They rode through much of the night, stopping finally in a sheltered spot to sleep and sit watch.
“The wind in which he hides is on the sea, but it is moving,” the ancien warrior had said before settling into a dark shadow cast by the light of their campfire for the night.
The two sovereigns sat watch through the early hours, watching the coast and listening to the crashing of the dark waves against the shore below their there was a shriek in the wind as it howled over the bluffs on which they were making camp, as if it were warning of something dire coming.
Finally, after the midpoint of the night had passed into the next day, Ash rose and stretched.
“I’m going to sleep,” he said, reaching skyward with his arms to loosen his sore muscles. “Another long day of riding tomorrow.”
Achmed continued to stare at the fire.
“Sit down for a moment,” he said quietly. “I am about to repay you for rescuing me today.”
The Lord Cymrian inhaled, then sat down again.
“Rhapsody is alive,” the Bolg king said. “I heard her heartbeat in the sea.”
Ashe sat up straighter. “You are certain of it? She’s alive?”
Achmed scowled. “I was certain of it at the time. I don’t want to be held to what may have happened since. But when I was beneath the waves while you took your time to get to me, I heard it—impossible to gauge distance in all that godforsaken water. I never could have imagined that I would be able to hear it through the damnable element; it has always been a barrier to me before. Perhaps I should have MacQuieth stand on my head whenever I need to scry hereafter.”
The Lord Cymrian lapsed into a grateful silence, contemplating his world.
“Thank you,” he said finally.
“We had best make plans as to how we are going to deal with Michael if MacQuieth is able to track and ultimately find him,” Ached said quietly. “In the old world Dhracians generally hunted F’dor alone, but the one we killed a few years ago was stronger, fiercer somehow; I don’t know if I am merely not as potent in the ritual as a full-blooded Dhracian would be, or if crossing Time has anything to do with it, but I do know if Grunthor and Rhapsody had not been there, I would have been lost to it.”
“What do you propose?”
“Once we get within striking distance, I will begin chanting the Thrall ritual,” Achmed said. “It ties a net of power around the demon, keeping it from escaping the host’s body, so that both die together. You will be able to tell if it has taken when I move my hand as if winding yarn about it; if the tether has hit its mark in the demon’s soul, the host’s body will lurch, as if being dragged.” Ashe nodded. “That is the moment when you want to strike.
“As a Dhracian, I can hold the demon’s spirit in its body, keep it from escaping, while the host is being killed. Done properly, a Dhracian can do it alone; the vibration of the Thrall will eventually cause the host’s head to cave in. But we had best take no chances. I will get him into Thrall, and you drive the water sword through him. If you do it right you can gouge his heart out of his chest and throw it, still beating, onto the ground, so that we can watch to be sure he dies in body and soul.”
“Poor technique,” MacQuieth muttered from the shadows where he lay. “You never fully extend until the blade is inside your target. Push it out his back instead.”
Ashe was sleeping on his back by the remains of the fire when the dragon in his blood felt the dawn break gently over the sea.
He sat up, stiff and sore, and looked over to the place where MacQuieth had been.
Nothing was there.
Ashe sat forward quickly, looking with his eyes, but allowing his dragon sense loose to find the old man.
It only took a moment. The sensitive vibrations in his blood told him that MacQuieth was near the edge of the cliff wall that towered over the beach below.
The Lord Cymrian rose, stepping quietly over Achmed, who slept fitfully next to the remains of the fire. He followed the path back to the overlook, his dragonesque eyes scanning for the ancient warrior.
What he found was the feeble old man he had met the day before, the progenitor of his family back so many generations that it was impossible to count, a hero who had slipped with Time into a state bordering on dementia.
The driftwood-gray had returned to his wrinkled skin, the color of extreme age mixed with a life led almost exclusively outdoors. He was wandering close to the edge, seemingly blind to the bluff that ran above the seacoast, on which he was walking.
Ashe caught the urge to call out to him in his throat; he could tell, with the inner sight that allowed him to observe many hidden things, that MacQuieth was not playfully risking death by walking so close to the end of the land.
He could not see anything.
Ashe willed himself to be calm, to move with great deliberateness so as to not startle the blind old man. As his senses wandered over the hero, he thought he had ascertained the reason why he was suddenly sightless.
The dragon had made note of the blood that had pooled in the back of MacQuieth’s eyes during the night; it had coated the back of the inner lens, leaving the man without sight. An hour, perhaps more, of being upright, and the blood would drain away from the back of his eyes, allowing him to see again. For the man who had carried Kirsdarke, carried the essence of the sword of water still, each awakening was a reminder of the drowned. When first he came to awareness he was paralyzed, frozen even beyond shivering.
Blind.
As if trapped beneath ice, the old man had to struggle to come to awareness, to awaken, a much more difficult battle to wage against exhaustion than any man of regular years faced. He deliberately, patiently melted the burden of time that he carried with each liquid-heavy breath, pushing his chest to make more breaths, tiny lapping waves to erode the years.
Even so, it appeared as if he were losing his battle to awaken.
Ashe felt his throat constrict. He waited until the old soldier had gotten his legs under him, then quietly drew Kirsdarke, the blade the old man had borne gloriously throughout so many centuries of life, and held it in outstretched hands, hoping that its ancient bond to MacQuieth would give him strength to draw on again now.
“The All-God give thee good day, Grandfather,” he said deferentially, using the polite form of address that the young used to speak with their elders.
As at the waterside the day before, the hero seemed to strengthen before his eyes, taking on the same patient, enduring power of the waves of the sea below them. The fragile old man shook the tangled mess that was his head.
“If He were to do so, I would be gone from this life now,” he said soberly, without melancholy or self-pity. “All of the years I have ahead of me, and all those behind, would I trade for but one day in which to see what has been lost to Time once more.”
“I understand,” Ashe said.
The soldier cocked his head in the Lord Cymrian’s direction. “Do you? Hmmm. I think not.” An amused smile crossed his lips. “But I suspect one day, a thousand years or more from now, you will.”
He turned to face the sea, letting the rising sun bathe his face with its light.
“The sun—I can feel it,” he murmured, his eyes open in the intense glare, reflecting the burning light. “I know it’s there. Like the Island, sleeping now beneath the waves, its towers crumbled into great mounds of sand, the great seawalls that proved to be futile broken, strewn about the bottom of the ocean floor like the playthings of a child. I feel its warmth; but I see it not.
“When the Second Fleet landed in Manosse, when my—duty was discharged, I stood in the sea and waited for the Island’s end.” MacQuieth closed his eyes to the golden light, lifting his face to the sky, following the path of the sun. “I felt it; it was many days, how many risings and setting of the sun I do not remember, but all that water, all that sun, all that salt burned the surface of my eyes. I did not care; I had no need of them. Anything that I had wanted to see was no longer visible.