No one could come to her aid but herself alone.
Rhapsody made her way to the ledge once more and stared down into the green swirling water.
Below the surface she could see movement, a slithering motion that made her skin go cold.
Snakes? she thought hazily. No, eels. The cave was full of them, black, oily ones, swept in on the last tide, not yet pulled out again with the ebbing current. A source of food, and of water. Choking back her disgust, she untied the closures of her torn shirt, pulled it off, then retied it into a snare of a sort.
I will live through this, she thought, running her hand over her abdomen. We will live through this together, you and I. And we will get out of here.
The wind whistled through the cave, then fell silent.
The seneschal did not wait for the last longboat to land before he began kindling the black fire.
Each of the oared vessels sported a lantern at the prow, hanging over the edge of the ship to light the shoals and reefs over which the longboats skimmed on their way to shore and ship and back. Now the demon in man’s flesh seized hold of the first, wresting the handle free with a savage twist.
An exposed rim of sharp wire gleamed in the sun. The seneschal ran the edge of his finger along it, drawing blood that hissed with fire from another world.
He unhooded the lantern and held up his finger, allowing the blood to drip into the well of the lantern.
From the drops tiny tendrils of caustic smoke rose, kindling a moment later into sparks that caught a breath of life in the air. A sliver of flame, black and liquid, twisting and transforming in a gloriously malevolent pattern of color, heavier than that which burned in the air of the upworld, caught the wick of the lantern and glowed.
The flame suddenly darkened, snapping evilly, then sprang to a more intense, more rampant light.
Michael turned to the fresh coterie of soldiers and sailors who had come ashore with him. He handed the lantern to the leader of the first group of four men, reaching for the next lantern to light in the same fashion.
“Comb the coast,” he ordered as his reeve divided the men up into smaller raiding parties. “Check every privy in every hut in every fishing village. If you find her, drag her out, then burn the house of whomever has been sheltering her.”
His blue eyes shone wildly in the dark.
“If you don’t find her, burn everything in sight.” the troops and raiding parties were saddling up and dispersing, both on horseback and on foot, the seneschal drew Caius, his trusted bowman, aside.
“I have a special assignment for you,” he said, his voice betraying excitement tinged with anxiety. “Quinn says she made her home a few days’ ride inland from here, in the first stronghold along the transcontinental roadway, in a keep known as ‘Haguefort’ in the province of Navarne. See if she has crawled home. And be sure to leave it in ashes, whether she has or not.
“If you come across her husband in the confusion of the evacuation, make sure you dispense with him first,” he continued, his bony face hardening, its sharp angles delineating the aspect of the demon that dwelt within him. “But cut off something as a souvenir; make sure it’s something she will recognize.”
“How will I know him?”
Michael shrugged. “If he is old or young enough to walk without assistance, assume any man you find in her house is her husband. Be thorough. Kill everyone you can, children too, Caius. Everyone.”
Caius nodded and pulled himself up on his mount.
“Remember, even though you are shooting in your brother’s memory,” Michael said with a sudden jolt of jollity, “try and limit your kills to one bolt. Any more than that, even to honor poor, sausage-handed Clomyn, and you will find yourself outnumbered and out of ammunition.”
Caius’s eyes narrowed at the offhand mention of his heart twin, but he said nothing, just nudged the horse east toward the thoroughfare that would lead him to Navarne.
40
Under the best of circumstances, the Bolg king and the Lord Cymrian would not have made easy traveling companions.
Under the worst of circumstances, in which they now found themselves, they discovered a surprisingly fluid pattern of companionship that was born of necessity.
Neither man had any need of or tolerance for camaraderie or conversation. Achmed spent his waking moments fending off the myriad vibrations in the wind, combing each pocket of air for a flicker of Rhapsody’s heartbeat, a trace of the stench of whatever F’dor spirit was now feeding off of Michael, a man he had loathed in the old world, but had never tracked before. Ashe, with the minutiae of awareness of the dragon in his blood, was unconsciously sorting through the infinite pieces of information that assaulted his senses, most of it banal and inconsequential, none of it indicating that his wife was still present in the world of the living.
As a result, they traveled in a mutual silence that suited them both.
They rode the borderlands between Roland and Tyrian, staying far enough off the road to avoid notice and the interference of the human and animal traffic that traveled the thoroughfare there, stopping at the first Lirin outpost in Tyrian long enough to send a coded message to Rial in Tomingorllo, the hilltop palace in the forested capital city.
More than the endless days and nights of silence, another unspoken synchronicity seemed to develop between them. Achmed’s blood rage, the propensity of hatred for F’dor present in the makeup of all of the Dhracian race, was simmering beneath the surface of his conscious control, a volatile anger that drove him to the hunt to the exclusion of everything else. No diversion, not the need for rest, or hunger, or even the desire to rescue a treasured friend, the woman who was the opposite side of his own coin, could break the concentration fomented by the primal need to seek and destroy that was driving his every waking breath.
Ashe, too, had fallen into a primal state that was just barely on the inside edge of containment. The dragon in his blood, awakened from dormancy and invigorated by the ministrations of the Lord and Lady Rowan in the effort to save his life, was lurking at the edge of his reason, whispering constantly in his mind, but it was not singular in its purpose as Achmed’s blood rage. It was easily led off the path by other things it desired, difficult to rein in, seeking and coveting endless items that led away from the path Ashe was pursuing.
So both men were fighting inner battles in preparation for an outward one, Achmed trying to keep from falling into the bottomless chasm of single-minded concentration that blood rage demanded, his entire essence locked on his prey; Ashe from being driven insane by the multiplicity of the dragon’s rapidly shifting focus.
Both men had relegated the hunt for the Lady Cymrian to the back of their minds. While there could be no question that each considered her to be the primary object of his search, the looming threat of a F’dor loose on the continent, lurking somewhere in the Wyrmlands, subjugated the need to save a single human life to secondary focus, even a life that was as precious to them both as hers.
They both knew, without discussing it, that she would agree.
Northwest, following the setting sun, they rode, leaving the open lands of way stations, farming villages, and tiny towns along the thoroughfare, to the sea cliffs, two weeks’ ride encumbered, ten days by their estimates, not know ing where they were to look, just hoping to start with the coastline north of Port Fallon and continuing up the beach until they found one of the things they were looking for, knowing the other would not be far away.
If she was still alive, or hadn’t been taken away by sea.
It was this thought that had both of them in the clutches of unspoken fear. The sea, like the wind, was a great source of masking vibration; if Michael had taken her aboard a ship and sailed away with her, Rhapsody’s heartbeat would be lost in the endless churning turbulence of the waves.