The Shining Ones

Rebal struck an exaggerated pose and raised both arms over his head. He began to speak, intoning guttural words in a hollow, booming voice.

‘Is that Styric?’ Kalten whispered to Sephrenia. ‘It doesn’t sound like Styric to me.’

‘It’s gibberish,’ she replied scornfully.

Kalten frowned. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them,’ he whispered. ‘What part of the world do the Gibbers come from?’

She stared at him, her face baffled.

‘Did I say it wrong?’ he asked. ‘Are they called the Gibberese, or maybe the Gibberenians? – the people who speak Gibberish, I mean.’

‘Oh, Kalten,’ she laughed softly. ‘I love you.’

‘What did I say?’

Rebal’s voice had risen to a near-shriek, and he brought both arms down sharply.

There was a sudden explosion in the middle of the bonfire, and a great cloud of smoke boiled out into the clearing.

‘Herken, Maisteres alle!’ a huge voice came out of the smoke. ‘Now hath the tyme for Werre ycom. Now, be me troth, shal alle trew Edomishmen on lyve to armes! Tak ye uppe the iren swerd; gird ye your limbes alle inne the iren haubergeon and the iren helm! Smyte ye the feendes foule, which beestes derk do sette hom and fey in deedly peril. Goe ye to bataile ferse to fend the feendes of the acurset Chirche of Chyrellos! Follwe! Follwe! Follwe me, as Godes hondys yeve ye force!’

‘Old High Elenic!’ Bevier exclaimed. ‘Nobody’s spoken that tongue in thousands of years!’

‘I’d follow him, whatever tongue it is,’ Ulath rumbled. ‘He makes a good speech.’

The smoke began to thin, and a huge, ox-shouldered man wearing ancient armor and holding a mighty two-handed sword above his head appeared at Rebal’s side. ‘Havok!’ he bellowed. ‘Havok and Werre!’

Chapter 5

‘They’ve all gone now,’ Berit reported when he and Talen returned to the camp concealed in the narrow ravine. ‘They spent a lot of time marching around in circles shouting slogans first, though.’

‘Then the beer ran out,’ Talen added dryly, ‘and the party broke up.’ He looked at Flute. ‘Are you sure this was supposed to be important?’ he asked her. ‘It was the most contrived hoax I’ve ever seen.’

She nodded stubbornly. ‘It was important,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t know why, but it was.’

‘How did they make that big flash and all the smoke?’ Kalten asked.

‘One of the fellows near the fire threw a handful of some kind of powder onto the coals,’ Khalad said, shrugging. ‘Everybody else was watching Rebal, so they didn’t see him when he did it.’

‘Where did the one in the armor come from?’ Ulath asked.

‘He was hiding in the crowd,’ Talen explained. ‘The whole thing was at about the same level as you’d find at a country fair – one that’s held a long way from the nearest town.’

‘The one who was pretending to be Incetes gave a fairly stirring speech, though,’ Ulath noted.

‘It certainly should have been,’ Bevier smiled. ‘It was written by Phalactes in the seventh century.’

‘Who was he?’ Talen asked.

‘Phalactes was the greatest playwright of antiquity. That stirring speech came directly from one of his tragedies, Etonicus. That fellow in the antique armor substituted a few words is all. The play’s a classic. It’s still performed at universities once in a while.’

‘You’re a whole library all by yourself, Bevier,’ Kalten told him. ‘Do you remember every single thing you’ve ever read – word for word?’

Bevier laughed. ‘I wish I could, my friend. Some of my classmates and I put on a performance of Etonicus when I was a student. I played the lead, so I had to memorize that speech. The poetry of Phalactes is really very stirring. He was a great artist – Arcian, naturally.’

‘I never liked him very much,’ Flute sniffed. ‘He was as ugly as sin; he smelled like an open cesspool; and he was a howling bigot.’

Bevier swallowed hard. ‘Please don’t do that, Aphrael,’ he said. ‘It’s very unsettling.’

‘What was the story about?’ Talen asked, his eyes suddenly eager.

‘Etonicus was supposed to be the ruler of a mythic kingdom somewhere in what’s now eastern Cammoria,’ Bevier replied. ‘The legend has it that he went to war with the Styrics over religion.’

‘What happened?’ Talen’s tone was almost hungry.

‘He came to a bad end,’ Bevier shrugged. ‘It’s a tragedy, after all.’

‘But …’

‘You can read it for yourself sometime, Talen,’ Vanion said firmly. ‘This isn’t the story hour.’

Talen’s face grew sulky.

‘I’d be willing to wager that you could paralyze our young friend here in mid-theft,’ Ulath chuckled. ‘All you’d have to do is say, “Once upon a time”, and he’d stop dead in his tracks.’

‘This throws a whole new light on what’s been happening here in Tamuli,’ Vanion mused. ‘Could this all be some vast hoax?’ He looked inquiringly at Flute.

She shook her head. ‘No, Vanion. There has been magic of varying levels in some of the things we’ve encountered.’

‘Some, perhaps, but not all, certainly. Was there any magic at all involved in what we saw tonight?’

‘Not a drop.’

‘Is that how you measure magic?’ Kalten asked curiously. ‘Does it come by the gallon?’

‘Like cheap wine, you mean?’ she suggested tartly.

‘Well, not exactly, but …’

‘This was very important,’ Sparhawk said. Thank you, Aphrael.’

‘I live but to serve.’ She smiled mockingly at him.

‘Stop that.’

‘You’ve missed me entirely, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said.

‘We’ve just found out that not everything that’s being reported back to Matherion is the result of real magic. There’s a fair amount of fraud mixed in as well. What does that suggest?’

‘The other side’s lazy.’ Kalten shrugged.

‘I’m not so sure,’ Ulath disagreed. ‘They’re not afraid to exert themselves when it’s important.’

‘Two,’ Sephrenia said. ‘Three at the most.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ Ulath said with a puzzled look.

‘Now do you see how exasperating that is, Ulath?’ she said to him. ‘This charade we watched here tonight rather strongly hints at the fact that there aren’t very many people who can really work spells on the other side. They’re spread out a bit thin, I’d say. What’s going on here in Edom – and probably in Astel and Daconia as well – is rather commonplace, so they don’t feel that they have to waste magic on it.’

‘Commonplace or not, it’s going to seriously hinder Tynian when he tries to lead the Church Knights across Daresia to Matherion,’ Sparhawk said. ‘If Rebal can stir up the whole kingdom the way he did this group tonight, Tynian’s going to have to wade his way through hordes of howling fanatics. The Edomish peasantry’s going to be convinced that our brothers are coming here to impose heresies on them by force, and they’ll be lurking behind every bush with sickles and pitchforks.’

‘We still have a certain advantage, though,’ Bevier said thoughtfully. ‘There’s no way that our enemies can possibly know that we’re here in Edom and that we saw this business tonight. Even if they were to know that we’re going to raise Bhelliom – which isn’t very likely – they wouldn’t know where it is, so they’d have no idea where we were going. Even we don’t know where we’re going.’

‘And even if they did, they wouldn’t know that we could get here as quickly as we did,’ Khalad added. ‘I think we’ve got the jump on them, my Lords. If they’re relying on hoaxes here, that probably means that they don’t have any magicians around to sniff us out. If we can pass ourselves off as ordinary travelers, we should be able to move around without much hindrance – and pick up all sorts of information in the process.’

‘We’re here to retrieve the Bhelliom, Khalad,’ Flute reminded him.

‘Of course, but there’s no point in passing up little treasures as we go along, is there?’

‘Aphrael,’ Vanion said, ‘have we seen and heard everything we were supposed to?’

She nodded.

‘I think we might want to move on to Jorsan rather quickly, then. If Khalad’s right and we’re one jump ahead, let’s stay that way. What would it take in the way of bribes to persuade you to speed up the journey?’

‘We could negotiate that, I suppose, Lord Vanion,’ she smiled. ‘I’m sure you could all offer me something that might induce me to lend a hand.’

They kissed the Child Goddess into submission and arrived in Jorsan late the following day. Jorsan turned out to be a typical Elene port-city squatting at the head of the gulf. The question of suitable disguises had arisen during the journey. Bevier had leaned strongly in the direction of posing as religious pilgrims. Kalten had liked the notion of masquerading as a group of rowdies in search of constructive debauchery, while Talen, perhaps influenced by Rebal’s recent performance, had thought it might be fun to pose as traveling players. They were still arguing about it when Jorsan came into view.

‘Isn’t all this a waste of time?’ Ulath asked them. ‘Why should we play dress-up? It’s not really anybody’s business who we are, is it? As long as we’re not wearing armor, the people in Jorsan won’t know – or care – about us. Why go to all the trouble of lying about it?’

‘We’ll need to wear our mail-shirts, Sir Ulath,’ Berit reminded him. ‘How do we explain that?’

‘We don’t. Lots of people wear chain-mail and carry weapons, so it’s not really that unusual. If somebody in town gets too curious about who we are and where we’re going, I can make him get un-curious in fairly short order.’ He held up his hand and closed his fist suggestively.

‘You mean just bully our way through?’ Kalten asked.

‘Why not? Isn’t that what we’re trained for?’

The inn was not particularly elegant, but it was clean and not so near the waterfront that the streets around it were filled with bawling sailors lurching from ale-house to ale-house. The sleeping-rooms were upstairs over the common-room on the main floor, and the stables were in the back.

‘Let me handle this,’ Ulath muttered to Sparhawk as they approached the innkeeper, a tousled fellow with a long, pointed nose.

‘Feel free,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘You,’ Ulath said abruptly to the innkeeper, ‘we need five rooms for the night, fodder for ten horses, and some decent food.’

‘I can provide all those, good master,’ the innkeeper assured him.

‘Good. How much?’

‘Ah …’ The man with the pointed nose rubbed at his chin, carefully appraising the big Thalesian’s clothes and general appearance. ‘That would be a half-crown, good master,’ he said somewhat tentatively. His rates seemed to be based on a sliding scale of some sort.

Ulath turned on his heel. ‘Let’s go,’ he said shortly to Sparhawk.

‘What was I thinking of?’ the innkeeper said, slapping his forehead. ‘That was five rooms and fodder for ten horses, wasn’t it? I got the numbers turned around in my head. I thought you wanted ten rooms for some reason. A half-crown would be far too much for only five rooms. The right price would be two silver imperials, of course.’

‘I’m glad you got your mathematics straightened out,’ Ulath grunted. ‘Let’s look at the rooms.’

‘Of course, good master.’ The innkeeper scurried on up the stairs ahead of them.

‘You don’t leave very many conversational openings, do you, my friend?’ Sparhawk chuckled.

‘I’ve never found innkeepers very interesting to talk with.’

They reached an upper hallway, and Ulath looked into one of the rooms. ‘Check it for bugs,’ he told Sparhawk.

‘Good master!’ the innkeeper protested.

‘I like to sleep alone,’ Ulath told him. ‘Bugs crowd me, and they’re always restless at night.’

The innkeeper laughed a bit weakly. ‘That’s very funny, good master. I’ll have to remember it. Where is it you come from, and where are you bound?’

Ulath gave him a long, icy stare, his blue eyes as chill as a northern winter and his shoulders swelling ominously as he bunched them under his tunic.

‘Ah – no matter, I suppose,’ the innkeeper rushed on. ‘It’s not really any of my affair, is it?’

‘You’ve got that part right,’ Ulath said. He looked around. ‘Good enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll stay.’ He nudged Sparhawk with his elbow. ‘Pay him,’ he said, turned, and clumped down the stairs.

They turned their horses over to the grooms and carried their saddle-bags up to the sleeping-rooms. Then they went back downstairs for supper.

Kalten, as usual, heaped his plate with steaming beef.

‘Maybe we should send out for another cow,’ Berit joked.

‘He’s young,’ Kalten told the others jovially, ‘but I like the way he thinks.’ He grinned at Berit, but then the grin slowly faded, and the big, blond Pandion grew quite pale. He stared at the young knight’s face for quite some time. Then he abruptly pushed his plate back and rose to his feet. ‘I don’t think I’m really hungry,’ he said. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’ He turned, quickly crossed the common-room to the stairs, and went up them two at a time.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ Ulath asked in a puzzled tone. ‘I’ve never seen him walk away from supper like that before.’

‘That’s God’s own truth,’ Bevier agreed.

‘You’d better have a talk with him when you go up, Sparhawk,’ Vanion suggested. ‘Find out if he’s sick or something. Kalten never leaves anything on his plate.’

‘Or anybody else’s, for that matter,’ Talen added.

Sparhawk did not linger over supper. He ate quickly, said goodnight to the others, and went upstairs to have a talk with his friend. He found Kalten sitting on the edge of his bed with his face in his hands.

‘What’s the matter?’ Sparhawk asked him. ‘Aren’t you feeling well?’

Kalten turned his face away. ‘Leave me alone,’ he said hoarsely.

‘Not very likely. What’s wrong?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The blond knight sniffed loudly and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Let’s go get drunk.’

‘Not until you tell me what’s bothering you, we won’t.’

Kalten sniffed again and set his jaw. ‘It’s something foolish. You’d laugh at me.’

‘You know better than that.’

‘There’s a girl, Sparhawk, and she loves somebody else. Are you satisfied now?’

‘Why didn’t you say something earlier?’

‘I just now found out about it.’

‘Kalten, you’re not making any sense at all. One girl’s always been the same as another to you. Most of the time you can’t even remember their names.’

‘This time’s different. Can we go get drunk now?’

‘How do you know she doesn’t feel the same way about you?’ Sparhawk knew who the girl was, and he was quite certain that she did in fact return his friend’s feelings for her.

Kalten sighed. ‘God knows that there are people in this world who are brighter than I am, Sparhawk. It’s taken me all this time to put it together. I’ll tell you one thing, though. If he breaks her heart, I’ll kill him, brother or no.’

‘Will you at least try to make some sense?’

‘She told me that she loves somebody else – as plain as if she’d come right out and said it in so many words.’

‘Alean wouldn’t do that.’

‘How did you know it was Alean?’ The big blond man sprang to his feet. ‘Have you all been laughing at me behind my back?’ he demanded pugnaciously.

‘Don’t be an ass. We wouldn’t do that. We’ve all been through exactly the same thing. You didn’t invent love, you know.’

‘Everybody knows, though, don’t they?’

‘No. I’m probably the only one – except for Melidere. Nothing much gets past her. Now what’s all this nonsense about Alean loving somebody else?’

‘I just put it together myself.’

‘What did you put together? Try to make a little sense, Kalten.’

‘Didn’t you hear her singing on the day we left?’

‘Of course I did. She has a beautiful voice.’

‘I’m not talking about her voice. I’m talking about the song she was singing. It was “My Bonnie Blue-Eyed Boy”.’

‘So?’

‘It’s Berit, Sparhawk. She’s in love with Berit.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I just noticed it when we sat down to supper.’ Kalten buried his face in his hands again. ‘I never paid any attention before, but when I looked into his face while we were talking, I saw it. I’m surprised you haven’t seen it yourself.’

‘Seen what?’

‘Berit’s got blue eyes.’

Sparhawk stared at him. Then, being careful not to laugh, he said, ‘So do you – when they’re not bloodshot.’

Kalten shook his head stubbornly. ‘His are bluer than mine. I know it’s him. I just know it! God’s punishing me for some of the things I’ve done in the past. He made me fall in love with a girl who loves somebody else. Well, I hope He’s satisfied. If He wants to make me suffer, He’s doing a good job of it.’

‘Will you be serious?’

‘Berit’s younger than I am, Sparhawk, and God knows he’s better looking.’

‘Kalten.’

‘Look at the way every girl who gets to within a hundred yards of him starts to follow him around like a puppy. Even the Atan girls were all falling in love with him.’

‘Kalten.’

‘I know it’s him. I just know it. God’s twisting His knife in my heart. He’s gone and made the one girl I’ll ever feel this way about fall in love with one of my brother-knights.’

‘Kalten.’

Kalten sat up and squared his shoulders. ‘All right, then,’ he said weakly, ‘if that’s the way God wants it, that’s the way it’s going to be. If Berit and Alean really, really love each other, I won’t stand in their way. I’ll bite my tongue and keep my mouth shut.’

‘Kalten.’

‘But I swear it to you, Sparhawk,’ the blond Pandion said hotly, ‘if he hurts her, I’ll kill him!’

‘Kalten!’ Sparhawk shouted at him.

‘What?’

Sparhawk sighed. ‘Why don’t we go out and get drunk?’ he suggested, giving up entirely.

It was cloudy the following morning. It was a low, dirty-gray cloud-cover which seethed and tattered in the stiff wind aloft. It was one of those peculiar days when the murk raced overhead, streaming in off the gulf lying to the west, but the air at the surface was dead calm.

They set out early and clattered along the narrow, cobbled streets where sleepy-eyed shopkeepers were opening their shutters and setting out their wares. They passed through the city gates and took the road that followed the north coast of the gulf.

After they had gone a mile or so, Vanion leaned over in his saddle. ‘How far do we have to go?’ he asked Flute, who nestled, as always, in her sister’s arms.

‘What difference does it make?’ the Child Goddess shrugged.

‘I’d like to know how long it’s going to take.’

‘What does “how far” have to do with “how long”?’

‘They’re the same thing, Aphrael. Time and distance mean the same thing when you’re traveling.’

‘Not if you know what you’re doing, they don’t.’

Sparhawk had always admired Vanion, but never quite so much as in that moment. The silvery-bearded preceptor did not even raise his voice. ‘All I’m really getting at, Divine One, is that nobody knows we’re here. Shouldn’t we keep it that way? I don’t mind a good fight now and then, but would bashing our way through crowds of drunken Edomish peasants serve any real purpose right now?’

‘You always take so long to get to the point, Vanion,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you just come right out and tell me to speed things up?’

‘I was trying to be polite. I think we’ll all feel much better about this when Sparhawk’s got Bhelliom in his hands again. It’s up to you, though. If you want the road from here to wherever it is you’ve got Bhelliom hidden awash with blood and littered with corpses, we’ll be happy to oblige you.’

‘He’s hateful,’ Aphrael said to her sister.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’

‘You wouldn’t. Sometimes you two are worse than Sparhawk and Ehlana.’

Sparhawk moved in rather quickly at that point. Aphrael was coming very close to saying things which she shouldn’t be saying in the presence of the others. ‘Shall we move right along?’ he suggested quite firmly. ‘Vanion’s right, Aphrael, and you know he is. If Rebal finds out that we’re here, we’ll have to wade through his people by the score.’

‘All right,’ she gave in quite suddenly.

‘That was quick,’ Talen said to Khalad.

‘I thought she was going to be stubborn about it.’

‘No, Talen,’ she smirked. ‘Actually, I’m sort of looking forward to hearing that vast cry of chagrin that’s going to echo from every mountain in Daresia when our enemies hear the sound of Anakha’s fist closing around Bhelliom again. Just lean back in your saddles, gentlemen, and leave the rest to me.’

Sparhawk awoke with a start. They were riding along the brink of a windswept cliff with an angry sea ripping itself to tattered froth on the rocks far below. Sephrenia rode in the lead, and she held Flute enfolded in her arms. The others trailed along behind, their cloaks drawn tightly around them and wooden expressions of endurance on their faces. The wind had risen, and it pushed at them and tugged at their cloaks.

There were some significant impossibilities involved here, but Sparhawk’s mind seemed somehow numb to them. Normally, Vanion rode protectively close to Sephrenia, but Vanion didn’t seem to be with them now.

Tynian, however, was. Sparhawk knew with absolute certainty that Tynian was a thousand leagues and more away, but there he was, his broad face as wooden as the faces of the others and his right shoulder as functional as ever.

Sparhawk did not turn round. He knew that another impossibility was riding behind him.

Their horses plodded up the winding trail that followed the edge of the long, ascending cliff toward a rocky promontory which thrust a crooked, stony finger out into the sea. At the outermost tip of the promontory stood a gnarled and twisted tree, its streaming branches flailing in the wind.

When she reached the tree, Sephrenia reined in. Kurik walked forward to lift Flute down. Sparhawk felt a sharp pang of bitter resentment. He knew about Aphrael’s need for symmetry, but this went too far.

Kurik set Aphrael down on her feet, and when he straightened, he looked Sparhawk full in the face. Sparhawk’s squire was unchanged. His features were rugged, and his black beard, touched with silver, was as coarse as ever. His bare shoulders were bulky, and his wrists were enclosed in steel cuffs. Without so much as changing expression, he winked at his lord.

‘Very well, then,’ Flute said to them in a crisp voice, ‘let’s get on with this before too many more of my cousins change their minds. I had to talk very fast and even throw a few tantrums to get them to agree, and many of them still have grave doubts about the whole notion.’

‘You don’t have to explain things to them, Flute,’ Kurik told her in that gruff voice of his, a voice so familiar that Sparhawk’s eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘Just tell them what to do. They’re Church Knights, after all, so they’re used to following orders they don’t understand.’

She laughed delightedly. ‘How very wise you are, Kurik. All right, then, gentlemen, come with me.’ She led them past the gnarled tree to the brink of the awful precipice. Even though they were very high above it, the roaring of the surf was much like heavy thunder.

‘All right,’ Aphrael told them, ‘I’m going to need your help with this.’

‘What do you want us to do?’ Tynian asked her.

‘Stand there and approve.’

‘Do what?’

‘Just approve of me, Tynian. You can cheer if you like, but it’s not really necessary. All I really need is approval – and love, of course – but there’s nothing unusual about that. I always need love.’ She smiled at them mysteriously.

Then she stepped off the edge of the cliff.

Talen gave a startled cry and plunged after her.