“It’s time I got started,” he said finally, reaching over the side of his chair for his crutches, pulling them into his lap. “Young Gwydion will be waiting; he’s already champing at the bit.” He continued to watch Rhapsody for a moment longer, then leaned forward.
“I have one final thing I want to say to you,” he said, his voice firm but calm again. “Just in the event I don’t return.”
Rhapsody went pale. “Don’t even think that, let alone say it,” she said.
Anborn smiled slightly. “It’s a possibility that occurs every time one leaves another’s presence. Isn’t that what you said?”
“Yes. But I don’t like the way it comes out of your mouth. When I said it, it was a reminder to tell the people you love how much they matter to you. When you say it, it feels like goodbye.”
“It’s meant to be neither; I just wish to pass along to the only Lirin Namer I know something that I have never said to another person, for the sake of history. Both of my parents were selfish, misguided monarchs that allowed a petty disagreement and their own thirst for power to plunge a continent into war and destroy the civilization their people had built from nothing. There is an element so avaricious, so self-important, about this that it can only be ascribed as evil—both of them.”
He leaned closer, so that his words, spoken softly, could be clearly heard.
“And while there are those who would discount what I say as biased, or self-serving, I swear to you, Rhapsody, that while Gwylliam, my father, may have been a man whose selfishness made him evil, my mother was wicked, malevolent, on a much deeper level. Llauron might disagree, were he to appear from the ether, or whatever elemental state he currently lounges about in, because he always took her part, but despite what my brother might say, I can tell you from firsthand experience that my mother was evil incarnate. She was soulless—she had been cursed with the ability to see only into the Past, for all intents and purposes, and she was reminded constantly of the wrongs that had been done to her, the slights and the betrayals, those injuries which good men and women put behind them and bury in what went before so that they might move on. Perhaps anyone so afflicted would also have turned wicked. But Anwyn had a ruthlessness that came from a deeper place. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was she that allowed the demon that you and your friends vanquished to grow in power, to escape notice for centuries as it sowed the seeds of its destructive plans. But I know more—much more. And I can tell you that there has been nothing in my experience more close to gazing directly into the Vault of the Underworld than looking into my mother’s eyes. May she putrefy in that Vault forever.”
He signaled to his bearers and was carried from the room, leaving Rhapsody watching him go in stunned silence.
25
Elynsynos’s lair was exactly as Rhapsody remembered it.
The journey with Ashe had been much easier than the first one they had made to this place together. Then they did not trust each other; the land was rife with hidden evil, in the grip of an unseen F’dor, causing even those who were allies to be suspicious of one another. Now, as they returned to the hidden cave set in a hollow in the hillside near a small woodland lake, lost in the wonder of love and impending parenthood, the Lord and Lady Cymrian found that sweet memories were all that remained of that first journey, the mistrust and acrimony lost to history.
The lake at the base of the hill was frozen, its crystalline ice reflecting the trees that lined it like a mirror.
From the depths of that cave a voice sounded as they approached, a voice that held the timbres of soprano, alto, tenor, and bass simultaneously.
Hello, Pretty. You’ve brought your husband and your baby. How lovely.
Rhapsody chuckled. “Hello, Elynsynos. May we enter?”
Yes, of course. Come in.
Together Ashe and Rhapsody followed the winding path down into the dragon’s lair.
The great wyrm, matriarch of all that lived on the continent, was waiting in her horde of glittering coins, chests of treasure and jewels, and artifacts recovered from a jealous sea—tridents and masts, figureheads from lost ships, rudders and wheels formed into chandeliers with a thousand candleless flames. As always, Rhapsody struggled not to become entranced by her eyes, prisms of colors and hypnotic light scored with the same vertical pupils that could be seen in Ashe’s eyes. Those enchanting eyes were dancing with the light of excitement.
The great beast lifted herself from the salty water of the lake that filled the bottom of her horde, her gleaming scales and enormous, serpentine body fluid as the wind. Elynsynos had long ago given up her physical form and existed in a purely elemental state, in much the same way that her grandson Llauron, Ashe’s father, had chosen to do.
Have you come to visit, as you promised, Pretty? the wyrm asked, settling down on the cave floor.
“Indeed,” Rhapsody said. “I am hoping to learn about carrying a wyrmkin child from you, and to find a way to feel better while doing it.”
How do you feel now? the great beast asked.
Rhapsody considered; the nausea had vanished from the moment she walked into the cave, lulled by the rhythmic sloshing of the small salt sea. While the darkness and closeness of the place reminded her of the Root, there was something about the love in it that seemed to keep the fear she was sometimes consumed by underground at bay. The sea treasures were signs of the dragon’s love of her lost Seren sailor, Merithyn the Explorer, who had found this place a millennium ago and had inadvertently started the dynasty that would build and destroy the continent.
And was rebuilding it now.
“Better,” she said. “Almost well.”
The wyrm regarded her with an expression of mixed fondness and concern.
“Will you take care of my wife for me for a little while, Great-grandmother?” Ashe asked, helping Rhapsody into a hammock that had been fixed to the stone wall by a trident thrust into the rock of the cave.
Of course, the dragon said, manipulating the wind as its voice. Have you chosen a name for the child?
The expectant parents looked at each other.
“We have discussed one, but we wanted to see what the baby looked and seemed like first,” Rhapsody said.
Very well, said Elynsynos. As long as you understand that the child will need a name in order to be born.
“Er—no, I hadn’t realized that,” Rhapsody said.
A dragon emerges from the egg in an elemental state, said Elynsynos. Because wyrms contain mostly Earth lore, but each of the other elements as well, whatever name is given will largely determine what the child is like. So choose well; many mother dragons are grumpy after egg-laying, and the names they give their offspring when they hatch yield even grumpier wyrm adults.
“Will that be the case for our baby?” Ashe asked, sitting down beside an enormous pile of rysin coins, forged of a blue metal found deep in the mountains. “He or she won’t be full wyrm—I am actually hoping that since his or her blood will be so dilute, it will yield a low draconic tendency.”
The great beast shrugged, a gesture that made Rhapsody giggle.
Every beast is different, Elynsynos said. It’s impossible to know what the combinations of blood will produce. When you consider, there really are only a few known examples of wyrmkin in the world, and all that I know of are related to me. My three daughters, Manwyn, Rhonwyn, and Anwyn, are first-generation wyrmkin; of them, only Anwyn reproduced. The only other living wyrmkin I know of are Anwyn’s three sons, Edwyn, Llauron, and Anborn, and, of course, yourself, Pretty’s Husband. All of you are different, though there are some family traits that are consistent. What this child will be like, who can say? He or she will be like himself, or herself.