with you, Sparhawk, I was a bit sceptical about what that thief in Esos
said about this Sabre fellow, but he certainly has the attention of the
nobles. He’s been making an issue of racial and religious differences
between Elenes and Tamuls. Kotyk kept referring to the Tamuls as ‘godless
yellow dogs’.’
‘We have Gods, your Grace,’ Oscagne protested mildly. ‘if you give me a
few moments, I might even be ‘able to remember some of their names.’
‘Our friend Sabre’s been busy,’ Tynian said. ‘He’s saying one thing to the
nobles and another to the serfs.’
‘I think it’s called talking out of both sides of your face at once,’ Ulath
noted. I believe the empire might want
to give the discovery ‘of Sabre’s identity a certain priority,’ Oscagne
mused. ‘It’s embarrassingly predictable, but we brutal oppressors and
godless yellow dogs always want to identify ring-leaders and troublemakers.’
‘So that you can catch them and hang them?’ Talen asked.’
‘Not necessarily, young man. When a natural talent comes to the surface,
one shouldn’t waste it. I’m sure we find a use for this fellow’s gifts.’
‘But he hates your empire, your Excellency,’ Ehlana pointed out. ‘That’s no
real drawback, your Majesty,’ Oscagne smiled. ‘The fact that a man hates
the empire doesn’t automatically make him a criminal. Anyone with any
common sense hates the empire. There are days when even the emperor himself
hates it. The presence of revolutionaries is a fair indication that
something’s seriously wrong in a given province. The revolutionary’s made
it his business to pinpoint the problems, so it’s easier in the long run to
just let him go ahead and fix things. I’ve known quite a few
revolutionaries who made very good provincial governors.’
‘That’s an interesting line of thought, your Excellency,’ Ehlana said,
‘but how do you persuade people who hate you to go to work for you?’
‘You trick them, your Majesty. You just ask them if they think they can do
any better. They inevitably think they can, so you just tell them to have a
go at it. It usually takes them a few months to realise that they’ve been
had. Being a provincial governor is the worst job in the world. Everybody
hates you.’
‘Where does this Ayachin fit in?’ Bevier asked.
‘I gather he’s the rallying point,’ Stragen replied. ‘Sort of the way
Drychtnath is in Lamorkand.’
‘A figurehead?’ Tynian suggested. ‘Most probably. You wouldn’t really
expect a ninthcentury hero to understand contemporary political reality.’
‘He’s sort of an enigma, though,’ Ulath pointed out.
‘The nobility believes he is one sort of man, and the serfs believe he’s
another. Sabre must have two different sets of speeches. Just exactly who
was Ayachin anyway?’
‘Kotyk told me that he was a minor nobleman who was very devoted to the
Astellian Church,’ Emban supplied. ”In the ninth century, there was a
Church-inspired invasion from Eosia. Your thief in Esos was right about
that part, at least. The Astels believe that our Holy Mother in Chyrellos
is heretical. Ayachin’s supposed to have rallied the nobles and finally won
a great victory in the Astel marshes.’
‘The serfs have a different story,’ Khalad told them. ‘They believe that
Ayachin was a serf disguised as a nobleman and that his real goal was the
emancipation of his class. They say that the victory in the marshes was the
work of the serfs, not the nobility. Later, when the nobles found out who
Ayachin really was, they had him murdered.’
‘He makes a perfect figurehead then,’ Ehlana said. ‘He was so ambitious
that he seems to offer something to everyone.’ Emban was frowning. ‘The
mistreatment of the serfs doesn’t make any sense Serfs aren’t very
industrious, but there are so many of them that all you have to do is pile
on more people until you get the job done. If you maltreat them, all you
really do is encourage them to turn on you. Even an idiot knows that.
Sparhawk, is there some spell that might have induced the nobility to
follow a course that’s ultimately suicidal?’
‘None that I know of’ Sparhawk replied. He looked around at the other
knights, and they all shook their heads. Princess Danae nodded very
slightly, however, indicating that there might very well be some way to do
what Emban suggested. ‘I wouldn’t discount the possibilitty though, your
Grace,’ he added. ‘just because none of us know the spell doesn’t mean that
there isn’t one. If someone wanted turmoil here in Astel, there’s probably
nothing that would have suited his purposes better than a serf uprising,
and if all the nobles started knouting their serfs at about the same time,
it would have been a perfect way to set one off.’
‘And this Sabre fellow seems to be responsible,’ Emban said. ‘He’s
stirring the nobles against the godless yellow dogs – sorry, Oscagne – and
at the same time he’s agitating the serfs against their masters. Was anyone
able to pick up anything about him?’
‘Elron was in his cups last night too,’ Stragen said. ‘He told Sparhawk
and me that Sabre creeps around at night wearing a mask and making
speeches.’
‘You’re not serious!’ Bevier asked incredulously. ‘Pathetic, isn’t it?
We’re obviously dealing with a juvenile mind here. Elron’s quite
overwhelmed by the melodrama of it all.’
‘He would be,’ Bevier sighed. ‘It does sort of sound like the fabrication
of a third-rate literary fellow, doesn’t it?’ Stragen smiled. ‘That’s
Elron, all right,” Tynian said. ‘You’re flattering him,’ Ulath grUnted.
‘He trapped me in a corner last night and recited some of his verse to me.
‘Third-rate’ is a gross overstatement of his talent.’
Sparhawk was troubled. Aphrael had told him that someone at Kotyk’s house
would say something important, but, aside from the revelation of some
fairly unsavoury personality defects, no one had directly told him anything
of earth-shaking note. When he thought about it Aphrael had not, in fact
promised that whatever was so important would be said to him. Quite
possibly, it had been revealed to one of the others. He brooded about it.
The simplest way to resolve the question would have been to ask his
daughter, but to do that would once more expose him to some offensive
comments about his limited understanding, so he decided that he’d much
prefer to work it out for himself. Their map indicated that the journey to
the capital at Darsas would take them ten days. It actually did not, of
course. ‘How do you deal with people who happen to see us when we’re moving
this way,’ he asked Danae as they moved along at that accelerated pace
later that day. He looked at his blank-faced uncomprehending friends. ‘I’ve
got a sort of an idea of how you convince the people who are travelling
with us that we’re just plodding along, but what about strangers?’
‘We don’t move this way when there are strangers around, Sparhawk,’ she
replied, ‘but they wouldn’t see us anyway. We’re going too fast.’
‘You’re freezing time then, the same way Ghnomb did in Pelosia?’
‘No, I’m actually doing just the opposite. Ghnomb froze time and made you
plod along through an endless second. What I’m doing is -‘ She looked
speculatively at her father. ‘I’ll explain it some other time,’ she
decided. ‘We’re moving in little spurts, a few miles at a time. Then we
amble along for a while, and then we spurt ahead again. Making it all fit
together is really very challenging. It gives me something to occupy my
mind during these long, boring journeys.’
‘Did that important thing you mentioned get said?’ he asked her. ‘Yes.’
‘What was it?’ He decided that a small bruise on his dignity wouldn’t
really hurt all that much. ‘I don’t know. I know that it was important and
that somebody was going to say it, but I don’t know the details.’
‘Then you’re not omniscient.( ‘I never said that I was.’
‘Could it have come in bits and pieces? A word or two to Emban, a couple
to Stragen and me and quite a bit more to Khalad? And then we sort of had
to put them all together to get the whole message?’ She thought about it.
‘That’s brilliant, father!’ she exclaimed. ‘Thank you.’ Their speculations
earlier had borne some fruit after all. Then he pushed it a bit further.
‘is someone here in Astel changing the attitudes of the people?’
‘Yes, but that goes on all the time.’
‘So when the nobility began to mistreat their serfs, it wasn’t their own
idea?’
‘Of course not. Deliberate, calculated cruelty is very hard to maintain.
You have to concentrate on it, and the Astels are too lazy for that. It was
externally imposed.’
‘Could a Styric magician have done it?’
‘One by one, yes. A Styric could have selected one nobleman and turned him
into a monster.’ She thought a moment. ‘Maybe two,’ she amended. ‘Three at
the most. There are too many variables for a human to keep track of when