‘That’s God’s own truth,’ Ulath murmured. ‘The sightings could very well
have been of real Trolls. Some time back they all just packed up and left
Thalesia. Nobody ever thought to stop one to ask him why.’
‘There have also been sightings of Dawn-men,’ Zalasta’ reported. ‘What are
they, learned one?’ Patriarch Emban asked him. ‘Man-like creatures from the
beginning of time, your Grace. They’re a bit bigger than Trolls, but not as
intelligent. They roam in packs, and they’re very savage.’
‘We’ve met them, friend Zalasta,’ Kring said shortly. ‘I lost many
comrades that day.’
‘There may not be a connection,’ Zalasta continued. The Trolls are
contemporary creatures, but the Dawnmen definitely ‘come from the past.
Their species has been extinct for some fifty aeons. There have also been
some unconfirmed reports of sightings of Cyrgai.’
‘You can mark that down as confirmed, Zalasta,’ Kalten told him. ‘They
provided us with some entertainment one night last week.’
‘They were fearsome warriors,’ Zalasta said. They might have impressed
their contemporaries,’ Kalten disagreed, ‘but modern tactics and weapons
and equipment are a bit beyond their capabilities. Catapults and the charge
of armoured knights seemed to baffle them.’
‘Just exactly who are the Cyrgai, learned one?’ Vanion
asked.
‘I gave you the scrolls, Vanion,’ Sephrenia said, didn’t you read them?’
‘I haven’t got that far yet. Styric’s a difficult language to read.
Somebody should give some thought to simplifying your alphabet.’
‘Hold it,’ Sparhawk interupted. He looked at Sephrenia. ‘I’ve never seen
you read anything,’ he accused her. ‘You wouldn’t let Flute even touch a
book. ‘Not an Elene book, no.’
‘Then you can read?’
‘in Styric, yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Because it wasn’t really any of your business, dear one.’
‘You lied!’ That shocked him for some reason. ‘No, as a matter of fact I
didn’t. I can’t read Elene largely because I don’t want to. It’s a
graceless language, and your writings are ugly – like spiders’ webs.’
‘You deliberately led us to believe that you were too simple to learn how
to read.’
‘That was sort of necessary, dear one. Pandion novices aren’t really very
sophisticated, and you had to have something to feel superior about.’
‘Be nice,’ Vanion murmured. ‘I had to try to train a dozen generations of
those great, clumsy louts, Vanion,’ she said with a certain asperity, ‘and
I had to put up with their insufferable condescension in the process. Yes,
Sparhawk, I can read, and I can count, and I can argue philosophy and even
theology if I have to, and I am fully trained in logic.’
‘I don’t know why you’re yelling at me,’ he protested mildly, kissing her
palms. ‘I’ve always believed you were a fairly nice lady – ‘ he kissed her
palms again, ‘for a Styric, that is.’ She jerked her hands out of his grasp
and then saw the grin on his face. ‘You’re impossible,’ she said, also
suddenly smiling. ‘We were talking about the Cyrgai, I believe,’ Stragen
said smoothly. ‘just exactly who are they?’ , ‘They’re extinct,
fortunately,’ Zalasta replied. ‘They were of a race that appears to, have
been unrelated to the other races of Daresia – neither Tamul nor Elene, and
certainly not Styric. Some have suggested that they might be distantly
related to the Valesians.’
‘I couldn’t accept that, learned one,’ Oscagne disagreed. ‘The Valesians
don’t even have a government, and they have no concept of war. They’re the
happiest people in the world. They could not in any way be related to the
Cyrgai.’
‘Temperament is sometimes based on climate, your Excellency,’ Zalasta
pointed out. ‘Valesia’s a paradise, and central Cynesga’s not nearly so
nice. Anyway, the Cyrgai worshipped a hideous God named Cyrgon – and, like
most primitive people do, they took their name from him. All peoples are
egotistical, I suppose. We’re all convinced that our God is better than all
the rest and that our race is superior. The Cyrgai took that to extremes.
We can’t really probe the beliefs of an extinct people, but it appears that
they even went so far as to believe that they were somehow of a different
species from other humans. They also believed that all truth had been
revealed to them by Cyrgon, so they ‘strongly resisted new ideas. They
carried the idea of a warrior society to absurd lengths, and they were
obsessed with the concept of racial purity and strove for physical
perfection. DeFormed babies were taken out into the desert and left to die.
Soldiers who received crippling injurieS in battle were killed by their
friends. Women who had too many female children were strangled. They built
a city-state beside the Oasis of Cyrga in Central Cynesga and rigidly
isolated themselves from other peoples and their ideas. The Cyrgai were
terribly afraid of ideas. Theirs was perhaps the only culture in human
history that idealised stupidity. They looked upon superior intelligence as
a defect, and overly bright children were killed.’
‘Nice group,’ Talen murmured. ‘They conquered and enslaved their
neighbours, of course – mostly desert nomads of indeterminate race and
there was a certain amount of interbreeding, soldiers being what they are.’
‘But that was perfectly all right, wasn’t it?’ Baroness Melidere added
tartly. ‘Rape is always permitted, isn’t it?’
‘In this case it wasn’t, Baroness,’ Zalasta replied. ‘Any Cyrgai caught
‘fraternising’ was killed on the spot.’
‘What a refreshing idea,’ she murmured. ‘So was the woman, of course.
Despite all their best efforts, however, the Cyrgai did produce a number of
offspring of mixed race. In their eyes, that was an abomination, and the
half-breeds were killed whenever possible. In time, however, Cyrgon
apparently had a change of heart. He saw a use for these half-breeds. They
were given some training and became a part of the army. They were called
‘Cynesgans’, and in time they came to comprise that part of the army that
did all of the dirty work and most of the dying. Cyrgon had a goal, you see
– the usual goal of the militaristically inclined.’
‘World domination?’ Vanion suggested. ‘Precisely. The Cynesgans were
encouraged to breed, and the Cyrgai used them to expand their frontiers.
They soon controlled all of the desert and began pushing at the frontiers
of their neighbours. That’s where we encountered them. The Cyrgai weren’t
really prepared to come up against Styrics.’
‘I can imagine,’ Tynian laughed. Zalasta smiled briefly. It was an
indulgent’ sort of smile, faintly tinged with a certain condescension. ‘The
priests of Cyrgon had certain limited gifts,’ the Styric went on, ‘but they
were certainly no match for what ,they encountered.’ He sat tapping his
fingertips together. ‘Perhaps when we examine it more closely, that’s our
real secret,’ he mused. ‘Other peoples have only one God – or at the most,
a small group of Gods. We have a thousand, who more or less get along with
each other and agree in a general sort of way about what ought to be done.
Anyway, the incursion of the Cyrgai into the lands of the Styrics proved to
be disastrous for them. They lost virtually all of their Cynesgans and a
major portion of their full-blooded Cyrgai. They retreated in absolute
disorder, and the Younger Gods decided that they ought to be encouraged to
stay at home after that. No one knows to this day which of the Younger Gods
developed the idea, but it was positively brilliant in both its simplicity
and its efficacy. A large eagle flew completely around Cynesga in a single
day,. and his shadow left an unseen mark on the ground. The mark means
absolutely nothing to the Cynesgans or the Atans or Tamuls or Styrics or
Elenes or even the Arjuni. It was terribly important to the Cyrgai,
however, kcause after that day any Cyrgai who stepped over that line died
instantly.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Kalten objected. ‘We encountered Cyrgai just to the west
of here. How did they get across the line?’ They were from the past, Sir
Kalten,’ Zalasta explained, spreading his hands. ‘The line didn’t exist for
them, because the eagle had not yet made his flight when they marched
north.’ Kalten scratched his head and sat frowning. ‘i’m not really all
that good at logic,’ he confessed, ‘but isn’t there a hole in that
somewhere?’ Bevier was also struggling with it. ‘I think I see how it
works,’ he said a little dubiously, ‘but I’ll have to go over it a few
times to be sure. ‘Logic can’t answer all the questions, Sir Bevier,’ Emban
advised. He hesitated. ‘You don’t have to tell Dolmant I said that, of
course,’ he added. ‘It may be that the enchantment’s no longer in force,’
Sephrenia suggested to Zalasta. ‘There’s no real need for it, since the
Cyrgai are extinct.’
‘And no way to prove it either,’ Ulath added, ‘one way or the other.’
Stragen suddenly laughed. ‘He’s right, you know,’ he said. ‘There might’
very well be this dreadful curse out there that nobody even knows about