doesn’t even understand Elenic – but then, who really does?’
‘Be nice.’
‘Take us back immediately!’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
There was that now-familiar lurch, and the moonlight faded
into gray. Then they were back in bright autumn sunshine on
the road a few miles outside Korvan, and their friends were
staring at them in astonishment.
‘What went wrong?’ Sephrenia asked Flute.
‘Our glorious leader here was wool-gathering,’ Flute replied
with heavy sarcasm. ‘We just took a little side-trip to Demos.’
‘Demos!’ Vanion exclaimed. ‘That’s on the other side of the
world!’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. “It’s the middle of the night there right
now. We were on the road to Kurik’s farm. Maybe our stalwart
commander here felt lonesome for Aslade’s cooking.’
“I can live without these “stalwart commanders, and “glorious
leaders”,’ Sparhawk told her tartly.
‘Then do it right.’
There was a certain desperation in the flicker of darkness at
the edge of Sparhawk’s vision this time, and a faint flicker of
harried confusion. Sparhawk did not even stop to think. ‘Blue
Rose!’ he barked to the Bhelliom, bringing up his other hand so
that both rings touched the deep blue petals, ‘destroy that thing.’
he felt a brief jolt in his hands and heard a sizzling kind of
crackle behind him.
The shadow that had dogged their steps for so long, which
they had thought at first to be Azash and then the Troll-Gods
gave a shrill shriek and began to babble in agony. Sparhawk
saw Sephrenia’s eyes widen.
The shadow was crying out, not in Zemoch or Trollish, but
in Styric.
CHAPTER 8
‘Well now, yet Queenship,’ Caalador was saying, “I don’t know
az I’d start a-dancin’ in the streets gist yet. Them fellers over t’
Interior’s bin a-doin’ ever’thang but a-nailin’ th’ doors shot t’
keep us from a-puttin’ our hands on this yore pertic’ler set o’
files, an’ now they turns up sorta unexpected-like amongst a
hull buncha others – which I’d swear a oath to that I already
looked over ’bout four er five times my own self. Don’t that
smell gist a bit like a dead fish t’ you?’
‘What did he say?’ Emperor Sarabian asked.
‘He’s suspicious,’ Ehlana translated. ‘He thinks that our
discovery of these files was too easy. He may just have a
point.’
They had gathered again in the royal apartment in what was
by now generally called ‘Ehlana’s Castle’ to discuss the surprising
discovery of a hitherto missing set of personnel files. The
files themselves were stacked in heaps upon the tables and the
floor of the main sitting room.
‘Do you always have to complicate things, Master Caalador?’
The Emperor’s expression was slightly pained. As he habitually
did now, Sarabian was wearing western-style clothes. Ehlana
felt that this morning’s choice of a black velvet doublet
and pearl-grey hose was not a happy one. Black velvet made
Sarabian’s bronze-tinted skin look sallow and unhealthy.
‘i’m a professional swindler, your Majesty,’ Caalador replied,
dropping the dialect. ‘i’ve learned that when something seems
too good to be true, it probably is.’
Stragen was looking into one of the files. ‘What an amazing
thing,’ he said. “Someone in the Ministry of the Interior seems
to have discovered the secret of eternal youth.’
‘Don’t be cryptic, Stragen,’ Ehlana told him, adjusting the
folds of her blue dressing gown. ‘Say what you mean.’
He took a sheet of paper out of the file he was holding. ‘This
particular document looks as if it were only written last week which
it probably was. The ink’s barely dry.’
‘They are still using those files, Milord,’ Oscagne said, ‘despite
the inconvenience. It’s probably just a recently filed document.’
Stragen took out another sheet of paper and handed both
documents to the Foreign Minister. ‘Do you notice anything
unusual about these, your Excellency?’
Oscagne shrugged. ‘One of them’s fairly new, the other’s
turned yellow with age, and the ink’s faded so badly you can
hardly read it.’
‘Exactly,’ Stragen said. ‘Don’t you find it just a little odd that
the faded one’s supposed to be five years younger than the fresh
one?’
Oscagne looked more closely at the two sheets of paper. ‘Are
you trying to say that they falsified an official document?’ he
exclaimed. ‘That’s a capital offense!’
‘Let me see those,’ Sarabian said.
Oscagne handed him the documents.
‘Oh, yes,’ Sarabian noted, ‘Chalba. Kolata’s been singing his
praises for the past fifteen years.’ He held up the suspicious
document. ‘This purports to be his appointment to the ministry.
It’s dated no more than a week after Kolata took office.’ He
looked at Stragen. ‘You think this has been substituted for the
original?’
“it certainly looks that way, your Majesty.’
Sarabian frowned. ‘What could there possibly have been on
the original that they’d have wanted to conceal?’ he asked.
“I have no idea, your Majesty. There must have been something,
though.’ He leafed through the file. ‘This Chalba’s rise in
the ministry was positively meteoric. It looks as if he was getting
promoted every time he turned around.’
‘That sounds a bit like the sort of thing one does for a close
friend,’ Oscagne mused, ‘. . . or a relative.’
Sarabian smiled faintly. ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Your brother
Itagne seems to have risen quite nearly as rapidly. ‘
Oscagne made a face. ‘That wasn’t my idea, your Majesty.
Itagne’s not a career official of the Foreign Ministry. I press him
into service in emergencies, and he always extorts promotions
out of me. I’d rather not have anything to do with him at all,
but he’s so brilliant that I don’t have any choice. My younger
brother’s intensely competitive, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised
to find that he has his eye on my position.’
‘This fallacious document Stragen found might give us a place
to start,’ Caalador mused. Caalador frequently dipped in and
out of the dialect like a leaping trout. ‘if Kolata took a cluster of
friends and relatives into the ministry with him, wouldn’t it
stand to reason that they’d be the ones he’d trust the most?’
“it would indeed,’ Stragen agreed, ‘and we’d be able to tell
from the dates on their appointments just who these cronies of
his are, and his cronies would have been the people he’d have
been most likely to confide in when he decided to take uP
treason as a hobby. I’d guess that anybody whose appointment
coincided with Kolata’s elevation to office is probably involved
in this business.’
‘The ones oz is still alive, anyway,’ Caalador added. ‘A feller
what turns down the chance t’ join some friends in the treason
business ain’t got too much in the way o’ life-expectancy after
he sez no.’
‘May I speak, your Majesty?’ Alcan asked Ehlana timidly.
‘Of course, dear.’
The gentle girl was holding one of the files in her hands. ‘Does
ink always fade and paper turn yellow as the document gets
older?’ she asked them in a barely audible voice.
‘indeed it does, child,’ Sarabian laughed. “it drives librarians
crazy.’
‘And if there was something written down in one of these
packages of paper that the people at the Inferior Ministry didn’t
want us to . . .’
Oscagne suddenly howled with laughter.
Alcan blushed and lowered her head. “I’m just being silly,
she said in a very tiny voice. ‘i’m sorry I interrupted.’
‘The place is called the Interior Ministry, Alcan,’ Melidere told
her gently.
“I preferred her term,’ Oscagne chuckled.
‘May I be excused, my queen?’ Alcan asked, her face flaming
with mortification.
‘Of course, dear,’ Ehlana replied sympathetically.
“not just yet, Ehlana,’ Sarabian cut in. ‘Come here, child,’ he
said to Alcan.
She crossed to his chair and curtsied a bit awkwardly. ‘Yes,
your Majesty?’ she said in a scarcely audible voice.
‘Don’t pay any attention to Oscagne,’ he said. ‘His sense of
humor gets the best of him sometimes. What were you going
to say?’
“it’s silly, your Majesty. I’m just an ignorant girl. I shouldn’t
have spoken.’
‘Alcan,’ he said very gently, ‘you were the one who suggested
that we take all the files of all the ministries out of the government
buildings and spread them out on the lawns. That turned
out to be an excellent idea. I don’t know about these others, but
I’ll listen to anything you have to say. Please go on.’
‘Well, your Majesty,’ she said, blushing even harder, ‘as I
understand what Milord Stragen just said, those people wanted
to hide things that were written down, so they wrote new papers
and put them in place of the ones they didn’t want us to see.’
“it looks as if that’s what they’ve done, all right.’
‘Well, then, if new paper’s white, and old paper’s yellow,
wouldn’t that sort of mean that anybody whose package has
white papers mixed in with yellow ones has something to hide?’
‘Oh, good God!’ Stragen exclaimed, smacking himself on the
forehead with his open palm. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’