Elene bought her from the soulless Arjuni who had stolen her from you. The
Elene bought her in order to satisfy his unwholesome desires. This child of
ours – for she is now as much my child as she is yours – taught him that an
Atana may not be used so. It was a hard lesson for him. He died in the
learning of it.’ A rumble of approval greeted the translation of that. ‘Our
child has passed through the hands of several Elenes – most with the worst
of motives – and came at last to me. At first she frightened me.’ Ehlana
smiled her most winsome smile. ‘You may have noticed that I am not a very
tall person.’ A small chuckle ran through the crowd. ‘I thought you might
have noticed that,’ she said, joining in their laughter. ‘It’s one of the
failings of our culture that our menfolk are stubborn and short-sighted. I
am not permitted to be trained in the use of weapons. ‘I know it sounds
ridiculous, but I’ve not even been allowed to kill my enemies personally. I
was not accustomed to women who could see to their own defence, and so I
was foolishly afraid of my Atan child. That has passed, however. I have
found her to be steadfast and true, gentle and affectionate and very, very
wise. We have come to Atan so that this dear child of ours may lay aside
the silver of childhood and assume the gold that is her just due in the
Rite of Passage. Let us join our hands and our hearts, Elene and Atan,
Styric and Tamul, in the ceremony which will raise our child to adulthood,
and in that ceremony, may our hearts be united, for in this child, we are
all made as one.’ As Norkan translated, an approving murmur went through
the crowd of Atans, a murmur that swelled to a roar, and Queen Betuana, her
eyes filled with tears, stepped down from the dais and embraced the pale
blonde queen of Elenia. Then she spoke very briefly to the crowd. ‘What did
she say?’ Stragen asked Oscagne. ‘She advised her people that anyone who
offered your queen any impertinence would answer to her personally. It’s no
idle threat, either. Queen Betuana’s one of the finest warriors in all of
Atan. I hope you appreciate your wife, Sparhawk. She’s just scored a
diplomatic coup of the highest order. How the deuce did she learn that the
Atans are sentimentalists? If she’d talked for another three minutes, the
whole square would have been awash with tears.’
‘Our queen’s a perceptive young woman,’ Stragen said rather proudly. ‘A
good speech is always drawn on a community of interest. Our Ehlana’s a
genius when it comes to finding things she has in common with her
audience.’
‘So it would seem. She’s ensured one thing, let me tell you.’
‘Oh?’
‘The Atans will give Atana Mirtai a Rite of Passage such as comes along
only once or twice in a generation. She’ll be a national heroine after an
introduction like that. The singing will be tumultuous.’
‘That’s probably more or less what my wife had in mind,’ Sparhawk told
him. ‘She loves to do nice things for her friends.’
‘And not so nice things to her enemies,’ Stragen added. ‘I remember some
of the plans she had for primate Annias.’.’That’s as it should be, Milord
Stragen,’ Oscagne smiled. ‘The only real reason for accepting the
inconveniences of power is to reward our friends and punish our enemies.’
‘I couldn’t agree more, your Excellency.’ Engessa conferred with King
Androl, and Ehlana with Queen Betuana. No one was particularly surprised
when Sephrenia served as translator for the queens. The small Styric woman,
it appeared, spoke most of the languages in the known world. Norkan
explained to Sparhawk and the others that the child’s parents were much
involved in the Rite of Passage. Engessa would serve as Mirtai’s father,
and Mirtai had rather shyly asked Ehlana to be her mother. The request had
occasioned an emotional display of affection between the two of them. ‘It’s
a rather touching ceremony, actually,’ Norkan told them. ‘The parents are
obliged to assert that their child is fit and ready to assume the
responsibilities of adulthood. They then offer to fight anyone who
disagrees. Not to worry Sparhawk,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘It’s a
formality. The challenge is almost never taken up.’
‘Almost never?’
‘i’m teasing, of course. No one’s going to fight your wife. That speech of
hers totally disarmed them. They adore her. I hope she’s quick of study,
however. She’ll haVe to speak in Tamul.’ learning a foreign language takes
a long time,’
‘Kalten said dubiously. ‘I studied Styric for ten years and never did get
the hang of it.’
‘ you have no aptitude for languages, Kalten,’ Vanion told him. ‘Even
Elenic confuses you sometimes.’
‘You don’t have to be insulting, Lord Vanion.’
‘I imagine Sephrenia will cheat a little,’ Sparhawk added. ‘She and
Aphrael taught me to speak Troll in about five seconds in Ghwerig’s cave.’
He looked at Norkan. ‘When will the ceremony take place?’ he asked. ‘At
midnight.)The child passes into adulthood as one day passes into the next.’
‘There’s an exquisite kind of logic there,’ Stragen noted. ‘The hand of
God,’ Bevier murmured piously.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Even the heathen responds to that gentle inner voice, Milord Stragen.’
‘i’m afraid I’m still missing the point, Sir Bevier.’
‘Logic is what sets our God apart,’ Bevier explained patiently. ‘It’s His
special gift to the Elene people, and He reaches out with it to all others,
freely offering its blessing to the unenlightened.’
‘is that really a part of Elene doctrine, your Grace?’ Stragen asked the
Patriarch of Ucera. Tentatively,’ Emban replied. ‘The view is more widely
held in Arcium than elsewhere. The Arcian clergy has been trying to have it
included in the articles of the faith for the last thousand years or so,
but the Deirans have been resisting. The Hierocracy takes up the question
when we have nothing else to do.’
‘Do you think it will ever be resolved, your Grace?’ Norkan asked him.
‘Good God no, your Excellency. If we ever settled the issue, we wouldn’t
have anything to argue about.’ Oscagne approached from the far side of the
square. He took Sparhawk and Vanion aside, his expression concerned. ‘How
well do you gentlemen know Zalasta?’ he asked them. ‘I only met him once
before we reached Sarsos,’ Spar hawk replied. ‘Lord Vanion here knows him
much better than I.’
‘i’m starting to have some doubts about this legendary wisdom of his,’
Oscagne said to them. ‘The Styric enclave in eastern Astel abuts Atan, so
he should know more about these people than he seems to. I just caught him
suggesting a demonstration of prowess to the Peloi and some of the younger
Church KNights.’
‘It’s not unusual, your Excellency,’ Vanion shrugged. ‘Young men like to
show off.’
‘That’s exactly my point, Lord Vanion.’ Oscagne’s expression was worried.
‘That’s not done here in Atan. Demonstrations of that kind lead to
bloodshed. The Atans look upon that sort of thing as a challenge. I got
there just in time to avert a disaster. What was the man thinking of?’
‘Styrics sometimes grow a bit vague,’ Vanion explained. ‘They can be
profoundly absent-minded sometimes. I’ll have Sephrenia speak with him and
remind him to pay attention.’
‘Oh, there’s something else, gentlemen,’ Oscagne ‘ smiled. ‘Don’t let Sir
Berit wander around alone in the city. There are whole platoons of
unmarried Atan girls lusting after him.’
‘Berit?’ Vanion looked startled. ‘it’s happened before, Vanion,’ Sparhawk
told him. There’s something about our young friend that drives young women
wild. It has to do with his eyelashes, I think. Ehlana and Melidere tried
to explain it to me in Darsas. I didn’t understand’what they were saying,
but ‘I took their word for it.’
‘What an astonishing thing,’ Vanion said.
There were torches everywhere, and the faint, fragrant breeze tossed their
sooty orange flames like a field of wheat. The Rite of Passage took place
in a broad meadow outside the city. An ancient stone %altar adorned With
wild-flowers stood between two broad oaks at the of the meadow, and two
bronze, basin-like cU~ flared, one on each end of the altar. A lone Atan
with snowy hair stood atop the city wall, intently watching the light of
the moon passing through a narrow horizontal aperture in one of the
battlements and down the face of a nearby wall, which was marked at regular
intervals with deeply-scored lines. It was not the most precise way to
determine the time, but if everyone agreed that the line of moonlight would
reach a certain one of those scorings at midnight, precision was
unimportant. As long as there was general agreement, it was midnight. The
night was silent except for the guttering of the
torches and the sighing of the breeze in the dark forest surrounding the