The Merchant Emperor (14 page)

“Men of Roland, of the Alliance,” he intoned. “Cast off your misery and rise.”

The soldiers stared at him, then slowly began to stand.

“Rise!” the Lord Marshal thundered.

The army jumped to its feet, a new wave of energy surging through them at the threat and Right of Command in Anborn’s voice. At just that moment, a shaft of sunlight broke through the morning haze and the smoke, lighting the rise on which he sat atop his mount, his broad face wreathed in the scowl of an ancient hero’s disgust.

“I had been under the impression I was leading men, not children,” he said disdainfully. “Cease your mourning, and stoke your
rage
. The holy city has been savagely attacked and burned; the Merchant Emperor of Sorbold is not even crowned yet and has already spat in the face of the All-God and wiped his feet on the documents of peace and friendship with the Alliance signed by his predecessor. Yet rather than mobilizing with grim determination and righteous anger, you are weeping and walking around like shades of men. Rise, you soldiers! You defenders! You sons of Roland! You, unlike your forebears, are united in the cause of Right, are not fighting your own brothers, but an invading army from the south that threatens your homes, and your God! Even in the most heinous battles of the Cymrian War, the holy city of Sepulvarta was never touched, never damaged by either faction. This is an
outrage.
It is an abomination, a
sin
. It should stir a fierce and merciless call for retaliation in your souls. Rise! We have a continent to protect, a Patriarch to restore, and you, sons of Roland, are going to establish the ramparts which will turn the open, undefended pastures of the Krevensfield Plain into a threshold of death to those invaders.”

“M’lord—the Patriarch is dead,” one of the field commanders said haltingly. “The Scales of Jierna Tal, the instrument that would decide a new Patriarch, are deep within Sorbold, in the armed city of Jierna’sid. How are we to—”

Before he could finish, the Lord Marshal signaled impatiently to a tall man in the hooded robes of a pilgrim standing at the foot of the swale. The man climbed quickly to the top of the rise and turned to face the makeshift army at Anborn’s feet. Then, with a violent snatch, he pulled down his hood. The same sunbeam that was lighting the general’s armor came to rest on the tall man’s white-blond hair, causing it to burn with a radiance that outshone even the crystalline blue of the furious gaze in his eyes.

Gleaming on the holy symbol of Sepulvarta that hung around his neck.

A wave of silence swept over the Krevensfield Plain.

Then, as if from one monstrous, all-consuming voice, a roar of acclaim and fury billowed forth, rising into the wind and bellowing across the land. It grew, second by second, as weapons were raised to the sun, as men turned to one another with renewed spirit in their gleaming eyes, as the sun pierced the gloom and flooded the vast fields with light.

Anborn threw his head back and laughed aloud, then drew his bastard sword and raised it to the sky as well. He let loose a war cry that melded with the roar of his men, who doubled their volume. Then he signaled to his field commanders.

“Mount up! Separate into the sectors from east to west that each cohort came from, and follow me. While we await the arrival of the united army of the Alliance—an army that Sorbold does not even know exists—we will build a chain of armed farming settlements from here to the sea. Now, come.”

He sheathed his sword, patted his steed, which cantered forth, and rode off to the west without so much as a backward glance.

With a reinvigorated fighting force ten thousand strong falling closely, excitedly in a great wide rank behind him.

11

THE DRAGON’S LAIR, GWYNWOOD, NORTH OF THE TAR’AFEL RIVER

Melisande waited at the opening of the cave for the Invoker to return.

Every now and then sounds echoed up the winding tunnel, plinks and skittering noises, dripping water, the rustling of leaves swirling in the cave’s mouth. The little girl rubbed her hands up and down her arms in the attempt to dispel the cold that had taken hold of her, but stopped after a few moments, realizing that the chill came from within.

From the vantage point atop the hill she looked down over the lake. The mirrorlike surface shone darkly below, its frozen patches duller than the areas where Thaw had melted the water. The call of a nightbird resounded off the surface, then was swallowed by the wind. Melisande thought it might have been the loneliest sound she had ever heard.

Below her in the greenwood she heard the crackling of brush.

She spun quickly around and peered into the darkness of the cave, but there was still no sign of Gavin.

The rustling grew louder. Whatever was moving through the brush was of a size and heft larger than her own, and there was more than one of them. Melisande shrank back from the cave’s entrance, whimpering in fear and hating herself for it.

“Gavin?” she called into the depths. “Gavin, something’s coming.”

“Indeed, Lady Melisande Navarne,” answered a voice from the dark behind her. Moments later, she could see the shadow of Gavin’s form emerge from the blackness, the Bolg midwife in his arms. “I called for them.”

Melisande looked back down the hill and watched as the Invoker’s horse and the one on which she had ridden to this place emerged from the greenwood. She never ceased to wonder at how the nature priest was able to compel the birds of the wood and the beasts in his service to respond to silent signals, but she was glad to see them.

She turned and came over to the Invoker. Krinsel had been wrapped in muslin strips soaked in a spicy liquid, so Melisande could barely see her skin. “Is she alive?” she asked.

“After a fashion,” Gavin replied gravely. “I have done what I can for her, but her wounds are beyond my skills to heal. The man who awaits us at the white forest’s edge will be able to do more, but dragon breath is caustic and burns in a way that no mortal medicine can really affect. She requires the talents of a healer with primordial lore.”

“Like a Lirin Skysinger? A Namer?”

Gavin nodded.

“But Rhapsody is back in the Bolglands now,” Melisande said sadly. “I do not believe that there are any others of her kind on the continent, or if there are, they’re within the Lirin realm. Krinsel may die before she gets there, and even if she does not, the Lirin and the Bolg are not friends. They might kill her, thinking she’s an enemy.”

Gavin emerged from the cave into the wind, and began heading carefully down the slope of the hillside to where the horses waited.

“Leave the worrying to me, Lady Melisande Navarne,” he said, laying the Bolg midwife gently across the front of his saddle. “You’ve done your part; now it is left but for me to do mine. Stay with her.”

“Where are you going?” Melisande asked nervously.

The Invoker barely glanced at her as he climbed back up the hummock to the mouth of the cave. “You already know the answer,” he said as he pushed her back away from it. “I am doing as you, and the Lady Cymrian, command me. Stand clear.”

The little girl covered her eyes as Gavin raised his muddy staff. Around the tip of his left hand, the wind whistled, almost as if it were tying itself in a knot there, causing the newborn leaves and young spring branches to dance wildly in the gathering breeze. The clouds raced along above them in the dark, and beneath her feet the earth seemed to be coming alive.

Inside the black cave tunnel, cracking and rumbling sounds began to issue forth along with a sputum of stones and rising dust. Melisande backed away, trying to shield her face from the stinging grit now flying forth.

I hope we’re doing the right thing,
she thought, but there really was nothing else to be done. As uncertain as she had been from the moment her carriage was attacked, one thing of which she was sure was that the cave had been empty.

The dragon was gone.

She maintained a stoic silence as boulders of all size began to roar down from within the rocky cave and from the mountainsides above. The Invoker stood amid it all, unflinching, as even the historic inscription calling the Cymrian people into being was covered in rubble. Melisande could not see clearly in the dark, but even in what little light there was she knew that the cave entrance had been sealed so completely that no one would ever have known it was there in the first place.

She stood quietly until the Invoker lowered his arms and turned to face her once again.

“I have done as you asked, Lady Melisande Navarne,” Gavin said. His voice was as plain and toneless as the wind that had died down around them. “The cave is sealed. Whatever treasure the dragon had, whatever secrets lay within this place, are now lost to history, at least until one of greater power than mine comes to unseal it.”

Melisande only nodded.

“Come, let us be on our way,” the Invoker said, resting his hand on her shoulder. “We will find a place by the shore of the lake to make camp until the moon rises, then return to the Circle, where the Bolg woman can find healing, and where you can find passage back to your father’s keep.”

“There is no one there for me anymore,” Melisande said in a dull voice as she mounted the horse the Invoker held for her. “Everyone is leaving Haguefort and moving on to Highmeadow, where Ashe will be leading the fight against whatever is coming.”

“Then we will arrange to get you to Highmeadow,” Gavin said, pulling himself into the saddle without jostling Krinsel at all. “Wherever you must be, I’ll see that you get there.”

Melisande took hold of the reins, but as she did, her horse snorted and danced sideways, shaking its right front hoof in pain. She gentled the mare down and dismounted, crouching down to examine the ground where the beast had trod.

Lying beneath a frozen fern was a strange dagger, rough-hewn, long and black, and wickedly sharp. It seemed to taper to a sickle-like point, bony ridges running along it from its man-made handle to what seemed to be a stone blade. Carefully Melisande picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

“What do you have there, Lady Melisande Navarne?” Gavin asked, wrapping the injured woman in his saddle blanket.

“It’s a knife of some sort,” the little girl answered, staring at it. The surface of the object hummed as if the stone were alive, vibrant, but there was no warmth in the thing.

The Invoker nudged his mount until he was alongside her own, and extended his gloved hand. Melisande complied with the silent demand, handing over the odd weapon, but feeling a tug of resistance bordering on resentment.

“It looks like a dragon’s claw, in fact,” he said, returning the blade to her after a moment. “Keep it. It will make a fine weapon as long as you are careful about keeping it sheathed unless you truly need it drawn.”

Melisande’s petty resentment turned quickly to horror.

“We—we can’t take that,” she stammered. “That’s treasure; dragon treasure. We’re not supposed to remove anything from the cave, not even a pebble. Rhapsody was quite specific about that.” Her mind went immediately to her Cymrian history lessons, most notably the ancient ballad
The Burning Fields,
which told the story of a dragon’s wrath upon discovering that a tin cup had been stolen by thieves from his lair. The tale ended in a gruesome and detailed description of the destruction of much of the Middle Continent, up to and including the central province of Bethany, where a great temple was later built in gratitude for a firebreak that spared the eastern continent. Rhapsody had assured her that the legends were lies, including one about Elynsynos’s fury called
The Rampage of the Wyrm,
but having seen the gargantuan size of the beast’s lair, and having felt the heft and sharpness of what had once been a mere single claw, she was beginning to wonder if perhaps the Lady Cymrian was believing what she wanted to believe about a dragon who had been fond of her, rather than the reality of the race.

The Invoker watched her thoughtfully for a moment. “I understand your concern, and admire your honesty,” he said. “But you are taking nothing from her cave; clearly you’ve discovered this item outside it. And since we’ve determined the beast to be dead, or at least gone, you must now decide if you wish to leave such a powerful and dangerous artifact lying about where anyone can find it. I suggest you take it with you and bear it as a gesture of respect to the one who sent you here, and the one whom you came to save.” He leaned closer, seeing that the little girl was struggling to keep her lip from trembling and tears from spilling out of her eyes. “Why are you crying, Lady Melisande Navarne?”

It was a moment before Melisande could speak. “I came all this way, and I failed,” she said haltingly. “I’m glad we found Krinsel, and I hope that we have managed to keep her alive, but that’s not why I traveled here from Haguefort. I came because Rhapsody wanted to me to save Elynsynos. She said that what I was doing was important beyond measure, something that might be saving the continent.”

The Invoker’s black eyes gleamed in the dark.

“How do you know that you have not?” he asked.

“Because Elynsynos is not here,” Melisande said, angrily wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “And her treasure is buried, perhaps for all time, so if there was something of great power in there that might have helped in the war that is coming, it is lost to the world as well. Not a very good outcome to my first, and probably last quest.”