

“We will have to use the stored power in the diamond,” she said, “since waiting for daylight, and for the sun to travel almost to the other end of the spectrum, would not be viable.”

“Yes.” Achmed strode to the lever that opened the metal shield that separated the space leading up through the tower from the glass in the dome. “Are you ready?”

Rhapsody struggled for breath. She nodded, her haggard face ghastly pale.

Achmed threw the switch, manipulating the segmented cover until it exposed just the indigo slice of the spectrum. A horrific grinding sound echoed in the room below the light tower, raining the dust and grit of disuse down upon them.

“Sivigant,” Rhapsody said, her voice shaking.
Activate.

The diamond's quivering light expanded, gleaming ferociously, until it caught the dark blue light of the indigo glass.

Luasa-ela,
Rhapsody sang. Even in her despair, the note was easy to find, the primal sound to which she was innately attuned at her very core.

A beam of rich, dense blue radiance descended from the dome of the tower through the suspended diamond to the calipers on the altar-like table, bathing the maps engraved in the tabletop in deep blue light.

Achmed watched the room beyond the circle of gleaming brilliance intently.

After several moments, it appeared as if the very air of the place was coated in deep blue radiance, thick and dense, heavy with moisture, almost as if it had been dipped into the deepest part of the ocean.

Achmed held up his hand, and Rhapsody let the note cease. He headed out of the tower toward the elevated hallway at the top of the staircase and went to the window, then looked out.

Below him, the bonfires and torches had dimmed dramatically, as if the air of the steppes was wrapped in an encompassing blue fog. The soldiers that moments before were saddling mounts and aligning into marching orders and battle formations seemed either to be stunned, looking around them in shock from the ground or atop their horses, or wandering aimlessly, confused.

A chill had settled on the mountain, cooling the flames of the torchlight inside the Cauldron and the Lightcatcher itself. Achmed took in a breath to find it heavy and cold in his lungs.