The Weaver's Lament (28 page)

The little boy on the floor began to cackle, then cry, the sound rippling painfully across Achmed's skin-web.

He turned away from Rhapsody's lifeless body and crawled back to the infant, lifting him carefully from the floor and cradling him against his shoulder.

Now what do I do?
he thought, panic rattling at the edges of his consciousness.
What do I do?

The Bolg, wandering distantly, still waiting to be summoned to battle, said nothing in reply.

*   *   *

The first task Achmed had undertaken with his son was the gathering of wood for the pyre of the child's mother.

Initially he had panicked when the baby cried, believing him to be hungry and knowing he had no way to provide nourishment without Rhapsody. Then, after several terrified moments he recalled a conversation that had taken place a millennium before between his child's mother and a Dhracian known as Rath, a demon-hunter of his own mother's race, who had instructed her in the lore that had brought their baby into being.

A summoned entity has no real need of food or drink or sleep,
the Dhracian had said as the Namer made careful notes.
It is comprised of a piece of a soul of two different people, and the musical vibrations of the lore by which it is sung into life. This is why the Earthchild has spent endlessly passing years in the darkness of the Earth, without the sustenance a normal child would need. The only necessity it has is that of love.

He found that picking the child up and cradling him had been sufficient.

The Bolg king went slowly through the halls of Ylorc, the sleeping baby on his forearm, finding and gathering sticks of any nature, all in the name of making Rhapsody's funeral bier, passing logy Bolg in armor who were carrying as much in the way of weaponry as they could.

He had returned her to his bed, where she had awoken in his arms that morning, carrying her back to the place where her smile had made him appreciate the sunrise. Now that she was dead, putting her body to rest on the black satin sheets she had joked about was the least he could do, rather than leaving her corpse in the hallways to possibly be come across and defiled by wandering Firbolg affected by the Night Caller spectrum. The thought of how appalled she had been by that prospect made him willing to do anything he must to keep her safe in death as he had not been able to in life.

You want to fuck me on the tunnel floor among the wandering, mindless Bolg and the rats?

The memory of how ashen her face had been, how bloodshot her eyes, had made his suffering even worse. He had been assuming until now that she had just been joking, sarcastic and exhausted. But it occurred to him now, after seeing her clenched jaw, her trembling chin, that the memory of her torment at Michael's hands might have been clinging to the edges of her consciousness at that moment.

Maybe it always had been.

He had carried the baby with him the whole time he was gathering and building Rhapsody's bier, hour into hour until the night had come again. The child had slept, or watched with wide-open eyes, but rarely made a sound as he worked. He had been at a loss, however, as to where to leave or put him when moving the body, so in the end he had carried Rhapsody in his arms with the baby lying atop her, a last communion of mother and son that had made him physically sick.

Many times during the course of the night it occurred to him that he might be dreaming. He found himself wishing and hoping desperately that he was, but eventually he had only a pile of sticks at the opening of the tunnel overlooking the canyon and a body in his bed each time he went back to check on it, so he ultimately surrendered to the reality of Rhapsody's death and sank into survival mode, accomplishing what needed to be done in the same way he always had—silently and without a lot of fuss.

When the bier was finally finished, he and the glowing child returned to his chambers to gather the baby's mother and take her to her pyre. Her body had begun to stiffen slightly in the rictus of death, but it was still largely warm, almost as much as it had been in life. Once again he carried her, the child atop her, to the hallway and set her carefully down among the branches and sticks that he and their son had gathered for her.

Achmed had despaired of the ratty dressing gown that was the only clothing she had brought with her to Ylorc, a sad final costume in which to be sent off to the Afterlife. The irony of it amused him darkly; the woman who had most vehemently disdained the trappings of royalty and privilege had nursed a secret fondness for pretty clothing, even among the brutish denizens of Ylorc who were imagining, when they would see her attired in colorful dresses, what flavor the cloth marinades might have imparted to the meat.

The dressing gown was still open at the top, as it had been when she had brought his hand to rest on her heart in the conception of their child. Achmed saw the golden locket that she had always worn around her neck and carefully opened the clasp, took it from her throat, and closed the clasp again, then held it up to his eyes, examining it closely for the first time.

It was an inexpensive piece of jewelry, doubtless more sentimental than valuable. He opened the spring and a small, odd copper coin fell out, thirteen-sided, the like of which he had never seen before. He returned it to the locket and closed it again, putting it in his pocket.

He stretched her out atop the branches on which he had scattered the last flowers of summer that he could find. He had been amazed at how beautiful she had remained in death; it had occurred to him while gathering the wood that he might return to find that Time had caught up with her, that the thousands of years during which she had avoided aging might come to claim her while he was gone, but he noticed no change each time he had returned.

Gently he reached out and with the back of his hand caressed her small, perfect breasts, the nipples still pale pink and rosy, beautiful and desirable in a way she had never understood.

I have no breasts to speak of,
she had said shyly as she revealed herself to him.

Then I will never speak of them. There aren't words worthy to do so.

He lowered his lips to the hollow between them and kissed her heart, still warm, but still, unbeating, beneath his sensitive lips.

Then he moved up to the rose-petal lips, the upper one shaped like a bow, and stared at them for a long moment.

If you want to, I think you should kiss me. It's not part of the actual ritual, but there's no reason we can't. And this time, if that happens, I promise you I will be kissing you with no one waiting to sweep me away, no battle we don't expect to survive, no comfort of a friend in mind, even though we are and always will be friends. If you kiss me this day, you will be kissing the mother of your child.

Achmed closed his eyes and leaned down, allowing his lips, thin and taut, to come to rest on hers, soft and plush, still warm.

Then he stood, looking down at her, the baby cradled in his arms now, sleeping, and thought back again to the time he had sat vigil over her when she had been at the point of death. The greatest healers of the City of Reason, the citadel Sepulvarta, where the Patriarch had held services in the basilica of the Star, Lianta'ar, had been unable to do anything but stanch her bleeding and advise him to prepare for the worst. Finally, he had remembered how, when he was griping about her wasting her time singing to comfort injured Bolg, she had given him the very tool to save her.

Well, that's a useful investment of your evening. I'm sure the Firbolg are very appreciative and will certainly reciprocate your ministrations if you should ever need something.

What does that mean?

I am trying to tell you that you will never see any return for your efforts. When you are injured or in pain, who will sing for you, Rhapsody?

Why, Achmed, you will.

Achmed sighed dispiritedly. He recalled sitting endlessly at her bedside, seeing no improvement, when finally the realization of what she meant had come to him. His words had perhaps been the first admission of love he had ever made, even if neither of them knew it, or could hear it, at the time.

Rhapsody, between two worlds I have had but two friends. I am not willing to let you alter this.

Now he had none.

But, through the memory, he now had her dirge.

He stood at the mouth of the cave, watching the wind play with her hair, brushing the edges of her tresses like a lover. He set the sleeping baby down again and carefully drew Daystar Clarion from its sheath.

As if the sword was mourning its bearer as well, no bright clarion call sounded, as it usually had when she drew it. The flames were burning quietly, just around the sword's tip, unlike the rolling blade of fire that it had been in her hand.

He expected it would be enough to light her pyre.

Then he discovered, upon touching it to the wood, that it wasn't.

The flames took the kindling at first, burning quietly and steadily, but rather than igniting her hair or her dressing gown, the bier seemed to be burning without taking her with it.

Annoyed, Achmed blew on the flames, but it seemed to have no impact.

“Hrekin,”
he said aloud; it had taken the better part of the day and night to gather the kindling, and now it was burning without accomplishing its purpose.

He looked at Rhapsody's body, glowing and untouched within the flame, and then down at the sword in his hand.

Then he realized his error.

Just as she and he had conjured the baby through their connection, his hand on her heart, so the sword must be mourning her, too, or at least subdued in the presence of an entity with as much or perhaps more fire lore than it had.

Careful of the flames, he laid the sword on her chest and abdomen, the hilt atop her heart, the blade pointing at her feet, and stepped back from the bier.

At first, the flames of the pyre roared higher, then settled into a steady burn.

Then, before his eyes, it seemed to him that the elemental fire she had absorbed in their trek through that inferno at the center of the Earth began to seep from her body, brightening the sword and the flames of the bier, leeching the color from her face and hands until she was as white as a dead birch tree. Beautiful as he had always thought the rosy golden glow of her skin to have been, there was something even more heartrendingly magnificent in this aspect of her, absent the fire that had burned within her.

In the distance beyond the opening, morning was beginning to break, the sun still yet to appear, but the black of the night sky was fading to the blue-gray of foredawn.

Achmed took the sleeping baby back into his arms.

An image flashed before his eyes, her face, bruised and bleeding from her first combat on the Root, her eyes glittering in the fire-colored darklight of the path through the Earth they had traveled to come away from what had pursued them relentlessly in Serendair. She had been applying bandages she had soaked in spice to his injured wrist, hesitantly singing her first song of healing.

Music is nothing more than the maps through the vibrations that make up all the world,
she had said.
If you have the right map, it will take you wherever you want to go.

How I wish I had the map to take you back in Time,
he thought as the pyre began to smoke, its curling tendrils beginning to catch the wind of dawn beyond the tunnel opening.
How many things would I change if I could?

He watched as the flames began to render her into ashes, and felt the song he had serenaded her back to life with once come to his lips again, a thousand years later. It was a song of his own making, a song of which even he didn't know the genesis.

He opened his mouth and began to sing in the three voices of the Dhracian race, one sharp and rapid, one low, like the shadow of a musical note just missed in the distance, and, from the back of his throat, coated in bile and nausea from his gut, the words he had sung her long ago.

Mo hale maar, my hero gone

World of star become world of bone

Grief and pain and loss I know

My heart is sore, my blood-tears flow

To end my sorrow I must roam

My terrors old, they lead me home.

In his imagination, he could see her stir as she had in the hospice bed the first time he had sung to her, eyes still closed. Her small, soft fingers, callused from years of playing stringed instruments, had brushed his hand, and he heard her inhale slowly, painfully, as if undertaking something very difficult.

Achmed?

Yes?

Will you keep singing until I'm better?

Yes.

Achmed?

What?

I'm better.

The gentle insult had made him smile in relief.

Obviously you're not much better if that's the best you can do. But you're still the same ungrateful brat you always were. That's nice thanks for someone who just gave you back the will to live.

You're right, you did,
she had said slowly, with great effort.
Now that you—have given me—a taste of—what the Underworld—is like—

Her words from the night before echoed louder in his mind and through his heart, making it bleed.

Do you feel better?

No. I'm not going to feel better.

He brought his lips to the baby's head and kissed him, then looked into the bier again.

Her skin and hair were aflame, gleaming with gold light. The sword of elemental fire was roaring with power, the blade alive as he had ever seen it.

Achmed stood, his lips still brushing the baby's golden hair that looked so much like his mother's, as the fire took her into its maw, screaming in the ecstasy of claiming one of its own, crackling with life and glee and welcome.