signals were simple. The yellow flag told the ships to crowd on
more sail to keep the towing hawsers taut; the blue flag told
them to put out the sea-anchors to slack off on the ropes; and
the red flag told them to cast off all lines and get out of the
way.
The tow-ropes went tight again as Khalad’s crisp signal
trickled down through the ranks to the sailors who actually did
the work aboard the ships.
‘How do you keep track of everything?’ Berit asked his
friend. ‘And how do you know so quickly that something’s
wrong?’
‘Pain,’ Khalad replied wryly. ‘I don’t really want to spend
several days taking this beast apart and putting it back together
again with the spray freezing on me, so I’m paying very close
attention to the things my body’s telling me. You can feel things
‘change in your legs and the soles of your feet. When (one of the
hawsers goes slack, it changes the feel of how the boom moves.’
‘is there anything you don’t know how to do?’
‘I don’t dance very well.’ Khalad squinted up into the first
stinging pellets of another sleet-squall. ‘it’s time to feed and
water the horses,’ he said. ‘Let’s go tell the novices to stop sitting
around admiring their title and get to work.’
‘You really dislike the aristocracy, don’t you?’ Berit asked as
they started forward along the edge of the corral toward the
wind-whipped tents of the apprentice knights.
‘No, I don’t dislike them. I just don’t have any patience with
them, and I can’t understand how they can be so blind to what’s
going on around them. A title must be a very heavy thing to
carry if the weight makes you ignore everything else.’
‘You’re going to be a knight yourself, you know.’
‘it wasn’t my idea. Sparhawk gets silly sometimes. He
thinks that making knights of my brothers and me is a way of
honoring our father. I’m sure that Father’s laughing at him right now.’
They reached the tents, and Khalad raised his voice. ‘All right,
gentlemen!’ he shouted, ‘it’s time to feed and water the animals.
Let’s get at it!’ Then he critically surveyed the corral. Five thousand
horses leave a great deal of evidence that they have been
present. ‘I think it’s time for another lesson in the virtue of
humility for our novices,’ he said quietly to Berit. Then he raised
his voice again. ‘And after you’ve finished with that, you’d
better break out the scoop-shovels and wheel-barrows again.
We wouldn’t want to let the work pile up on us, would we,
gentlemen?’
Berit was not yet fully adept at some of the subtler forms of
magic. That part of the Pandion training was the study of a
lifetime. He was far enough along, however, to recognize ‘tampering’
when he encountered it. The log-boom seemed to be lumbering
southward at a crawl, but the turning of the seasons was
giving some things away. It should have taken them much
longer to escape the bitter cold of the far north, for one thing,
and the days should not have become so much longer in such
a short time for another.
However it was managed, and whoever managed it, they
arrived at a sandy beach a few miles north of Matherion late
one golden autumn afternoon long before they should have and
began wading the horses ashore from the wobbly collection of
rafts.
‘Short trip,’ Khalad observed laconically as the two watched
the novices unloading the horses.
‘You noticed,’ Berit laughed.
‘They weren’t particularly subtle about it. When the spray
stopped freezing in my beard between one minute and the next,
I started having suspicions.’ He paused. ‘is magic very hard to
learn?’ he asked.
‘The magic itself isn’t too hard. The hard part is learning the
Styric language. Styric doesn’t have any regular verbs. They’re
all irregular – and there are nine tenses.’
‘Berit please speak plain Elenic.’
‘You know what a verb is, don’t you?’
‘Sort of, but what’s a tense?’
Somehow that made Berit feel better. Khalad did not know
everything. ‘We’ll work on it,’ he assured his friend. ‘Maybe
Sephrenia can make some suggestions.’
The sun was going down in a blaze of color when they rode
through the opalescent gates into fire-domed Matherion, and it
was dusk when they reached the imperial compound.
‘What’s wrong with everybody?’ Khalad muttered as they
rode through the gate.
‘I didn’t follow that,’ Berit confessed.
‘Use your eyes, man. those gate-guards were looking at SParhawk
as if they expected him to explode – or maybe turn into
a dragon. Something’s going on, Berit.’
The Church Knights rode off across the twilight-dim lawn to
their barracks while the rest of them clattered across the drawbridge
into Ehlana’s castle. They dismounted in the torch-lit
courtyard and trooped inside.
‘it’s even worse here,’ Khalad murmured. ‘Let’s stay close to
Sparhawk in case we have to restrain him. The knights at the
drawbridge seemed to be actually afraid of him.’
They went up the stairs to the royal apartment. Mirtai was
not in her customary place at the door, and that made Berit even
more edgy. Khalad was right. Something here was definitely
not the way it should be.
Emperor Sarabian, dressed in his favorite purple doublet and
hose, was nervously pacing the blue-carpeted floor of the sitting
room as they entered, and he seemed to shrink back as Sparhawk
and Vanion approached him.
‘Your Majesty,’ Sparhawk greeted him, inclining his head. ‘it’s
good to see you again.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Ehlana?’ he
asked, laying his helmet on the table.
‘Uh – in a minute, Sparhawk. How did things go on the North
Cape?’
‘More or less the way we’d planned. Cyrgon doesn’t command
the Trolls any more, but we’ve got another problem that
might be even worse.’
‘Oh?’
‘We’ll tell you about it when Ehlana joins us. It’s not such a
pretty story that we’d want to go through it twice.’
The Emperor gave Foreign Minister Oscagne a helpless look.
‘let’s go speak with Baroness Melidere, Prince Sparhawk,’
Oscagne suggested. ‘Something’s happened here. She was present,
so she’ll be able to answer your questions better than we
would.’
‘All right.’ Sparhawk’s gaze was level, and his voice was
steady, despite the fact that Sarabian’s nervousness and
Oscagne’s evasive answer fairly screamed out the fact that something
was terribly wrong.
Baroness Melidere sat propped up in her bed. She wore a fetching
blue dressing-gown, but the sizeable bandage on her left
shoulder was a clear indication that something serious had happened.
Her face was Pale, but her eyes were cool and rocksteady.
Stragen sat at her bedside in his white satin doublet, his
face filled with concern.
well,’ Melidere said, ‘finally.’ Her voice was crisp and
businesslike. She flicked a withering glance at the Emperor and
his advisers. ‘I see that these brave gentlemen have decided to
let me tell you about what happened here, Prince Sparhawk. I’ll
try to be brief. One night a couple of weeks ago, the Queen,
Alcan, and I were getting ready for bed. There was a knock on
the door, and four men we thought were Peloi came in. Their
heads were shaved and they wore Peloi clothing, but they
weren’t Peloi. One of them was Krager. The other three were
Elron, Baron Parok, and Scarpa. ‘
Sparhawk did not move, and his face did not change expression.
‘And?’ he asked, his voice still unemotional.
‘You’ve decided to be sensible, I see,’ Melidere said coolly.
‘Good. We exchanged a few insults, and then Scarpa told Elron
to kill me – just to prove to the Queen that he was serious. Elron
lunged at me, and I deflected his thrust with my wrist. I fell
down and smeared the blood around to make it appear that I’d
been killed. Ehlana threw herself over me, pretending to be
hysterical, but she’d seen what I’d done.’ The Baroness took a
ruby ring out from under her pillow. ‘This is for you, Prince
Sparhawk. Your wife hid it in my bodice. She also said, “Tell
Sparhawk that I’m all right, and tell him that I forbid him to
give up Bhelliom, no matter what they threaten to do to me.”
Those were her exact words. Then she covered me with a
blanket.’
Sparhawk took the ring and slipped it onto his finger. ‘I see,’
he said in a calm voice. ‘What happened then, Baroness?’
‘Scarpa told your wife that he and his friends were taking her
and Alcan as hostages. He said that you were so foolishly
attached to her that you’d give him anything for her safe return.
He obviously intends to exchange her for the Bhelliom. Krager
had a note already prepared. He cut off a lock of Ehlana’s hair
to include in the note. I gather that there’ll be other notes, and
each one will have some of her hair in it to prove that it’s authentic.