Requiem for the Sun by Elizabeth Haydon Page B

looked up into the thin, towering dome hollowed into the mountain peak Gurgus, the Bolgish word for talon. The levels of scaffolding that ringed the interior of the structure were silent now, the artisans gone, leaving only the king and himself.
    And an increasingly large pile of broken glass.
    â€œNot going particularly well, Oi take it?” he said humorously, kicking aside the debris. He reached down and picked up a crumpled piece of parchment lying beneath the detritus that bore the markings of an architectural plan.
    â€œDon’t open it,” Achmed advised sourly. “It’s full of spit. I encouraged everyone to take a turn at it after a particularly trying day early last week. You might want to stay away from any other wads, too; as the week wore on, the bodily fluids we applied to the plans reflected our progress, or lack thereof. You can imagine where we ended up.”
    Grunthor grinned, his neatly polished tusks gleaming in the half-light, and tossed the wad of parchment back into the pile.
    â€œWhy ya driving yerself mad with this, sir?” he asked, his tone at once light and serious. “If you really feel the need to be irritated to the point o’ going insane, why don’t we just send for the Duchess? She generally ’as that same effect on you, and she costs less than rebuilding the dome of a mountain, at least if you pay by the hour.”
    Achmed chuckled. “Now, now, let’s not reference our beloved Lady Cymrian’s sordid past. We’ll be seeing her soon enough. I heard from her last night
by avian messenger; she wants us to meet her four weeks hence in Yarim.”
    â€œOh, goody,” the giant replied, staring up into the tower again. “What now?”
    â€œShe wants our assistance — your assistance, actually — in bringing Entudenin, that dead geyser obelisk, back to life.”
    Grunthor nodded, arranging the piles of colored glass with the toe of his boot.
    â€œOi told ’er a long time ago ‘twas probably a blockage o’ some sort in the strata. She got ’em to agree to let us drill?”
    â€œApparently.”
    â€œAnd you’re willing to drop everything and leave at ’er request?”
    Achmed shrugged, then went back to the pile of colored rubble.
    The giant raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, returning his attention to the tower.
    When Gwylliam founded Canrif he seemed to have a penchant for hollowing out mountain peaks. The Teeth were full of them, jagged summits that stretched into the clouds, multicolored, threatening, dark with beauty and secrets. They must have posed a challenge to the arrogant Cymrian king, because he spent a good deal of his time reinforcing them while chipping away at the mountain strata inside them, filling them with needless rooms and grand domes. Grunthor, tied to the earth as he was, found the practice repulsive to the point of feeling violated.
    When he, Achmed, and Rhapsody had come to Ylorc, they had found and restored a ruined guard-tower post in the western peak of Grivven, attached to a fortress and barracks that housed more than two thousand Bolg soldiers, and a towering observatory above the Great Hall, from which thirty miles of the Krevensfield Plain could be seen in all directions save east.
    He, as a military man, understood the need for these renovations. He could even grudgingly abide the rebuilding of the inner mountain cities and the restoration of the art and statuary, things he had little use for. But none of the reconstruction projects had taken on the import, or produced the aggravation, that the Bolg king’s current undertaking had, and for the life of him, he had no idea why.
    The Sergeant squinted as he looked up into the pinnacle of the broken tower, trying to discern what it was about this Cymrian artifact, this particular hollowed-out mountain peak, that so captivated Achmed’s attention. Each time he returned from maneuvers the king’s