inside a rainbow.’
‘We’ll know more about it in a little bit,’ Kalten said. ‘That
fog’s moving straight toward us, and it’s bringing the light with
it.’ He raised his face. ‘And there’s absolutely no breeze. What’s
going on here, Sephrenia?’
Before she could answer, shrieks of terror came from the
south, where the road was. Talen scurried across the littered
yard to the tumbled wall. ‘The Cyrgai are running away!’ he
shouted. ‘They’re throwing away their swords and helmets and
running like rabbits!’
“I don’t like the feel of this, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said bleakly,
drawing his sword.
The fog-bank approaching them had divided and flowed
around the hill upon which they stood. It was a thick fog
such as one might see in a coastal city, and it moved across
the arid, barren desert, marching inexorably upon the ruined
fortress.
‘There’s something moving in there!’ Talen shouted from the
far side of the ruin.
They were only blurs of light at first, but as the strange fogbank
drew nearer, they grew more and more distinct. Sparhawk
could clearly make out the shapes of nebulous bodies now.
Whatever they were, they had human shapes.
Then Sephrenia shrieked as one seized in the grip of an overpowering
rage. ‘Defiled ones! Defiled ones! Foul and accursed!!’
They stared at her, stunned by her sudden outburst.
The lights in the fog never faltered but continued their glowing,
inexorable advance.
‘Run!’ Itagne suddenly shouted. ‘Run for your lives! It’s the
Delphae – the Shining Ones!’
-PART TWO
Delphaeus
CHAPTER 11
It was the fog perhaps. The fog blurred everything. There were
no precise outlines, no clear, sharp dangers, and the glowing
figures in the mist approached slowly, seeming almost to float
up the graveled slope toward the ancient ruin, bringing their
obscuring fog with them. Their faces, their very shapes were
indistinct, softened until they seemed hardly more than glowing
blurs. It was the fog, perhaps – but then again, perhaps not.
For whatever reason, Sparhawk felt no alarm.
The Delphae stopped about twenty yards from the broken
walls of the ruin and stood with their glowing fog eddying and
swirling around them, erasing the night with its cold, pale fire.
Sparhawk’s mind was strangely detached, his thoughts clear
and precise. ‘Well met, neighbors,’ he called out to the shapes
in the mist.
‘Are you mad?’ Itagne gasped.
‘Destroy them, Sparhawk!’ Sephrenia hissed. ‘Use the Bhelliom!
Obliterate them!’
‘Why don’t we see what they want first?’
‘How can you be so calm, man?’ Itagne demanded.
‘Training, I suppose,’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘You develop
instincts after a while. Those people out there don’t have any
hostile intentions.’
‘He’s right, Itagne,’ Vanion said. ‘You can definitely feel it
when someone wants to kill you. Those people out there don’t
want to fight. They’re not afraid of us, but they’re not here to
fight. Let’s see where this goes, gentlemen. Keep your guard
up, but let’s not precipitate anything – not yet, anyway.’
‘Anakha,’ one of the glowing figures in the fog called.
‘That’s a good start,’ Vanion murmured. ‘See what they want,
Sparhawk.’
Sparhawk nodded and stepped closer to the time-eroded boulders
of the fallen wall. ‘You know me?’ he called, speaking in
Tamul.
‘The very rocks know the name of Anakha. Thou art as no man
who hath ever lived.’ The language was archaic and profoundly
formal. ‘We bear thee no malice, and we come in friendship.’
‘i’ll listen to what you have to say.’ Sparhawk heard
Sephrenia’s sharp intake of breath behind him.
‘We offer thee and thy companions sanctuary,’ the Delphae
out in the fog told him. ‘Thine enemies are all about thee, and
thy peril is great here in the land of the Cyrgai. Come thou even
unto Delphaeus, and we will give thee rest and safety.’
‘Your offer’s generous, neighbor,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘and
my companions and I are grateful.’ his tone, however, was
doubtful.
‘We sense thy reluctance.’ The voice in the fog seemed
strangely hollow with a sort of reverberating echo to it, an echo
such as one might hear in a long, empty corridor, a sound receding
off into some immeasurable distance. ‘Be assured that we
mean thee and thy companions no harm, and shouldst thou
choose to come to Delphaeus, we will pledge thee our protection.
Few there are in all this world who will willingly face us.’
‘So I’ve heard. But that brings up a question. Why, neighbor?
We’re strangers here. What possible interest can the Delphae
have in our affairs? What do you hope to gain from this offer of
friendship?’ The glowing shape in the fog hesitated. ‘Thou hast taken up
Bhelliom, Anakha – for good or for ill, and thou knowest not
which. Thy will is no longer thine own, for Bhelliom bends thee
to its own purpose. Thou art no longer of this world, nor is thy
destiny. Thy design and thy destiny are of Bhelliom’s devising.
In truth, we’ are indifferent to thee and thy companions, for our
offer of friendship is not to thee, but to Bhelliom, and it is from
Bhelliom that we will extract the price ofthat friendship.’
‘That’s direct enough,’ Kalten muttered.
‘Thy peril is greater than thou knowest,’ the glowing speaker
continued. ‘Bhelliom is the greatest prize in all the universe, and
beings beyond thine imagining seek to possess it. It will not be
possessed, however. It chooseth its own, and it hath chosen
thee. Into thy hand hath it placed itself, and through thine ears
must we speak with it and offer our exchange.’ The speaker
paused. ‘Consider what we have told thee here, and put aside
thy suspicion. Thy success or failure in completing Bhelliom’s
design may hinge on our assistance – or its lack – and we will
have our price. We will speak more of this anon.’
The fog swirled and thickened, and the glowing shapes
dimmed and faded. A sudden night breeze, as chill as winter
and as arid a s dust, swept across the desert, and the fog tattered
and shawled, whirling, all seethe and confusion. And then it
was gone, and the Shining Ones with it.
‘Don’t listen to them, Sparhawk.’ Sephrenia said in a shrill
voice. ‘Don’t even consider what he said. It’s a trick.’
‘We’re not children, Sephrenia,’ Vanion told the woman he
loved. ‘We’re not really gullible enough to accept the word of
strangers at face value – particularly not the word of strangers
like the Delphae.’
‘You don’t know them, Vanion. Their words are like the honey
that lures and traps the unwary fly. You should have destroyed
them, Sparhawk.’
‘Sephrenia,’ Vanion said in a troubled tone, ‘you’ve spent the
last forty years with your hand on my sword arm trying to
keep me from hurting people. Why have you changed? What’s
making you so blood-thirsty all of a sudden?’
She gave him a flat, hostile look. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘That’s an evasion, dear, and you know me well enough to
know that it’s probably not true. The Delphae may not have
been entirely candid with us about their offer, but they weren’t
hostile, and they weren’t threatening us in any way.’
‘Ah – Lord Vanion,’ Ulath interrupted, “I don’t think anybody
in his right mind would threaten Sparhawk. Threatening the
man who holds Bhelliom in his fist is not the course of wisdom
– not even for people who glow in the dark and mulch their
neighbors down into compost.’
‘That’s exactly my point, Vanion.’ Sephrenia seized upon
Ulath’s words. ‘The Delphae were afraid to attack us because of
Bhelliom. That’s all that was holding them back.’
‘But they were holding back. They weren’t any danger to us.
Why did you want Sparhawk to kill them?’
“I despise them!’ It came out in a kind of hiss.
,Why? What did they ever do to you?
‘They have no right to exist!’
‘Everything has a right to exist, Sephrenia – even wasps and
scorpions. You’ve spent your whole life teaching blood-thirsty
young Pandions that lesson. Why are you suddenly throwing it
away?’
She turned her face away from him.
‘Please don’t do that. You’ve got some kind of problem here,
and your problems are mine. Let’s pull this out into the light
and look at it.’
‘NO!’ and she turned abruPtly on her heel and stalked away.
“It has absolutely no basis in fact,’ Itagne told them as they rode
across the barren miles under a murky sky.
‘Those are usually the best stories,’ Talen said.
Itagne smiled briefly. ‘There’s been a body of folk-lore about
the Shining Ones in Tamul culture for eons. It started out with
the usual horror stories, I suppose, but there’s something in the
Tamul nature that drives us to extremes. About seven hundred
years ago, a decidedly minor poet began to tamper with the
legend. Instead of concentrating on the horror, he began to wax
sentimental, delving into how the Delphae felt about their situation.
He wept copiously in vile verse about their loneliness and