Destiny

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  This book is dedicated to the other half of my soul

  My traveling companion for eternity

  My co-parent, best friend, dream-come-true

  And general all around favorite person

  The heartless lout

  Who scratches out some of my favorite dialogue

  Deletes whole passages I worked very hard on

  Believes “yeah, it’s fine,” to be the ultimate compliment

  And keeps it Real

  Without whom none of these books would exist

  To Bill

  with love

  throughout Time

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to the usual suspects, the fine folks at Tor, especially Jim Minz and Jodi Rosoff, and the great Tom Doherty. And to Richard Curtis, as always.

  Sincere appreciation to the Henry Mercer Museum and Tile Foundry, the Comparative Literature Department of SMU, the International Maritime Museum and the chiefs and clan mothers of the Onondaga Nation.

  Thanks to Glynn Gomes for the hydrogeological review.

  My deepest gratitude to Aidan Rose, MJ Urist, Rebecca Caballo, Diane Rogers, Az-Kim, the Weltman Clan, and the Friedmans, for your endless support.

  With love to my parents, for everything you taught me and the world you showed me.

  And Bill and the kids, my world now.

  The Prophecy of the Three

  The Three shall come, leaving early, arriving late,

  The lifestages of all men:

  Child of Blood, Child of Earth, Child of the Sky.

  Each man, formed in blood and born in it,

  Walks the Earth and sustained by it,

  Reaching to the sky, and sheltered beneath it,

  He ascends there only in his ending, becoming part of the stars.

  Blood gives new beginning, Earth gives sustenance,

  The Sky gives dreams in life—eternity in death.

  Thus shall the Three be, one to the other.

  The Prophecy of the Uninvited Guest

  Among the last to leave, among the first to come,

  Seeking a new host, uninvited, in a new place.

  The power gained in being the first,

  Was lost in being the last.

  Hosts shall nurture it, unknowing,

  Like the guest wreathed in smiles

  While secretly poisoning the larder.

  Jealously guarded of its own power,

  Ne’er has, nor ever shall its host bear or sire children,

  Yet ever it seeks to procreate.

  The Prophecy of the Sleeping Child

  The Sleeping Child, the youngest born

  Lives on in dreams, though Death has come

  To write her name within his tome

  And no one yet has thought to mourn.

  The middle child, who sleeping lies,

  ’Twixt watersky and shifting sands

  Sits silent, holding patient hands

  Until the day she can arise.

  The eldest child rests deep within

  The ever-silent vault of earth,

  Unborn as yet, but with its birth

  The end of Time Itself begins.

  The Prophecy of the Last Guardian

  Within a Circle of Four will stand a Circle of Three

  Children of the Wind all, and yet none

  The hunter, the sustainer, the healer,

  Brought together by fear, held together by love,

  To find that which hides from the Wind.

  Hear, oh guardian, and look upon your destiny:

  The one who hunts also will stand guard

  The one who sustains also will abandon,

  The one who heals also will kill

  To find that which hides from the Wind.

  Listen, oh Last One, to the wind:

  The wind of the past to beckon her home

  The wind of the earth to carry her to safety

  The wind of the stars to sing the mother’s-song most known to her soul

  To hide the Child from the Wind.

  From the lips of the Sleeping Child will come the words of ultimate wisdom:

  Beware the Sleepwalker

  For blood will be the means

  To find that which hides from the Wind.

  The Prophecy of the King of Soldiers

  As each life begins, Blood is joined, but is spilled as well; it divides too easily to heal the rift.

  The Earth is shared by all, but it too is divided, generation into generation.

  Only the Sky encompasses all, and the sky cannot be divided; thus shall it be the means by which peace and unity will come.

  If you seek to mend the rift, General, guard the Sky, lest it fall.

  First you must heal the rift within yourself. With Gwylliam’s death you now are the king of soliders, but until you find the slightest of your kinsmen and protect that helpless one, you are unworthy of forgiveness. And so it shall be until you either are redeemed, or die unabsolved.

  The Kinsman Call

  By the Star, I will wait, I will watch, I will call and will be heard.

  The Order of the Filids

  Llauron the Invoker

  Chief Priests:

  Khaddyr, Llauron’s Tanist [successor] and Healer

  Lark, Herbalist

  Gavin, Chief Forester

  Ilyana, Chief of Agriculture

  The Circle [lower level Priests and foresters]

  The Patrician Religion of Sepulvarta

  The Patriarch, Silineus

  The Benisons:

  The Blesser of Avonderre-Navarne, Philabet Griswold

  The Blesser of Sorbold, Nielash Mousa

  The Blesser of Bethe Corbair, Lanacan Orlando

  The Blesser of Canderre-Yarim, Ian Steward

  The Blesser of the Nonaligned States, Colin Abernathy

  The Elemental Basilicas

  Ether

  Lianta’ar, Sepulvarta

  Fire

  Vrackna, Bethany

  Water

  Abbat Mythlinis, Avonderre

  Air

  Ryles Cedelian, Bethe Corbair

  Earth

  Terreanfor, Sorbold

  Contents

  Finale

  At the Edge of the Krevensfield Plain

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36<
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  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Epilogue

  Finale

  At the Edge of the Krevensfield Plain

  Time was growing short, Meridion knew.

  The seven-and-a-half-foot-tall monster in ring mail threw back his head, bared tusklike fangs, and roared. The bellowing howl of rage rang through the darkness that clung to the toothlike, mountainous crags, sending loose shale stone and clods of snow tumbling down into the canyon a mile or more below.

  Achmed the Snake, king of the Firbolg, exchanged a glance with Rhapsody and Krinsel, the Bolg midwife who was helping her pack for their journey. He returned to his sorting, hiding a smile behind his face-veil at the shock in the Singer’s enormous green eyes.

  “What’s upsetting Grunthor now?” she asked, handing the midwife a sack of roots. Krinsel sniffed it, then shook her head, and Rhapsody set the sack down again.

  “He’s apparently displeased with the quartermaster and his regiment,” Achmed answered as a stream of Bolgish profanities rumbled over the heath.

  “I think he’s more perturbed that he can’t go with us,” Rhapsody said, looking through the gray light of foredawn with sympathy at the terrified soldiers and their leader, who were doing their best to stand at attention, withering under the Sergeant-Major’s violent dressing-down. The midwife handed her a pouch, and she smiled.

  “Undoubtedly, but it can’t be helped.” Achmed cinched a leather sack and wedged it into his saddlebag. “The Bolglands are not in any state to be left without a leader at the moment. Do you have everything you need for the delivery?”

  The Singer’s smile vanished. “Thank you, Krinsel. Be well while I’m away, and look in on my grandchildren for me, will you?” The Bolg woman nodded, bowed perfunctorily to the king, and then made a cautious exit, disappearing into one of the Cauldron’s many exit tunnels.

  “I have no idea what I’m going to need for this delivery,” she said in a low voice with a terse edge to it. “I’ve never delivered a child who is demon-spawn before. Have you?”

  Achmed’s dark, mismatched eyes stared at her for a moment above the veil, then looked away as he went back to his packing.

  Rhapsody brushed back a strand of her golden hair, exhaled, and rested a hand gently on the Bolg king’s forearm. “I’m sorry for being churlish. I’m nervous about this journey.”

  Achmed hoisted the snow-encrusted saddlebag over his shoulder. “I know,” he said evenly. “You should be. We are still agreed about these children, I take it? You understand the conditions under which my help is given?”

  Rhapsody returned his piercing stare with one that was milder but every bit as determined. “Yes.”

  “Good. Then let’s go rescue the quartermaster from Grunthor’s wrath.”

  The newly fallen snow of winter’s earliest days crunched below their feet as they tramped over the dark heath. Rhapsody paused for a moment, turning away from the western foothills and the wide Krevensfield Plain to the black eastern horizon beyond the peaks of the Teeth, lightening now at its jagged rim with the paler gray that preceded daybreak.

  An hour, maybe less, before sunrise, she thought, trying to gauge when she and Achmed would be departing. It was important to be in a place where she could greet the dawn with the ritual songs that were the morning prayers of the Liringlas, her mother’s race. She inhaled the clear, cold air, and watched as it passed back out with her exhalation, frozen clouds in the bitter wind.

  “Achmed,” she called to the king, twenty or more paces ahead of her. He turned around and waited silently as she caught up with him. “I am grateful for your help in this matter; I really am.”

  “Don’t be, Rhapsody,” he said seriously. “I’m not doing this to help you spare the spawn of the F’dor from damnation. My motives are entirely selfish. You should know that by now.”

  “If your motives were entirely selfish, you would not have agreed to accompany me on this mission to find them, you would have gone alone and hunted them down,” she said, untangling the strap of her pack. “Let’s strike a bargain: I won’t pretend your intentions are altruistic, and you won’t pretend they’re selfish. Agreed?”

  “I’ll agree to whatever makes you hurry up and get ready. If we don’t leave before full-sun we run the risk of being seen.”

  She nodded, and the two of them hurried over the remainder of the heath and down to the lower tier of battlements, where Grunthor and the quartermaster’s troops were waiting.

  “You’re a disgrace to this regiment, the ’ole lot o’ ya,” Grunthor was snarling at the trembling Bolg soldiers. “One more missed instruction, Oi’m gonna flay ya, filet ya, and fry ya in fat for my supper, every last one o’ ya. And you, Hagraith, you will be dessert.”

  Achmed cleared his throat. “Are the horses ready, Sergeant-Major?”

  “ ’Bout as ready as can be expected,” Grunthor grumbled. “Provisions will be in place momentarily, as soon as Corporal Hagraith ’ere gets ’is ’ead out of ’is arse, cleans the hrekin out of ’is ears, and gets them rolled bandages Oi requested two hours ago.” The soldier took off in a dead run.

  Rhapsody waited in respectful silence as Grunthor dismissed the rest of the supply troops, then came up behind him and wound her arms around his massive waist, a sensation similar to encircling a full-grown tree trunk.

  “I’m going to miss your troops tromping by my chamber and singing me awake,” she said jokingly. “Dawn just won’t be the same without a few choruses of ‘Leave No Limb Unbroken.’”

  The giant’s leathery features relaxed into a fond grin. “Well, ya could always stay, then,” he said, mussing her glistening locks, which shone with the brilliance of the sun.

  It never failed to amaze him, looking at her thus, how much she resembled the Great Fire they had passed through together, in that journey so long ago. While crawling along the root of Sagia the World Tree, that had wound itself around the centerline of the Earth, he had come to respect this tiny woman, even though his own race had preyed on hers in the old world.

  Rhapsody sighed. “How I wish I could.” She watched his amber eyes darken sadly. “Will you be all right, Grunthor?”

  A sharp sound of annoyance came from over her shoulder. “Safeguarding the mountain is child’s play to Grunthor.”

  “Nope. Oi vaguely recall enjoying child’s play. Don’ like this a’tall,” the Firbolg giant muttered, his fearsome face wreathed in a terrifying scowl. “We almost lost ya once to a bastard child of the demon; Oi don’t especially want ya riskin’ your life—and your afterlife—again, miss. Wish you’d reconsider.”

  She patted his arm. “I can’t. We have to do this; it’s the only
way to get the blood we need for Achmed to finally track and find the host of the F’dor.”

  “ ’E may need to do it, then,” Grunthor said. “No need for you to go along, Duchess. ’Is Majesty works best alone, anyway. We already lost Jo; Oi don’t see no reason to risk losing you as well.”

  The reference to the death of the street child she had adopted as her sister made Rhapsody’s eyes sting, but outwardly she betrayed no sign of sorrow. She had sung Jo’s final dirge a few days before, along with the laments for the others they had lost along the way. She bit back a bitter answer, remembering that Grunthor had loved Jo almost as much as she had.

  “Jo was little more than a child. I’m a trained warrior, trained by the best. Between you and Oelendra I believe I am fully capable of defending myself. Besides, since you’re ‘The Ultimate Authority, to Be Obeyed at All Costs,’ you can just command me to live, and I suppose I will have to do so. I wouldn’t want to risk your wrath by dying against orders.”