The Weaver's Lament (27 page)

The Lady Cymrian considered for a moment.

Then she nodded her understanding and dismounted the horse, coming to stand a few steps from Meridion.

“Tell me what you feel you must,” she said softly.

Meridion summoned his courage, sick at heart at the sight of her face, the glowing light in it that had always been present waning before his eyes.

The mist of the Veil of Hoen hung heavy in the air, frozen in Time. He turned to the enormous loom on which the tapestry of history was being woven, and pointed to the place where the original image had been altered, beginning with a tiny knot of interwoven copper and golden threads.

He watched her enormous eyes take in the sight of the rewoven history, the original pattern hovering in the air, evanescent, translucent beside the clear, well-formed threads that represented Time as it was now recorded.

Those eyes filled with unspent tears as she did.

“It was me, Mimen. I am so sorry.”

Rhapsody continued to watch the floating scene of the Forgotten Past unfold before her eyes.

“It was me, Mimen, though I did not know it until I came here to meet you,” Meridion said. He took a breath of the unmoving air and spoke as quickly as he could, trying to maintain a calm tone, relying on his training as a Namer, even as his heart pounded violently. “I just saw it in the Weaver's tapestry—the gold thread of your hair, the copper of Gwydion's—and my own fingerprints. I am the one who edited Time, who sent my father back to meet you in the old world. I am the one who caused the strand of Time that you lived before to burn in favor of the one I altered.”

Finally she turned to him and smiled slightly.

“I know,” she said. “I can see it as well.”

“Can you forgive me? For this, and for everything I said?”

A dark wind blew through the glade.

Behind the horse, the clouds of dust on the filmy ground began rising rapidly, reaching skyward into darker ones that were racing again now.

Rhapsody's eyes grew clearer, and she appeared slightly more solid, as if by force of will. When she spoke, the tone of the Namer was in her voice.

“You had no say in the matter, Meridion. And it was the right thing for the world. There is nothing to forgive.”

The Lord Rowan was looking behind him. “M'lady—”

“I wanted you enough to accept death as the consequence of your birth on both sides of Time, Meridion. Both times, I deem that my decision was wise. I am forever grateful to have been your mother.”

Black rain began to strafe the glade, sending the limbs of the trees writhing, their leaves rustling madly.

“M'lady,
he comes.
”

Meridion's eyes widened as he beheld the horizon approaching from behind the Lord Rowan's mount.

Fire now was leaping from the ground, and thunder crackled and snapped in the clouds shot with lightning.

Before it all rode another horseman, larger and broader in form than the Lord Rowan, clad in spiked armor, a whip of many tails in his heavy-gloved hand.

The face beneath his war helm was exposed to the heavy air, his lips skinned back from his teeth that were clenched in a grin of hatred.

His face was part skeleton, part sunken, in which eyes of fire burned.

He rode low over the back of his mount, a tall, broad steed that seemed to be formed of dark wind and fire.

He was beating that windfire steed mercilessly, urging it onward, a grin of both satisfaction and fury curled on what remained of his lips.

“Mother—”

The remaining spirit of Rhapsody reached out and seized Meridion by the shoulders. Her hands had no weight, but he felt the strength of her will nonetheless.

“Hear me, Meridion: I love you; remember that
always
. Speak the same words for me to all our family—especially to your father. Be gentle with him. Tell him that no one killed me, there is no revenge to exact—and nothing else about my death. Tell him this additionally—
your lady commands you not to rampage; Grunthor's death brought the continent to the brink of war, but she wishes hers to return it to peace. Honor this command, and your wife will meet you one day beyond the Gate. She thanks you for the most beautiful life she could ever have imagined.
”

She took his hand and pressed her lips to the back of it; the warmth and sensation of love conveyed remained there for the rest of his life.

Then her other hand slid down his arm as she backed away from him toward the Lord Rowan's horse. Her palm, cold as the wind around them, rested in his for one last moment.

“And, my beloved son, above all else, may you know joy.”

She gave him one final smile, then turned to the Lord Rowan, whose white hair was streaming violently in the wind now, and reached up her arms.

Without another breath the Lord Rowan swept her from the filmy forest floor and dragged her onto the mount before him. He kicked its sides savagely and dashed forward through the Gate, riding through Meridion as he did without so much as a whisper of impact.

Meridion spun around in time to see the horse disappear beyond the Gate of Life, then turned back again as the lightning flashed and the rain drenched his skin, stinging and burning, but leaving no droplets or mist.

*   *   *

Meridion closed his eyes as the howl of the wind before him rose into a scream of fury.

He could feel his eyelids burn as the thundering hoofbeats rode closer, ripping grass and dirt beneath them in a horrific smell.

A violent slap roared through him, dragging his hair behind him and off-balancing him, making his chest, shoulders, and legs ache violently.

Then he heard the sound of a horse in walk, circling him from behind and stopping in front of him again.

“Open your eyes,
coward
.”

Meridion obeyed.

The manifestation of the Wracked Death stared down at him from atop its evanescent mount in hatred.

His mother's words, spoken so recently and yet seemingly forever ago, sounded in his ear.

Stand up straight and shrink from no one. Look every man in the eye. Spit in that eye if you need to.

As warmth spread through him, Meridion stared back at Death.

The enormous monster leaned over the side of the horse, bringing its rotting head and the putrid stench of its tattered teeth down next to his face.

“You have taken a valuable prize from me, Namer,” the Wracked Death said. In its voice were sounds of wailing, screams of agony, above the base of a growl that rang with the slamming of cemetery gates. “Your mother made a life of claiming such prizes from me—healing those who were among my spoils, who I deserved to carry beyond the Gate, or staying my hand by comforting them in death—just as you do. This does not come without cost. The ledgers record these thefts, both hers and yours—and now yours of her.”

The eyes of the manifestation of Death burned even darker before him. His final words were considered, slow, and spoken in a terrifying hiss.

“I will never forgive your debt. When your time comes, I will be there to collect you—be certain of it.”

Meridion exhaled.

“Perhaps,” he said, sighting the horseman down. “Or perhaps my mother was right. Death itself is an immutable entity, but the manifestations of it, the traditions and myths, the legends and tales are perhaps given power by the very Namers, priests, and Singers, and their fellows in other cultures who recount that lore. Perhaps all of us have brought you into existence by the very sharing, guarding, and maintaining of that lore.

“I believe I will put that theory to the test—I shall return to the Repositories of Lore and remove any mention of you from the displays. I will rewrite the books and expunge your image, and that of the other monsters who are your brothers, leaving only Yl Angaulor in the record. I will whisper a new lore of Death into the wind: that those whose lives end in pain, or in war, or in the death of worlds, arrive at the Gate in joy. And, if I am wrong, I will apologize if you come to collect me, and you may torment me however you choose. That seems only fair. But trust me—I am confident enough in my ability to rewrite the lore as I have mentioned that I will lose no sleep over the infinitesimal possibility that I will ever see you again.”

The grisly horseman blinked in astonishment. Meridion could not suppress a smile.

Then he closed his eyes and loosed the bonds he had put on Time in the Veil of Hoen, and made his way through its corridors to Ylorc.

 

28

THE TUNNEL ABOVE THE CHASM, YLORC

In the face of the miracle that he had just witnessed, Achmed's sardonic nature had failed him utterly.

As he looked down at the child in Rhapsody's hands, his own poised beneath the birthing cloth, he found himself staring into a pair of eyes, colored in two different shades, looking back at him as if the baby was sighting down a crossbow.

He chuckled in spite of himself.

My son,
he thought, still unable to believe what he was seeing. He noticed the traceries of veins that scored the baby's tiny head, looking as if they had been painted there by an artist from the Inoye clan, a Gwenen tribe that detailed the skin in beautiful runes with inks made of cacao and the excretions of squid.
There is a little of me in him after all.
He gently touched the infant's translucent gold hair, and his long black lashes and golden skin with a rosy undertone exactly like that of his mother.
Thankfully, very little.

The air of the room suddenly became heavier, pushing against the sensitive skin of his face.

“He's beauti—”

His instinctive reflexes responded like lightning as the child dropped into his hands.

His mother fell sideways to the floor, limp and lifeless.

“Rhapsody?” Achmed blinked in surprise.

He was over her a moment later, the newborn swaddled in the birthing cloth in the crook of his arm, sensing for a heartbeat he had known intimately for more than two millennia, but finding nothing.

“Rhapsody?” he demanded, his tone unintentionally harsh as it had been in previous times when his worry got the better of him.

Shaking, he rolled her over onto her back and felt her neck numbly for her heartbeat, only to be sickeningly assured of its absence.

Every organ in his body went numb or constricted with shock.

He opened his mouth to taste the air, pulled his veils farther away from his skin-web to allow his senses the best chance of finding her heartbeat in the wind, but, just as it had been a short time ago with Grunthor, there was no trace of it. He let loose his
kirai,
the gift he had utilized in Serendair to locate any prey by its cardiac trail, but to no avail.

The Bolg king fell back, shaking with shock.

He could hear his own voice, long ago, when she had been grievously injured by the demonic vine that had sprung from her F'dor-possessed sister's entrails, trying to jolly her into awareness.

Come on, Rhapsody, we've been in worse fights than this. Sleep on your own time, will you? This is no way to get out of your share of the work breaking camp.

But there was something so certain, so all-encompassing, so final about her state that he could not even bring himself to joke for old times' sake.

Achmed opened his mouth and began to breathe shallowly.

Desperation gripped him suddenly. He tightened the cloth around the newborn and set him, with the greatest of care, on the floor, then tilted her head back and pressed his open mouth on hers, breathing for her, pushed rhythmically on her chest, even though he knew before he began it would be to no avail.

He put his hand on the naked skin of her chest, the place she just a few moments before had bared for him, allowing him to rest his palm there.

It was warm, perhaps from the recentness of her heart stopping, perhaps owing to the fire that had been absorbed in her when she sang her way through the molten, towering wall of the element at the heart of the Earth.

“Rhapsody,” he whispered brokenly. “Please, please don't do this.”

Her eyes, green as the forest canopy, were open, staring blankly.

Achmed let his hand come to rest on them, closing the lids, brushing the luminous black lashes as he took his hand away.

Angrily he contemplated a blind run for the chasm.

A tiny gurgling sound, like the pealing of bell, went up behind him.

He turned to see that the baby had disentangled himself from the birthing cloth and was waving his arms slowly, randomly.

In the back of his mind he could hear the words of a prophecy spoken, something Ashe had obsessed over, that Rhapsody had assured him, during the course of her later, more routine pregnancies, had not been about Meridion or any of his siblings, but a woman who long ago she had delivered of a child with demon's blood, a spawn of a rape by the Rakshas.

I see an unnatural child born of an unnatural act. Rhapsody, you should beware of childbirth. The mother shall die, but the child shall live.

Her later pregnancies after Meridion's birth had all been healthy and safe, despite his rude comments about Ashe risking her life.

I see an unnatural child born of an unnatural act.

Oh gods,
Achmed thought as he looked from his son to the baby's dead mother.
Oh, gods.

There was a lingering warmth against his cheek, the odor of spice and flowers and soap; he put his hand to his face, feeling words he did not think he had actually heard, spoken after what felt like a loving kiss, in a sweet, familiar voice.

Thank you. Love—you.

Oh gods,
he thought again.

For the first time he could remember, he felt the presence of caustic, bitter tears burn down his face.

Achmed shook his head to dislodge them from his skin, fearing if they remained there, he would never be able to make the ones that would come after them cease.