The Shining Ones

‘Isn’t a mermaid supposed to be half-girl and half-fish?’ Ulath asked.

‘So the legend goes,’ Oscagne replied.

‘And isn’t she supposed to be a fish from the waist down?’

‘I’ve been told so, yes.’

‘Then how … ?’ Ulath also looked quickly at Ehlana and then abruptly broke off.

‘How what, Sir Ulath?’ Ehlana asked him innocently.

‘It’s – ah – not really important, your Majesty,’ he replied with an embarrassed cough.

‘I wouldn’t even raise this absurd myth, your Majesties,’ Oscagne said to Sarabian and Ehlana, ‘except in the light of recent developments. The parallels between the vampires in Arjuna, the Shining Ones in southern Atan, and the werewolves, ghouls and Ogres in other parts of the Empire are really rather striking, wouldn’t you say? I’d imagine that if someone were to go to Tega and ask around, he might hear stories about some prehistoric pearl-diver who’s been resurrected and also find that some rabble-rouser’s telling the Tegans that this hero and his half-fish, half-human mistress are going to lead the oysters in a mass assault on Matherion.’

‘How droll,’ Sarabian murmured.

‘Sorry, your Majesty,’ Oscagne apologized. ‘What I’m getting at here is that we’ve probably got some relatively inexperienced conspirator on Tega. He’s just getting started, so he’s bound to make mistakes – but experienced or not, he knows a great deal about the whole conspiracy. Since our friends here won’t let us question Kolata too closely, we have to look elsewhere for information.’

‘We’re not being delicate about the Minister of the Interior, your Excellency,’ Kalten told him. ‘It’s just that we’ve seen what happens to prisoners who are on the verge of talking too much. Kolata’s still useful to us, but only as long as he stays in one piece. He won’t be much good if little chunks and globs of him get scattered all over the building.’

Oscagne shuddered. ‘I’ll take your word for it, Sir Kalten. At any rate, your Majesty, if some of our Elene friends here could go to Tega and put their hands on this fellow and talk with him before our enemy can dismantle him, they could probably persuade him to tell us everything he knows. Sir Sparhawk has some ambitions along those lines, I understand. He wants to find out if he can wring somebody out hard enough to make his hair bleed.’

‘You have a very graphic imagination, Sparhawk,’ Sarabian noted. ‘What do you think, Ehlana? Can you spare your husband for a while? If he and some of his knights went to Tega and held the entire island under water for a couple of hours, God only knows what kind of information might come bubbling to the surface.’

‘That’s a very good idea, Sarabian. Sparhawk, why don’t you take some of our friends, run on down to the Isle of Tega, and see what you can find out?’

‘I’d really rather not be separated from you, dear,’ he replied with feigned reluctance.

‘That’s very sweet, Sparhawk, but we do have responsibilities, you know.’

‘Are you ordering me to go, Ehlana?’

‘You don’t have to put it that way, Sparhawk. It’s only a suggestion, after all.’

‘As my Queen commands,’ he sighed, putting on a melancholy expression.

Chapter 2

Empress Gahenas was a Tegan lady of middle years with a severe expression and tightly pursed lips. She wore a plain gray gown, buttoned to the chin, and long-sleeved gloves of scratchy wool. Her hair was drawn so tightly back into a bun that it made her eyes bulge, and her ears protruded from the sides of her head like open barn doors. Empress Gahenas disapproved of everything, that much was clear from the outset. She had come to Sparhawk’s study to provide background information on the Isle of Tega, but she did not come alone. The Empress Gahenas never went anywhere without her four chaperones, a cluster of ancient Tegan hags who perched on a varnished bench like a row of gargoyles.

It was a warm day in early autumn, but the sunlight streaming in through the window of Sparhawk’s study seemed to grow wan and sickly when Empress Gahenas entered with the stern guardians of her virtue.

She spent an hour lecturing Sparhawk on the gross national product of her homeland in a tone that strongly suggested that she was going to give a test at the conclusion of the lecture. Sparhawk fought to keep from yawning. He was not really interested in production figures or labor costs. What he really wanted from the jug-eared Empress were little details of ordinary life on the Isle to flesh out the series of letters he was writing to his wife – letters which were to be doled out to Ehlana to help sustain the fiction that he and his friends were tracking down ring-leaders and other conspirators who were concealed among the general population.

‘Ah …’ he interrupted Gahenas’s droning monologue, ‘this is absolutely fascinating, your Highness, but could we go back for a moment to the island’s form of government? That really has me baffled.’

‘Tega is a republic, Prince Sparhawk. Our rulers are elected to their positions every five years. It’s been that way for twenty-five centuries.’

‘Your officials aren’t elected for life?’

‘Of course not. Who would want a job like that for life?’

‘No one ever develops a hunger for power?’

‘The government has no power, Prince Sparhawk. It exists only to carry out the will of the electorate.’

‘Why five years?’

‘Because nobody wants to be away from his own affairs for longer than that.’

‘What happens if a man’s re-elected?’

‘That’s contrary to the law. No one serves more than one term in office.’

‘Let’s suppose somebody turned out to be an absolute genius in a particular position? Wouldn’t you want to keep him there?’

‘We’ve never found anyone that indispensable.’

‘It seems to me that the system would encourage corruption. If a man knows he’s going to be thrown out of office after five years, what’s to keep him from manipulating his official decisions to further his own interests – later on, I mean?’

‘Quite impossible, Prince Sparhawk. Our elected officials have no outside interests. As soon as they’re elected, everything they own is sold, and the money’s put into the national treasury. If the economy prospers during their term in office, their wealth earns them a profit. If the economy collapses, they lose everything.’

‘That’s absurd. No government ever makes a profit.’

‘Ours does,’ she said smugly, ‘and it has to be a real profit. The tax rates are set and cannot be changed, so our officials can’t generate a false profit by simply raising taxes.’

‘Why would anyone want to be an official in a government like that?’

‘Nobody wants to be, Prince Sparhawk. Most Tegans do everything they possibly can to avoid election. The fact that a man’s own personal fortune’s in the treasury forces him to work just as hard as he possibly can to make sure that the government prospers. Many have worked themselves to death looking after the interests of the Republic.’

‘I think I’d run away from an honor like that one.’

‘That’s really quite impossible, your Highness. Just as soon as a man’s name’s placed in nomination for a public office, he’s put under guard, and if he’s elected, he remains under close guard for his entire term. The Republic makes absolutely sure that nobody evades his responsibilities to her.’

‘The Republic’s a stern mistress.’

‘She is indeed, Prince Sparhawk, and that’s exactly the way it should be.’

Though his companions chafed at the delay, Sparhawk put off their departure for two more days while he feverishly composed the letters to Ehlana. The progress of the fictitious investigation had to be convincing, certainly, and at least moderately interesting. Sparhawk wove false leads, plots and unsolved mysteries into his account. He became increasingly absorbed in the developing story, sometimes becoming so caught up in it that he lost sight of the fact that the events he was reporting were not actually taking place. He became rather proud of his efforts, and he began to revise extensively, adding a touch here and modifying a poorly phrased passage there, until he unwittingly crossed the line between careful artistry and sheer fussiness.

‘They’re good enough, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said to him after reading through the letters on the evening of the second day. Vanion was rather pointedly wearing the plain tunic and heavy riding boots Pandions customarily put on before making an extended journey.

‘You don’t think it’s too obvious?’

‘It’s fine just the way it is.’

‘Maybe I should rework that third letter. It seems awfully weak to me for some reason.’

‘You’ve written it four times already. It’s good enough.’

‘I’m really not happy with it, Vanion.’ Sparhawk took the offending letter from his friend and ran through it once more, automatically reaching for his pen as he read.

Vanion firmly took the letter away from him.

‘Let me just fix that last paragraph,’ Sparhawk pleaded.

‘No.’

‘But …’

‘NO!’ Vanion put the letter back in its proper place, folded the packet, and tucked it inside his doublet. ‘Oscagne’s sending Norkan along with us,’ he said. ‘We’ll give the letters to him, and he can sort of dribble them back here to Ehlana. Norkan’s shrewd enough to space them out just enough to keep her from getting suspicious. The ship’s been ready for a week now, and Emban’s getting impatient. We’ll sail with the morning tide.’

‘I think I know what I did wrong,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I can fix that third letter in no more than an hour or two.’

‘No, Sparhawk. Absolutely not.’

‘Are you sure she’s asleep?’ Sparhawk whispered.

‘Of course I am, father,’ Princess Danae replied.

‘The slightest sound will wake her up, you know. She can hear a fly walking across the ceiling.’

‘Not tonight she can’t. I’ve seen to that.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing, Danae. She knows every tiny little mark on that ring. If there’s the slightest difference between it and this new one, she’ll notice it immediately.’

‘Oh, father, you worry too much. I’ve done this before, after all. Ghwerig made the rings, and I still fooled him. I’ve been stealing those rings for thousands of years. Believe me, mother will never know the difference.’

‘Is this really necessary?’

‘Yes. Bhelliom’s useless to you without both rings, and you may need it almost as soon as we lift it from the sea-floor.’

‘Why?’

She rolled her eyes upward and sighed. ‘Because the whole world will shift just as soon as Bhelliom moves. When you were carrying it to Zemoch, the world quivered around like a plate of jelly the whole time. My family and I really don’t like it when Bhelliom moves. It makes some of us queasy.’

‘Will our enemies out there be able to pinpoint our location from that?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s too generalized. Every God in the world’s going to know when Bhelliom starts to move, though, and we can be absolutely sure that at least some of them will come looking for it. Can we talk about this some other time?’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Just stand watch at the bedroom door. I don’t like having an audience when I’m stealing things.’

‘You sound just like Talen.’

‘Naturally. He and I were made for each other. It was the Gods who invented theft in the first place.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘Of course. We steal things from each other all the time. It’s a game. Did you think we just sat around on clouds basking in adoration? We have to do something to pass the time. You should try it sometime, father. It’s lots of fun.’ She looked around furtively, crouched low and reached for the bedroom door-handle. ‘Keep a lookout, Sparhawk. Whistle if you hear anybody coming.’

They all gathered in the sitting room of the royal apartment the following morning to receive their final instructions from Emperor Sarabian and Queen Ehlana. It was a formality, really. Everybody knew what they were supposed to do already, so they sat in the sunlit room making generalized small-talk and cautioning each other to be careful. People who are parting from each other do that a lot.

Alean, Queen Ehlana’s doe-eyed maid, was in the next room, and she was singing. Her voice was clear and sweet and true, and all conversation in the sitting room broke off as she sang. ‘It’s like listening to an angel,’ Patriarch Emban murmured.

‘The girl has a truly magnificent voice,’ Sarabian agreed. ‘She already has the court musicians in near-despair.’

‘She seems a bit sad this morning,’ Kalten said, two great tears glistening in his eyes.

Sparhawk smiled faintly. Kalten had preyed on maids since he had been a young man, and few had been able to resist his blandishments. This time, however, the shoe was on the other foot. Alean was not singing for her own entertainment. The brown-eyed girl was singing for an audience of one, and her song, dealing as it did with the sorrows of parting, filled Kalten’s eyes. She sang of broken hearts and other extravagances in a very old Elenian ballad entitled ‘My Bonnie Blue-Eyed Boy’. Then Sparhawk noticed that Baroness Melidere, Queen Ehlana’s lady-in-waiting, was also watching Kalten very closely. Melidere’s eyes met Sparhawk’s and she slowly winked. Sparhawk almost laughed aloud. He was clearly not the only one who was aware of Alean’s subtle campaign.

‘You will write, won’t you, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana said.

‘Of course I will,’ he replied.

‘I can virtually guarantee that, your Majesty,’ Vanion said. ‘If you give him just a little time, Sparhawk’s a great letter-writer. He devotes enormous amounts of time and effort to his correspondence.’

‘Tell me everything, Sparhawk,’ the queen urged.

‘Oh he will, your Majesty, he will,’ Vanion assured her. ‘He’ll probably tell you more than you ever really wanted to know about the Isle of Tega.’

‘Critic,’ Sparhawk muttered under his breath.

‘Please don’t be too vivid in your description of our situation here, your Grace,’ Sarabian was saying to Emban. ‘Don’t make Dolmant think that my empire’s falling down around my ears.’

‘Isn’t it, your Majesty?’ Emban replied with some surprise. ‘I thought that was why I was dashing back to Chyrellos to fetch the Church Knights.’

‘Well, maybe it is, but don’t destroy my dignity entirely.’

‘Dolmant’s very wise, your Majesty,’ Emban assured him. ‘He understands the language of diplomacy.’

‘Oh, really?’ Ehlana said with heavy sarcasm.

‘Should I convey your Majesty’s greetings to the Archprelate as well?’ Emban asked her.

‘Of course. Tell him that I’m desolate at being separated from him – particularly in view of the fact that I can’t keep an eye on him. You might also advise him that a little-known Elenian statute clearly says that I have to ratify any agreements he makes with the Earl of Lenda during my absence. Tell him not to get too comfortable in those pieces of my kingdom he’s been snipping off since I left, because I’ll just take them back again as soon as I get home.’

‘Does she do this all the time, Sparhawk?’ Sarabian asked.

‘Oh yes, all the time, your Majesty. The Archprelate bites off all his fingernails every time a letter from her reaches the Basilica.’

‘It keeps him young,’ Ehlana shrugged. She rose to her feet. ‘Now, friends,’ she said, ‘I hope you’ll excuse my husband and me for a few moments so that we can say our goodbyes privately. Come along, Sparhawk,’ she commanded.

‘Yes, my Queen.’

The morning fog had lifted, and the sun was very bright as their ship sailed out of the harbor and heeled over to take a southeasterly course which would round the southern tip of the Micaen peninsula to the Isle of Tega. The ship was well appointed, although she was of a slightly alien configuration. Khalad did not entirely approve of her, finding fault with her rigging and the slant of her masts.

It was about noon when Vanion came up on deck to speak with Sparhawk, who was leaning on the rail watching the coastline slide by. They were both wearing casual clothing, since there is no real need for formal garb on board ship.

‘Sephrenia wants us all in the main cabin,’ the Preceptor told his friend. ‘It’s time for one of those startling revelations we’ve all come to love and adore. Why don’t you round up the others and bring them on down?’

‘You’re in a peculiar humor,’ Sparhawk noted. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Sephrenia’s being excessively Styric today,’ Vanion shrugged.

‘That one escaped me.’

‘You know the signs, Sparhawk – the mysterious expression, the cryptic remarks, the melodramatic pauses, the superior manner.’

‘Have you two been fighting?’

Vanion laughed. ‘Never that, my friend. It’s just that we all have little quirks and idiosyncrasies that irritate our loved ones sometimes. Sephrenia’s having one of her quirky days.’

‘I won’t tell her you said that, of course.’

Vanion shrugged. ‘She already knows how I feel. We’ve discussed it in the past – at length. Sometimes she does it just to tease me. Go get the others, Sparhawk. Let’s not give her too much time to perfect this performance.’

They all gathered in the main salon below decks, a cabin which was part dining room and part lounge. Sephrenia had not put in her appearance as yet and, after a few moments, Sparhawk understood what Vanion had been talking about. A familiar sound began to emerge from the lady’s cabin.

‘Flute?’ Talen exclaimed in astonishment, his voice cracking in that peculiar adolescent yodel which afflicts human males at the onset of puberty.

Sparhawk had wondered how Aphrael intended to get round the rather sticky problem of explaining her identity. To have appeared to the others as Princess Danae would quite obviously have been out of the question. Flute was quite another matter. His friends all recognized Flute as Aphrael, and that would eliminate the need for extended explanations. Sparhawk sighed as a rather melancholy thought occurred to him. He realized sadly that he didn’t know what his daughter really looked like. That dear little face which was engraved on his mind almost as deeply as Ehlana’s was only one in a long line of incarnations – one of thousands, more than likely.

Then the door to Sephrenia’s cabin opened, and the small Styric woman emerged with a smile that made her face look like the sun coming up, and with her little sister in her arms.

Flute, of course, was unchanged – and unchangeable. She appeared to be no more than six years old – precisely the same age as Danae. Sparhawk immediately rejected the possibility of coincidence. Where Aphrael was concerned, there were no coincidences. She wore the same short linen smock belted at the waist and the same plaited grass headband that she had been wearing when they had first met her. Her long hair was as black as night, and her large eyes nearly as dark. Her little bare feet were grass-stained. She held a simple many-chambered set of goatherd’s pipes to her bow-like lips, and her song was Styric, set in a complex minor key.

‘What a pretty child,’ Ambassador Norkan observed, ‘but is it really a good idea to take her along on this mysterious mission of yours, Prince Sparhawk? I gather there might be some danger involved.’

‘Not now there won’t be, your Excellency,’ Ulath grinned.

Sephrenia gravely set the Child Goddess on the cabin floor, and Flute began to dance to the clear, sweet music of her pipes.

Sephrenia looked at Emban and Norkan. ‘Watch the child closely, Emban, and you too, your Excellency. That should save us hours of explanation and argument.’

Flute pirouetted through the cabin, her grass-stained little feet flickering, her black hair flying and her pipes sounding joyously. This time Sparhawk actually saw the first step she placed quite firmly on insubstantial air. As one mounting an invisible stair, the Child Goddess danced upward, whirling as she climbed, bending and swaying, her tiny feet fluttering like birds’ wings as she danced on nothing at all. Then her song and her dance ended, and, smiling impishly and still standing in mid-air, she curtsied.

Emban’s eyes were bulging, and he had half fallen from his chair. Ambassador Norkan tried to maintain his urbane expression, but it was slipping badly, and his hands were shaking.

Talen grinned and began to applaud. The others laughed, and they all joined in.

‘Oh, thank you, my dear ones,’ Flute said sweetly, curtsying again.

‘For God’s sake, Sparhawk!’ Emban choked. ‘Make her come down from there! She’s destroying my sanity!’

Flute laughed and quite literally hurled herself into the fat little churchman’s arms, smothering his pale, cringing face with kisses. ‘I love to do that to people!’ she giggled delightedly.

Emban shrank back even further.

‘Oh, don’t be silly, Emban,’ she chided. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I sort of love you, actually.’ A look of sly mischief came into her eyes. ‘How would you like to come to work for me, your Grace?’ she suggested. ‘I’m not nearly as stuffy as your Elene God, and we could have a lot of fun together.’

‘Aphrael!’ Sephrenia said sharply. ‘Stop that! You know you’re not supposed to do that!’

‘I was only teasing him, Sephrenia. I wouldn’t really steal Emban. The Elene God needs him too much.’

‘Has your theology been sufficiently shaken, your Grace?’ Vanion asked the Patriarch of Ucera. ‘The little girl in your lap who’s blithely trying to lead you off down the flowery path to heresy is the Child Goddess Aphrael, one of the thousand Younger Gods of Styricum.’

‘How do I greet her?’ Emban asked in a squeaky, frightened kind of voice.

‘A few kisses might be nice,’ Flute suggested.

‘Stop that,’ Sephrenia chided her again.

‘And what are your feelings, your Excellency?’ the little girl asked Norkan.

‘Dubious, your – uh …’

‘Just Aphrael, Norkan,’ she told him.

‘That’s really not suitable,’ he replied. ‘I’m a diplomat, and the very soul of diplomatic speech is formal modes of address. I haven’t called anyone but colleagues by their first names since I was about ten years old.’

‘Her first name is a formal mode of address, your Excellency,’ Sephrenia said gently.

‘All right, then,’ Aphrael said, slipping down from Emban’s lap. ‘Tynian and Emban are going to Chyrellos to fetch the Church Knights. Norkan’s going to the Isle of Tega to help Sparhawk lie to my – uh – his wife, that is. The rest of us are going to go get the Bhelliom again. Sparhawk seems to think he might need it. I think he’s underestimating his own abilities, but I’ll go along with him on the issue – if only to keep him from nagging and complaining.’

‘I’ve really missed her,’ Kalten laughed. ‘What are you going to do, Flute? Saddle up a herd of whales for us to ride to that coastline where we threw Bhelliom into the sea?’

Her eyes brightened.

‘Never mind,’ Sparhawk told her quite firmly.

‘Spoilsport.’

‘I’m really disappointed in you, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘I’ve never ridden a whale before.’

‘Will you shut up about whales?’ Sparhawk snapped at him.

‘You don’t have to get so touchy about it. What have you got against whales?’

‘It’s a personal thing between Aphrael and me,’ Sparhawk replied in a grating tone. ‘I won’t win many arguments with her, but I am going to win the one about whales.’

The layover of their ship at Tega was necessarily brief. The tide had already turned, and the captain was quite concerned about the inexorably lowering water-level in the harbor.

Sparhawk and his friends conferred briefly in the ship’s main salon while Khalad directed the sailors in the unloading of their horses and supplies. ‘Do your very best to make Sarathi understand just how serious the situation here really is, Emban,’ Vanion said. ‘Sometimes he gets a little pig-headed.’