Rhapsody, Child of Blood (19 page)

"Where's Grunthor?"

'On the other side of the root. We're going to be taking a different path. You may like this a little more; we have to make a short climb up, but then it should be a horizontal journey, at least for a while."

She handed him back the rough camp blanket she had woken beneath, trying to keep her voice under control. "How do you know this path will lead us out of here?

What if you are just getting us lost deeper within the Earth?"

Achmed ignored her question. He went to the root wall and grasped the rope that Grunthor had secured, then began to inch around to the far side of the root. "This way."

»Jt was more difficult navigating the root sideways than it had been to climb down.

Grunthor had secured a rope to the root on his way around it, pegging it in place.

Rhapsody clung to the guideline and struggled not to look down as the muscles in her legs and arms shuddered from the new strain. The endless darkness below her loomed, frigid and menacing. The air was growing colder.

'Come on, miss, Oi got the rope. Take your time." Rhapsody took in a deep breath.

She knew the giant still could not see her; he had been calling out routinely since she -1

had started around, encouraging her. There was a note of uncertainty in the rich bass voice this time. The musical fluctuation told her that she hadn't moved recently, and the Bolg was wondering if she had fallen. She steadied herself.

'I'm coming," she called, amazed at how fragile her voice sounded. The weakness annoyed her, strengthening her resolve. She cleared her throat, and shouted.

'I'm almost to the bend, Grunthor."

A few moments later she crested the edge and looked around. The giant was standing there, grinning, his hand outstretched, at the mouth of a small horizontal tunnel. The root itself branched off, like a many-tubered vegetable, into the walls of the main shaft they had been descending, some above her, some below.

'Don't 'urry," warned Grunthor. "Take your time."

Rhapsody nodded, and closed her eyes. She clutched the rope and concentrated on finding the last footholds, listening to the rhythm of her racing heart. One by one, slowly. As she had the night before, she began to whisper her musical name in tune with the song of the Tree, and felt its music fill her, sustaining her, giving her strength.

After what seemed like an eternity she felt the grip of massive hands on her arm and waist, and the sickening rush of air as she was torn loose from the rope, then placed gently on solid ground. Rhapsody opened her eyes to find herself in a tunnel not much taller than Grunthor, the root's tributary running horizontally next to her. A choked laugh escaped her as she fell to her knees, reveling in the feel of firm earth.

The giant laughed in turn.

'You like that, do you?" He offered her a hand. "Well, then, shall we be on our way, Duchess? We gotta catch up."

The exhaustion she had been fighting every moment since the climb began claimed her. Rhapsody shook her head, lay down and stretched out on her back. "I can't. I need to rest. I'm sorry." She ran her hand up the side of the narrow tunnel wall, staring at the crumbling ceiling above her.

The Bolg Sergeant's face lost its smile. "Oi'll give you a moment, Duchess, but then we're gone. You don't want to be where the ceilin' can cave in one bit longer than you have to be." His voice carried the quiet ring of authority that commanded armies.

Rhapsody sighed, then took his hand. "All right," she acquiesced. "Let's go."

Chey walked erect until the tunnel grew smaller, then squeezed through the small opening that sheathed the now-horizontal root. The ceiling was too low for Grunthor even to crouch, so they crawled along for some distance until the earth-tunnel widened into a broader vertical space once again. In the distance there was light, and Rhapsody's heart leapt. They must be near the surface.

Finally they came to the opening, struggling to hurry. When she emerged from the tunnel and stood upright, Rhapsody gasped.

They were standing next to a vast bulbous tower that loomed above them, with spidery flaccid branches sprouting from it, long thin trails of radix hanging next to it from the darkness above. By comparison, the root they had descended was nothing more than a branch of this one.

The giant root reached up into the vertical tunnel high above them out of sight.

Unlike the absolute darkness of their descent, there was a faint red glow within this shaft, a darklight that held no radiance, just heat. There were no other horizontal tunnels, just more of this new root twisting into the chasm below.

The strangling disappointment of not being at the surface gave way to fearful amazement. "Gods, what is this?" Rhapsody said, thinking aloud.

'Oi believe it's the taproot, the one what connects the tree to the main line,"

Grunthor offered.

'Main line? What are you talking about?" A disgusted snort came from the darkness in front of her, and her weary eyes made out Achmed at the edge of the tunnel. Until that moment she had not seen him; he had blended completely into the darkness.

'One would think you would know your Lirin lore a little better. Had you thought this was the end? We haven't even made it to the real Root yet."

Fighting the devastation that threatened to consume her, Rhapsody thought back to the stories her mother had told her about Sagia. It is the Oak of Deep Roots, she had said, its veins and arteries are lifelines that spread throughout the earth and are shared by other holy trees, called Root Twins, around the world. She had spoken of its massive girth, but the outsize im -1

pressions of childhood perspective had led Rhapsody to expect a trunk of great heft, not a tree the size of the town square.

The main roots of the holy trees ran along something her mother had called the Axis Mundi, the centerline of the Earth, which the Lirin people believed to be round, contrary to the opinions of their neighbors. This main axle on which the Earth spun, reputed to be an invisible line of power, and the root of Sagia had melded together. That was the reason the Tree resonated with the wisdom of the ages, that it had grown to such an unbelievable height and breadth. It was tied into the very soul of the world, her mother had said. That might be the main line to which Grunthor had referred.

'You mean the Axis Mundi?"

'The one and only." Achmed spat on his hands, then took hold of one of the flaccid vestigial roots, called a radix. He pulled himself awkwardly off the ground, swinging slightly as the radix flexed, then positioned his foot in the crotch where an outsize knob was attached to the giant root.

He was able to scale the taproot slowly, compensating for the weakness in the smaller roots by keeping one arm wrapped around the vast green-white flesh of the main trunk. When he was ten or so feet from the ground in the tunnel he looked down.

'Saddle up, Grunthor," he said in the strange, fricative voice that had first caught Rhapsody's attention in the market. He looked at her now with an expression that hovered between contempt and indifference. "Are you coming?"

'How far up does it go?"

'No telling. There's nothing but this for as far as I can see, and my underground sight is good. What's your alternative?"

She was without one, and he knew it. Rhapsody was still unsure as to whether Achmed had been her deliverer or her kidnapper, but whatever he had intended, he was now her captor. He had dragged her in here, trapping her inside the Tree with no exit except through the root, and even that was looking more and more unlikely. She tried to keep the seething hatred out of her voice.

'Thanks to you, I have none. I'm coming."

Che. climb was arduous, with repeated episodes of slipping and a few almost-tragic falls. Initially it had been a little like climbing a ladder, and almost as easy. There were more knobs and lichenous growths on the taproot to serve as foot and handholds than there had been on the first root they had descended, the root of Sagia's trunk.

But as the first few minutes passed into an hour, the dull ache in Rhapsody's shoulders roared into full-blown agony. She tried to make better use of her legs to give her arms some respite, but even that did little to ease the searing pain and bone-deep exhaustion. The men had quickly outdistanced her, having far greater strength in their arms and upper bodies than she did, but even they were slowing slightly, remaining in view above her. At least Grunthor was; she could see nothing past him, except for the never-ending pale wall of the root.

Once they had been climbing for more than an hour Rhapsody could no longer see anything that even vaguely resembled the ground below them, just perpetual darkness.

It was like being suspended in the sky among the stars, hovering above the world miles below.

The thought of the stars made her choke up, but she held back the tears, remembering her abductor's harsh warning about crying. Her mother's race, the Liringlas, the Skysingers, believed that all of life was part of their God. They held the heavens to be holy, the sheltering sky that touched its children, making them part of the collective soul of the universe. This was the reason they greeted the daily celestial changes with song, honoring the rising and setting of the sun, as well as the appearance of the stars, with chanted devotions.

The pain she had suffered in her life was her own fault. She had run away, abandoned her family as a teenager, but still had longed for the day when she might return, repentant, to the fold. The daily devotions, particularly the songs to the stars, were her way of comforting herself until that occurred. She would faithfully sing her morning aubades and evening vespers each day, thinking of her mother, knowing she, too, was chanting the ancient tunes of her people, thinking of the child she had lost.

And now that child was trapped in the Earth, miles below the surface, possibly never to see the sky again.

'Ya all right down there, miss?" Grunthor's deep voice shattered her thoughts; the other two were many yards above her. The Sergeant was leaning away from the taproot, trying to discern what was delaying her in the darkness.

Rhapsody sighed. "I'm fine," she called, then began the laborious task of hauling herself up the towering root once more.

-

* * *

(-finally Achmed found a ledge large enough for the two men to rest, with a smaller indentation in the root below it for her. Rhapsody settled into the pit, her body numb from the pain and exertion. Grunthor leaned over the ledge and handed her down a flask of water he had collected from the radix around him while he was waiting for her to catch up.

'

'Ere ya go, Yer Ladyship. Ya all right?"

Too tired to answer, she managed a weak smile and a nod, then drank gratefully. A moment later Achmed's rope landed in her lap.

'Tie yourself to that outcropping of branches there," he directed from above. "We're going to sleep here. You should make sure you never sleep without it." Rhapsody looked up and met his glance, and in the fog of her exhaustion understanding came over her. There was no end in sight. There might never be.

Uhey continued to climb. Any sense of time vanished. There seemed to be nothing at all in time or space but the root, the three of them, and the endless climb. How long it had been was impossible to tell; Rhapsody was rarely hungry, and the other two felt compelled to eat even less frequently than she did, so keeping track of the passing of hours or meals or breaths they took didn't serve to mark the passage of time.

Eventually they gave up altogether, becoming resigned to the eternal journey, with the ever-dwindling hope that there would one day be an end to it.

Achmed and Grunthor had become accustomed to traveling with their hostage. She never complained, and rarely spoke, though she had some trouble staying on the root.

She was small, and the trunk was too vast for her arms to gain any purchase, so as a result she slipped more frequently than they did, on occasion necessitating that Grunthor make an adjustment in pace to keep from losing her.

The most troublesome aspect to her company was the nightmares. The three companions endeavored to find sleeping places as close to each other as possible, Achmed in the lead, Grunthor next, and the girl bringing up the rear. Rhapsody never passed a sleeping session in peace, always awakening in a cold sweat or a panic, gasping wildly.

Being within the Earth intensified her dreams, changing them dramatically. They now began as distant visions, inexplicable sights that had no bearing on any real experience. Rhapsody dreamt often of Sagia, sometimes walking around it in the darkness of the silent glade, touching its gleaming bark in wonder, unable to find the hole through which they'd entered.

One night, in a particularly disturbing dream, she saw a star fall into the sea, and the waves around it erupting in fire, swirling into a towering wall of water that enveloped the Island, swallowing it. She saw Sagia, its boughs filled with thousands of Lirin singers, dressed in green, chains of wildflowers entwined in their hair and about their necks, singing sweetly as it vanished beneath the ocean surface.

She had moaned in her sleep, turning over in the ropes by which she had bound herself to the root. Achmed had been on watch, and tore off one of the millions of bulbous growths that disfigured the root, dropping it on her from above in hope of making her stop whining. It had the desired effect; she grew quiet again as her dream changed into an old one, one that recalled her past.

It was a dream of the bordello she had worked in a few years back. She could see the bedchamber again clearly in her mind's eye, the tawdry red furniture that was the decorating staple of every brothel, the extra-large bed. She shuddered in her sleep at the memory that unspooled itself against her best efforts to keep it in check.

Michael had been sprawled lazily across the bed, the mud from his boots soiling the linens.

'Well, there you are, Rhapsody, my dear," he said, his eyes opening wide in delight.

"I was beginning to think you weren't coming."

'I wasn't," she answered tersely. "Why are you here? What did you say to Nana?