The Merchant Emperor (13 page)

He gasped raggedly and with the last of his effort tore Ashe’s hands from his neck.

“Unhand me, you lunatic,” he snarled, pulling away. “What truth do you wish me to tell you, Gwydion? That I knobbed the girl? I admit it freely. I brought her to Haguefort, along with the other servants, to assist you and Rhapsody in any capacity you might need them in your transition to Highmeadow. It did not occur to me, nor does it embarrass me, that you might make use of her copious talents beneath the sheets. I couldn’t care less. I have been free about acknowledging my attitudes regarding the value of bedwenches and whores—an attitude your own
father
shared, if you recall.” Tristan breathed more deeply, his bruised trachea aching, noticing the simmering down of the fire in the Lord Cymrian’s eyes. He decided to press his luck. “Also, if you recall, the woman I have loved most in my life was just such a serving wench who was both my father’s concubine and mine. So do not attach to my gift any nefarious purpose, Gwydion. If you considered straying from your marital vows and bed, well, that’s on your head.”

Ashe eyed him warily, the gleam of fire calmer, but still burning.

“Look well upon your gift to me, and remember this sight as you recall what you once held in your arms,” he said, his voice measured. “I speak to you as one who has had a piece of his very soul enslaved by such a demon, and if in the throes of passion the beast that probably inhabited this woman ripped away a piece of yours, Tristan, you will reap your deserved punishment a thousandfold. By rights I should kill you now, where you stand, rather than risk letting such a scourge live on through you, if you are in fact in the demon’s thrall.”

The Lord Roland’s face went white.

“But you are surely not contemplating that, Gwydion?” he said nervously. The Lord Cymrian’s aspect was utterly blank, expressionless, save for the burning fury in his blue eyes, eyes scored with vertical pupils denoting the dragon blood in his veins. Though they had been friends since childhood, Tristan Steward could see no reassuring sign of fealty or privilege there; for all intents and purposes, he could be looking into the face of a stranger.

Or an enemy.

The Lord Cymrian continued to stare at him a moment longer. Then he turned to his chamberlain.

“Parchment and ink, please, Owen. Sit down, Tristan.” He indicated the only chair in the room at the small table on which the basin and pitcher rested as the chamberlain left the room. When the Lord Roland hesitated, the Lord Cymrian took him by the shoulder and slammed him into the seat. Tristan struggled to rise, but as he did, Ashe drew his sword.

In the glimmering blue light of the blade of Kirsdarke, the ancient sword of elemental water, Tristan Steward froze.

“Gwydion—” he gasped.

“If you so much as twitch again, I will behead you and gouge the beating heart from your chest,” the Lord Cymrian said quietly. “Doubt not my word, Tristan. As far as I am concerned, you are a thrall of the demon and a threat to all I hold dear. To think I tolerated your continued existence in the same keep as my wife and son—”

“You—you can’t seriously believe I would—
harm
Rhapsody, or your son?”

“Knowing that there is no limit to the evil a F’dor’s thrall can commit, I am willing to believe you capable of anything,” the Lord Cymrian said, his tone deadly. “I need not even believe that your soul is tied to a demon to know that you want my wife, and would do anything to have her, your pledge of fealty and supposed lifelong friendship to me notwithstanding. Don’t open your mouth again to protest, Tristan, unless you want to experience the taste of my sword—I am fighting every inclination that is coursing through me at this moment to ram it down your throat.”

The regent swallowed hard but said nothing as the chamberlain returned to the room with an inkwell, a quill pen, and a sheaf of parchment.

The Lord Cymrian indicated the table, and the chamberlain set the items down on the flat surface, moving the bowl and pitcher out of the way with a faint look of disgust. Ashe conferred with him in low tones for a moment; then the chamberlain nodded and left the room again. Ashe turned to Tristan once more.

“Write,” he demanded.

“Write what?”

“‘My dearest Madeleine,’” the Lord Cymrian dictated. He raised his sword as Tristan hesitated, then took up the quill quickly and began to scratch letters onto the parchment. “‘I fear I am needed at Highmeadow for the foreseeable future. I urge you to take Malcolm and return for the time being to Canderre, where your father’s keep will provide you both with security and care.’ Finish with whatever endearments you don’t mean. Then sign it.”

“I—I need to get back to my lands—”

“As of this moment, you have no lands, Tristan. Your lands, your title, and your freedom are forfeit until such a time as it can be determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are not in the debt of a demon. I will take no chances with that possibility.”

“You are out of your misbegotten
mind
,” the Lord Roland spat, rage outweighing his fear. “What makes you think—” His words were choked off by the dry crackling in the air that signaled the rise of the dragon in Ashe’s blood.

And the knock at the door.

“Come,” the Lord Cymrian said. The multiple tones of the dragon were in his voice.

The door opened and Gerald Owen reappeared. Behind him in the hallway were four of Highmeadow’s guards, armed and drawn. The chamberlain came into the room.

“The Lord Roland’s—er, guest quarters are ready, m’lord.”

“What are you talking about? I am perfectly comfortable in my current suite,” Tristan Steward stammered, but realization was beginning to dawn on him.

“No doubt,” said Ashe dryly. “Thank you, Gerald—we will be ready in a moment.” The elderly chamberlain bowed and left the room, struggling to cover the smirk on his lips.

Finally the Lord Cymrian’s eyes came to rest on the Lord Roland. In them there was no sign of Tristan’s boyhood friend, or the patient leader of the Alliance; all of the pleasantry and tolerance had been stripped from his aspect, leaving nothing but a wildness of fury that chilled Tristan’s soul. Somewhere, deep within that soul, he felt a twinge, guilt or something darker.

But only for a moment.

“You have not been given the tour yet, Tristan, but you will be happy to see that even the most secure of prison cells here in Highmeadow are relatively comfortable, certainly compared to the accommodations I experienced in my twenty years of exile, hiding from those forces that had taken a piece of
my
soul. Compared to those hovels, sewer vents, barns, and mud huts, you should feel downright pampered.”

“You’re insane,” the Lord Roland whispered. “You can’t be serious—you are
arresting me
?”

“For the sake of your wife and child, and her family, I am willing to forgo that announcement at present,” Ashe said. His voice was low and controlled, but the hiss of the dragon was in the undertone. “It is still my hope that you can be examined by those who can taste the presence of a demon’s bondage and found to be free of it, but until such time I will not chance the possibility that you are so bound. Portia died alone in the woods, as far as we know, so the demon may have died as well, with no host to take it on. But if it did find its way to a new host, then that person still holds a bill of lading against your soul—you are still a thrall of the demon, just like the every other hapless fool who wreaked havoc upon this land and then had no idea why. I have an Alliance to protect. The only other option to your imprisonment is your execution and the dissolving of your body in acid—you make the choice.” His voice dropped to a sinister whisper.

“And remember, protecting the Alliance is my duty as Lord Cymrian. You should be grateful to have been allowed the chance to be incarcerated behind heavy doors that will spare you from the rampaging dragon and furious husband whose marriage you tried to ruin. For that alone I should cause your body to turn inside out, as I did to Khaddyr when he betrayed my father. You are the luckiest of men, the kind that never really gets what he truly deserves.”

He opened the door and gestured with his sword.

Tristan Steward glared balefully at him as he passed through the doorway, stopping one last time.

“I will never forgive you for this, Gwydion. Never.”

Ashe smiled ruefully, causing Tristan Steward to shudder.

“Those are not words you want to teach me, Tristan—you would curse the day you did, if I ever were to return the sentiment. Come; your new quarters await. If I’m feeling sporting I may even spot you a flask of Canderian brandy every now and then to keep you company.”

10

THE KREVENSFIELD PLAIN, SOUTHERN BETHANY

The aftermath of the retreat from Sepulvarta had filled the very air of the Krevensfield Plain with desolation and despair. Those morose emotions hung, above the ground, extant in the wind that whipped the new grass of early spring, unable to be cleared from the place or the army that was encamped on it.

In spite of not having been an actual part of the battle in which the army of Sorbold sacked the holy city of Sepulvarta, the fighting force that the Lord Marshal had assembled out of the reserves and forward installations along the southern rim of the Plain had been devastated by that battle anyway. They had gathered in the highest of spirits, called to martial duty by the ancient hero of the Cymrian War, a historic conflict fought centuries before the great majority of them had been born. They had dropped everything to ride with their brothers and sons to the rescue of the Citadel of the Star in the City of Reason, the sacred seat of their faith, and that of the Patriarch who was the head of that faith, in time to see the city in ruins, blazing with fire and patrolled from the air by nightmarish beasts that snatched its citizens from the streets and carried them off into the burning skies.

As they moved slowly through the smoke, the hastily assembled army had no idea that the Patriarch they had ridden to rescue was actually encamped among them. The fighting force had been gathered from all across the southern continent, so most of the soldiers had not served with one another before, and therefore did not recognize the tall, older man in the gray hood and robes as anything other than a comrade-in-arms who, like them, had been too late to aid the holy city.

Not only did the heartsick soldiers not recognize the Patriarch in their midst, they fairly believed him dead. The assumption of this assassination was the greatest reason for their depression.

Anborn ap Gwylliam sat atop his beautiful black warhorse at the crest of a low swale at the eastern outskirts of the encampment, watching the men he had gathered drifting aimlessly, going about their assigned duties as if they were ghosts. His thighs were aching from gripping his mount, an action which until that morning had been denied him for over three years. The feeling had begun to return to his toes and heels as well, though his calves and the arches of his feet still were numb.

Unlike his feet and those walking ghosts, Anborn’s spirit was not numbed by the failure of the rescue he had undertaken. The impending rebirth of the use of his legs had filled the Lord Marshal with new hope, and the memory of a time in his life, long ago and long forgotten, when the ideals of selfless military service, defense of home, kin, and homeland, leadership, brotherhood and camaraderie, and valor were the foundation of his life. Thus, the grit of the battlefield smoke that was drifting over the encampment from the holy city eighty leagues away did not reek of despair or failure for him, but of invigoration, of grim and stolid determination.

A call to arms, ringing deep within the soul he had forgotten he had.

He cast his eyes around until they sighted on a trumpeter, sitting despondently in the gray light of foredawn, staring into a battered metal mug. He turned his mount into the wind; the horse intuitively lowered its head, knowing a command was coming.

“Soldier! Rise and attend!” The general’s booming battlefield voice rang out in the smoky air of morning. The man, his neck snapping around in shock, leapt to his feet, dropping his mug down the front of his trousers.

“Follow me,” Anborn instructed. He clicked to his mount, and the horse bore the general smoothly to the front of the rise. The trumpeter followed him, stumbling but eager.

At the crest of the rise the general stopped and surveyed the encampment again. Then he cleared his throat and signaled to the trumpeter.

“Sound muster,” he ordered.

The trumpeter licked his lips, raised his horn, and let fly.

The silver blast rang over the encampment, causing a following wave of shock. Ten thousand faces turned in the Lord Marshal’s direction.

Anborn sat up straight in the saddle. His black hair, streaked with silver, flowed freely in the wind above his burning azure eyes as he surveyed the army below him. As if gathering power from the very air around him, he swept his cape back over his shoulder, allowing his black ring mail interlaced with silver to catch the diffuse light of the sun rising behind the clouds of smoke, causing his chest to glow like a beacon above the army below him.