‘Good God!’ Berit exclaimed, staring at the horror all around them. What had seemed to be round white rocks by the faint light of the stars were revealed as bleached skulls, nesting in jumbles of bones and staring in mute accusation at the heavens.
‘It looks as if we’ve come to the right place,’ Khalad observed. ‘The note Sparhawk left us talked about a “Plain of Bones”.’
‘It goes on forever!’ Berit gasped, looking off toward the west.
‘Let’s hope not. We have to cross it.’ Khalad stopped, peering intently toward the west. ‘There it is,’ he said, pointing at a gleaming spot of reflected light in the center of a low range of dark hills some distance beyond the ghastly plain.
‘There what is?’
‘Our landmark. Sparhawk called it the “Pillars of Cyrgon”. Something out there’s catching the moonlight. We’re supposed to ride toward that spot.’
‘Who’s that?’ Berit hissed, pointing at a figure walking toward them out of the bone-littered desert.
Khalad loosened his sword in its sheath. ‘Another note from Krager, maybe,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s start being a little careful, my Lord. I think we’re getting very close to the place where we’ll have outlived our usefulness.’
The figure coming out of the desert seemed to be moving at no more than a casual stroll, and as he came closer, they were able to make out his features.
‘Watch yourself, Khalad!’ Berit hissed sharply. ‘He’s not human!’
Khalad felt it as well. It was nothing really definable, just an overpowering sense of presence, an aura that no human had. The figure appeared to be that of an extraordinarily handsome young man. He had tightly-curled hair, classic features and very large, almost luminous eyes. ‘Ah, there you are, gentlemen,’ he said urbanely in flawless Elenic. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you.’ He glanced around. ‘This is a really wretched place, don’t you think? Exactly the sort of place you’d expect the Cyrgai to inhabit. Cyrgon’s terribly warped. He adores ugliness. Have you ever met him? Frightful fellow. No sense of beauty whatsoever.’ He smiled, a radiant, slightly vague smile. ‘My cousin Aphrael sent me. She’d have come herself, but she’s a little busy right now – but then, Aphrael’s always busy, isn’t she? She can’t stand to just sit quietly.’ He frowned. ‘She wanted me to tell you something.’ His frown intensified. ‘What was it now? I have the worst memory lately.’ He held up one hand. ‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t tell me. It’ll come to me in a moment. It’s terribly important, though, and we’re supposed to hurry. I’ll probably think of it as we go along.’ He looked around. ‘Do you gentlemen by any chance happen to know which way we’re supposed to go?’
‘It won’t work, Aphrael,’ Kalten said morosely. ‘I’ve tried it when I was dead drunk and the same thing happens. I go crazy when I feel the water closing over my head.’
‘Just try it, Kalten,’ the minimally dressed Goddess urged. ‘It really will relax you.’ She pushed the tankard into his hand.
He sniffed suspiciously. ‘It smells good. What is it?’
‘We drink it at parties.’
‘The beer of the Gods?’ His eyes brightened. ‘Well, now.’ He took a cautious sip. ‘Well now,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘That’s the way it’s supposed to taste.’
‘Drink it all,’ she instructed, watching him intently.
‘Gladly.’ He drained the tankard and wiped his lips. ‘That’s really good. If a man had the recipe for that, he could –’ he broke off, his eyes glazed.
‘Lay him down,’ Aphrael ordered. ‘Quickly, before he stiffens up. I don’t want him all twisted into a pretzel when I drag him through the tunnel.’
Talen was doubled over with both hands tightly over his mouth to stifle his laughter.
‘What’s your problem?’ the Goddess demanded tartly.
‘Nothing,’ he gasped. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘I’ve got a long way to go with that one,’ Aphrael muttered to Sparhawk.
‘Is this going to work?’ Sparhawk asked her. ‘Kalten, I mean? Can you really drag an unconscious man underwater for any distance without drowning him?’
‘I’ll stop his breathing.’ She looked around at the others. I don’t want any of you to try to help me,’ she cautioned. ‘You just concentrate on getting through yourselves. I don’t have to breathe, but you do, and I don’t want to have to spend an hour fishing you out of that pool one by one after we get there. Now, does anybody else have any problems you haven’t told me about? This is the time to talk about them – before we’re all under water.’ She looked pointedly at Bevier. ‘Is there something you’d like to tell me, Sir Knight? You seem to be having a crisis of some sort.’
‘It’s nothing, Divine One,’ he mumbled. ‘I’ll be fine. I swim like a fish.’ He deliberately avoided looking at her.
‘What’s bothering you, then?’
‘I’d really rather not say.’
She sighed. ‘Men.’ Then she climbed into the shaft leading down toward the unseen water rushing toward the inner wall. ‘Bring Kalten,’ she ordered, ‘and let's get at this.’
‘I’d really like to do something about that,’ Sephrenia murmured to Vanion as they peered over the top of the gravel mound at the encampment of the slavers.
‘So would I, love,’ Vanion replied, ‘but I think we’d better wait until later. If everything goes the way it’s supposed to, we’ll be waiting for them when they reach Cyrga.’ He raised himself a bit higher. ‘I think that’s the salt-flats just beyond that trail they’re following.’
‘We’ll be able to tell for certain when the moon rises,’ she replied.
‘Have you heard anything at all from Aphrael?’
‘Nothing I can make any sense of. The echoes are very confusing when she’s in two places at the same time. I gather that things are coming to a head in Matherion, and she and Sparhawk are swimming.’
‘Swimming? This is a desert, Sephrenia.’
‘Yes, I noticed that. They’ve found something to swim in, though.’ She paused. ‘Does Kalten know how to swim?’ she asked.
‘He splashes a great deal, but he manages to drag himself through the water. I wouldn’t call him graceful, by any means. Why do you ask?’
‘She’s having some sort of problems with him, and it has to do with swimming. Let’s go back and join the others, dear one. Just the sight of those slavers is setting my blood to boiling.’
They slid back down the gravel-strewn mound and walked along a shallow gully toward their armored soldiers.
The Cyrinic knight, Sir Launesse, stood somewhat diffidently beside a burly, intricately curled and massively eyebrowed personage with heavy shoulders and a classical demeanor. ‘Sephrenia!’ the clearly non-human being said in a voice that could probably have been heard in Thalesia. ‘Well-met!’
‘Well-met indeed, Divine Romalic,’ she replied with just a trace of a weary sigh.
‘Please, dear,’ Vanion murmured, ‘ask him to lower his voice.’
‘Nobody else can hear him,’ she assured him. ‘The Gods speak loudly – but only to certain ears.’
‘Thy sister bids me give thee greetings,’ Romalic announced in a voice of thunder.
‘Thou art kind to bear those greetings, Divine One.’
‘Kindness and courtesy aside, Sephrenia,’ the huge God declaimed, combing his beard with enormous fingers, ‘art thou yet prepared to serve us all and to assume thy proper place?’
‘I am unworthy, Divine One,’ she replied modestly. ‘Surely there are others wiser and better suited.’
‘What’s this?’ Vanion asked.
‘It’s been going on for a long time, dear one,’ she explained. ‘I’ve been avoiding it for centuries. Romalic always has to bring it up, though.’
It all fell into place in Vanion’s mind. ‘Sephrenia!’ he gasped. ‘They want you to be Over-Priestess, don’t they?’
‘It’s Aphrael, Vanion, not me. They think they can get around her by offering this to
me. I don’t really want it, and they don’t really want to give it to me, but they’re afraid of her, and this is their way to placate her.’
‘Aphrael bids thee to make haste,’ Romalic proclaimed. ‘Ye must all be at the gates of Cyrga ere dawn, for this is the night of decision, when Cyrgon and, yea, even Klæl, must be confronted and, we may hope, confounded. E’en now doth Anakha move ghost-like through the streets of the Hidden City towards his design. Let us hasten.’ He lifted his voice and thundered, ‘On to Cyrga!’
‘Is he always like this?’ Vanion murmured.
‘Romalic?’ Sephrenia said. ‘Oh, yes. He’s perfectly suited to the Cyrinic Knights. Come along, dear one. Let’s go to Cyrga.’
There were dim, flickering lights far above, but the pool was sunk in inky blackness when Sparhawk surfaced and explosively blew out the breath he had been holding.
‘Kalten,’ he heard Aphrael saying, ‘wake up.’
There was a startled cry and a great deal of splashing.
‘Oh, stop that,’ the Goddess told Sparhawk’s friend. ‘It’s all over, and you came through it just fine. Xanetia, dear, could we have a little light?’
‘Of a certainty, Divine One,’ the Anarae replied, and her face began to glow.
‘Are we all here?’ Aphrael asked quietly, looking around. As Xanetia’s light gradually increased, Sparhawk saw that the Goddess appeared to be no more than waist-deep in the pool, and she was holding Kalten up by the back of his tunic.
‘Do you want to give me a hand with this, Sparhawk?’ Bevier said.
‘Right.’ Sparhawk swam over to join the Cyrinic, and together they hauled in the slender rope Bevier had trailed behind him as they had come through the tunnel. At the other end of the rope were their tightly-bundled mail-shirts and swords.
‘Wait a minute,’ Bevier said when the rope suddenly went taut. ‘It’s caught on something.’ He drew in several deep breaths, plunged under the surface, and went hand-over-hand back along the rope.
Sparhawk waited, unconsciously holding his own breath. Then the rope came free, and he hauled it in quickly. Bevier popped to the surface again, blowing out air.
‘Are you sure you aren’t part fish?’ Sparhawk asked him.
‘I’ve always had good lungs,’ Bevier replied. ‘Do you think we should get out our swords?’
‘Let’s see what Aphrael says first,’ Sparhawk decided, peering around. ‘I don’t see any place to climb up out of the water yet.’
‘Now what?’ Talen was asking the Goddess. ‘We’re swimming around at the bottom of a well here.’ He looked up at the sheer sides of the shaft rising from the pool. ‘There are some openings up there, but there’s no way to get to them.’
‘Did you bring it, Mirtai?’ Aphrael asked.
The giantess nodded. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said, and she sank beneath the surface and began to pull off her tunic.
‘What’s she doing?’ Talen asked, peering down through the clear water.
‘She’s taking off her clothes,’ Aphrael replied, ‘and she doesn’t need any help from you. Keep your eyes where they belong.’
‘You run around naked all the time,’ he protested. ‘Why should you care if we watch Mirtai get undressed?’
‘It’s entirely different,’ she replied in a lofty tone. ‘Now do as you’re told.’
Talen thrust himself around in the water until he had his back to Mirtai. ‘I’m never going to understand her,’ he grumbled.
‘Oh, yes you will, Talen,’ she told him in a mysterious little voice. ‘But not quite yet. I’ll explain it all to you in a few more years.’
Then Mirtai rose to the surface holding the coil of rope that had been slung over her shoulder under her tunic. ‘I’ll need something to stand on, Aphrael,’ she said, hefting the grappling hook attached to one end of the rope. ‘I won’t be able to throw this while I’m treading water.’
‘All right, gentlemen,’ Aphrael said primly, ‘eyes front.’
Sparhawk’s smile was concealed in the dimness. Talen was right. Aphrael seemed almost unaware of her own nakedness, but Mirtai’s was an entirely different matter. He heard the sound of water trickling off the sleek limbs of the golden giantess as she rose to stand, he surmised, on its very surface.
Then he heard the whistling sound of the grappling hook as Mirtai swung it in wider and wider circles. Then the whistling stopped for an interminable, breathless moment. There was the clink of steel on stone high above, followed by a grating sound as the points dug in.
‘Good cast,’ Aphrael said.
‘Lucky,’ Mirtai replied. ‘It usually takes two or three throws.’
Sparhawk felt a touch on his shoulder. ‘Here,’ Mirtai said, handing him the rope. ‘Hold this while I get dressed. Then we’ll climb up and go find your wife.’
‘What on earth are you doing, Bergsten?’
The Patriarch of Emsat started violently and jerked his head around to stare at the God who had just walked up behind him.
‘You’re supposed to be hurrying, you know,’ Setras chided him. ‘Aphrael wants everybody to be in place by morning.’
‘We came across some of Klæl’s soldiers, Divine One,’ Sir Heldin rumbled. ‘They’re inside that cave.’ He pointed at a barely visible opening in the hillside across the shallow gully.
‘Why didn’t you deal with them? I told you how to do it.’
‘We put a lantern in there, but there’s a door inside the cave, Setras-God,’ Atana Maris advised him.
‘Well, open it, dear lady,’ Setras said. ‘We really must reach Cyrga by morning. Aphrael will be terribly vexed with me if we’re late.’
‘We’d gladly open it if we knew how, Divine One,’ Bergsten told him, ‘but late or not, I won’t ride away from here and leave those monsters behind me, and if that vexes Aphrael, that’s just too bad.’ The handsome, stupid God irritated Bergsten for some reason.
‘Why do I have to do everything myself?’ Setras sighed. ‘Wait here. I’ll deal with this, and then we’ll be able to move on. We’re terribly behind schedule, you know. We’ll have to get cracking if we’re going to make it by morning.’ He strolled on across the rocky gully and entered the cave.
‘That young fellow’s really trying my patience,’ Bergsten muttered. ‘Trying to explain something to him is like talking to a brick. How can he be so –’ Bergsten pulled up short just this side of heresy.
‘He’s coming back out,’ Atana Maris said.
‘I thought he might,’ Bergsten said with some satisfaction. ‘Apparently he didn’t have any better luck with that door than we did.’
Setras was strolling toward them humming a Styric melody when the entire hill vanished in a great, fiery explosion that shook the very earth. The fire billowed out with a dreadful, seething roar, hurling Bergsten and the others to the ground and engulfing Aphrael’s cousin.
‘Dear God!’ Bergsten gasped, staring at the boiling fire.
Then Setras, with not so much as a hair out of place, came sauntering out of the fire. ‘There now,’ he said mildly, ‘that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’
‘How did you get the door open, Divine One?’ Heldin asked curiously.
‘I didn’t, old boy,’ Setras smiled. ‘Actually, they opened it for me.’
‘Why would they do that?’
‘I knocked, dear boy. I knocked. Even creatures like that have some manners. Shall we be going, then?’
‘They are much feared by the other Cyrgai,’ Xanetia reported, ‘and all do give way to them.’
‘That would be useful – if it weren’t for the racial differences,’ Bevier noted.
‘Such differences do not pose an insurmountable obstacle, Sir Knight,’ Xanetia assured him. ‘Should it prove needful, thy features and those of thy companions may once more be altered. Divine Aphrael can doubtless serve in her sister’s stead in the combining of the two spells which disguised ye previously.’
‘We can talk about that in a moment,’ Flute
said. ‘First, though, I think we should all get some idea of how this part of the city’s laid out.’ The Goddess had resumed her more familiar form, and Bevier for one seemed much relieved.
‘Methinks this mount is not of natural origin, Divine One,’ Xanetia told her. ‘The sides are of uniform steepness, and the avenues which do ascend to the top are more stairways than streets. Cross-streets, however, do encircle the hill at regular intervals.’
‘Unimaginative, aren’t they?’ Mirtai observed. ‘Are there many of them wandering around out there?’
‘Nay, Atana. 'Tis late, and most have long since sought their beds.’
‘We could chance it,’ Kalten mused. ‘If Flute and Xanetia can make us look like Cyrgai, we could just march right up the hill.’
‘Not in these clothes we can’t,’ Sparhawk disagreed.
Talen slipped out of the shadows to re-enter the passageway leading back to the central shaft of the well. In many ways the agile young thief could be nearly as invisible as Xanetia. ‘More soldiers coming,’ he whispered.
‘Those patrols could get to be a nuisance,’ Kalten said.
‘These aren’t like those others,’ Talen told him. ‘They aren’t patrolling the side-streets. They’re just climbing the stairs toward the top of the city. They aren’t wearing the same kind of armor either.’
‘Describe them, young master Talen,’ Xanetia said intently.
‘They’re wearing cloaks, for one thing,’ Talen replied, ‘and they’ve got a sort of emblem on their breastplates. Their helmets are different, too.’
‘Temple Guards then,’ Xanetia said, ‘the ones of which I spake earlier. I did glean from the thought of such few as I encountered that other Cyrgai do avoid them insofar as they might, and that all are obliged to bow down when they pass.’
Sparhawk and Bevier exchanged a long look. ‘There are the clothes you wanted, Sparhawk,’ Bevier said.
‘How many are there?’ Sparhawk asked Talen.
‘I counted ten.’
Sparhawk considered it. ‘Let’s do it,’ he decided, ‘but try to keep the noise down.’ And he led them out of the passageway into the street.