Читать книгу The Hidden City - David Eddings - Страница 13

She was always tired, hovering at times on the verge of exhaustion, and she was nearly always wet and dirty. Her clothes were ripped and tattered, and her hair was a ruin. Those things were unimportant, however. She willingly submitted to discomfort and indignities to keep the madman who was their captor from hurting the terrified Alean.

The realization that Scarpa was mad had come to her slowly. She had known from the first moment she had seen him that he was ruthless and driven, but the evidence of his insanity had become gradually more and more overwhelming as the endless days of her captivity ground on.

He was cruel, but Ehlana had encountered cruel men before. After she and Alean had been hurried through the dank tunnels under the streets of Matherion to the outskirts of the city, they had been roughly shoved into the saddles of waiting horses, bound securely in place, and literally dragged at breakneck speed down the road leading to the port of Micae on the southwestern coast of the peninsula, seventy-five leagues away. A normal man does not mistreat the animals upon which he is totally dependent. That was the first evidence of Scarpa’s madness. He drove the horses, flogging them savagely until the poor beasts were staggering with exhaustion, and his only words during those dreadful four days were, ‘Faster! Faster!’

Ehlana shuddered as she recalled the horror of that endless ride. They had –

Her horse stumbled in the muddy path, and she was jolted forward, bringing her attention back into the immediate present. The cord which tightly bound her wrists to the saddlebow dug into her flesh, and the bleeding started again. She tried to ease into a different position so that the cord would no longer cut into the already open wounds.

‘What are you doing?’ Scarpa demanded. His voice was harsh, and it came out almost as a scream. Scarpa almost always screamed when he was talking to her.

‘I’m just trying to keep the cord from cutting deeper into my wrists, Lord Scarpa,’ she replied meekly. She had been instructed early in her captivity to address him so and she had quickly found that failure to do so resulted in savage mistreatment of Alean and the withholding of food and water.

‘You’re not here to be comfortable, woman!’ he raged at her. ‘You’re here to obey! I see what you’re doing there! If you don’t stop trying to loosen those cords, I’ll use wire!’ His eyes bulged, and she saw again that strange, bluish cast to the whites of those eyes and the abnormally large pupils.

‘Yes, Lord Scarpa,’ she said in her most submissive tone.

He glared at her, his face filled with suspicion and his mad eyes looking hungrily for some excuse to punish or humiliate his prisoners further.

She lowered her gaze to stare fixedly at the rough, muddy track that wound deeper and deeper into the rank, vine-choked forest of the southeast coast of Daresia.

The ship they had boarded at the port of Micae had been a sleek, black-hulled corsair that could not have been built for any honest purpose. She and Alean had been unceremoniously dragged below decks and confined in a cramped compartment that smelled of the bilges and was totally dark. After they had been two hours at sea, the compartment door had opened and Krager had entered with two swarthy sailors, one carrying what appeared to be a decent meal, and the other, two pails of hot water, some soap and a wad of rags for use as towels. Ehlana had resisted an impulse to embrace the fellow.

‘I’m really sorry about all this, Ehlana,’ Krager had apologized, squinting at her nearsightedly, ‘but I have no control of the situation. Be very careful of what you say to Scarpa. You’ve probably noticed that he’s not entirely rational.’ He had looked around nervously, then laid a handful of cheap tallow candles on the rough table and left, chaining the door shut behind him.

They had been five days at sea and had reached Anan, a port city on the edge of the jungles of the southeast coast some time after midnight. Then she and Alean had been hustled into a closed carriage with the pouchy-eyed Baron Parok at the reins. During the transfer from the ship to the carriage, Ehlana had discreetly looked at each of her captors, seeking some weakness. Krager, despite his habitual drunkenness, was too shrewd, and Parok was Scarpa’s long-time confederate, a man evidently untroubled by his friend’s madness. Then she had coolly appraised Elron. She had noticed that under no circumstances would the foppish Astellian poet look her in the eye. His apparent murder of Melidere had evidently filled him with remorse. Elron was a poseur rather than a man of action, and he clearly had no stomach for blood. She had recalled moreover, how vain he had been about his long curls when she had first met him and had wondered what form of duress Scarpa had used to force him to shave his head in order to pose as one of Kring’s Peloi. She had surmised that the violation of his hair had raised certain strong resentments in him. Elron was clearly reluctant to participate in this affair, and that made him the weak link. She kept that fact firmly in mind now. The time might come when she could use it to her advantage.

The carriage had carried them from the waterfront to a large house on the outskirts of Anan. It had been there that Scarpa had spoken with a gaunt Styric with the lumpy features characteristic of the men of his race. The Styric’s name was Keska, and his eyes had the look of one hopelessly damned.

‘I don’t care about the discomfort!’ Scarpa had half-shouted to the gaunt man at one point. ‘Time is important, Keska, time! Just do it! As long as it doesn’t kill us, we can endure it!’

The next morning the significance of that command had become all too obvious. Keska was evidently one of those outcast Styric magicians, but not a very good one. He could, with a great deal of clearly exhausting effort, compress the miles that lay between them and Scarpa’s intended destination, but only a few miles each time, and the compression was accompanied by a horrid kind of wrenching agony. It seemed almost as if the clumsy magician were jerking them up and hurling them blindly forward with every ounce of his strength, and Ehlana could never be certain after each hideous, bruising jump that she was still intact. She felt torn and battered, but did what she could to conceal her pain from Alean. The gentle girl with the large eyes wept almost continuously now, overcome by her pain and fear and the misery of their circumstances.

Ehlana drew her mind into the present and looked about warily. It was approaching evening again. The overcast sky was gradually darkening, and the time of day Ehlana dreaded the most would soon be upon them.

Scarpa looked with some scorn at Keska, who slumped in his saddle like a wilted flower, obviously near exhaustion. ‘This is far enough,’ he said. ‘Set up some kind of camp and get the women down off those horses,’ His brittle eyes grew bright as he looked Ehlana full in the face. ‘It’s time for the bedraggled Queen of the Elenes to beg for her supper again. I do hope she’ll be more convincing this time. It really distresses me to have to refuse her when her pleas aren’t sufficiently sincere.’

‘Ehlana,’ Krager whispered, touching her shoulder. The fire had died down to embers, and Ehlana could hear the sound of snores coming from the other side of their rude camp.

‘What?’ she replied shortly.

‘Keep your voice down.’ He was still wearing the black leather Peloi jerkin, his shaved head was sparsely stubbled, and his wine-reeking breath was nearly overpowering. ‘I’m doing you a favor. Don’t put me in danger. I assume you realize by now that Scarpa’s completely insane?’

‘Really?’ she replied sardonically. ‘What an amazing thing.’

‘Please don’t make this any more difficult. I seem to have made a small error in judgment here. If I’d fully realized how deranged that half-Styric bastard is, I’d have never agreed to take part in this ridiculous adventure.’

‘What is this strange fascination you have with lunatics, Krager?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s a character defect. Scarpa actually believes that he can outwit his father – and even Cyrgon. He doesn’t really believe that Sparhawk will surrender Bhelliom in exchange for your return, but he’s managed to about half-convince the others. I’m sure you realize by now how he feels about women.’

‘He’s demonstrated it often enough,’ she said bitterly. ‘Does he share Baron Harparin’s fondness for little boys instead?’

‘Scarpa isn’t fond of anything except himself. He is his only passion. I’ve seen him spend hours trimming that beard of his. It gives him the opportunity to adore his reflection in the mirror. You haven’t had the opportunity to see his delightful personality in full flower. The details of this trip are keeping what he chooses to call his mind occupied. Wait until we get to Natayos and you hear him start raving. He makes Martel and Annias seem like the very souls of sanity by comparison. I don’t dare stay too long, so listen closely. Scarpa believes that Sparhawk will bring Bhelliom with him when he comes, right enough, but he doesn’t believe he’ll bring it to trade for you. Scarpa’s absolutely certain that your husband’s coming in order to have it out with Cyrgon, and he believes that they’ll destroy each other in the course of the argument.’

‘Sparhawk has Bhelliom, you fool, and Bhelliom eats Gods for breakfast.’

‘I’m not here to argue about that. Maybe Sparhawk will win, and maybe he won’t. That’s really beside the point. What’s important to us is what Scarpa believes. He’s convinced himself that Sparhawk and Cyrgon will fight a war of mutual extinction. Then he thinks that Bhelliom will be left lying around free for the taking.’

‘What about Zalasta?’

‘I get the strong feeling that Scarpa doesn’t expect Zalasta to be around when the fight’s over. Scarpa’s more than willing to kill anybody who gets in his way.’

‘He’d kill his own father?’

Krager shrugged. ‘Blood ties don’t mean anything to Scarpa. When he was younger, he decided that his mother and his half-sisters knew things about him that he didn’t want them to share with the authorities, so he killed them. He hated them anyway, so that may not mean all that much. If Sparhawk and Cyrgon do kill each other, and if Zalasta’s broken out in a sudden rash of mortality during the festivities, Scarpa might just be the only one left around to take possession of the Bhelliom. He’s got an army in these jungles, and if he has the Bhelliom as well, he might be able to pull it off. He’ll march on Matherion, take the city and slaughter the government. Then he’ll crown himself emperor. I’m personally betting against it, though, so for God’s sake keep your temper under control. You’re not really important to his plans, but you’re vital to Zalasta’s – and mine. If you do anything at all to set Scarpa off, he’ll kill you as quickly as he ordered Elron to kill your lady-in-waiting. Zalasta and I believe that Sparhawk will trade Bhelliom for you, but only if you’re alive. Don’t enrage that maniac. If he kills you, all our plans will collapse.’

‘Why are you telling me this, Krager? There’s something else too, isn’t there?’

‘Of course. If things go against us, I’d like to have you available to speak out in my behalf when the trials start.’

‘That wouldn’t do any good, I’m afraid,’ she told him sweetly. There won’t be any trial for you, Krager. sparhawk’s already given you to Khalad and Khalad’s already made up his mind.’

‘Khalad?’ Krager’s voice sounded a little weak.

‘Kurik’s oldest son. He seems to feel that you had some part in his father’s death, and he feels obliged to do something about it. I suppose you could try to talk him out of it, but I’d advise you to talk fast if you do. Khalad’s a very abrupt young man, and he’ll probably have you hanging from a meat-hook before you get out three words.’

Krager didn’t answer, but slipped away instead, his shaved scalp pale in the darkness. It wasn’t much of a victory, Ehlana privately conceded, but in her situation victories of any kind were very hard to come by.

* * *

‘They actually do that?’ Scarpa’s harsh voice was hungry.

‘It’s an old custom, Lord Scarpa,’ Ehlana replied in a meek voice, keeping her eyes downcast as they plodded along the muddy path. ‘Emperor Sarabian is planning to discontinue the practice, however.’

‘It will be reinstituted immediately following my coronation.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright. ‘It is a proper form of respect.’ Scarpa had an old purple velvet cloak, shiny with wear, that he had dramatically pulled over one shoulder in a grotesque imitation of an imperial mantle, and he struck absurd poses with each pronouncement.

‘As you say, Lord Scarpa.’ It was tedious to go over the same things again and again, but it kept Scarpa’s mind occupied, and when his attention was firmly fixed on the ceremonies and practices of the imperial court in Matherion he was not thinking of ways to make life unbearable for his captives.

‘Describe it again,’ he commanded. ‘I’ll need to know precisely how it’s supposed to be done – so that I can punish those who fail to perform it properly.’

Ehlana sighed. ‘At the approach of the imperial person, the members of the court kneel –’

‘On both knees?’

‘Yes, Lord Scarpa.’

‘Excellent! Excellent!’ His face was exalted. ‘Go on.’

‘Then, as the emperor passes, they lean forward, put the palms of their hands on the floor and touch their foreheads to the tiles.’

‘Capital!’ He suddenly giggled, a high-pitched, almost girlish sound that startled her. She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. His face was grotesquely distorted into an expression of unholy exaltation. And then his eyes grew wide and his expression became one of near-religious ecstasy. ‘And the Tamuls who rule the world shall be ruled by me’,’ He intoned in a resonant, declamatory voice. ‘All power shall be mine! The governance of the world shall be in my hands, and disobedience will be death!’

Ehlana shuddered as he raved on.

And he came to her again as humid night settled over their muddy forest encampment, drawn to her by a hunger, a greed, that was beyond his ability to control. It was revolting, but Ehlana realized that her knowledge of the particulars of traditional court ceremonies gave her an enormous power over him. His hunger was insatiable, and only she could satisfy it. She grasped that power firmly, drawing strength and confidence from it, actually relishing it even as Krager and the others withdrew with expressions of frightened revulsion.

‘Nine wives, you say!’ Scarpa’s voice was almost pleading. ‘Why not ninety? Why not nine hundred?’

‘It is the custom, Lord Scarpa. The reason for it should be obvious.’

‘Oh, of course, of course.’ He brooded darkly over it. ‘I shall have nine thousand!’ he proclaimed. ‘And each shall be more desirable than the last! And when I have finished with them, they shall be given to my loyal soldiers! Let no woman dare to believe that my favor in any way empowers her! All women are only whores! I shall buy them and throw them away when I tire of them!’ His mad eyes bulged, and he stared into the campfire. The flickering flames reflected in those eyes seemed to seethe like the madness that lay behind them.

He leaned toward her, laying a confiding hand on her arm. I have seen that which others are too stupid to see,’ he told her. ‘Others look, but they do not see – but, I see. Oh, yes, I see. I see very well. They are all in it together, you know – all of them. They watch me. They have always watched me. I can never get away from their eyes – watching, watching, watching – and talking – talking behind their hands, breathing their cinnamon-scented breath into each other’s faces. All foul and corrupt – scheming, plotting against me, trying to bring me down. Their eyes – all soft and hidden and veiled with the lashes that hide the daggers of their hatred, watching, watching, watching.’ His voice sank lower and lower. ‘And talking, talking behind their hands so that I can’t hear what they’re saying. Whispering. I hear it always. I hear the hissing susurration of their endless whispering. Their eyes following me wherever I go – and their laughing and whispering. I hear the hiss, hiss of their whispering – endless whisper – always my name – Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, again and again, hissing in my ears. Flaunting their rounded limbs and rolling their soot-lined eyes. Plotting, scheming with the endless hissing whispers, always seeking ways to hurt me. Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, trying to humiliate me.’ His blue-tinged eyeballs were starting from his face, and his lips and beard were flecked with foam. ‘I was nothing. They made me nothing. They called me Selga’s bastard and gave me pennies to lead them to the beds of my mother and my sisters and cuffed me and spat on me and laughed at me when I cried and they lusted after my mother and my sisters and all around me the hissing in my ears – and I smell the sound – that sweet cloying sound of rotten flesh and stale lust all purple and writhing with the liquid hiss of their whispers and –’

Then his mad eyes filled with terror, and he cringed back from her and fell, grovelling in the mud. ‘Please, Mother!’ he wailed. I didn’t do it! Silbie did it! Please-pleaseplease don’t lock me in there again! Please not in the dark! Pleasepleaseplease not in the dark! Not in the dark!’ And he scrambled to his feet and fled back into the forest with his ‘Pleasepleaseplease’ echoing back in a long, dying fall.

Ehlana was suddenly overcome with a wrenching, unbearable pity, and she bowed her head and wept.

Zalasta was waiting for them in Natayos. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had seen a flowering of Arjuni civilization, a flowering financed largely by the burgeoning slave-trade. An ill-advised slave-raid into southern Atan, however, coupled with a number of gross policy blunders by the Tamul administrators of that region had unleashed an uncontrolled Atan punitive expedition. Natayos had been a virtual gem of a city with stately buildings and broad avenues. It was now a forgotten ruin buried in the jungle, its tumbled buildings snarled in ropelike vines, its stately halls now the home of chattering monkeys and brightly colored tropical birds, and its darker recesses inhabited by snakes and the scurrying rats which were their prey.

But now humans had returned to Natayos. Scarpa’s army was quartered there, and Arjunis, Cynesgans, and rag-tag battalions of Elenes had cleared the quarter near the ancient city’s northern gate of vines, trees, monkeys and reptiles in order to make it semi-habitable.

Zalasta stood leaning on his staff at the half-fallen gate, his silvery-bearded face drawn with fatigue and a look of hopeless pain in his eyes. His first reaction when his son arrived with the captives was one of rage. He snarled at Scarpa in Styric, a language that seemed eminently suited for reprimand and one which Ehlana did not understand. She took no small measure of satisfaction, however, in the look of sullen apprehension that crossed Scarpa’s face. For all his blustering and airs of pre-eminent superiority, Scarpa still appeared to stand in a certain awe and fear of the ancient Styric who had incidentally sired him.

Once, and only once, apparently stung by something Zalasta said to him in a tone loaded with contempt, Scarpa drew himself up and snarled a reply. Zalasta’s reaction was immediate and savage. He sent his son reeling with a heavy blow of his staff, then leveled its polished length at him, muttered a few words, and unleashed a fiery spot of light from the tip of the staff. The burning spot struck the still-staggering Scarpa in the belly, and he doubled over sharply, clawing at his stomach and shrieking in agony. He fell onto the muddy earth, kicking and convulsing as Zalasta’s spell burned into him. His father, the deadly staff still leveled, watched his writhing son coldly for several endless minutes.

‘Now do you understand?’ he demanded in a deadly voice, speaking in Tamul this time.

‘Yes! Yes! Father!’ Scarpa shrieked. ‘Stop! I beg you!’

Zalasta let him writhe and squirm for a while longer. Then he lifted the staff. ‘You are not master here,’ he declared. ‘You are no more than a brain-sick incompetent. Any one of a dozen others here could command this army, so do not try my patience further. Next time, son or no son, I will let the spell follow its natural course. Pain is like a disease, Scarpa. After a few days – or weeks – the body begins to deteriorate. A man can die from pain. Don’t force me to prove that to you.’ And he turned his back on his pale-faced, sweating son. ‘My apologies, your Majesty,’ he said to Ehlana. ‘This was not what I intended.’

‘And what did you intend, Zalasta?’ she asked coldly.

‘The dispute is between your husband and myself, Ehlana. It was never in my mind to cause you such discomfort. This cretin I must unfortunately acknowledge took it upon himself to mistreat you. I promise you that he will not live to see the sunset of the day in which he does it again.’

‘I see. The humiliation and pain were not your idea, but the captivity was. Where’s the difference, Zalasta?’

He sighed and passed a weary hand over his eyes. ‘It is necessary,’ he told her.

‘For what reason? Sephrenia will never submit to you, you know. Even if Bhelliom and the rings fall into your hands, you cannot compel her love.’

‘There are other considerations as well, Queen Ehlana,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Please bring your maid and come with me. I’ll see you to your quarters.’

‘Some dungeon, I suppose?’

He sighed. ‘No, Ehlana, the quarters are clean and comfortable. I’ve seen to that myself. Your ordeal is at an end, I promise you.’

‘My ordeal, as you call it, will not be at an end until I’m reunited with my husband and my daughter.’

‘That, we may pray, will be very soon. It is, however, in the hands of Prince Sparhawk. All he must do is follow instructions. Your quarters are not far. Follow me, please,’ He led them to a nearby building and unlocked the door.

Their prison was very nearly luxurious, an apartment of sorts, complete with several bedrooms, a dining hall, a large sitting-room, and even a kitchen. The building had evidently been the palace of some nobleman, and, although the upper stories had long since collapsed, the ground-floor rooms, their ceilings supported by great arches, were still intact. The furnishings in the rooms were ornate, though mis-matched, and there were rugs on the floors and drapes to cover the windows – windows, Ehlana noticed, which had recently been fitted with stout iron bars.

The fireplaces were cavernous, and they were all filled with blazing logs, not so much to ward off the minimal chill of the Arjuni winter but to dry out rooms saturated with over a millennium of dank humidity. There were beds and fresh linen and clothing of an Arjuni cut, but most important of all, there was a fair-sized room with a large marble bathtub set into the floor. Ehlana’s eyes fixed longingly on that ultimate luxury. It so completely seized her attention that she scarcely heard Zalasta’s apologies. After a few vague replies from her, the Styric realized that his continued presence was no longer appreciated, so he politely excused himself and left.

‘Alean, dear,’ Ehlana said in an almost dreamy voice, ‘that’s quite a large tub – certainly large enough for the two of us, wouldn’t you say?’

Alean was also gazing at the tub with undisguised longing. ‘Easily, your Majesty,’ she replied.

‘How long do you think it might take us to heat enough water to fill it?’

‘There are plenty of large pots and kettles in that kitchen, my Queen,’ the gentle girl said, ‘and all the fireplaces are going. It shouldn’t take very long at all.’

‘Wonderful,’ Ehlana said enthusiastically. ‘Why don’t we get started?’

‘Just exactly who is this Klæl, Zalasta?’ Ehlana asked the Styric several days later when he came by to call. Zalasta came to their prison often, as if his visits in some way lessened his guilt, and he always talked, long, rambling, sometimes disconnected talk that often revealed far more than he probably intended for her to know.

‘Klæl is an eternal being,’ he replied. Ehlana noted almost absently that the heavily accented Elenic which had so irritated her when they had first met in Sarsos was gone now. Another of his ruses, she concluded. ‘Klæl is far more eternal than the Gods of this world,’ he continued. ‘He’s in some way connected to Bhelliom. They’re contending principles, or something along those lines. I was a bit distraught when Cyrgon explained the relationship to me, so I didn’t fully understand.’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she murmured. Her relationship with Zalasta was peculiar. The circumstances made ranting and denunciation largely a waste of time, so Ehlana was civil to him. He appeared to be grateful for that, and his gratitude made him more open with her. That civility, which cost her nothing, enabled her to pick up much information from the Styric’s rambling conversation.

‘Anyway,’ Zalasta continued, ‘Cyzada was terrified when Cyrgon commanded him to summon Klæl, and he tried very hard to talk the God out of the notion. Cyrgon was implacable, though, and he was filled with rage when Sparhawk neatly plucked the Trolls right out of his grasp. We’d never even considered the possibility that Sparhawk might release the Troll-Gods from their confinement.’

‘That was Sir Ulath’s idea,’ Ehlana told him. ‘Ulath knows a great deal about Trolls.’

‘Evidently so. At any rate, Cyrgon forced Cyzada to summon Klæl, but Klæl no sooner appeared than he went in search of Bhelliom. That took Cyrgon aback. It had been his intention to hold Klæl in reserve – hiding, so to speak – and to unleash him by surprise. That went out the window when Klæl rushed off to the North Cape to confront Bhelliom. Sparhawk knows that Klæl is here now – although I have no idea what he can do about it. That was what made the summoning of Klæl such idiocy in the first place. Klæl can’t be controlled. I tried to explain that to Cyrgon, but he wouldn’t listen. Our goal is to gain possession of Bhelliom, and Klæl and Bhelliom are eternal enemies. As soon as Cyrgon takes Bhelliom in his hands, Klæl will attack him, and I’m fairly certain that Klæl is infinitely more powerful than he is.’ Zalasta glanced around cautiously. ‘The Cyrgai are in many ways a reflection of their God, I’m afraid. Cyrgon abhors any kind of intelligence. He’s frighteningly stupid sometimes.’

‘I hate to point this out, Zalasta,’ she said insincerely, ‘but you have this tendency to ally yourself with defectives. Annias was clever enough, I suppose, but his obsession with the Archprelacy distorted his judgment, and Martel’s drive for revenge made his thinking just as distorted. From what I gather, Otha was as stupid as a stump, and Azash was so elemental that all he had on his mind were his desires. Coherent thought was beyond him.’

‘You know everything, don’t you, Ehlana?’ he said. ‘How on earth did you find all of this out?’

‘I’m not really at liberty to discuss it,’ she replied.

‘No matter, I suppose,’ he said absently. A sudden hunger crossed his face. ‘How is Sephrenia?’ he asked.

‘Well enough. She was very upset when she first found out about you, though – and your attempt on Aphrael’s life was really ill-conceived, you know. That was the one thing that convinced her of your treachery.’

‘I lost my head,’ he confessed. ‘That cursed Delphaeic woman destroyed three hundred years of patient labor with a toss of her head.’

‘I suppose it’s none of my business, but why didn’t you just accept the fact that Sephrenia was wholly committed to Aphrael and let it go at that? There’s no way you can ever compete with the Child Goddess, you know.’

‘Could you have ever accepted the idea that Sparhawk was committed to another, Ehlana?’ His tone was accusing.

‘No,’ she admitted, ‘I suppose I couldn’t have. We do strange things for love, don’t we, Zalasta? I was at least direct about it, though. Things might have worked out differently for you if you hadn’t tried deceit and deception. Aphrael’s not completely unreasonable, you know.’

‘Perhaps not,’ he replied. Then he sighed deeply. ‘But we’ll never know, will we?’

‘No. It’s far too late now.’

‘The glazier cracked the pane when he was setting it into the frame, my Queen,’ Alean said quietly, pointing at the defective triangle of bubbled glass in the lower corner of the window. ‘He was very clumsy.’

‘How did you come to know so much about this, Alean?’ Ehlana asked her.

‘My father was apprenticed to a glazier when he was young,’ the doe-eyed girl replied. ‘He used to repair windows in our village.’ She touched the tip of the glowing poker to the bead of lead that held the cracked pane in place. ‘I’ll have to be very careful,’ she said, frowning in concentration, ‘but if I do it right, I can fix it so that we can take out this little section of glass and put it back in again. That way, we’ll be able to hear what they’re talking about out there in the street, and then we’ll be able to put the glass back in again so that they’ll never know what we’ve done. I thought you might want to be able to listen to them, and they always seem to gather just outside this window.’

‘You’re an absolute treasure, Alean!’ Ehlana exclaimed, impulsively embracing the girl.

‘Be careful, my Lady!’ Alean cried in alarm. ‘The hot iron!’

Alean was right. The window with the small defective pane was at the corner of the building, and Zalasta, Scarpa and the others were quartered in the attached structure. It appeared that whenever they wanted to discuss something out of the hearing of the soldiers, they habitually drifted to the walled-in cul-de-sac just outside the window. The small panes of cheap glass leaded into the window-frame were only semi-transparent at best, and so, with minimal caution, Alean’s modification of the cracked pane permitted Ehlana to listen and even marginally observe without being seen.

On the day following her conversation with Zalasta, she saw the white-robed Styric approaching with a look of bleakest melancholy on his face and with Scarpa and Krager close behind him. ‘You’ve got to snap out of this, Father,’ Scarpa said urgently. ‘The soldiers are beginning to notice.’

‘Let them,’ Zalasta replied shortly.

‘No, Father,’ Scarpa said in his rich, theatrical voice, ‘we can’t do that. These men are animals. They function below the level of thought. If you walk around through these streets with the face of a little boy whose dog just died, they’re going to think that something’s wrong and they’ll start deserting by the regiment. I’ve spent too much time and effort gathering this army to have you drive them away by feeling sorry for yourself.’

‘You’d never understand, Scarpa,’ Zalasta retorted. ‘You can’t even begin to comprehend the meaning of love. You don’t love anything.’

‘Oh, yes I do, Zalasta,’ Scarpa snapped. ‘I love me. That’s the only kind of love that makes any sense.’

Ehlana just happened to be watching Krager. The drunkard’s eyes were narrowed, shrewd. He casually moved his ever-present tankard around behind him and poured most of the wine out. Then he raised the tankard and drank off the dregs noisily. Then he belched. ‘Parn’me,’ he slurred, reaching out his hand to the wall to steady himself as he weaved back and forth on his feet.

Scarpa gave him a quick, irritated glance, obviously dismissing him. Ehlana, however, rather quickly reassessed Krager. He was not always nearly as drunk as he appeared to be.

‘It’s all been for nothing, Scarpa,’ Zalasta groaned. ‘I’ve allied myself with the diseased, the degenerate and the insane for nothing. I had thought that once Aphrael was gone, Sephrenia might turn to me. But she won’t. She’d die before she’ll have anything to do with me.’

Scarpa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let her die then,’ he said bluntly. ‘Can’t you get it through your head that one woman’s the same as any other? Women are a commodity – like bales of hay or barrels of wine. Look at Krager here. How much affection do you think he has for an empty wine barrel? It’s the new ones, the full ones, that he loves, right, Krager?’

Krager smirked at him owlishly and then belched again. ‘Parn’me,’ he said.

‘I can’t really see any reason for this obsession of yours anyway,’ Scarpa continued to grind on his father’s most sensitive spot. ‘Sephrenia’s only damaged goods now. Vanion’s had her – dozens of times. Are you so poor-spirited that you’d take the leavings of an Elene?’

Zalasta suddenly smashed his fist against the stone wall with a snarl of frustration.

‘He’s probably so used to having her that he doesn’t even waste his time murmuring endearments to her any more,’ Scarpa went on. ‘He just takes what he wants from her, rolls over and starts to snore. You know how Elenes are when they’re in rut. And she’s probably no better. He’s made an Elene out of her, Father. She’s not a Styric any more. She’s become an Elene – or even worse, a mongrel. I’m really surprised to see you wasting all this pure emotion on a mongrel.’ He sneered. ‘She’s no better than my mother or my sisters, and you know what they were.’

Zalasta’s face twisted, and he threw back his head and actually howled. ‘I’d rather see her dead!’

Scarpa’s pale, bearded face grew sly. ‘Why don’t you kill her then, Father?’ he asked in an insinuating whisper. ‘Once a decent woman’s been bedded by an Elene, she can never be trusted again, you know. Even if you did persuade her to marry you, she’d never be faithful.’ He laid an insincere hand on his father’s arm. ‘Kill her, Father,’ he advised. ‘At least your memories of her will be pure; she never will be.’

Zalasta howled again and clawed at his beard with his long fingernails. Then he turned quickly and ran off down the street.

Krager straightened, and his seeming drunkenness slid away. ‘You took an awful chance there, you know,’ he said in a cautious tone.

Scarpa looked sharply at him. ‘Very good, Krager,’ he murmured. ‘You played the part of a drunkard almost to perfection.’

‘I’ve had lots of practice,’ Krager shrugged. ‘You’re lucky he didn’t obliterate you, Scarpa – or tie your guts in knots again.’

‘He couldn’t,’ Scarpa smirked. ‘I’m a fair magician myself, you know, and I’m skilled enough to know that you have to have a clear head to work the spells. I kept him in a state of rage. He couldn’t have worked up enough magic to break a spider-web. Let’s hope that he does kill Sephrenia. That should really scatter Sparhawk’s wits, not to mention the fact that as soon as the desire of his life is no more than a pile of dead meat, Zalasta’s very likely to conveniently cut his own throat.’

‘You really hate him, don’t you?’

‘Wouldn’t you, Krager? He could have taken me with him when I was a child, but he’d come to visit for a while, and he’d show me what it meant to be a Styric, and then he’d go off alone, leaving me behind to be tormented by whores. If he doesn’t have the stomach to cut his own throat, I’d be more than happy to lend him a hand.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright, and he was smiling broadly. ‘Where’s your wine barrel, Krager?’ he asked. ‘Right now I feel like getting drunk.’ And he began to laugh, a cackling, insane laugh empty of any mirth or humanity.

‘It’s no use!’ Ehlana said, flinging the comb across the room. ‘Look at what they’ve done to my hair!’ She buried her face in her hands and wept.

‘It’s not hopeless, my Lady,’ Alean said in her soft voice. ‘There’s a style they wear in Cammoria.’ She lifted the mass of blonde hair on the right side of Ehlana’s head and brought it over across the top. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It covers all the bare places, and it really looks quite chic’

Ehlana looked hopefully into her mirror. ‘It doesn’t look too bad, does it?’ she conceded.

‘And if we set a flower just behind your right ear, it would really look very stunning.’

‘Alean, you’re wonderful!’ the Queen exclaimed happily. ‘What would I ever do without you?’

It took them the better part of an hour, but at last the unsightly bare places were covered, and Ehlana felt that some measure of her dignity had been restored.

That evening, however, Krager came to call. He stood swaying in the doorway, his eyes bleary and a drunken smirk on his face. ‘Harvest-time again, Ehlana,’ he announced, drawing his dagger. ‘It seems that I’ll need just a bit more of your hair.’