The Hidden City

1

A chill haze was rising from the meadow, and thin clouds had drifted in from the west to obscure the cold, brittle sky. There were no shadows, and the frozen ground was iron-hard and unyielding. Winter was inexorably tightening its grip on the North Cape. Sparhawk’s army, girt in steel and leather and thousands strong, was lined up along a broad front in the frost-covered grass of the meadow near the ruins of Tzada. Sir Berit sat his horse in the center of the bulky, armored Church Knights watching the ghastly feast taking place a few hundred yards to the front. Berit was a young and idealistic knight, and he was having some difficulty with the behavior of their new allies.

The screams were remote, mere rumors of agony, and those who were screaming were not actually people—not really. They were no more than shades, the scarce-remembered reflections of long-dead men. Besides, they were enemies—members of a cruel and savage race that worshipped an unspeakable God.

But they steamed. That was the part of the horror Sir Berit could not shrug off. Though he told himself that these Cyrgai were dead—phantoms raised by Cyrgon’s magic—the fact that steam rose from their eviscerated bodies as the ravening Trolls fed on them brought all of Berit’s defenses crashing down around his ears.

‘Trouble?’ Sparhawk asked sympathetically. Sparhawk’s black armor was frost-touched, and his battered face was bleak.

Berit felt a sudden embarrassment. ‘It’s nothing, Sir Sparhawk,’ he lied quickly. ‘It’s just—’ He groped for a word.

‘I know. I’m stumbling over that part myself. The Trolls aren’t being deliberately cruel, you know. To them we’re just food. They’re only following their nature.’

‘That’s part of the problem, Sparhawk. The notion of being eaten makes my blood run cold.’

‘Would it help if I said, “better them than us”?’

‘Not very much.’ Berit laughed weakly. ‘Maybe I’m not cut out for this kind of work. Everybody else seems to be taking it in stride.’

‘Nobody’s taking it in stride, Berit. We all feel the same way about what’s happening. Try to hold on. We’ve met these armies out of the past before. As soon as the Trolls kill the Cyrgai generals, the rest should vanish, and that’ll put an end to it.’ Sparhawk frowned. ‘Let’s go find Ulath,’ he suggested. ‘I just thought of something, and I want to ask him about it.’

‘All right,’ Berit agreed quickly. The two black-armored Pandions turned their horses and rode through the frosty grass along the front of the massed army.

They found Ulath, Tynian and Bevier a hundred yards or so down the line. ‘I’ve got a question for you, Ulath,’ Sparhawk said as he reined Faran in.

‘For me? Oh, Sparhawk, you shouldn’t have!’ Ulath removed his conical helmet and absently polished the glossy black Ogre-horns on the sleeve of his green surcoat. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Every time we’ve come up against these antiques before, the dead all shriveled up after we killed the leaders. How are the Trolls going to react to that?’

‘How should I know?’

‘You’re supposed to be the expert on Trolls.’

‘Be reasonable, Sparhawk. It’s never happened before. Nobody can predict what’s going to happen in a totally new situation.’

‘Make a guess,’ Sparhawk snapped irritably.

The two of them glared at each other.

‘Why badger Ulath about it, Sparhawk?’ Bevier suggested gently. ‘Why not just warn the Troll-Gods that it’s going to happen and let them deal with the problem?’

Sparhawk rubbed reflectively at the side of his face, his hand making a kind of sandy sound on his unshaven cheek. ‘Sorry, Ulath,’ he apologized. ‘The noise from the banquet hall out there’s distracting me.’

‘I know just how you feel,’ Ulath replied wryly. ‘I’m glad you brought it up, though. The Trolls won’t be satisfied with dried rations when there’s all this fresh meat no more than a quarter mile away.’ He put his Ogre-horned helmet back on. ‘The Troll Gods will honor their commitment to Aphrael, but I think we’d better warn them about this. I definitely want them to have a firm grip on their Trolls when supper turns stale. I’d hate to end up being the dessert course.’

‘Ehlana?’ Sephrenia gasped.

‘Keep’ your voice down!’ Aphrael muttered. She looked around. They were some distance to the rear of the army, but they were not alone. She reached out and touched Ch’iel’s bowed white neck, and Sephrenia’s palfrey obediently ambled off a little way from Kalten and Xanetia to crop at the frozen grass.

‘I can’t get too many details,’ the Child Goddess said. ‘Melidere’s been badly hurt, and Mirtai’s so enraged that they’ve had to chain her up.’

‘Who did it?’

‘I don’t know, Sephrenia! Nobody’s talking to Danae. All I can get is the word “hostage”. Somebody’s managed to get into the castle, seize Ehlana and Alcan and spirit them out. Sarabian’s beside himself. He’s flooded the halls with guards, so Danae can’t get out of her room to find out what’s really happening.’

‘We must tell Sparhawk!’

‘Absolutely not. Sparhawk bursts into flames when Ehlana’s in danger. He’s got to get this army safely back to Matherion before we can let him catch on fire.’

‘But—’

‘No, Sephrenia. He’ll find out soon enough, but let’s get everyone to safety before he does. We’ve only got a week or so left until the sun goes down permanently and everything—and everyone—up here turns to solid ice.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Sephrenia conceded. She thought a moment, staring off at the frost-silvered forest beyond the meadow. ‘That word “hostage” explains everything, I think. Is there any way you can pinpoint your mother’s exact location?’

Aphrael shook her head. ‘Not without putting her in danger. If I start moving around and poking my nose into things, Cyrgon will feel me nudging at the edges of his scheme, and he might do something to Mother before he stops to think. Our main concern right now is keeping Sparhawk from going crazy when he finds out what’s happened.’ She suddenly gasped and her dark eyes went very wide.

‘What is it?’ Sephrenia asked in alarm. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I don’t know!’ Aphrael cried. ‘It’s something monstrous!’ She cast her eyes about wildly for a moment and then steadied herself, her pale brow furrowing in concentration. Then her eyes narrowed in anger. ‘Somebody’s using one of the forbidden spells, Sephrenia,’ she said in a voice that was as hard as the frozen ground.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Absolutely. The very air stinks of it.’

Djarian the necromancer was a cadaverous-looking Styric with sunken eyes, a thin, almost skeletal frame, and a stale, mildewed odor about him. Like the other Styric captives, he was in chains and under the close watch of Church Knights well-versed in countering Styric spells.

A cold, oppressive twilight was settling over the encampment near the ruins of Tzada when Sparhawk and the others finally got around to questioning the prisoners. The Troll-Gods had taken their creatures firmly in hand when the feeding orgy had come suddenly to an end, and the Trolls were now gathered around a huge bonfire several miles out in the meadow holding what appeared to be religious observances of some sort.

‘Just go through the motions, Bevier,’ Sparhawk quietly advised the olive-skinned Cyrinic Knight as Djarian was dragged before them. ‘Keep asking him irrelevant questions until Xanetia signals that she’s picked him clean.’

Bevier nodded. ‘I can drag it out for as long as you want, Sparhawk. Let’s get started.’

Sir Bevier’s gleaming white surcoat, made ruddy by the flickering firelight, gave him a decidedly ecclesiastical appearance, and he heightened that impression by prefacing his interrogation with a lengthy prayer. Then he got down to business.

Djarian replied to the questions tersely in a hollow voice that seemed almost to come echoing up out of a vault. Bevier appeared to take no note of the prisoner’s sullen behavior. His whole manner seemed excessively correct, even fussy, and he heightened that impression by wearing fingerless wool gloves such as scribes and scholars wear in cold weather. He doubled back frequently, rephrasing questions he had previously asked and then triumphantly pointing out inconsistencies in the prisoner’s replies.

The one exception to Djarian’s terse brevity was a sudden outburst of vituperation, a lengthy denunciation of Zalasta—and Cyrgon—for abandoning him here on this inhospitable field.

‘Bevier sounds exactly like a lawyer,’ Kalten muttered quietly to Sparhawk. ‘I hate lawyers.’

‘He’s doing it on purpose,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Lawyers like to spring trick questions on people, and Djarian knows it. Bevier’s forcing him to think very hard about the things he’s supposed to conceal, and that’s all Xanetia really needs. We always seem to underestimate Bevier.’

‘It’s all that praying,’ Kalten said sagely. ‘It’s hard to take a man seriously when he’s praying all the time.’

‘We’re Knights of the Church, Kalten—members of religious orders.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘In his own mind is he more dead than alive,’ Xanetia reported later when they had gathered around one of the large fires the Atans had built to hold back the bitter chill. The Anarae’s face reflected the glow of the fire, as did her unbleached wool robe.

‘Were we right?’ Tynian asked her. ‘Is Cyrgon augmenting Djarian’s spells so that he can raise whole armies?’

‘He is,’ she replied.

‘Was that outburst against Zalasta genuine?’ Vanion asked her.

‘Indeed, my Lord. Djarian and his fellows are increasingly discontent with the leadership of Zalasta. They have all come to expect no true comradeship from their leader. There is no longer common cause among them, and each doth seek to wring best advantage to himself from their dubious alliance. Overlaying all is the secret desire of each to gain sole possession of Bhelliom.’

‘Dissension among your enemies is always good,’ Vanion noted, ‘but I don’t think we should discount the possibility that they’ll all fall in line again after what happened here today. Could you get anything specific about what they might try next, Anarae?’

‘Nay, Lord Vanion. They were in no wise prepared for what hath come to pass. One thing did stand out in the mind of this Djarian, however, and it doth perhaps pose some danger. The outcasts who surround Zalasta do all fear Cyzada of Esos, for he alone is versed in Zemoch magic, and he alone doth plunge his hand through that door to the nether world which Azash opened. Horrors beyond imagining lie within his reach. It is Djarian’s thought that since all their plans have thus far gone awry, Cyrgon in desperation might command Cyzada to use his unspeakable art to raise creatures of darkness to confront and confound us.’

Vanion nodded gravely.

‘How did Stragen’s plan affect them?’ Talen asked curiously.

‘They are discomfited out of all measure,’ Xanetia replied. ‘They did rely heavily on those who now are dead.’

‘Stragen will be happy to hear that. What were they going to do with all those spies and informers?’

‘Since they had no force capable of facing the Atans, Zalasta and his cohorts thought to use the hidden employees of the Ministry of the Interior to assassinate diverse Tamul officials in the subject kingdoms of the empire, hoping thereby to disrupt the governments.’

‘You might want to make a note of that, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said.

‘Oh?’

‘Emperor Sarabian had some qualms when he approved Stragen’s plan. He’ll probably feel much better when he finds out that all Stragen really did was beat our enemies to the well. They’d have killed our people if Stragen hadn’t killed theirs first.’

‘That’s very shaky moral ground, Kalten,’ Bevier said disapprovingly.

‘I know,’ Kalten admitted. ‘That’s why you have to run across the top of it so fast.’

The sky was cloudy the following morning, thick roiling cloud that streamed in from the west, all seethe and confusion.

Because it was late autumn and they were far to the north, it seemed almost that the sun was rising in the south, turning the sky above Bhelliom’s escarpment a fiery orange and reaching feebly out with ruddy, low-lying light to paint the surging underbellies of the swift-scudding cloud with a brush of flame. The campfires seemed wan and weak and very tiny against the overpowering chill here on the roof of the world, and the knights and their friends all wore fur cloaks and huddled close to the fires. There were low rumbles off to the south, and flickers of pale, ghastly light.

‘Thunder?’ Kalten asked Ulath incredulously. ‘Isn’t it the wrong time of year for thunderstorms?’

‘It happens,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘I was in a thunderstorm north of Heid once that touched off a blizzard. That’s a very unusual sort of experience.’

‘Whose turn is it to do the cooking?’ Kalten asked him absently.

‘Yours,’ Ulath replied promptly.

‘You’re not paying attention, Kalten,’ Tynian laughed. ‘You know better than to ask that question.’

Kalten grumbled and started to stir up the fire.

‘I think we’d better get back to the coast today, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said gravely. ‘The weather’s held off so far, but I don’t think we’ll be able to count on that much longer.’

Sparhawk nodded.

The thunder grew louder, and the fire-red clouds overhead blanched with shuddering flickers of lightning. Then there was a sudden, rhythmic booming sound.

‘Is it another earthquake?’ Kring cried out in alarm.

‘No,’ Khalad replied. ‘It’s too regular. It sounds almost like somebody beating a very big drum.’ He stared at the top of Bhelliom’s wall. ‘What’s that?’ he asked pointing.

It was like a hilltop rearing up out of the forest beyond the knife-like edge of the top of the cliff—very much like a hilltop, except that it was moving.

The sun was behind it, so they could not see any details, but as it rose higher and higher they could make out the fact that it was a kind of flattened dome with two pointed protuberances flaring out from either side like huge wings. And still it swelled upward. As they could see more of it, they realized that it was not a dome. It seemed to be some enormous, inverted triangle instead, wide at the top, pointed at the bottom and with those odd winglike protuberances jutting out from its sides. The pointed bottom seemed to be set in some massive column. Since the light was behind it, it was as black as night, and it rose and swelled like some vast darkness.

Then it stopped.

And then its eyes opened.

Like two thin, fiery gashes at first, the blazing eyes opened wider and wider, cruelly slanted like cats’ eyes and all ablaze with fire more incandescent than the sun itself. The imagination shuddered back from the realization of the enormity of the thing. What had appeared to be huge wings were the creature’s ears.

And then it opened its mouth and roared, and they knew that what they had heard before had not been thunder. It roared again, and its fangs were flickers of lightning that dripped flame like blood.

‘Klael!’ Aphrael shrieked.

And then, like two rounded, bulky mountains, the shoulders rose above the sharp line of the cliff, and, fanning out from the shoulders like black sails, two jointed, batlike wings.

‘What is it?’ Talen cried.

‘It’s Klael!’ Aphrael shrieked again.

‘What’s a Klael?’

‘Not what, you dolt! Who. Azash and the other Elder Gods cast him out. Some idiot has returned him!’

The enormity atop the escarpment continued to rise, revealing vast arms with many-fingered hands. The trunk was huge, and flashes of lightning seethed beneath its skin, illuminating ghastly details with their surgng flickers. And then that monstrous presence rose to its full height, towering eighty, a hundred feet above the top of the escarpment.

Sparhawk’s spirit shrivelled. How could they possibly—?

‘Blue Rose,’ he said sharply. ‘Do something!’

‘There is no need, Anakha.’ Vanion’s usurped voice was very calm as Bhelliom once again spoke through his lips. ‘Klael hath but momentarily escaped Cyrgon’s grasp. Cyrgon will not risk his creature in a direct confrontation with me.’

‘That thing belongs to Cyrgon?’

‘For the moment. In time that will change, and Cyrgon will belong to Klael.’

‘What is it doing?’ Betuana cried.

The monstrosity atop the cliff had raised one huge fist and was striking at the ground with incandescent fire, hammering at the earth with lightning. The face of the escarpment shuddered and began to crack away, falling, tumbling, roaring down to smash into the forest at the foot of the cliff. More and more of the sheer face crumbled and sheared away and fell in a huge thundering landslide.

‘Klael was ever uncertain of the strength of his wings,’ Bhelliom observed calmly. ‘He would come to join battle with me, but he fears the height of the wall. Thus he prepares a stair for himself.’

Then with a booming like that of the earthquake which had spawned it, a mile or more of the escarpment toppled ponderously outward and crashed into the forest, piling rubble higher and higher against the foot of the cliff.

The enormous being continued to savage the top of the cliff, spilling more and more rubble down to form a steep causeway reaching up and up to the top of the wall.

And then the thing called Klael vanished, and a shrieking wind swept the face of the escarpment, whipping away the boiling clouds of dust the landslide had raised.

There was another sound as well. Sparhawk turned quickly. The Trolls had fallen to their faces, moaning in terror.

‘We’ve always known about him,’ Aphrael said pensively. ‘We used to frighten ourselves by telling stories about him. There’s a certain perverse pleasure in making one’s own flesh crawl. I don’t think I ever really admitted to myself that he actually existed.’

‘Exactly what is he?’ Bevier asked her.

‘Evil.’ She shrugged. ‘We’re supposed to be the essence of good—at least that’s what we tell ourselves. Klael is the opposite. He’s our way of explaining the existence of evil. If we didn’t have Klael, we’d have to accept the responsibility for evil ourselves, and we’re a little too fond of ourselves to do that.’

‘Then this Klael is the King of Hell?’ Bevier asked.

‘Well, sort of. Hell isn’t a place, though. It’s a state of mind. The story has it that when the Elder Gods—Azash and the others—emerged, they found Klael already here. They wanted the world for themselves, and he was in their way. After several of them had tried individually to get rid of him and got themselves obliterated, they banded together and cast him out.’

‘Where did he come from? Originally, I mean?’ Bevier pressed. Bevier was very much caught up in first causes.

‘How in the world should I know? I wasn’t there. Ask Bhelliom.’

‘I’m not so much interested in where this Klael came from as I am in what kinds of things it can do,’ Sparhawk said. He took Bhelliom out of the pouch at his waist. ‘Blue Rose,’ he said, ‘I do think we must talk concerning Klael.’

‘It might be well, Anakha,’ the jewel responded, once again taking control of Vanion.

‘Where did he—or it—originate?’

‘Klael did not originate, Anakha. Even as I, Klael hath always been.’

‘What is it—he?’

‘Necessary. I would not offend thee, Anakha, but the necessity of Klael is beyond thine ability to comprehend. The Child Goddess hath explained Klael sufficiently—within her capabilities.’

‘Well, really!’ Aphrael spluttered.

A faint smile touched Vanion’s lips. ‘Be not wroth with me, Aphrael. I do love thee still—despite thy limitations. Thou art young, and age shall bring thee wisdom and understanding.’

‘This is not going well, Blue Rose,’ Sephrenia warned the stone.

‘Ah, well,’ Bhelliom sighed. ‘Let us then to work. Klael was, in fact, cast out by the Elder Gods, as Aphrael hath told thee, although the spirit of Klael, even as my spirit, doth linger in the very rocks of this world—as in all others which I have made. Moreover, what the Elder Gods could do, they could also undo, and the spell which hath returned Klael was implicit in the spell which did cast Klael out. Clearly, some mortal conversant with the spells of the Elder Gods hath reversed the spell of casting out, and Klael hath returned.’

‘Can he—or it—be destroyed?’

‘It is not “he” of which we speak, nor do we speak of some “it”. We speak of Klael. But nay, Anakha, Klael cannot be destroyed—no more than can I. Klael is eternal.’

Sparhawk’s heart sank. ‘I think we’re in trouble,’ he muttered to his friends.

‘The fault is in some measure mine. So caught up was I in the birth of this latest child of mine that mine attention did stray from needful duties. It is my wont to cast Klael out at a certain point in the making of a new world. This particular child did so delight me, however, that I delayed the casting out. Then it was that I did encounter the red dust which did imprison me, and the duty to cast Klael out did devolve upon the Elder Gods. The casting-out was made imperfect by reason of their imperfection, and thus it was possible for Klael to be returned.’

‘By Cyrgon?’ Sparhawk asked bleakly.

‘The spell of casting out—and returning—is Styric. Cyrgon could not utter it.’

‘Cyzada then,’ Sephrenia guessed. ‘He might very well have known the spell. I don’t think he’d have used it willingly, though.’

‘Cyrgon probably forced him to use it, little mother,’ Kalten said. ‘Things haven’t been going very well for Cyrgon and Zalasta lately.’

‘But to call Klael!’ Aphrael shuddered.

‘Desperate people do desperate things,’ Kalten shrugged. ‘So do desperate Gods, I suppose.’

‘What do we do, Blue Rose?’ Sparhawk asked. ‘About Klael, I mean to say?’

‘Thou canst do nothing, Anakha. Thou didst well when thou didst meet Azash, and doubtless will do well again in thy dispute with Cyrgon. Thou wouldst be powerless against Klael, however.’

‘We’re doomed then.’ Sparhawk suddenly felt totally crushed.

‘Doomed? Of course thou art not doomed. Why art thou so easily downcast and made disconsolate, my friend? I did not make thee to confront Klael. That is my duty. Klael will trouble us in some measure, as is Klael’s wont. Then, as is our custom, Klael and I will meet.’

‘And thou wilt once more banish him?’

‘That is never certain, Anakha. I do assure thee, however, that I will strive to mine utmost to cast Klael out—even as Klael will strive to cast me out. The contest between us doth lie in the future, and as I have oft told thee, the future is concealed. I will approach the contest with confidence, however, for doubt doth weaken resolve, and timorous uncertainty doth weigh down the spirit. Battle should be joined with a light heart and joyous demeanor.’

‘You can be very sententious sometimes, World-Maker,’ Aphrael said with just a hint of spitefulness.

‘Be nice,’ Bhelliom chided mildly.

‘Anakha.’ It was Ghworg, the God of Kill. The huge presence came across the frosty meadow, plowing a dark path through the silver-sheathed grass.

‘I will hear the words of Ghworg,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘Have you summoned Klael? Is it your thought that Klael will aid us in causing hurt to Cyrgon? it is not good if you have. Let Klael go back.’

‘It was not my doing, Ghworg. Neither was it the Flower-Gem’s doing. It is our thought that it was Cyrgon who summoned Klael to cause hurt to us.’

‘Can the Flower-Gem cause hurt to Klael?’

‘That is not certain. The might of Klael is even as the might of the Flower-Gem.’

The God of Kill squatted on the frozen turf, scratching at his shaggy face with one huge paw. ‘Cyrgon is as nothing, Anakha,’ he rumbled in an almost colloquial form of speech. ‘We can cause hurt to Cyrgon tomorrow—or some time by-and-by. We must cause hurt to Klael now. We cannot wait for by-and-by.’

Sparhawk dropped to one knee on the frozen turf. ‘Your words are wise, Ghworg.’

Ghworg’s lips pulled back in a hideous approximation of a grin. ‘The word you use is not common among us, Anakha. If Khwaj said, “Ghworg is wise”, I would cause hurt to him.’

‘I did not say it to cause you anger, Ghworg.’

‘You are not a Troll, Anakha. You do not know our ways. We must cause hurt to Klael so that he will go away. How can we do this?’

‘We cannot cause hurt to him. Only the Flower-Gem can make him go away.’

Ghworg smashed his fist against the frozen ground with a hideous snarl.

Sparhawk held up one hand. ‘Cyrgon has called Klael,’ he said. ‘Klael has joined Cyrgon to cause hurt to us. Let us cause hurt to Cyrgon now, not by-and-by. If we cause hurt to Cyrgon, he will fear to aid Klael when the Flower-Gem goes to cause hurt to Klael and make him go away.’

Ghworg puzzled his way through that. ‘Your words are good, Anakha,’ he said finally. ‘How might we best cause hurt to Cyrgon now?’

Sparhawk considered it. ‘The mind of Cyrgon is not like your mind, Ghworg, nor is it like mine. Our minds are direct. Cyrgon’s is guileful. He threw your children against our friends here in the lands of winter to make us come here to fight them. But your children were not his main force.

‘Cyrgon’s main force will come from the lands of the sun to attack our friends in the city that shines.’

‘I have seen that place. The Child Goddess spoke first with us there.’

Sparhawk frowned, trying to remember the details of Vanion’s map. ‘There are high places here and to the south,’ he said.

Ghworg nodded.

‘Then, even further south, the high places grow low and then they become flat.’

‘I see it,’ Ghworg said. ‘You describe it well, Anakha.’ That startled Sparhawk. Evidently Ghworg could visualize the entire continent.

‘In the middle of that flat place is another high place that the man-things call the Tamul Mountains.’

Ghworg nodded in agreement.

‘The main force of Cyrgon’s children will pass that high place to reach the city that shines. The high place will be cool, so your children will not suffer from the sun there.’

‘I see which way your thought goes, Anakha,’ Ghworg said. We will take our children to that high place and wait there for Cyrgon’s children. Our children will not eat Aphrael’s children. They will eat Cyrgon’s children instead.’

‘That will cause hurt to Cyrgon and his servants, Ghworg.’

‘Then we will do it.’ Ghworg turned and pointed toward the landslide. ‘Our children will climb Klael’s stairway. Then Ghnomb will make time stop. Our children will be in the high place before the sun goes to sleep this night.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘Good hunting,’ he growled, turned and went back to join his fellows and the still terrified Trolls.

‘We still have to proceed as if things were normal,’ Vanion told them as they gathered near the fire a couple of hours past noon. The sun, Sparhawk noted, was already going down. ‘Klael can probably appear at any time and any place. We can’t plan for him—any more than we can plan for a blizzard or a hurricane. If you can’t plan for something, about the only thing you can do is take a few precautions and then ignore it.’

‘Well spoken,’ Queen Betuana approved. Betuana and Vanion were getting along well.

‘What do we do then, friend Vanion?’ Tikume asked.

‘We’re soldiers, friend Tikume,’ Vanion replied. ‘We do what soldiers do. We get ready to fight armies, not Gods. Scarpa’s coming up out of the jungles of Arjuna, and I’d expect another thrust to come out of Cynesga. The Trolls will probably hamper Scarpa, but they can only move out a short way from those mountains in southern Tamul Proper because of the climate.

‘After the initial shock of encountering Trolls, Scarpa will probably try to go around them.’ Vanion consulted his map. ‘We’ll have to have forces in place to respond either to Scarpa or to an army coming out of Cynesga. I’d say that Samar would be the best location.’

‘Sama,’ Betuana disagreed.

‘Both,’ Ulath countered. ‘Forces in Samar could cover everything from the southern edge of the Atan Mountains to the Sea of Arjuna and be in position to strike eastward to the southern Tamul Mountains if Scarpa evades the Trolls. Forces in Sama could block the invasion route through the Atan mountains.’

‘His point’s well taken,’ Bevier said. ‘It divides our forces, but we don’t have much choice.’

‘We could put the knights and the Peloi in Samar and the Atan infantry in Sama,’ Tynian added. ‘The lower valley of the River Sarna’s ideal for mounted operations, and the mountains around Sama itself are natural for Atans.’

‘Both positions are defensive,’ Engessa objected. ‘Wars aren’t won from defensive positions.’

Sparhawk and Vanion exchanged a long look. ‘Invade Cynesga?’ Sparhawk asked dubiously.

‘Not yet,’ Vanion decided. ‘Let’s wait until the Church Knights get here from Eosia before we do that. When Komier and the others cross into Cynesga from the west, that’s when we’ll want to come at the place from the east. We’ll put Cyrgon in a vice. With that sort of force coming at him from both sides, he can raise every Cyrgai whore ever lived, and he’ll still lose.’

‘Right up until the moment he unleashes Klael,’ Aphrael added moodily.

‘No, Divine One,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘Bhelliom wants Cyrgon to send Klael against us. If we do it this way, we’ll force the issue in a place and time that we choose. We’ll pick the spot Cyrgon will unleash Klael, and I’ll unleash Bhelliom. Then all we have to do is sit back and watch.’

‘We’ll go to the top of the wall the same way the Trolls went, Vanion-Preceptor,’ Engessa said the following morning. ‘We can climb as well as they can.’

‘It might take us a little longer,’ Tikume added. ‘We’ll have to push boulders out of the way to get our horses up that slope.’

‘We will help you, Tikume-Domi,’ Engessa promised.

‘That’s it, then,’ Tynian summed up. ‘The Atans and the Peloi will go south from here to take up positions in Sarna and Samar. We’ll take the knights back to the coast, and Sorgi will ferry us back to Matherion. We’ll go overland from there.’

‘It’s the ferrying that concerns me,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Sorgi’s going to have to make at least a half-dozen trips.’

Khalad sighed and rolled his eyes upward.

‘I gather you’re going to embarrass me in public again,’ Sparhawk said. ‘What am I overlooking?’

‘The rafts, Sparhawk,’ Khalad said in a weary voice. ‘Sorgi’s gathering up the rafts to take them south to the timber markets. He’s going to lash them all together into a long log-boom. Put the knights in the ships, the horses on the boom, and we can all make it to Matherion in one trip.’

‘I forgot about the rafts,’ Sparhawk admitted sheepishly.

‘That log-boom won’t move very fast,’ Ulath pointed out.

Xanetia had been listening to their plans intently. She looked at Khalad and spoke diffidently, almost shyly. ‘Might a steady wind behind thy logs assist thee, young Master?’ Xanetia asked Khalad.

‘It would indeed, Anarae,’ Khalad said enthusiastically. ‘We can weave rough sails out of tree-limbs.’

‘Won’t Cyrgon—or Klael—feel you raising a breeze, dear sister?’ Sephrenia asked.

‘Cyrgon cannot detect Delphaeic magic, Sephrenia,’ Xanetia replied. ‘Anakha can ask Bhelliom whether Klael is similarly unaware.’

‘How did you manage that?’ Aphrael asked curiously.

Xanetia looked slightly embarrassed. ‘It was to hide from thee and thy kindred, Divine Aphrael. When Edaemus did curse us, he did so arrange his curse that our magic would be hidden from our enemies—for thus did we view thee at that time. Doth that offend thee, Divine One?’

‘Not under these circumstances, Anarae,’ Flute replied, swarming up into Xanetia’s arms and kissing her soundly.

2

The log-boom Captain Sorgi’s sailors had constructed from the rafts was a quarter of a mile long and a hundred feet wide. Most of it was taken up by the huge corral. It wallowed and wobbled its way south under threatening skies, and it was frequently raked by stinging sleet-squalls. The weather was bitterly cold, and the young knights who manned the raft were bundled to the ears in furs and spent most of their time huddled in the dubious shelter of the flapping tents.

‘It’s all in attention to detail, Berit,’ Khalad said as he tied off the rope holding the starboard end of one of their makeshift sails in place. ‘That’s all that work really is—details.’ He squinted along the ice-covered line of what was really much more like a snow-fence than a sail. ‘Sparhawk looks at the grand plan and leaves the details to others. It’s a good thing, really, because he’s a hopeless incompetent when it comes to little things and real work.’

‘Khalad!’ Berit was actually shocked.

‘Have you ever seen him try to use tools? That was something our father used to tell us over and over. “Don’t ever let Sparhawk pick up a tool.” Kalten’s fairly good with his hands, but Sparhawk’s hopeless. If you hand him anything associated with honest work, he’ll hurt himself with it.’ Khalad’s head came up sharply, and he swore.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Didn’t you feel it? The port-side tow-ropes just went slack. Lets go wake up those sailors. We don’t want this big cow turning broadside on us again.’ The two fur-clad young men started across the icy collection of lashed-together rafts, skirting the huge corral where the horses huddled together in the bitterly cold breeze coming from astern.

The idea of making a log-boom out of the rafts was very good in theory, but the problems of steering proved to be far more complex than either Sorgi or Khalad had anticipated. Khalad’s thickly woven fences of evergreen boughs acted well enough as sails, moving the sheer dead weight of the boom steadily southward ahead of Xanetia’s breeze. Sorgi’s ships were supposed to provide steerage-way by towing the boom, and that was where the problems cropped up. No two ships ever move at exactly the same rate of speed, even when propelled by the same wind. Thus, the fifty ships ahead and the twenty-five strung out along each side of the boom had to be almost constantly fine-tuned to keep the huge raft moving in the right general direction. As long as everybody paid very close attention, all went well. Two days south of Bhelliom’s wall, however, a number of things had gone wrong all at once, and the log-boom had swung round sideways. No amount of effort had been able to straighten it out, and so they had been obliged to take it apart and reassemble it—back-breaking labor in the bitter cold. Nobody wanted to go through that again.

When they reached the port side of the boom, Berit took a dented brass horn out from under his fur cape and blew a flat, off-key blast at the port-side tow-boats while Khalad picked up a yellow flag and began to wave it vigorously. The pre-arranged signals were simple. The yellow flag told the ships to crowd on more sail to keep the towing hawsers taut; the blue flag told them to put out the sea-anchors to slack off on the ropes; and the red flag told them to cast off all lines and get out of the way.

The tow-ropes went tight again as Khalad’s crisp signal trickled down through the ranks to the sailors who actually did the work aboard the ships.

‘How do you keep track of everything?’ Berit asked his friend. ‘And how do you know so quickly that something’s wrong?’

‘Pain,’ Khalad replied wryly. ‘I don’t really want to spend several days taking this beast apart and putting it back together again with the spray freezing on me, so I’m paying very close attention to the things my body’s telling me. You can feel things change in your legs and the soles of your feet. When one of the hawsers goes slack, it changes the feel of how the boom moves.’

‘Is there anything you don’t know how to do?’

‘I don’t dance very well.’ Khalad squinted up into the first stinging pellets of another sleet-squall. ‘It’s time to feed and water the horses,’ he said. ‘Let’s go tell the novices to stop sitting around admiring their title and get to work.’

‘You really dislike the aristocracy, don’t you?’ Berit asked as they started forward along the edge of the corral toward the wind-whipped tents of the apprentice knights.

‘No, I don’t dislike them. I just don’t have any patience with them, and I can’t understand how they can be so blind to what’s going on around them. A title must be a very heavy thing to carry if the weight makes you ignore everything else.’

‘You’re going to be a knight yourself, you know.’

‘It wasn’t my idea. Sparhawk gets silly sometimes. He thinks that making knights of my brothers and me is a way of honoring our father. I’m sure that Father’s laughing at him right now.’

They reached the tents, and Khalad raised his voice. ‘All right, gentlemen!’ he shouted, ‘It’s time to feed and water the animals. Let’s get at it!’ Then he critically surveyed the corral. Five thousand horses leave a great deal of evidence that they have been present. ‘I think it’s time for another lesson in the virtue of humility for our novices,’ he said quietly to Berit. Then he raised his voice again. ‘And after you’ve finished with that, you’d better break out the scoop-shovels and wheel-barrows again. We wouldn’t want to let the work pile up on us, would we, gentlemen?’

Berit was not yet fully adept at some of the subtler forms of magic. That part of the Pandion training was the study of a lifetime. He was far enough along, however, to recognize ‘tampering’ when he encountered it. The log-boom seemed to be lumbering southward at a crawl, but the turning of the seasons was giving some things away. It should have taken them much longer to escape the bitter cold of the far north, for one thing, and the days should not have become so much longer in such a short time for another.

However it was managed, and whoever managed it, they arrived at a sandy beach a few miles north of Matherion late one golden autumn afternoon long before they should have and began wading the horses ashore from the wobbly collection of rafts.

‘Short trip,’ Khalad observed laconically as the two watched the novices unloading the horses.

‘You noticed,’ Berit laughed.

‘They weren’t particularly subtle about it. When the spray stopped freezing in my beard between one minute and the next, I started having suspicions.’ He paused. ‘Is magic very hard to learn?’ he asked.

‘The magic itself isn’t too hard. The hard part is learning the Styric language. Styric doesn’t have any regular verbs. They’re all irregular—and there are nine tenses.’

‘Berit, please speak plain Elenic.’

‘You know what a verb is, don’t you?’

‘Sort of, but what’s a tense?’

Somehow that made Berit feel better. Khalad did not know everything. ‘We’ll work on it,’ he assured his friend. ‘Maybe Sephrenia can make some suggestions.’

The sun was going down in a blaze of color when they rode through the opalescent gates into fire-domed Matherion, and it was dusk when they reached the imperial compound.

‘What’s wrong with everybody?’ Khalad muttered as they rode through the gate.

‘I didn’t follow that,’ Berit confessed.

‘Use your eyes, man. Those gate-guards were looking at Sparhawk as if they expected him to explode—or maybe turn into a dragon. Something’s going on, Berit.’

The Church Knights rode off across the twilight-dim lawn to their barracks while the rest of them clattered across the drawbridge into Ehlana’s castle. They dismounted in the torch-lit courtyard and trooped inside.

‘It’s even worse here,’ Khalad murmured. ‘Let’s stay close to Sparhawk in case we have to restrain him. The knights at the drawbridge seemed to be actually afraid of him.’

They went up the stairs to the royal apartment. Mirtai was not in her customary place at the door, and that made Berit even more edgy. Khalad was right. Something here was definitely not the way it should be.

Emperor Sarabian, dressed in his favorite purple doublet and hose, was nervously pacing the blue-carpeted floor of the sitting room as they entered, and he seemed to shrink back as Sparhawk and Vanion approached him.

‘Your Majesty,’ Sparhawk greeted him, inclining his head. ‘It’s good to see you again.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Ehlana?’ he asked, laying his helmet on the table.

‘Uh—in a minute, Sparhawk. How did things go on the North Cape?’

‘More or less the way we’d planned. Cyrgon doesn’t command the Trolls any more, but we’ve got another problem that might be even worse.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’ll tell you about it when Ehlana joins us. It’s not such a pretty story that we’d want to go through it twice.’

The Emperor gave Foreign Minister Oscagne a helpless look.

‘Let’s go speak with Baroness Melidere, Prince Sparhawk,’ Oscagne suggested. ‘Something’s happened here. She was present, so she’ll be able to answer your questions better than we would.’

‘All right.’ Sparhawk’s gaze was level, and his voice was steady, despite the fact that Sarabian’s nervousness and Oscagne’s evasive answer fairly screamed out the fact that something was terribly wrong.

Baroness Melidere sat propped up in her bed. She wore a fetching blue dressing-gown, but the sizeable bandage on her left shoulder was a clear indication that something serious had happened. Her face was pale, but her eyes were cool and rock steady. Stragen sat at her bedside in his white satin doublet, his face filled with concern.

‘Well,’ Melidere said, ‘finally.’ Her voice was crisp and businesslike. She flicked a withering glance at the Emperor and his advisers. ‘I see that these brave gentlemen have decided to let me tell you about what happened here, Prince Sparhawk. I’ll try to be brief. One night a couple of weeks ago, the Queen, Alcan, and I were getting ready for bed. There was a knock on the door, and four men we thought were Peloi came in. Their heads were shaved and they wore Peloi clothing, but they weren’t Peloi. One of them was Krager. The other three were Elron, Baron Parok, and Scarpa.’

Sparhawk did not move, and his face did not change expression.

‘And?’ he asked, his voice still unemotional.

‘You’ve decided to be sensible, I see,’ Melidere said coolly. ‘Good. We exchanged a few insults, and then Scarpa told Elron to kill me—just to prove to the Queen that he was serious. Elron lunged at me, and I deflected his thrust with my wrist. I fell down and smeared the blood around to make it appear that I’d been killed. Ehlana threw herself over me, pretending to be hysterical, but she’d seen what I’d done.’ The Baroness took a ruby ring out from under her pillow. ‘This is for you, Prince Sparhawk. Your wife hid it in my bodice. She also said, “Tell Sparhawk that I’m all right, and tell him that I forbid him to give up Bhelliom, no matter what they threaten to do to me.” Those were her exact words. Then she covered me with a blanket.’

Sparhawk took the ring and slipped it onto his finger. ‘I see,’ he said in a calm voice. ‘What happened then, Baroness?’

‘Scarpa told your wife that he and his friends were taking her and Alcan as hostages. He said that you were so foolishly attached to her that you’d give him anything for her safe return. He obviously intends to exchange her for the Bhelliom. Krager had a note already prepared. He cut off a lock of Ehlana’s hair to include in the note. I gather that there’ll be other notes, and each one will have some of her hair in it to prove that it’s authentic. Then they took Ehlana and Alcan and left.’

‘Thank you, Baroness,’ Sparhawk said, his voice still steady. ‘You’ve shown amazing courage in this unfortunate business. May I have the note?’

Melidere reached under her pillow again, took out a folded and sealed piece of parchment, and handed it to him.

Berit had loved his Queen from the moment he had first seen her sitting on her throne encased in crystal, although he had never mentioned the fact to her. There would be other loves in his life, of course, but she would always be the first. So it was that when Sparhawk broke the seal, unfolded the parchment, and gently removed the thick lock of pale blonde hair, Berit’s mind suddenly filled with flames. His grip tightened round the haft of his war-axe.

Khalad took him by the arm, and Berit was dimly startled by just how strong his friend’s grip was. ‘That’s not going to do anybody any good at all, Berit,’ he said in a crisp voice. ‘Now why don’t you just give me the axe before you do something foolish with it?’

Berit drew in a deep, trembling breath pushing away his sudden, irrational fury. ‘Sorry, Khalad,’ he said. ‘I sort of lost my grip there for a moment. I’ll be all right now.’ He looked at his friend. ‘Sparhawk’s going to let you kill Krager, isn’t he?’

‘So he says.’

‘Would you like some help?’

Khalad flashed him a quick grin. ‘It’s always nice to have company when you’re doing something that takes several days,’ he said.

Sparhawk quickly read the note, his free hand still gently holding the lock of Ehlana’s pale hair. Berit could see the muscles rippling along his friend’s jaw as he read. He handed the note to Vanion. ‘You’d better read this to them,’ he said bleakly.

Vanion nodded and took the note. He cleared his throat.

‘“Well now, Sparhawk,”’ he read aloud. ‘“I gather that your temper-tantrum’s over. I hope you didn’t kill too many of the people who were supposed to be guarding your wife.

‘“The situation here is painfully obvious, I’m afraid. We’ve taken Ehlana hostage. You will behave yourself, won’t you, old boy? The tiresomely obvious part of all of this is that you can have her back in exchange for Bhelliom and the rings. We’ll give you a few days to rant and rave and try to find some way out of this. Then, when you’ve come to your senses and realize that you have no choice but to do exactly as you’re told, I’ll drop you another note with some rather precise instructions. Do be a good boy and follow the instructions to the letter. I’d really rather not be forced to kill your wife, so don’t try to be creative.

‘“Be well, Sparhawk, and keep an eye out for my next note. You’ll know it’s from me because I’ll decorate it with another lock of Ehlana’s hair. Pay very close attention, because if our correspondence continues for too long, your wife will run out of hair, and I’ll have to start using fingers.”

‘And it’s signed “Krager”,’ Vanion concluded.

Kalten smashed his fist into the wall, his face rigid with fury.

‘That’s enough of that!’ Vanion snapped.

‘What are we going to do?’ Kalten demanded. ‘We have to do something!’

‘We’re not going to jump eight feet into the air and come down running, for a start,’ Vanion told him.

‘Where’s Mirtai?’ Kring’s voice had a note of sudden alarm.

‘She’s perfectly all right, Domi,’ Sarabian assured him. ‘She was a little upset when she found out what happened.’

‘A little?’ Oscagne murmured. ‘It took twelve men to subdue her. She’s in her room, Domi Kring—chained to the bed, actually. There are some guards there as well to keep her from doing herself any injury.’

Kring abruptly turned and left Melidere’s bedroom.

‘We’re tiring you, aren’t we, Baroness?’ Sarabian said then.

‘Not in the least, your Majesty,’ she replied in a cool voice. She looked around at them. ‘It’s a bit cramped in here. Why don’t we adjourn to the sitting-room? I’d imagine we’ll be most of the night at this, so we might as well be comfortable.’ She threw back her blankets and started to get out of bed.

Stragen gently restrained her. Then he picked her up.

‘I can walk, Stragen,’ she protested.

‘Not while I’m around, you can’t.’ Stragen’s customary expression of civilized urbanity was gone as he looked around at the others, and it had been replaced with one of cold, tightly suppressed rage. ‘One thing gentlemen,’ he told them. ‘When we catch up with these people, Elron’s mine. I’ll be very put out with anybody who accidentally kills him.’

Baroness Melidere’s eyes were quite content, and there was a faint smile on her face as she laid her head on Stragen’s shoulder.

Caalador was waiting for them in the sitting-room. His knees and elbows were muddy, and there were cobwebs in his hair.

‘I found it, your Majesty,’ he reported to the Emperor. ‘It comes out in the basement of that barracks the Church Knights have been using.’ He looked appraisingly at Sparhawk. ‘I’d heard you were back,’ he said. ‘We’ve managed to pick up a little information for you.’

‘I appreciate that, Caalador,’ Sparhawk replied quietly.

The big Pandion’s almost inhuman calm had them all more than a little on edge. ‘Stragen was a bit distracted after what happened to the Baroness here,’ Caalador reported, ‘so I was left more or less to my own devices. I took some fairly direct steps. The ideas were all mine, so don’t blame him for them.’

‘You don’t have to do that, Caalador,’ Stragen said, carefully tucking a blanket round Melidere’s shoulders. ‘You didn’t do anything I didn’t approve of.’

‘I take it that there were a few atrocities,’ Ulath surmised.

‘Let me start at the beginning,’ Caalador said, brushing his hands through his hair, trying to dislodge the cobwebs. ‘One of the men we’d been planning to kill during the Harvest Festival managed to evade my cut-throats, and he sent me a message offering to exchange information for his life. I agreed to that, and he told me something I didn’t know about. We knew that there were tunnels under the lawns here in the imperial compound, but what we didn’t know is that the ground under the whole city’s honeycombed with more tunnels. That’s how Krager and his friends got into the imperial grounds, and that’s how they took the Queen and her maid out.’

‘Prithee, good Master Caalador, stay a moment,’ Xanetia said. ‘I have seen into the memories of the Minister of the Interior, and he had no knowledge of such tunnels.’

‘That wouldn’t be hard to explain, Anarae,’ Patriarch Emban told her. ‘Ambitious underlings quite often conceal things from their superiors. Teovin, Director of the Secret Police, probably had his eye on Kolata’s position.’

‘That’s most likely it, your Grace,’ Caalador agreed. ‘Anyway, my informant knew the location of some of the tunnels, and I put men down there to look around for more while I questioned various members of the Secret Police who were in custody. My methods were fairly direct, and the ones who survived the questioning were more than happy to co-operate.

‘The tunnels were very busy on the night the Queen was abducted. The diplomats who were forted up in the Cynesgan Embassy knew about the scheme, and they realized that we’d kick down their walls as soon as we found out that the Queen was gone. They tried to escape through the tunnels, but I already had men down in those rat-holes. There were a number of noisy encounters, and we either rounded up or killed just about the entire embassy staff. The Ambassador himself survived, and I let him watch while I interrogated several under-secretaries. I’m very fond of Queen Ehlana, so I was quite firm with them.’ He looked at Sephrenia. ‘I don’t think I need to go into too much detail,’ he added.

‘Thank you,’ Sephrenia murmured.

‘The Ambassador didn’t really know all that much,’ Caalador continued apologetically, ‘but he did tell me that Scarpa and his friends were going south from here—which may or may not have been a ruse. His Majesty ordered the ports of Micae and Saranth sealed, and he put Atan patrols on the road from Toea to the coast, just to be on the safe side. Nothing’s turned up yet, so Scarpa either got away ahead of us, or he’s gone down a hole someplace nearby.’

The door opened, and Kring rejoined them, his face gloomy.

‘Did you unchain her?’ Tynian asked him.

‘That wouldn’t be a good idea right now, friend Tynian. She feels personally responsible for the Queen’s abduction. She wants to kill herself. I took everything with any kind of sharp edge out of the room, but I don’t think it’s really safe to unshackle her just yet.’

‘Did you get that spoon of hers away from her?’ Talen asked.

Kring’s eyes went wide. ‘Oh, God!’ he exclaimed, bolting for the door.

‘If he’d only yell at us or bang his fist against the wall or something,’ Berit murmured to Khalad the next morning when they gathered once again in the blue-draped sitting-room. ‘All he does is sit there.’

‘Sparhawk keeps his feelings to himself,’ Khalad replied.

‘It’s his wife we’re talking about, Khalad. He sits there like a lump. Doesn’t he have any feelings at all?’

‘Of course he does, but he’s not going to take them out and wave them around for us to look at. Right now it’s more important for him to think than to feel. He’s listening and putting things together. He’s saving up his feelings for when he gets his hands on Scarpa.’

Sparhawk sat in his chair with his daughter in his lap. He seemed to be studying the floor, and he was absently stroking Princess Danae’s cat.

Lord Vanion was telling the Emperor and the others about Klael and about their strategic disposition of forces: the Trolls to the Tamul mountains in south-central Tamul Proper, the Atans to Sarna and Tikume’s Peloi to Samar.

Flute was sitting quietly on Sephrenia’s lap. Berit noticed something that hadn’t occurred to him before. He glanced first at Princess Danae and then at the Child Goddess. They appeared to be about the same age, and their bearing and manner seemed very much alike for some reason.

The presence of the Child Goddess was having a peculiar effect on Emperor Sarabian. The brilliant, erratic ruler of the continent seemed dumbfounded by her presence and he sat gazing wide-eyed at her. His face was pale, and he was obviously not hearing a word Lord Vanion was saying.

Aphrael finally twisted round and returned his gaze. Then she slowly crossed her eyes at him. The Emperor started back violently.

‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it’s not polite to stare, Sarabian?’ she asked him.

‘Mind your manners,’ Sephrenia chided.

‘He’s supposed to be listening. If I want adoration, I’ll get myself a puppy.’

‘Forgive me, Goddess Aphrael,’ the Emperor apologized. ‘I seldom have divine visitors.’ He looked at her rather closely. ‘I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you rather resemble Prince Sparhawk’s daughter. Have you ever met her Royal Highness?’

Sparhawk’s head came up sharply, and there was a strange, almost wild look in his eyes.

‘Now that you mention it, I don’t think I have,’ Flute said.

She looked across the room at the Princess. Berit noticed that Sephrenia’s eyes were also just a bit wild as Flute slid down out of her lap and went across the room to Sparhawk’s chair. ‘Hullo, Danae,’ the Child Goddess said in an offhand sort of way.

‘Hullo, Aphrael,’ the Princess replied in almost exactly the same tone. ‘Are you going to do something to get my mother back home?’

‘I’m working on it. Try to keep your father from getting too excited about this. He’s no good to any of us when he flies all to pieces and we have to gather him up and put him back together again.’

‘I know. I’ll do what I can with him. Would you like to hold my cat?’

Flute glanced at Mmrr, whose eyes were filled with a look of absolute horror. ‘I don’t think she likes me,’ she declined.

‘I’ll take care of my father,’ Danae assured the little Goddess. ‘You deal with these others.’

‘All right.’ Aphrael paused. ‘I think we’ll get on well together,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t mind if I stopped by from time to time, would you?’

‘Any time, Aphrael.’

Something very peculiar was going on. Berit saw nothing unusual in the conversation between the two little girls, but Sparhawk’s face—and Sephrenia’s—clearly showed that they were both very disturbed. Berit kept his expression casual and looked around. Everyone else had faintly indulgent smiles on their faces as they watched the exchange—all except Lord Vanion and Anarae Xanetia. Their faces were no less strained than Sparhawk’s and Sephrenia’s. Evidently something titanic had just happened, but for the life of him, Berit could not fathom out what it might have been.

‘I don’t think we should discount the possibility,’ Oscagne said gravely. ‘Baroness Melidere has demonstrated again and again the fact that she has a very penetrating mind.’

‘Thank you, your Excellency,’ Melidere said sweetly.

‘I wasn’t really being complimentary, Baroness,’ he replied coolly. ‘Your intelligence is a resource to be exploited in this situation. You’ve seen Scarpa and we haven’t. Do you really believe he’s mad?’

‘Yes, your Excellency, quite mad. It wasn’t only his behavior that convinced me of it. Krager and the others treated him the way you’d treat a live cobra. They’re terrified of him.’

‘That dovetails rather neatly with some of the reports I got from the thieves of Arjuna,’ Caalador agreed. ‘There’s always a certain amount of exaggeration involved when people talk about madmen, but every report that came in mentioned it.’

‘If you’re trying to make Sparhawk and me feel better, you’re going at it in a strange way, Caalador,’ Kalten accused. ‘You’re suggesting that the women we love are the prisoners of a crazy man. He could do anything.’

‘It might not be as bad as it looks, Sir Kalten,’ Oscagne said. ‘If Scarpa’s mad, couldn’t this abduction have been his idea alone? If that’s the case, our solution becomes almost too simple. Prince Sparhawk simply follows the instructions he receives to the letter, and when Scarpa appears with Queen Ehlana and Alcan, his Highness simply hands over the Bhelliom. We all know what’ll happen to Scarpa as soon as he touches it.’

‘You’re equating insanity with feeble-mindedness, Oscagne,’ Sarabian disagreed, ‘and that’s simply not the way it works. Zalasta knows that the rings would protect him if he ever managed to get his hands on Bhelliom, and if he knows, then we have to assume that Scarpa does, too. He’ll demand the rings before he even tries to touch the jewel.’

‘We have three possibilities then,’ Patriarch Emban summed it all up. ‘Either Cyrgon instructed Zalasta to arrange for the abduction, or Zalasta came up with the notion on his own, or Scarpa’s so crazy that he thinks he can just pick up Bhelliom and start giving it commands with no instruction or preparation at all.’

‘There’s one more possibility, Your Grace,’ Ulath said. ‘Klael could already be in charge, and this could be his way to force Bhelliom to come to him for their customary contest.’

‘What difference does it make at this point?’ Sparhawk asked suddenly. ‘We won’t know whose idea it is until we see who shows up to make the exchange.’

‘We should have some plans in place, Prince Sparhawk,’ Oscagne pointed out. ‘We should try to think our way through each situation so that we’ll know what to do.’

‘I already know what I’m going to do, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk told him bleakly.

‘At the moment, we can’t do anything,’ Vanion said, moving in rather quickly. ‘All we can do is wait for Krager’s next note.’

‘Truly,’ Ulath agreed. ‘Krager’s going to give Sparhawk instructions. Those instructions might give us some clues about whose idea this really is.’

‘You noticed it, too, didn’t you?’ Berit said to Khalad that evening when the two of them were getting ready for bed.

‘Noticed what?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me, Khalad. You see everything that’s going on around you. Nothing gets by you. Sparhawk and Sephrenia were behaving very peculiarly when Flute and Danae were talking to each other.’

‘Yes,’ Khalad admitted calmly. ‘So what?’

‘Aren’t you curious about why?’

‘Has it occurred to you that “why” might not be any of our business?’

Berit stepped round that. ‘Did you notice how much the two girls resemble each other?’

Khalad shrugged. ‘You’re the expert on girls.’

Berit suddenly blushed and silently cursed himself for blushing.

‘It isn’t a secret, you know,’ Khalad told him. ‘Empress Elysoun’s fairly obvious. She doesn’t hide her feelings any more than she hides—well, you know.’

‘She’s a good girl,’ Berit quickly came to her defense. ‘It’s just that her people don’t pay any attention to our kind of morality. They can’t even comprehend the notion of fidelity.’

‘I’m not throwing rocks at her. If the way she behaves doesn’t bother her husband, it certainly doesn’t bother me. I’m a country boy, remember? We’re more realistic about things like that. I just wouldn’t get too attached to her, Berit. Her attention may wander in time.’

‘It already has,’ Berit replied. ‘She doesn’t want to discontinue our friendship, though. She wants to be friendly to me and to him—and to the half-dozen or so others she neglected to mention earlier.’

‘The world needs more friendliness, Berit,’ Khalad grinned. ‘There wouldn’t be so many wars if people were friendlier.’

Krager’s next note arrived two days later, and it was authenticated by another lock of Ehlana’s hair. The thought of the sodden drunkard violating his Queen’s pale blonde hair enraged Berit for some obscure reason. Vanion once again read the note to them while Sparhawk sat somewhat apart, gently holding the lock of his wife’s hair in his fingers.

‘“Sparhawk, old boy,”’ the note began. ‘“You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? I always admired the way Martel sort of tossed that off when everything was going his way. It was possibly the only thing about him that I admired.

‘“Enough of these fond reminiscences. You’re going to be making a trip, Sparhawk. We want you to take your squire and travel by the customary overland route to Beresa in southeastern Arjuna. You’ll be watched, so don’t take any side-trips, don’t have Kalten and the other baboons trailing along behind you, don’t have Sephrenia disguised as a mouse or a flea hidden in your pocket, and most definitely don’t use Bhelliom for anything at all—not even for building campfires. I know we can depend on your absolute co-operation, old boy, since you’ll never see Ehlana alive again if you misbehave.

‘“It’s always a pleasure to talk with you, Sparhawk particularly in view of the fact that it’s your hands that are chained this time. Now stop wasting time. Take Khalad and the Bhelliom and go to Beresa. You’ll receive further instructions there. Fondly, Krager.”’

3

They talked and talked and talked, and every ‘maybe’ or ‘possibly’ or ‘probably’ or ‘on the other hand’ set Sparhawk’s teeth on edge. It was all pure speculation, useless guessing that circled and circled and never got to the point. He sat slightly apart from them holding the lock of pale hair. The hair felt strangely alive, coiling round his fingers in a soft caress.

It was his fault, of course. He should never have permitted Ehlana to come to Tamuli. It went further than that, though.

Ehlana had been in danger all her life, and it had all been because of him—because of the fact that he was Anakha. Xanetia had said that Anakha was invincible, but she was wrong. Anakha was as vulnerable as any married man. By marrying Ehlana, he had immediately put her at risk, a risk that would last for as long as she lived.

He should never have married her. He loved her, of course, but was it an act of love to put her in danger? He silently cursed the weakness that had led him to even consider the ridiculous notion when she had first raised it. He was a soldier, and soldiers should never marry—particularly not scarred, battered old veterans with too many years and too many battles behind them and too many enemies still about. Was he some selfish old fool? Some disgusting, half-senile lecher eager to take advantage of a foolish young girl’s infatuation? Ehlana had extravagantly declared that she would die if he refused her, but he knew better than that. People die from a sword in the belly, or from old age, but they do not die from love. He should have laughed in her face and rejected her absurd command. Then he could have arranged a proper marriage for her, a marriage to some handsome young nobleman with good manners and a safe occupation. If he had, she would still be safely back in Cimmura instead of in the hands of madmen, degenerate sorcerers and alien Gods to whom her life meant nothing at all.

And still they talked on and on and on. Why were they wasting all their breath? There wasn’t any choice in the matter. Sparhawk would obey the instructions because Ehlana’s life depended on it. The others were certain to argue with him about it, and the arguments would only irritate him. The best thing would probably be just to take the Bhelliom and Khalad and slip out of Matherion without giving them the chance to drive him mad with their meaningless babble.

It was the touch of a springlike breeze on his cheek and a soft nuzzling on his hand that roused him from his gloomy reverie.

‘It was not mine intent to disturb thy thought, Sir Knight,’ the white deer apologized, ‘but my mistress would have words with thee.’

Sparhawk jerked his head round in astonishment. He no longer sat in the blue-draped room in Matherion, and the voices of the others had faded away to be replaced by the sound of the gentle lapping of waves upon a golden strand. His chair now sat on the marble floor of Aphrael’s temple on the small verdant island that rose gem-like from the sea. The breeze was soft under the rainbow-colored sky, and the ancient oaks around the alabaster temple rustled softly.

‘Thou hast forgotten me,’ the gentle white hind reproached him, her liquid eyes touched with sorrow.

‘Never,’ he replied. ‘I shall remember thee always, dear creature, for I do love thee, even as I did when first we met.’ The extravagant expression came to his lips unbidden.

The white deer sighed happily and laid her snowy head in his lap. He stroked her arched white neck and looked around.

The Child Goddess Aphrael, gowned in white and surrounded by a glowing nimbus, sat calmly on a branch of one of the nearby oaks. She lifted her many-chambered pipes and blew an almost mocking little trill.

‘What are you up to now, Aphrael?’ he called up to her, deliberately forcing away the flowery words that jumped to his lips.

‘I thought you might want to talk,’ she replied, lowering the pipes. ‘Did you want some more time for self-mortification? Would you like a whip so that you can flog yourself with it? Take as much time as you want, Father. This particular instant will last for as long as I want it to.’ She reached out with one grass-stained little foot, placed it on nothing at all and calmly walked down a non-existent stairway to the alabaster floor of her temple. She sank down on it, crossed her feet at the ankles and lifted her pipes again. ‘Will it disturb your sour musings if I play?’

‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.

She shrugged. ‘You seem to have this obscure need for penance of some kind, and there’s no time for it. I wouldn’t be much of a Goddess if I couldn’t satisfy both needs at the same time, now would I?’ She raised her pipes. ‘Do you have any favorites you’d like to hear?’

‘You’re actually serious, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ She breathed another little trill into the pipes.

He glared at her for a moment, and then he gave up. ‘Can we talk about this?’ he asked her.

‘You’ve come to your senses? Already? Amazing.’

He looked around at the island. ‘Where is this place?’ he asked curiously.

The Child Goddess shrugged. ‘Wherever I want it to be. I carry it with me everyplace I go. Were you serious about what you were just thinking, Sparhawk? Were you really going to snatch up Bhelliom, grab Khalad by the scruff of the neck, leap onto Faran’s back and try to ride off in three directions at the same time?’

‘All Vanion and the others are doing is talking, Aphrael, and the talk isn’t going anywhere.’

‘Did you speak with Bhelliom about this notion of yours?’

‘The decision is mine, Aphrael. Ehlana’s my wife.’

‘How brave you are, Sparhawk. You’re making a decision that involves the Bhelliom without even consulting it. Don’t be misled by its seeming politeness, Father. That’s just a reflection of its archaic speech. It won’t do something it knows is wrong, no matter how sorry you’re feeling for yourself, and if you grow too insistent, it might just decide to create a new sun—about six inches from your heart.’

‘I have the rings, Aphrael. I’m still the one giving the orders.’

She laughed at him. ‘Do you really think the rings mean anything, Sparhawk? They have no control over Bhelliom at all. That was just a subterfuge that concealed the fact that it has an awareness—and a will and purpose of its own. It can ignore the rings any time it wants to.’

‘Then why did it need me?’

‘Because you’re a necessity, Sparhawk—like wind or tide or rain. You’re as necessary as Klael is—or Bhelliom—or me, for that matter. Someday we’ll have to come back here and have a long talk about necessity, but we’re a little pressed for time right now.’

‘And was that little virtuoso performance of yours yesterday another necessity as well? Would the world have come to an end if you hadn’t held that public conversation with yourself?’

‘What I did yesterday was useful, Father, not necessary. I am who I am, and I can’t change that. When I’m going through one of these transitions, there are usually people around who know both of the little girls, and they start noticing the similarities. I always make it a point to have the girls meet each other in public. It puts off tiresome questions and lays unwanted suspicions to rest.’

‘You terrified Mmrr, you know.’

She nodded. ‘I’ll make it up to her. That’s always been a problem. Animals can see right through my disguises. They don’t look at us in the way that we look at each other.’

He sighed. ‘What am I going to do, Aphrael?’

‘I was hoping that a visit here would bring you back to your senses. A stopover in reality usually has that effect.’

He looked up at her private, rainbow-colored sky. ‘This is your notion of reality?’

‘Don’t you like my reality?’

‘It’s lovely,’ he told her, absently stroking the white deer’s neck, ‘but it’s a dream.’

‘Are you really sure about that, Sparhawk? Are you so certain that this isn’t reality and that other place isn’t the dream?’

‘Don’t do that. It makes my head hurt. What should I do?’

‘I’d say that your first step ought to be to have a long conversation with Bhelliom. All of your moping around and contemplating arbitrary decisions has it more than a little worried.’

‘All right. Then what?’

‘I haven’t gotten that far yet.’ She grinned at him. ‘I’m a-workin’ on it though, Dorlin’,’ she added.

‘They’re going to be all right, Kalten,’ Sparhawk said, gently laying his hand on his suffering friend’s shoulder.

Kalten looked up, his eyes filled with hopeless misery. ‘Are you sure, Sparhawk?’

‘They will be if we can just keep our heads. Ehlana was in much more danger when I came back from Render, and we took care of that, didn’t we?’

‘I suppose you’re right.’ Kalten straightened up in his chair and jerked down his blue doublet. His face was bleak. ‘I think I’m going to find some people and hurt them,’ he declared.

‘Would you mind if I came along?’

‘You can help if you like.’ Kalten rubbed at the side of his face. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘You know that if you follow those orders in Krager’s note, he’ll be able to keep you plodding from one end of Tamuli to the other for the next year or more, don’t you?’

‘Do I have any choice? They’re going to be watching me.’

‘Let them. Do you remember how we met Berit?’

‘He was a novice in the Chapterhouse in Cimmura,’ Sparhawk shrugged.

‘Not when I first saw him, he wasn’t. I was coming back from exile in Lamorkand, and I stopped at a roadside tavern outside of Cimmura. Berit was there with Kurik, and he was wearing your armor. I’ve known you since we were children, and even I couldn’t tell that he wasn’t you. If I couldn’t tell, Krager’s spies certainly won’t be able to. If somebody has to plod around Tamuli, let Berit do it. You and I have better things to do.’

Sparhawk was startled. ‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard yet.’ He looked around at the others. ‘Could I have your attention, please?’ he said. They all looked sharply at him, their faces apprehensive. ‘It’s time to get to work,’ he told them. ‘Kalten here just reminded me that we’ve used Sir Berit as a decoy in the past. Berit and I are nearly the same size, and my armor fits him more or less—and with his visor down, nobody can really tell that he isn’t me. If we can prevail on him to masquerade as a broken-down old campaigner again, we might just be able to prepare a few surprises for Krager and his friends.’

‘You don’t even have to ask, Sparhawk,’ Berit said.

‘Get some details before you volunteer like that, Berit,’ Khalad told his friend in a pained voice.

‘Your father used to say almost exactly the same thing,’ Berit recalled.

‘Why didn’t you listen to him?’

‘It’s an interesting plan, Prince Sparhawk,’ Oscagne said a bit dubiously, ‘but isn’t it extremely dangerous?’

‘I’m not afraid, your Excellency,’ Berit protested.

‘I wasn’t talking about your danger, young sir. I’m talking about the danger to Queen Ehlana. The moment someone penetrates your disguise—well ...’ Oscagne spread his hands.

‘Then we’ll just have to make sure that his disguise is foolproof,’ Sephrenia said.

‘He can’t keep his visor down forever, Sephrenia,’ Sarabian objected.

‘I don’t think he’ll have to,’ Sephrenia replied. She looked speculatively at Xanetia. ‘Do we trust each other enough to cooperate, Anarae?’ she asked. ‘I’m talking about something a little deeper than we’ve gone so far.’

‘I will listen most attentively to thy proposal, my sister.’

‘Delphaeic magic is directed primarily inward, isn’t it?’ Xanetia nodded. ‘That’s probably why no one can hear or feel it. Styric magic is just the reverse. We alter things around us, so our magic reaches out. Neither form will work by itself in this particular situation, but if we were to combine them ...’ She left it hanging in the air between them.

‘Interesting notion,’ Aphrael mused.

‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Vanion said.

‘The Anarae and I are going to have to experiment a bit,’ Sephrenia told him, ‘but if what I’ve got in mind works, we’ll be able to make Berit look so much like Sparhawk that they’ll be able to use each other for shaving mirrors.’

‘As long as each of us knows exactly what the other’s doing, it’s not too difficult, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia assured him later when he and Berit joined her, Vanion and the Anarae in the room she shared with Vanion.

‘Will it really work?’ he asked her dubiously.

‘They haven’t actually tried it yet, Sparhawk,’ Vanion told him, ‘so we’re not entirely positive.’

‘That doesn’t sound too promising. This isn’t much of a face, but it’s the only one I’ve got.’

‘There will be no danger to thee or to young Sir Berit, Anakha,’ Xanetia said. ‘In times past it hath oft been necessary for my people to leave our valley and to go abroad amongst others. This hath been our means of disguising our true identity.’

‘It works sort of like this, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia explained. ‘Xanetia casts a Delphaeic spell that would normally imprint your features on her own face, but just as she releases her spell, I release a Styric one that deflects the spell to Berit instead.’

‘Won’t every Styric in Matherion feel it when you release your spell?’ Sparhawk asked.

‘That’s the beauty of it, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael told him. ‘The spell itself originates with Xanetia, and others can’t feel or hear a Delphaeic spell. Cyrgon himself could be in the next room and he wouldn’t hear a thing.’

‘You’re sure it’s going to work?’

‘There’s one way to find out.’

Sparhawk, of course, did not feel a thing. He was only the model, after all. It was a bit disconcerting to watch Berit’s appearance gradually change, however. When the combined spell had been completed, Sparhawk carefully inspected his young friend. ‘Do I really look like that from the side?’ he asked Vanion, feeling a bit deflated.

‘I can’t tell the two of you apart.’

‘That nose is really crooked, isn’t it?’

‘We thought you knew.’

‘I’ve never looked at myself from the side this way before.’ Sparhawk looked critically at Berit’s eyes. ‘You should probably try to squint just a little,’ he suggested. ‘My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. That’s one of the things you have to look forward to as you get older.’

‘I’ll try to remember that.’ Even Berit’s voice was different.

‘Do I really sound like that?’ Sparhawk was crestfallen. Vanion nodded. Sparhawk shook his head. ‘Seeing and hearing yourself as others do definitely lowers your opinion of yourself,’ he admitted.

He looked at Berit again. ‘I didn’t feel anything, did you?’

Berit nodded, swallowing hard.

‘What was it like?’

‘I’d really rather not talk about it.’ Berit gently explored his new face with cringing fingertips, wincing as he did.

‘I still can’t tell them apart,’ Kalten marveled, staring first at Berit and then at Sparhawk.

‘That was sort of the idea,’ Sparhawk told him.

‘Which one are you?’

‘Try to be serious, Kalten.’

‘Now that we know how it’s done, we can make some other changes as well,’ Sephrenia told them. ‘We’ll give you all different faces so that you’ll be able to move around freely—and we’ll put men wearing your faces here in the palace. I think we can all expect to be watched, even after the Harvest Festival, and this should nullify that particular problem.’

‘We can make more detailed plans later,’ Vanion said. ‘Let’s get Berit and Khalad on their way first. What’s the customary route when someone wants to go overland from here to Beresa?’ He unrolled a map and spread it out on the table.

‘Most travelers go by sea,’ Oscagne replied, ‘but those who don’t usually cross the peninsula to Micae and then take a ship across the gulf to the mainland.’

‘There don’t seem to be any roads over there,’ Vanion frowned, looking at the map.

‘It’s a relatively uninhabited region, Lord Vanion,’ Oscagne shrugged, ‘salt marshes and the like. What few tracks there are wouldn’t show up on the map.’

‘Do the best you can,’ Vanion told the two young men. ‘Once you get past the Tamul Mountains, you’ll hit that road that skirts the western side of the jungle.’

‘I’d make a special point of staying out of those mountains, Berit,’ Ulath advised. ‘There are Trolls there now.’

Berit nodded.

‘You’d better have a talk with Faran, Sparhawk,’ Khalad suggested. ‘I don’t think he’ll be fooled just because Berit’s wearing your face, and Berit’s going to have to ride him if this is going to be convincing.’

‘I’d forgotten that,’ Sparhawk admitted.

‘I thought you might have.’

‘All right then,’ Vanion continued his instructions to the two young men. ‘follow that road down to Hydros, then take the road around the southern tip of Arjuna to Beresa. That’s the direct route, and they’ll probably be expecting you to go that way.’

‘That’s going to take quite a while, Lord Vanion,’ Khalad said.

‘I know. Evidently Krager and his friends want it to. If they were in a hurry, they’d have instructed Sparhawk to go by sea. ’

‘Give Berit your wife’s ring, Sparhawk,’ Flute instructed.

‘What?’

‘Zalasta can sense the ring, and if he can, Cyrgon can, too and Klael will definitely feel it. If you don’t give Berit the ring, changing his face was just a waste of time.’

‘You’re putting Berit and Khalad in a great deal of danger,’ Sephrenia said critically.

‘That’s what we get paid for, little mother,’ Khalad shrugged.

‘I’ll watch over them,’ Aphrael assured her sister. She looked critically at Berit. ‘Call me,’ she told him.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Use the spell, Berit,’ she explained with exaggerated patience. ‘I want to be sure you’re doing it right.’

‘Oh.’ Berit carefully enunciated the spell of summoning, his hands moving in the intricate accompanying gestures.

‘You mispronounced “Knjernsticon”,’ she corrected him.

Sephrenia was trying without much success to suppress a laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ Talen asked her.

‘Sir Berit’s pronunciations raised some questions about his meaning,’ Stragen explained.

‘What did he say?’ Talen asked curiously.

‘Just never mind what he said,’ Flute told him primly. ‘We’re not here to repeat off-color jokes about the differences between boys and girls. Practice on that one, Berit. Now try the secret summoning. ’

‘What’s that?’ Itagne murmured to Vanion.

‘It’s used to pass messages, your Excellency,’ Vanion replied. ‘It summons the awareness of the Child Goddess, but not her presence. We can give her a message to carry to someone else by using that spell.’

‘Isn’t that just a little demeaning for the Child Goddess? Do you really make her run errands and carry messages that way?’

‘I’m not offended, Itagne.’ Aphrael smiled. ‘After all, we live only to serve those we love, don’t we?’

Berit’s pronunciation of the second spell raised no objections.

‘You’ll probably want to use that one most of the time anyway, Berit,’ Vanion instructed. ‘Krager warned Sparhawk about using magic, so don’t be too obvious about things. If you get any further instructions along the road, make some show of following them, but pass the word on to Aphrael.’

‘There’s no real point in decking him out in Sparhawk’s armor now, is there, Lord Vanion?’ Khalad asked.

‘Good point,’ Vanion agreed. ‘A mail-shirt should do, Berit. We want them to see your face now.’

‘Yes, my Lord.’

‘Now you’d better get some sleep,’ Vanion continued. ‘You’ll be starting early tomorrow morning.’

‘Not too early, though,’ Caalador amended. ‘We purely wouldn’t want th’ spies t’ oversleep therselfs an’ miss seein’ y’ leave. Gittin’ a new face don’t mean shucks iffn y’ don’t git no chance t’ show it off, now does it?’

It was chill and damp in the courtyard the following morning, and a thin autumn mist lay over the gleaming city. Sparhawk led Faran out of the stables. ‘Just be careful,’ he cautioned the two young men in mail-shirts and travelers’ cloaks.

‘You’ve said that already, my Lord,’ Khalad reminded him. ‘Berit and I aren’t deaf, you know.’

‘You’d better forget that name, Khalad,’ Sparhawk said critically. ‘Start thinking of our young friend here as me. A slip of the tongue in the wrong place could give this all away.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind.’

‘Do you need money?’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

‘You’re as bad as your father was.’ Sparhawk pulled a purse from under his belt and handed it to his squire. Then he firmly took Faran by the chin and looked straight into the big roan’s eyes. ‘I want you to go with Berit, Faran,’ he said. ‘Behave exactly as you would if he were me.’

Faran flicked his ears and looked away.

‘Pay attention,’ Sparhawk said sharply. ‘This is important.’

Faran sighed.

‘He knows what you’re talking about, Sparhawk,’ Khalad said. ‘He’s not stupid—just bad-tempered.’

Sparhawk handed the reins to Berit. Then he remembered something. ‘We’ll need a password,’ he said. ‘The rest of us are going to have different faces, so you won’t recognize us if we have to contact you. Pick something ordinary.’

They all considered it.

‘How about “ramshorn”?’ Berit suggested. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard to work it into an ordinary conversation, and we’ve used it before.’

Sparhawk suddenly remembered Ulesim, most-favored-disciple-of-holy-Arasham, standing atop a pile of rubble with Kurik’s crossbow bolt sticking out of his forehead and the word ramshorn still on his lips. ‘Very good, Berit—ah—Sir Sparhawk, that is. It’s a word we all remember. You’d better get started.’

They nodded and swung up into their saddles.

‘Good luck,’ Sparhawk said.

‘You too, my Lord,’ Khalad replied. And then the pair turned and rode slowly toward the drawbridge.

‘All we’ve really got to work with is the name Beresa,’ Sarabian mused, somewhat later. ‘Krager’s note said that Sparhawk would receive further instructions there.’

‘That could be a ruse, your Majesty,’ Itagne pointed out. ‘Actually, the exchange could take place at any time—and any place. That might have been the reason for the instructions to go overland.’

‘That’s true,’ Caalador agreed. ‘Scarpa and Zalasta might just be waiting on the beach on the west side of the Gulf of Micae wanting to make the trade right there, for all we know.’

‘We’re going to an awful lot of trouble here,’ Talen said. ‘Why doesn’t Sparhawk just have Bhelliom go rescue the Queen? It could pick her up and have her back here before Scarpa even knew she was gone.’

‘No,’ Aphrael said, shaking her head. ‘Bhelliom can’t do that any more than I can.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we don’t know where she is—and we can’t go looking for her, because they’ll be able to sense us moving around.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know that.’

Aphrael rolled her eyes upward. ‘Men!’ she sighed.

‘It was very resourceful of Ehlana to slip her ring to Melidere,’ Sephrenia said, ‘but locating her would be much easier if she still had it with her.’

‘I sort of doubt that, dear,’ Vanion disagreed. ‘Zalasta of all people knows that the rings can be traced. If Ehlana had still been wearing it, the first thing Scarpa would have done would been to send Krager or Elron off in the opposite direction with it.’

‘You’re assuming that Zalasta’s involved in this,’ she disagreed. ‘There is the possibility that Scarpa’s acting on his own, you know. ’

‘It’s always better to assume the worst,’ he shrugged. ‘Our situation is much more perilous if Zalasta and Cyrgon are involved. If it’s only Scarpa, he’ll be relatively easy to dispose of.’

‘But only after Ehlana and Alcan are safe,’ Sparhawk amended.

‘That goes without saying, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said.

‘Everything hinges on the moment of the exchange then, doesn’t it?’ Sarabian noted. ‘We can make some preparations, but we won’t be able to do anything at all significant until the moment that Scarpa actually produces Ehlana.’

‘And that means that we have to stay close to Berit and Khalad,’ Tynian added.

‘No.’ Aphrael was shaking her head. ‘You’ll give everything away if you all start hovering over those two. Let me do the staying close. I don’t wear armor, so no one will be able to smell me from a thousand paces off. Itagne’s right. The exchange could come at any time. I’ll let Sparhawk know the very instant Scarpa shows up with Ehlana and Alcan. Then Bhelliom can set him down—with knife—right on top of them. Then we’ll have the ladies back, and we’ll be more or less in charge of things again.’

‘And that brings us right back to a purely military situation,’ Patriarch Emban mused. ‘I think we’ll want to send word to Komier and Bergsten. We’re going to need the Church Knights in Cynesga and Arjuna, not in Edam or Astel—or here in Matherion. Let’s have them ride southeast after they come down out of the mountains of Zemoch. We’ll have the Atans in Sarna, the eastern Peloi and the Church Knights we’ve already got in Samar, the Trolls in the Tamul Mountains and Komier and Bergsten on the western side of the Desert of Cynesga. We’ll be able to squeeze the land of the Cyrgai like a lemon at that point.’

‘And see what kind of seeds come popping out,’ Kalten added bleakly.

Patriarch Emban, First Secretary of the Church of Chyrellos, was a man who absolutely adored lists. The fat little churchman automatically drew up a list when any subject was being discussed.

There is a certain point in most discussions when things have all been settled, and the participants start going back over the various points. Inevitably, that was the point at which Emban pulled out his list. ‘All right then,’ he said in a tone that clearly said that he was summing up, ‘Sparhawk will take ship for Beresa, along with Milord Stragen and young master Talen, right?’

‘It puts him in place in case Berit and Khalad do, in fact, have to ride all the way down there, your Grace,’ Vanion said. ‘And Stragen and Talen have contacts in Beresa, so they’ll probably be able to find out just who else is in town.’

Emban checked that off his list. ‘Next. Sir Kalten, Sir Bevier and Master Caalador will sail south on a different ship and go into the jungles of Arjuna.’

Caalador nodded. ‘I’ve got a friend in Delo who has contacts with the robber bands in those jungles,’ he said. ‘We’ll join one of those bands, so we’ll be able to keep an eye on Natayos and pass the word if Scarpa’s army starts to move.’

‘Right.’ Emban checked that off. ‘Next. Sir Ulath and Sir Tynian will go to the Tamul Mountains to stay in touch with the Trolls.’ He frowned. ‘Why is Tynian going there?’ he asked. ‘He doesn’t speak Trollish.’

‘Tynian and I get along well,’ Ulath rumbled, ‘and I’ll get terribly lonely if there’s no one around to talk with but Trolls. You have no idea of how depressing it is to be alone with Trolls, your Grace.’

‘Whatever makes you happy, Sir Ulath.’ Emban shrugged. ‘Now then, Sephrenia and Anarae Xanetia will go to Delphaeus to advise Anari Codon about all these recent developments and to explain what we’re doing.’

‘And to see what we can do to make peace between Styricum and the Delphae,’ Sephrenia added.

Emban checked off another item. He said, ‘Lord Vanion, Queen Betuana, Ambassador Itagne and Domi Kring will take the five thousand knights and go to Western Tamul proper to join with the forces they have in place in Sarna and Samar.’

‘Where is Domi Kring?’ Betuana asked, looking around for the little man.

‘He’s standing guard over Mirtai,’ Princess Danae said. ‘He’s still about half afraid she might try to kill herself.’

‘We could have a problem there,’ Bevier observed. ‘Under those circumstances, Kring might not be willing to leave Matherion.’

‘We can get along without him if we have to,’ Vanion said. ‘I can deal with Tikume directly. Having Kring around would make it easier, but I can make do without him if he really thinks that Mirtai might do something foolish.’

Emban nodded. ‘Emperor Sarabian, Foreign Minister Oscagne and I will stay here in Matherion to hold down the fort, and the Child Goddess will keep us all in touch with each other. Have I left anything out?’

‘What do you want me to do, Emban?’ Danae asked sweetly.

‘You’ll stay here in Matherion with us, your Royal Highness,’ Emban replied, ‘to brighten our gloomy days and nights with the sunshine of your smile.’

‘Are you making fun of me, your Grace?’

‘Of course not, Princess.’

To say that Mirtai was unhappy would have been the grossest of understatements. She was in chains when Kring brought her into the council chamber with a hopeless kind of look on his face. ‘Nothing I say even reaches her,’ the Domi told them. ‘I think she’s even forgotten that we’re betrothed.’

The golden Atan giantess would not look at any of them, but sank instead to the floor in abject misery.

‘She has failed her owner.’ Betuana shrugged. ‘She must either avenge or die.’

‘Not quite, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk’s daughter said firmly. She slipped down from the chair in the corner from which she had been watching the proceedings. She deposited Rollo in one corner of the chair and Mmrr in the other and crossed the room to Mirtai with a businesslike look on her small face. ‘Atana Mirtai,’ she said crisply, ‘get up off the floor.’

Mirtai looked sullenly at her, then slowly rose, her chains rattling.

‘In my mother’s absence, I am the queen,’ Danae declared.

Sparhawk blinked.

‘You’re not Ehlana,’ Mirtai said.

‘I’m not pretending to be. I’m stating a legal fact. Sarabian, isn’t that the way it works? Isn’t my mother’s power mine while she’s away?’

‘Well—technically, I suppose.’

‘Technically my foot. I’m Queen Ehlana’s heir. I’m assuming her position until she returns. That means that I temporarily own everything that’s hers—her throne, her crown, her jewels, and her personal slave.’

‘I’d hate to have to argue against her in a court of law,’ Emban admitted.

‘Thank you, your Grace,’ Danae said. ‘All right, Atana Mirtai, you heard them. You’re my property now.’

Mirtai scowled at her.

‘Don’t do that,’ Danae snapped. ‘Pay attention. I am your owner, and I forbid you to kill yourself. I also forbid you to run off. I need you here. You’re going to stay here with Melidere and me, and you’re going to guard us. You failed my mother. Don’t fail me.’

Mirtai stiffened, and then she broke her chains with an angry wrench of her arms. ‘It shall be as you say, your Majesty,’ she snapped, her eyes blazing.

Danae looked around at the rest of them with a smug little smile. ‘See,’ she said. ‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?’

4

It was a small, single-masted coastal freighter with a leaky bottom and patched sails. It definitely did not skim the waves.

Berit and Khalad wore their mail-shirts and travelers’ cloaks and they stood in the bow looking out across the leaden expanse of the Gulf of Micae as the wretched vessel wallowed along.

‘Is that coast up ahead?’ Berit asked hopefully.

Khalad looked out across the choppy water. ‘No, just a cloudbank. We’re not moving very fast, my Lord. We won’t make the coast today, I’m afraid.’ He looked aft and lowered his voice. ‘Stay alert after the sun goes down,’ he instructed. ‘The crew of this tub is made up of waterfront sweepings, and the captain isn’t much better. I think we should take turns sleeping tonight.’

Berit glanced back along the deck at the assortment of ruffians loitering there. ‘I wish I had my axe,’ he muttered.

‘Don’t say things like that out loud, Berit,’ Khalad muttered. ‘Sparhawk doesn’t use a war-axe. Krager knows that, and one of these sailors may be working for him.’

‘Still? after the Harvest Festival?’

‘Nobody’s ever figured out a way to kill all the rats, my Lord, and it only takes one. Let’s both behave as if we’re being watched and every word we say is being overheard—just to be on the safe side.’

‘I’ll be a lot happier once we get ashore. Did we really have to make this leg of the trip by sea?’

‘It’s the custom.’ Khalad shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. We can hold off these sailors if we have to.’

‘That’s not what’s bothering me, Khalad. This scow waddles through the water like a whale with a sprained back. It’s making me queasy.’

‘Eat a piece of dry bread.’

‘I’d rather not. This is really miserable, Khalad.’

‘But we’re having an adventure, my Lord,’ Khalad said brightly. ‘Doesn’t the excitement make up for the discomfort?’

‘No. Not really.’

‘You’re the one who wanted to be a knight.’

‘Yes, I know—and right now I’m trying to remember why.’

Patriarch Emban was very displeased. ‘This is really outrageous, Vanion,’ he protested as he waddled along with the others toward the chapel in the west wing. ‘If Dolmant ever finds out that I’ve permitted the practice of witchcraft in a consecrated place of worship, he’ll have me defrocked.’

‘It’s the safest place, Emban,’ Vanion replied. ‘The pretense of “sacred rites” gives us an excuse to chase all the Tamuls out of the west wing. Besides, the chapel’s probably never really been consecrated anyway. This is an imitation castle built to make Elenes feel at home. The people who built it couldn’t have known the rite of consecration.’

‘You don’t know that it hasn’t been consecrated.’

‘And you don’t know that it has. If it bothers you all that much, Emban, you can re-consecrate it after we finish.’

Emban’s face blanched. ‘Do you know what’s involved in that, Vanion?’ he protested. ‘The hours of praying—the prostration before the altar—the fasting?’ His chubby face went pale. ‘Good God, the fasting!’

Sephrenia, Flute, and Xanetia had slipped into the chapel several hours earlier, and they were sitting unobtrusively in one corner listening to a choir of Church Knights singing hymns. Emban and Vanion were still arguing when they joined the ladies.

‘What’s the problem?’ Sephrenia asked.

‘Patriarch Emban and Lord Vanion are having a disagreement about whether or not the chapel’s been consecrated, little mother,’ Kalten explained.

‘It hasn’t,’ Flute told him with a little shrug.

‘How can you tell?’ Emban demanded.

She gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Who am I, your Grace?’ she asked him.

He blinked. ‘Oh. I keep forgetting that for some reason. Is there actually a way you can tell whether or not a place has been consecrated?’

‘Well of course there is. Believe me, Emban, this chapel’s never been consecrated to your Elene God.’ She paused. ‘There was a spot not far from here that was consecrated to a tree about eighteen thousand years ago, though.’

‘A tree?’

‘It was a very nice tree—an oak. It’s always an oak for some reason. Nobody ever seems to want to worship an elm. Lots of people used to worship trees. They’re predictable, for one thing.’

‘How could anybody in his right mind worship a tree?’

‘Who ever said that religious people were in their right minds? Sometimes you humans confuse us a great deal, you know.’

Since there was an exchange of features involved in most cases here, Sephrenia and Xanetia had experimented a bit to alter the spell which had imprinted Sparhawk’s face on Berit. No exchange was necessary for Sparhawk, however, so they modified him first. He sat beside his old friend, Sir Endrik, a veteran with whom he, Kalten and Martel had endured their novitiates.

Xanetia approached them with the color draining from her features and that soft radiance suffusing her face. She examined Endrik meticulously, and then her voice rose as she began to intone the Delphaeic spell in her oddly accented, archaic Tamul. Sephrenia stood at her side simultaneously casting the Styric spell.

Sparhawk felt nothing whatsoever as Xanetia released her spell. Then at the crucial instant, Sephrenia extended her hand, interposing it between Sir Endrik’s face and Xanetia’s and simultaneously releasing the Styric spell. Sparhawk definitely felt that. His features seemed to somehow soften like melting wax, and he could actually feel his face changing, almost as wet clay is changed and molded by the potter’s hand. The straightening of his broken nose was a bit painful, and the lengthening of his jaw made his teeth ache as they shifted in the bone.

‘What do you think?’ Sephrenia asked Vanion when the process had been completed.

‘I don’t think you could get them any closer,’ Vanion replied, examining the two men closely. ‘How does it feel to be twins, Endrik?’

‘I didn’t feel a thing, my Lord,’ Endrik replied, staring curiously at Sparhawk.

‘I did,’ Sparhawk told him, gingerly touching his re-shaped nose. ‘Does the ache go away eventually, Anarae?’ he asked.

‘Thou wilt notice it less as time doth accustom thee to the alteration, Anakha. I did warn thee that some discomfort is involved, did I not?’

‘You did indeed.’’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘It’s not unbearable.”

‘Do I really look like that?’ Endrik asked.

‘Yes,’ Vanion replied.

‘I should take better care of myself. The years aren’t being good to me.’

‘Nobody stays young and beautiful forever, Endrik,’ Kalten laughed.

‘Is that all that needs to be done to these two, Anarae?’ Vanion asked.

‘The process is complete, Lord Vanion,’ Xanetia replied.

‘We need to talk, Sparhawk,’ the Preceptor said. ‘Let’s go into the vestry where we’ll be out of the way while the ladies modify the others.’

Sparhawk nodded, stood up and followed his friend to the small door to the left of the altar. Vanion led the way inside and closed the door behind them.

‘You’ve made all the arrangements with Sorgi?’ he asked.

Sparhawk sat down. ‘I talked with him yesterday,’ he replied. ‘I told him that I had some friends that had to go to Beresa without attracting attention. He’s had the usual desertions, and he’s holding three berths open. Stragen, Talen and I’ll merge with the crew. We should be able to slip into Beresa without being noticed.’

‘I imagine that cost you. Sorgi’s prices are a little steep sometimes.’

Sparhawk massaged the side of his aching jaw. ‘It wasn’t all that bad,’ he said. ‘Sorgi owes me a couple of favors, and I gave him time to pick up a cargo to cover most of the cost.’

‘You’ll be going directly to the harbor from here?’

Sparhawk nodded. ‘We’ll use that tunnel Caalador found under the barracks. I told Sorgi that his three new crew members would report to him about midnight.’

‘You’ll sail tomorrow then?’

Sparhawk shook his head. ‘The day after. We have to load Sorgi’s cargo tomorrow.’

‘Honest work, Sparhawk?’ Vanion smiled.

‘You’re starting to sound like Khalad.’

‘He does have opinions, doesn’t he?’

‘So did his father.’

‘Quit rubbing your face like that, Sparhawk. You’ll make your skin raw.’ Vanion paused. ‘What was it like?’

‘Very strange.’

‘Painful?’

‘The nose was. It feels almost as if somebody broke it again. Be glad you don’t have to go through it.’

‘There wouldn’t be much point in that. I won’t be sneaking down alleys the way the rest of you will. ‘ Vanion looked sympathetically at his friend. ‘We’ll get her back, Sparhawk,’ he said.

‘Of course. Was that all?’ Sparhawk’s tone was deliberately unemotional. The important thing here was not to feel.

‘Just be careful, and try to keep a handle on your temper.’

Sparhawk nodded. ‘Let’s go see how the others are coming.’

The alterations were confusing, there was no question about that. It was hard to tell exactly who was talking, and sometimes Sparhawk was startled by just who answered his questions. They said their goodbyes and quietly left the chapel with the main body of the Church Knights. They went out into the torch-lit courtyard, crossed the drawbridge, and proceeded across the night-shrouded lawn to the barracks of the knights, where Sparhawk, Stragen and Talon changed into tar-smeared sailor’s smocks while the others also donned the mis-matched clothing of commoners. Then they all went down to the cellar.

Caalador, who now wore the blocky face of a middle-aged Deiran knight, led the way into a damp, cobweb-draped tunnel with a smoky torch. When they had gone about a mile, he stopped and raised the torch. ‘This yere’s yer exit, Sporhawk,’ he said, pointing at a steep, narrow stairway. ‘You’ll come out in an alley—which it is oz don’t smell none too sweet, but is S an’ dark.’ He paused. ‘Sorry, Stragen,’ he apologized. ‘I wanted to give you something to remember me by.’

‘You’re too kind,’ Stragen murmured.

‘Good luck, Sparhawk,’ Caalador said then.

‘Thanks, Caalador.’ The two shook hands, and then Caalador lifted his torch and led the rest of the party off down the musty-smelling passageway toward their assorted destinations, leaving Sparhawk, Talon, and Stragen alone in the dark.

‘They won’t be in any danger, Vanion,’ Flute assured the Preceptor as the ladies were packing. ‘I’ll be going along, after all, and I can take care of them.’

‘Ten knights then,’ he amended his suggestion downward.

‘They’d just be in our way, love,’ Sephrenia told him. ‘I do want you to be careful, though. A body of armed men is far more likely to be attacked than a small party of travelers.’

‘But it isn’t safe for ladies to travel alone,’ he protested. ‘There are always robbers and the like lurking in the forest.’

‘We won’t be in one place long enough to attract robbers or anybody else,’ Flute told him. ‘We’ll be in Delphaeus in two days. I could do it in one, but I’ll have to stop and have a long talk with Edaemus before I go into his valley. He might just take a bit of convincing.’

‘When art thou leaving Matherion, Lord Vanion?’ Xanetia asked.

‘About the end of the week, Anarae,’ he replied. ‘We’ve got to spend some time on our equipment, and there’s always the business of organizing the supply train.’

‘Take warm clothing,’ Sephrenia instructed. ‘The weather could change at any time.’

‘Yes, love. How long will you be at Delphaeus?’

‘We can’t be sure. Aphrael will keep you advised. We have a great deal to discuss with Anari Codon. The fact that Cyrgon has summoned Klael complicates matters.’

‘Truly,’ Xanetia agreed. ‘We may be obliged to entreat Edaemus to return.’

‘Would he do that?’

Flute smiled roguishly. ‘I’ll coax him, Vanion,’ she said, ‘and you know how good I am at that. If I really want something, I almost always get it.’

‘You there! Look lively.’ Sorgi’s bull-necked bo’sun bellowed, popping his whip at Stragen’s heels.

Stragen, who now wore the braids and sweeping mustaches of a blond Genidian Knight, dropped the bale he was carrying across the deck and reached for his dagger.

‘No!’ Sparhawk hissed at him. ‘Pick up that bale!’

Stragen glared at him for a moment, then bent and lifted the bale again. ‘This wasn’t part of the agreement,’ he muttered.

‘He’s not really going to hit you with that whip,’ Talen assured the frowning Thalesian. ‘Sailors all complain about it, but the whip’s just for show. A bo’sun who really hits his men with his whip usually gets thrown over the side some night during the dogwatch.”

‘Maybe,’ Stragen growled darkly, ‘but I’ll tell you this right now. If that cretin so much as touches me with that whip of his, he won’t live long enough to go swimming. I’ll have his guts in a pile on the deck before he can even blink.’

‘You new men!’ the bo’sun shouted, ‘do your talking on your own time! You’re here to work, not to discuss the weather!’ and he cracked his whip again.

‘She could do it, Khalad,’ Berit insisted.

‘I think you’ve been out in the sun too long,’ Khalad replied.

They were riding south along a lonely beach under an overcast sky. The beach was backed by an uninviting salt marsh where dry reeds clattered against each other in the stiff onshore breeze. Khalad rose in his stirrups and looked around. Then he settled back in his saddle again. ‘It’s a ridiculous idea, my Lord.’

‘Try to keep an open mind, Khalad. Aphrael’s a Goddess. She can do anything.’

‘I’m sure she can, but why would she want to?’

‘Well—’ Berit struggled with it. ‘She could have a reason, couldn’t she? Something that you and I wouldn’t even understand?”

‘Is this what all that Styric training does to a man? You’re starting to see Gods under every bush. It was only a coincidence. The two of them look a little bit alike, but that’s all.’

‘You can be as skeptical as you want, Khalad, but I still think that something very strange is going on.’

‘And I think that what you’re suggesting is an absurdity.’

‘Absurd or not, their mannerisms are the same, their expressions are identical, and they’ve both got that same air of smug superiority about them.’

‘Of course they do. Aphrael’s a Goddess, and Danae’s a Crown Princess. They are superior—at least in their own minds and I think you’re overlooking the fact that we saw them both in the same room and at the same time. They even talked to each other, for God’s sake.’

‘Khalad, that doesn’t mean anything. Aphrael’s a Goddess. She can probably be in a dozen different places all at the same time if she really wants to be.’

‘That still brings us right back to the question of why? What would be the purpose of it? Not even a God does things without any reason.’

‘We don’t know that, Khalad. Maybe she’s doing it just to amuse herself.’

‘Are you really all that desperate to witness miracles, Berit?’

‘She could do it,’ Berit insisted.

‘All right. So what?’

‘Aren’t you the least bit curious about it?

‘Not particularly,’ Khalad shrugged.

Ulath and Tynian wore bits and pieces of the uniforms of one of the few units of the Tamul army that accepted volunteers from the Elene kingdoms of western Daresia. The faces they had borrowed were those of grizzled, middle-aged knights, the faces of hard-bitten veterans. The vessel aboard which they sailed was one of those battered, ill-maintained ships that ply coastal waters. The small amount of money they had paid for their passage bought them exactly that—passage, and nothing else.

They had brought their own food and drink and their patched blankets, and they ate and slept on the deck. Their destination was a small coastal village some twenty-five leagues east of the foothills of the Tamul mountains. They lounged on the deck in the daytime, drinking cheap wine and rolling dice for pennies.

The sky was overcast when the ship’s longboat deposited them on the rickety wharf of the village. The day was cool, and the Tamul Mountains were little more than a low smudge on the horizon.

‘What was that horse-trader’s name again?’ Tynian asked.

‘Sablis,’ Ulath grunted.

‘I hope Oscagne was right,’ Tynian said. ‘If this Sablis has gone out of business, we’ll have to walk to those mountains.’

Ulath stepped across the wharf to speak to a pinch-faced fellow who was mending a fish net. ‘Tell me, friend,’ he said politely in Tamul, ‘where can we find Sablis the horse-trader?’

‘What if I don’t feel like telling you?’ the scrawny net-mender replied in a whining, nasal voice that identified him as one of those mean-spirited men who would rather die than be helpful, or even polite. Tynian had encountered his kind before, small men, usually, with an inflated notion of their own worth, men who delighted in irritating others just for the fun of it.

‘Let me,’ he murmured, laying one gently restraining hand on his Thalesian companion’s arm. Ulath’s bunched muscles clearly spoke of impending violence.

‘Nice net,’ Tynian noted casually, picking up one edge of it. Then he drew his dagger and began cutting the strings.

‘What are you doing?’ the pinch-faced fisherman screamed.

‘I’m showing you what,’ Tynian explained. ‘You said, “what if I don’t feel like telling you?” This is what. Think it over. My friend and I aren’t in any hurry, so take your time.’ He took a fistful of net and sawed through it with his knife.

‘Stop,’ the fellow shrieked in horror.

‘Ah—where was it you said we might find Sablis?’ Ulath asked innocently.

‘His corrals are on the eastern edge of town.’ The words came tumbling out. Then the scrawny fellow gathered up his net in both arms and held it to his chest, almost like a mother shielding a child from harm.

‘Have a pleasant day, neighbor,’ Tynian said, sheathing his dagger. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how much we’ve appreciated your help here. You’ve been absolutely splendid about the whole affair.’ And the two knights turned and walked along the wharf toward the shabby-looking village.

Their camp was neat and orderly with a place for everything and everything exactly where it belonged. Berit had noticed that Khalad always set up camp in exactly the same way. He seemed to have some concept of the ideal camp etched in his mind and, since it was perfect, he never altered it. Khalad was very rigid in some ways.

‘How far did we come today?’ Berit asked as they washed up their supper dishes.

‘Ten leagues,’ Khalad shrugged, ‘the same as always. Ten leagues is standard on level terrain.’

‘This is going to take forever,’ Berit complained.

‘No. It might seem like it, though.’ Khalad looked around and then lowered his voice until it was hardly more than a whisper. ‘We’re not really in any hurry, Berit,’ he said. ‘We might even want to slow down a bit.’

‘What?’

‘Keep your voice down. Sparhawk and the others have a long way to go, and we want to be sure they’re in place before Krager—or whoever it is—makes contact with us. We don’t know when or where that’s going to happen, so the best way to delay it is to slow down.’ Khalad looked out into the darkness beyond the circle of firelight. ‘How good are you at magic?’

‘Not very,’ Berit admitted, scrubbing diligently. ‘I’ve still got a lot to learn. What did you want me to do?’

‘Could you make one of our horses limp—without actually hurting him?’

Berit probed through his memory. Then he shook his head. ‘I don’t think I know any spells that would do that.’

‘That’s too bad. A lame horse would give us a good reason to slow down.’

It came without warning: a cold prickling kind of sensation that seemed to be centered at the back of Berit’s neck. ‘That’s good enough,’ he said in a louder voice. ‘I’m not getting paid enough to scrub holes in tin plates.’ He rinsed off the dish he’d been washing, shook most of the water off it and stowed it back into the pack.

‘You felt it, too?’ Khalad’s whisper came out from between motionless lips. That startled Berit. How could Khalad have known?

Berit buckled the straps on the pack and gave his friend a curt nod. ‘Let’s build up the fire a bit and then get some sleep.’ He said it loudly enough to be heard out beyond the circle of firelight.

The two of them walked toward their pile of firewood. Berit was murmuring the spell and concealing the movements of his hands at the same time.

‘Who is it?’ Again, Khalad’s lips did not move.

‘I’m still working on that,’ Berit whispered back. He released the spell so slowly that it seemed almost to dribble out of the ends of his fingers.

The sense of it came washing back to him. It was something on the order of recognizing an accent—except that it was done when nobody was talking. ‘It’s a Styric,’ he said quietly.

‘Zalasta?’

‘No, I don’t believe so. I think I’d recognize him. It’s somebody I’ve never been around before.’

‘Not too much wood, my Lord,’ Khalad said aloud. ‘This pile has to get us through breakfast too, you know.’

‘Good thinking,’ Berit approved. He reached out again, very cautiously. ‘He’s moving away,’ he muttered. ‘How did you know we were being watched?’

‘I could feel it,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘I always know when somebody’s watching me. How noisy is it when you get in touch with Aphrael?’

‘That’s one of the good spells. It doesn’t make a sound.’

‘You’d better tell her about this. Let her know that we are being watched and that it’s a Styric who’s doing the watching.’

Khalad knelt and began to carefully stack his armload of broken-off limbs on their campfire. ‘Your disguise seems to be working,’ he noted.

‘How did you arrive at that?’

‘They wouldn’t waste a Styric on us if they knew who you really are.’

‘Unless they don’t have anybody left except Styrics. Stragen’s celebration of the Harvest Festival might have been more effective than we thought.’

‘We could probably argue about that all night. Just tell Aphrael about our visitor out there. She’ll pass it on to the others, and we’ll let them get the headache from trying to sort it out with logic.’

‘Aren’t you curious about it?’

‘Not so curious that I’m going to lose any sleep over it. That’s one of the advantages of being a peasant, my Lord. We’re not required to come up with the answers to these earth-shaking questions. You aristocrats get the pleasure of doing that.’

‘Thanks,’ Berit said sourly.

‘No charge, my Lord,’ Khalad grinned.

Sparhawk had never actually worked for a living before, and he discovered that he did not like it very much. He quickly grew to hate Captain Sorgi’s thick-necked bo’sun. The man was crude, stupid, and spitefully cruel. He fawned outrageously whenever Sorgi appeared on the quarterdeck, but when the captain returned below decks, the bo’sun’s natural character re-asserted itself. He seemed to take particular delight in tormenting the newest members of the crew, assigning them the most tedious, exhausting and demeaning tasks aboard ship. Sparhawk found himself quite suddenly in full agreement with Khalad’s class prejudices, and sometimes at night he found himself contemplating murder.

‘Every man hates his employer, From,’ Stragen told him, using Sparhawk’s assumed name. ‘It’s a very natural part of the scheme of things.’

‘I could stand him if he didn’t deliberately go out of his way to be offensive,’ Sparhawk growled, scrubbing at the deck with his block of pumice-stone.

‘He’s paid to be offensive, my friend. Angry men work harder. Part of your problem is that you always look him right in the eye. He wouldn’t single you out the way he does if you’d keep your eyes lowered. If you don’t, this is going to be a very long voyage for you.’

‘Or a short one for him,’ Sparhawk said darkly.

He considered it that night as he tried, without much success, to sleep in his hammock. He fervently wished that he could get his hands on the idiot who had decided that humans could sleep in hammocks. The roll of the ship made it swing from side to side, and Sparhawk continually felt that he was right on the verge of being thrown out.

‘Anakha.’ The voice was only a whisper in his mind.

Sparhawk was stunned. ‘Blue Rose?’ he said.

‘Prithee, Anakha, do not speak aloud. Thy voice is as the thunder in mine ears. Speak silently in the halls of thine awareness. I will hear thee.’

‘How is this possible?’ Sparhawk framed the thought. ‘Thou art confined.’

‘Who hath power to confine me, Anakha? When thou art alone and thy mind is clear of other distraction, we may speak thus.’

‘I did not know that.’

‘Until now, it was not needful for thee to know.’

‘I see. But now it is?’

‘Yes.’

‘How dost thou penetrate the barrier of the gold?’

‘It is no barrier to me, Anakha. Others may not sense me within the confines of thine excellent receptacle. I, however, may reach out to thee in this manner. This is particularly true when we are so close.’

Sparhawk laid his hand on the leather pouch hanging on a thong about his neck and felt the square outline of the box. ‘And should it prove needful, may I speak so with thee?’

‘Even as thou dost now, Anakha.’

‘This is good to know.’

‘I sense thy disquiet, Anakha, and I share thine anxiety for the safety of thy mate.’

‘Thou art kind to say so, Blue Rose.’

‘Expend thou all thine efforts to securing thy Queen’s release, Anakha. I will keep watch over our enemies whilst thou art so occupied.’ The jewel under Sparhawk’s hand paused. ‘Hear me well, my friend,’ Bhelliom continued, ‘should it come to pass that no other course be open to thee, fear not to surrender me up to obtain thy mate’s freedom.’

‘That I will not do—for she hath forbidden it.’

‘Do not be untranquil if it should come to pass, Anakha. I will not submit to Cyrgon, even though mine own child, whom I love, even as thou lovest thine, be endangered by my refusal. Be comforted in the knowledge that I will not permit my child—nor thee and all thy kind—to be enslaved by Cyrgon—or worse yet, by Klael. Thou hast my promise that this will never happen. Should it appear that our task doth verge on failure, I give thee my solemn vow that I shall destroy this child of mine and all who dwell here to prevent such mischance.’

‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’

5

She was always tired, hovering at times on the verge of exhaustion, and she was nearly always wet and dirty. Her clothes were ripped and tattered, and her hair was a ruin. Those things were unimportant, however. She willingly submitted to discomfort and indignities to keep the madman who was their captor from hurting the terrified Alcan.

The realization that Scarpa was mad had come to her slowly. She had known from the first moment she had seen him that he was ruthless and driven, but the evidence of his insanity had become gradually more and more overwhelming as the endless days of her captivity ground on.

He was cruel, but Ehlana had encountered cruel men before. After she and Alcan had been hurried through the dank tunnels under the streets of Matherion to the outskirts of the city, they had been roughly shoved into the saddles of waiting horses, bound securely in place, and literally dragged at breakneck speed down the road leading to the port of Micae on the southwestern coast of the peninsula, seventy-five leagues away.

A normal man does not mistreat the animals upon which he is totally dependent. That was the first evidence of Scarpa’s madness. He drove the horses, flogging them savagely until the poor beasts were staggering with exhaustion, and his only words during those dreadful four days were, ‘Faster! Faster.’

Ehlana shuddered as she recalled the horror of that endless ride. They had. Her horse stumbled in the muddy path, and she was jolted forward, bringing her attention back into the immediate present.

The cord which tightly bound her wrists to the saddlebow dug into her flesh, and the bleeding started again. She tried to ease into a different position so that the cord would no longer cut into the already open wounds.

‘What are you doing?’ Scarpa demanded. His voice was harsh, and it came out almost as a scream. Scarpa almost always screamed when he was talking to her.

‘I’m just trying to keep the cord from cutting deeper into my wrists, Lord Scarpa,’ she replied meekly. She had been instructed early in her captivity to address him so and she had quickly found that failure to do so resulted in savage mistreatment of Alcan and the withholding of food and water.

‘You’re not here to be comfortable, woman!’ he raged at her. ‘You’re here to obey! I see what you’re doing there! If you don’t stop trying to loosen those cords, I’ll use wire!’ His eyes bulged, and she saw again that strange, bluish cast to the whites of those eyes and the abnormally large pupils.

‘Yes, Lord Scarpa,’ she said in her most submissive tone.

He glared at her, his face filled with suspicion and his mad eyes looking hungrily for some excuse to punish or humiliate his prisoners further. She lowered her gaze to stare fixedly at the rough, muddy track that wound deeper and deeper into the rank, vine-choked forest of the southeast coast of Daresia.

The ship they had boarded at the port of Micae had been a sleek, black-hulled corsair that could not have been built for any honest purpose. She and Alcan had been unceremoniously dragged below decks and confined in a cramped compartment that smelled of the bilges and was totally dark. After they had been two hours at sea, the compartment door had opened and Krager had entered with two swarthy sailors, one carrying what appeared to be a decent meal, and the other, two pails of hot water some soap and a wad of rags for use as towels. Ehlana had resisted an impulse to embrace the fellow.

‘I’m really sorry about all this, Ehlana,’ Krager had apologized, squinting at her nearsightedly, ‘but I have no control of the situation. Be very careful of what you say to Scarpa. You’ve probably noticed that he’s not entirely rational.’ He had looked around nervously, then laid a handful of cheap tallow candles on the rough table and left, chaining the door shut behind him.

They had been five days at sea and had reached Arian, a port city on the edge of the jungles of the southeast coast some time after midnight. Then she and Alcan had been hustled into a closed carriage with the pouchy-eyed Baron Parok at the reins.

During the transfer from the ship to the carriage, Ehlana had discreetly looked at each of her captors, seeking some weakness.

Krager, despite his habitual drunkenness, was too shrewd, and Parok was Scarpa’s long-time confederate, a man evidently untroubled by his friend’s madness. Then she had coolly appraised Elron. She had noticed that under no circumstances would the foppish Astellian poet look her in the eye. His apparent murder of Melidere had evidently filled him with remorse.

Elron was a poseur rather than a man of action, and he clearly had no stomach for blood. She had recalled moreover, how vain he had been about his long curls when she had first met him and had wondered what form of duress Scarpa had used to force him to shave his head in order to pose as one of Kring’s Peloi.

She had surmised that the violation of his hair had raised certain strong resentments in him. Elron was clearly reluctant to participate in this affair, and that made him the weak link. She kept that fact firmly in mind now. The time might come when she could use it to her advantage.

The carriage had carried them from the waterfront to a large house on the outskirts of Arian. It had been there that Scarpa had spoken with a gaunt Styric with the lumpy features characteristic of the men of his race. The Styric’s name was Keska, and his eyes had the look of one hopelessly damned.

‘I don’t care about the discomfort!’ Scarpa had half-shouted to the gaunt man at one point. ‘Time is important, Keska, time! Just do it! As long as it doesn’t kill us, we can endure it!’

The next morning the significance of that command had become all too obvious. Keska was evidently one of those outcast Styric magicians, but not a very good one. He could, with a great deal of clearly exhausting effort, compress the miles that lay between them and Scarpa’s intended destination, but only a few miles each time, and the compression was accompanied by a horrid kind of wrenching agony. It seemed almost as if the clumsy magician were jerking them up and hurling them blindly forward with every ounce of his strength, and Ehlana could never be certain after each hideous, bruising jump that she was still intact. She felt torn and battered, but did what she could to conceal her pain from Alcan. The gentle girl with the large eyes wept almost continuously now, overcome by her pain and fear and the misery of their circumstances.

Ehlana drew her mind into the present and looked about warily. It was approaching evening again. The overcast sky was gradually darkening, and the time of day Ehlana dreaded the most would soon be upon them.

Scarpa looked with some scorn at Keska, who slumped in his saddle like a wilted flower, obviously near exhaustion. ‘This is far enough,’ he said. ‘Set up some kind of camp and get the women down off those horses.’ His brittle eyes grew bright as he looked Ehlana full in the face. ‘It’s time for the bedraggled Queen of the Elenes to beg for her supper again. I do hope she’ll be more convincing this time. It really distresses me to have to refuse her when her pleas aren’t sufficiently sincere.’

‘Ehlana,’ Krager whispered, touching her shoulder. The fire had died down to embers, and Ehlana could hear the sound of snores coming from the other side of their rude camp.

‘What?’ she replied shortly.

‘Keep your voice down.’ He was still wearing the black leather Peloi jerkin, his shaved head was sparsely stubbled, and his wine-reeking breath was nearly overpowering. ‘I’m doing you a favor. Don’t put me in danger. I assume you realize by now that Scarpa’s completely insane?’

‘Really?’ she replied sardonically. ‘What an amazing thing.’

‘Please don’t make this any more difficult. I seem to have made a small error in judgment here. If I’d fully realized how deranged that half-Styric bastard is, I’d have never agreed to take part in this ridiculous adventure.’

‘What is this strange fascination you have with lunatics, Krager?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s a character defect. Scarpa actually believes that he can outwit his father—and even Cyrgon. He doesn’t really believe that Sparhawk will surrender Bhelliom in exchange for your return, but he’s managed to about half-convince the others. I’m sure you realize by now how he feels about women.’

‘He’s demonstrated it often enough,’ she said bitterly. ‘Does he share Baron Harparin’s fondness for little boys instead?’

‘Scarpa isn’t fond of anything except himself. He is his only passion. I’ve seen him spend hours trimming that beard of his. It gives him the opportunity to adore his reflection in the mirror. You haven’t had the opportunity to see his delightful personality in full flower. The details of this trip are keeping what he chooses to call his mind occupied. Wait until we get to Natayos and you hear him start raving. He makes Martel and Annias seem like the very souls of sanity by comparison. I don’t dare stay too long, so listen closely. Scarpa believes that Sparhawk will bring Bhelliom with him when he comes right enough, but he doesn’t believe he’ll bring it to trade for you. Scarpa’s absolutely certain that your husband’s coming in order to have it out with Cyrgon, and he believes that they’ll destroy each other in the course of the argument.’

‘Sparhawk has Bhelliom, you fool, and Bhelliom eats Gods for breakfast.’

‘I’m not here to argue about that. Maybe Sparhawk will win, and maybe he won’t. That’s really beside the point. What’s important to us is what Scarpa believes. He’s convinced himself that Sparhawk and Cyrgon will fight a war of mutual extinction. Then he thinks that Bhelliom will be left lying around free for the taking.’

‘What about Zalasta?’

‘I get the strong feeling that Scarpa doesn’t expect Zalasta to be around when the fight’s over. Scarpa’s more than willing to kill anybody who gets in his way.’

‘He’d kill his own father?’

Krager shrugged. ‘Blood ties don’t mean anything to Scarpa. When he was younger, he decided that his mother and his half-sisters knew things about him that he didn’t want them to share with the authorities, so he killed them. He hated them anyway, so that may not mean all that much. If Sparhawk and Cyrgon do kill each other, and if Zalasta’s broken out in a sudden rash of mortality during the festivities, Scarpa might just be the only one left around to take possession of the Bhelliom. He’s got an army in these jungles, and if he has the Bhelliom as well, he might be able to pull it off. He’ll march on Matherion, take the city and slaughter the government. Then he’ll crown himself emperor. I’m personally betting against it, though, so for God’s sake keep your temper under control. You’re not really important to his plans, but you’re vital to Zalasta’s—and mine. If you do anything at all to set Scarpa off, he’ll kill you as quickly as he ordered Elron to kill your lady-in-waiting. Zalasta and I believe that Sparhawk will trade Bhelliom for you, but only if you’re alive. Don’t enrage that maniac. If he kills you, all our plans will collapse.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Krager? There’s something else too, isn’t there?’

‘Of course. If things go against us, I’d like to have you available to speak out in my behalf when the trials start.’

‘That wouldn’t do any good, I’m afraid,’ she told him sweetly. ‘There won’t be any trial for you, Krager. Sparhawk’s already given you to Khalad and Khalad’s already made up his mind.’

‘Khalad?’ Krager’s voice sounded a little weak.

‘Kurik’s oldest son. He seems to feel that you had some part in his father’s death, and he feels obliged to do something about it. I suppose you could try to talk him out of it, but I’d advise you to talk fast if you do. Khalad’s a very abrupt young man, and he’ll probably have you hanging from a meat-hook before you get out three words.’

Krager didn’t answer, but slipped away instead, his shaved scalp pale in the darkness. It wasn’t much of a victory, Ehlana privately conceded, but in her situation victories of any kind were very hard to come by.

‘They actually do that?’ Scarpa’s harsh voice was hungry.

‘It’s an old custom, Lord Scarpa,’ Ehlana replied in a meek voice, keeping her eyes downcast as they plodded along the muddy path. ‘Emperor Sarabian is planning to discontinue the practice, however.’

‘It will be reinstituted immediately following my coronation.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright. ‘It is a proper form of respect.’

Scarpa had an old purple velvet cloak, shiny with wear, that he had dramatically pulled over one shoulder in a grotesque imitation of an imperial mantle, and he struck absurd poses with each pronouncement.

‘As you say, Lord Scarpa.’ It was tedious to go over the same things again and again, but it kept Scarpa’s mind occupied, and when his attention was firmly fixed on the ceremonies and practices of the imperial court in Matherion he was not thinking of ways to make life unbearable for his captives.

‘Describe it again,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll need to know precisely how it’s supposed to be done—so that I can punish those who fail to perform it properly.’

Ehlana sighed. ‘At the approach of the imperial person, the members of the court kneel. ’

‘On both knees?’

‘Yes, Lord Scarpa.’

‘Excellent, excellent!’ His face was exalted. ‘Go on.’

‘Then, as the emperor passes, they lean forward, put the palms of their hands on the floor and touch their foreheads to the tiles.’

‘Capital!’ He suddenly giggled, a high-pitched, almost girlish sound that startled her. She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. His face was grotesquely distorted into an expression of unholy exaltation. And then his eyes grew wide and his expression became one of near-religious ecstasy. ‘And the Tamuls who rule the world shall be ruled by me!’ he intoned in a resonant, declamatory voice. ‘All power shall be mine. The governance of the world shall be in my hands, and disobedience will be death!’

Ehlana shuddered as he raved on.

And he came to her again as humid night settled over their muddy forest encampment, drawn to her by a hunger, a greed, that was beyond his ability to control. It was revolting, but Ehlana realized that her knowledge of the particulars of traditional court ceremonies gave her an enormous power over him. His hunger was insatiable, and only she could satisfy it.

She grasped that power firmly, drawing strength and confidence from it, actually relishing it even as Krager and the others withdrew with expressions of frightened revulsion.

‘Nine wives, you say?’ Scarpa’s voice was almost pleading. ‘Why not ninety? Why not nine hundred?’

‘It is the custom, Lord Scarpa. The reason for it should be obvious.’

‘Oh, of course, of course.’ He brooded darkly over it. ‘I shall have nine thousand!’ he proclaimed. ‘And each shall be more desirable than the last. And when I have finished with them, they shall be given to my loyal soldiers. Let no woman dare to believe that my favor in any way empowers her. All women are only whores. I shall buy them and throw them away when I tire of them!’ his mad eyes bulged, and he stared into the campfire. The flickering flames reflected in those eyes seemed to seethe like the madness that lay behind them.

He leaned toward her, laying a confiding hand on her arm.

‘I have seen that which others are too stupid to see,’ he told her. ‘Others look, but they do not see—but I see. Oh, yes, I see very well. They are all in it together, you know—all of them. They watch me. They have always watched me. I can never get away from their eyes—watching, watching, watching and talking—talking behind their hands, breathing their cinnamon-scented breath into each other’s faces. All foul and corrupt—scheming, plotting against me, trying to bring me down. Their eyes—all soft and hidden and veiled with the lashes that hide the daggers of their hatred, watching, watching, watching.’ His voice sank lower and lower. ‘And talking, talking behind their hands so that I can’t hear what they’re saying. Whispering. I hear it always. I hear the hissing susurration of their endless whispering. Their eyes following me wherever I go—and their laughing and whispering. I hear the hiss, hiss of their whispering endless whisper—always my name—Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, again and again, hissing in my ears. Flaunting their rounded limbs and rolling their soot-lined eyes. Plotting, scheming with the endless hissing whispers, always seeking ways to hurt me. Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, trying to humiliate me.’ His blue-tinged eyeballs were starting from his face, and his lips and beard were flecked with foam. ‘I was nothing. They made me nothing. They called me Selga’s bastard and gave me pennies to lead them to the beds of my mother and my sisters and cuffed me and spat on me and laughed at me when I cried and they lusted after my mother and my sisters and all around me the hissing in my ears—and I smell the sound—that sweet cloying sound of rotten flesh and stale lust all purple and writhing with the liquid hiss of their whispers and—’

Then his mad eyes filled with terror, and he cringed back from her and fell, grovelling in the mud. ‘Please, Mother!’ he wailed. ‘I didn’t do it! Silbie did it! pleasepleaseplease don’t lock me in there again. Please not in the dark. Pleasepleaseplease not in the dark. Not in the dark!’ And he scrambled to his feet and fled back into the forest with his ‘Pleasepleaseplease’ echoing back in a long, dying fall.

Ehlana was suddenly overcome with a wrenching, unbearable pity and she bowed her head and wept.

Zalasta was waiting for them in Natayos. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had seen a flowering of Arjuni civilization, a flowering financed largely by the burgeoning slave-trade. An ill-advised slave-raid into southern Atan, however, coupled with a number of gross policy blunders by the Tamul administrators of that region, had unleashed an uncontrolled Atan punitive expedition. Natayos had been a virtual Ssm of a city, with stately buildings and broad avenues. It was now a forgotten ruin buried in the jungle, its tumbled buildings snarled in ropelike vines, its stately halls now the home of chattering monkeys and brightly colored tropical birds, and its darker recesses inhabited by snakes and the scurrying rats which were their prey.

But now humans had returned to Natayos. Scarpa’s army was quartered there, and Arjunis, Cynesgans, and rag-tag battalions of Elenes had cleared the quarter near the ancient city’s northern gate of vines, trees, monkeys and reptiles in order to make it semi-habitable.

Zalasta stood leaning on his staff at the half-fallen gate, his silvery-bearded face drawn with fatigue and a look of hopeless pain in his eyes. His first reaction when his son arrived with the captives was one of rage. He snarled at Scarpa in Styric, a language that seemed eminently suited for reprimand and one which Ehlana did not understand. She took no small measure of satisfaction, however, in the look of sullen apprehension that crossed Scarpa’s face. For all his blustering and airs of preeminent superiority, Scarpa still appeared to stand in a certain awe and fear of the ancient Styric who had incidentally sired him.

Once, and only once, apparently stung by something Zalasta said to him in a tone loaded with contempt, Scarpa drew himself up and snarled a reply. Zalasta’s reaction was immediate and savage. He sent his son reeling with a heavy blow of his staff, then leveled its polished length at him, muttered a few words, and unleashed a fiery spot of light from the tip of the staff. The burning spot struck the still-staggering Scarpa in the belly, and he doubled over sharply, clawing at his stomach and shrieking in agony. He fell onto the muddy earth, kicking and convulsing as Zalasta’s spell burned into him. His father, the deadly staff still leveled, watched his writhing son coldly for several endless minutes.

‘Now do you understand?’ he demanded in a deadly voice, speaking in Tamul this time.

‘Yes. yes! Father!’ Scarpa shrieked. ‘Stop! I beg you!’

Zalasta let him writhe and squirm for a while longer. Then he lowered the staff. ‘You are not master here,’ he declared. ‘You are no more than a brain-sick incompetent. Any one of a dozen otherrs here could command this army, so do not try my patience further. Next time, son or no son, I will let the spell follow its natural course. Pain is like a disease, Scarpa. After a few days—or weeks—the body begins to deteriorate. A man can die from pain. Don’t force me to prove that to you.’ And he turned his back on his pale-faced, sweating son.

‘My apologies, your Majesty,’ he said to Ehlana. ‘This was not what I intended.’

‘And what did you intend, Zalasta?’ she asked coldly.

‘The dispute is between your husband and myself, Ehlana. It was never in my mind to cause you such discomfort. This cretin I must unfortunately acknowledge took it upon himself to mistreat you. I promise you that he will not live to see the sunset of the day in which he does it again.’

‘I see. The humiliation and pain were not your idea, but the captivity was. Where’s the difference, Zalasta?’

He sighed and passed a weary hand over his eyes. ‘It is necessary,’ he told her.

‘For what reason? Sephrenia will never submit to you, you know. Even if Bhelliom and the rings fall into your hands, you cannot compel her love.’

‘There are other considerations as well, Queen Ehlana,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Please bring your maid and come with me. I’ll see you to your quarters.’

‘Some dungeon, I suppose.’

He sighed. ‘No, Ehlana, the quarters are clean and comfortable. I’ve seen to that myself. Your ordeal is at an end, I promise you.’

‘My ordeal, as you call it, will not be at an end until I’m united with my husband and my daughter.’

‘That, we may pray, will be very soon. It is, however, in the hands of Prince Sparhawk. All he must do is follow instructions. Your quarters are not far. Follow me, please.’ He led them to a nearby building and unlocked the door.

Their prison was very nearly luxurious, an apartment of sorts, complete with several bedrooms, a dining hall, a large sitting-room and even a kitchen. The building had evidently been the palace of some nobleman and, although the upper stories had since collapsed, the ground-floor rooms, their ceilings supported by great arches, were still intact. The furnishings in the rooms were ornate, though mis-matched, and there were rugs on the floors and drapes to cover the windows—windows, Ehlana noticed, which had recently been fitted with stout iron bars.

The fireplaces were cavernous, and they were all filled with blazing logs, not so much to ward off the minimal chill of the Arjuni winter but to dry out rooms saturated with over a millennium of dank humidity. There were beds and fresh linen and clothing of an Arjuni cut, but most important of all, there was a fair-sized room with a large marble bathtub set into the floor. Ehlana’s eyes fixed longingly on that ultimate luxury. It so completely seized her attention that she scarcely heard Zalasta’s apologies. After a few vague replies from her, the Styric realized that his continued presence was no longer appreciated, so he politely excused himself and left.

‘Alcan, dear,’ Ehlana said in an almost dreamy voice, ‘that’s quite a large tub—certainly large enough for the two of us, wouldn’t you say?’

Alcan was also gazing at the tub with undisguised longing.

‘Easily, your Majesty,’ she replied.

‘How long do you think it might take us to heat enough water to fill it?’

‘There are plenty of large pots and kettles in that kitchen, my Queen,’ the gentle girl said, ‘and all the fireplaces are going. It shouldn’t take very long at all.’

‘Wonderful,’ Ehlana said enthusiastically. ‘Why don’t we get started?’

‘Just exactly who is this Klael, Zalasta?’ Ehlana asked the Styric several days later when he came by to call. Zalasta came to their prison often, as if his visits in some way lessened his guilt, and he always talked, long, rambling, sometimes disconnected talk that often revealed far more than he probably intended for her to know.

‘Klael is an eternal being,’ he replied. Ehlana noted almost absently that the heavily accented Elenic which had so irritated her when they had first met in Sarsos was gone now. Another of his ruses, she concluded. ‘Klael is far more eternal than the Gods of this world,’ he continued. ‘He’s in some way connected to Bhelliom. They’re contending principles, or something along those lines. I was a bit distraught when Cyrgon explained the relationship, so I didn’t fully understand.’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she murmured. Her relationship with Zalasta was peculiar. The circumstances made ranting and denunciation largely a waste of time, so Ehlana was civil to him. He appeared to be grateful for that, and his gratitude made him more open with her. That civility, which cost her nothing, enabled her to pick up much information from the Styric’s rambling conversation.

‘Anyway,’ Zalasta continued, ‘Cyzada was terrified when Cyrgon commanded him to summon Klael, and he tried very hard to talk the God out of the notion. Cyrgon was implacable, though, and he was filled with rage when Sparhawk neatly plucked the Trolls right out of his grasp. We’d never even considered the possibility that Sparhawk might release the Troll Gods from their confinement.’

‘That was Sir Ulath’s idea,’ Ehlana told him. ‘Ulath knows a great deal about trolls.’

‘Evidently so. At any rate, Cyrgon forced Cyzada to summon Klael, but Klael no sooner appeared than he went in search of Bhelliom. That took Cyrgon aback. It had been his intention to hold Klael in reserve—in hiding, so to speak—and to unleash him by surprise. That went out the window when Klael rushed off to the North Cape to confront Bhelliom. Sparhawk knows that Klael is here now—although I have no idea what he can do about it. That was what made the summoning of Klael such idiocy in the first place. Klael can’t be controlled. I tried to explain that to Cyrgon, but he wouldn’t listen. Our goal is to gain possession of Bhelliom, and Klael and Bhelliom are eternal enemies. As soon as Cyrgon takes Bhelliom in his hands, Klael will attack him, and I’m fairly certain that Klael is infinitely more powerful than he is.’ Zalasta glanced around cautiously. ‘The Cyrgai are in many ways a reflection of their God, I’m afraid. Cyrgon abhors any kind of intelligence. He’s frighteningly stupid sometimes.’

‘I hate to point this out, Zalasta,’ she said insincerely, ‘but you have this tendency to ally yourself with defectives. Annias was clever enough, I suppose, but his obsession with the Archprelacy distorted his judgment, and Martel’s drive for revenge made his thinking just as distorted. From what I gather, Otha was as stupid as a stump, and Azash was so elemental that all he had on his mind were his desires. Coherent thought was beyond him.’

‘You know everything, don’t you, Ehlana?’ he said. ‘How on earth did you find all of this out?’

‘I’m not really at liberty to discuss it,’ she replied.

‘No matter, I suppose,’ he said absently. A sudden hunger crossed his face. ‘How is Sephrenia?’ he asked.

‘Well enough. She was very upset when she first found out about you, though—and your attempt on Aphrael’s life was really ill-conceived, you know. That was the one thing that convinced her of your treachery.’

‘I lost my head,’ he confessed. ‘That cursed Delphaeic woman destroyed three hundred years of patient labor with a toss of her head.’

‘I suppose it’s none of my business, but why didn’t you just accept the fact that Sephrenia was wholly committed to Aphrael and let it go at that? There’s no way you can ever compete with the Child Goddess, you know.’

‘Could you have ever accepted the idea that Sparhawk was committed to another, Ehlana?’ His tone was accusing.

‘No,’ she admitted, ‘I suppose I couldn’t have. We do strange things for love, don’t we, Zalasta? I was at least direct about it, though. Things might have worked out differently for you if you hadn’t tried deceit and deception. Aphrael’s not completely unreasonable, you know.’

‘Perhaps not,’ he replied. Then he sighed deeply. ‘But we’ll never know, will we?’

‘No. It’s far too late now.’

‘The glazier cracked the pane when he was setting it into the frame, my Queen,’ Alcan said quietly pointing at the defective triangle of bubbled glass in the lower corner of the window. ‘He was very clumsy.’

‘How did you come to know so much about this, Alcan?’ Ehlana asked her.

‘My father was apprenticed to a glazier when he was young,’ the doe-eyed girl replied. ‘He used to repair windows in our village.’ She touched the tip of the glowing poker to the bead of lead that held the cracked pane in place. ‘I’ll have to be very careful,’ she said, frowning in concentration, ‘but if I do it right I can fix it so that we can take out this little section of glass and put it back inagain. That way, we’ll be able to hear what they’re talking about out there in the street, and then we’ll be able to put the glass back in again so that they’ll never know what we’ve found out. I thought you might want to be able to listen to them, they always seem to gather just outside this window.’

‘You’re an absolute treasure, Alcan!’ Ehlana exclaimed, impulsively embracing the girl.

‘Be careful, my Lady.’ Alcan cried in alarm. ‘The hot iron!’

Alcan was right. The window with the small defective pane was at the corner of the building, and Zalasta, Scarpa and the others were quartered in the attached structure. It appeared that whenever they wanted to discuss something out of the hearing of the soldiers, they habitually drifted to the walled-in cul-de-sac just outside the window. The small panes of cheap glass leaded late the window-frame were only semi-transparent at best, and so, with minimal caution, Alcan’s modification of the cracked pane permitted Ehlana to listen and even marginally observe without being seen.

On the day following her conversation with Zalasta, she saw the white-robed Styric approaching with a look of bleakest melancholy on his face and with Scarpa and Krager close behind him.

‘You’ve got to snap out of this, Father,’ Scarpa said urgently. ‘The soldiers are beginning to notice.’

‘Let them,’ Zalasta replied shortly.

‘No, Father,’ Scarpa said in his rich, theatrical voice, ‘we can’t do that. These men are animals. They function below the level of thought. If you walk around through these streets with the air of a little boy whose dog just died, they’re going to think that something’s wrong and they’ll start deserting by the regiment. I’ve spent too much time and effort gathering this army to have you drive them away by feeling sorry for yourself.’

‘You’d never understand, Scarpa,’ Zalasta retorted. ‘You can’t even begin to comprehend the meaning of love. You don’t love anything.”

‘Oh, yes I do, Zalasta,’ Scarpa snapped. ‘I love me. That’s the only kind of love that makes any sense.’

Ehlana just happened to be watching Krager. The drunkard’s eyes were narrowed, shrewd. He casually moved his ever-present tankard around behind him and poured most of the wine out. Then he raised the tankard and drank off the dregs. Then he belched. ‘Parn’me,’ he slurred, reaching out his hand to the wall to steady himself as he weaved back and forth on his feet.

Scarpa gave him a quick, irritated glance, obviously dismissing him. Ehlana, however, rather quickly re-assessed Krager. He was not always nearly as drunk as he appeared to be.

‘It’s all been for nothing, Scarpa,’ Zalasta groaned. ‘I’ve allied myself with the diseased, the degenerate and the insane for nothing. I had thought that once Aphrael was gone, Sephrenia might turn to me. But she won’t. She’d die before she’ll have anything to do with me.’

Scarpa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let her die then,’ he said bluntly. ‘Can’t you get it through your head that one woman’s the same as any other? Women are a commodity—like bales of hay or barrels of wine. Look at Krager here. How much affection do you think he has for an empty wine barrel? It’s the new ones, the full ones, that he loves, right, Krager?’

Krager smirked at him owlishly and then belched again.

‘Parn’me,’ he said.

‘I can’t really see any reason for this obsession of yours anyway,’ Scarpa continued to grind on his father’s most sensitive spot. ‘Sephrenia’s only damaged goods now. Vanion’s had her dozens of times. Are you so poor-spirited that you’d take the leavings of an Elene?’

Zalasta suddenly smashed his fist against the stone wall with a snarl of frustration.

‘He’s probably so used to having her that he doesn’t even waste his time murmuring endearments to her any more,’ Scarpa went on. ‘He just takes what he wants from her, rolls over and starts to snore. You know how Elenes are when they’re in rut. And she’s probably no better. He’s made an Elene out of her, Father. She’s not a Styric any more. She’s become an Elene—or even worse, a mongrel. I’m really surprised to see you wasting all this pure emotion on a mongrel.’ He sneered. ‘She’s no better than my mother or my sisters, and you know what they were.’

Zalasta’s face twisted, and he threw back his head and actually howled. ‘I’d rather see her dead!’

Scarpa’s pale, bearded face grew sly. ‘Why don’t you kill her then, Father?’ he asked in an insinuating whisper. ‘Once a decent woman’s been bedded by an Elene, she can never be trusted again, you know. Even if you did persuade her to marry you, she’d never be faithful.’ He laid an insincere hand on his arm. ‘Kill her, Father,’ he advised. ‘At least your memory of her will be pure, she never will be.’

Zalasta howled again and clawed at his beard with his long nails. Then he turned quickly and ran off down the street.

Krager straightened, and his seeming drunkenness slid away. ‘You took an awful chance there, you know,’ he said in a cautious tone.

Scarpa looked sharply at him. ‘Very good, Krager,’ he murmmured. ‘You played the part of a drunkard almost to perfection.’

‘I’ve had lots of practice,’ Krager shrugged. ‘You’re lucky he didn’t obliterate you, Scarpa—or tie your guts in knots.”

‘He couldn’t,’ Scarpa smirked. ‘I’m a fair magician myself, you know, and I’m skilled enough to know that you have to have a clear head to work the spells. I kept him in a state of rage. He couldn’t have worked up enough magic to break a spider-web. Lets hope that he does kill Sephrenia. That should really scatter Sparhawk’s wits, not to mention the fact that as soon as the desire of his life is no more than a pile of dead meat, Zalasta’s very likely to conveniently cut his own throat.’

‘You really hate him, don’t you?’

‘Wouldn’t you, Krager? He could have taken me with him when I was a child, but he’d come to visit for a while, and he’d show me what it meant to be a Styric, and then he’d go off alone, leaving me behind to be tormented by whores. If he doesn’t have the stomach to cut his own throat, I’d be more than happy to lend him a hand.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright, and he was smiling broadly. ‘Where’s your wine barrel, Krager?’ he asked. ‘Right now I feel like getting drunk.’ And he began to laugh, a long insane laugh empty of any mirth or humanity.

‘It’s no use!’ Ehlana said, flinging the comb across the room. ‘Look at what they’ve done to my hair!’ She buried her face in her hands and wept.

‘It’s not hopeless, my Lady,’ Alcan said in her soft voice. ‘There’s a style they wear in Cammoria.’ She lifted the mass of blonde hair on the right side of Ehlana’s head and brought it over across the top. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It covers all the bare parts, and it really looks quite chic.’

Ehlana looked hopefully into her mirror. ‘It doesn’t look too bad, does it?’ she conceded.

‘And if we set a flower just behind your right ear, it would really look very stunning.’

‘Alcan, you’re wonderful!’ the Queen exclaimed happily. ‘What would I ever do without you?’

It took them the better part of an hour, but at last the unsightly bare places were covered, and Ehlana felt that some measure of her dignity had been restored.

That evening, however, Krager came to call. He stood swaying in the doorway, his eyes bleary and a drunken smirk on his face. ‘Harvest-time again, Ehlana,’ he announced, drawing his dagger. ‘It seems that I’ll need just a bit more of your hair.’

6

The sky remained overcast, but as luck had it, it had not yet rained. The stiff wind coming in off the Gulf of Micae was raw, however, and they rode with their cloaks wrapped tightly about them. Despite Khalad’s belief that it was to their advantage to move slowly, Berit was consumed with impatience. He knew that what they were doing was only a small part of the overall strategy, but the confrontation they all knew was coming loomed ahead, and he desperately wanted to get on with it.

‘How can you be so patient?’ he asked Khalad about midafternoon one day when the onshore wind was particularly chill and damp.

‘I’m a farmer, Sparhawk,’ Khalad replied, scratching at his short black beard. ‘Waiting for things to grow teaches you not to expect changes overnight.’

‘I suppose I’ve never really thought about what it must be like just sitting still waiting for things to sprout.’

‘There’s not much sitting still when you’re a farmer,’ Khalad told him. ‘There are always more things to do than there are hours in the day, and if you get bored, you can always keep a close watch on the sky. A whole year’s work can be lost in a dry-spell or a sudden hailstorm.’

‘I hadn’t thought about that either.’ Berit mulled it over. That’s what makes you so good at predicting the weather, isn’t it? ’

‘It helps.’

‘There’s more to it than that, though. You always seem to know about everything that’s going on around you. When we were on that log-boom, you knew instantly when there was the slightest change in the way it was moving.’

‘It’s called “paying attention”, my Lord. The world around you is screaming at you all the time, but most people can’t seem to hear it. That really baffles me. I can’t understand how you can miss so many things.’

Berit was just slightly offended by that. ‘All right, what’s the world screaming at you right now that I can’t hear?’

‘It’s telling me that we’re going to need some fairly substantial shelter tonight. We’ve got bad weather coming.’

‘How did you arrive at that?’

Khalad pointed. ‘You see those seagulls?’ he asked.

‘Yes. What’s that got to do with it?’

Khalad sighed. ‘What do seagulls eat, my Lord?’

‘Just about everything—fish mostly, I suppose.’

‘Then why are they flying inland? They aren’t going to find very many fish on dry land, are they? They’ve seen something they don’t like out there in the gulf and they’re running away from it. Just about the only thing that frightens a seagull is wind—and the high seas that go with it. There’s a storm out to sea, and it’s coming this way. That’s what the world’s screaming at me right now.’

‘It’s just common sense then, isn’t it?’

‘Most things are, Sparhawk—common sense and experience.’ Khalad smiled slightly. ‘I can still feel Krager’s Styric out there watching us. If he isn’t paying any more attention than you were just now, he’s probably going to spend a very miserable night.’

Berit grinned just a bit viciously. ‘Somehow that information fails to disquiet me,’ he said.

It was more than a village, but not quite a town. It had three streets, for one thing, and at least six buildings of more than one story, for another. The streets were muddy, and pigs roamed freely. The buildings were made primarily of wood and they were roofed with thatch. There was an inn on what purported to be the main street. It was a substantial-looking building, and there were a pair of rickety wagons with dispirited mules in their traces out front.

Ulath reined in the weary old horse he had bought in the fishing village. ‘What do you think?’ he said to his friend.

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Tynian replied.

‘Let’s go ahead and take a room as well,’ Ulath suggested. ‘The afternoon’s wearing on anyway, and I’m getting tired of sleeping on the ground. Besides, I’m a little overdue for a bath.’

Tynian looked toward the starkly outlined peaks of the Tamul Mountains lying some leagues to the west. ‘I’d really hate to keep the Trolls waiting, Ulath,’ he said with mock seriousness.

‘It’s not as if we had a definite appointment with them. Trolls wouldn’t notice anyway. They’ve got a very imprecise notion of time.’

They rode on into the innyard, tied their horses to a rail outside the stable and went on into the inn.

‘We need a room,’ Ulath told the innkeeper in heavily accented Tamul.

The innkeeper was a small, furtive-looking man. He gave them a quick, appraising glance, noting the bits and pieces of army uniform that made up most of their dress. His expression hardened with distaste. Soldiers are frequently unwelcome in rural communities for any number of very good reasons. ‘Well,’ he replied in a whining, sing-song sort of voice, ‘I don’t know. It’s our busy season—’

‘Late autumn?’ Tynian broke in skeptically. ‘That’s your busy season?’

‘Well—there are all the wagoneers who can come by at any time, you know.’

Ulath looked beyond the innkeeper’s shoulder into the low, smoky taproom. ‘I count three,’ he said flatly.

‘There are bound to be more along shortly,’ the fellow replied just a bit too quickly.

‘Of course there are,’ Tynian said sarcastically. ‘But we’re here now, and we’ve got money. Are you going to gamble a sure thing against the remote possibility that some wagon might stop here along about midnight?’

‘He doesn’t want to do business with a couple of pensioned-off veterans, Corporal,’ Ulath said. ‘Let’s go talk with the local commissioner. I’m sure he’ll be very interested in the way this fellow treats his Imperial Majesty’s soldiers.’

‘I’m his Imperial Majesty’s loyal subject,’ the innkeeper said quickly ‘and I’ll be honored to have brave veterans of his army under my roof.’

‘How much?’ Tynian cut him off.

‘A half-crown?’

‘He doesn’t seem very certain. does he, Sergeant?’ Tynian asked his friend. ‘I think you misunderstood,’ he said then to the nervous innkeeper. ‘We don’t want to buy the room. We just want to rent it for one night.’

Ulath was staring hard at the now-frightened little Tamul. ‘Eight pence,’ he countered with a note of finality.

‘Eight?’ the innkeeper objected in a shrill voice.

‘Take it or leave it—and don’t be all day about it. We’ll need a little daylight to find the Commissioner.’

‘You’re a hard man, Sergeant.’

‘Nobody ever promised you that life would be easy, did they?’ Ulath counted out some coins and jingled them in his hand. ‘Do you want these or not?’

After a moment of agonized indecision, the innkeeper reluctantly took the coins.

‘You took all the fun out of that, you know,’ Tynian complained as the two went back out to the stable to see to their horses.

‘I’m thirsty,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘Besides, a couple of ex-soldiers would know in advance exactly how much they were willing to pay, wouldn’t they?’ He scratched at his face. ‘I wonder if Sir Gerda would mind if I shaved off his beard,’ he mused. ‘This thing itches.’

‘It’s not really his face, Ulath. It’s still yours. You’ve just been modified to look like him.’

‘Yes, but when the ladies switch our faces back, they’ll use this one as a model for Gerda, and when they’re done, he’ll be standing there with a naked face. He might object.’

They unsaddled their horses put them into stalls and went on into the taproom. Tamul drinking establishments were arranged differently from those owned by Elenes. The tables were much lower, for one thing, and here the room was heated by a porcelain stove rather than a fireplace. The stove smoked as badly as a fireplace, though. Wine was served in delicate little cups and ale in cheap tin tankards. The smell was much the same, however. They were just starting on their second tankard of ale when an officious-looking Tamul in a food-spotted wool mantle came into the room and walked directly to their table. ‘I’ll have a look at your release papers, if you don’t mind,’ he told them in a loftily superior tone.

‘And if we do?’ Ulath asked.

The official blinked. ‘What?’

‘You said if we don’t mind. What if we do mind?’

‘I have the authority to demand to see those documents.’

‘Why did you ask, then?’ Ulath reached inside his red uniform jacket and took out a dog-eared sheet of paper. ‘In our old regiment, men in authority never asked.’

The Tamul read through the documents Oscagne had provided them as a part of their disguise. ‘These seem to be in order,’ he said in a more conciliatory tone. ‘Sorry I was so abrupt. We’ve been told to keep our eyes out for deserters—all the turmoil, you understand. I guess the army looks a lot less attractive when there’s fighting in the wind.’ He looked at them a bit wistfully. ‘I see you were stationed in Matherion.’

Tynian nodded. ‘It was good duty—a lot of inspections and polishing, though. Sit down, Commissioner.’

The Tamul smiled faintly. ‘Deputy-Commissioner, I’m afraid, Corporal. This backwater doesn’t rate a full Commissioner.’ He slid into a chair. ‘Where are you men bound?’

‘Home,’ Ulath said, ‘back to Verel in Daconia.’

‘You’ll forgive my saying so, Sergeant, but you don’t look all that much like a Dacite.’

Ulath shrugged. ‘I take after my mother’s family. She was an Astel before she married my father. Tell me, Deputy-Commissioner, would we save very much time if we went straight on across the Tamul Mountains to reach Sepal? We thought we’d catch a ferry or some trading ship there, go across the Sea of Arjun to Tiara and then ride on down to Saras. It’s only a short way from there to Verel.’

‘I’d advise staying out of the Tamul Mountains, my friends.’

‘Bad weather?’ Tynian asked him.

‘That’s always possible at this time of year, Corporal, but there have been some distirbing reports coming out of those mountains. It seems that the bears up there have been breeding like rabbits. Every traveler who’s come through here in the past few weeks reports sighting the brutes. Fortunately they all run away.’

‘Bears, you say?’

The Tamul smiled. ‘I’m translating. The ignorant peasants around here use the word “monster”, but we all know what a large, shaggy creature who lives alone in the mountains is, don’t we?’

‘Peasants are an excitable lot, aren’t they?’ Ulath laughed, draining his tankard. ‘We were out on a training exercise once, and this peasant came running up to us claiming that he was being chased by a pack of wolves. When we went out to take a look, it turned out to be one lone fox. The size and number of any wild animal a peasant sees seems to grow with each passing hour.’

‘Or each tankard of ale,’ Tynian added.

They talked with the now-polite official for a while longer, and then the man wished them a good journey and left.

‘Well, it’s nice to know that the Trolls made it this far south,’ Ulath said. ‘I’d hate to have to go looking for them.’

‘Their Gods were guiding them, Ulath,’ Tynian pointed out.

‘You’ve never talked with the Troll-Gods, I see,’ Ulath laughed. ‘Their sense of direction is a little vague—probably because their compass only has two directions on it.’

‘Oh?’

‘North and not-north. It makes finding places a little difficult.’

The storm was one of those short, savage gales that seem to come out of nowhere in the late autumn. Khalad had dismissed the possibility of finding any kind of shelter in the salt marshes and had turned instead to the beach. At the head of a shallow inlet he had found the mountain of driftwood he’d been seeking. A couple of hours of fairly intense labor had produced a snug, even cozy little shelter on the leeward side of the pile.

The gale struck just as the last light was fading. The wind screamed through the huge pile of driftwood. The surf crashed and thundered against the beach, and the rain sheeted horizontally across the ground in the driving wind. Khalad and Berit, however, were warm and dry. They sat with their backs against the huge, bleached-white log that formed the rear wall of their shelter and their feet stretched out toward their crackling fire.

‘You always amaze me, Khalad,’ Berit said. ‘How did you know that there’d be boards mixed in amongst all this driftwood?’

‘There always are,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘Any time you find one of these big heaps of driftwood, you’re going to find sawed lumber as well. Men make ships out of boards, and ships get wrecked. The boards float around until the wind and currents and tides push them to the same sheltered places where the sticks and the logs have been accumulating.’ He reached up and patted the ceiling. ‘Finding this hatch-cover all in one piece was a stroke of luck, though, I’ll grant you that.’ He rose to his feet and went to the front of the shelter. ‘It’s really blowing out there,’ he noted. He extended his hands toward the fire. ‘Cold, too. The rain’s probably going to turn to sleet before midnight.’

‘Yes,’ Berit agreed pleasantly. ‘I certainly pity anybody caught out in the open on a night like this.’ He grinned.

‘Me too,’ Khalad grinned back. He lowered his voice, although there was no real need. ‘Can you get any sense of what he’s thinking?’

‘Nothing specific,’ Berit replied. ‘He’s seriously uncomfortable, though.’

‘What a shame.’

‘There’s something else, though. He’s going to come and talk with us. He has a message of some kind for us.’

‘Is he likely to come in here tonight?’

Berit shook his head. ‘He has orders not to make contact until tomorrow morning. He’s very much afraid of whoever told him what to do and when to do it, so he’ll obey those orders to the letter. How’s that ham coming?’

Khalad drew his dagger and used its point to lift the lid of the iron pot half-buried in embers at the edge of the fire. The steam that came boiling out smelled positively delicious. ‘It’s ready. As soon as the beans are done, we can eat.’

‘If our friend out there is down-wind of us, that smell should add to his misery just a bit.’ Berit chuckled.

‘I sort of doubt it, Sparhawk. He’s a Styric, and he’s not allowed to eat pork.’

‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten about that. He’s a renegade, though. maybe he’s discarded his dietary prejudices.’

‘We’ll find out in the morning. When he comes to us tomorrow, I’ll offer him a piece. Why don’t you saw off a few slices of that loaf of bread? I’ll toast them on the pot-lid here.’

The wind had abated somewhat the following morning, and the rain had slacked off to a few fitful spatters stuttering on the hatch-cover roof. They had more of the ham and beans for breakfast and began to get things ready to pack.

‘What do you think?’ Berit asked.

‘Let’s make him come to us. Sitting tight until the last of the rain passes wouldn’t be all that unusual.’ Khalad looked speculatively at his friend.

‘Would you be offended by a bit of advice, my Lord?’ he asked.

‘Of course not.’

‘You look like Sparhawk, but you don’t sound very much like him, and your mannerisms aren’t quite right. When the Styric comes, make your face colder and harder. Keep your eyes narrow. Sparhawk squints. You’ll also want to keep your voice low and level. Sparhawk’s voice gets very quiet when he’s angry and he calls people “neighbor” a lot. He can put all sorts of meaning into that one word.’

‘That’s right, he does call just about everybody “neighbor”, doesn’t he? I’d almost forgotten that. You’ve got my permission to correct me any time I start to lose my grip on the real Sparhawk, Khalad.’

‘Permission?’

‘Poor choice of words there, I suppose.’

‘You might say that, yes.’

‘The climate got a little too warm for us back in Matherion,’ Caalador said, leaning back in his chair. He looked directly at the hard-faced man seated across from him. ‘I’m sure you take my meaning, Order.’

The hard-faced man laughed. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied. ‘I’ve left a few places about one jump ahead of the law a time or two myself.’ Order was an Elene from Vardenaise who ran a seedy tavern on the waterfront in Delo. He was a burly ruffian who prospered here because Elene criminals felt comfortable in the familiar surroundings of an Elene tavern and because Order was willing to buy things from them—at about a tenth of their real value—without asking questions.

‘What we really need is a new line of work.’ Caalador gestured at Kalten and Bevier, disguised with new faces and rough, mismatched clothing. ‘A fairly high personage in the Ministry of the Interior was in charge of the group of policemen who stopped by to ask us some embarrassing questions.’ He grinned at Bevier, who wore the face of one of his brother Cyrinics, an evil-looking knight who had lost an eye in a skirmish in Render and covered the empty socket with a black patch. ‘My one-eyed friend there didn’t care for the fellow’s attitude, so he lopped his head off with that funny-looking hatchet of his.’

Order looked at the weapon Bevier had laid on the table beside his ale-tankard. ‘That’s a lochaber axe, isn’t it?’ he asked.

Bevier grunted. Kalten felt that Bevier’s flair for dramatics was pushing him a little far. The black eye-patch was probably enough, but Bevier’s participation in amateur theatricals as a student made him seem to want to go to extremes. His intent was obviously to appear dangerously competent. What he was achieving, however, was the appearance of a homicidal maniac.

‘Doesn’t a lochaber usually have a longer handle?’ Order asked.

‘It wouldn’t fit under my tunic,’ Bevier growled, ‘so I sawed a couple of feet off the handle. It works well enough—if you keep chopping with it. The screaming and the blood don’t bother me all that much, so it suits me just fine.’

Order shuddered and looked slightly sick. ‘That’s the meanest-looking weapon I’ve ever seen,’ he confessed.

‘Maybe that’s why I like it so much,’ Bevier told him.

Order looked at Caalador. ‘What line were you and your friends thinking of taking up, Ezek?’ he asked.

‘We thought we might try our hand at highway robbery or something along those lines,’ Caalador said. ‘You know, fresh air, exercise, wholesome food, no policemen in the neighborhood, that sort of thing. We’ve got some fairly substantial prices on our heads, and now that the Emperor’s disbanded Interior, all the policing is being done by the Atans. Did you know that you can’t bribe an Atan?’

Order nodded glumly. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘It’s shocking.’ He squinted speculatively at ‘Ezek’, who appeared to be a middle-aged Deiran. ‘Why don’t you describe Caalador to me, Ezek? I’m not doubting your word, mind. It’s just that things are a little topsy-turvy right now, what with all the policemen we used to bribe either in jail or dead, so we all have to be careful.’

‘No offense taken at all, Order,’ Caalador assured him. ‘I wouldn’t trust a man who wasn’t careful these days. Caalador’s a Cammorian, and he’s got curly hair and a red face. He’s sort of blocky—you know, big shoulders, thick neck, and a little stout around the middle.’

Order’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘What did he tell you? Repeat his exact words.’

‘Wal, sir,’ Caalador replied, exaggerating the dialect just a bit, ‘Ol’ Caalador, he tole us t’ come down yore t’ Delo an’ look up a feller name o’ Order—on accounta this yore Order, he’s th’ one oz knows whut’s whut in the shadowy world o’ crime herebouts.’

Order relaxed and laughed. ‘That’s Caalador, all right,’ he said. ‘I knew you were telling me the truth before you’d said three words.’

‘He certainly mangles the language,’ Caalador agreed. ‘He’s not as stupid as he sounds, though.’

Kalten covered a smile with his hand.

‘Not by a dang sight, he ain’t,’ Order agreed, imitating the dialect. ‘I think you’ll find that highway robbery isn’t very profitable around here, Ezek, mainly because there aren’t that many highways. It’s safe enough out in the jungle—not even the Atans can find anybody in all that underbrush—but pickings are slim. Three men alone in the bush won’t be able to make ends meet. I think you’ll have to join one of the bands out there. They make a fair living robbing isolated estates and raiding various towns and villages. That takes quite a number of men, so there are always job openings.’ He sat back and tapped one finger thoughtfully against his chin. ‘Do you want to go a long way from town?’ he asked.

‘The further out the better,’ Caalador replied.

‘Narstil’s operating down by the ruins of Natayos. I can guarantee that the police won’t bother you there. A fellow named Scarpa’s got an army stationed in the ruins. He’s a crazy revolutionary who wants to overthrow the Tamul government. Narstil has quite a few dealings with him. There’s some risk involved, but there’s a lot of profit to be made in that neighborhood.’

‘I think you’ve found just what we’re looking for, Order,’ Caalador said eagerly.

Kalten carefully let out a long sigh of relief. Order had come up with the exact answer they’d been looking for without even being prompted. If they joined this particular band of robbers, they’d be close enough to Natayos to smell the smoke from the chimneys, and that was a better stroke of luck than they’d even dared to hope for.

‘I’ll tell you what, Ezek,’ Order said, ‘why don’t I write a letter to Narstil introducing you and your friends?’

‘We’d definitely appreciate it, Order.’

‘But before I waste all that ink and paper, why don’t we have a talk about how much you’re going to pay me to write that letter?’

The Styric was wet and muddy and very nearly blue with the cold. He was shivering so violently that his voice quavered as he hailed their camp. ‘I have a message for you,’ he called. ‘Don’t get excited and do something foolish.’ He spoke in Elenic, and that made Berit quite thankful, since his own Styric was not all that good. It was the one major flaw in his disguise.

‘Come on in, neighbor,’ he called out to the miserable-looking fellow at the upper end of the beach. ‘Just keep your hands out in plain sight.’

‘Don’t order me around, Elene,’ the Styric snapped. ‘I’m the one who’s giving the orders here.’

‘Deliver your message from right there then, neighbor,’ Berit said coldly. ‘Take your time, if you want. I’m warm and dry in here, so waiting while you make up your mind won’t be all that unpleasant for me.’

‘It’s a written message,’ the man said in Styric. At least Berit thought that was what he said.

‘Friend,’ Khalad said, stepping in quickly, ‘we’ve got a slightly touchy situation here. There are all sorts of chances for misunderstandings, so don’t make me nervous by talking in a language I don’t understand. Sir Sparhawk here understands Styric, but I don’t, and my knife in your belly will kill you just as quick as his will. I’ll be very sorry afterward, of course, but you’ll still be dead.’

‘Can I come in?’ the Styric asked, speaking in Elenic.

‘Come ahead, neighbor,’ Berit told him.

The lumpy-faced messenger approached the front of their shelter, looking longingly at the fire.

‘You really look uncomfortable, old boy,’ Berit noted. ‘Couldn’t you think of a spell to keep the rain off?’

The Styric ignored that. ‘I’m instructed to give you this,’ he said, reaching inside his homespun smock and drawing out an oilskin-covered packet.

‘Tell me what you’re going to do before you stick your hand inside your clothes like that, neighbor,’ Berit cautioned him in a low voice and squinting at him as he said it. ‘As my friend just pointed out, we’ve got some wonderful opportunities for misunderstandings here. Startling me when I’m this close to you isn’t a good way to keep your guts on the inside.’

The Styric swallowed hard and stepped back as soon as Berit took the packet.

‘Would you care for a slice of ham while my Lord Sparhawk reads his mail, friend?’ Khalad offered. ‘It’s nice and greasy, so it’ll lubricate your innards.’ The Styric shuddered, and his face took on a faintly nauseated look. ‘There’s nothing quite like a few gobs of oozy pork-fat to slick up a man’s gullet,’ Khalad told him cheerfully. ‘It must come from all the garbage and half-rotten swill that pigs eat.’

The Styric made a retching sound.

‘You’ve delivered your message, neighbor,’ Berit said coldly. ‘I’m sure you have someplace important to go, and we certainly wouldn’t want to keep you.’

‘Are you sure you understand the message?’

‘I’ve read it. Elenes read very well. We’re not illiterates like you Styrics. The message didn’t make me very happy, so it’s not going to pay you to stay around.’

The Styric messenger backed away, his face apprehensive. Then he turned and fled.

‘What does it say?’ Khalad asked.

Berit gently held the identifying lock of the Queen’s hair in his hand. ‘It says that there’s been a change of plans. We’re supposed to go on down past the Tamul Mountains and then turn west. They want us to go to Sepal now.’

‘You’d better get word to Aphrael.’

There was a sudden, familiar little trill of pipes. The two young men spun around quickly. The Child Goddess sat cross-legged on Khalad’s blankets, breathing a plaintive Styric melody into her many-chambered pipes. ‘Why are you staring at me?’ she asked them. ‘I told you I was going to look after you, didn’t I?’

‘Is this really wise, Divine One?’ Berit asked her. ‘That Styric’s no more than a few hundred yards away, you know, and he can probably sense your presence.’

‘Not right now, he can’t,’ Aphrael smiled. ‘Right now he’s too busy concentrating on keeping his stomach from turning inside out. All that talk about pork-fat was really cruel, Khalad.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘Did you have to be so graphic?’

‘I didn’t know you were around. What do you want us to do?’

‘Go to Sepal the way they told you to. I’ll get word to the others.’ She paused. ‘What did you do to that ham, Khalad?’ she asked curiously. ‘You’ve actually managed to make it smell almost edible.’

‘It’s probably the cloves,’ he shrugged. ‘Nobody’s really all that fond of the taste of pork, when you get right down to it, but my mother taught me that almost anything can be made edible—if you use enough spices. You might want to keep that in mind the next time you’re thinking about serving up a goat.’

She stuck her tongue out at him, and then she vanished.

7

It was snowing in the mountains of Zemoch, a dry, brittle snow that settled like a cloud of feathers in the dead calm air. It was bitterly cold, and a huge cloud of steam hung like a low-lying fog over the horses of the army of the Knights of the Church as they plodded forward, their hooves sending the powdery snow swirling into the air again. The preceptors of the militant orders rode in the lead, dressed in full armor and bundled in furs.

Preceptor Abriel of the Cyrinic Knights, still vigorous despite his advanced age, rode with Darellon, the Alcione Preceptor, and with Sir Heldin, a scarred old veteran who was filling in as leader of the Pandions during Sparhawk’s absence. Patriarch Bergsten rode somewhat apart. The huge Churchman was muffled to the ears in fur, and his Ogre-horned helmet made him look very warlike, an appearance offset to some degree by the small, black-bound prayer book he was reading. Preceptor Komier of the Genidians was off ahead with the scouts.

‘I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again,’ Abriel groaned, pulling his fur cloak tighter about him. ‘Old age thins the blood. Don’t ever get old, Darellon.’

‘The alternative isn’t very attractive, Lord Abriel.’ Darellon was a slender Deiran who appeared to have been swallowed up by his massive armor. He lowered his voice. ‘You didn’t really have to come along, my friend,’ he said. ‘Sarathi would have understood.’

‘Oh, no, Darellon. This is probably my last campaign. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ Abriel peered ahead. ‘What’s Komier doing out there?’

‘Lord Komier said that he wanted to take a look at the ruins of Zemoch,’ Sir Heldin replied in his rumbling basse. ‘I guess Thalesians take a certain pleasure in viewing the wreckage after a war’s over.’

‘They’re a barbaric people,’ Abriel muttered sourly. He glanced quickly at Bergsten, who seemed totally immersed in his prayer book. ‘You don’t necessarily have to repeat that, gentlemen,’ he said to Darellon and Heldin.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it, Abriel,’ Bergsten said, not looking up from his prayer book.

‘You’ve got unwholesomely sharp ears, your Grace.’

‘It comes from listening to confessions. People tend to shout the sins of others from the rooftops, but you can barely hear them when they’re describing their own.’ Bergsten looked up and pointed. ‘Komier’s coming back.’

The Preceptor of the Genidian Knights was in high spirits as he reined in his horse, swirling up a huge billow of the dustlike snow. ‘Sparhawk doesn’t leave very much standing when he destroys a place,’ he announced cheerfully. ‘I didn’t entirely believe Ulath when he told me that our broken-nosed friend blew the lid off the Temple of Azash, but I do now. You’ve never seen such a wreck. I doubt if there’s a habitable building left in the whole city.’

‘You really enjoy that sort of thing, don’t you, Komier?’ Abriel accused.

‘That’s enough of that, gentlemen!’ Bergsten cut in quickly. ‘We’re not going to resurrect that worn-out old dispute again. We make war in different ways. Arcians like to build forts and castles, and Thalesians like to knock them down. It’s all part of making war, and that’s what we get paid for.’

‘We, your Grace?’ Heldin rumbled mildly.

‘You know what I mean, Heldin. I don’t personally get involved in that any more, of course, but—’

‘Why did you bring your axe along then, Bergsten?’ Komier asked him.

Bergsten gave him a flat stare. ‘For old times’ sake—and because you Thalesian brigands pay closer attention to a man who’s got an axe in his hands.’

‘Knights, your Grace,’ Komier mildly corrected his countryman. ‘We’re called knights now. We used to be brigands, but now we’re behaving ourselves.’

‘The Church appreciates your efforts to mend your ways my son, even though she knows that you’re lying in your teeth.’

Abriel carefully covered a smile. Bergsten was a former Genidian Knight himself, and sometimes his cassock slipped a bit.

‘Who’s got the map?’ he asked, more to head off the impending argument than out of any real curiosity.

Heldin unbuckled one of his saddle-bags, his black armor clinking. ‘What did you want to know, my Lord?’ he asked, taking out his map.

‘The usual. How far? How long? What sort of unpleasantness up ahead?’

‘It’s just over a hundred leagues to the Astellian border, my Lord,’ Heldin replied, consulting his map, ‘and nine hundred leagues from there to Matherion.’

‘A hundred days at least,’ Bergsten grunted sourly.

‘That’s if we don’t run into any trouble, your Grace,’ Darellon added.

‘Take a look back over your shoulder, Darellon. There are a hundred thousand Church Knights behind us. There’s no trouble that we can’t deal with. What sort of terrain’s up ahead, Heldin?’

‘There’s some sort of divide about three days east of here, your Grace. All the rivers on this side of it run down into the Gulf of Merjuk. On the other side, they run off into the Astel Marshes. I’d imagine that we’ll be going downhill after we cross that divide—unless Otha fixed it so that water runs uphill here in Zemoch.’

A Genidian Knight rode forward. ‘A messenger from Emsat just caught up with us, Lord Komier,’ he reported. ‘He says he has important news for you.’

Komier nodded, wheeled his horse and rode back toward the army. The rest of them pushed on as it started to snow a little harder. Komier was laughing uproariously when he returned with the travel-stained messenger who had chased them down.

‘What’s so funny?’ Bergsten asked him.

‘We have good news from home, your Grace,’ Komier said. ‘Tell our beloved Patriarch what you just told me,’ he instructed the messenger.

‘Yes, my Lord,’ the blond-braided Thalesian said. ‘It happened a few weeks back, your Grace. One morning the palace servants couldn’t find a trace of the Prince Regent anywhere at all. The Guards tore the place apart for two straight days, but the little weasel seemed to have vanished entirely.’

‘Mind your manners, man,’ Bergsten snapped. ‘Avin’s the Prince Regent, after all—even if he is a little weasel.’

‘Sorry your Grace. Anyway, the whole capital was mystified. Avin Wargunsson never went anywhere without taking a brass band along to blow fanfares announcing his coming. Then one of the servants happened to notice a full wine barrel in Avin’s study. That seemed odd, because Avin didn’t have much stomach for wine, so they got to looking at the barrel a little more closely. It was clear that it had been opened, because quite a bit of wine had been spilled on the floor. Well, your Grace, they’d all worked up quite a thirst looking for Avin, so they decided to open the barrel, but when they tried to pry it open, they found out that it had been nailed shut. Now nobody nails a wine barrel shut in Thalesia, so everybody got suspicious right away. They took some pliers and pulled out the nails and lifted the lid—and there was Avin, stone dead and floating face down in the barrel.’

‘You’re not serious!’

‘Yes, your Grace. Somebody in Emsat’s got a very warped sense of humor, I guess. He went to all the trouble of rolling that wine barrel into Avin’s study just so that he could stuff him in and nail down the lid. Avin seems to have struggled a bit. He had splinters under his fingernails, and there were clawmarks on the underside of the lid. It made an awful mess. I guess the wine drained out of him for a half an hour after they fished him out of the barrel. The palace servants tried to clean him up for the funeral, but you know how hard wine-stains are to get out. He was very purple when they laid him out on the bier in the Cathedral of Emsat for his funeral.’

The messenger rubbed at the side of his face reflectively. ‘It was the strangest funeral I’ve ever attended. The Primate of Emsat kept trying to keep from laughing while he was reading the burial service, but he wasn’t having much luck, and that got the whole congregation to laughing too. There was Avin lying on that bier, no bigger than a half-grown goat and as purple as a ripe plum, and there was the whole congregation, roaring with laughter.’

‘At least everybody noticed him,’ Komier said. ‘That was always important to Avin.’

‘Oh, they noticed him all right, Lord Komier. Every eye in the Cathedral was on him. Then, after they put him in the royal crypt, the whole city had a huge party, and we all drank toasts to the memory of Avin Wargunsson. It’s hard to find something to laugh about in Thalesia when winter’s coming on, but Avin managed to brighten up the whole season.’

‘What kind of wine was it?’ Patriarch Bergsten asked gravely.

‘Arcian red, your Grace.’

‘Any idea of what year?’

‘Year before last, I believe it was.’

‘A vintage year,’ Bergsten sighed. ‘There was no way to save it, I suppose?’

‘Not after Avin had been soaking in it for two days, your Grace.’

Bergsten sighed again. ‘What a waste,’ he mourned. And then he collapsed over his saddlebow, howling with laughter.

It was cold in the Tamul Mountains as Ulath and Tynian rode up into the foothills. The Tamul Mountains were one of those geographic anomalies which crop up here and there, a cluster of worn-down, weary-looking peaks with no evident connection to neighboring and more jagged peaks forested by fir and spruce and pine. The gentler slopes of the Tamul Mountains were covered with hardwoods which had been stripped of their leaves by the onset of winter.

The two knights rode carefully, staying in the open and making enough noise to announce their presence. ‘It’s very unwise to startle a Troll,’ Ulath explained.

‘Are you sure they’re out there?’ Tynian asked as they wound deeper into the mountains.

Ulath nodded. ‘I’ve seen tracks—or places where they’ve tried to brush out their traces—and fresh dirt where they’ve buried their droppings. Trolls take pains to conceal their presence from humans. It’s easier to catch supper if it doesn’t know you’re around.’

‘The Troll-Gods promised Aphrael that their creatures wouldn’t eat humans any more.’

‘It may take a few generations for that notion to sift down into the minds of some of the stupider Trolls—and a Troll can be fearfully stupid when he sets his mind to it. We’d better stay alert. As soon as we get up out of these foothills, I’ll perform the ceremony that calls the Troll-Gods. We should be safe after that. It’s these foothills that are dangerous.’

‘Why not just perform the ceremony now?’

Ulath shook his head. ‘Bad manners. You’re not supposed to call on the Troll-Gods until you’re up higher—up in real Troll country.’

‘This isn’t Troll country, Ulath.’

‘It is now. Let’s find a place to camp for the night.’

They built their camp on a kind of stair-stepped bench so that they had a solid cliff to their backs and a steep drop to the front. They took turns standing watch, and as the first faint light of dawn began to wash the darkness out of the overcast sky, Tynian shook Ulath awake. ‘There’s something moving around in the brush at the foot of the cliff,’ he whispered.

Ulath sat up, his hand going to his axe. He cocked his head to listen. ‘Troll,’ he said after a moment.

‘How can you tell?’

‘Whatever’s making all the noise is doing it on purpose. A deer wouldn’t crash around like that, and the bears have all denned up for the winter. The Troll wants us to know he’s there.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Let’s build up the fire a bit—let him know that we’re awake. We’ve got a touchy situation here, so let’s not move too fast.’

He pushed his blankets aside and rose to his feet as Tynian piled more limbs on the fire.

‘Should we invite him in to get warm?’ Tynian asked.

‘He isn’t cold.’

‘It’s freezing, Ulath.’

‘That’s why he’s got fur. Trolls build fires for light, not heat. Why don’t you go ahead and get started with breakfast? He’s not going to do anything until full daylight.’

‘It’s not my turn.’

‘I have to keep watch.’

‘I can keep watch as well as you can.’

‘You wouldn’t know what to look for, Tynian.’ Ulath’s tone was reasonable. It usually was when he was talking his way out of doing the cooking.

The light grew gradually stronger. It was a process that is always strange. A man can be looking directly at a dark patch in the surrounding forest and suddenly realize that he can see trees and rocks and bushes where there had been only darkness before.

Tynian brought Ulath a plate of steaming ham and a chunk of leathery-crusted bread. ‘Leave the ham on the spit,’ Ulath told him.

Tynian grunted, picked up his own plate, and joined his friend at the front edge of the rocky shelf. They sat and kept watch on the birch forest that ran down the steep slope beneath them as they ate.

‘There he is,’ Ulath said gravely, ‘right beside that big rock.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Tynian replied. ‘I see him now. He blends right in, doesn’t he?’

‘That’s what being a Troll is all about, Tynian. He’s a part of the forest.’

‘Sephrenia says that we’re distantly related to them.’

‘She’s probably right. There aren’t really all that many differences between us and the Trolls. They’re bigger, and they have a different diet is about all.’

‘How long is this likely to take?’

‘I have no idea. As far as I know, this has never happened before.’

‘What’ll he do next?’

‘As soon as he’s sure we know he’s there, he’ll probably try to communicate in some way.’

‘Does he know that you speak Trollish?’

‘He might. The Troll-Gods are acquainted with me, and they know that I run in the same pack with Sparhawk.’

‘That’s an odd way to put it.’

‘I’m trying to think like a Troll. If I can get it right, I might be able to anticipate what he’s going to do next.’

Then the Troll shouted up the hill to them.

‘What did he say?’ Tynian asked nervously.

‘He wants to know what he’s supposed to do. He’s very confused.’

‘He’s confused? What about me?’

‘He’s been told to meet us and take us to the Troll-Gods. He doesn’t have any idea of our customs or the proper courtesies. We’ll have to guide him through this. Put your sword back in its sheath. Let’s not make things any worse than they already are.’

Ulath stood up, being careful not to move too fast. He raised his voice and called to the creature below in Trollish. ‘Come to this child of Khwaj which we have made. We will take eat together and talk of what we must do.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I invited him to join us for breakfast.’

‘You did what? You want a Troll that’s no more than a few feet from you to start eating?’

‘It’s a precaution. It would be discourteous of him to kill us after he’s taken food from us.’

‘Discourteous? That’s a Troll out there, Ulath.’

‘Just because he’s a Troll doesn’t mean that he has bad manners. Oh, I almost forgot. When he comes into camp, he’ll want to sniff us. It’s polite to sniff him as well. He won’t smell very nice, but do it anyway. Trolls do that so that they’ll recognize each other if they ever meet again.’

‘I think you’re losing your mind.’

‘Just follow my lead, and let me do the talking.’

‘What else can I do, you clot? I don’t speak Trollish, remember?’

‘You don’t? What an amazing thing. I thought every educated man spoke Trollish.’

The Troll approached cautiously, moving smoothly up through the birch forest. He used his arms a great deal as he moved, grasping trees to pull himself along, moving with his whole body. He was about eight and a half feet tall and had glossy brown fur. His face was simian to a degree, though he did not have the protruding muzzle of most apes, and there was a glimmer of intelligence in his deep-sunk eyes. He came up onto the bench where the camp lay and then squatted, resting his forearms on his knees and keeping his paws in plain sight.

‘I have no club,’ he half-growled.

Ulath made some show of setting his axe aside and held out his empty hands. ‘I have no club,’ he repeated the customary greeting. ‘Undo your sword-belt, Tynian,’ he muttered. ‘Lay it aside.’

Tynian started to object, but decided against it.

‘The child of Khwaj you have made is good,’ the Troll said, pointing at their fire. ‘Khwaj will be pleased.’

‘It is good to please the Gods,’ Ulath replied.

The Troll suddenly banged his fist on the ground. ‘This is not how it should be!’ he declared in an unhappy voice.

‘No,’ Ulath agreed, dropping down into a squat much like the Troll’s. ‘It is not. The Gods have their reasons for it, though. They have said we must not kill each other. They have also said we must not eat each other.’

‘I have heard them say it. Could we have misunderstood them?’

‘I think we have not.’

‘Could it be that their minds are sick?’

‘It is possible. We must still do as they tell us, though.’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Tynian asked nervously.

‘We’re discussing philosophy,’ Ulath shrugged.

Tynian stared at him.

‘It’s fairly complex. It has to do with whether or not we’re morally obliged to obey the Gods if they’ve gone crazy. I’m saying that we are. Of course my position’s a little tainted by self-interest in this particular situation.’

‘Can it not speak!’ the Troll asked, pointing at Tynian. ‘Are those bird-noises the only sounds it can make?’

‘The bird-noises pass for speech among those of our kind. Will you take some of our eat with us?’

The Troll looked appraisingly at their horses. ‘Those?’ he asked.

‘No.’ Ulath shook his head. ‘Those are the beasts which carry us.’

‘Are your legs sick? Is that why you are so short?’

‘No. The beasts can run faster than we can. They carry us when we want to go fast.’

‘What kind of eat do you take?’

‘Pig.’

‘Pig is good. Deer is better.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is the pig? Is it dead? If it is still alive, I will kill it.’

‘It is dead.’

The Troll looked around. ‘I do not see it.’

‘We have only brought part of it.’ Ulath pointed at the large ham spitted over the fire.

‘Do you share your eat with the child of Khwaj?’

Ulath decided not to explain the concept of cooking at that particular moment. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is our custom.’

‘Does it please Khwaj that you share your eat with his child?’

‘It is our thought that it does.’ Ulath drew his dagger, lifted the spit from off the fire and sawed off a chunk of ham weighing perhaps three pounds.

‘Are your teeth sick?’ The Troll even sounded sympathetic. ‘I had a sick tooth once. It caused me much hurt.’

‘Our kind does not have sharp teeth,’ Ulath told him. ‘Will you take some of our eat?’

‘I will.’ The Troll rose to his feet and came to the fire, towering over them.

‘The eat has been near the child of Khwaj,’ Ulath warned. ‘It is hot. It may cause hurt to your mouth.’

‘I am called Bhlokw,’ the Troll introduced himself.

‘I am called Ulath.’

‘U-lat? That is a strange thing to be called.’ Bhlokw pointed at Tynian. ‘What is it called?’

‘Tynian,’ Ulath replied.

‘Tin-in. That is stranger than U-lat.’

‘The bird-noises of our speech make what we are called sound strange.’

The Troll leaned forward and snuffled at the top of Ulath’s head. Ulath suppressed a strong urge to shriek and run for the nearest tree. He politely sniffed at Bhlokw’s fur. The Troll actually didn’t smell too bad. Then the monster and Tynian exchanged sniffs. ‘Now I know you,’ Bhlokw said.

‘It is good that you do.’ Ulath held out the chunk of steaming ham.

Bhlokw took it from him and stuffed it into his mouth. Then he quickly spat it back out into his hand. ‘Hot,’ he explained a little sheepishly.

‘We blow on it to make it cool so that we can eat it without causing hurt to our mouths,’ Ulath instructed.

Bhlokw blew noisily on the piece of ham for a while. Then he rammed it back into his mouth. He chewed reflectively for a moment. Then he swallowed. ‘It is different,’ he said, diplomatically.

Then he sighed. ‘I do not like this, U-lat,’ he confided unhappily. ‘This is not how things should be.’

‘No,’ Ulath agreed, ‘It is not.’

‘We should be killing each other. I have killed and eaten you man-things since you first came to the Troll-range. That is how things should be. It is my thought that the Gods are sick in their minds to make us do this.’ He sighed a hurricane sort of sigh. ‘Your thought is right, though. We must do as they tell us to do. Someday their minds will get well. Then they will let us kill and eat each other again.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘They want to see you. I will take you to them.’

‘We will go with you.’

They followed Bhlokw up into the mountains all that day and half of the next, and he led them finally to a snow-covered clearing where a fire burned in a large pit. The Troll-Gods were waiting for them there.

‘Aphrael came to us,’ the enormity that was Ghworg told them.

‘She said that she would do this,’ Ulath replied. ‘She said that when things happened that we should know about, she would come to us and tell us.’

‘She put her mouth on our faces.’ Ghworg seemed puzzled.

‘She does this. It gives her pleasure.’

‘It was not painful,’ Ghworg conceded a bit dubiously, touching the cheek where Aphrael had kissed him.

‘What did he say?’ Tynian asked quietly.

‘Aphrael came here and talked with them,’ Ulath replied. ‘She even kissed them a few times. You know Aphrael.’

‘She actually kissed the Troll-Gods?’ Tynian’s face grew pale.

‘What did it say?’ Ghworg demanded.

‘It wanted me to say what you had said.’

‘This is not good, Ulath-from-Thalesia. It should not talk to you in words we do not understand. What is its name?’

‘It is called Tynian-from-Deira.’

‘I will make it so that Tynian-from-Deira knows our speech.’

‘Brace yourself,’ Ulath warned his friend.

‘What? What’s happening, Ulath?’

‘Ghworg’s going to teach you Trollish.’

‘Now, wait a minute—’ Then Tynian suddenly clapped his hands to the sides of his head, cried out and fell writhing into the snow. The paroxysm passed quickly, but Tynian was pale and shaking as he sat up, and his eyes were wild.

‘You are Tynian-from-Deira?’ Ghworg demanded in Trollish.

‘Y-yes.’ Tynian’s voice trembled as he replied.

‘Do you understand my words?’

‘They are clear to me.’

‘It is good. Do not speak the other kind of talk when you are near us. When you do, you make it so that we do not trust you.’

‘I will remember that.’

‘It is good that you will. Aphrael came to us. She told us that the one called Berit has been told not to go to the place Beresa. He has been told to go to the place Sepal instead. She said that you would understand what this means.’ He paused, frowning. ‘Do you?’ he asked.

‘Do we?’ Tynian asked Ulath, speaking in Trollish.

‘I am not sure.’ Ulath rose, went to his horse, and took a map out of his saddle-bag. Then he returned to the fire. ‘This is a picture of the ground,’ he explained to the enormous presences. ‘We make these pictures so that we will know where we are going.’

Schlee looked briefly at the map. ‘The ground does not look like that,’ he told them. He squatted and thrust his huge fingers down through the snow into the dirt. ‘This is how the ground looks.’

Ulath jumped back as the earth under his feet shuddered slightly. Then he stared down. It was not so much a map as it was a miniaturized version of the continent itself.

‘This is a very good picture of the ground,’ he marveled.

Schlee shrugged. ‘I put my hand into the ground and felt its shape. This is how it looks.’

‘Where is Beresa?’ Tynian asked Ulath, staring in wonderment at hair-thin little trees bristling like a two-day growth of beard on the sides of tiny mountains.

Ulath checked his map and walked several yards south to a shimmering surface covered with minuscule waves. His feet even sank slightly into Schlee’s recreation of the southern Tamul sea. ‘It is right here,’ he replied in Trollish, bending and putting his finger on a spot on the coastline.

‘That is where the ones who took Anakha’s mate away told him to go,’ Tynian explained to the Troll-Gods.

‘We do not understand,’ Khwaj said bluntly.

‘Anakha is fond of his mate.’

‘That is how it should be.’

‘He grows angry when his mate is in danger. The ones who took his mate away know this. They said that they will not give her back to him unless he gives them the Flower-Gem.’

The Troll-Gods all frowned, puzzling their way through it. Then Khwaj suddenly roared, belching out a great, billowing cloud of fire and melting the snow for fifty yards in every direction. ‘That is wickedness!’ he thundered. ‘It is not right to do this! Their quarrel was with Anakha, not with his mate! I will find these wicked ones! I will turn them into fires that will never go out. They will cry out with hurt forever!’

Tynian shuddered at the enormity of that idea. Then, with a great deal of help from Ulath, he explained their disguises and the subterfuges those disguises made possible.

‘Do you in truth look different from how you looked before, Ulath-from-Thalesia?’ Ghworg asked peering curiously at Ulath.

‘Much different, Ghworg.’

‘That is strange. You seem the same to me.’ The God considered it. ‘Perhaps it is not so strange,’ he amended. ‘Your kind all look the same to me.’ He clenched his huge fists. ‘Khwaj is right,’ he said. ‘We must cause hurt to the wicked ones. Show us where the one called Berit has been told to go.’

Ulath consulted his map again and crossed the miniature world to the edge of the large lake known as the Sea of Arjun.

‘It is here, Ghworg,’ he said, bending again and putting his finger to a spot on the coast. Then he bent lower and stared at the shore-line. ‘It is really there.’ he gasped. ‘I can see the tiny little buildings. That is Sepal!’

‘Of course,’ Schlee said as if it were of no particular moment. ‘It would not be a good picture if I had left things out.’

‘We have been tricked,’ Tynian said. ‘It was our thought that our enemies were in the place Beresa. They are not. They are in the place Sepal instead. The one called Berit does not have the Flower-Gem. Anakha has the Flower-Gem. Anakha takes it to Beresa. If the wicked ones meet with Berit in the place Sepal, he will not have the Flower-Gem with him to give to the wicked ones. They will be angry, and they may cause hurt to Anakha’s mate.’

‘It may be that I taught it too well,’ Ghworg muttered. ‘It talks much now.’

Schlee, however, had been listening carefully to Tynian’s oration. ‘It has spoken truly, however. Anakha’s mate will be in danger. Those who have taken her away may even kill her.’ The skin on his enormous shoulders flickered, absently shaking off the snowflakes which continually fell on him, and his face twisted as he concentrated. ‘It is my thought that this will anger Anakha. He may be so angry that he will raise up the Flower-Gem and make the world go away. We must keep the wicked ones from causing hurt to her.’

‘Tynian-from-Deira and I will go to the place Sepal,’ Ulath said. ‘The wicked ones will not know us because our faces have been changed. We will be nearby when the wicked ones tell the one called Berit that they will give him Anakha’s mate if he will give them the Flower-Gem. We will kill them and take Anakha’s mate back when they do this.’

‘It speaks well,’ Zoka told the other Troll-Gods. ‘Its thought is good. Let us help it and the other one—but let us not permit it to kill the wicked ones. Killing them is not enough. The thought of Khwaj is better. Let Khwaj make them into fires that will never go out instead. Let them burn always. That will be better.’

‘I will put these man-things into the time which does not move,’ Ghnomb said. ‘We will watch them in Schlee’s picture of the ground as they go to the place Sepal while the world stands still.’

‘Can you truly see something as small as a man-thing in Schlee’s picture of the ground?’ Ulath asked the God of Eat with some surprise.

‘Can you not?’ Ghnomb seemed even more surprised. ‘We will send Bhlokw with you to help you, and we will watch you in Schlee’s picture of the ground. Then, when the wicked ones show her to the one called Berit to prove to him that they truly have her, you and Tynian-from-Deira will step out of the time which does not move and take her away from them.’

‘Then I will reach into Schlee’s picture of the ground and take them up in my hands,’ Khwaj added grimly. ‘I will bring them here and make them into fires that will never go out.’

‘Can you truly reach into Schlee’s picture of the ground and pick the wicked ones out of the real world?’ Ulath asked in astonishment.

‘It is easy,’ Khwaj shrugged.

Tynian was shaking his head vigorously.

‘What?’ Schlee demanded.

‘The one called Zalasta can also come into the time which does not move. We have seen him do this.’

‘It will not matter,’ Khwaj told him. ‘The one called Zalasta is one of the wicked ones. I will make him into a fire which will never go out as well. I will let him burn forever in the time which does not move. The fire will be just as hot there as it will be here.’

The snow was heavier—and wetter—after they crossed the rocky spine that divided the rivers flowing west from those that flowed east. The huge cloud of humid air that hung perpetually above the Astel Marshes lapped against the eastern slopes of the Mountains of Zemoch, unloosing phenomenal snowfalls that buried the forests and clogged the passes. The Church Knights grimly forced their way through sodden drifts as they followed the valley of the south fork of the River Esos toward the Zemoch town of Basne.

Patriarch Abriel of the Cyrinic Knights had begun this campaign with a certain sense of well-being. His health was good, and a lifetime of military training had kept him in peak physical condition. He was, however, fast approaching his seventieth year and he found that starting out each morning was growing harder and harder, though he would never have admitted it.

About mid-morning on a snowy day, one of the scouting parties ranging ahead returned with three goatskin-clad Zemochs. The men were thin and dirty, and they had terrified expressions on their faces. Patriarch Bergsten rode on ahead to question them. When the rest of them caught up to the gigantic churchman, he was having a rather heated discussion with an Arcian Knight. ‘But they’re Zemochs, your Grace,’ the knight protested.

‘Our quarrel was with Otha, Sir Knight,’ Bergsten said coldly, ‘not with these poor, superstitious devils. Give them some food and warm clothing and let them go.’

‘But—’

‘We’re not going to have trouble about this, are we, Sir Knight?’ Bergsten asked in an ominous tone, swelling even larger. The knight seemed to consider his situation. He backed up a few paces. ‘Ah—no, your Grace,’ he replied, ‘I don’t believe so.’

‘Our Holy Mother appreciates your obedience, my son,’ Bergsten told him.

‘Did those three have anything useful for us?’ Komier asked.

‘Not much,’ Bergsten replied, hauling himself back up into his saddle. ‘There’s an army of some kind moving into place somewhere to the east of Argoch. There was a lot of superstition mixed up in what they told me, so I couldn’t get anything very accurate out of them.’

‘A fight then,’ Komier said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

‘I sort of doubt that,’ Bergsten disagreed. ‘As closely as I could make out from all the gibberish, the force up ahead is composed largely of irregulars—religious fanatics of some kind. Our Holy Mother in Chyrellos didn’t make many friends in this part of the world when she tried to re-assimilate herself with the branches of Elene faith in western Daresia during the ninth century.’

‘That was almost two thousand years ago, Bergsten,’ Komier objected. ‘That’s a long time to hold a grudge.’

Bergsten shrugged. ‘The old ones are the best. Send your scouts out a little further, Komier. Let’s see if we can get some kind of coherent report on the welcoming committee. A few prisoners might be useful.’

‘I know how to do this, Bergsten.’

‘Do it then. Don’t just sit there talking about it.’

They passed Argoch, and Komier’s scouts brought in several prisoners. Patriarch Bergsten interrogated the poorly clad and ignorant Elene captives briefly, and then he ordered them released.

‘Your Grace,’ Darellon protested, ‘that was very unwise. Those men will run back to their commanders and report everything they’ve seen.’

‘Yes,’ Bergsten replied, ‘I know. I want them to do that. I also want them to tell all their friends that they’ve seen a hundred thousand Church Knights coming down out of the mountains. I’m encouraging defections, Darellon. We don’t want to kill those poor misguided heretics, we just want them to get out of our way.’

‘I still think it’s strategically unsound, your Grace.’

‘You’re entitled to your opinion, my son,’ Bergsten said. ‘This isn’t an article of the faith, so our Holy Mother encourages disagreement and discussion.’

‘There isn’t much point to discussion after you’ve already let them go, your Grace.’

‘You know, that very same thought occurred to me.’

They encountered the opposing force in the broad valley of the River esos just to the south of the Zemoch town of Basne thirty leagues or so to the west of the Astellian border. The reports of the scouts and the information gleaned from the captives proved to be accurate. What faced them was not so much an army as it was a mob, poorly armed and undisciplined.

The preceptors of the Four Orders gathered around Patriarch Bergsten to consider options. ‘They’re members of our own faith,’ Bergsten told them. ‘Our disagreements with them lie in the area of Church Government, not in the substance of our common beliefs. Those matters aren’t settled on the battlefield, so I don’t want too many of those people killed.’

‘I don’t see much danger of that, your Grace,’ Preceptor Abriel said.

‘They outnumber us about two to one, Lord Abriel,’ Sir Heldin pointed out.

‘One charge should even things out, Heldin,’ Abriel replied. ‘Those people are amateurs, enthusiastic but untrained, and about half of them are only armed with pitchforks. If we all drop our visors, level our lances and charge them en masse, most of them will still be running a week from now.’

And that was the last mistake the venerable Lord Abriel was ever to make. The mounted knights fanned out with crisp precision to form up on a broad front stretching across the entire valley. Rank after rank of Cyrinics, Pandions, Genidians, and Alciones, all clad in steel and mounted on belligerent horses, lined up in what was probably one of the more intimidating displays of organized unfriendliness in the known world. The preceptors waited in the very center of the front rank as their subalterns formed up the rear ranks and the messengers galloped forward to declare that all was in readiness.

‘That should be enough,’ Komier said impatiently. ‘I don’t think the supply wagons will have to charge too.’ he looked around at his friends. ‘Shall we get started, gentlemen? Let’s show that rabble out there how real soldiers mount an attack.’

He made a curt signal to a hulking Genidian Knight, and the huge blond man blew a shattering blast on his Ogre-horn trumpet. The front rank of the knights clapped down their visors and spurred their horses forward. The perfectly disciplined knights and horses galloped forward in an absolutely straight line like a moving wall of steel.

Midway through the charge the forest of upraised lances came down like a breaking wave, and the defections in the opposing army began. The ill-trained serfs and peasants broke and ran, throwing away their weapons and squealing in terror. Here and there were some better-trained units that held their ground, but the flight of their allies from either side left their flanks dangerously exposed.

The knights struck those few units with a great, resounding crash. Once more Abriel felt the old exulting satisfaction of battle. His lance shattered against a hastily raised shield, and he discarded the broken weapon and drew his sword. He looked around and saw that there were other forces massed behind the wall of peasants that had concealed them from view, and that army was like none Abriel had ever seen before. The soldiers were huge, larger than even the Thalesians. They wore breastplates and mail, but their cuirasses were more closely moulded to their bodies than was normal. Every muscle seemed starkly outlined under the gleaming steel. Their helmets were exotic steel re-creations of the heads of improbable beasts, and they did not have visors as such but steel masks instead, masks which had been sculpted to bear individualized features, the features, Abriel thought, of the warriors who wore them. The Cyrinic Preceptor was suddenly chilled. The features the masks revealed were not human.

There was a strange domed leather tent in the center of that inhuman army, a ribbed, glossy black tent of gigantic dimensions. But then it moved, opening, spreading wide—two great wings, curved and batlike. And then rising up from under the shelter of those wings, was a being huge beyond imagining, a creature of total darkness with a head shaped like an inverted wedge and with flaring, pointed ears. Two slitted eyes blazed in that awful absence of a face, and two enormous arms stretched forth hungrily. Lightning seethed beneath the glossy black skin, and the earth upon which the creature stood smoked and burned.

Abriel was strangely calm. He lifted his visor to look full into the face of Hell. ‘At last,’ he murmured, ‘a fitting opponent.’

And then he clapped his visor down again, drew his warlike shield before his body, and raised the sword he had carried with honor for over half a century. His unpalsied hand brandished the sword at the enormity still rising before him. ‘For God and Arcium.’ he roared his defiance, set himself, and charged directly into obliteration.

8

To say that Edaemus was offended would be the grossest of understatements. The blur of white light that was the God of the Delphae was tinged around the edges with flickers of reddish orange, and the dusting of snow that covered the ground in the little swale above the valley of the Delphae fumed tendrils of steam as it melted in the heat of his displeasure.

‘No!’ he said adamantly. ‘Absolutely not!’

‘Oh, be reasonable, Cousin,’ Aphrael coaxed. ‘The situation has changed. You’re holding on to something that no longer has any meaning. There might have been some justification for “eternal enmity” before. I’ll grant you that my family didn’t behave very well during the war with the Cyrgai, but that was a long time ago. Clinging to your injured sensibilities now is pure childishness.’

‘How couldst thou, Xanetia?’ Edaemus demanded accusingly. ‘How couldst thou do this thing?’

‘It was in furtherance of our design, Beloved,’ she replied. Sephrenia was more than a little startled by the intensely personal relationship Xanetia had with her God. ‘Thou didst command me to render assistance unto Anakha, and by reason of his love for Sephrenia, I was obliged to reach accommodation with her. Once she and I did breach the wall of enmity which did stand between us and did learn to trust each other, respect and common purpose did soften our customary despite, and all unbidden, love did gently creep in to replace it. In my heart is she now my dear sister.’

‘That is an abomination! Thou shalt not speak so of this Styric in my presence again.’

‘As it please thee, Beloved,’ she agreed, submissively bowing her head. But then her chin came up, and her inner light glowed more intensely. ‘But will ye, nil ye, I will continue to think so of her in the hidden silence of my heart.’

‘Are you ready to listen, Edaemus?’ Aphrael asked, ‘or would you like to take a century or two to throw a temper-tantrum first?’

‘Thou art pert, Aphrael,’ he accused.

‘Yes, I know. It’s one of the things that makes me so delightful. You do know that Cyrgon’s trying to get his hands on Bhelliom, don’t you? Or have you been so busy playing leap-frog with the stars that you’ve lost track of what’s happening here?’

‘Mind your manners,’ Sephrenia told her crisply.

‘He makes me tired. He’s been cuddling his hatred to his breast like a sick puppy for ten thousand years.’ The Child Goddess looked critically at the incandescent presence of the God of the Delphae. ‘The light-show doesn’t impress me, Edaemus. I could do it too, if I wanted to take the trouble.’

Edaemus flared even brighter, and the reddish-orange nimbus around him became sooty.

‘How tiresome,’ Aphrael sighed. ‘I’m sorry, Xanetia, but we’re wasting our time here. Bhelliom and I are going to have to deal with Klael on our own. Your tedious God wouldn’t be any help anyway.’

‘Klael!’ Edaemus gasped.

‘Got your attention, didn’t I?’ She smirked. ‘Are you ready to listen now?’

‘Who hath done this? Who hath unloosed Klael again upon the earth?’

‘Well, it certainly wasn’t me. Cyrgon had everything going his way, and then Anakha turned things around on him. You know how much Cyrgon hates to lose, so he started breaking the rules. Do you want to help us with this—or would you rather sit around and pout for another hundred eons or so? Quickly, quickly, Edaemus,’ she said, snapping her fingers at him. ‘Make up your mind. I don’t have all day, you know.’

‘What makes you think I need any more men?’ Narstil demanded. Narstil was a lean, almost cadaverous Arjuni with stringy arms and hollow cheeks. He sat at a table set under a spreading tree in the center of his encampment deep in the jungles of Arjuna.

‘You’re in a risky kind of business,’ Caalador shrugged, looking around at the cluttered camp. ‘You steal furniture and carpets and tapestries. That means that you’ve been raiding villages and mounting attacks on isolated estates. People fight back when you try that, and that means casualties. About half of your men are wearing bandages right now, and you probably leave a few dead behind you every time you try to steal things. A leader in your line always needs more men.’

‘I don’t have any vacancies just now.’

‘I can arrange some,’ Bevier told him in a menacing voice, melodramatically drawing his thumb across the edge of his lochaber.

‘Look, Narstil,’ Caalador said in a somewhat less abrasive tone, ‘we’ve seen your men. Be honest now. You’ve gathered up a bunch of local bad-boys who got into trouble for stealing chickens or running off somebody else’s goats. You’re very light on professionals, and that’s what we’re offering you—professionalism. Your bad-boys bluster and try to impress each other by looking mean and nasty, but real killing isn’t in their nature, and that’s why they get hurt when the fighting starts. Killing doesn’t bother us. We’re used to it. Your young bravos have to prove things to each other, but we don’t. Order knows who we are. He wouldn’t have sent you that letter otherwise.’

His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Believe me, Narstil, life will be much easier for all of us if we’re working with you rather than setting up shop across the street.’

Narstil looked a little less certain of himself. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘Do that. And don’t get any ideas about trying to eliminate potential competition in advance. Your bad-boys wouldn’t be up to it, and my friends and I would sort of be obliged to take it personally.’

‘Stop that.’ Sephrenia chided her sister as the four of them moved through the corridor-like streets of Delphaeus toward the home of Codon, the Anari of Xanetia’s people.

‘Edaemus is doing it,’ Aphrael countered.

‘It’s his city, and these are his people. It’s not polite to do that when you’re a guest.’

Xanetia gave them a puzzled look.

‘My sister’s showing off,’ Sephrenia explained.

‘Am not,’ Aphrael retorted.

‘Yes you are too, Aphrael, and you and I both know it. We’ve had this argument before. Now stop it.’

‘I do not understand,’ Xanetia confessed.

‘That’s because you’ve grown accustomed to the sense of her presence, sister,’ Sephrenia explained wearily. ‘She’s not supposed to flaunt her divinity this way when she’s around the worshippers of other Gods. It’s the worst form of bad manners, and she knows it. She’s only doing it to irritate Edaemus. I’m surprised she hasn’t flattened the whole city or set fire to the thatching on the roofs with all that divine personality.’

‘That’s a spiteful thing to say, Sephrenia,’ Aphrael accused.

‘Behave yourself then.’

‘I won’t unless Edaemus does.’

Sephrenia sighed, rolling her eyes upward.

They entered the southern wing of the extended city-building that was Delphaeus and proceeded down a dim hallway to Codon’s door. The Anari was waiting for them, his ancient face filled with wonder. He fell to his knees as the light that was Edaemus approached, but his God dimmed, assumed a human form, and reached out gently to raise him to his feet again.

‘That is not needful, my old friend,’ he said.

‘Why, Edaemus,’ Aphrael said, ‘you’re really quite handsome. You shouldn’t hide from us in all that light the way you do.’

A faint smile touched the ageless face of the Delphaeic God. ‘Seek not beguile me with flattery, Aphrael. I know thee, and I know thy ways. Thou shalt not so easily ensnare me.’

‘Oh, really? Thou art ensnared already, Edaemus. I do but toy with thee now. My hand is already about thine heart. In time, I shall close it and make thee mine.’ And she laughed a silvery little peal of laughter. ‘But that’s between you and me, Cousin. Right now we have other things to do.’

Xanetia fondly embraced the ancient Codon. ‘As thou canst readily perceive, my dear old friend, momentous changes are afoot. The dire peril which we face doth reshape our entire world. Let us consider that peril first, and then at our leisure may we pause to marvel at how all about us is altered.’

Codon led them down the three worn stone steps into his low-ceilinged chamber with its inwardly curving, white plastered walls, its comfortable furniture, and its cheery fire.

‘Tell them what’s been going on, Xanetia,’ Aphrael suggested, climbing up into Sephrenia’s lap. ‘That may explain why it was necessary for me to violate all the rules and come here.’ She gave Edaemus an arch look. ‘Regardless of what you may think, Cousin, I do have good manners, but we’ve got an emergency on our hands.’

Sephrenia leaned back in her chair as Xanetia began her account of the events of the past several months. There was a sense of peace, an unruffled calm about Delphaeus that Sephrenia had not perceived during her last visit. At that time, her mind had been so filled with obsessive hatred that she had scarcely taken note of her surroundings. The Delphae had appealed to Sparhawk to seal their valley away from the rest of the world, but that seemed somehow unnecessary. They were already separate—so separate that they no longer seemed even human. In a peculiar way, Sephrenia envied them.

‘Infuriating, aren’t they?’ the Child Goddess murmured. ‘And the word you’re looking for is “serenity”.’

‘And you’re doing everything in your power to disturb that, aren’t you?’

‘They’re still a part of this world, Sephrenia—for a little while longer, anyway. All I’m doing is reminding them that the rest of us are still out here.’

‘You’re behaving very badly toward Edaemus.’

‘I’m trying to jerk him back to reality. He’s been off by himself for the past hundred centuries, and he’s forgotten what it’s like having the rest of us around. I’m reminding him. Actually, it’s good for him. He was starting to get complacent.’ She slipped down from her sister’s lap. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘It’s time for me to give him another lesson.’

She crossed the room and stood studying him with her large, dark eyes. The God of the Delphae was so engrossed in Xanetia’s account that he scarcely noticed Aphrael and, when she held out her arms to him, he absently picked her up and settled her into his lap. Sephrenia smiled.

‘And most recently,’ Xanetia concluded her report, ‘young Sir Berit hath been given further instruction. He is to turn aside and go to the town of Sepal on the coast of the Sea of Arjun. He hath advised the Child Goddess of this alteration of direction, and she in turn hath made the rest of us aware of it. It is the intent of the Troll-Gods to transport Sir Ulath and Sir Tynian to Sepal and to conceal them there in what they call “No-Time”. It is their thought that when our enemies produce Queen Ehlana to exchange her for Bhelliom, they might leap from their concealment and rescue her.’

‘No-Time?’ Codon asked, his face puzzled.

‘Suspended duration,’ Aphrael explained. ‘Trolls are hunters, and their Gods have found a new place of concealment for them so that they’re able to stalk their prey unseen. It’s clever, but it has its drawbacks.’

Edaemus asked her something in that language Sephrenia had tried several times to learn but had never really been able to grasp. Aphrael replied, speaking rapidly in a rather dry, technical tone and making intricate gestures with her hands.

‘Ah,’ he said finally, lapsing back into Tamul and with an expression of comprehension flooding his face. ‘It is a peculiar notion.’

‘You know how the Troll-Gods are.’ She made a little face.

‘Didst thou in truth wring acceptance of thine outrageous demands from them?’

‘I had something they wanted.’ She shrugged. ‘They’ve been trying to think up some way to escape from Bhelliom for three hundred centuries now. They didn’t like my conditions, but they didn’t have much choice.’

‘Thou are cruel, Aphrael.’

‘Not really. I was driven by necessity, and necessity’s neither cruel nor kindly. It just is. I kissed them a few times when I stopped by a couple of days ago, and that made them feel better. It did once they realized that I wasn’t going to take a bite out of them, anyway.’

‘Thou didst not!’ He seemed aghast.

‘They aren’t so bad,’ she defended her action. ‘I suppose I could have scratched them behind the ears, but that might have insulted them, so I kissed them instead.’ She smiled. ‘A few more kisses and I’d have had them licking my fingers like puppies.’

He straightened, then suddenly blinked as if realizing for the first time where she was sitting. She gave him another of those mysterious little smiles and patted his cheek. ‘That’s all right, Cousin,’ she told him. ‘You’ll come around eventually. They always do.’ And she slipped down from his lap and walked back across the room to rejoin her sister.

‘That’s my place!’ a burly fellow of indeterminate race asserted threateningly as Kalten dropped his saddle-bags and bed-roll on a clear spot under a large tree.

‘It was,’ Kalten grunted.

‘You can’t just walk in here and steal a man’s place like this.’

‘Oh? Is it against the law or something?’ Kalten straightened. He was at least a head taller than the other man, and he bulked large in his mail-shirt. ‘My friends and I are going to be staying right here,’ he stated flatly, ‘so pick up your bed and all this other trash and go someplace else.’

‘I’m not in the habit of taking orders from Elenes!’

‘That’s too bad. Now move away. I’ve got work to do.’ Kalten was not in a good humor. Alcan’s peril gnawed at him constantly, and even slight irritations rubbed his temper raw. Some of that must have showed on his face. The other man backed off a few steps.

‘Further,’ Kalten told him.

‘I’ll be back,’ the man blustered, retreating a few more steps. ‘I’ll be back with all my friends.’

‘I can hardly wait.’ Kalten deliberately turned his back on the man he had just dispossessed.

Caalador and Bevier joined him. ‘Trouble?’ Caalador asked.

‘I wouldn’t call it that,’ Kalten shrugged. ‘I was just establishing some rank, is all. Any time you come into a new situation, you have to push a few people around to make everybody else understand that you’re not going to put up with any foolishness. Let’s get settled in.’

They had erected their tent and were gathering leaves and moss for beds when Narstil stopped by. ‘I see you’re getting set up, Ezek,’ he said to Caalador. His tone was conciliatory, though not quite cordial.

‘A few finishing touches are about all that’s left,’ Caalador replied.

‘You men make a good camp,’ Narstil noted.

‘A cluttered camp is the sign of a cluttered mind,’ Caalador said. He shrugged. ‘I’m glad you stopped by, Narstil. We hear that there’s an army camped out not far from here. Do they cause you any problems?’

‘We’ve got an agreement with them,’ Narstil replied. ‘We don’t steal from them, and they leave us alone. That’s not a real army in Natayos, though. It’s more like a large band of rebels. They want to overthrow the government.’

‘Doesn’t everybody?’

Narstil laughed. ‘Actually, having that mob in Natayos is very good for my business. The fact that they’re all there keeps the police out of this part of the jungle, and one of the reasons they tolerate us is because we rob travelers, and that keeps people from snooping around Natayos. We do a fairly brisk business with them. They’re a ready market for just about everything we steal.’

‘How far is this Natayos place from here?’

‘About ten miles. It’s an old ruin. Scarpa—he’s the one in charge over there—moved in with his rebels a couple of years back. He’s fortified it, and he’s bringing in more of his followers every day. I don’t care much for him, but business is business.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘He’s crazy. Some days he’s so crazy that he bays at the moon. He’s convinced that he’ll be emperor one day, and I expect it won’t be long until he marches his rabble out of those ruins. He’s fairly safe in this jungle, but just as soon as he gets out into open country, the Atans will grind him into dog meat right on the spot.’

‘Are we supposed to care about that?’ Bevier asked.

‘I personally couldn’t care less,’ Narstil assured the apparently one-eyed ruffian. ‘It’s the loss of his business that concerns me.’

‘Can just anybody walk in and out of Natayos any time he feels like it?’ Kalten asked as if only mildly curious.

‘If you’re leading a mule loaded down with food or drink, they’ll welcome you with open arms. I send an ox-cart loaded down with barrels of ale every few days. You know how soldiers like their ale.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Kalten agreed. ‘I’ve known a few soldiers in my time, and their whole world stops when somebody opens an ale barrel.’

‘It doth derive from our ability to control the light which doth emulate from us,’ Codon explained. ‘What we call sight is profoundly influenced by light. The subterfuge is not perfect. Some faint shimmers do appear, and we must be wary lest our shadows reveal our presence, but with a certain care, we can be unobserved.’

‘Now there are some interesting contrasts,’ Aphrael said. ‘The Troll-Gods tamper with time, you tamper with light, and I tamper with the attention of the people I want to hide from, but it’s all an attempt to achieve some measure of invisibility.’

‘Knowest thou of any who can be truly invisible, Divine One?’ Xanetia asked.

‘I don’t. Do you, Cousin?’

Edaemus shook his head.

‘We can come close, though,’ the Child Goddess said. ‘The real thing would probably have drawbacks. It’s a very good idea, Anari Codon, but I don’t want Xanetia to put herself in any kind of danger. I love her too much for that.’

Xanetia flushed slightly, and then she gave Edaemus an almost guilty look. Sephrenia laughed. ‘I must in honesty warn thee, Edaemus,’ she said. ‘Guard well thy worshippers. My Goddess is a notorious thief.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘If Xanetia could go unobserved into Sepal, it could be very useful. Her ability to reach into the thoughts of others would enable her to discover in short order whether Ehlana’s there or not. If she is, we can take steps. If not, we’ll know that Sepal’s just another diversion.’

Codon looked at Edaemus. ‘I think, Beloved One, that we must extend our involvement in the world around us further than we had earlier planned. Anakha’s concern for the safety of his wife doth take precedence in his mind o’er all else, and his promise to us doth stand in peril until she be returned to him safe and whole.’

Edaemus sighed. ‘It may be e’en as thou sayest, my Anari. Though it doth make me unquiet, it would appear that we must set aside our repugnance and join in the search for Anakha’s wife, lending such aid as is within our power.’

‘Are you really sure you want to become involved in this, Edaemus?’ Aphrael asked him. ‘Really, really sure?’

‘I have said it, Aphrael.’

‘Aren’t you the least bit interested in why I’m so concerned with the fate of a pair of Elenes? Elenes do have their own God, you know. Why do you imagine that I’d be so interested in them?’

‘Why is it ever thy wont to speak circuitously, Aphrael?’

‘Because I love to surprise people,’ she replied sweetly. ‘I really do want to thank you for your concern about the well-being of my mother and father, Cousin. You’ve touched me to the very heart.’

He stared at her in stunned astonishment. ‘Thou didst not!’ he gasped.

‘Somebody had to do it.’ She shrugged. ‘One of us had to keep an eye on Bhelliom. Anakha is Bhelliom’s creature, but as long as I have my hand around his heart, I can more or less control the things he does.’

‘But they’re Elenes!’

‘Oh, grow up, Edaemus. Elene, Styric, Delphae—what difference does it make? You can love all of them if your heart’s not closed.’

‘But they eat pigs!’

‘I know,’ she shuddered. ‘Believe me, I know. It’s one of the things I’ve been working on.’

Senga was a good-natured brigand whose racial origins were so mixed that no one could really tell what he was. He grinned a great deal, and he was loud and boisterous and had an infectious laugh. Kalten liked him, and Senga appeared to have found a kindred spirit in the Elene outlaw he knew as Col. He was laughing as he came across Narstil’s cluttered compound where furniture and other household goods were stacked in large, untidy heaps on the bare ground. ‘Ho, Col!’ he shouted as he approached the tree where Kalten, Caalador, and Bevier had pitched their tent. ‘You should have come along. An ox-cart load of ale opens every door in Natayos.’

‘Armies make me nervous, Senga,’ Kalten replied. ‘The officers are always trying to enlist you—usually at sword-point—and generals as a group tend to be overly moralistic for my taste. The term “martial law” makes my blood run cold for some reason.’

‘Scarpa grew up in a tavern, my friend,’ Senga assured him, ‘and his mother was a whore, so he’s accustomed to the seamier side of human nature.’

‘How did you make out?’ Kalten asked.

Senga grinned, rolled his eyes and jingled a heavy purse. ‘Well enough to make me consider giving up crime and opening my own brewery. The only problem with that is the fact that our friends at Natayos probably won’t be there all that much longer. If I set up shop as a brewer and my customers all marched off to get killed by the Atans, I’d probably have to drink all that ale by myself, and nobody’s that thirsty.’

‘Oh? What makes you think those rebels are getting ready to leave?’

‘Nothing very specific,’ Senga said, sprawling out on the ground and offering Kalten his wineskin. ‘Scarpa’s been gone for the past several weeks. He and two or three Elenes left Natayos last month, and nobody I talked with knew where he was going or why.’

Kalten carefully kept his expression disinterested. ‘I hear that he’s crazy. Crazy men don’t need reasons for the things they do or the places they go.’

‘Scarpa’s crazy enough, all right, but he can certainly whip those rebels of his into a frenzy. When he decides to make a speech, you’d better find a comfortable place to sit, because you’re going to be there for six hours at least. Anyway, he went off a while back, and his army was getting settled in for the winter. That’s all changed now that he’s back.’

Kalten became very alert. ‘He’s come back?’

‘That he has, my friend. Here, give us a drink.’ Senga took the wineskin and tipped it up, squirting a long stream of wine into his mouth. Then he wiped his chin on the back of his hand. ‘He and those Elene friends of his came riding into Natayos not four days ago. They had a couple of women with them, I hear.’

Kalten sank down on the ground and made some show of adjusting his sword-belt to cover his sudden excitement. ‘I thought Scarpa hated women,’ he said, trying to keep his voice casual.

‘Oh, that he does, my friend, but from what I hear, these two women weren’t just some playthings he picked up along the way. They had their hands tied, for one thing, and the fellow I talked with said that they were a little bedraggled, but they didn’t really look like tavern wenches. He didn’t get a very good look at them, because Scarpa hustled them into a house that seems to have been fixed up for somebody a little special—fancy furniture and rugs on the floor and all that.’

‘Was there anything unusual about them?’ Kalten almost held his breath.

Senga shrugged and took another drink. ‘Just the fact that they weren’t treated like ordinary camp followers, I suppose.’ He scratched his head. ‘There was something else the fellow told me,’ he said. ‘What was it now?’

Kalten did hold his breath this time.

‘Oh, yes,’ Senga said, ‘now I remember. The fellow said that these two women Scarpa took all the trouble to invite to Natayos were Elenes. Isn’t that odd?’

9

The town of Beresa on the southeastern Arjuni coast was a low, unlovely place squatting toadlike on the beach lying between the South Tamul Sea and the swampy green jungle behind it. The major industry of the region was the production of charcoal, and acrid smoke hung in the humid air over Beresa like a curse. Captain Sorgi dropped his anchor some distance out from the wharves and went ashore to consult with the harbor master.

Sparhawk, Stragen, and Talen, wearing their canvas smocks, leaned on the port rail staring across the smelly water toward their destination. ‘I have an absolutely splendid idea, From,’ Stragen said to Sparhawk.

‘Oh?’ Sparhawk replied.

‘Why don’t we jump ship?’

‘Nice try, Vymer,’ Talen laughed. They were all more or less at ease with the assumed names by now.

Sparhawk looked around carefully to make sure that none of the rest of the crew was near. ‘An ordinary sailor wouldn’t leave without collecting his pay. Let’s not do anything to attract attention. All that’s really left to do is the unloading of the cargo.’

‘Under the threat of the bo’sun’s whip,’ Stragen added glumly. ‘That man really tests my self-control. Just the sight of him makes me want to kill him.’

‘We can endure him this one last time,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘This town’s going to be full of unfriendly eyes. Krager’s note told me to come here, and he’ll have people here to make sure I’m not trying to sneak in reinforcements behind his back.’

‘That might just be the flaw in this whole plan, From,’ Stragen said. ‘Sorgi knows that we’re not ordinary sailors. Is he the kind to let things slip?’

Sparhawk shook his head. ‘Sorgi knows how to keep his mouth shut. He was paid to get us to Beresa unnoticed, and Sorgi always does what he’s paid to do.’

The captain returned late that afternoon, and they raised anchor and eased up to one of the long wharves protruding out into the harbor. They unloaded the cargo the next morning. The bo’sun cracked his whip only sparingly, and the unloading proceeded rapidly.

Then, when the cargo holds were all emptied, the sailors lined up and filed along the quarterdeck where Sorgi sat at a small table with his account book and his stacks of coins. The captain gave each sailor a little speech as he paid him. The speeches varied slightly, but the general message was the same: ‘Stay out of trouble, and get back to the ship on time. I won’t wait for you when the time comes to sail.’ He did not alter the speech when he paid Sparhawk and his friends, and his face did not in any way betray the fact they were anything other than ordinary crew members.

Sparhawk and his two friends went down the gangway with their sea-bags on their shoulders and with a certain amount of anticipation. ‘Now I see why sailors are so rowdy when they reach port,’ Sparhawk said. ‘That wasn’t really much of a woyage, and I still feel a powerful urge to kick over the traces.’

‘Where to?’ Talen asked when they reached the street.

‘There’s an inn called the Seaman’s Rest,’ Stragen replied. ‘It’s supposed to be a clean, quiet place out beyond the main battle zone here along the waterfront. It should give us a base of operations to work from.’

The sun was just going down as they passed through the noisy, reeking streets of Beresa. The buildings were constructed for the most part of squared-off logs, since stone was rare here on the vast, soggy delta of the Arjun River, and the logs appeared to have been attacked by damp rot almost before they were in place. Moss and fungus grew everywhere, and the air was thick with the chill damp and the acrid wood smoke from the charcoal yards outside of town. The Arjunis in the streets were noticeably more swarthy than their Tamul cousins of the north, their eyes were shifty, and even their most casual gait through the muddy streets of their unlovely town seemed somehow furtive.

Sparhawk muttered the spell under his breath as they passed along the shabby street, and he released it carefully to avoid alerting the watchers he was sure were there.

‘Well?’ Talen asked. Talen had been around Sparhawk long enough to know the signs that the big Pandion was using magic.

‘They’re out there,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Three of them that I can pick up.’

‘Are they concentrating on us?’ Stragen asked tensely.

Sparhawk shook his head. ‘Their attention’s sort of generalized. They aren’t Styrics, so they won’t know I’ve gone looking for them. Let’s just move along. If they start to follow us, I’ll let you know.’

The Seaman’s Rest was a square, tidy inn festooned with fish nets and other nautical decorations. It was run by a burly retired sea captain and his equally burly wife. They brooked no nonsense under their roof and they recited a long list of house rules to each prospective tenant before they would accept his money. Sparhawk had not even heard of some of the things that were prohibited.

‘Where to now?’ Talen asked after they had stowed their seabags in their room and come back out into the muddy street.

‘Back to the waterfront,’ Stragen replied. ‘The chief of the local thieves is a man named Estokin. He deals extensively with smugglers and with sailors who pilfer things from cargo holds. I’ve got a letter from Caalador. Ostensibly, we’re here to make sure that he got his money’s worth during the Harvest Festival. Arjunis aren’t generally trusted, so Estokin won’t be too surprised to see us.’

Estokin the Arjuni was a man who had clearly been destined for a life of crime from the day he was born. He had what was perhaps the most evil face Sparhawk had ever seen. His left eye peered perpetually off in a northeasterly direction, and he had a pronounced squint. His beard was sparse and straggly, and his skin was blotched with a scaly disease. He scratched at his face almost continually, showering white flakes like a winter sky. His high-pitched, nasal voice was very much like the whine of a hungry mosquito, and he reeked of garlic, cheap wine and pickled herring. ‘Is Caalndor accusing me of cheating him, Vymer?’ he demanded with some show of indignation.

‘Of course not.’ Stragen leaned back in the rickety chair in the back room of the smelly waterfront dive. ‘If he thought you’d done that, you’d already be dead. He wants to know if we missed anybody, that’s all. Were any local people particularly upset when the bodies started to turn up?’

Estokin squinted at Stragen with his good eye. ‘What’s it worth to him?’ he haggled.

‘We’ve been instructed to let you live if you co-operate,” Stragen countered in a cool voice.

‘You can’t threaten me like that, Vymer,’ Estokin blustered.

‘I wasn’t threatening you, old boy. I was just letting you know how things stand. Let’s get to the point here. Who got excited here in Beresa after the killings?’

‘Not very many, really.’ Stragen’s chilly manner had evidently persuaded Estokin to behave himself. ‘There was a Styric here who was fairly free with his money before the Harvest Festival.’

‘What was he buying?’

‘Information, mostly. He was on the list Caalador gave me, but he managed to get away—rode off into the jungle. I’ve got a couple of local cut-throats on his trail.’

‘I’d sort of like to talk with him before they put him to sleep.’

‘Not much chance, Vymer. They’re a long way out in the bush by now.’ Estokin scratched at his forehead, stirring up another snow flurry. ‘I’m not sure why Caalador wanted all those people killed,’ he said, ‘and I don’t really want to know, but I’m getting a whiff or two of politics, and here in Arjuna that means Scarpa. You might want to warn Caalador to be very careful. I’ve talked with a few deserters from that rebel army in the jungle. We’ve all heard stories about how crazy Scarpa is, but let me tell you, my friend, the stories don’t even come close. If only half of what I’ve heard is true, Scarpa’s the craziest man who ever lived.’

Sparhawk’s stomach gave a lurch, and then it settled into a cold knot.

‘Father?’ Sparhawk sat up in bed quickly. ‘Are you awake?’ the Child Goddess asked, her voice roaring in his mind.

‘Of course. Please lower your voice a bit. You’re jarring my teeth.’

‘I wanted to be sure I had your attention. Some things have happened. Berit and Khalad got some new instructions from Krager. They’re supposed to go to Sepal now instead of coming here to Beresa.’

Sparhawk swore.

‘Please don’t use that kind of language, Father. I am just a little girl, you know.’

He ignored that. ‘Is the trade going to take place in Sepal?’

‘It’s hard to say. Bevier’s been in touch with me too. Kalten talked with an outlaw who’s been selling beer to the soldiers in Natayos, and he says that Scarpa’s gone back there. Then the outlaw told Kalten that Scarpa had two Elene women with Him when he returned.’

Sparhawk’s heart leaped. ‘Was he sure?’

‘Kalten thinks so. The fellow didn’t have any reason to lie about it. Of course, Kalten’s beer merchant didn’t actually see them for himself, so don’t get your hopes up too much. It could be a very carefully planted story. Zalasta’s in Natayos, and he could be trying to lure you there or trying to trick you into giving away any secrets you might have tucked up your sleeve. He knows you well enough to know that you’ll try to do something he doesn’t expect.’

‘Is there any way you could find out for sure if your mother’s in Natayos?’

‘I’m afraid not. I could slip around Scarpa easily enough, but Zalasta would sense me immediately. It’s too risky.’

‘What else is going on?’

‘Ulath and Tynian have reached the Troll-Gods. Ghnomb’s going to take them to Sepal in that frozen time he’s so fond of, and they’ll be there when Berit and Khalad arrive. Ghnomb knows another way to play around with time, so he’s going to skip Ulath and Tynian from moment to moment. It’s a little complicated, but they’ll be there and watching and nobody will be able to see them. If Scarpa and Zalasta try to make the trade in Sepal, Tynian and Ulath will be right on top of them to rescue Mother and Alcan.’

‘Zalasta can follow them into that frozen moment, you know.’

‘That wouldn’t really pay him, Father. Khwaj was outraged when he heard about Mother, so he’s going to be lurking in No-Time. If Zalasta tries to follow Ulath and Tynian, Khwaj will set him on fire—and the fire won’t ever go out.’

‘I could learn to grow fond of Khwaj.’

‘Sephrenia and Xanetia are in Delphaeus,’ Aphrael continued. ‘Edaemus is being tiresome, but the news about Klael shook his tree, so I’ll probably be able to coax him down out of the branches. He knows that Mother’s captivity puts the arrangement you have with Codon at risk, so he’s agreed to help us rescue her. I’ll keep working on him. If I can push him just a little further, he might agree to let the Delphae come out of their valley. They could be enormously helpful to us.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me about all of this earlier?’

‘What would you have done if I had, Sparhawk?’ Jumped over the side of Sorgi’s ship and swum ashore?’

‘I need to know these things when they happen, Aphrael.’

‘Why? Let me take care of the fretting and worrying, Sparhawk. All it does is make you foul-tempered.’

He let that pass. ‘I’ll tell this to Bhelliom.’

‘Absolutely not! We don’t dare open that box. Cyrgon or Klael will feel Bhelliom instantly if we do.’

‘Didn’t you know?’ he asked her mildly. ‘I don’t have to open the box to speak with Bhelliom. We can talk with each other right through the gold.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘What would you have done if I had? Jumped into the sea and come swimming after Sorgi’s ship?’

There was a long moment of silence. ‘You really enjoy turning my own words around and throwing them back in my teeth like that, don’t you, Sparhawk?’

‘Naturally. Was there anything else you’d like to share with me, Divine One?’

But the sense of her presence was gone, leaving only a slightly huffy silence behind.

‘Where’s—ah—Vymer?’ Sparhawk asked Talen as the boy entered the room a few minutes later.

‘He’s out attending to something,’ Talen replied evasively.

‘Attending to what?’

‘He asked me not to tell you.’

‘All right. I’m asking you to ignore him—and I’m right here where I can get my hands on you.’

‘That’s a crude way to put it.’

‘Nobody’s perfect. What’s he up to?’

Talen sighed. ‘One of Estokin’s men stopped by—just after you came up to go to bed. He said that there are three Elenes in town who are letting it be known they’ll pay good money for information about any strangers who seem to be settling in for a long stay. Vymer decided to look them up.’ Talen glanced meaningfully at the walls of their small room. ‘I’d guess that he probably wants to find out just exactly what they mean by “good money”. You know Vymer when there’s some profit to be made.’

‘He should have told me,’ Sparhawk said cautiously. ‘I’m not any more allergic to a quick profit than he is.’

‘Sharing isn’t one of Vymer’s strong points, From.’ Talen touched his ear and then laid a finger to his lips. ‘Why don’t we go out and see if we can find him?’

‘Good idea.’ Sparhawk quickly pulled on his clothes, and the two of them clattered down the stairs and out into the street.

‘I just had a religious experience,’ Sparhawk murmured as they walked into the noisy area near the docks.

‘Oh?’

‘One of those Divine visitations.’

‘Ah. What did your Divine visitor have to say?’

‘A broken-nosed friend of ours got another one of those notes. He’s been told to go to Sepal instead of coming here.’

Talen muttered a fairly vile oath.

‘My feelings exactly. Isn’t that Vymer coming up the street?’ Sparhawk pointed at a blond man in a tar-smeared smock who was lurching unsteadily toward them.

Talen peered at the fellow. ‘I think you’re right.’ He made a face. ‘The ladies who changed things around may have gone a little far. He doesn’t even walk the same any more.’

‘What are you two doing out this late?’ Stragen asked as he joined them.

‘We got lonesome,’ Sparhawk replied in a flat tone of voice.

‘For me? I’m touched. Let’s go for a walk on the beach, my friends. I find myself yearning for the smell of salt water—and the nice loud sound of waves crashing on the sand.’

They went on past the last of the wharves and then out onto the sand. The clouds had blown off, and there was a bright moon. They reached the water’s edge and stood looking out at the long combers rolling in off the south Tamul Sea to hammer noisily on the wet sand.

‘What have you been up to, Stragen?’ Sparhawk demanded bluntly.

‘Business, old boy. I just enlisted us in the intelligence service of the other side.’

‘You did what?’

‘The three you sensed when we first got here needed a few good men. I volunteered our services.’

‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘Of course not. Think about it for a while, Sparhawk. What better way is there to gather information? Our celebration of the Harvest Festival thinned their ranks drastically, so they can’t afford to be choosy. I paid Estokin to vouch for us, and then I told them a few lies. They’re expecting a certain Sir Sparhawk to flood the town with sharp-eyed people. We’re supposed to report anybody we see who’s acting a little suspicious. I provided them with a prime suspect.’

‘Oh? Who was that?’

‘Captain Sorgi’s bo’sun—you know, the fellow with the whip.’

Sparhawk suddenly laughed. ‘That was a truly vicious thing to do, Stragen.’

‘I rather liked it, myself.’

‘Aphrael came by to call,’ Talen said. ‘She told Sparhawk that Berit and my brother have been ordered to change direction. Now they’re supposed to go to Sepal on the coast of the Sea of Arjun.’

Stragen swore.

‘I already said that,’ Talen told him.

‘We probably should have expected it,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Krager’s working for the other side, and he knows us well enough to anticipate some of the things we might try to do.’ He suddenly banged his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘I wish I could talk with Sephrenia!’ he burst out.

‘You can, as I recall,’ Stragen said. ‘Didn’t Aphrael fix it once so that you and Sephrenia talked together when she was in Sarsos and you were in Cimmura?’

Sparhawk suddenly felt more than a little foolish. ‘I’d forgotten about that,’ he admitted.

‘That’s all right, old boy,’ Stragen excused him. ‘You’ve got a lot on your mind. Why don’t you have a word with her Divine little Whimsicality and see if she can arrange a council of war someplace? I think it might be time for a good, old-fashioned get-together.’

Sparhawk knew where he was before he even opened his eyes. The fragrance of wildflowers and tree blossoms immediately identified the eternal spring of Aphrael’s own private reality.

‘Art thou now awake, Anakha?’ the white deer asked him, touching his hand with her nose.’

‘Yea, gentle creature,’ he replied, opening his eyes and touching the side of her face. He was in the pavilion again and he looked out through the open flap at the flower-studded meadow, the sparkling azure sea, and the rainbow-colored sky above.

‘The others do await thy coming on the eyot,’ the hind advised him.

‘We must hasten, then,’ he said, rising from his bed. He followed her from the pavilion out into the meadow where the white tigress indulgently watched the awkward play of her large-footed cubs. He rather idly wondered if these were the same cubs she had been tending when he had first visited this enchanted realm a half-dozen years ago.

‘Well, of course they are, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael’s voice murmured in his ear. ‘Nothing ever changes here.’

He smiled.

The white deer led him to that beautiful, impractical boat, a swan-necked craft with sails like wings, elaborate embellishment and so much of its main structure above the water line that a sneeze would have capsized it, had it existed in the real world.

‘Critic,’ Aphrael’s voice accused him.

‘It’s your dream, Divine One. You can put any impossibility in it that you want.’

‘Oh, thank you, Sparhawk!’ she said with effusive irony.

The emerald green eyot, crowned with ancient oaks and Aphrael’s alabaster temple, nestled in the sapphire sea, and the swan-necked boat touched the golden beach in only minutes.

Sparhawk looked around as he stepped out onto the sand. The disguises most of them wore in the real world had been discarded, and they all had their own features here in this eternal dream. Some of them had been here before. Those who had not had expressions of bemused wonderment as they all lounged in the lush grass that blanketed the slopes of the enchanted isle.

The Child Goddess and Sephrenia sat side by side on an alabaster bench in the temple. Aphrael’s expression was pensive, and she was playing a complex Styric melody in a minor key on her many-chambered pipes. ‘What kept you, Sparhawk?’ she asked, lowering the rude instrument.

‘The person in charge of my travel arrangements took me on a little side-trip,’ he replied. ‘Are we all here?’

‘Everybody who’s supposed to be. Come up here, all of you, and let’s get started.’

They climbed up the slope to the temple.

‘Where is this place?’ Sarabian asked in an awed voice.

‘Aphrael carries it in her mind, your Majesty,’ Vanion replied. ‘She invites us here from time to time. She likes to show it off.’

‘Don’t be insulting, Vanion,’ the Child Goddess told him.

‘Well, don’t you?’

‘Of course, but it’s not nice to come right out and say it like that.’

‘I feel different here, for some reason,’ Caalador noted. ‘Better, somehow.’

Vanion smiled. ‘It’s a very healthy place, my friend,’ he said. ‘I was seriously ill at the end of the Zemoch war—dying, actually. Aphrael brought me here for a month or so, and I was disgustingly healthy by the time I left.’

They all reached the little temple and took seats on the marble benches lining the columned perimeter. Sparhawk looked around, frowning. ‘Where’s Emban?’ he asked their hostess.

‘It wouldn’t have been appropriate for him to be here, Sparhawk. Your Elene God makes exceptions in the case of the Church Knights, but he’d probably throw a fit if I brought one of the Patriarchs of his Church here. I didn’t invite the Atans either—or the Peloi.’ She smiled. ‘Neither group is comfortable with the idea of religious diversity, and this place would probably confuse them.’ She rolled her eyes upward. ‘You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to persuade Edaemus to permit Xanetia to come. He doesn’t approve of me. He thinks I’m frivolous.’

‘You?’ Sparhawk feigned some surprise. ‘How could he possibly believe something like that?’

‘Let’s get at this,’ Sephrenia said. ‘Why don’t you start, Berit? We know generally what happened, but we don’t have any details.’

‘Yes, Lady Sephrenia,’ the young knight replied. ‘Khalad and I were coming down the coast, and we’d been watched from almost the moment we came ashore. I used the spell and identified the watcher as a Styric. He came to us after several days and gave us another one of those notes from Krager. The note told us to continue down the coast, but once we get past the Tamul Mountains, we’re supposed to cut across country to Sepal instead of continuing south. The note said that we’d get further instructions there. It was definitely from Krager. It had another lock of Queen Ehlana’s hair in it.’

‘I’m going to talk with Krager about that when I catch up with him,’ Khalad said in a bleak tone of voice. ‘I want to be sure he understands just how much we resent his even touching the Queen’s hair. Trust me, Sparhawk. Before I’m done with him, he’s going to regret it—profoundly.’

‘I’ve got enormous confidence in you, Khalad,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘Oh,’ Khalad said then, ‘there’s something I almost forgot. Does anybody know of a way to make one of our horses limp without actually hurting him? I think Berit and I might want to be able to slow down from time to time without causing suspicion. An intermittently lame horse should explain it to the people who are watching us.’

‘I’ll talk with Faran,’ Aphrael promised.

‘You won’t need to limp on your way to Sepal,’ Ulath told Khalad. ‘Ghnomb’s going to see to it that Tynian and I are there long before you arrive. You might be able to see us when you get there, but you might not. I’m having a little trouble explaining some things to the Troll-Gods. We’ll be able to see you, though. If I can’t make Ghnomb understand, I’ll slip a note in your pocket.’

‘If we do come out in the open, you’ll just love our traveling companion,’ Tynian laughed.

Berit gave him a puzzled look. ‘Who’s that, Sir Tynian?’

‘Bhlokw. He’s a Troll.’

‘It’s Ghnomb’s idea,’ Ulath explained. ‘I have to go through a little ceremony before I can talk with the Troll-Gods. Bhlokw doesn’t. It speeds up communication. Anyway, we’ll be there and out of sight. If Scarpa and Zalasta try to make the trade there in Sepal, we’ll step out of No-Time, grab the lot of you, and disappear again.’

‘That’s assuming that they’re taking Queen Ehlana to Sepal to make the exchange,’ Itagne said. ‘We’ve got some things that don’t match up, though. Sir Kalten picked up a rumor that Scarpa’s holding the Queen and her maid in Natayos.’

‘I wouldn’t want to wager the farm on it, your Excellency, Kalten said. ‘It’s second-hand information at best. The fellow I talked with probably isn’t bright enough to make up stories, and he didn’t have any reason to lie to me. He got his information from somebody else, though, and that makes the whole thing a little wormy.’

‘You’ve put your finger on the problem, Sir Kalten,’ Sarabian said. ‘Soldiers gossip worse than old women.’ He tugged at one earlobe and looked up at the rainbow-colored sky. ‘The other side knows that I wasn’t entirely dependent on the Ministry of the Interior for information, so they’ll expect me to have ears in Natayos. This story Sir Kalten heard could have been planted for our benefit. Prince Sparhawk, is there any way at all you could use Bhelliom to confirm the rumor?’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Sephrenia said flatly. ‘Zalasta would know immediately if Sparhawk did that.’

‘I’m not so sure, little mother,’ Sparhawk disagreed. ‘It was just recently that we found out that the gold box doesn’t totally isolate Bhelliom. I’m getting a strong feeling that a great deal of what we think we know about Bhelliom is pure misdirection. The rings evidently don’t really mean anything at all—except possibly as a means of communication, and the gold box doesn’t appear to be relevant either. It could be an idea Bhelliom planted to keep us from enclosing it in iron. I’m guessing, but I’d say that the touch of iron is still painful to it, but whether it’s painful enough to actually confine it isn’t all that certain.’

‘He’s right, you know,’ Aphrael told her sister. ‘A great deal of what we think we know about Bhelliom came from Ghwerig, and Bhelliom had absolute control of Ghwerig. Our mistake was believing that Ghwerig knew what he was talking about.’

‘That still doesn’t answer the question about using Bhelliom to investigate things in Natayos,’ Sparhawk said, ‘and it’s not the sort of thing I’d want to experiment with.’

‘I will go to Natayos,’ Xanetia said quietly. ‘It had been mine intent to go unseen to Sepal, but Sir Tynian and Sir Ulath will be there already, and well able to determine if the Queen be truly there. I will go to Natayos and seek her there instead.’

‘Absolutely not!’ Sarabian said. ‘I forbid it.’

‘I am not subject to thee, Sarabian of Tamuli,’ she reminded him. ‘But fear not. There is no peril involved for me. None will know that I am there, and I can reach out to those who are about me and share their thoughts. I will soon be able to determine whether or no the Queen and her maidservant are in Natayos. This is precisely the kind of service we offered when we concluded our pact with Anakha.’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ he said stubbornly.

‘It seemeth me that thou hast forgot mine other gift, Sarabian of Tamuli,’ she told him quite firmly. ‘The curse of Edaemus is still upon me, and my touch is still death, an I choose it so. Fear not for me, Sarabian, for should necessity compel me to it, I can spread death and terror through Natayos. Though it doth cause me pain to confess it, I can make Natayos once more a waste, a weed-choked ruin populated only by the dead.’

10

The city of Sama in Western Tamul Proper lay just to the south of the Atan border in the deep gorge of the river from which it took its name. The surrounding mountains were steep and rugged and were covered with dark evergreens which sighed endlessly in the prevailing wind sweeping down out of the wilderness to the north. The weather was cold, and the leaden sky spat stinging pellets of snow as Vanion’s army of Church Knights slowly descended the long, steep road leading down into the gorge. Vanion and Itagne, muffled in their heavy cloaks, rode at the head of the column.

‘I’d have much preferred to stay on Aphrael’s island,’ Itagne said, shivering and pulling his cloak tighter. ‘I’ve never been particularly fond of this time of year.’

‘We’re almost there, your Excellency,’ Vanion replied.

‘Is it customary to campaign in the wintertime, Lord Vanion?’ Itagne asked. ‘In Eosia, I mean?’

‘We try to avoid it, your Excellency,’ Vanion replied. ‘The Lamorks attack each other in the winter, but the rest of us usually have better sense.’

‘It’s a miserable time to go to war.’

Vanion smiled faintly. ‘That it is, my friend, but that’s not why we avoid it. It’s a question of economics, really. It’s more expensive to campaign in winter because you have to buy hay for the horses. It’s the expense that keeps Elene kings peaceful when there’s snow on the ground.’ Vanion stood up in his stirrups to peer ahead. ‘Betuana’s waiting,’ he said. ‘We’d better ride down to meet her.’

Itagne nodded, and they pushed their horses into a jolting trot.

The Queen of Atan had left them at Dasan on the eastern edge of the mountains to come on ahead. She had several very good reasons, of course, but Vanion privately suspected that her decision had been influenced more by impatience than necessity. Betuana was too polite to speak of it, but she clearly had little use for horses, and she seldom missed an opportunity to outrun them. She and Engessa, both garbed in otter-skins, waited at the roadside about a mile outside the city.

‘Was there any trouble?’ the Atan Queen asked.

‘No, your Majesty,’ Vanion replied, his black armor clinking as he swung down out of his saddle. ‘We were watched, but there’s nothing unusual about that. Has anything been happening in Cynesga?’

‘They’re moving up to the border, Vanion-Preceptor,’ Engessa replied quietly. ‘They aren’t being very subtle about it. We’ve been disrupting their supply lines and ambushing their scouting parties just to keep them off-balance, but it’s fairly obvious that they plan to come across the line in force.’

Vanion nodded. ‘It’s more or less what we expected, then. If it’s all right with you, your Majesty, I’d like to get my men settled in before we get too involved in discussions. I can always think better after I’ve seen to all the details.’

‘Of course,’ Betuana agreed. ‘Engessa-Atan and I have arranged quarters for them. When will you be leaving for Samar?’

‘Tomorrow or the next day, Betuana-Queen. Tikume’s Peloi are probably spread a little thin down there. He has a lot of ground to cover.’

‘He sent back to Pela for more men, Vanion-Lord,’ Engessa advised. ‘You’ll have a sizeable force in Samar in a week or so.’

‘Good. Let me go back and hurry the knights along. We have much to discuss.’

Night settled early at the bottom of the gorge of the River Sama, and it was fully dark by the time Vanion joined the others in the headquarters of the city’s Atan garrison. Like all Atan structures, the building was severely utilitarian and devoid of any embellishment. The lone exception in the conference room in which they gathered was a very large map covering one entire wall. The map was brightly colored and dotted here and there with fanciful illustrations. Vanion had bathed hurriedly and now wore plain clothing. The years had taught him that armor was impressive and even useful at times, but that no one had yet devised a way to make it comfortable or to eliminate its characteristic smell.

‘Are the quarters satisfactory?’ Betuana enquired politely.

‘Most satisfactory, your Majesty,’ he replied, settling into a chair. ‘Have you been advised of the details of our meeting with the Child Goddess?’

She nodded. ‘Itagne-Ambassador gave me a report,’ she replied. She paused. ‘One is curious to know why one was excluded,’ she added.

‘Theological considerations, your Majesty,’ Vanion explained. ‘As I understand it, the Gods have an exquisitely complex etiquette in these situations. Aphrael didn’t want to offend your God by inviting his children to her island. There were some other rather conspicuous absences as well. Emperor Sarabian was there and Ambassador Itagne, but Foreign Minister Oscagne wasn’t.’

Itagne frowned slightly. ‘The Emperor and I are skeptics—agnostics, I suppose you could call us—but Oscagne’s an out-and-out atheist. Would that account for it?’

‘It might. I’ll ask Aphrael the next time I talk with her.’

Engessa looked around. ‘I didn’t see Kring-Domi when we met you, Vanion-Preceptor,’ he noted.

‘Kring took his men and veered off toward Samar not long after you and her Majesty left us to come on ahead. He thought he’d be more useful there than he would here in Sama—and you know how the western Peloi feel about mountains and forests. Have the Cynesgans made any forays across the border as yet?’

‘No, Vanion-Preceptor,’ Engessa replied. ‘They’re massing in staging areas and bringing up supplies.’ He rose and went to the map. ‘A large force moved out of Cynestra a while back,’ he said, pointing at the Cynesgan capital. ‘They’re positioned near the border more or less opposite us here. Another force has taken up a similar position just across the line from Samar.’

Vanion nodded. ‘Cyrgon’s more like a general than a God in most ways. He’s not going to leave fortified positions to his rear. He’ll have to neutralize Samar and Sama before he can strike any deeper into Tamul Proper. I’d say that the force you’re facing here has been ordered to take Sama, seal the southern border of Atan and then swing northeast toward Tualas. I’m sure they’d rather not have the entire Atan nation come swarming down out of these mountains.’

‘There aren’t enough Cynesgans living to keep my people hemmed in,’ Betuana told him.

‘I’m sure of it, your Majesty, but there probably are enough to slow you down, and Cyrgon can recruit armies from the past to hinder you all the more.’ He studied the map, his lips pursed. ‘I think I see where he’s going,’ he said. ‘Matherion’s on a peninsula, and that narrow neck of land at Toea is the key to that. If I had to wager anything on it, I’d say that the main battle’s going to take place there. Scarpa will move north out of Natayos. Probably the southern Cynesgans are planning to capture Samar and then swing around the north shore of the Sea of Arjun to join him somewhere in the vicinity of the Tamul Mountains. From there the combined army can march up the west shore of the Gulf of Micae to Toea.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Of course, there’s a very nasty surprise waiting for them in the Tamul Mountains. I’d imagine that before this is over, Cyrgon will wish that he’d never heard of the Trolls.’

‘I will send an army out of northern Atan to Toea, Vanion-Preceptor,’ Betuana said, ‘but I’ll leave enough of my people along the southern and eastern borders to tie up half of the Cynesgans.’

‘In the meantime I think we can disrupt their preparations,’ Engessa added. ‘Raids in force across that border will delay their main attack.’

‘And that’s all we really need,’ Vanion chuckled. ‘If we can delay them long enough, Cyrgon’s going to have a hundred thousand Church Knights swarming across his western frontier. I think he’ll forget about Toea at that point.’

‘Don’t worry about him, From,’ Stragen told Sparhawk. ‘He can take care of himself.’

‘I think we sometimes forget that he’s only a boy, Vymer. He doesn’t even shave regularly yet.’

‘Reldin stopped being a boy before his voice started to change.’ Stragen leaned back on his bed reflectively. ‘Those of us in our particular line of work tend to lose our childhoods,’ he said. ‘It might have been nice to roll hoops and catch polliwogs, but...’ He shrugged.

‘What are you going to do when this is all over?’ Sparhawk asked him. ‘Assuming that we survive?’

‘There’s a certain lady of our acquaintance who proposed marriage to me a while back. It’s part of a business arrangement that’s very attractive. The notion of marriage never really appealed to me, but the business proposition’s just too good to pass up.’

‘There’s more, too, isn’t there?’

‘Yes,’ Stragen admitted. ‘After what she did back in Matherion that night, I’m not about to let her get away from me. She’s one of the coolest and most courageous people I’ve ever met.’

‘Pretty, too.’

‘You noticed.’ Stragen sighed. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to end up being at least semi-respectable, my friend.’

‘Shocking.’

‘Isn’t it? First, though, there’s this other little matter I want to deal with. I think I’ll present my beloved with the head of a certain Astellian poet of our acquaintance. If I can find a good taxidermist, I may even have it stuffed and mounted for her.’

‘It’s the kind of wedding present every girl dreams of.’

‘Maybe not every girl,’ Stragen grinned, ‘but I’m in love with a very special lady.’

‘But there are so many of them, U-lat,’ Bhlokw said plaintively. ‘They would not miss just one, would they?’

‘I am certain they would, Bhlokw,’ Ulath told the huge, brown-furred Troll. ‘The man-things are not like the deer. They pay very close attention to the other members of the herd. If you eat one of them, they will know that we are here. Catch and eat one of their dogs instead.’

‘Is dog good-to-eat?’

‘I am not sure. Eat one and tell me if it is good.’

Bhlokw grumbled and squatted down on his haunches.

The process Ghnomb had called ‘breaking the moments in two pieces’ produced some rather strange effects. The brightness of noon was dimmed to twilight, for one thing, and the citizens of Sepal seemed to walk about their town with a fast, jerky kind of movement, for another. The God of Eat had assured them that because they were present in only a small part of each instant, they had been rendered effectively invisible. Ulath could see a rather large logical flaw in the explanation, but the belief that the spell worked seemed to override logic.

Tynian came back up the street shaking his head. ‘It’s impossible to understand them,’ he reported. ‘I can pick up a word or two now and then, but the rest is pure gibberish.’

‘It is talking in bird-noises again,’ Bhlokw complained.

‘You’d better speak in Trollish, Tynian,’ Ulath said. ‘You’re making Bhlokw nervous.’

‘I forgot,’ Tynian admitted, reverting to the hideous language of the Trolls. ‘I am—’ he groped. ‘What is the word that means that you want it that you had not done something?’ he asked their shaggy companion.

‘There is no such word, Tin-in,’ Bhlokw replied.

‘Can you ask Ghnomb to make it so that we can understand what the man-things are saying?’ Ulath asked.

‘Why? What does it matter?’ Bhlokw’s face was puzzled.

‘If we can know what they are saying, we will know which ones of the herd we should follow,’ Tynian explained. ‘They will be the ones who will know about the wicked ones.’

‘They do not all know?’ Bhlokw asked with some amazement.

‘No. Only some know.’

‘The man-things are very strange. I will talk with Ghnomb. He may understand this.’ He rose to his feet, towering over them. ‘I will do it as soon as I come back.’

‘Where are you going?’ Tynian asked politely.

‘I am hungry. I will go eat a dog. Then I will come back and talk with Ghnomb.’ He paused. ‘I can bring a dog back for you as well, if you are also hungry.’

‘Ah—no, Bhlokw,’ Tynian replied. ‘I do not think I am hungry right now. It was good of you to ask, though.’

‘We are pack-mates now,’ Bhlokw shrugged. ‘It is right to do this.’ And he shambled off down the street.

‘It’s not really all that far,’ Aphrael told her sister as the two of them rode with Xanetia up out of the valley of Delphaeus toward the town of Dirgis in southern Atan, ‘but Edaemus is still reluctant to help us, so I think I’d better mind my manners. He might be offended if I start “tampering” in the home of his children.’

‘You’ve never used that word to describe it before,’ Sephrenia noted.

‘Sparhawk’s influence, I guess,’ the Child Goddess replied. ‘It’s a useful sort of term. It glosses over things that we don’t want to discuss in front of strangers. After we get to Dirgis, we’ll be well clear of the home of the Delphae. Then I’ll be able to tamper to my heart’s content.’

‘How long dost thou think it will take us to reach Natayos, Goddess?’ Xanetia asked. She had once again altered her coloration and suppressed her inner radiance to conceal her racial characteristics.

‘No more than a few hours—in real time,’ Aphrael shrugged. ‘I can’t quite jump us around the way Bhelliom does, but I can cover a lot of ground in a hurry when there’s an emergency. If things were really desperate, I could fly us there.’

Sephrenia shuddered. ‘It’s not that desperate, Aphrael.’

Xanetia gave her Styric sister a puzzled look.

‘It makes her queasy,’ Aphrael explained.

‘No, Aphrael,’ Sephrenia corrected, ‘not queasy—terrified . It’s a horrible experience, Xanetia. She’s done it to me about five times in the past three hundred years. I’m an absolute wreck for weeks afterward.’

‘I keep telling you not to look down, Sephrenia,’ Aphrael told her. ‘If you’d just look at the clouds instead of down at the ground, it wouldn’t bother you so much.’

‘I can’t help myself, Aphrael,’ Sephrenia told her.

‘Is it truly so disturbing, sister mine?’ Xanetia asked.

‘You couldn’t even begin to imagine it, Xanetia. You skim along with nothing but about five thousand feet of empty air between you and the ground. It’s awful!’

‘We’ll do it the other way,’ Aphrael assured her.

‘I’ll start composing a prayer of thanksgiving immediately.’

‘We’ll stay the night in Dirgis,’ Aphrael told them, ‘and then tomorrow morning we’ll run down to Natayos. Sephrenia and I’ll stay out in the woods, Xanetia, and you can go into town and have a look around. If Mother’s really being held there, we should be able to bring this little crisis to an end in short order. Once Sparhawk knows exactly where she is, he’ll fall on Scarpa and his father like a vengeful mountain. Natayos won’t even be a ruin any more when he’s done. it’ll just be a big hole in the ground.’

‘He actually saw them,’ Talen reported. ‘He described them too well to have been making it up.’ The young thief had just returned from his foray into the seamier parts of Beresa.

‘What sort of fellow was he?’ Sparhawk asked. ‘This is too important for us to be taken in by random gossip.’

‘He’s a Dacite,’ Talen replied, ‘a guttersnipe from Jura. His politics go about as far as his purse. His main reason for joining Scarpa’s army in the first place was his enthusiasm for the idea of taking part in the looting of Matherion. We’re not talking about a man with high ideals here. When he got to Natayos and found out that there might be actual fighting involved, he started to lose interest. Anyway, I found him in one of the shabbiest taverns I’ve ever seen, and he was roaring drunk. Believe me, From, he was in no condition to lie to me. I told him that I was thinking of joining Scarpa’s army, and he turned all fatherly on me—”Don’ even skink about it, boy. It’s tur’ble there”—that sort of thing. He said that Scarpa’s a raving lunatic with delusions of invincibility who thinks he can just blow on the Atans and make them go away. He said he’d just about decided to desert anyway, and then Scarpa came back to Natayos—along with Krager, Elron and Baron Parok. They had the Queen and Alcan with them, and Zalasta met them at the gate. The Dacite happened to be nearby, so he could hear what they were saying. Evidently, Zalasta’s still got a few good manners, so he wasn’t very happy about the way Scarpa had been treating his prisoners. The two of them had an argument about it, and Zalasta tied his son into a very complicated knot with magic. I guess Scarpa was squirming around like a wont on a hot rock for a while. Then Zalasta took the ladies to a large house that had been fixed up for them. From what my deserter said, the house comes fairly close to being luxurious—if you discount the bars on the windows.’

‘He could have been coached,’ Sparhawk fretted. ‘Maybe he wasn’t as drunk as he appeared to be.’

‘Believe me, From, he was drunk,’ Talen assured him. ‘I cut a purse on my way to that tavern—just to keep in practice—so I had plenty of money. I poured enough strong drink into him to stun a regiment.’

‘I think he’s right, From,’ Stragen said. ‘There are just too many details for this to be a contrived story.’

‘And if this deserter had been sent to spin cobwebs for our benefit, why would he waste time and effort entertaining a young pickpocket?’ Talen added. ‘None of us look the way we did the last time Zalasta saw us, and I doubt that even he could have guessed how Sephrenia and Xanetia put their heads together to modify us.’

‘I still think we should hold off,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Aphrael’s going to put Xanetia into Natayos in a day or so, and Xanetia can find out for sure if it’s really Ehlana who’s locked up in that house.’

‘We could at least get closer,’ Stragen said.

‘Why? Distance doesn’t mean anything to my blue friend here.’ Sparhawk touched the bulge under the front of his tunic. ‘Just as soon as I know for certain that Ehlana’s there, we’ll go pay Zalasta and his bastard a call. I might even invite Khwaj to come along. He has some plans for them that sort of interest me.’

The light was suddenly very bright, and the citizens of Sepal abruptly ceased jerking around like marionettes on strings and started to walk like normal humans. It had taken a half a day to explain to Ghnomb why it was necessary for them to return to real time, and the God of Eat still had some serious reservations about the whole idea.

‘I’ll wait in that tavern just up the street,’ Tynian said to Ulath as the two of them stepped out of the narrow alley. ‘Do you remember the password?’

Ulath grunted. ‘I shouldn’t be long,’ he said. He walked across the street toward the pair of travelers who had just come into town. ‘That’s an interesting looking saddlebow you’ve got there, neighbor,’ he said to one of them, a broken-nosed man on a roan horse. ‘What’s it made of? Ramshorn?’

Berit gave him a startled look, then glanced quickly around the narrow street near the east gate of Sepal. ‘I didn’t think to ask the saddle-maker, Sergeant,’ he replied, noticing the blond Elene’s tattered-looking uniform jacket. ‘Ah—maybe you could give my young friend and me some advice.’

‘Advice is free. Go ahead and ask.’

‘Do you happen to know of a good inn here in Sepal?’

‘The one my friend and I are staying at isn’t too bad. It’s about three streets over.’ Ulath pointed. ‘It’s got the sign of a boar hanging out front—although the picture doesn’t look very much like any boar I’ve ever seen.’

‘We’ll look into it.’

‘Maybe my friend and I’ll see you there. We’re usually in the taproom after supper.’

‘We’ll stop by—if we decide to stay there.’

Ulath nodded and walked up the street to a tavern and went on inside, where he joined Tynian at a table near the fire. ‘What did you do with our shaggy friend?’ he asked.

‘He went out looking for another dog,’ Tynian replied. ‘You might have made a mistake there, Sergeant. He seems to be developing a taste for them. There won’t be a dog left in the whole town if we stay much longer.’

Ulath sat down and leaned back. ‘Ran into an Elene fellow out there in the street,’ he said, loudly enough to be heard by the other tavern patrons.

‘Oh?’ Tynian said casually. ‘Astellian or Edomish?’

‘It was sort of hard to say. He’d had his nose broken at one time or another, so it was a little difficult to determine his race. He was looking for a good inn, so I recommended the one where we’re staying. We might see him there. It’s good to hear somebody talking Elenic for a change. I get tired of listening to people babbling at me in Tamul. If you’re about finished here, why don’t we drift on down to the harbor and see if we can find somebody to ferry us on across the lake to Tiara.’

Tynian drained his tankard. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, standing up. The two of them left the tavern and strolled back to their inn, Walking casually and moving at the leisurely pace of men with nothing really pressing to do.

‘I want to have a look at that shoe on my horse’s left forehoof,’ Ulath said when they arrived. ‘Go on ahead. I’ll meet you in the taproom.’

‘Where else?’ Tynian laughed.

Khalad was in the stable as Ulath had expected. He was making some show of currying Faran. ‘I see that you and your friend decided to stay here,’ the big Thalesian said in a casual tone.

‘It was handy,’ Khalad shrugged.

‘Listen carefully,’ Ulath said in a voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘We were able to pick up some information. Nothing’s going to happen here. You’ll get another one of those messages.’

Khalad nodded.

‘It’s going to tell you to go on across the lake to Tiara. Be careful of what you say on the boat, because there’ll be a fellow on board who’s working for the other side—an Arjuni with a long scar on his cheek.’

‘I’ll keep an eye out for him,’ Khalad said.

‘You’ll get another message in Tiara,’ Ulath continued. ‘You’ll be told to go on around the lake to Arjun.’

‘That’s the long way around,’ Khalad objected. ‘We could take the road from here and be in Arjun in less than half the time.’

‘Evidently they don’t want you to get there that soon. They’ve probably got some other irons in the fire. I won’t swear to this, but I think they’ll send you on to Verel from Arjun. If Kalten’s right and Ehlana’s being held in Natayos, that would be the next logical step.’

Khalad nodded again. ‘I’ll tell Berit. I think we’d better stay out of that taproom. I’m sure we’re being watched, and if we start talking with other Elenes, we’ll just put the enemy on their guard.’

The horses in the stable suddenly began to squeal and kick at the sides of their stalls.

‘What’s wrong with the horses?’ Khalad demanded. ‘And what’s that odd smell?’

Ulath muttered an oath. Then he raised his voice and spoke in Trollish. ‘Bhlokw, it is not good that you come into the dens of the man-things this way. You have been eating dog, and the man-things and their beasts can smell you.’

There was an injured silence as Ulath’s unseen traveling-companion withdrew from the stable.

Betuana and Engessa, dressed in sleek otter-skins, accompanied Vanion and the knights south from Sama. At Engessa’s suggestion they proceeded due west to come down out of the mountains in eastern Cynesga.

‘We’ve been watching them, Vanion-Preceptor,’ the towering Atan said as he loped along beside Vanion’s horse. ‘Their main supply dump is about five leagues west of the frontier.’

‘Did you have anything pressing to attend to, your Majesty?’ Vanion asked Betuana, who was running along on the other side.

‘Nothing that can’t wait. What did you have in mind?’

‘Since we’re here anyway, we might as well swing over and burn their supply dump. My knights are getting restless, and a little exercise might do them some good.’

‘It is rather chilly,’ she observed with just the hint of a smile. ‘A fire would be nice.’

‘Shall we, then?’

‘Why don’t we?’

The Cynesgan supply dump covered about five acres. It lay in a rocky, treeless basin, and it was defended by about a regiment of Cynesgan troops in flowing robes. As the column of armored knights approached, the defenders galloped forth to meet them. That particular maneuver might best be described as a tactical blunder. The gravel-covered floor of the Desert of Cynesga was flat and clear of obstructions, so the charge of the Church Knights was unimpeded. There was an enormous crash as the two forces collided, and the knights, after only a nomentary hesitation, rode on, trampling the bodies of the wounded and slain under the steel-shod hooves of their mounts while the squealing horses of the Cynesgans fled in terror.

‘Impressive,’ Betuana conceded as she ran along beside Vanion’s mount. ‘But isn’t it tedious to endure the weight—and the smell—of the armor for months on end for the sake of two minutes of entertainment?’

‘There are drawbacks to any style of warfare, your Majesty,’ Vanion said, raising his visor. ‘A part of the idea behind armored charges is to persuade others to avoid confrontations. It holds down the casualties in the long run.’

‘A reputation for extreme severity is a good weapon, VanionPreceptor,’ she agreed.

‘We like it,’ he smiled. ‘Let’s go build that bonfire so that your Majesty can warm her toes.’

‘That would be nice,’ she smiled.

There was a dust-covered hill directly ahead, rising like a slightly rounded pyramid to block the way to the supply dump. With simple arm-gestures, Vanion directed his knights to diverge and sweep around both sides of the hill to swarm over the accumulated supplies of Cyrgon’s army. They galloped forward with that vast, steely, clinking thunder that proclaims implacable invincibility.

And then the hill moved. The dust which had covered it shuddered away in a great billowing cloud, and the two enormous wings unfurled their glossy blackness to reveal the wedge-shaped face of Klael. The beast of ultimate darkness roared, and the fangs of lightning, jagged and flickering, emerged from behind snarling lips.

And out from beneath the shelter of those two great wings came an army like no army Vanion had ever seen. They were as tall as the Atans and more bulky. Their bare arms were huge, and their steel breastplates fit them like a second skin, revealing every knotted muscle. Their helmets bore exotic-looking embellishments—horns or antlers or stiff steel wings—and, like their breastplates, their visors fit tightly over their faces, exactly duplicating the features of each individual warrior. There was no humanity in those polished faces. The brows were impossibly wide, and, like the face of Klael himself, they narrowed down to almost delicately pointed chins. The eye-slits blazed, and there were twin holes in place of noses. The mouths of those masks were open, and they were filled with cruelly pointed teeth.

They swarmed out from beneath Klael’s wings with his lightning playing around them. They brandished weapons that appeared to be part mace and part axe—steel atrocities dredged from nightmare. They were too close to permit any kind of orderly withdrawal, and the knights, still moving at a thunderous gallop, were committed before they could fully comprehend the nature of the enemy. The impact as the two armies came together shook the earth, and that solid, steely crash shattered into a chaos of sound blows, shrieks, the agonized squeals of horses, the tearing of metal.

‘Sound a withdrawal!’ Vanion bellowed to the leader of the Genidians. ‘Blow your heart into that Ogre-horn, man. Get our people clear!’

The carnage was ghastly. Horses and men were being ripped to pieces by Klael’s inhuman army. Vanion drove his spurs home, and his horse leapt forward. The Pandion Preceptor drove his lance through the steel breastplate of one of the aliens and saw blood—at least he thought it might be blood, thick yellow blood—gushing from the steel-lipped mask. The creature fell back, but still swung its cruel weapon. Vanion pulled his hand clear of the butt of the lance, leaving the beast transfixed, skewered, as it were, and drew his sword.

It took a long time. The thing absorbed blows which would have dismembered a human. Eventually, however, Vanion chopped it down—almost like a peasant chopping out a tough, stringy thorn-bush.

‘Engessa!’ Betuana’s shriek of rage and despair rang out above the other sounds of the battle.

Vanion wheeled his horse and saw the Atan Queen rushing to the aid of her stricken general. Even the monstrous creatures Klael had unleashed quailed in the face of her fury as she cut her way to Engessa’s side. Vanion smashed his way through to her, his sword flickering in the chill light, spraying yellow blood in gushing fountains.

‘Can you carry him?’ he shouted to Betuana.

She bent and with no apparent effort lifted her fallen friend in her arms.

‘Pull back!’ Vanion shouted. ‘I’ll cover you!’ And he hurled his horse into the path of the monsters who were rushing to attack her.

There was no hope in Betuana’s face as she ran toward the rear, cradling Engessa’s limp body in her arms, and her eyes were streaming tears. Vanion ground his teeth together, raised his sword, and charged.

Sephrenia was very tired when they reached Dirgis. ‘I’m not really hungry,’ she told Xanetia and Aphrael after they had taken a room in a respectable inn near the center of the city. ‘All I want is a nice hot bath and about twelve hours of sleep.’

‘Art thou unwell, sister mine?’ Xanetia’s voice was concerned.

Sephrenia smiled wearily. ‘No, dear,’ she said, laying one hand on the Anarae’s arm. ‘I’m a little tired, that’s all. This rushing around is starting to wear on me. You two go ahead and have some supper. just ask someone to bring a small pot of tea up to the room. That’ll be enough for right now. I’ll make up for it at breakfast time. Only don’t make too much noise when you come up to bed.’

She spent a pleasant half-hour immersed to her ears in steaming water in the bath-house and returned to their room tightly wrapped in her Styric robe and carrying a candle to light her way.

Their room was not large, but it was warm and cozy, heated by one of the porcelain stoves common here in Tamuli. Sephrenia rather liked the concept of a stove, since it kept the ashes and cinders off the floor. She drew a chair close to the fire and began to brush her long, black hair.

‘Vanity, Sephrenia? After all these years?’

She started half to her feet at the sound of the familiar voice.

Zalasta scarcely looked the same. He no longer wore his Styric robe, but rather a leather jerkin of an Arjuni cut, stout canvas trousers, and thick-soled boots. He had even so far discarded his heritage that he wore a short sword at his waist. His white hair and beard were tangled, and his face was haggard. ‘Please don’t make a scene, love,’ he told her. His voice was weary and devoid of any emotion beyond a kind of profound regret. He sighed. ‘Where did we go wrong, Sephrenia?’ he asked sadly. ‘What tore us apart and brought us to this sorry state?’

‘You don’t really want me to tell you, do you, Zalasta?’ she replied. ‘Why couldn’t you just let it go? I did love you, you know—not that way, of course, but it was love. Couldn’t you accept that and forget about the other?’

‘Evidently not. It didn’t even occur to me.’

‘Sparhawk’s going to kill you, you know.

‘Perhaps. To be honest with you, though, I no longer really care.’

‘What’s the point of this then? Why have you come here?’

‘I wanted to see you one last time—hear the sound of your voice. ‘ He rose from the chair in the corner where he had been sitting. ‘It all could have been so different—if it hadn’t been for Aphrael. She was the one who took you into the lands of the Elenes and corrupted you. You’re Styric, Sephrenia. We Styrics have no business consorting with the Elene barbarians.’

‘You’re wrong, Zalasta. Anakha’s an Elene. That’s our business with them. You’d better leave. Aphrael’s downstairs eating supper right now. If she finds you here, she’ll have your heart for dessert.’

‘In a moment. There’s something I have to do first. After that, she can do anything to me she wants to do.’ His face suddenly twisted into an expression of anguish. ‘Why, Sephrenia? Why? How could you bear the unclean touch of that Elene savage?’

‘Vanion? You wouldn’t understand. You couldn’t even begin to comprehend it.’ She stood, her face defiant. ‘Do whatever it is you have to do and leave. The very sight of you sickens me.’

‘Very well.’ His face was suddenly as cold as stone.

She was not really surprised when he drew a long bronze dagger out from under his jerkin. In spite of everything, he was still Styric enough to loathe the touch of steel. ‘You have no idea of how much I regret this,’ he told her as he came closer.

She tried to struggle, clawing at his face and eyes. She even felt a momentary sense of triumph when she seized his beard and saw him wince with pain. She jerked at his beard, sawing his face this way and that as she called out for help, but then he jerked free, roughly shoving her back from him. She stumbled back and half-fell over a chair, and that was what ultimately defeated her. Even as she struggled to regain her feet, he caught her by the hair, and she knew that she was lost.

Despairing, she drew Vanion’s face from her memory, filling her eyes and heart with his features even as she attempted again to claw at Zalasta’s eyes.

And then he drove the dagger directly into her breast and wrenched it free again. She cried out, falling back and clutching at the wound, feeling the blood spurting out between her fingers.

He caught her in his arms. ‘I love you, Sephrenia,’ he said in a broken voice as the light faded from her eyes.