Destiny: Child Of Sky (6 page)

The third week, the Week of Loss, still saw water coming forth from Entudenin, but it had dwindled to a mere trickle. During this time only those with desperate illness in their households were allowed to collect water from the Fountain Rock.

Unlike the raucous harvest of the first two weeks, any such collection was done reverently, with great humility, and at considerable expense in the form of a donation of food or coinage to the priestesses who guarded Entudenin.

Finally, the trickle would vanish. The Fountain Rock would go dry, and this week, the Week of Slumber, was a time when a sense of apprehension bordering on dread would come over Yarim Paar, at least according to the legends. Though the geyser had been erupting cyclically with its gift for as long as anyone could remember, there was always an unspoken fear that each time might be the last. And while the Yarimese had managed to trust the sun and moon to follow the patterns the All-God had laid out for them without a second thought, there was always a fear that Entudenin might change her mind, might abandon her children to the dust of the wasteland around them if anything gave her offense.

The task of tending to the Wellspring was entrusted to a clan known as the Shanouin, a band of former nomads that were said to have come originally from Kurimah Milani. The Shanouin water-priestesses were accorded the highest social status in Yarim, second only to the line of the duke and the benison that Yarim shared with the neighboring province of Canderre. Because Entudenin followed a monthly cycle it was believed to have a female outlook, and so only the Shanouin women were allowed the actual task of cleaning and maintaining the obelisk in its rest, as well as managing the access of the townspeople to the Wellspring. The men and children of the clan were accorded the tasks of basin-building and water delivery to the more important households; the Shanouin carter who brought monthly water vessels to the house of the duke was accorded a position even higher than that of the royal chamberlain.

When centuries passed and the Erim Rus became contaminated with the Blood Fever, and the tributary of the Tar'afel went dry, Entudenin remained stalwart, constant, nurturing the dry realm with the elixir of life, twenty days out of every moon-cycle. The verdant desert gardens that had grown up in Yarim Paar were allowed to wither in order to divert some of the Wellspring's water to the outlying towns and villages, and the opal outposts and mineral mining camps as well. The paradise that Yarim Paar had become settled into a more staid, sensible city, a comely matron taking the place of the once ravishingly beautiful bride.

And so it went, month after month, year after year, century after century for millennia uncounted until the day that Entudenin went to sleep and did not awaken.

At first the Shanouin had cautioned composure. The Wellspring had not been perfect in the marking of its cycles, though no one at the time could remember it ever deviating from its routine by more than three days. When the fourth day passed, then the fifth, however, the Blesser of Canderre-Yarim was summoned by avian messenger from his basilica in Bethany to Yarim Paar, in the hope that perhaps his divine wisdom, endowed by the Creator through the Patriarch, would be able to determine the cause of Entudenin's silence, and perhaps make amends for whatever offense had been committed.

The benison came in all due haste, riding his desert stallion in the company of but eight guards, rather than resorting to the slower method of the royal caravan. By the time he arrived from Bethany the Wellspring had been dry for ten days, and there was widespread consternation bordering on panic, not only in Yarim Paar, but in the other Yarimese cities and outposts as well, since all of them depended upon the water of Entudenin for sustenance. That panic soon had spread to the other provinces of Roland, because many of the Or-landan dukes had holdings and financial interests in Yarim.

When the benison was unable to summon the life back into the Wellspring with his prayers to the Patriarch, much of the population of Yarim began reverting from the monotheistic practices of the religion of Sepulvarta, the Patriarch, and his benisons back to the pagan polytheism that had been their creed before the Cymrians came.

Sacrifices, both public and private, benign and malevolent, were offered to the goddess of the Earth, to the Lord of the Sea, to the god of water, to any and every possible deity that might have taken offense, in the hope that whatever divine entity would listen might call off the curse of thirst. The pleas fell on deaf ears all the way around.

Finally the finger pointed. Word swept through the town that it was the Shanouin who were to blame; Entudenin's handmaidens had displeased her, had caused her to withdraw from her people. The water-priestesses and the rest of their clan escaped Yarim Paar by night as the brushy scrub for their pyres was being collected. But even with the departure of the Shanouin, Entudenin still remained unmoved, still refused to open her heart.

When murderous rioting broke out over control of the drying cisterns, the city of Yarim Paar, under the hand of the duke, settled back into sullen silence and contemplated how it would survive now that the water was gone. A halfhearted attempt at well-digging was made, then quickly abandoned; no one alive had ever undertaken such a task, so no one knew how, having lived all their lives with Entudenin tending to their water needs like a generous wet-nurse. In addition, even if they had known how to pierce the dry earth, doing it in a place that would produce water was as likely as finding a specific grain of flax in a ten-stone sack.

What water there might be crept so far beneath the sand that it might as well be on the other side of the earth for all the tunneling required to reach it.

At last it occurred to the duke that the Shanouin, while they might have displeased the Wellspring, were the repository of knowledge about water in this arid climate.

He sent forth his army to round up the entire tribe and had them herded back to Yarim, where they then met in council with him, the magistrate of Yarim Paar, the supervisors of the various mining camps, and the officials of the other Yarimese cities.

At this meeting the duke of Yarim promised the Shanouin free citizenship again, and the protection of the Yarimese army, if they would find a way to bring forth water from the dry clay to sustain life in the province's thirsty cities.

And so the Shanouin slowly regained their social status over the centuries, establishing successful water camps that fed the province of Yarim, though never again as abundantly as it had been in its glory days. Though they were now without the Artery that brought forth life from the heart of the Earth, there were still any number of small veins running near the surface, which the former priestesses of Entudenin were able to divine. The work was difficult and chancy, but somehow Yarim survived its apocalypse. The once-glorious capital of Yarim Paar withered in the heat, drying out in the sun and cracking as it did.

As for Entudenin, it continued to stand, stalwartly rising toward the sky, but silent now. The great marble basin around it dried out as well and crumbled away. The obelisk baked in the heat, losing its luster, its colors, until finally it was as dry and red as the rest of the clay that had built Yarim. It was visited from time to time by pilgrims from across the desert, who stood at its base, gazing up at the carcass of the dead Fountain Rock, shaking their heads either at the overwhelming sadness of its loss, or the exaggeration of the stories they had heard about it in the first place.

When darkness fell each night, however, just as twilight was leaving the sky, someone watching the ancient formation might note the tiniest glimmer of gold, the silvery sheen of fragile mica, forever forged in the heat into the dark, spindling rock, pointing the way to the stars.

I take it Ashe never brought you to this place when the two of you visited Yarim?"

'No. Why?"

Achmed stared up at the tall, thinning shaft of the towering obelisk. “I would think this giant phallus would only reinforce his feelings of inadequacy. Justifiable feelings, I might add."

Beneath the veils of the pilgrim disguise that shielded her face from sight, Rhapsody smiled but said nothing. Instead she waited until the three elderly women, draped as she was in flowing white ghodins with their faces shielded behind veils, finished their prayers and moved on. She then moved closer to the ancient formation.

Entudenin was smaller than she had envisioned, and thinner; it had the appearance of frailty to it. They had, in fact, walked past it twice, because it stood in the midst of the central town square like an unappreciated statue, while oxcarts and cattle caravans rumbled past and around it as if it were not there. The three women who had just walked away were the only people in all of the busy traffic of Yarim Paar that had stopped to look at the obelisk that morning.

The deposits of mineral sediment that had once formed it now had solidified into hard red rock, pocked and scarred with deep gouges and holes. Rhapsody observed that it looked vaguely like a dismembered arm balanced on the ground, missing the hand as well.

She cast a glance around the busy town square, then quickly averted her eyes as a cadre of Yarimese soldiers, distinguished by their horned helmets, rode past. When she could no longer hear the sounds of the horses' hooves, she looked back at Achmed. He was staring off toward the south.

'What do you think happened to the water? Why did Entudenin go dry?"

Achmed smirked. “Are you mistaking me for Manwyn just because we're in the same city?"

'Hardly. She's ever so much more pleasant than you are." Rhapsody shuddered, remembering the Oracle's hideous laughter, her unprovoked taunting of Ashe, her ugly prophecies.

,' tee an unnatural child born of an unnatural act. Rhapsody, you should beware of childbirth: the mother jhall die, but the child dhall live.

Ashe had been furious at his aunt's words. When he demanded an explanation, Manwyn had thrown puzzling words at him as well.

Gwydion ap Llauron, thy mother died in giving birth to thee, but thy children 'j mother dhali not die giving birth to them.

There had been something else, but Rhapsody could not remember what it was, almost as if it had been plucked from her memory.

She blinked and found Achmed's mismatched eyes staring at her. Rhapsody shook her head to drive the memory away.

'If I wanted to ask a Seer about what happened to Entudenin, it would have to be Anwyn,“ she said. "She's the one who sees the Past. I think I'll pass, thank you. I'd rather ask you, even if you can only give your opinion. What offense do you think was committed that caused the Fountain Rock to run dry?"

Beneath his veils she could tell he was smiling. He turned and stared up at Entudenin. “The offense of a mineral clog, or a shifting of strata within the Earth."

'Really? That's all?"

'That's all, at least in my opinion. Have you ever noticed, Rhapsody, that when something miraculous and good happens it's a gift from the All-God, but when something baleful or terrible takes it away, it was man's fault? Perhaps everything that happens, good and bad, is just random chance."

'Perhaps,“ she said hastily. She pulled out the journal and began thumbing through it. "Rhonwyn said the child's location was Tarim Paar, below Entudenin, didn't she?"

Achmed nodded, not looking away from the fossilized geyser. “Listening to you pry the names, ages, and locations of those demon brats out of that lunatic Seer was torture."

Rhapsody chuckled. “I'm sorry. It's not easy to get information from someone who can't remember who you are from moment to moment, because she can only see the Present. A heartbeat later the Present becomes the Past and she can't remember what she said, let alone what you said. And if you think Rhonwyn was bad, be glad you didn't meet Manwyn." She leaned forward and tried to peer over the domes of the buildings toward the Oracle's crumbling temple, but could not see the minaret.

“The fountain square is the direct center of the city. Do you think 'below' meant south of the square?"

The Firbolg king shrugged, trying to concentrate. The heartbeats were muffled now, swallowed by the hum of human traffic, the whine of the winter wind through the narrow alleys, the haggling of the women, the cacophony of merchants in the marketplace shouting their wares. Added to this was the muffling of the veils that were worn by almost everyone in Yarim to keep the blowing dirt from the eyes and nose.

His chest was still aching from the shock of the arrhythmia, the jolt of dissonance that his heart's rhythm had experienced when the second pulse had ricocheted off it. He understood what Rhapsody meant about name-songs, songs of one's self; the way that she could attune her music to something's true name. Her musical lore worked in much the same way that his tracking ability did, locking both of them to the unique vibrations that each individual emitted. He had always known how vulnerable he was when matching his own heartbeat to another's. It made him wonder what her exposure was as well.

He could still hear both rhythms, distantly. There was such an infinitesimal amount of blood from the old world in the makeup of the children that he hardly should be able to hear it at all. One of the heartbeats was fainter and more intermittent than the other.

'One of them—the first one—is at the southeastern edge of the city,“ he said finally. "As for the other one, it could be anywhere."

Rhapsody adjusted the veil in front of her face nervously. “That doesn't inspire great confidence."

'I'm sorry."

'Don't be angry. It's just that your ability to track these children is the only hope we have of finding them."

Achmed took her elbow and drew her away from the dry fountain. He led her to a sheltered alcove in a side alley, and after checking to be certain they were alone, leaned close to her ear.

'I should have explained this to you long ago,“ he said in a voice so low as to be barely above a whisper. "You do not understand the difficulty in what you are asking.

'On the Island, I could find and follow any man's heartbeat easily. Like finding my way through a familiar forest, there was uncertainty, there were perils, but I knew where they were, and how to cope with them. That ability vanished, and with the exception of those who were also born on Serendair, I can no longer do that. I can match heartbeats with you, and Grunthor, and a handful of First Generation Cymrians. That's all."