The Shining Ones (32 page)

‘You’ve just taken all the fun out of all the “I told you so”s I’ve been saving up.’

Zalasta arrived in Matherion two days later. After only the briefest of greetings to the rest of them, he went immediately to Sephrenia’s room.

‘He’ll straighten it out, Vanion,’ Sparhawk assured the Preceptor. ‘He’s her oldest friend, and he’s far too wise to be infected with irrational prejudice.’

‘I wouldn’t be all that sure, Sparhawk.’ Vanion’s face was gloomy. ‘I thought
she
was too wise, and look what happened there. This blind hatred may infect the entire Styric race. If Zalasta feels the same way Sephrenia does, all he’s going to do is reinforce her prejudices.’

Sparhawk shook his head. ‘No, my friend. Zalasta’s above that. He has no reason to trust Elenes either, but he was willing to help us, wasn’t he? He’s a realist, and even if he
does
share her feelings, he’ll suppress them in the name of political expediency. And if I’m right, he’ll persuade her to do the same. She doesn’t have to like Xanetia. All she has to do is accept the fact that we
need her. Once Zalasta convinces her of that, the two of you will be able to patch things up.’

‘Maybe.’

It was several hours later when Zalasta emerged alone from Sephrenia’s room with his rough-hewn Styric face somber. ‘It will not be easy, Prince Sparhawk,’ he said when the two of them met in the corridor outside. ‘She is deeply wounded. I cannot understand what Aphrael was thinking of.’

‘Who can
ever
understand why Aphrael does things, learned one?’ Sparhawk smiled briefly. ‘She’s the most whimsical and exasperating person I’ve ever known sometimes. As I understand it, she doesn’t approve of Sephrenia’s prejudice, and she’s taking steps. The expression “doing something to somebody for his own good” always implies a certain amount of brutality, I’m afraid. Were you able to talk any sense into Sephrenia at all?’

‘I’m approaching the question obliquely, your Highness,’ Zalasta replied. ‘Sephrenia’s already been deeply injured. This isn’t a good time for a direct confrontation. I was at least able to persuade her to postpone her return to Sarsos.’

‘That’s something, anyway. Let’s go talk to the others. A lot has happened since you left.’

‘The reports come from unimpeachable sources, Anarae,’ Zalasta said coolly.

‘I do assure thee, Zalasta of Styricum, they are nonetheless false. None of the Delphae have left our valley for well over a hundred years – except to deliver our invitation to Anakha.’

‘It’s happened before, Zalasta,’ Kalten told the white-robed Styric. ‘We watched Rebal use some very obvious trickery when he was talking to a group of Edomish peasants.’

‘Oh?’

‘It was the sort of thing one sees in second-rate carnivals, learned one,’ Talen explained. ‘One of his henchmen threw something into a fire; there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke; then somebody dressed in old-time clothes stood up from where he’d been hiding and started bellowing in an ancient form of speech. The peasants all thought they were seeing Incetes rising from the grave.’

‘Those who witnessed the Shining Ones were not so gullible, Master Talen,’ Zalasta objected.

‘And the fellow who gulled them probably wasn’t as clumsy.’ The boy shrugged. ‘A skilled fake can make almost anybody believe almost anything – as long as they aren’t close enough to see the hidden wires. Sephrenia told us that it means that the other side’s a little short on real magicians, so they have to cheat.’

Zalasta frowned. ‘It
may
be possible,’ he conceded. ‘The sightings were brief and at quite some distance.’ He looked at Xanetia. ‘You are certain, Anarae? Could there perhaps be some of your people who live separately? Who are cut off from Delphaeus and may have joined with our enemies?’

‘They would no longer be of the Delphae, Zalasta of Styricum. We are bound to the lake. It is the lake which doth make us what we are, and I tell thee truly, the light which doth illuminate us is but the least of the things which do make us unlike all others.’ She looked at him gravely. ‘Thou art Styric, Zalasta of Ylara, and thou art well aware of the consequences of markedly differing from thy neighbors.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘to our sorrow.’

‘The decision of thy race to attempt to co-exist with the other races of man may be suitable for Styrics,’ she continued. ‘For my race, however, it hath not been possible. Ye of the Styric race are oft met with contempt and
derision, but thy differences are not threatening to the Elenes or Tamuls who are about ye. We of Delphaeus, however, do inspire terror in the hearts of all others. In time, methinks, thy race will become acceptable. The wind of change hath already begun to blow, engendered in large measure by that fortuitous alliance betwixt ye and the Church of Chyrellos. The knights of that Church are kindly disposed toward Styricum, and their might shall alter Elenic predispositions. For the Delphae, however, such accommodation is impossible. Our very appearance doth set us forever apart from all others, and this doth stand at the heart of our present alliance. We have sought out Anakha, and we have offered him our aid in his struggle with Cyrgon. In exchange, we have besought him only to raise up Bhelliom and to seal us away from all other men. Then none may come against us, nor may we go against any other. Thus will all be safe.’

‘A wise decision perhaps, Anarae,’ he conceded. ‘It was a choice which
we
considered in eons past. Delphaeic numbers are limited, however, and your hidden valley will easily hold all of you. We Styrics are more numerous and more widespread. Our neighbors would not look kindly on a Styric homeland abutting their own borders. We cannot follow your course, but must live in the world.’

Xanetia rose to her feet, putting one hand on Kalten’s shoulder. ‘Stay, gentle knight,’ she told him. ‘I must confer a moment with Anakha in furtherance of our pact. Should he detect falsity in me,
he
may slay me.’

Sparhawk stood up, crossed to the door, and opened it for her. Danae, dragging Rollo behind her, followed them from the room.

‘What is it, Anarae?’ Sparhawk asked.

‘Let us repair to that place above where we are wont
to speak,’ she replied. ‘What I must tell thee is for thine ears alone.’

Danae gave her a hard look.

‘Thou mayest also hear my words, Highness,’ Xanetia told the little girl.

‘You’re
so
kind.’

‘We can’t hide from her, Xanetia,’ Sparhawk said. ‘We could go to the top of the highest tower in Matherion, and she’d fly up to eavesdrop on us anyway.’

‘Canst thou truly fly, Highness?’ Xanetia looked startled.

‘Can’t everyone?’

‘Behave yourself,’ Sparhawk told his daughter.

They climbed the stairs to the top of the tower again and went out onto the roof. ‘Anakha, I must tell thee a truth which thou mayest not wish to believe,’ Xanetia said gravely, ‘but it
is
truth, nonetheless.’

‘That’s an unpromising start,’ Danae observed.

‘I must speak this truth, Anakha,’ Xanetia said gravely, ‘for it is not only in keeping with our pact, but it doth also have a grave import on our common design.’

‘I get the feeling that I should take hold of something solid,’ Sparhawk said wryly.

‘As it seemeth best to thee, Anakha. I must advise thee, however, that thy trust in Zalasta of Styricum is sorely misplaced.’

‘What?’

‘He hath played thee false, Anakha. His heart and his mind are Cyrgon’s.’

‘That’s absolutely impossible!’ Danae exclaimed. ‘Zalasta
loves
my sister and me! He’d
never
betray us!’

‘He doth love thy sister beyond measure, Goddess,’ Xanetia replied. ‘His feelings for
thee,
however, are not so kindly. In truth, he doth hate thee.’

‘I don’t believe you!’

Sparhawk was a soldier, and soldiers who cannot adjust to surprises rapidly do not live long enough to become veterans. ‘You weren’t at Delphaeus, Aphrael,’ he reminded the Child Goddess. ‘Bhelliom vouched for Xanetia’s truthfulness.’

‘She’s just saying this to drive a wedge between us and Zalasta.’

‘I don’t really think so.’ A number of things were rapidly falling into place in Sparhawk’s mind. ‘The alliance is too important to the Delphae for her to endanger it with something that petty, and what she just told us explains several things that didn’t make sense before. Let’s hear her out. If there’s some question about Zalasta’s loyalty, we’d better find out about it right now. Exactly what did you discover in his mind, Anarae?’

‘A great confusion, Anakha,’ Xanetia said sadly. ‘The mind of Zalasta might have been a noble one, but it doth stand on the brink of madness, consumed with but one thought and one desire. He hath loved thy sister since earliest childhood, Goddess, but his love is not the brotherly affection thou hast believed it was. This I know with greater certainty than all else, for it is ever at the forefront of his mind. He doth think of her as his affianced bride.’

‘That’s absurd!’ Danae said. ‘She doesn’t think of him that way at all.’

‘Nay, but he doth think so of her. My sojourn within his thought was brief, therefore I do not as yet know all. As soon as I did perceive his treachery, my pledge bound me to reveal it to Anakha. With more time, I will discover more.’

‘What prompted you to look into
his
thought, Xanetia?’ Sparhawk asked her. ‘The room was full of people. Why did you choose him? – or do you just listen to everybody simultaneously? It seems to me that would be very confusing.’ He made a face. ‘I think I’m going at this backward. It might be helpful if I knew how your gift works. Is it like having another set of ears? Do you hear
every
thought going on around you? – all at the same time?’

‘Nay, Anakha.’ She smiled faintly. ‘That, as thou hast perceived, would be too confusing. Our ears, will we, nil we, hear
all
sound. My perception of the thought of others doth require my conscious direction. I must reach out to hear,
unless
the thought of one who is near me be so intense that it doth become as a shout. So it was with Zalasta. His mind doth scream the name of Sephrenia again and again. In equal measure, moreover, doth his mind shriek
thy
name, Goddess, and
those
shrieks are filled with his hatred of thee. In his mind art thou a thief, having stolen away all his hope of joy.’

‘A
thief? Me? He
was the one who was trying to steal what was mine! I
put
my sister here on this world. She’s
mine
! She’s always been mine! How
dare
he?’ Danae’s black eyes were flashing, and her voice was filled with outraged indignation.

‘This isn’t one of the more attractive sides of your nature, Divine One,’ Sparhawk suggested. ‘We don’t own other people.’

‘I’m not a people, Sparhawk! I own what I want!’

‘You’re just digging yourself in deeper. I wouldn’t pursue it any further.’

‘But I
do,
father. I’ve devoted hundreds of years to Sephrenia, and all that time Zalasta’s been sneaking around behind my back trying to steal her from me.’

‘Aphrael,’ he said gently, ‘you’re an Elene in this particular incarnation, so you’re going to have to stop thinking like a Styric. There are certain things that decent Elenes don’t do, and you’re doing one of them right now. Sephrenia belongs to herself – not to you, not to Zalasta, not even to Vanion. Her soul’s her own.’

‘But I love her!’ It was almost a wail.

‘I’m not built right for this,’ Sparhawk muttered to himself. ‘How can any human hope to be the father of a Goddess?’

‘Don’t you love me, father?’ Her voice was tiny.

‘Of course I do.’

‘Then
you
belong to me too. Why are you arguing with me about it?’

‘You’re a primitive.’

‘Of course I am. We’re
supposed
to be primitive. All these years Zalasta’s been pretending to love me – smiling at me, kissing me, holding me while I slept. That wretch! That lying wretch! I’ll have his heart for supper for this!’

‘No, as a matter of fact, you won’t. I’m not raising a cannibal. You won’t eat pork, so don’t start developing a taste for people.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said contritely. ‘I got excited.’

‘Besides, I think Vanion’s got first claim on Zalasta’s tripes.’

‘Oh dear. I completely forgot about Vanion. That poor, poor man.’ Two great tears welled up in her eyes. ‘I’ll spend the rest of his life making this up to him.’

‘Why don’t we let Sephrenia take care of that? Just heal the breach between them. That’s the only thing he
really wants.’ Then Sparhawk thought of something. ‘It won’t wash, Xanetia. Zalasta could very well be in love with Sephrenia, but he hasn’t gone over to Cyrgon. When we encountered those Trolls in the mountains of Atan, he was the one who saved us from them – and it wasn’t just the Trolls. There were worse things there as well.’

‘The Trolls do not loom large in Cyrgon’s plans, Anakha. The deaths of a hundred of them were of little moment. All else was illusion – illusion wrought by Zalasta himself to allay certain suspicions in the minds of diverse of thy companions. He sought to win thy trust by destroying those shadows of his own making.’

‘It
does
fit,’ Sparhawk said in a troubled voice. ‘Would you ladies excuse me for a moment? I think Vanion should hear this. It concerns him too, and I’d like his advice before I start making decisions.’ He paused. ‘Will you two be all right here – together, I mean? Without someone here to keep you from each other’s throats?’

‘All will be well, Anakha,’ Xanetia assured him. ‘Divine Aphrael and I have something to discuss.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘but no hitting – and don’t start screaming at each other. You’ll wake up the whole castle.’ He crossed the parapet to the door and went back down the stairs.

The meeting in the royal apartment had adjourned for a time, and Sparhawk found his friend sitting with his face in his hands in a room quite some distance from the one he normally shared with Sephrenia.

‘I need some help, my friend,’ Sparhawk said to him. ‘There’s something you need to know, and we’re going to have to decide what to do about it.’

Vanion raised his grief-ravaged face. ‘More trouble?’ he asked.

‘Probably. Xanetia just told me about something we should deal with. I’ll let her tell you about it herself.
She and Danae are up at the top of the tower. I think we’ll want to keep this private – at least until we decide what steps to take.’

Vanion nodded and rose to his feet. The two of them went back out into the corridor and started up the stairs. ‘Where’s Zalasta?’ Sparhawk asked.

‘He’s with Sephrenia. She needs him right now.’

Sparhawk grunted, not really trusting himself to speak.

They found Xanetia and Danae at the battlements looking out over the city. The sun was moving down the intensely blue autumn sky toward the craggy western horizon, and the breeze coming in off the Tamul Sea had a salt tang mingled with the ripe odor of autumn. ‘All right, go ahead and tell him, Xanetia,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Then we’ll decide what to do.’

To Sparhawk’s surprise, Vanion didn’t waste much time on incredulous exclamation. ‘You’re sure, Anarae?’ he asked after Xanetia had told him of Zalasta’s duplicity.

She nodded. ‘I have seen his heart, my Lord. He hath played thee false.’

‘You don’t seem very surprised, Vanion,’ Sparhawk said.

‘I’m not – well, not really. There’s always been something about Zalasta that didn’t quite ring true. He had some trouble keeping his face under control when Sephrenia and I first went to Sarsos and moved into her house there. He tried to hide it, but I could tell that he wasn’t very happy with our living arrangements, and his disapproval seemed to go quite a bit further than a generalized kind of moral outrage about unorthodox relationships.’

‘That’s a delicate way to put it,’ Danae observed. ‘We’ve never understood why you humans make such a fuss about that. If two people love each other, they
should do something about it, and living together is much more convenient for that sort of thing, isn’t it?’

‘There are certain ceremonies and formalities customary first,’ Sparhawk explained dryly.

‘You mean something like the way the peacock shows off his feathers to the peahen before they start building a nest?’

‘Something along those lines.’ Vanion shrugged, then sighed. ‘It seems that Sephrenia doesn’t admire my feathers any more.’

‘Not so, Lord Vanion,’ Xanetia disagreed. ‘She doth deeply love thee still, and her heart is made desolate by reason of her separation from thee.’

‘And Zalasta’s with her right now doing everything he can to make the separation permanent,’ Sparhawk added, his voice bleak. ‘How do you want us to proceed with this, Vanion? You’re the one most deeply involved here. There’s nothing any of us could say that would convince Sephrenia that Zalasta’s a traitor, you know.’

Vanion nodded. ‘She’s going to have to see it for herself,’ he agreed. ‘How far were you able to reach into his mind, Anarae?’

‘His present thought is open to me; his memories somewhat less so. Proximity and some time should provide opportunity to probe more.’

‘That’s the key, then,’ Vanion said. ‘Ehlana and Sarabian want to start tearing down the government almost immediately. Once that starts, Zalasta’s presence in our inner councils is going to be potentially disastrous. He’ll find out everything we’ve got planned.’

‘Let him,’ Danae sniffed. ‘It’s not going to do him much good after I’m done with my supper.’

‘What’s this?’ Vanion asked.

‘Our little savage here wants to eat Zalasta’s heart,’ Sparhawk explained.

‘While he watches,’ the Child Goddess added. ‘That’s the whole point of it – making him watch while I do it.’

‘Could she do that?’ Vanion asked.

‘Probably,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I won’t let her, though.’

‘I didn’t
ask
you, father,’ Danae said.

‘You didn’t have to. I said no. Now let’s drop it.’

‘When did Zalasta make this arrangement with Cyrgon, Anarae?’ Vanion asked.

‘This is unclear for the nonce, my Lord,’ she replied. ‘I shall pursue it further. My sense of his thought doth suggest that their alliance dates back some years and doth involve Bhelliom in some fashion.’

Sparhawk thought about that. ‘Zalasta
was
very upset when he found out that we’d thrown Bhelliom into the sea,’ he recalled. ‘I could start making some educated guesses at this point, but let’s wait and see what Xanetia’s able to turn up. Right now, I think we’d better concentrate on delaying Ehlana and Sarabian until we can devise some way to make Zalasta expose his own guilt. We need to get Sephrenia out from under his influence, and she’s never going to believe that he’s a traitor until she actually sees and hears him convict himself by doing or saying something that proves his treason.’

Vanion nodded his agreement.

‘I think we’re going to have to keep this just among the four of us,’ Sparhawk continued. ‘Zalasta’s very shrewd, and Sephrenia knows all of us better than we know ourselves. If the others have any idea of what we’re doing, they’ll let something slip, and Sephrenia will know about it immediately – and Zalasta will know about five minutes after she does.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ Vanion agreed.

‘Hast thou a plan, Anakha?’ Xanetia asked.

‘Sort of. I’ve still got to work out some of the details, though. It’s a little complicated.’

Danae rolled her eyes upward. ‘Elenes,’ she sighed.

‘Absolutely not,’ Ehlana said adamantly. ‘He’s too valuable. We can’t risk it.’ She was sitting near the window with the morning sun streaming in on her and setting her pale hair aglow.

‘There’s no risk involved, dear,’ Sparhawk assured her. ‘The cloud and the shadow are both gone. Bhelliom and I took care of that once and for all.’ There was the flaw. Sparhawk was not entirely positive of that.

‘He’s right, my Queen,’ Kalten agreed. ‘He tore the cloud to tatters and dissolved the shadow like salt in boiling water.’

‘I’d really like to ask Kolata some questions, Ehlana,’ Sarabian said. ‘It doesn’t make very much sense to keep feeding him if we aren’t going to get any use out of him. This is what we’ve been waiting for, my dear – some sort of assurance that he won’t be torn to pieces the minute he opens his mouth.’

‘Are you absolutely sure, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana asked.

‘Trust me.’ Sparhawk reached inside his doublet and took out the box. ‘My blue friend here can make sure that Kolata remains intact – no matter
what
questions we ask.’ He looked at Zalasta. ‘I’m going to ask a favor of you, learned one,’ he said, keeping his voice casual. ‘I think Sephrenia should sit in on this. I know that she’d rather wash her hands of the lot of us right now, but maybe if she listens to Kolata’s confession, she’ll begin to take an interest in things again. It might be just the thing to bring her out of the state she’s in right now.’

Zalasta’s face was troubled, though he was obviously trying very hard to keep his expression under control. ‘I don’t think you realize how deeply she feels about this matter, Prince Sparhawk. I strongly advise you not
to force her to be present when you question Kolata. It will only deepen the rift between her and her former friends.’

‘I won’t accept that, Zalasta,’ Ehlana told him. ‘Sephrenia’s a member of the royal council of Elenia. I appointed her to that position when I ascended the throne. Her personal problems are her own business, but I need her here in her
official
capacity. If necessary, I’ll command her presence, and I’ll send Kalten and Ulath to deliver the command and make sure that she obeys.’