Domes of Fire

‘Why would the Troll-Gods be so interested in protecting Krager?’ Ehlana asked, her face puzzled.

‘I don’t think it’s Krager they’re protecting,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I think it has something to do with what’s going on in Lamorkand.’ He slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair. ‘I wish Sephrenia were here!’ he burst out with a sudden oath. ‘All we’re doing is groping in the dark.’

‘Would you be opposed to logic at this point?’ Stragen asked him.

‘I wouldn’t even be opposed to astrology just now,’ Sparhawk replied sourly.

‘All right.’ The blond Thalesian thief rose to his feet and began to pace up and down, his eyes thoughtful. ‘First of all, we know that somehow the Troll-Gods have got out of that box.’

‘Actually, you haven’t really proved that, Stragen,’ Ulath disagreed. ‘Not logically, anyway.’

Stragen stopped pacing. ‘He’s right, you know,’ he admitted. ‘We’ve been basing that conclusion on a guess. All we can say with any logical certainty is that we’ve encountered something that looks and feels like a manifestation of the Troll-Gods. Would you accept that, Sir Ulath?’

‘I suppose I could go that far, Milord Stragen.’

‘I’m so happy. Do we know of anything else that does the same sort of things?’

‘No,’ Ulath replied, ‘but that’s not really relevant. We don’t know about everything. There could be dozens of things we don’t know about that take the form of shadows or clouds, tear people all to pieces and give humans a chilly feeling when they’re around.’

‘I’m not sure that logic is really getting us anywhere,’ Stragen conceded.

‘There’s nothing wrong with your logic, Stragen,’ Ehlana told him. ‘Your major premise is faulty, that’s all.’

‘You too, your Majesty?’ Kalten groaned. ‘I thought there was at least one other person in the room who relied on common sense rather than all this tedious logic.’

‘All right then, Sir Kalten,’ she said tartly, ‘what does your common sense tell you?’

‘Well, first off, it tells me that you’re all going at the problem backwards. The question we should be asking is what makes Krager so special that something supernatural would go out of its way to protect him? Does it really matter what the supernatural thing is at the moment?’

‘He might have something there, you know?’ Ulath said. ‘Krager’s a cockroach basically. His only real reason for existing is to be stepped on.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Ehlana disagreed. ‘Krager worked for Martel, and Martel worked for Annias.’

‘Actually, dear, it was the other way around,’ Sparhawk corrected her.

She waved that distinction aside. ‘Belton and the others were all allied to Annias, and Krager used to carry messages between Annias and Martel. Belton and his cohorts would almost certainly have known Krager. Pelk’s story more or less confirms that. That’s what made Krager important in the first place.’ She paused, frowning. ‘But what made him important after the renegades were all in custody?’

‘Backtracking,’ Ulath grunted.

‘I beg your pardon?’ The queen looked baffled.

‘This whatever-it-is didn’t want us to be able to trace Krager back to his present employer.’

‘Oh, that’s obvious, Ulath,’ Kalten snorted. ‘His employer is Count Gerrich. Pelk told Sparhawk that there was somebody in Lamorkand who wanted to keep us so busy here in Elenia that we wouldn’t have time to take any steps to put down all the turmoil over there. That has to be Gerrich.’

‘You’re just guessing, Kalten,’ Ulath said. ‘You could very well be right, but it’s still just a guess.’

‘Do you see what I mean about logic?’ Kalten demanded of them. ‘What do you want, Ulath? A signed confession from Gerrich himself?’

‘Do you have one handy? All I’m saying is that we ought to keep an open mind. I don’t think we should close any doors yet, that’s all.’

There was a firm knock on the door, and it opened immediately afterward. Mirtai looked in. ‘Bevier and Tynian are here,’ she announced.

‘They’re supposed to be in Rendor,’ Sparhawk said. ‘What are they doing here?’

‘Why don’t you ask them?’ Mirtai suggested pointedly. ‘They’re right out here in the corridor.’

The two knights entered the room. Sir Bevier was a slim, olive-skinned Arcian, and Sir Tynian a blond, burly Deiran. Both were in full armour.

‘How are things in Rendor?’ Kalten asked them.

‘Hot, dry, dusty, hysterical,’ Tynian replied. ‘Rendor never changes. You know that.’

Bevier dropped to one knee before Ehlana. Despite the best efforts of his friends, the young Cyrinic Knight was still painfully formal. ‘Your Majesty,’ he murmured respectfully.

‘Oh, do stand up, my dear Bevier,’ she smiled at him. ‘We’re friends, so there’s no need for that. Besides, you creak like a rusty iron-works when you kneel.’

‘Overtrained, perhaps, your Majesty,’ he admitted.

‘What are you two doing back here?’ Sparhawk asked them.

‘Carrying dispatches,’ Tynian replied. ‘Darrellon’s running things down there, and he wants the other preceptors kept abreast of things. We’re also supposed to go on to Chyrellos and brief the Archprelate.’

‘How’s the campaign going?’ Kalten asked them.

‘Badly,’ Tynian shrugged. ‘The Rendorish rebels aren’t really organised, so there aren’t any armies for us to meet. They hide amongst the population and come out at night to set fires and assassinate priests. Then they run back into their holes. We take reprisals the next day – burn villages, slaughter herds of sheep and the like. None of it really proves anything.’

‘Do they have any kind of a leader as yet?’ Sparhawk asked.

‘They’re still discussing that,’ Bevier said dryly. ‘The discussions are quite spirited. We usually find several dead candidates in the alleys every morning.’

‘Sarathi blundered,’ Tynian said.

Bevier gasped.

‘I’m not trying to offend your religious sensibilities, my young friend,’ Tynian said, ‘but it’s the truth. Most of the clergymen he sent to Rendor were much more interested in punishment than in reconciliation. We had a chance for real peace in Rendor, and it fell apart because Dolmant didn’t send somebody down there to keep a leash on the missionaries.’ Tynian set his helmet on a table and unbuckled his sword-belt. ‘I even saw one silly ass in a cassock tearing the veils off women in the street. After the crowd seized him, he tried to order me to protect him. That’s the kind of priests the church has been sending to Rendor.’

‘What did you do?’ Stragen asked him.

‘For some reason I couldn’t quite hear what he was saying,’ Tynian replied. ‘All the noise the crowd was making, more than likely.’

‘What did they do to him?’ Kalten grinned.

‘They hanged him. Quite a neat job, actually.’

‘You didn’t even go to his defence?’ Bevier exclaimed.

‘Our instructions were very explicit, Bevier. We were told to protect the clergy against unprovoked attacks. That idiot violated the modesty of about a dozen Rendorish women. That crowd had plenty of provocation. The silly ass had it coming. If that crowd hadn’t hanged him, I probably would have. That’s what Darrellon wants us to suggest to Sarathi. He thinks the Church should pull all those fanatic missionaries out of Rendor until things quiet down. Then he suggests that we send in a new batch – a slightly less fervent one.’ The Alcione Knight laid his sword down beside his helmet and lowered himself into a chair. ‘What’s been happening here?’ he asked.

‘Why don’t the rest of you fill them in?’ Sparhawk suggested. ‘There’s someone I want to talk with for a few minutes.’ He turned and quietly went back into the royal apartment.

The person he wanted to talk with was not some court functionary, but rather his own daughter. He found her playing with her kitten. After some thought, her Royal little Highness had decided to name the small animal ‘Mmrr’, a sound which, when she uttered it, sounded so much like the kitten’s purr that Sparhawk usually couldn’t tell for sure which of them was making it. Princess Danae had many gifts.

‘We need to talk,’ Sparhawk told her, closing the door behind him as he entered.

‘What is it now, Sparhawk?’ she asked.

‘Tynian and Bevier just arrived.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘Are you playing with things again? Are you deliberately gathering all our friends here?’

‘Of course I am, father.’

‘Would you mind telling me why?’

‘There’s something we’re going to need to do before long. I thought I’d save some time by getting everybody here in advance.’

‘You’d probably better tell me what it is that we have to do.’

‘I’m not supposed to do that.’

‘You never pay any attention to any of the other rules.’

‘This is different, father. We’re absolutely not supposed to talk about the future. If you think about it for a moment, I’m sure you’ll see why. Ouch!’ Mmrr had bitten her finger. Danae spoke sharply with the kitten – a series of little growls, a meow or two and concluding with a forgiving purr. The kitten managed to look slightly ashamed of itself and proceeded to lick the injured finger.

‘Please don’t talk in cat, Danae,’ Sparhawk said in a pained tone. ‘If some chambermaid hears you, it’ll take us both a month to explain.’

‘Nobody’s going to hear me, Sparhawk. You’ve got something else on your mind, haven’t you?’

‘I want to talk with Sephrenia. There are some things I don’t understand, and I need her help with them.’

‘I’ll help you, father.’

He shook his head. ‘Your explanations of things always leave me with more questions than I had when we started. Can you get in touch with Sephrenia for me?’

She looked around. ‘It probably wouldn’t be a good idea here in the palace, father,’ she told him. ‘It involves something that might be hard to explain if someone overheard us.’

‘You’re going to be in two places at the same time again?’

‘Well – sort of.’ She picked up her kitten. ‘Why don’t you find some excuse to take me out for a ride tomorrow morning? We’ll go out of the city and I can take care of things there. Tell mother that you want to give me a riding lesson.’

‘You don’t have a pony, Danae.’

She gave him an angelic smile. ‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘that sort of means that you’re going to have to give me one, doesn’t it?’

He gave her a long, steady look.

‘You were going to give me a pony eventually anyway, weren’t you, father?’ She gave it a moment’s thought. ‘A white one, Sparhawk,’ she added. ‘I definitely want a white one.’ Then she snuggled her kitten against her cheek, and they both started to purr.

Sparhawk and his daughter rode out of Cimmura not long after breakfast the following morning. The weather was blustery, and Mirtai had objected rather vociferously until Princess Danae told her not to be so fussy. For some reason, the word ‘fussy’ absolutely enraged the Tamul giantess. She stormed away, swearing in her own language.

It had taken Sparhawk hours to find a white pony for his daughter, and he was quite convinced after he had that it was the only white one in the whole town. When Danae greeted the stubby little creature like an old friend, he began to have a number of suspicions. Over the past couple of years, he and his daughter had painfully hammered out a list of the things she wasn’t supposed to do. The process had begun rather abruptly in the palace garden one summer afternoon when he had come around a box hedge to find a small swarm of fairies pollinating flowers under Danae’s supervision. Although she had probably been right when she had asserted that fairies were really much better at it than bees, he had firmly put his foot down. After a bit of thought this time, however, he decided not to make an issue of his daughter’s obvious connivance in obtaining a specific pony. He needed her help right now, and she might point out with a certain amount of justification that to forbid one form of what they had come to call ‘tampering’ while encouraging another was inconsistent.

‘Is this going to involve anything spectacular?’ he asked her when they were several miles out of town.

‘How do you mean, spectacular?’

‘You don’t have to fly or anything, do you?’

‘It’s awkward that way, but I can if you’d like.’

‘No, that’s all right, Danae. What I’m getting at is would you be doing anything that would startle travellers if we went out into this meadow a ways and you did whatever it is there?’

‘They won’t see a thing, father,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll race you to that tree out there.’ She didn’t even make a pretence of nudging her pony’s flanks, and despite Faran’s best efforts, the pony beat him to the tree by a good twenty yards. The big roan warhorse glowered suspiciously at the short-legged pony when Sparhawk reined him in.

‘You cheated,’ Sparhawk accused his daughter.

‘Only a little.’ She slid down from her pony and sat cross-legged under the tree. She lifted her small face and sang in a trilling, flute-like voice. Her song broke off, and for several moments she sat blank-faced and absolutely immobile. She did not even appear to be breathing, and Sparhawk had the chilling feeling that he was absolutely alone, although she clearly sat not two yards away from him.

‘What is it, Sparhawk?’ Danae’s lips moved, but it was Sephrenia’s voice that asked the question, and when Danae opened her eyes, they had changed. Danae’s eyes were very dark; Sephrenia’s were deep blue, almost lavender.

‘We miss you, little mother,’ he told her kneeling and kissing the palms of his daughter’s hands.

‘You called me from half-way round the world to tell me that? I’m touched, but …’

‘It’s something a little more, Sephrenia. We’ve been seeing that shadow again – the cloud too.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘I sort of thought so myself, but we keep seeing them all the same. It’s different, though. It feels different for one thing, and this time it’s not just Ehlana and I who see it. Stragen and Ulath saw it too.’

‘You’d better tell me exactly what’s been happening, Sparhawk.’

He went into greater detail about the shadow and then briefly described the incident in the mountains near Cardos. ‘Whatever this thing is,’ he concluded, ‘it seems very intent on keeping us from finding out what’s going on in Lamorkand.’

‘Is there some kind of trouble there?’

‘Count Gerrich is raising a rebellion. He seems to think that the crown might fit him. He’s even going so far as to claim that Drychtnath’s returned. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’

Her eyes grew distant. ‘Is this shadow you’ve been seeing exactly the same as the one you and Ehlana saw before?’ she asked.

‘It feels different somehow.’

‘Do you get that same sense that it has more than one consciousness in it?’

‘That hasn’t changed. It’s a small group, but it’s a group all the same, and the cloud that tore the Earl of Belton to pieces was definitely the same. Did the Troll-Gods manage to escape from Bhelliom somehow?’

‘Let me think my way through it for a moment, Sparhawk,’ she replied. She considered it for a time. In a curious way she was impressing her own appearance on Danae’s face. ‘I think we may have a problem, dear one,’ she said finally.

‘I noticed that myself, little mother.’

‘Stop trying to be clever, Sparhawk. Do you remember the Dawn-men who came out of that cloud up in Pelosia?’

Sparhawk shuddered. ‘I’ve been making a special point of trying to forget that.’

‘Don’t discount the possibility that the wild stories about Drychtnath may have some basis in fact. The Troll-Gods can reach back in time and bring creatures and people forward to where we are now. Drychtnath may very well indeed have returned.’

Sparhawk groaned. ‘Then the Troll-Gods have managed to escape, haven’t they?’

‘I didn’t say that, Sparhawk. Just because the Troll-Gods did this once doesn’t mean that they’re the only ones who know how. For all I know, Aphrael could do it herself.’ She paused. ‘You could have asked her these questions, you know.’

‘Possibly, but I don’t think I could have asked her this one, because I don’t think she’d know the answer. She doesn’t seem to be able to grasp the concept of limitations for some reason.’

‘You’ve noticed,’ she said dryly.

‘Be nice. She’s my daughter, after all.’

‘She was my sister first, so I have a certain amount of seniority in the matter. What is it that she wouldn’t be able to answer?’

‘Could a Styric magician – or any other magician – be behind all this? Could we be dealing with a human?’

‘No, Sparhawk, I don’t think so. In forty thousand years there have only been two Styric magicians who were able to reach back into time, and they could only do it imperfectly. For all practical purposes what we’re talking about is beyond human capability.’

‘That’s what I wanted to find out for sure. We’re dealing with Gods then?’

‘I’m afraid so, Sparhawk, almost certainly.’

CHAPTER 4

Preceptor Sparhawk:

It is our hope that this finds you and your family in good health.

A matter of some delicacy has arisen, and we find that your presence is required here in Chyrellos. You are therefore commanded by the Church to proceed forthwith to the Basilica and to present yourself before our throne to receive our further instruction. We know that as true son of the Church you will not delay. We shall expect your attendance upon us within the week.

Dolmant, Archprelate.

Sparhawk lowered the letter and looked around at the others.

‘He gets right to the point, doesn’t he?’ Kalten observed. ‘Of course Dolmant never was one to beat around the bush.’

Queen Ehlana gave a howl of absolute fury and began beating her fists on the council table and stamping her feet on the floor.

‘You’ll hurt your hands,’ Sparhawk cautioned.

‘How dare he?’ she exploded. ‘How dare he?’

‘A bit abrupt, perhaps,’ Stragen noted cautiously.

‘You will ignore this churlish command, Sparhawk!’ Ehlana ordered.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You are my husband and my subject! If Dolmant wants to see you, he’ll ask my permission! This is outrageous!’

‘The Archprelate does in fact have the authority to summon the preceptor of one of the Militant Orders to Chyrellos, your Majesty,’ the Earl of Lenda diffidently told the fuming queen.

‘You’re wearing too many hats, Sparhawk,’ Tynian told his friend. ‘You should resign from a few of these exalted positions you hold.’

‘It’s that devastating personality of his,’ Kalten said to Ulath, ‘and all those unspeakable gifts. People just wither and die in his absence.’

‘I forbid it!’ Ehlana said flatly.

‘I have to obey him, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk explained. ‘I’m a Church Knight.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Very well then,’ she decided, ‘since Dolmant’s feeling so authoritarian, we’ll all obey his stupid command. We’ll go to Chyrellos and set up shop in the Basilica. I’ll let him know that I expect him to provide me with adequate facilities and an administrative staff – at his expense. He and I are going to have this out once and for all.’

‘This promises to be one of the high points in the history of the Church,’ Stragen observed.

‘I’ll make that pompous ass wish he’d never been born,’ Ehlana declared ominously.

Nothing Sparhawk might say could in any way change his wife’s mind. If the truth were to be known, however, he did not really try all that hard, because he could see her point. Dolmant was being high-handed. He tended at times to run roughshod over the kings of Eosia and so the clash of wills between the Archprelate and the Queen of Elenia was probably inevitable. The unfortunate thing was that they were genuinely fond of each other, and neither of them was opposing the other out of any petty vanity or pride. Dolmant was asserting the authority of the Church, and Ehlana that of the Elenian throne. They had become institutions instead of people. It was Sparhawk’s misfortune to be caught in the middle.

He was absolutely certain that the arrogant tone of the Archprelate’s letter had not come from his friend but from some half-drowsing scribe absent-mindedly scribbling formula phrases. What Dolmant had most probably said was something on the order of, ‘Send a letter to Sparhawk and tell him I’d like to see him.’ That was not, however, what had arrived in Cimmura. What had arrived had set Ehlana’s teeth on edge, and she went out of her way to make the impending visit to Chyrellos as inconvenient for the Archprelate as she possibly could.

Her first step was to depopulate the palace. Everybody had to join her entourage. The queen needed ladies-in-waiting. The ladies-in-waiting needed maids. They all needed grooms and footmen. Lenda and Platime, who were to remain in Cimmura to maintain the government, were left almost unassisted.

‘Looks almost like an army mobilising, doesn’t it?’ Kalten said gaily as they came down the palace stairs on the morning of their departure.

‘Let’s hope the Archprelate doesn’t misunderstand,’ Ulath murmured. ‘He wouldn’t really believe your wife was planning to lay siege to the Basilica, would he, Sparhawk?’

Once they left Cimmura, the gaily-dressed Elenian Court stretched out for miles under a blue spring sky. Had it not been for the steely glint in the queen’s eyes, this might have been no more than one of those ‘outings’ so loved by idle courtiers. Ehlana had ‘suggested’ that Sparhawk, as acting preceptor of the Pandion Order, should also be suitably accompanied. They had haggled about the number of Pandions he should take with him to Chyrellos. He had held out at first for Kalten, Berit and perhaps one or two others, while the queen had been more in favour of bringing along the entire order. They had finally agreed upon a score of black-armoured knights.

It was impossible to make any kind of time with so large an entourage. They seemed almost to creep across the face of Elenia, plodding easterly to Lenda and then southeasterly toward Demos and Chyrellos. The peasantry took the occasion of their passing as an excuse for a holiday, and the road was usually lined with crowds of country people who had come out to gawk. ‘It’s a good thing we don’t do this very often,’ Sparhawk observed to his wife not long after they had passed the city of Lenda.

‘I rather enjoy getting out, Sparhawk.’ The queen and princess Danae were riding in an ornate carriage drawn by six white horses.

‘I’m sure you do, but this is the planting season. The peasants should be in the fields. Too many of these royal excursions could cause a famine.’

‘You really don’t approve of what I’m doing, do you, Sparhawk?’

‘I understand why you’re doing it, Ehlana, and you’re probably right. Dolmant needs to be reminded that his authority isn’t absolute, but I think this particular approach is just a little frivolous.’

‘Of course it’s frivolous, Sparhawk,’ she admitted quite calmly. ‘That’s the whole point. In spite of all the evidence he’s had to the contrary, Dolmant still thinks I’m a silly little girl. I’m going to rub his nose in “silly” for a while. Then, when he’s good and tired of it, I’ll take him aside and suggest that it would be much easier on him if he took me seriously. That should get his attention. Then we’ll be able to get down to business.’

‘Everything you do is politically motivated, isn’t it?’

‘Well not quite everything, Sparhawk.’

They stopped briefly in Demos, and Khalad and Talen took the royal couple, Kalten, Danae and Mirtai to visit their mothers. Aslade and Elys mothered everyone impartially. Sparhawk strongly suspected that this was one of the main reasons his wife quite often found excuses to travel to Demos. Her childhood had been bleak and motherless, and anytime she felt insecure or uncertain, some reason seemed to come up why her presence in Demos was absolutely necessary. Aslade’s kitchen was warm, and its walls were hung with burnished copper pots. It was a homey sort of place that seemed to answer some deep need in the Queen of Elenia. The smells alone were enough to banish most of the cares of all who entered it.