The Diamond Throne (17 page)

‘All right, Kurik,’ Sparhawk said, ‘but when the fighting starts, stay close to him. I don’t want him getting hurt.’

‘I never let
you
get hurt, did I?’ Sparhawk grinned at his friend. ‘No. As I recall, you didn’t.’

They stayed the night in the ruin and rode out early the following morning. Their combined forces numbered just over five hundred men, and they rode south under a still-threatening sky Just beyond Darra stood a nunnery with yellow sandstone walls and a red tile roof. Sparhawk and Sephrenia turned aside from the road and crossed a winter-browned meadow towards the building.

‘And what is the child’s name?’ the black-robed Mother Superior asked when they were admitted into her presence in a severely simple room with only a small brazier to warm it.

‘She doesn’t talk, mother,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘She plays those pipes all the time, so we call her Flute.’

‘That is an unseemly name, my son.’

‘The child doesn’t mind, Mother Superior,’ Sephrenia told her.

‘Did you make some effort to find her parents?’

‘There was no one in the vicinity when we found her,’ Sparhawk explained.

The Mother Superior looked gravely at Sephrenia. ‘The child is Styric, she pointed out. ‘Would it not perhaps be better to put her with a family of her own race and her own faith?’

‘We have pressing business,’ Sephrenia said, ‘and Styrics can be very difficult to find when they choose to be’

‘You know, of course, that if she stays with us, we will raise her in the Elene faith?’

Sephrenia smiled. ‘You will
try,
Mother Superior. I think you will find that she’s not amenable to conversion, however. Coming, Sparhawk?’

They rejoined the column and rode south under clearing skies, moving first at a rolling trot and then at a thunderous gallop. They crossed a knoll, and Sparhawk
reined Faran in sharply, staring in astonishment at Flute, who sat cross-legged on a large white rock playing her pipes. ‘How did you – ‘ he began, then broke off. ‘Sephrenia,’ he called, but the white-robed woman had already dismounted. She approached the child, speaking gently to her in that strange Styric dialect.

Flute lowered her pipes and gave Sparhawk an impish little grin. Sephrenia laughed and took the child in her arms.

‘How did she get ahead of us?’ Kalten asked, his face baffled.

‘Who knows?’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I guess I’d better take her back.’

‘No, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia said firmly. ‘She wants to go with us.’

‘That’s too bad,’ he said bluntly ‘I’m not going to take a little girl into battle.’

‘Don’t concern yourself with her, Sparhawk. I’ll care for her.’ She smiled at the child nestled in her arms. ‘I’ll care for her as if she were my own.’ She laid her cheek against Flute’s glossy black hair. ‘In a way, she is.’

He gave up. ‘Have it your own way,’ he said. Just as he began to wheel Faran around, he felt a sudden chill accompanied by the sense of an implacable hatred. ‘Sephrenia!’ he said sharply.

‘I felt it, too!’ she cried, drawing the little girl closer to her. ‘It’s directed at the child!’

Flute struggled briefly, and Sephrenia, looking surprised, set her down. The little girl’s face was set, looking more annoyed than angered or frightened. She set her pipes to her lips and began to play. The melody this time was not that light air in a minor key which she had played before. It was sterner and peculiarly ominous.

Then from some distance away they heard a sudden howl of pain and surprise. The howl immediately began
to fade, as if whoever or whatever had made it were fleeing at an unimaginable rate.

‘What was that?’ Kalten exclaimed.

‘An unfriendly spirit,’ Sephrenia replied calmly.

‘What drove it away?’

‘The child’s song. It seems that she has learned to protect herself.’

‘Do you understand any of what’s going on here?’ Kalten asked Sparhawk.

‘No more than you do. Let’s keep moving. We’ve still got a couple of days of hard riding ahead of us.’

The castle of Count Radun, the uncle of King Dregos, was perched atop a high, rocky promontory. Like so many of the castles in this southern kingdom, it was surrounded by massive walls. The weather had cleared off, and the noonday sun was very bright as Sparhawk, Kalten, and Sephrenia, who still carried Flute in front of her saddle, rode across a broad meadow of yellow grass towards the fortress.

They were admitted without question; in the courtyard they were met by the count, a blocky man with heavy shoulders and silver-shot hair. He wore a dark green doublet trimmed in black and surmounted by a heavily starched white ruff of a collar. It was a style which had gone out of fashion in Elenia decades ago. ‘My house is honoured to welcome the knights of the Church,’ he declared formally after they had introduced themselves.

Sparhawk swung down off Faran’s back. ‘Your hospitality is legendary, my Lord,’ he said, ‘but our visit is not entirely social. Is there someplace private where we can talk? We have a matter of some urgency to discuss with you.’

‘Of course,’ the count replied. ‘If you will all be so good as to come with me.’ They followed him through the
broad doors of his castle and along a candlelit corridor strewn with rushes. At the end of the corridor, the count produced a brass key and unlocked a door. ‘My private study,’ he said modestly. ‘I’m rather proud of my collection of books. I have almost two dozen.’

‘Formidable,’ Sephrenia murmured.

‘Perhaps you might care to read some of them, madame?’

‘The lady doesn’t read,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘She’s a Styric and an initiate in the secrets. She feels that reading might somehow interfere with her abilities.’

‘A witch?’ the count said, looking at the small woman. ‘Truly?’

‘We prefer to use other terms, my Lord,’ she replied mildly

‘Please, sit down,’ the count said, pointing at a large table standing in a chill patch of wintry sunlight coming through a heavily barred window. ‘I’m curious to hear about this urgent matter.’

Sparhawk removed his helmet and gauntlets and laid them on the table. ‘Are you familiar with the name of Annias, Primate of Cimmura, my Lord?’

The count’s face hardened. ‘I’ve heard of him,’ he said shortly

‘You know his reputation then?’

‘I do.’

‘Good. Quite by accident, Sir Kalten and I unearthed a plot hatched by the primate. Fortunately, he isn’t aware of the fact that we know about it. Is it your common practice so freely to admit Church Knights?’

‘Of course. I revere the Church and honour her Knights.’

‘Within a few days – a week at most – a sizeable group of men in black armour and bearing the standards of Pandion Knights will ride up to your gates. I strongly advise you not to admit them.’

‘But’

Sparhawk held up one hand. ‘They will
not
be Pandion, my Lord. They’re mercenaries under the command of a renegade named Martel. If you let them in, they will kill everyone within your walls – excepting only a churchman or two who will spread word of the outrage.’

‘Monstrous!’ the count gasped. ‘What reason could the Primate of Cimmura have to bear me such hatred?’

‘The plot isn’t directed at you, Count Radun,’ Kalten told him. ‘Your murder is designed to discredit the Pandion Knights. Annias hopes that the Hierocracy of the Church will be so infuriated that they’ll disband the order.’

‘I must send word to Larium at once,’ the count declared, coming to his feet. ‘My nephew can have an army here in a few days.’

‘That won’t be necessary, my Lord,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I have five hundred fully armed Pandions, real ones – concealed in the woods just to the north of your castle. With your permission, I’ll bring a hundred of them inside your walls to reinforce your garrison. When the mercenaries arrive, find some excuse not to admit them.’

‘Won’t that seem strange?’ Radun asked. ‘I have a reputation for hospitality – for the Knights of the Church in particular.’

‘The drawbridge,’ Kalten said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Tell them that the windlass that operates your drawbridge is broken. Then tell them that you have men working on it and ask them to be patient.’

‘I will not lie,’ the count said stiffly

‘That’s all right, my Lord,’ Kalten assured him. ‘I’ll break the windlass for you myself, so you won’t really be lying.’

The count stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.

‘The mercenaries will be outside the castle,’ Sparhawk went on, ‘and your walls will give very little room for manoeuvring. That’s when we’ll attack them from behind.’

Kalten grinned broadly ‘It should be almost like a cheese grater when we start to grind them up against your walls.’

‘And I can drop some interesting things on them from my battlements as well,’ the count added, also grinning. ‘Arrows, large rocks, burning pitch – that sort of thing.’

‘We’re going to get on splendidly, my Lord,’ Kalten told him.

‘I will, of course, make arrangements to lodge this lady and the little girl here in safety,’ the count said.

‘No, my Lord,’ Sephrenia disagreed. ‘I will accompany Sir Sparhawk and Sir Kalten back to our hiding place. This Martel Sparhawk mentioned is a former Pandion and he has delved deeply into secret knowledge that is forbidden to honest men. It may be necessary to counter him, and I’m best equipped to do that.’

‘But surely the child’

‘The child must stay with me,’ Sephrenia said firmly She looked over at Flute, who was in the act of curiously opening a book. ‘No!’ she said, probably more sharply than she intended. She rose and took the book away from the little girl.

Flute sighed, and Sephrenia spoke briefly to her in that dialect Sparhawk did not understand.

Since there was no way to know when Martel’s mercenaries might arrive, the Pandions built no fires that night, and when the next morning dawned clear and cold, Sparhawk unrolled himself from his blankets and looked
with some distaste at his armour, knowing that it would take at least an hour for the heat of his body to take the clammy chill out of it. He decided that he was not ready to face that just yet, so he belted on his sword, pulled his stout cloak around his shoulders, and walked down through the sleeping camp towards a small brook that trickled through the woods where he and his knights lay hidden.

He knelt beside the brook and drank from his cupped hands, then braced himself and splashed icy water on his face. Then he rose, dried his face with the hem of his cloak, and stepped across the brook. The just-risen sun streamed golden into the leafless wood, slanting between the dark trunks and touching fire into the dewdrops collected like strings of beads along the stems of the grass about his feet. Sparhawk walked on through the woods.

He had gone perhaps a half a mile when he saw a grassy meadow through the trees. As he approached the meadow, he heard the thudding of hooves. Somewhere ahead, a single horse was loping across the turf at a canter. And then he heard the sound of Flute’s pipes rising in the morning air.

He pushed his way to the edge of the meadow, parted the bushes, and peered out.

Faran, his roan coat glistening in the morning sun, cantered easily in a wide circular course around the meadow. He wore no saddle nor bridle, and there was something almost joyful about his stride. Flute lay face up on his back with her pipes at her lips. Her head was nestled comfortably on his surging front shoulders, her knees were crossed, and she was beating time on Faran’s rump with one little foot.

Sparhawk gaped at them, then stepped out into the meadow to stand directly in the big roan’s path. He
spread his arms wide, and Faran slowed to a walk and then stopped in front of his master.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Sparhawk barked at him.

Faran’s expression grew lofty and he looked away.

‘Have you completely taken leave of your senses?’

Faran snorted and flicked his tail even as Flute continued to play her song. Then the little girl slapped her grass-stained foot imperiously on his rump several times, and he neatly sidestepped the fuming Sparhawk and cantered on with Flute’s song soaring above him.

Sparhawk swore and ran after them. After a few yards, he knew it was hopeless and he stopped, breathing hard.

‘Interesting, wouldn’t you say?’ Sephrenia said. She had come out from among the trees and stood at the edge of the meadow with her white robe gleaming in the morning sun.

‘Can you make them stop?’ Sparhawk asked her. ‘She’s going to fall off and get hurt.’

‘No, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia disagreed, ‘she will not fall.’ She said it in that strange manner into which she sometimes lapsed. Despite the decades she had spent in Elene society, Sephrenia remained a Styric to her fingertips, and Styrics had always been an enigma to Elenes. The centuries of close association between the militant orders of the Elene Church and their Styric tutors, however, had taught the Church Knights to accept the words of their instructors without question.

‘If you’re sure,’ Sparhawk said a bit dubiously as he looked across the turf at Faran, who seemed somehow to have lost his normally vicious temperament.

‘Yes, dear one,’ she said, laying an affectionate hand on his arm in reassurance. ‘I’m absolutely sure.’ She looked out at the great horse and his tiny passenger joyously circling the dew-drenched meadow in the
golden morning sunlight. ‘Let them play a while longer,’ she advised.

About midmorning, Kalten returned from the vantage point to the south of the castle where he and Kurik had been keeping watch over the road coming up from Sarrinium. ‘Nothing yet,’ he reported as he dismounted, his armour clinking. ‘Do you think Martel might just try to come across country and avoid the roads?’

‘It’s not very likely,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘He
wants
to be seen, remember? He needs lots of witnesses.’

‘I suppose I hadn’t thought of that,’ Kalten admitted. ‘Have you got the road coming down from Darra covered?’

Sparhawk nodded. ‘Lakus and Berit are watching it.’

‘Berit?’ Kalten sounded surprised. ‘The apprentice? Isn’t he a little young?’

‘He’ll get over it. He’s steady, and he’s got good sense. Besides, Lakus can keep him out of trouble.’