Prophecy, Child of Earth (47 page)

'And why not? Always worked for us before. Seriously, miss, this is too big to take chances with, if you're not sure."

'That's ridiculous, Grunthor."

'No, it's not," said Achmed. He had been quiet for the better part of the evening, taking in the arguments and sorting through them while Rhapsody and Grunthor had at each other. His silence had made Rhapsody occasionally forget he was even there. "What's ridiculous is your insatiable need to reestablish the world you lost.

'Your family is gone, Rhapsody; we're it now, Grunthor and Jo and I. Your town is gone as well; you live here, among the Bolg. The king your family honored is dead two thousand years; the leaders here could not hold a candle to him and his reign. He certainly never led an entire generation to its death over a domestic squabble. Those who came from Serendair to this place were shoddy examples of our culture. They don't deserve another chance to get it right. And as for Ashe, why do you want to duplicate your old relationship with a twisted madman all over again? Do you really miss the Wind of Death that much?"

Rhapsody's mouth dropped open. "How can you say that?" she sputtered. "Ashe has never hurt me, or tried to compromise me in any way. He's
hunted
, Achmed—I would think you of all people could sympathize with that. A piece of his soul is the source that powers the Rakshas. It's in the hands of what appears to be a F'dor of great power, which means damnation in both life and death. The wound where the demon ripped that piece of his soul from his chest has never healed; he is in unspeakable pain. Despite all that, he has never even asked for anything from me except that we consider being his allies. How can you even think to compare him to Michael? Michael was a bastard of the lowest order, and a liar."

'And that is precisely the problem I have with all the Cymrians, Ashe included.

They are all liars, too. At least in the old world you knew who sided with evil gods because they professed what they stood for. Here, in this new and twisted place, even the allegedly
good
ones are calculating users. The ancient evils could never wreak the level of havoc that the 'good' Lord and Lady Cymrian did. And you want to hand yourself over on a silver platter to the potentially biggest liar of all."

Rhapsody had had enough. "Well, if I do, it is my choice to do so. I will take the risk, and live or die of my own volition."

'Wrong." Achmed rose slowly, anger evident in the tight, methodical movements of his body. "We may all suffer that fate, because you aren't just compromising yourself, you are throwing all of our neutrality into the pot, and if you overbet your hand, we all lose."

Rhapsody looked at him. His eyes were burning with intensity, his shoulders knotted with a rage she had not seen in a long time.

'Why are you so angry? Just because I want to help someone else doesn't mean my loyalty to you is any less."

'That has nothing to do with it."

'I disagree." She stood up and came to his side of the table where he stood, struggling to contain his wrath, and sat on the tabletop in front of him. "I think it does. And I might remind you that, in the course of helping you accomplish what you wanted in these lands, I have done a number of things that I was not sure about, or in fact was repulsed by. But I did them anyway, because you asked me to, and because you said it was right. I believed in you. Why shouldn't I believe in him as well?"

'Because he has told you none of this. He has played mystery games with you, seeking information but giving none in return. He doesn't trust you. For all you know, he might be the F'dor himself."

'I don't think so."

'Well, that's reassuring. You are the worst judge of character in the world. Your intuition is suspect here as well."

Angry tears sprang into Rhapsody's eyes. "How can you say that? I love you and I love Grunthor. How many non-Bolg do you think would be able to see past your obnoxious behavior to the good in you?"

'None. And that's because they would be reading us more correctly than you do.

You have been misinterpreting my intentions since the moment we met."

'What do you mean?" Rhapsody's stomach knotted suddenly.

Achmed put his hands on the table on either side of her, and leaned forward until he was inches from her face, forcing her to stare into his mismatched eyes.

"Do you remember the first thing I ever said to you?"

Rhapsody swallowed. "Yes. You said, 'Come with us if you want to live.'

'

'And you understood me to mean that I would save you if you came with me?"

'Yes. And you did."

'Wrong
again
? Achmed spat. "Perhaps I should have worded it for you differently. Make no mistake, Rhapsody, no matter what has grown between us since then, no matter what I have come to feel for you over time, at that moment what I should have said to you was 'Come with us or I will kill you.' Do you understand now? You are too willing to believe that people are as good as you want them to be. On the whole, they're not. Not me, not Grunthor, and certainly not Ashe. His soul is in the hands of an old-world demon—do you know what that means?"

'No."

'Well, I do. You forget, I've been there." He slammed both fists down on either side of her, making her jump. "Unlike you, I
do
understand what Ashe is going through. I know what it is like to have a piece of yourself in demonic hands. You will do anything, betray anyone, to keep from allowing the rest to be taken. I don't fault him for that, Rhapsody; if it were me instead of him you were talking about, you shouldn't trust me, either.

'I've told you before, F'dor can possess their victims in different ways. Ashe doesn't have to be its actual host in order to be enslaved to it. Sometimes a F'dor plants a single suggestion in some unwitting person's mind, just long enough to perform some act it wants accomplished. Sometimes it owns the victim, can see through him, or command him at will, but stops short of binding its spirit to that person's body. That means anyone and everyone we meet in this place is suspect.

Why can't you understand this?

'It's bad enough that you keep adopting orphans that may or may not have ever encountered the beast. The Firbolg and even Stephen's children are most likely harmless, but we found Jo in the House of Remembrance, remember? She was the prisoner of the Rakshas. Who knows whether or not she has been bound to the F'dor?"

Rhapsody was trembling. " know," she said. "She's not. You forget, Achmed, she was there to be sacrificed for her blood, along with all those other children.

Why would the F'dor or the Rakshas waste their time, energy and
life force
possessing someone they expected to destroy?"

The furor in the mismatched eyes did not cool at all. "That is the
only
reason I allowed you to bring her along. It was a serious lapse in judgment on my part."

'How can you say that?" Rhapsody demanded. "I thought you liked her."

'I
do
like her, most of the time. And the fact that you keep bringing up such an inane point shows me that you do not even
begin
to understand the severity of what we're dealing with. Love and friendship mean nothing here,
nothing
. It is worse than life and death when you are dealing with the F'dor.

'I know you love Jo, and Grunthor does, too. That notwithstanding, I am continually regretting that I didn't kill her the first time she did something stupid to compromise us. She has done so repeatedly, in both your presence and your absence. I am beginning to believe it is a pattern, Rhapsody, that there is a reason for it we can't see, and that she can't help. If that turns out to be the case, the consequences for us, and for the Bolg, will make the destruction of Serendair pale by comparison. And those consequences are eternal—they will not end with death."

'For gods' sake, Achmed! She's a teenager! Didn't you ever do anything foolish or misguided when you were a teenager?"

'No. And that's not the point. The F'dor or its minion can
be
a teenager, or a child, or the handsome young imbecile who passed you on the street and dropped a flower in your path. It can be anyone, Rhapsody,
anyone.''''

'But it can't be
everyone
, Achmed. Eventually we will have to choose sides, to intervene. We just can't hide, stay locked away in Ylorc for the rest of eternity. If any of the mythos is right, and we are destined to some hideous form of longevity bordering on immortality, sooner or later there's going to be a confrontation with us. Besides, if you really believe that someone you care about might be tainted by the F'dor, don't you think you have an obligation to try and spare that person from damnation? To reclaim whatever part of them is in its hands?"

Achmed turned away and ran an angry hand through his hair. "You're not talking about Jo now, are you? You're back to Ashe again. I hadn't realized he had been elevated to the level of'someone we care about.''

'We can help him," she whispered. "We can find and kill the F'dor. We're the only ones who can. Remember the prophecy Llauron told us of? Haven't you figured it out yet? We're the Three. You're the Child of Blood; that's obvious.

Grunthor is the Child of Earth; you know that as well. And I am Lirin; that's what they call us—Children of the Sky. It's us, Achmed. Our coming was foretold in this place."

He whirled and glared at her. "So we should merrily follow the prophecies because some insane Cymrian seer said so? You want to blithely go out and rid the world of this evil that these people brought on themselves by bringing them back into power? Where's the guarantee? How do you know you won't end up its next victim?"

'Where's the guarantee that won't happen anyway? Don't you think it knows about us by now? It came on a Cymrian ship. Probably its original host, and many of its subsequent ones, were Cymrian. It attended the Councils; it knows the prophecies. And aside from the purely random chance that we will come up against it anyway, there is a good possibility that it will seek to destroy us
just because
some insane Cymrian seer said so
. Forget about Ashe, forget about Llauron. We have to kill the damned thing anyway, for ourselves."

'She's right, sir." Grunthor spoke up from the corner he had retreated to during the heat of their argument, causing both of them to start. "If it's out there, and we're the only ones 'oo can kill it, Oi say we do so and be done with it. Oi don't want to spend the rest of my life lookin' over my shoulder again."

Achmed watched his sergeant for a moment, then nodded. "All right," he acquiesced, still glaring at Rhapsody. "I suppose there is wisdom in us getting to it first, at least. So what's your plan?"

'I'll call Ashe to Elysian, alone, and give him the ring. Once he's healed, we can go after the Rakshas and kill it."

'Why not just call him here?"

Rhapsody thought about the distance Ashe always maintained. "Because Ashe will never agree to it. He will only come to a place he knows he can be safe.

Elysian's waterfall is perfect to shield his vibrational signature from anyone who might be able to find it."

'No. That wouldn't be safe for
yon"
Achmed muttered. "There's no speaking tube down to Elysian. You wouldn't be able to call for help if you needed it."

'No, but the gazebo is there. It's a natural amplifier. Believe me, Achmed, if I send you a signal you will hear it."

'No doubt," he said sourly, his eyes boring a hole through hers. "Is that before or after he has coerced all of our secrets out of you?"

'I would never give Ashe any help that I thought would make him a threat to you, Achmed," she said, returning his stare with a mild expression. "My loyalty is, first and foremost, to my family." She smiled at Grunthor, and breathed a litde easier when she saw him hide a slight grin. "That's part of the reason I've helped you subdue the Bolglands. Not that you couldn't do it on your own, but with any luck the Bolg will turn out to be more within your vision of the nation you want them to be. The united Cymrians will pose no threat to diem, particularly if I'm right about Ashe. We'll be allies. He will feel that he owes us. And if I'm wrong, I will kill him myself. I promise."

'We'll see."

'But our help has to be freely given, otherwise it's not worth as much."

'You know, Rhapsody, sometimes I wish you wouldn't treat strategy like a sale in die market. It is acceptable to not always get the most diat something is worth from time to time."

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "You'll let me help him, then?"

'You are a grown woman, Rhapsody. I don't have to let you do anything."

'But you'll help."

A strange smile came over his face. "Yes. But not for him. Only for you. Now, before you invite diat useless idiot into my lands, I would appreciate your help in taking care of somedüng else first. Crack open whatever nice vintage you brought home with you, and Grunthor and I will tell you about the Loritorium." ours later, the bottle of Canderian brandy Rhapsody had bought for Achmed was empty.

'Did you happen to gain any insight into the mystery of who the host of the F'dor might be while you were gone?" The Firbolg king tossed the empty decanter into the fire.

'A little. I think I figured out what happened to Gwylliam based on what Oelendra told me. Do you remember that other body we found with his in die library, the one we thought was a guard?" The two Bolg nodded. "That was probably the host of the F'dor, die one diat actually killed him. The host would have been far less formidable than Gwylliam himself, which is why the king was able to kill the guard before he succumbed to death himself. Remember how you suspected at die time diere was a second guard?" Achmed and Grunthor nodded simultaneously again. "Well, undoubtedly there was. He or she was the innocent witness. And when die F'dor's host died at Gwylliam's hand, die demon-spirit took possession of the second guard and left die vault."

Achmed nodded. "Makes sense."

'I wish I could have found out who it is now," Rhapsody said regretfully.

"Oelendra actually has seen F'dor in a human host before, and has been looking more tüan a thousand years for this one witü no luck. But I did find a few clues."