14
Achmed had been poring over his dusty volume for more than an hour when the messenger bird arrived.
Grunthor had become accustomed to standing or sitting in silence of late, contemplating the field maps and reports that came from the Eyes in the farther outposts, the more distant guard towers in Ylorc, past the Blasted Heath and the blue forests of the central kingdom, deep into the crags of the Teeth. The Sickness had spread throughout the Claw and Guts clans, but the Eyes had seemed to remain unscathed, so most of the information now being delivered to him was from their leaders, as they maneuvered to consolidate his favor in the absence of competition. The news they were sending his way was increasingly disturbing.
The stone walls hewn from the mountain that formed the Cauldron’s main meeting room were flecked with shadows from the large hearth fire that burned steadily in the corner, the occasional crack and pop of the wet wood the only sound in the room. When the messenger from the aviary opened the door, therefore, the hum of the hinges and the whine of the wood reverberated through the silence. Grunthor looked up to see the hairs on the Bolg king’s sinewy arms standing at irritated attention.
The soldier coughed politely, a sound that a human would have thought to be a grunt. Achmed waved him in impatiently.
He stared at the scrap of oilcloth that the messenger handed him for a long time, then sat back in his heavy wooden chair, his hand resting on his thin lips in the position he frequently assumed when contemplating. Finally he looked up and leveled a sharp glance at the Sergeant-Major.
“I’m going to need to leave again in a few weeks,” he said to Grunthor.
“Ya just got back,” the Sergeant said grumpily. “What is it now?”
“I have to go to a carnival,” Achmed said.
“Oh. Well, if that’s it, certainly, by all means, ’ave a wonderful time, sir,” Grunthor said sarcastically. “Bring me back some of those pretty lit’le sugared almonds if they ’ave any.”
Achmed tossed the oilcloth scrap into the fire and watched it burn before he spoke, appreciating the hiss of cured paper in smoke.
“Rhapsody and her ne’er-do-well husband have decided to confer the title of duke of Navarne on Stephen’s son Gwydion,” he said finally. “Hard as it is for me to imagine the words coming from my lips when pertaining to someone or something Cymrian, I have to admit I have taken a liking to young Gwydion, as I took one to his father.”
“Yeah, ol’ Lord Steve was a dandy fellow,” Grunthor said, the earlier gruffness in his voice dissipating a little. “But, if Oi might be so bold to suggest it, sir, you ’ave a few other things to attend to, if ya know what Oi mean. The Sickness is spreading—or at least those who survived coming in contact wi’ the glass of the Lightcatcher all seem to be in fairly great agony. Strange rumblin’s in the breastworks, word from the Eyes that Sorbold seems unusually quiet—Oi don’t like the feel o’ the wind these days. Might be a good time to stay close ta home.”
“Undoubtedly it is,” Achmed agreed. “But I have my reasons for going other than court ceremony and the appeal of spending a frivolous day in the company of a bunch of self-important Cymrian nobles.”
“Oi never would o’ guessed that, sir,” said the Sergeant dryly. “We all know ’ow much ya love those sorts o’ parties. Oi assume that givin’ the Duchess what she wants is at least a part of it?”
The Bolg king rose and crouched near the fireplace, allowing the pulsing heat to ripple over the sensitive exposed nerves of his skin. “Not at all, actually. I have something I need her to do for me. And she owes me.” He rose and returned to his dusty reading. “In addition, I have something I want to give to Gwydion Navarne—a spoil of fortune in the rescue of Rhapsody. I claimed it, though Ashe had already determined Gwydion was the one to have it. I want to be the one to confer it to him, so that it is used properly. I need to make that clear to all involved. Finally, I want to test the Archons in my absence. They’ve been commissioned at last, brought into the light. They understand what I expect of them, what their purpose is now. I will only be gone for less than a fortnight. Surely you can hold things together without incident that long, Grunthor.”
The giant Sergeant did not answer, but stared into the twisting flames, wondering what new horror would come to pass this time.
High at the topmost frozen peak, the wyrm clung to the snowy rocks, trembling in the wind. She had slithered out through the gate of the frozen palace and up into the mountaintops, battling the screaming wind all the way to the dark peak.
Wrapped around the summit, the spines of her serpentine tail anchored into the frost, she set her teeth against the wind and struggled to open her eyes. The gale that whipped around the mountaintop slapped her again, digging icy fingers into her eyelids.
Damnation, the beast thought.
She did not feel the cold as much as she had, for within her a fire of a sort had been lighted. With the remembrance of her name had come a burning power, smoldering deep in her viscera, a source of strength and energy that had been sapped from her by her near-death and entombment. Not knowing her name, her past, how she had come to be in the state she now was in had left her weak, disoriented, impotent. But now that she had remembered at least part of her past, she was hell-bent to seek the rest of it.
And return whatever power resided there to herself.
She steeled her will against the icy blast and shouted with all the power of her mind into the screaming wind.
Anwyn! Anwyn!
From the beast’s draconic throat, absent a traditional larynx, no sound emerged. But the will to speak was enough; from all around her the air thickened, then vibrated, bent to her will as all the elements bend to the command of a dragon.
Anwyn!
The updrafts caught the elemental sound, stretching it on the gusts of air until it hovered, dancing around the mountaintop, in long, moaning circles.
Annnnnnnwyyyyyyyyynnnnnnnnn!
The sound molded, swelled, and filled the thin air of the summit. It grew in volume and intensity, the vibrations of it shaking the snow from the peaks, causing avalanches to slide, shimmering, down the mountains and into the foothills below.
The noise of it grew and ebbed, catching currents of wind and stretching across them, whispering off into the wide world on the breeze, multiplying the noise of her shout over and over again, until it had expanded to the edge of the sea.
The beast clutched the icy stones of the peak, the fog in her mind lifting as much as it had since the time of her Awakening. She braced herself in the wind, her reptilian blood coursing in a sort of ecstasy, feeling the echoes of her name’s reverberations in the world, sensing its vibrations as it danced on the wind, thundering off the hillsides, wailing down through the chasms.
And then, in the distance, a thousand leagues or more away, a noise rose up to greet it, to echo its sound. It was a vibration from a history long past, centuries old, rumbled in a voice that was unlike that of the wyrm, though it had silt in its timbre, as if it, too, had in some way been tied to earth. Though the word was the same, the elongated melody of its syllables almost identical, the power of it was vastly different. Where the dragon’s shout had been victorious, the call that answered it was from a voice in torment. Even centuries later, thousands of miles away in time and space, the fury in the word, the hatred that swelled to an agonized lament was unmistakable.
Annnnnnnwyyyyyyyyynnnnnnnnn!
The beast’s head rose above the wind, her senses immediately heightened to crystalline clarity.