Faran tensed, bunching his muscles, and the sound of his steel-shod hooves altered very slightly, becoming somehow more crisp, more deliberate. Sparhawk touched the big roan’s neck with one hand. ‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll let you know when the time comes.’
Faran shuddered, absently flicking his master’s reassurance off like a bothersome insect and continuing his cautious pace.
Vanion looked at his friend questioningly.
‘Faran’s being a little sensitive, my Lord.’
‘Sensitive? That ill-tempered brute?’
‘Faran doesn’t really deserve that reputation, Vanion. When you get right down to it, he’s a good-natured horse. He tries very hard to please me. We’ve been together for so long that he knows what I’m feeling most of the time, and he goes out of his way to match his attitude to mine. I’m the one who’s the ill-tempered brute, but he gets all the blame. He behaves like a puppy when Aphrael’s riding on his back.’
‘Are you feeling belligerent just now?’
‘I don’t like being led around by the nose, but it’s nothing specific. You’ve overtrained me, Vanion. Any time anything unusual comes up, I start getting ready for war. Faran can feel that, so he does the same.’
Xanetia and Kalten were leading them across the meadow that sloped down toward the glowing lake and the strangely alien town nestled on the near shore. The pale Delphaeic woman still glowed with that eerie light. The radiance surrounding her seemed to Sparhawk’s heightened senses to be almost a kind of aura, a mark more of a special kind of grace rather than a loathsome contamination.
‘It’s all one building, did you notice that?’ Talen was saying to his brother. ‘It looks like any other city from a distance, but when you get closer, you start to see that the houses are all connected together.’
Khalad grunted. ‘It’s a stupid idea,’ he said. ‘A fire could burn out the whole town.’
‘The buildings are made of stone. They won’t burn.’
‘But the roofs are thatch, and thatch will burn. It’s a bad idea.’
Delphaeus had no separate wall as such. The outermost houses, all interconnected, turned their backs to the world, facing inward with their windowless rear walls presented to the outside. Sparhawk and the others followed Xanetia through a large, deep archway into the city. There was a peculiar fragrance about Delphaeus, a scent of new-mown hay. The streets were narrow and twisting, and they frequently ran through the buildings, passing under heavy arches into vaulted corridors which emerged again on the far side. As Talen had noted, Delphaeus was all one building, and what would have been called streets in another town were simply unroofed hallways here.
The citizens did not avoid them, but they made no particular effort to approach. Like pale ghosts they drifted through the shadowy maze.
‘No torches,’ Berit noted, looking around.
‘No need,’ Ulath grunted.
‘Truly,’ the young knight agreed. ‘Notice how it changes the smell of the place? Even Chyrellos always reeks of burning pitch – even in the daytime. It’s a little strange to be in a city that doesn’t have that greasy smoke clinging to everything.’
‘I don’t think the world at large is ready for selfilluminating people yet, Berit. It’s an idea that probably won’t catch on – particularly in view of the drawbacks attached to it.’
‘Where are we going, Lady?’ Kalten asked the pale, glowing woman at his side. Kalten’s situation was a peculiar one. He guarded and protected Xanetia. He was solicitous about her comfort and well-being. He would, however, be the one who would kill her at the first sign of hostility from her people.
‘We go to the quarters of the Anari,’ Xanetia replied. ‘It is he who must place our proposal before Anakha. Anakha holds the keys to Bhelliom, and only he can command it.’
‘You could have saved the rest of us a lot of trouble and made this trip alone, Sparhawk,’ Talen said lightly.
‘Maybe, but it’s always nice to have company. Besides, if you hadn’t come along, you’d have missed all the fun. Look at how entertaining it was to jump off that cliff and lounge around in mid-air with about a thousand feet of absolute emptiness under you.’
‘I’ve been trying very hard to forget about that, my Lord,’ the boy replied with a pained expression.
They dismounted in one of those vaulted corridors near the center of the city, and turned their horses over to several young Delphae. The young men looked to Sparhawk like goatherds who had been pressed into service as stable-boys. Then they followed the glowing woman to a dark-stained door, worn with centuries of use. Sparhawk, still in the grip of that emotionless calm, looked rather carefully at Xanetia. She was not much bigger than Sephrenia, and, although she was clearly a woman and quite an attractive one, that fact somehow had no meaning. Xanetia’s gender seemed irrelevant. She opened the worn door and led them into a hallway with deeply inset doorways piercing the walls at widely spaced intervals. The hallway was lighted by glass globes hanging on long chains from the vaulted ceiling, globes filled with a glowing liquid – water drawn from the lake, Sparhawk surmised.
At the far end of the corridor, Xanetia paused in front of one of the doors, and her eyes grew distant for a moment. ‘Cedon bids us to enter,’ she said after a brief pause. She opened the door, and with Kalten close behind her, she led them into the chambers beyond. ‘The hall of Cedon, Anari of the Delphae,’ she told them in that peculiarly echoing voice that seemed to be one of the characteristics of her race.
Three worn stone steps led down into the central chamber, a tidy room with vaulted ceilings supported by low, heavy arches. The slightly inwardly curving walls were covered with white plaster, and the low, heavy furniture was upholstered with snowy lamb’s-wool. A small fire burned in an arched fireplace at the far end of the room, and more of those glowing globes hung from the ceiling.
Sparhawk felt like a crude, barbaric intruder here. Cedon’s home reflected a gentle, saintly nature, and the big Pandion was acutely conscious of his chain-mail shirt and the heavy broadsword belted at his waist. He felt bulky and out of place, and his companions, wrapped in steel and leather and rough, gray cloth, seemed to loom around him like the crude monoliths of an ancient and primitive culture.
A very old man entered from the far side of the room. He was frail and bent, and his shuffling steps were aided by a long staff. His hair was wispy and snowy-white, in his case the mark of extreme age rather than a racial characteristic. In addition to his unbleached wool robe he wore a kind of shawl about his thin shoulders.
Xanetia went to him immediately, touching his wrinkled old face with a gentle hand. Her eyes were full of concern for him, but she did not speak.
‘Well met, Sir Knights,’ the old man greeted them. He spoke in only slightly accented Elenic, and his voice sounded thin and rusty as if he seldom had occasion to speak at all. ‘And welcome to thee as well, dear sister,’ he added, speaking to Sephrenia in nearly flawless, though archaic, Styric.
‘I am not your sister, old man,’ she said, her face cold.
‘We are all brothers and sisters, Sephrenia of Ylara, High Priestess of Aphrael. Our kinship lies in our common humanity.’
‘That may have been true once, Delphae,’ she replied in a voice like ice, ‘but you and your accursed race are no longer human.’
He sighed. ‘Perhaps not. It is hard to say precisely what we are – or what we will become. Put aside thine enmity, Sephrenia of Ylara. Thou wilt come to no harm in this place, and for once, our purposes merge into one. Thou wouldst set us apart from the rest of mankind, and that is now also our desire. May we not join our efforts to achieve this end?’
She turned her back on him.
Itagne, ever the diplomat, stepped in to fill the awkward gap. ‘Cedon, I presume?’ he said urbanely.
The old man nodded.
‘I find Delphaeus puzzling, revered one, I must confess it. We Tamuls know virtually nothing about your people, and yet the Delphae have been cent
ral to a grossly affected genre in our literature. I’ve always felt that this so-called “Delphaeic literature” had been spun out of whole cloth by third-rate poets with diseased imaginations. Now I come to Delphaeus and find that all manner of things I had believed to be literary conceits have more than a little basis in fact.’ Itagne was smooth, there was no question about that. His assertion that he was even more clever than his brother, the Foreign Minister, was probably quite true.
The Anari smiled faintly. ‘We did what we could, Itagne of Matherion. I will grant thee that the verse is execrable and the sentimentality appalling, but “Xadane” did serve the purpose for which it was created. It softened and turned aside certain of the antagonisms the Styrics had planted in your society. The Tamuls control the Atans, and we did not wish a confrontation with our towering neighbors. I cringe to confess it to thee, but I myself played no small part in the composition of “Xadane”.’
Itagne blinked. ‘Cedon, are we talking abut the same poem? The “Xadane” I studied as a schoolboy was written about seven hundred years ago.’
‘Has it been so long? Where do the years go? I did enjoy my stay in fire-domed Matherion. The university was stimulating.’
Itagne was too well trained to show his astonishment. ‘Your features are Tamul, Cedon, but didn’t your coloration seem – odd?’
‘Ye Tamuls are far too civilized to make an issue of deformity. My racial characteristics were simply taken to mean that I was an albino. The condition is not unheard of. I had a colleague – a Styric – who had a club-foot. Rather surprisingly, we got on well together. I note from thy speech that contemporary Tamul hath changed from what it was when I was last among thy people. That would make it difficult for me to return to Matherion. Please accept my apologies for “Xadane”. It is truly abominable, but as I say, it served its purpose.’
‘I should have known,’ Sephrenia cut in. ‘The whole body of Delphaeic literature was created with the sole purpose of fostering a climate of anti-Styric bigotry.’
‘And what was the purpose of the eons of outright falsehood with which ye Styrics deceived the Tamuls?’ Cedon demanded. ‘Was the design not precisely the same? Did you not seek to instil the idea in the Tamul perception that the Delphae are sub-human?’
Sephrenia ignored the question. ‘Does your hatred of us run so deep that you would contaminate the understanding of an entire race?’
‘And how deeply doth thy hatred run, Sephrenia of Ylara? Art thou not even now attempting to poison the minds of these simple Elenes against us?’ The Anari sank into a cushioned chair, passing one weary hand across his face. ‘Our mutual hatreds have gone, methinks, too far to be healed. Better far that we live apart. And that doth bring us to the issue which hath brought us together. It is our wish to be apart from all others.’
‘Because you’re so much better than the rest of us?’ Sephrenia’s tone was thick with contempt.
‘Not better, Priestess, only different. We will leave that puffed-up sense of superiority to thy race.’
‘If you two want to renew a few eons-old hatreds, I think the rest of us would prefer not to sit through it,’ Vanion said coolly. ‘You both seem quite able to manage without our help.’
‘You don’t know what they’ve done, Vanion,’ Sephrenia said with a mute appeal in her eyes.
‘Frankly, dear, I’m not really interested in what happened several thousand years ago. If you want to chew old soup, please do it on your own time.’ Vanion looked at the ancient Delphae. ‘I believe you had some kind of an exchange in mind, Cedon. We’d love to sit around and watch you and Sephrenia slice each other into thin strips, but we’re a little pressed for time. Affairs of state, you understand.’
Even Sparhawk choked a bit on that.
‘Thou art very blunt, Lord Vanion,’ Cedon said in a coldly reproving tone.
‘I’m a soldier, revered Anari. A conversation made up of spiteful little insults bores me. If you and Sephrenia really want to fight, use axes.’
‘Have you had many occasions to deal with Elenes, revered Anari?’ Itagne asked in an unruffled manner.
‘Almost none.’
‘You might consider offering up a few prayers of thanksgiving for that. The Elenes have this distressing tendency to get right to the point. It’s dreadfully uncivilized, of course, but it does save time. I believe you wanted to address your proposal to Anakha. That’s him right there. I should probably warn you that Lord Vanion is the absolute soul of finesse when compared to Sparhawk, but Sparhawk is Anakha, so sooner or later you’re going to have to deal with him.’
‘Since we’ve all decided to be unpleasant this evening, I don’t think we’ll get very far,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you want, Cedon, and what you’re prepared to offer in return? I’ll think it over tonight, and then we can talk about it tomorrow, after we’ve all had time to get a firmer grip on our civility.’
‘A wise course, perhaps, Anakha,’ the old man agreed. ‘There is turmoil afoot in Tamuli.’
‘Yes. We’ve noticed that.’
‘The turmoil is not directed at the Empire, Anakha, but at thee. Thou wert lured here because thou hast the keys to Bhelliom. Thine enemies covet the jewel.’
‘We know that too. I don’t really need a preamble, Cedon. What’s the point of this?’
‘We will aid thee in thy struggle, and I do assure thee that without our aid, thou canst not prevail.’
‘You’ll have to convince me of that, but we can talk about it some other time. What do you want in return?’
‘We would have thee take up Bhelliom and seal us in this valley.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That is all we ask. Put us beyond the reach of all others, and put all others beyond our reach. All will be served by this – Elene and Tamul, Styric and Delphae. Use the infinite power of Bhelliom to set us apart from the rest of mankind so that we may continue our journey undisturbed.’
‘Journey?’
‘A figure of speech, Anakha. Our journey is measured in generations, not in leagues.’
‘An even exchange, then? You’ll help us to deal with our enemies if I close off this valley so that no one can ever get in – or out?’
‘An even exchange, Anakha.’
‘All right. I’ll think about it.’
‘She won’t talk to me about it, Sparhawk,’ Vanion sighed, ‘or about anything else, for that matter.’ The silvery-haired Preceptor and his friend were speaking privately in a small room just off the corridor that led to the cluster of tiny, cell-like rooms where they had spent the night.
‘You were just a bit blunt last night,’ Sparhawk told him.
‘Irrational behavior irritates me. I wish Aphrael were here. She could straighten Sephrenia out in fairly short order.’
Sparhawk slid lower in his chair. ‘I’m not so sure, Vanion. I don’t know if I’m supposed to tell you this, but I get the feeling that Aphrael wouldn’t interfere. Before she left, she told me that Sephrenia has to work this out for herself.’
‘Could Itagne shed any light on this antagonism between the Styrics and the Delphae?’
Sparhawk shook his head. ‘No more than he’s already told us. The whole business seems to date back to the time of the war with the Cyrgai. That was about ten thousand years ago, so history’s a little vague about what really happened. Evidently the Styrics and the Delphae were allies, and there seems to have been a betrayal of some sort.’
‘I gathered as much. Can Itagne make any guesses about who was betrayed?’
‘No. The Styrics have made themselves useful to the Tamuls over the centuries – in much the same way as they made themselves useful to the Church in Eosia. They’ve been busy insinuating their version of what happened into the Tamul perception of history. From what Cedon told us last night, I’d say that the Delphae have infiltrated the University of Matherion and inserted Delphaeic literature into the Tamul culture with precisely the same idea. The events of ten thousand y
ears ago are going to be buried under a thick layer of myth and legend anyway, and with both the Styrics and the Delphae busily muddying up the waters, the real truth probably won’t ever come out into the open.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’m not sure how significant it is, but the Styrics tried to contaminate the historians, while the Delphae spent their time trying to contaminate the poets. Interesting contrast, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Aphrael would know the truth.’
‘Probably, but she’s not talking. I know her well enough to know that her silence is deliberate. I don’t think she really wants us to know who was originally at fault. She doesn’t seem to want us to take sides for some reason, and that puts us in a very difficult position. I don’t think we’ll ever find out the truth behind this racial antagonism – not that it really matters. I doubt if Sephrenia or the Anari themselves even know. They’ve both had the benefit of about four hundred generations of hysterical propaganda to set their prejudices in stone. Our problem is that the Delphae can probably hold us here indefinitely. If we try to ride away, they’ll just turn us around and lead us right back, so eventually we’re going to have to negotiate with them. We all love Sephrenia, though, so if we do negotiate with the Delphae, she’ll take fire spontaneously.’
‘Yes, I noticed that. What am I going to do, Sparhawk? I bleed when she so much as pricks her finger.’
‘Lie to her,’ Sparhawk shrugged.
‘Sparhawk!’
‘You don’t have to be too obvious about it, but lean your neutrality slightly in her direction. I’m the one in charge of Bhelliom, so Cedon’s going to have to deal with me. Technically, you’re secondary here – sorry, Vanion, but it’s true. Cedon’s going to be negotiating with me, not you. Glare at me now and then and raise objections. Sephrenia’s behaving irrationally, so the others, like good, logical Elenes, are going to oppose her. Let’s not isolate her entirely. You’re the most important person in her life, and if you seem to be turning against her as well, you’ll break her heart.’ He smiled a bit wryly. ‘I’d take it as a personal favor, though, if you didn’t let her turn me into a toad about midway through the negotiations.’