some strange ideas. He doesn’t get excited about us, so why
should you? Anyway, the normal rules are all more or less suspended
until this crisis is over. We’ve even enlisted Edaemus
and the Atan God – and they haven’t spoken to any of the rest
of us for eons. Aphrael wants me to tell you about something
having to do with the soldiers Klael brought with him. Somebody
named Khalad has devised a means of destroying them.’
‘Tell Gardas about it,’ Bergsten suggested. ‘He can pass it on
to me, and I won’t get into trouble.’
‘i’m sorry, Bergsten, but Aphrael insisted that I say it directly
to you. Just pretend that I’m a dream or something.’ Setras’ face
grew slightly puzzled, and his large, luminous eyes revealed a
frightening lack of comprehension. ‘I don’t entirely understand
this,’ he confessed. ‘Aphrael’s much cleverer than I am – but
we love each other, so she doesn’t throw my stupidity into my
face very often. She’s terribly polite. She’s even nice to your
God, and he can be extremely tedious sometimes – where was
I?”
‘Ah -‘ Sir Gardas said gently, ‘you were going to tell his Grace
about Klael’s soldiers, Divine Setras.’
‘I was?’ The large eyes were blank. ‘Oh, yes. I was, wasn’t I?
You mustn’t let me ramble on like that, Gardas. You know how
easily I get distracted.’
‘Yes, Divine Setras. That had occurred to me.’
‘Anyway,’ Setras pushed on, ‘this Khalad person – a frightfully
clever young man, I gather – realized that there might be
some similarity between the awful stuff Klael’s soldiers breathe
and something he calls “firedamp”. Have you any idea at all of
what he was talking about, Bergsten?’ Setras hesitated. ‘Am I
supposed to call you “your Grace” the way Gardas did? Are
you really that graceful? You look awfully large and clumsy to
me.’
‘It’s a formal mode of address, Divine One,’ Sir Gardas
explained.
‘Oh. We don’t have to be formal with each other, do we
Bergsten? We’re almost old friends now, aren’t we?’
The Patriarch of Emsat swallowed very hard. Then he sighed.
‘Yes, Divine Setras,’ he said. ‘I suppose we are. Why don’t you
go ahead and tell me about this strategy Sparhawk’s squire has
devised?’
‘Of course. Oh, there’s one other thing, too. We have to be
at the gates of Cyrga by morning.’
‘Please, Atana Liatris,’ Baroness Melidere said patiently to Sarabian’s
Atan wife, ‘we want them to make the attempt.’
‘It is too dangerous,’ Liatris said stubbornly. ‘if I go ahead
and kill Chacole and Torellia, the others will run away and that
will be the end of it.’
‘Except that we’ll never find out who else is involved,’ Patriarch
Emban explained. ‘And we can’t know for certain that they
won’t try again.’
Princess Danae sat a little apart from them with Mmrr curled
up in her lap. Her vision was strangely doubled with one
image superimposed on the other. It seemed that the dark
streets of Cyrga lay just behind the others here in the sitting-room.
‘i’m touched by your concern, Liatris,’ Sarabian was saying,
‘but I’m not nearly as helpless as I seem.’ He flourished his
rapier.
‘And we will have guards nearby,’ Foreign Minister Oscagne
added. ‘Chacole and Torellia almost have to be getting help from
somebody inside the government.- ,some leftover from that
coup-attempt, most likely.’
‘I will wring his identity from them before I kill them,’ Liatris
declared.
Sarabian winced at the word ‘wring’
‘We are near, Divine Aphrael.’ Xanetia’s voice seemed at once
a long way away and very close. ‘Methinks I do smell water.’
The dark, narrow street they followed opened out into some
kind of square a hundred feet further on.
‘Let’s catch them all, Liatris,’ Elysoun urged her sisterempress.
‘you might be able to beat one or two names out of
Chacole and Torellia, but if we can catch the assassins in the
actual attempt, we’ll be able to sweep the palace compound
clean. If we don’t, our husband’s going to have to go through
the rest of his life with a drawn rapier.’
‘Hark!’ Xanetia whispered in that other (city. ‘I do hear the
sound of running water.’
Danae concentrated very hard. It was exhausting to keep
things separate.
‘I really hate to have to put it this way, Liatris,’ Sarabian said
regretfully, ‘but I forbid you to kill either Chacole or Torellia
We’ll deal with them after their assassins try to kill me.’
‘As my husband commands,’ Liatris responded automatically.
‘What I want you to do is to protect Elysoun and Gahennas,’
he continued. ‘Gahennas is probably in the greater danger right
now. Elysoun’s still useful to the people involved in this,
but Gahennas knows more than they want her to. I’m sure
they’ll try to kill her, so let’s get her out of the Women’s Palace
tonight.’
‘It is beneath the street, Divine One,’ Xanetia said. ‘Methinks
there is some volume of water passing under our feet.’
‘Truly,’ the Child Goddess replied. ‘Let’s follow the sound
back to its source. There has to be some way to get to the water
here in the outer city.’
‘How did you become involved in this, Elysoun?’ Liatris was
asking.
Elysoun shrugged. ‘I have more freedom of movement than
the rest of you,’ she replied. ‘Chacole needed somebody she
trusted to carry messages out of the Women’s Palace. I pretended
to fall in with her plan. It wasn’t too hard to deceiVC
Chacole. She is a Cynesgan, after all.’
‘It is here, Divine One,’ Xanetia whispered, laying her hand
on a large iron plate set into the cobblestones. ‘Thou canst feel
the urgent rush of water through the very iron.’
‘i’ll take your word for it, Anarae,’ Aphrael replied, cringing
back from the notion of touching iron. ‘How do they get it open?’
‘These rings do suggest that the plate can be lifted.’
‘Let’s go back and get the others. I think this might be the
weakness Bevier was looking for.’
Danae yawned. Everything seemed to be under control, so
she curled up in her chair, nestled Mmrr in her arms, and
promptly fell asleep.
‘Couldn’t you have just – well -?’ Talen wiggled his fingers.
‘It’s iron, Talen,’ Flute said with exaggerated patience
She shuddered. ‘I can’t bear the touch of iron.
‘So? What’s that got to do with it?’
Bevier looked intently at her. ‘Bhelliom suffers from the same
affliction,’ he observed.
‘Yes. So what?’
‘That would suggest a certain kinship.’
‘Your grasp of the obvious is positively dazzling, Bevier.’
‘Behave yourself,’ Sparhawk chided.
‘What’s so unpleasant about iron?’ Talen asked. ‘It’s cold,
it’s hard, you can pound it into various shapes, and it gets
%
‘That’s a nice scholarly description. Do you know what a lodestone
is?’
‘It’s a piece of iron ore that sticks to other iron, isn’t it? I seem
to remember Platime talking about something called magnetism
once.’
‘And you actually listened? Amazing.’
‘That’s why Bhelliom had to congeal itself into a sapphire!’
Bevier exclaimed. ‘It’s the magnetism of iron, isn’t it? Bhelliom
can’t bear it – and neither can you, isn’t that so?’
‘Please, Bevier,’ Aphrael said weakly. ‘just thinking about it
makes my flesh crawl. Right now we don’t want to talk about
iron. We want to talk about water. There’s a stream or river of
some kind running under the streets here in the outer city, and
it’s flowing in the direction of the inner wall. There’s a large
iron plate set in the middle of the street not far from here, and
you can hear the water running beneath it. I think that’s the
weakness you were looking for. The water’s running through a
tunnel of some kind, and that tunnel goes under the wall of the
inner fortress – at least I hope so. I’ll go find out as soon as you
gentlemen lift off that iron plate for me.’
‘Did you see any patrols in the streets?’ Kalten asked.
‘Nay, Sir Knight,’ Xanetia replied. ‘Centuries of custom have
clearly dulled the alertness of the Cynesgans responsible for the
defense of the outer city.’
‘A burglar’s dream,’ Talen murmured. ‘I could get rich in this
town.’
‘What would you steal?’ Aphrael asked him. ‘The Cyrgai don’t
believe in gold and silver.’
‘What do they use for money?’
‘They don’t. They don’t need money. The Cynesgans provide
them with everything they need, so they don’t even think about
money.’
‘That’s monstrous.’
‘We can discuss economics some other time. Right now I want
to investigate their water supply.’
‘You idiot!’ queen Betuana raged at her general.
‘We had to find out, Betuana-Queen,’ Engessa explained.
‘And I will not send another where I will not go.’
‘I am most displeased with you, Engessa-atan!’ Betuana’s
retreat into ritualized mourning had vanished. ‘Did your last
encounter with the Klael-beasts teach you nothing? They could
have been lurking just inside the cave, and you would have
faced them alone again.’
‘It is not reasonable to suppose that they would have,’ he