Rhapsody: Child of Blood

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Rhapsody: Child of Blood is the first book in The Symphony of Ages by Elizabeth Haydon, and was first published in 1999 by Tor Books.

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The story begins in the Overture, as Meridion sits before a strange Time Editing machine, using small handtools to watch and alter a tiny strand of time. He watches as a young boy makes his way along a forest road, unguarded, and he smiles. Meridion dabs a small amount of harsh-smelling liquid into the eyes of the boy in the time strand, and then sits back to wait.

The boy, who we find out is called Gwydion, finds himself in a completely different place to the one he had been walking in moments before. This new place is Serendair, an island on the other side of the world to his homeland, an island which had, over 1000 years earlier, been lost in the fiery devastation of the Sleeping Child, a fallen star that had sat at the bottom of the ocean off the coast, waiting to arise. It seems that Gwydion was thrown back in Time; the problem is, he doesn't know it yet.

Still wondering where he is, Gwydion finds work at a small farm on the outskirts of a country village. He is told of the foreharvest dance, being held that night, which is the last dance before the Marriage Lottery. That evening in the village, moments before the dance, Gwydion meets an exotic girl, named Emily, who seems to be hiding from the people in the dance-hall. She is half-Lirin - a race of slender, elf-like people - and Gwydion, being half-Lirin himself, quickly becomes friends with her. They dance in a small grassed area away from the dance-hall, and eventually leave, taking a walk through Emily's favourite places, ending up beneath a large willow tree atop a hill, overlooking what she calls the Patchworks. Gwydion is enchanted with her, and they fall in love.

But Gwydion soon realizes where he is, and knows that he must find a way to escape from Serendair before it is destroyed. He panics momentarily, but soon calms as the two promise to leave the small country town together, and marry. They consummate their marriage beneath the willow, and plan to meet at Emily's house the following day for her Birthday supper, where they would ask for her father's blessing. They swap tokens of love - Emily gives him a small, heart-shaped button from her dress, and Gwydion - who she believes is called Sam - gives her an odd, thirteen-sides coin, one of only two in the known world.

But, just as Gwydion was thrown back in Time, the following afternoon he is suddenly forced back to the Present, where he finds no Emily, and only a small, heart-shaped button as proof of his sanity.

The main character, Rhapsody, is a woman, a talented Singer of Lirin blood. While running from a depraved former client known as Michael, the Wind of Death, she bumps into two strange men - the giant Sergeant-Major Grunthor, and a mysterious veiled man known as The Brother, later revealed to be the greatest assassin known. In a strange occurrence, Rhapsody adopts the two as her brothers in an attempt to scare off her pursuers, and accidentally renames The Brother as Achmed the Snake, reforming his entire vibrational signature and thus his identity, using her as-of-yet unknown powers as a Namer. Formerly being held captive by a F'Dor, a race of ancient Fire demons, his new name had broken an invisible chain of service, and he wanted to know how it had happened.

The two men force her to accompany them on their journey to escape the Tsoltan, the F'Dor host. Their plan (of which Rhapsody is ignorant) is to escape their island home of Serendair by entering Sagia, the Oak of Deep Roots, one of the World Trees, and crawling along its root through the Axis Mundi, the center of the world. As a child of the Sky, Liringlas, Rhapsody fears being shut away in the ground, but Achmed forces her to join them, eager to know more about her abilities and what she could do for him in the future.

The excruciating journey through the Root seems endless for the three companions, punctuated by Rhapsody's prescient nightmares of destruction and death. As they reach the center of the world, Achmed takes Rhapsody aside and tells her of a sleeping wyrm that was imprisoned within the Earth by the F'dor, and which they are now very near. He tells of plans the F'Dor had to awaken the dragon, heralding the end of the world. But, using her musical talents, Rhapsody is able to create a song using the Earth's own vibrations to prevent the F'dor from waking the wyrm, obscuring the call the F'Dor would have to make.

As they crawl along the Axis Mundi, they reach a fire at the center of the earth. Rhapsody uses their own vibrational songs - their Namesongs - to walk them through the fire and to the other side, Purging them of all scars and physical imperfections made by Time. In addition to that, Rhapsody takes some of the Fire's Lore with her, and when she arrives on the other side she is compellingly beautiful, her charisma strikingly similar to that of the Fire.

As their arduous journey comes to an end, Rhapsody finds a flaming sword embedded within the earth, and Achmed recognizes it as Daystar Clarion, the fabled Star Sword from Serendair. Fearing they had travelled so far to come back to their Island, the three are shocked at what they find when they reach the surface.

Rhapsody studies for a time with a religious leader known as Llauron, while Achmed and Grunthor explore the surrounding terrain. Rhapsody learns that their journey took well over 1,400 years. Their homeland, Serendair, sank into the ocean over 1,400 years ago, and this new land is populated by the descendants of the refugees, who were called the Cymrians. She relates this information to Achmed and Grunthor, and though those two are overjoyed that they escaped pursuit, Rhapsody is devastated when she realizes she will never see her family again.