‘Sore. I’ve got bruises from my hips to my neck.’
‘At least you’re standing up straight.’
Kalten grunted sourly. ‘Mirtai’s very direct, isn’t she? I still don’t know exactly what to make of her. What I mean is, how are we supposed to treat her? She’s obviously a woman.’
‘You’ve noticed.’
‘Very funny, Sparhawk. What I’m getting at is the fact that you can’t really treat her like a woman. She’s as big as Ulath, and she seems to expect us to accept her as a comrade in arms.’
‘So?’
‘It’s unnatural.’
‘Just treat her as a special case. That’s what I do. It’s easier than arguing with her. Are you in the mood for a bit of advice?’
‘That depends on the advice.’
‘Mirtai feels that it’s her duty to protect the royal family, and she’s extended that to include my wife’s maid. I’d strongly recommend that you curb your instincts. We don’t fully understand Mirtai, and so we don’t know exactly how far she’ll go. Even if Alean seems to be encouraging you, I wouldn’t pursue the matter. It could be very dangerous.’
‘The girl likes me,’ Kalten objected. ‘I’ve been around long enough to know that.’
‘You might be right, but I’m not sure if that’ll make any difference to Mirtai. Do me a favour, Kalten. Just leave the girl alone.’
‘But she’s the only one on board ship,’ Kalten protested.
‘You’ll live.’ Sparhawk turned and saw Patriarch Emban and Ambassador Oscagne standing near the stern. They were an oddly matched pair. The Patriarch of Ucera had laid aside his cassock for the voyage and wore instead a brown jerkin over a plain robe. He was very nearly as wide as he was tall, and he had a florid face. Oscagne, on the other hand, was a slight man with fine bones and little flesh. His skin was a pallid bronze colour. Their minds, however, were very similar. They were both consummate politicians. Sparhawk and Kalten drifted back to join them.
‘All power comes from the throne in Tamuli, your Grace,’ Oscagne was explaining. ‘Nothing is done there except at the express instruction of the emperor.’
‘We delegate things in Eosia, your Excellency,’ Emban told him. ‘We pick a good man, tell him what we want done and leave the details up to him.’
‘We’ve tried that, and it doesn’t really work in our culture. Our religion is fairly superficial, and it doesn’t encourage the kind of personal loyalty yours does.’
‘Your emperor has to make all the decisions?’ Emban asked a bit incredulously. ‘How does he find the time?’
Oscagne smiled. ‘No, no, your Grace. Day-to-day decisions are all taken care of by custom and tradition. We’re great believers in custom and tradition. It’s one of our more serious failings. Once a Tamul moves out of those realms, he’s obliged to improvise, and that’s when he usually gets into trouble. His improvisations always seem to be guided by self-interest, for some reason. We’ve discovered that it’s best to discourage these expeditions into free decision-making. By definition, the emperor is all-wise anyway, so it’s probably best to leave these things in his hands.’
‘A standard definition isn’t always very accurate, your Excellency. “All-wise” means different things when it’s applied to different people. We have one ourselves. We like to say that the Archprelate is guided by the voice of God. There have been a number of Archprelates in the past who didn’t listen very well, though.’
‘We’ve noticed the same sort of thing, your Grace. The definition “all wise” does seem to have a wide range of meaning. To be honest with you, my friend, we’ve had some frightfully stupid emperors from time to time. We’re rather fortunate just now though. Emperor Sarabian is moderately accomplished.’
‘What’s he like?’ Emban asked intently.
‘He’s an institution, unfortunately. He’s as much at the mercy of custom and tradition as we are. He’s obliged to speak in formulas, so it’s almost impossible to get to know him.’ The ambassador smiled. ‘The visit of Queen Ehlana may just jerk him into humanity. He’ll have to treat her as an equal – for political reasons – and he was raised to believe that he didn’t have any equals. I hope your lovely blonde queen is gentle with him. I think I like him – or I would if I could get past all the formalities – and it would just be too bad if she happened to say something that stopped his heart.’
‘Ehlana knows exactly what she’s doing every minute of the day, your Excellency,’ Emban assured him. ‘You and I are babies compared to her. You don’t have to tell her I said that, Sparhawk.’
‘What’s my silence worth to you, your Grace?’ Sparhawk grinned.
Emban glowered at him for a moment. ‘What are we likely to encounter in Astel, your Excellency?’
‘Tears, probably,’ Oscagne replied.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The Astels are an emotional people. They cry at the drop of a handkerchief. Their culture is much like that of the kingdom of Pelosia. They’re tediously devout and invincibly backward. It’s been demonstrated to them over and over again that serfdom is an archaic, inefficient institution, but they maintain it anyway – largely at the connivance of the serfs themselves. Astellian nobles don’t exert themselves in any way, so they have no concept of the extent of human endurance. Their serfs take advantage of that outrageously. Astellian serfs have been known to collapse from sheer exhaustion at the very mention of such unpleasant words as “reaping” or “digging”. The weepy nobles are tender-hearted, so the serfs get away with it almost every time. Western Astel’s a silly place filled with silly people. That changes as one moves east.’
‘One would hope so. I’m not certain just how much silliness I can –’
It was that same flicker of darkness at the very edge of Sparhawk’s vision, and it was accompanied by that same chill. Patriarch Emban broke off, turning his head quickly to try to see it more clearly. ‘What –?’
‘It’ll pass,’ Sparhawk told him tersely. ‘Try to concentrate on it, your Grace, and you as well, if you don’t mind, your Excellency.’ They were seeing the shadow for the first time, and their initial reactions might be useful. Sparhawk watched them closely as they tried to turn their heads to look directly at the annoying darkness just beyond the range of sight. Then the shadow was gone.
‘All right,’ Sparhawk said crisply, ‘Exactly what did you see?’
‘I couldn’t see anything,’ Kalten told him. ‘It was like having someone trying to sneak up behind me.’ Although Kalten had seen the cloud several times, this was the first time he had encountered the shadow.
‘What was it, Sir Sparhawk?’ Ambassador Oscagne asked.
‘I’ll explain in a moment, your Excellency. Please try to remember exactly what you saw and felt.’
‘It was something dark,’ Oscagne replied, ‘very dark. It seemed to be quite substantial, but somehow it was able to move just enough to stay where I couldn’t quite see it. No matter how quickly I turned my head or moved my eyes, it was never where I could see it directly. It felt as if it were standing just behind my head.’
Emban nodded. ‘And it made me feel cold.’ He shuddered. ‘I’m still cold, as a matter of fact.’
‘It was unfriendly, too,’ Kalten added. ‘Not quite ready to attack, but very nearly.’
‘Anything else?’ Sparhawk asked them. ‘Anything at all – no matter how small.’
‘There was a peculiar odour,’ Oscagne told him.
Sparhawk looked at him sharply. He had never noticed that. ‘Could you describe it at all, your Excellency?’
‘I seemed to catch the faintest smell of tainted meat – a haunch or a side that had been left hanging for perhaps a week too long.’
Kalten grunted. ‘I caught that too, Sparhawk – just for a second, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth.’
Emban nodded vigorously. ‘I’m an expert on flavours. It was definitely rotten meat.’
‘We were sort of standing in a semi-circle,’ Sparhawk mused,
‘and we all saw – or sensed – it right behind us. Did any of you see it behind anybody else?’
They all shook their heads.
‘Would you please explain this, Sparhawk?’ Emban said irritably.
‘In just a moment, your Grace.’ Sparhawk crossed the deck to a sailor who was splicing a loop into the bight of a rope. He spoke with the tar-smeared man for a few minutes and then returned.
‘He saw it too,’ he reported. ‘Let’s spread out and talk with the rest of the sailors on deck. I’m not being deliberately secretive, gentlemen, but let’s get what information we can from the sailors before they forget the incident entirely. I’d like to know just how widespread this visitation was.’
It was about a half hour later when they gathered again near the aft companionway, and they had all begun to exhibit a kind of excitement.
‘One of the sailors heard a kind of crackling noise – like a large fire,’ Kalten reported.
‘I talked to one fellow, and he thought there was a kind of reddish tinge to the shadow,’ Oscagne added.
‘No,’ Emban disagreed. ‘It was green. The sailor I talked with said that it was definitely green.’
‘And I spoke with a man who’d just come up on deck, and he hadn’t seen or felt a thing,’ Sparhawk added.
‘This is all very interesting, Sir Sparhawk,’ Oscagne said, ‘but could you please explain it to us?’
‘Kalten already knows, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘It would appear that we’ve just been visited by the Troll-Gods.’
‘Be careful, Sparhawk,’ Emban warned, ‘you’re walking on the edge of heresy.’
‘The Church Knights are permitted to do that, your Grace. Anyway, that shadow’s followed me before, and Ehlana’s seen it too. We’d assumed it was because we were wearing the rings. The stones in the rings were fashioned from shards of the Bhelliom. The shadow seems to be a little less selective now.’
‘That’s all it is? Just a shadow?’ Oscagne asked him.
Sparhawk shook his head. ‘It can also show up as a very dark cloud, and everybody can see that.’
‘But not the things that are concealed in it,’ Kalten added.
‘Such as what?’ Oscagne asked.
Sparhawk gave Emban a quick sidelong glance. ‘It would start an argument, your Excellency, and we don’t really want to spend the morning in a theological debate, do we?’
‘I’m not all that doctrinaire, Sparhawk,’ Emban protested.
‘What would be your immediate response if I told you that humans and Trolls are related, your Grace?’
‘I’d have to investigate the condition of your soul.’
‘Then I’d probably better not tell you the truth about our cousins, wouldn’t you say? Anyway, Aphrael told us that the shadow – and later the cloud – were manifestations of the Troll-Gods.’
‘Who’s Aphrael?’ Oscagne asked.
‘We had a tutor in the Styric arts when we were novices, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk explained. ‘Aphrael is her Goddess. We thought that the cloud was somehow related to Azash, but we were wrong about that. The reddish colour and the heat that one sailor sensed was Khwaj, the God of Fire. The greenish colour and that rotten meat-smell was Ghnomb, the God of Eat.’
Kalten was frowning. ‘I thought it was just one of those things you might expect from sailors,’ he said, ‘but one fellow told me that he had some rather overpowering thoughts about women while the shadow was lurking behind him. Don’t the Trolls have a God of Mating?’
‘I think so,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Ulath would know.’
‘This is all very interesting, Sir Sparhawk,’ Oscagne said dubiously, ‘but I don’t quite see its relevance.’
‘You’ve been encountering supernatural incidents that seem to be connected to the turmoil in Tamuli, your Excellency. There’s almost exactly the same sort of disturbances cropping up in Lamorkand, and the same sort of unnatural events accompanying them. We were questioning a man who knew some things about it once, and the cloud engulfed him and killed him before he could talk. That strongly suggests some kind of connection. The shadow may have been present in Tamuli as well, but no one would have recognised it for what it really is.’
‘Zalasta was right then,’ Oscagne murmured. ‘You are the man for this job.’
‘The Troll-Gods are following you again, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘What is this strange fascination they seem to have with you? We can probably discount your looks – but then again, maybe not. They’re used to Trolls, after all.’
Sparhawk looked meaningfully at the ship rail. ‘How would you like to run alongside the ship for a while, Kalten?’
‘No, that’s all right, Sparhawk. I got all the exertion I need for the day when Mirtai decided to use me for a rug.’
The wind held, and the sky remained clear. They rounded the southern tip of Zemoch and sailed up the east coast in a northeasterly direction. Once, when Sparhawk and his daughter were standing in the bow, he decided to satisfy a growing curiosity.
‘How long have we actually been at sea, Danae?’ he asked her directly.
‘Five days,’ she replied.
‘It seems like two weeks or more.’
‘Thank you, father. Does that answer your question about how well 1 can manage time?’
‘We certainly haven’t eaten as much in five days as we would have in two weeks. Won’t our cooks get suspicious?’
‘Look behind us, father. Why do you suppose all those fish are gleefully jumping out of the water? And what are all those seagulls doing following us?’
‘Maybe they’re feeding.’
‘Very perceptive, Sparhawk, but what could possibly be out there for that many of them to eat? Unless, of course, somebody’s been throwing food to them off the aft deck.’
‘When do you do that?’
‘At night,’ she shrugged. ‘The fish are terribly grateful. I think they’re right on the verge of worshipping me.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve never been worshipped by fish before, and I don’t really speak their language very well. It’s mostly bubbles. Can I have a pet whale?’
‘No. You’ve already got a kitten.’
‘I’ll pout.’
‘It makes you look silly, but go ahead if you feel like it.’
‘Why can’t I have a whale?’
‘Because they can’t be housebroken. They don’t make good pets.’
‘That’s a ridiculous answer, Sparhawk.’
‘It was a ridiculous request, Aphrael.’
The port of Salesha at the head of the Gulf of Daconia was an ugly city that reflected the culture which had prevailed in Zemoch for nineteen hundred years. The Zemochs appeared to be confused by what had happened in their capital six years before. No matter how often they were assured that Otha and Azash were no more, they still tended to start violently at sudden loud noises, and they generally reacted to any sort of surprise by running away.
‘I’d strongly advise that we spend the night on board our ships, your Majesty,’ Stragen advised the queen after he had made a brief survey of the accommodations available in the city. ‘I wouldn’t kennel dogs in the finest house in Salesha.’
‘That bad?’ she asked.
‘Worse, my Queen.’
And so they stayed on board and set out early the following morning.
The road they followed north was truly bad, and the carriage in which the queen and her entourage rode jolted and creaked as their column wound up into the low range of mountains lying between the coast and the town of Basne. After they had been travelling for no more than an hour, Talen rode forward. As the queen’s page, it was one of the boy’s duties to carry messages for her. Talen was not alone on his horse this time, however. Sparhawk’s daughter rode behind him, her arms about his waist and her cheek resting against his back. ‘She wants to ride with you,’ Talen told Sparhawk. ‘Your wife, Emban and the ambassador are talking politics. The princess kept yawning in their faces until the queen gave her permission to g
et out of the carriage.’
Sparhawk nodded. The suddenly-acquired timidity of the Zemochs made this part of the trip fairly safe. He reached over and lifted his daughter onto Faran’s back in front of his saddle. ‘I thought you liked politics,’ he said to her after Talen had returned to his post beside the carriage.
‘Oscagne’s describing the organisation of the Tamul Empire,’ she replied. ‘I already know about that. He’s not making too many mistakes.’
‘Are you going to shrink the distance from here to Basne?’
‘Unless you enjoy long, tedious journeys through boring terrain. Faran and the other horses appreciate my shortening things up a bit, don’t you Faran?’
The big roan nickered enthusiastically.
‘He’s such a nice horse,’ Danae said, leaning back against her father’s armoured chest.
‘Faran? He’s a foul-tempered brute.’
‘That’s because you expect him to be that way, father. He’s only trying to please you.’ She rapped on his armour. ‘I’m going to have to do something about this,’ she said. ‘How can you stand that awful smell?’
‘You get used to it.’ The Church Knights were all wearing full armour, and brightly-coloured pennons snapped from their lances. Sparhawk looked around to be sure no one was close enough to overhear them. ‘Aphrael,’ he said quietly, ‘can you arrange things so that I can see real time?’
‘Nobody can see time, Sparhawk.’
‘You know what I mean. I want to see what’s really going on, not the illusion you create to keep what you’re doing a secret.’
‘Why?’
‘I like to know what’s going on, that’s all.’
‘You won’t like it,’ she warned.
‘I’m a Church Knight. I’m supposed to do things I don’t like.’
‘If you insist, father.’
He was not entirely certain what he had expected – some jerky, accelerated motion, perhaps, and the voices of his friends sounding like the twittering of birds as they condensed long conversations into little bursts of unintelligible babble. That was not what happened, however. Faran’s gait became impossibly smooth. The big horse seemed almost to flow across the ground – or, more properly, the ground seemed to flow back beneath his hooves. Sparhawk swallowed hard and looked around at his companions. Their faces seemed blank, wooden, and their eyes half-closed.