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‘It covers the front of my head. What else can you expect from a face?’
‘The physicians of Borrata seem less skilled than we’d been led to believe.’
‘We’ve wasted more time, then?’
‘We haven’t finished yet. Don’t give up hope.’
They came finally to a small, unpainted door set back in a shabby alcove. Sparhawk rapped, and a slurred voice responded, ‘Go away.’
‘We need your help, learned sir,’ Sephrenia said.
‘Go and bother somebody else. I’m busy getting drunk right now.’
‘That does it!’ Sparhawk snapped. He grasped the door handle and pushed, but the door was locked from the inside. Irritably, he kicked it open, splintering the frame.
The man inside the tiny cubicle blinked. He was a shabby little man with a crooked back and bleary eyes. ‘You knock very loudly, friend,’ he observed. Then he belched. ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Come in.’ His head weaved back and forth. He was shabbily dressed, and his wispy grey hair stuck out in all directions.
‘Is there something in the water around here that makes everybody so churlish?’ Sparhawk asked acidly.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ the shabby man replied. ‘I never drink water.’ He drank noisily from a battered tankard.
‘Obviously.’
‘Shall we spend the rest of the day exchanging insults, or would you rather tell me about your problem?’ The physician squinted myopically at Sparhawk’s face. ‘So you’re the one,’ he said.
‘The one what?’
‘The one we aren’t supposed to talk to.’
‘Would you like to explain that?’
‘A man came here a few days ago. He said that it would be worth a hundred gold pieces to every physician in the building if you left empty-handed.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘He had a military bearing and white hair.’
‘Martel,’ Sparhawk said to Sephrenia.
‘We should have guessed almost immediately,’ she replied.
‘Take heart, friends,’ the messy little man told them expansively. ‘You’ve found your way to the finest physician in Borrata.’ He grinned then. ‘My colleagues all fly south with the ducks in the fall going, “Quack, quack, quack.” You couldn’t get a sound medical opinion out of any one of them. The white-haired man said that you’d describe some symptoms. Some lady someplace is very ill, I understand, and your friend – this Martel you mentioned – would prefer that she didn’t recover. Why don’t we disappoint him?’ He drank deeply from his tankard.
‘You’re a credit to your profession, good doctor,’ Sephrenia said.
‘No. I’m a vicious-minded old drunkard. Do you really want to know why I’m willing to help you? It’s because I’ll enjoy the screams of anguish from my colleagues when all that money slips through their fingers.’
‘That’s as good a reason as any, I suppose,’ Sparhawk said.
‘Exactly.’ The slightly tipsy physician peered at Sparhawk’s nose. ‘Why didn’t you have that set when it got broken?’ he asked.
Sparhawk touched his nose. ‘I was busy with other things.’
‘I can fix it for you if you’d like. All I have to do is take a hammer and break it again. Then I can set it for you.’
‘Thanks all the same, but I’m used to it now.’
‘Suit yourself. All right, what are these symptoms you came here to describe?’
Once again Sephrenia ran down the list for him.
He sat scratching at his ear with his eyes narrowed. Then he rummaged through the litter piled high on his desk and pulled out a thick book with a torn leather cover. He leafed through it for several moments, then slammed it shut. ‘Just as I thought,’ he said triumphantly. He belched again.
‘Well?’ Sparhawk said.
‘Your friend was poisoned. Has she died yet?’
A chill caught at Sparhawk’s stomach. ‘No,’ he replied.
‘It’s only a matter of time.’ The physician shrugged. ‘It’s a rare poison from Rendor. It’s invariably fatal.’
Sparhawk clenched his teeth. ‘I’m going to go back to Cimmura and disembowel Annias,’ he grated, ‘with a dull knife.’
The disreputable little physician suddenly looked interested. ‘You do it this way,’ he suggested. ‘Make a lateral incision just below the navel. Then kick him over backwards. Everything ought to fall out at that point.’
‘Thank you.’
‘No charge. If you’re going to do something, do it right. I take it that this Annias person is the one you think was responsible?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘Go ahead and kill him then. I despise a poisoner.’
‘Is there an antidote for this poison?’ Sephrenia asked.
‘None that I know of. I’d suggest talking with several physicians I know in Cippria, but your friend will be dead before you could get back.’
‘No,’ Sephrenia disagreed. ‘She’s being sustained.’
‘I’d like to know how you managed that.’
‘The lady is Styric,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘She has access to certain unusual things.’
‘Magic? Does that really work?’
‘At times, yes.’
‘All right, then. Maybe you do have time.’ The seedy-looking doctor ripped a corner off one of the papers on his desk and dipped a quill into a nearly dry inkpot. ‘The first two names here are those of a couple of fairly adept physicians in Cippria,’ he said as he scrawled on the paper. ‘This last one is the name of the poison.’ He handed the paper to Sparhawk. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Now get out of here so I can continue what I was doing before you kicked in my door.’
Chapter 16 (#ulink_a8330e8e-368f-5a1c-8e64-deab4d6a1453)
‘Because you don’t look like Rendors,’ Sparhawk told them. ‘Foreigners attract a great deal of attention there – usually unfriendly. I can pass for a native in Cippria. So can Kurik. Rendorish women wear veils, so Sephrenia’s appearance won’t be a problem. The rest of you are going to have to stay behind.’
They were gathered in a large room on the upper floor of the inn near the university. The room was bare with only a few benches along the walls and no curtains at the narrow window. Sparhawk had reported what the tipsy physician had said and the fact that Martel had attempted subterfuge this time rather than a physical confrontation.
‘We could put something on our hair to change the colour,’ Kalten protested. ‘Wouldn’t that get us by?’
‘It’s the manner, Kalten,’ Sparhawk explained. ‘I could dye you green, and people would still know that you’re an Elenian. The same’s more or less true of the rest of you. You all have the bearing of knights. It takes years to erase that.’
‘You want us to stay here, then?’ Ulath asked.
‘No. Let’s all go down to Madel,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘If something unexpected comes up in Cippria, I can get word to you there faster.’
‘I think you’re overlooking something, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘We know that Martel’s moving around down here, and he’s probably got eyes everywhere. If we all ride out of Borrata in full armour, he’ll know about it before we cover half a league.’
‘Pilgrims,’ Ulath grunted cryptically.
‘I don’t quite follow you,’ Kalten said, frowning.
‘If we pack our armour in a cart and dress in sober clothes, we can join a group of pilgrims, and nobody’s going to give us a second glance.’ He looked at Bevier. ‘Do you know very much about Madel?’ he asked.
‘We have a chapterhouse there,’ Bevier replied. ‘I visit it from time to time.’
‘Are there any shrines or holy places there?’
‘Several. But pilgrims seldom travel in winter.’
‘They do if they get paid. ‘We’ll hire some – and a clergyman to sing hymns as we go along.’
‘It’s got possibilities, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘Martel doesn’t really know which way we’re going when we leave here, so his spies are going to be spread fairly thin.’
‘How will we know this Martel person?’ Bevier asked. ‘Should we encounter him while you’re in Cippria, I mean?’
‘Kalten knows him,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘and Talen has seen him once.’ Then he remembered something. He looked over at the boy, who was making a cat’s cradle to entertain Flute. ‘Talen,’ he said, ‘could you draw pictures of Martel and Krager?’
‘Of course.’
‘And we can conjure up the image of Adus as well,’ Sephrenia added.
‘Adus is easy,’ Kalten said. ‘Just put armour on a gorilla and you’ve got him.’
‘All right, we’ll do it that way, then,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Berit.’
‘Yes, Lord Sparhawk?’
‘Go and find a church somewhere – a poor one. Talk with the vicar. Tell him that we’ll finance a pilgrimage to the shrines in Madel. Ask him to pick a dozen or so of his neediest parishioners and to bring them here tomorrow morning. We’ll want him to come with us as well – to be the caretaker of our souls. And tell him that we’ll make a sizeable contribution to his church if he agrees.’
‘Won’t he ask about our motives, my Lord?’
‘Tell him that we’ve committed a dreadful sin and want to atone for it,’ Kalten shrugged. ‘Just don’t be too specific about the sin.’
‘Sir Kalten!’ Bevier gasped. ‘You would lie to a churchman?’
‘It’s not exactly a lie, Bevier. We’ve all committed sins. I’ve sinned at least a half-dozen times this week already. Besides, the vicar of a poor church isn’t going to ask too many questions when there’s a contribution involved.’
Sparhawk took a leather pouch from inside his tunic. He shook it a few times, and a distinctive jingling sound came from it. ‘All right, gentlemen,’ he said, untying the top of the pouch, ‘we’ve reached the part of this service you all enjoy the most – the offertory. God appreciates a generous giver, so don’t be shy. The vicar will need cash to hire pilgrims.’ He passed the pouch around.
‘Do you think God might accept a promissory note?’ Kalten asked.
‘God might. I won’t. Put something in the pouch, Kalten.’
The group that gathered in the innyard the following morning was uniformly shabby – widows in patched mourning, out-of-work artisans and several hungry beggars. They were all mounted on weary nags or sleepy-looking mules. Sparhawk looked at them from the window. ‘Tell the innkeeper to feed them,’ he said to Kalten.
‘There’s quite a number of them, Sparhawk.’
‘I don’t want them fainting from hunger a mile out of town. You take care of that while I go and talk with the vicar.’
‘Anything you say.’ Kalten shrugged. ‘Should I bathe them, too? Some of them look a bit unwashed.’
‘That won’t be necessary. Feed their horses and mules as well.’
‘Aren’t we being a little overgenerous?’
‘You get to carry any horse that collapses.’
‘Oh. I’ll see to it right away, then.’
The vicar of the poor church was a thin, anxious-looking man in his sixties. His silvery hair was curly and his face was drawn and deeply lined with care. ‘My Lord,’ he said, bowing deeply to Sparhawk.
‘Please, good vicar,’ Sparhawk said to him, ‘just “pilgrim” is adequate. We are all equal in the service of God. My companions and I wish simply to join with your good, pious folk and to journey to Madel that we may worship at the holy shrines there for the solace of our souls and in the certain knowledge of the infinite mercy of God.’
‘Well said – uh – pilgrim.’
‘Would you join us at table, good vicar?’ Sparhawk asked him. ‘We will go many miles before we sleep tonight.’
The vicar’s eyes grew suddenly bright. ‘I would be delighted, my Lord – uh, pilgrim, that is.’
The feeding of the Cammorian pilgrims and their mounts took quite some time and stretched the capacity of the kitchen and the stable grain bins to a considerable degree.
‘I’ve never seen people eat so much,’ Kalten grumbled. Clad in a sturdy, unmarked cloak, he swung up into his saddle just outside the inn.
‘They were hungry,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘At least we can see to it that they get a few good meals before they have to return to Borrata.’
‘Charity, Sir Sparhawk?’ Bevier asked. ‘Isn’t that a bit out of character? The grim-faced Pandions are not noted for their tender sensibilities.’
‘How little you know them, Sir Bevier,’ Sephrenia murmured. She mounted her white palfrey, then held out her hands to Flute, but the little girl shook her head, walked over to Faran and reached out her tiny hand. The big roan lowered his head, and she caressed his velvety nose. Sparhawk felt an odd quiver run through his mount’s body. Then Flute insistently raised her hands to the big Pandion. Gravely, Sparhawk leaned over and lifted her into her accustomed place in front of the saddle and enfolded her in his cloak. She nestled against him, took out her pipes, and began to play that same minor melody she had been playing when they had first found her.
The vicar at the head of their column intoned a brief prayer, invoking the protection of the God of the Elenes during their journey, an invocation punctuated by questioning – even sceptical – trills from Flute’s pipes.
