Elizabeth Haydon - Rhapsody 2 - Prophecy, Child of Earth.pdf

(1010 KB) Pobierz
403624871 UNPDF
======================
Note s :
This book was scanned by JASC
If you correct any minor errors, please change the version number below (and in the file name) to a
slightly higher one e.g. from .9 to .95 or if major revisions, to v. 1.0/2.0 etc..
Current e-book version is .9 ( most formatting errors have been corrected—but OCR errors still occur;
unproofed)
Comments, Questions, Requests(no promises): daytonascan4911@hotmail.com
DO NOT READ THIS BOOK OF YOU DO NOT OWN/POSSES THE PHYSICAL COPY.
THAT IS STEALING FROM THE AUTHOR.
--------------------------------------------
Book Information:
Genre: Fantasy
Author: Elizabeth Haydon
Name: Prophecy: Child of Earth
Series: Book 2 of Rhapsody Trilogy
======================
Prophecy: Child of Earth
Rhapsody (Part 2)
Elizabeth Haydon
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 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 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 safely
 
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.
Meridion sat in the darkness, lost in thought. The instrument panel of the Time Editor was dark as well;
the great machine stood silent for the moment, the gleaming threads of diaphanous film hanging idle on
their spools, each reel carefully labeled Past or Future . The Present, as ever, hung evanescent like silver
mist in the air under the Editor's lamp, twisting and changing moment by moment in the half-light.
Draped across his knees was an ancient piece of thread, a lore strand from the Past. It was a film
fragment of immeasurable importance, burnt and broken beyond repair on one end. Meridion picked it
up gingerly, then turned it over in his hands and sighed.
Time was a fragile thing, especially when manipulated mechanically. He had tried to be gentle with the
dry film, but it had cracked and ignited in the press of the Time Editor's gears, burning the image he had
needed to see. Now it was too late; the moment was gone forever, along with the information it held. The
identity of the demon he was seeking would remain hidden. There was no going back, at least not this
way.
Meridion rubbed his eyes and leaned back against the translucent aurelay, the gleaming field of energy
tied to his life essence that he had shaped for the moment into a chairlike seat, resting his head within its
hum. The prickling melody that surrounded him was invigorating, clearing his thoughts and helping him to
concentrate. It was his namesong, his life's own innate tune. A vibration unique in all the world, tied to his
true name.
The demon he was seeking had great power over names, too. Meridion had gone back into the Past
itself to find it, looking for a way to avert the path of devastation it had carefully constructed over Time,
but the demon had eluded him. F'dor were the masters of lies, the fathers of deception. They were
without corporeal form, binding themselves to innocent hosts and living through them or using them to do
their will, then moving on to another more powerful host when the opportunity presented itself. Even far
away, from his vantage point in the Future, there was no real way to see them.
For this reason Meridion had manipulated Time, had sliced and moved around pieces of the Past to
bring a Namer of great potential together with those that might help her in the task of finding and
 
destroying the demon. It had been his hope that these three would be able to accomplish this feat on their
side of Time before it was too late to prevent what the demon had wrought, the devastation that was now
consuming lands on both sides of the world. But the strategy had been a risky one. Just bringing lives
together did not guarantee how they would be put to use.
Already he had seen the unfortunate consequences of his actions. The Time Editor had run heatedly
with the unspooling of the time strands, fragments of film rending apart and swirling into the air above the
machine as the Past destroyed itself in favor of the new. The stench of the burning timefilm was rank and
bitter, searing Meridion's nostrils and his lungs, leaving him trembling at the thought of what damage he
might inadvertently be doing to the Future by meddling in the Past. But it was too late now.
Meridion waved his hand over the instrument panel of the Time Editor. The enormous machine roared
to life, the intricate lenses illuminated by its ferocious internal light source. A warm glow spilled onto the
tall panes of glass that formed the walls of the circular room and ascended to the clear ceiling above. The
glimmering stars that had been visible from every angle above and below him in the darkness a moment
before disappeared in the blaze of reflected brilliance. Meridion held the broken fragment of film up to
the light. The images were still there, but hard to make out. He could see the small, slender woman
because of her shining hair, golden and reflecting the sunrise, bound back with a black ribbon, standing
on the brink of morning in the vast panorama of the mountains where he had last sighted the two of them.
Meridion blew gently on the lore-strand to clear it of dust and smiled as the tiny woman in the frame
drew her cloak closer about herself. She stared off into the valley that stretched below her, prickled with
spring frost and the patchy light of dawn.
Her traveling companion was harder to find. Had Meridion not known he was there prior to
examining the film he never would have seen him, hidden in the shadows cast by the sun. It took him
several long moments to find the outline of the man's cloak, designed as it was to hide him from the eyes
of the world. A faint trace of mist rose from the cloak and blended with the rising dew burning off in the
sunlight.
As he suspected, the lore-strand had burnt at precisely the wrong moment, obliterating the Namer's
chance to catch a glimpse of the F'dor's ambassador before he or she reached Ylorc. Meridion had been
watching through her eyes, waiting for the moment when she first beheld the henchman, as the Seer had
advised. He could make out a thin dark line in the distance; that must have been the ambassadorial
caravan. She had already seen it. The opportunity had passed. And he had missed it.
He dimmed the lamp on the Time Editor again and sat back in the dark sphere of his room to think,
suspended within his glass globe amid the stars, surrounded by them. There must be another window,
another way to get back into her eyes.
Meridion glanced at the endless wall of glass next to him and down at the surface of the Earth miles
below. Black molten fire was crawling slowly across the darkened face of the world, withering the
continents in its path, burning without smoke in the lifeless atmosphere. At the rim of the horizon another
glow was beginning; soon the fire sources would meet and consume what little was left. It took all of
Meridion's strength to keep from succumbing to the urge to scream. In his darkest dreams he could never
have imagined this.
as
ln his darkest dreams . Meridion sat upright with the thought. The Nameras prescient, she could see
the Past and Future in her dreams, or sometimes •st by reading the vibrations that events had left behind,
hovering in the air or clinging to an object. Dreams gave off vibrational energy; if he could find a trace of
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin