The Weaver's Lament (19 page)

Except for the occasional violent outburst of grief, often by one of Grunthor's descendants, the enormous crowd was silent, stunned. The Sergeant-Major had been more than an epic soldier to the Bolg; his astonishing life span and extraordinary leadership skills had rendered unto him the status of a demi-god. Rhapsody had always known this, but the sheer power of the grief at the loss of their demi-deity, second in respect and fear only to the king himself, battered against her like a violent rainstorm, or the edge winds of a tornado.

If she weren't so rent with anguish, she would have been terrified just to witness their gathering.

Grunthor's body lay in state, decked out in full military uniform with the “medals” of honor that Bolg cherished, the femurs, ulnas, and jaws of fallen enemies, his head sewn back on by the careful ministrations of the Keepers of the Dead. Achmed had refused to allow them to remove the bolts or to mask the bruises, however. He had assured Rhapsody that to hide the way the Sergeant-Major had died was itself a dishonor.

As a result, every one of the hundreds of thousands of Bolg that filed past him was enflamed at the sight of the atrocity that had been perpetrated on their beloved leader and countryman.

And, in the back of her fuzzy mind, Rhapsody tried to calculate what could be done to contain that wrath once he was committed to the Earth.

She had literally no concept of the answer short of the razing of the entire continent.

*   *   *

From the morning of the second day after their return to Ylorc through the night, then all the next day as well, the population of the Teeth filed past the catafalque. Children had come, each carrying a stone to add to the base of the elevated wall on which Grunthor's open coffin had been laid, so that by the time the night came on the second day it appeared that he was lying in state atop a mountain.

The vast ceremonial braziers roared with angry fire, lighted at sunset the first day and fed throughout the night. Rhapsody was certain that the residents in the nearest city to the Bolglands, Bethe Corbair, could see the glow and the cyclonic plumes of smoke rising in the distance, and were no doubt trembling as she was.

The first thought that pierced the numbness in her mind that had settled into her brain like mortar was that Ashe had most likely notified the cities of the Alliance by avian messenger of the threat of war brewing, so it was probable that their garrisons and outposts were alive with activity as much as the Bolg's were.

The thought caused her to step away from the Summoner's Rise of the Moot, the place from which she had long ago called the first Cymrian Council of the new age, and vomit. She had eaten almost nothing in the course of her journey in the wagon, and so found herself wracked with convulsions, producing nothing but bile.

The numbness returned a few moments later.

Finally, as the night came on the second day, the Archons, the elite council of leaders and elders of the kingdom, came forward to the catafalque, following the Bolg king. Achmed had arranged for Rhapsody to chant the name of silence from the Rise, a mighty task that left her throat raw, until at last the population of the Teeth was listening, still in the throes of a brewing rage.

Achmed nodded to her from the floor of the Moot.

The Lady Cymrian swallowed heavily, and began to sing the Sergeant-Major's dirge.

The first few lines, the Song of Passage that celebrated the Earth from which his race had come, was the standard death hymn sung at every funeral that she had ever overseen in Ylorc. Her throat, raw from sobbing and scorched in the aftermath of bile, produced wobbling notes with no sweetness to them, rasping, sour sounds that, ironically, seemed to soothe the Bolgish ears in attendance.

She sang of his victories, of his bravery, of his longevity, and his numerous progeny, which had always been a source of great pride to him.

She kept the song to those things that the enormous assemblage would find comfort in, avoiding any of the things that had made Grunthor special to her personally.

There would be time for that later, she knew.

The final lines of the dirge welcomed him into the Earth, and celebrated the strength his body would impart to it.

And then, with no finesse, the dirge ground to a halt.

Achmed exhaled and nodded his satisfaction to her, then addressed the roiling crowd below her, who hovered on the tiers of the Moot above him.

“Withdraw from the steppes to beyond the chasm, beyond the guardian mountains to the Blasted Heath and past it,” he instructed, his voice betraying his exhaustion and the fury that had not been dimmed by it. “There is to be order; the Sergeant would have demanded no less. None shall take action until I command it. When we move, it will be as though the Teeth themselves have come to Roland.”

A full-throated roar of understanding rocked the Moot and echoed off the mountains behind it to the east.

“Sharpen every blade, curry and saddle every horse, be prepared. When I return, you will be ready. Extinguish the braziers; when they are lit once more, it will be time to assemble.”

The enormous assemblage tarried for a moment, waiting to see if there were any further instructions, then broke apart like a scrambling anthill dissolving from the slanted layers of the Moot and moved, as if the Earth itself were doing so, in great streaming lines, back into the kingdom of Ylorc.

The Bolg king signaled to the Archons, and together they approached the funeral bier. He glanced up at Rhapsody, a terrible frown on his face, and then to the far end of the Moot. She nodded and made her way toward the exit.

The Bolg, watching in silence, lined the pathway from the Moot across the steppes to the gates of the mountain kingdom as the Archons bore Gunthor's coffin back into the arms of the kingdom of Ylorc, the Firbolg king and the First Woman following behind.

Then they scattered, hurrying to their outposts and battlements.

 

18

DEEP WITHIN THE MOUNTAINS, IN THE LORITORIUM

The Archons had been tasked with digging the grave within the Loritorium, the secret unfinished city deep underground within the mountains that Gwylliam the Visionary had begun more than two millennia before, meant to be a repository of elemental lore, books of great knowledge, and magical objects, found incomplete by the Three when they first came to Ylorc.

Sklvarch, Archon of Tunnels, had taken the lead with the project, providing diamond-edged shovels and picks to his fellows, with aid from the only Namer the Bolg had ever produced, Kandyrs, specially trained by Rhapsody. Kandyrs sang the incantations of Earth and Water, causing the ground to soften for the tools, and so the project that would have normally required many weeks of effort was accomplished in a day and half.

The site that Achmed had chosen for the grave was at the base of another catafalque, the altar of Living Stone on which the Sleeping Child lay in repose.

The Bolg king had the weary Archons set the coffin down outside the Loritorium and wait, resting, while he and Rhapsody went in. They traveled through the cavernous place, its high stone ceilings echoing the sound of their footfalls as they made their way through what had long ago been planned to be streets.

“Do you remember how he got the Earthchild here in the first place?” Rhapsody mused, still clad only in her soiled dressing gown which whispered around her as she walked.

Achmed smiled sadly and nodded. The battle that had waged beneath the ground with a massive demonic vine, tainted with the blood of a F'dor demon, had set the place the Child of Earth originally slept alight with rancid smoke and devouring flames. Grunthor, a child of Earth in a completely different way, had melded his body into hers, walking free of the flames and coming to this place, hollow and empty as it was. The Earthchild had stretched out on the very catafalque they were now approaching, where Grunthor had separated from her, stepping free of her, bringing her to safety and silence and warmth within the ruins of the unfinished Loritorium.

It was a silent, sacred place where each of the Three had stood guard in different ways, tending to her over the years into centuries into millennia, a stalwart vigil for one of the last Children of Earth, whose rib was sought by every F'dor still in existence in the air of the upworld, because if one of them could obtain it, that rib would serve as the key to open the Vault of the Underworld, setting the rest of their captive destructive race free on the world.

When the remaining two of the Three had climbed over the stony barricade Grunthor had built as a last line of defense for her, they paused atop it.

The Earthchild was there beyond it on her bier of stone, still asleep.

Achmed gave Rhapsody his hand to steady her in the descent from the enormous ledge of rock and led her to the catafalque, in front of which an enormous grave loomed.

The immense being, carved as she was from Living Stone and whose brown skin displayed lines and irregular stripes of vermilion and green, blue and purple, seemed healthy and well. Her eyes, closed in eternal slumber, were fringed with lashes that were green like grass at their tips but were showing signs of gold closer to her eyelids, evidence that the Earth was preparing for autumn. Her long, grassy hair was displaying the same colors.

Her cheeks were striped with trickling tears, leaving wet, muddy trails down the sides of her face to the catafalque beneath her.

Rhapsody, long ago invested by the Grandmother, the Child's last Dhracian guardian, as her
amelystik,
the female whose role was to tend to her, felt her throat tighten. She hurried to the Sleeping Child and ran her hand gently over the enormous statue's hair.

“Shhhh,” she whispered. “Shhh, my dear, my child,” she said in the language of the Dhracians. “I know. I know.”

As always, the Child gave no sign of life or movement.

“We've brought him here to be with you,” she said softly. “This is where he would want to sleep, to keep watch over you. Is that all right?”

She and Achmed watched carefully for a sign of an answer.

The trickle of tears slowly ceased.

Rhapsody kissed the Earthchild's forehead. “I understand,” she said.

Achmed left her alone, caressing the Earthchild's hair, and returned after some time with the Archons, bearing the coffin in a funeral procession. They brought it to the grave and lowered it down, then knelt around it in final homage.

Making note of the Bolg king's dismissal, they hurried back over the barrier, out of the Loritorium, and up to the mountain tunnels again.

Achmed's elite council faded into the swelling mass of their rapidly moving countrymen, joining in the preparations for war.

*   *   *

Rhapsody and Achmed stood silent vigil for a while longer, observing the drying of the Sleeping Child's tears, until she seemed to be breathing easily again.

Then Rhapsody walked over and stood at the foot of Grunthor's grave, looking down at him, asleep in the arms of the Earth that was his mother.

Child of sand and open sky,
she sang tremulously as once she had sung him through the fire at the heart of the Earth itself.
Son of the caves and lands of darkness, Bengard, Firbolg. The Sergeant-Major.
Her tears were flowing freely now, clogging her throat.
My trainer, my protector. The Lord of Deadly Weapons. The Ultimate Authority, to Be Obeyed at All Costs
.

Our brother. One of the Three. A faithful friend, strong and reliable as the Earth itself. Our beloved friend.

Then, before she broke into sobbing, she sang his true name, a series of whistling snarls followed by a clicking glottal stop.

Achmed's thin, strong hand encircled her arm at the elbow.

“He would have loved hearing that again,” he said quietly. “And, after all this time, to know that you have
finally
learned to pronounce the Firbolg tongue sufficiently.”

Rhapsody struggled to contain her tears. In her ear, she heard the Sergeant's voice as she had within the belly of the world, just outside the fire at its center, replying as he had long ago when she had sung his name to help him pass through to the other side.

That's it, miss. Oi feel positively a-tingle.

If there is any way that you can feel it, Grunthor, I hope you can feel my love,
she thought.

They set to burying him in the rich, unpolluted ground of the Loritorium, taking their time. Grunthor had gone into the grave uncovered, without a shroud or other barrier between his body and the soil, as they both knew he would have wanted, so Achmed had Rhapsody step back at first while he shoveled dirt directly onto his body. Then he nodded, and she joined him in the task.

How long they worked was impossible to gauge beneath the ground, but they stopped occasionally to rest and to check on the Earthchild, who had returned to her slumber, seemingly content.

Finally, when the grave was filled in and patted down, Achmed wiped his brow with the back of his forearm and nodded his satisfaction. He leaned on his spade.

“Now that you're back in Ylorc, I assume you will be attending to your
amelystik
duties more regularly,” he said. “You can visit with both of them at the same time; he would have liked that.”

He cast a glance at Rhapsody, her white dressing gown sodden with dirt, her face paler than the fabric. He reached out and took her shovel.

“Sit down if you need to,” he said. “You look awful.”

She shook her head. “I need wine,” she said. “It's the only thing I can think of that might dull the ache in my belly. Can we go back?”

Achmed smiled in spite of himself. “That will be interesting to see again,” he said. “Getting drunk with you, on the rare occasions it occurred in the last millennium, was one of Grunthor's delights. You say the funniest things when you are inebriated. He used to repeat them frequently once you'd gone home.”