The Hidden City

‘Cyrgon’s main force will come from the lands of the sun to attack our friends in the city that shines.’

‘I have seen that place. The Child Goddess spoke first with us there.’

Sparhawk frowned, trying to remember the details of Vanion’s map. ‘There are high places here and to the south,’ he said.

Ghworg nodded.

‘Then, even further south, the high places grow low and then they become flat.’

‘I see it,’ Ghworg said. ‘You describe it well, Anakha.’ That startled Sparhawk. Evidently Ghworg could visualize the entire continent.

‘In the middle of that flat place is another high place that the man-things call the Tamul Mountains.’

Ghworg nodded in agreement.

‘The main force of Cyrgon’s children will pass that high place to reach the city that shines. The high place will be cool, so your children will not suffer from the sun there.’

‘I see which way your thought goes, Anakha,’ Ghworg said. ‘We will take our children to that high place and wait there for Cyrgon’s children. Our children will not eat Aphrael’s children. They will eat Cyrgon’s children instead.’

‘That will cause hurt to Cyrgon and his servants, Ghworg.’

‘Then we will do it.’ Ghworg turned and pointed toward the landslide. ‘Our children will climb Klæl’s stairway. Then Ghnomb will make time stop. Our children will be in the high place before the sun goes to sleep this night.’ He stood up abruptly. ‘Good hunting,’ he growled, turned and went back to join his fellows and the still terrified Trolls.

‘We still have to proceed as if things were normal,’ Vanion told them as they gathered near the fire a couple of hours past noon. The sun, Sparhawk noted, was already going down. ‘Klæl can probably appear at any time and any place. We can’t plan for him – any more than we can plan for a blizzard or a hurricane. If you can’t plan for something, about the only thing you can do is take a few precautions and then ignore it.’

‘Well spoken,’ Queen Betuana approved. Betuana and Vanion were getting along well.

‘What do we do then, friend Vanion?’ Tikume asked.

‘We’re soldiers, friend Tikume,’ Vanion replied. ‘We do what soldiers do. We get ready to fight armies, not Gods. Scarpa’s coming up out of the jungles of Arjuna, and I’d expect another thrust to come out of Cynesga. The Trolls will probably hamper Scarpa, but they can only move out a short way from those mountains in southern Tamul Proper because of the climate. After the initial shock of encountering Trolls, Scarpa will probably try to go around them.’ Vanion consulted his map. ‘We’ll have to have forces in place to respond either to Scarpa or to an army coming out of Cynesga. I’d say that Samar would be the best location.’

‘Sarna,’ Betuana disagreed.

‘Both,’ Ulath countered. ‘Forces in Samar could cover everything from the southern edge of the Atan Mountains to the Sea of Arjuna and be in position to strike eastward to the southern Tamul Mountains if Scarpa evades the Trolls. Forces in Sarna could block the invasion route through the Atan mountains.’

‘His point’s well taken,’ Bevier said. ‘It divides our forces, but we don’t have much choice.’

‘We could put the knights and the Peloi in Samar and the Atan infantry in Sarna,’ Tynian added. ‘The lower valley of the River Sarna’s ideal for mounted operations, and the mountains around Sarna itself are natural for Atans.’

‘Both positions are defensive,’ Engessa objected. ‘Wars aren’t won from defensive positions.’

Sparhawk and Vanion exchanged a long look. ‘Invade Cynesga?’ Sparhawk asked dubiously.

‘Not yet,’ Vanion decided. ‘Let’s wait until the Church Knights get here from Eosia before we do that. When Komier and the others cross into Cynesga from the west, that’s when we’ll want to come at the place from the east. We’ll put Cyrgon in a vice. With that sort of force coming at him from both sides, he can raise every Cyrgai who’s ever lived, and he’ll still lose.’

‘Right up until the moment he unleashes Klæl,’ Aphrael added moodily.

‘No, Divine One,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘Bhelliom wants Cyrgon to send Klæl against us. If we do it this way, we’ll force the issue in a place and time that we choose. We’ll pick the spot, Cyrgon will unleash Klæl, and I’ll unleash Bhelliom. Then all we have to do is sit back and watch.’

‘We’ll go to the top of the wall the same way the Trolls went, Vanion-Preceptor,’ Engessa said the following morning. ‘We can climb as well as they can.’

‘It might take us a little longer,’ Tikume added. ‘We’ll have to push boulders out of the way to get our horses up that slope.’

‘We will help you, Tikume-Domi,’ Engessa promised.

‘That’s it, then,’ Tynian summed up. The Atans and the Peloi will go south from here to take up positions in Sarna and Samar. We’ll take the knights back to the coast, and Sorgi will ferry us back to Matherion. We’ll go overland from there.’

‘It’s the ferrying that concerns me,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Sorgi’s going to have to make at least a half-dozen trips.’

Khalad sighed and rolled his eyes upward.

‘I gather you’re going to embarrass me in public again,’ Sparhawk said. ‘What am I overlooking?’

‘The rafts, Sparhawk,’ Khalad said in a weary voice. ‘Sorgi’s gathering up the rafts to take them south to the timber markets. He’s going to lash them all together into a long log-boom. Put the knights in the ships, the horses on the boom, and we can all make it to Matherion in one trip.’

‘I forgot about the rafts,’ Sparhawk admitted sheepishly.

That log-boom won’t move very fast,’ Ulath pointed out.

Xanetia had been listening to their plans intently. She looked at Khalad and spoke diffidently, almost shyly. ‘Might a steady wind behind thy logs assist thee, young Master?’ Xanetia asked Khalad.

‘It would indeed, Anarae,’ Khalad said enthusiastically. ‘We can weave rough sails out of tree-limbs.’

‘Won’t Cyrgon – or Klæl – feel you raising a breeze, dear sister?’ Sephrenia asked.

‘Cyrgon cannot detect Delphaeic magic, Sephrenia,’ Xanetia replied. ‘Anakha can ask Bhelliom whether Klæl is similarly unaware.’

‘How did you manage that?’ Aphrael asked curiously.

Xanetia looked slightly embarrassed. ‘It was to hide from thee and thy kindred, Divine Aphrael. When Edaemus did curse us, he did so arrange his curse that our magic would be hidden from our enemies – for thus did we view thee at that time. Doth that offend thee, Divine One?’

‘Not under these circumstances, Anarae,’ Flute replied, swarming up into Xanetia’s arms and kissing her soundly.

Chapter 2

The log-boom Captain Sorgi’s sailors had constructed from the rafts was a quarter of a mile long and a hundred feet wide. Most of it was taken up by the huge corral. It wallowed and wobbled its way south under threatening skies, and it was frequently raked by stinging sleet-squalls. The weather was bitterly cold, and the young knights who manned the raft were bundled to the ears in furs and spent most of their time huddled in the dubious shelter of the flapping tents.

‘It’s all in attention to detail, Berit,’ Khalad said as he tied off the rope holding the starboard end of one of their makeshift sails in place. ‘That’s all that work really is – details.’ He squinted along the ice-covered line of what was really much more like a snow-fence than a sail. ‘Sparhawk looks at the grand plan and leaves the details to others. It’s a good thing, really, because he’s a hopeless incompetent when it comes to little things and real work.’

‘Khalad!’ Berit was actually shocked.

‘Have you ever seen him try to use tools? That was something our father used to tell us over and over: “Don’t ever let Sparhawk pick up a tool.” Kalten’s fairly good with his hands, but Sparhawk’s hopeless. If you hand him anything associated with honest work, he’ll hurt himself with it.’ Khalad’s head came up sharply, and he swore.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Didn’t you feel it? The port-side tow-ropes just went slack. Let’s go wake up those sailors. We don’t want this big cow turning broadside on us again.’ The two fur-clad young men started across the icy collection of lashed-together rafts, skirting the huge corral where the horses huddled together in the bitterly cold breeze coming from astern.

The idea of making a log-boom out of the rafts was very good in theory, but the problems of steering proved to be far more complex than either Sorgi or Khalad had anticipated. Khalad’s thickly woven fences of evergreen boughs acted well enough as sails, moving the sheer dead weight of the boom steadily southward ahead of Xanetia’s breeze. Sorgi’s ships were supposed to provide steerageway by towing the boom, and that was where the problems cropped up. No two ships ever move at exactly the same rate of speed, even when propelled by the same wind. Thus, the fifty ships ahead and the twenty-five strung out along each side of the boom had to be almost constantly fine-tuned to keep the huge raft moving in the right general direction. As long as everybody paid very close attention, all went well. Two days south of Bhelliom’s wall, however, a number of things had gone wrong all at once, and the log-boom had swung round sideways. No amount of effort had been able to straighten it out, and so they had been obliged to take it apart and reassemble it – back-breaking labor in the bitter cold. Nobody wanted to go through that again.

When they reached the port side of the boom, Berit took a dented brass horn out from under his fur cape and blew a flat, off-key blast at the port-side tow-boats while Khalad picked up a yellow flag and began to wave it vigorously. The pre-arranged 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 titles 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 rock-steady. 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, Alean, 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 Alean 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. Then they took Ehlana and Alean 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.