The Dragon of Despair (40 page)

Toriovico looked sharply at his three advisors, but none of them looked as if they had noticed his lapse. Apheros and Dimiria still glowered angrily at the Dragon’s Claw, while Xarxius waited patiently for the Healed One’s comment.

“Certainly Xarxius has a point,” Toriovico said with a slight effort. “We do not wish to make such a monumental decision in haste. For example, we must make certain the promised artifacts are indeed from the days before the Burning Times, not manufactured ‘antiques.’ I suggest that the Sodality of Artificers could give us assistance there.”

Dimiria didn’t look pleased at Toriovico’s suggestion. After all, she had already offered her opinion as to the authenticity of at least some of the artifacts, but, oddly, she spared them her acid comments.

It’s as if Dimiria is waiting for something,
Toriovico thought.
A cue? Are she and Apheros working on this together? Are the Waterlanders paying them some bribe? Has Xarxius refused to be bribed and so finds himself on the opposite side from his usual ally?

Apheros’s expression showed that he also was less than pleased with Toriovico’s caution. His reaction confirmed the Healed One’s evolving theory that the Waterlanders must have bribed the Dragon Speaker.

Normally, Apheros was the representative type of the isolationist New Kelvinese, often refusing to meet even prominent ambassadors. One reason that Xarxius was so valuable to Apheros was that he spared the Dragon Speaker such distasteful inconveniences.

Had this been a more usual quarter-moon meeting, Toriovico would have been inclined to let himself be persuaded by the mere sign of the Dragon Speaker’s displeasure. This, however, had not been a normal meeting, nor was this routine business. As Torio saw it, it amounted to signing away a good portion of New Kelvin’s trade income in return for these nebulous artifacts and the unseen harbor—and for preferential trade options on goods they could do without.

“No decision will be made at this time,” the Healed One stated firmly. “That is my final judgment.”

At his words, Dimiria and Apheros rose from their seats almost as one and began their part of the departure ritual. Xarxius moved a bit more slowly. When the other two marched from the room, their disappointment evident despite their formal and ceremonial farewells, the Dragon’s Claw lingered.

“A good decision,” Xarxius said softly, “and thank you for your hospitality.”

“Oh?”

Toriovico was puzzled.

“Yes, Apheros didn’t really want me to attend, you see.” The hound dog face gave a wry smile. “I pointed out to him that you were certain to want my advice on such an important matter of trade. Your questions, as well as your support of my opinion, justified my insistence.”

Xarxius bowed himself from the room before Toriovico had an opportunity to ask more. That didn’t stop the Healed One from wondering. Usually, he was content to leave governing to the Dragon Speaker and to restrict himself to the secret duties of the Healed One. After today’s meeting, however, Toriovico thought he had better pay more attention to less esoteric matters for a time.

After all, last winter he had overlooked the machinations that had brought both Lady Melina and three magical artifacts into New Kelvin. He smiled as he considered how those events had changed his life. It wouldn’t do to miss anything that had the potential to transform it once more.

DESPITE DERIAN’S CONCERNS
that Peace—or Jalarios, as he must remember to think of the Illuminator—and his young “son” would be immediately discovered, the deception survived their stay in the Gateway to Enchantment. Derian was somewhat surprised that Peace insisted that he and Citrine remain in character once the group had left Gateway and the roads seemed empty of any travelers but themselves.

“I was the Dragon’s Eye,” Peace reminded them when Elise expressed the discomfort they all felt at treating the other two as servants. “That meant I learned to watch people, to see what they gave away when they thought themselves unobserved. I have learned more from a fist clenched in anger by a man who believed his action hidden within the cuff of his sleeve than from any smiling face and sweet words.”

Doc looked up from sorting through the additional medicinal herbs and ointments he’d purchased in Gateway.

“How’d you manage to see it if the man’s fist was hidden within his sleeve?”

“Simple, Doctor,” Peace replied. “You of all men know how the muscles and sinews are connected. I saw the sinews along the man’s neck tighten slightly on one side and wondered why. Then I saw that his hand was withdrawn and guessed the rest.”

“Clever,” Doc said with a grin. “I guess much isn’t hidden from you.”

Peace only smiled, too polite to agree.

Derian, however, thought that Doc’s observation was probably only the truth and he wished that he felt happier about it.

For this trip, Peace had chosen a different route than the one they had taken to Dragon’s Breath the first time. It was a longer route, but then, as Peace pointed out, speed was not the important thing—at least not at this point.

“King Tedric wishes you to gather information,” he reminded them. “You will not learn much from farmers in the high country. Better to travel the more usual trade routes, stopping at the public houses, pausing to buy a bit of fabric or glassware.

“Besides, we are traveling in summer with good horses to pull the wagons. In the winter you would be lucky to have light for a third of the day on the road. In summer we can travel for half the day or even longer.”

Derian agreed. As Peace had noted, they were well prepared to follow this course. The wagon gave them room to pack away their purchases. In the high country, they would have had to abandon the wagon completely—an unrealistic decision for those who were coming to trade.

Moreover, Citrine could ride in the wagon when she grew tired of walking or of riding one of the spare horses. They’d felt they could bring a few extra mounts from Hawk Haven without arousing comment, but a pony comfortable for one her size would have been too unlikely.

In this fashion, they made their slow but deliberate way through the more settled portions of New Kelvin. In some ways what they saw was not unlike what they knew in Hawk Haven. Many of the same crops grew in the fields, though the ones that throve in the warmer, wetter reaches did not. The birds and animals were similar, too, though Derian noted that the horses tended toward stockiness and strength rather than grace and elegance, and Edlin commented that the dogs were more often bred for herding than for the chase.

The people, though, they were different. It was hard to tell how many of those differences were bred in the bone, for the long robes—worn even by the field-workers, though these kilted them up—and the omnipresent facial decorations obscured much.

From what Derian could see the New Kelvinese tended toward leaner, finer builds. Not that they were fragile or frail—far from it—but it was the strength of the willow rather than the oak. And who could tell fair or dark when hair and skin alike was dyed and painted in hues that would make a field of spring flowers envious?

Wherever the people touched their land, the land was different again. The houses—even of the poor—wore gaudy hues. The poor were limited to adorning doorways or windows, but the wealthier washed their entire homes in color. A few towns had ordinances that coordinated shades and tones, but many followed no law but the whims of individual owners.

And the architectural styles differed as well. Much of what was built in Hawk Haven—and in her sister Bright Bay as well—was built for use first with considerations of art second. In New Kelvin art often won over practicality, so Derian found himself stabling horses in miniature palaces delightful to look upon, but where the hay was stored in some inconvenient outbuilding since a loft would have distorted the dreamer’s lines.

The inns they stayed in were the same, each rivaling the other to invoke some old story or legend, even if it meant that the rooms had ceilings that canted at odd angles or the dining area was halfway across the structure from the kitchen.

Citrine’s favorite was an inn built in the shape of a fat, red dragon. The kitchens were positioned so that the smoke from their fires eddied out the dragon’s nostrils.

The visitors were told that the Red Dragon Inn was bitter cold in winter, for the landlord disliked lighting fires elsewhere lest the smoke from other chimneys ruin his effect. His devotion to his art was why they were welcomed to stay at such a fabulous place at all, for even outlander money was welcome at a place that needed to do much business in summer to survive winter.

As their road took them farther inland, angling to intersect the long turnpike that ran along the base of the Sword of Kelvin Mountains, they found fewer inns that welcomed outlanders. Derian thought this shortsighted of the innkeepers, since Dragon’s Breath was the capital city and any foreigners who wished to do business with the rulers of the land must come there.

However, the xenophobia of the New Kelvinese was such that most foreigner traders chose to come no farther than Zodara in the east or the Gateway to Enchantment in the west. Since the New Kelvinese desired to keep secret the making of silk and the cultivating of the medicinal plants that were their most valuable exports, they were willing to bear the expense and trouble of hauling their goods to the border. Therefore, the inland New Kelvinese, even those along the roads, could maintain their splendid isolation and feel that it was at very little cost to themselves.

Grateful Peace nearly glowed with joy to be in his homeland once more, and for the first time in a long while Derian contemplated the sacrifice the man had made in the hope of improving his land’s future prospects. As Jalarios, Peace could talk unguardedly about the history of a certain region or press them to try a certain dish or liquor. No one thought it at all odd that a guide should turn loquacious for his employers’ benefit and Peace took full advantage of this.

Nor did any of the Hawk Havenese particularly mind. Although they were held to a wagon’s pace, the group traveled on as long as light and weather would permit. Peace’s stories livened the hours of plodding travel that—even with marvels of architecture and dress to liven the view—would have grown monotonous.

Peace told them tales of the White Sorcerers of the Eversnow Mountains who had performed miracles in the days of the Founders, of the Star Wizard, and of the First Healed One’s tragic love for a maiden made from moon dust and ice crystals. Many of Peace’s tales went back to the Old World. New Kelvin’s Founders had not been the same as those of Hawk Haven and while some of the stories had a similar tone, being heavily freighted with wondrous enchantments and marvelous beasts, they differed, too.

Derian could not help but note that whereas the tales he had heard as a child were cautionary in nature, Peace’s made one want to reach out and embrace magic. No wonder the New Kelvinese had been willing to risk an international incident to lay their hands on magical artifacts.

He wondered if Melina, coming to New Kelvin as a girl right about Damita’s age and similarly restless, had heard some of the same stories and if they had awakened in her a hunger for forbidden magic.

Could a story change a life?

MELINA MIGHT HAVE BEEN AMBITIOUS
, but she was not such a fool as to believe that she could conquer an entire kingdom single-handedly—not even with the assistance of those members of the government who were conditioned to follow whatever course of action she might suggest.

She had slaves, far more than either Toriovico or Apheros realized, for starting with the winter moons of her arrival she had begun her purchasing. Later, when she became Consolor, she did her buying through private agents. The wife of the Healed One was given gifts by almost anyone who wanted the ruler’s favor, so she wasn’t hurting for funds.

In the course of her researches into New Kelvin’s history and lore Melina learned there were caverns beneath Thendulla Lypella. Almost as soon as she had wed Toriovico, she found reasons to explore beneath the city, following ancient maps to dusty, unused tunnels that led to complexes abandoned and forgotten since the Burning Times. Here her purchases could be imprisoned, kept tame by promises of eventual liberty and by living conditions more comfortable than they could expect elsewhere.