The Weaver's Lament (32 page)

Achmed had been Rath's quarry for centuries before they had finally come upon one another. Given that every other name Rath had been seeking was that of a demon, Achmed did not find that notion flattering.

And yet, not long after he, Grunthor, and Rhapsody had taken the mountains, Rath had appeared, finally having located him by the name the Bolg of Serendair had given him at birth,
Ysk,
the word for spittle. The Dhracian had explained to the incredulous king that not only he but all the upworld Dhracians, those who hunted for the loose spirits of F'dor demons in the material world, were seeking him as well, because he, as a Dhracian, should have been part of the Common Mind, the hive-like consciousness to which all with Dhracian blood had a connection.

But, Rath had said, the Bolg king had something more. The accident of his birth, the mass rape of his mother by a contingent of Bolg in the old world, had produced in him ties not only to the wind, the element from which Dhracians had sprung, but also to Earth, the origin of his father's race, whoever that father might have been.

It was a birthright that would give him the ability to not only find the elusive F'dor spirits in the air of the upworld, which all Dhracians possessed, but the ability to walk their prison of Living Stone, known as the Vault of the Underworld, and draw strength from the element from which it was made.

Rath had hounded him, more or less ceaselessly, from the time he had come across him, to take up that task.

You will need to answer this question, Assassin King—are you more assassin, or are you more king?

His first reply, a thousand years before, had been that he was a king, the ruler of a realm of monstrous men he was trying to reclaim, to take the bastard race of Firbolg, that of his unknown father, and make them a force to be contended with in the eyes of the world.

With Grunthor's help, and Rhapsody's, he had done that.

But now that they were both gone, and their goal had long been accomplished, Achmed could feel a change in the wind from which his mother sprang.

“You beckoned?”

Achmed exhaled and nodded.

“What is your need?”

“I have a proposal for you, Rath,” he said.

The Dhracian said nothing, waiting.

“You have long been after me to join the Primal Hunt with you and the others of our race. And while I have assisted you in the capture and killing of a few of the names on your list, I have resisted taking on that task as my first priority—something I know that has bothered you immensely over the centuries.”

Rath studied his face.

“I am not bothered, Majesty. I am just perplexed at how one of our race has managed to deny the primordial urge, the needles in our veins that demand we submit to the Primal Hunt before all else.”

“Just lucky, I suppose. I have a question to ask you.”

The Dhracian waited.

“Has the Hunt been completed? Or do you have a new list of names?”

The Dhracian's pupils expanded, watching him intensely.

“I no longer have a list. You helped with some of them on it.”

“Is that because all the upworld F'dor are dead—or just because the hunters have killed all that they know about? Could there be more that we do not know about?”

Rath stared at him.

“There could always be more that we do not know about, Majesty,” he said darkly. “That is why we continuously comb the wind, looking for a trace of the odor of burning flesh in fire. Having the names of some of the Older and the Younger Pantheon was a helpful tool, but finding those on the list was not an end in itself.”

“I thought so. So the Primal Hunt continues?”

“Of course.”

“Why?”

The Dhracian's mouth drew tight in annoyance. “I should not have to answer this question for you, half-breed or otherwise.”

“Humor me. As I said, I have a proposal for you. I need these answers to be clear before I offer it.”

Rath's jaw, taut a moment before, slackened. He understood the need to apply questions to any situation in which there was uncertainty.

“The Primal Hunt continues until the Earth does not, because if there is a chance that a F'dor spirit has been overlooked, the Earth
will
not. If a demon is hiding, unknown, somewhere in the cracks of the Earth, or within the wind itself, the possibility remains that it will continue to grow in strength and power until it finds a way to open the Vault of the Underworld and set the rest of its race free.

“We know that there is still at least one more living Earthchild, a child that slumbers eternally within your own kingdom, and whose rib would serve as a key to the Vault. Unfortunately, we know that they are also aware of this. They know that she lives, and where she sleeps—and that it is unlikely you would ever seek to move her, for you fear her death, whereas her rib is of value to them whether or not she is alive. And you are more than aware of the answer to your own questions—so what is it you are thinking?”

The Bolg king leaned back and let the thin wind and the wisps of clouds at the mountaintop race over the sensitive skin of his face.

“What am I thinking?” he mused, almost to himself. “I am thinking about my children.”

Rath blinked his enormous eyes.

“Your children?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me, I was unaware that you had any.”

“So was I, for the longest time.”

The Dhracian looked uncomfortable. “I would have thought that such news would have been passed along through the Common Mind, given how important progeny are to the continuation of our guardian race.”

“They are mostly not of our guardian race,” Achmed said. “The first was the child you have already referenced—the Earthchild. She was the first vulnerable entity to whom I have sworn protection, with my life. You asked me once if I was more assassin, or more king—being a king allows me to guard her with considerable resources, rather than being out chasing ephemeral demons in the wind across the wide world. Chasing and killing demons would have been ever so much more fun and rewarding, but she needed me here. So here I have stayed, as much as I could.”

“I see,” said Rath. “Are there others?”

“Rhapsody told me early on that the Bolg were my children, though I scoffed at her at the time. But if children are brutish, unevolved resources that you put your time and your guidance, your knowledge and your faith into, for a purpose greater than your own selfish desires, I suppose she was right.”

He glanced down from the mountain into the blue shadows, where the children he had just mentioned were moving slowly, wandering aimlessly, waiting for a war that, with any luck, would never come.

“And there are children who call me ‘Uncle,' the strangest of experiences for one who had neither siblings nor parents in his life. Rhapsody's children, six in all, and a multitude of their own progeny. She made it a point to bring them to these mountains at least once a year during their childhoods, to visit, to learn their great-grandfather's engineering brilliance, military training from Grunthor, weapons and other manufacturing, nit-picking skills, snot assault skills and other Firbolg manners—”

Rath raised an eyebrow.

“—and, the most important lesson, that the Bolg are beings entitled to the same treatment that the people of Roland enjoy. And to know their uncles.”

He sighed. It was a sound full of memory.

“And, at last, my actual son.”

“You have a son?” Rath's tone was cautious.

“Yes.”
Only in the thin air of a mountaintop could my head be so light as to be talking of this,
he thought.

“Of whom?”

“It doesn't matter. She's dead.” Achmed sat forward and leaned an arm on his leg.

“Condolences.” Rath looked away to the east, where the sun seemed absent. “Was he conjured?”

Achmed sat up, his eyes narrowing. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I felt a momentary trembling in the Common Mind a few days ago, a new song on the wind, if only for a moment,” Rath said. “It put me in mind of the Lady Cymrian, who has studied the conjuring of a child with me, as well as with others knowledgeable of the lore. I do not know if you recall this, but long ago, when I met her first son, I asked if he had been conjured, because there was such a magical air about him.”

Achmed lapsed into silence.

“What has put you in mind of them all today?”

The wind whistled through suddenly, bringing a chill with it.

“I am trying to find a reason to do something ultimately selfless,” Achmed said. “That has never been in my nature; I am a selfish bastard of famous reputation. But an idea has come into my head that I cannot displace, as much as I might try. It's utterly illogical and undoubtedly suicidal. So I have been undertaking to determine what knobbing
arse
is manipulating my thoughts in this way.”

“An unpleasant thing to say about your children.”

The Bolg king smiled wryly.

“
I
am the knobbing arse, Rath.”

“Well, I cannot dispute that.” The ancient Dhracian's serious expression eased slightly for a breath, then returned to its stolidity. “What do you propose to undertake that would be for your children, and not yourself? Are you finally ready to join the Primal Hunt?”

“No, and never.” Achmed brushed the rocky dirt from his hands and stood, looking west. “I think I am finally ready to walk the Vault.”

An even heavier silence fell.

Rath was making the attempt to breathe quietly.

“But I cannot do it alone.”

The Dhracian shook his head, as if trying to dislodge a gnat from his ear. “Who would you imagine could do it with you?”

“You, Rath.”

“I have no lore of Earth—”

“I know. And I had no intention of taking you in with me.”

“Then, what do you—”

“I want you to guard my oldest child,” Achmed said to the Krevensfield Plain beyond the Teeth and the steppes leading up to them. “When she was first brought to the tunnels below the mountains by the Dhracians in the Colony that fought to protect her, she always had a guardian, an
amelystik,
who cared for her day into night into day.” He took in a measured breath and let the moist fog fill his mouth, cooling the acid of the words forming with it. “She has recently lost that guardian.”

Rath's eyes closed.

“I am so sorry. Was it in childbirth? A result of conjuring?”

Achmed's mind roiled at the intrusion he would normally feel at Rath's unwanted perception, but he merely nodded. “So if you would like the event you predicted long ago to take place, you would need to agree to remain with her, day into night into day, and protect her with your life. You alone of anyone I know, at least those still among the living, are uniquely qualified to do so. You could sense a F'dor coming, more likely than anyone else, and you are a master hunter. She would be safer with you than with any other choice I could make.”

Rath nodded. His eyes took on a gleam.

“Do not agree too quickly, Rath. Guardianship of any entity below ground is like death for those of our race, accustomed to the buffeting of the wind and the freedom of the open air. It must have been so with our forebears that gave up their connection to the sky to live in the bowels of the world, standing guard over the Vault. I need you to vow that you will protect her with your life and everything you have, forever if necessary, until I return victorious, or at least until you know that the Vault is empty.” He smiled sardonically. “It will probably be an endless commitment.”

“You have my vow.”

Achmed nodded, looking suddenly older.

“When would this commence?” Rath asked.

The Bolg king picked up his pack and his weapons from the ground.

“Now,” he said.

He turned without another word or glance and made his way west down the mountain, through the heavy blue mist and into the light of the brightening day.

*   *   *

The next task Achmed undertook was the summoning, and the gathering, of the Archons.

It took far longer for them to arrive on the steppes than he had hoped, each of them called by name through the speaking tubes that wound throughout the mountainous realm, an innovative communication system that had been designed and installed initially within the Cauldron by Gwylliam in the first Cymrian era, then extended to the entirety of the mountain range in the thousand years of his own reign. By the time the last one, Zifhram, the Archon of Agriculture, had arrived, the Bolg king was beyond furious, struggling to keep his rage in check, knowing that it was by his own hand that his specialists were slowed.

He was standing at the far edge of the steppes, where the low scrub and short, dry swales transitioned to the open rolling grasslands of the Krevensfield Plain. A beautiful gray stallion waited quietly beside him, saddled and tacked by the king's own hand, provisioned for a long journey. Across his back he wore a specially fashioned dual bandolier, a sheath that would hold two swords, and a hook at his belt for the cwellan, the strange, curved crossbow-like missile weapon that he had designed himself long before. In one of the sheaths of his bandolier, Tysterisk, the elemental sword of Air, rested.

The other was empty.

Achmed gestured impatiently for the Archons, the first rank of leadership below him, to come closer.

He looked at them, thirty or more generations removed from the original group of children Rhapsody had suggested he garner from each of the tribes that he had vanquished in the taking of the mountain, children who showed particular intelligence or promise in a variety of areas.

Idly he thought back to those original orphans, offered up in relief and disgust by the tribes, who then had discovered to their shock that those unwanted children were received into the king's favor, trained and educated and given positions of power in his court. He had insisted on maintaining at least a modicum of wildness, a dose of demi-humanity, in the generations of Archons that came later, fearful that if he bred all the monster out of the race that they might devolve even further into a construct he could not stomach—the race of humans.