Mercedes Lackey - Blue Heart

They had just settled on that price, when he happened to look out the window and froze in surprise at what he saw wandering by.

"Who is that?" he gasped, wondering if he had somehow stumbled on a creature like one of the fabled Hawkbrothers. The headman followed his gaze and smiled.

"Our lovely butterfly," he said, with a smile of pure pleasure. "That's our butterfly."

"She's your daughter, then?" the trader replied, unable to take his eyes from the girl.

But the headman laughed. "No. Oh, no, Trader. In a way, she belongs to the whole village."

Now Gencan spared him a sharp glance. "The village? What's that supposed to mean?"

But now the headman frowned, just a little. The girl drifted out of sight, and Gencan was able to gather his scattered wits about him again. "It's a strange story, Trader," the headman said at last. "And not altogether a happy one."

Gencan pursed his lips and nodded sagely. "Well, then," he replied. "What say we drink to our bargain and you can tell me her story." He signaled to his servant to bring in the wine. "Nothing makes a bitter story more palatable than a good wine!"

He poured the headman a cup of the strong, smooth wine, then settled in to listen with as good a will as he'd bargained.

Leaving his caravan in the charge of his most trusted assistant, he rode out that very night, pushing hard for Karse. Eight days later he was kneeling, forehead to the floor, before Baron Munn. The cost of a private audience had been steep, but the results of this audience could make him wealthy beyond the income brought by any trade route. He would be able to retire and hire others to lead his caravans, while he directed them like a great lord with his retainers.

Baron Munn sucked at a plum pit, and looked down at him out of one half-lidded eye. The Baron was a massive, bulky man, but his face and limbs showed only the barest hint of the fat of soft living. He had been called "The Bull of the Sun," and he looked like his namesake in every way, down to the expression in his face. "Rise," he said at last, waving a hand languidly. "State your business."

Gencan only removed his forehead from the floor so that he could watch the Baron's expression. "I thank the great and wise Baron Munn for granting me an audience," he said, with every token of humility. "I am not even worthy to scrape the bottoms of the great one's — " "Fine, fine," the Baron interrupted. "Get on with it." He selected another fruit and bit into it, licking the juice from his fingers.

"I have come to tell you of a young woman, Great Lord," Gencan said, quickly.

Baron Munn looked up from his half-eaten peach, pale eyes bright with interest.

"She is barely fourteen summers old," Gencan continued, "And just coming into the full bloom of womanhood. Her hair is the white of snow, of clearest ice, a waterfall of molten silver. Her eyes are the blue of a clear sky, of the finest sapphire. Her skin is as flawless as cream from the cattle of the Temple. Her face and her form are as perfect as that of a young goddess."

The Baron was truly interested now; he licked his lips and set his fruit aside. Oh, he was feigning indifference, but Gencan had not been a trader all his life without learning how to read people. He played his winning card. "Such a lovely creature could only have been created by the Sunlord himself," Gencan continued piously. "And in the wisdom of the Sunlord, he has balanced all her virtues, by a single defect. He has given her the mind and heart of a child of no more than eight years. So she is now, and so shall she remain all of her life. Innocent, simple, trusting, and loving! She cannot know a lie, cannot tell one. She cannot understand any but the simplest of commands, or do more than care for herself as a child would. Her needs are those of a child, her joys and fears those of a child, and she will do anything she is told to do by an adult."

Baron Munn straightened in his thronelike chair. Gen-can watched as the light of interest and curiosity in his eyes turned to the flames of desire, a desire that turned his strong face into a caricature of himself. Now he looked even more like a bull — a bull scenting a heifer. And Gencan knew that the whispered rumors he had heard about the Baron were true.

Baron Munn composed himself after a moment, pulling a mask of indifference over his features. He stared at Gencan as if he were deciding on what he meant to order for dinner. But his ragged breathing gave him away.

"Tell me where this girl is, Trader," the Baron said harshly. "I will send my people to see if all you have told me is the truth." His hand, the strong hand that had swung an ax it took two ordinary men to wield, clenched on the arm of his chair. That ax itself hung behind his chair in a jeweled sheath, lest anyone forget what it was that had brought the Baron to power. "If it is true, and I may have her, you will be rewarded."

His hand clenched again, and Gencan blanched, remembering how many heads the Baron had removed with that ax, to the greater glory of the Sunlord. "If you lie," he continued, "I will make you my slave. My emasculated, deaf, and dumb slave."

Gencan's mouth was suddenly very dry. "It is all true, Great Lord, I swear it!" He ran his tongue over his lips, and tried to keep from trembling with fear as he was led away to wait.

In twenty days, the spies returned. Their reports of the girl were even more enthusiastic than the trader's. Baron Munn, in a fit of joy and generosity, rewarded the trader with gold, gems, and spices from the South.

Spices so rare that Gencan had never tasted them, and could not resist trying them in his own celebratory feast.

Gencan died that night, a rich and happy man, never knowing that he had been poisoned by those spices from the South at the Baron's orders. There were other rich, powerful men who had the same appetites that the Baron had. The Baron did not intend Gencan to increase his profits by selling his knowledge to them as well. Gencan's own people, and all the Baron's spies but one, followed the trader into the arms of Vkandis.

Guided by his spy, the Baron led a handpicked company of men out of Karse and into the mountain lands disputed by his land and the land of Valdemar. Baron Munn did not trust any man to steal this girl for him. There was too much chance that she could be sold to another, taken away, or tampered with.

The late fall wind had a bite to it, here in the mountains. It whipped up the canyons and fled crying over the village with a hundred mournful voices, circling around the goat pens until the goats added then- own plaintive bleats to the wind's cries.

And yet, compared to the mountains above, the village itself was relatively calm, protected by the mountains themselves and the trees that had been planted to shelter it from biting winds. The villagers were used to the winds, used to the deceptive cries. There was no reason to stop work from being done, not even a reason for children to stop their games. People simply wrapped themselves and then" children a little tighter in their coats and narrowed their eyes against the blast. It was not even a reason to keep Mikhal from taking the older children up onto the slopes for their daily lessons in herbcraft and woodscraft.

But all work stopped when young Deke, the Watch-Boy, came pounding up the dirt street, arms and legs flailing, yelling that soldiers were coming —

— fast, on horseback —

— and lots of them.

The headman listened to Deke's breathless gasps of warning, his mind rolled with shock and confusion. Soldiers? he thought desperately. Why? Who would be sending soldiers? There's no reason for soldiers to come here!

"They — they — they're coming from Karse!" Deke gasped around his panting.