Read Online The Merchant Emperor by Elizabeth Haydon - Free Book Online
Authors: Elizabeth Haydon
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grasped it and was pulled, amid the sucking of mud, out of the devouring mire, coated with muck to her hairline, back into the air of the world again.
A strong, rough hand grasped her by the back of her vest and swung her away from the hole.
“Lady Melisande Navarne, were you running in a forest at night?” came the gruff, familiar voice of the Invoker. He set her down on the forest floor.
The little girl wiped the sludge from her eyes, opening two gleaming white spheres in an otherwise black shadow in the last rays of the setting sun.
Then she spat out the mud that had filled her mouth a moment before.
“Yes,” she said. “I was running from wolves.”
“No, you were not,” Gavin said solemnly. “There are no wolves in these woods, just coyotes. And you should never turn your back on either of them, nor should you run in a forest you don’t know, for fear of deadfall such as the one you have just escaped. Haven’t you learned anything in our time together?”
“Apparently not,” Melisande said. She made another pass with the back of her sleeve at her mouth, succeeding only in filling it with more mud.
For the first time since she had been with him, the Invoker laughed.
“Follow me to the lake,” he said, taking her by the shoulder. “It will be cold, but better than dragging around twice your weight in mire. Did you find the dragon’s lair?” The little girl nodded in the dark. “And what did you discover there?”
“I came upon the Bolg midwife Rhapsody asked your foresters to look for,” Melisande replied. She spat again into the underbrush as she walked beside the Invoker. “She is gravely injured—she needs help right away.”
Gavin nodded. “And the dragon?”
Melisande sighed sadly as the surface of Mirror Lake appeared beyond the bracken, gleaming with mist in the dusk. She went to the water’s edge and scooped what liquid was not in icy form into her hands, then splashed it onto her face. She did so again, but this time took some into her mouth, which she cleared, then spat out the liquid dirt.
The taste of the grave remained.
“Seal the cave,” she said.
THE FAR NORTHEASTERN WILDS OF THE KREVENSFIELD PLAIN
Deep within the earth in the cold northeastern desert wastelands, another dragon, the dragon Anwyn, daughter of Elynsynos, felt herself dying.
The beast had been lying within the relatively small comfort of the earth for as long as her tattered mind could remember. That she was in the broken ruins of a place of healing was only intermittently clear to her; her memory had been limited to only the things in the forgotten Past, a waste, given that she had once been the indisputably powerful Seer of that realm, into which only a few had sight.
Today she was mourning, though she was not certain why.
If her mind had been whole, it would have remembered that the event she was grieving was the relatively recent murder of her sister, the middle of the trio of triplets to which she belonged, born of an ancient mariner of a Firstborn race and the dragon who had fallen in love with him, taken a human form, and given birth to the three cursed and powerful offspring. Her sister Rhonwyn had been the one of the three that was mildest and gentlest, though her fragility of thought was maddening to most who knew her. She had been incapable of holding on to the Present beyond the moment that it had turned into the Past, a few seconds after it had occurred, and so she spent most of her life alone in an abbey in Sepulvarta, the holy City of Reason, sought after only by a few pilgrims looking for her fleeting guidance.
Until recently, when she had been thrown a thousand feet to her death from a tower into a chasm, an ignominious end to the most harmless of the Manteids, the Seers of the Past, Present, and Future.
Thrown by the hand of a man who was about to take hold of the royal scepter of state of a nation.
Anwyn, who when in the human form she was given at birth was the Seer of the
A strong, rough hand grasped her by the back of her vest and swung her away from the hole.
“Lady Melisande Navarne, were you running in a forest at night?” came the gruff, familiar voice of the Invoker. He set her down on the forest floor.
The little girl wiped the sludge from her eyes, opening two gleaming white spheres in an otherwise black shadow in the last rays of the setting sun.
Then she spat out the mud that had filled her mouth a moment before.
“Yes,” she said. “I was running from wolves.”
“No, you were not,” Gavin said solemnly. “There are no wolves in these woods, just coyotes. And you should never turn your back on either of them, nor should you run in a forest you don’t know, for fear of deadfall such as the one you have just escaped. Haven’t you learned anything in our time together?”
“Apparently not,” Melisande said. She made another pass with the back of her sleeve at her mouth, succeeding only in filling it with more mud.
For the first time since she had been with him, the Invoker laughed.
“Follow me to the lake,” he said, taking her by the shoulder. “It will be cold, but better than dragging around twice your weight in mire. Did you find the dragon’s lair?” The little girl nodded in the dark. “And what did you discover there?”
“I came upon the Bolg midwife Rhapsody asked your foresters to look for,” Melisande replied. She spat again into the underbrush as she walked beside the Invoker. “She is gravely injured—she needs help right away.”
Gavin nodded. “And the dragon?”
Melisande sighed sadly as the surface of Mirror Lake appeared beyond the bracken, gleaming with mist in the dusk. She went to the water’s edge and scooped what liquid was not in icy form into her hands, then splashed it onto her face. She did so again, but this time took some into her mouth, which she cleared, then spat out the liquid dirt.
The taste of the grave remained.
“Seal the cave,” she said.
THE FAR NORTHEASTERN WILDS OF THE KREVENSFIELD PLAIN
Deep within the earth in the cold northeastern desert wastelands, another dragon, the dragon Anwyn, daughter of Elynsynos, felt herself dying.
The beast had been lying within the relatively small comfort of the earth for as long as her tattered mind could remember. That she was in the broken ruins of a place of healing was only intermittently clear to her; her memory had been limited to only the things in the forgotten Past, a waste, given that she had once been the indisputably powerful Seer of that realm, into which only a few had sight.
Today she was mourning, though she was not certain why.
If her mind had been whole, it would have remembered that the event she was grieving was the relatively recent murder of her sister, the middle of the trio of triplets to which she belonged, born of an ancient mariner of a Firstborn race and the dragon who had fallen in love with him, taken a human form, and given birth to the three cursed and powerful offspring. Her sister Rhonwyn had been the one of the three that was mildest and gentlest, though her fragility of thought was maddening to most who knew her. She had been incapable of holding on to the Present beyond the moment that it had turned into the Past, a few seconds after it had occurred, and so she spent most of her life alone in an abbey in Sepulvarta, the holy City of Reason, sought after only by a few pilgrims looking for her fleeting guidance.
Until recently, when she had been thrown a thousand feet to her death from a tower into a chasm, an ignominious end to the most harmless of the Manteids, the Seers of the Past, Present, and Future.
Thrown by the hand of a man who was about to take hold of the royal scepter of state of a nation.
Anwyn, who when in the human form she was given at birth was the Seer of the
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