The Hidden City

  ‘Were they bad-to-eat, Bhlokw?’ Tynian asked sympathetically.

  ‘Very bad-to-eat, Tin-in. I have not tasted anything so bad-to-eat before.’

  ‘I did not know this, Bhlokw,’ Ulath tried to apologize. ‘It was my thought that they were big enough that one or two might fill your belly.’

  ‘I only ate one,’ Bhlokw replied. ‘It was so bad-to-eat that I did not want to eat another. Not even Ogres would eat those, and Ogres will eat anything. It makes me not-glad that you said the thing that was not so to me, U-lat.’

  ‘It makes me not-glad as well,’ Ulath confessed. ‘I said a thing which I did not know. It was wicked of me to do this.’

  Queen Betuana drew Tynian aside. ‘How long will it take us to reach the Hidden City, Tynian-Knight?’ she asked.

  ‘Is your Majesty talking about how long it’s really going to take or how long it’s going to seem?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘It’s going to seem like weeks, Betuana-Queen, but in actual time, it’ll be instantaneous. Ulath and I left Matherion just a few weeks ago in real time, but it seems that we’ve been on the road for nearly a year. It’s very strange, but you get used to it after a while.’

  ‘We must start soon if we are to reach Cyrga by morning.’

  ‘Ulath and I’ll have to talk with Ghnomb about that. He’s the one who stops time, but he’s also the God of Eat. He may not be happy with us. The idea of letting the Trolls kill Klæl’s soldiers was a good one, but Ghnomb expects them to eat what they kill, and they don’t like the taste.’

  She shuddered. ‘How can you stand to be around the Troll-beasts, Tynian-Knight? They’re horrible creatures.’

  ‘They aren’t really so bad, your Majesty,’ Tynian defended them. ‘They’re very moral creatures, you know. They’re fiercely loyal to their own packs; they don’t even know how to lie; and they won’t kill anything unless they intend to eat it – or unless it attacks them. As soon as Ulath finishes apologizing to Bhlokw, we’ll summon Ghnomb and talk with him about stopping time so that we can get to Cyrga.’ Tynian made a face. ‘That’s what’s going to take a while. You have to be patient when you’re trying to explain something to the Troll-Gods.’

  ‘Is that what Ulath-Knight is doing?’ she asked curiously. ‘Apologizing?’

  Tynian nodded. ‘It’s not as easy as it sounds, your Majesty. There’s nothing in Trollish that even comes close to “I’m sorry”, probably because Trolls never do anything that they’re ashamed of.’

  ‘Will you be still?’ Liatris hissed at the protesting Gahennas. ‘ They’re in the next room right now.’

  The three empresses were hiding in a dark antechamber adjoining the Tegan’s private quarters. Liatris stood at the door with her dagger in her hand.

  They waited in tense apprehension.

  ‘They’re gone now,’ Liatris said. ‘We’d better wait for a little while, though.’

  ‘Will you please tell me what’s going on?’ Gahennas asked.

  ‘Chacole sent some people to kill you,’ Elysoun told her. ‘Liatris and I found out about it, and came to rescue you.’

  ‘Why would Chacole do that?’

  ‘Because you know too much about what she’s planning.’

  ‘That silly plan to implicate Cieronna in a spurious assassination plot?’

  ‘The plot wasn’t spurious, and Cieronna wasn’t even remotely connected with it. Chacole and Torellia are planning to kill our husband.’

  ‘Treason!’ Gahennas gasped.

  ‘Probably not. Chacole and Torellia are members of royal houses currently at war with the Tamul Empire, and they’re getting orders from home. The assassination of Sarabian could technically be called an act of war.’ Elysoun stopped as a wave of nausea swept over her. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said in a sick little voice.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Liatris demanded.

  ‘It’s nothing. It’ll pass.’

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘Sort of. It’s nothing to worry about. I should have eaten something when you woke me up, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re white as a sheet. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m pregnant, if you really have to know.’

  ‘It was bound to happen eventually, Elysoun,’ Gahennas said smugly. ‘I’m surprised it didn’t happen earlier, the way you carry on. Have you any idea at all of who the father is?’

  ‘Sarabian,’ Elysoun replied with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘Do you think it’s safe to leave now, Liatris? I think we’d better get to our husband as quickly as we can. Chacole wouldn’t have sent people to kill Gahennas unless this was the night when she was planning her attempt on Sarabian.’

  ‘She’ll have people watching all the doors,’ Liatris said.

  ‘Not all the doors, dear,’ Elysoun smiled. ‘I know of at least three that she’s not aware of. You see, Gahennas, there are some advantages to having an active social life. Check the hallway, Liatris. Let’s get Gahennas out of here before Chacole’s assassins come back.’

  The Cyrgai at the bronze gate stood back fearfully as Sparhawk led the others up the last few steps. ‘Yala Cyrgonl’ the officer in charge said, smashing his fist against his breastplate in a kind of formal salute.

  ‘Respond, Anakha,’ Xanetia’s voice murmured in Sparhawk’s ear. “Tis customary.’

  ‘Yala Cyrgonl’ Sparhawk said, also banging on his chest and being careful not to allow the cloak he’d removed from the unconscious Temple Guardsman to open and reveal the fact that he was wearing his mail-shirt rather than an ornate breastplate.

  The officer seemed not to notice. Sparhawk and the others marched through the gate and moved along a broad street toward a kind of central square. ‘Is he still watching?’ Sparhawk muttered.

  ‘Nay, Anakha,’ Xanetia replied. ‘He and his men have returned to the guardroom beside the gate.’

  It had appeared from below that the only buildings within the walls at the summit of Cyrga were the fortress-palace and the temple, but that was not entirely true. There were other structures as well, low, utilitarian-looking buildings, storehouses for the most part, Sparhawk guessed. ‘Talen,’ he said back over his shoulder, ‘ease over to the side of the street. Find a door you can get open in a hurry. Let’s get out of sight while Xanetia scouts around.’

  ‘Right,’ Talen replied. He ducked into the shadows and a moment later they heard his whisper and quickly moved to the door he was holding open for them.

  ‘Now what?’ Kalten asked.

  ‘Xanetia and I go looking for Ehlana and Alean,’ Aphrael’s voice replied out of the darkness.

  ‘Where were you?’ Talen asked curiously. ‘When we were coming up the hill, I mean?’

  ‘Here and there,’ she replied. ‘My family’s moving all the others into position, and I wanted to be sure everything’s going according to schedule.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘It is now. There were a couple of problems, but I took care of them. Let’s get at this, Xanetia. We still have a lot to do before morning.’

  ‘Ah, there they are,’ Setras said. ‘I wasn’t really all that far off, now was I?’

  ‘Are you sure this time?’ Bergsten demanded.

  ‘You’re cross with me, aren’t you, Bergsten?’

  Bergsten sighed, and decided to let it pass. ‘No, Divine One,’ he replied. ‘We all make mistakes, I guess.’

  ‘That’s frightfully decent of you, old boy,’ Setras thanked him. ‘We were moving in generally the right direction. I was just off a few degrees, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you certain those are the right peaks this time, Divine One?’ Heldin rumbled.

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ Setras said happily. ‘They’re exactly as Aphrael described them. You notice how they glow in the moonlight?’

  Heldin squinted across the desert at the two glowing spires rearing up out of the dark jumble of broken rock. ‘They look about right,’ he said dubiously.

  ‘I have to go find the gate,’ Setras
told them. ‘It’s supposed to be exactly on a line from the gap between the two peaks.’

  ‘Are you sure, Divine One?’ Bergsten asked. ‘It’s that way on the south side, but do we know for certain that it’s the same here on the north?’

  ‘You’ve never met Cyrgon, have you, old boy? He’s the most rigid creature you’ve ever seen. If there’s a gate on the south, there’ll be one on the north as well, believe me. Don’t go away. I’ll be right back.’ He turned and strolled off across the desert toward the two peaks glowing in the moonlight.

  Atana Maris was standing to one side of Bergsten and Heldin with a slightly troubled look on her face.

  ‘What’s the matter, Atana?’ Heldin asked her.

  ‘I think there is something I do not understand, Heldin-Knight,’ she replied, struggling to put her thought into Elenic. The Setras person is a God?’

  ‘A Styric God, yes.’

  ‘If he is a God, how did he get lost?’

  ‘We’re not certain, Atana Maris.’

  ‘That is what I do not understand. If Setras-God were a human, I would say that he is stupid. But he is a God, so he cannot be stupid, can he?’

  ‘I think you’d better take that up with his Grace here,’ Heldin replied. ‘I’m only a soldier. He’s the expert on theology.’

  ‘Thanks, Heldin,’ Bergsten said in a flat tone of voice.

  ‘If he is stupid, Bergsten-Priest, how can we be certain that he’s brought us to the right place?’

  ‘We have to trust Aphrael, Atana. Setras may be a little uncertain about things, but Aphrael isn’t, and she talked with him for quite some time, as I recall.’

  ‘Speaking slowly,’ Heldin added, ‘and using short, simple words.’

  ‘Is it possible, Bergsten-Priest?’ Maris asked insistently. ‘Can a God be stupid?’

  Bergsten looked at her helplessly. ‘Ours isn’t,’ he evaded, ‘and I’m sure yours isn’t either.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question, Bergsten.’

  ‘You’re right, Atana,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t – and I’m not going to, either. If you’re really curious, I’ll take you to Chyrellos when this is all over, and you can ask Dolmant.’

  ‘Bravely spoken, Lord Bergsten,’ Heldin murmured.

  ‘Shut up, Heldin.’

  ‘Yes, your Grace.’

  Sparhawk, Bevier and Kalten stood at a small, barred window in the musty-smelling warehouse looking out at the fortress-like palace rearing above the rest of the city. ‘That’s really archaic,’ Bevier said critically.

  ‘It looks strong enough to me,’ Kalten said.

  ‘They’ve built the main structure of the palace right up against the outer wall, Kalten. It saves building two walls, but it compromises the structural integrity of the fortress. Give me a couple of months and some good catapults, and I could pound the whole thing to pieces.’

  ‘I don’t think catapults had been invented when they built it, Bevier,’ Sparhawk said. ‘It was probably the strongest fort in the world ten thousand years ago.’ He looked out at the gloomy, rearing pile. As Bevier had noted, the main structure was backed up against the wall that separated this part of Cyrga from the rest of the city. Shorter towers stair-stepped up to the large central tower that shouldered high above the rest of the palace and grew, or so it seemed, out of the wall itself. It appeared that the palace had not been built to look out over the city, but rather to face the white limestone temple. The Cyrgai clearly looked at their God, and turned their backs on the rest of the world.

  The door which Talen had unlocked to provide them entry into this storehouse creaked as it opened and then closed. Then the soft glow of Xanetia’s face once again dimly illuminated the area around her.

  ‘We’ve found them,’ the Child Goddess said as the Anarae set her down on the flagstoned floor.

  Sparhawk’s heart leaped. ‘Are they all right?’

  ‘They haven’t been treated very well. They’re tired and hungry and very much afraid. Zalasta took them to see Klæl, and that’s enough to frighten anybody.’

  ‘Where are they?’ Mirtai demanded intently.

  ‘At the very top of that highest tower at the back of the palace.’

  ‘Did you talk with them?’ Kalten asked intently.

  Aphrael shook her head. ‘I didn’t think it was a good idea. What they don’t know about, they can’t talk about.’

  ‘Anarae,’ Bevier said thoughtfully, ‘would the soldiers in the palace let Temple Guardsmen move around freely in there?’

  ‘Nay, Sir Knight. The Cyrgai are much driven by custom, and Temple Guardsmen have little cause to enter the palace.’

  ‘I guess we can discard these, then,’ Kalten said, pulling off the ornate bronze helmet and dark cloak he had purloined in the lower city. He touched his cheek. ‘We still look like Cyrgai. We could steal some different uniforms and then just march in, couldn’t we?’

  Xanetia shook her head. ‘The soldiers within the palace are all kinsmen, members of the royal clan, and are all known to one another. Subterfuge would be far too perilous.’

  ‘We’ve got to come up with a way to get into that tower!’ Kalten said desperately.

  ‘I already have,’ Mirtai told him calmly. ‘It’s dangerous, but I think it’s the only way.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Sparhawk told her.

  ‘We might be able to sneak up through the palace, but if we’re discovered, we’d have to fight, and that’d put Ehlana and Alean in immediate danger.’

  Sparhawk nodded bleakly. ‘It’s just too dangerous to risk,’ he agreed.

  ‘All right, then. If we can’t go through the palace, we’ll have to go up the outside.’

  ‘You mean climb the tower?’ Kalten asked incredulously.

  ‘It’s not as difficult as it sounds, Kalten. Those walls aren’t built of marble, so they aren’t smooth. They’re rough stone blocks, and there are plenty of hand-holds and places to put your feet. I could climb that back wall like a ladder, if I had to.’

  ‘I’m not really very graceful, Mirtai,’ he said dubiously. ‘I’ll do anything at all to rescue Alean, but I won’t be much good to her if I make a misstep and fall five hundred feet into the lower city.’

  ‘We have ropes, Kalten. I’ll keep you from falling. Talen can scamper up a wall like a squirrel, and I can climb almost as well. If we had Stragen and Caalador along, they’d be halfway up the side of that tower by now.’

  ‘Mirtai,’ Bevier said in a pained voice, ‘we’re wearing mail-shirts. Climbing a sheer wall with seventy pounds of steel hanging from your shoulders might be a little challenging.’

  ‘Then take the mail-shirt off, Bevier.’

  ‘I might need it when I get up on top.’

  ‘No problem,’ Talen assured him. ‘We’ll bundle them all together and pull them up behind us. I do sort of like it, Sparhawk. It’s quiet; it’s fairly fast; and there probably won’t be any guards going hand-over-hand around the outside of the tower looking for intruders. Mirtai’s had training from Stragen and Caalador, and I was born for burglary. She and I can do the real climbing. We’ll drop ropes down to the rest of you at various stages along the way, and you can haul up the mail-shirts and swords behind you. We can get to the top of that tower in no time at all. We can do it, Sparhawk. It’ll be easy.’

  ‘I can’t really think of any alternatives,’ Sparhawk conceded dubiously.

  ‘Let’s do it then,’ Mirtai said abruptly. ‘Let’s get Ehlana and Alean out of there, and once they’re safe, we can start to take this place apart.’

  ‘After I get my real face back,’ Kalten added adamantly. ‘Alean’s entitled to that much consideration.’

  ‘Let’s do that right now, Xanetia,’ Aphrael said. ‘Kalten will nag us about it all night if we don’t.’

  ‘Nag?’ Kalten objected.

  ‘What color was your hair again, Kalten? Purple, wasn’t it?’ she asked him with an impish little smile.

  Chapter 31

 
There were deep shadows along the western side of the Women’s Palace when Elysoun, Liatris and Gahennas emerged through the little-used door and moved quickly through the darkness to take cover in a nearby grove of ornamental evergreens. ‘This is going to be the dangerous part,’ Liatris cautioned in a low voice. ‘Chacole knows by now that her assassins weren’t able to find Gahennas, and she’s certain to have her people out to try to prevent us from reaching Ehlana’s castle.’

  Elysoun looked out at the moon-drenched lawn. ‘That’s impossible,’ she said. ‘It’s just too bright. There’s a path that goes on through this grove. It comes out near the Ministry of the Interior.’

  ‘That’s the wrong direction, Elysoun,’ Gahennas protested. ‘The Elene castle’s the other way.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but there’s no cover. There’s nothing between here and the castle but open lawn. We’d better stick to the shadows. If we go around on the other side of Interior, we’ll be able to go through the grounds of the Foreign Ministry. It’s only about fifty yards from there to the drawbridge of the castle.’

  ‘What if the drawbridge has been raised?’

  ‘We’ll worry about that when we get there, Gahennas. But we have to get into the gardens around the Foreign Ministry first.’

  ‘Let’s go then, ladies,’ Liatris said abruptly. ‘We’re not accomplishing anything by standing around talking. Let’s go find out what we’re up against.’

  ‘Back here,’ Talen whispered to them, coming out of a narrow alleyway. ‘The palace wall runs back to the place where it joins the outer fortifications at the end of this alley. The right angle where the two walls meet is perfect for climbing.’

  ‘Will you need this?’ Mirtai asked, holding her grappling hook out to him.

  ‘No. I can make it to the top without it, and we’d better not risk having some sentry up there hear the hook banging on the stones.’ He led them back along the alley to the cul-de-sac where the palace wall butted up against the imposing fortifications separating the compound from the rest of the city.

  ‘How high would you say it is?’ Kalten asked, squinting upward. It was strange to see Kalten’s face again after all the weeks it had been disguised. Sparhawk tentatively touched his own face and immediately recognized the familiar contours of his broken nose.