The Merchant Emperor (43 page)

THE MOUNTAIN PASS INTO KRALDURGE, YLORC

Whether it had been half a decade or half a millennium before, the loss of Achmed’s blood lore still stung in ways he could not completely give voice to, even if he had been inclined to do so.

It was an ability he had had most, if not all of his life. He could not be sure if the memory of its origin was correct, as he had been young and on the brink of death at the time, but when he sought to recall the birth of his blood-gift, the image in his mind was the face of his mentor, a quiet and unassuming monk in the old world by the name of Father Halphasion. The priest had been his rescuer, his protector, his teacher, and, in a sense, the first Namer he had ever known, despite the fact that the man was not Lirin, the race of which Namers were born, but rather Dhracian, as Achmed’s own mother had been. Like Achmed, Father Halphasion was not
Zherenditck
, not part of a Dhracian Colony, but
Dhisrik
, one of the Uncounted, those Dhracians that were lost in the world, unconnected to their people who, more than any race ever known, were joined at the mind, like ants, able to think and act as one with their kin in vast, interwoven webs of silent vibration.

The gentle monk had come upon him, dying, in the wake of his escape from the torment of his Bolg captors who used him for slave labor and viciously cruel entertainment, in the days when his name was Ysk, the Bolgish word approximating of spittle or vomit. The word had an overtone of poison in it, likely because the only thing more grotesque in appearance than Firbolg, a bastard race of demi-humans that had been conquered by every other culture that had ever come in contact with it and had bred into it through rape and domination the ugliest of traits, was the visage of a half-breed whose other side was Dhracian.

Father Halphasion had renamed him, in the course of his reclamation and studies, calling him the Brother, a name he said described the dying boy perfectly.

Brother to all, akin to none
.

Though he was uncertain when the skill of sensing and tracking the heartbeats of every person on the Island of Serendair had become his own, Achmed believed it to have been in that moment when the monk uttered those words. Not long after he was aware of a cacophony of heartbeats, vibrating on his skin and in his ears, often deafening, always maddening, but able to be singled out, isolated, and locked on to, making him an unerring tracker and unfailing assassin. But whenever the gift had actually come to him, he was certain of when it was taken from him.

It was the moment that a desperate, golden-haired half-Lirin woman had stumbled upon him and Grunthor in a back alley in the city of Easton in Serendair, asked them to adopt her for a moment, then introduced him to her pursuers as her brother.

You gentlemen are just in time to meet my brother. Brother, these are the town guard. Gentlemen, this is my brother—Achmed—the Snake.

Without even meaning to, she had snapped the chain of domination that his demonic master had around that name, and changed him forever.

He hadn’t noticed the loss then; even when the power was broken, he was still tied to the sound of the heartbeats of those born on the Island. It was not until he stepped out into the crisp, bitter air of winter on this new continent, emerging from the bowels of the Earth, that he was aware, for the first time in as long as he could remember, of silence. It had been more a curse than a blessing; while he no longer was assaulted in each moment with the pounding of millions of distinct vibrations, he was now without the greatest tool he had relied on when tracking an enemy.

He was acutely aware of that loss this morning as his footsteps, normally silent, echoed up the towering walls of the mountain pass that led in to the wide circular meadow known to the Bolg as Kraldurge, meaning the Realm of Ghosts. The reverberating echoes stung his skin, making him even more irritable than he had been in recent memory.

It did not help that Grunthor’s massive boots were making an even more horrific noise, a thundering clatter that bounced off both sides of the narrow pass. Even the soft treads of Rhapsody’s small boots were clacking loudly; it was giving the Bolg king an excruciating headache.

“Is this really necessary?” he asked as they approached the end of the pass that opened into the meadow. “I believe Grunthor has given you several reports of the status of Elysian, Rhapsody; I don’t understand your need to inspect the place yourself. Nothing survived Anwyn’s attack—she set the entirety of the island ablaze, scorching the house, the boats, the gardens—everything. The smell still lingers; my nostrils are already stinging from it, all the way above the grotto. I do wish you could just take his word for it—I have an endless list of better things to do.”

“Then by all means, go attend to them,” Rhapsody said, stroking the head of the sleeping baby in the broadcloth sling strapped to her chest. “I wanted to see Elysian for myself—between its loss and that of the Lirin harbor of Port Tallono, I am thinking to the next steps for both of their reclamation. I am perfectly all right going down to the grotto alone—it’s my duchy, I’ve done it a million times. It was your idea to come.”

“Hardly,” the Bolg king replied sourly. “It was Grunthor’s idea.”

“Damned right,” said the Sergeant, looking around the meadow blooming to the very edges of the rockwalls in colorful heartsease. “Oi don’ ever like it when you go off by yerself, Duchess; like it less when ya drag the lit’le prince with you, and especially ’ate it when you put yerself in places where dragons have been.” He cast a glance around the windy veldt carpeted with bright flowers. “Don’ like it at’tall.”

As if in agreement, Meridion’s tiny head emerged from against his mother’s chest, the oil from where he had been anointed in blessing by the Patriarch still gleaming on his tiny forehead. Constantin had come to them at breakfast that morning to bless the baby before going into his last prayer vigil before departing; Rhapsody had bade him goodbye without an embrace and without speaking, knowing it would disturb his spiritual preparations. Meridion’s bright blue eyes met hers.

Then he opened his mouth and screamed.

“Oh my goodness!” Rhapsody blurted, shocked. “Meridion, shhhh, now. Shhhh.”

The sound rocketed off Achmed’s sensitive skin, stinging it intensely. He closed his eyes, the lids of which were burning from the sound.

“Make him stop
now
,” he commanded.

“Ya just fed ’im,” Grunthor murmured, alone not distressed by the caterwauling. “Wonder what’s botherin’ ’im?”

Rhapsody bent closer to whisper soothingly to the baby.

She had just enough time to roll as she fell into the flower-filled grass, sparing Meridion from being crushed, paralyzed, an all-but-invisible dart in the back of her neck.

*   *   *

Within a heartbeat, the Sergeant-Major was on top of them both. Achmed made note of his movement without seeing it; he had swung the cwellan down from over his shoulder and was turning rapidly, letting loose a spray of whisper-thin disks in a spinning circle at the same height from the ground that the dart had come. In the distance he could feel the thudding of one body that fell, most likely the source of the dart, invisible to his sight.

He cursed silently and turned back to Rhapsody.

Only to find her, and her son, and Grunthor missing.

Achmed crouched low to the grass and whirled, scanning the vista of short blossoms and taller vegetation. Whatever was hiding within it in the more distant parts of the meadow was invisible to him; he tried to sense for vibrations, and found them, but they were jumbled, battered around the circular rockwalls in the wind that screamed like demons, giving the place its name. His gaze returned to the place where Grunthor and Rhapsody had fallen.

Instantly he recalled the time when Rhapsody had whispered the name of highgrass, using her powers to hide them from a troop of wandering Lirinved in the old world, and wondered if that was why he couldn’t see them. But the pallor in her cheeks, the glass stare in her eyes as she fell made him certain that it had not been at her will that the two of them were hiding, if in fact they were. He looked down a short distance away to see a rich brown patch of earth that was rapidly covering itself with meadow flowers, the descendants of the heartsease the Singer had planted in this place. Within a moment, it had blending seamlessly into the carpet of blooms and taller scrub.

Good
, he thought.
Grunthor has them
.
Good.

Once the other two of the Three were out of sight, his ancient skill and training roared back, ascendant. Achmed sank to the ground and crawled, reptile-like, on his belly, moving without sound, causing no disturbance to the meadow grass. His instincts led him away from the center of the meadow, scanning the fields for those similarly talented at hiding, but he saw nothing. Aside from the first assassin, the one he had caught in a random sweep of cwellan disks, he could discern no one, not even a trace of scent on the wind, and grudgingly admired the skill of the assassins who had breached his unassailable fortress.

Until overwhelming fury took hold, making him shake.

Come out and play, you knobbing bastards,
he thought silently.

He waited, crouched flat, but still saw no movement. The wind blew through again, howling down the rockwalls, the sound echoing until it died away.

The patterns of stalking that the assassins in his meadow were undertaking were foreign to him; Achmed cursed himself again. In the old land he made it an unconscious practice to be familiar with every trade secret employed by formal assassin’s guilds and independent hunters; he had been king long enough now that those root-level survival skills were long from his mind. He turned slowly on his side again, keeping the cwellan at a wide arc of attack.

Then, as he stared into the gold-brown scrub above the colorful flowers, he thought he saw something descend, almost like the lightest of snow.

Only it was the hue of emeralds, the color of pine trees in spring, grass on Midsummer’s Night. Rhapsody’s eyes.

A ribbon of light was wending its way through the meadow, a wide shaft of sunlight, though unmistakably green.

What is happening?
Achmed thought angrily as the radiance settled on the grass. He raised his head slightly and, in doing so, was treated to a sight that he had made possible himself, through the unrelenting and obnoxiously insistent belief in the need for the Lightcatcher’s restoration.

Four shadows were highlighted, images of men crouched in a seemingly random pattern around the meadow and within the crags of the rockwalls. Each was armed with weapons of either the desert or the sea; Achmed’s throat burned at the knowledge that they were assassins, no doubt, from Yarim Paar, and very likely from Golgarn or beyond. They did not seem to see him, nor did they discern the green light that was illuminating them to him, as if outlined by the light of an emerald sun.

Far away, deeper into Kraldurge, closer to the opening to the grotto of Elysian, a dark, wraith-thin shadow was slipping away. A third curse passed silently over Achmed’s lips as it rounded the bend and vanished.

One more he would have to hunt.

“Thank you, Constantin,” he muttered softly. He continued the rest of his thought without speaking.
Whatever silly countersigns and oil you splashed onto the baby this morning notwithstanding, the true blessing you have given him is the use of the Lightcatcher’s green spectrum, the power of grass scrying.

He thought of Rhapsody and swallowed to ease the dryness in his throat.

Then rose slowly, almost imperceptibly, sighting his cwellan.

Within the next heartbeat, four men from the desert and the sea were bleeding their lives out into the meadow, feeding the flowers.

Achmed stood and looked around.

No other figures remained in the glowing green light, which began to disperse and disappear a moment later.

He called for Grunthor as he scanned the meadow. Closer to him than he had expected a large, blossom-covered hummock stretched and rose, shaking dirt and leaves from its greatcoat.

“Did ya get ’em all?” the Sergeant-Major inquired as he brushed away the petals and leaves.

“Lost one—he was on the way down to Elysian when I spotted him,” Achmed said tersely. “There must be a breach there; it figures. Is Rhapsody breathing?”

“Yeah,” said Grunthor, hauling her off the ground and into his arms, in one of which a tiny bundle was cooing. “Barely. Y’all right there, Yer ’ighness?”

A round of chirping and babbling sounds answered him.

“Must be a paralytic,” Achmed said, “or she wouldn’t be breathing. They must have wanted to take her alive. Here, give the two of them to me. You go down and seal the bloody entrance to that place once and for all, and meet me back in the Great Hall.”

*   *   *

Rhapsody woke before she was able to open her eyes.

When she shuddered with panic, still unable to move, she felt the thin leather of gloves brush the hair back from her numb forehead.

“Don’t try to move yet,” the sandy voice said. “You will come out of this much better if you just let the poison run its course, rather than injuring body parts by making them move before they are ready to do so. Additionally, you will give me an extended respite from your prattle; the silence has been a blessing so far, please don’t ruin it. I’m assuming you can hear me. Just listen.

“Your brat is fine. Grunthor has him, and he had supper before he took the baby, so Meridion is safe for the moment, I’d wager, though if I were you, I’d lie very still in the hope of dissipating the poison before Grunthor’s stomach starts rumbling for his midnight snack. Yes, midnight—you’ve been down for a long time. I imagine your breasts will be exploding any minute now. Charming.

“You cannot stay here any longer and expect to be safe. They’ve broached the mountain, though they were apparently looking for you, and not the Earthchild, at least as far as we can tell. We’ve consulted with Gyllian, and she agrees that you and the other women, including Melisande, should travel with her under the Lightcatcher’s power of grass hiding to the Nain kingdom, where you can seek refuge. It was the green spectrum that saved your arse, by the way; I never would have seen the assassins hiding in Kraldurge had it not been for Constantin’s last gift to you. He was watching us through the Lightcatcher, trying to determine if Meridion was able to be seen through a scrying instrumentality; he says the cloak kept your brat from notice, though he could see each of us. He’s gone now, off to rebuild his Chain of Prayer.