The Weaver's Lament (11 page)

“Oh, for goodness' sake, Sam, that's nothing. Be quiet a moment,” she said as he started to speak. She chanted a soft healing roundelay as she reached farther into the small closet and pulled out his bathrobe and her dressing gown, then looked back over her shoulder again. She came to him and handed him the robe.

“All better,” she said briskly. When her husband just stared at her, she turned her back to show him her newly healed skin, then pulled on her dressing gown. “If you'll pour the wine, I'll serve supper.”

“I can't believe you are dismissing what just happened as if it were nothing,” Ashe said, cinching the belt of his robe and looking around for the bottle.

“It's the red over on the windowsill,” Rhapsody said as she ladled the stew into two bowls. “And I can't believe that you are worrying one more moment about it.”

“I—
harmed
you, Rhapsody, injured you; the dragon is overzealous again—”

The Lady Cymrian set the bowls in their places, then stood up and crossed her arms in front of her, looking at him with a mixture of fondness and disbelief.

“In a thousand years of spectacular lovemaking, there have been surprisingly few bumps and bruises, Sam, largely owing to your impressive agility, but there
have
been some,” she said humorously, her tone gentle. “We've both endured an occasional scratch or two, rug burns, insect bites, even a splinter, especially when utilizing the floor of a turf hut, rocks by the shoreline, or some other rough surface. If I recall correctly, on the two hundredth anniversary of our formal wedding, a collision of our foreheads during vigorous knobbing against a pillar in the Great Hall of Highmeadow after everyone else had left resulted in a rather impressive black eye for you—am I wrong?”

Ashe's despair tempered and he chuckled. “No. You are never wrong.”

“Well, now you're just trying to gain points with sweet talk you don't really mean,” she scolded playfully. Her teasing smile faded to a warmer one. “That collision also resulted in Elienne.”

Ashe's smile matched hers. “Indeed. Well worth the black eye.”

“So stop fretting.” She returned to the sideboard and brought the rest of the food to the table while he poured the wine.

She touched the wicks of the candles as he pulled out her chair for her, snapping them to life, then sat as he pushed it back in and took his seat. The music grew slightly louder as they set about dining in relative silence, smiling at each other and discussing the state of the Alliance between courses.

“How was Tyrian?” Ashe asked as Rhapsody rose to bring forth the dessert.

“The realm is in splendid shape, prosperous, peaceful, anticipating a good growing season, a bountiful harvest, and fine weather for the most part. The healing centers are functioning well, and are being visited by healers from far corners of the world.” Rhapsody carefully sliced the torte and put a large piece on his plate. “Structurally, agriculturally, culturally, militarily, and spiritually, all seems right with the world there. Rial is still doing a magnificent job as viceroy, though I suspect he will want to step away and rest soon.”

“And the meeting of Namers?”

Rhapsody's eyes sparkled.

“That was amazing,” she said, taking her fork to her own piece of cake. “I am so encouraged about the state of the lore, not only among Lirin Namers, but with those who preserve it in other races and cultures, too. The Repository is still ringing with some of the most glorious tales and songs; the Sea Mages were delighted with the new Maritime wing, where we did two whole days cataloguing and sharing sea chanteys. And you would have been incredibly proud of Meridion, Sam; his address and his work on the symposium were first-rate. Speaking objectively, he's by far the most gifted Namer in the Known World.”

“I am always incredibly proud of him, and of all our children, and the Grands and Greats,” Ashe said, folding his napkin and laying it beside his plate. “You and God, the One, the All, have blessed me with a family I could never have even begun to imagine, given the one I came from. I thank Him each day for giving me the sense to have listened to you about having one of our own.”

Rhapsody laughed and rose to clear the dishes. “You had a bit of a hand in making that family what it is, too,” she said. “The best proof I can recall of the wisdom of deciding what you want the outcome of something to be, and then making it happen.”

“I've already admitted that you are never wrong,” Ashe said, gathering the dishes she left behind. “Shall I wash or dry?”

Rhapsody was already pumping water into the sink near the wall. “Why don't you dry and put away tonight? I swear I am shrinking; I had trouble getting some of the serving pieces down from the top shelves this afternoon.”

A pounding hum behind Ashe's eyes made him stop for a moment; the dragon, which had settled into dormancy after their lovemaking and had been abashed into silence at the sight of the scratches and her blood beneath his fingernails, was beginning to rise again. “Can we set them to soak for now, Aria? We need to talk more seriously.”

Rhapsody sighed, but did not turn to face him.

“Are we going to have the anniversary discussion now, then?”

Ashe swallowed, struggling to contain the draconic voice that was growing louder in his ears.

“Do you begrudge me?”

Rhapsody touched the cold soapy water, releasing her fire lore to raise its temperature to just short of boiling. Then she turned and gave him a reassuring smile that carried over into her tone.

“Not at all. I'm grateful you are willing to limit the discussion to once a year—I know it's painful to have to wait so long.”

He put his load of plates into the water, wiped his hands, then took her into his arms and kissed her.

“If you would acquiesce, we could stop talking about it.”

Rhapsody smiled, but Ashe could almost see the lump that had formed in her throat.

“If I acquiesce, we will stop talking altogether.”

“I don't believe that's so,” he said lightly. “When my father undertook this transition, he was often in the ether nearby, and able to speak to me. He came to the Cymrian Council, witnessed our investiture and wedding—”

He stopped as her eyes filled with tears.

“I'm sorry, Aria,” he said as he drew her closer, a gesture meant to both comfort her and spare himself the sight of her crying. “I know it pains you to hear this.”

“It does,” she said to his shoulder, “but it also pains me to hear the suffering in your voice and to know that you are unhappy.”

He pulled back and took her face in his hands.

“I have never said that I am unhappy,” he said, looking deep into her eyes to assure her of the veracity of his words. “How can anyone as blessed as I have been be unhappy—be anything but grateful?”

She said nothing, but her eyes reflected an even deeper sorrow. Ashe sighed dispiritedly and pulled her close again, resting her head on his shoulder and caressing her recently healed back.

For the past twenty or so years this had been a hallmark of most of their secret-wedding anniversary celebrations in the tiny turf hut, an agonizing discussion that they had agreed to limit to once a year.

It had begun with a request he had made two decades before out of nowhere in the aftermath of an especially tender evening celebrating just such an anniversary. Faced with his own painful aging and approaching mortality, the persistent rise and increasing unpredictability of the dragon within him, and his unspoken fear that the beast in his blood would inadvertently harm her, their children, or the continent, he had casually suggested that he consider undertaking the same transition from wyrmkin to wyrm that Llauron, his father, had undergone.

Llauron had made the decision, just prior to meeting Rhapsody, to forswear his humanity in favor of entering an elemental state and become a pure dragon. He had manipulated Rhapsody, by means of a false death, into using Daystar Clarion, the elemental sword of starfire that she carried as the Iliachenva'ar, to light his funeral pyre with the sword, the action that made his transition to an elemental state possible. Llauron, forever after in elemental wyrm form, later had warned her at the Cymrian Council where she and Ashe announced the date of their public wedding of what would happen in the future.

Rhapsody, I must ask you to remember something.

Yes?

Whether you realize it now or not, for all that you hated our last interaction, you will be faced one day with the same situation again.

What does that mean?

It means that when you marry a man who is also a dragon, one day you will find that he is in need of becoming one or the other. If he chooses to let his human side win, you will eventually understand the pain of being widowed, as I have. And if he takes the path I chose, well, you have had a window into what both of you must do. I don't mean to impinge on your happiness in any way, my dear, but these are the realities of the family you are about to marry into. I just don't want you to wake up one day and feel you were misled.

Rhapsody, who had been tremendously traumatized to discover she had essentially burned Llauron alive, had greatly resented being so misled. She had struggled to keep her voice calm and as anger-free as possible.

Goodbye, Llauron,
she had said.
I'll see you at the wedding, I expect, or at least feel your presence.

Now her father-in-law's prediction was coming to pass.

That first night twenty years before, Rhapsody had listened while Ashe laid out his proposal with the same serene look on her face as was usually in place, though her eyes had kindled from emerald green to the color of spring grass. When he had finished explaining his idea, she had asked but one question of him:
Is this an obscene joke?

At the shock on his face that followed her question, she had risen from the bed, pulled on her dressing gown, and run from the turf hut. The sounds of her retching, followed by sobbing of a magnitude he had almost forgotten she was capable of, her despair filling the crabapple grove with a howling wind and causing the waterfall to roar in accusation, had appalled him so greatly that he had let the subject pass for the next three years.

Quite possibly that was because he knew even a thousand years' time had not healed her from the nightmares, remembering the part she had been manipulated into playing in Llauron's transition.

And his own complicity in it.

The avoidance of the discussion had resulted in the ability to sincerely wish her happy anniversary during those next three years, and a shattering frustration that the dragon within his blood exploited in his silence, nearly driving him insane. Finally the topic returned at his insistence, and her acceptance, of the need to at least ponder the possibility.

In his arms, Rhapsody inhaled deeply. “Do you have something new to add this year?”

Ashe swallowed the dragon's ire and waited until his response could sound considered. “Not really—do you?”

His wife pulled gently out of his arms. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “A few things. Can we sit?”

Ashe smiled and kissed her. “As my lady commands.”

Rhapsody's face was thoughtful. “I do not command you, m'lord,” she said seriously. “I merely asked. The peril of misspeaking during these discussions, especially for me, is immense. Please forgive me if I err on the side of cautious speech; I am so terribly afraid.” Her eyes were mild, but Ashe could sense she was clenching her jaw to try to stop her chin from trembling, and he cursed himself silently.

She sat down on the bed.

“After Meridion and I took care of our responsibilities at the Tree, I went to see your great-grandmother.”

“Elynsynos? You went to the dragon's lair?”

“I did.”

“Oh. How is she?”

“She's well. Delighted with the world, and all her Cymrian Grands and Greats.” Her eyes grew soft in the firelight with memory. “I needed her perspective. I hope you will forgive me; I didn't tell her of your—proposal, but I did ask her about being a dragon.”

Ashe nodded. “And what did you learn?”

Rhapsody smiled slightly. “That, like every other being in the world, dragons do not know what happens after death.” Her smile faded. “But she still seems as convinced as she was on the day you first brought me to her lair that she and all her kind are without souls, that they are long-lived, but not immortal, except that the blood they leave behind turns into veins of copper or gold or gems, to adorn the empty heads of kings and the breasts of vain women.” She looked at him sharply.

“And she believes, in great sadness, that what Llauron really sacrificed for his dragon elemental state, for his wyrm longevity, was the human soul he was born with, his immortality, his Afterlife.

“Just as you are thinking of doing.”

THE NONALIGNED STATES, THE FORMER EMPIRE OF SORBOLD, TOWN OF DROSSER

The four commanders rode two abreast down the narrow cobbled Mainway, between the median of horse troughs and the northern side of the street, scouting the pubs and taverns.

Dusk was coming, and with nightfall it would be more difficult to gauge the logistics and layouts of the places in which they expected to find the Sergeant-Major, so they had split up earlier, each of two pairs taking one side of the cobbled road.

Reynard and Goodeve, the two generals, had taken the lead, asking around to determine which of the establishments had better reputations for military types, finally narrowing the likely contenders to two, the Cock and Bull and the Serpent's Egg, which had been closed owing to a death in the family.

A few well-placed questions to a well-paid barkeep in the Cock and Bull confirmed their research.

“Well, he's likely to be here this evening, or somewhere on the street,” the barkeep had told them, never ceasing in his task of drying the tankards. “A great customer, if yer in need of endless stories and tales of war.”