Rollo didn’t say anything, but then Rollo seldom did.
Sephrenia, who was standing in the doorway, however, seemed a bit startled. ‘Aren’t you feeling well, Sparhawk?’
‘I’m fine, little mother. Why do you ask?’ He hadn’t really expected anyone to witness a performance intended primarily for his wife and daughter.
‘You do realise that you’re talking to a stuffed toy, don’t you?’
Sparhawk stared at Rollo in mock surprise. ‘Why, I believe you’re right, Sephrenia. How strange that I didn’t notice that. Maybe it has something to do with being rousted out of bed at the crack of dawn.’ No matter how hard he tried to put a good face on this, it wasn’t going to go very well.
‘What on earth are you talking about, Sparhawk?’
‘You see, Rollo?’ Sparhawk said, trying to rescue something. ‘They just don’t understand – any of them.’
‘Ah – Prince Sparhawk?’ It was Ehlana’s maid Alean. She had come into the room unnoticed, and her huge eyes were concerned. ‘Are you all right?’
Things were deteriorating all around Sparhawk. ‘It’s a long, long story, Alean,’ he sighed.
‘Have you seen the princess, my Lord?’ Alean was looking at him strangely.
‘She’s in bed with her mother.’ There was really not much left for him to salvage from the situation. ‘I’m going to the bath-house – if anybody cares.’ And he stalked from the room with the tatters of his dignity trailing along behind him.
Zalasta the Styric was an ascetic-looking man with white hair and a long, silvery beard. He had the angular, uncompleted-looking face of all Styric men, shaggy black eyebrows and a deep, rich voice. He was Sephrenia’s oldest friend, and was generally conceded to be the wisest and most powerful magician in Styricum. He wore a white, cowled robe and carried a staff, which may have been an affectation, since he was quite vigorous and did not need any aid when he walked. He spoke the Elenic language very well, although with a heavy Styric accent. They gathered that morning in Sephrenia’s interior garden to hear the details of what was really going on in Tamuli.
‘We can’t be entirely positive if they’re real or not,’ Zalasta was saying. ‘The sightings have been random and very fleeting.’
‘They’re definitely Trolls, though?’ Tynian asked him.
Zalasta nodded. ‘No other creature looks quite like a Troll.’
‘That’s God’s own truth,’ Ulath murmured. ‘The sightings could very well have been of real Trolls. Some time back they all just packed up and left Thalesia. Nobody ever thought to stop one to ask him why.’
‘There have also been sightings of Dawn-men,’ Zalasta reported.
‘What are they, learned one?’ Patriarch Emban asked him.
‘Man-like creatures from the beginning of time, your Grace. They’re a bit bigger than Trolls, but not as intelligent. They roam in packs, and they’re very savage.’
‘We’ve met them, friend Zalasta,’ Kring said shortly. ‘I lost many comrades that day.’
‘There may not be a connection,’ Zalasta continued. ‘The Trolls are contemporary creatures, but the Dawn-men definitely come from the past. Their species has been extinct for some fifty aeons. There have also been some unconfirmed reports of sightings of Cyrgai.’
‘You can mark that down as confirmed, Zalasta,’ Kalten told him. ‘They provided us with some entertainment one night last week.’
‘They were fearsome warriors,’ Zalasta said.
‘They might have impressed their contemporaries,’ Kalten disagreed, ‘but modern tactics and weapons and equipment are a bit beyond their capabilities. Catapults and the charge of armoured knights seemed to baffle them.’
‘Just exactly who are the Cyrgai, learned one?’ Vanion asked.
‘I gave you the scrolls, Vanion,’ Sephrenia said. ‘Didn’t you read them?’
‘I haven’t got that far yet. Styric’s a difficult language to read. Somebody should give some thought to simplifying your alphabet.’
‘Hold it,’ Sparhawk interrupted. He looked at Sephrenia. ‘I’ve never seen you read anything,’ he accused her. ‘You wouldn’t let Flute even touch a book.’
‘Not an Elene book, no.’
‘Then you can read?’
‘In Styric, yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’
‘Because it wasn’t really any of your business, dear one.’
‘You lied!’ That shocked him for some reason.
‘No, as a matter of fact I didn’t. I can’t read Elene – largely because I don’t want to. It’s a graceless language, and your writings are ugly – like spiders’ webs.’
‘You deliberately led us to believe that you were too simple to learn how to read.’
‘That was sort of necessary, dear one. Pandion novices aren’t really very sophisticated, and you had to have something to feel superior about.’
‘Be nice,’ Vanion murmured.
‘I had to try to train a dozen generations of those great, clumsy louts, Vanion,’ she said with a certain asperity, ‘and I had to put up with their insufferable condescension in the process. Yes, Sparhawk, I can read, and I can count, and I can argue philosophy and even theology if I have to, and I am fully trained in logic.’
‘I don’t know why you’re yelling at me,’ he protested mildly, kissing her palms. ‘I’ve always believed you were a fairly nice lady –’ he kissed her palms again, ‘for a Styric, that is.’
She jerked her hands out of his grasp and then saw the grin on his face. ‘You’re impossible,’ she said, also suddenly smiling.
‘We were talking about the Cyrgai, I believe,’ Stragen said smoothly. ‘Just exactly who are they?’
‘They’re extinct, fortunately,’ Zalasta replied. ‘They were of a race that appears to have been unrelated to the other races of Daresia – neither Tamul nor Elene, and certainly not Styric. Some have suggested that they might be distantly related to the Valesians.’
‘I couldn’t accept that, learned one,’ Oscagne disagreed. ‘The Valesians don’t even have a government, and they have no concept of war. They’re the happiest people in the world. They could not in any way be related to the Cyrgai.’
‘Temperament is sometimes based on climate, your Excellency,’ Zalasta pointed out. ‘Valesia’s a paradise, and central Cynesga’s not nearly so nice. Anyway, the Cyrgai worshipped a hideous God named Cyrgon – and, like most primitive people do, they took their name from him. All peoples are egotistical, I suppose. We’re all convinced that our God is better than all the rest and that our race is superior. The Cyrgai took that to extremes. We can’t really probe the beliefs of an extinct people, but it appears that they even went so far as to believe that they were somehow of a different species from other humans. They also believed that all truth had been revealed to them by Cyrgon, so they strongly resisted new ideas. They carried the idea of a warrior society to absurd lengths, and they were obsessed with the concept of racial purity and strove for physical perfection. Deformed babies were taken out into the desert and left to die. Soldiers who received crippling injuries in battle were killed by their friends. Women who had too many female children were strangled. They built a city-state beside the Oasis of Cyrga in Central Cynesga and rigidly isolated themselves from other peoples and their ideas. The Cyrgai were terribly afraid of ideas. Theirs was perhaps the only culture in human history that idealised stupidity. They looked upon superior intelligence as a defect, and overly bright children were killed.’
‘Nice group,’ Talen murmured.
‘They conquered and enslaved their neighbours, of course – mostly desert nomads of indeterminate race – and there was a certain amount of interbreeding, soldiers being what they are.’
‘But that was perfectly all right, wasn’t it?’ Baroness Melidere added tartly. ‘Rape is always permitted, isn’t it?’
‘In this case it wasn’t, Baroness,’ Zalasta replied. ‘Any Cyrgai caught “fraternising” was killed on the spot.’
‘What a refreshing idea,’ she murmured.
