Her eyes suddenly glowed warmly.
‘Why do you ask?’ he wanted to know.
‘No reason. Just curious.’
‘Oh. I see.’
They went into the council chamber, and Sparhawk unfastened the neck of his dripping cloak. As chance had it, the Queen of Elenia had her back to the door when he entered. She and the Earl of Lenda, Platime and Stragen were bent over the large map spread out on the council table. ‘I’ve been through that quarter of the city,’ she was saying insistently, ‘and I don’t really think there’s any help for it. The streets are so bad that patching just won’t do. It’s all going to have to be repaved.’ Her rich, vibrant voice touched Sparhawk’s heart, even when she was discussing so mundane a matter. He smiled and laid his wet cloak across a chair near the door.
‘Of course we can’t start until spring, Your Majesty,’ Lenda pointed out, ‘and even then we’re going to be fearfully short of workers until the army returns from Lamorkand, and –’ The old man broke off, staring at Sparhawk in astonishment.
The Prince Consort touched one finger to his lips as he approached the table to join them. ‘I hate to disagree with Your Majesty,’ he said in a clinical tone, ‘but I think you should give more consideration to the condition of the highways rather than the streets here in Cimmura. Bad streets inconvenience the burghers, but if the farmers can’t get their crops to market, it’s more than just an inconvenience.’
‘I know that, Sparhawk,’ she said, still staring at the map, ‘but –’ She raised her flawless young face, her grey eyes stunned. ‘Sparhawk?’ Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.
‘I really think Your Majesty should concentrate on the highways,’ he continued seriously. ‘The one between here and Demos is in really shocking –’ That was about as far as he got with that particular subject.
‘Gently,’ Mirtai cautioned him as Ehlana hurled herself into his arms. ‘Remember what I told you outside.’
‘When did you get back?’ Ehlana demanded.
‘Just now. The others are a little behind. I rode on ahead – for several reasons.’
She smiled and kissed him again.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ Lenda said to Platime and Stragen, ‘I think perhaps we can continue this discussion later.’ He smiled. ‘Somehow I don’t really think we’ll be able to command Her Majesty’s full attention this evening.’
‘Would you all mind too terribly much?’ Ehlana asked them in a little-girl sort of voice.
‘Of course not, baby sister,’ Platime boomed. He grinned at Sparhawk. ‘It’s good to have you back, my friend. Maybe you can distract Ehlana enough so that she won’t be poking her nose into the details of certain public works projects I have an interest in.’
‘We won, I gather,’ Stragen said.
‘Sort of,’ Sparhawk replied, remembering Kurik. ‘Otha and Azash won’t be bothering us any more at least.’
‘That’s the important thing,’ the blond thief said. ‘You can fill us in on the details later.’ He looked at Ehlana’s radiant face. ‘Much later, I’d imagine,’ he added.
‘Stragen,’ Ehlana said firmly.
‘Yes, Your Majesty?’
‘Out.’ She pointed imperiously at the door.
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Sparhawk and his bride adjourned to the royal apartments shortly after that, accompanied only by Mirtai. Sparhawk was not really sure just how long the Tamul giantess intended to remain in attendance. He didn’t want to offend her, but –
Mirtai, however, was very business-like. She gave a number of crisp commands to the queen’s personal servants – commands having to do with hot baths, suppers, privacy and the like, and then, after everything in the royal apartment was to her satisfaction, she went to the door, drawing a large key from under her sword-belt. ‘Will that be all for tonight, Ehlana?’ she asked.
‘Yes, Mirtai,’ the queen replied, ‘and thank you so very much.’
Mirtai shrugged. ‘It’s what I’m supposed to do. Don’t forget what I told you, Sparhawk.’ She tapped the key firmly against the door. ‘I’ll let you out in the morning,’ she said. Then she went out and closed the door behind her. The sound of the key turning in the lock was very loud.
‘She’s such a bully,’ Ehlana laughed a bit helplessly. ‘She absolutely ignores me when I give her any orders.’
‘She’s good for you, love,’ Sparhawk smiled. ‘She helps you to keep your perspective.’
‘Go and bathe, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana commanded. ‘You smell all rusty. Then you can tell me about everything that happened. Oh, by the way, I’ll have my ring back now, if you don’t mind.’
He held out his hands. ‘Which one is it?’ he asked her. ‘I can’t for the life of me tell them apart.’
‘It’s this one, of course.’ She pointed at the ring on his left hand.
‘How do you know?’ he asked, removing the ring and slipping it on her finger.
‘Anyone can see that, Sparhawk.’
‘If you say so,’ he shrugged.
Sparhawk was really not accustomed to bathing in the presence of young ladies, but Ehlana seemed unwilling to let him out of her sight. Thus he began the story even as he bathed and continued it while they ate. There were things which Ehlana did not grasp and others she misunderstood, but she was able to accept most of what had taken place. She cried when he told her that Kurik had died, and her expression grew fierce when he described the fates of Annias and her aunt and cousin. There were a number of things he glossed over and others he did not mention at all. He found the evasive remark, ‘You almost had to have been there’ very useful a number of times. He made a rather special point of avoiding any mention of the nearly universal depression which seemed to have fallen over the world since the destruction of Azash. It did not seem to be a proper subject to be mentioned to a young woman in the initial months of her first pregnancy.
And then as they lay together in the close and friendly darkness, Ehlana told him of the events which had taken place here in the west during his absence.
Perhaps it was because they were in bed where such things normally happen, but for some reason the subject of dreams came up. ‘It was so very strange, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana said as she nestled down in the bed beside him. ‘The entire sky was covered with a rainbow, and we were on an island, the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. There were trees – very old – and a kind of marble temple with graceful white columns, and I was waiting there for you and our friends. And then you came, each of you led by a beautiful white animal. Sephrenia was waiting with me, and she looked very young, hardly more than a girl, and there was a child who played some shepherd’s pipes and danced. She was almost like a little empress, and everybody obeyed her orders.’ She giggled. ‘She even called you a grouchy old bear. Then she started to talk about Bhelliom. It was all very deep, and I only could understand a little of it.’
None of them had grasped it all, Sparhawk remembered, and the dream had been more widespread than he had imagined. But why had Aphrael included Ehlana?
‘That was sort of the end of that dream,’ she continued, ‘and you know all about the next one.’
‘Oh?’
‘You just described it to me,’ she told him, ‘right down to the last detail. For some reason, I dreamed every single thing that happened in the Temple of Azash in Zemoch. My blood kept running cold while you were telling me about it.’
‘I wouldn’t worry all that much about it,’ he told her, trying to keep his voice casual. ‘We’re very close together, you know, and it’s not really too strange that you’d know what I was thinking about.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Of course. It happens all the time. Ask any married woman, and she’ll tell you that she always knows what’s on her husband’s mind.’
‘Well,’ she said dubiously, ‘maybe.’ She snuggled closer to him. ‘You’re not being very attentive tonight, love,’ she accused. ‘Is it because I’m getting fat and ugly?’
/>
‘Of course not. You’re in what’s called a “delicate condition”. Mirtai kept warning me to be careful. She’ll carve out my liver if she thinks I’ve hurt you.’
‘Mirtai isn’t here, Sparhawk.’
‘But she’s still the only one with a key to that door.’
‘Oh, no, she isn’t, Sparhawk,’ his queen said smugly, reaching under her pillow. ‘The door locks from either side, and it won’t open unless it’s been unlocked from both sides.’ She handed him a large key.
‘A very cooperative door,’ he smiled. ‘Why don’t I just slip on out to the other room and lock it from this side?’
‘Why don’t you do that? And don’t get lost on your way back to bed. Mirtai told you to be careful, so you ought to practise that for a while.’
Later – quite a bit later actually – Sparhawk slipped out of bed and went to the window to look out at the rain-swept night. It was over now. He would no longer rise before the sun to watch the veiled women of Jiroch going to the well in the steely grey light of dawn, nor would he ride strange roads in distant lands with the Sapphire Rose nestled near his heart. He had returned at last, older certainly and sadder and infinitely less certain of things he had always before accepted without question. He had come home at last, his wars over, he hoped, and his travels complete. They called him Anakha, the man who makes his own destiny, and he grimly resolved that his entire destiny lay here in this unlovely city with the pale, beautiful young woman who slept only a few feet away.
It was good to have that settled once and for all, and it was with some sense of accomplishment that he turned back to the bed and to his wife.
Epilogue
Spring came grudgingly that year, and a sudden late freeze stripped all the fruit trees of their blossoms, obliterating any chance of a crop. The summer was wet and cloudy, and the harvest scanty.
The armies of western Eosia returned home from Lamorkand to immerse themselves in unrewarding toil in stubborn fields where only thistles grew in abundance. Civil war erupted in Lamorkand, but there was nothing unusual about that; there was a serf rebellion in Pelosia, and the number of beggars near the churches and at the gates of the cities of the west increased dramatically.
Sephrenia received the news of Ehlana’s pregnancy with astonishment. The undeniable fact of that pregnancy seemed to baffle her, and that bafflement made her short-tempered, even waspish. In the usual course of time Ehlana gave birth to her first child, a daughter whom she and Sparhawk named Danae. Sephrenia gave the infant an extended examination, and it seemed somehow to Sparhawk that his tutor was almost offended by the fact that Princess Danae was totally normal and disgustingly healthy.
Mirtai calmly rearranged the queen’s schedule to add the task of nursing to Ehlana’s other royal duties. It should be noted in passing perhaps that Ehlana’s ladies-in-waiting all jealously hated Mirtai, even though the giantess had never physically assaulted nor even spoken sharply to a single one of them.
The Church soon lost sight of her grand design in the east, turning instead to the south to seize an opportunity which presented itself there. Martel’s enlistment of the most fervent Eshandists and his subsequent defeat at Chyrellos had decimated the ranks of that sect, leaving Rendor ripe for reassimilation into the congregation of the faithful. Although Dolmant sent his priests into Rendor in a spirit of love and reconciliation, that spirit lasted in most of his missionaries for only so long as the dome of the Basilica remained in view. The missions to Rendor were vengeful and punitive, and the Rendors responded in a fairly predictable fashion. After a number of the more strident and abrasive missionaries had been murdered, larger and larger detachments of Church Knights were sent into that southern kingdom to protect the unwelcome clergy and their meagre congregations of converts. Eshandist sentiments began to re-emerge, and there were once again rumours of caches of weapons out in the desert.
Civilized man believes that his cities are the crown of his culture and seems incapable of grasping the fact that the foundation of any kingdom is the land upon which it rests. When a nation’s agriculture falters, its economy begins to collapse, and governments starved for revenue inevitably fall back on the most regressive of all forms of taxation, heaping additional burdens on an already suffering peasantry. Sparhawk and the Earl of Lenda had long and increasingly bitter arguments on that very issue, and they quite frequently stopped speaking to each other entirely.
Lord Vanion’s health steadily deteriorated as the months wore on. Sephrenia tended his many infirmities as best she could, but finally on a blustery autumn morning some months following the birth of Princess Danae, the two of them were nowhere to be found, and when a white-robed Styric appeared at the Pandion Mother-house at Demos, announcing that he was assuming Sephrenia’s duties, the worst of Sparhawk’s suspicions were confirmed. Despite his pleading of prior commitments, he was pressed into assuming his friend’s duties as interim Preceptor, an appointment Dolmant wished to make permanent, although Sparhawk resisted that notion strenuously.
Ulath, Tynian and Bevier stopped by the palace from time to time for visits, and their reports of what was happening in their homelands were no more cheerful than the news Sparhawk was receiving from the outlying districts of Elenia. Platime gravely reported that his far-flung informants had advised him that near-famine, epidemics and civil unrest were well-nigh universal. ‘Hard times, Sparhawk,’ the fat thief said with a philosophic shrug. ‘No matter what we do to try to hold them off, hard times come along now and then.’
Sparhawk enrolled Kurik’s four elder sons as Pandion novices, overriding Khalad’s objections. Since Talen was still a bit young for military training, he was ordered to serve as a page in the palace where Sparhawk could keep an eye on him. Stragen, unpredictable as always, came often to Cimmura. Mirtai guarded Ehlana, bullied her when it was necessary and laughingly avoided the repeated marriage-proposals of Kring, who seemed to be able to find all manner of excuses to ride across the continent from eastern Pelosia to Cimmura.
The years ground on, and conditions did not improve. That first year of excessive rain was followed by three years of drought. Food was continually in short supply, and the governments of Eosia were starved for revenue. Ehlana’s pale, beautiful face grew careworn, although Sparhawk did what he could to transfer as many burdens as possible from her shoulders to his own.
It was on a clear, chilly afternoon in late winter when something quite profound happened to the Prince Consort. He had spent the morning in a violent argument with the Earl of Lenda about a proposed new tax, and Lenda had become shrill, even abusive, accusing Sparhawk of systematically dismantling the government in his excessive concern for the well-being of the pampered, lazy peasantry. Sparhawk won the argument in the end, although he took no particular pleasure in that, since each victory drove the wedge between him and his old friend that much deeper.
He sat near the fire in the royal apartment in a kind of moody discontent, half-watching the activities of his four-year-old daughter, the Princess Danae. His wife, accompanied by Mirtai and Talen, was off on some errand in the city, and so Sparhawk and the tiny princess were alone.
Danae was a grave, serious child with glossy black hair, large eyes as dark as night and a mouth like a pink rosebud. Despite her serious demeanour, she was affectionate, frequently showering her parents with spontaneous kisses. At the moment, she was near the fireplace doing important things involving a ball.
It was the fireplace that brought everything to a head and changed Sparhawk’s life forever. Danae miscalculated slightly, and her ball rolled directly into the grate. Without giving it any apparent thought, she quickly went to the fireplace, and before her father could stop her or even cry out, she reached into the flames and retrieved her toy. Sparhawk leaped to his feet with a strangled cry and rushed to her. He snatched her up and closely examined her hand.
‘What is it, father?’ she asked him quite calmly. Princess Danae was a precocious child. She had begun to speak earl
y, and her speech by now was very nearly adult.
‘Your hand! You burned it! You know better than to stick your hand into a fire.’
‘It’s not burnt,’ she protested, holding it up and wiggling her fingers. ‘See?’
‘Don’t go near the fire again,’ he commanded.
‘No, father.’ She wriggled to be let down and then crossed the floor with her ball to continue her game in a safe corner.
Troubled, Sparhawk returned to his chair. One can thrust one’s hand into a fire and snatch it back out again without being burned, but it had not seemed that Danae had moved her hand that quickly. Sparhawk began to look more closely at his child. He had been very busy for the past several months, so he had not really looked at her but had simply accepted the fact that she was there. Danae was at an age when certain changes occur quite rapidly, and those changes, it seemed, had taken place right under Sparhawk’s inattentive gaze. As he looked at her now, however, a sudden chill gripped his heart. Unbelievingly, he saw something for the first time. He and his wife were Elenes. Their daughter was not.
He stared for a long time at his Styric daughter, then seized on the only possible explanation. ‘Aphrael?’ he said in a stunned voice. Danae only looked a little bit like Flute, but Sparhawk could see no other possibility.
‘Yes, Sparhawk?’ Her voice betrayed no surprise.
‘What have you done with my daughter?’ he shouted, half-rising to his feet in agitation.
‘Don’t be absurd, Sparhawk,’ she said quite calmly. ‘I am your daughter.’
‘That’s impossible. How –?’
‘You know I am, father. You were there when I was born. Did you think I was some kind of changeling? Some starling planted in your nest to supplant your own chick? That’s a foolish Elene superstition, you know. We don’t ever do that.’
He began to gain some control over his emotions. ‘Do you plan to explain this?’ he asked in as level a tone as he could manage, ‘or am I supposed to guess?’
The Sapphire Rose Page 57
