Merchant of Alyss Read online

  “You know,” Hyam persisted. “Her mother knows as well. Shona will never be content with your profession. She will choose her own road. If you refuse her the chance to decide for herself, she will run away. Perhaps through a bad marriage, perhaps through rebellion. But it is coming. You sense this. And you fear this.”

  “She is my daughter. It is my decision. My cousin cannot possibly know whether she would make a capable ruler.”

  “Precisely. Which is why Bayard wants her to come with us. Even if she is not suited to lead, she can learn. And she will grow. And she will return enriched by the process.”

  Timmins struggled to hold his composure. “You will keep her safe?”

  Joelle walked over and fit herself to Hyam’s side. “We will do our best. That is all we can promise.”

  “She is her own person,” Hyam said. “The road carries all the risks that worry you in the night. But you know us both. You know we will do all we can to protect your daughter and bring her home.”

  Timmins turned to his daughter and asked, “This is what you want?”

  “More than anything, Father. More than my next breath.”

  He shuddered. “You understand what it means to accept the role of heir?”

  “How can I? But I know that I want to learn. And be tested. And have this chance to see if I am worthy to lead. And to serve.”

  “Well said,” Joelle murmured.

  Timmins bowed his head, defeated. “Then go with my blessing.”

  Shona embraced him fiercely. “Thank you, Father. Oh, thank you!”

  Hyam turned to where Bayard observed them and said, “We are ready.”

  5

  Early on their third day, they entered the high reaches leading to Rothmore Vale, home to the badland tribe closest to Falmouth Port. The road curved and climbed, then climbed some more, up to a pass flecked by late snows. They descended slowly through severe cutbacks. Twice warriors as rough-hewn as the rocks emerged from caves and offered them a savage salute.

  They shared the Emporis road with the earl’s troops and a motley assortment of traders and wagons. Captain Meda was accompanied by a handsome young corporal named Alembord, who was clearly smitten with Shona. But if the scribe’s daughter even noticed the soldier’s existence, she gave no sign.

  They traversed a high meadow rimmed by razor ridges the locals called fells, then rounded a silver lake fed by a myriad of streams. The wolfhound loped about chasing gophers until Hyam spotted an eagle and called Dama to heel.

  The eagle’s wingspan was broader than Hyam’s reach. The snowy hunter clung to the blue-black sky and circled directly overhead.

  Joelle said, “I wonder what it is like to fly.”

  “Like the Ashanta travel,” he guessed. “Only better. Wings and wind and all the senses alive.”

  “Trace speaks of lost spells that permitted the orb carriers to soar.”

  Hyam nodded to the bird and the sky. He had heard the same.

  She turned from the bird. “Husband, I sense something troubles you.”

  The call came for them to mount up. As they rejoined the trail, the eagle dropped from the sky like a feathered bomb. The wings snapped out at the last possible moment. The bird showed a dancer’s poise as it snared a furry creature with its talons and winged away. Hyam waited until the eagle was a faint speck in the distance to say, “I will tell you tonight.”

  They rode the same shaggy-haired mountain ponies as all the other troops. Midway through the afternoon, clouds gathered and the sky boiled with sullen fury. They arrived at a cluster of corrals and simple stone huts just as the wind strengthened. Hurriedly they off-loaded the animals and took shelter.

  Joelle loved such times and stood outside the doorway to watch the storm’s arrival. The rain moved upon sibilant limbs, a hushed sound that flavored the air with a sweet fragrance. Hyam held his wife and reveled in her laughter every time the lightning illuminated their craggy world.

  They shared their hut with Meda, Shona, Alembord, two traders, and a red-bearded clan shepherd. The cottage roof was designed with such storms in mind, sloped away from the predominant northern wind, with a slanted hole that let out the fire’s smoke yet kept their haven dry. Three sheep were secured in the corner, so pregnant they looked ready to explode at any moment.

  As they shared a simple meal, Hyam noticed Bryna’s appearance and Joelle’s smile of welcome. His wife remained stiffly nervous around the Ashanta elders, but Bryna and Joelle had become fast friends. Hyam watched the Ashanta drift past the fire and settle onto the packed earth next to Joelle. The telepathic race knew no word for either greeting or farewell. But Joelle traced a hand along the space where the apprentice Seer’s face should have been, as warm a hello as Hyam had ever witnessed.

  He decided there would be no better time to confess, “I have been dreaming of dragons.”

  The entire hut turned toward him as he went on, “Actually, it has been one dragon, several dreams. Four, to be precise. They started the morning after I finished sorting the scrolls. The beast has returned before each dawn.”

  Meda asked, “But dragons don’t exist. Do they? Have they ever?”

  Shona replied, “They fly in numerous legends. But none that hold any truth.”

  “Bryna agrees with you,” Joelle said.

  Alembord asked, “Who?”

  “Her Ashanta friend,” Meda explained.

  “She is here now?”

  Joelle said, “She just arrived, yes.”

  It was hard to say who had the wider eyes, the shepherd or the traders or the corporal. The younger merchant said, “The legends come alive and dance in the firelight.”

  Meda asked Hyam, “What happens in your dreams?”

  So Hyam told them. Precisely. Here there was no need to hurry. The fire warmed them, their bellies were full. The rain fell and the lightning punctuated his telling. Hyam described the moment of swift travel, the island, the mountains, the black shoreline. The meadow dotted with large green mounds. The dragon that unfurled and hovered in the air beside him. “The first three nights, the dream was the same. Deep bursts of speech, then rage, then I am blasted by the beast’s fire. All morning I ache from the flames.”

  Meda asked, “A dream leaves you hurting?”

  “I know it is absurd. But the soreness is real enough, I assure you.”

  Joelle interrupted at this point to say, “Bryna has never heard of such a place as this island.”

  Shona’s expression was as awestruck as the traders’. “Nor have I ever read of such an island realm.”

  The fire crackled and hissed for a time, then Joelle asked, “You’re certain this was speech?”

  “Staccato beats. The same each time. As precise as a warrior’s drum. At first I wasn’t sure. But now, yes. The dragon seeks to speak with me.”

  Joelle asked, “Then the dream changed?”

  “This very dawn. The dragon soared up to where I was trapped in the air. It examined me for what seemed like hours. Over and over the beast spoke, low drumbeats timed so precisely I am certain it was an unknown tongue. Finally it grew angry, just like every time before. Only this time it did not blast me. Instead, it flew out, far over the sea, until it vanished in the distance. And then it returned.”

  “And all the while you remained imprisoned in midair.”

  “Yes. When the dragon returned, it held in one claw a golden scroll.”

  Meda and Shona and Joelle all breathed as one. His wife asked, “Like the ones you carry?”

  “I wasn’t certain at first. Then the beast flapped the scroll open. It drifted in the sunlight like a brilliant sail. It was the same. Only a hundred times larger. A thousand.”

  Alembord demanded, “Larger than what?”

  Hyam reached into his pack, drew out one of the scrolls, opened it, and let the fire play over the golden surface. The shepherd muttered fearfully, and the traders were beyond speech. Hyam rolled up the scroll and returned it to his pack. “The beast spoke again
. The impatience it has always shown me was even stronger now, but without the fury. I could feel the pressure of its words, like the storm we watched approach. A great, intense urgency. It shook the scroll and it spoke. It was still speaking when I drew away. It shouted, louder and louder, and the power made my departure even swifter. When I woke up, I was still vibrating from the force.”

  Hyam held out his hand, revealing the tremors that shook his entire arm. “Just speaking of it causes me to shake again.”

  Joelle asked for them all, “What does it mean?”

  He shivered anew from the force of words he did not understand, uttered by a beast who had never existed. “I have no idea.”

  By midmorning of the next day, all the travelers spoke of nothing save Hyam’s dragon dreams.

  The highland meadow narrowed to a ridge broken by a high pass, then broadened to where Meda and Shona and Alembord and Joelle all rode clustered around Hyam. Dama loped ahead, exploring in happy abandon. The storm had departed with the dawn. The sky was impossibly clear, the air crisp.

  Meda mused as they rode, “A beast that large cannot fly.”

  “It doesn’t need to,” Hyam replied, enjoying the discussion enormously, for it eased the dream’s grip. “Seeing as how it exists only in my head.”

  “Tell us again what happened during this morning’s dream,” Shona said.

  So he did. For once, he did not mind being the center of attention. The shepherd who had shared their hut rode a stunted mountain pony, listening in silence as Hyam repeated his dream.

  When he was done, Alembord spoke for the first time since they’d entered the new vale. “And then once again it held out the golden scroll.”

  “As long as the Falmouth gates are tall,” Hyam replied.

  Joelle said, “And marked with the same strokes as on the ones you carry.”

  “Identical.”

  The route narrowed as it crested a rise. They looked down into Rothmore Vale, broad as a bowl and filled with a village of over a thousand dwellings. At its center rose a mound that was crowned by a larger hall of stone and wood. When they arrived at the valley floor, the shepherd rode on ahead, the pony making swift time.

  Meda watched his departure, then returned to her earlier musings. “No matter how large the beast’s wings might be, they couldn’t lift that great a weight.”

  Joelle declared, “Perhaps the wings are not for flight at all.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same,” Shona said. “They are for balance.”

  “And steering,” Joelle said. “Exactly.”

  Meda studied the pair. “Then how can it fly?”

  “Magic,” Joelle replied.

  “It stands to reason,” Shona said.

  “The beast does not exist,” Hyam said.

  “This we cannot say for certain,” Meda countered.

  Shona said, “Describe the speech.”

  “The pattern was intentional and repetitive. Of this I no longer have any doubt. Imagine a living kettle drum. Like that.”

  As they approached the village, a contingent of warriors emerged from the chieftain’s hall and mounted steeds scarcely larger than the shepherd’s horse. They cantered through the wooden palisade and started toward Hyam.

  The lead man saluted Hyam with a lance. Upon the long slender blade was tied a highland banner that snapped in the breeze. “You are the hero who defeated the Emporis mage?”

  At Joelle’s insistence, Hyam no longer protested when others applied the word to him. Hero. “I am.”

  “The chief of Rothmore Vale salutes you and invites you and your company to be his guest this night.”

  At sunset they were feted in the clan’s main hall—not, according to Meda, the normal greeting shown to the earl’s troops. The warrior clans might hold the peace. But they were still a quarrelsome bunch who lived to make trouble. The earl kept the roads open by gold as much as by treaty. Normally the troops and merchants paid a hefty fee for their passage and fare.

  This evening, however, everyone traveling with Hyam was invited to the feast, down to the lowliest trooper and smallest trader. Hyam and Joelle were hosted by the chief himself, seated with his wives and the clan leaders on a raised dais. Their chairs ran along just one side of the long table, so they could be viewed by all those gathered in the hall. The chamber was a full hundred and fifty paces across, beamed with branches from the largest tree Hyam had ever seen. At first he thought the mound supporting the chieftain’s hall held a grove of many trees, but the chief assured him that this was the mark of every highland vale—one tree, iron roots, many limbs. Why only one such tree grew in each vale, no one knew. The legends differed from clan to clan. But such trees formed the heart of the tribe and fashioned the living pillars upon which every chieftain’s hall was supported. A great flat plateau of rock and earth and root formed the center of every vale, so preserved by time and stubborn strength that not even the great central fire could scar its living timber.

  It was also here that Hyam finally learned the reason why Shona held no interest in the dumbstruck Alembord or any other fawning young man.

  Joelle had remained withdrawn since the banquet’s start. Hyam knew something had upset her, and he feared it was his fault. Joelle was normally not given to silent brooding. When she was displeased, she wanted the world to know it. Her suppressed tension worried him mightily.

  Over platters of roasted wild boar coated in honeyed wine, Hyam leaned in close and said, “What is it?”

  Joelle showed him a blank gaze. “The girl is infatuated with you.”

  The words were so unexpected, for an instant he had no idea who she referred to. “You mean . . . Shona?”

  Joelle’s examination was so intense she might as well have peeled away his skin. “You did not know?”

  “Joelle, I . . .”

  She sighed away a fraction of her ire. “Shona has been captivated since the first day you entered her father’s house.”

  “What?”

  “More than that. She is in love.”

  Hyam could not help but glance down at the center table, where Alembord struggled as usual to make conversation with the beautiful young girl. In Hyam’s home region, they could have called Shona’s coloring midnight fair. Her hair was a dark russet that turned gold in moonlight. Bayard’s strength was present in her features, but Shona gentled this with a womanly grace. She was striking now and would no doubt mature into a rare beauty. She would make a fine countess. Or queen.

  Hyam asked, “How do you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “The girl seated there, Timmins’s own daughter. She told you, my wife, that she is in love with me.”

  “Shona asked if I would consider sharing you with a second wife,” Joelle said. “I wish you could see your face.”

  “I cannot handle you,” Hyam replied, “much less another woman.”

  Joelle showed him a cautious smile. But a smile nonetheless. “I would hardly call that a gallant response.”

  “What do I do?”

  Joelle took aim at the young woman. Her voice was flat as beaten tin. “Be gentle. Be patient. But be firm when the time comes.”

  Hyam had the distinct impression his wife was speaking to herself far more than him. “I will try.”

  She turned back. “Truly, you had no idea of this?”

  “Now that you tell me, yes, I suppose there were signals . . .” He sighed. “What a mess.”

  Joelle tilted her head, as though needing to inspect him from a different angle. “Are all men so blind?”

  Hyam was saved from needing to respond by the chief rising to his feet. He was a massive red-bearded warrior who hammered the table with the haft of a two-bladed ax. The chief roared for silence, then declared, “The hero of Emporis will now tell of his dragon!”

  The declaration was Hyam’s first signal that he was to provide the night’s entertainment. He might have objected had the task not been far easier than his conversation with Joelle. So h
e rose to his feet and related the dreams yet again. One after the other.

  The history of each badland tribe was an oft-repeated lore, seldom written down. These were people who loved nothing more than a new tale. They cheered each dream and quarreled over their meanings. As Hyam described the huge golden scroll, Joelle reached into his pack and drew out the smaller versions, which Hyam passed to the chief. The bearded leader marveled over them for a time, then motioned for aides to carry them about the chamber. Hyam needed over an hour to arrive at the point where he declared, “At dawn this morning, there was a new dream.”

  As he described the most recent encounter, the hall grew quieter than it had been all night. The only sound, other than Hyam’s voice, was the faint echo from the hall’s distant rims, where his words were passed down to those who could not hear.

  In his latest dream, the dragon shaped a perch from one claw and carried Hyam over a distance so vast he might as well have been transported to a different world.

  The dragon deposited him in a valley filled with ash. Hyam did not see the bones. But he knew they were there, hidden beneath the tragic blanket of ruin and defeat. Just as he knew who had been behind the destruction.

  When he finished talking, the hall remained locked in eerie stillness. The clan chief rose to his feet once more and declared, “It is forbidden to speak of the dark days in this chamber.”

  “I apologize,” Hyam said. “I did not know.”

  “Nor could you. Now it is done.” He turned to the hall and raised his voice. “I say, tonight we break the oaths, and for the best of reasons. Who stands with me?” When the clan responded with a roar, the chief said, “Describe to us this vale.”

  Hyam responded with a question of his own. “How many clans were laid waste by the crimson mage?”

  “Nineteen halls will no longer hear the songs of lore and clan saga. Describe and leave nothing out.”

  Hyam had no difficulty doing so. This was another remarkable component of the dreams, how they did not fade with time. “The valley was almost as wide as it was long. How great, I do not know, for there was nothing in the basin except ash.”