The Weaver's Lament (26 page)

They met a few moments later in the place they had been the night before, the tunnel opening over the chasm that separated the Cauldron and guardian mountains from the Blasted Heath.

The sun had still not yet risen, but the sky had begun to lighten, shedding rays of pink and gold across soft strands of clouds that looked like spun sugar.

There was an unmistakable sense of magic in that place, the place where they had mourned so many times, none worse than that which had occurred the previous night. But on the wind of morning, a feeling of good news blew in, bathing the opening of the cave tunnel with rosy light and fresh air.

Rhapsody knelt on the floor just inside the opening, the morning breeze playing with her golden tresses, hanging loose around her dressing gown. She hung the birthing cloth over her arm.

“Are you certain you still wish to do this?” she asked him.

“Yes. Please don't ask me again.”

“All right.” She swallowed, looking at him intently, solemnly, then slowly pulled the outer bodice of her dressing gown open, her eyes never leaving his.

“I have no breasts to speak of, as you know,” she said. “But there is no need to hide what I do have from you.”

The Bolg king locked eyes with her, their mismatched color and placement in his face as direct a connection as it was possible for any to have.

Rhapsody slid the top of her dressing gown over her shoulders, laying her upper body bare.

She glanced down at her heart, silently indicating where he needed to touch her.

His eyes followed hers.

“Then I will never speak of them,” he said, a hint of awe in his voice. “There aren't words worthy to do so.”

Rhapsody smiled. “Give me your hand,” she said.

Trembling, he obeyed.

She took his hand in hers and drew it to her lips, then kissed it gently, allowing her lips to linger on the distended veins, the traces of nerve endings.

“Are you certain you want to do this?” she asked quietly. “To make and share this child with me? I'm not questioning you, it's part of the ritual for me to ask you.”

Achmed could not speak coherently, so he merely nodded.

“You have to say it,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he whispered back.

Rhapsody drew his hand closer and placed it on her chest between her breasts, directly over her heart.

“Then close your eyes, and together we will put ourselves in a state of willingness, of creation, of the desire to bring forth a soul into the world through the offering of a piece of each of our own.”

The Bolg king obliged as much as he could.

After a moment, he heard Rhapsody begin to sing. With his eyes closed it seemed to him that she was singing a purple melody, much like the color of the sky at the end of a brilliant sunset or just before dawn, and the sound made his sensitive skin hum with a comforting buzz.

Then the song went indigo, rich, dark, and encompassing blue that weighed heavily but coolly on his eyes like the thick light with which the instrumentality in Gurgus Peak had painted the Bolglands, simmering the hot rage to something baffling and slow. It was a calm sound, like a lullaby to a fussy baby or a sensible solution to preempt a duel.

He listened to the Namer's incantation change colors across the whole spectrum of the rainbow, evoking each of the powers of the lore of light.
I wonder what sort of magic it might impart to the child,
he thought from behind his closed eyes.

The song of conjuring was so beautiful, so inspiring, that he felt a loss, like the slap of a cold wave, when it came to an end. A tug within him made him sense that the piece of his soul he had agreed to part with had been removed from within him and now hung, nascent, in the air between them, mixing with hers.

“Achmed,” Rhapsody whispered. “Are you ready?”

He nodded, his eyes still closed.

“Open your eyes.”

He obeyed.

Rhapsody was holding the birthing cloth over his hands.

A glow of spectacular beauty was hovering above it.

“Welcome, little one,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Meet your father.”

The generalized glow became defined; the outline appeared of a tiny head, dusted with golden hair, with arms that reached upward into the world, the skin translucent, scored with the finest of traceries of surface veins, like Achmed's own.

She looked up at her friend, the other side of her coin.

The father of her last child.

His eyes met hers, and they shared a smile, then looked back at their child as it continued to form.

And then, suddenly, the world around her, glowing with warmth and the profound beauty of the song accompanying a soul's appearance, went dark and silent.

Silent except for the sound of a horse's whinny.

 

26

Rhapsody looked quickly around.

It seemed as if Time had stopped.

Before her, Achmed still knelt, a look of heartbreaking awe on his normally cynical face. He was staring down at the glowing light in the birthing cloth, wonder in his eyes.

Unmoving.

The baby was awake and beautiful,
a boy,
she thought hazily, feeling her head swim as it had when she had given birth before. His hair was fine and golden, his skin perfect and dewy, with the lightest traceries of veins scoring his head in beautiful patterns like the designs the Lirin wove into their hair.
A beautiful boy.

Also unmoving.

She looked up.

Rising behind Achmed in the now-dark stood a gargantuan horse of no breed that she recognized, its coat and mane changing color from moment to moment.

Atop the horse was a figure she did recognize.

He was tall, wearing robes the color of night; his skin was pale, his eyes were black as pitch, and deep. Rhapsody felt she easily could fall into those eyes, crowned with black thundercloud brows beneath a mane of snowy white hair.

She had known his face for a thousand years, having spent the equivalent of seven in his realm, an ethereal place between life and death known as the Veil of Hoen, the Cymrian word for
joy
.

Yl Angaulor.

The Hand of Mortality.

The Lord Rowan.

The manifestation of Peaceful Death.

The Lord Rowan smiled sadly.

“M'lady, I am here to make good on the promise I made you. Come now.”

Rhapsody's brow wrinkled. In her haze she shook her head. “Promise?”

The Lord Rowan stretched out his hand.

A sudden clarity filled her mind, like a Namer's bell tolling, and she heard in her ears her own voice, and his.

M'lord Rowan, will you grant me a favor? Please?

What is it you wish?

Will you come for me one day? Please?

The Guardian of Peaceful Death's solemn face had betrayed a flicker of a smile.

Fascinating. Usually I only hear prayers asking me to stay away, though you are not the first Cymrian by any means who has prayed for my assistance. You are the first one in the bloom of youth, however.

Please, m'lord. Please say that you will come for me one day.

I will if I can, my child. That is the only promise I can make you.

Rhapsody blinked as realization dawned. “I—am I dead?”

“Come, m'lady.” There was a tone of urgency in his voice.

“But—”

Her protest was cut short as the voice of Manwyn, the Seer of the Future, rang in her head.

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.

“Oh, my God—”

“M'lady—”

She looked down at the translucent baby in her arms, only to see that her arms were frozen in Time as well.

Rhapsody jumped up in alarm, leaving her body, and the child it cradled, behind.

She looked down at her arms, translucent now as well.

The Lord Rowan glanced over his shoulder.

“M'lady, do not panic, I beg you,” he said, his voice controlled, but there was an edge to it. “Be careful of what you say; a Namer's authority can contravene Time and Death, but you do not wish for that to happen.”

Rhapsody met his gaze. “Why?” she asked, her voice trembling.

The black eyes narrowed. “Another comes for you. Another iteration of Death. Please, m'lady. It is time.”

“But—my child—my baby—needs me—please, m'lord—”

“You are by no means the first woman to utter those words before meeting Death; you brought several children from such mothers to my realm long ago, if you recall.” He stretched out his hand even farther. “Come.”

“Please,” Rhapsody said, choking. “One moment—just one. I beg you.”

The Lord Rowan fell silent, a disapproving look in his black eyes.

Rhapsody inhaled, feeling no air come into her chest. She came closer to the Lord Rowan, walking around her own body, and knelt down beside Achmed, bending again over the child, cradled in the birthing cloth in her hands. She kissed the baby's head quickly, then spoke his name above him.

Graal,
she said in the tone of the Naming invocation. It was the word in Serenne, the language of the Ancient Seren that Llauron had insisted she learn long ago, the word meaning
visionary wisdom
.

Speaking the word was heavier than she could imagine; it was as if she were swimming through clay.
I—love—you,
she whispered, forcing the words through the weighty air.

She turned her head with great difficulty and pressed a kiss on Achmed's temple, just above his ear.

Thank you,
she said, struggling for breath.
Love—you.

In the distance, thunder rolled and lightning crackled.

The devouring blackness that had appeared a moment after the baby's emergence lightened to gray, as if it were foredawn. Now Rhapsody could see an endless horizon all around her, shapes of a desolate landscape she could not make out.

In the direction the horse was facing, she thought she could see what appeared to be a wood wrapped in fog and sunlight. A massive gate rose from the mist, open to a realm of shining brightness.

The Lord Rowan's eyes darkened.

“
Now
, m'lady,” he insisted. He reached down as far as he could from atop the steed.

Rhapsody stood and came to him. She took his hand.

The Lord Rowan swept her effortlessly up and onto the horse before him and dug his knees into the steed, which took off in a scream of wind toward the foggy place before them.

She turned with difficulty and caught one last sight of the three of them.

Herself.

Her last child.

And the man who had been the other side of her coin. Her child's father.

His only living parent now.

Beyond the rushing of wind, the thundering of the horse's hoofbeats, the Gate loomed in the green glade beyond the Veil, magnificent in its brightness.

She bowed her head in grief as the world began to spin away.

Only to raise her face as the Lord Rowan dragged back on his mount in a screaming of horseflesh and anger.

 

27

Meridion stood at the Gate before them.

The Lord Rowan drew the mighty steed to an unexpected stop, causing vibrations of immense power to shake whatever appeared to be the ground. He glanced at Rhapsody before him.

“My eldest son,” she said haltingly.

The Lord Rowan's eyes narrowed as he assessed the man in front of him.

“You have not died,” he said, almost accusingly.

Meridion bowed his head in deference. “No, m'lord.”

“How did you know to come here?”

“I saw it in a dream, m'lord—this very night, a turgid dream of monumental scale. I needed to see my mother, so I came. I beg your forgiveness.”

The manifestation of Peaceful Death drew himself up in the saddle angrily. “Then I am in the presence of an entity with the power to halt Time itself. I had never expected to be thus. What do you want? Your interference puts your mother at grave risk—a gravity I cannot overstate.”

“I must speak to her, I beg you, m'lord,” Meridion said. “Please. I believe I can hold Time in stasis for a few moments, long enough to impart to her what I have to say.”

The black eyes of the Lord Rowan gleamed with displeasure. He turned and looked down again at Rhapsody, after glancing behind them.

“I came to take you beyond the Veil of Hoen and through the Gate because in Life you once asked that boon of me, and I agreed to grant it if I could. But you must know that the circumstance in which Death has come to meet you is not one within my domain. It is not my appointed task or jurisdiction to carry you to the Gate, m'lady, but that of my elder brother.” The expression in the black eyes grew even darker for a moment. “And, upon my word, you do not wish for that to come to pass if you can possibly help it.”

Rhapsody turned and looked beyond his shoulder. The flat sky was darkening in the distance, great clouds of gray dust seeming to dance slowly upward.

“He is coming,” the Lord Rowan said. “And his authority, and power, eclipses yours, Child of Time.”

Meridion swallowed and tried to keep from shaking. “As a Namer, it is my obligation to share lost lore with one who is entitled to know it—and as the Child of Time, I can keep Time at bay for a few moments, at least. Please, m'lord—I promise not to tarry.” He pointed just beyond the Gate, to an enormous loom before which a woman sat, weaving the story of history. “There is something in the Weaver's loom that my mother must see.”

The Lord Rowan turned in the saddle and looked into Rhapsody's eyes one last time, the black irises of his own devouring what little light was present.

“This is your decision, m'lady,” he said, “though I strongly advise against it. I caught you in the moment just before your heart exploded, before an agonizing end that cannot be described in words. I will not be able to help you should the one who is coming for you find you here before you enter the Afterlife.”