The Merchant Emperor (7 page)

Unlike her father, she found such things terrifying.

The dark mountains of coins were piled high in captain’s chests and hammocked in massive sails strung from ropes that were moored to the walls of the cave with rigging hardware. Wrecked prows and decks of ships loomed throughout the cavern, as did anchors, masts, and several salt-encrusted figureheads. The eyes of the wooden women adorning those figureheads seemed to stare at her in the dark.

In the center of the great cave was the lagoon of salt water Rhapsody had described, complete with waves that rolled gently to the muddy edges. She could see shapes and shadows of more objects displayed within the waves like offshore rocky formations, but the darkness was too deep to make out what they were.

She did not see what she had expected to find, the enormous shadow of an injured dragon.

“Elynsynos?” she called again. Her voice echoed up and around the gargantuan cave, repeating the beast’s name over and over.

Elynsynos? Elynsynos? Elynsynos? Elynsyn—Elyn—El—en—sin—

No sound answered her.

I
heard
her,
she thought, fighting back panic as cold sweat sprang from her, leaving her feeling faint.
I
know
I did.

Rhapsody’s voice spoke softly so that it echoed off the surface of the water and vibrated in the ripples it made.

If she is missing, when you report to Gavin, tell him to seal the cave. There is great treasure there, much of it not readily recognizable.

“No,” Melisande whimpered aloud. “Don’t tell me she’s not here. I’ve come such a long way. Maybe she’s just hiding. Please, please, don’t tell me she’s gone.”

“Elynsynos?” she called again, her voice sounding thin and desperate.

The cave thudded with empty silence.

If that lair is plundered, it would mean even greater woe to the continent than it will have already experienced with her loss,
said the magical voice.
And take nothing, Melisande—not even a pebble. To do so would be a desecration.

Her own voice spoke aloud in answer, repeating the words she had said to the Lady Cymrian.

I understand.

I know you do.
Rhapsody’s answer had been soft with sorrow, and now it was even more mournful, echoing off the dark walls, drowning in the gently lapping waves.
Understand this as well—if through your efforts Elynsynos is found and restored to health, you will be doing this continent one of the greatest services that has ever been done it. And even if it is too late—even if it is, you will be safeguarding more than I can possibly explain.

I’m ready,
her own voice replied in her ear, as it had on that night in winter.

“No I’m
not
!” Melisande shouted. “Why did you send me here? Why would you make me come here if she’s
dead
? She can’t be dead. She
can’t
be!” Tears of rage and pain sprang, hot, from her eyes.

She could feel the warmth on her cheek where Rhapsody had kissed her, and brushed her hand over the place angrily.

We wouldn’t be sending you if we didn’t believe it. I love you, Melisande. Travel well.

“She
has
to be here! I
heard
her!
Elynsynos!
” Melisande screamed, turning around blindly in the near-dark.

From behind a barrier of coins and gems, a horrific groan went up.

Her scalp tingling with dread and hope, Melisande scrambled to the pile of treasure and started to climb, slipping and falling as she tried to summit it. It took her several attempts to reach the crest, scattering gold pieces in every direction as she did, but finally she pulled herself to the top and looked over it.

Near the lapping water’s edge lay a body in the dark, human in shape, prone in the sand.

Could that be Elynsynos?
Melisande thought anxiously. Every Cymrian child knew the tale of how the beast had taken human, or rather Seren, form to attract the notice of Merithyn the Explorer, but she had expected the dragon to be in her natural serpentine state. She slid down the other side of the moraine of treasure and ran clumsily to the water’s edge, where she fell on her knees beside the body. Then, her hands shaking violently, she held up the glowing spore, wincing at what she beheld.

The woman lay motionless, her face in the cold sand. On one side of her body the clothing was scorched, in some places to ashes, the skin beneath it blistered in horrific coal-colored burns that oozed red. If she was breathing at all, it was shallowly—Melisande could detect no movement whatsoever at her waist, which was scarred black.

Beside the body were scattered fragments of fish bones and traces of kelp, like that she could see floating in the shallows of the lagoon. Gently the little girl slid her hand under the woman’s shoulder and turned her slightly onto the side that had not been burned to give her more access to the air. She gasped in horror.

The woman’s left eye was poached white like an egg, swollen from beneath a tattered lid. Her face was half obscured by a thick, striated scab of charred skin, obliterating her ability to be recognized. That which remained unburned was dark and hirsute, its untouched eye fixed on the ceiling.

“Elynsynos?” Melisande whispered.

The woman’s remaining eye blinked, but she said nothing.

This can’t be the dragon,
Melisande thought as her stomach turned over, threatening to spill its contents onto the sand. She fought her gorge back down as the voice that had been speaking to her since her entrance to the sacred lands spoke again.

They should comb the woods for a lost Firbolg midwife named Krinsel.

It took a moment for the words to register in her mind. Then she looked again at what remained of the woman’s face and suddenly realized why she appeared so dark and hirsute—she was of a bastard race of demi-humans who lived in the far mountains. Though Melisande had heard many childish tales of the Firbolg race, considered monsters by the humans of Roland, Rhapsody had taught her another view of them, and she herself had loved Grunthor, the giant Sergeant-Major, himself half Bolg, from the first time she had met him in early childhood.

“Krinsel?” Melisande asked. She leaned closer to the wounded woman. “Are you Krinsel?”

With great effort, the woman nodded once.

Perhaps there had been something so overwhelming in the prospect of discovering an injured dragon that Melisande had been able to distance herself from the possibility of real intervention. She had believed she would be given instructions, then would run for all her might back to Gavin, for surely no ten-year-old could be expected to minister to the wounds of such a beast. But now, upon discovering no beast but a flesh-and-blood being that was suffering on the sand in front of her, reality returned with a vengeance, and she began to weep, uncertain of what she should do.

“Dear All-God,” she murmured as she ran her hand over her hair. “Dear All-God—”

The Firbolg woman strained to form a word. “Water,” she croaked.

The word was not a request, but delivered, softly as it was, in the calm, commanding voice of one who had brought scores of children into a world of pain. Something in the tone was so intractable that Melisande’s foggy mind cleared instantly. She tore into her pack and quickly produced the waterskin, holding it carefully to the disfigured woman’s lips. Krinsel drank in desperation, then closed her remaining eye and laid her head back on the sand.

“Can you—can you walk?” Melisande asked. “I could help you—”

“You—alone?”

“Yes—I mean, no,” Melisande stammered. “There is a healer nearby, about a day’s journey, and the Invoker—”

“Bring—them.”

“All right,” the little girl said, rising. “I’ll run as fast as I can. Hold on, and I will be back—”

The Firbolg midwife shook her head. “Wait for—morning,” she whispered. “Dark now.”

Melisande glanced back up the lightless tunnel and wondered how she knew. She surmised that the injured woman had been living off kelp and whatever fish she could catch in the shallows, but there was no fresh water in the cave, and the thirst, coupled with the burns, must be torturous. “Very well,” she said at last. “You must eat. I have some apples, and the juice will be good for the thirst.”

The Bolg woman said nothing, but made a faint attempt to nod.

“Did—Elynsynos do this to you?” Melisande asked as she rooted through her pack for food that would soothe the woman’s tattered throat.

A slight shake of the head was all Krinsel could muster. “Anwyn,” she whispered.

“Anwyn? Anwyn’s dead—” Melisande began, but then remembered there were many things in the world that she, the insignificant sister of the young duke of Navarne, was not privy to.
That needs to come to an end,
she thought as she pulled the knife from her boot sheath and began to pare down the apple.
If I’m going to be sent on missions like this, I need to know what’s actually going on. I’m going to have to speak to the Lord Cymrian about this as soon as I get back
.

The impudence of the thought made her cringe a moment later, and she set about tending to the woman’s needs as best she could until exhaustion overcame her. She stretched out beside the Bolg midwife and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep on the sand.

How long she lay there she would never know, but she awoke to the sound of Krinsel’s ragged breathing, sand impressed into her skin and hair. She sat up and leaned over the woman in the dark. The spore had extinguished; only the faintest of light remained in the cave from the flames in the chandeliers, but even in that dim illumination Krinsel’s remaining skin appeared grayer, more sallow than she thought it had been when she first saw it.

“Is it morning yet?” she whispered to the disfigured woman.

Krinsel nodded slightly, her eyes still closed.

“How can you tell?”

The scarred forehead wrinkled in the effort to form words.

“Tide—is—out.”

Melisande turned and saw that she was right. The water in the lagoon had withdrawn by a distance of a score of paces. She rose and followed the shoreline deeper into the cave, closer to the objects in the lagoon. One appeared to be shaped like a giant fork, another had the outline of a woman with a fish’s tail. Everything else had receded into the dark.

Melisande turned back, brushing the sand from her trousers and shirt as best she could.

“I’m going for help,” she said. She took the waterskin from her pack and laid it gently on the woman’s abdomen, taking care to avoid the most badly burned area, and positioned her hand atop it. “I’m leaving the remains of the supplies here, too; they are next to you, here, where you can reach them. I’ll be back, Krinsel, just hold on a little longer, please.”

The Bolg midwife did not respond.

She is considered a great leader among her peopl
e
,
Melisande thought, remembering Rhapsody’s tales of Bolg clan society, and how different it was from human rulership. She had liked the fact that the women who assisted in birth were valued among almost every other faction, and that children were considered valuable as well.
The most valuable warrior would be left to bleed to death on the battlefield when measured against the needs of a laboring woman. One represents only the present, the other, the future
, Rhapsody had said.

Krinsel coughed weakly, convulsed, then went still again.

I’m going to save you,
Melisande thought. Dread and fear had been banished by her sleep in the dragon’s cave; now she felt only determination and a sense of focused mission.

“I’ll be back,” she promised again as she tied her boots and leggings. “I’ll be back soon.”

She hurried up the long and winding tunnel, out into the fresh air again, and made her way as quickly as she could around Mirror Lake to where the Invoker said he would be waiting.

The sun had risen halfway up the welkin of the sky; the day was later than she had hoped, and the way longer than she remembered it. She stopped a few times to rest, but only for a few moments, driven on by the urgency that had taken root in her belly. She tried not to think about the sight of the woman’s face, but it haunted her as she ran.

She had gotten only halfway around the shoreline when dusk began to set in. Birds twittered nervously as the air began to grow heavier with the moisture of night. The wind picked up, blowing her curly tresses in her face, so she stopped long enough to bind them back, when in the near distance a howl rose on the wind behind her.

Wolves—dear All-God, no,
she thought as her blood ran cold,
no, not now. I have to get help for Krinsel. And if I die, what will Gwydion do? He’ll be all alone in the world.

She broke into a blind run, darting haphazardly through the underbrush, pushing aside the wild berry bushes and silvery thorns that scratched her face and snagged her hair. Her heart beat wildly in her chest, drowning out her common sense and causing her to gasp for air. The woods were losing light by the moment, the gleaming white tree trunks growing gray with the setting sun. The shore of Mirror Lake was quickly lost to sight as she scrambled through the thickets, her desperation taking her off course and losing her way even more profoundly.

And then, all at once, she was falling, sucked down from the faint light into blackness. For a moment there was only air around her; then, with a sickening
thud,
the wind was knocked out of her, and she struggled for breath, sinking in mud and dead leaves that swelled around her head. She tried to call for help, but the muck rushed into her mouth, choking her.

In that moment, Melisande knew with adult certainty, even at the mere age of not quite ten years, that when she tried to take another breath, she would only be able to inhale mud and the detritus from the forest floor, that no air would come into her lungs.

That she was dying.

She did not think of Krinsel, who until that moment had been foremost in her mind. The thought of leaving her brother Gwydion behind also vanished, as did any thought of the future, of rejoining her parents beyond the Veil of Hoen in the Afterlife.
At least I am buried,
she thought without sorrow.
My body will not be torn to pieces and devoured by coyotes, the way that poor woman we found was. The earth is my grave
.