The Hidden City

  ‘It puts him in place in case Berit and Khalad do, in fact, have to ride all the way down there, your Grace,’ Vanion said. ‘And Stragen and Talen have contacts in Beresa, so they’ll probably be able to find out just who else is in town.’

  Emban checked that off his list. ‘Next. Sir Kalten, Sir Bevier and Master Caalador will sail south on a different ship and go into the jungles of Arjuna.’

  Caalador nodded. ‘I’ve got a friend in Delo who has contacts with the robber bands in those jungles,’ he said. ‘We’ll join one of those bands, so we’ll be able to keep an eye on Natayos and pass the word if Scarpa’s army starts to move.’

  ‘Right.’ Emban checked that off. ‘Next. Sir Ulath and Sir Tynian will go to the Tamul Mountains to stay in touch with the Trolls.’ He frowned. ‘Why is Tynian going there?’ he asked. ‘He doesn’t speak Trollish.’

  ‘Tynian and I get along well,’ Ulath rumbled, ‘and I’ll get terribly lonely if there’s no one around to talk with but Trolls. You have no idea of how depressing it is to be alone with Trolls, your Grace.’

  ‘Whatever makes you happy, Sir Ulath.’ Emban shrugged. ‘Now then, Sephrenia and Anarae Xanetia will go to Delphaeus to advise Anari Cedon about all these recent developments and to explain what we’re doing.’

  ‘And to see what we can do to make peace between Styricum and the Delphae,’ Sephrenia added.

  Emban checked off another item. He said, ‘Lord Vanion, Queen Betuana, Ambassador Itagne and Domi Kring will take the five thousand knights and go to Western Tamul Proper to join with the forces they have in place in Sarna and Samar.’

  ‘Where is Domi Kring?’ Betuana asked, looking around for the little man.

  ‘He’s standing guard over Mirtai,’ Princess Danae said. ‘He’s still about half afraid she might try to kill herself.’

  ‘We could have a problem there,’ Bevier observed. ‘Under those circumstances, Kring might not be willing to leave Matherion.’

  ‘We can get along without him if we have to,’ Vanion said. I can deal with Tikume directly. Having Kring around would make it easier, but I can make do without him if he really thinks that Mirtai might do something foolish.’

  Emban nodded. ‘Emperor Sarabian, Foreign Minister Oscagne and I will stay here in Matherion to hold down the fort, and the Child Goddess will keep us all in touch with each other. Have I left anything out?’

  ‘What do you want me to do, Emban?’ Danae asked sweetly.

  ‘You’ll stay here in Matherion with us, your Royal Highness,’ Emban replied, ‘to brighten our gloomy days and nights with the sunshine of your smile.’

  ‘Are you making fun of me, your Grace?’

  ‘Of course not, Princess.’

  To say that Mirtai was unhappy would have been the grossest of understatements. She was in chains when Kring brought her into the council chamber with a hopeless kind of look on his face. ‘Nothing I say even reaches her,’ the Domi told them. ‘I think she’s even forgotten that we’re betrothed.’

  The golden Atan giantess would not look at any of them, but sank instead to the floor in abject misery.

  ‘She has failed her owner.’ Betuana shrugged. ‘She must either avenge or die.’

  ‘Not quite, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk’s daughter said firmly. She slipped down from the chair in the corner from which she had been watching the proceedings. She deposited Rollo in one corner of the chair and Mmrr in the other and crossed the room to Mirtai with a businesslike look on her small face. ‘Atana Mirtai,’ she said crisply, ‘get up off the floor.’

  Mirtai looked sullenly at her, then slowly rose, her chains clinking.

  ‘In my mother’s absence, I am the queen,’ Danae declared.

  Sparhawk blinked.

  ‘You’re not Ehlana,’ Mirtai said.

  ‘Im not pretending to be. I’m stating a legal fact. Sarabian, isn’t that the way it works? Isn’t my mother’s power mine while she’s away?’

  ‘Well – technically, I suppose.’

  ‘Technically my foot. I’m Queen Ehlana’s heir. I’m assuming her position until she returns. That means that I temporarily own everything that’s hers – her throne, her crown, her jewels, and her personal slave.’

  ‘I’d hate to have to argue against her in a court of law,’ Emban admitted.

  Thank you, your Grace,’ Danae said. ‘All right, Atana Mirtai, you heard them. You’re my property now.’

  Mirtai scowled at her.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Danae snapped. ‘Pay attention. I am your owner, and I forbid you to kill yourself. I also forbid you to run off. I need you here. You’re going to stay here with Melidere and me, and you’re going to guard us. You failed my mother. Don’t fail me.’

  Mirtai stiffened, and then she broke her chains with an angry wrench of her arms. ‘It shall be as you say, your Majesty,’ she snapped, her eyes blazing.

  Danae looked around at the rest of them with a smug little smile. ‘See,’ she said. ‘Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?’

  Chapter 4

  It was a small, single-masted coastal freighter with a leaky bottom and patched sails. It definitely did not skim the waves. Berit and Khalad wore their mail-shirts and travelers’ cloaks and they stood in the bow looking out across the leaden expanse of the Gulf of Micae as the wretched vessel wallowed along. ‘Is that coast up ahead?’ Berit asked hopefully.

  Khalad looked out across the choppy water. ‘No, just a cloud-bank. We’re not moving very fast, my Lord. We won’t make the coast today, I’m afraid.’ He looked aft and lowered his voice. ‘Stay alert after the sun goes down,’ he instructed. ‘The crew of this tub is made up of waterfront sweepings, and the captain isn’t much better. I think we should take turns sleeping tonight.’

  Berit glanced back along the deck at the assortment of ruffians loitering there. ‘I wish I had my axe,’ he muttered.

  ‘Don’t say things like that out loud, Berit,’ Khalad muttered. ‘Sparhawk doesn’t use a war-axe. Krager knows that, and one of these sailors may be working for him.’

  ‘Still? After the Harvest Festival?’

  ‘Nobody’s ever figured out a way to kill all the rats, my Lord, and it only takes one. Let’s both behave as if we’re being watched and every word we say is being overheard – just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘I’ll be a lot happier once we get ashore. Did we really have to make this leg of the trip by sea?’

  ‘It’s the custom.’ Khalad shrugged. ‘Don’t worry. We can hold off these sailors if we have to.’

  ‘That’s not what’s bothering me, Khalad. This scow waddles through the water like a whale with a sprained back. It’s making me queasy.’

  ‘Eat a piece of dry bread.’

  ‘I’d rather not. This is really miserable, Khalad.’

  ‘But we’re having an adventure, my Lord,’ Khalad said brightly. ‘Doesn’t the excitement make up for the discomfort?’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘You’re the one who wanted to be a knight.’

  ‘Yes, I know – and right now I’m trying to remember why.’

  Patriarch Emban was very displeased. ‘This is really outrageous, Vanion,’ he protested as he waddled along with the others toward the chapel in the west wing. ‘If Dolmant ever finds out that I’ve permitted the practice of witchcraft in a consecrated place of worship, he’ll have me defrocked.’

  ‘It’s the safest place, Emban,’ Vanion replied, ‘The pretense of “sacred rites” gives us an excuse to chase all the Tamuls out of the west wing. Besides, the chapel’s probably never really been consecrated anyway. This is an imitation castle built to make Elenes feel at home. The people who built it couldn’t have known the rite of consecration.’

  ‘You don’t know that it hasn’t been consecrated.’

  ‘And you don’t know that it has. If it bothers you all that much, Emban, you can re-consecrate it after we finish.’

  Emban’s face blanched. ‘Do you know what’s involved
in that, Vanion?’ he protested. ‘The hours of praying – the prostration before the altar – the fasting?’ His chubby face went pale. ‘Good God, the fasting!’

  Sephrenia, Flute, and Xanetia had slipped into the chapel several hours earlier, and they were sitting unobtrusively in one corner listening to a choir of Church Knights singing hymns.

  Emban and Vanion were still arguing when they joined the ladies. ‘What’s the problem?’ Sephrenia asked.

  ‘Patriarch Emban and Lord Vanion are having a disagreement about whether or not the chapel’s been consecrated, little mother,’ Kalten explained.

  ‘It hasn’t,’ Flute told him with a little shrug.

  ‘How can you tell?’ Emban demanded.

  She gave him a long-suffering look. ‘Who am I, your Grace?’ she asked him.

  He blinked. ‘Oh. I keep forgetting that for some reason. Is there actually a way you can tell whether or not a place has been consecrated?’

  ‘Well of course there is. Believe me, Emban, this chapel’s never been consecrated to your Elene God.’ She paused. ‘There was a spot not far from here that was consecrated to a tree about eighteen thousand years ago, though.’

  ‘A tree?

  ‘It was a very nice tree – an oak. It’s always an oak for some reason. Nobody ever seems to want to worship an elm. Lots of people used to worship trees. They’re predictable, for one thing.’

  ‘How could anybody in his right mind worship a tree?’

  ‘Who ever said that religious people were in their right minds? Sometimes you humans confuse us a great deal, you know.’

  Since there was an exchange of features involved in most cases here, Sephrenia and Xanetia had experimented a bit to alter the spell which had imprinted Sparhawk’s face on Berit. No exchange was necessary for Sparhawk, however, so they modified him first. He sat beside his old friend, Sir Endrik, a veteran with whom he, Kalten and Martel had endured their novitiates. Xanetia approached them with the color draining from her features and that soft radiance suffusing her face. She examined Endrik meticulously, and then her voice rose as she began to intone the Delphaeic spell in her oddly accented, archaic Tamul. Sephrenia stood at her side simultaneously casting the Styric spell.

  Sparhawk felt nothing whatsoever as Xanetia released her spell. Then at the crucial instant, Sephrenia extended her hand, interposing it between Sir Endrik’s face and Xanetia’s and simultaneously releasing the Styric spell. Sparhawk definitely felt that. His features seemed to somehow soften like melting wax, and he could actually feel his face changing, almost as wet clay is changed and molded by the potter’s hand. The straightening of his broken nose was a bit painful, and the lengthening of his jaw made his teeth ache as they shifted in the bone.

  ‘What do you think?’ Sephrenia asked Vanion when the process had been completed.

  ‘I don’t think you could get them any closer,’ Vanion replied, examining the two men closely. ‘How does it feel to be twins, Endrik?’

  ‘I didn’t feel a thing, my Lord,’ Endrik replied, staring curiously at Sparhawk.

  ‘I did,’ Sparhawk told him, gingerly touching his re-shaped nose. ‘Does the ache go away eventually, Anarae?’ he asked.

  ‘Thou wilt notice it less as time doth accustom thee to the alteration, Anakha. I did warn thee that some discomfort is involved, did I not?’

  ‘You did indeed.’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘It’s not unbearable.’

  ‘Do I really look like that?’ Endrik asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Vanion replied.

  ‘I should take better care of myself. The years aren’t being good to me.’

  ‘Nobody stays young and beautiful forever, Endrik,’ Kalten laughed.

  ‘Is that all that needs to be done to these two, Anarae?’ Vanion asked.

  ‘The process is complete, Lord Vanion,’ Xanetia replied.

  ‘We need to talk, Sparhawk,’ the Preceptor said. ‘Let’s go into the vestry where we’ll be out of the way while the ladies modify the others.’

  Sparhawk nodded, stood up and followed his friend to the small door to the left of the altar.

  Vanion led the way inside and closed the door behind them. ‘You’ve made all the arrangements with Sorgi?’ he asked.

  Sparhawk sat down. ‘I talked with him yesterday,’ he replied. ‘I told him that I had some friends that had to go to Beresa without attracting attention. He’s had the usual desertions, and he’s holding three berths open. Stragen, Talen and I’ll merge with the crew. We should be able to slip into Beresa without being noticed.’

  ‘I imagine that cost you. Sorgi’s prices are a little steep sometimes.’

  Sparhawk massaged the side of his aching jaw. ‘It wasn’t all that bad,’ he said. ‘Sorgi owes me a couple of favors, and I gave him time to pick up a cargo to cover most of the cost.’

  ‘You’ll be going directly to the harbor from here?’

  Sparhawk nodded. ‘We’ll use that tunnel Caalador found under the barracks. I told Sorgi that his three new crew members would report to him about midnight.’

  ‘You’ll sail tomorrow then?’

  Sparhawk shook his head. ‘The day after. We have to load Sorgi’s cargo tomorrow.’

  ‘Honest work, Sparhawk?’ Vanion smiled.

  ‘You’re starting to sound like Khalad.’

  ‘He does have opinions, doesn’t he?’

  ‘So did his father.’

  ‘Quit rubbing your face like that, Sparhawk. You’ll make your skin raw.’ Vanion paused. ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Very strange.’

  ‘Painful?’

  ‘The nose was. It feels almost as if somebody broke it again. Be glad you don’t have to go through it.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be much point in that. I won’t be sneaking down alleys the way the rest of you will.’ Vanion looked sympathetically at his friend. ‘We’ll get her back, Sparhawk,’ he said.

  ‘Of course. Was that all?’ Sparhawk’s tone was deliberately unemotional. The important thing here was not to feel.

  ‘Just be careful, and try to keep a handle on your temper.’

  Sparhawk nodded. ‘Let’s go see how the others are coming.’

  The alterations were confusing; there was no question about that. It was hard to tell exactly who was talking, and sometimes Sparhawk was startled by just who answered his questions. They said their goodbyes and quietly left the chapel with the main body of the Church Knights. They went out into the torch-lit courtyard, crossed the drawbridge, and proceeded across the night-shrouded lawn to the barracks of the knights, where Sparhawk, Stragen and Talen changed into tar-smeared sailor’s smocks while the others also donned the mis-matched clothing of commoners. Then they all went down to the cellar.

  Caalador, who now wore the blocky face of a middle-aged Deiran knight, led the way into a damp, cobweb-draped tunnel with a smoky torch. When they had gone about a mile, he stopped and raised the torch. ‘This yere’s yer exit, Sporhawk,’ he said, pointing at a steep, narrow stairway. ‘You’ll come out in an alley – which it is ez don’t smell none too sweet, but is good an’ dork.’ He paused. ‘Sorry, Stragen,’ he apologized. ‘I wanted to give you something to remember me by.’

  ‘You’re too kind,’ Stragen murmured.

  ‘Good luck, Sparhawk,’ Caalador said then.

  ‘Thanks, Caalador.’ The two shook hands, and then Caalador lifted his torch and led the rest of the party off down the musty-smelling passageway toward their assorted destinations, leaving Sparhawk, Talen, and Stragen alone in the dark.

  ‘They won’t be in any danger, Vanion,’ Flute assured the Preceptor as the ladies were packing. ‘Ill be going along, after all, and I can take care of them.’

  ‘Ten knights then,’ he amended his suggestion downward.

  ‘They’d just be in our way, love,’ Sephrenia told him. ‘I do want you to be careful, though. A body of armed men is far more likely to be attacked than a small party of travelers.’

  ‘But it isn’t
safe for ladies to travel alone,’ he protested. ‘There are always robbers and the like lurking in the forest.’

  ‘We won’t be in one place long enough to attract robbers or anybody else,’ Flute told him. ‘We’ll be in Delphaeus in two days. I could do it in one, but I’ll have to stop and have a long talk with Edaemus before I go into his valley. He might just take a bit of convincing.’

  ‘When art thou leaving Matherion, Lord Vanion?’ Xanetia asked.

  ‘About the end of the week, Anarae,’ he replied. ‘We’ve got to spend some time on our equipment, and there’s always the business of organizing the supply train.’

  ‘Take warm clothing,’ Sephrenia instructed. ‘The weather could change at any time.’

  ‘Yes, love. How long will you be at Delphaeus?’

  ‘We can’t be sure. Aphrael will keep you advised. We have a great deal to discuss with Anari Cedon. The fact that Cyrgon has summoned Klæl complicates matters.’

  ‘Truly,’ Xanetia agreed. ‘We may be obliged to entreat Edaemus to return.’

  ‘Would he do that?’

  Flute smiled roguishly. ‘I’ll coax him, Vanion,’ she said, ‘and you know how good I am at that. If I really want something, I almost always get it.’

  ‘You there! Look lively!’ Sorgi’s bull-necked bo’sun bellowed, popping his whip at Stragen’s heels.

  Stragen, who now wore the braids and sweeping mustaches of a blond Genidian Knight, dropped the bale he was carrying across the deck and reached for his dagger.

  ‘No!’ Sparhawk hissed at him. ‘Pick up that bale!’

  Stragen glared at him for a moment, then bent and lifted the bale again. ‘This wasn’t part of the agreement,’ he muttered.

  ‘He’s not really going to hit you with that whip,’ Talen assured the fuming Thalesian. ‘Sailors all complain about it, but the whip’s just for show. A bo’sun who really hits his men with his whip usually gets thrown over the side some night during the voyage.’