Domes of Fire

  ‘That’s a start, I suppose,’ Emban noted.

  ‘Old habits die hard, your Grace,’ Talen smirked. ‘Anyway, since you’re all dying to know, I was out in the city sort of nosing around, and I ran across an old friend. Would you believe that Krager’s here in Chyrellos?’

  PART TWO

  Astel

  Maps

  CHAPTER 7

  Komier,

  My wife’s making a state visit to Matherion in Tamuli. We’ve discovered that the present turmoil in Lamorkand is probably originating in Daresia, so we’re using Ehlana’s trip to give us the chance to go there to see what we can find out. I’ll keep you advised. I’m borrowing twenty-five Genidian Knights from your local chapterhouse to serve as a part of the honour guard.

  I’d suggest that you do what you can to keep Avin Wargunsson from cementing any permanent alliances with Count Gerrich in Lamorkand. Gerrich is rather deeply involved in some kind of grand plan that goes far beyond the borders of Lamorkand itself. Dolmant probably wouldn’t be too displeased if you, Darrellon and Abriel can contrive some excuse to go to Lamorkand and step on the fellow’s neck. Watch out for magic, though. Gerrich’s getting help from somebody who knows more than he’s supposed to. Ulath’s sending you more details.

  – Sparhawk.

  ‘Isn’t that just a little blunt, dear?’ Ehlana said, reading over her husband’s shoulder. She smelled very good.

  ‘Komier’s a blunt sort of fellow, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk shrugged, laying down his quill, ‘and I’m not really very good at writing letters.’

  ‘I noticed.’ They were in their ornate apartments in one of the Church buildings adjoining the Basilica where they had spent the day composing messages to people scattered over most of the continent.

  ‘Don’t you have letters of your own to write?’ Sparhawk asked his wife.

  ‘I’m all finished. All I really had to do was send a short note to Lenda. He knows what to do.’ She glanced across the room at Mirtai, who sat patiently snipping the tips off Mmrr’s claws. Mmrr was not taking it very well. Ehlana smiled. ‘Mirtai’s communication with Kring was much more direct. She called in an itinerant Peloi and told him to ride to Kring with her command to ride to Basne on the Zemoch-Astel border with a hundred of his tribesmen. She said that if he isn’t waiting when she gets there, she’ll take it to mean that he doesn’t love her.’ Ehlana pushed her pale blonde hair back from her brow.

  ‘Poor Kring,’ Sparhawk smiled. ‘She could raise him from the dead with a message like that. Do you think she’ll ever really marry him?’

  ‘That’s very hard to say, Sparhawk. He does have her attention, though.’

  There was a knock at the door, and Mirtai rose to let Kalten in. ‘It’s a beautiful day out there,’ the blond man told them. ‘We’ll have good weather for the trip.’

  ‘How are things coming along?’ Sparhawk asked him.

  ‘We’re just about all ready.’ Kalten was wearing a green brocade doublet, and he bowed extravagantly to the queen. ‘Actually, we are ready. About the only things happening now are the usual redundancies.’

  ‘Could you clarify that just a bit, Sir Kalten?’ Ehlana said.

  He shrugged. ‘Everyone’s going over all the things everyone else has done to make sure that nothing’s been left out.’ He sprawled in a chair. ‘We’re surrounded by busybodies, Sparhawk. Nobody seems to be able to believe that anybody else can do something right. If Emban asks me if the knights are all ready to ride about one more time, I think I’ll strangle him. He has no idea at all about what’s involved in moving a large group of people from one place to another. Would you believe that he was going to try to put all of us on one ship? Horses and all?’

  ‘That might have been just a bit crowded,’ Ehlana smiled. ‘How many ships did he finally decide on?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I still don’t know for certain how many people are going. Your attendants are all absolutely convinced that you’ll simply die without their company, my Queen. There are about forty or so who are making preparations for the trip.’

  ‘You’d better weed them out, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk suggested. ‘I don’t want to be saddled with the entire court.’

  ‘I will need a few people, Sparhawk – if only for the sake of appearances.’

  Talen came into the room. The gangly boy was wearing what he called his ‘street clothes’ – slightly mismatched, very ordinary and just this side of shabby. ‘He’s still out there,’ he said, his eyes bright.

  ‘Who?’ Kalten asked.

  ‘Krager. He’s creeping around Chyrellos like a lost puppy looking for a home. Stragen’s got people from the local thieves’ community watching him. We haven’t been able to figure out exactly what he’s up to just yet. If Martel were still alive, I’d almost say he’s doing the same sort of thing he used to do – letting himself be seen.’

  ‘How does he look?’

  ‘Worse.’ Talen’s voice cracked slightly. It was still hovering somewhere between soprano and baritone. ‘The years aren’t treating Krager very well. His eyes look like they’ve been poached in bacon grease. He looks absolutely miserable.’

  ‘I think I can bear Krager’s misery,’ Sparhawk noted. ‘He’s beginning to make me just a little tired, though. He’s been sort of hovering around the edge of my awareness for the last ten years or more – sort of like a hangnail or an ingrown toenail. He always seems to be working for the other side, but he’s too insignificant to really worry about.’

  ‘Stragen could ask one of the local thieves to cut his throat,’ Talen offered.

  Sparhawk considered it. ‘Maybe not,’ he decided. ‘Krager’s always been a good source of information. Tell Stragen that if the opportunity happens to come up, we might want to have a little chat with our old friend, though. The offer to braid his legs together usually makes Krager very talkative.’

  Ulath stopped by about a half hour later. ‘Did you finish that letter to Komier?’ he asked Sparhawk.

  ‘He has a draft copy, Sir Ulath,’ Ehlana replied for her husband. ‘It definitely needs some polish.’

  ‘You don’t have to polish things for Komier, your Majesty. He’s used to strange letters. One of my Genidian brothers sent him a report written on human skin once.’

  She stared at him. ‘He did what?’

  ‘There wasn’t anything else handy to write on. A Genidian Knight just arrived with a message for me from Komier, though. The knight’s going back to Emsat, and he can carry Sparhawk’s letter if it’s ready to go.’

  ‘It’s close enough,’ Sparhawk said, folding the parchment and dribbling candle wax on it to seal it. ‘What did Komier have to say?’

  ‘It was good news for a change. All the Trolls have left Thalesia for some reason.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘Who knows? Who cares?’

  ‘The people who live in the country they’ve gone to might be slightly interested,’ Kalten suggested.

  ‘That’s their problem,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘It’s funny, though. The Trolls don’t really get along with each other. I couldn’t even begin to guess at a reason why they’d all decide to pack up and leave at the same time. The discussions must have been very interesting. They usually kill each other on sight.’

  ‘There’s not much help I can give you, Sparhawk,’ Dolmant said gravely when the two of them met privately later that day. ‘The Church is fragmented in Daresia. They don’t accept the authority of Chyrellos, so I can’t order them to assist you.’ Dolmant’s face was careworn, and his white cassock made his complexion look sallow. In a very real sense, Dolmant ruled an empire that stretched from Thalesia to Cammoria, and the burdens of his office bore down on him heavily. The change they had all noticed in their friend in the past several years derived more likely from that than from any kind of inflated notion of his exalted station.

  ‘You’ll get more co-operation in Astel than either Edom or Daconia,’ he continued. ‘The doctrine of the Church of Astel is
very close to ours – close enough that we even recognise Astellian ecclesiastical rank. Edom and Daconia broke away from the Astellian Church thousands of years ago and went their own way.’ The Archprelate smiled ruefully. ‘The sermons in those two kingdoms are generally little more than hysterical denunciations of the Church of Chyrellos – and of me personally. They’re anti-hierarchical, much like the Rendors. If you should happen to go into those two kingdoms, you can expect the Church there to oppose you. The fact that you’re a Church Knight will be held against you rather than the reverse. The children there are all taught that the Knights of the Church have horns and tails. They’ll expect you to burn churches, murder clergymen and enslave the people.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can to stay away from those places, Sarathi,’ Sparhawk assured him. ‘Who’s in charge in Astel?’

  ‘The Archimandrite of Darsas is nominally the head of the Astellian Church. It’s an obscure rank approximately the equivalent of our “patriarch”. The Church of Astel’s organised along monastic lines. They don’t have a secular clergy there.’

  ‘Are there any other significant differences I should know about?’

  ‘Some of the customs are different – liturgical variations primarily. I doubt that you’ll be asked to conduct any services, so that shouldn’t cause any problems. It’s probably just as well. I heard you deliver a sermon once.’

  Sparhawk smiled. ‘We serve in different ways, Sarathi. Our Holy Mother didn’t hire me to preach to people. How do I address the Archimandrite of Darsas – in case I meet him?’

  ‘Call him “your Grace”, the same as you would a patriarch. He’s an imposing man with a huge beard, and there’s nothing in Astel that he doesn’t know about. His priests are everywhere. The people trust them implicitly, and they all submit weekly reports to the Archimandrite. The Church has enormous power there.’

  ‘What a novel idea.’

  ‘Don’t mistreat me, Sparhawk. Things haven’t been going very well for me lately.’

  ‘Would you be willing to listen to an assessment, Dolmant?’

  ‘Of me personally? Probably not.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking about that. You’re too old to change, I expect. I’m talking about your policies in Rendor. Your basic idea was good enough, but you went at it the wrong way.’

  ‘Be careful, Sparhawk. I’ve sent men to monasteries permanently for less than that.’

  ‘Your policy of reconciliation with the Rendors was very sound. I spent ten years down there, and I know how they think. The ordinary people in Rendor would really like to be reconciled with the Church – if for no other reason than to get rid of all the howling fanatics out in the desert. Your policy is good, but you sent the wrong people there to carry it out.’

  ‘The priests I sent are all experts in doctrine, Sparhawk.’

  ‘That’s the problem. You sent doctrinaire fanatics down there. All they want to do is punish the Rendors for their heresy.’

  ‘Heresy is a sort of problem, Sparhawk.’

  ‘The heresy of the Rendors isn’t theological, Dolmant. They worship the same God we do, and their body of religious belief is identical to ours. The disagreements between us are entirely in the field of Church government. The Church was corrupt when the Rendors broke away from us. The members of the Hierocracy were sending relatives to fill Church positions in Rendor, and those relatives were parasitic opportunists who were far more interested in lining their own purses than caring for the souls of the people. When you get right down to it, that’s why the Rendors started murdering primates and priests – and they’re doing it for exactly the same reason now. You’ll never reconcile the Rendors to the Church if you try to punish them. They don’t care who’s governing our Holy Mother. They’ll never see you personally, my friend, but they will see their local priest – probably every day. If he spends all his time calling them heretics and tearing the veils off their women, they’ll kill him. It’s as simple as that.’

  Dolmant’s face was troubled. ‘Perhaps I have blundered,’ he admitted. ‘Of course if you tell anybody I said that, I’ll deny it.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘All right, what should I do about it?’

  Sparhawk remembered something then. ‘There’s a Vicar in a poor church in Borrata,’ he said. ‘He’s probably the closest thing to a saint I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t even get his name. Berit knows what it is though. Disguise some investigators as beggars and send them down to Cammoria to observe him. He’s exactly the kind of man you need.’

  ‘Why not just send for him?’

  ‘He’d be too tongue-tied to speak to you, Sarathi. He’s what they had in mind when they coined the word “humble”. Besides, he’d never leave his flock. If you order him to Chyrellos and then send him to Rendor, he’ll probably die within six months. He’s that kind of man.’

  Dolmant’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘You trouble me, Sparhawk,’ he said. ‘You trouble me. That’s the ideal we all had when we took holy orders.’ He sighed. ‘How did we all get so far away from it?’

  ‘You got too much involved in the world, Dolmant,’ Sparhawk told him gently. ‘The Church has to live in the world, but the world corrupts her much faster than she can redeem it.’

  ‘What’s the answer to that problem, Sparhawk?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, Sarathi. Maybe there isn’t any.’

  ‘Sparhawk.’ It was his daughter’s voice, and it was somehow inside his head. He was passing through the nave of the Basilica, and he quickly knelt as if in prayer to cover what he was really doing.

  ‘What is it, Aphrael?’ he asked silently.

  ‘You don’t have to genuflect to me, Sparhawk.’ Her voice was amused.

  ‘I’m not. If they catch me walking through the corridors holding long conversations with somebody who isn’t there, they’ll lock me up in an asylum.’

  ‘You look very reverential in that position, though. I’m touched.’

  ‘Was there something significant, or are you just amusing yourself?’

  ‘Sephrenia wants to talk with you again.’

  ‘All right. I’m in the nave right now. Come down and meet me here. We’ll go up to the cupola again.’

  ‘I’ll meet you up there.’

  ‘There’s only one stairway leading up there, Aphrael. We have to climb it.’

  ‘You might have to, but I don’t. I don’t like going into the nave, Sparhawk. I always have to stop and talk with your God, and He’s so tedious most of the time.’

  Sparhawk’s mind shuddered back from the implications of that.

  The dried-out wooden stairs circling up to the top of the dome still shrieked their protest as Sparhawk mounted. It was a long climb, and he was winded when he reached the top.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Danae asked him. She wore a simple white smock. It was a little-girl sort of dress, so no one seemed to even notice that its cut was definitely Styric.

  ‘You enjoy saying things like that to me, don’t you?’ Sparhawk accused.

  ‘I’m only teasing, father,’ she laughed.

  ‘I hope no one saw you coming up here. I don’t think the world’s ready for a flying princess just yet.’

  ‘No one saw me, Sparhawk. I’ve done this before, you know. Trust me.’

  ‘Do I have any choice? Let’s get to work. I’ve still got a lot left to do today if we’re going to leave tomorrow morning.’

  She nodded and sat cross-legged near one of the huge bells. She lifted her face again and raised that flute-like trill. Then her voice drifted off, and her face went blank.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Sephrenia asked, opening Danae’s eyes to stare at her pupil.

  He sighed. ‘If you two don’t stop that, I’m going to go into another line of work.’

  ‘Has Aphrael been teasing you again?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course she has. Did you know that she can fly?’

  ‘I’ve never seen her do it, but I’d assumed she could.’


  ‘What did you want to see me about?’

  ‘I’ve been hearing disturbing rumours. The northern Atans have been seeing some very large, shaggy creatures in the forests near their north coast.’

  ‘So that’s where they went.’

  ‘Don’t be cryptic, dear one.’

  ‘Komier sent word to Ulath. It seems that the Trolls have all left Thalesia.’

  ‘The Trolls!’ she exclaimed. ‘They wouldn’t do that! Thalesia’s their ancestral home!’

  ‘Maybe you’d better go tell the Trolls about that. Komier swears that there’s not a single one of them left in Thalesia.’

  ‘Something very, very strange is going on here, Sparhawk.’

  ‘Ambassador Oscagne said more or less the same thing. Can the Styrics there at Sarsos make any sense out of it yet?’

  ‘No. Zalasta’s at his wits’ end.’

  ‘Have you come up with any idea at all of who’s behind it?’

  ‘Sparhawk, we don’t even know what’s behind it. We can’t even make a guess about the species of whatever it is.’

  ‘We sort of keep coming back to the idea that it’s the Troll-Gods again. Something had to have enough authority over the Trolls to command them to leave Thalesia, and that points directly at the Troll Gods. Are we absolutely sure that they haven’t managed to get loose?’

  ‘It’s not a good idea to discount any possibility when you’re dealing with Gods, Sparhawk. I don’t know the spell Ghwerig used when he put them inside the Bhelliom, so I don’t know if it can be broken.’

  ‘Then it is possible.’

  ‘That’s what I just said, dear one. Have you seen that shadow – or the cloud – lately?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Has Aphrael ever seen it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She could tell you, but I’d rather not have her exposed to whatever it is. Perhaps we can come up with a way to lure it out when you get here so that I can take a look at it. When are you leaving?’