The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [161]
He felt suddenly cold when he realized that a character was exactly what he was seeing. There had been words worked into the painting. By trying to clear off the ivy, he was destroying what little was left of the art underneath. With a curse he let the flake fall. He had best not touch a thing until he learned how to go about saving the precious relics of this place he once had loved. At that thought he remembered someone who might help him, someone in fact who knew the original plan of the city almost as well as he did. First, though, he had to attend to his errant brother.
Cool with the scent of decay the sea-breeze lifted the leaves of unpruned trees and rustled in the weeds. Evandar flung himself into the air, stepped upon the wind, and let its eddying carry him through to the Rhiddaer and, he hoped, Shaetano.
The Gel da’Thae priests believe that the gods gave Cerr Cawnen to the human folk of the Rhiddaer as restitution for their sufferings at the hands of the Slavers, and at the time of which we speak, the town did seem divinely blessed. Fertile farmland surrounded the lake and yielded rich crops of oats and barley, twice what you could get for the same labor down in Arcodd. Although no one understood why, people who drank the steaming mineral waters of the lake grew strong bones and rarely lost their teeth in old age, even women who lived mostly on barley bread. The town lay at a juncture of merchant routes; Gel da’Thae from the west and Dwarven traders from the far east both came to Cerr Cawnen to trade with each other as well as the Rhiddaer folk. But the greatest boon of all lay hidden in the hills nearby, veins of moonstones and volcanic crystals in a rainbow of colors.
Trading in these stones had made Verrarc’s father rich, and his son knew a thing or two about merchanting himself. As a young lad he’d ridden east with the caravans and seen the life of the Dwarveholts in the northern mountains. He’d noticed that the folk raised only a few sheep and gathered little flax, either; most of their wool and linen came up from the Deverry borders, and an expensive commodity it was, too. On his own he brought one summer a few bales of fine yarns and ended up getting twelve times their value in worked jewelry. Late in the autumn the Gel da’Thae paid high for those trinkets, giving him the capital to buy cloth instead of yarn.
With his father long dead now, Verrarc had made his own fortune as a wool merchant, carrying gems only as a favor for longtime customers. There would come a day, he could see, when all the gems to be found had been found, but new lambs were born every spring to grow wool. Thanks to him the Weavers Guild had turned into a real power in Cerr Cawnen.
“I was ever so pleased when your da came to us about a marriage,” Emla remarked. “Your family does have a special place in Councilman Verrarc’s heart.”
“So we do,” Niffa said. “It gladdens me that you find favor in such.”
They were hiking up the path that spiralled around Citadel. The day hung cold but clear above them; sun glittered on snow below in the meadows that surrounded the town. Although Cronin knew everything there was to know about cloth and looms, Emla was the one with the head for money and business.
“There’ll be no harm in bringing you along for this bargaining,” Emla said. “And mayhap a little good, eh? I do like all my daughters to know how to drive a good bargain, and so you’d best start learning. Mayhap one day Demet will have a shop