The Diamond Throne (54 page)

‘Dear one,’ she began in an agonized voice ‘My dearest one –’

‘As I said,’ he cut her off, ‘the discussion is ended.’

There was a long and awkward silence as Sephrenia and Vanion stood with their eyes locked on each other’s face.

‘Did the physician in Dabour give you any hints about which objects might cure the Queen?’ Bevier asked Sparhawk a bit uneasily

‘He mentioned a spear in Daresia, several rings in Zemoch, a bracelet somewhere in Pelosia, and a jewel on the royal crown of Thalesia.’

Ulath grunted. ‘The Bhelliom.’

‘That solves it, then,’ Kalten said. ‘We go to Thalesia, borrow Wargun’s crown, and come back here with it.’

‘Wargun doesn’t have it,’ Ulath told him.

‘What do you mean, Wargun doesn’t have it? He’s the King of Thalesia, isn’t he?’

‘That crown was lost five hundred years ago.’

‘Could we possibly find it?’

‘Almost anything is possible, I suppose,’ the big Thalesian replied, ‘but people have been looking for it for five hundred years without much success. Do we have that kind of time?’

‘What is this Bhelliom?’ Tynian asked him.

‘The legends say that it’s a very large sapphire carved in the shape of a rose It’s supposed to have the power of the Troll-Gods in it.’

‘Does it?’

‘I wouldn’t know I’ve never seen it. It’s lost, remember?’

‘There are bound to be other objects,’ Sephrenia declared. ‘We live in a world with magic all around us. In all of the aeons since the beginning of time, I’d imagine that the Gods have seen fit to create any number of things with the kind of power we’re looking for.’

‘Why not just make
one?’
Kalten asked. ‘Get a group of people together and have them cast a spell on something, some jewel or stone or ring or whatever?’

‘Now I can see why you never became proficient in the secrets, Kalten.’ Sephrenia sighed. ‘You don’t even understand the basic principles. All magic comes from the Gods, not from us. They allow us to borrow if we ask them in the proper fashion – but they
won’t
let us make the kind of thing we’re looking for in this case. The power that’s instilled in these objects is a part of the power of the Gods themselves, and they don’t sacrifice that sort of thing lightly’

‘Oh,’ the blond man said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘You should have. I told you about it when you were fifteen.’

‘I must have forgotten.’

‘About all we can do is start looking,’ Vanion said. ‘I’ll send word to the other preceptors. We’ll have every Church Knight in all four orders working on it.’

‘And I’ll get word to the Styrics in the mountains,’ Sephrenia added. ‘There are many such things known only to Styricum.’

‘Did anything interesting happen in Madel?’ Sparhawk asked Kalten.

‘Not really,’ Kalten replied. ‘We caught a few glimpses of Krager, but always from a distance. By the time we got close to where he’d been, he’d given us the slip. He’s a tricky little weasel, isn’t he?’

Sparhawk nodded. ‘That’s what made me finally realize that he was being used as bait. Could you get any idea of what he was doing?’

‘No. We could never get close enough. He was up to something, though. He was scurrying around Madel like a mouse in a cheese factory’

‘Did Adus drop out of sight?’

‘More or less. Talen and Berit saw him once – when he and Krager rode out of town.’

‘Which way were they going?’ Sparhawk asked the boy

Talen shrugged. ‘They were headed back towards Borrata the last time we saw them,’ he said. ‘They might have changed direction once they got out of sight, though.’

‘The big one had some bandages on his head, Sir Sparhawk,’ Berit reported, ‘and his arm was in a sling.’

Kalten laughed. ‘It seems that you got a bigger piece of him than either one of us realized, Sparhawk,’ he said.

‘I was trying,’ Sparhawk said grimly. ‘Getting rid of Adus is one of my main goals in life.’

The door opened, and Kurik came back in carrying the wooden case containing the swords of the fallen knights.

‘You insist on doing this, Vanion?’ Sephrenia asked.

‘I don’t see that there’s any choice,’ he replied. ‘You have to be fit to move around. I can do my job sitting down – or lying in bed – or dead, probably, if it comes to that.’

The movement was but a faint one of Sephrenia’s eyes. She looked for the briefest instant at Flute, and the little girl gravely nodded her head. Sparhawk was positive that only he had witnessed the exchange; for some reason it troubled him profoundly.

‘Only take the swords one at a time,’ Sephrenia instructed Vanion. ‘The weight is considerable, and you’ll need to give yourself time to get used to it.’

‘I’ve held swords before, Sephrenia.’

‘Not like these, and it’s not the weight of the swords I’m talking about. It’s the weight of all that goes with them.’ She opened the case and took out the sword of Sir Parasim, the young knight whom Adus had killed in Arcium. She took the blade and gravely extended the hilt across her forearm to Vanion.

He rose and took it from her. ‘Correct me if I make any mistakes,’ he said and started to chant in Styric Sephrenia raised her voice with his, though her tone was softer, less certain, and her eyes were filled with doubt. The spell rose to a climax, and Vanion suddenly sagged, his face turning grey ‘God!’ he gasped, almost dropping the sword.

‘Are you all right, dear one?’ Sephrenia asked sharply, reaching out and touching him.

‘Let me get my breath for a minute,’ Vanion said. ‘How can you stand this, Sephrenia?’

‘We do what we must,’ she replied. ‘I feel better already, Vanion. There’s no need for you to take the other two.’

‘Yes, there is. We’re going to lose another of the twelve of us any day now, and his ghost will deliver another sword to you. I’m going to see to it that your hands are free when it comes.’ He straightened. ‘All right,’ he said grimly ‘Give me the next one.’

Sparhawk found that he was unusually tired that evening. The rigours of what had taken place in Rendor seemed to catch up with him all at once, but despite his weariness, he tossed and turned fitfully on the narrow cot in the cell-like room. The moon was full, and it cast its pale light through the narrow window directly into Sparhawk’s face. He muttered a sour oath and covered his head with his blanket to hide his eyes from the light.

Perhaps he dozed, or perhaps not. He hovered on the verge of sleep for what seemed hours; but, try though he might to slip through that soft door, he could not. He threw off his blanket and sat up.

It was spring, or very nearly. It seemed that the winter had been interminable, but what had he really accomplished? The months had slipped away, and with them Ehlana’s life. Was he really any closer to freeing her from her crystal entombment? In the cold light of the midnight moon, he suddenly came face to face with a chilling thought. Might it not be entirely possible that all of the scheming and the complicated plots of Annias and Martel had been with but a single aim – to delay him, to fill the time Ehlana had left with senseless activity? He had been dashing from crisis to crisis since he had returned to Cimmura. Perhaps the plots of his enemies had not been intended to succeed. Perhaps their only
purpose had been delay He felt somehow that he was being manipulated and that whoever was behind it was taking pleasure in his anger and frustration, toying with him with cruel amusement. He lay back again to consider that.

It was a sudden chill that awoke him, a cold that seemed to penetrate to his bones, and he knew even before he opened his eyes that he was not alone.

An armoured figure stood at the foot of his cot, with the moonlight gleaming on the enamelled black steel. The familiar charnelhouse reek filled the room. ‘Awaken, Sir Sparhawk,’ the figure commanded in a chillingly hollow tone ‘I would have words with thee.’

Sparhawk sat up. ‘I’m awake, brother,’ he replied. The spectre raised its visor, and Sparhawk saw a familiar face ‘I’m sorry, Sir Tanis,’ he said.

‘All men die,’ the ghost intoned, ‘and my death was not without purpose That thought alone doth comfort me in the House of the Dead. Attend to me, Sparhawk, for my time with thee must be short. I bring thee instructions. This is the purpose for which I died.’

‘I will hear thee, Tanis,’ Sparhawk promised.

‘Go thou then this very night to the crypt which doth lie beneath the cathedral of Cimmura. There shalt thou meet another restless shade which will instruct thee further in the course which thou must follow’

‘Whose shade?’

‘Thou shalt know him, Sparhawk.’

‘I will do as you command, my brother.’

The spectre at the foot of the cot drew its sword. ‘And now I must leave thee, Sparhawk,’ it said. ‘I must deliver up my sword ’ere I return to the endless silence.’

Sparhawk sighed. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘Hail then, brother, and farewell,’ the ghost concluded. ‘Remember me in thy prayers.’ Then the
armoured figure turned and walked silently from the room.

The towers of the cathedral of Cimmura blotted out the stars, and the pale moon lay low on the western horizon, filling the streets with silvery light and inky black shadows. Sparhawk moved silently down a narrow alleyway and stopped in the dense shadow at its mouth. He was directly across the street from the main doors of the cathedral. Beneath his traveller’s cloak he wore mail, and his plain sword was belted at his waist.

He felt a peculiar detachment as he stared across the street at the pair of church soldiers standing guard at the cathedral door. Their red tunics were leeched of all colour by the pale moon, and they leaned inattentively against the stones of the cathedral wall.

Sparhawk considered the situation. The guarded door was the only way into the cathedral. All others would be locked. By tradition, however, if not by Church law, the locking of the main doors of any church was forbidden.

The guards would be sleepy and far from alert. The street was not wide. One quick rush would eliminate the problem. Sparhawk straightened and reached for his sword. Then he stopped. Something seemed wrong with the notion. He was not squeamish, but it seemed somehow that he should not go to this meeting with blood on his hands. Then, too, he decided, two bodies lying on the cathedral steps would announce louder than words that someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to get inside

All he really needed was about a minute to cross the street and slip through the doors. He thought about it. What would be most likely to pull the soldiers from their posts? He came up with a half-dozen possibilities before he finally settled on one. He smiled when the notion
came to him. He ran over the spell in his mind, making sure that he had all the words right, and then he began to mutter under his breath in Styric

The spell was fairly long. There were a number of details he wanted to get exactly right. When it was done, he raised his hand and released it.

The figure that appeared at the end of the street was that of a woman. She wore a velvet cloak with its hood thrown back, and her long blonde hair tumbled down her back. Her face was lovely beyond belief. She walked towards the doors of the cathedral with a seductive grace and, when she reached the steps, she stopped, looking up at the now fully awake pair of guards. She did not speak. Speech would have unnecessarily complicated the spell, and she did not need to say anything. Slowly, she unfastened the neck of her cloak and then opened it. Beneath the cloak, she was naked.

Sparhawk could clearly hear the suddenly hoarse breathing of the two soldiers.

Then, with inviting glances over her shoulder, she walked back up the street. The two guards looked after her, then at each other, then up and down the street to be sure that no one was watching. They leaned their pikes against the stone walls beside them and ran down the steps.

The figure of the woman had stopped beneath the torch flaring at the corner She beckoned again, then stepped out of the light and disappeared up the side street.

The guards ran after her

Sparhawk was out of the shadows at the mouth of the alley before the pair had rounded the corner. He was across the street in seconds, and he bounded up the steps two at a time, seized the heavy handle of one of the great arched doors, and pulled. Then he was inside. He smiled
faintly to himself, wondering how long the soldiers would search for the now-vanished apparition he had created.

The inside of the cathedral was dim and cool, smelling of incense and candle wax. Two lone tapers, one on either side of the altar, burned fitfully, stuttering in the faint breath of night air that had followed Sparhawk into the nave. Their light was little more than two flickering pinpoints that were reflected only faintly in the gems and gold decorating the altar.

Sparhawk moved silently down the central aisle, his shoulders tense and senses alert. Although it was late at night, there was always the possibility that one of the many churchmen who lived within the confines of the cathedral might be up and about, and Sparhawk preferred to keep his visit a secret and to avoid noisy confrontations.

He knelt perfunctorily before the altar, rose, and moved out of the nave into the dim, latticed corridor leading towards the chancel.

There was light ahead, dim but steady. Sparhawk moved quietly, keeping close to the wall. A curtained archway stood before him, and he carefully parted the thick purple drapes a finger’s width and peered in.

The Primate Annias, garbed not in satin but in harsh monk’s cloth, knelt before a small stone altar inside the sanctuary His emaciated features were twisted in an agony of self-loathing, and he wrung his hands together as if he would tear his fingers from their sockets. Tears streamed openly down his face, and his breath rasped hoarsely in his throat.

Sparhawk’s face went bleak, and his hand went to his sword hilt. The soldiers at the cathedral door had been one thing. Killing them would have served no real purpose Annias, however, was an entirely different
matter. The primate was alone. A quick rush and a single thrust would remove this filthy infection from Elenia once and for all.