Then they took Ehlana and Alcan and left.’
‘Thank you, Baroness,’ Sparhawk said, his voice still steady.
‘You’ve shown amazing courage in this unfortunate business.
May I have the note?’
Melidere reached under her pillow again, took out a folded
and sealed piece of parchment, and handed it to him.
Berit had loved his Queen from the moment he had first seen
her sitting on her throne encased in crystal, although he had
never mentioned the fact to her. There would be other loves in
his life, of course, but she would always be the first. So it was
that when Sparhawk broke the seal, unfolded the parchment,
and gently removed the thick lock of pale blonde hair, Berit’s
mind suddenly filled with flames. His grip tightened round the
haft of his war-axe.
Khalad took him by the arm, and Berit was dimly startled by
just how strong his friend’s grip was. ‘That’s not going to do
anybody any good at all, Berit,’ he said in a crisp voice. ‘Now
why don’t you just give me the axe before you do something
foolish with it?’
Berit drew in a deep, trembling breath pushing away his
sudden, irrational fury. ‘Sorry, Khalad,’ he said. ‘I sort of lost
my grip there for a moment. I’ll be all right now.’ He looked at
his friend. ‘Sparhawk’s going to let you kill Krager, isn’t he?’
‘So he says.’
‘Would you like some help?’
Khalad flashed him a quick grin. ‘it’s always nice to have
company when you’re doing something that takes several days,’ he said.
Sparhawk quickly read the note, his free hand still gently
holding the lock of Ehlana’s pale hair. Berit could see the muscles
rippling along his friend’s jaw as he read. He handed the note
to Vanion. ‘You’d better read this to them,’ he said bleakly.
Vanion nodded and took the note. He cleared his throat.
“‘Well now, Sparhawk,” ‘ he read aloud. “‘I gather that your
temper-tantrum’s over. I hope you didn’t kill too many of the
people who were supposed to be guarding your wife.
“‘The situation here is painfully obvious, I’m afraid. We’ve
taken Ehlana hostage. You will behave yourself, won’t you, old
boy? The tiresomely obvious part of all of this is that you can
have her back in exchange for Bhelliom and the rings. We’ll give
you a few days to rant and rave and try to find some way out
of this. Then, when you’ve come to your senses and realize that
you have no choice but to do exactly as you’re told, I’ll drop
you another note with some rather precise instructions. Do
be a good boy and follow the instructions to the letter. I’d
really rather not be forced to kill your wife, so don’t try to be
creative.
“‘Be well, Sparhawk, and keep an eye out for my next note.
You’ll know it’s from me because I’ll decorate it with another
lock of Ehlana’s hair. Pay very close attention, because if our
correspondence continues for too long, your wife will run out of
hair, and I’ll have to start using fingers.”
‘And it’s signed “Krager”,’ Vanion concluded.
Kalten smashed his fist into the wall, his face rigid with fury.
‘That’s enough of that!’ Vanion snapped.
‘What are we going to do?’ Kalten demanded. ‘We have to do
something! ‘
‘We’re not going to jump eight feet into the air and come down
running, for a start,’ Vanion told him.
‘Where’s Mirtai?’ Kring’s voice had a note of sudden alarm.
‘She’s perfectly all right, Domi,’ Sarabian assured him. ‘She
was a little upset when she found out what happened.’
‘A little?’ Oscagne murmured. ‘it took twelve men to subdue
her. She’s in her room, Domi Kring – chained to the bed, actually.
There are some guards there as well to keep her from doing
herself any injury.’
Kring abruptly turned and left Melidere’s bedroom.
‘We’re tiring you, aren’t we, Baroness?’ Sarabian said then.
‘Not in the least, your Majesty,’ she replied in a cool voice.
She looked around at them. ‘it’s a bit cramped in here. Why
don’t we adjourn to the sitting-room? I’d imagine we’ll be most
of the night at this, so we might as well be comfortable.’ She
threw back her blankets and started to get out of bed.
Stragen gently restrained her. Then he picked her up.
‘I can walk, Stragen,’ she protested.
‘Not while I’m around, you can’t.’ Stragen’s customary
expression of civilized urbanity was gone as he looked around
at the others, and it had been replaced with one of cold, tightly
suppressed rage. ‘One thing gentlemen,’ he told them. ‘When
we catch up with these people, Elron’s mine. I’ll be very put
out with anybody who accidentally kills him.’
Baroness Melidere’s eyes were quite content, and there was a
faint smile on her face as she laid her head on Stragen’s shoulder.
Caalador was waiting for them in the sitting-room. His knees
and elbows were muddy, and there were cobwebs in his hair.
‘I found it, your Majesty,’ he reported to the Emperor. ‘it comes
out in the basement of that barracks the Church Knights have
been using.’ He looked appraisingly at Sparhawk. ‘i’d heard
you were back,’ he said. ‘We’ve managed to pick up a little
information for you.’
‘I appreciate that, Caalador,’ Sparhawk replied quietly.
The big Pandion’s almost inhuman calm had them all more than a
little on edge. ‘Stragen was a bit distracted after what happened to the
Baroness here,’ Caalador reported, ‘so I was left more or less
to my own devices. I took some fairly direct steps. The ideas
were all mine, so don’t blame him for them.’
‘You don’t have to do that, Caalador,’ Stragen said, carefully
tucking a blanket round Melidere’s shoulders. ‘You didn’t do
anything I didn’t approve of.’
‘I take it that there were a few atrocities,’ Ulath surmised.
‘Let me start at the beginning,’ Caalador said, brushing his
hands through his hair, trying to dislodge the cobwebs. ‘One of
the men we’d been planning to kill during the Harvest Festival
managed to evade my cut-throats, and he sent me a message
offering to exchange information for his life. I agreed to that,
and he told me something I didn’t know about. We knew that
there were tunnels under the lawns here in the imperial compound,
but what we didn’t know is that the ground under the
whole city’s honeycombed with more tunnels. That’s how
Krager and his friends got into the imperial grounds, and that’s
how they took the Queen and her maid out.’
‘Prithee, good Master Caalador, stay a moment,’ Xanetia said.
‘I have seen into the memories of the Minister of the Interior,
and he had no knowledge of such tunnels.’
‘That wouldn’t be hard to explain, Anarae,’ Patriarch Emban
told her. ‘Ambitious underlings quite often conceal things from
their superiors. Teovin, Director of the Secret Police, probably
had his eye on Kolata’s position.’
‘That’s most likely it, your Grace,’ Caalador agreed. ‘Anyway,
my informant knew the location of some of the tunnels, and I
put men down there to look around for more while I questioned
various members of the Secret Police who were in custody. My
methods were fairly direct, and the ones who survived the questioning
were more than happy to co-operate.
The tunnels were very busy on the night the Queen was
abducted. The diplomats who were forted up in the Cynesgan
Embassy knew about the scheme, and they realized that we’d
kick down their walls as soon as we found out that the Queen
was gone. They tried to escape through the tunnels, but I already
had men down in those rat-holes. There were a number of noisy
encounters, and we either rounded up or killed just about the
entire embassy staff. The Ambassador himself survived, and I
let him watch while I interrogated several under-secretaries. I’m
very fond of Queen Ehlana, so I was quite firm with them.’ He
looked at Sephrenia. ‘I don’t think I need to go into too much
detail,’ he added.
Thank you,’ Sephrenia murmured.
The Ambassador didn’t really know all that much,’ Caalador
continued apologetically, ‘but he did tell me that Scarpa and his
friends were going south from here – which may or may not
have been a ruse. His Majesty ordered the ports of Micae and
Saranth sealed, and he put Atan patrols on the road from Toea
to the coast, just to be on the safe side. Nothing’s turned up
yet, so Scarpa either got away ahead of us, or he’s gone down
a hole someplace nearby.’
The door opened, and Kring rejoined them, his face gloomy.
‘Did you unchain her?’ Tynian asked him.
‘That wouldn’t be a good idea right now, friend Tynian. She
feels personally responsible for the Queen’s abduction. She
wants to kill herself. I took everything with any kind of sharp
edge out of the room, but I don’t think it’s really safe to unshackle