The Shining Ones (23 page)

‘Nuthin’ simpler, little dorlin’,’ Caalador smirked, holding up a needle-thin implement with a hook on the end.

‘We’d better get started,’ Stragen said. ‘It’s midnight, and it might take us the rest of the night to find the door to that hidden room.’

‘You’re not serious,’ Ehlana scoffed.

‘May muh tongue turn green iffn I ain’t, yer Queenship.’ Caalador paused. ‘Dreadful, isn’t it?’ he added.

‘I don’t quite understand,’ Sarabian confessed.

‘It’s a cliche, your Majesty,’ Stragen explained, ‘taken from a type of literature that’s currently very popular in Eosia.’

‘Do you really want to dignify that trash by calling it literature, Stragen?’ Baroness Melidere murmured.

‘It satisfies the needs of the mentally deprived, Baroness,’ he shrugged. ‘Anyway, your Imperial Majesty, the literature consists largely of ghost stories. There’s always a haunted castle complete with hidden rooms and secret passages, and the entrances to these rooms
and passages are always hidden behind bookcases. It’s a very tired old device – so tired in fact that I almost didn’t think of it. I didn’t believe
anybody
would be so obvious.’ He laughed. ‘I wonder if Teovin thought it up all by himself or if he plagiarized. If he stole it, he has abominable taste in literature.’

‘Are books all that available in Eosia?’ Oscagne asked curiously. ‘They’re fearfully expensive here.’

‘It’s one of the results of our Holy Mother’s drive toward universal literacy during the last century, your Excellency,’ Ehlana explained. ‘The Church wanted her children to be able to read her message, so parish priests spend a great deal of time teaching everybody to read.’

‘The message of the Church doesn’t really take all that long to browse through, however,’ Stragen added, ‘and after the browsing’s done, you’ve got crowds of literate people with a skill they can’t really apply. It was the invention of paper that set off the literary explosion, though. The labor costs involved in copying aren’t particularly high. It was the cost of parchment that made books so prohibitively expensive. When paper came along, books became cheaper. There are copy-houses in most major cities with whole platoons of scriveners grinding out books by the ton. It’s a very profitable business. The books don’t have illuminations or decorated capitals, and the lettering’s a little shoddy, but they’re readable – and affordable. Not everyone who can read has good taste, though, so a lot of truly dreadful books are written by people with minimal talent. They write adventure stories, ghost stories, heroic fantasies and those naughty books that people don’t openly display in their bookcases. The Church encourages lives of the saints and tedious religious verse. Things like that are produced, of course, but nobody really reads that sort of thing. Ghost stories are currently in vogue – particularly in Thalesia. It has something to do with our
national character, I think.’ He looked at Ehlana. ‘The business of getting the information out of Teovin’s hidey-hole is going to be tedious, my Queen. There are mountains of documents in there, and I can’t take whole platoons of people in over the roof every night to help plow through them. Mirtai, Caalador and I are going to have to read every document ourselves.’

‘Perhaps not, Milord Stragen,’ Ehlana disagreed. She smiled at the blond thief. ‘I had absolute confidence in your dishonesty, dear boy, so I knew that sooner or later you’d find what we were looking for. I struggled for a time with the very problem you just mentioned. Then I remembered something Sparhawk once told me. He’d used a spell to put the image of Krager’s face in a basin of water so that Talen could draw his picture. I spoke with one of the Pandions who came along with us – a Sir Alvor. He told me that since Sephrenia refuses to learn to read Elenic, she and Sparhawk devised a way round her deliberate incapacity. She can glance at a page – a single glance – and then make the whole page come up in a mirror or on the surface of a basin of water hours or even days later. Sir Alvor knows the spell. He’s a fairly young and agile fellow, so he’ll be able to creep across the roof-top with you. Take him along next time you visit the Interior Ministry and turn him loose in Teovin’s hidden closet. I rather imagine he’ll be able to carry that entire library out with him in a single night.’

‘Does it really work, your Majesty?’ Caalador asked her a bit doubtfully.

‘Oh, yes, Caalador. I handed Alvor a book he’d never seen before. He leafed through it in a couple of minutes and then printed it on that mirror over there – page after page after page. I checked what he was producing against the original, and it was absolutely perfect – right down to the smudges and the food-stains on the pages.’

‘Them there Pandion fellers is real useful t’ have around,’ Caalador admitted.

‘You know,’ she smiled, ‘I’ve noticed the exact same thing myself. There’s one in particular who does all sorts of useful things for me.’

‘We don’t have any choice, dear,’ Vanion said to Sephrenia. ‘We’ve even tried turning around and going back, and we
still
keep moving in the same direction. We’re going to have to use the Bhelliom.’ He looked on up the gorge lying ahead of them. The mountain river was tumbling over the boulders jutting up out of its bed, sawing its way deeper and deeper into the rock with its white, roaring passage. The sides of the gorge were thick with evergreens which dripped continually in the swirling mist rising out of the rapids.

‘No, Vanion,’ Sephrenia replied stubbornly. ‘We’ll fall directly into their trap if we do that. The Delphae want the Bhelliom, and as soon as Sparhawk tries to use it, they’ll attack us and try to kill him and take it away from him.’

‘They’ll regret it if they do,’ Sparhawk told her.

‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘but then again, maybe not. We don’t know what they’re capable of. Until I know
how
they’re misleading us, I can’t even guess at what else they can do. There are too many uncertainties involved to be taking chances.’

‘Isn’t this what they call an impasse?’ Khalad suggested. ‘We keep going north no matter how much we try to go in some other direction, and we don’t know what the Delphae will do if Sparhawk tries to use Bhelliom to pull us out of these mountains. Why don’t we just stop?’

‘We have to get back to Matherion, Khalad,’ Sparhawk objected.

‘But we’re not
going
to Matherion, my Lord. Every
step we take brings us that much closer to Delphaeus. We’ve been twisting and turning around through these mountains for two days now, and we’re
still
going north. If all directions lead to a place where we really don’t want to go, why keep moving at all? Why not find a comfortable camp-site and stay there for a while? Let’s make them come to
us,
instead of the other way around.’

‘It makes sense, Lord Vanion,’ Itagne agreed. ‘As long as we keep moving, the Delphae don’t have to do a thing except herd us in the right direction. If we stop moving, they’ll have to try something else, and that might give Lady Sephrenia some clues about their capabilities. It’s called “constructive inaction” in diplomatic circles.’

‘What if the Delphae just decide to wait us out?’ Ulath objected. ‘Autumn isn’t a good time to linger in the mountains. It wasn’t so bad in those foothills we came through when we left the desert, but now that we’re up here, time starts to get very important.’

‘I don’t think they’ll wait, Sir Ulath,’ Itagne disagreed.

‘Why not? They’ve got all the advantages, haven’t they?’

‘Let’s just call it a diplomat’s instinct. I caught a faint odor of urgency about them when they approached us. They want us to go to Delphaeus, right enough, but it’s
also
important to them that we get there soon.’

‘I’d like to know how you worked
that
out, your Excellency,’ Kalten said skeptically.

‘It’s a combination of a thousand little things, Sir Kalten – the tone of voice, slight changes of expression, even their posture and their rate of breathing. The Delphae weren’t as certain of themselves as they seemed, and they want us to go to Delphaeus as quickly as possible. As long as we keep going, they don’t have any reason to make further contact, but I think we’ll find that if we just sit still, they’ll come to us and start making
concessions. I’ve seen it happen that way many times.’

‘Does it take long to learn how to be a diplomat, your Excellency?’ Talen asked him with a speculative look.

‘That depends entirely on your natural gifts, Master Talen.’

‘I’m a quick learner. Diplomacy sounds like a lot of fun.’

‘It’s the best game there is,’ Itagne smiled. ‘There’s no other that even approaches it.’

‘Are you considering another career-change, Talen?’ his brother asked him.

‘I’m never going to be a very good knight, Khalad – not unless Sparhawk takes the Bhelliom and makes me about four times bigger than I am now.’

‘Isn’t this about the third occupation you’ve grown excited about so far this year?’ Sparhawk asked him. ‘Have you given up the notion of becoming the emperor of the thieves or the archprelate of larceny?’

‘I don’t really have to make any final decisions yet, Sparhawk. I’m still young.’ Talen suddenly thought of something. ‘They can’t arrest a diplomat, can they, your Excellency? I mean, the police can’t really touch him at all – no matter
what
he does?’

‘That’s a long-standing custom, Master Talen. If I throw
your
diplomats into a dungeon, you’ll turn around and do the same thing to
mine,
won’t you? That puts a diplomat more or less above the law.’

‘Well, now,’ Talen said with a beatific smile, ‘isn’t
that
something to think about?’

‘I like caves.’ Ulath shrugged.

‘Are you sure you’re not part Troll, Ulath?’ Kalten asked.

‘Even Trolls and Ogres can have good ideas once in a while. A cave’s got a roof in case the weather turns sour, and nobody can come at you from behind. This
one’s a good cave, and it’s been used before. Somebody spent quite a bit of time building a wall around that spring in there so that there’s plenty of water.’

‘What if he comes back and wants his cave again?’

‘I don’t think he’ll do that, Kalten.’ The big Thalesian held up a beautifully crafted flint spearhead. ‘He left this behind when he moved out. I’d say that he’d probably be too old to give us much to worry about – fifteen or twenty thousand years too old, at least.’ He touched a careful thumb to the serrated edge of the spearpoint. ‘He did very nice work, though. He drew pictures on the wall, too – animals, mostly.’

Kalten shuddered. ‘Wouldn’t it be sort of like taking up residence in a tomb?’

‘Not really. Time’s all one piece, Kalten. The past is always with us. The cave served the fellow who made this spearpoint very well, and the work he left behind inclines me to trust his judgement. The place has everything we need – shelter, water, plenty of firewood nearby, and then there’s that steep meadow a hundred yards off to the south, so there’s plenty of forage for the horses.’

‘What are
we
going to eat, though? After a couple of weeks when our supplies run out, we’ll be trying to boil rocks down for soup-stock.’

‘There’s game about, Sir Kalten,’ Khalad told him. ‘I’ve seen deer down by the river and a flock of feral goats higher up the slope.’

‘Goat?’ Kalten made a face.

‘It’s better than rock soup, isn’t it?’

‘Sir Ulath is right, gentlemen,’ Bevier told them. ‘The cave’s in a defensible position. So far as we know, the Delphae have to get close enough to touch us in order to do us any harm. Some breastworks and a wellplanted field of sharpened stakes on that steep slope leading down to the river will keep them at arm’s length.
If Ambassador Itagne is right and the Delphae
are
pressed for time, that should encourage them to come to the bargaining table.’

‘Let’s do it,’ Vanion decided. ‘And let’s get right at it. The Delphae seem to come out at night, so we’ll want some defenses in place before the sun goes down.’

The overcast which had turned the sky into an oppressive leaden bowl for the past week was gone the following morning, and the autumn sunlight touching the turning leaves of the grove of aspens across the gorge from their cave filled the day with a vibrant, golden light. Everything seemed etched with a kind of preternatural clarity. The boulders in the stream-bed below were starkly white, and the swift-moving river was a dark, sun-illuminated green. The gorge was alive with bird song and the chatter of scolding squirrels.

The knights continued the labor of fortification, erecting a substantial, chest-high wall of loosely piled stones around the edge of the semi-circular shelf that extended out from the mouth of the cave, and planting a forest of sharpened stakes on the steep slope that led down to the river.

They pastured their horses in the adjoining meadow by day and brought them inside the makeshift fort as the sun went down. They bathed and washed their clothing in the river, and hunted deer and goats in the forest. They took turns standing watch at night, but there was no sign of the Delphae.

They stayed there for four nights, growing more restless with each passing hour. ‘If this is how the Delphae respond to something urgent, I’d hate to sit around waiting for them when they were relaxed,’ Talen said dryly to Itagne on the morning of the fourth day. ‘They don’t even have anybody out there watching us.’

‘They’re out there, Master Talen,’ Itagne replied confidently.

‘Why haven’t we seen them, then? They’d be fairly hard to miss at night.’

‘Not necessarily,’ Kalten disagreed. ‘I don’t think they glow all the time. We saw them shining out there in that fog the first time they came to call, but the second time they crept up to within twenty yards of us before they lit up. They seem to be able to control the light, depending on the circumstances.’

‘They’re out there,’ Itagne repeated, ‘and the longer they wait, the better.’

‘I didn’t follow that,’ Talen confessed.

‘They know by now that we’re not going to move from this spot, so they’re out there right now arguing among themselves about what they’re going to offer us. Some of them want to offer more than the others, and the longer we sit right here, the more we strengthen the position of that faction.’

‘Have you suddenly become clairvoyant, Itagne?’ Sephrenia asked him.

‘No, Lady Sephrenia, just experienced. This delay is fairly standard in any negotiation. I’m on familiar ground now. We’ve chosen the right strategy.’

‘What else should we be doing?’ Kalten asked.

‘Nothing, Sir Knight. It’s their move.’

She came from the river in broad daylight, climbing easily up the rocky path that ascended the steep slope. She wore a gray, hooded robe and simple sandals. Her features were Tamul, but she did not have the characteristic golden skin-tone of her race. She was not so much pale as she was colorless. Her eyes were gray and seemed very wise, and her hair was long and completely white, though she appeared to be scarcely more than a girl.

Sparhawk and the others watched her as she came up the hill in the golden sunlight. She crossed the steep meadow where the horses grazed. Ch’iel, Sephrenia’s gentle white palfrey, approached the colorless woman curiously, and the stranger gently touched the mare’s face with one slim hand.

‘That’s probably far enough,’ Vanion called to her. ‘What is it that you want?’

‘I am Xanetia,’ the young woman replied. Her voice was soft, but there was a kind of echoing timbre to it that immediately identified her as one of the Delphae. ‘I am to be thy surety, Lord Vanion.’

‘You know me?’

‘We know thee, Lord Vanion – and each of thy companions. Ye are reluctant to come to Delphaeus, fearing that we mean ye harm. My life will serve as pledge of our good faith.’

‘Don’t listen, Vanion,’ Sephrenia said, her eyes hard.

‘Art thou afeared, Priestess?’ Xanetia asked calmly. Thy Goddess doth not share thy fear. Now do I perceive that it is
thy
hatred which doth obstruct that which must come to pass, and thus it shall be into
thy
hands that I shall place my life – to do with as thou wilt. If thou must needs kill me to quench this hatred of thine, then so be it.’

Sephrenia’s face went deathly pale. ‘You know I wouldn’t do that, Xanetia.’

‘Then put the implement of death into the hands of another. Thus thou mayest command my dying and put no stain of blood upon thine own hands. Is this not the custom of thy race, Styric? Thou shalt remain undefiled – even as this thirst of thine is slaked. All unsmirched mayest thou face thy Goddess and protest thine innocence, for thou shalt be blameless. My blood shall be upon the hands of thine Elenes, and Elene souls are cheap, are they not?’ She reached inside her robe and
drew out a jewel-like stone dagger. ‘Here is the implement of my death, Sephrenia,’ she said. ‘The blade is obsidian, so thou shalt not contaminate thy hands – or thy soul – with the loathsome touch of steel when thou spillest out my life.’ Xanetia’s voice was soft, but her words cut into Sephrenia like hard, sharp steel.

‘I won’t listen to this!’ the small Styric woman declared hotly.

Xanetia smiled. ‘Ah, but thou wilt, Sephrenia,’ she said, still very calm. ‘I know thee well, Styric, and I know that my words have burned themselves into thy soul. Thou wilt hear them again and again. In the silence of the night shall they come to thee, burning deeper each time. Truly shalt thou listen, for my words are the words of truth, and they shall echo in thy soul all the days of thy life.’

Sephrenia’s face twisted in anguish, and with a sudden wail she fled back into the cave.

Itagne’s face was troubled as he came back along the narrow path from the meadow to the open area in front of the cave. ‘She’s very convincing,’ he told them. ‘I get no sense of deceit from her at all.’

‘She probably doesn’t know enough about the real motives of the leaders of her people to have anything to hide,’ Bevier said doubtfully. ‘She could very well be nothing more than a pawn.’

‘She
is
one of the leaders of her people, Sir Bevier,’ Itagne disagreed. ‘She’s the equivalent of the crown princess of the Delphae. She’s the one who’ll be Anarae when the Anari dies.’

‘Is that a name or a title?’ Ulath asked.

‘It’s a title. The Anari – or in Xanetia’s case, the Anarae – is both the temporal and spiritual leader of the Delphae. The current Anari is named Cedon.’

‘She’s not just making it up?’ Talen asked. ‘She
could
be just pretending to be their crown princess, you know. That way, we’d
think
she was important, when she’s actually nothing more than a shepherdess or somebody’s housemaid.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Itagne said. ‘It may sound immodest, but I don’t really believe anyone can lie to me for very long and get away with it. She says that she’s the one who’ll be Anarae, and I believe her. The move’s consistent with standard diplomatic practice. Hostages
have
to be important. It’s another indication of just how desperate the Delphae are in this business. I think Xanetia’s telling the truth, and if she is, she’s the most precious thing they possess.’ He made a wry face. ‘It definitely goes against everything I’ve been trained to believe about the Shining Ones since childhood, but I think we almost have to trust them this time.’