The Weaver's Lament (47 page)
Read The Weaver's Lament Online
Authors: Elizabeth Haydon
It was the place, he knew, where she had put out her hand to touch a tunnel wall and had rested it on a massive scale in the hide of that Wyrm.
As if in confirmation, in the near distance he could hear a buzzing sound, many repetitive notes that clashed in dissonance, almost unrecognizable as music.
Achmed exhaled his breath slowly, expelling the last of the air from his lungs, and taking in another, colder breath.
Slowly he made his way forward to a place where an opening yawned.
He came to the threshold and looked inside.
The tunnel he had once stood at the entry to was filled with countless crystalline threads of sound, frozen in place for centuries, spanning every possible opening or space.
The noise was cacophonous, each new thread of song produced by the harp layering even more soft, musical noise on top of what was already deafening. The Bolg king covered his ears with his hands, adding another barrier over the wads of cloth, but it did little to deflect the vibrations of the music.
Beyond the opening he could see that what Rhapsody had once mistaken for an enormous wall, the scale in the gargantuan Wyrm's skin, had both solidified and become at the same time vaporous, scored a billion times over with thin lines of light.
It looked for all the world like the silken sac of a spider, wound around the long-dead carcass of its prey.
The Wyrm that he had lived in terror of awakening was a gargantuan corpse, filling the tunnel with its ever-thickening body of wasted flesh and the tangible vibration of harp song.
Achmed, his body and spirit far beyond exhausted, felt a surge of warmth in the frozen belly of the world.
He thought back to the earliest of days with Rhapsody, still his hostage, when he first had come to learn she was a student of Liringlas music.
So I'll ask you again, Singer; what can you do?
He could hear her voice in his memory as clearly as if she were standing beside him.
Not very much, outside from singing a rather extensive collection of historical ballads and epics. I can find herbs to throw into the fire to mesmerize people. Obviously that isn't going to impress you much since you can, too. I can bring sleep to the restless, or prolong the slumber of someone who is already asleep, an especially useful talent for new parents of fussy babies. I can ease pain of the body and the heart, heal minor wounds and comfort the dying, making their passage easier. Sometimes I can see their souls as they leave for the light. I can tell a story from a few bits of fact and a good dollop of audience reaction. I can tell the absolute truth as I know it. And when I do that I can change things.
Achmed's throat had tightened to the point of choking.
Yes, yes you could, Rhapsody,
he thought, his eyes stinging dryly.
And you did. You changed the predestined fate of the world.
He swallowed and, in his fading mind, whispered what passed for a prayer, thinking of Graal, as he all but always did.
Finally you are safe as I can make you, my son,
he thought.
Thanks to your mother.
Then, with one last glance at the dead Wyrm, he continued on his way, back to where he had come from, back in Time.
Back, he hoped, to the remains of Serendair.
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
After a trek more endless than the one that brought him from the Vault to the Wyrm, Achmed finally began to recognize parts of the Root he remembered.
The vermin he had fought at the beginning of his journey had vanished, leaving nothing but the evidence of salt water all around him.
If this is Serendair, if I have made it back from whence I came, it's probably submerged,
he thought.
He remembered MacQuieth's description of what he had found when he had walked the sea to the site of the Island's destruction, hoping and failing to find and bury his son.
Where there had been highlands, there was nothing beneath the waves but rubble and ruin, melted statues and stone gates jutting from great mountains of broken earth, the towers of Elysian castle now pebbles in the swirling current. They had built seawalls, levies, in the last days, in the vain attempt to hold back the inevitable. That must have been Hector. My son would have been filling bags of sand to the last.
As he climbed the taproot, what had been the first of the pathways in their endless journey, he saw above him some of what MacQuieth had spoken ofâbroken walls and the detritus of cataclysm, clogging the tunnel above it.
Nothing recognizable except for what looked like a gate, crushed at the bottom of all the wreckage.
With the last of his strength, Achmed seized the handle of the gate and pulled with all his might, knowing against all hope that he was trying to open a door at the very bottom of the sea, on which an entire Island kingdom lay in pieces.
To his surprise, it opened.
Beyond the gate stood a woman he remembered, smiling brightly.
The elemental fire that had once burned at her core, turning her hair the color of warm honey, was gone; it now hung loose to her waist, a waterfall the same shade as pale flax.
Gone was the seraphic beauty she had gained in her walk through the fire; she was now just the pretty young girl he had run into in the back alleys of Easton. All of the flawless perfection of her beauty had faded into a simple, dewy complexion and bright green eyes that sparkled when she smiled.
As she was doing now, beckoning excitedly to him.
“Come!”
Behind her a giant shadow loomed, broad as a two-yoked oxcart, tall as an elder-oak, his skin the color of old bruises, his shaggy horse-hair and beard red-orange once more.
He was grinning broadly, displaying neatly polished tusks.
Whole again.
“Come!” she called once more. Her voice was musical, but held none of the power of the ring of the Namer. Her eyes met his, and her smile broadened.
“Come with us, if you want to live!”
As the gate crumbled before his eyes, and the sea began to rush in, Achmed's heart leapt, and he could not help himself.
He threw his head back, as he had never before done in his life, and began to laugh uproariously.
Then he ran for the doorway and climbed through it.
Into arms that were waiting to embrace him.
Welcoming him.
After all his journeys through darkness, above and below the surface of the Earth, into the Light.
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The Symphony of Ages Books by
Elizabeth Haydon
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As the daughter of an air-force officer,
Elizabeth Haydon
began traveling at an early age and has since traveled all over the world. She draws on the imagery of these visits in The Symphony of Ages series and blends her love of music, anthropology, herbalism, and folklore into much of her writing. Haydon is also a harpist and a madrigal singer (a singer of medieval songs). She lives with her family on the East Coast. You can sign up for email updates
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CONTENTS
The Symphony of Ages Books by Elizabeth Haydon
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE WEAVER
'
S LAMENT
Copyright © 2016 by Elizabeth Haydon
All rights reserved.
Maps by Ed Gazsi
Cover art by Stephen Youll
Illustrations
here
and
here
by Joe Dettmore
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-2055-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-4922-4 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781429949224
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First Edition: June 2016