CHAPTER 12

Sparhawk dug into his sea-bag, throwing clothes on the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ Aphrael demanded urgently. ‘We have to hurry!’

‘I’ve got to leave a note for Stragen, but I can’t find any paper.’

‘Here.’ She held out her hand, and a sheet of parchment appeared in it.

‘Thank you.’ He took the parchment and continued to rummage in the bag.

‘Get on with it, Sparhawk.’

‘I need something to write with.’ She muttered something in Styric and handed him a quill and a small inkpot. ‘Vymer,’ Sparhawk scribbled, ‘something’s come up, and I’ll be gone for a while. Keep Reldin out of trouble.’ And he signed it, ‘From.’ Then he laid it in the center of Stragen’s bed.

‘Now can we go?’ she asked impatiently.

‘How are you going to do this?’ He picked up his cloak.

‘We have to get out of town first. I don’t want anybody to see us. What’s the quickest way to the woods?’

‘East. It’s about a mile to the edge of the forest.’

‘Let’s go.’ They left the room, went down the stairs and on out into the Street. Sparhawk picked her up and half-enfolded her in his cloak.

‘I can walk,’ she protested.

‘Not without attracting attention, you can’t. You’re a Styric, and people would notice that.’ He started off down the street, carrying her in his arms.

‘Can’t you go any faster?’

‘Just let me handle this part of it, Aphrael. If I start running, people will think I’ve stolen you.’ He looked around to make sure no one on the muddy street was close enough to hear. ‘How are you going to manage this?’ he asked her. ‘There are people out there who can feel it when you tamper with things, you know. We don’t want to attract attention.’

She frowned. ‘I’m not sure. I was upset when I came here. ’

‘Are you trying to get your mother killed?’

‘That’s a hateful thing to say.’ She pursed her little mouth in thought. ‘There’s always a certain amount of noise,’ she mused.

‘I didn’t quite follow that.’

‘It’s one of the disadvantages of having our two worlds overlap the way they do. The sounds of one sort of spill over into the other. Most humans can’t hear us - or feel us - when we move around, but we can definitely hear and feel each other.’

Sparhawk crossed the street to avoid a noisy brawl that had just erupted from a sailors’ tavern. ‘if the others can hear you., how are you going to hide what you’re doing?’

‘You didn’t let me finish, Sparhawk. We’re not alone here. There are others all around us - my family, the Tamul Gods, your Elene God, various spirits and ghosts, and the air’s positively littered with the Powerless Ones. Sometimes they flock up ,like migrating birds.’

He stopped and stepped back to let a rickety charcoal wagon creak past. ‘Who are these “Powerless Ones?”?’ he asked her. ‘Are they dangerous?’

‘Hardly. They don’t even really exist any more. They’re nothing but memories - old myths and legends.’

‘Are they real? Could I see them?’

‘Not unless you believe in them. They were Gods once, but their worshippers either died out or were converted to the worship of other Gods. They wail and flutter around the edges of reality without

substance or even thought. All they have is need.’ She sighed. ‘We go out of fashion, Sparhawk - like last years gowns or old shoes and hats. The Powerless Ones are discarded Gods who shrink and shrink as the years go by until they’re finally nothing at all but a kind of anguished wailing.’ She sighed again.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘there’s all this noise in the background, and it makes it very hard to concentrate or pick out specifics.’

They passed another smelly tavern loud with drunken song. ‘Is this noise something like that?’ Sparhawk asked, jerking his head toward the singing. ‘Meaningless sound that fills up your ears and keeps you from hearing what you’re really listening for?’

‘More or less. We have a couple of senses that you don’t, though, so we know when others are around, for one thing, and we know when they’re doing things - tampering, if you want to call it that - for another.

Maybe I can hide what I’m doing in all that other noise. How much further do we have to go?’

He turned a corner into a quiet street. ‘We’re coming to the edge of town now.’ He shifted her in his arms and continued on up the street, walking a little faster now. The houses here on the outskirts of Beresa were more substantial, and they were set back from the streets in aloof, self-important pride. ‘After we go through the charcoal yards, we’ll come to the woods,’ he told her. ‘Are you sure this noise that I can’t hear will be loud enough to hide your spells?’

‘I’ll see if I can get some help. I just thought of something. Cyrgon doesn’t know exactly where I am, and it’ll take him a little while to identify me and pinpoint my exact location. I’ll ask some of the others to come here and have a party or something. If they’re loud enough, and if I move fast enough, he won’t even know that I’ve been here.’

There were only a few workmen tending the sullen fires in the charcoal yards that ringed Beresa, incurious men, blackened by their tasks and far gone with drink, who lurched around the smoky flames like hellish imps dancing on eternal coals. Sparhawk walked even faster now, carrying the distraught Child

Goddess toward the shadowy edge of the tangled forest.

‘I’ll need to be able to see the sky,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want any tree-limbs in my way.’ She paused.

‘Are you afraid of heights?’ she asked.

‘Not particularly, why?’

‘Just asking. Don’t get excited when we start. I won’t let anything happen to you. You’ll be perfectly safe as long as I’m holding your hand.’ She paused again. ‘Oh, dear,’ she murmured. ‘I just remembered something.’

‘What?’ He pushed aside a branch and slipped past it into the darkness of the forest.

‘I have to be real when I do this.’

‘What do you mean “real? you’re real now, aren’t you?’

‘Not exactly. Don’t ask questions, Sparhawk. Just find me a patch of open sky and don’t bother me for a while. I have to appeal for some help - if I can find them.’ He pushed through the tangled brush, a cold knot in his stomach and his heart like a stone in his chest. The hideous dilemma they faced tore at him, seeming almost to rip him apart. Sephrenia was dying, but he must endanger Ehlana in order to save her life. It was only the force of Bhelliom’s will that kept him moving at all. His own will was paralyzed by the conflicting needs of the two he loved most in all the world. He pushed at the tangle surrounding him in a kind of hopeless frustration. Then he broke through the screen of brush into a small clearing carpeted by deep moss where a pool of water fed by a gurgling spring winked back at the stars strewn like bright grain across the velvet night. It was a quiet place, almost enchanted, but his eyes refused to accept its beauty. He stopped and set Aphrael down. Her small face was devoid of expression, and her eyes were blank, unseeing. Sparhawk waited tensely.

‘Well, finally.’ she said at last in an exasperated tone of voice. ‘It’s so hard to explain anything to them.

They never stop babbling long enough to listen.’

‘Who’s this we’re talking about?’

‘The Tamul Gods. Now I can see why Oscagne’s an atheist. I finally persuaded them to come here to do their playing. That should help to hide you and me from Cyrgon.’

‘Playing?’

‘They’re children, Sparhawk, babies who run and play and squeal and chase each other for months on end. Cyrgon absolutely hates them, so he won’t go anywhere near them. That should help. They’ll be here in a few minutes, and then we’ll be able to start. Turn your back, Father. I don’t like having people watch me change.’

‘I’ve seen you before - your reflection anyway.’

‘That part doesn’t bother me. The process of the changeover’s a little degrading, though. Just turn your back, Father. You wouldn’t understand.’

He obediently turned and gazed up at the night sky. Several familiar constellations were either missing or in the wrong places.

‘All right, Father, you can turn around now.’ Her voice was richer and more vibrant.

He turned. ‘Would you please put some clothes on?’

‘Why?’

“Just do it, Aphrael. Humor my quirks.’

‘This is so tedious.’ She reached out and took hold of a gauzy kind of veil she had spun out of nothing and wrapped herself in it. ‘Better?’ she asked.

‘Not much. Can we leave now?’

‘I’ll check.’ Her eyes went distant for a moment. ‘They’re coming,’ she reported. ‘They got side-tracked.

It doesn’t take much to distract them. Now, listen very carefully. Try to stay calm when we do this. Just keep the fact firmly in mind that I’m not going to let you get hurt. You won’t fall.’

‘Fall? Fall from where? What are you talking about?’

‘You’ll see. I’d do it differently, but we have to get to Dirgis in a hurry, and I don’t want Cyrgon to have time to locate me. We’ll take it in easy stages at first, so you’ll have time to get used to the idea.’ She turned her head slightly. ‘They’re here,’ she said. ‘We can start now.’ Sparhawk cocked his head slightly.

He seemed to hear the distant sound of childish laughter, though it might have been only the sound of an errant breeze rustling the leaves in the treetops.

‘Give me your hand,’ she instructed. He reached out and took her by the hand. It seemed very warm and somehow comforting.

‘Just look up at the sky, Sparhawk,’ the heartbreakingly beautiful young woman instructed. He raised his face and saw the upper edge of the moon come creeping pale and luminous up above the treetops.

‘You can look down now.’

They were standing some ten feet above the rippled waters of the pool. Sparhawk’s muscles tensed.

‘Don’t do that!’ she said sharply. ‘Just relax. You’ll slow us down if I have to drag you through the air like a water-logged cat.’

He tried, but he didn’t have much success. He was certain that his eyes were lying to him, though. He could feel solidity under his feet. He stamped on it, and it was as firm as earth ought to be.

‘That’s just for now,’ the Goddess told him. ‘In a little while you won’t need it any more. I always have to put something solid down for Sephrenia -‘ Her voice broke off with a strange little sob. ‘please get control of yourself, Sparhawk,’ she pleaded. ‘We must hurry. Look at the sky again. We’re going a little higher.’ He felt nothing at all, no rush of air, no sinking in the pit of his stomach, but when he looked down again, the clearing and its enchanted pool had shrunk to a dot. The tiny lights of Beresa twinkled from minuscule windows, and the moon had laid a long, glowing path out across the Tamul Sea.

‘Are you all right!’ Her inflections were still Aphrael’s, but her voice, and most definitely her appearance, were totally different. Her face peculiarly combined Flute’s features with Danae’s, making her the adult who had somehow been both little girls. Sparhawk didn’t answer, but instead stood stamping one foot on the solid nothing under him.

‘I won’t be able to keep that there when we start,’ she warned. ‘We’ll be going too fast. Just hold onto my hand, but don’t get excited and break my fingers. ’

‘Don’t do anything to surprise me, then. Are you going to sprout wings?’ ‘What an absurd idea. I’m not a bird, Sparhawk. Wings would only get in my way. Just lean back and relax.’ She looked intently at him.

‘You’re really handling this well. Sephrenia’s usually in hysterics at this point. Would you be more at ease if you sat down?’

‘On what?’

‘Never mind. Maybe we’d better stand. Take a couple of deep breaths, and let’s get started.’

He found that looking up helped. When he was looking at the stars and the newly risen moon, he could not see the awful emptiness under him. There was no sense of movement, no whistle of the wind in his ears, no flapping of his cloak. He stood holding Aphrael’s hand and looking intently at the moon as it receded ponderously southward. Then there was a pale luminosity coming up from beneath them.

‘Oh, bother,’ the Goddess said.

‘What’s wrong?’ His voice was a little shrill.

“look down.”

He looked down and saw a fairy-tale world under them. cloud, glowing in the moonlight, stretched out as if forever. Mountains of airy mist swelled up from a folded, insubstantial plain, and pillars and castles of curded cloud stood sentinel-like between. Sparhawk’s mind filled with wonder as the soft, moonlit cloudscape flowed smoothly back below them.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured.

‘Maybe, but I can’t see the ground.’

‘I think I prefer it that way.’

‘I need reference points, Sparhawk. I can’t see where I am, so I can’t tell where I’m going. Bhelliom can find a place with nothing but a name to work with, but I can’t. I need landmarks, and I can’t see them with all these clouds in the way.’

Why don’t you use the stars?’

‘What?’

‘That’s what sailors do when they’re out at sea. The stars don’t move, so the sailors pick out a certain star or constellation and steer toward it.’ There was a long silence while the swiftly receding rush of cloud beneath them slowed and finally stopped.

‘Sometimes you’re so clever that I can’t stand you, Sparhawk,’ the Goddess holding his hand said tartly.

‘You mean you’ve never even thought of it?’ he asked her incredulously.

‘I don’t fly at night very often.’ Her tone was defensive. ‘We’re going down. I have to find a landmark.’

They sank downward, the clouds rushing up to meet them, and then they were immersed in a dense, clinging mist.

‘They’re made out of fog, aren’t they? Clouds, I mean.’ Sparhawk was

‘What did you think they were?’

‘ I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it before. It just seems strange for some reason.’

bemke out of the underside of the cloud - clouds now bathed in moonglow, now hanging close over their heads lay ceiling that closed off the light. The earth beneath them was enveloped in almost total darkness.

They drifted gliding in air and veering this way and that, peering and searching for something recognizable.

‘Over there.’ Sparhawk pointed. ‘It must be a fair-sized town. There’s quite a lot of light.’

They moved in that direction, drawn toward the light like mindless insects. There was a sense of unreality as Sparhawk looked down. The town lying beneath them seemed tiny. It huddled like a child’s toy on the edge of a large body of water.

Sparhawk scratched at his cheek, trying to remember the details of his map. ‘It’s probably Sepal,’ he said. ‘That lake almost has to be the Sea of Arjun.’ He stopped, his mind suddenly reeling. ‘That’s over three hundred leagues from where we started, Aphrael!’ he exclaimed. ‘Almost a thousand miles!’

‘Yes - if that town really is Sepal.’

‘It has to be. The Sea of Arjun’s the only large body of water on this part of the continent, and Sepal’s on the east side of it. Arjun’s on the south side, and Tiana’s on the west.’ He stared at her incredulously. ‘A thousand miles. and we only left Beresa a half un hour ago. just how fast are we going?’

‘What difference does it make? We got here. That’s all that matters.’ The young woman holding his hand looked speculatively down at the miniature town on the lake-shore. ‘Dirgis is off to the west a little way, so we won’t want to go straight north.’ She shifted them around in mid-air until they were facing in a slightly northwesterly direction.

‘That should be fairly close. Don’t move your head, Sparhawk. Keep looking in that direction. We’ll go back up, and you pick out a star.’

They rose swiftly through the clouds, and Sparhawk saw the familiar constellation of the wolf lying above the misty horizon ahead. ‘There,’ he pointed. ‘The five stars clustered in the shape of a dog’s head.’

‘It doesn’t look like any dog I’ve ever seen.’

‘You have to use your imagination. How is it you’ve never thought of steering by the stars before?’

She shrugged. ‘Probably because I can see farther than you can. You see the sky as a surface - a kind of overturned bowl with the stars painted on it all at the same distance from you. That’s why you can see that cluster of stars as a dog’s head. I can’t, because I can see the difference in distances. Keep an eye on your dog, Sparhawk. Let me know if we start to drift off.’

The moon-bathed cloud beneath them began to flow smoothly back again, and they flew on in silence for a while.

‘This isn’t so bad,’ Sparhawk said. ‘At least not when you get used to it.’

‘It’s better than walking,’ the gauze-clad Goddess replied.

‘It made my hair stand on end right at first, though.’

‘Sephrenia’s never gotten past that stage. She starts gibbering in panic as soon as her feet come up off the ground.’

Sparhawk remembered something. ‘Wait a minute,’ he objected. ‘When we killed Ghwerig and stole the Bhelliom, you came floating up out of that chasm in his cave, and she walked out across the air to meet you. She wasn’t gibbering in panic then.’

‘No. It was probably the bravest thing she’s ever done. I was so proud of her that I almost burst.’

‘Was she conscious at all? When you found her, I mean?’

‘Off and on. She was able to tell us who’d attacked her. I managed to slow her heartbeat and take away the pain. She’s very calm now.’ Aphrael’s voice quavered. ‘She expects to die, Sparhawk. She can feel the wound in her heart, and she knows what that means. She was giving Xanetia a last message for Vanion when I left.’ The young Goddess choked back a sob. ‘Can we talk about something else?’

‘Of course.’ Sparhawk’s eyes flickered away from the constellation in the night sky. ‘There are mountains sticking up out of the clouds just ahead.’

‘We’re almost there, then. Dirgis is in the big basin lying beyond that first ridge.’

Their rapid flight began to slow. They passed over the snowy peaks of the southern-most expanse of the mountains of Atan, peaks that rose out of the clouds like frozen islands, and found that there was only thin cloud-cover over the basin lying beyond. They descended, drifting down like dandelion puffs toward the forest-covered hills and valleys of the basin, a landscape sharply etched in the moonlight that leeched out all color. There another cluster of lights some distance to the left - ruddy torches in narrow streets and golden candlelight in little windows.

‘That’s Dirgis,’ Aphrael said. ‘We’ll set down outside of town. I should probably change back before we go on in.’

‘Either that or put on some more clothes.’

‘That really bothers you, doesn’t it, Sparhawk? Am I ugly or something?’

‘Quite the opposite - and that bothers me all the more. I can’t think while you’re standing around naked, Aphrael.’

‘I’m not really a woman, Sparhawk - not in the sense that seems to bother you so much, anyway. Can’t you think of me as a mare - or a doe?’

‘No, I can’t. Just do whatever you have to do, Aphrael. I don’t really think we need to talk about how I think of you.’

‘Are you blushing, Sparhawk?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact I am. Now can we drop it?’

‘That’s really rather sweet, you know.’

‘Will you stop?’

They came down in a secluded little glen about a half-mile from the outskirts of Dirgis, and Sparhawk turned his back while the Child Goddess once again assumed the more familiar form of the Styric waif

they all knew as Flute.

‘Better?’ she asked when he turned around.

‘Much.’ He picked her up and started toward town, his long legs stretching out in a rapid stride. He concentrated on that. It seemed to help him avoid thinking. They went directly into town, made one turn off the main street, and came to a large, two-story building.

‘This is it,’ Aphrael said. ‘We’ll just go in and up the stairs. I’ll make the innkeeper look the other way.’

Sparhawk pushed open the door, crossed the common-room on the main floor and went up the stairs.

They found Xanetia all aglow and cradling Sephrenia in her arms. The two women were on a narrow bed in a small room with roughly squared-off log walls. It was one of those snug, comfortable rooms such as one finds in mountain inns the world over. It had a porcelain stove, a couple of chairs, and a nightstand beside each bed. A pair of candles cast a golden light on the pair on the bed. The front of Sephrenia’s robe was covered with blood, and her face was deathly pale, tinged slightly with that fatal grey.

Sparhawk looked at her, and his mind suddenly filled with flames.

‘I will cause hurt to Zalasta for this,’ he growled in Trollish.

Aphrael gave him a startled look. Then she also spoke in the guttural language of the Trolls. ‘Your thought is good, Anakha.’ she agreed fiercely. ‘Cause much hurt to him.’

The rending sound of the Trollish word for “hurt” seemed very satisfying to both of them.

‘His heart still belongs to me, though,’ she added. ‘Has there been any change?’ she asked Xanetia.

‘lapsing into e, Divine One,’ Xanetia replied in a voice near to exhaustion. ‘I am lending our dear sister of mine own strength to sustain her, but I am nearly spent. Soon both she and I will die.’

‘Nay, gentle Xanetia,’ Aphrael said. ‘I will not lose you. Fear not, however. Anakha hath come with Bhelliom to restore ye both.’

‘But that must not be,’ Xanetia protested. ‘To do so would put the life of Anakha’s Queen in peril. Better that thy sister and I both perish than that.’

‘Don’t be noble, Xanetia,’ Aphrael told her tartly. ‘it makes my hair hurt. Talk to Bhelliom, Sparhawk.

Find out how we’re supposed to do this.’

‘Blue Rose,’ Sparhawk said, touching his fingers to the bulge under his smock.

‘I hear thee, Anakha.’ The voice in Sparhawk’s mind was a whisper.

‘We have come unto the place where Sephrenia lies stricken.’

‘Yes.’

‘What must we now do? I implore thee, Blue Rose, do not increase the peril of my mate.’

‘Thine admonition is unseemly, Anakha. It doth bespeak a lack of trust. Let us proceed. Surrender thy will to me. It is through thy lips that I must speak with Anarae Xanetia.’

A strange, detached lassitude came over Sparhawk, and he felt himself somehow separating, his awareness sliding away from his body.

‘Attend to me, Xanetia.’ It was Sparhawk’s altered voice, but he had no consciousness of having spoken.

‘Most closely, World-Maker,’ the Anarae replied in her exhausted voice.

‘Let the Child Goddess assume the burden of supporting her sister. I have need of thy hands.’

Aphrael slipped onto the bed and took Sephrenia from Xanetia’s arms and held her in a tender embrace.

‘Take forth the box, Anakha,’ Bhelliom instructed, ‘and surrender it up unto Xanetia.’

Sparhawk’s movements were jerky as he pulled the golden box out from under his tunic and lifted the thong upon which it hung suspended up over his head.

‘Gather about thee that serenity which the curse of Edaemus bestowed upon thee, Xanetia,’ Bhelliom instructed, ‘and enfold the box - and mine essence - in thy hands, letting thy peace infuse that which thou dost hold.’ Xanetia nodded and extended her glowing hands to take the box from Sparhawk’s grasp.

‘Very good. Now, take the Child Goddess in thine arms. Embrace her and deliver me up unto her.’

Xanetia clasped both Aphrael and Sephrenia in her arms.

‘Excellent. Thy mind is quick, Xanetia. This is even better. Aphrael, open thou the box and draw me forth.’ Bhelliom paused. ‘No tricks,’ it admonished her with uncharacteristic colloquialism. ‘Seek not to

ensnare me with thy wiles and thy soft touch.’

‘Don’t be absurd, World-Maker.’

‘I know thee, Aphrael, and I know that thou art more dangerous than ever Azash was or Cyrgon could be. Let us both concentrate all our attention upon the cure of thy sister.’

The Child Goddess opened the lid of the box and lifted out the glowing Sapphire Rose.

Sparhawk, all bemused, saw the steady white glow which emanated from Xanetia take on a faint bluish flush as Bhelliom’s radiance joined her own. ‘Apply me, poulticelike, to her wound that I may heal that injury which Zalasta hath inflicted.’ Sparhawk was a soldier and he knew a great deal about wounds. His stomach knotted when he saw the deep, seeping gash in the upper swell of Sephrenia’s left breast.

Aphrael reached out with Bhelliom and gently touched it to the bleeding wound.

Sephrenia started to glow with an azure radiance. She half raised her head. ‘No,’ she said weakly, trying to push Aphrael’s hand away.

Sparhawk took both her hands in his and held them. ‘It’s all right, little mother,’ he lied softly.

‘Everything’s been taken care of.’

The wound in Sephrenia’s breast had closed, leaving an ugly purple scar. Then, even as they watched, the Sapphire Rose continued its work. The scar shrank down to a thin white line that became fainter and fainter and finally disappeared entirely. Sephrenia began to cough. It was a gurgling, liquid kind of cough such as a nearly drowned man might make.

‘Hand me that basin, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael instructed. ‘She has to clear the blood out of her lungs.’

Sparhawk reached out and took the large, shallow basin from the nightstand and handed it to her. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You can have this back now.’ She gave him back the gold box, took the basin, and held it under Sephrenia’s mouth.

‘That’s right,’ she said encouragingly to her sister as the woman began coughing up chunks of clotted blood. ‘Get it all out.’

Sparhawk looked away. The procedure was not very pretty.

‘Put thy mind at rest, Anakha,’ Bhelliom’s voice told him softly. ‘Thine enemies are unaware of what hath come to pass.’ The jewel paused. ‘I have not given Edaemus his due, for he is very shrewd. Methinks none other could have perceived the true import of what he hath done. To curse his children as he hath was the only true way to conceal them. I shudder to imagine the pain it must have caused him.’

‘I do not understand,’ Sparhawk confessed.

‘A blessing rings and shimmers in the lucid air like bell-sound, Anakha, but a curse is dark and silent.

Were the light which doth emanate from Anarae Xanetia a blessing, all the world would hear and feel its overwhelming love, but Edaemus hath made it a curse instead. Therein lay his wisdom. The accurse are cast out and hidden, and no one - man or God - can hear or feel their comings and goings up and down the land. When she did take the box in her hands, Anarae Xanetia did smother all sound and sense of my presence, and when she did embrace Aphrael and Sephrenia and enfold them in her luminous darkness, none living could detect me. Thy mate is safe - for now. Thine enemies have no knowledge of what hath come to pass.’

Sparhawk’s heart soared. ‘I do sorely repent my lack of trust, Blue Rose,’ he apologized.

‘Thou wert distraught, Anakha. I do freely forgive thee.’

‘Sparhawk.’ Sephrenia’s voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Yes, little mother?’ He went quickly to the side of the bed.

‘You shouldn’t have agreed to this. You’ve put Ehlana in terrible danger. I thought you were stronger.’

‘Everything’s all right, Sephrenia,’ he assured her. ‘Bhelliom just explained it to me. Nobody heard or felt a thing while you were being healed.’

.How is that possible?’

‘It was Xanetia’s presence - and her touch. Bhelliom says she easily muffled what was going on. It has to do with the difference between a blessing and a curse, as I understand it. However it works, what just happened didn’t put Ehlana in any danger. How are you feeling?’

‘Like a half-drowned kitten, if you really want to know,’ she smiled weakly. Then she sighed. ‘I would never have believed that Zalasta could be capable of what he did.’

‘I’ll make him wish he’d never thought of it,’ Sparhawk said grimly. ‘I’m going to tear out his heart, roast it on a spit, and then serve it up to Aphrael on a silver plate.’

‘Isn’t he a nice boy?’ Aphrael said fondly. ‘No.’ Sephrenia’s voice was surprisingly firm.

‘I appreciate the thought, dear ones, but I don’t want either of you to do anything to Zalasta. I’m the one he stabbed, so I want to be the one who decides who gets him.’

‘I suppose that’s fair,’ Sparhawk conceded.

‘What have you got in mind, Sephrenia?’ Aphrael asked.

‘Vanion’s going to be dreadfully upset when he hears about this. I don’t want him raging and breaking up the furniture, so I’m going to give Zalasta to him - all tied up in a bright red ribbon.’

‘I still get his heart, though,’ Aphrael insisted.