The Hidden City

  Sparhawk was a little dubious about that, but like the others, he bowed his head. He did not, however, direct his words to his Elene God. ‘Blue Rose,’ he sent out his thought.

  ‘Art thou praying, my son?’ The answering voice sounded slightly amused.

  ‘Consulting, Blue Rose,’ Sparhawk corrected. ‘Others will direct our entreaty to our Elene God, and I do perceive that the time fast approaches when thou and I must part.’

  ‘Truly.’

  ‘I thought to take this opportunity to ask a boon of thee.’

  ‘If it be within my power.’

  ‘I have seen the extent of thy power, Blue Rose – and in some measure shared it. It is uncandid of thee to suggest that there are any limits to what thou canst do.’

  ‘Be nice,’ Bhelliom murmured. It seemed quite fond of that particular phrase. ‘What is this boon, my son?’

  ‘I do entreat thee to take all thy power with thee when thou dost depart. It is a burden I am unprepared to accept. I am thy son, Blue Rose, but I am also a man. I have neither the patience nor the wisdom to accept responsibility for what thou hast bestowed upon me. This world which thou hast made hath Gods in plenty. She doth not need another.’

  ‘Think, my son. Think of what thou dost propose to surrender.’

  ‘I have, my father. I have been Anakha, for it was needful.’ Sparhawk struggled for a way to put his feelings into archaic Elenic. ‘When I did as Anakha confront the Styric Zalasta, I did feel a great detachment within myself, and that detachment abideth within me still. It seemeth me that thy gift hath altered me, making me more – or less – than a man. I would, an it please thee, no longer be “patient Anakha” or “curious Anakha” or “implacable Anakha”. Anakha’s task is finished. Now, with all my heart, I would be Sparhawk again. To be “loving Sparhawk” or even “irritated Sparhawk” would please me far more than the dreadful emptiness which is Anakha.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Know that I am well-pleased with thee, my son.’ There was pride in the silent voice in Sparhawk’s mind. ‘I find more merit in thee in this moment than in any other. Be well, Sparhawk.’ And the voice was gone.

  The wedding ceremony was strange in some ways and very familiar in others. The celebration of the love that existed between Vanion and Sephrenia was there, but the preaching which so marred the Elene ritual was not. At the conclusion, Xanetia gently laid her hands in loving benediction upon the heads of the two she had just joined. The gesture seemed to proclaim that the ceremony was at an end.

  But it was not.

  The second of the two figures which had accompanied Xanetia across the luminous waters of the lake stepped forward, all glowing blue, to add its own benediction. It raised its hands over the man and the woman, and for a brief moment they shared its azure incandescence. And when the light faded, Sephrenia had subtly changed. The cares and weariness which had marked her face in a dozen tiny ways were gone, and she appeared to be no older than Alean. The changes Bhelliom’s glowing touch had wrought on Vanion were more visible and pronounced. His shoulders, which had imperceptibly slumped over the years, were straight again. His face was unlined, and his silvery hair and beard were now the dark auburn Sparhawk dimly remembered from the days of his novitiate. It was Bhelliom’s final gift, and nothing could have pleased Sparhawk more.

  Aphrael clapped her hands together with a squeal of delight and flew into the arms of the nebulous, glowing figure which had just rejuvenated her sister and Vanion.

  Sparhawk rather carefully concealed a smile. The Child Goddess had finally maneuvered Bhelliom into a position where she could unleash the devastating effects of her kisses upon it. The kisses could, of course, have been pure, effusive gratitude – but they probably weren’t.

  The wedding was at an end, but the glowing Delphae did not return to their empty city. Xanetia placed one supporting arm around Anari Cedon’s frail old shoulders and guided him instead out onto the radiant surface of the lake, and the Shining Ones followed, raising a different hymn as incandescent Edaemus hovered in the air above them. The light of the lake grew brighter and brighter, and the ethereal glow of the Delphae seemed to merge, and individual figures were no longer distinguishable. Then, like the point of a spear, Edaemus streaked skyward, and all of his children streamed upward behind him. When Sparhawk and his friends had first come to Delphaeus, Anari Cedon had told them that the Delphae journeyed toward the light and that they would become the light, but that there were yet impediments. Bhelliom had evidently removed those barriers. The Delphae marked the starry sky like a comet as they rose together on the first step of their inconceivable journey.

  The pale, clear radiance of the lake was gone, but it was not dark. An azure spark hung over it as Bhelliom surveyed what it had wrought and found that it was good. Then it too rose from the earth to rejoin the eternal stars.

  They stayed that night in deserted Delphaeus, and sparhawk awoke early as usual. He dressed himself quietly and left the simple bedroom and his tousled, sleeping wife to go outside to check the weather.

  Flute joined him when he reached the city gate. ‘Why don’t you put some shoes on?’ he asked her, noting that her bare, grass-stained little feet were sunk in the snow.

  ‘What do I need with shoes, Father?’ She held out her arms, and he picked her up.

  ‘It was quite a night, wasn’t it?’ he said, looking up at the cloudy sky.

  ‘Why did you do that, Sparhawk?’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘You know what I mean. Do you realize what you could have done? You could have turned this world into a paradise, but you threw it all away.’

  ‘I don’t think that would have been a good idea, Aphrael. My idea of paradise would probably have been different from other people’s.’ He sniffed at the chill air. ‘I think we’ve got weather coming,’ he observed.

  ‘Don’t change the subject. You had ultimate power. Why did you give it up?’

  He sighed. ‘I didn’t really like it all that much. There wasn’t any effort involved in it, and when you get something without working for it, it doesn’t really have any value. Besides, there are people who have claims on me.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘What could I have done if Ehlana had decided that she wanted Arcium? Or if Dolmant had decided that he wanted to convert Styricum? Or all of Tamuli? I have loyalties and obligations, Aphrael, and sooner or later, I’d have made bad decisions because of them. Trust me. I made the right choice.’

  ‘I think you’re going to regret it.’

  ‘I've regretted lots of things. You learn to live with it. Can you get us to Matherion?’

  ‘You could have done it yourself, you know.’

  ‘Don’t beat it into the ground, Aphrael. If you don’t want to, then we’ll just plow our way through the snow. We’ve done it before.’

  ‘You’re hateful, Sparhawk. You know I won’t let you do that.’

  ‘Now do you see what I mean about the power of loyalties and obligations?’

  ‘Don’t start lecturing me. I’m in no mood for it. Go wake up the others, and let’s get started.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Divine One.’

  They located the rather large communal kitchen in which the Delphae had prepared all their meals and the storerooms where the food was kept. Despite their eons of enmity, the dietary prejudices of the Styrics and Delphae were remarkable similar. Sephrenia found the breakfast much to her liking, but Kalten grumbled a great deal. He did eat three helpings, however.

  ‘Whatever happened to friend Bhlokw?’ Kring asked, pushing back his plate. ‘I just realized that I haven’t seen him since Zalasta took fire.’

  ‘He went off with his Gods, Domi,’ Tynian replied. ‘He did what they sent him to do. and now he and the rest of the Trolls are on their way back to Thalesia. He wished us all good hunting. That’s about as close as a Troll can come to saying goodbye.’

  ‘It might sound a little strange,’ Kring admitted, ??
?but I liked him.’

  ‘He’s a good pack-mate,’ Ulath said. ‘He hunts well, and he’s willing to share what he kills with the others in the pack.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Tynian agreed with a shudder. ‘If it wasn’t a freshly-killed dog, it was a haunch of raw Cyrgai.’

  ‘It was what he had, Tynian,’ Ulath defended his shaggy friend, ‘and he was ready to share it. You can’t ask more than that, can you?’

  ‘Sir Ulath,’ Talen said, ‘I’ve just eaten. Do you suppose we could talk about something else?’

  They saddled their horses and rode out of Delphaeus.

  As he left, Khalad reined in, dismounted, and closed the gate. ‘Why did you do that?’ Talen asked him. ‘The Delphae aren’t coming back, you know.’

  ‘It’s the proper thing to do,’ Khalad said as he remounted. ‘Leaving it open would have been disrespectful.’

  Since they all knew who she really was, Flute made no attempt to conceal her tampering this time. The horses plodded along, as horses will if they aren’t being pushed, but every few minutes the horizon flickered and changed. Once, somewhat east of Dirgis, Sparhawk rose in his stirrups to look to the rear. Their clearly visible trail stretched back to the middle of an open meadow where it stopped abruptly, almost as if the horses and riders had been dropped there out of the sky.

  They reached the now-familiar hilltop overlooking fire-domed Matherion and its harbor just as evening was approaching, and they rode on down to the city gratefully. They had all been long on the road, and it was good to be home again. Sparhawk rather quickly amended that thought in his mind. Matherion was not really home. Home was a dank, unlovely city on the Cimmura River, half a world away.

  There were some startled looks at the gate of the imperial compound, and yet more startled looks at the drawbridge to Ehlana’s castle. Vanion had stubbornly rejected his wife’s urgings to conceal his head and face with the hood of his cloak and quite literally flaunted the fact that some thirty-odd years had somehow fallen away. Vanion was like that sometimes.

  There were some visible changes inside the castle as well. They found the Emperor in the blue-draped sitting-room on the second floor, and in addition to Baroness Melidere, Emban and Oscagne, three of his wives, Elysoun, Gahennas, and Liatris were also present. Elysoun was probably the most notable, since she was now modestly dressed.

  ‘Good God, Vanion!’ Emban exclaimed when he saw the Pandion Preceptor. ‘What’s happened to you?’

  ‘I got married, your Grace,’ Vanion replied. He smoothed back his mahogany-colored hair. ‘This was one of the wedding presents. Do you like it?’

  ‘You look ridiculous!’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Sephrenia disagreed. ‘I rather like it.’

  ‘I gather that congratulations are in order,’ Sarabian said urbanely. There was a marked difference in the Tamul Emperor. He had a self-confidence and a commanding presence that had not been there before. ‘Considering the enormous religious barriers, who performed the ceremony?’

  ‘Xanetia did, your Majesty,’ Vanion replied. ‘Delphaeic doctrine didn’t have any objections.’

  Sarabian looked around. ‘Where is Xanetia?’ he asked.

  Sephrenia pointed upward with one finger. ‘Out there,’ she replied rather sadly, ‘with the rest of the Delphae.’

  ‘What?’ The Emperor’s expression was baffled.

  ‘Edaemus took them, Sarabian,’ Flute explained. ‘Evidently he and Bhelliom made some sort of arrangement.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s Danae?’

  ‘She’s in her room, Divine One,’ Baroness Melidere said. ‘She was a little tired, so she went to bed early.’

  ‘I’d better go tell her that her mother’s home,’ the Child Goddess said, going toward the door leading back into the rest of the apartment.

  ‘We’ve received any number of reports,’ Foreign Minister Oscagne said, ‘but they were all couched in generalities – “the war’s over, and we won” – that sort of thing. No offense intended, Queen Betuana. Your Atans are excellent messengers, but it’s hard to get details out of them.’

  She shrugged. ‘Perhaps it’s a racial flaw, Oscagne-Excellency.’ As she always did now, Betuana stood very close to the silent Engessa. She seemed reluctant to let him get very far away from her side.

  ‘The thing that puzzles me the most is the rather garbled message I got from my brother,’ Oscagne confessed.

  ‘Itagne-Ambassador has a great deal on his mind just now,’ Betuana said blandly.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He and Atana Maris became quite friendly when he was posted to Cynestra last fall. He didn’t take it too seriously, but she did. She came looking for him. She found him in Cyrga and took him back with her to Cynestra.’

  ‘Really?’ Oscagne said, his face betraying no hint of a smile. Then he shrugged. ‘Oh, well,’ he added, ‘it’s time that Itagne settled down anyway. As I recall, Atana Maris is a very vigorous young woman.’

  ‘Yes, Oscagne-Excellency, and very determined. I think your clever brother’s days as a bachelor are numbered.’

  ‘What a shame,’ Oscagne sighed. ‘Pardon me a moment.’ He went rather quickly into the next room, and they all heard the sounds of muffled laughter coming from there.

  And then Danae, her black hair flying, came running into the room to hurl herself into her mother’s arms.

  Sarabian’s face went bleak. ‘Who finally killed Zalasta?’ he asked. ‘He was at the bottom of all this, when you get right down to it.’

  ‘Zalasta isn’t dead,’ Sephrenia said sorrowfully, lifting Flute into her lap.

  ‘He isn’t? How did he manage to get away?’

  ‘We let him go, your Majesty,’ Ulath replied.

  ‘Are you mad? You know the kind of trouble he can stir up.’

  ‘He won’t be causing any more trouble, your Majesty,’ Vanion said. ‘Unless he happens to start a few grass-fires.’

  ‘He won’t do that, Vanion,’ Flute said. ‘It’s a spiritual fire, not a real one.’

  ‘Will somebody please tell me what happened?’ Sarabian said.

  ‘Zalasta shewed up at Sephrenia’s wedding, your Majesty,’ Ulath told him. ‘He tried to kill Vanion, but Sparhawk stopped him. Then our friend here was just about to do something fairly permanent about Zalasta, but Khwaj asserted a prior claim. Sparhawk considered the politics of the situation and agreed. Then Khwaj set Zalasta on fire.’

  ‘What a gruesome idea,’ Sarabian shuddered. Then he looked at Sephrenia. ‘I thought you said that he isn’t dead. Yet Sir Ulath just told me that he’d been burned to death.’

  ‘No, your Majesty,’ Ulath corrected, ‘I just said that Khwaj set fire to him. The same thing happened to Baron Parok.’

  ‘The Trollish notion of justice sort of appeals to me,’ Sarabian said with a bleak smile. ‘How long will they burn?’

  ‘Forever, your Majesty,’ Tynian replied somberly. ‘The fire is eternal.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘It’s further than I’d have gone,’ Sparhawk conceded, but as Ulath said, there were political considerations involved.’

  They talked until quite late, providing details of the campaign, the rescue of Ehlana and Alean, the freeing of Bhelliom, and the final confrontation between Sparhawk and Cyrgon. Sparhawk rather carefully stressed his surrogacy in that particular event and made some issue of the fact that he was no longer Anakha. He wanted that particular book permanently closed with no doubts remaining in anyone’s mind that there was absolutely no way to reopen it.

  Also during the course of that long conversation, Sarabian told them of the attempt on his life by Chacole and Torellia. ‘They might have actually pulled it off if it hadn’t been for Elysoun,’ he concluded, looking fondly at his now-demure Valesian wife.

  Mirtai looked at Elysoun with one questioningly-raised eyebrow. ‘Why the change of costume?’ she asked bluntly.

  Elysoun shrugged. ‘I’m with child,’ she replied. ‘I guess my days of
adventuring are over.’ She looked at Mirtai’s puzzled expression. ‘It’s a Valesian custom,’ she explained. ‘We’re allowed a certain amount of freedom until our first pregnancy. After that, we’re supposed to behave ourselves.’ She smiled. ‘I’d more or less exhausted the potentials of the imperial compound anyway,’ she added. ‘Now it’s time to settle down – and catch up on my sleep.’

  ‘Has anybody heard from Stragen and Caalador?’ Talen asked.

  ‘Viscount Stragen and Duke Caalador came back to Matherion a week ago,’ Sarabian replied.

  ‘New embellishments?’ Ehlana asked with some surprise.

  ‘Rewards for services rendered, Ehlana,’ Sarabian smiled. ‘It seemed appropriate. Duke Caalador’s accepted a position in the Ministry of the Interior, so he’s gone back to Lebas to settle up his affairs there.’

  ‘And Stragen?’

  ‘He’s on his way to Astel, your Majesty,’ Baroness Melidere replied with a bleak smile. ‘He said that he wants to have a few words with Elron.’

  ‘Did Elron manage to get out of Natayos alive?’ Kalten sounded surprised. ‘Ekrasios said that the Shining Ones had obliterated the place.’

  ‘The word Caalador picked up was that Elron hid out somewhere while the Shining Ones were dissolving Scarpa and Cyzada. Then, after they were gone, he crept out of the ruins and bolted for home. Stragen’s going to look him up.’ The Baroness looked at Khalad. ‘Krager got out as well,’ she told him. ‘Caalador found out that he was bound for Zenga in eastern Cammoria. There’s something you should know about Krager, though.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Do you remember how King Wargun died?’

  ‘His liver finally gave out on him, didn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘The same thing’s happening to Krager. Caalador talked with a man named Orden in the town of Delo. Krager was completely out of his head when they put him on the ship bound for Zenga.’

  ‘He’s still alive, though, isn’t he?’ Khalad asked bleakly.

  ‘If you can call it that,’ she sighed. ‘Let it go, Khalad. He wouldn’t even feel it if you ran your sword through him. He wouldn’t know who you were or why you were killing him.’