‘Cyrgon? That’s absurd!’ ~Kolata blustered. ‘Cyrgon’s a myth.’
‘Oh, really?’ Oscagne looked at him with contempt. ‘Don’t
play the fool with me, Kolata. I don’t have the patience for it.
Your orders come from the Cynesgan Embassy, don’t they? and
most of the time, they’re delivered by a man named Krager.’
Kolata gaped at him.
‘Close your mouth, Kolata. You look like an idiot with it hanging
open like that. We already know a great deal about your
treason. All we really want from you are a few details. You were
first contacted by someone you had reason to trust – and most
probably someone you respected. That immediately rules out a
Cynesgan. No Tamul has anything but contempt for Cynesgans.
Given our characteristic sense of our own superiority, that would
also rule out an Arjuni or an Elene from any of the western
kingdoms. That would leave only another Tamul, or possibly
an Atan, or…’ Oscagne’s eyes suddenly widened, and his
expression grew thunderstruck. ‘Or a Styric!’
‘Absurd,’ Kolata scoffed weakly. His eyes, however, were
wild, darting this way and that like those of a man looking for
a place to hide.
Sparhawk looked appraisingly at Zalasta. The sorcerer’s face
was deathly pale, but his eyes showed that he was still in control.
It was going to take something more to push him over the edge.
The big Pandion placed his left hand rather casually on his
sword-hilt, giving Oscagne the pre-arranged signal.
‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere, old boy,’ Oscagne
drawled, recovering from his surprise. “I think you need some
encouragement.’ He turned and looked at Xanetia. ‘Would
you be so kind, Anarae?’ he asked her. ‘Our esteemed Minister
of the Interior doesn’t seem to want to share things with
us. Do you suppose you could persuade him to change his
mind?’
“I can but try, Oscagne of Matherion,’ Xanetia replied, rising
to her feet. She crossed the front of the room, choosing for some
reason to approach the prisoner from the side where Sephrenia
sat rather than the one from which she herself had been watching.
‘Thou art afeared, Kolata of Matherion,’ she said gravely,
‘and thy fear doth make thee brave, for it is in thy mind that
though they who hold thy body captive may do thee great harm,
he who hath thy soul in thrall may do thee worse. Now must
thou contend with yet an even greater fear. Look upon me,
Kolata of Matherion, and tremble, for I will visit upon thee the
ultimate horror. Wilt thou speak, and speak freely?’
“I can’t!’ ~Kolata wailed.
‘Then art thou lost. Behold me as I truly am, and consider
well thy fate, for I am death, Kolata of Matherion, death beyond
thy most dreadful imagining.’ The color drained from her
slowly, and the glow within her was faint at first. She stood
looking at him with her chin raised and an expression of deep
sadness in her eyes as she glowed brighter and brighter.
Kolata screamed.
The other officials scrambled to their feet, their faces terrified,
and their babbling suddenly shrill.
‘SIT DOWN!’ Sarabian bellowed at them. ‘AND BE SILENT!’
A few of them were cowed into obedience. Most, however,
were too frightened. They continued to shrink back from Xanetia,
crying out in shrill voices.
‘My Lord Vanion,’ Sarabian called over the tumult, ‘would
you please restore order?”
‘At once, your Majesty.’ Vanion clapped down his visor,
pulled his sword from its scabbard, and raised his shield. ‘Draw
swords!’ He barked the command. There was a steely rasP as the
Church Knights drew their swords. ‘Forward!’ Vanion ordered.
The knights posted along the walls marched clankingly forward,
their swords at the ready, converging on the frightened
officials. Vanion stretched forth his steel-clad arm, extending his
sword and touching the tip to the throat of the Prime Minister.
“I believe the Emperor told you to sit down, Pondia Subat,’ he
said. ‘Do it! now!”
The Prime Minister sank back into his chair, suddenly more
afraid of Vanion than he was of Xanetia.
A couple of the council members had to be chased down and
forcibly returned to their seats, and one rather athletic one, the
Minister of Public Works, Sparhawk thought, was persuaded to
come down from the drape he’d been climbing only by the threat
of Khalad’s crossbow. Order was restored. When the council
had returned – or been returned – to their seats, however, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer was discovered lying on the floor,
vacant-eyed and with a large bubble of foam protruding from his
gaping mouth. Vanion checked the body rather perfunctorily.
‘Poison,’ he said shortly. ‘He seems to have taken it himself.’
Ehlana shuddered.
‘Prithee, Anarae,’ Sarabian said to Xanetia, ‘continue thine
inquiry.’
‘An it please your Majesty,’ she replied in that strange echoing
Voice. She turned her gaze on Kolata. ‘Wilt thou speak, and
freely, Kolata of Matherion?’ she asked. He shrank back in horror.
‘So be it, then.’ She put forth her hand and moved closer.
‘The curse of Edaemus is upon me,’ she warned, ‘and I bear its
mark. I will share that curse with thee. Mayhap thou wilt regret
thy silence when thy flesh doth decay and melt like wax from
thy bones. The time hath come to choose, Kolata of Matherion.
Speak or die. Who is it who hath stolen thy loyalty from thine
appointed master.’ Her hand, more surely deadly than Vanion’s
sword, was within inches of Kolata’s ashen face.
‘No!’ he shrieked. ‘No. I’ll tell you!’
The cloud appeared quite suddenly in the air above the gibbering
minister, but Sparhawk was ready. Half hidden behind
Ehlana’s throne, he had taken off his gauntlet and surreptitiously
removed the Sapphire Rose from its confinement. ‘Blue
Rose!’ he said sharply. ‘Destroy the cloud.’
The Bhelliom surged in his hand, and the dense, almost solid-appearing
patch of intense darkness tattered, whipping like a
pennon on a flag-staff in a hurricane, then it streamed away and
was gone.
Zalasta was thrown back in his chair as his spell was broken.
He half rose and fell back again, writhing and moaning as the
jagged edges of his broken spell clawed at him. His chair overturned,
and he convulsed ‘on the floor like one caught in a
seizure.
“It was him!’ ~Kolata shrieked, Pointing with a trembling hand.
“It was Zalasta He made me do it!’
Sephrenia’s gasp was clearly audible. Sparhawk looked
sharply at her. She had fallen back, nearly as shaken as Zalasta
himself. Her eyes were filled with disbelief and horror. Danae,
Sparhawk noticed, was talking to her, speaking rapidly and
holding her sister’s face quite firmly in her small hands.
‘Curse you, Sparhawk!’ The words came out in a kind of rasping
croak as Zalasta, aided by his staff, dragged himself unsteadily
to his feet. His face was shaken and twisted in
frustration and rage. ‘You are mine, Sephrenia, mine!’ he howled.
“I have longed for you for an eternity, watched as your thieving,
guttersnipe Goddess stole you from me. but no more. Thus do
I banish forever the Child Goddess and her hold on thee!’ his
deadly staff whirled and leveled. ‘Die, Aphrael!’ he shrieked.
Sephrenia, without even thinking, clasped her arms around
Sparhawk’s daughter and turned quickly in her seat, shielding
the little girl with her own body, willingly offering her back to
Zalasta’s fury.
Sparhawk’s heart froze as a ball of fire shot from the tip of
the staff.
‘No!’ Vanion cried, trying to rush forward.
But Xanetia was already there. Her decision to approach Kolata
from Sephrenia’s side of the room had clearly been influenced
by her perception of what lay in Zalasta’s mind. She had
consciously placed herself in a position to protect her enemy. Unafraid,
she faced the raving Styric. The sizzling fireball streaked through the
silent air of the throne-room, bearing with it all of Zalasta’s
centuries-old hatred. Xanetia held out her hand, and, like a tame bird
returning to the hand that feeds it, the flaming orb settled into that
hand. With only the faint hint of a smile touching her lips, the Delphaeic
woman closed her fingers around Zalasta’s pent-up
hatred. For an instant, incandescent flame spurted out from
between her pale fingers, and then she absorbed the fiery messenger
of death, the light within her consuming it utterly. ‘What
now, Zalasta of Styricum?’ she asked the raging sorcerer. ‘What
dost thou propose now? Wilt thou contend with me more at
peril of thy life? Or wilt thou, like the whipped cur thou art,
Clings and flee my wrath? For I do know thee. It hath been ~thy
poisoned tongue which hath set my sister’s heart against me.
Flee, master of lies. Abuse Sephrenia’s ears no longer with thy
foul slanders. Go. I abjure thee. Go.’
Zalasta howled, and in that howl there was a lifetime of unsatisfied
longing and blackest despair.
And then he vanished.
CHAPTER 20
Emperor Sarabian’s expression was strangely detached as he
looked out over the shambles of his government. Some of the