The Shining Ones

  ‘You might be right, my dear,’ Sarabian agreed. ‘I’d really like to get rid of her, though. She’s irritated me since the day she was born. What are you doing back here in Matherion, Norkan?’

  One of Ambassador Norkan’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Things have changed, haven’t they, Oscagne? Are we supposed to tell him to his face what’s really going on?’

  ‘Emperor Sarabian’s decided to take charge of his own government, my friend,’ Oscagne sighed mournfully.

  ‘Isn’t that against the law?’

  ‘Afraid not, old boy.’

  ‘Would you consider accepting my resignation?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Don’t you want to work for me any more, Norkan?’ Sarabian asked.

  ‘I have nothing against you personally, your Majesty, but if you decide to actually meddle in government, the whole Empire could collapse.’

  ‘Marvelous, Norkan. I love the way you start talking before you’ve saddled up your brains. You see, Ehlana? That’s what I was telling you about. The officials in my government all expect me to smile regally, approve their recommendations without question, and leave the business of running things to them.’

  ‘How boring.’

  ‘Indeed it is, my dear, but I’m going to change it. Now that I’ve seen a real ruler in action, whole new horizons have been opened to me. You still haven’t answered my question, Norkan. What brings you back to Matherion?’

  ‘The Atans are growing restive, your Majesty.’

  ‘Are the recent disturbances starting to erode their loyalty?’

  ‘No, your Majesty, quite the reverse. The uprising has them all excited. Androl wants to move out in force to occupy Matherion in order to guarantee your safety. I don’t think we want that. The Atans don’t pay too much attention to rank or position when they decide to kill people.’

  ‘We noticed that,’ Sarabian replied dryly. ‘I’ve received all sorts of petitions of protest from the noble houses of Tamul proper as a result of the measures Engessa took to put down the coup.’

  ‘I’ve spoken with Betuana, your Majesty,’ Norkan continued. ‘She’s promised to shorten her husband’s leash until I get some instructions from you. Something short and to the point like, “Sit! Stay!” might be appropriate, considering Androl’s mental capabilities.’

  ‘How did you ever get to be a diplomat, Norkan?’

  ‘I lied a lot.’

  ‘A suggestion, Emperor Sarabian?’ Tynian offered.

  ‘Go ahead, Sir Tynian.’

  ‘We don’t really want to ruffle King Androl’s feathers, so a suggestion to him that he’s being held in place to meet a far greater threat might be preferable to just sending him to bed without any supper.’

  Sarabian laughed. ‘What a novel way to put it, Sir Tynian. All right, Norkan, send Engessa.’

  Norkan blinked.

  ‘Pay attention, man,’ Sarabian snapped.

  ‘That’s something you’ll have to get used to, Norkan,’ Oscagne advised. ‘The Emperor sometimes takes verbal shortcuts.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ Norkan thought about it. ‘Might I ask why Atan Engessa would be better qualified to carry out your instructions than I would, your Majesty?’

  ‘Because Engessa can run faster than you can, and he’ll be able to put our commands to Androl in language far more acceptable to him. There’s also the fact that using Engessa hints at a military reason for the decision, and that should smooth Androl’s feathers all the more. You can explain our real reasons to Betuana when you get back.’

  ‘You know something, Oscagne?’ Norkan said. ‘He might just work out all right after all – if we can keep him from making too many blunders right at the outset.’

  Oscagne winced.

  Sparhawk touched Vanion’s shoulder and motioned with his head. The two of them drifted back to the rear of the throne-room. ‘I’ve got a problem, Vanion,’ Sparhawk muttered.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’ve racked my brains to come up with an excuse for us to get out of Matherion for long enough to retrieve the Bhelliom, but I haven’t had a single idea that a child wouldn’t be able to see through. Ehlana’s not stupid, you know.’

  ‘No, that she isn’t.’

  ‘Aphrael won’t say anything definite, but I get the strong feeling that she wants us to sail on the same ship with Emban and Tynian, and I’m starting to run out of excuses to keep delaying their departure. Any ideas?’

  ‘Ask Oscagne to help you,’ Vanion shrugged. ‘He’s a diplomat, so lying comes second nature to him.’

  ‘Nice idea, but I can’t really tell him where we’re going and what we’re going to do when we get there, can I?’

  ‘Don’t tell him, then. Just tell him that you need a reason to be out of town for a while. Put on a gravely mysterious face and let it go at that. Oscagne’s been around for long enough to recognize the symptoms of official reticence when he sees them.’

  ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

  ‘Probably because your oath keeps getting in your way. I know that you’ve sworn to tell the truth, but that doesn’t mean that you have to tell the whole truth. You can leave things out, you know. Leaving things out is one of the perquisites of the office of Preceptor.’

  Sparhawk sighed. ‘Back to school, I see. I think I’m doomed to spend my whole life getting instructions from you – and being made to feel inadequate in the process.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for, Sparhawk.’

  ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’ Sparhawk tried very hard to keep it from sounding like an accusation.

  ‘Not yet, no,’ Princess Danae replied, carefully tying a doll’s bonnet on her cat’s head. Mmrr did not appear to care for the idea, but she endured her mistress’s little game with a look of resignation.

  ‘Why not?’ Sparhawk asked his daughter, flopping down into one of the blue armchairs in the royal apartment.

  ‘Because something might still come up to make it unnecessary. You’re not going to find Bhelliom until I decide to let you find it, father.’

  ‘You want us to sail with Tynian and Emban, though?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter. I just need Tynian with us when we first set out, that’s all.’

  ‘Then you don’t really have any set destination in mind – with that ship, I mean?’

  ‘Of course not. I just need Tynian to be along for a couple of days. We can go out to sea for a couple of leagues and then sail around in circles for two days if you want. It’s all the same to me.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said acidly.

  ‘No charge. There.’ She held up the cat. ‘Isn’t she darling in her new bonnet?’

  ‘Adorable.’

  Mmrr gave Sparhawk a flat look of pure hatred.

  ‘I can’t tell you why at the moment, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk said to Oscagne later that same day when they were alone in one of the hallways. ‘All I can say is that I need a reason to be away from Matherion with a group of nine or ten of my friends for an indeterminate period of time – several weeks or so. It has to be significant enough to convince my wife that it’s necessary, but not so serious as to worry her, and I have to sail on the same ship with Emban and Tynian.’

  ‘All right,’ Oscagne agreed. ‘How good an actor are you, Prince Sparhawk?’

  ‘I don’t think anybody’d pay money to watch me perform.’

  Oscagne let that pass. ‘I gather that this ploy is primarily intended for your wife’s benefit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it might be best if the idea of sending you off someplace came from her. I’ll maneuver her into ordering you off on some inconsequential errand, and you can take it from there.’

  ‘I’d really like to see you try to maneuver Ehlana.’

  ‘Trust me, old boy. Trust me.’

  ‘Tega?’ Sarabian asked his foreign minister incredulously. ‘The only superstition they have on the Isle
of Tega is the one that says that it’s bad luck not to raise the price of sea-shells every year.’

  ‘They’ve never mentioned it to us in the past because they were probably afraid we’d think they were being silly, your Majesty,’ Oscagne replied urbanely. Oscagne looked decidedly uncomfortable in the blue doublet and hose Sarabian had ordered him to wear. He couldn’t seem to think of anything to do with his hands, and he appeared to be very self-conscious about his bony legs. ‘The word “silly” seems to strike at the very core of the Tegan soul. They’re the stuffiest people in the world.’

  ‘I know. Gahenas, my Tegan wife, can put me to sleep almost immediately – even when we’re…’ The Emperor threw a quick look at Ehlana and left it hanging.

  ‘Tegans have raised being boring to an art form, your Majesty,’ Oscagne agreed. ‘Anyway, there’s an old Tegan myth to the effect that the oyster-beds are haunted by a mermaid. Supposedly she eats oysters, shells and all, and that really upsets the Tegans. She also seduces Tegan divers, who tend to drown during the exchange of pleasantries.’

  ‘Isn’t a mermaid supposed to be half-girl and half-fish?’ Ulath asked.

  ‘So the legend goes,’ Oscagne replied.

  ‘And isn’t she supposed to be a fish from the waist down?’

  ‘I’ve been told so, yes.’

  ‘Then how…?’ Ulath also looked quickly at Ehlana and then abruptly broke off.

  ‘How what, Sir Ulath?’ Ehlana asked him innocently.

  ‘It’s – ah – not really important, your Majesty,’ he replied with an embarrassed cough.

  ‘I wouldn’t even raise this absurd myth, your Majesties,’ Oscagne said to Sarabian and Ehlana, ‘except in the light of recent developments. The parallels between the vampires in Arjuna, the Shining Ones in southern Atan, and the werewolves, ghouls and Ogres in other parts of the Empire are really rather striking, wouldn’t you say? I’d imagine that if someone were to go to Tega and ask around, he might hear stories about some prehistoric pearl-diver who’s been resurrected and also find that some rabble-rouser’s telling the Tegans that this hero and his half-fish, half-human mistress are going to lead the oysters in a mass assault on Matherion.’

  ‘How droll,’ Sarabian murmured.

  ‘Sorry, your Majesty,’ Oscagne apologized. ‘What I’m getting at here is that we’ve probably got some relatively inexperienced conspirator on Tega. He’s just getting started, so he’s bound to make mistakes – but experienced or not, he knows a great deal about the whole conspiracy. Since our friends here won’t let us question Kolata too closely, we have to look elsewhere for information.’

  ‘We’re not being delicate about the Minister of the Interior, your Excellency,’ Kalten told him. ‘It’s just that we’ve seen what happens to prisoners who are on the verge of talking too much. Kolata’s still useful to us, but only as long as he stays in one piece. He won’t be much good if little chunks and globs of him get scattered all over the building.’

  Oscagne shuddered. ‘I’ll take your word for it, Sir Kalten. At any rate, your Majesty, if some of our Elene friends here could go to Tega and put their hands on this fellow and talk with him before our enemy can dismantle him, they could probably persuade him to tell us everything he knows. Sir Sparhawk has some ambitions along those lines, I understand. He wants to find out if he can wring somebody out hard enough to make his hair bleed.’

  ‘You have a very graphic imagination, Sparhawk,’ Sarabian noted. ‘What do you think, Ehlana? Can you spare your husband for a while? If he and some of his knights went to Tega and held the entire island under water for a couple of hours, God only knows what kind of information might come bubbling to the surface.’

  ‘That’s a very good idea, Sarabian. Sparhawk, why don’t you take some of our friends, run on down to the Isle of Tega, and see what you can find out?’

  ‘I’d really rather not be separated from you, dear,’ he replied with feigned reluctance.

  ‘That’s very sweet, Sparhawk, but we do have responsibilities, you know.’

  ‘Are you ordering me to go, Ehlana?’

  ‘You don’t have to put it that way, Sparhawk. It’s only a suggestion, after all.’

  ‘As my Queen commands,’ he sighed, putting on a melancholy expression.

  Chapter 2

  Empress Gahenas was a Tegan lady of middle years with a severe expression and tightly pursed lips. She wore a plain gray gown, buttoned to the chin, and long-sleeved gloves of scratchy wool. Her hair was drawn so tightly back into a bun that it made her eyes bulge, and her ears protruded from the sides of her head like open barn doors. Empress Gahenas disapproved of everything, that much was clear from the outset. She had come to Sparhawk’s study to provide background information on the Isle of Tega, but she did not come alone. The Empress Gahenas never went anywhere without her four chaperones, a cluster of ancient Tegan hags who perched on a varnished bench like a row of gargoyles.

  It was a warm day in early autumn, but the sunlight streaming in through the window of Sparhawk’s study seemed to grow wan and sickly when Empress Gahenas entered with the stern guardians of her virtue.

  She spent an hour lecturing Sparhawk on the gross national product of her homeland in a tone that strongly suggested that she was going to give a test at the conclusion of the lecture. Sparhawk fought to keep from yawning. He was not really interested in production figures or labor costs. What he really wanted from the jug-eared Empress were little details of ordinary life on the Isle to flesh out the series of letters he was writing to his wife – letters which were to be doled out to Ehlana to help sustain the fiction that he and his friends were tracking down ring-leaders and other conspirators who were concealed among the general population.

  ‘Ah…’ he interrupted Gahenas’s droning monologue, ‘this is absolutely fascinating, your Highness, but could we go back for a moment to the island’s form of government? That really has me baffled.’

  ‘Tega is a republic, Prince Sparhawk. Our rulers are elected to their positions every five years. It’s been that way for twenty-five centuries.’

  ‘Your officials aren’t elected for life?’

  ‘Of course not. Who would want a job like that for life?’

  ‘No one ever develops a hunger for power?’

  ‘The government has no power, Prince Sparhawk. It exists only to carry out the will of the electorate.’

  ‘Why five years?’

  ‘Because nobody wants to be away from his own affairs for longer than that.’

  ‘What happens if a man’s re-elected?’

  ‘That’s contrary to the law. No one serves more than one term in office.’

  ‘Let’s suppose somebody turned out to be an absolute genius in a particular position? Wouldn’t you want to keep him there?’

  ‘We’ve never found anyone that indispensable.’

  ‘It seems to me that the system would encourage corruption. If a man knows he’s going to be thrown out of office after five years, what’s to keep him from manipulating his official decisions to further his own interests – later on, I mean?’

  ‘Quite impossible, Prince Sparhawk. Our elected officials have no outside interests. As soon as they’re elected, everything they own is sold, and the money’s put into the national treasury. If the economy prospers during their term in office, their wealth earns them a profit. If the economy collapses, they lose everything.’

  ‘That’s absurd. No government ever makes a profit.’

  ‘Ours does,’ she said smugly, ‘and it has to be a real profit. The tax rates are set and cannot be changed, so our officials can’t generate a false profit by simply raising taxes.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to be an official in a government like that?’

  ‘Nobody wants to be, Prince Sparhawk. Most Tegans do everything they possibly can to avoid election. The fact that a man’s own personal fortune’s in the treasury forces him to work just as hard as he possibly can to make sure that the government prosper
s. Many have worked themselves to death looking after the interests of the Republic.’

  ‘I think I’d run away from an honor like that one.’

  ‘That’s really quite impossible, your Highness. Just as soon as a man’s name’s placed in nomination for a public office, he’s put under guard, and if he’s elected, he remains under close guard for his entire term. The Republic makes absolutely sure that nobody evades his responsibilities to her.’

  ‘The Republic’s a stern mistress.’

  ‘She is indeed, Prince Sparhawk, and that’s exactly the way it should be.’

  Though his companions chafed at the delay, Sparhawk put off their departure for two more days while he feverishly composed the letters to Ehlana. The progress of the fictitious investigation had to be convincing, certainly, and at least moderately interesting. Sparhawk wove false leads, plots and unsolved mysteries into his account. He became increasingly absorbed in the developing story, sometimes becoming so caught up in it that he lost sight of the fact that the events he was reporting were not actually taking place. He became rather proud of his efforts, and he began to revise extensively, adding a touch here and modifying a poorly phrased passage there, until he unwittingly crossed the line between careful artistry and sheer fussiness.

  ‘They’re good enough, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said to him after reading through the letters on the evening of the second day. Vanion was rather pointedly wearing the plain tunic and heavy riding boots Pandions customarily put on before making an extended journey.

  ‘You don’t think it’s too obvious?’

  ‘It’s fine just the way it is.’

  ‘Maybe I should rework that third letter. It seems awfully weak to me for some reason.’

  ‘You’ve written it four times already. It’s good enough.’

  ‘I’m really not happy with it, Vanion.’ Sparhawk took the offending letter from his friend and ran through it once more, automatically reaching for his pen as he read.