скачать книгу бесплатно
Rollo didn’t say anything, but then Rollo seldom did.
Sephrenia, who was standing in the doorway, however, seemed a bit startled. ‘Aren’t you feeling well, Sparhawk?’
‘I’m fine, little mother. Why do you ask?’ He hadn’t really expected anyone to witness a performance intended primarily for his wife and daughter.
‘You do realise that you’re talking to a stuffed toy, don’t you?’
Sparhawk stared at Rollo in mock surprise. ‘Why, I believe you’re right, Sephrenia. How strange that I didn’t notice that. Maybe it has something to do with being rousted out of bed at the crack of dawn.’ No matter how hard he tried to put a good face on this, it wasn’t going to go very well.
‘What on earth are you talking about, Sparhawk?’
‘You see, Rollo?’ Sparhawk said, trying to rescue something. ‘They just don’t understand – any of them.’
‘Ah – Prince Sparhawk?’ It was Ehlana’s maid Alean. She had come into the room unnoticed, and her huge eyes were concerned. ‘Are you all right?’
Things were deteriorating all around Sparhawk. ‘It’s a long, long story, Alean,’ he sighed.
‘Have you seen the princess, my Lord?’ Alean was looking at him strangely.
‘She’s in bed with her mother.’ There was really not much left for him to salvage from the situation. ‘I’m going to the bath-house – if anybody cares.’ And he stalked from the room with the tatters of his dignity trailing along behind him.
Zalasta the Styric was an ascetic-looking man with white hair and a long, silvery beard. He had the angular, uncompleted-looking face of all Styric men, shaggy black eyebrows and a deep, rich voice. He was Sephrenia’s oldest friend, and was generally conceded to be the wisest and most powerful magician in Styricum. He wore a white, cowled robe and carried a staff, which may have been an affectation, since he was quite vigorous and did not need any aid when he walked. He spoke the Elenic language very well, although with a heavy Styric accent. They gathered that morning in Sephrenia’s interior garden to hear the details of what was really going on in Tamuli.
‘We can’t be entirely positive if they’re real or not,’ Zalasta was saying. ‘The sightings have been random and very fleeting.’
‘They’re definitely Trolls, though?’ Tynian asked him.
Zalasta nodded. ‘No other creature looks quite like a Troll.’
‘That’s God’s own truth,’ Ulath murmured. ‘The sightings could very well have been of real Trolls. Some time back they all just packed up and left Thalesia. Nobody ever thought to stop one to ask him why.’
‘There have also been sightings of Dawn-men,’ Zalasta reported.
‘What are they, learned one?’ Patriarch Emban asked him.
‘Man-like creatures from the beginning of time, your Grace. They’re a bit bigger than Trolls, but not as intelligent. They roam in packs, and they’re very savage.’
‘We’ve met them, friend Zalasta,’ Kring said shortly. ‘I lost many comrades that day.’
‘There may not be a connection,’ Zalasta continued. ‘The Trolls are contemporary creatures, but the Dawn-men definitely come from the past. Their species has been extinct for some fifty aeons. There have also been some unconfirmed reports of sightings of Cyrgai.’
‘You can mark that down as confirmed, Zalasta,’ Kalten told him. ‘They provided us with some entertainment one night last week.’
‘They were fearsome warriors,’ Zalasta said.
‘They might have impressed their contemporaries,’ Kalten disagreed, ‘but modern tactics and weapons and equipment are a bit beyond their capabilities. Catapults and the charge of armoured knights seemed to baffle them.’
‘Just exactly who are the Cyrgai, learned one?’ Vanion asked.
‘I gave you the scrolls, Vanion,’ Sephrenia said. ‘Didn’t you read them?’
‘I haven’t got that far yet. Styric’s a difficult language to read. Somebody should give some thought to simplifying your alphabet.’
‘Hold it,’ Sparhawk interrupted. He looked at Sephrenia. ‘I’ve never seen you read anything,’ he accused her. ‘You wouldn’t let Flute even touch a book.’
‘Not an Elene book, no.’
‘Then you can read?’
‘In Styric, yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Because it wasn’t really any of your business, dear one.’
‘You lied!’ That shocked him for some reason.
‘No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. I can’t read Elene – largely because I don’t want to. It’s a graceless language, and your writings are ugly – like spiders’ webs.’
‘You deliberately led us to believe that you were too simple to learn how to read.’
‘That was sort of necessary, dear one. Pandion novices aren’t really very sophisticated, and you had to have something to feel superior about.’
‘Be nice,’ Vanion murmured.
‘I had to try to train a dozen generations of those great, clumsy louts, Vanion,’ she said with a certain asperity, ‘and I had to put up with their insufferable condescension in the process. Yes, Sparhawk, I can read, and I can count, and I can argue philosophy and even theology if I have to, and I am fully trained in logic.’
‘I don’t know why you’re yelling at me,’ he protested mildly, kissing her palms. ‘I’ve always believed you were a fairly nice lady –’ he kissed her palms again, ‘for a Styric, that is.’
She jerked her hands out of his grasp and then saw the grin on his face. ‘You’re impossible,’ she said, also suddenly smiling.
‘We were talking about the Cyrgai, I believe,’ Stragen said smoothly. ‘Just exactly who are they?’
‘They’re extinct, fortunately,’ Zalasta replied. ‘They were of a race that appears to have been unrelated to the other races of Daresia – neither Tamul nor Elene, and certainly not Styric. Some have suggested that they might be distantly related to the Valesians.’
‘I couldn’t accept that, learned one,’ Oscagne disagreed. ‘The Valesians don’t even have a government, and they have no concept of war. They’re the happiest people in the world. They could not in any way be related to the Cyrgai.’
‘Temperament is sometimes based on climate, your Excellency,’ Zalasta pointed out. ‘Valesia’s a paradise, and central Cynesga’s not nearly so nice. Anyway, the Cyrgai worshipped a hideous God named Cyrgon – and, like most primitive people do, they took their name from him. All peoples are egotistical, I suppose. We’re all convinced that our God is better than all the rest and that our race is superior. The Cyrgai took that to extremes. We can’t really probe the beliefs of an extinct people, but it appears that they even went so far as to believe that they were somehow of a different species from other humans. They also believed that all truth had been revealed to them by Cyrgon, so they strongly resisted new ideas. They carried the idea of a warrior society to absurd lengths, and they were obsessed with the concept of racial purity and strove for physical perfection. Deformed babies were taken out into the desert and left to die. Soldiers who received crippling injuries in battle were killed by their friends. Women who had too many female children were strangled. They built a city-state beside the Oasis of Cyrga in Central Cynesga and rigidly isolated themselves from other peoples and their ideas. The Cyrgai were terribly afraid of ideas. Theirs was perhaps the only culture in human history that idealised stupidity. They looked upon superior intelligence as a defect, and overly bright children were killed.’
‘Nice group,’ Talen murmured.
‘They conquered and enslaved their neighbours, of course – mostly desert nomads of indeterminate race – and there was a certain amount of interbreeding, soldiers being what they are.’
‘But that was perfectly all right, wasn’t it?’ Baroness Melidere added tartly. ‘Rape is always permitted, isn’t it?’
‘In this case it wasn’t, Baroness,’ Zalasta replied. ‘Any Cyrgai caught “fraternising” was killed on the spot.’
‘What a refreshing idea,’ she murmured.
‘So was the woman, of course. Despite all their best efforts, however, the Cyrgai did produce a number of offspring of mixed race. In their eyes, that was an abomination, and the half-breeds were killed whenever possible. In time, however, Cyrgon apparently had a change of heart. He saw a use for these half-breeds. They were given some training and became a part of the army. They were called “Cynesgans”, and in time they came to comprise that part of the army that did all of the dirty work and most of the dying. Cyrgon had a goal, you see – the usual goal of the militaristically inclined.’
‘World domination?’ Vanion suggested.
‘Precisely. The Cynesgans were encouraged to breed, and the Cyrgai used them to expand their frontiers. They soon controlled all of the desert and began pushing at the frontiers of their neighbours. That’s where we encountered them. The Cyrgai weren’t really prepared to come up against Styrics.’
‘I can imagine,’ Tynian laughed.
Zalasta smiled briefly. It was an indulgent sort of smile, faintly tinged with a certain condescension. ‘The priests of Cyrgon had certain limited gifts,’ the Styric went on, ‘but they were certainly no match for what they encountered.’ He sat tapping his fingertips together. ‘Perhaps when we examine it more closely, that’s our real secret,’ he mused. ‘Other peoples have only one God – or at the most, a small group of Gods. We have a thousand, who more or less get along with each other and agree in a general sort of way about what ought to be done. Anyway, the incursion of the Cyrgai into the lands of the Styrics proved to be disastrous for them. They lost virtually all of their Cynesgans and a major portion of their full-blooded Cyrgai. They retreated in absolute disorder, and the Younger Gods decided that they ought to be encouraged to stay at home after that. No one knows to this day which of the Younger Gods developed the idea, but it was positively brilliant in both its simplicity and its efficacy. A large eagle flew completely around Cynesga in a single day, and his shadow left an unseen mark on the ground. The mark means absolutely nothing to the Cynesgans or the Atans or Tamuls or Styrics or Elenes or even the Arjuni. It was terribly important to the Cyrgai, however, because after that day any Cyrgai who stepped over that line died instantly.’
‘Wait a minute,’ Kalten objected. ‘We encountered Cyrgai just to the west of here. How did they get across the line?’
‘They were from the past, Sir Kalten,’ Zalasta explained, spreading his hands. ‘The line didn’t exist for them, because the eagle had not yet made his flight when they marched north.’
Kalten scratched his head and sat frowning. ‘I’m not really all that good at logic,’ he confessed, ‘but isn’t there a hole in that somewhere?’
Bevier was also struggling with it. ‘I think I see how it works,’ he said a little dubiously, ‘but I’ll have to go over it a few times to be sure.’
‘Logic can’t answer all the questions, Sir Bevier,’ Emban advised. He hesitated. ‘You don’t have to tell Dolmant I said that, of course,’ he added.
‘It may be that the enchantment’s no longer in force,’ Sephrenia suggested to Zalasta. ‘There’s no real need for it, since the Cyrgai are extinct.’
‘And no way to prove it either,’ Ulath added, ‘one way or the other.’
Stragen suddenly laughed. ‘He’s right, you know,’ he said. ‘There might very well be this dreadful curse out there that nobody even knows about because the people it’s directed at all died out thousands of years ago. What finally happened to them, learned one?’ he asked Zalasta. ‘You said that they were extinct.’
‘Actually, Milord Stragen, they bred themselves out of existence.’
‘Isn’t that a contradiction?’ Tynian asked him.
‘Not really. The Cynesgans had been very nearly wiped out, but now they were of vital importance, since they were the only troops at Cyrgon’s disposal who could cross the frontiers. He directed the Cyrgai to concentrate on breeding up new armies of these formerly despised underlings. The Cyrgai were perfect soldiers who always obeyed orders to the letter. They devoted their attention to the Cynesgan women even to the exclusion of their own. By the time they realised their mistake, all the Cyrgai women were past child-bearing age. Legend had it that the last of the Cyrgai died about ten thousand years ago.’
‘That raises idiocy to an art-form, doesn’t it?’ Stragen observed.
Zalasta smiled a thin sort of smile. ‘At any rate, what used to be Cyrga is now Cynesga. It’s occupied by a defective, mongrel race that manages to survive only because it sits astride the major trade routes between the Tamuls of the east and the Elenes of the west. ‘The rest of the world looks upon these heirs of the invincible Cyrgai with the deepest contempt. They’re sneaky, cowardly, thieving and disgustingly servile – a fitting fate for the offspring of a race that once thought it was divinely destined to rule the world.’
‘History’s such a gloomy subject,’ Kalten sighed.
‘Cynesga’s not the only place where the past is returning to haunt us,’ Zalasta added.
‘We’ve noticed,’ Tynian replied. ‘The Elenes in western Astel are all convinced that Ayachin’s returned.’
‘Then you’ve heard of the one they call Sabre?’ Zalasta asked.
‘We ran across him a couple of times,’ Stragen laughed. ‘I don’t think he poses much of a threat. He’s an adolescent poseur.’
‘He satisfies the needs of the western Astels, though,’ Tynian added. ‘They’re not exactly what you’d call deep.’
‘I’ve encountered them,’ Zalasta said wryly. ‘Kimear of Daconia and Baron Parok, his spokesman, are a bit more serious, though. Kimear was one of those men on horseback who emerge from time to time in Elene societies. He subdued the other two Elene Kingdoms in western Astel and founded one of those empires of a thousand years that spring up from time to time and promptly fall apart when the founder dies. The hero in Edom is Incetes – a bronze-age fellow who actually managed to hand to Cyrgai their first defeat. The one who does his talking for him calls himself Rebal. That’s not his real name, of course. Political agitators usually go by assumed names. Ayachin, Kimear and Incetes appeal to the very simplest of Elene emotional responses – muscularity, primarily. I wouldn’t offend you for the world, my friends, but you Elenes seem to like to break things and burn down other people’s houses.’
‘It’s a racial flaw,’ Ulath conceded.
‘The Arjuni present us with slightly different problems,’ Zalasta continued. ‘They’re members of the Tamul race, and their deep-seated urges are a bit more sophisticated. Tamuls don’t want to rule the world, they just want to own it.’ He smiled briefly at Oscagne. ‘The Arjuni aren’t very attractive as representatives of the race, though. Their hero is the fellow who invented the slave-trade.’
Mirtai’s breath hissed sharply, and her hand went to her dagger.
‘Is there some problem, Atana?’ Oscagne asked her mildly.
‘I’ve had experience with the slave-traders of Arjuna, Oscagne,’ she replied shortly. ‘Someday I hope to have more, and I won’t be a child this time.’
Sparhawk realised that Mirtai had never told them the story of how she had become a slave.
‘This Arjuni hero’s of a somewhat more recent vintage than the others,’ Zalasta continued. ‘He was of the twelfth century. His name was Sheguan.’
‘We’ve heard of him,’ Engessa said bleakly. ‘His slavers used to raid the training camps of Atan children. We’ve more or less persuaded the Arjuni not to do that any more.’
‘That sounds ominous,’ Baroness Melidere said.
‘It was an absolute disaster, Baroness,’ Oscagne told her. ‘Some Arjuni slavers made a raid into Atan in the seventeenth century, and an imperial administrator got carried away by an excess of righteous indignation. He authorised the Atans to mount a punitive expedition into Arjuna.’
‘Our people still sing songs about it,’ Engessa said in an almost dreamy fashion.
‘Bad?’ Emban asked Oscagne.
‘Unbelievable,’ Oscagne replied. ‘The silly ass who authorised the expedition didn’t realise that when you command the Atans to do something, you have to specifically prohibit certain measures. The fool simply turned them loose. They actually hanged the King of Arjuna himself and then chased all his subjects into the southern jungles. It took us nearly two hundred years to coax the Arjuni down out of the trees. The economic upheaval was a disaster for the entire continent.’
‘These events are somewhat more recent,’ Zalasta noted. ‘The Arjuni have always been slavers, and Sheguan was only one of several operating in northern Arjuna. He was an organiser more than anything. He established the markets in Cynesga and codified the bribes that protect the slave-routes. The peculiar thing we face in Arjuna is that the spokesman’s more important than the hero. His name is Scarpa, and he’s a brilliant and dangerous man.’
‘What about Tamul itself?’ Emban asked, ‘and Atan?’
‘We both seem to be immune to the disease, your Grace,’ Oscagne replied. ‘It’s probably because Tamuls are too egotistical for hero worship and because the Atans of antiquity were all so much shorter than their descendants that modern Atans overlook them.’ He smiled rather slyly at Engessa. ‘The rest of the world’s breathlessly awaiting the day when the first Atan tops ten feet. I think that’s the ultimate goal of their selective breeding campaign.’ He looked at Zalasta. ‘Your information’s far more explicit than ours, learned one,’ he complimented the Styric. ‘The best efforts of the empire have unearthed only the sketchiest of details about these people.’
‘I have different resources at my disposal, Excellency,’ Zalasta replied. ‘These figures from antiquity, however, would hardly be of any real concern. The Atans could quite easily deal with any purely military insurrection, but this isn’t a totally military situation. Someone’s been winnowing through the darker aspects of human imagination and spinning the horrors of folk-lore out of thin air. There are vampires and werewolves, ghouls, Ogres and once even a thirty-foot giant. The officials shrug these sightings off as superstitious nonsense, but the common people of Tamuli are in a state of abject terror. We can’t be certain of the reality of any of these things, but when you mingle monsters with Trolls, Dawn-men and Cyrgai, you have total demoralisation. Then, to push the whole thing over the edge, the forces of nature have been harnessed as well. There have been titanic thunderstorms, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and even isolated eclipses. The common people of Tamuli have become so fearful that they flee from rabbits and flocks of sparrows. There’s no real focus to these incidents. They simply occur at random, and since there’s no real plan behind them, there’s no way to predict when and where they’ll occur. That’s what we’re up against, my friends – a continent-wide campaign of terror – part reality, part illusion, part genuine magic. If it isn’t countered – and very, very soon – the people will go mad with fear. The empire will collapse, and the terror will reign supreme.’
‘And what was the bad news you had for us, Zalasta?’ Vanion asked him.
Zalasta smiled briefly. ‘You are droll, Lord Vanion,’ he said. ‘You may be able to gather more information this afternoon, my friends,’ he told them all. ‘You’ve been invited to attend the session of the Thousand. Your visit here is quite significant from a political point of view, and – although the council seldom agrees about anything – there’s a strong undercurrent of opinion that we may have a common cause with you in this matter.’ He paused, then sighed. ‘I think you should be prepared for a certain amount of antagonism,’ he cautioned. ‘There’s a reactionary faction in the council that begins to foam at the mouth whenever someone even mentions the word “Elene”. I’m sure they’ll try to provoke you.’
‘Something’s happening that I don’t understand, Sparhawk,’ Danae murmured quietly a bit later. Sparhawk had retired to one corner of Sephrenia’s little garden with one of Vanion’s Styric scrolls and had been trying to puzzle out the Styric alphabet. Danae had found him there and had climbed up into his lap.
‘I thought you were all-wise,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that supposed to be one of your characteristics?’
‘Stop that. Something’s terribly wrong here.’
‘Why don’t you talk with Zalasta about it? He’s one of your worshippers, isn’t he?’
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘I thought you and he and Sephrenia grew up together in the same village.’
