‘Our assistance in thy struggle with thine enemies, Anakha.
‘That’s a little unspecific, Codon. I’ve got the Bhelliom. what
can you possibly do for me that I can’t do for myself?’
‘Thou must have the cooperation of the jewel, Anakha. Thou
canst compel the stone, but it loves thee not, and it doth sometimes
deliberately misunderstand thee – as when it took thee
and the Child Goddess to Demos when thou sought to go to
Delo in Arjuna.’
‘How did you know about that?’ Sparhawk was startled.
‘Thy mind is open to me, Anakha, as are all minds. This is
but one of the services we can offer thee. Would it not be to
thine advantage to know what those about thee are thinking?’
‘It would indeed, Codon, but there are other ways to wrest
the truth from men’s hearts.’
‘But men who have been put to the torture know that they
have been tortured, and they know what they have revealed
unto thee. Our way is more subtle.’
‘He’s got a point there, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘What am I
thinking right now, Codon?’
‘Thou art troubled by the duty to slay Xanetia should our
people play thee false, Sir Knight. Thy mind is gently inclined
toward her.’
‘He’s right about that,’ Kalten admitted to the others. ‘I think
these people can hear what others are thinking.’
‘We have other capabilities as well, Sir Knights,’ the Anari
told them, ‘and we freely offer them to thee in exchange for
what we ask.’ He looked rather sadly at Sephrenia. ‘I fear that
when I reveal the nature of these capabilities, it will cause thee
pain and harden thine heart yet more toward us, dear sister.’
‘Will you stop calling me that? My heart is already like granite
toward you and your kind.’
‘That is not true, Sephrenia of Ylara,’ Xanetia disagreed. ‘Thou
art troubled forasmuch as thou hast found no wickedness in us
in this, thy first meeting with our kind. Hard put art thou to
maintain an hatred which groweth more from thy sense of duty
to thy kindred than from any personal rancor. I do freely confess
mine own similarly troubled state. I am inclined to love thee,
even as thou art so inclined toward me.
‘Stop that!’ SePhrenia burst out. ‘KeeP your unclean hands
out of my thoughts.’
“Stubborn, isn’t she?’ Ulath murmured.
‘It is the nature of the Younger Gods of Styricum to protect
their children – even from their own folly,’ the Anari noted.
‘Thus it is that the Styrics must appeal to their Gods with spells
and prayers for aid when they would step beyond the powers
of other men. Is it not so, Sephrenia of Ylara?’
She refused to answer him.
‘That’s the core of Styric magic, Codon,’ Vanion replied for her.
She glared at him, and Sparhawk silently groaned. Why
couldn’t Vanion keep his mouth shut?
The Anari nodded. ‘Edaemus hath, as I say, gone before us
to prepare the way, and he is therefore no longer able to watch
over us. Thus hath he granted certain of us the power to do
what must be done without his guidance.’
‘Unrestrained magic?’ Sephrenia exclaimed. ‘You hold the
power of the Gods in your own hands with no restraints?’
“Some few of us, yes.’
‘That’s monstrous! The human mind isn’t capable of understanding
the nature of that kind of power. We can’t grasp the
consequences of unleashing it to satisfy our childish whims.’
‘Thy Goddess hath instructed thee well, Sephrenia of Ylara,’
Xanetia noted. ‘This is what she wishes thee to believe.’
‘Thy Goddess would keep thee a child, dear sister,’ the Anari
said. ‘For so long as thou art a child, she is secure in thy love.
I tell thee truly, however, Edaemus doth love us even as thine
Aphrael doth love thee. His love, however, doth compel us to
grow. He hath placed his power in our hands, and we must
accept the consequences of our acts when we bring it to bear.
It is a different kind of love, but it is love nonetheless. Edaemus
is no longer here to guide us, so we can do whatever our minds
are able to conceive.’ The Anari smiled gently. ‘Forgive me, my
friends,’ he said to them, ‘but one as old as I hath but one
peculiar interest.’ He held up one withered old hand and looked
at it rather sadly. ‘How soon are we altered by the passing of
years, and how distressing is the alteration.’
The change seemed gradual, but considering the staggering
nature of that change, what was happening before their eyes was
nearly miraculous. The withered hand grew more firm-fleshed,
the knobby joints smoothed, and the wrinkles faded. It was not
only the hand, however. The tracery of wrinkles and lines on
Codon’s face seemed to slide away. His hollow cheeks filled out,
and his thin, wispy hair grew fuller, more abundant. They stared
at him as, with no apparent effort, he reversed the erosion of
years. He regressed to vigorous youth, his skin clear and his hands
and face firm and unmarked. Then, he began to diminish, his
limbs shrinking inside his garments. The prickly stubble vanished
from his cheeks and chin, and, as he continued to regress, hiS
head seemed to grow larger in proportion to his shrinking body.
‘That might be far enough,’ he said in a piping, childish voice. He
smiled, a strangely ancient smile which looked very much out of
place on that little boy’s face. ‘A miscalculation here might reduce
me to nothing. In truth, I have considered that, but my tasks and
responsibilities are not yet completed. Xanetia has her own tasks,
and I would not yet burden her with mine as well.’
Sparhawk swallowed hard. ‘I think you’ve made your point,
Codon,’ he said in a strained voice. ‘We’ll accept the fact that
you can do things that we can’t do.’ He looked around at his
friends. ‘I can already see arguments brewing,’ he told them,
deliberately avoiding Sephrenia’s eyes, ‘and no matter what we
decide, we’ll probably all have serious doubts about it.’
‘We could pray,’ Bevier suggested.
‘Or roll dice and let them decide,’ Ulath added.
‘Not with your dice, we couldn’t,’ Kalten objected.
‘We could even fall back on logic,’ Vanion concluded, ‘but
Sparhawk’s right. No matter how we try to decide, we could
probably sit here all winter and still not agree.’ he also avoided
Sephrenia’s eyes.
‘All right, then,’ Sparhawk said, reaching inside his tunic,
‘since Aphrael’s not here to bully us into agreement, we’ll let
Bhelliom decide.’ He took out the golden box and set it on the
table in front of him.
‘Sparhawk.’ Sephrenia gasped.
‘No, Anakha!’ Xanetia also exclaimed.
‘Bhelliom doesn’t love any of us,’ he said, ‘so we can sort
of rely on its neutrality. We need guidance here, and neither Edaemus nor
Aphrael is around to provide it – besides which,
I don’t know that I’d trust either of them anyway, given the
peculiar circumstances here. We want an uncontaminated
opinion, so why don’t we just find out what Bhelliom thinks
about the situation?
CHAPTER 15
‘Blue Rose,’ Sparhawk said in Trollish to the glowing jewel in
his hands, “I am Anakha. Do you know me?’
Bhelliom’s glow pulsed slightly, and Sparhawk could sense
the stone’s stiff reluctance to acknowledge his dominion. Then
he thought of something. ‘You and I need to talk,’ he said,
speaking in Elenic this time, ‘and I don’t think Khwaj and the
others need to be listening. Can you understand me when I
speak in this fashion?’
There was the faintest hint of curiosity in the pulse this time.
‘Good. Is there some way you can talk to me? There’s something
you and I have to decide. This is too important for me to
simply force you to do what I want, because I could be wrong.
I know you’re none too fond of me – or of any creature on this
particular world – but I think that we may have some common
interest this time.’
‘Let me go.’ The voice was a kind of lingering whisper, but it
was familiar.
Sparhawk whirled round to stare at Kalten. His boyhood
friend’s face was wooden, uncomprehending, and the words
came stiffly from his lips. ‘Why hast thou done this thing,
Anakha? Why hast thou enslaved me?’ The archaic Elenic could
not have come from Kalten, but why had Bhelliom chosen this
most unlikely mouth?
Sparhawk carefully readjusted his thoughts, casting them in
the profoundly formal language with which the stone had
addressed him; and in the instant of that changeover, perception
and understanding came. It somehow seemed that knowledge
had lain dormant in his mind until unlocked by this peculiar’
key. Strangely, his understanding had been bound up in language,
and once he made the conscious shift from contemporary
Elenic with all its casual imprecision to more stately and concise
cadences, that previously closed part of his mind opened. “It was