The Dragon of Despair (39 page)

Other visits, mostly to places within a few days’ journey of Dragon’s Breath—for she would not risk that her hold on the government might have opportunity to weaken—proved to Melina beyond a doubt that much of what the residents of Hawk Haven took for magic was merely specialized art and craft.

These disappointments did not weaken Melina’s resolve any more than a mother who knows her child must be somewhere within the house stops looking simply because the first few rooms are empty. In her mental floor plan she simply closed a few doors and moved on. In this way, at last, Melina focused upon the tale of the Star Wizard and the Dragon of Despair.

This time, to her excitement and even to her amazement, research did not eliminate the legend from consideration. Instead it led her more and more deeply toward something that looked rather like truth.

MELINA’S RESEARCH
into the tale of the Star Wizard and the Dragon of Despair fell into two separate but connected channels. One was hunting for the places mentioned with such exasperating obliqueness in the story. The other was searching for the spell by which the Star Wizard had bound the dragon and by which, so the tales said, it could be again set free.

True, all the tales said that the holds that bound the dragon could not be released without terrible cost, but Melina was not afraid of cost. Hadn’t she already given up her homeland and proximity to her children? Hadn’t she given up property and the respect of her brothers? Hadn’t she accepted that she was spoken of in the same breath as her brother Newell—and she as the worse of the two, though Newell had sought to murder King Tedric?

Cost frightened Melina little enough, and if she succeeded in this venture she would take back much of what had been stolen from her. She would reclaim her obedient children and punish that traitorous bitch Sapphire. She would have property enough—kingdoms’ worth.

As for slander on her name, none would dare speak of Melina with other than perfect respect. The New Kelvinese would give her honors easily, for their awe of magical power was universal. The Hawk Havenese would struggle, but fear was a powerful force, as Melina had learned in educating her children. There would come a time when no one spoke of Melina with anything but wonder, awe, and respect.

She would be like her ancestress, Zorana Shield, now called the Great, but where Zorana had been merely the queen of one small, constantly embattled kingdom, Melina planned to rule all this region. The New Kelvinese had waited too long for their Founders. It was time they acquired the ability to go looking for their absent landlords—and to demand an accounting.

The first step in that journey was solidifying the region and its resources behind one leader. Realistically, New Kelvin was a small kingdom. It needed harbors and fleets, land more fertile than its own rocky soil to support such an effort.

To the north New Kelvin was bordered by mountains, inhabited, as far as Melina knew, by nothing but a few isolated communities. To the west were the Death Touch Mountains, known as the Iron Mountains in Melina’s natal land. There was nothing but wilderness in those western lands, and although someday the raw resources of that wilderness might prove useful, for now the west could be ignored.

South and east were where Melina looked to find what she desired. In the south lay Hawk Haven and beyond it its new ally, Bright Bay. Hawk Haven would provide a source for rich agricultural resources as well as laborers and skilled crafters. Bright Bay would serve as a buffer against potentially aggressive neighbors farther south. Its navy would be sent to conquer the Isles and bring them back under mainland control.

For her exploratory navy, Melina planned to go into Waterland. Conquest there would be interesting, for the only thing that the Waterlanders valued—as far as Melina could tell—was money. She had several plans she might employ in her conquest, one of which simply involved using the hoarded treasury of New Kelvin—backed by sufficient force of arms—to buy herself into the place of the Supreme Affluent. There might be laws forbidding such, but Melina planned to find that which would make laws a formality—at least where she was concerned.

Such were the dreams and visions that kept Melina at her research long after Toriovico had slipped into sated slumber, that kept her at them when even Apheros the Dragon Speaker relaxed and took time for some light entertainment. Such were the researches that led her at last to the tunnels beneath Thendulla Lypella, hunting for where the Dragon of Despair was imprisoned.

XV

FOUR TIMES A MOON PHASE
the Healed One met with the Dragon Speaker in a very private meeting. Ideally these meetings should occur at neat, astronomically defined times, but the responsibilities of being joint heads of government meant that the current Dragon Speaker and Healed One met when convenient, usually on a date as close as possible to that which had been the appointed.

Toriovico knew this casualness regarding date had not always been the case. During the reign of the second Healed One the Stargazers had gained great prominence by dictating the precise hour at which the moon was full or at her first quarter or whatever—and dictating when meetings should be held thereby.

The Stargazers had abused their power, though, often calling for meetings at odd hours of the night, or hauling the Dragon Speaker from other duties at the whim of the heavens. When the insanity of the third Healed One had meant that meetings were held when possible rather than when the Stargazers ordained, and when no great catastrophe had befallen New Kelvin, then the Stargazers had fallen from glory.

They never had recovered.

Or rather,
Toriovico thought, observing who Apheros had admitted at the end of today’s briefing,
they have never recovered until today.

The man and woman Apheros had begged permission to admit so that they might advise on an order of new business were the two most prominent Stargazers in the kingdom: Dimiria and Xarxius.

Technically, Dimiria was merely one of the three Primes elected from within her sodality. In reality, she was the driving force within her triad. It was widely—if quietly—said that the other two did not dare vote contrary to her wishes.

For eighty years the stars had looked down upon Dimiria and the brave jested that for at least seventy-five of those years she had been ordering them about their business.

Dimiria wore her eighty years neither well nor with any attempt to disguise what they had done to her. When her hair had thinned, she had adopted a hooded robe rather than a wig or weaving hair in to thicken her queue.

When the majority of her teeth had fallen out, Dimiria had ordered the remainder pulled. The dentures she now wore were as much statement of identity as her tattoos or the patterns of her face paint. Each ivory tooth was incised with an astrological symbol from her personal horoscope. As if this wasn’t enough to draw attention, the set had an idiosyncratic fit so that Dimiria’s speech was underlaid with a certain hollowness.

Superficially, Xarxius could not be more different from his colleague. Indeed, although his training had been among the Stargazers, for the last decade or so he had been a member of Apheros’s Dragon’s Three—appointed as the Dragon’s Claw, whose specialty was interaction with foreign peoples.

Xarxius reminded most people of a hound dog, both because of his general friendliness and because of the bags under his eyes. People tended to get lost in his amiable personality—a mistake that Toriovico, who was himself often misjudged, did not make.

Xarxius had become interested in foreigners and their customs during a tour in Waterland as a member of the New Kelvinese embassy. This, because of the Waterlanders’ superstitious regard for the stars, always included several promising Stargazers.

Apheros said that it was as an expert on Waterland and an expert on trade, rather than as a Stargazer, that Xarxius had been asked to attend today’s meeting. Still, Toriovico did not forget Xarxius’s training and his probable bias.

After the new arrivals had supplicated themselves before their Healed One and offered less humble but equally formal greetings to the Dragon Speaker, Apheros moved to the business that had brought them together.

“The most important matter of new business is a proposal from certain Waterland business interests that will increase trade between our countries. In short, these interests wish an exclusive contract to handle foreign sales of certain types of glassware, silk, and pharmaceutical products.”

Toriovico raised an eyebrow.

“And in return?” he asked. “What do we get?”

Apheros went on as placidly as if he had not just presented a proposal that would put the majority of New Kelvin’s foreign trade—and profit—into another country’s hands.

“In return the Waterland interests have offered to reduce the prices we will pay for slaves, for goods of their own manufacture, and…” The Dragon Speaker cleared his throat. “And to give into our hands a certain number of artifacts dating from before the Burning Times—artifacts that hold great promise of being magical.”

No one made a sound, so Toriovico was certain that the other two had been briefed in advance. Certainly Dimiria would not have kept silent otherwise. He glanced at her now and noticed an odd vacancy about her expression.

“Dimiria,” he said, “what do you think about this offer?”

“It is very generous,” the Stargazer said immediately. “I have examined a few of the artifacts in question, both some years ago when I served as part of our embassy in Waterland and more recently when I traveled there as an honored guest for their major planting festival. They seem to hold potential, at least as much potential as did the three artifacts that were in our possession last winter.”

Silence fell again as everyone remembered those events and their disastrous conclusion.

“Moreover,” Dimiria continued, “it has been hinted to me by several of my Waterland contacts that these are not the only advantages we could gain through this trade agreement. One of the Opulences with whom we would be doing business has told me that he is willing to lease to us—for a token fee—a small harbor and the surrounding land.”

This was an offer nearly as stunning as the one to supply New Kelvin with potentially magical artifacts. One of New Kelvin’s great shortcomings was that it lacked an ocean port. This would answer that need, even if the New Kelvinese would be forced to travel a great distance to use the promised harbor.

Toriovico could not believe what he was hearing.

“How certain was that ‘hint’?” he asked.

“Quite,” Dimiria said blandly. “The merchant in question is among the top-ranking members of the Waterland oligarchy. I think he believes that securing an exclusive trade contract with our country would be sufficient to raise him to the Supreme Affluent.”

The Supreme Affluent was a post similar to that of the Dragon Speaker, the first among a larger ruling body. Unlike the Dragon Speaker, however, the Supreme Affluent held the post by merit of wealth alone, wealth calculated and assessed by a complicated formula that only the Waterlanders themselves understood.

Internally, Toriovico shook himself. Something was very odd about all of this. This type of meeting was a dance he knew quite well, but something was off in the cadence of the steps.

He turned to Xarxius. The Dragon’s Claw had been unusually quiet during the presentation—unusually not because he was a particularly talkative man, but because this was his area of expertise and he was permitting others to present the proposal. Moreover, although Apheros had included Xarxius in the meeting, he had not once asked him to speak. Indeed, now that Toriovico had been given an opportunity to observe them, it seemed to him that all was not well between the Speaker and his Claw.

“What do you think, Xarxius? You’ve been remarkably quiet.”

Toriovico regretted the last phrase as soon as he said it. He didn’t want to draw attention to the oddness he sensed until he had a chance to figure out its source.

Xarxius, however, appeared to notice nothing. He smiled apologetically in response to the Healed One’s rebuke.

“The Dragon Speaker and Prime Dimiria have made such an excellent presentation,” Xarxius said, “that I had felt my words unneeded. However, may I suggest that we proceed with some caution? A Waterlander thinks first of his own profit, then of others.”

The phrase was such a commonplace as to nearly be proverbial. Despite this, both Dimiria and Apheros glared at Xarxius as if he had suggested refusing the proposal out of hand.

This is more the dance I know
, Toriovico thought.
There should be more debate, more flow of ideas. Why are both Dimiria and Apheros so in favor of making this deal? Is it the lure of the artifacts? Before the others were stolen we were close to unraveling their secrets. Melina’s fresh point of view was a great help.

As always when Toriovico thought of his newlywed wife he felt a mingling of wonder and awe, a rosy haze that made him smile warmly—rather like an idiot, he feared.

Toriovico shook the feeling from him, aware that he had fallen into a completely inappropriate daze. He succeeded in pulling himself into the present, though the warm feeling lingered caressingly at the back of his mind.