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‘ “It’s always a pleasure to talk with you, Sparhawk, particularly in view of the fact that it’s your hands that are chained this time. Now stop wasting time. Take Khalad and the Bhelliom and go to Beresa. You’ll receive further instructions there. Fondly, Krager”.’
Chapter 3 (#ulink_dd876b89-4671-5a72-9df9-2c60863cd845)
They talked and talked and talked, and every ‘maybe’ or ‘possibly’ or ‘probably’ or ‘on the other hand’ set Sparhawk’s teeth on edge. It was all pure speculation, useless guessing that circled and circled and never got to the point. He sat slightly apart from them holding the lock of pale hair. The hair felt strangely alive, coiling round his fingers in a soft caress.
It was his fault, of course. He should never have permitted Ehlana to come to Tamuli. It went further than that, though. Ehlana had been in danger all her life, and it had all been because of him – because of the fact that he was Anakha. Xanetia had said that Anakha was invincible, but she was wrong. Anakha was as vulnerable as any married man. By marrying Ehlana, he had immediately put her at risk, a risk that would last for as long as she lived.
He should never have married her. He loved her, of course, but was it an act of love to put her in danger? He silently cursed the weakness that had led him to even consider the ridiculous notion when she had first raised it. He was a soldier, and soldiers should never marry – particularly not scarred, battered old veterans with too many years and too many battles behind them and too many enemies still about. Was he some selfish old fool? Some disgusting, half-senile lecher eager to take advantage of a foolish young girl’s infatuation? Ehlana had extravagantly declared that she would die if he refused her, but he knew better than that. People die from a sword in the belly, or from old age, but they do not die from love. He should have laughed in her face and rejected her absurd command. Then he could have arranged a proper marriage for her, a marriage to some handsome young nobleman with good manners and a safe occupation. If he had, she would still be safely back in Cimmura instead of in the hands of madmen, degenerate sorcerers and alien Gods to whom her life meant nothing at all.
And still they talked on and on and on. Why were they wasting all their breath? There wasn’t any choice in the matter. Sparhawk would obey the instructions because Ehlana’s life depended on it. The others were certain to argue with him about it, and the arguments would only irritate him. The best thing would probably be just to take the Bhelliom and Khalad and slip out of Matherion without giving them the chance to drive him mad with their meaningless babble.
It was the touch of a springlike breeze on his cheek and a soft nuzzling on his hand that roused him from his gloomy reverie.
‘It was not mine intent to disturb thy thought, Sir Knight,’ the white deer apologized, ‘but my mistress would have words with thee.’
Sparhawk jerked his head round in astonishment. He no longer sat in the blue-draped room in Matherion, and the voices of the others had faded away to be replaced by the sound of the gentle lapping of waves upon a golden strand. His chair now sat on the marble floor of Aphrael’s temple on the small verdant island that rose gem-like from the sea. The breeze was soft under the rainbow-colored sky, and the ancient oaks around the alabaster temple rustled softly.
‘Thou hast forgotten me,’ the gentle white hind reproached him, her liquid eyes touched with sorrow.
‘Never,’ he replied. ‘I shall remember thee always, dear creature, for I do love thee, even as I did when first we met.’ The extravagant expression came to his lips unbidden.
The white deer sighed happily and laid her snowy head in his lap. He stroked her arched white neck and looked around.
The Child Goddess Aphrael, gowned in white and surrounded by a glowing nimbus, sat calmly on a branch of one of the nearby oaks. She lifted her many-chambered pipes and blew an almost mocking little trill.
‘What are you up to now, Aphrael?’ he called up to her, deliberately forcing away the flowery words that jumped to his lips.
‘I thought you might want to talk,’ she replied, lowering the pipes. ‘Did you want some more time for self-mortification? Would you like a whip so that you can flog yourself with it? Take as much time as you want, Father. This particular instant will last for as long as I want it to.’ She reached out with one grass-stained little foot, placed it on nothing at all and calmly walked down a non-existent stairway to the alabaster floor of her temple. She sank down on it, crossed her feet at the ankles and lifted her pipes again. ‘Will it disturb your sour musings if I play?’
‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.
She shrugged. ‘You seem to have this obscure need for penance of some kind, and there’s no time for it. I wouldn’t be much of a Goddess if I couldn’t satisfy both needs at the same time, now would I?’ She raised her pipes. ‘Do you have any favorites you’d like to hear?’
‘You’re actually serious, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ She breathed another little trill into the pipes.
He glared at her for a moment, and then he gave up. ‘Can we talk about this?’ he asked her.
‘You’ve come to your senses? Already? Amazing.’
He looked around at the island. ‘Where is this place?’ he asked curiously.
The Child Goddess shrugged. ‘Wherever I want it to be. I carry it with me everyplace I go. Were you serious about what you were just thinking, Sparhawk? Were you really going to snatch up Bhelliom, grab Khalad by the scruff of the neck, leap onto Faran’s back and try to ride off in three directions at the same time?’
‘All Vanion and the others are doing is talking, Aphrael, and the talk isn’t going anywhere.’
‘Did you speak with Bhelliom about this notion of yours?’
‘The decision is mine, Aphrael. Ehlana’s my wife.’
‘How brave you are, Sparhawk. You’re making a decision that involves the Bhelliom without even consulting it. Don’t be misled by its seeming politeness, Father. That’s just a reflection of its archaic speech. It won’t do something it knows is wrong, no matter how sorry you’re feeling for yourself, and if you grow too insistent, it might just decide to create a new sun – about six inches from your heart.’
‘I have the rings, Aphrael. I’m still the one giving the orders.’
She laughed at him. ‘Do you really think the rings mean anything, Sparhawk? They have no control over Bhelliom at all. That was just a subterfuge that concealed the fact that it has an awareness – and a will and purpose of its own. It can ignore the rings any time it wants to.’
‘Then why did it need me?’
‘Because you’re a necessity, Sparhawk – like wind or tide or rain. You’re as necessary as Klæl is – or Bhelliom – or me, for that matter. Someday we’ll have to come back here and have a long talk about necessity, but we’re a little pressed for time right now.’
‘And was that little virtuoso performance of yours yesterday another necessity as well? Would the world have come to an end if you hadn’t held that public conversation with yourself?’
‘What I did yesterday was useful, Father, not necessary. I am who I am, and I can’t change that. When I’m going through one of these transitions, there are usually people around who know both of the little girls, and they start noticing the similarities. I always make it a point to have the girls meet each other in public. It puts off tiresome questions and lays unwanted suspicions to rest.’
‘You terrified Mmrr, you know.’
She nodded. ‘I’ll make it up to her. That’s always been a problem. Animals can see right through my disguises. They don’t look at us in the way that we look at each other.’
He sighed. ‘What am I going to do, Aphrael?’
‘I was hoping that a visit here would bring you back to your senses. A stopover in reality usually has that effect.’
He looked up at her private, rainbow-colored sky. ‘This is your notion of reality?’
‘Don’t you like my reality?’
‘It’s lovely,’ he told her, absently stroking the white deer’s neck, ‘but it’s a dream.’
‘Are you really sure about that, Sparhawk? Are you so certain that this isn’t reality and that other place isn’t the dream?’
‘Don’t do that. It makes my head hurt. What should I do?’
‘I’d say that your first step ought to be to have a long conversation with Bhelliom. All of your moping around and contemplating arbitrary decisions has it more than a little worried.’
‘All right. Then what?’
‘I haven’t gotten that far yet.’ She grinned at him. ‘I’m a-workin’ on it though, Dorlin’,’ she added.
‘They’re going to be all right, Kalten,’ Sparhawk said, gently laying his hand on his suffering friend’s shoulder.
Kalten looked up, his eyes filled with hopeless misery. ‘Are you sure, Sparhawk?’
They will be if we can just keep our heads. Ehlana was in much more danger when I came back from Rendor, and we took care of that, didn’t we?’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ Kalten straightened up in his chair and jerked down his blue doublet. His face was bleak. ‘I think I’m going to find some people and hurt them,’ he declared.
‘Would you mind if I came along?’
‘You can help if you like.’ Kalten rubbed at the side of his face. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘You know that if you follow those orders in Krager’s note, he’ll be able to keep you plodding from one end of Tamuli to the other for the next year or more, don’t you?’
‘Do I have any choice? They’re going to be watching me.’
‘Let them. Do you remember how we met Berit?’
‘He was a novice in the Chapterhouse in Cimmura,’ Sparhawk shrugged.
‘Not when, I first saw him, he wasn’t. I was coming back from exile in Lamorkand, and I stopped at a roadside tavern outside of Cimmura. Berit was there with Kurik, and he was wearing your armor. I’ve known you since we were children, and even, I couldn’t tell that he wasn’t you. If, I couldn’t tell, Krager’s spies certainly won’t be able to. If somebody has to plod around Tamuli, let Berit do it. You and I have better things to do.’
Sparhawk was startled. ‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard yet.’ He looked around at the others. ‘Could I have your attention, please?’ he said.
They all looked sharply at him, their faces apprehensive.
‘It’s time to get to work,’ he told them. ‘Kalten here just reminded me that we’ve used Sir Berit as a decoy in the past. Berit and I are nearly the same size, and my armor fits him – more or less – and with his visor down, nobody can really tell that he isn’t me. If we can prevail on him to masquerade as a broken-down old campaigner again, we might just be able to prepare a few surprises for Krager and his friends.’
‘You don’t even have to ask, Sparhawk,’ Berit said.
‘Get some details before you volunteer like that, Berit,’ Khalad told his friend in a pained voice.
‘Your father used to say almost exactly the same thing,’ Berit recalled.
‘Why didn’t you listen to him?’
‘It’s an interesting plan, Prince Sparhawk,’ Oscagne said a bit dubiously, ‘but isn’t it extremely dangerous?’
‘I’m not afraid, your Excellency,’ Berit protested.
‘I wasn’t talking about your danger, young sir. I’m talking about the danger to Queen Ehlana. The moment someone penetrates your disguise – well …’ Oscagne spread his hands.
‘Then we’ll just have to make sure that his disguise is foolproof,’ Sephrenia said.
‘He can’t keep his visor down forever, Sephrenia,’ Sarabian objected.
‘I don’t think he’ll have to,’ Sephrenia replied. She looked speculatively at Xanetia. ‘Do we trust each other enough to co-operate, Anarae?’ she asked. ‘I’m talking about something a little deeper than we’ve gone so far.’
‘I will listen most attentively to thy proposal, my sister.’
‘Delphaeic magic is directed primarily inward, isn’t it?’
Xanetia nodded.
‘That’s probably why no one can hear or feel it. Styric magic is just the reverse. We alter things around us, so our magic reaches out. Neither form will work by itself in this particular situation, but if we were to combine them …’ She left it hanging in the air between them.
‘Interesting notion,’ Aphrael mused.
‘I’m not sure I follow,’ Vanion said.
‘The Anarae and I are going to have to experiment a bit,’ Sephrenia told him, ‘but if what I’ve got in mind works, we’ll be able to make Berit look so much like Sparhawk that they’ll be able to use each other for shaving mirrors.’
‘As long as each of us knows exactly what the other’s doing, it’s not too difficult, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia assured him later when he and Berit joined her, Vanion and the Anarae in the room she shared with Vanion.
‘Will it really work?’ he asked her dubiously.
‘They haven’t actually tried it yet, Sparhawk,’ Vanion told him, ‘so we’re not entirely positive.’
‘That doesn’t sound too promising. This isn’t much of a face, but it’s the only one I’ve got.’
‘There will be no danger to thee or to young Sir Berit, Anakha,’ Xanetia said. ‘In times past it hath oft been necessary for my people to leave our valley and to go abroad amongst others. This hath been our means of disguising our true identity.’
‘It works sort of like this, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia explained. ‘Xanetia casts a Delphaeic spell that would normally imprint your features on her own face, but just as she releases her spell, I release a Styric one that deflects the spell to Berit instead.’
‘Won’t every Styric in Matherion feel it when you release your spell?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘That’s the beauty of it, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael told him. ‘The spell itself originates with Xanetia, and others can’t feel or hear a Delphaeic spell. Cyrgon himself could be in the next room and he wouldn’t hear a thing.’
‘You’re sure it’s going to work?’
‘There’s one way to find out.’
Sparhawk, of course, did not feel a thing. He was only the model, after all. It was a bit disconcerting to watch Berit’s appearance gradually change, however.
When the combined spell had been completed, sparhawk carefully inspected his young friend. ‘Do I really look like that from the side?’ he asked Vanion, feeling a bit deflated.
‘I can’t tell the two of you apart.’
‘That nose is really crooked, isn’t it?’
‘We thought you knew.’
‘I’ve never looked at myself from the side this way before.’ Sparhawk looked critically at Berit’s eyes. ‘You should probably try to squint just a little,’ he suggested. ‘My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. ‘That’s one of the things you have to look forward to as you get older.’
‘I’ll try to remember that.’ Even Berit’s voice was different.
‘Do I really sound like that?’ Sparhawk was crestfallen.
Vanion nodded.
Sparhawk shook his head. ‘Seeing and hearing yourself as others do definitely lowers your opinion of yourself,’ he admitted. He looked at Berit again. ‘I didn’t feel anything, did you?’
Berit nodded, swallowing hard.
‘What was it like?’
‘I’d really rather not talk about it.’ Berit gently explored his new face with cringing fingertips, wincing as he did.
‘I still can’t tell them apart,’ Kalten marveled, staring first at Berit and then at Sparhawk.
‘That was sort of the idea,’ Sparhawk told him.
