The Shining Ones

‘That brings us right back to the issue we were discussing before you got here, Caalador,’ Stragen said. Stragen wore black today, and Ehlana privately felt that the color didn’t really suit him. He rose and began to pace up and down, a habit the Queen of Elenia found irritating. ‘The Interior Ministry’s beginning to flex its muscles for some reason. We’re sitting on the Minister himself, so this onset of burliness is probably coming from some underling.’

‘Interior has always liked to throw its weight around,’ Oscagne told them. The Foreign Minister was wearing western-style clothes again, and he looked distinctly uncomfortable in them.

‘I think that reinforces the point I was trying to make earlier, Ehlana,’ Sarabian said. ‘Are you sure we shouldn’t dissolve the Interior Ministry right now?’

‘Absolutely,’ Ehlana replied. ‘We’ve got Kolata buttoned up inside the castle here, and we’ve given the world a perfectly legitimate reason for his presence. He’s still functioning – under our control – and that’s of enormous value to us. We’re playing for time, Sarabian. We’re terribly vulnerable until Tynian and Emban come back from Chyrellos with the Church Knights – or at the very least until all the Atan commanders have been advised that they aren’t supposed to obey the orders of the Interior Ministry any more. We definitely don’t want the Atans fighting on both sides if trouble breaks out.’

‘I guess I hadn’t thought of that,’ he admitted.

‘Not only that, your Majesty,’ Oscagne added gently. ‘It’s entirely possible that Interior would simply ignore a proclamation disbanding them. They have almost total power, you know. Queen Ehlana’s right. We can’t move against them until we’re sure of the Atans.’

Stragen had continued his pacing. ‘Nobody can subvert an entire branch of government,’ he declared. ‘There are just too many people involved, and all it would take would be one honest policeman to expose the entire scheme.’

‘There’s no such thing as an honest policeman, Stragen,’ Caalador said with a cynical laugh. ‘It’s a contradiction in terms.’

‘You know what I mean.’ Stragen shrugged that off. ‘We know that Kolata has dirty hands, but we can’t be sure just how far that disloyalty goes. It could be very widespread, or it could be confined to just a few in the higher councils of the ministry.’

Caalador shook his head. “Tain’t hordly likely, Stragen,’ he disagreed. ‘Y’ gotta have them ez y’ kin trust out thar when y’ start givin’ orders ez runs contrary t’ reg’lar policy. They’s gotta be some in th’ hinterlands ez knows whut’s whut.’

Stragen made a face. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ he complained. ‘Please don’t use that vile dialect when you’re right. It makes me feel inadequate. All right, then. We can be fairly certain that most of the higher-ranking officials in the ministry are involved, but we can’t even guess at how widespread the contamination is. I’d say that finding out gets to be a kind of priority.’

‘Shouldn’t take y’ more’n a couple hunnerd years t’ do thet, Stragen,’ Caalador noted.

‘Not necessarily,’ Baroness Melidere disagreed. She looked at Oscagne. ‘You once said that the Ministry of the Interior’s very fond of paper, your Excellency.’

‘Of course, Baroness. All government agencies adore paper. Paperwork provides full employment for our relatives. Interior goes a little farther, though. Policemen can’t function without files and dossiers. They write everything down.’

‘I rather thought that might be the case. The people over at Interior are all trained as policemen, aren’t they?’

Oscagne nodded.

‘Then they’d all be compulsive about writing reports and filing them, wouldn’t they?’

‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I don’t see where you’re going with this exactly, Baroness.’

‘Wake up, Oscagne,’ Sarabian said excitedly. ‘I think this wonderful girl’s just solved our problem for us. Someplace over in that rabbit warren at Interior there’s a set of files that contains the names of all the disloyal policemen and secret agents in the Empire. All we have to do is get our hands on that set of files, and we’ll know exactly which people to pick up when the time comes to move.’

‘Except for the fact that they’ll defend those files to the death,’ Ehlana observed. ‘And there’s also the fact that a move against their filing system would be the same as a frontal assault on the ministry itself.’

‘You really know how to burst bubbles, Ehlana,’ the Emperor complained.

‘There might be a way around the queen’s objections, your Majesty,’ Melidere said with a slight frown. ‘Is there a standardized filing system here in Matherion, Minister Oscagne?’

‘Good God, no, Baroness,’ he exclaimed. ‘If we all had the same filing system, anybody at all could walk into our offices and find anything he wanted. We’d never be able to keep any secrets from each other.’

‘I thought that might be the case. Now then, suppose that Queen Ehlana happened to mention to the Emperor – just in passing – that her government had standardized the filing system, and that everybody filed things the same way. Then let’s suppose that the Emperor grew very excited about the idea – the enormous savings in the cost of government and all that. Then, still supposing, he appoints an imperial commission with extraordinary powers to examine everybody’s files with an eye toward that standardization. Wouldn’t that sort of justify a thorough search of the offices at Interior?’

‘It’s got possibilities, my Queen,’ Stragen approved. ‘Something like that would hide what we’re really up to – particularly if we had people tearing up everybody else’s files at the same time.’

Oscagne’s face went absolutely white.

‘I’d sooner take pizen than insult y’, little lady,’ Caalador drawled to the baroness, ‘but yer still a-talkin’ ’bout a chore which it is that’d taken us a good twenty year ’er more t’ finish. We got us a hull buildin’ over thar t’ take aport iffn th’ Furrin Minister yere is kee-rect ’bout how miny tons o’ paper they got over t’ Interior.’

‘We can shorten that a bit, Master Caalador,’ Melidere replied. ‘All we have to do is question Interior Minister Kolata.’

‘Absolutely not,’ Ehlana said sharply. ‘I don’t want him all torn to pieces – at least not until I don’t need him any more.’

‘We wouldn’t be asking him any sensitive questions, your Majesty,’ Melidere said patiently. ‘All we want to know is how his filing system works. That wouldn’t compromise the conspiracy he’s involved in, would it?’

‘I think she’s right, Ehlana,’ Mirtai said. ‘There would almost have to be some sort of trigger – questions about certain subjects – that would make our enemies decide to kill Kolata. They wouldn’t kill him if all we did was ask him about something as ordinary as a filing system, would they?’

‘No,’ the queen agreed. They probably wouldn’t at that.’ Her expression was still doubtful, however.

‘It’s all very clever, Baroness,’ Stragen said, ‘but we’ll be sending Tamul officials into the various ministries to investigate files. How will we know that at least some of them aren’t on the other side?’

‘We wouldn’t, Milord Stragen. That’s why we’ll have to send our own people – the Church Knights – in to review those files.’

‘How would we justify that?’

‘The new filing system would be an Elene invention, Milord. We’re obviously going to have to send Elenes into the various ministries to evaluate the current methods and to instruct the officials on how to convert to the new system.’

‘Now I’ve got you, Baroness,’ he said triumphantly. This is all a fiction. We don’t have a new filing system.’

‘Then invent one, Milord Stragen,’ she suggested sweetly.

Prime Minister Subat was deeply troubled by the suggestion the Chancellor of the Exchequer had just placed before him. The two were alone together in the Prime Minister’s ornate office, a room only slightly less magnificent than one of the imperial audience chambers. ‘You’re out of your mind, Gashon,’ he declared flatly.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Gashon was a bloodless, corpse-like man with sunken cheeks and no more than a few wispy strands of hair protruding from his lumpy scalp. ‘Look at it more closely, Pondia Subat,’ he said in his hollow, rusty-sounding voice. ‘It’s only a theory, but it does explain many things that are otherwise incomprehensible.’

‘They wouldn’t have dared,’ Subat scoffed.

‘Try to lift your mind out of the fourteenth century, Subat,’ Gashon snapped. ‘You’re the Prime Minister, not the keeper of antiquities. The world is changing all around you. You can’t just sit still with your eyes firmly fixed on the past and hope to survive.’

‘I don’t like you very much, Gashon.’

‘I’m not terribly fond of you either, Subat. Let me go through it for you again. Try to stay awake this time.’

‘How dare you?’

‘I dare because I’d sort of like to keep my head where it is. First off: the Elenes of Eosia are absolute barbarians. Can we agree on that at least?’

‘All right.’

‘They haven’t caused us much trouble in the past because they were too busy fighting among themselves about religion, and because they had Otha of Zemoch to worry about. Would it surprise you too much if I told you that Otha’s dead and that the Rendorish insurgency’s been almost completely crushed?’

‘I have my own sources of information, Gashon.’

‘Have you ever considered listening to what they tell you? Now then, there was open warfare in the streets of Chyrellos preceding the elevation of this Dolmant to the Archprelacy. I’d say that’s a fair indication of the fact that he’s not universally loved. The best way I know of for a shaky ruler to consolidate his position is to contrive a foreign adventure, and the only real foreign ground for the Elenes of the Eosian Continent is Daresia – the Tamul Empire. That’s us, in case you hadn’t noticed, Pondia Subat.’

‘I know that, Gashon.’

‘I just wanted to be sure, that’s all. Are you with me so far?’

‘Get to the point, Gashon. I don’t have all day.’

‘Did you have an appointment with the headsman? All right, then. The Elenes are religious fanatics who feel that they’re called of the Lord to convert everybody in the world to their absurd faith. For all I know, they also want to convert snakes, spiders and fish. Dolmant’s their religious leader, and they’d probably try to subdue glaciers and tides if he told them to. So, we’ve got a religious leader who has an uncertain grasp on power in his own Church, and he has hordes of fanatic followers at his disposal. He can either use those followers to crush his opponents at home, or he can hurl them against a foreign power on some trumped-up excuse that will inflame the commons and stifle objections to his rule. Isn’t it a coincidence that at precisely that time we have this “state visit” by a silly female – a female Foreign Minister Oscagne assures us is the Queen of Elenia. I hope the fact that we only have Oscagne’s word for that hasn’t escaped you. This so-called queen is obviously more accustomed to doing business in bed than she is on a throne. She clearly wrestled not only that silly ass Alberen of Astel into submission but probably Androl of the Atans as well. We can only speculate about her adventures among the Peloi and the Styrics at Sarsos. Then, once she reached Matherion, she lured Emperor Sarabian to her bedchamber before the first day was out – you did know that Sarabian and Oscagne crept across the compound to that imitation Elene castle on the first night she was here, didn’t you?’

Subat started to object.

‘Yes, I know,’ Gashon cut him off, ‘that brings us to Oscagne. I’d say that the evidence strongly suggests that Oscagne has gone over to the Elenes – either for personal gain or because he’s fallen under the spell of that blonde Elene strumpet. She had plenty of time to work on him while he was in Chyrellos, you know.’

‘It’s all speculation, Gashon,’ Subat said, although his voice lacked conviction.

‘Of course it is, Subat,’ Gashon replied with heavy sarcasm. ‘What would be the fastest way to get to Matherion from Chyrellos?’

‘By ship, naturally.’

‘Then why did the strumpet of Cimmura choose to come overland? Was it to look at scenery, or to grapple her way across the continent? The girl’s got stamina, I’ll give her that.’

‘What about this recent coup-attempt, Gashon? The government would have fallen if the Elenes hadn’t been here.’

‘Ah yes, the famous coup. Isn’t it astounding that a group of Elenes, who didn’t even speak the Tamul language when they arrived, were able to unearth this dire plot in about six weeks? – when the agents of the Ministry of the Interior, who’ve only been in Matherion for all of their lives, hadn’t come across a single clue about it? The Elenes crushed an imaginary coup, Subat, and now they’ve used it as an excuse to imprison the Emperor in that cursed fortress of theirs – not only the Emperor, but Interior Minister Kolata as well, and Kolata’s the one man in government who has the resources to free our ruler. I’ve talked with Teovin, Director of the Secret Police, and he assures me that no one from the ministry has been permitted to speak with Kolata privately since his incarceration. Our colleague is obviously a prisoner, and the orders he’s issuing to the Interior Ministry are just as obviously coming from the Elenes. Then, if that weren’t bad enough, they’ve sent the so-called churchman, Emban, back to Chyrellos to lead the Church Knights back here to “deal with the crisis”. We have all the resources of Interior and whole armies of Atans at our disposal, Subat. Why do we need the Church Knights? What possible reason is there to bring the most ruthless force in the entire world to Tamuli? Would the word “invasion” startle you? That’s all that the famous coup really was, you realize – an excuse for the Elene Church to invade Tamuli, and quite obviously it’s been with the Emperor’s full cooperation.’

‘Why would the Emperor conspire with the Elenes to topple his own government?’

‘I can think of any number of reasons. Maybe this so-called queen threatened to deny him her favors. Most probably, though, she’s been spinning fairy-tales for him, telling him about the joys of absolute power. That’s a common fiction in Eosia. Elene rulers like to pretend that they’re the ones who make all the decisions in their kingdoms rather than permitting the government to do it for them. We both know how ridiculous that idea is. A king – or in our case, the Emperor – only has one function. He’s a symbol of government, nothing more. He serves as a focus for the love and loyalty of the people. The imperial government’s been engaged in a selective-breeding program for the past thousand years. The Emperor’s Tamul wife – the one who produces the heir to the throne – is always selected for her stupidity. We don’t need intelligent emperors, only docile ones. Somehow Sarabian slipped past us. If you’d ever really taken the trouble to pay attention to him, you’d have discovered that he’s frighteningly intelligent. Kolata blundered there. Sarabian should have been killed long before he ascended the throne. Our revered Emperor’s beginning to hunger for real power, I’m afraid. Normally, we could deal with that, but we can’t get at him to kill him as long as he’s inside that blasted fortress.’

‘You weave a convincing story, Gashon,’ the Prime Minister conceded with a troubled frown. ‘I knew it was a blunder to invite that Sparhawk savage to come to Matherion.’

‘We all did, Subat, and you’ll recall who it was who overrode all our objections.’

‘Oscagne,’ Subat spat.

‘Precisely. Is it beginning to fit together for you now?’

‘Did you devise all of this by yourself, Gashon? It’s a little elaborate for a man who spends all his time counting pennies.’

‘Actually, it was Teovin, the Director of the Secret Police, who brought it to my attention. He provided me with a great deal of very concrete evidence. I’ve summarized it for you here. Interior has spies everywhere, you know. Nothing happens in the Empire that doesn’t generate a report for those famous files of theirs. Now, Pondia Subat, what does our esteemed Prime Minister propose to do about the fact that our Emperor’s being held prisoner – willingly or unwillingly – not a hundred paces from where we sit? You’re the titular head of government, Subat. You’re the one who has to make these decisions. Oh, and while you’re at it, you might want to give some thought to how we’re going to prevent the Church Knights from sweeping across the continent, marching into Matherion and forcing everyone to bow down to their ridiculous God – and butchering the entire government in the process.’

‘They’re trying to stall, your Majesties,’ Stragen reported. ‘When supper-time comes, they escort us to the door, push us outside, and lock the door behind us. The building stays locked for the rest of the night – although there are always plenty of lights moving around in there after dark. When we go back the next morning, everything’s been rearranged. The files migrate from room to room like ducks in the autumn. I wouldn’t actually swear to it, but I think they move walls as well. We found a room just this morning that I don’t really think was there last night.’

‘I’ll send in Engessa’s Atans,’ Sarabian said darkly. ‘We’ll chase everybody out and then tear the building apart brick by brick.’

‘No,’ Ehlana said, shaking her head. ‘If we make an overt move against the Ministry of the Interior, every policeman in the Empire will scurry down a rabbit-hole.’ She pursed her lips. ‘Let’s start to do inconvenient things to the other ministries as well. Don’t make it obvious that we’re concentrating all of our attention on the Ministry of the Interior.’

‘How can you possibly make things any worse than they already are, your Majesty?’ Oscagne asked in a broken voice. ‘You’ve disrupted centuries of work as it is.’

‘Can anyone think of anything?’ Sarabian asked, looking around.

‘May I speak, your Majesty?’ Alean asked in a small, timid-sounding voice.

‘Of course, dear,’ Ehlana smiled.

‘I hope you’ll all forgive my presumption,’ Alean apologized. ‘I can’t even read, so I don’t really know what files are, but aren’t we sort of letting on that we’re rearranging them?’

‘That’s what we’re telling everybody,’ Mirtai replied.

‘As I said, I can’t read, but I do know a bit about rearranging cupboards and such things. This is a little like that, isn’t it?’

‘Close enough,’ Stragen replied.

‘Well, then, when you’re rearranging a cupboard, you take everything out and spread it on the floor. Then you put all the things you want in the top drawer in one pile, the things you want in the second drawer in another, and so on. Couldn’t we do that with these files?’

‘It’s a nice i-dee, little dorlin’,’ Caalador drawled, ‘but they ain’t e-nuff floors in the hull buildin’ fer spreadin’ out all them there files.’

‘There are lots of lawns around the outside, though, aren’t there?’ Alean kept her eyes downcast as she spoke. ‘Couldn’t we just take all the files from every government building outside and spread them around on the lawns. We could tell the people who work in the buildings that we want to sort through them and put them in the proper order. They couldn’t really object, and you can’t lock the door to a lawn at night, or move things around when there are seven-foot-tall Atans standing guard over them. I know I’m just a silly servant girl, but that’s the way I’d do it.’

Oscagne was staring at her in absolute horror.

Chapter 4

The soil on the western side of the Isle of Tega was thin and rocky, and since there was plenty of fertile ground farther inland, the citizens of the Republic had made no effort to cultivate here. Tough, scrubby bushes rustled stiffly in the onshore breeze as Sparhawk and his friends rode along a rocky trail leading to the coast.

‘The breeze helps,’ Talen observed gratefully. ‘At least it blows away that stink.’

‘You complain too much,’ Flute told him. The little girl rode with Sephrenia as she had since they had first encountered her. She nestled in her older sister’s arms with her dark eyes brooding. She straightened suddenly as the sound of surf pounding on the western shore of the Isle reached them. ‘This is far enough for right now, gentlemen,’ she told them. ‘Let’s have some supper and wait for it to get dark.’

‘Is that a good idea?’ Bevier asked her. ‘The ground’s been getting rougher the farther west we come, and the sound of that surf seems to have rocks mixed up in it. This might not be a good place to be blundering around in the dark.’

‘I can lead you safely to the beach, Bevier,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want you gentlemen to get too good a look at our ship. There are certain ideas involved in her construction that you don’t need to know. That’s one of the promises I had to make during those negotiations I was telling you about.’ She pointed to the lee-side of a rocky hillock. ‘Let’s go over there out of this wind and build a fire. I have some instructions for you.’

They rode away from the ill-defined trail and dismounted in the shelter of the hill. ‘Whose turn is it to do the cooking?’ Berit asked Sir Ulath.

‘Yours,’ Ulath told him with no hint of a smile.

‘You knew he was going to do that, Berit,’ Talen said. ‘What you just did was almost the same thing as volunteering.’

Berit shrugged. ‘My turn will come up eventually anyway,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d get it out of the way for a while.’

‘All right, gentlemen,’ Vanion said, ‘let’s look around and see what we can find in the way of firewood.’

Sparhawk concealed a smile. Vanion could maintain that he was no longer the Preceptor as much as he wished, but the habit of command was deeply ingrained in him.

They built a fire, and Berit stirred up an acceptable stew. After supper, they sat by the fire watching as evening slowly settled in.

‘Now then,’ Flute said to them, ‘we’re going to ride down to a cove. I want you all to stay close behind me, because it’s going to be very foggy.’

‘It’s a perfectly clear evening, Flute,’ Kalten objected.

‘It won’t be when we reach the cove,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to make sure that you don’t get too much chance to examine that ship. I’m not really supposed to do this, so don’t get me into trouble.’ She looked sternly at Khalad. ‘And I want you in particular to keep a very tight rein on your curiosity.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. You’re too practical and too clever by half for my comfort. Your noble friends here aren’t imaginative enough to make any educated guesses about the ship. You’re a different matter. Don’t be digging at the decks with your knife, and don’t try to sneak off to examine things. I don’t want to drop by Cimmura someday and find a duplicate of the ship anchored in the river. We’ll go down to the cove, board the ship, and go directly below. You will not go up on deck until we get to where we’re going. A certain part of the ship has been set aside for us, and we’ll all stay there for the duration of the voyage. I want your word on that, gentlemen.’

Sparhawk could see some differences between Flute and Danae. Flute was more authoritarian, for one thing, and she didn’t seem to have Danae’s whimsical sense of humor. Although the Child Goddess had a definite personality, each of her incarnations seemed to have its own idiosyncrasies.

Flute looked up at the slowly darkening sky. ‘We’ll wait another hour,’ she decided. ‘The crew of the ship has been told to stay away from us. Our meals will be put just outside the door, and we won’t see the one who puts them there. It won’t do you any good to try to catch her, so don’t even try.’

‘Her?’ Ulath exclaimed. ‘Are you trying to say that there are women in the crew?’

‘They’re all females. There aren’t very many males where they come from.’