unbeknownst to us all, hath a smattering of that tongue, and
he was thus able to glean from their hurried conversation the
very information which he – and we – are most curious about.’
That’s a surprise,’ Kalten muttered. ‘Drunk or sober, Krager’s
a shrewd one, all right. Where’s Zalasta taking the ladies,
Anarae?’
Xanetia sighed. ‘The information is melancholy, Sir Kalten,’
She told him. ‘I do fear me that it is Zalasta’s intent to take the
queen and her handmaiden to the hidden city of Cyrga, where
Cyrgon himself doth hold sway, and by his power there can
deny us all access to those we love.’
CHAPTER 20
If they would just let her sleep. The world around her seemed
distorted, unreal, and she could only watch in numb, uncaring
bemusement as her exhausted body screamed for sleep – or even
for death. She stood exhausted at the window. The slaves toiling
in the fields around the lake below looked almost like ants crawling
across the winter-fallow fields as they grubbed at the soil with
crude implements. Other slaves gathered firewood among the
trees on the sloping sides of the basin, and the puny sounds of
their axes drifted up to the dark tower from which she watched.
Alcan lay on an unpadded bench, sleeping or dead, Ehlana
could no longer tell which, but she envied her gentle maid in
either case.
They were not alone, of course. They were never alone.
Zalasta, his own face gaunt with weariness, talked on and on
with King Santheocles. Ehlana was too tired to make any sense
of the haggard Styric’s droning words. She absently looked at
the King of the Cyrgai, a man in a close-fitting steel breastplate,
a short leather kirtle and ornate steel wrist-guards. Santheocles
was of a race apart, and generations of selective breeding had
heightened those features most admired by his people. he was
tall and superbly muscled. His skin was very fair, although his
carefully curled and oiled hair and beard were glossy black. Ffis
nose was straight, continuing the unbroken line of his forehead.
His eyes were very large and very dark – and totally empty. His
expression was haughty, cruel. His was the face of a stupid,
arrogant man devoid of compassion or even simple decency.
His ornate breastplate left his upper arms and shoulders bare,
and as he listened, he absently clenched and relaxed his fists,
setting his muscles to writhing and dancing under his pale skin.
He was obviously not paying much attention to Zalasta’s words,
but sat instead totally engrossed in the rhythmic flexing and
relaxing of the muscles in his arms. He was in all respects a
perfect soldier, possessed of a superbly-conditioned body and
mind unviolated by thought.
Ehlana wearily let her eyes drift again around the room. The
furniture was strange. There were no chairs as such, only
benches and padded stools with ornate arms but no backs. Evidently
the notion of a chair-back had not occurred to the Cyrgai.
The table in the center of the room was awkwardly low, and
the lamps were of an ancient design, no more than hammered
copper bowls of oil with burning wicks floating in them. The
roughly sawed boards of the floor were covered with rushes,
the walls of square-cut black basalt were unadorned, and the
windows were undraped.
The door opened and Ekatas entered. Ehlana struggled to
bring her exhausted mind into focus. Santheocles was king here
in Cyrga, but it was Ekatas who ruled. The High Priest of Cyrgon
was robed and cowled in black, and his aged face was a network
of deep wrinkles. Although his expression was every bit as cruel
and arrogant as that of his king, his eyes were shrewd, ruthless.
The front of his black robe was adorned with the symbol that
seemed to be everywhere here in the Hidden City, a white
square surmounted by a stylized golden flame. There was some
significance there certainly, but Ehlana was too tired to even
wonder what it might be. ‘Come with me,’ he commanded
abruptly. ‘Bring the women.’
‘The servant girl is of no moment,’ Zalasta replied in a slightly
challenging tone. ‘Let her sleep.’
‘I am not accustomed to having my commands questioned,
Styric. ‘
‘Get accustomed, Cyrgai. The women are my prisoners. My
arrangement is with Cyrgon, and you’re no more than an
appendage to that arrangement. Your arrogance is beginning to
annoy me. Leave the girl alone.’
Their eyes locked, and a sudden tension filled the room. ‘Well,
Ekatas?’ Zalasta said very quietly. ‘Has the time come? Have
you finally worked up enough courage to challenge me? Any
time, Ekatas. Any time at all.’
Ehlana, now fully alert, saw the flicker of fear in the eyes of
Cyrgon’s priest. ‘Bring the Queen then,’ he said sullenly. ‘It is
she whom Cyrgon would behold.’
‘Wise decision, Ekatas,’ Zalasta said sardonically. ‘if you keep
making the right choices, you might even live for a little while
longer.’
Ehlana took her cloak and gently covered Alcan with it. Then
she turned to face the three men. ‘Let’s get on with this,’ she
told them, mustering some remnant of her royal manner.
Santheocles rose woodenly to his feet and put on his highcrested
helmet, taking great pains to avoid mussing his carefully
‘arranged hair. He spent several moments buckling on his large
round shield, and then he drew his sword.
‘What an ass,’ Ehlana noted scornfully. ‘Are you really sure
you should trust His Majesty with anything sharp, though? He
might hurt himself with it, you know.’
‘It is customary, woman,’ Ekatas replied stiffly. ‘Prisoners are
always kept under close guard.’
‘Ah,’ she murmured, ‘and we must obey the dictates of custom,
mustn’t we, Ekatas? When custom rules, thought is
unnecessary. ‘
Zalasta smiled faintly. ‘I believe you wanted to take us to the
temple, Ekatas. Let’s not keep Cyrgon waiting.’
Ekatas choked back a retort, jerked the door open and led
them out into the chilly hallway.
The stairs that descended from the top-most tower of the royal
palace were narrow and steep, endless stairs winding down
and down. Ehlana was trembling by the time they reached the
courtyard below.
The winter sun was very bright in that broad courtyard, but
there was not much heat to it.
They crossed the flagstoned courtyard to the pale temple, a
building constructed not of marble but of chalky limestone.
Unlike marble, the limestone had a dull, unreflective surface,
and the temple looked somehow diseased, leprous.
They mounted the stairs to the portico and entered through
a rude doorway. Ehlana had expected it to be dark inside this
holy of Holies, but it was not. She stared with a certain apprehensive
astonishment at the source of the light even as Ekatas
and Santheocles prostrated themselves, crying in unison, ‘VBnet,
Akor. Yala Cyrgon!’
And then it was that the Queen understood the significance of
that ubiquitous emblem that marked virtually everything here in
the Hidden City. The white square represented the blocky altar
set in the precise center of the temple, but the flame that burned
atop that altar was no stylized representation. It was instead an
actual fire that twisted and flared, reaching hungrily upward.
Ehlana was suddenly afraid. The fire burning on the altar was
not some votive offering, but a living flame, conscious, aware,
and possessed of an unquenchable will. Bright as the sun,
Cyrgon himself burned eternal on his pale altar.
‘No,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘We’d better not. Let’s just sit tight at
least until Xanetia has the chance to winnow through a few
minds. We can always come back and deal with Scarpa and his
friends later. Right now we need to know where Zalasta’s taking
Ehlana and Alcan.’
‘We already know,’ Kalten said. ‘They’re going to Cyrga.’
‘That’s the whole point,’ the now-visible Ulath told him. ‘We
don’t know where Cyrga is.’
They had gone back into the vine-choked ruins and had gathered
on the second floor of a semi-intact palace to consider
options.
‘Aphrael has a general idea,’ Kalten said. ‘Can’t we just start
out for central Cynesga and do some poking around when we
get there?’
‘I don’t think that’d do much good,’ Bevier pointed out.
‘Cyrgon’s been concealing the place with illusions for the past
ten eons. We could probably walk right through the streets of
the city and not even see it.’
‘He’s not hiding it from enerybody,’ Caalador mused. ‘There
are messages going back and forth, so somebody here in Natayos
has to know the way. Sparhawk’s right. Why don’t we let Xanetia
do the poking around here, instead of the lot of us going off
into the desert to dodge scorpions and snakes while we turn
over pebbles and grains of sand?’
‘We stay here then?’ Tynian asked.
‘For the time being,” Sparhawk replied. ‘Let’s not do anything
to attract attention until we find out what Xanetia can discover.
That’s our best option at the moment.’
‘We were so close.’ Kalten fumed. ‘if we’d just gotten here a