‘How are things coming along?’ Sparhawk asked him.
‘We’re just about all ready.’ Kalten was wearing a green brocade doublet, and he bowed extravagantly to the queen. ‘Actually, we are ready. About the only things happening now are the usual redundancies.’
‘Could you clarify that just a bit, Sir Kalten?’ Ehlana said.
He shrugged. ‘Everyone’s going over all the things everyone else has done to make sure that nothing’s been left out.’ He sprawled in a chair. ‘We’re surrounded by busybodies, Sparhawk. Nobody seems to be able to believe that anybody else can do something right. If Emban asks me if the knights are all ready to ride about one more time, I think I’ll strangle him. He has no idea at all about what’s involved in moving a large group of people from one place to another. Would you believe that he was going to try to put all of us on one ship? Horses and all?’
‘That might have been just a bit crowded,’ Ehlana smiled. ‘How many ships did he finally decide on?’
‘I’m not sure. I still don’t know for certain how many people are going. Your attendants are all absolutely convinced that you’ll simply die without their company, my Queen. There are about forty or so who are making preparations for the trip.’
‘You’d better weed them out, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk suggested. ‘I don’t want to be saddled with the entire court.’
‘I will need a few people, Sparhawk – if only for the sake of appearances.’
Talen came into the room. The gangly boy was wearing what he called his ‘street clothes’ – slightly mismatched, very ordinary and just this side of shabby. ‘He’s still out there,’ he said, his eyes bright.
‘Who?’ Kalten asked.
‘Krager. He’s creeping around Chyrellos like a lost puppy looking for a home. Stragen’s got people from the local thieves’ community watching him. We haven’t been able to figure out exactly what he’s up to just yet. If Martel were still alive, I’d almost say he’s doing the same sort of thing he used to do – letting himself be seen.’
‘How does he look?’
‘Worse.’ Talen’s voice cracked slightly. It was still hovering somewhere between soprano and baritone. ‘The years aren’t treating Krager very well. His eyes look like they’ve been poached in bacon grease. He looks absolutely miserable.’
‘I think I can bear Krager’s misery,’ Sparhawk noted. ‘He’s beginning to make me just a little tired, though. He’s been sort of hovering around the edge of my awareness for the last ten years or more – sort of like a hangnail or an ingrown toenail. He always seems to be working for the other side, but he’s too insignificant to really worry about.’
‘Stragen could ask one of the local thieves to cut his throat,’ Talen offered.
Sparhawk considered it. ‘Maybe not,’ he decided. ‘Krager’s always been a good source of information. Tell Stragen that if the opportunity happens to come up, we might want to have a little chat with our old friend, though. The offer to braid his legs together usually makes Krager very talkative.’
Ulath stopped by about a half hour later. ‘Did you finish that letter to Komier?’ he asked Sparhawk.
‘He has a draft copy, Sir Ulath,’ Ehlana replied for her husband. ‘It definitely needs some polish.’
‘You don’t have to polish things for Komier, your Majesty. He’s used to strange letters. One of my Genidian brothers sent him a report written on human skin once.’
She stared at him. ‘He did what?’
‘There wasn’t anything else handy to write on. A Genidian Knight just arrived with a message for me from Komier, though. The knight’s going back to Emsat, and he can carry Sparhawk’s letter if it’s ready to go.’
‘It’s close enough,’ Sparhawk said, folding the parchment and dribbling candle wax on it to seal it. ‘What did Komier have to say?’
‘It was good news for a change. All the Trolls have left Thalesia for some reason.’
‘Where did they go?’
‘Who knows? Who cares?’
‘The people who live in the country they’ve gone to might be slightly interested,’ Kalten suggested.
‘That’s their problem,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘It’s funny, though. The Trolls don’t really get along with each other. I couldn’t even begin to guess at a reason why they’d all decide to pack up and leave at the same time. The discussions must have been very interesting. They usually kill each other on sight.’
‘There’s not much help I can give you, Sparhawk,’ Dol-mant said gravely when the two of them met privately later that day. ‘The Church is fragmented in Daresia. They don’t accept the authority of Chyrellos, so I can’t order them to assist you.’ Dolmant’s face was careworn, and his white cassock made his complexion look sallow. In a very real sense, Dolmant ruled an empire that stretched from Thalesia to Cammoria, and the burdens of his office bore down on him heavily. The change they had all noticed in their friend in the past several years derived more likely from that than from any kind of inflated notion of his exalted station.
‘You’ll get more co-operation in Astel than either Edom or Daconia,’ he continued. ‘The doctrine of the Church of Astel is very close to ours – close enough that we even recognise Astellian ecclesiastical rank. Edom and Daconia broke away from the Astellian Church thousands of years ago and went their own way.’ ‘The Archprelate smiled ruefully. The sermons in those two kingdoms are generally little more than hysterical denunciations of the Church of Chyrellos – and of me personally. They’re anti-hierarchical, much like the Rendors. If you should happen to go into those two kingdoms, you can expect the Church there to oppose you. The fact that you’re a Church Knight will be held against you rather than the reverse. The children there are all taught that the Knights of the Church have horns and tails. They’ll expect you to burn churches, murder clergymen and enslave the people.’
‘I’ll do what I can to stay away from those places, Sarathi,’ Sparhawk assured him. ‘Who’s in charge in Astel?’
‘The Archimandrite of Darsas is nominally the head of the Astellian Church. It’s an obscure rank approximately the equivalent of our “patriarch”. The Church of Astel’s organised along monastic lines. They don’t have a secular clergy there.’
‘Are there any other significant differences I should know about?’
‘Some of the customs are different – liturgical variations primarily. I doubt that you’ll be asked to conduct any services, so that shouldn’t cause any problems. It’s probably just as well. I heard you deliver a sermon once.’
Sparhawk smiled. ‘We serve in different ways, Sarathi. Our Holy Mother didn’t hire me to preach to people. How do I address the Archimandrite of Darsas – in case I meet him?’
‘Call him “your Grace”, the same as you would a patriarch. He’s an imposing man with a huge beard, and there’s nothing in Astel that he doesn’t know about. His priests are everywhere. The people trust them implicitly, and they all submit weekly reports to the Archimandrite. The Church has enormous power there.’
‘What a novel idea.’
‘Don’t mistreat me, Sparhawk. Things haven’t been going very well for me lately.’
‘Would you be willing to listen to an assessment, Dolmant?’
‘Of me personally? Probably not.’
‘I wasn’t talking about that. You’re too old to change, I expect. I’m talking about your policies in Rendor. Your basic idea was good enough, but you went at it the wrong way.’
‘Be careful, Sparhawk. I’ve sent men to monasteries permanently for less than that.’
‘Your policy of reconciliation with the Rendors was very sound. I spent ten years down there, and I know how they think. The ordinary people in Rendor would really like to be reconciled with the Church – if for no other reason than to get rid of all the howling fanatics out in the desert. Your policy is good, but you sent the wrong people there to carry it out.’
‘The priests I sent are all experts in doctrine, Sparhawk.’
‘That’s the problem. You sent doctrinaire fanatics down there. All they want to do is punish the Rendors for their heresy.’
‘Heresy is a sort of problem, Sparhawk.’
‘The heresy of the Rendors isn’t theological, Dolmant. They worship the same God we do, and their body of religious belief is identical to ours. The disagreements between us are entirely in the field of Church government. The Church was corrupt when the Rendors broke away from us. The members of the Hierocracy were sending relatives to fill Church positions in Rendor, and those relatives were parasitic opportunists who were far more interested in lining their own purses than caring for the souls of the people. When you get right down to it, that’s why the Rendors started murdering primates and priests – and they’re doing it for exactly the same reason now. You’ll never reconcile the Rendors to the Church if you try to punish them. They don’t care who’s governing our Holy Mother. They’ll never see you personally, my friend, but they will see their local priest – probably every day. If he spends all his time calling them heretics and tearing the veils off their women, they’ll kill him. It’s as simple as that.’
Dolmant’s face was troubled. ‘Perhaps I have blundered,’ he admitted. ‘Of course if you tell anybody I said that, I’ll deny it.’
‘Naturally.’
‘All right, what should I do about it?’
Sparhawk remembered something then. ‘There’s a Vicar in a poor church in Borrata,’ he said. ‘He’s probably the closest thing to a saint I’ve ever seen, and I didn’t even get his name. Berit knows what it is though. Disguise some investigators as beggars and send them down to Cammoria to observe him. He’s exactly the kind of man you need.’
