The Merchant Emperor (9 page)

“Omet.”

“Yes, Your Majesty?”

“Take three of the other artisans up to the peak and remove the cover of the dome. It’s almost morning.” Achmed felt the slight vibration of Omet’s head nodding in assent, but kept his attention on the dying man in front of him as Omet started across the massive room for the door.

Rhapsody exhaled, trying force the panic out with her breath. She pushed everything else from her mind and focused her concentration on Rath again.

There was a beauty, a magic in this dying entity that she had seen before, twice. It defied her ability to put words to, strange for a Lirin Namer who by profession sought to know every True Name in the world. She could find the music in almost anything—the voice of the earth, the vibration of the stars, the whispers of meadow grass, the thundering of the waves of the sea, the crackling of fire—but there was something special about the wind, the element which carried the magic of her mother’s race, that reached down into her heart whenever she was in the presence of those born of it.

As Rath had been born of it, purely and without the pollution of any other element, in the First Age of the world.

Even her friend the Bolg king, as obnoxious and offensive as he could be, and was being now, had been born of it, and she held him in her heart in spite of his surly behavior.

She bent back over the dying Dhracian. His eyes had gone glassy, and he was slowly turning the color of chalk.

“Rath,” she whispered. “Live. Please.”

“That’s the best you can do?” Achmed demanded. “I could have had the piss boy from the third column of the Blasted Heath do that, with seemingly the same outcome.”

“The only other thing I can think of to try is empathic healing, taking his injuries onto myself,” Rhapsody said, searching his neck for his pulse and finding none. “But these injuries are not from the crushing blow of the titan that intervened in the Thrall ritual—it’s the damage done to his heart when it was suddenly torn from its connection with the demon he was attempting to kill. Were I to take that on, to absorb that damage, my guess is that
you
would then have to nurse and wean Meridion, Achmed.”

“I’ve already told you my solution for that—hawks.”

“Not funny, sir.” Grunthor’s voice was uncharacteristically serious. “Yer not to even think o’ doin’ that, Duchess, ’owever important or ancient this bloke may be. That’s an order. An’ don’t threaten the lit’le prince, sir—’e’s my friend and sleepin’ partner.”

Rhapsody looked up at the dome again, then turned quickly and called to Omet, who had just reached the doorway.

“Omet! Wait.”

The young artisan stopped, looking questioningly at the Firbolg king, who exhaled in annoyance, then signaled his permission.

“Do you have any of the frits of glass left over from the original firings?” Rhapsody asked. Omet nodded. “Any of the red?” The artisan nodded again. “Please bring one to me, a little bigger than your hand—but make sure it is one that you have matched exactly to the color keys.” The young man walked back into the recesses of the room as the Three returned their gaze to the dying Dhracian.

“Clarify something for me, Achmed,” Rhapsody said as dark blood began to drip from Rath’s mouth. “In Gwylliam’s time, when this was a Lightforge, rather than a Lightcatcher, the power source was pure elemental fire from the heart of the Earth, piped here from the flamewell in the Loritorium below, right?”

“Yes.” She could almost hear the dust of his clenched teeth in his voice. “It has been adapted to use the light of the sun now instead, as you bloody well know.”

“Don’ think ’e has two hours left in ’im, sir,” Grunthor whispered.

For a moment Rhapsody continued to stare down at Rath, bringing her right hand to rest on his fractured heart. Then, without looking up, she spoke two words, and they echoed strangely in the tower room, as if they came from a deeper part of her.

“Step away,” she said.

She put out her left hand as Omet returned to the stone altar and nervously placed a rectangular piece of red glass onto her palm, then carefully withdrew ten paces, his black eyes glittering in the light of the oil lanterns. Her eyes still locked on Rath, Rhapsody moved it into position in an angle above his heart exactly matching that of the spectrum of broken glass in the dome above.

“Achmed,” she said quietly, “hold this. Here. Keep your fingers to the outside edge.”

The Bolg king obeyed, his mismatched eyes watching intently.

As soon as she was certain of the sureness of Achmed’s grip, Rhapsody slowly released the frit. Then, her hand still on the Dhracian’s heart, slightly lower and to the right in his chest cavity than a human’s, just as Achmed’s was, she took hold of the hilt of her sword and carefully drew it from its sheath of Black Ivory, the same inert stone from which the altar was made.

Daystar Clarion, the ancient weapon of two elements, ether and fire, whispered forth from its sheath, a clear note like the sound of a horn winding as it came. Its blade gleamed with the light of the stars, while tongues of the purest flame licked up it from hilt to tip. Rhapsody took her eyes off Rath long enough to bring the sword into place behind the frit of red glass in Achmed’s hand.

A palm-sized ray of ruby-colored light shone through the frit, gleaming brightly, pulsing as the fire of the sword pulsed. It came to rest on Rath’s heart, just above where Rhapsody’s hand rested.

Four sets of eyes watched intently.

After a long moment, Achmed spoke.

“Nothing is happening. I see no change.”

“Of course you don’t,” Rhapsody whispered crossly. “Shhhh.”

She opened her mouth and intoned a note,
ut
, the first in the common octave of Naming, voicing it a moment later with the word for it in the ancient lore, power from the Before-Time in the earliest days of the world.

Lisele.

At first there was no sign of any change.

Rhapsody’s mind was racing, thinking methodically of the filmy parchment manuscript Achmed had showed her of the plans for this instrumentality, remembering the list of the True Names of the color spectrum, age-old lore that terrified her. It had been graphed in the manuscript in musical script, with the symbols for sharp and flat, and the words in Ancient Serenne, the language of the Lost Island of Serendair.

Blood Saver
#

Blood Letter

Understanding struck her. She made a slight adjustment to her tone, bringing it up a half-step to the sharp of
ut
, and sang the word again.

Lisele
#

Above her hand, the area of Rath’s heart began to glow as red as the light that was shining on it through the frit. The tone that Rhapsody sang vibrated along the surface of his skin, echoing back in the ruby light.

Omet and the Three watched in amazement as the color spread rapidly over and through Rath’s body until it began to shine with a translucence that stung their eyes. Within moments his body was ringing with the tone.

Lisele-ut
#

And healing before their eyes.

The common injuries, the damage sustained where he had been thrown violently across a forest glen, swelled, then disappeared first, shattered ribs mending visibly beneath the surface of his flesh, abrasions knitting back into smooth skin, bruises vanishing. Longer in the process of repair were the deeper wounds, the metaphysical damage caused when the Thrall ritual, the vibrational tie of hunter’s heartbeat to that of prey, had been torn asunder. Rhapsody held the note, breathing in a circular pattern, as the bulging veins in his head and neck receded, his skin grew brighter, the blood that had trickled from his mouth dried and disappeared. Finally, his heartbeat returned, strong enough to be visible, keeping time with the rising and falling of the note Rhapsody sang.

A deep, shuddering gasp issued forth from the Dhracian’s lungs.

Then he began breathing again in a regular rhythm, his body returning to an opacity that expelled the red light from within him, shining on the surface of his skin as it did on Rhapsody’s hand.

After a few moments, when no further signs appeared, Achmed spoke in a low, quiet voice.

“Rhapsody—he’s healed.”

The Lady Cymrian exhaled and let the tone come to an end. “How can you tell?” she whispered back. “He still looks—well, fairly awful.”

“He’s a Dhracian,” the Bolg king replied. “We always look awful. I think you can stop now.” He put the red frit down on the altar beside Rath, and flexed his gloved hand, stretching it to ease the cramping that had come into the fingers.

Rhapsody sheathed the sword; as she did, the room returned to darkness again, broken only by the fading flickering of the distant oil lamp flames. She leaned her head over Rath’s lips, newly healed, and listened to the tides of his breath in time with the strong beating of his heart. Then she removed her hand and looked at the Bolg king, exhaling deeply once again.

“I believe you are right,” she said softly. “I think he is as better as we can make him without knowing his True Name. We should let him sleep now—you can stand guard over him here if you want to, but it might make sense to move him to a bedchamber where he can get some real sleep.”

“What did you do? How did you activate the lore without the Lightcatcher?”

Rhapsody put her hands to her face, covering it for a moment. She rubbed her eyes, then pulled her hair back off her forehead.

“Omet—” she began, but the young glass artisan had already taken the hint. He put his hands together, palm to palm, and bowed, then hurried from the room, a look of stark amazement still on his face. As soon as the heavy door was closed, Rhapsody turned to her two friends.

“I can’t really explain it to you shortly except to convey this—you know that all of the universe is made up of vibration, of light in the color spectrum, energy, and sound. The basic function of the Lightcatcher is to direct all three kinds of the purest forms of each of those types of vibration together, focusing it where the specific lore, like healing, is needed or wanted. The wheel, the second piece of the instrumentality, focuses the colored light and provides the sound when it is functioning.”

“That note you were singing?”

“Yes—and the name. I can explain this further to you, most likely within a circle of protection to prevent being overheard, sometime tomorrow, but right now I am exhausted.”

As Achmed and Grunthor continued to stare down at the sleeping Dhracian, Rhapsody hurried to the speaking tubes in the corner of the vast cylindrical room, snapping one of them open.

“Yltha?”

A moment later the reply came up the tube. “Yes, First Woman?”

“Please bring Meridion to me as quickly as you can. I am literally about to explode, and believe me,
no one
wants that.”

7

PALACE OF JIERNA TAL, JIERNA’SID, SORBOLD

When Talquist arrived at the bottom of the Great Stair, he laughed aloud in delight.

Standing in the glorious light of the entryway, its towering marble walls illuminated by four hundred candle sconces, were two of the guests whose attendance he had most gleefully anticipated.

Beliac, the king of Golgarn, a seafaring nation to the east of Sorbold’s southern coastline, was nervously glancing around the palace of Jierna Tal, his eyes glittering. He was attired in the traveling garments of his office, a military cloak and mantle with a drape at the shoulders in deeply resonant blue, much like the color of the water of the seacoast that was the entire southern border of his realm, with a simple silver circlet crowning his brow. Upon seeing that, except for Jierna Tal’s staff, the Diviner, and the Emperor Presumptive himself, he was alone in the entryway, Beliac seemed to relax somewhat, Talquist noted. It was the first time the king of Golgarn had ever been in his palace, had met with him as anything other than the merchant he had been. And Beliac was clearly intimidated.

Talquist was immensely pleased.

Beside Beliac in a similar mantle, gray and trimmed in white fur, stood his even older friend Hjorst, the Diviner of the Hintervold, the cold, frozen realm of permafrost and glaciers to the north of Roland past the Tar’afel River. Talquist suppressed his amusement, knowing the next day would see his friend in the absurd regalia of his station, a massive robe of polar bear fur, a staff browed with curving animal bone, and a random choice of one of his many hats of state, all bearing a lifelike representation of an animal native to his land. Talquist had once been required to carry on a critical negotiation with the Diviner staring across a massive table at the lifelike life-sized model of a sea otter on the man’s head; he could barely contain himself at the time. It was one of his best-kept secrets that the Diviner, whose public persona was that of a forbidding, primitive shaman with a thick gray beard reaching to the center of his chest, from a realm of seemingly endless winter nights and disturbingly long summer days, actually was a well-read anti-ascetic who favored bubbling wines, fragile emasculated pastries, and finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off.