Free The Merchant Emperor by Elizabeth Haydon Page B

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