From beyond the crag came the brassy note of a horn that trailed off into a distinctly unmusical squawk.
‘He had to have a horn,’ Stragen explained. ‘No performance like that would ever be complete without a horn.’ He laughed delightedly. ‘Maybe if he practises, he’ll even learn to carry a tune with it.’
Darsas was an ancient city situated on the east bank of the Astel River. The bridge which approached it was a massive arch which had probably been in place for at least a thousand years, and most of the city’s buildings showed a similar antiquity. The cobbled streets were narrow and twisting, following, quite probably, paths along which cows had gone to water aeons in the past. Although its antiquity seemed strange, there was still something profoundly familiar about Darsas. It was an almost prototypical Elene town, and Sparhawk felt as if his very bones were responding to its peculiar architecture. Ambassador Oscagne led them through the narrow streets and cluttered bazaars to an imposing square at the centre of the city. He pointed out a fairy-tale structure with a broad gate, and soaring towers bedecked with brightly-coloured pennons. ‘The royal palace,’ he told Sparhawk. ‘I’ll speak with Ambassador Fontan, our local man, and he’ll take us to see King Alberen. I’ll only be a moment.’
Sparhawk nodded. ‘Kalten,’ he called to his friend. ‘Let’s sort of form up the troops. A bit of ceremony might be in order here.’
When Oscagne emerged from the Tamul embassy, which was conveniently located in a building adjoining the palace, he was accompanied by an ancient-appearing Tamul whose head was totally hairless and whose face was as wrinkled as the skin of a very old apple. ‘Prince Sparhawk,’ Oscagne said quite formally, ‘I have the honour to present his Excellency, Ambassador Fontan, his Imperial Majesty’s representative here in the Kingdom of Astel.’
Sparhawk and Fontan exchanged polite bows.
‘Have I your Highness’ permission to present his Excellency to her Majesty, the Queen?’ Oscagne asked.
‘Tedious, isn’t it Sparhawk?’ Fontan asked in a voice as dry as dust. ‘Oscagne’s a good boy. He was my most promising pupil, but his fondness for ritual and formula overcomes him at times.’
‘I’ll borrow a sword and immolate myself at once, Fontan,’ Oscagne bantered.
‘I’ve seen you fumbling with a sword, Oscagne,’ Fontan replied. ‘If you’re suicidally inclined, go molest a cobra instead. If you try to do it with a sword, you’ll take all week.’
‘I gather that I’m watching a reunion of sorts,’ Sparhawk smiled.
‘I always like to lower Oscagne’s opinion of himself, Sparhawk.’ Fontan replied. ‘He’s brilliant, of course, but sometimes he lacks humility. Now, why don’t you introduce me to your wife? She’s much prettier than you are, and the imperial messenger from Matherion rode three horses to death bringing me the emperor’s instructions to be excruciatingly nice to her. We’ll chat for a few moments, and then I’ll take you to meet my dear, incompetent friend, the king. I’m sure he’ll swoon at the unspeakable honour your queen’s visit does him.’
Ehlana was delighted to meet the ambassador. Sparhawk knew that to be true because she said so herself. She invited the ancient Tamul, the real ruler of Astel, to join her in the carriage, and the entire party moved rather inexorably on to the palace gates.
The captain of the palace guard was nervous. When two hundred professional killers descend on one with implacable pace, one is almost always nervous. Ambassador Fontan put him at his ease, and three messengers were dispatched to advise the king of their arrival. Sparhawk decided not to ask the captain why he sent three. The poor man was having a bad enough day already. The party was escorted into the palace courtyard where they dismounted and turned their horses over to the stable hands. ‘Behave yourself,’ Sparhawk muttered to Faran as a slack-mouthed groom took the reins.
There seemed to be a great deal of activity going on in the palace. Windows kept popping open, and excited people stuck their heads out to gape.
‘It’s the steel clothing, I think,’ Fontan observed to the queen. ‘The appearance of your Majesty’s escort on the doorstep may very well set a new fashion. A whole generation of tailors may have to learn black-smithing.’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, well,’ he added. ‘It’s a useful trade. They can always shoe horses when business is slow.’ He looked at his pupil, who had returned to the carriage. ‘You should have sent word on ahead, Oscagne. Now we’ll have to wait while everyone inside scurries around to make ready for us.’
After several minutes, a group of liveried trumpeters filed onto a balcony over the palace door and blew a shattering fanfare. The courtyard was enclosed by stone buildings, and the echoes from the trumpets were almost sufficient to unhorse the knights. Fontan climbed down from the carriage and offered Ehlana his arm with a graceful courtliness.
‘Your Excellency is exquisitely courteous,’ she murmured.
‘Evidence of a misspent youth, my dear.’
‘Your teacher’s manner seems quite familiar, Ambassador Oscagne,’ Stragen smiled.
‘My imitation of him is only a poor shadow of my master’s perfection, Milord.’ Oscagne looked fondly at his wrinkled tutor. ‘We all try to imitate him. His successes in the field of diplomacy are legendary. Don’t be deceived, Stragen. When he’s being urbane and ironically humorous, he’s completely disarming you and gathering more information about you than you could ever imagine. Fontan can read a man’s entire character in the twitch of one of his eyebrows.’
‘I expect I’ll be quite a challenge to him,’ Stragen said, ‘since I don’t have any character to speak of.’
‘You deceive yourself, Milord. You’re not nearly as unprincipled as you’d like us to believe.’
A stout factotum in splendid scarlet livery escorted them into the palace and along a broad, well-lit corridor. Ambassador Oscagne walked just behind him, identifying the members of their party as they went.
The broad doors at the end of the corridor swung wide, and their liveried guide preceded them into a vast, ornate throne-room filled with excited courtiers. The factotum thunderously pounded on the floor with the butt of the staff which was his badge of office. ‘My Lords and Ladies,’ he boomed, ‘I have the honour to present her Divine Majesty, Queen Ehlana of the Kingdom of Elenia!’
‘Divine?’ Kalten murmured to Sparhawk.
‘It grows more evident as you get to know her better.’
The liveried herald continued his introductions, laboriously embellishing their individual titles as he presented them. Oscagne had quite obviously done his homework very thoroughly, and the herald dusted off seldom-used ornaments of rank in his introductory remarks. Kalten’s nearly-forgotten baronetcy emerged. Bevier was exposed as a viscount, Tynian as a duke, and Ulath as an earl. Most surprising of all perhaps was the revelation that Berit, plain, earnest Berit, had been concealing the title of marquis in his luggage. Stragen was introduced as a baron. ‘My father’s title,’ the blond thief explained to them in an apologetic whisper. ‘Since I killed him and my brothers, I suppose it technically belongs to me – spoils of war, you understand.’
‘My goodness,’ Baroness Melidere murmured, her blue eyes alight, ‘I seem to be standing in the middle of a whole constellation of stars.’ She seemed positively breathless.
‘I wish she wouldn’t do that,’ Stragen complained.
‘What’s the problem?’ Kalten asked him.
‘She makes it seem as if the light in her eyes is the sun streaming in through the hole in the back of her head. I know she’s far more clever than that. I hate dishonest people.’
‘You?’
‘Let it lie, Kalten.’
The throne-room of King Alberen of Astel was filled with an awed silence as the eminence of the visitors was revealed. King Alberen himself, an ineffectual-looking fellow whose royal robes looked a size or so too large for him, seemed to shrink with each new title. Alberen, it appeared, had weak eyes, and his myopic gaze gave him the fearful, timid look of a rabbit or some other such small helpless animal which all other creatures look upon as a food source. The splendour of his throne-room seemed to shrink him all the more, the wide expanses of crimson carpets and drapes, the massive gilt and crystal chandeliers and marble columns providing an heroic setting which he could never hope to fill.
Sparhawk’s queen, regal and lovely, approached the throne on Ambassador Fontan’s arm with her steel-plated entourage drawn up around her. King Alberen seemed a bit uncertain about the customary ceremonies. As the reigning monarch of Astel, he was entitled to remain seated upon his throne, but the fact that his entire court genuflected as Ehlana passed intimidated him, and he rose to his feet and even stepped down from the dais to greet her.
‘Now has our life seen its crown,’ Ehlana proclaimed in her most formal and oratorical style, ‘for we have, as God most surely must have decreed since time’s beginning, come at last into the presence of our dear brother of Astel, whom we have longed to meet since our earliest girlhood.’
‘Is she speaking for all of us?’ Talen whispered to Berit. ‘I didn’t really have a girlhood, you know.’
‘She’s using the royal plural,’ Berit explained. ‘The queen’s more than one person. She’s speaking for the entire kingdom.’
‘We are honoured more than we can say, your Majesty,’ Alberen faltered.
Ehlana quickly assessed her host’s limitations and smoothly adopted a less formal tone. She abandoned ceremony and unleashed her charm on the poor fellow. At the end of five minutes they were chatting together as if they had known each other all their lives. At the end of ten, he’d have given her his crown had she asked for it.
After the obligatory exchanges, Sparhawk and the other members of Ehlana’s entourage moved away from the throne to engage in that silly but necessary pastime known as ‘circulating’. They talked about the weather mostly. The weather is a politically correct topic. Emban and Archimandrite Monsel, the head of the Church of Astel, exchanged theological platitudes without touching on those doctrinal differences which divided their two Churches. Monsel wore an elaborate mitre and intricately embroidered vestments. He also wore a full black beard that reached to his waist.
Sparhawk had discovered early in life that a scowl was his best defence in such situations, and he customarily intimidated whole rooms-full of people who might otherwise inflict conversational inanities upon him.
‘Are you in some kind of distress, Prince Sparhawk?’ It was Ambassador Fontan. ‘Your face has a decidedly dyspeptic cast to it.’
‘It’s entirely tactical, your Excellency,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘When a military man doesn’t want to be pestered, he digs a ditch and lines the bottom and sides with sharpened stakes. A scowl serves the same purpose in social situations.’
‘You look bristly enough, my boy. Let’s take a turn around the battlements and enjoy the view, the fresh air and the privacy. There are things you should know, and this may be my only chance to get you alone. King Alberen’s court is full of inconsequential people who would all die for the chance to be able to manoeuvre conversations around to the point where they can assert that they know you personally. You have quite a reputation, you know.’
‘Largely exaggerated, your Excellency.’
‘You’re too modest, my boy. Shall we go?’
They left the throne-room unobtrusively and climbed several flights of stairs until they came out on the windswept battlements.
Fontan looked down at the city spread below. ‘Quaint, wouldn’t you say?’
