The Merchant Emperor (48 page)

She struggled to her feet and ran, her free arm pressed against her ribcage, due west, away from the mountains and the other women, the dragon in fast pursuit. She had made it fewer than forty paces, zigzagging, when the other claw struck again, seizing her by the back of her shirt and dragging her to a halt.

Anwyn lifted her off the ground again and dangled her in the air once more.

“Leaving so soon? Surely not.”

Rhapsody flicked her wrist, bringing forward a dagger, and quickly sliced her shirt open in the front, freeing herself and falling to the ground again.

“No, surely not,” she muttered as she pulled herself to her feet and took off to the west once more.

Another sweep of the claw caught her back, and Rhapsody felt the sting of her skin as it tore open. She fell to the ground, and the blow missed her, shouting to Analise in Ancient Lirin.

“Get up into the piedmont—head for the mountain!”

The dragon reared up to breathe down on her, supine on the ground.

Then spun around in shock.

Melisande pulled her dragon claw dagger out of the beast’s tail, where she had planted it with a two-handed overhead blow.

“Get away from my grandmother!” she screamed, burying the weapon in Anwyn’s foot claw as the wyrm lashed its torn tail from side to side, splattering the ground with black blood in the darkness.

Rhapsody saw the fury in the dragon’s eyes as the beast looked behind her. “Melisande, run!” she shouted, scrambling to her feet again.
“Run!”
Seeing the wyrm turning toward the little girl, she backed away to the west.

“Coward,” she said, pointing her finger and using the Naming ability to place the words directly into the monster’s ear. “Chasing a child with a dagger instead of a woman with a sword. You are a pathetic excuse for a dragon, Anwyn. Perhaps, rather than
wyrm
, you are actually
worm
.”

The dragon’s enormous head snapped back around. She crawled forward, following Rhapsody westward, where she stood alone in the open desert field.

“I will eat your eyes,” the dragon whispered. “And your cursed mouth, which utters such lies.”

“I suggest you eat something else,” the Iliachenva’ar said.

She raised the sword above her head and spoke the name of the evening star hanging low to the horizon, a blue white one named Helaphon, named by the Lirin of this land for a warrior queen of long ago.

The open field at the edge of the steppes was suddenly blanketed with an ethereal light as bright as midday, though silver in hue. It flooded over Rhapsody, causing her hair to shine silver as well, and the beast, whose eyes glowed as they opened wide in shock.

Then, with a thunderous roar, the fire of the star blasted down on both of them, the woman and the dragon, illuminating their outlines as it flooded over them, rolling over the steppes and lighting the highgrass into a low inferno for miles around.

45

At first nothing but silence and the crackling of burning grass reigned in the desert to the west of the mountains.

Then the wind picked up, whining mournfully, whipping through the steppes in the dark. After a moment, the wind’s dirge was joined by the wailing of a terrified child.

“No!” Melisande sobbed from halfway up the piedmont. “No, please, no.”

“Shhh, child,” Analise whispered, pulling her into her arms and letting the girl bury her face in her shoulder. “Quiet now. We are not yet out of danger.”

As the words left her lips, a burning swale of grass flexed and moved.

Two enormous eyes, glowing eerily blue in the darkness amid the orange flames, opened slowly, the light from them shining like dim beacons in the fog of the sea.

Then the huge mound stretched slowly, scales falling from her hide in great chunks of black soot. She loosed a grisly sound of agony, then crawled slowly to the fissure in the earth from which she had emerged in the first place.

And slid painfully into it, disappearing into the ground.

Silence returned to the plain.

A few moments later, another, smaller ridge of grass, this one not burning, stretched as well and stood up carefully. As it did, hails of ash fell from it as well; Rhapsody was black from head to toe, her golden hair was smeared with creosote, hanging loose as the charred remnants of her hair ribbon crumbled and fell to the ground, along with her clothing.

She shook herself like a dog coming out of a lake, as even more ash fell from her now naked body.

“
Hrekin
,” the living shadow muttered angrily. “How many bloody times do I have to
kill her
?”

Melisande broke from Analise’s embrace and ran, stumbling and sliding, down the grade of the piedmont and across the field, skirting the burning grass which was beginning to extinguish. She came to a halt as the Lady Cymrian held up her hand.

“Wait, Melly; could you get my pack and bring it with you?”

The little girl nodded quickly and complied as Analise, Gyllian, and Krinsel began coming forth from their cover in the rocks. Rhapsody looked around and swore again.

“Double
hrekin
,” she said angrily. “I fried the goats. And I didn’t even kill the dragon.
Hrekin
.” She took the pack from Melisande who, in spite of the coating of soot and ash, threw her arms around her grandmother.

“It’s all right, Melly,” she said, kissing the girl delicately on the top of her head. “Try not to get too much of this on you—it smells terrible, and it’s almost impossible to get it out of your nose once it gets in there.” She looked at herself again in disgust.

“Ugh.”

*   *   *

“I cannot believe I killed the goats,” Rhapsody muttered as she rinsed herself off in the artesian stream she found at the base of the piedmont. She had sung her Naming note into the wind, and woven the name of water into the song; the stream had answered, and Rhapsody had slipped into it gratefully.

Gyllian chuckled as the Lady Cymrian shook the water off herself.

“They were an annoyance anyway. And we have goats in Undervale. Be of good cheer, m’lady. I have seen you summon starfire once before, at the battle with the Fallen at the Moot during the Cymrian Council, but until this day I had not known that you could summon it upon
yourself
and still survive. To say that you have risen in my estimation would be an understatement.”

Rhapsody was digging through her pack. She pulled forth her spare set of clothes and quickly set about rectifying her nakedness.

“Don’t be impressed so easily, Gyllian,” she said as she brushed away the last of the wet ashes that had once been her linen shirt, trousers, and boots, then donned their replacements. “Anwyn apparently survived it also, which makes the
second
time for her. I suppose I should have known that a dragon has all of the five elemental lores nascent in its blood, as so therefore would be difficult to destroy with a combination of ether and fire. Well, at least I now know where she is. I should have guessed she was hiding in Kurimah Milani; I hadn’t realized we were near to it, coming from this direction. The last time I was here we approached from the west.”

“Two little known historical points, m’lady,” said Gyllian in amusement as she watched the Lady Cymrian lace up her trousers, “the legends say that Kurimah Milani was originally built, or partially built, by ancestors of the indigenous Nain that dwelt in the lands of and near the Deep Kingdom in the era before the arrival of the Cymrians, or even the humans, to the lands south of here. And one of the major resources utilized in constructing what is said to have been one of the architectural and artistic marvels of that age was the Molten River, known by a different name at the time, Fûrinazen. It is the legendary river of hot lava and liquid gold that divides the lands of the Nain of the Deep Kingdom from those of the dragon Witheragh, who guards the entrance to both. So you will be coping with not one, but two wyrms, in the space of a few hours.”

“Have you ever met Witheragh?” Rhapsody asked.

“Goodness, no. But my father has had commerce with him, as well as diplomatic interaction. I can’t say that he has ever enjoyed it much.”

“Well, blessedly, the intelligence I have about him indicates that he is considered to be reliable in his agreements, even if he is hard to reason with and avaricious,” Rhapsody said. She bound her hair back in the last of the surviving black ribbons.

Gyllian’s brows drew together. “Considered so by whom? I’m not sure Faedryth would concur.”

The Lady Cymrian smiled. “By those of his own kind,” she said, coming over to where Krinsel was sitting and crouching down before her. “I have had a considerable amount of interaction with dragons over the last few years, including marrying and giving birth to one. I no longer am afraid to negotiate with one, even one I haven’t met, as long as I have forewarning of its temperament.” She waited until Krinsel gave silent permission, and then opened the outer folds of the mist cloak.

Meridion was asleep, his tiny mouth making suckling motions, a scowl on his face.

Rhapsody hid her smile and closed the folds carefully again.

“You truly are your father’s son,” she whispered fondly. “Only the two of you could sleep through a dragon battle and a strike of starfire.”

“Another reason to be glad to be rid of the goats,” said Analise. “Unlike the battle and the starfire, they woke him up every time they started bleating.”

Rhapsody turned back to the four women who were eyeing her uncertainly.

“How much farther to the Molten River?” she asked Gyllian.

“If we press on through the night, we will be there by morning.”

Rhapsody smiled encouragingly.

“Then let us press on,” she said.

She shouldered her much lighter pack and took up her walking stick, putting her hand out to Melisande Navarne, who happily took it.

And followed the oldest child of the Nain king to the mountain passes that would lead them into Undervale, the hidden realm of the mysterious Deep Kingdom.

46

AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE NAIN KINGDOM, BESIDE THE MOLTEN RIVER

“The secret to talking with a dragon is to keep breathing.”

The eyes of the four women across from Rhapsody in the mouth of the cave were set in four different expressions. The youngest of the group, Melisande Navarne, nodded, a steady gaze meeting that of her adopted grandmother, as if she was agreeing with her assessment of the weather. Krinsel, the Bolg midwife, was staring at her with narrowed eyes, but that was the expression that almost always would be seen on Krinsel’s face. Analise’s silver eyes were wide in alarm, but Gyllian’s gaze was full of amusement.

“Well, I assume that’s the goal
after
talking with a dragon as well,” she said humorously.

Rhapsody laughed.

“All right, I put that poorly. What I meant was to keep breathing as evenly as you can. Inhale; count to ten. Exhale slowly to the same count of ten, if possible. Inhale again. And so on. Draconic conversations are almost always overwhelming, but they can be tricky and irritating beyond measure. Steady breathing helps avoid overreaction on both sides.”

The light of the Molten River, the moving trail of lava mixed with liquid gold that divided the Deep Kingdom of the Nain from the realm of the wyrm Witheragh, splashed a brilliance luminescence on the earthen walls of the cavern, though the river itself was still out of sight. Even as far away as they were, the heat from the river was intense, causing all but Krinsel and Rhapsody to begin shedding their cloaks.

Analise’s face had returned to its mask of stoic calm, but Rhapsody knew that being within the solid enclosure of the mountains, away from the sheltering sky, was a torment for her Liringlas soul. She handed her walking stick to Melisande, then went to her oldest friend and embraced her gently.

“I know what this is costing you,” she said quietly in the language of the old world. “It is a gift beyond measure that you have given me; thank you for making the sacrifice.”

“
Hrekin
,” Analise murmured into her ear the word for excrement in the tongue of the Bolg. Rhapsody choked, then laughed aloud, as Analise reverted to Ancient Lirin. “It is a joy to be of service to my sovereign, a pleasure to be of help to my friend, and literally the very least I can do, given
your
sacrifice for me.”

The humor left Rhapsody’s eyes; she released Analise and gently patted her shoulder. Then she turned to the others.

“I suggest that once Gyllian indicates we are at the border, you all remain out of sight and out of range. Melisande, I want you to stay beside Her Highness; I am grateful for your intercession earlier with Anwyn, but this is an entirely different situation, and we need to follow Gyllian’s lead in these lands.” The little girl nodded. “I’ll hold on to my own pack at this point; if Witheragh deprives me of my clothing as Anwyn did, I will be entering the Deep Kingdom naked anyway, as I am now out of spare outfits.”

The adult women chuckled. Melisande initially appeared horrified, but once she understood the joke, she smiled as well. Rhapsody turned to Krinsel. Wordlessly she asked if the Bolg midwife was all right, and received a nod in reply. Then she came to her and opened the drape of the mist cloak.

Meridion’s face lit up upon beholding her, and he let out a cackle of delight.

Rhapsody’s eyes filled with tears as she returned his grin. She kissed his nose, his hands and belly, then began quietly crooning him his lullabye, the song they had learned together while trapped within the sea cave, music of the waves that carried an endless number of stories over Time.

Meridion’s dragonesque eyes remained trained intently on her. Then, after a few moments, they began to droop, and his toothless grin settled into a complacent smile as his eyes closed.

“He will be ferociously hungry when he wakes,” Rhapsody said softly as she closed the mist cloak around him again. “My breasts hurt just thinking about it. All right, I had best get to this. With any luck this parley will be brief.” She handed Melisande her walking stick, squeezed Krinsel’s upper arm, and then followed Gyllian down the brightening tunnel.