honour your queen’s visit does him.’ Ehlana was delighted to meet the
ambassador. Sparhawk knew that to be true because she said so herself. she
invited the ancient Tamul, the real ruler of Astel, to join her in the
carriage, and the entire party moved rather inexorably on to the palace
gates. -.The captain of the palace guard was nervous. When two hundred
professional killers descend on one with fylacble pace, one is almost
always nervous. Ambassador Fontan put him at his ease, and three messengers
were dispatched to advise the king of their %I killed him and my brothers,
I suppose it technically belongs to me – spoils of war, you understand.’
‘My goodness,’ Baroness Melidere murmured, her blue eyes alight, ‘I seem to
be standing in the middle of a whole constellation of stars.’ She seemed
positively breathless. ‘I wish she wouldn’t do that,’ Stragen complained.
‘What’s the problem?’ Kalten asked him. ‘She makes it seem as if the light
in her eyes is the sun streaming in through the hole in the back of her
head. I’know she’s far more clever than that. I hate dishonest people.’
‘You?’
‘Let it lie, Kalten.’ The throne-room of King Alberen of Astel was filled
with an awed silence as the eminence of the visitors was revealed. King
Alberen himself, an ineffectual-‘looking fellow whose royal robes looked a
size or so too large for him, seemed to shrink with each new title.
Alberen, it appeared, had weak eyes, and his myopic gaze gave ‘him the
fearful, timid look of a rabbit or some other such small helpless animal
which all other creatures look upon as a food source. The splendour of his
throneroom seemed to shrink him all the more, the wide expanses of crimson
carpets and drapes, the massive gilt and crystal chandeliers and marble
columns providing an heroic setting which he could never hope to fill.
Sparhawk’s queen, regal and lovely, approached the throne on Ambassador
Fontan’s arm with her steelplated entourage’ drawn up around her. King
Alberen seemed a bit uncertain about the customary ceremonieS. As the
reigning monarch of Astel, he was entitled to remain seated upon his
throne, but the fact that his entire court genuflected as Ehlana passed
intimidated him, and he rose to his feet and even stepped down from the
dais to greet her. ‘Now has our life seen its crown,’ Ehlana proclaimed in
her most formal and oratorical style, ‘for we have, as God most surely must
have decreed since time’s beginning, come at last into the presence of our
dear brother of Astel, whom we have longed to meet since our earlyest
girlhood.’
‘is she speaking for all of us?’ Talen whispered to Berit. ‘I didn’t
really have a girlhood, you know.’
‘She’s using the royal plural,’ Berit explained. ‘The queen’s more than
one person. She’s speaking for the entire kingdom.’
‘We are honoured more than we can say, your Majesty,’ Alberen faltered.
Ehlana quickly assessed her host’s limitations and smoothly adopted a less
formal tone. She abandoned ceremony and unleashed her charm on the poor
fellow. At the end of five minutes they were chatting together as if they
had known each other all their lives. At the end of ten, he’d have given
her his crown had she asked for it. After the obligatory ‘exchanges,
Sparhawk and the other members of Ehlana’s entourage moved away from the
throne to engage in that silly but necessary pastime known as
‘circulating.’ They talked about the weather mostly. The weather is a
politically correct topic. Emban and Archimandrite Morsel, the head of the
Church of Astel, ex’changed theological platitudes without touching on
those doctrinal differences which divided their two Churches. Morsel wore
an elaborate mitre and intricately embroidered vestments. He also wore a
full black beard that reached to his waist. Sparhawk had discovered early
in life that a scowl was his best defence in such situations, and he
customarily intimidated whole rooms-full of people who might otherwise
inflict conversational inanities upon him. ‘Are you in some kind of
distress, Prince Sparhawk?’ It was Ambassador Fontan. ‘Your face has a
decidedly dyspeptic cast to it.’
‘It’s entirely tactical, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘When a
military man doesn’t want to be pestered, he digs a ditch and lines the
bottom and sides with sharpened stakes. A scowl serves the same purpose in
social situations.’
‘You look bristly enough, my boy. Let’s take a turn around the battlements
and enjoy the view, the fresh air and the’ privacy. There are things you
should know, and this may be my only chance to get you alone. King
Alberen’s court is full of inconsequential people who would all die for the
chance to be able to manoeuvre conversations around to the point where they
can assert that they know you personally. You have quite a reputation, you
know.’
‘Largely exaggerated, your Excellency.’
‘You’re too modest, my boy. Shall we go?’ They left the throne-room
unobtrusively and climbed several flights of stairs until they came out on
the windswept battlements. Fontan looked down at the city spread below.
‘Quaint, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Elene cities are always quaint, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘Elene architects haven’t had a new idea in the last five millennia.’
‘Matherion will open your eyes, Sparhawk. All right, then, Astel’s right on
the verge of flying apart. So’s the rest of the world, but Astel’s carrying
it to extremes. I’m doing what I can to hold things together, but Alberen’s
so pliable that almost anyone can influence him. He’ll literally sign
anything anybody puts in front of him. You’ve heard about Ayachin, of
course? And his running dog, Sabre?’ Sparhawk nodded. ‘I’ve got every
imperial agent in Astel out ‘trying to identify Sabre, but we haven’t had
much luck so far. He’s out there blithely dismantling a system the empire
spent centuries creating. We don’t really know very much about him.’
‘He’s an adolescent, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk said. ‘No matter what his
age, he’s profoundly juvenile.’ He briefly described the incident in the
forest. ‘That’s helpful,’ Fontan said. ‘None of my people have ever been
able to infiltrate one of those famous meetings, so we had no idea of what
sort of fellow we were dealing with. He’s got the nobility completely in
his grasp. I stopped Alberen just in time a few weeks ago when he was on
the verge of signing a proclamation which would have criminalised a serf if
he ran away. That would have brought the kingdom down around our ears, I’m
afraid. That’s always been the serf’s final answer to an intolerable
situation. If he can run away and stay away for a year and a day, he’s
free. If you take that away from the serfs, they’ll revolt, and a serf
rebellion is too hideous a notion to even contemplate. ‘ it’s quite
deliberate, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk advised him. ‘Sabre’s agitating the
serfs as well. He wants a serf rebellion here in Astel. He’s been using his
influence over the nobility to persuade them to commit the exact blunders
that will outrage the serfs all the more.’ what’s the man thinking of?’
Fontan burst out. ‘He’ll drown Astel in blood.’ Sparhawk made an intuitive
leap at the point. ‘I don’t think he really cares about Astel, your
Excellency. Sabre’s no more than a tool for someone who has his eye on a
much bigger goal.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
I’m guessing, your Excellency, but I think there’s somebody out there who
wants the whole world, and he’d sacrifice Astel and every living person in
it to get what he wants.’
CHAPTER 12
‘It’s hard to put your finger on it, Prince Sparhawk,’ Baroness Melidere
said that evening after the extended royal family had retired to their
oversized apartment for the night. At ‘the queen’s insistence, Melidere,
Mirtai and Alcan, her maid, had been provided with rooms in the apartment.
Ehlana needed women around her for a number of reasons, some practical,
some political and some very obscure. The ladies had removed their formal
gowns, and, except for Mirtai, they wore soft pastel dressing gowns.
Melidere was brushing Mirtai’s wealth of blue-black hair, and the doe-eyed
Alcan was performing the same service for Ehlana. ‘i’m not sure exactly
how to describe it,’ the honeyblonde Baroness continued. ‘It’s a sort of
generalised sadness. They all sigh a great deal.’
‘I noticed that myself, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana told her husband. ‘Alberen
hardly smiles at all, and I can make anybody smile.’
‘Your presence alone is enough to make us all smile, my Queen,’ Talen told
her. Talen was the queen’s page, and he was also a member of the extended
family. The young thief was elegant tonight, dressed in a plumcoloured
velvet doublet and knee-britches in the same shade and fabric.
Knee-britches were just coming into fashion, and Ehlana had tried her very
best to get Sparhawk into a pair of them. He had categorically refused, and
his wife had been obliged to settle for coercing her page into the