The Hidden City

by David Eddings

  The fireplaces were cavernous, and they were all filled with blazing logs, not so much to ward off the minimal chill of the Arjuni winter but to dry out rooms saturated with over a millennium of dank humidity. There were beds and fresh linen and clothing of an Arjuni cut, but most important of all, there was a fair-sized room with a large marble bathtub set into the floor. Ehlana’s eyes fixed longingly on that ultimate luxury. It so completely seized her attention that she scarcely heard Zalasta’s apologies. After a few vague replies from her, the Styric realized that his continued presence was no longer appreciated, so he politely excused himself and left.

  ‘Alean, dear,’ Ehlana said in an almost dreamy voice, ‘that’s quite a large tub – certainly large enough for the two of us, wouldn’t you say?’

  Alean was also gazing at the tub with undisguised longing. ‘Easily, your Majesty,’ she replied.

  ‘How long do you think it might take us to heat enough water to fill it?’

  ‘There are plenty of large pots and kettles in that kitchen, my Queen,’ the gentle girl said, ‘and all the fireplaces are going. It shouldn’t take very long at all.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Ehlana said enthusiastically. ‘Why don’t we get started?’

  ‘Just exactly who is this Klæl, Zalasta?’ Ehlana asked the Styric several days later when he came by to call. Zalasta came to their prison often, as if his visits in some way lessened his guilt, and he always talked, long, rambling, sometimes disconnected talk that often revealed far more than he probably intended for her to know.

  ‘Klæl is an eternal being,’ he replied. Ehlana noted almost absently that the heavily accented Elenic which had so irritated her when they had first met in Sarsos was gone now. Another of his ruses, she concluded. ‘Klæl is far more eternal than the Gods of this world,’ he continued. ‘He’s in some way connected to Bhelliom. They’re contending principles, or something along those lines. I was a bit distraught when Cyrgon explained the relationship to me, so I didn’t fully understand.’

  ‘Yes, I can imagine,’ she murmured. Her relationship with Zalasta was peculiar. The circumstances made ranting and denunciation largely a waste of time, so Ehlana was civil to him. He appeared to be grateful for that, and his gratitude made him more open with her. That civility, which cost her nothing, enabled her to pick up much information from the Styric’s rambling conversation.

  ‘Anyway,’ Zalasta continued, ‘Cyzada was terrified when Cyrgon commanded him to summon Klæl, and he tried very hard to talk the God out of the notion. Cyrgon was implacable, though, and he was filled with rage when Sparhawk neatly plucked the Trolls right out of his grasp. We’d never even considered the possibility that Sparhawk might release the Troll-Gods from their confinement.’

  ‘That was Sir Ulath’s idea,’ Ehlana told him. ‘Ulath knows a great deal about Trolls.’

  ‘Evidently so. At any rate, Cyrgon forced Cyzada to summon Klæl, but Klæl no sooner appeared than he went in search of Bhelliom. That took Cyrgon aback. It had been his intention to hold Klæl in reserve – hiding, so to speak – and to unleash him by surprise. That went out the window when Klæl rushed off to the North Cape to confront Bhelliom. Sparhawk knows that Klæl is here now – although I have no idea what he can do about it. That was what made the summoning of Klæl such idiocy in the first place. Klæl can’t be controlled. I tried to explain that to Cyrgon, but he wouldn’t listen. Our goal is to gain possession of Bhelliom, and Klæl and Bhelliom are eternal enemies. As soon as Cyrgon takes Bhelliom in his hands, Klæl will attack him, and I’m fairly certain that Klæl is infinitely more powerful than he is.’ Zalasta glanced around cautiously. ‘The Cyrgai are in many ways a reflection of their God, I’m afraid. Cyrgon abhors any kind of intelligence. He’s frighteningly stupid sometimes.’

  ‘I hate to point this out, Zalasta,’ she said insincerely, ‘but you have this tendency to ally yourself with defectives. Annias was clever enough, I suppose, but his obsession with the Archprelacy distorted his judgment, and Martel’s drive for revenge made his thinking just as distorted. From what I gather, Otha was as stupid as a stump, and Azash was so elemental that all he had on his mind were his desires. Coherent thought was beyond him.’

  ‘You know everything, don’t you, Ehlana?’ he said. ‘How on earth did you find all of this out?’

  ‘I’m not really at liberty to discuss it,’ she replied.

  ‘No matter, I suppose,’ he said absently. A sudden hunger crossed his face. ‘How is Sephrenia?’ he asked.

  ‘Well enough. She was very upset when she first found out about you, though – and your attempt on Aphrael’s life was really ill-conceived, you know. That was the one thing that convinced her of your treachery.’

  ‘I lost my head,’ he confessed. ‘That cursed Delphaeic woman destroyed three hundred years of patient labor with a toss of her head.’

  ‘I suppose it’s none of my business, but why didn’t you just accept the fact that Sephrenia was wholly committed to Aphrael and let it go at that? There’s no way you can ever compete with the Child Goddess, you know.’

  ‘Could you have ever accepted the idea that Sparhawk was committed to another, Ehlana?’ His tone was accusing.

  ‘No,’ she admitted, ‘I suppose I couldn’t have. We do strange things for love, don’t we, Zalasta? I was at least direct about it, though. Things might have worked out differently for you if you hadn’t tried deceit and deception. Aphrael’s not completely unreasonable, you know.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he replied. Then he sighed deeply. ‘But we’ll never know, will we?’

  ‘No. It’s far too late now.’

  ‘The glazier cracked the pane when he was setting it into the frame, my Queen,’ Alean said quietly, pointing at the defective triangle of bubbled glass in the lower corner of the window. ‘He was very clumsy.’

  ‘How did you come to know so much about this, Alean?’ Ehlana asked her.

  ‘My father was apprenticed to a glazier when he was young,’ the doe-eyed girl replied. ‘He used to repair windows in our village.’ She touched the tip of the glowing poker to the bead of lead that held the cracked pane in place. ‘I’ll have to be very careful,’ she said, frowning in concentration, ‘but if I do it right, I can fix it so that we can take out this little section of glass and put it back in again. That way, we’ll be able to hear what they’re talking about out there in the street, and then we’ll be able to put the glass back in again so that they’ll never know what we’ve done. I thought you might want to be able to listen to them, and they always seem to gather just outside this window.’

  ‘You’re an absolute treasure, Alean!’ Ehlana exclaimed, impulsively embracing the girl.

  ‘Be careful, my Lady!’ Alean cried in alarm. ‘The hot iron!’

  Alean was right. The window with the small defective pane was at the corner of the building, and Zalasta, Scarpa and the others were quartered in the attached structure. It appeared that whenever they wanted to discuss something out of the hearing of the soldiers, they habitually drifted to the walled-in cul-de-sac just outside the window. The small panes of cheap glass leaded into the window-frame were only semi-transparent at best, and so, with minimal caution, Alean’s modification of the cracked pane permitted Ehlana to listen and even marginally observe without being seen.

  On the day following her conversation with Zalasta, she saw the white-robed Styric approaching with a look of bleakest melancholy on his face and with Scarpa and Krager close behind him. ‘You’ve got to snap out of this, Father,’ Scarpa said urgently. ‘The soldiers are beginning to notice.’

  ‘Let them,’ Zalasta replied shortly.

  ‘No, Father,’ Scarpa said in his rich, theatrical voice, ‘we can’t do that. These men are animals. They function below the level of thought. If you walk around through these streets with the face of a little boy whose dog just died, they’re going to think that something’s wrong and they’ll start deserting by the regiment. I’ve spent too much time and effort g
athering this army to have you drive them away by feeling sorry for yourself.’

  ‘You’d never understand, Scarpa,’ Zalasta retorted. ‘You can’t even begin to comprehend the meaning of love. You don’t love anything.’

  ‘Oh, yes I do, Zalasta,’ Scarpa snapped. ‘I love me. That’s the only kind of love that makes any sense.’

  Ehlana just happened to be watching Krager. The drunkard’s eyes were narrowed, shrewd. He casually moved his ever-present tankard around behind him and poured most of the wine out. Then he raised the tankard and drank off the dregs noisily. Then he belched. ‘Parn’me,’ he slurred, reaching out his hand to the wall to steady himself as he weaved back and forth on his feet.

  Scarpa gave him a quick, irritated glance, obviously dismissing him. Ehlana, however, rather quickly reassessed Krager. He was not always nearly as drunk as he appeared to be.

  ‘It’s all been for nothing, Scarpa,’ Zalasta groaned. ‘I’ve allied myself with the diseased, the degenerate and the insane for nothing. I had thought that once Aphrael was gone, Sephrenia might turn to me. But she won’t. She’d die before she’ll have anything to do with me.’

  Scarpa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let her die then,’ he said bluntly. ‘Can’t you get it through your head that one woman’s the same as any other? Women are a commodity – like bales of hay or barrels of wine. Look at Krager here. How much affection do you think he has for an empty wine barrel? It’s the new ones, the full ones, that he loves, right, Krager?’

  Krager smirked at him owlishly and then belched again. ‘Parn’me,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t really see any reason for this obsession of yours anyway,’ Scarpa continued to grind on his father’s most sensitive spot. ‘Sephrenia’s only damaged goods now. Vanion’s had her – dozens of times. Are you so poor-spirited that you’d take the leavings of an Elene?’

  Zalasta suddenly smashed his fist against the stone wall with a snarl of frustration.

  ‘He’s probably so used to having her that he doesn’t even waste his time murmuring endearments to her any more,’ Scarpa went on. ‘He just takes what he wants from her, rolls over and starts to snore. You know how Elenes are when they’re in rut. And she’s probably no better. He’s made an Elene out of her, Father. She’s not a Styric any more. She’s become an Elene – or even worse, a mongrel. I’m really surprised to see you wasting all this pure emotion on a mongrel.’ He sneered. ‘She’s no better than my mother or my sisters, and you know what they were.’

  Zalasta’s face twisted, and he threw back his head and actually howled. ‘I’d rather see her dead!’

  Scarpa’s pale, bearded face grew sly. ‘Why don’t you kill her then, Father?’ he asked in an insinuating whisper. ‘Once a decent woman’s been bedded by an Elene, she can never be trusted again, you know. Even if you did persuade her to marry you, she’d never be faithful.’ He laid an insincere hand on his father’s arm. ‘Kill her, Father,’ he advised. ‘At least your memories of her will be pure; she never will be.’

  Zalasta howled again and clawed at his beard with his long fingernails. Then he turned quickly and ran off down the street.

  Krager straightened, and his seeming drunkenness slid away. ‘You took an awful chance there, you know,’ he said in a cautious tone.

  Scarpa looked sharply at him. ‘Very good, Krager,’ he murmured. ‘You played the part of a drunkard almost to perfection.’

  ‘I’ve had lots of practice,’ Krager shrugged. ‘You’re lucky he didn’t obliterate you, Scarpa – or tie your guts in knots again.’

  ‘He couldn’t,’ Scarpa smirked. ‘I’m a fair magician myself, you know, and I’m skilled enough to know that you have to have a clear head to work the spells. I kept him in a state of rage. He couldn’t have worked up enough magic to break a spider-web. Let’s hope that he does kill Sephrenia. That should really scatter Sparhawk’s wits, not to mention the fact that as soon as the desire of his life is no more than a pile of dead meat, Zalasta’s very likely to conveniently cut his own throat.’

  ‘You really hate him, don’t you?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you, Krager? He could have taken me with him when I was a child, but he’d come to visit for a while, and he’d show me what it meant to be a Styric, and then he’d go off alone, leaving me behind to be tormented by whores. If he doesn’t have the stomach to cut his own throat, I’d be more than happy to lend him a hand.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright, and he was smiling broadly. ‘Where’s your wine barrel, Krager?’ he asked. ‘Right now I feel like getting drunk.’ And he began to laugh, a cackling, insane laugh empty of any mirth or humanity.

  ‘It’s no use!’ Ehlana said, flinging the comb across the room. ‘Look at what they’ve done to my hair!’ She buried her face in her hands and wept.

  ‘It’s not hopeless, my Lady,’ Alean said in her soft voice. ‘There’s a style they wear in Cammoria.’ She lifted the mass of blonde hair on the right side of Ehlana’s head and brought it over across the top. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It covers all the bare places, and it really looks quite chic’

  Ehlana looked hopefully into her mirror. ‘It doesn’t look too bad, does it?’ she conceded.

  ‘And if we set a flower just behind your right ear, it would really look very stunning.’

  ‘Alean, you’re wonderful!’ the Queen exclaimed happily. ‘What would I ever do without you?’

  It took them the better part of an hour, but at last the unsightly bare places were covered, and Ehlana felt that some measure of her dignity had been restored.

  That evening, however, Krager came to call. He stood swaying in the doorway, his eyes bleary and a drunken smirk on his face. ‘Harvest-time again, Ehlana,’ he announced, drawing his dagger. ‘It seems that I’ll need just a bit more of your hair.’

  Chapter 6

  The sky remained overcast, but as luck had it, it had not yet rained. The stiff wind coming in off the Gulf of Micae was raw, however, and they rode with their cloaks wrapped tightly about them. Despite Khalad’s belief that it was to their advantage to move slowly, Berit was consumed with impatience. He knew that what they were doing was only a small part of the overall strategy, but the confrontation they all knew was coming loomed ahead, and he desperately wanted to get on with it. ‘How can you be so patient?’ he asked Khalad about mid-afternoon one day when the onshore wind was particularly chill and damp.

  ‘I’m a farmer, Sparhawk,’ Khalad replied, scratching at his short black beard. ‘Waiting for things to grow teaches you not to expect changes overnight.’

  ‘I suppose I’ve never really thought about what it must be like just sitting still waiting for things to sprout.’

  ‘There’s not much sitting still when you’re a farmer,’ Khalad told him. ‘There are always more things to do than there are hours in the day, and if you get bored, you can always keep a close watch on the sky. A whole year’s work can be lost in a dry-spell or a sudden hailstorm.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought about that either.’ Berit mulled it over. ‘That’s what makes you so good at predicting the weather, isn’t it?’

  ‘It helps.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that, though. You always seem to know about everything that’s going on around you. When we were on that log-boom, you knew instantly when there was the slightest change in the way it was moving.’

  ‘It’s called “paying attention”, my Lord. The world around you is screaming at you all the time, but most people can’t seem to hear it. That really baffles me. I can’t understand how you can miss so many things.’

  Berit was just slightly offended by that. ‘All right, what’s the world screaming at you right now that I can’t hear?’

  ‘It’s telling me that we’re going to need some fairly substantial shelter tonight. We’ve got bad weather coming.’

  ‘How did you arrive at that?’

  Khalad pointed. ‘You see those seagulls?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. What’s that got to do with it?’

&nb
sp; Khalad sighed. ‘What do seagulls eat, my Lord?’

  ‘Just about everything – fish mostly, I suppose.’

  ‘Then why are they flying inland? They aren’t going to find very many fish on dry land, are they? They’ve seen something they don’t like out there in the gulf and they’re running away from it. Just about the only thing that frightens a seagull is wind – and the high seas that go with it. There’s a storm out to sea, and it’s coming this way. That’s what the world’s screaming at me right now.’

  ‘It’s just common sense then, isn’t it?’

  ‘Most things are, Sparhawk – common sense and experience.’ Khalad smiled slightly. I can still feel Krager’s Styric out there watching us. If he isn’t paying any more attention than you were just now, he’s probably going to spend a very miserable night.’

  Berit grinned just a bit viciously. ‘Somehow that information fails to disquiet me,’ he said.

  It was more than a village, but not quite a town. It had three streets, for one thing, and at least six buildings of more than one story, for another. The streets were muddy, and pigs roamed freely. The buildings were made primarily of wood and they were roofed with thatch. There was an inn on what purported to be the main street. It was a substantial-looking building, and there were a pair of rickety wagons with dispirited mules in their traces out front. Ulath reined in the weary old horse he had bought in the fishing village. ‘What do you think?’ he said to his friend.

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ Tynian replied.

  ‘Let’s go ahead and take a room as well,’ Ulath suggested. The afternoon’s wearing on anyway, and I’m getting tired of sleeping on the ground. Besides, I’m a little overdue for a bath.’

  Tynian looked toward the starkly outlined peaks of the Tamul Mountains lying some leagues to the west. ‘I’d really hate to keep the Trolls waiting, Ulath,’ he said with mock seriousness.