The Merchant Emperor (30 page)

The Diviner nodded. “Go on.”

“I have, as you have heard, an ambitious goal for my reign. Unfortunately, I am already in my middle years, moving toward my dotage, and I have not even begun my undertaking. My biggest fear is that I will not live long enough to see it through. That would leave Sorbold vulnerable to retaliation by the Cymrians I intend to supplant, if I were to die before they are eradicated.”

His mouth grew dry as his anger rose; it always did when contemplating the rest of his thought.

“It was not enough that those bastards were inordinately powerful when they crashed upon our shores and began the rape of our continent. No, in addition to their bloodthirstiness and the innocence of our ancestors who were slaughtered and displaced, the Cymrians had two more advantages—elemental lore, which gave them powers they were unworthy of, and a ridiculously extended life expectancy, which allowed them to outlive many times over anyone who would confront them. How, then, am I to be able to defeat Gwydion of Manosse, or his wife, or the Lord Roland, or any of the other misbegotten descendants of Gwylliam and Anwyn, or dragons, or even the ordinary Cymrian dock whore who still has the advantage of immortality over me?”

The Diviner’s eyes, black as midnight, took him in thoughtfully.

“So you are looking to know how long you will live?”

“No,” said Talquist quietly. “I am looking to do so eternally.”

“You seek immortality for yourself?”

“Is that so wrong?” the emperor asked bitterly. “One hundred thousand miscreant refugees, who Fate had declared doomed, sailed away from their homeland in great ships whose broken magical wooden shells still litter the Skeleton Coast—farmers and apostate priests, prostitutes and thieves, buggerers and assassins, and every one of those reprehensible excuses for human beings was gifted, as a result of whatever they did to cheat Death, with life everlasting.”

“And suffered immensely for it,” the Diviner said seriously. “Of those one hundred thousand of the First Generation, how many are still alive, do you know? For if you do not,
I
do—I had an ancestor who was one who is not. There are but a handful among the living, Talquist, and this is something that most likely you do not know—far more of them died at their own hands, in the grip of insanity brought on by the so-called gift of everlasting life, than even died in the Cymrian War.”

“Of course they did,” said Talquist contemptuously. “Because, with all due deference to your ancestor, the majority of that indigent population was deficient, inferior; they were pampered and protected from the harsh realities of life by the abundance of resources the Island of Serendair enjoyed, the gentle climate, the fortuitous geography—”

“Indeed, especially if you overlook their proximity to a boiling undersea hazard with catastrophic inclination, they were lazy, worthless peasants living in a lackadaisical paradise,” growled the Diviner. “Stop, Talquist, I beg you. I am your friend, and your ally, though until these recent unfortunate events our nations were both also friends of the Alliance. I met the Lord and Lady Cymrian at their wedding, and several times thereafter, as well as King Achmed, and I have to say that, while they have proven to be skillful liars and disingenuous in their claims of peace and friendship, they are hardly the pathetic lowlifes you describe. I am very intent on not underestimating any adversaries the Hintervold may be forced to fight; that is the first fool’s errand. Lord Gwydion is an impressive man, a well-educated, well-trained and gifted soldier and the grandson of perhaps the greatest inventor the Known World has ever seen. The Lady Rhapsody is a Namer of undeniable power, and very difficult to resist becoming enchanted with, as Beliac has already mentioned. The Bolg king terrifies me, I have to say, and has since I made his acquaintance at the empress’s funeral last year. It would be highly unwise to underestimate their power.” He sighed dispiritedly at the expression that came over the new emperor’s face and looked up at the dome towering above him in the dark, through which gleaming ethereal light was bathing the center of the basilica.

“That being said, you have my loyalty as your friend and ally. Our kingdoms are under threat; we have no choice but to do whatever we must to ensure their safety and protection. So, if you will tell me what exactly you are trying to achieve, I will divine as best as I am able for you at this inopportune time of the year.”

Talquist exhaled. He closed his eyes again and recalled the dark, musty temple of Manwyn, the Seer of the Future, the insane soothsayer in Yarim whose irisless eyes reflected like a mirror as she looked into the realm of what had not yet come to pass.

“The prophecy I was given, in response to my question regarding immortality, was unsatisfying and obtuse. I am hoping your divination can be more specific as to what I must do to achieve it.”

“Tell me what you said to Manwyn, as exactly as you can remember it, and exactly what she said in return.”

Talquist swallowed. He did not have the desire to reveal that his legendary self-confidence had deserted him in the face of the mad prophetess, who gazed at him with what could only be interpreted as a wildly amused and cruel expression.

You have awaited this day for a very long time,
the madwoman had said.
Gaze into the well, and tell me what you see there—Your Majesty.

Talquist, at the time still a powerful but socially insignificant member of the mercantile, had blinked in astonishment melting into delight at her form of address. She had all but confirmed to him the reality of his wishes to be crowned emperor. It was not until later that he realized the shock of having his deepest desires affirmed had made his phrasing of what he wanted to know vulnerable to the famed manipulation of the Seer.

He had done as she commanded and looked into the yawning chasm at her feet over which she was suspended on a hanging platform, rocking unsteadily back and forth. The image that looked back at him from the darkness below was his own, attired in linen robes painted with gold, and the crown of Sorbold on his brow.

When will I be able to see myself so attired, should I happen to look in the mirror?
he asked, almost unable to contain his excitement.

On the first day of spring, four years hence
, Manwyn had intoned.
Or a thousand years in the Future. On either day, you will be attired in the same way
.

And what must I do to see myself, so attired, a thousand years hence?
he had asked.

Manwyn grinned even more broadly.

You must find the Child of Time,
she whispered.

And then, as the last syllable had left her lips, the platform on which she lay prone began to swing wildly over the bottomless pit as a tremor shook the very earth on which Talquist was standing.

As dust and grit began to rain down from the ceiling above, also wreathed in darkness, he had quit the temple, running for his life.

More thrilled than he had ever been with it before.

Until the day, little more than a year ago, when he had attended the burial of Leitha. The Dowager Empress had died as she had lived, resolutely and without compromise; she had managed, as she lay all but frozen by the magics he had called upon through the purple scale of the New Beginning, to deliver a stinging shot with her ancient, grotesquely twisted foot to his genitals as he stood above her bed, taunting her, and to move one finger on her bird-claw of a desiccated hand into a commonly recognized gesture of obscenity before he stripped the life from her. At ninety-eight, there had been little enough of it left in her skeletal body anyway.

But after her funeral in the elemental basilica Terreanfor, where he had once served as an acolyte to the sexton, an experience that had allowed him to harvest the Living Stone that made all his steps in usurping the throne possible, he had noticed as they carried her body to its final entombment in the upper chapel that she was attired in the same gold-painted linen garment and crown that he had seen in the paintings of her coronation three-quarters of a century before.

The same such robes as he had worn in his vision from Manwyn.

On either day, you will be attired in the same way
.

The worry had come to consume him, the doubt creeping into his brain in his dreams. He wondered constantly what finding the Child of Time meant, and how it would bring his desired immortality into being. In his deepest moments of despair, it occurred to him that the so-named child might be born free of its bonds, and therefore Time had no power over it. If that was the case, as he grew more to fear each day that it was, perhaps the she-witch of a Seer merely was suggesting that such a creature could transport him into the Future.

And that he would be attired in his gold-painted linen robes of state and crown as he was carried on his burial litter to his catafalque beneath the stained glass windows in the upper chapel of Terreanfor.

While Talquist, stalwart atheist that he was, did not fear punishment for his crimes in the Afterlife, he was terrified of Oblivion.

“I asked Manwyn what I needed to do to attain eternal life,” he said to the Diviner, pushing the abhorrent memory out of his mind. “She told me, in turn, that I must find the Child of Time.”

“And do you know who or what that is? Have you ever heard of the Child of Time?”

“No. I have no idea.” His mind went to Manwyn’s sister, Rhonwyn, the Seer of the Present, who had indicated the whereabouts of the child, in the Orlandan keep known as Haguefort, as the night of the calendar’s last day passed into the day of Yule. He had sent a cohort of his soldiers, clothed in the colors of the Lord Cymrian’s regiment, who had never returned. Rhonwyn was able to tell him nothing of use after that, being limited in her sight to the Present; in his anger, he had tossed her from the window of his tower into the abyss a thousand feet below. “Is this a name or title that you have heard in your divinations, possibly at the turn of this year?”

“Indeed not,” said the Diviner.

“Then what can you do to discover what this means?” Talquist swallowed, trying to keep his voice from cracking under the strain. “Can you help me, Hjorst?”

The Diviner affixed him with the steady, troubled gaze of his devouringly dark eyes for a moment. Then he exhaled.

“I will try,” he said. “But we must choose the right kind of divination to undertake, as I can only perform one. Do you have any idea as to what kind you would want?”

The emperor smiled.

“The kind which will be unquestionably right. Because, Hjorst, the fate of the Middle Continent depends upon it.”

25

GURGUS PEAK, YLORC

The fire was crackling merrily on the enormous hearth that Rhapsody had once observed was big enough to allow an oxcart team to be roasted whole.

She was now comfortably ensconced in front of it in a large, ugly padded leather chair with grotesquely cheerful floral pillows that her Bolg friends had kept for her from the days when she had lived within the mountain. Even after her marriage and relocation to the other side of the Middle Continent, the miserable chair had remained in the council room behind the thrones in the Great Hall, untouched and unsat in.

Achmed still treasured the memory of the look of horror on her face when he and Grunthor had solemnly presented it to her for her birthday the year the three of them had taken the mountain, a look which had quickly melted into the sweetest of smiles amid her almost-sincere thanks. Watching her curled up in it now, beneath an equally ugly lap rug, writing furiously in a leather-bound notebook while reading from the ancient scrolls that contained the schematics of the Lightcatcher, the firelight mirroring her moods, crackling when she was scratching enthusiastically with her quill, settling into softer embers when she was lost in thought, it was almost like old times.

Almost,
he thought sourly.

Meridion drowsed beneath a soft blanket on her shoulder. He had been highly entertaining earlier in the evening, mimicking her singing of her evening vespers and, later, the songs she sang to him, like a tiny mockingbird, buzzing like a lizard and burping like a drunkard, causing Grunthor to laugh until the heavy pine council table shook. Rath, who was sitting nearer to the window, watched with what seemed to be amusement in his large black eyes, and even Achmed hid a smile from time to time at the outrageous sounds coming from the small baby.

He had driven his mother to distraction by blowing bubbles at her breast when she tried to feed him, making flatulent sounds with his tiny mouth against her skin, then giggling infectiously, until at last he settled down to vigorous nursing that caused Rhapsody to alternately wince or gasp. His feeding was followed by a ridiculously loud belch and a collapse into a milk stupor, his tiny dragonesque eyes staring blankly at the ceiling above him. When they finally closed, it was as if he had suddenly become boneless; his head hung off Rhapsody’s shoulder as if tied by a thread to his neck, until she pulled him gently against her own, caressing his back as she returned to her reading.