‘Growing,’ Kurik grunted, taking the cloak. ‘My sons are getting taller and Aslade’s getting fatter. Farm life agrees with her.’
‘You like plump women, Kurik,’ Sparhawk reminded his squire. ‘That’s why you married her.’
Kurik grunted again, looking critically at his Lord’s lean frame. ‘You haven’t been eating, Sparhawk,’ he accused.
‘Don’t mother me, Kurik.’ Sparhawk sprawled in a heavy oak chair. He looked around. The room had a stone floor and stone walls. The ceiling was low, with heavy black beams supporting it. A fire crackled in an arched fireplace, filling the room with dancing light and shadows. Two candles burned on the table, and two narrow cots stood, one against either wall. It was to the heavy rack beside the single blue-draped window that Sparhawk’s eyes went first, however. Hanging on that rack was a full suit of armour, enamelled shiny black; leaning against the wall beside it was a large black shield with the emblem of his family, a hawk with flared wings and with a spear in its talons, worked in silver upon its face. Beside the shield stood a massive, sheathed broadsword with a silver-bound hilt.
‘You forgot to oil it when you left,’ Kurik accused. ‘It took me a week to get the rust off. Give me your foot.’ He bent and worked off one of Sparhawk’s riding boots and then the other. ‘Why do you always have to walk in the mud?’ he growled, tossing the boots over beside the fireplace. ‘I’ve got a bath ready for you in the next room,’ he said then. ‘Strip. I want to see those wounds of yours anyway.’
Sparhawk sighed wearily and stood up. With his gruff squire’s peculiarly gentle help, he undressed.
‘You’re wet clear through,’ Kurik noted, touching his Lord’s clammy back with one rough, callused hand.
‘Rain does that to people sometimes.’
‘Did you ever see a surgeon about these?’ the squire demanded, lightly touching the wide purple scars on Sparhawk’s shoulders and left side.
‘A physician looked at them. There wasn’t a surgeon handy, so I left them to heal by themselves.’
Kurik nodded. ‘It shows,’ he said. ‘Go and get in the tub. I’ll fetch something for you to eat.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘That’s too bad. You look like a skeleton. Now that you’re back, I’m not going to let you walk around in that condition.’
‘Why are you bullying me, Kurik?’
‘Because I’m angry. You frightened me half to death. You’ve been gone for ten years, and there’s been little news – and all of it bad.’ The gruff man’s eyes grew momentarily soft, and he roughly grasped Sparhawk’s shoulders in a grip that might have brought a lesser man to his knees. ‘Welcome home, my Lord,’ he said in a thick voice.
Sparhawk roughly embraced his friend. ‘Thank you, Kurik,’ he said, his voice also thick. ‘It’s good to be back.’
‘All right,’ Kurik said, his face hard again. ‘Now get in the tub. You stink.’ And he turned on his heel and went to the door.
Sparhawk smiled and walked into the next room. He stepped into the wooden tub and sank gratefully down into the steaming water. He had been another man with another name – a man called Mahkra – for so long now that he knew that no simple bath would wash that other identity away, but it was good to relax and let the hot water and coarse soap rinse the dust of that dry, sun-blasted coast from his skin. In a kind of detached reverie as he washed his lean, scarred limbs, he remembered the life he had led as Mahkra in the city of Jiroch in Rendor. He remembered the small, cool shop where, as an untitled commoner, Mahkra had sold brass ewers, candied sweetmeats, and exotic perfumes while the bright sunlight reflected blindingly from the thick, white walls across the street. He remembered the hours of endless talk in the little wine shop on the corner, where Mahkra had sipped sour, resinous Rendorish wine by the hour and had delicately, subtly, probed for the information which was then passed on to his friend and fellow Pandion, Sir Voren – information concerning the reawakening of Eshandist sentiment in Rendor, of secret caches of arms hidden in the desert and of the activities of the agents of Emperor Otha of Zemoch. He remembered the soft, dark nights filled with the clinging perfume of Lillias, Mahkra’s sulking mistress, and of the beginning of each day when he had arisen and gone to the window to watch the women going to the wells in the steel-grey light of sunless dawn. He sighed. ‘And who are you now, Sparhawk?’ he asked himself softly. ‘No longer a merchant in brass and candied dates and perfumes, certainly, but once again a Knight Pandion? A magician? The Queen’s Champion? Perhaps not. Perhaps no more than a battered and tired man with a few too many years and scars and far too many skirmishes behind him.’
‘Didn’t it occur to you to cover your head while you were in Rendor?’ Kurik asked sourly from the doorway. The burly squire held a robe and a rough towel. ‘When a man starts talking to himself, it’s a sure sign that he’s been out in the sun too long.’
‘Just musing, Kurik. I’ve been a long time away from home, and it’s going to take a while to get used to it again.’
‘You may not have a while. Did anyone recognize you when you rode in?’
Sparhawk remembered the fop in the square and nodded. ‘One of Harparin’s toadies saw me in the square near the west gate.’
‘That’s it, then. You’re going to have to present yourself at the palace tomorrow, or Lycheas will have Cimmura taken apart stone by stone searching for you.’
‘Lycheas?’
‘The Prince Regent – bastard son to Princess Arissa and whatever drunken sailor or unhanged pickpocket got him on her.’
Sparhawk sat up quickly, his eyes hardening. ‘I think you’d better explain a few things, Kurik,’ he said. ‘Ehlana’s the Queen. Why does her kingdom need a Prince Regent?’
‘Where have you been, Sparhawk? On the moon? Ehlana fell ill a month ago.’
‘Not dead?’ Sparhawk demanded with a sudden sinking in his stomach and a wrench of unbearable loss at the memory of the pale, beautiful girl-child with the grave, serious grey eyes whom he had watched throughout her childhood and whom, in a peculiar way, he had come to love, though she had been but eight years old when King Aldreas had sent him into his exile in Rendor.
‘No,’ Kurik replied, ‘not dead, though she might as well be.’ He picked up the large, rough towel. ‘Come out of the tub,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll tell you about it while you eat.’
Sparhawk nodded and stood up. Kurik roughly towelled him off and then draped the soft robe about him. The table in the other room was laid with a platter of steaming slices of meat swimming in gravy, a half-loaf of rough, dark peasant bread, a wedge of cheese, and a pitcher of chilled milk. ‘Eat,’ Kurik said.
‘What’s been going on here?’ Sparhawk demanded as he seated himself at the table and started to eat. He was surprised to find that he was suddenly ravenous. ‘Start at the beginning.’
‘All right,’ Kurik agreed, drawing his dagger and starting to carve thick slices of bread from the loaf. ‘You knew that the Pandions were confined to the motherhouse at Demos after you left, didn’t you?’
Sparhawk nodded. ‘I heard about it. King Aldreas was never really very fond of us.’
‘That was your father’s fault, Sparhawk. Aldreas was very fond of his sister, and then your father forced him to marry someone else. That sort of soured his attitude towards the Pandion Order.’
‘Kurik,’ Sparhawk said, ‘it’s not proper to talk about the king that way.’
Kurik shrugged. ‘He’s dead now, so it doesn’t hurt him, and the way he felt about his sister was common knowledge anyway. The palace pages used to take money from anyone who wanted to watch Arissa walk mother-naked through the upper halls to her brother’s bedchamber. Aldreas was a weak king, Sparhawk. He was totally under the control of Arissa and the Primate Annias. With the Pandions confined at Demos, Annias and his underlings had things pretty much the way they wanted them. You were lucky not to have been here during those years.’
‘Perhaps,’ Sparhawk murmured. ‘What did Aldreas die from?’
‘They say that it was the falling-sickness. My guess would be that the whores Annias used to slip into the palace for him after his wife died finally wore him out.’
‘Kurik, you gossip worse than an old woman.’
‘I know,’ Kurik admitted blandly. ‘It’s a vice I have.’
‘And then Ehlana was crowned Queen?’
‘Right. And then things started to change. Annias was certain that he’d be able to control her the same way that he’d been able to control Aldreas, but she brought him up short. She summoned Preceptor Vanion from the motherhouse at Demos and made him her personal advisor. Then she told Annias to make preparations to retire to a monastery to meditate on the virtues proper to a churchman. Annias was livid, of course, and he started to scheme immediately. The messengers were as thick as flies on the road between here and the cloister where the Princess Arissa has been confined. They’re old friends, and they had certain common interests. At any rate, Annias suggested that Ehlana should marry her bastard cousin, Lycheas, but she laughed in his face.’
‘That sounds fairly characteristic,’ Sparhawk smiled. ‘I raised her myself and I taught her what was appropriate. What is this illness of hers?’
‘It appears to be the same one that killed her father. She had a seizure and never regained consciousness. The court physicians all maintained that she wouldn’t live out the week, but then Vanion took steps. He appeared at court with Sephrenia and eleven other Pandions – all in full armour and with their visors down. They dismissed the Queen’s attendants, took her from her bed, clothed her in her state robes and put the crown on her head. Then they carried her to the great hall and set her on the throne and locked the door. Nobody knows what they did in there, but when they opened the door again, Ehlana sat on her throne encased in crystal.’
‘What?’ Sparhawk exclaimed.
‘It’s as clear as glass. You can see every freckle on the Queen’s nose, but you can’t get near her. The crystal’s harder than diamond. Annias had workmen hammering on it for five days, and they couldn’t even chip it.’ Kurik looked at Sparhawk. ‘Could you do something like that?’ he asked curiously.
‘Me? Kurik, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Sephrenia taught us the basics, but we’re like babies compared to her.’
‘Well, whatever it was that she did, it’s keeping the Queen alive. You can hear her heart beating. It echoes through the throne room like a drum. For the first week or so, people were flocking in there just to listen to it. There was even talk that it was some kind of miracle and that the throne room ought to be made a shrine. But Annias locked the door and summoned Lycheas the bastard to Cimmura and set him up as Prince Regent. That was about two weeks ago. Since then Annias has had the church soldiers rounding up all his enemies. The dungeons under the cathedral are bulging with them. That’s where things stand right now. You picked a good time to come back.’ He paused, looking directly into his lord’s face. ‘What happened in Cippria, Sparhawk?’ he asked. ‘The news we got here was pretty sketchy.’
Sparhawk shrugged. ‘It wasn’t much. Do you remember Martel?’
‘The renegade Vanion stripped of his knighthood? The one with white hair?’
