CHAPTER 20

If they would just let her sleep. The world around her seemed distorted, unreal, and she could only watch in numb, uncaring bemusement as her exhausted body screamed for sleep - or even for death. She stood exhausted at the window. The slaves toiling in the fields around the lake below looked almost like ants crawling across the winter-fallow fields as they grubbed at the soil with crude implements. Other slaves gathered firewood among the trees on the sloping sides of the basin, and the puny sounds of their axes drifted up to the dark tower from which she watched. Alcan lay on an unpadded bench, sleeping or dead, Ehlana could no longer tell which, but she envied her gentle maid in either case.

They were not alone, of course.

They were never alone. Zalasta, his own face gaunt with weariness, talked on and on with King Santheocles. Ehlana was too tired to make any sense of the haggard Styric’s droning words. She absently looked at the King of the Cyrgai, a man in a closefitting steel breastplate, a short leather kirtle and ornate steel wrist-guards. Santheocles was of a race apart, and generations of selective breeding had heightened those features most admired by his people. he was tall and superbly muscled. His skin was very fair, although his carefully curled and oiled hair and beard were glossy black. His nose was straight, continuing the unbroken line of his forehead. His eyes were very large and very dark - and totally empty.

His expression was haughty, cruel. His was the face of a stupid, arrogant man devoid of compassion or even simple decency. His ornate breastplate left his upper arms and shoulders bare, and as he listened, he absently clenched and relaxed his fists, setting his muscles to writhing and dancing under his pale skin.

He was obviously not paying much attention to Zalasta’s words, but sat instead totally engrossed in the

rhythmic flexing and relaxing of the muscles in his arms. He was in all respects a perfect soldier, possessed of a superbly-conditioned body and mind unviolated by thought. Ehlana wearily let her eyes drift again around the room. The furniture was strange. There were no chairs as such, only benches and padded stools with ornate arms but no backs. Evidently the notion of a chair-back had not occurred to the Cyrgai. The table in the center of the room was awkwardly low, and the lamps were of an ancient design, no more than hammered copper bowls of oil with burning wicks floating in them. The roughly sawed boards of the floor were covered with rushes, the walls of square-cut black basalt were unadorned, and the windows were undraped.

The door opened and Ekatas entered. Ehlana struggled to bring her exhausted mind into focus.

Santheocles was king here in Cyrga, but it was Ekatas who ruled. The High Priest of Cyrgon was robed and cowled in black, and his aged face was a network of deep wrinkles. Although his expression was every bit as cruel and arrogant as that of his king, his eyes were shrewd, ruthless. The front of his black robe was adorned with the symbol that seemed to be everywhere here in the Hidden City, a white square surmounted by a stylized golden flame. There was some significance there certainly, but Ehlana was too tired to even wonder what it might be.

‘Come with me,’ he commanded abruptly. ‘Bring the women.’

‘The servant girl is of no moment,’ Zalasta replied in a slightly challenging tone. ‘Let her sleep.’

‘I am not accustomed to having my commands questioned, Styric.’

‘Get accustomed, Cyrgai. The women are my prisoners. My arrangement is with Cyrgon, and you’re no more than an appendage to that arrangement. Your arrogance is beginning to annoy me. Leave the girl alone.’ Their eyes locked, and a sudden tension filled the room.

‘Well, Ekatas?’ Zalasta said very quietly. ‘Has the time come? Have you finally worked up enough courage to challenge me? Any time, Ekatas. Any time at all.’

Ehlana, now fully alert, saw the flicker of fear in the eyes of Cyrgon’s priest.

‘Bring the Queen then,’ he said sullenly. ‘It is she whom Cyrgon would behold.’

‘Wise decision, Ekatas,’ Zalasta said sardonically. ‘if you keep making the right choices, you might even live for a little while longer.’

Ehlana took her cloak and gently covered Alcan with it. Then she turned to face the three men. ‘Let’s get on with this,’ she told them, mustering some remnant of her royal manner. Santheocles rose woodenly to his feet and put on his highcrested helmet, taking great pains to avoid mussing his carefully arranged hair.

He spent several moments buckling on his large round shield, and then he drew his sword.

‘What an ass,’ Ehlana noted scornfully. ‘Are you really sure you should trust His Majesty with anything sharp, though? He might hurt himself with it, you know.’

‘It is customary, woman,’ Ekatas replied stiffly. ‘Prisoners are always kept under close guard.’

‘Ah,’ she murmured, ‘and we must obey the dictates of custom, mustn’t we, Ekatas? When custom rules, thought is unnecessary.’

Zalasta smiled faintly. ‘I believe you wanted to take us to the temple, Ekatas. Let’s not keep Cyrgon waiting.’

Ekatas choked back a retort, jerked the door open and led them out into the chilly hallway. The stairs that descended from the top-most tower of the royal palace were narrow and steep, endless stairs winding down and down. Ehlana was trembling by the time they reached the courtyard below. The winter sun was very bright in that broad courtyard, but there was not much heat to it. They crossed the flagstoned courtyard to the pale temple, a building constructed not of marble but of chalky limestone.

Unlike marble, the limestone had a dull, unreflective surface, and the temple looked somehow diseased, leprous. They mounted the stairs to the portico and entered through a rude doorway. Ehlana had expected it to be dark inside this holy of Holies, but it was not. She stared with a certain apprehensive astonishment at the source of the light even as Ekatas and Santheocles prostrated themselves, crying in unison,

‘Vnet, Akor. Yala Cyrgon!’

And then it was that the Queen understood the significance of that ubiquitous emblem that marked virtually everything here in the Hidden City. The white square represented the blocky altar set in the

precise center of the temple, but the flame that burned atop that altar was no stylized representation. It was instead an actual fire that twisted and flared, reaching hungrily upward. Ehlana was suddenly afraid.

The fire burning on the altar was not some votive offering, but a living flame, conscious, aware, and possessed of an unquenchable will. Bright as the sun, Cyrgon himself burned eternal on his pale altar.

‘No,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘We’d better not. Let’s just sit tight at least until Xanetia has the chance to winnow through a few minds. We can always come back and deal with Scarpa and his friends later.

Right now we need to know where Zalasta’s taking

Ehlana and Alcan.’

‘We already know,’ Kalten said. ‘They’re going to Cyrga.’

‘That’s the whole point,’ the now-visible Ulath told him. ‘We don’t know where Cyrga is.’

They had gone back into the vine-choked ruins and had gathered on the second floor of a semi-intact palace to consider options.

‘Aphrael has a general idea,’ Kalten said. ‘Can’t we just start out for central Cynesga and do some poking around when we get there?’

‘I don’t think that’d do much good,’ Bevier pointed out. ‘Cyrgon’s been concealing the place with illusions for the past ten eons. We could probably walk right through the streets of the city and not even see it.’

‘He’s not hiding it from everybody,’ Caalador mused. ‘There are messages going back and forth, so somebody here in Natayos has to know the way. Sparhawk’s right. Why don’t we let Xanetia do the poking around here, instead of the lot of us going off into the desert to dodge scorpions and snakes while we turn over pebbles and grains of sand?’

‘We stay here then?’ Tynian asked.

‘For the time being,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Let’s not do anything to attract attention until we find out what Xanetia can discover. That’s our best option at the moment.’

‘We were so close.’ Kalten fumed. ‘if we’d just gotten here a day or two earlier.’

‘Well we didn’t,’ Sparhawk said flatly, forcing back his own disappointment and frustration. ‘So let’s make the best of it and salvage what we can.’

‘With Zalasta getting further and further away with every minute,’ Kalten added bitterly.

‘Don’t worry, Kalten,’ Sparhawk told him in a tone as cold as death. ‘Zalasta can’t run far enough or fast enough to get away from me when I decide to go after him.’

‘Are you busy, Sarabian?’ Empress Elysoun asked tentatively from the doorway of the blue-draped room.

‘Not really, Elysoun,’ he sighed. ‘Just brooding. I’ve had a great deal of bad news in the last day or so.’

‘I’ll come back some other time. You’re not much fun when you’ve got things on your mind.’

‘Is that all there is in the world, Elysoun?’ he asked her sadly.

‘Only fun?’ Her sunny expression tightened slightly, and she stepped into the room. ‘That’s what you married us for in the first place, wasn’t it, Sarabian?’ She spoke in crisp Tamul that was not at all like her usual relaxed Valesian dialect. ‘Our marriages to you were to cement political alliances, so we’re here as symbols, playthings, and ornaments. We’re certainly not a part of the government.’

He was rather startled by her perception and by the sudden change in her. It was easy to underestimate Elysoun. Her single-minded pursuit of pleasure and the aggressively revealing nature of her native dress proclaimed her to be an empty-headed sensualist, but this was a completely different Elysoun. He looked at her with new interest. ‘What have you been up to lately, my love?’ he asked her fondly.

‘The usual,’ she shrugged.

He averted his eyes. ‘Please don’t do that.’

‘Do what?’

‘Bounce that way. It’s very distracting.’

‘It’s supposed to be. You don’t think I dress this way because I’m too lazy to put on clothes, do you?’

‘Is that why you came by? For fun? Or was there something more tedious?’

They had never talked this way before, and her sudden frankness intrigued him.

‘Let’s talk about the tedious things first,’ she said. She looked at him critically. ‘You need to get more sleep,’ she chided.

‘I wish I could. I’ve got too much on my mind.’

‘I’ll have to see what I can do about that.’ She paused. ‘There’s something going on in the Women’s Palace, Sarabian.’

‘Oh?’

‘A lot of strangers have been mingling with the assorted lapdogs and toadies that litter the halls.’

He laughed. ‘That’s a blunt way to describe courtiers.’

‘Aren’t they? There’s not a real man among them. They’re in the palace to help us with our schemes. You did know that we spend our days plotting against each other, didn’t you?’

He shrugged. ‘It gives you all something to do in your spare time.’

‘That’s the only kind of time we have, my husband. All of our time is spare time, Sarabian, that’s what’s wrong with us. Anyway, these strangers aren’t attached to any of the established courts.’

‘Are you sure?’

Her answering smile was wicked. ‘Trust me. I’ve had dealings with all the regular ones. They’re all little more than butterflies. These strangers are wasps.’

He gave her an amused look. ‘Have you actually winnowed your way through all the courtiers in the Women’s Palace?’

‘More or less.’ She shrugged again - quite deliberately, he thought. ‘Actually it was rather boring.

Courtiers are a tepid lot, but it was a way to keep track of what was going on.’

‘Then it wasn’t entirely - ?’

‘A little, perhaps, but I have to take steps to protect myself. Our politics are subtle, but they’re very savage.’

‘Are these strangers Tamuls?’

‘Some are. Some aren’t.’

‘How long has this been going on?’ ‘Since we all moved back to the Women’s Palace. I didn’t see any of these wasps when we were all living here with the Elenes.’

‘Just the past few weeks then?’

She nodded. ‘I thought you should know. It could be just more of the same kind of thing that’s been going on for years, but I don’t really think so. It feels different somehow. Our politics are more indirect than yours, and what’s happening in the

Women’s Palace is men’s politics.’

‘Do you suppose you could keep an eye on it for me? I’d be grateful.’

‘Of course, my husband. I am loyal, after all.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Don’t make that mistake, Sarabian. Loyalty shouldn’t be confused with that other business. That doesn’t mean anything Loyalty does.’

‘There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye, Elysoun.’

‘Oh? I’ve never tried to conceal anything.’ She inhaled deeply.

He laughed again. ‘Do you have plans for this evening?’

‘Nothing that can’t be put off until some other time. What did you have in mind?’

‘I thought we might talk a while.’

‘Talk?’

‘Among other things.’

‘Let me send a message first. Then we can talk for as long as you like - among those other things you mentioned.’

They were two days out of Tiara on their way around the west end of the lake on the road to Arjuna.

They had camped on the lake-shore some distance from the road, and Khalad had shot a deer with his crossbow.

‘Camp-meat,’ he explained to Berit as he skinned the animal. ‘It saves time and money.’

‘You’re really very good with that crossbow,’ Berit said.

Khalad shrugged. ‘Practice,’ he replied. Then his head came up sharply. ‘Company coming.’ He pointed toward the road with his knife.

‘Alunir’ Berit noted, squinting at the approaching riders.

‘Not all of them,’ Khalad disagreed. ‘The one in front’s an Bene - an Edomishman judging from his clothes.’

Khalad wiped his bloody hands on the long grass, picked up his crossbow and re-cocked it.

‘Just to be on the safe side,’ he explained. ‘They do know who we really are, after all.’

Berit nodded bleakly and loosened his sword in its scabbard.

The riders reined in about fifty yards away.

‘Sir Sparhawk?’ the Edomishman called out in Elenic.

‘Maybe,’ Berit called back. ‘What can I do for you, neighbor?’

‘I have a message for you.’

‘I’m touched. Bring it on in.’

‘Come alone,’ Khalad added. ‘You won’t need your bodyguards.’

‘I’ve heard about what you did to the last messenger.’

‘Good,’ Khalad replied. ‘We sort of intended for word of that to get around. The fellow had a little trouble being civil, but I’m sure you have better manners. Come ahead. You’re safe - as long as you’re polite.’

The Edomishman still hesitated.

‘Friend,’ Khalad said pointedly, ‘you’re well within range of my crossbow, so you’d better do as I tell you. Just come on in alone. We’ll conduct our business, and then you and your Arjuni friends can be on your way. Otherwise, this might turn unpleasant. ’

The Edomishman conferred briefly with his bodyguards and then rode cautiously forward, holding a folded parchment above his head. ‘I’m not armed,’ he announced.

‘That’s not very prudent, neighbor,’ Berit told him. ‘These are troubled times. Let’s have the note.’

The messenger lowered his arm slowly and extended the parchment. ‘The plans have changed, Sir Sparhawk,’ he said politely.

‘Astonishing.’ Berit opened the parchment and gently took out the lock of identifying hair. ‘This is only about the third time. You fellows seem to be having some difficulty making up your minds.’ He looked at the parchment. ‘That’s accommodating. somebody even drew a map this time.’

‘The village isn’t really very well-known,’ the Edomishman explained. ‘It’s a tiny place that wouldn’t even be there if it weren’t for the slave-trade.’

‘You’re a very good messenger, friend,’ Khalad told him.

‘Would you like to carry a word back to Krager for me?’

‘I’ll try, young Master.’

‘Good. Tell him that I’m coming after him. He should probably start looking back over his shoulder, because no matter how this turns out, one day I’ll be there.’

The Edomishman swallowed hard. ‘I’ll tell him, young Master.’

‘I’d appreciate it.’

The messenger carefully backed his horse off a few yards and then rode off to rejoin his Arjuni escort.

‘Well?’ Khalad asked.

‘Vigayo - over in Cynesga.’

‘It’s not much of a town.’

‘You’ve been there?’

‘Briefly. Bhelliom took us there by mistake when Sparhawk was practicing with it.’

‘How far is it from here?’

‘About a hundred leagues. It’s in the right direction, though. Aphrael said that Zalasta’s taking the Queen

to Cyrga, so Vigayo’s got to be closer than Arjun. Pass the word, Berit. Tell Aphrael that we’ll start out first thing in the morning. Then you can come and help me cut up this deer. It’s ten days to Vigayo, so we’re probably going to need the meat.’

‘He hath been there,’ Xanetia told them. ‘His memories of the Hidden City are vivid, but his recollection of the route is imprecise. I could glean no more than disconnected impressions of the journey. His madness hath bereft his thought of coherence, and his mind doth flit from reality to illusion and back without purpose or direction.’

‘I’d say we got us a problem,’ Caalador drawled. ‘Ol’ Krager, he don’t know th’ way on accounta he wuz too drunk t’ Pay attention when Zalasta wuz a-talkin’bout how t’ git t’ Cyrga, an’ Scorpa’s too crazy t’

remember how he got that.’ His eyes narrowed, and he discarded the dialect. ‘What about Cyzada?’ he asked Xanetia.

She shuddered. ‘It is not madness nor drunkenness which doth bar my way into the thought of Cyzada of Esos,’ she replied in a voice filled with revulsion. ‘Deeply hath he reached into the darkness that was Azash, and the creatures of the netherworld have possessed him so utterly that his thought is no longer human. His spells at first did in some measure control those horrid demons, but then he did summon Klael, and in that act was all unloosed. Prithee, do not send me again into that soothing chaos. He doth indeed know a route to Cyrga, but we could in no wise follow that path, for it doth lie through the realm of sine and darkness and unspeakable horror.’

‘That more or less exhausts the possibilities of this place then, doesn’t it?’

They all turned quickly at the sound of the familiar voice. The Child Goddess sat demurely on a window-ledge holding her pipes in her hands.

‘Is this wise, Divine One?’ Bevier asked her.

‘Won’t our enemies sense your presence?’

‘There’s no one left here who can do that, Bevier,’ she replied. ‘Zalasta’s gone. I just stopped by to tell you that Berit’s received new instructions. He and Khalad are going to Vigayo, a village just on the other side of the Cynesgan border. As soon as you’re ready, I’ll take you there.’

‘What good will that do?’ Kalten asked.

‘I need to get Xanetia close to the next messenger,’ she replied. ‘Cyrga’s completely concealed - even from me. There’s a key to that illusion, and that’s what we have to find. Without that key, we could all grow old wandering around out in that wasteland and still not find the city.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Sparhawk conceded. He looked directly at her. ‘Can you arrange another meeting? We’re getting close to the end of this, and I need to talk with the others Vanion and Bergsten in particular, and probably with Betuana and Kring as well. We’ve got armies at our disposal, but they won’t be much use if they’re running off in three different directions or attacking Cyrga piecemeal. We’ve got a general idea of where the place is, and I’d like to put a ring of steel around it, but I don’t want anybody to go blundering in there until we get

Ehlana and Alcan safely out.’

‘You’re going to get me in trouble, Sparhawk,’ she said tartly. ‘Do you have any idea of the kinds of promises I’ll have to make to get permission for that kind of gathering? - and I’ll have to keep all those promises too.’

‘It’s really very important, Aphrael.’ She stuck her tongue out at him, and then she wavered and vanished.

‘Domi Tikume sent orders, your Reverence,’ the shaved-headed Peloi advised Patriarch Bergsten when they met in the churchman’s tent just outside the town of Pela in central Astel. ‘We’re to provide whatever assistance we can.’

‘Your Domi’s a good man, friend Daiya,’ the armored Patriarch replied.

‘His orders stirred up a hornet’s nest,’ Daiya said wryly. ‘The idea of an alliance with the Church Knights set off a theological debate that went on for days. Most people here in Astel believe that the Church

Knights were born and raised in Hell. A fair number of the debaters are currently taking the matter up with

God in person. ’

‘I gather that religious disputes among the Peloi are quite spirited.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Daiya agreed. ‘The message from Archimandrite Morsel helped to quiet things, though. Peloi religious thought isn’t really all that profound, your Reverence. We trust God and leave the theology to the churchmen. If the Archimandrite approves, that’s good enough for us. If he’s wrong, he’s the one who’ll burn in Hell for it.’

‘How far is it from here to Cynestra?’ Bergsten asked him.

‘About a hundred and seventy-five leagues, your Reverence.’

‘Three weeks,’ Bergsten muttered sourly. ‘Well, there’s not much we can do about that, I suppose. We’ll start out first thing in the morning. Tell your men to get some sleep, friend Daiya. It’s probably going to be in short supply for the next month or so.’

‘Bergsten.’ The voice crooning his name was light and musical.

The Thalesian Patriarch sat up quickly, reaching for his axe.

‘Oh, don’t do that, Bergsten. I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Who’s there?’ he demanded, fumbling for his candle and his flint and steel. ’

‘Here.’

A small hand emerged from the darkness with a tongue of flame dancing on its palm. Bergsten blinked.

His midnight visitor was a little girl - Styric, he guessed. She was a beautiful child with long hair and large eyes as dark as night. Bergsten’s hands started to tremble.

‘You’re Aphrael, aren’t you?’ he choked.

‘Good observation, your Grace. Sparhawk wants to see you.’

He drew back from this personage that standard Church doctrine told him did not - could not - exist.

‘You’re being silly, your Grace,’ she told him. ‘You know that I wouldn’t even be talking to you if I didn’t have permission from your God, don’t you? I can’t even come near you without permission.’

‘Well, theoretically,’ he reluctantly conceded. ‘You could be a demon, though, and the rules don’t apply to them.’

‘Do I look like a demon?’

‘Appearance and reality are two different things,’ he insisted.

Aphrael looked into his eyes and pronounced the true name of the Elene god, one of the most closely-kept secrets of the Church.

‘A demon couldn’t say that name, could it, your Grace?’

‘Well, I suppose not.’

‘We’ll get along well, Bergsten,’ she smiled, kissing him lightly on the cheek. ‘Ortzel would have argued that point for weeks. Leave your axe here, please. Steel makes my flesh crawl.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To meet with Sparhawk. I already told you that.’

‘Is it far?’

‘Not really.’ She smiled, opening the tent flap. It was still night in Pela, but it was broad daylight beyond the tent flap - a strange sort of daylight. A pristine white beach stretched down to a sapphire sea all under a rainbow-colored sky, and a small green Eyot surmounted by a gleaming alabaster temple rose from that incredibly blue sea about a half-mile from the beach.

‘What place is this!’ Bergsten asked, poking his head out of the tent and looking around in amazement.

‘I suppose you could call it Heaven, your Grace,’ the Child Goddess replied, blowing out the flame dancing on her palm.

‘It’s mine, anyway. There are others, but this one’s mine.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Everywhere and anywhere. All the Heavens are everyplace all at once. So are all the Hells, of course -

but that’s another story. Shall we go?’