16.1
Jewel looked down upon the man, her memories finally finding a consensus, fed into her greater self like the Vah was formed from its many tributaries.
The recollection stirred through her with unease, the faintest shiver of anger teasing at the muscles in her wing shoulders, tugging at her to flare them wide, curl back her neck, prepare herself to strike or invoke her denial upon his very existence in the world.
But it was old memories, faded and softened by the years.
Peter Bulchava.
His clothes were no longer finery stripped of gold and silver, the colors and volumes of fabric entirely different, his hair was sparse and what remained of it held no color. If Mathias’s skin seemed a cracking ruin of wrinkles and aged spots then the old peddler before her resembled a place where the earth and foundations of a fortress had utterly imploded under the weight of age.
There was only a slight similarity in the color of his eyes to what she had known before, but that was hardly notable, for Jewel had seen thousands of men and women with eyes that color before and since.
Not even his voice was the same as that man, aged, crackling and quavery in places. He was to be blunt a thing so utterly transformed it was a wonder she recognized him at all! Only the faintest scents were there to remind her and even those were covered by oils and perfumes and the rot of a slowly dying man.
Then there was the distraction of how he was riddled and swaddled in miracles. The heavens’ presence upon the man an ever overlaying mess of cuts and slices, from his toes to fingers, crown of the head to his spine.
It left her in the novel predicament that her spawn-selves could actually see the man more clearly than her wyrm sight!
“I remember you, Peter Bulchava, Peddler, Insulter of my mother’s honor.”
The man dipped his head, he sweated briefly, his body and the world within him clenching in fear, then the heavens brushed through him, soothing his turmoil, bringing ease to his tone.
“Just so, Countess of Viznove, Lady of Valasect, Shining Wyrm of the Ridgetail’s vault. I am yet the man who once was a fool to insult your family, far too generously paid to depart despite it, and now returned to you, having long been blessed by that very gold, offering whatever boon suffices to make peace with you and my past.”
He kept himself bent at the waist, not a tremble despite his age, oh his muscles were strained to exhaustion, his joints were weak, but the heaven’s touch inside him muffled those motions, held his body still and steady, eased his pain, soothed his breathing, maintained his stamina.
It was fascinating in its complexity as it was mildly disquieting, not even the sorcery of Murad’s rings had touched half of the High King’s body like the miracles that held up Peter Bulchava. The divine force that allowed a thing like him to even stand could be used to do so much more than this.
If she focused on just a few threads of the divine intervention she’d even have a guess how she might lace similar in one of her spawn with Wyrmflame. A few hours of study felt like they might be able to extend the boons to Gem or the twin’s strength twice over for half the flame exhausted!
“Such a trespass is many long years in both our pasts Peter Bulchava, but if it soothes your soul to unburden such guilt that has so gnawed at you I will accept, what can you and your house offer to Viznove and the house of Rochford?”
The man rose from his bow at her words, smoothly, pulled as much by the cuts of the divine presence within him as the muscles in his back.
“I apologize if I presume ignorance of knowledge which your majesty already possesses, but my riches, my fortune and all I have gained in this life since that fateful meeting with your father comes from one source. That of True Wyrm Eggs, nay given the nature of the sorcery which had held me and my family safe for generations all my blessings and riches have always sprung from that source, it was only with its loss that I came to understand that.”
Jewel offered a single nod, holding back from the curves her neck yearned to draw itself into, keeping her wings carefully furled, not in a way that should read as tension, but not flaring out in distress or anger. She retained the grace of a Countess, the expected demeanor of her station.
He dipped his head.
“When I began again I first tried to procure a replacement for that talisman, only to find that it was all but impossible! True Wyrm’s Egg Shell was by the measure of such things easy to acquire, but the actual sorcery to make another enchantment that could protect like my family’s had? An all but lost art your Majesty, priceless without the work of Wizardry or the Divine now. Yet once common enough to have mere scribes and craftsmen perform it for the city guard!”
Jewel listened, nodding at his words where appropriate, drawing on lessons she had learned with Gem’s practice. The peddler seemed to love the sound of his own voice, steady and strong due to the miracles flexing in his throat.
He had a fury under his gentler tones, he gestured widely as he spoke, body pulled by the star’s cutting touches with every motion.
“Is the countess aware that even when you can find the manuals for Old Cantor arts and sorcerous songs that they don’t work? An aspiring worker of sorcery can recite and practice what has been written and copied by scribes from the old texts and accomplish nothing for the effort.”
Peter Bulchava shook his head, a smile creasing the deep lines of his face.
“It was only the crafts and workings taught from master to apprentice that could even begin to hold true, and well there are very few surviving masters for the old crafts... Ah apologies Countess, I digress, I meant to speak of what I could offer you! What my Enterprise has to give in thanks for your family, for the mercy and generosity of Rochford set it all in motion.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
She could barely trust her wyrmish senses in the blinding presence of so much touch from the heavens, but the other six eyes available to her caught the way that he swallowed a bit at the end, the flex of his fingers, the smell of fear and a hint of anger as he talked.
For all his words of thanks there was a bitterness that had stayed with the man for the decades between the moment he spoke of and now.
“Again, What can your enterprise offer as a boon Tradesman Bulchava?”
Jewel filled the opportunity with her voice, letting the slightest rumble stir under her usual tone. For his part the peddler was not shifted by the hint of a growl from a wyrm that easily filled the guest room Mathias had given her.
He wet the papery skin on his lips before grinning again, each tooth a gleaming white, several of them only a few years old if Jewel’s perception amid the shifting star’s miracles was right.
“I and my enterprise have spent the years since your family’s ‘donation’ becoming the foremost experts in True Wyrm eggs and the means of utilizing them in sorcery and workings. I’ve felt and handled nearly a hundred unhatched eggs with my own hands. More of the older fragments of shells long since discarded. I’ve spoken to dozens of hunters and slayers of dragons.”
Jewel raised a brow as he spoke, only just letting the insult pass, for him even mentioning that he gained his expertise with ‘slayers’, or what it might mean to compare her to a feral wyrm hunted by such.
“And dismiss me for this insult for another twenty years if what I ask proves untrue, but you don’t actually care for your True Egg do you Countess?”
She froze, not merely holding back the desire to rear back in offense, but utterly still, wings clenching hard from splaying out and back, no longer feinting a relaxed posture, the skin along the back of her neck trembling up and down.
“Y-you dare to sugge-”
“You look after it of course, you have it secured in your home, but do you fear for it? Concern yourself for its safety? I expect not, not like you did for your spawn in their shells. ”
Jewel fell silent, her flame roiling in her chest. Flaring in the space where her heart beat.
Peter Bulchava nodded at her stillness and silence then raised both brows high and tapped his nose. The skin above his eyes rolling back into ridges of wrinkles to disappear beneath his absurdly floppy blue hat.
“Eh? Yes I thought so, it’s a trick I’ve found in my chosen trade, the cleverest of the hunters tried to keep it a secret, but I quickly set aside their worries, most of their customers hire them to kill wyrms. But that isn't the Bulchavan Enterprise’s way, on the contrary I was delighted to find out that if you are careful it's perfectly easy to just kick a True Wyrm egg out of its nest and off a cliff without harming the beasts.”
Jewel stared at the man as he grinned up at her, a wyrm, talking about kicking an egg from its nest, the thought of doing that to Gem’s or either of the Twins before they hatched left her cold inside, a freezing terror that began to slowly crack.
“Not the spawn’s eggs! No, that's the secret Countess, you can’t even touch the spawn’s eggs lest you set a wyrm into an absolute fury. But if you have an eye for it the True Wyrm eggs are easy to find, usually even pushed off on their own already. So I ask again: Do you care for your True Egg?”
He chuckled, voice softening, leaning back on his heels like a man a quarter his age.
“It’s no offense to you Countess, it’s part of your nature! And I’ve made a life’s work out of learning that nature.”
She took a breath, pulled her wings back from where they had flared out to press into the stonework of the guest chamber. Eased the tightness of the curve in her neck, lowering her gaze down closer to the Peddler.
One deep breath to fill her lungs, the wind whistling through all the room as she drew it towards her, wisps of the merchant’s sparse hair pulled free from his hat to sway towards her.
“For the last time peddler, what precisely is it that you are offering to me?”
The man was unphased, delighted actually, his expression widening with joy at her reaction, at the imminent threat in her voice, at the way she could tell her growl had rattled his bones.
“The Bulchavan Enterprise has accomplished miracles that neither wizards, nor old cantor nor the gods themselves have on offer, I’ve done what was thought impossible twice over! Cracked open the unbreakable and forged the unmakable! We’ve had the wise and the clever join from all across the known world! And to you, Countess of Viznove, Lady Jewel, Shining Wyrm of Rochford? I would open all that we’ve learned of wyrms to you and seek to aid you in a third impossible miracle wrought by man, what can we offer to your Majesty?”
He held out his hands as if expecting an embrace, grinning wide, gesturing as if to encompass her splayed out coils, but more than that the room and the sky beyond.
“What does the lady wish?”
Jewel glared at the man, lowering her head even further, sliding closer until she could meet him eye to eye, noting only the slight twitching of his fingers behind his back. Following the clench of his hand around a wrist hidden from ‘her’ view but still perfectly visible to Gem.
“I want to speak to my father’s departed ghost, I want to know he and those the heavens have lied to us about keeping are safe, that they are at peace in death.”
There was a flicker of concern at her words, but he hid it quickly. However even that flex echoed in the shifting of the heaven sent miracles.
“Well! If that is what the House of Rochford wishes, the Bulchavan Enterprise will do all in its power to provide it!”
Jewel considered the man.
“And if that is all? begone.”
She only restrained herself enough to avoid making the utterance a proper sorcerous command, and thankfully the peddler left without another word. Once he was well beyond all of her senses Jewel took in a long, slow breath, filling each set of her lungs in turn and then releasing them all in a single exasperated sigh.
Jewel promised all of herselves she was leaving Burning Depths Ford as soon as the weather allowed.