Elegy for a Lost Star (23 page)

“I am entirely serious,” insisted Talquist. “I will give you ten times what you paid for him.”

The Ringmaster shook his head. “I have made that back already,” he said, his face beginning to harden at the unwanted negotiation. “He is not for sale,
m'lord
.”

Talquist's hands were starting to sweat. “Twenty times, then.”

The Ringmaster turned his back and walked to the tent flap again. “That thing guttles down a gallon of eels in a sitting; it has eaten all but a dozen of my breeding goldfish, thanks to Duckfoot Sally, who risks stripes across her back to give it treats. It is tremendously hard to maintain and sickly to boot. Besides, what possible use could you have for it? No, m'lord, I cannot sell him to you, and as your friend, I cannot imagine you really want him. Come along, and I will show you some new horrors almost as fascinating.” He looked over his shoulder nervously; the regent was still staring at the fishboy, entranced. Another thought occurred to him in his desperation. “I also have a new pleasure wagon; I could have the keepers stand guard if you would like some private entertainment, much as in the old days—”

Talquist turned and shot him a look that stung like an arrow in his forehead. “My final offer—twenty times what you paid for him, and your safe passage from my lands.” The threat in his voice was unmistakable.

The Ringmaster inhaled deeply, then let his breath out slowly, seething silently. “Very well. I paid two hundred gold crowns for him—plus two,” he added quickly, still rankling at the thought of the arrogant fisherman.

“You're a liar,” Talquist said contemptuously, “but I don't care. I will send my soldiers to get him in two hours. They will deliver your money
then, but I will be paying you in gold Sorbold suns—our coins are worth two Orlandan crowns.”

“I expect you'll want his food as well,” the Ringmaster said angrily. “You are unlikely to have the amount of fish he requires in the middle of this desert. That'll be costly.”

“That won't matter, keep your food,” the emperor presumptive replied, his eyes never leaving the tank. “Now leave. I want to observe my new purchase for a while without you. It's obvious he doesn't like you much.”

He continued to stare into the green water, watching the pale, fishlike creature, its cataract-covered eyes following the Ringmaster out of the tent and into the darkness of the Monstrosity.

A
chmed's suspicious nature was an entrenched part of the culture he had established in Ylorc, and occasionally it made for unusual protocols that would be unrecognizable in most courts on the continent. His leavetaking was generally a closely guarded secret; whenever the king vacated the mountain, it was done not with the pomp and ceremony favored by many monarchs, but under cover of darkness, with as little folderol as possible, to minimize the number of people who even knew he was gone. The only instance that caused a deviation from this custom was when it suited Achmed's purposes for his known enemies, as well as his unknown ones, to be aware that he was away.

The Sergeant-Major participated in the charade willingly, knowing that it served to quiet Achmed's raging paranoia to a small degree. He did not waste his time or breath explaining to the Bolg king that every beating heart within Achmed's kingdom was more than aware when he left, primarily because they could feel the tension break palpably. Within a few hours of Achmed's departure, virtually every one of his subjects that lived in the tunnels of the mountains before the Blasted Heath had felt his absence, and had breathed a little easier because of it.

Achmed himself was beginning to pick up the threads of this paradox—that the only thing his subjects feared more than his absence was his presence—and it served to make him even more irritable, even more anxious. Secretly he was looking forward to seeing Rhapsody for reasons other than the ones he had stated to Grunthor. Her natural music, the vibration she emitted into the air around her, was the one sensation he had found in his lifetime that soothed the angry nerves and exposed veins in his skin, that quieted the natural prickliness of his odd physiology. For all that his journey was one of self-interest and holding people to their promises, he was almost eager to get under way so that for a short time he might find a little bit of physical peace while extracting favors owed him.

So it was with more than a little annoyance that he found himself delayed in his own throne room, a satchel in one hand, the glass calipers in the other, by the arrival of Kubila, the Archon of Trade and Diplomacy, who nervously hovered at the entranceway to the Great Hall, awaiting permission to come in.

“What is it?” the king said crossly, gesturing for the young man to enter.

The Archon cleared his throat. “There is an ambassador here to see you, sire.”

“An
ambassador?
” Achmed demanded incredulously. “It's the middle of the night.”

“Yes, sire,” Kubila replied uncomfortably. He, like the other Archons, was not in particular fear of the king; Achmed treated them with enough respect to prevent that. But he was also aware of the import hovering in the air, and it chilled him.

“Idiot,” the king muttered, switching the satchel to his other hand. “Send him away.”

The Bolg diplomat cleared his throat again. “Sire, this man has come from very far off. It might be wise to entertain his request; he claims he needs but a moment of your time.”

“I don't care if he sailed from the Lost Island of Serendair,” Achmed retorted. He inclined his head toward the door behind the throne; Grunthor nodded and started for it.

“Sire, this ambassador is from the Nain,” Kubila stuttered.

The sound went out of the vast room. Achmed froze in his tracks, then turned slowly to eye the trembling Archon. He inhaled deeply, and exhaled deliberately. Then he handed the satchel to Grunthor.

“I will meet you there,” he said, giving him the glass calipers. The Sergeant nodded.

Achmed waited until the giant had left the room, then turned to Kubila.

“Send him in,” he said curtly.

Kubila nodded, then returned to the main doorway. He pulled open one of the two enormous doors that had been carved and gilt with pure gold in Gwylliam's time, then stepped out of the way.

A moment later a man strode into the room. He was broad of neck and shoulder, with a chest shaped like a wine barrel and strong, sturdy legs. His height was less than Achmed's own by half a head, but his bearing was straight and proud enough to give the illusion that he was as tall as the king. His beard, which hung to the center of his chest, was brown at the chin, silver in the middle, and white at the curling tips. His skin was tawny with a sallow undertone, the sign of a life lived within the mountains away from the sun, yet exposed to the intense heat of forge fire. As he entered the room Achmed saw the light of the wall torches catch his face, causing the blue-yellow tapetum at the back of the man's eyes to glow in the dim hall like those of a feral animal.

“Well met, sire.” The man saluted Achmed briskly. “I am Garson ben Sardonyx, sent as an emissary of His Majesty, Faedryth, Lord of the Distant Mountains.”

“I know who you are,” Achmed said snidely. “I suffered your presence, and that of many of your kind, during my investiture, and later at the Cymrian Council four years ago. Your contingent consumed ten times the victuals and spirits as all the other delegations combined, and left an unholy mess that has only recently been scoured clean. What do you want?”

The veneer of politeness vanished in a twinkling from the Nain's eyes. He reached unconsciously for the end of his beard and angrily smoothed it into place.

“I can see you are in a pleasant mood, as always, Your Majesty,” he said testily. “As am I. Receiving a visit at midnight in Ylorc can only be slightly less foul than having to make one. I needed to catch you before you left for the winter carnival in Navarne, to which I know you have been invited. I will be brief; I have come with a direct message from His Majesty, King Faedryth.”

“And what is it?” demanded Achmed impatiently.

The Nain ambassador's gaze met the Bolg king's and did not waver.

“He knows that you are attempting to reconstruct the Lightforge,” he said, his voice heavy with import. “He bids me to tell you that you must not.”

For a full score of heartbeats the Bolg king and the Nain ambassador locked eyes in silence. Then the mismatched pair belonging to Achmed narrowed behind his veils.

“You traveled all the way from your lands to dare to instruct me in such a manner? You're a brave man with too much time on his hands.”

Garson did not blink. “My king commanded it.”

“Well, I am puzzled, then,” said Achmed, sitting down on the chair of ancient marble scored with channels of blue and gold giltwork. “I know of no Lightforge. And yet Faedryth has risked my ire, which as you know is considerable, by sending you to barge into my rooms in the middle of the night to issue me an
order
regarding it? Even I, who places less stock in diplomacy and matters of etiquette than anyone I know, find that offensive.”

“Perhaps you do not call it by the same name,” said Garson evenly, ignoring the king's objections. “But I suspect you know to what I refer. The Lightforge is an instrumentality that the Nain built for Lord Gwylliam the Visionary eleven centuries ago, a machine formed of metal and colored glass embedded into a mountain peak, which manipulated light to various ends. It was destroyed in the Great War, as it should have been, because it tapped power that was unstable, unpredictable. It poses a great threat not only to your allies and enemies, but to your own kingdom as well. You are attempting to rebuild something you do not fully understand; your foolishness will lead to your destruction, and very possibly that of those around you. You have already seen the effects of this. The tainted glass from your first attempt still litters the countryside. This is folly of unspeakable rashness. King Faedryth commands that you cease at once, for the good of the Alliance, and for your own as well.”

The Bolg king's hands went to his lips, where they folded in a contemplative gesture. He stared at the Nain diplomat, who remained rooted to his spot on the polished marble of the Great Hall floor. Then a crooked smile crossed the lower half of his hidden face, visible in his eyes.

“And how precisely do you know of all this?” he asked casually. “Your hidden kingdom is so distant that it cannot be reached even by extended mail caravans; the Nain are all but invisible in the sight of the world. If the ocean separated us we could not be more isolated from one another; how is it that you are so aware of my undertakings?”

“King Faedryth makes it his business to monitor events that could have a disastrous impact on the world, sire,” Garson said haughtily. “Information finds its way to him when it is important that it do so.”

Achmed's amusement dissipated, and he rose from his seat slowly, deliberately, like a snake preparing to strike.

“Liar,” he said contemptuously. “The Nain turned their backs on the world four centuries ago; you have no interest in the day-to-day goings-on of the world outside your own, and no means of hearing of them, even if you did have the interest. And yet here you are, telling me the details of the most secret of my projects, at the command of a king who believes he has the domain to tell me what to do about it?”

He walked down the aisle and stood directly in front of the Nain ambassador, looking down into his smoldering eyes.

“You have one yourself,” Achmed said levelly. “You have built your own instrumentality, and you make use of its scrying ability to spy on my lands. It's the only way you could have known.”

Garson glared at him in stony silence.

Achmed turned his back on the ambassador and returned to his seat. “Get out of my kingdom at once,” he ordered, gesturing to Kubila, who had remained in a shadow at the back of the Great Hall. “Return to your king and tell him this from me: I once had respect for him and the way he conducts his reign; he has as low an opinion of the Cymrians as I do, and is a reticent member of the Alliance, just as I am. He keeps to himself within his mountains, as do I. But if he continues to spy into my lands, or send emissaries who tell me what to do, when my own version of your so-called Lightforge is operational, I will be testing out its offensive capabilities on distant targets. I will leave it to you to guess which ones.”

“I doubt very much that you wish me to convey that message to Faedryth,” said the ambassador.

“Doubt it not, Garson. Now leave.”

Achmed waited until the Nain diplomat had stalked out of the Great Hall, then turned to Kubila.

“Have Krinsel waiting here for me when I return.”

G
runthor was putting the calipers back in their leather case when Achmed appeared at the summit of the mound of gravel and ash that served as the final barrier in the Earthchild's sepulcher.