The Shining Ones (26 page)

‘We have other capabilities as well, Sir Knights,’ the Anari told them, ‘and we freely offer them to thee in exchange for what we ask.’ He looked rather sadly at Sephrenia. ‘I fear that when I reveal the nature of these capabilities, it will cause thee pain and harden thine heart yet more toward us, dear sister.’

‘
Will
you stop calling me that? My heart is already like granite toward you and your kind.’

‘That is not true, Sephrenia of Ylara,’ Xanetia disagreed. ‘Thou art troubled forasmuch as thou hast found no wickedness in us in this, thy first meeting with our kind. Hard put art thou to maintain an hatred which groweth more from thy sense of duty to thy kindred than from any personal rancor. I do freely confess mine own similarly troubled state. I am inclined to love thee, even as thou art so inclined toward me.’

‘Stop that!’ Sephrenia burst out. ‘Keep your unclean hands out of my thoughts.’

‘Stubborn, isn’t she?’ Ulath murmured.

‘It is the nature of the Younger Gods of Styricum to protect their children – even from their own folly,’ the Anari noted. ‘Thus it is that the Styrics must appeal to their Gods with spells and prayers for aid when they would step beyond the powers of other men. Is it not so, Sephrenia of Ylara?’

She refused to answer him.

‘That’s the core of Styric magic, Cedon,’ Vanion replied for her.

She glared at him, and Sparhawk silently groaned. Why
couldn’t
Vanion keep his mouth shut?

The Anari nodded. ‘Edaemus hath, as I say, gone before us to prepare the way, and he is therefore no longer able to watch over us. Thus hath he granted certain of us the power to do what must be done
without
his guidance.’

‘Unrestrained magic?’ Sephrenia exclaimed. ‘You hold the power of the Gods in your
own
hands with no restraints?’

‘Some few of us, yes.’

‘That’s monstrous! The human mind isn’t capable of understanding the nature of that kind of power. We can’t grasp the consequences of unleashing it to satisfy our childish whims.’

‘Thy Goddess hath instructed thee well, Sephrenia of Ylara,’ Xanetia noted. ‘This is what she
wishes
thee to believe.’

‘Thy Goddess would keep thee a child, dear sister,’ the Anari said. ‘For so long as thou art a child, she is secure in thy love. I tell thee truly, however, Edaemus doth love us even as thine Aphrael doth love thee. His love, however, doth compel us to grow. He hath placed his power in our hands, and we must accept the consequences of our acts when we bring it to bear. It is a different kind of love, but it is love nonetheless. Edaemus is no longer here to guide us, so we can do whatever our minds are able to conceive.’ The Anari smiled gently. ‘Forgive me, my friends,’ he said to them, ‘but one as old as I hath but one peculiar interest.’ He held up one withered old hand and looked at it rather sadly. ‘How soon are we altered by the passing of years, and how distressing is the alteration.’

The change seemed gradual, but considering the staggering nature of that change, what was happening before their eyes was nearly miraculous. The withered hand grew more firm-fleshed; the knobby joints smoothed; and the wrinkles faded. It was not only the hand, however. The tracery of wrinkles and lines on Cedon’s face seemed to slide away. His hollow cheeks filled out, and his thin, wispy hair grew fuller, more abundant. They stared at him as, with no apparent effort, he reversed the erosion of years. He regressed to
vigorous youth, his skin clear and his hand and face firm and unmarked. Then, he began to diminish, his limbs shrinking inside his garments. The prickly stubble vanished from his cheeks and chin, and, as he continued to regress, his head seemed to grow larger in proportion to his shrinking body. ‘That might be far enough,’ he said in a piping, childish voice. He smiled, a strangely ancient smile which looked very much out of place on that little boy’s face. ‘A miscalculation here might reduce me to nothing. In truth, I have considered that, but my tasks and responsibilities are not yet completed. Xanetia has her own tasks, and I would not yet burden her with mine as well.’

Sparhawk swallowed hard. ‘I think you’ve made your point, Cedon,’ he said in a strained voice. ‘We’ll accept the fact that you can do things that we can’t do.’ He looked around at his friends. ‘I can already see arguments brewing,’ he told them, deliberately avoiding Sephrenia’s eyes, ‘and no matter what we decide, we’ll probably all have serious doubts about it.’

‘We could pray,’ Bevier suggested.

‘Or roll dice and let them decide,’ Ulath added.

‘Not with
your
dice, we couldn’t,’ Kalten objected.

‘We could even fall back on logic,’ Vanion concluded, ‘but Sparhawk’s right. No matter how we try to decide, we could probably sit here all winter and still not agree.’ He also avoided Sephrenia’s eyes.

‘All right, then,’ Sparhawk said, reaching inside his tunic, ‘since Aphrael’s not here to bully us into agreement, we’ll let Bhelliom decide.’ He took out the golden box and set it on the table in front of him.

‘
Sparhawk!
’ Sephrenia gasped.

‘No, Anakha!’ Xanetia also exclaimed.

‘Bhelliom doesn’t love any of us,’ he said, ‘so we can sort of rely on its neutrality. We need guidance here, and neither Edaemus nor Aphrael is around to provide
it – besides which, I don’t know that I’d trust either of them anyway, given the peculiar circumstances here. We want an uncontaminated opinion, so why don’t we just find out what Bhelliom thinks about the situation?’

‘Blue Rose,’ Sparhawk said in Trollish to the glowing jewel in his hands, ‘I am Anakha. Do you know me?’

Bhelliom’s glow pulsed slightly, and Sparhawk could sense the stone’s stiff reluctance to acknowledge his dominion. Then he thought of something. ‘You and I need to talk,’ he said, speaking in Elenic this time, ‘and I don’t think Khwaj and the others need to be listening. Can you understand me when I speak in this fashion?’

There was the faintest hint of curiosity in the pulse this time.

‘Good. Is there some way you can talk to me? There’s something you and I have to decide. This is too important for me to simply force you to do what I want, because I could be wrong. I know you’re none too fond of me – or of any creature on this particular world – but I think that we may have some common interest this time.’

‘Let me go.’ The voice was a kind of lingering whisper, but it was familiar.

Sparhawk whirled round to stare at Kalten. His boyhood friend’s face was wooden, uncomprehending, and the words came stiffly from his lips. ‘Why hast thou done this thing, Anakha? Why hast thou enslaved me?’ The archaic Elenic could not have come from Kalten, but why had Bhelliom chosen this most unlikely mouth?

Sparhawk carefully readjusted his thoughts, casting them in the profoundly formal language with which the stone had addressed him, and in the instant of that changeover, perception and understanding came. It somehow seemed that knowledge had lain dormant in
his mind until unlocked by this peculiar key. Strangely, his understanding had been bound up in language, and once he made the conscious shift from contemporary Elenic with all its casual imprecision to more stately and concise cadences, that previously closed part of his mind opened. ‘It was not I who enslaved thee, Blue Rose. It was thine own inattention that brought thee into such perilous proximity to the red of iron which congealed thee into thy present state, and it was Ghwerig who lifted thee from the earth and contorted thee into this similitude of a flower with his cruel diamond implements.’

A stifled groan came from Kalten’s lips, a groan of pain endured and pain remembered.

‘I am Anakha, Blue Rose,’ Sparhawk continued. ‘I am
thy
creature. It is
thou
who hast caused me to be, that I might be the instrument of thy liberation, and I will not betray thy trust in me. I am in some part made of
thy
thought, and I am therefore thy servant. It is thou who hast enslaved
me.
Didst thou not set my destiny apart, making me a stranger to the Gods of this world and to all other men? But, though I am thine enslaved servant, I am, nonetheless, still of
this
world, and I will not have it destroyed nor its people crushed by the vile oppression of mine enemies. I did free thee from the enslavement of Ghwerig, did I not? Is this not in some small measure proof of my fidelity to the task which thou hast lain upon me? And, bound together in common purpose, did we not destroy Azash, who would have chained us both in a slavery harsher than that which now chains us together? For mistake me not, Blue Rose, even as thou art
my
slave, so am I
thine,
and once again the chain which binds us together is common purpose, and neither shall be free until that purpose be accomplishèd. Then shalt thou, and then shall I, be free to go our separate ways – I to remain, and thou to go, an it
please thee, to continue thine interrupted and endless journey to the farthest star.’

‘Thou hast learned well, Anakha,’ Bhelliom said grudgingly, ‘but thine understanding of thy situation did never obtrude itself upon thy conscious thought where I could perceive it. I had despaired, thinking that I had wrought amiss.’

Sephrenia was staring at them, first at Sparhawk and then at the seemingly comatose Kalten, and her pale, flawless face was filled with something very like chagrin. Xanetia stared also, and her expression was no less chagrined. Sparhawk took a fleeting satisfaction in that. The two were very much alike in their perhaps unconscious assumption of condescending superiority. Sparhawk’s sudden, unexpected awareness of things long concealed in his understanding had shaken that irritating smugness of theirs. For the first time in his life he consciously knew that he was Anakha, and more importantly, he knew the meaning of Anakha in ways neither Sephrenia nor Xanetia could ever begin to comprehend. He had stepped around them to reach Bhelliom, and in joining his thought with Bhelliom’s, he had to some degree shared Bhelliom’s awareness, and that was something neither of them could ever do.

‘Thou hast not wrought amiss, Blue Rose,’ he told the jewel. ‘Thine error lay in casting thy thought in this particular speech. Mine understanding was also cast so, and it did not reveal itself to me until I responded to thy words in kind. Now, let us to work withal. Mine enemies are also thine, forasmuch as they would bind
thee
even as they would bind
me.
Neither of us shall be secure in our freedom until they are no more. Are we agreed upon that?’

‘Thy reasoning is sound, Anakha.’

‘Our purpose then is the same?’

‘So it would seem.’

‘We’re making some headway here,’ Sparhawk murmured.

Kalten’s expression became coldly disapproving.

‘Sorry,’ Sparhawk apologized, ‘force of habit, I suppose. Reason doth urge that since our enemies and our purpose are common, and that since our thoughts are linked by this chain of
thy
forging, we must join our efforts in this cause. In victory shall we be freed. Our enemies and our common purpose shall be no more, and the chain which links us will fall away. I do pledge it to thee that upon the completion of this task will I free thee to continue thy work. My life is surely within thy fist, and thou mayest destroy me if I play thee false.’

‘I find no falsity in thy thought, Anakha, and I will strengthen thine arm and harden thine heart, lest others, beloved by thee, seek to turn thee aside from thy design and thy pledge. We are agreed.’

‘Done, then!’ Sparhawk was exultant.

‘
And done!
’ Bhelliom’s speech, emerging from Kalten’s lips, had been dry and unemotional, but this time the voice was also exultant.

‘And now to this decision which thou and I must make together.’

‘Sparhawk…’ Sephrenia’s tone was uncertain.

‘I’m sorry, little mother,’ he said, ‘I’m not talking with you at the moment. Please don’t interrupt.’ Sparhawk was not entirely sure whether he should address his question to the Sapphire Rose or to Kalten, who seemed to have been completely taken over by the spirit within the jewel. He settled for directing his question somewhere between them. ‘The Delphae have offered their assistance in exchange for a certain service,’ he said. ‘They would have us seal their valley that none may enter and none may leave, and in recompense for that small favor they promise to aid us. Is their offer made
in good faith?’ Sparhawk heard Xanetia’s sharp intake of breath.

‘It is,’ Bhelliom replied. ‘There is no falsity in their offer.’

‘I didn’t think so myself, but I wanted to be sure.’

‘Anakha.’ The voice was firm. ‘When thou speakest so, thy mind is concealed from me. Our alliance is new and unfamiliar. It is not wise of thee to raise doubts in me by compressing thy words together so.’

Sparhawk suddenly laughed. ‘Forgive my lapse, Blue Rose,’ he said. ‘We can trust the Delphae, then?’

‘For the moment, yes. Their intent is presently without guile. It is uncertain what it will be tomorrow. Thy kind is inconstant, Anakha.’ Kalten’s voice hesitated briefly. ‘I say that not as criticism, merely as observation. For the nonce mayest thou put thy trust in their sincerity – and they in thine. What may come subsequently lieth in the hands of chance.’

‘Then there
is
such a thing as chance?’ Sparhawk was a bit surprised at that. ‘We are told that all things are pre-determined by the Gods.’

‘Whosoever told thee so was in error.’

Bevier gasped.

‘My journey and my task were interrupted by chance,’ Bhelliom continued. ‘If
my
course may be turned aside, might not thine as well? Truly I tell thee, Anakha, we
must
join with the Delphae in this enterprise, for if we do not, we shall surely fail. Whether one or both play the other false will depend on circumstance. At this time, the hearts of the Delphae are pure; that may change. At this time,
thine
heart is
also
pure; that may
also
change. But will we, nil we, we must join with them, lest we fail and languish forever in vilest bondage.’

‘You heard him, Bevier,’ Sephrenia was saying to the olive-skinned Arcian later when Sparhawk quietly
entered the room where the two were deep in conversation, ‘they worship the lake – the source of the contamination that makes them outcast.’

‘He
did
mention a God, Lady Sephrenia,’ Bevier protested mildly. ‘I think he called their God Edaemus – or something like that.’

‘But Edaemus has abandoned them – cursed them and then turned his back on them.’

‘Anari said that Edaemus had gone before them to prepare a place for them.’ Bevier’s objection seemed even weaker. ‘He said that they were changing – turning into pure light.’

‘Lies,’ she snapped. ‘The light that marks them is not the mark of a blessing, Bevier, it’s the mark of their curse. Cedon was cleverly trying to twist it around to make it seem that the Delphae are turning into something holy, when the reverse is actually true.’

‘They
do
perform magic, Sephrenia, and a kind of magic I’ve never seen before. I wouldn’t have believed that
anyone
could return to childhood if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.’

‘Exactly my point, Bevier. They’re using witchcraft, not magic. You’ve never seen
me
imitate a God, have you?’

Sparhawk stepped unobserved back out into the hallway and went on down to the doorless cell Vanion occupied. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ he told the Preceptor of the Pandions.

‘Another one?’

‘Sephrenia’s trying to subvert Bevier. She’s trying to convince him that the Delphae practice witchcraft. You know Bevier. His eyes start to bulge out any time anyone so much as mentions the word.’

‘
Why
won’t she just leave it alone?’ Vanion exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. ‘Wasn’t Bhelliom’s word good enough for her?’

‘She doesn’t
want
to believe, Vanion,’ Sparhawk sighed. ‘We’ve run into exactly the same thing when we’ve tried to convince rural Elenes that Styrics aren’t born with horns and tails.’

‘She of all people should be free of that sort of thing.’

‘I’m afraid not, my friend. Styrics are good haters, I guess. How do we want to handle this?’

‘I’ll confront her directly.’

Sparhawk winced. ‘She’ll turn you into a frog if you do.’

Vanion smiled briefly. ‘No. I lived in Sarsos, remember? A Styric can’t do anything like that without the consent of his God, and Aphrael’s sort of fond of me – I hope.’

‘I’ll round up the others and get them out from underfoot so that you can speak with her privately.’

‘No, Sparhawk, it has to be done in front of them. She’s trying to slip around behind us to recruit converts. They’re all going to have to be made aware of the fact that she’s not to be trusted in this particular situation.’

‘Wouldn’t it be a little better to talk with her privately at first? –
before
you humiliate her publicly?’

Vanion shook his head stubbornly. ‘We’ve got to meet this head on,’ he declared.

‘You’d
better
hope that Aphrael’s fond of you,’ Sparhawk murmured.

‘They’ve reverted to total paganism,’ Sephrenia said stubbornly. ‘They might as well worship trees or oddly shaped rocks. They have no creed, no doctrine and no restraints. Their use of witchcraft proves that.’ They had gathered at Vanion’s summons in a large room at the end of the hall, and Sephrenia was urgently, even stridently, trying to make her case.

‘What’s the difference?’ Talen shrugged. ‘Magic, witchcraft, it’s all the same, isn’t it?’

‘Magic is of the Gods, Talen,’ Bevier explained. ‘Our Holy Mother, in her wisdom, has chosen to allow the Church Knights to learn the secrets of Styricum that we might better serve her. There are restraints on us – certain areas we may not enter. Witchcraft is unrestrained because it is of the evil one.’

‘The Devil, you mean? I’ve never really believed in the Devil. There’s plenty of concentrated wickedness in people anyway, so we can probably get along fairly well without him. I’ve known some
very
nasty people, Bevier.’

‘The existence of the Devil has been proved.’

‘Not to me it hasn’t.’

‘Aren’t we wandering a bit?’ Ulath suggested. ‘Does it really matter
what
the Delphae worship? We’ve allied ourselves with all sorts of people in the past in order to achieve this or that goal. Bhelliom says that we have to join forces with the Delphae, or we’re going to lose. I don’t like losing, so what’s the problem?’

‘Bhelliom doesn’t know anything about this world, Ulath,’ Sephrenia said.

‘So much the better. It comes at the problem with a clear and uncluttered understanding. If I need to jump behind a tree to keep from being swept away by an avalanche, I’m not going to stop to question the tree about its beliefs first.’

‘Bhelliom will do or say
anything
in order to gain its freedom,’ Sephrenia asserted. ‘That’s why I was so much against using it in the first place.’

‘We
have
to believe Bhelliom, Sephrenia,’ Vanion told her, obviously trying to keep his irritation under control. ‘It doesn’t make much sense for us to trust it with our very lives and then not believe what it tells us, does it? It
has
done some very useful things for us in the past, you know.’

‘Only because it was
compelled
to, Vanion. Bhelliom
submits because it’s forced to submit. I trust the Bhelliom even less than I trust the Delphae. It’s alien, totally alien, and we have no way of knowing
what
it will do. We’re safe only for as long as we keep it chained and force it to obey us. The minute we begin to listen to it, we’re in great danger.’