ourselves. I’ve even noticed that in my own character. ‘
‘You?’
‘Be nice, father.’ She said it almost absently, her small black brows
knitted in concentration. ‘It’s certainly consistent,’ she added. ‘Back in
Astel, that Sabre fellow showed a rather profound lack of maturity, and he
was being rather tightly controlled. You may just have hit upon one of our
weaknesses, Sparhawk. I’d rather you didn’t apply the notion to me
directly, but keep the idea that we’re all just a bit immature sort of in
the front of your mind. I won’t be able to see it myself, I’m afraid. If it
is one of our failings, I’m just as infected with it as the others. We’ all
love to impress each other, and it’s polite to be impressed when someone
else is showing off.’ She made a little face. ‘It’s automatic, I’m afraid.
Keep a firm hold on your scepticism, Sparhawk. Your cold-eyed lack of
gullibility might be very useful. Now please go back to sleep. I’m very
busy right now.’ They crossed the summit of the mountains of Atan and moved
on down the eastern slopes toward the border. The demarcation between Atan
and Tamul was abrupt and clearly evident. Atan was a wilderness of trees
and rugged peaks, Tamul was a carefully-tended park. The fields were
excruciatingly neat, and even the hills seemed to have been artfully
sculpted to provide pleasing prospects and vistas. The peasantry seemed
industrious, and they did not have that expression of hopeless misery so
common on the faces of the peasants and serfs of the Elene Kingdoms.
‘Organisation, my dear Emban,’ Oscagne was telling the fat little
churchman. ‘The key to our success lies in organisation. All power in Tamul
descends from the emperor, and all decisions are made in Matherion. We even
tell our peasants when to plant and when to harvest. I’ll admit that
central planning has its drawbacks, but the Tamul nature seems to require
it.’
‘Elenes, unfortunately, are much less disciplined, Emban replied. ‘The
Church would be happier with a more docile congregation, but we have to
make do with what God gave us to work with.’ He smiled. ‘Oh, well, it keeps
life interesting.’ They reached Lebas late one afternoon. It was a small,
neat city with a distinctly alien-looking architecture that leaned strongly
in the direction of artistic embellishment. The houses were low and broad,
with graceful mots that curved upward at the ends of their ridge-lines as
if the architects felt’ that abrupt straight lines were somehow’
incomplete. The cobbled streets were broad and straight, and they were
filled with citizens dressed in brightly coloured silks. The entrance of
the westerners created quite a stir, since the Tamuls had never seen Elene
knights before. It was the Queen of Elenia, however, who astonished them
the most. The Tamuls were a golden-skinned, dark-haired people, and the
pale, blonde queen filled them with awe as her carriage moved almost
ceremonilly through the streets. Their first concern, of course, was the
wounded. Oscagne assured them that Tamul physicians were among the finest
in the world. It appeared, moreover, that the ambassador held a fairly
exalted rank in the empire. A house was immediately provided for the
injured knights, and a medical staff seemed to materialise at his command.
Additional houses were provided for the rest of their company, and those
houses were fully staffed with servants who could not understand a single
word of the Elenic language. ‘You seem to throw a great deal of weight
around, Oscagne,’ Emban said that evening after they ‘had eaten an exotic
meal consisting of course after course of unidentifiable delicacies and
sometimes startling flavours. ‘i’m not the overweight one, my friend,’
Oscagne smiled. ‘My commission is signed by the emperor, and his hand had
the full weight of the entire Daresian continent behind it. He’s ordered
that all of Tamuli do everything possible – and even impossible – to make
the visit of Queen Ehlana pleasant and convenient. No one ever disobeys his
orders.’
‘They must not have reached the Trolls then,’ Ulath said blandly. ‘Of
course Trolls have a different view of the world than we do. Maybe they
thought Queen Ehlana would be entertained by their welcome.’
‘Does he have to do that?’ Oscagne complained to Sparhawk. ‘Ulath? yes, I
think he does, your Excellency. It’s something in the Thalesian nature terribly
obscure, I’m afraid, and quite possibly perverted.’
‘Sparhawk.’ Ulath protested. ‘Nothing personal there, old boy,’ Sparhawk
grinned, just a reminder that I haven’t yet quite forgiven you for
all the times you’ve tricked me into doing the cooking when it wasn’t
really my turn.’
‘Hold still,’ Mirtai commanded. ‘You got some of it in my eye,’ Talen
accused her. ‘It won’t hurt you. Now hold still.’ She continued to daub the
mixture onto his face. ‘What is that, Mirtai?’ Baroness Melidere asked
curiously. ‘Saffron. We use it in our cooking. It’s a kind of a spice.’
‘What are we doing here?’ Ehlana asked curiously as she and Sparhawk
entered the room to find the Atana spreading the condiment over Talen’s
face. ‘We’re modifying your page, my Queen,’ Stragen explained. ‘He has to
go out into the streets, and we want him to be unobtrusive. Mirtai’s
changing the colour of his skin.’
‘You could do that with magic, couldn’t you, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana asked.
‘Probably,’ he said, ‘and if I couldn’t, Sephrenia certainly could.’
‘Now you tell me,’ Talen said in a slightly bitter tone. ‘Mirtai’s been
seasoning me for the past half hour.’
‘You smell good, though,’ Melidere told him. ‘I didn’t set out to be
somebody’s supper. Ouch.’
‘Sorry,’ Alcan murmured, carefully disengaging her comb from a snarl in
his hair. ‘I have to work the dye in, though, or it won’t look right.’
Alcan was applying black dye to the young man’s hair. ‘How long will it
take me to wash this yellow stuff off?’ Talen asked. ‘i’m not sure,’ Mirtai
shrugged. ‘It might be permanent, but it should grow out in a month or so.’
‘I’ll get you for this, Stragen,’ Talen threatened. ‘Hold still,’ Mirtai
said again and continued her daubing. ‘We have to make contact with the
local thieves,’ Stragen explained. ‘The thieves at Sarsos promised that
we’d get a definite answer here in Lebas.’ I see a large hole in the plan,
Stragen,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Talen doesn’t speak Tamul.’
‘That’s no real problem,’ Stragen shrugged. ‘The chief of the local
thieves is a Cammorian.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘We’re very cosmopolitan, Sparhawk. All thieves are brothers, after all,
and we recognise the aristocracy of talent. Anyway, as soon as he can pass
for a Tamul, Talen’s going to the local thieves’ den to talk with Caalador
– that’s the Cammorian’s name. He’ll bring him here, and we’ll be able to
talk with him privately.’
‘Why aren’t you the one who’s going?’
‘And get saffron all over my face? Don’t be silly, Sparhawk.’
Caalador the Cammorian was a stocky, red-faced man with curly black hair
and an open, friendly countenance. He looked more like a jovial innkeeper
than a leader of thieves and cutthroats. His manner was bluff and good
humoured, and he spoke in the typical Cammorian brawl and with the slovenly
grammar that bespoke back-country origins. ‘So yet the one oz has got all
the thieves of Daresia so sore perplexed,’ he said to Stragen when Talen
presented him. ‘I’ll have to plead guilty on that score, Caalador, Stragen
smiled. ‘Don’t never do that, brother. Alluz try’n lie yet way outten
thangs.’
‘I’ll try to remember that. What are you doing so far
from home, my friend?’
‘I nought ax you the same question, Stragen. It’s a fur piece from here t’
Thalesia.’
‘And quite nearly as far from Cammoria.’
‘Ain, that’s easy explained, m’ friend. I started out in life oz a
poacher, ketchin’ rabbits an’ sick in the bushes on land that weren’t
rightly mine, but that’s a sore hard kinda work with lotsar risk and mighty
slim profit, so I tooken t’ liftin’ chickens outten hen-roosts – chickens
not runnin’ near oz fast oz rabbits, especial at night. Then I moved up t’
sheep-stealing – only one night I had me a set-to with a hull passel o’
sheep-dawgs which it wuz oz betrayed me real cruel by not stayin’ bribed.’
‘How do you bribe a dog?’ Ehlana asked curiously. ‘Easiest thang in the
world, little lady. Y thrum ’em some meat-scraps t’ keep then attention.
well, sir, them there dawgs tore into me somethin’ fierce, an’ I lit out
leavin’, misfortunate-like, a hat which it wuz I wuz partial ‘to an’ which
it wuz oz could be rekonnized oz mine by half the parish. Now, I’m gist a
country boy at hert ‘thout no real citified ways t’ get me by in town, an’
so I tooken t’ sea, an’ t’ make it short, I fetched up on this yore fu~n
coast an’ beat my way inland, the capting of the ship I wuz a-sailin’ on