‘What do I say to him?’
‘Nothing. He’ll find out what he wants to know just by looking
at you. He doesn’t understand your husband, and looking at
you will give him some hints about Anakha’s nature. Anakha’s
the unknown element in this business. He always has been, I
suppose. klael understands Bhelliom. It’s Bhelliom’s creature
who baffles him.’
‘You’ve changed, Zalasta.’
‘I suppose I have,’ he admitted. ‘I have a feeling that I won’t
live much longer. klael’s touch does peculiar things to people.
We’d better not keep him waiting.’ He looked at Ekatas, who
stood trembling violently. ‘I want this room clean when we come ‘
back.’
‘i’ll see to it, Master,’ Ekatas promised in a grotesquely servile
tone.
‘How do you find them again?’ Itagne asked curiously. ‘What
I’m trying to get at is that the Trolls are in this “No-Time”, but
you and Tynian had to come out into real time in order to enter
Sama, so time started moving for you. How do you get back to
the moment where you left the Trolls?’
‘Please don’t ask metaphysical questions, Itagne,’ Ulath
replied with a pained expression. ‘We just go back to the spot
where we left the Trolls, and there they are. We deal with
“where” and let the Troll-Gods deal with “when”. They seem
to be able to jump around iN time without paying much attention
to the rules.’
‘Where are the Trolls right now?’
“Just outside of town,’ Tynian replied. ‘We didn’t think it was
a good idea to bring them into Sama with us. They’re starting to get a
little out of hand.’
‘is it something we should know about, Tynian-Knight?’
Engessa asked.
Ulath leaned back in his chair. ‘Cyrgon disrupted Trollish
behavior rather profoundly when he went to Thalesia and posed
as Ghworg,’ he explained somberly. ‘Zalasta told him about the
Trolls, but Cyrgon’s been a little out of touch, so he mistook the
Trolls for the Dawn-Men. The Dawn-Men were herd-animals,
but the Trolls run in packs. Herd-animals will accept any
member of their species, but pack-animals are a little more selective.
It’s to our advantage right now to have the Trolls behave
like a herd. At least we can keep them all going in the same
direction, but some problems are starting to crop up. The packs
are beginning to separate, and there’s a great deal of snapping
and snarling going on. ‘
Tynian glanced at Queen Betuana, who, gowned all in
black, was sitting somewhat apart from them. He motioned
Engessa slightly to one side. ‘is she all right?’ he asked very
quietly.
‘Betuana-Queen is in ritual mourning,’ Engessa replied, also
in half-whisper. ‘The loss of her husband has touched her very
deeply.’
‘Were they really that close?’
‘It did not seem so,’ Engessa admitted. His eyes were troubled
as he looked at his melancholy queen. ‘The mourning-ritual is
seldom observed now. I am keeping careful watch over her. She
must not be allowed to do herself injury.’ Engessa’s shouldermuscles
bunched.
Tynian was startled. ‘is there any real danger of that?’
‘It was not uncommon a few centuries ago,’ Engessa replied.
‘We’d been expecting you earlier,’ Itagne was saying to Ulath.
‘As I understand it, “No-Time” means that the Trolls can go
from one place to another almost instantaneously.’
‘Not quite instantaneously, Itagne. We’ve been a week or so
getting here from the Tamul Mountains. We have to stop and
go back into real time every so often so that they can hunt.
Hungry Trolls aren’t the best of travelling companions. What’s
been happening? We can’t make contact with Aphrael when
we’re in No-Time.’
‘Sparhawk’s found some clues about the location of Cyrga,’
Itagne replied. ‘They aren’t too precise, but he’s going to take
a chance and try to follow them.’
‘How’s Patriarch Bergsten coming?’
‘He’s captured Cynestra -. Had it handed to him on a plate,
actually.’
‘Oh?’
‘Do you remember Atana Mans?’
‘the pretty girl who commanded the garrison in Cynestra?
The one who was so fond of you?’
Itagne smiled. ‘That’s the one. She’s an abrupt sort of girl,
and I’m quite fond of her, and when she saw Bergsten and the
Church Knights approaching, she decided to present him with
the city. She swept the streets clean of Cynesgan troops and
opened the gates for Bergsten. She was going to give him King
Jaluah’s head as well, but he persuaded her not to.’
‘Pity,’ Ulath murmured, ‘but that’s the sort of thing you have
to expect when a good man gets religion.’
‘Vanion’s in place,’ Itagne continued, ‘and he and Kring are
establishing strongholds about a day’s ride out into Cynesga.
We’re going to do the same here, but we thought we’d wait
until you arrived first.’
‘is anybody encountering any significant opposition?’ Tynian
asked.
‘It’s hard to say exactly,’ Itagne mused. ‘We’re moving on to
central Cynesga, but Klaels soldiers pop out of every crack
between two rocks. The further back we push them, the tighter
they’ll be concentrated. If we don’t come up with a way to neutralize
them, we’ll have to carve our way through them, and
from what Vanion tells me they don’t carve very well. Kring’s
tactics are working well enough now, but when we get closer
to Cyrga -‘ He spread his hands helplessly.
‘We’ll work something out,’ Ulath said. ‘Anything else?’
‘It’s still sort of up in the air, Sir Ulath,’ Itagne replied. ‘The
fairy-stories Stragen and Caalador are hatching in Beresa are
diverting most of the Cynesgan cavalry away from the eastern
border. Half of them are running south toward the coast around
Kaftal, and the other half are running north toward a little village
called Zhubay. Caalador added an imaginary massing of the
Atans up there to Stragen’s illusory fleet off the southern coast.
Between them, they’ve split the entire Cynesgan army in tWO
and sent them off to chase moonbeams.’
‘You say that half of them are going north?’ Tynian asked
innocently.
‘Toward Zhubay, yes. They seem to think the Atans are massing
there for some reason.’
‘What an amazing thing,’ Ulath said with a straight face. ‘It
just so happens that Tynian and I have been sort of drifting in
that general direction anyway. Do you think the Cynesgans
would be too disappointed if they came up against Trolls instead
of Atans?’
‘You could go up there and ask them, I suppose,’ Itagne
replied, also with no hint of a smile. They all knew what was
going to happen at Zhubay.
‘Convey our apologies to them, Ulath-Knight,’ Betuana said
with a sad little smile.
‘Oh, we will, your Majesty,’ Ulath assured her. ‘If we can find
any of them still in one piece after they’ve frolicked around with
the Trolls for a couple of hours.
‘Get out of there!’ Kalten shouted, galloPing his horse toward
the dog-like creatures clustered around something lying on the
gravel floor of the desert. The beasts scampered away, hooting
with soulless laughter.
‘Are they dogs?’ Talen asked in a sick voice.
‘No,’ Mirtai replied shortly. ‘Hyenas.’
Kalten rode back. ‘It’s a man,’ he reported bleakly, ‘or what’s
left of one.’
‘We must bury him,’ Bevier said.
They’d only dig him up again,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘Besides,
he added, ‘if you start trying to bury them all, we’ll be here for
Several lifetimes.’ He gestured at the bone-littered plain stretching
off to the low range of black mountains lying to the west.
He looked at Xanetia. ‘It was a mistake to bring you along,
Anarae,’ he apologized. ‘This is going to get worse before it gets
any better.’
‘It was not unexpected, Anakha,’ she replied.
Kalten looked up at the flock of vultures circling overhead.
filthy brutes,’ he muttered.
Sparhawk raised up in his stirrups to peer on ahead. ‘We’ve
got a couple more hours until the sun goes down, but maybe
we’d better pull back a mile or two and set up camp a little early.
We’ll have to spend one night out there. Let’s not spend two.’
‘We need those pillars for landmarks anyway,” Talen added,
‘and they’re a lot brighter when the sun first comes up.’
‘That’s if that bright spot we’ve been following really comes
from those pillars,’ Kalten said dubiously.
‘They got us here, didn’t they? This has to be what Ogerajin
called “the Plain of Bones”, doesn’t it? I had my own doubts at
first. Ogerajin was raving so much of the time that I was sure
that he’d garbled at least some of the directions, but he hasn’t
led us astray yet.’
‘We still haven’t seen the city, Talen,’ Kalten reminded him,
‘so I’d sort of hold off on composing the letter of thanks.’
‘i’ve got all the money I’ll ever need, Or(len,’ Krager said expansively,
leaning back in his chair and looking out through the
window at the buildings and the harbor of the port city of Delo.
He took another drink of wine.
%’I wouldn’t go around annoumcing that, Krager,’ the buEly