The Shining Ones (8 page)

‘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.

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.’

‘Women aren’t strong enough to raise and lower the sails,’ he objected.

‘These females are ten times stronger than you are, Ulath, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, because the ship doesn’t
have
sails. Please stop asking questions, gentlemen. Oh, one other thing. There’ll be a sort of humming sound when we get under way. It’s normal, so don’t let it alarm you.’

‘How…’ Ulath began.

She held up her hand. ‘No more questions, Ulath,’ she told him quite firmly. ‘You don’t need to know the answers. The ship’s here to take us from one place to another in a hurry. That’s all you need to know.’

‘That brings us to something we really
should
know,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Where
are
we going?’

‘To Jorsan on the west coast of Edom,’ she replied. ‘Well, almost, anyway. There’s a long gulf leading inland to Jorsan. We’ll put ashore at the mouth of the gulf and go inland on horseback. Now, why don’t we talk about something else?’

The fog seemed almost thick enough to walk on, and the knights were obliged to blindly follow the misty light of the torch Sephrenia held aloft as they rode down a steep bank toward the sound of unseen surf.

They reached a sandy beach and groped their way down toward the water. Then they saw other lights out in the fog – filmy, mist-shrouded lights which stretched out for what seemed an impossible distance. The lights did not flicker, and they were the wrong color for torchlight.

‘Good God!’ Ulath choked. ‘
No
ship could be that big!’

‘
Ulath!
’ Flute said sharply from out of the fog ahead.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

When they reached the water’s edge, all they could see was a dark, looming shape lying low in the water several yards out, a shape outlined by those unwinking white lights. A ramp reached from the ship to the beach, and Ch’iel, Sephrenia’s white palfrey, stepped confidently onto that ramp and clattered across to the ship.

There were dim, shrouded shapes on the deck, cloaked and hooded figures that were all no more than shoulder high, but strangely squat and blocky.

‘What do we do with the horses?’ Vanion asked as they all dismounted.

‘Just leave them here,’ Flute replied. ‘They’ll be taken care of. Let’s go below. We can’t start until everybody’s off the deck.’

‘The crew stays up here, don’t they?’ Ulath asked her.

‘No. It’s too dangerous.’

They went to a rectangular hatchway in the deck and followed an inclined ramp leading down.

‘Stairs would take up less space,’ Khalad said critically.

‘The crew couldn’t use stairs, Khalad,’ Flute told him. ‘They don’t have legs.’

He stared at her in horror.

‘I told you that they’re not human,’ she shrugged.

The companionway they reached at the bottom of the ramp was low, and the knights had to half stoop as they followed the Child Goddess aft. The area below decks was illuminated by pale glowing spots of light recessed into the ceiling and covered over by what appeared to be glass. The light was steady, unwinking, and it definitely did not come from any kind of fire.

The quarters to which their little guide led them were more conventionally illuminated by candles, however, and the ceilings were high enough for the tall knights to stand erect. No sooner had Ulath closed the heavy door to what was in effect to be their prison for the next five days than a low-pitched humming sound began to vibrate in the deck beneath their feet, and they could feel the bow of the strange vessel start to swing ponderously about to point at the open sea. Then the ship surged forward.

‘What’s making it move?’ Kalten asked. ‘There’s no wind.’

‘
Kalten!
’ Aphrael said sharply.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

‘There are four compartments here,’ she told them. ‘We’ll eat in this one, and we can spread out and sleep in the other three. Put away your belongings, gentlemen. Then you might as well go to bed. Nothing’s going to happen for five days.’

Sparhawk and Kalten went into one of the cabins,
taking Talen with them. Talen was carrying Khalad’s saddle-bags as well as his own.

‘What’s your brother up to?’ Sparhawk asked the boy suspiciously.

‘He wants to look around a bit,’ Talen replied.

‘Aphrael told him not to do that.’

‘So?’

They all staggered a bit as the ship gave another forward surge. The humming sound climbed to a whine, and the ship seemed to rise up in the water almost like a sitting man rising to his feet.

Kalten threw his saddle-bags onto one of the bunks and sat down beside them. ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ he grumbled.

‘You aren’t supposed to,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘I wonder if they’ve got anything to drink aboard. I could definitely use a drink about now.’

‘I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high, and I’m not sure you’d care to drink something brewed by nonhumans. It might do some strange things to you.’

Khalad came into the tiny compartment, his eyes baffled. ‘I don’t want to alarm you, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘but we’re moving faster than a horse can run.’

‘How do you know that?’ Talen asked him.

‘Those curtains in that central cabin are hanging over openings that are sort of like portholes – they’ve got glass over them, anyway. I looked out. There’s still fog all around us, but I could see the water. We passed a floating log, and it went by like a crossbow bolt. There’s something else, too. The hull curves back under us, and it isn’t touching the water at all.’

‘We’re
flying?’
Kalten asked incredulously.

Khalad shook his head. ‘I think the keel’s touching the water, but that’s about all.’

‘I really don’t want to know about this,’ Kalten said plaintively.

‘He’s right, Khalad,’ Sparhawk said. ‘I think this is one of the things Aphrael told us was none of our business. Leave those curtains closed from now on.’

‘Aren’t you the least bit curious, my Lord?’

‘I can live with it.’

‘You don’t mind if I speculate just a bit, do you, Sparhawk?’

‘Go right ahead, but keep your speculations to yourself.’ He sat down on his bunk and began to pull off his boots. ‘I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to follow orders and go to bed. This is a good chance to catch up on our sleep, and we’ve all been running a little short on that for quite some time now. We’ll want to be alert when we get to Jorsan.’

‘Which only happens to be about a quarter of the way around the world,’ Khalad added moodily, ‘and which we’re going to reach in just five days. I don’t think I’m put together right for this kind of thing. Do I
have
to be a Pandion Knight, Sparhawk?’

‘Yes,’ Sparhawk told him, dropping his boots on the deck. ‘Was there anything else you wanted to know before I go to sleep?’

They all slept a great deal during the next five days. Sparhawk strongly suspected that Aphrael might have had a hand in that, since sleeping people don’t wander around making discoveries.

Their meals were served on strange oblong trays which were made of some substance none of them could identify. The food consisted entirely of uncooked vegetables, and they were given only water to drink. Kalten complained about the food at every meal, but, since there was nothing else available, he ate it anyway.

On the afternoon before they were scheduled to arrive, they gathered together in the cramped central compartment. ‘Are you sure?’ Kalten dubiously asked
Flute when she told them that they were no more than ten hours from their destination.

She sighed. ‘Yes, Kalten, I’m sure.’

‘How do you know? You haven’t been up on deck, and you haven’t talked to any of the sailors. We could have been…’ His words sort of faded off. She was looking at him with a long-suffering expression as he floundered on. ‘Oh,’ he said then. ‘I wasn’t thinking, I guess. Sorry.’

‘I
do
love you, Kalten – in spite of everything.’

Khalad cleared his throat. ‘Didn’t Dolmant tell you that the Edomish have some strong feelings about the Church?’ he asked Sparhawk.

Sparhawk nodded. ‘As I understand it, they look at our Holy Mother in almost the same way that the Rendors do.’

‘Church Knights wouldn’t really be welcome then, I gather.’

‘Hardly.’

‘We’ll need to disguise ourselves as ordinary travelers, then.’

‘More than likely,’ Sparhawk agreed.

Vanion had been looking at his map. ‘Exactly where are we going from Jorsan, Aphrael?’ he asked Flute.

‘Up the coast a ways,’ she replied vaguely.

‘That’s not very specific.’

‘Yes, I know.’

He sighed. ‘Is there any real need for us to go on up the Gulf of Jorsan to the city itself? If we were to land on the north shore of the gulf, we could avoid the city entirely. Since the Edomish have these prejudices, shouldn’t we stay away from them as much as possible?’

‘We have to go to Jorsan,’ she told him. ‘Well,’ she amended, ‘Jorsan itself isn’t that important, but we’re going to see something along the way that will be.’

‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘You get used to that,’ Sparhawk told his friend. ‘Our little Goddess here gets hunches from time to time – no details at all, just hunches.’

‘What time will we make our landfall?’ Ulath asked.

‘About midnight,’ she replied.

‘Landing on a strange shore at night can be a little tricky,’ he said doubtfully.

‘There won’t be any problems.’ She said it with absolute confidence.

‘I’m not supposed to worry about it. Is that it?’

‘You can worry if you want to, Ulath,’ she smiled. ‘It’s not necessary, but you can worry all you like, if it makes you feel better.’

It was foggy when they came up on deck again – a dense, obscuring fog – and this time the strange ship showed no lights. Their horses, already saddled, were waiting, and they led them down the ramp to a pebbly beach.