‘It’s a bit complex.’ Then she stopped and gave him a penetrating look. ‘Perhaps you’re ready, at that,’ she murmured. She rose to her feet. ‘Come over here, Sparhawk,’ she said, moving towards the fireplace.
Puzzled, he rose and followed her.
‘Look into the flames, dear one,’ she said softly, using that odd Styric form of address she had used when he was her pupil.
Compelled by her voice, he stared at the fire. Faintly, he heard her whispering in Styric, and then she passed her hand slowly across the flames. Unthinking, he sank to his knees and stared into the fireplace.
Something was moving in the fire. Sparhawk leaned forward and stared hard at the little bluish curls of flame dancing along the edge of a charred oak log. The blue colour expanded, growing larger and larger, and within that nimbus of coruscating blue, he seemed to see a group of figures that wavered as the flame flickered. The image grew stronger, and he realized that he was looking at the semblance of the throne room in the palace, many miles away. Twelve armoured Pandions were crossing the flagstone floor bearing the slight figure of a young girl. She was borne, not upon a litter, but upon the flat sides of a dozen gleaming sword blades held rock-steady by the twelve black-armoured and visored men. They stopped before the throne, and Sephrenia’s white-robed figure stepped out of the shadows. She raised one hand, seeming to say something, though all Sparhawk could hear was the crackling flames. With a dreadful jerking motion, the young girl sat up. It was Ehlana. Her face was distorted and her eyes wide and vacant.
Without thinking, Sparhawk reached towards her, thrusting his hand directly into the flames.
‘No,’ Sephrenia said sharply, pulling his hand back. ‘You may watch only.’
The image of Ehlana, trembling uncontrollably, jerked to its feet, following, it seemed, the unspoken commands of the small woman in the white robe. Imperiously, Sephrenia pointed at the throne, and Ehlana stumbled, even staggered, up the steps of the dais to assume her rightful place.
Sparhawk wept. He tried once again to reach out to his queen, but Sephrenia held him back with a gentle touch that was strangely like an iron chain. ‘Continue to watch, dear one,’ she told him.
The twelve knights then formed a circle around the enthroned Queen and the white-robed woman standing at her side. Reverently, they extended their swords so that the two women on the dais were ringed in steel. Sephrenia raised her arms and spoke. Sparhawk could clearly see the strain on her face as she uttered the words of an incantation he could not even begin to imagine.
The point of each of the twelve swords began to glow and grew brighter and brighter, bathing the dais in intense silvery-white light. The light from those sword tips seemed to coalesce around Ehlana and her throne. Then Sephrenia spoke a single word, bringing her arm down as she did so in a peculiar cutting motion. In an instant the light around Ehlana solidified, and she became as she had been when Sparhawk had seen her in the throne room that morning. The image of Sephrenia, however, wilted and collapsed on the dais beside the crystal-encased throne.
The tears were streaming openly down Sparhawk’s face, and Sephrenia gently enfolded his head in her arms, holding him to her. ‘It is not easy, Sparhawk,’ she comforted him. ‘To look thus into the fire opens the heart and allows what we really are to emerge. You are gentler far than you would have us believe.’
He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘How long will the crystal sustain her?’ he asked.
‘For as long as the thirteen of us who were there continue to live,’ Sephrenia replied. ‘A year at most, as you Elenes measure time.’
He stared at her.
‘It is our life force that keeps her heart alive. As the seasons turn, we will one by one drop away, and one of us who was there will then have to assume the burden of the fallen. Eventually when we have each and every one given all we can – your Queen will die.’
‘No!’ he said fiercely. He looked at Vanion. ‘Were you there, too?’
Vanion nodded.
‘Who else?’
‘It wouldn’t serve any purpose for you to know that, Sparhawk. We all went willingly and we knew what was involved.’
‘Who’s going to take up the burden you mentioned?’ Sparhawk asked Sephrenia.
‘I will.’
‘We’re still arguing that point,’ Vanion disagreed. ‘Any one of us who were there can do it, actually.’
‘Not unless we modify the spell, Vanion,’ she told him just a bit smugly.
‘We’ll see,’ he said.
‘But what good does it do?’ Sparhawk demanded. ‘All you’ve done is to give her a year more of life at a dreadful cost – and she doesn’t even know.’
‘If we can isolate the cause of her illness and find a cure, the spell can be reversed,’ Sephrenia replied. ‘We have suspended her life to give us time.’
‘Are we making any progress?’
‘I’ve got every physician in Elenia working on it,’ Vanion said, ‘and I’ve summoned others from various parts of Eosia. Sephrenia’s looking into the possibility that the illness may not be of natural origin. We’ve encountered some resistance, though. The court physicians refuse to co-operate.’
‘I’ll go back to the palace then,’ Sparhawk said bleakly. ‘Perhaps I can persuade them to be more helpful.’
‘We thought of that already, but Annias has them all closely guarded.’
‘What is Annias up to?’ Sparhawk burst out angrily. ‘All we want to do is to restore Ehlana. Why is he putting all these stumbling blocks in our path? Does he want the throne for himself?’
‘I think he has his eyes on a bigger throne,’ Vanion said. ‘The Archprelate Cluvonus is old and in poor health. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Annias believed that the mitre of the Archprelacy might fit him.’
‘Annias? Archprelate? Vanion, that’s an absurdity.’
‘Life is filled with absurdities, Sparhawk. The militant orders are all opposed to him, of course, and our opinion carries a great deal of weight with the Church Hierocracy, but Annias has his hands in the treasury of Elenia up to the elbows and he’s very free with his bribes. Ehlana would have been able to cut off his access to that money, but she fell ill. That may have something to do with his lack of enthusiasm about her recovery.’
‘And he wants to put Arissa’s bastard on the throne to replace her?’ Sparhawk was growing angrier by the minute. ‘Vanion, I’ve just seen Lycheas. He’s weaker – and stupider – than King Aldreas was. Besides, he’s illegitimate.’
Vanion spread his hands. ‘A vote of the Royal Council could legitimize him, and Annias controls the council.’
‘Not all of it, he doesn’t,’ Sparhawk grated. ‘Technically, I’m also a member of the council, and I think I might just want to sway a few votes if that ever came up. A public duel or two might change the minds of the council.’
‘You’re rash, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia told him.
‘No, I’m angry. I feel a powerful urge to hurt some people.’
Vanion sighed. ‘We can’t make any decisions just yet,’ he said. Then he shook his head and turned to another matter. ‘What’s really going on in Rendor?’ he asked. ‘Voren’s reports were all rather carefully worded in the event they fell into unfriendly hands.’
Sparhawk rose and went to one of the embrasured windows with his black cape swirling about his ankles. The sky was still covered with dirty-looking cloud, and the city of Cimmura seemed to crouch beneath that scud as if clenched to endure yet another winter. ‘It’s hot there,’ he mused, almost as if to himself, ‘and dry and dusty. The sun reflects back from the walls and pierces the eye. At first light, before the sun rises and the sky is like molten silver, veiled women in black robes and with clay vessels on their shoulders pass in silence through the streets on their way to the wells.’
‘I’ve misjudged you, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia said in her melodic voice. ‘You have the soul of a poet.’
‘Not really, Sephrenia. It’s just that you need to get the feel of Rendor to understand what’s happening there. The sun is like the blows of a hammer on the top of your head, and the air is so hot and dry that it leaves no time for thought. Rendors seek simplistic answers. The sun doesn’t give them time for pondering. That might explain what happened to Eshand in the first place. A simple shepherd with his brains half baked out isn’t the logical receptacle for any kind of profound epiphany. It’s the aggravation of the sun, I think, that gave the Eshandist Heresy its impetus in the first place. Those poor fools would have accepted any idea, no matter how absurd, just for the chance to move around – and perhaps find some shade.’
‘That’s a novel explanation for a movement that plunged all of Eosia into three centuries of warfare,’ Vanion observed.
‘You have to experience it,’ Sparhawk told him, returning to his seat. ‘Anyway, one of those sun-baked enthusiasts arose at Dabour about twenty years ago.’
‘Arasham?’ Vanion surmised. ‘We’ve heard of him.’
‘That’s what he calls himself,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘He was probably born with a different name, though. Religious leaders tend to change their names fairly often to fit the prejudices of their followers. From what I understand, Arasham is an unlettered, unwashed fanatic with only a tenuous grip on reality. He’s about eighty or so, and he sees things and hears voices. His followers have less intelligence than their sheep. They’d gladly attack the kingdoms of the north – if they could only figure out which way north is. That’s a matter of serious debate in Rendor. I’ve seen a few of them. These heretics that send the members of the Hierocracy in Chyrellos trembling to their beds every night are little more than howling desert dervishes, poorly armed and with no military training. Frankly, Vanion, I’d worry more about the next winter storm than any kind of resurgence of the Eshandist Heresy in Rendor.’
‘That’s blunt enough.’
‘I’ve just wasted ten years of my life on a nonexistent danger. I’m sure you’ll forgive a certain amount of discontent about the whole thing.’
