‘And the uprising is to be timed to coincide with the election of the new Archprelate in the Basilica of Chyrellos?’
‘I really don’t know that, Sir Sparhawk. Please believe me. You’re probably right, but I can’t really say for certain.’
‘We’ll let that one pass for the moment. Now, I have a burning curiosity Just where is Martel right now?’
‘He’s gone to Dabour to talk with Arasham. The old man’s trying to whip his followers into a frenzy so that they’ll start burning churches and expropriating church lands. Martel was very upset when he heard about it, and he hurried to Dabour to try to head it off.’
‘Probably because it was premature?’
‘I’d imagine as much, yes.’
‘I guess that’s about all then, Elius,’ Sparhawk said benignly ‘I certainly want to thank you for your cooperation tonight.’
‘You’re letting me go?’ the consul asked incredulously.
‘No, I’m afraid not. Martel’s an old friend of mine. I want to surprise him when I get to Dabour, so I can’t risk having you get word to him that I’m coming. There’s a penitent’s cell down in the cellar of this monastery. I’m sure you feel very penitent just now, and I want to give you some time to reflect on your sins. The cell is quite comfortable, I’m told. It has a door, four walls, a ceiling and even a floor.’ He looked at the abbot. ‘It does have a floor, doesn’t it, my Lord?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the abbot confirmed, ‘a nice cold stone one.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Elius protested shrilly.
‘Sparhawk,’ Kurik agreed, ‘you really can’t confine a man in a penitent’s cell against his will. It’s a violation of Church law.’
‘Oh,’ Sparhawk said pettishly, ‘I suppose you’re right. I did want to avoid all the mess. Go ahead and do it the other way, then.’
‘Yes, my Lord,’ Kurik said respectfully He drew his dagger. ‘Tell me, my Lord Abbot,’ he said, ‘does your monastery have a graveyard?’
‘Yes, rather a nice one, actually.’
‘Oh, good. I hate just to drag them out into the open countryside and leave them for the jackals.’ He took hold of the consul’s hair and tipped his head back. Then he set the edge of his dagger against the cringing man’s throat. ‘This won’t take a moment, your Excellency,’ he said professionally.
‘My Lord Abbot,’ Elius squealed.
‘I’m afraid it’s altogether out of my hands, your Excellency,’ the abbot said with mock piety. ‘The Church Knights have their own laws. I wouldn’t dream of interfering.’
‘Please, my Lord Abbot,’ Elius pleaded. ‘Confine me to the penitent’s cell.’
‘Do you sincerely repent your sins?’ the abbot asked.
‘Yes! Yes! I am heartily ashamed!’
‘I am afraid, Sir Sparhawk, that I must intercede on this penitent’s behalf,’ the abbot said. ‘I cannot permit you to kill him until he has made his peace with God.’
‘That’s your final decision, my Lord Abbot?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘I’m afraid it is, Sir Sparhawk.’
‘Oh, all right. Let us know as soon as he’s completed his penance Then we’ll kill him.’
‘Of course, Sir Sparhawk.’
After the violently trembling Elius had been taken away by a pair of burly monks, the three men in the room began to laugh.
‘That was rare, my Lord,’ Sparhawk congratulated the abbot. ‘It was exactly the right tone.’
‘I’m not a complete novice at this sort of thing, Sparhawk,’ the abbot said. He looked at the big Pandion shrewdly ‘You Pandions have a reputation for brutality.
particularly where questioning captives is concerned.’
‘It seems to me I’ve heard some rumours to that effect, yes,’ Sparhawk admitted.
‘But you don’t really do anything to people, do you?’
‘Not usually, no. It’s the reputation that persuades people to co-operate. Do you have any idea how hard—and messy—it is actually to torture people? We planted those rumours about our order ourselves. After all, why work if you don’t have to?’
‘My feelings exactly, Sparhawk. Now,’ the abbot said eagerly, ‘why don’t you tell me about the naked lady—and the bridge—and anything else you might have run across? Don’t leave anything out. I’m only a poor cloistered monk, and I don’t really get much fun out of life.’
Chapter 20
Sparhawk winced and drew his breath in sharply. ‘Sephrenia, do you have to dig straight in?’ he complained.
‘Don’t be such a baby,’ she told him, continuing to pick at the sliver in his hand with her needle. ‘If I don’t get it all out, it’s going to fester.’
He sighed and gritted his teeth together as she continued to probe. He looked at Flute, who had both hands across her mouth as if to stifle a giggle.
‘You think it’s funny?’ he asked her crossly.
She lifted her pipes and blew a derisive little trill.
‘I’ve been thinking, Sparhawk,’ the abbot said. ‘If Annias has people in Jiroch the same as he has here in Cippria, wouldn’t it be safer just to go around it and avoid the possibility of being recognized?’
‘I think we’ll have to chance it, my Lord,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I’ve got a friend in Jiroch I need to talk with before we go upriver.’ He looked down at his black robe. ‘These ought to get us past a casual glance.’
‘I think it’s dangerous, Sparhawk.’
‘Not if we’re careful, I hope.’
Kurik, who had been saddling their horses and loading the pack mule the abbot had given them, came into the room. He was carrying a long, narrow wooden case. ‘Do you really have to take this?’ he asked Sephrenia.
‘Yes, Kurik,’ she replied in a sad voice. ‘I do.’
‘What’s in it?’
‘A pair of swords. They’re a part of the burden I bear.’
‘It’s a pretty large box for only two swords.’
‘There’ll be others, I’m afraid.’ She sighed, then began to wrap Sparhawk’s hand with a strip of linen cloth.
‘It doesn’t need a bandage, Sephrenia,’ he objected. ‘It was only a splinter.’
She gave him a long, steady stare.
He gave up. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Do whatever you think is best.’
‘Thank you.’ She tied the end of the bandage.
‘You’ll send word to Larium then, my Lord?’ Sparhawk asked the abbot.
‘On the next ship that leaves the harbour, Sir Sparhawk.’
Sparhawk thought a moment. ‘I don’t think we’ll be going back to Madel,’ he said. ‘We have some companions staying at the house of the Marquis Lycien there.’
The abbot nodded. ‘I know him,’ he said.
‘Could you get word to them as well? Tell them that if everything works out at Dabour, we’ll be going home from there I think they might as well go on back to Cimmura.’
‘I’ll see to it, Sparhawk.’
Sparhawk tugged thoughtfully at the knot on his bandage.
‘Leave it alone,’ Sephrenia told him.
He took his hand away. ‘I’m not trying to tell the preceptors what to do,’ he said to the abbot, ‘but you might suggest in your message that a few small contingents of Church Knights in the streets of Rendorish cities right now might remind the local population of just how unpleasant things can get if they pay too much attention to all these rumours.’
‘And head off the need for whole armies later on,’ the abbot agreed. ‘I’ll definitely mention it in my report.’
Sparhawk rose to his feet, ‘I’m in your debt again, my Lord Abbot,’ he said. ‘You always seem to be here when I need you.’
‘We serve the same master, Sparhawk,’ the abbot replied. He grinned then. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I sort of like you. You Pandions don’t always do things the way we would, but you get results, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?’
‘We can hope.’
‘Be careful in the dese
rt, my friend, and good luck.’
‘Thank you, my Lord.’
They went down to the central court of the monastery as the bells began to chime their call to morning prayers. Kurik tied Sephrenia’s sword case to the pack mule’s saddle, and they all mounted. Then they rode out through the front gate with the sound of the bells hovering in the air above them.
Sparhawk’s mood was pensive as they reached the dusty coast road and turned west towards Jiroch.
‘What is it, Sparhawk?’ Sephrenia asked him.
‘Those bells have been calling me for ten years now,’ he replied. ‘Somehow I’ve always known that someday I’d come back to this monastery ‘ He straightened in his saddle ‘It’s a good place,’ he said. ‘I’m a little sorry to leave it, but ‘ He shrugged and rode on.
The morning sun was very bright, and it reflected back blindingly from the wasteland of rock, sand, and gravel lying on the left side of the road. On the right side was a steep bank leading down to a gleaming white beach, and beyond that lay the deep blue waters of the inner sea. Within an hour it was quite warm. A half-hour later it was hot.
‘Don’t they ever get a winter down here?’ Kurik asked. mopping at his streaming face.
‘This is winter, Kurik,’ Sparhawk told him.
‘What’s it like in the summer?’
‘Unpleasant. In the summer you have to travel at night.’
‘How far is it to Jiroch?’
‘About five hundred leagues.’
‘Three weeks at least.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘We should have gone by ship—waterspouts or no.’
‘No, Kurik,’ Sephrenia disagreed. ‘None of us could be of any help to Ehlana if we’re all lying on the bottom of the sea.’
‘Won’t that thing that’s after us just use magic to locate us anyway?’
‘It seems that it can’t do that,’ she replied. ‘When it was looking for Sparhawk ten years ago, it had to question people. It couldn’t just sniff him out.’
‘I’d forgotten that,’ he admitted.
They rose early each day, even before the stars faded, and pushed their horses hard during the early morning hours before the sun became a bludgeon at midday. Then they rested in the scant shade of the tent the abbot had pressed on them while their mounts grazed listlessly on scrubby forage in the blistering sun. As the sun sank towards the west, they rode on, usually until well after dark. Occasionally, they reached some desert spring, inevitably surrounded by lush vegetation and shade. At times, they lingered for a day to rest their horses and to gather the strength to face the savage sun again.
It was at such a spring, where crystal water came purling out of a rocky slope to gather in an azure pool surrounded by palm trees, that the shade of a black-armoured Pandion Knight visited them. Sparhawk, clad in only a loincloth, had just emerged dripping from the pool when he saw the mounted figure approaching from the west. Although the sun stood at the figure’s back, it cast no shadow, and he could clearly see the sun-blasted hillsides through both horse and man. Once again he caught that charnelhouse reek; as the figure approached, he saw that its horse was little more than a vacant-eyed skeleton. He made no attempt to reach a weapon, but stood shivering despite the furnacelike heat as the mounted spectre bore down on them. Some few yards away, the shade reined in its skeletal mount and, with a deadly slow motion, drew its sword. ‘Little mother,’ it intoned hollowly to Sephrenia, ‘I have done all that I could.’ It raised the hilt of its weapon to its visor in a salute, then reversed the blade and offered the hilt across its insubstantial forearm.
Sephrenia, pale and faltering, crossed the hot gravel to the spectre and took the sword hilt in both hands. ‘Thy sacrifice shall be remembered, Sir Knight,’ she said in a trembling voice.
‘What is remembrance in the House of the Dead, Sephrenia? I did what duty commanded of me That alone is my solace in the eternal silence.’ Then it turned its visored countenance towards Sparhawk. ‘Hail, brother,’ it said in that same empty voice—‘Know that thy course is aright. At Dabour shalt thou find that answer which we have sought. Shouldst thou succeed in thy quest, we shall salute thee with our hollow cheers in the House of the Dead.’
‘Hail, brother,’ Sparhawk replied in a choked voice, ‘and farewell.’
Then the spectre vanished.
With a long, shuddering moan, Sephrenia collapsed. It was as if the weight of the suddenly materialized sword had crushed her to earth.
Kurik rushed forward, scooped her slight form up in his arms, and carried her back into the shade beside the pool.
Sparhawk, however, moved at a resolute pace towards the spot where she had fallen, heedless of the blistering gravel under his naked feet, and retrieved his fallen brother’s sword.
Behind him, he heard the sound of Flute’s pipes. The melody was one that he had not heard before. It was questioning and filled with a deep sadness and an aching kind of longing. He turned around with the sword in his hand. Sephrenia lay on a blanket in the shade of the palms. Her face seemed drawn, and quite suddenly dark circles had appeared beneath her now-closed eyes. Kurik knelt anxiously beside her, and Flute sat cross-legged not far away with her pipes to her lips, sending her strange, hymn-like song soaring into the air.
Sparhawk crossed the gravel and stopped in the shade. Kurik rose and joined him. ‘She won’t be able to go on today,’ the squire said quietly, ‘perhaps not even tomorrow.’
Sparhawk nodded.
‘This is weakening her terribly, Sparhawk,’ Kurik continued gravely ‘Each time one of those twelve knights dies, she seems to wilt a little more. Wouldn’t it be better to send her back to Cimmura when we get to Jiroch?’
‘Perhaps so, but she wouldn’t go.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Kurik agreed glumly. ‘You do know that you and I could move faster if we didn’t have her and the little girl along, though, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but what would we do without her when we got to where we’re going?’
‘You’ve got a point there, I guess. Did you happen to recognize that ghost?’
Sparhawk nodded. ‘Sir Kerris,’ he said shortly.
‘I never got to know him very well,’ Kurik admitted. ‘He always seemed a little stiff and formal.’
‘He was a good man, though.’
‘What did he say to you? I was too far away to hear him.’
‘He said that we’re on the right course and that we’ll find the answer we need at Dabour.’
‘Well, now,’ Kurik said. ‘That helps, doesn’t it? I was about half-afraid that we were chasing shadows.’
‘So was I,’ Sparhawk admitted.
Flute had laid aside her pipes and now sat beside Sephrenia. She reached out and took the stricken woman’s hand and held it. Her small face was grave, but betrayed no other emotion.
An idea came to Sparhawk. He went to where Sephrenia lay ‘Flute,’ he said quietly.
The little girl looked up at him.
‘Can you do something to help Sephrenia?’
Flute shook her head a bit sadly.
‘It is forbidden.’ Sephrenia’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, and her eyes were still closed. ‘Only those of us who were present can bear this burden.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Go put some clothes on, Sparhawk,’ she said then. ‘Don’t walk around like that in front of the child.’
They remained in the shade beside the pool for the remainder of that day and all of the next. On the morning of the third day, Sephrenia rose and resolutely began to gather up her things. ‘Time is moving along, gentlemen,’ she said crisply, ‘and we still have a long way to go.’
Sparhawk looked closely at her. Her face was still haggard, and the deep circles beneath her eyes had not lessened. As she bent to pick up her veil, he saw several silvery strands in her glistening black hair. ‘Wouldn’t you be stronger if we stayed here another day?’ he asked her.
‘Not appreciably, Sparhawk,’ she replied in a
weary voice. ‘My condition can’t be improved by resting. Let’s move on. It’s a long way to Jiroch.’
They rode at an easy pace at first, but after a few miles, Sephrenia spoke rather sharply. ‘Sparhawk,’ she said, ‘it’s going to take all winter if we keep sauntering along like this.’
‘All right, Sephrenia,’ he said. ‘Whatever you say.’
It was perhaps ten days later when they arrived in Jiroch. Like Cippria, the port city in western Rendor was a low, flat town with thick-walled, flat-roofed houses thickly plastered with white mortar. Sparhawk led them through a series of twisting alleys to a section of town not far from the river. It was a quarter where foreigners were, if not actually encouraged, at least tolerated. While most of the people in the streets were still Rendors, there was a fair spattering of brightly robed Cammorians, a number of Lamorks, and even a few Elenians in the crowd. Sparhawk and the others kept their hoods up and rode slowly to avoid attracting attention.
It was late morning when they reached a modest house set some distance back from the street. The man who owned the house was Sir Voren, a Pandion Knight, although few in Jiroch were aware of that fact. Most people in the port city thought of him as a moderately prosperous Elenian merchant. He did, in fact, engage in trade. Some years, he even made a profit. Sir Voren’s real purpose for being in Jiroch was not commercial, however. There were a goodly number of Pandion Knights submerged in the general population of Rendor, and Voren was their only contact with the motherhouse at Demos. All their communications and dispatches passed through his hands to be concealed in the boxes and bales of goods he shipped from the harbour.
A slack-lipped servant with dull, uncurious eyes led Sparhawk and the others through the house and on into a walled garden filled with the shade of fig trees and the musical trickle of a marble fountain in the centre. Neatly tended flowerbeds lined the walls, and the nodding blossoms were a riot of colours. Voren was seated on a bench beside the fountain. He was a tall, thin man with a sardonic sense of humour. His years in this southern kingdom had browned his skin until it was the colour of an old saddle. Though he was of late middle age, his hair was untouched by grey, but his tanned face was a tracery of wrinkles. He wore no doublet, but rather a plain linen shirt open at the neck. He rose as they entered the garden. ‘Ah, Mahkra,’ he greeted Sparhawk with a brief, sidelong glance at the servant, ‘so good to see you again, old boy.’