‘Styrics, you mean?’
‘Naturally. What other civilized people are there?’
‘Be nice,’ he chided her.
She smiled. ‘The inclusion of orgies in the worship of Azash was a part of Otha’s original strategy. It brought in the Elenes. Otha’s an Elene himself, and he knows how strong those appetites are in your race. We Styrics have more exotic perversions. Azash really prefers those, but the primitives in the back country still hold to the old ways. They’re relatively harmless.’
Talen drew in beside them. ‘What do you want me to do with the pieces of that idol?’ he asked.
‘Throw them away,’ she replied, ‘– one piece every mile or so. Scatter them thoroughly. The rite had already begun, and we don’t want someone to gather up the pieces and put them back together again. The cloud’s trouble enough. We don’t want Azash Himself behind us as well.’
‘Amen,’ the boy said fervently. He rode off to one side, stood up in his stirrups and hurled a fragment of mud some distance away.
‘We’re safe then, aren’t we?’ Sparhawk said. ‘Now that the idol’s smashed, I mean? And as soon as Talen finishes scattering it?’
‘Hardly, dear one. That cloud’s still there.’
‘But the cloud’s never really hurt us, Sephrenia. It tried to make us melancholy and afraid, but that’s about all – and Flute took care of that for us. If that’s the best it can really do, it’s not much of a threat.’
‘Don’t let yourself grow overconfident, Sparhawk,’ she warned. ‘The cloud – or shadow, whichever it is – is probably a creature of Azash, and that would make it at least as dangerous as the Damork or the Seeker.’
The countryside did not improve as they rode eastward, nor did the weather. It was bitterly cold, and the billowing clouds of black dust erased the sky. What little vegetation they saw was stunted and sickly. They were following something that sort of looked like a trail, though its drunken meanderings suggested wild cattle rather than men. The waterholes were infrequent, and the water in them was ice which had to be melted down to water the horses.
‘Cursed dust!’ Ulath suddenly bellowed at the sky, throwing aside the cloth which covered his mouth and nose.
‘Steady,’ Tynian said to him.
‘What’s the use of all this?’ Ulath demanded, spitting out dust. ‘We can’t even tell which way we’re going!’ He pulled the cloth back across his face and rode on, muttering to himself.
The horses continued to plod on, their hooves kicking up little puffs of frozen dust.
The melancholy which had beset them in the mountains lying to the west of the Gulf of Merjuk was obviously returning, and Sparhawk rode on cautiously, watching with chagrin as the mood of his companions rapidly deteriorated even as he kept a wary eye on nearby ravines and rocky outcrops.
Bevier and Tynian were deep in a sombre conversation. ‘It is a sin,’ Bevier was saying stubbornly. ‘To even suggest it is a heresy and a blasphemy. The Fathers of the Church have reasoned it out, and reason, coming as it does from God, is of God. Thus God Himself tells us that He and He alone is Divine.’
‘But –’ Tynian began to object.
‘Hear me out, my friend,’ Bevier said to him. ‘Since God tells us that there are no other Divinities, for us to believe otherwise is blackest sin. We are embarked upon a quest founded in childish superstition. The Zemochs are a danger, certainly, but they are a worldly danger, even as the Eshandists. They have no supernatural allies. We are throwing our lives away searching for a mythical foe who exists only in the diseased imaginations of our heathen enemies. I will reason with Sparhawk about this presently, and I have no doubt that he can be persuaded to abandon this vain quest.’
‘That might be best,’ Tynian agreed, albeit somewhat dubiously. The two of them seemed totally unaware that Sparhawk was clearly riding within earshot.
‘You’ve got to talk with him, Kurik,’ Kalten was saying to Sparhawk’s squire. ‘We haven’t got a chance in the world.’
‘You tell him,’ Kurik growled. ‘I’m a servant. It’s not my place to tell my lord that he’s a suicidal madman.’
‘I honestly believe we should slip up behind him and tie him up. I’m not just trying to save my own life, you understand. I’m trying to save his too.’
‘I feel the same way, Kalten.’
‘They’re coming!’ Berit screamed, pointing at a nearby cloud of swirling dust. ‘Arm yourselves!’
The war-like shouts of Sparhawk’s friends were shrill, tinged with panic, and their charge had an air of desperation about it. They crashed into the dust-cloud, swinging their swords and axes at the unfeeling air.
‘Help them, Sparhawk!’ Talen cried, his voice shrill.
‘Help them with what?’
‘The monsters! They’ll all be killed!’
‘I rather doubt that, Talen,’ Sparhawk replied coolly, watching his friends flailing at the dust-cloud with their weapons. ‘They’re more than a match for what they’re facing.’
Talen glared at him for a moment, then rode several yards away, swearing to himself.
‘I take it that you don’t see anything in the dust either,’ Sephrenia said calmly.
‘That’s all it is, little mother – just dust.’
‘Let’s deal with that right now.’ She spoke briefly in Styric, then gestured.
The thickly billowing dust-cloud seemed to shudder and flinch in upon itself for a moment, and then it gave a long, audible sigh as it slithered to the ground.
‘Where did they go?’ Ulath roared, looking around and brandishing his axe.
The others looked equally baffled, and the looks they directed at Sparhawk were darkly suspicious.
They avoided him after that and rode with dark scowls, whispering to each other and frequently casting covert looks at him, looks filled with hostility. They made their night’s encampment on the leeward side of a steep bluff where pale, sand-scoured rocks protruded from an unwholesome, diseased-looking bank of leprous clay. Sparhawk cooked their meal, and his friends chose not to linger with him at the fire after the meal as was customary. He shook his head in disgust and went to his blankets.
‘Awaken, Sir Knight, an it please thee.’ The voice was soft and gentle, and it seemed filled with love. Sparhawk opened his eyes. He found himself in a gaily-coloured pavilion, and beyond the open tent flap was a broad green meadow, all aswirl with wild flowers. There were trees, ancient and vast, their branches heavy with fragrant blossoms, and beyond the trees lay a sparkling sea of deep, deep blue, bejewelled with the gleams of reflected sunlight. The sky was as no other sky had ever been. It was a rainbow that covered the entire dome of the heavens, blessing all the world beneath.
The speaker who had awakened him stood nudging at him with her nose and pawing impatiently at the carpeted floor of the pavilion with one forehoof. She was small for a deer, and her coat was of such dazzling whiteness as to be almost incandescent. Her eyes were large and meltingly brown, and they reflected a docility, a trust and a sweet nature that tugged at the heart. Her manner, however, was insistent. She most definitely wanted him to get up.
‘Have I slept overlong?’ he asked, a bit concerned that he might have offended her.
‘Thou wert a-weary, Sir Knight,’ she replied, automatically, it seemed, coming to his defence even against self-criticism. ‘Dress thyself with some care,’ the gentle hind instructed, ‘for I am bidden to bring thee into the presence of my mistress, who doth rule this realm and whom all her subjects adore.’
Sparhawk fondly stroked her snowy neck, and her great eyes melted with love. He rose and looked to his armour. It was as it should have been, jet black and embossed with silver. He was pleased to note as he drew it on that it had no more weight than gossamer silk. It was not steel, however. Though his great sword was imposing, it was, he knew, no more than ornamental in this fairy kingdom begirt by a jewelled sea and lying in happy contentment beneath its multi-coloured sky. Here were no dangers, no hat
e, no discord, and all was abiding peace and love.
‘We must hasten,’ the white deer told him. ‘Our boat doth await us on yon strand where wavelets play in wanton abandon in the ever-changing light of our enchanted sky.’ She led him with precise and delicate steps into the flower-kissed meadow, a meadow so sweet-smelling as to make the senses swoon.
They passed a white tigress lolling indolently upon her back in the warm morning sunlight as her cubs, large-footed and awkward, wrestled in the grass nearby in mock ferocity. The white deer paused briefly to nuzzle at the face of the tigress, and she was rewarded by a broad, affectionate swipe of a huge pink tongue which dampened one side of her snowy face from chin to ear-tip.
The flower-tipped grasses bowed before the warm breeze as Sparhawk followed the white deer across the meadow to the blue-tinged shade beneath the ancient trees. Beyond the trees, an alabaster gravel strand sloped gently down to an azure sea, and there awaited them a craft more bird than ship. Slender was her prow, and graceful as neck of swan. Two wings of snowy sail arose above her oaken deck, and she tugged at her moorings as if eager to be off.
Sparhawk considered the white doe, bent and, placing one arm beneath her breast and the other behind her haunch, he lifted her quite easily. She made no effort to struggle, but a momentary alarm showed in her huge eyes.
‘Calm thyself,’ he told her. ‘I do but bear thee unto our waiting ship that thou wilt encounter no sudden chill from the waters which do stand between us and our craft.’
‘Thou art kind, gentle knight,’ she said, trustingly resting her chin upon his shoulder as, with purposeful strides he waded out into the playful wavelets.
Once they had boarded, their eager craft leapt forward, bravely breasting the waves, and their destination soon emerged before them. It was a small, verdant eyot crowned with a sacred grove ancient beyond imagining, and Sparhawk could clearly see the gleaming marble columns of a temple beneath those spreading limbs.
Other craft, no less graceful than his own and heedless of the vagaries of the wanton breeze, also made their way across that sapphire sea towards the eyot which beckoned to them. And as they stepped out upon a golden strand, Sir Sparhawk recognized the dearly-loved faces of his companions. Sir Kalten, steadfast and true, Sir Ulath, bull-strong and lion-brave, Sir –
Sparhawk half-woke, shaking his head to clear the cobwebs of cloying image and extravagant expression from his mind.
Somewhere a tiny foot stamped in exasperation. ‘That really makes me cross, Sparhawk!’ a familiar voice scolded him. ‘Now go back to sleep at once!’
Slowly the valiant knights climbed the gentle slope leading to the eyot’s grove-crested top, recounting to each other their morning’s adventures. Sir Kalten was guided by a white badger, Sir Tynian by a white lion, Sir Ulath by a great white bear and Sir Bevier by a snowy dove. The young knight-to-be, Berit, was led by a white lamb, Kurik by a faithful white hound and Talen by a mink in ermine coat.
Sephrenia, clad in white and with her brow encircled by a garland of flowers, awaited them on the marble steps of the temple, and, seated quite calmly on the branch of an oak that predated every other living thing, was the queen of this fairy realm, the Child-Goddess Aphrael. She wore a gown instead of that rude smock, and her head was crowned with light. The playful subterfuge of the pipes was no longer necessary, and she raised her voice in a clear, pure song of greeting. Then she rose and walked down through the empty air as calmly as she might have descended a stair, and when she reached the cool, lush grass of the sacred grove, she danced, whirling and laughing among them, bestowing kisses by the score with her bow-like little mouth. Her tiny feet but lightly crushed the soft grass, but Sparhawk immediately saw the source of those greenish stains which had always perplexed him. She even kissed those snowy creatures which had guided the heroes into her exalted presence. The flowery descriptions came into Sparhawk’s mind despite his best efforts to keep them out, and he groaned inwardly. Aphrael imperiously motioned for him to kneel, encircled his neck with her small arms and kissed him several times. ‘If you don’t stop making fun of me, Sparhawk,’ she murmured for his ears alone, ‘I’ll strip you of your armour and turn you out to graze with the sheep.’
‘Forgive mine error, Divine One,’ he grinned at her.
She laughed and kissed him again. Sephrenia had once mentioned the fact that Aphrael enjoyed kisses. That did not appear to have changed very much.
They breakfasted on fruits unknown to man, then lounged at their ease on the soft grass as birds carolled to them from the limbs of the sacred grove. Then Aphrael rose to her feet and, after circling through the group once more for kisses, she spoke to them quite gravely. ‘Though I have been desolate to have been absent from your midst for the past lonely months,’ she began, ‘I have not summoned ye here solely for this joyful reunion, glad though it makes my heart. Ye have gathered at my request and with my dear sister’s aid –’ she gave Sephrenia a smile of radiant love – ‘so that I may impart unto ye certain truths. Forgive me that I must touch these truths but lightly, for they are the truths of the Gods, and are far beyond your grasp, I do fear; for much as I melt with love for each of ye, I must tell ye, not unkindly, that even as I have appeared as a child to ye, so ye now appear to me. Thus I will not assault the outer bounds of your understanding with matters beyond your reach.’ She looked around at their uncomprehending expressions. ‘What is the matter with you all?’ she said in exasperation.
Sparhawk rose to his feet, crooked one finger at the little Goddess and led her off to one side.
‘What?’ she demanded crossly.
‘Are you in the mood for some advice?’ he asked her.
‘I’ll listen.’ Her tone made no promises.
‘You’re stupefying them with eloquence, Aphrael. Kalten looks like a pole-axed ox at the moment. We’re plain men, little Goddess. You’ll have to speak to us plainly if you want us to understand.’
She pouted. ‘I worked for weeks on that speech, Sparhawk.’
‘It’s a lovely speech, Aphrael. When you tell the other Gods about this – and I’m sure you will – recite it to them as if you had delivered it to us verbatim. They’ll swoon with delight, I’m sure. For the sake of brevity – this night won’t last forever, you know – and for the sake of clarity, give us the abbreviated version. You might consider suspending the thee’s and thou’s as well. They make you sound as if you’re preaching a sermon, and sermons tend to put people to sleep.’
She pouted slightly. ‘Oh, very well, Sparhawk,’ she said, ‘but you’re taking all the fun out of this for me.’
‘Can you ever forgive me?’
She stuck her tongue out at him and led him back to rejoin the others.
‘This grouchy old bear suggests that I get to the point,’ Aphrael said, giving Sparhawk a sly, sidelong glance. ‘He’s nice enough as a knight, I suppose, but he’s a bit lacking in poetry. Very well, then, I’ve asked you to come here so that I can tell you a few things about Bhelliom – why it’s so powerful – and so very dangerous.’ She paused, knitting her raven-like brows. ‘Bhelliom isn’t substance,’ she continued. ‘It’s spirit, and it predates the stars. There are many such spirits, and each of them has many attributes. One of their more important attributes is colour. You see, what happens is –’ She looked around at them. ‘Maybe we can save that for some other day,’ she decided. ‘Anyway, these spirits were cast across the sky so that –’ She broke off again. ‘This is very difficult, Sephrenia,’ she said in a plaintive little voice. ‘Why must these Elenes be so dense?’
‘Because their God chooses not to explain things to them, Aphrael,’ Sephrenia told her.
‘He’s such an old stick,’ Aphrael said. ‘He makes rules for no reason at all. That’s all He ever does – make rules. He’s so tiresome sometimes.’
‘Why don’t you go on with your story, Aphrael?’
‘Very well.’ The Child-Goddess looked at the knights. ‘The spirits have colours, and t
hey have a purpose,’ she told them. ‘I think you’ll have to settle for that at the moment. One of the things they do is to make worlds. Bhelliom – which isn’t its real name – made the blue ones. Seen from afar, this world is blue, because of its oceans. Other worlds are red, or green or yellow or any of countless other colours. These spirits make worlds by attracting the dust that blows forever through the emptiness, and the dust congeals around them like churned butter. But when Bhelliom made this world, it made a mistake. There was too much red dust. Bhelliom’s essence is blue, and it can’t bear red, but when you gather red dust together, you have –’
‘Iron!’ Tynian exclaimed.
‘And you said they wouldn’t understand,’ Aphrael said reproachfully to Sparhawk. She rushed to Tynian and kissed him several times. ‘Very well then,’ she said happily. ‘Tynian is exactly right. Bhelliom cannot bear iron because iron is red. To protect itself, it hardened its essence of blue into the sapphire – which Ghwerig later carved into the shape of a rose. The iron – the red – congealed around it, and Bhelliom was trapped within the earth.’
They stared at her, still only vaguely comprehending.
‘Just make it short,’ Sparhawk advised.
‘I am.’
‘It’s your story, Aphrael,’ he shrugged.
‘Bhelliom’s been congealed even more because the Troll-Gods are trapped inside it,’ she continued.
‘They’re what?’ Sparhawk gasped.
‘Everybody knows that, Sparhawk. Where do you think Ghwerig hid them from us when we were looking for them?’
He uneasily remembered that Bhelliom and its unwilling inhabitants lay no more than a few inches from his heart.
‘The point of all this is that Sparhawk has threatened to destroy Bhelliom, and because he’s an Elene knight, he’ll probably use his sword – or an axe – or the spear of Aldreas, or something like that – something made of steel, which is to say iron. If he strikes Bhelliom with something made of steel, he will destroy it, and Bhelliom and the Troll-Gods are doing everything in their power to keep him from ever coming near enough to Azash for him to be tempted to raise his sword against it. First they tried to attack his mind, and when that didn’t work, they began to attack yours. It won’t be long, dear ones, before one of you tries to kill him.’
The Sapphire Rose Page 45
