of his hands at the same time.
‘Who is it?’ Again, Khalad’s lips did not move.
‘i’m still working on that,’ Berit whispered back. He released
the spell so slowly that it seemed almost to dribble out of the
ends of his fingers.
The sense of it came washing back to him. It was something
on the order of recognizing an accent – except that it was done
when nobody was talking. ‘It’s a Styric,’ he said quietly.
‘Zalasta?’
‘No, I don’t believe so. I think I’d recognize him. It’s somebody
I’ve never been around before.’
‘Not too much wood, my Lord,’ Khalad said aloud. ‘This pile
has to get us through breakfast too, you know.’
‘Good thinking,’ Berit approved. He reached out again, very
cautiously. ‘He’s moving away,’ he muttered. ‘How did you
know we were being watched?’
‘I could feel it,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘I always know when somebody’s
watching me. How noisy is it when you get in touch
with Aphrael?’
‘That’s one of the good spells. It doesn’t make a sound.’
‘You’d better tell her about this. Let her know that we are
being watched and that it’s a Styric who’s doing the watching.’
Khalad knelt and began to carefully stack his armload of broken-off
limbs on their campfire. ‘Your disguise seems to be working, ‘
he noted.
‘How did you arrive at that?’
‘They wouldn’t waste a Styric on us if they knew who you
really are.’
‘Unless they don’t have anybody left except Styrics. Stragen’s
celebration of the Harvest Festival might have been more effective
than we thought.’
‘We could probably argue about that all night. just tell Aphrael
about our visitor out there. She’ll pass it on to the others, and
we’ll let them get the headache from trying to sort it out with
logic.’
‘Aren’t you curious about it?’
‘Not so curious that I’m going to lose any sleep over it.
That’s one of the advantages of being a peasant, my Lord.
We’re not required to come up with the answers to these
earth-shaking questions. You aristocrats get the pleasure of
doing that.’
‘Thanks,’ Berit said sourly.
‘No charge, my Lord,’ Khalad grinned.
Sparhawk had never actually worked for a living before, and he
discovered that he did not like it very much. He quickly grew
to hate Captain Sorgi’s thick-necked bo’sun. The man was crude,
stupid, and spitefully cruel. He fawned outrageously whenever
Sorgi appeared on the quarterdeck, but when the captain
returned below decks, the bo’sun’s natural character re-asserted
itself. He seemed to take particular delight in tormenting the
newest members of the crew, assigning them the most tedious,
exhausting and demeaning tasks aboard ship. Sparhawk found
himself quite suddenly in full agreement with Khalad’s class
prejudices, and sometimes at night he found himself contemplating
murder.
‘Every man hates his employer, From,’ Stragen told him, using
Sparhawk’s assumed name. ‘It’s a very natural part of the
scheme of things.’
‘I could stand him if he didn’t deliberately go out of his way
to be offensive,’ Sparhawk growled, scrubbing at the deck with
his block of pumice-stone.
‘He’s paid to be offensive, my friend. Angry men work harder.
Part of your problem is that you always look him right in the
eye. He wouldn’t single you out the way he does if you’d keep
your eyes lowered. If you don’t, this is going to be a very long
voyage for you.’
‘Or a short one for him,’ Sparhawk said darkly.
He considered it that night as he tried, without much success,
to sleep in his hammock. He fervently wished that he could get
his hands on the idiot who had decided that humans could sleep
in hammocks. The roll of the ship made it swing from side to
side, and Sparhawk continually felt that he was right on the
verge of being thrown out.
‘Anakha.’ The voice was only a whisper in his mind.
Sparhawk was stunned. ‘Blue Rose?’ he said.
‘Prithee, Anakha, do not speak aloud. Thy voice is as the
thunder in mine ears. Speak silently in the halls of thine awareness.
I will hear thee.’
‘How is this possible?’ Sparhawk framed the thought. ‘Thou
art confined.’
‘Who hath power to confine me, Anakha? When thou art alone
and thy mind is clear of other distraction, we may speak thus.’
‘I did not know that.’
‘Until now, it was not needful for thee to know.’
‘I see. But now it is?’
‘Yes.’
‘How dost thou penetrate the barrier of the gold?’
‘It is no barrier to me, Anakha. Others may not sense me
within the confines of thine excellent receptacle. I, however,
may reach out to thee in this manner. This is particularly true
when we are so close.’
Sparhawk laid his hand on the leather pouch hanging on a
thong about his neck and felt the square outline of the box. ‘And
should it prove needful, may I speak so with thee?’
‘Even as thou dost now, Anakha.’
This is good to know.’
‘I sense thy disquiet, Anakha, and I share thine anxiety for
the safety of thy mate.’
‘Thou art kind to say so, Blue Rose.’
‘Expend thou all thine efforts to securing thy Queen’s release,
Anakha. I will keep watch over our enemies whilst thou art so
occupied.’ The jewel under Sparhawk’s hand paused. ‘Hear me
well, my friend,’ Bhelliom continued, ‘should it come to pass
that no other course be open to thee, fear not to surrender me
up to obtain thy mate’s freedom.’
‘That I will not do – for she hath forbidden it.’
‘Do not be untranquil if it should come to pass, Anakha. I will
not submit to Cyrgon, even though mine own child, whom I
love,even as thou lovest thine, be endangered by my refusal.
Be comforted in the knowledge that I will not permit my child
– nor thee and all thy kind – to be enslaved by Cyrgon – or
worse yet, by Klael. Thou hast my promise that this will never
happen. Should it appear that our task doth verge on failure, I
give thee my solemn vow that I shall destroy this child of mine
and all who’ dwell here to prevent such mischance.’
‘is that supposed to make me feel better?’
CHAPTER 5
She was always tired, hovering at times on the verge of exhaustion,
and she was nearly always wet and dirty. Her clothes were
riPPed and tattered, and her hair was a ruin. Those things were
unimportant, however. She willingly submitted to discomfort
and indignities to keep the madman who was their captor from
hurting the terrified Alcan.
The realization that Scarpa was mad had come to her slowly.
She had known from the first moment she had seen him that
he was ruthless and driven, but the evidence of his insanity had
become gradually more and more overwhelming as the endless
days of her captivity ground on.
He was cruel, but Ehlana had encountered cruel men before.
After she and Alcan had been hurried through the dank tunnels
under the streets of Matherion to the outskirts of the city, they
had been roughly shoved into the saddles of waiting horses,
bound securely in place, and literally dragged at breakneck
sPeed down the road leading to the port of Micae on the southwestern
coast of the peninsula, seventy-five leagues away. A
normal man does not mistreat the animals upon which he is
totally dependent. That was the first evidence of Scarpa’s madness.
He drove the horses, flogging them savagely until the poor
beasts were staggering with exhaustion, and his only words
during those dreadful four days were, ‘Faster! Faster.’
Ehlana shuddered as she recalled the horror of that endless
ride. They had Her
horse stumbled in the muddy path, and she was jolted
forward, bringing her attention back into the immediate present.
The cord which tightly bound her wrists to the saddlebow dug
into her flesh, and the bleeding started again. She tried to ease
into a different position so that the
cord would no longer cut into the already open wounds.
‘What are you doing?’ Scarpa demanded. His voice was harsh,
and it came out almost as a scream. Scarpa almost always
SCreamed when he was talking to her.
‘i’m just trying to keep the cord from cutting deeper into
my wrists, Lord Scarpa,’ she replied meekly. She had been
instructed early in her captivity to address him so and she had
quickly found that failure to do so resulted in savage mistreatment
of Alcan and the withholding of food and water.
“you’re not here to be comfortable, woman!’ he raged at her.
“you’re here to obey! I see what you’re doing there! If you don’t
stop trying to loosen those cords, I’ll use wire!’ his eyes bulged,
and she saw again that strange, bluish cast to the whites of those
eyes and the abnormally large pupils.
‘Yes, Lord Scarpa,’ she said in ‘her most submissive tone.
He glared at her, his face filled with suspicion and his mad