(no subject)
Again, posting another David Eddings fanfic I wrote almost a decade ago, for purposes of linking to it for a friend.
Bloodstone
Bloodstone
The crown princess of Elenia was peeved.
Things simply weren't going quite the way she had envisioned them. Her
plans were in a shambles thanks to what she would _swear_ was deliberate
stupidity on the part of the people around her. Why couldn't they _see_
that she knew best?
"Your Highness, may I suggest..." the aged Earl of Lenda began. Danae
shot him a glare of such concentrated danger that he immediately lapsed
into silence.
"Gentlemen," the dark-haired young woman spoke sharply, "if you're done
tossing all of my carefully-planned ideas out of the topmost windows of
the palace, may _I_ suggest that we adjourn for the morning? I'm really
very cross at you all and I'd like a bit of privacy while I break
things."
"Danae..." the rugged Pandion knight at her right hand spoke. "They
really were all very good ideas, but they were unworkable. The treasury
just wouldn't stand that sort of thing for very long without raising
taxes...and since one of your other ideas was to freeze tax rates, you'd
be at a stalemate in two years."
"Father, why don't we discuss this in private?" she asked, punctuating
the request with a significant glance.
"Good idea," Sparkhawk agreed. "Gentlemen, I motion that this training
session be adjourned."
"Seconded!" a slim man spoke from the far end of the table. "I was about
ready to plead an urgent matter myself just to get out of here."
"Talen, you'll eventually be sitting in on far longer meetings than this
one, you know."
"Yes, Sparhawk, but by then I may have the luxury of the kind of
posterior padding that Platime enjoys and I won't mind so much."
Danae gave them all a hopeless look, and motioned her father to the door
of the chamber. "Come along, Father. We need to talk."
"Pray for me, my friends," the big Pandion said in mock despair.
The raven-haired girl looked back at him, an amused expression on her
face.
"Somehow I doubt it would help, Father."
The mock Royal Council chuckled at this as they filed out the door.
Sparkhawk strode into the adjoining chamber and sat at his daughter's
writing desk.
"What did you want to discuss, Danae?"
"You _know_ I can make it work, Sparhawk. Why do you insist on doing
things the hard way?"
"Aphrael, you can't run an Elene kingdom with divine magic. The people
won't stand for it. Eventually, someone will notice that you're running
your kingdom on nothing, because you can't keep the entire population of
this world under your spells. Besides, if you start doing everything
for everybody, when the time comes that they have to do something
themselves, they won't know how."
The Child-Goddess-cum-Princess wore an expression of regret. "But I love
them, Father! I love them all! I've never had Elenes before, and, may
my family forgive me, I love them as much as I love my Styric children!"
"But they're _not_ Styrics, Aphrael," Sparhawk explained. "They won't
just sit back and accept that suddenly there's enough in the treasury to
pay for every improvement but their taxes have dropped. They'll try to
figure out how it happened, how you're working it. What's worse, the
other Elene kings as well as other rulers in the world will notice. And
that's a secret they'd kill to possess. Do you really want your love
and generosity to lead the kingdom to war?"
"Of course not!" Aphrael looked shocked, as if she hadn't thought about
that possibility. "How can I show them how much I love them, then? How
can I use my advantages to help them?"
"Maybe the best way to show that you love them is to leave them alone,"
Sparhawk replied. "Only use your powers to help them in subtle ways.
When a drought threatens the kingdom's crops, make it rain, but just
enough to keep the crops alive. When floods threaten, cause them to
avoid populated areas, but only by a narrow margin. Don't wave your
hand and wipe out all poverty and natural disaster. Turning Elenia into
a paradise will only make it a brighter target to other powers.
"And _don't_ try to push any schemes based on your 'advantages' through
the mock Council. None of the members of that body are stupid. Lenda,
may he last long enough to offer his counsel to your reign, is sharp.
Talen is almost preternaturally shrewd. Melidere is nearly impossible
to fool. You're not dealing with rustic Styric mystics here.
"Which brings up a question I've been meaning to ask but keep finding
myself forgetting, for some strange reason," Sparhawk continued,
glancing sharply at his daughter. "What do you intend to do about
Talen?"
"What do you mean?"
"He's definitely on your menu, Aphrael. You've made no secret of that
in the last dozen years or so. Do you intend to tell him who you really
are?"
"I suppose we'll have to swim that river when we come to it," she
answered, an artfully innocent expression on her face.
Sparhawk shook his head in disgust and walked out of the room, a curious
giggling following him down the tower stairs.
==========================================
Atana Miran, warrior-priestess in Her Majesty's service, slept in the
half-awake state of all of her race. A warrior-bred did not give any
creature a chance to take advantage of any vulnerabilities, including
sleep. She did, however, dream. And that dream profoundly disturbed
her.
Miran awoke quickly, reached for the writing tools and parchment on the
desk beside her bed, and began to write.
After an hour of this, the Atana replaced the tools on her desk and
placed the parchment carefully in a drawer. Returning to bed, she
dropped quickly back into her alert relaxation. She would deliver the
fruits of her effort to the Styric advisor to the queen tomorrow. Solan
would know what it meant.
Miran drifted back into her half-sleep, confidence in the Styric's
knowledge of esoteric matters calming the ripples of disquiet the dream
had caused her. A whippoorwill sang his melancholy chorus as the moon
drifted across the sky.
==========================================
Some weeks later, the sky above southern Rendor was inky black, a
darkness broken only by the brilliance of the stars above. A herd of
sheep, penned into the fold for the night and mostly asleep, looked
skyward almost as one, the sleepers wakening in an instant. A few muted
bleats escaped the upraised woolly muzzles, bleats which brought the
shepherd out of his sleep on an instant. Lions had been seen in the
region the last few nights, and the shepherd's sleep was light. Sheep
weren't very pretty, or intelligent, or even interesting, but they were
his livelihood. He stepped out of his tent, his hunting bow and staff
at the ready, but saw nothing. Except for the fact that his flock
seemed to be intent on some unseen object in the sky.
The shepherd looked up, as a high-pitched whine began to intrude on his
senses. He strained his eyes to see what it was that the sheep were so
interested in, and noticed a white flare high up. A shooting star, like
the hundreds the shepherd saw out here in the desert every year. With a
sigh of disgust, he started back to his tent.
He never made it.
A blast of flame and heat obliterated the tent, the fold, and the
shepherd as the meteor flashed only a few hundred yards overhead. Had
he survived, he would have seen the object come to ground with a
blinding explosion, but the shock waves from that explosion would have
sealed his fate as surely as the fires of its passage did. If he had
survived the explosion, he would, perhaps, have crept his way carefully
to the edge of the ragged hole that the landing had made, and he would
have seen the meteor itself, a hunk of blackish-blue rock five feet in
diameter, as it cooled from its passage through the atmosphere. And he
may also have seen the single jewel which protruded from that rock, a
ruby the size of a man's fist. A ruby which held a deep red glow,
throbbing to some unknown pulse.
And he may have heard a low, throaty chuckle, a sound as chilling for
the coldness of its tone as for the fact that it seemed to come from
that glowing jewel.
=============================================================================
The monastery bustled with the normal morning activity of a thriving
religious community. Monks walked quickly from the dormitories to the
chapel, and teamsters, struggling not to make a great deal of noise out
of respect for the religious nature of the place, filled the outer
courtyards with their delivery wagons and waited their turn to unload
with uncharacteristic patience. The air was already uncomfortably warm,
and the humidity that the night had brought was quickly evaporated by
the morning sun.
"Lovely, lovely Rendor...hot as hell and twice as uncomfortable," one of
a pair of monks crossing the courtyard muttered under his breath.
"Shhh! Not in front of the teamsters," his companion warned him. "Monks
don't swear, remember?"
"Blast the teamsters!" the first spoke, but in a whisper. "It's been
three years since we were sent down here. What's Galeryn's point with
this little masquerade? Why Rendor? The Eshandists haven't been a real
threat since the Battle of Chyrellos. Once Sarathi replaced the men who
were revenge-minded with those who would actually work for
reconciliation, that particular heresy withered away. So why are we
here?"
"I don't know, Rosler. We'll find out when we find out, won't we?"
His companion began to reply, but bit back his words as they entered the
chapel. Built of the same white stucco that most Rendorish structures
were made of, the chapel was decorated to resemble northern churches as
closely as possible. A low altar resided in the apse to the east, and a
flat ceiling replaced the vaults and pillars in necessary genuflection
to the local architecture. Rather than carvings, the Rendorish practice
of painted stucco, called _fresco_, picked out the saints and angels of
the Elene church. There were patriarchs with their curved croziers of
office, knights with their great swords, kings with their scepters of
state, shepherds with their hooked staves. The great and the small, the
rich and the poor. All equally holy in the eyes of the Holy Mother
Church. And each pair of half-windows matched, knight to patriarch,
king to shepherd, crozier crossing sword and scepter crossing staff.
The monastic pair joined a group of their fellows in the pews near the
front of the nave. Morningsong had begun, the voices of the monks
rising in praise of the Elene god as monkish voices had since the dawn
of the Church.
When the morning service was over, the monks filed out of the chapel and
dispersed to their tasks. A monastery is not, contrary to popular
belief, a particularly restful place. There is sufficient time for
contemplation, of course, but it usually occurs that this time for
mental activity is allotted concurrently with some necessary physical
activity. It isn't necessary, for instance, to be particularly alert
when hoeing a field. Nor does one need to concentrate on the harvesting
of grapes. There were, however, other physical activities in this
monastery that required quite a bit of mental acuity and concentration,
activities that the general population of Khorentz weren't aware of.
Rosler and Korran stepped across the courtyard, aiming for the hidden
practice field deep in the heart of the monastery grounds.
"Lord Abbot! Lord Abbot!" came the cry from the main gates as a boy ran
frantically into the courtyard, spooking horses and scattering chickens
as he ran. "Lord Abbot!"
Rosler grabbed the boy, stopping him and trying to calm him to the point
of coherence. Korran gasped as he recognized the child.
"Rosler, that's Shalan's son!"
Rosler looked at the boy critically, then recognized the distinctive
features that he'd inherited from his father.
"Usif, calm down. My Lord Abbot will be here in a second, but you must
stop screaming. This is a place of worship and reflection. We cannot
have this sort of disturbance."
Usif looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. His eyes were
filled with a horror that neither Rosler nor Korran had seen in many,
many years. And it filled them with dread.
Korran felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked over his shoulder to find
Brother Lothran, the abbot. A sigh of relief escaped his lips as
Lothran took the child's hand and led him toward the inner buildings and
his office.
"Lord Abbot...my father... he's..."
"Hush, child. You can tell me the whole story in my office."
Both Rosler and Korran watched the pair enter the inner gate, then
looked at each other with worried faces. Shalan was the local outside
contact for the monastery, a shepherd who spent several months of the
year in the semi-desert areas to the south but remained in the city the
rest of the time. If he were in trouble...
The question remained unspoken, the possibilities too horrible to
consider. Shalan was the only outsider in town who knew what the
monastery really was. As callous as it seemed, both Rosler and Korran
hoped fervently that whatever had happened had happened quickly. Both
for his sake and for theirs.
The pair walked off to their original destination with a subdued step.
And the sun drifted westward like a flaming galleon, bombarding the land
below with its heat.
=================================================
"We're about to have guests, Sparhawk," Danae whispered to her father.
"And I'm afraid it's not a social call."
Sparhawk looked quizzically at his daughter, but she only pointed out
the window with a grim look on her face. Leaving Elahna to deal with
the Tamul ambassador alone, Sparhawk sidestepped toward the opening and
looked out on the city of Cimmura.
A small group had just passed through the palace gates, two men, two
women, and a little girl. Sparhawk heard the faint notes of pipes drift
upward and he shot Danae an exasperated look. She merely raised an
eyebrow.
_Wait and see, Sparhawk. I know it annoys you when I bilocate, but it
was necessary._
The big Pandion turned from her and gazed at the group coming into the
courtyard. The delicate white horse one of the ladies rode looked
familiar, as did the black charger behind.
"Sephrenia?! And Vanion? What are they doing here?" he hissed at his
daughter.
_Like I said, father, you'll see. It's not quite my story to tell.
There are other reasons too, but I'm sure you'll pick those up soon
enough._ Her mental voice was quietly disgusted, but Sparhawk couldn't
tell what the object of that disgust was.
The group was approaching the main doors now, and Sparhawk moved to
excuse himself officially.
"We have special guests, my Queen. I'll see to their welcome."
"Why, thank you, Sparhawk. Entagne and I are just finishing up,
though. Who is it?"
"I'll bring them up to the conference room once everyone's pulled
themselves together from the journey. I'd hate to spoil the surprise,"
the Queen's Champion spoke with a forced smile. He was always happy to
see Vanion and Sephrenia, but the circumstances held the fairly strong
scent of trouble, and that was a situation he could live without.
"Of course, dear. I'll be presentable in half an hour."
Sparhawk bowed to his wife and took the back stairs to the east
corridor. He entered the Travellers' Porch just as the small party
started up the steps.
"Sparhawk!" Vanion came forward and clapped him on the shoulder. His
renewed youth hadn't faded very much in the 10 years since their last
crisis together in Daresia. If anything, married life was keeping him
young.
"Lord Vanion, it's very good to see you again. Elahna will be thrilled.
Little Mother," he said, turning to Sephrenia, who'd come up behind the
red-haired former Pandion preceptor. "Would you bless me?"
"Of course, dear one," the raven-haired Styric priestess spoke with a
rich voice and asked the blessings of the Younger Gods on the knight.
"Who are your companions?" Sparhawk asked, then realized that the
cloaked one could only be an Atan. No other human being was that big.
"I don't want to explain things more than once," Sephrenia told him, "so
that can wait until Elahna and the others get here."
"Others?"
"You'll see," Sephrenia said with a nearly-hidden smile.
"Have you been talking to Aphrael?" Sparhawk asked suspiciously. He was
beginning to get very tired of that phrase.
"Of course, dear one. I always talk to Aphrael."
The small Styric girl danced forward then, playing her pipes. Sparhawk
laughed and picked her up, hugging her tight. He loved Aphrael's Danae
incarnation more than the world, but Flute was special.
"Come in, everyone. I'll have rooms prepared, and you can get settled."
"The others should be here within the next two days," Sephrenia told
him. "Aphrael's been playing messenger since we entered Eosia."
Sparhawk showed them to their chambers, then went to find Danae. He was
planning on having a long talk with his daughter.
The almost laughing sound of shepherd's pipes that followed him up the
stairs did not ease his mood in the least.
=============================================================================
The scrawny man was filthy. Living by one's wits on the edges of the
Great Rendorish Desert wasn't the cleanest occupation humankind had ever
discovered. He was also hungry, and the rumors of a great curse
couldn't compete with his stomach's complaints as he neared what he knew
had once been a shepherd's camp near a burned-out sheepfold. The tent,
of course, was gone, destroyed by whatever evil magic had burned both
the shepherd and his sheep to blackened husks. He knew these desert
shepherds, however. There was bound to be a buried cache of food and
water nearby.
It would be difficult to find, of course. The sandstorm that had blown
through the area soon after the fireball had passed over last night
would see to that. But it couldn't be very far from the fold. No one
hid anything too far away in the desert. One could need things very
quickly out here and one rarely had time to search square leagues of
identical, sandy terrain for a necessity.
He found the cache as predicted, a few hundred feet to the east of the
fold. Two waterskins, a carefully wrapped haunch of mutton, and a sack
of pomegranates were hidden in the sand. The water was warm, of course,
but it was water and that was all that mattered.
The scavenger tucked the food and water into his pack, and began to the
west, toward Khorentz. He passed a slight depression in the sand, off
of his path by a few hundred yards. Another cache? he wondered.
Khorentz could wait.
He veered off to the north, toward the hollow in the sand. Shrugging
his pack from his shoulders, he bent down and began to dig into the sand
with his fingers, using his hands like spades to push the sand away.
After a few minutes, a slow, pulsing beat began to sound in his ears,
and doubt began to plague him. The scavenger started to get to his
feet, intending to take his pack and resume his journey. Whatever was
buried here could stay buried!
But his legs would not carry him, nor would his hands stop digging. He
was tired, he was soaked with sweat, and he was afraid. Very afraid.
His hands dug, though he screamed in frustration for them to stop. His
legs remained under him, though every nerve in his body felt the need to
run. And the beat grew louder, like a vast heart, shuddering through
his brain with every throb.
His screams of helpless anguish rang through the desert air. But there
was no one to hear them, and he dug on.
============================================
They arrived the next day, friends from years ago. Stragen, of course,
was a resident of Cimmura thanks to Melidere, but was returning from his
meetings in Emsat with his successor as leader of that city's underworld
kingdom. Tynian and Ulath arrived together, having met up in the Holy
City while each was on an individual errand for their respective
orders. Bevier came up from the south, overland from Arcium. Berit and
Kalten came directly from the Motherhouse in Demos. Alean accompanied
Kalten, of course. She had rarely let him out of her sight in the eight
years they'd been married. Kalten's reputation had preceded him into
wedlock.
The last to arrive were Mirtai and Kring. Elahna almost broke down into
tears at the sight of the proud Atana riding beside the short, scarred,
bald man on the second horse.
"Not in public, Elahna," Mirtai spoke firmly but gently as they
embraced. "We'll both end up crying ourselves dry before it's over, but
in private."
"Of course, Mirtai," the queen said as she regained some control over
her emotions. "Promise me we'll have time for a long, leisurely
conversation."
"I can't promise that, but I promise that I'll try, my mother," Mirtai
replied, invoking the deeper relationship that Elahna had adopted at
Mirtai's succession to adulthood. Some in their party may have
dismissed the queen's declaration of motherhood to the tall Atana as
simple oratory extravagance, but both of the principals knew that Mirtai
was the true spiritual daughter of the beautiful Queen of Elenia, a
position she'd assumed upon learning of Mirtai's childhood and the
deaths of her parents at the hands of slavers.
"Kring," Sparhawk went to welcome the Peloi domi, almost forgotten in
the emotional reunion of the two women. "It's good to see you."
"And you, Sir Knight," the scarred chieftain replied. He threw a glance
at his wife and the queen. "How long do you think they'll be taking?"
Sparhawk laughed. "Another quarter hour, at least. More, if we didn't
have other guests."
"I should get the horses settled and our things in the palace, then.
That little girl promised some fairly dire consequences if everyone
weren't present and available by this evening. She's a bossy little
goddess, isn't she?"
Sparhawk chuckled. "Only out of love, Kring. Only out of love."
======================================
Brother Rosler fumbled his way out of his pallet, moving quietly in the
dark as he pulled on his sandals. Korran was already awake and waiting
for him at the side of the bed, a burglar's lantern in his hand with the
shutters closed.
"Hurry up, brother," Korran whispered. "The Lord Abbot is waiting."
"I _am_ hurrying, brother, so don't shove," Rosler answered, irritated.
He knew this was the sort of thing he'd signed on for, but having Korran
and his 'quickly, quickly' attitude to deal with at the 3rd hour wasn't
what he'd expected.
The two monks walked briskly to the Lord Abbot's quarters, sandals
scuffing as they stepped on grit and sand that the desert made an
inevitable part of the decor of any town built near it.
"Good morning, my sons," the Brother Jothran greeted them.
"Very early morning, my lord," Rosler muttered darkly.
"Don't worry, Rosler," the abbot began. "You'll see more of them before
your next assignment is done."
Both of the monks looked at their abbot quickly, their eyes questioning.
"This room's secure, so we can talk openly," the older man started. "Sir
Rosler, you and Sir Korran are to ride to the sheepfold of Shalan the
shepherd. Do it quietly, and do it quickly. I want you to find
anything unusual in the area and report back to me."
"My Lord...may we ask what happened to Shalan. I mean...we've heard
rumors. That he'd been torn apart by lions, that he'd been slain by one
of the wild nomad tribes, that his sheep had taken a liking to meat and
eaten him. What really happened?"
The "abbot" looked at them, gauging whether they were ready to learn the
truth. "Shalan is dead. He's been burned to a husk, along with his
sheep, his tent, and the fold. We don't know what did this. That's why
I'm sending you out."
Brother Jothran turned to the table at the back of the room and picked
up a piece of parchment, which he carried to his desk.
"There are numerous reports of a fireball in the sky over that area the
same night. From our investigations, as you know, we've found that
'falling stars' and fireballs are merely stones falling from the air,
most likely pieces of the moon shaken loose by the pull of our world.
The timing and placement of this one, however, are suspicious. It may
yet turn out to have been merely a rock from the sky, heated
tremendously by it's speed through the air and igniting Shalan's camp in
passing. Then again, there may be more to it."
Korran looked at the report, then passed it to Rosler.
"What's our methodology, my lord?"
Vice-Preceptor Jothran looked at him with an amused quirk to his mouth.
"That's what _you_ get paid for, Sir Knight. I merely push the
parchment and issue the orders. Now go to the stables and outfit your
horses for a ride out to the camp. You'll want to investigate the area
thoroughly, try to come up with explanations, and file a report on the
whole operation when you return. You know the details."
Rosler looked up from his contemplation of the report and spoke, "On our
way, my lord!"
Both "monks" snapped their heels and saluted, then slipped out the door.
"Galeryn, I hope you know what you're doing," the tall vice-preceptor
spoke softly to the air. "I smell trouble at every turn down here. And
if the Secret Order becomes known in Rendor, we'll all wish we'd been
crisped by that fireball."
Jothran brought his hand to his throat, where a small silver medallion
rested, and brought it up to his eyes. Following the mazelike pathways
on the surface of the disc, he initiated several deliberate breathing
routines and quickly relaxed into a meditative state. He had a good
three hours until Morningsong, and he felt a great need to clear his
mind of the worries that came with not only running, but hiding, an
entire chapterhouse of Church Knights from Elene and Rendor alike.
The spring-wound mantel clock in the office, quite possibly the only one
of its kind on this world, gently ticked its way through the minutes as
its silver pendulum swung beneath.
=============================================================================
They gathered in the Council Chamber that afternoon, all except Danae,
who told Ehlana that she wasn't feeling well at all, and to convey her
apologies to the rest, especially Aphrael. Sparhawk caught her in the
corridors before the gathering began.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to see the court physician? If you're
really ill..."
Danae sighed and raised her eyes skyward. "Of _course_ I'm not really
ill, Father. I'm going to need my full concentration in there," she
said as she gestured toward the Council Chamber, "and I can't do that if
I have to divide my awareness. Now just let me go and lie down like a
good little sick child while you pay attention to what we're going to be
discussing. It's very important."
Sparhawk looked at her as if searching for something. "All right. But
you and I are going to have a long talk after this meeting."
"If it makes you feel better, of course," she replied lightly, and
walked up the stairs quickly.
The whole company was gathered when Sparhawk entered the chamber. A
long table stood in the center of the room, with carved wooden chairs
set around it. All were filled except for the one beside Ehlana.
Mirtai stood behind Ehlana's chair, taking her customary place as
bodyguard as much out of old habit as duty. Kring was seated in a
window embrasure, talking in low tones with Stragen. Flute was sitting
on Sephrenia's lap, the expression on her face grave.
Sparhawk took his seat beside the queen, and Flute stood. Stragen and
Kring both fell silent as the tiny goddess lifted her face to speak.
"Something very unusual has happened in the world, my friends, and I'm
not certain how to react to it. I'm sure you've all heard that Styrics
don't take surprises well. Unfortunately, that is a trait they
inherited from their gods. I've been surprised in the last two weeks.
Badly surprised, and I'm afraid I don't know how to deal with those
surprises."
The Child-Goddess's voice cracked, and her anxiety was evident. The
faces of those gathered were caught between sympathy for the child-like
deity and fear of whatever was ominous enough to put her at such a loss.
Sephrenia rose from her seat, and took Aphrael into her arms.
"The heart of the matter is this," the priestess began, reaching into
her robes to remove a parchment, written in Tamul characters. "Two weeks
ago, the Priestess-Warrior attached to the Royal House of Atan had a
dream. It was a prophecy, sent directly to her by the Atan god. Most
of the gods don't deal with prophecies, preferring to have closer
relationships with their people than the distant words of prophecy
allow, but the god of the Atans has always been just a bit strange."
Ehlana was the first to speak, directing her remarks to the Atana that
had accompanied Sephrenia and Vanion to Cimmura.
"Atana Miran, were you the dreamer of this prophecy?"
"I was, Ehlana-Queen," the olive-skinned Atana replied gravely. "The
dream came to me as I slept, and I wrote it down immediately after. I
brought it to Betuana-Queen's advisor, Solan," she added, indicating the
elderly Styric man beside her. "And he knew to bring it to
Sephrenia-Priestess, who commanded me to accompany her here to the
West."
"Thank you, Atana."
Stragen spoke now, his interest in the esoteric showing in his face.
"What does the prophecy say, Little Mother?"
Sephrenia opened the parchment and read:
"Behold, in the day when fire rains in the desert shall the
Child-Goddess begin her quest for the Hidden One, and in the ending of
that quest remove a great evil from the world. Let her go forth and
vanquish the Spirit which has lain so long out of the grasp of gods and
men."
"The Hidden One?" Sparhawk asked.
Aphrael sighed, and motioned to Sephrenia to go on.
"When the Younger Gods were binding the Elder Gods, one was missed.
He'd left the company of his brethren eons before and very few
remembered his existence, let alone where he'd gone. He is the Hidden
One. He had another name, ages and ages ago, but it's been erased in
the minds of men and gods...probably at his own initiative. The Hidden
One is the only Elder God of Styricum left unvanquished, and this
prophecy indicates that it's Aphrael's task to finish the job."
Talen looked at her wide-eyed. "I can see why you're frightened. If all
of the Elder Gods were like Azash, you have your work cut out for you."
"Why is the god of the Atans issuing a Younger God of Styricum marching
orders? No offense intended, Atanas," he said quickly.
Aphrael sighed again and began to speak. "Do you remember when I told
you that we can't really see the future, just the occasional dim image?"
Sparhawk nodded.
"Well, that's not entirely true. Sometimes one of us has a very clear
vision. The Atan god tends to have these most often. Except for your
Elene god, who's reputed to know the future with some clarity. The
Elder Gods as well, although they didn't see clearly enough to avoid
being bound."
"Azash didn't seem like such a powerful seer when we met him in Zemoch,"
Talen noted.
Aphrael gave him a look that said volumes about her opinion of his
insight. "Azash was bound, Talen. He was limited by the idol."
"Oh," the young man answered, looking slightly disappointed.
"But this isn't giving me what I need...advice! I need a plan, my
friends, and I need it soon. A fireball was sighted over Rendor two
nights ago. That means I'm already past due to begin the search!"
"Perhaps the fireball and the prophecy are related in more than timing,"
the Baroness Melidere offered. "Perhaps there was something about that
fireball that will tell us where you need to start."
"I like it," Stragen spoke.
"You have to," Talen told him, ducking away from Melidere's exquisitely
manicured hand as he spoke.
Vanion, however, looked thoughtfully at Melidere. "She may have
something there. Call it a hunch, call it years of living with a mystic
people, but that idea just feels right to me."
Aphrael's eyes lit up with hope for the first time since they'd begun
this meeting. "It does to me too, Vanion."
"Where in Rendor was this fireball sighted?" Stragen asked.
Sephrenia stood up to point to a spot on the world map on the wall.
"Here...near a town called Khorentz."
===============================
They found the charcoaled remains of the sheepfold half-buried in sand,
but that was expected. Nothing stays uncovered in the desert. Some
searching revealed the canvas floor of the tent, protected from the
flames by a layer of sand the night the fireball appeared.
Rosler and Korran searched in a widening circle from the tent floor,
finding nothing but sand. At a few hundred yards, Rosler stopped and a
small groan came from his lips.
"Are you all right?" Sir Korran asked, shouting from his position to the
south.
"Come here! Quickly!" Rosler yelled back. Korran ran to his position.
"What's wrong?"
"Don't you feel that?!" the older knight asked him, an expression of
slight pain on his face.
"Feel what, Rosler?"
"Damnit! Open yourself. This isn't a picnic. We're supposed to be
investigating this, and that includes the Disciplines."
Korran apologized, shame-faced. "I forgot to ground and open. Hold on."
Stepping aside for the minor ritual that would open his mind to the
impression of magic, Korran began to scan the area. There! To the
northwest about twenty yards. A feeling of discomfort, like a sharp
headache, began to beat at his brain.
"Do you have the location?" Rosler asked him.
"Yes. About twenty yards that way. There's a depression in the sand
over there."
"Close up and follow me. We'll need to get closer and we'll never be
able to stand the pain if we go over there like this."
Both of the Church Knights went through the procedure of closing down
their higher awareness and went back to their horses to get the spades
they'd brought.
Working in shifts, they uncovered the meteor within an hour.
"This must be the fireball," Korran said.
"Let's get it hitched up to the horses and pull it out of this hole. We
need to examine it more closely."
The horses pulled the blue-black rock out of the sand, and Rosler
studied it closely. The heat of its passage through the air had melted
the outer layer smooth, except for a fist-sized depression, the edges of
which were sharp and clear, as if something had been attached to the
stone until after it had cooled.
Sir Rosler wasn't fond of pain, but he could face it if duty demanded.
He knew he had to open himself again, to find the exact source of the
evil they'd sensed before. Perhaps a bit of reconstruction, too, to
identify what had been attached to the stone.
He prepared himself again, and opened his mind to impressions while Sir
Korran watched warily. Rosler noted that the intensity had faded, as if
the source of the pain had been removed and only residual impressions
remained. That lent strength to his theory.
Rosler then began a reconstruction of the stone as it had been
immediately after its fall. Piece by piece, he saw the
stone-as-it-had-been come into being in his mind...steam rose from it,
and the smell of ash and heat. And, sitting in the depression as if it
were born there, a ruby, glowing a bloody red. And emanating an evil
more horrible than anything Rosler had ever experienced.
====================================================================================
"Why didn't you tell me about this when you first found out?" Sparhawk
questioned his daughter in her study after the gathering below had
dispersed to make their preparations for the journey to Rendor.
"Sparhawk, I'm more than a bit upset with myself for missing the clues
and rumors as it is," Danae replied. "Please don't make it any worse by
telling me what I should have done."
"Clues and rumors?"
"There have been stories floating around my family for centuries that
the Hidden One was still active on this world. But they were only
stories, tales we told to frighten ourselves. We're not unlike mortals
in that respect.
"But in the last five or six summers, those stories have been coming
from other directions than the Younger Gods. The Troll Gods actually
came to my cousin Setras and told him that they were concerned about
certain...I guess you could call them sounds, though that's not exactly
accurate...coming from the sky. And the Tamul gods all but went into
hiding two moons ago. No one has been able to coax them out of their
private domains to find out what frightened them. My own family had
realized that something different was happening. Except for me."
Danae's usually radiant face was downcast and shadowed. Sparhawk gazed
at her in concern.
"Why did you miss these clues?"
Danae laughed sardonically. "Because of _this_," she said, gesturing at
herself. "This 'adolescence' that you mortals go through is distracting
me tremendously! The hormone imbalances alone are taking about half of
my concentration, and the physical changes are uncomfortable. I don't
dare do more than try to keep things on an even keel because I don't
know for sure what a major change at the wrong time will do in the end,
and it's driving me crazy! I'm beginning to wonder what I could
possibly have been thinking when I decided to 'go mortal' in a situation
where I _had_ to let things happen naturally."
The Pandion looked confused. "You don't know how to grow up?"
"I've never _had_ to before, Father. I usually take steps to prevent
growth after my sixth birthday. This is the first time I've let nature
take its course. And you see where it's led us."
"I wouldn't worry, Danae. I doubt that you could have done anything in
any case until that prophecy was given. Do you think any of your family
would have believed you if you had somehow put all the clues together?"
The dark-haired princess looked thoughtfully out the window. "Probably
not. My family loves me dearly, but they don't really take me very
seriously. Sephrenia wasn't made the Overpriestess because of any
affirmation of my leadership abilities. She was given the honor because
the rest of my family wanted to bribe me into leaving their pet projects
alone. You might say I annoyed it out of them rather than led them to
the decision."
"And even if they had listened to you, do you think you could have done
anything to prevent the Hidden One from becoming active again? We still
don't even know where it is or what it's doing. We're just pinning hopes
on that fireball. It looks pretty, sitting there with all of those
hopes dangling from it, but it's not going anywhere very fast just yet."
Danae smiled at that, and it was like the sun emerging from
thunderclouds.
"Oh, I love you, Father!" she laughed as she ran to him.
Sparhawk embraced her with all the love a father could feel for his
daughter, and an extra measure for the part of her that was Flute.
And, for that moment, all was right with the world.
=====================================
Vice-Preceptor Jothran was worried. The report that the two knights had
brought back from the desert was disturbing in the extreme. A stone of
great evil, come from the sky, was loose in the world. They didn't even
know what it was, let alone what it could do. Or how it had escaped the
rock which had carried it to this world.
A report was required, but Jothran was reluctant to make it. Galeryn,
having led the Secret Order for 40 years, was frail. Sarathi had, after
his succession and the customary revelation of the existence of the
Secret Order, offered to allow the elderly preceptor a generous
retirement, but Galeryn had declined. He wanted to die in the habit of
the Order, on active duty, not in some dusty, forgotten hostel where his
name would be forgotten before his body was even cold. Still, Galeryn
was frail. And reports of a great new evil in the world could very well
finish him.
Jothran considered sending the report directly to the Archprelate
instead, then decided against it. Galeryn would be mortally offended if
he ever found out that his vice-preceptor had gone over his head.
Jothran couldn't do that to a beloved friend.
The thin, almost rangy, man behind the desk sighed wearily and removed a
quill and parchment from the drawers before him. Duty was a
constantly-moving wind filling the sails of the ship that was the
Church, and a wish for the comfort of friends was a wisp of fog before
it. Jothran began his report as the sun began to sink behind the hills
to the west.
=====================================
The man is filthy, the innkeeper at Jiroch thought to himself. I'll have
to pay my other patrons to stay if I let him in.
"Go away, desert scum," he spoke to the man looking for rooms in the
haughty tone of townsfolk the world over when speaking to rustics. "When
you know how to look more like a human being and less like a jackal,
come back and I'll consider letting you clean the stables."
The thin man had the look of a dervish, that fanatical gleam in the eyes
that spoke of madness as much as faith. The innkeeper had never had
occasion to confront that particular characteristic before, but several
patrons in the common room had recognized both the look in the peasant's
eyes and the tone in the innkeeper's voice, and were searching for
unobtrusive exits as the dirty little man stared the innkeeper down.
Finally, the man spoke. His voice was strange, almost as if more than
one person were speaking.
"You should learn manners, friend innkeep. You live today. You may
regret that."
The man turned and walked out of the door of the small white inn,
disappearing down the crowded avenue in search of other lodgings. The
innkeeper merely smirked his opinion of 'desert superstition' and
continued in his duties.
Three days later, he was dead, his body ravaged by a wasting disease
that had never been examined by the physicians of any city on the coast
of the Inner Sea. Since it didn't appear to be contagious, the gathered
worthies merely shrugged and returned to their respective towns and
cities, noting the anomalous appearance of a non-virulent consumptive
disease in Jiroch and worrying themselves about it no more.
Except for one physic from Dabour, who was more conversant with
controversial therapeutic techniques than his conservative colleagues.
A letter was written and sent to a woman of his acquaintance, via a
contact in Jiroch. The contact would get the letter to the woman, even
if she were traveling. His talents were unusual, and the physic had no
wish to know more than he had to about the methods used, considering the
prevailing mood in Rendor. Eshand's heresies may have been stamped out,
but the general attitudes toward witchcraft survived.
After sending the information he'd gathered, the physic returned to his
shop in Dabour, and promptly forgot about what he'd seen, heard, and
written, a talent of his own that had proven most useful over the years.
Bloodstone
Bloodstone
The crown princess of Elenia was peeved.
Things simply weren't going quite the way she had envisioned them. Her
plans were in a shambles thanks to what she would _swear_ was deliberate
stupidity on the part of the people around her. Why couldn't they _see_
that she knew best?
"Your Highness, may I suggest..." the aged Earl of Lenda began. Danae
shot him a glare of such concentrated danger that he immediately lapsed
into silence.
"Gentlemen," the dark-haired young woman spoke sharply, "if you're done
tossing all of my carefully-planned ideas out of the topmost windows of
the palace, may _I_ suggest that we adjourn for the morning? I'm really
very cross at you all and I'd like a bit of privacy while I break
things."
"Danae..." the rugged Pandion knight at her right hand spoke. "They
really were all very good ideas, but they were unworkable. The treasury
just wouldn't stand that sort of thing for very long without raising
taxes...and since one of your other ideas was to freeze tax rates, you'd
be at a stalemate in two years."
"Father, why don't we discuss this in private?" she asked, punctuating
the request with a significant glance.
"Good idea," Sparkhawk agreed. "Gentlemen, I motion that this training
session be adjourned."
"Seconded!" a slim man spoke from the far end of the table. "I was about
ready to plead an urgent matter myself just to get out of here."
"Talen, you'll eventually be sitting in on far longer meetings than this
one, you know."
"Yes, Sparhawk, but by then I may have the luxury of the kind of
posterior padding that Platime enjoys and I won't mind so much."
Danae gave them all a hopeless look, and motioned her father to the door
of the chamber. "Come along, Father. We need to talk."
"Pray for me, my friends," the big Pandion said in mock despair.
The raven-haired girl looked back at him, an amused expression on her
face.
"Somehow I doubt it would help, Father."
The mock Royal Council chuckled at this as they filed out the door.
Sparkhawk strode into the adjoining chamber and sat at his daughter's
writing desk.
"What did you want to discuss, Danae?"
"You _know_ I can make it work, Sparhawk. Why do you insist on doing
things the hard way?"
"Aphrael, you can't run an Elene kingdom with divine magic. The people
won't stand for it. Eventually, someone will notice that you're running
your kingdom on nothing, because you can't keep the entire population of
this world under your spells. Besides, if you start doing everything
for everybody, when the time comes that they have to do something
themselves, they won't know how."
The Child-Goddess-cum-Princess wore an expression of regret. "But I love
them, Father! I love them all! I've never had Elenes before, and, may
my family forgive me, I love them as much as I love my Styric children!"
"But they're _not_ Styrics, Aphrael," Sparhawk explained. "They won't
just sit back and accept that suddenly there's enough in the treasury to
pay for every improvement but their taxes have dropped. They'll try to
figure out how it happened, how you're working it. What's worse, the
other Elene kings as well as other rulers in the world will notice. And
that's a secret they'd kill to possess. Do you really want your love
and generosity to lead the kingdom to war?"
"Of course not!" Aphrael looked shocked, as if she hadn't thought about
that possibility. "How can I show them how much I love them, then? How
can I use my advantages to help them?"
"Maybe the best way to show that you love them is to leave them alone,"
Sparhawk replied. "Only use your powers to help them in subtle ways.
When a drought threatens the kingdom's crops, make it rain, but just
enough to keep the crops alive. When floods threaten, cause them to
avoid populated areas, but only by a narrow margin. Don't wave your
hand and wipe out all poverty and natural disaster. Turning Elenia into
a paradise will only make it a brighter target to other powers.
"And _don't_ try to push any schemes based on your 'advantages' through
the mock Council. None of the members of that body are stupid. Lenda,
may he last long enough to offer his counsel to your reign, is sharp.
Talen is almost preternaturally shrewd. Melidere is nearly impossible
to fool. You're not dealing with rustic Styric mystics here.
"Which brings up a question I've been meaning to ask but keep finding
myself forgetting, for some strange reason," Sparhawk continued,
glancing sharply at his daughter. "What do you intend to do about
Talen?"
"What do you mean?"
"He's definitely on your menu, Aphrael. You've made no secret of that
in the last dozen years or so. Do you intend to tell him who you really
are?"
"I suppose we'll have to swim that river when we come to it," she
answered, an artfully innocent expression on her face.
Sparhawk shook his head in disgust and walked out of the room, a curious
giggling following him down the tower stairs.
==========================================
Atana Miran, warrior-priestess in Her Majesty's service, slept in the
half-awake state of all of her race. A warrior-bred did not give any
creature a chance to take advantage of any vulnerabilities, including
sleep. She did, however, dream. And that dream profoundly disturbed
her.
Miran awoke quickly, reached for the writing tools and parchment on the
desk beside her bed, and began to write.
After an hour of this, the Atana replaced the tools on her desk and
placed the parchment carefully in a drawer. Returning to bed, she
dropped quickly back into her alert relaxation. She would deliver the
fruits of her effort to the Styric advisor to the queen tomorrow. Solan
would know what it meant.
Miran drifted back into her half-sleep, confidence in the Styric's
knowledge of esoteric matters calming the ripples of disquiet the dream
had caused her. A whippoorwill sang his melancholy chorus as the moon
drifted across the sky.
==========================================
Some weeks later, the sky above southern Rendor was inky black, a
darkness broken only by the brilliance of the stars above. A herd of
sheep, penned into the fold for the night and mostly asleep, looked
skyward almost as one, the sleepers wakening in an instant. A few muted
bleats escaped the upraised woolly muzzles, bleats which brought the
shepherd out of his sleep on an instant. Lions had been seen in the
region the last few nights, and the shepherd's sleep was light. Sheep
weren't very pretty, or intelligent, or even interesting, but they were
his livelihood. He stepped out of his tent, his hunting bow and staff
at the ready, but saw nothing. Except for the fact that his flock
seemed to be intent on some unseen object in the sky.
The shepherd looked up, as a high-pitched whine began to intrude on his
senses. He strained his eyes to see what it was that the sheep were so
interested in, and noticed a white flare high up. A shooting star, like
the hundreds the shepherd saw out here in the desert every year. With a
sigh of disgust, he started back to his tent.
He never made it.
A blast of flame and heat obliterated the tent, the fold, and the
shepherd as the meteor flashed only a few hundred yards overhead. Had
he survived, he would have seen the object come to ground with a
blinding explosion, but the shock waves from that explosion would have
sealed his fate as surely as the fires of its passage did. If he had
survived the explosion, he would, perhaps, have crept his way carefully
to the edge of the ragged hole that the landing had made, and he would
have seen the meteor itself, a hunk of blackish-blue rock five feet in
diameter, as it cooled from its passage through the atmosphere. And he
may also have seen the single jewel which protruded from that rock, a
ruby the size of a man's fist. A ruby which held a deep red glow,
throbbing to some unknown pulse.
And he may have heard a low, throaty chuckle, a sound as chilling for
the coldness of its tone as for the fact that it seemed to come from
that glowing jewel.
=============================================================================
The monastery bustled with the normal morning activity of a thriving
religious community. Monks walked quickly from the dormitories to the
chapel, and teamsters, struggling not to make a great deal of noise out
of respect for the religious nature of the place, filled the outer
courtyards with their delivery wagons and waited their turn to unload
with uncharacteristic patience. The air was already uncomfortably warm,
and the humidity that the night had brought was quickly evaporated by
the morning sun.
"Lovely, lovely Rendor...hot as hell and twice as uncomfortable," one of
a pair of monks crossing the courtyard muttered under his breath.
"Shhh! Not in front of the teamsters," his companion warned him. "Monks
don't swear, remember?"
"Blast the teamsters!" the first spoke, but in a whisper. "It's been
three years since we were sent down here. What's Galeryn's point with
this little masquerade? Why Rendor? The Eshandists haven't been a real
threat since the Battle of Chyrellos. Once Sarathi replaced the men who
were revenge-minded with those who would actually work for
reconciliation, that particular heresy withered away. So why are we
here?"
"I don't know, Rosler. We'll find out when we find out, won't we?"
His companion began to reply, but bit back his words as they entered the
chapel. Built of the same white stucco that most Rendorish structures
were made of, the chapel was decorated to resemble northern churches as
closely as possible. A low altar resided in the apse to the east, and a
flat ceiling replaced the vaults and pillars in necessary genuflection
to the local architecture. Rather than carvings, the Rendorish practice
of painted stucco, called _fresco_, picked out the saints and angels of
the Elene church. There were patriarchs with their curved croziers of
office, knights with their great swords, kings with their scepters of
state, shepherds with their hooked staves. The great and the small, the
rich and the poor. All equally holy in the eyes of the Holy Mother
Church. And each pair of half-windows matched, knight to patriarch,
king to shepherd, crozier crossing sword and scepter crossing staff.
The monastic pair joined a group of their fellows in the pews near the
front of the nave. Morningsong had begun, the voices of the monks
rising in praise of the Elene god as monkish voices had since the dawn
of the Church.
When the morning service was over, the monks filed out of the chapel and
dispersed to their tasks. A monastery is not, contrary to popular
belief, a particularly restful place. There is sufficient time for
contemplation, of course, but it usually occurs that this time for
mental activity is allotted concurrently with some necessary physical
activity. It isn't necessary, for instance, to be particularly alert
when hoeing a field. Nor does one need to concentrate on the harvesting
of grapes. There were, however, other physical activities in this
monastery that required quite a bit of mental acuity and concentration,
activities that the general population of Khorentz weren't aware of.
Rosler and Korran stepped across the courtyard, aiming for the hidden
practice field deep in the heart of the monastery grounds.
"Lord Abbot! Lord Abbot!" came the cry from the main gates as a boy ran
frantically into the courtyard, spooking horses and scattering chickens
as he ran. "Lord Abbot!"
Rosler grabbed the boy, stopping him and trying to calm him to the point
of coherence. Korran gasped as he recognized the child.
"Rosler, that's Shalan's son!"
Rosler looked at the boy critically, then recognized the distinctive
features that he'd inherited from his father.
"Usif, calm down. My Lord Abbot will be here in a second, but you must
stop screaming. This is a place of worship and reflection. We cannot
have this sort of disturbance."
Usif looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. His eyes were
filled with a horror that neither Rosler nor Korran had seen in many,
many years. And it filled them with dread.
Korran felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked over his shoulder to find
Brother Lothran, the abbot. A sigh of relief escaped his lips as
Lothran took the child's hand and led him toward the inner buildings and
his office.
"Lord Abbot...my father... he's..."
"Hush, child. You can tell me the whole story in my office."
Both Rosler and Korran watched the pair enter the inner gate, then
looked at each other with worried faces. Shalan was the local outside
contact for the monastery, a shepherd who spent several months of the
year in the semi-desert areas to the south but remained in the city the
rest of the time. If he were in trouble...
The question remained unspoken, the possibilities too horrible to
consider. Shalan was the only outsider in town who knew what the
monastery really was. As callous as it seemed, both Rosler and Korran
hoped fervently that whatever had happened had happened quickly. Both
for his sake and for theirs.
The pair walked off to their original destination with a subdued step.
And the sun drifted westward like a flaming galleon, bombarding the land
below with its heat.
=================================================
"We're about to have guests, Sparhawk," Danae whispered to her father.
"And I'm afraid it's not a social call."
Sparhawk looked quizzically at his daughter, but she only pointed out
the window with a grim look on her face. Leaving Elahna to deal with
the Tamul ambassador alone, Sparhawk sidestepped toward the opening and
looked out on the city of Cimmura.
A small group had just passed through the palace gates, two men, two
women, and a little girl. Sparhawk heard the faint notes of pipes drift
upward and he shot Danae an exasperated look. She merely raised an
eyebrow.
_Wait and see, Sparhawk. I know it annoys you when I bilocate, but it
was necessary._
The big Pandion turned from her and gazed at the group coming into the
courtyard. The delicate white horse one of the ladies rode looked
familiar, as did the black charger behind.
"Sephrenia?! And Vanion? What are they doing here?" he hissed at his
daughter.
_Like I said, father, you'll see. It's not quite my story to tell.
There are other reasons too, but I'm sure you'll pick those up soon
enough._ Her mental voice was quietly disgusted, but Sparhawk couldn't
tell what the object of that disgust was.
The group was approaching the main doors now, and Sparhawk moved to
excuse himself officially.
"We have special guests, my Queen. I'll see to their welcome."
"Why, thank you, Sparhawk. Entagne and I are just finishing up,
though. Who is it?"
"I'll bring them up to the conference room once everyone's pulled
themselves together from the journey. I'd hate to spoil the surprise,"
the Queen's Champion spoke with a forced smile. He was always happy to
see Vanion and Sephrenia, but the circumstances held the fairly strong
scent of trouble, and that was a situation he could live without.
"Of course, dear. I'll be presentable in half an hour."
Sparhawk bowed to his wife and took the back stairs to the east
corridor. He entered the Travellers' Porch just as the small party
started up the steps.
"Sparhawk!" Vanion came forward and clapped him on the shoulder. His
renewed youth hadn't faded very much in the 10 years since their last
crisis together in Daresia. If anything, married life was keeping him
young.
"Lord Vanion, it's very good to see you again. Elahna will be thrilled.
Little Mother," he said, turning to Sephrenia, who'd come up behind the
red-haired former Pandion preceptor. "Would you bless me?"
"Of course, dear one," the raven-haired Styric priestess spoke with a
rich voice and asked the blessings of the Younger Gods on the knight.
"Who are your companions?" Sparhawk asked, then realized that the
cloaked one could only be an Atan. No other human being was that big.
"I don't want to explain things more than once," Sephrenia told him, "so
that can wait until Elahna and the others get here."
"Others?"
"You'll see," Sephrenia said with a nearly-hidden smile.
"Have you been talking to Aphrael?" Sparhawk asked suspiciously. He was
beginning to get very tired of that phrase.
"Of course, dear one. I always talk to Aphrael."
The small Styric girl danced forward then, playing her pipes. Sparhawk
laughed and picked her up, hugging her tight. He loved Aphrael's Danae
incarnation more than the world, but Flute was special.
"Come in, everyone. I'll have rooms prepared, and you can get settled."
"The others should be here within the next two days," Sephrenia told
him. "Aphrael's been playing messenger since we entered Eosia."
Sparhawk showed them to their chambers, then went to find Danae. He was
planning on having a long talk with his daughter.
The almost laughing sound of shepherd's pipes that followed him up the
stairs did not ease his mood in the least.
=============================================================================
The scrawny man was filthy. Living by one's wits on the edges of the
Great Rendorish Desert wasn't the cleanest occupation humankind had ever
discovered. He was also hungry, and the rumors of a great curse
couldn't compete with his stomach's complaints as he neared what he knew
had once been a shepherd's camp near a burned-out sheepfold. The tent,
of course, was gone, destroyed by whatever evil magic had burned both
the shepherd and his sheep to blackened husks. He knew these desert
shepherds, however. There was bound to be a buried cache of food and
water nearby.
It would be difficult to find, of course. The sandstorm that had blown
through the area soon after the fireball had passed over last night
would see to that. But it couldn't be very far from the fold. No one
hid anything too far away in the desert. One could need things very
quickly out here and one rarely had time to search square leagues of
identical, sandy terrain for a necessity.
He found the cache as predicted, a few hundred feet to the east of the
fold. Two waterskins, a carefully wrapped haunch of mutton, and a sack
of pomegranates were hidden in the sand. The water was warm, of course,
but it was water and that was all that mattered.
The scavenger tucked the food and water into his pack, and began to the
west, toward Khorentz. He passed a slight depression in the sand, off
of his path by a few hundred yards. Another cache? he wondered.
Khorentz could wait.
He veered off to the north, toward the hollow in the sand. Shrugging
his pack from his shoulders, he bent down and began to dig into the sand
with his fingers, using his hands like spades to push the sand away.
After a few minutes, a slow, pulsing beat began to sound in his ears,
and doubt began to plague him. The scavenger started to get to his
feet, intending to take his pack and resume his journey. Whatever was
buried here could stay buried!
But his legs would not carry him, nor would his hands stop digging. He
was tired, he was soaked with sweat, and he was afraid. Very afraid.
His hands dug, though he screamed in frustration for them to stop. His
legs remained under him, though every nerve in his body felt the need to
run. And the beat grew louder, like a vast heart, shuddering through
his brain with every throb.
His screams of helpless anguish rang through the desert air. But there
was no one to hear them, and he dug on.
============================================
They arrived the next day, friends from years ago. Stragen, of course,
was a resident of Cimmura thanks to Melidere, but was returning from his
meetings in Emsat with his successor as leader of that city's underworld
kingdom. Tynian and Ulath arrived together, having met up in the Holy
City while each was on an individual errand for their respective
orders. Bevier came up from the south, overland from Arcium. Berit and
Kalten came directly from the Motherhouse in Demos. Alean accompanied
Kalten, of course. She had rarely let him out of her sight in the eight
years they'd been married. Kalten's reputation had preceded him into
wedlock.
The last to arrive were Mirtai and Kring. Elahna almost broke down into
tears at the sight of the proud Atana riding beside the short, scarred,
bald man on the second horse.
"Not in public, Elahna," Mirtai spoke firmly but gently as they
embraced. "We'll both end up crying ourselves dry before it's over, but
in private."
"Of course, Mirtai," the queen said as she regained some control over
her emotions. "Promise me we'll have time for a long, leisurely
conversation."
"I can't promise that, but I promise that I'll try, my mother," Mirtai
replied, invoking the deeper relationship that Elahna had adopted at
Mirtai's succession to adulthood. Some in their party may have
dismissed the queen's declaration of motherhood to the tall Atana as
simple oratory extravagance, but both of the principals knew that Mirtai
was the true spiritual daughter of the beautiful Queen of Elenia, a
position she'd assumed upon learning of Mirtai's childhood and the
deaths of her parents at the hands of slavers.
"Kring," Sparhawk went to welcome the Peloi domi, almost forgotten in
the emotional reunion of the two women. "It's good to see you."
"And you, Sir Knight," the scarred chieftain replied. He threw a glance
at his wife and the queen. "How long do you think they'll be taking?"
Sparhawk laughed. "Another quarter hour, at least. More, if we didn't
have other guests."
"I should get the horses settled and our things in the palace, then.
That little girl promised some fairly dire consequences if everyone
weren't present and available by this evening. She's a bossy little
goddess, isn't she?"
Sparhawk chuckled. "Only out of love, Kring. Only out of love."
======================================
Brother Rosler fumbled his way out of his pallet, moving quietly in the
dark as he pulled on his sandals. Korran was already awake and waiting
for him at the side of the bed, a burglar's lantern in his hand with the
shutters closed.
"Hurry up, brother," Korran whispered. "The Lord Abbot is waiting."
"I _am_ hurrying, brother, so don't shove," Rosler answered, irritated.
He knew this was the sort of thing he'd signed on for, but having Korran
and his 'quickly, quickly' attitude to deal with at the 3rd hour wasn't
what he'd expected.
The two monks walked briskly to the Lord Abbot's quarters, sandals
scuffing as they stepped on grit and sand that the desert made an
inevitable part of the decor of any town built near it.
"Good morning, my sons," the Brother Jothran greeted them.
"Very early morning, my lord," Rosler muttered darkly.
"Don't worry, Rosler," the abbot began. "You'll see more of them before
your next assignment is done."
Both of the monks looked at their abbot quickly, their eyes questioning.
"This room's secure, so we can talk openly," the older man started. "Sir
Rosler, you and Sir Korran are to ride to the sheepfold of Shalan the
shepherd. Do it quietly, and do it quickly. I want you to find
anything unusual in the area and report back to me."
"My Lord...may we ask what happened to Shalan. I mean...we've heard
rumors. That he'd been torn apart by lions, that he'd been slain by one
of the wild nomad tribes, that his sheep had taken a liking to meat and
eaten him. What really happened?"
The "abbot" looked at them, gauging whether they were ready to learn the
truth. "Shalan is dead. He's been burned to a husk, along with his
sheep, his tent, and the fold. We don't know what did this. That's why
I'm sending you out."
Brother Jothran turned to the table at the back of the room and picked
up a piece of parchment, which he carried to his desk.
"There are numerous reports of a fireball in the sky over that area the
same night. From our investigations, as you know, we've found that
'falling stars' and fireballs are merely stones falling from the air,
most likely pieces of the moon shaken loose by the pull of our world.
The timing and placement of this one, however, are suspicious. It may
yet turn out to have been merely a rock from the sky, heated
tremendously by it's speed through the air and igniting Shalan's camp in
passing. Then again, there may be more to it."
Korran looked at the report, then passed it to Rosler.
"What's our methodology, my lord?"
Vice-Preceptor Jothran looked at him with an amused quirk to his mouth.
"That's what _you_ get paid for, Sir Knight. I merely push the
parchment and issue the orders. Now go to the stables and outfit your
horses for a ride out to the camp. You'll want to investigate the area
thoroughly, try to come up with explanations, and file a report on the
whole operation when you return. You know the details."
Rosler looked up from his contemplation of the report and spoke, "On our
way, my lord!"
Both "monks" snapped their heels and saluted, then slipped out the door.
"Galeryn, I hope you know what you're doing," the tall vice-preceptor
spoke softly to the air. "I smell trouble at every turn down here. And
if the Secret Order becomes known in Rendor, we'll all wish we'd been
crisped by that fireball."
Jothran brought his hand to his throat, where a small silver medallion
rested, and brought it up to his eyes. Following the mazelike pathways
on the surface of the disc, he initiated several deliberate breathing
routines and quickly relaxed into a meditative state. He had a good
three hours until Morningsong, and he felt a great need to clear his
mind of the worries that came with not only running, but hiding, an
entire chapterhouse of Church Knights from Elene and Rendor alike.
The spring-wound mantel clock in the office, quite possibly the only one
of its kind on this world, gently ticked its way through the minutes as
its silver pendulum swung beneath.
=============================================================================
They gathered in the Council Chamber that afternoon, all except Danae,
who told Ehlana that she wasn't feeling well at all, and to convey her
apologies to the rest, especially Aphrael. Sparhawk caught her in the
corridors before the gathering began.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like to see the court physician? If you're
really ill..."
Danae sighed and raised her eyes skyward. "Of _course_ I'm not really
ill, Father. I'm going to need my full concentration in there," she
said as she gestured toward the Council Chamber, "and I can't do that if
I have to divide my awareness. Now just let me go and lie down like a
good little sick child while you pay attention to what we're going to be
discussing. It's very important."
Sparhawk looked at her as if searching for something. "All right. But
you and I are going to have a long talk after this meeting."
"If it makes you feel better, of course," she replied lightly, and
walked up the stairs quickly.
The whole company was gathered when Sparhawk entered the chamber. A
long table stood in the center of the room, with carved wooden chairs
set around it. All were filled except for the one beside Ehlana.
Mirtai stood behind Ehlana's chair, taking her customary place as
bodyguard as much out of old habit as duty. Kring was seated in a
window embrasure, talking in low tones with Stragen. Flute was sitting
on Sephrenia's lap, the expression on her face grave.
Sparhawk took his seat beside the queen, and Flute stood. Stragen and
Kring both fell silent as the tiny goddess lifted her face to speak.
"Something very unusual has happened in the world, my friends, and I'm
not certain how to react to it. I'm sure you've all heard that Styrics
don't take surprises well. Unfortunately, that is a trait they
inherited from their gods. I've been surprised in the last two weeks.
Badly surprised, and I'm afraid I don't know how to deal with those
surprises."
The Child-Goddess's voice cracked, and her anxiety was evident. The
faces of those gathered were caught between sympathy for the child-like
deity and fear of whatever was ominous enough to put her at such a loss.
Sephrenia rose from her seat, and took Aphrael into her arms.
"The heart of the matter is this," the priestess began, reaching into
her robes to remove a parchment, written in Tamul characters. "Two weeks
ago, the Priestess-Warrior attached to the Royal House of Atan had a
dream. It was a prophecy, sent directly to her by the Atan god. Most
of the gods don't deal with prophecies, preferring to have closer
relationships with their people than the distant words of prophecy
allow, but the god of the Atans has always been just a bit strange."
Ehlana was the first to speak, directing her remarks to the Atana that
had accompanied Sephrenia and Vanion to Cimmura.
"Atana Miran, were you the dreamer of this prophecy?"
"I was, Ehlana-Queen," the olive-skinned Atana replied gravely. "The
dream came to me as I slept, and I wrote it down immediately after. I
brought it to Betuana-Queen's advisor, Solan," she added, indicating the
elderly Styric man beside her. "And he knew to bring it to
Sephrenia-Priestess, who commanded me to accompany her here to the
West."
"Thank you, Atana."
Stragen spoke now, his interest in the esoteric showing in his face.
"What does the prophecy say, Little Mother?"
Sephrenia opened the parchment and read:
"Behold, in the day when fire rains in the desert shall the
Child-Goddess begin her quest for the Hidden One, and in the ending of
that quest remove a great evil from the world. Let her go forth and
vanquish the Spirit which has lain so long out of the grasp of gods and
men."
"The Hidden One?" Sparhawk asked.
Aphrael sighed, and motioned to Sephrenia to go on.
"When the Younger Gods were binding the Elder Gods, one was missed.
He'd left the company of his brethren eons before and very few
remembered his existence, let alone where he'd gone. He is the Hidden
One. He had another name, ages and ages ago, but it's been erased in
the minds of men and gods...probably at his own initiative. The Hidden
One is the only Elder God of Styricum left unvanquished, and this
prophecy indicates that it's Aphrael's task to finish the job."
Talen looked at her wide-eyed. "I can see why you're frightened. If all
of the Elder Gods were like Azash, you have your work cut out for you."
"Why is the god of the Atans issuing a Younger God of Styricum marching
orders? No offense intended, Atanas," he said quickly.
Aphrael sighed again and began to speak. "Do you remember when I told
you that we can't really see the future, just the occasional dim image?"
Sparhawk nodded.
"Well, that's not entirely true. Sometimes one of us has a very clear
vision. The Atan god tends to have these most often. Except for your
Elene god, who's reputed to know the future with some clarity. The
Elder Gods as well, although they didn't see clearly enough to avoid
being bound."
"Azash didn't seem like such a powerful seer when we met him in Zemoch,"
Talen noted.
Aphrael gave him a look that said volumes about her opinion of his
insight. "Azash was bound, Talen. He was limited by the idol."
"Oh," the young man answered, looking slightly disappointed.
"But this isn't giving me what I need...advice! I need a plan, my
friends, and I need it soon. A fireball was sighted over Rendor two
nights ago. That means I'm already past due to begin the search!"
"Perhaps the fireball and the prophecy are related in more than timing,"
the Baroness Melidere offered. "Perhaps there was something about that
fireball that will tell us where you need to start."
"I like it," Stragen spoke.
"You have to," Talen told him, ducking away from Melidere's exquisitely
manicured hand as he spoke.
Vanion, however, looked thoughtfully at Melidere. "She may have
something there. Call it a hunch, call it years of living with a mystic
people, but that idea just feels right to me."
Aphrael's eyes lit up with hope for the first time since they'd begun
this meeting. "It does to me too, Vanion."
"Where in Rendor was this fireball sighted?" Stragen asked.
Sephrenia stood up to point to a spot on the world map on the wall.
"Here...near a town called Khorentz."
===============================
They found the charcoaled remains of the sheepfold half-buried in sand,
but that was expected. Nothing stays uncovered in the desert. Some
searching revealed the canvas floor of the tent, protected from the
flames by a layer of sand the night the fireball appeared.
Rosler and Korran searched in a widening circle from the tent floor,
finding nothing but sand. At a few hundred yards, Rosler stopped and a
small groan came from his lips.
"Are you all right?" Sir Korran asked, shouting from his position to the
south.
"Come here! Quickly!" Rosler yelled back. Korran ran to his position.
"What's wrong?"
"Don't you feel that?!" the older knight asked him, an expression of
slight pain on his face.
"Feel what, Rosler?"
"Damnit! Open yourself. This isn't a picnic. We're supposed to be
investigating this, and that includes the Disciplines."
Korran apologized, shame-faced. "I forgot to ground and open. Hold on."
Stepping aside for the minor ritual that would open his mind to the
impression of magic, Korran began to scan the area. There! To the
northwest about twenty yards. A feeling of discomfort, like a sharp
headache, began to beat at his brain.
"Do you have the location?" Rosler asked him.
"Yes. About twenty yards that way. There's a depression in the sand
over there."
"Close up and follow me. We'll need to get closer and we'll never be
able to stand the pain if we go over there like this."
Both of the Church Knights went through the procedure of closing down
their higher awareness and went back to their horses to get the spades
they'd brought.
Working in shifts, they uncovered the meteor within an hour.
"This must be the fireball," Korran said.
"Let's get it hitched up to the horses and pull it out of this hole. We
need to examine it more closely."
The horses pulled the blue-black rock out of the sand, and Rosler
studied it closely. The heat of its passage through the air had melted
the outer layer smooth, except for a fist-sized depression, the edges of
which were sharp and clear, as if something had been attached to the
stone until after it had cooled.
Sir Rosler wasn't fond of pain, but he could face it if duty demanded.
He knew he had to open himself again, to find the exact source of the
evil they'd sensed before. Perhaps a bit of reconstruction, too, to
identify what had been attached to the stone.
He prepared himself again, and opened his mind to impressions while Sir
Korran watched warily. Rosler noted that the intensity had faded, as if
the source of the pain had been removed and only residual impressions
remained. That lent strength to his theory.
Rosler then began a reconstruction of the stone as it had been
immediately after its fall. Piece by piece, he saw the
stone-as-it-had-been come into being in his mind...steam rose from it,
and the smell of ash and heat. And, sitting in the depression as if it
were born there, a ruby, glowing a bloody red. And emanating an evil
more horrible than anything Rosler had ever experienced.
====================================================================================
"Why didn't you tell me about this when you first found out?" Sparhawk
questioned his daughter in her study after the gathering below had
dispersed to make their preparations for the journey to Rendor.
"Sparhawk, I'm more than a bit upset with myself for missing the clues
and rumors as it is," Danae replied. "Please don't make it any worse by
telling me what I should have done."
"Clues and rumors?"
"There have been stories floating around my family for centuries that
the Hidden One was still active on this world. But they were only
stories, tales we told to frighten ourselves. We're not unlike mortals
in that respect.
"But in the last five or six summers, those stories have been coming
from other directions than the Younger Gods. The Troll Gods actually
came to my cousin Setras and told him that they were concerned about
certain...I guess you could call them sounds, though that's not exactly
accurate...coming from the sky. And the Tamul gods all but went into
hiding two moons ago. No one has been able to coax them out of their
private domains to find out what frightened them. My own family had
realized that something different was happening. Except for me."
Danae's usually radiant face was downcast and shadowed. Sparhawk gazed
at her in concern.
"Why did you miss these clues?"
Danae laughed sardonically. "Because of _this_," she said, gesturing at
herself. "This 'adolescence' that you mortals go through is distracting
me tremendously! The hormone imbalances alone are taking about half of
my concentration, and the physical changes are uncomfortable. I don't
dare do more than try to keep things on an even keel because I don't
know for sure what a major change at the wrong time will do in the end,
and it's driving me crazy! I'm beginning to wonder what I could
possibly have been thinking when I decided to 'go mortal' in a situation
where I _had_ to let things happen naturally."
The Pandion looked confused. "You don't know how to grow up?"
"I've never _had_ to before, Father. I usually take steps to prevent
growth after my sixth birthday. This is the first time I've let nature
take its course. And you see where it's led us."
"I wouldn't worry, Danae. I doubt that you could have done anything in
any case until that prophecy was given. Do you think any of your family
would have believed you if you had somehow put all the clues together?"
The dark-haired princess looked thoughtfully out the window. "Probably
not. My family loves me dearly, but they don't really take me very
seriously. Sephrenia wasn't made the Overpriestess because of any
affirmation of my leadership abilities. She was given the honor because
the rest of my family wanted to bribe me into leaving their pet projects
alone. You might say I annoyed it out of them rather than led them to
the decision."
"And even if they had listened to you, do you think you could have done
anything to prevent the Hidden One from becoming active again? We still
don't even know where it is or what it's doing. We're just pinning hopes
on that fireball. It looks pretty, sitting there with all of those
hopes dangling from it, but it's not going anywhere very fast just yet."
Danae smiled at that, and it was like the sun emerging from
thunderclouds.
"Oh, I love you, Father!" she laughed as she ran to him.
Sparhawk embraced her with all the love a father could feel for his
daughter, and an extra measure for the part of her that was Flute.
And, for that moment, all was right with the world.
=====================================
Vice-Preceptor Jothran was worried. The report that the two knights had
brought back from the desert was disturbing in the extreme. A stone of
great evil, come from the sky, was loose in the world. They didn't even
know what it was, let alone what it could do. Or how it had escaped the
rock which had carried it to this world.
A report was required, but Jothran was reluctant to make it. Galeryn,
having led the Secret Order for 40 years, was frail. Sarathi had, after
his succession and the customary revelation of the existence of the
Secret Order, offered to allow the elderly preceptor a generous
retirement, but Galeryn had declined. He wanted to die in the habit of
the Order, on active duty, not in some dusty, forgotten hostel where his
name would be forgotten before his body was even cold. Still, Galeryn
was frail. And reports of a great new evil in the world could very well
finish him.
Jothran considered sending the report directly to the Archprelate
instead, then decided against it. Galeryn would be mortally offended if
he ever found out that his vice-preceptor had gone over his head.
Jothran couldn't do that to a beloved friend.
The thin, almost rangy, man behind the desk sighed wearily and removed a
quill and parchment from the drawers before him. Duty was a
constantly-moving wind filling the sails of the ship that was the
Church, and a wish for the comfort of friends was a wisp of fog before
it. Jothran began his report as the sun began to sink behind the hills
to the west.
=====================================
The man is filthy, the innkeeper at Jiroch thought to himself. I'll have
to pay my other patrons to stay if I let him in.
"Go away, desert scum," he spoke to the man looking for rooms in the
haughty tone of townsfolk the world over when speaking to rustics. "When
you know how to look more like a human being and less like a jackal,
come back and I'll consider letting you clean the stables."
The thin man had the look of a dervish, that fanatical gleam in the eyes
that spoke of madness as much as faith. The innkeeper had never had
occasion to confront that particular characteristic before, but several
patrons in the common room had recognized both the look in the peasant's
eyes and the tone in the innkeeper's voice, and were searching for
unobtrusive exits as the dirty little man stared the innkeeper down.
Finally, the man spoke. His voice was strange, almost as if more than
one person were speaking.
"You should learn manners, friend innkeep. You live today. You may
regret that."
The man turned and walked out of the door of the small white inn,
disappearing down the crowded avenue in search of other lodgings. The
innkeeper merely smirked his opinion of 'desert superstition' and
continued in his duties.
Three days later, he was dead, his body ravaged by a wasting disease
that had never been examined by the physicians of any city on the coast
of the Inner Sea. Since it didn't appear to be contagious, the gathered
worthies merely shrugged and returned to their respective towns and
cities, noting the anomalous appearance of a non-virulent consumptive
disease in Jiroch and worrying themselves about it no more.
Except for one physic from Dabour, who was more conversant with
controversial therapeutic techniques than his conservative colleagues.
A letter was written and sent to a woman of his acquaintance, via a
contact in Jiroch. The contact would get the letter to the woman, even
if she were traveling. His talents were unusual, and the physic had no
wish to know more than he had to about the methods used, considering the
prevailing mood in Rendor. Eshand's heresies may have been stamped out,
but the general attitudes toward witchcraft survived.
After sending the information he'd gathered, the physic returned to his
shop in Dabour, and promptly forgot about what he'd seen, heard, and
written, a talent of his own that had proven most useful over the years.