Domes of Fire Part 23

'If she is truly Atan, she will not object, Ehlana-Queen.' He turned abruptly and crossed to where Mirtai sat with the Peloi.

'Mirtai's certainly the centre of things today,' Melidere observed.

'I think it's very nice,' Ehlana said. 'She keeps herself in the background most of the time. She's ent.i.tled to a bit of attention.'

'It's political, you realise,' Stragen told her. 'Tik.u.me's people are showering Mirtai with attention for Kring's benefit.'

'I know, Stragen, but it's nice all the same.' She looked speculatively at her golden slave. 'Sparhawk, I'd take it as a personal favour if you'd actively pursue the marriage-negotiations with Atan Engessa. Mirtai deserves some happiness.'

'I'll see what I can arrange for her, my queen.'

Mirtai readily agreed to Engessa's proposed test. She rose gracefully to her feet, unfastened the neck of her purple robe and let it fall. The Peloi gasped. Their women-folk were customarily dressed in far more concealing garments. The sneer on the face of Tik.u.me's wife Vida, however, was a bit wan. Mirtai was significantly female. She was also fully armed, and that also shocked the Peloi.

She and Engessa moved to the area in front of the canopy, curtly inclined their heads to each other and drew their swords. Sparhawk thought he knew the differences between contest and combat, but what followed blurred that boundary for him. Mirtai and Engessa seemed to be fully intent on killing each other. Their swordsmanship was superb, but their manner of fencing involved a great deal more physical contact than did western-style fighting.

'It looks like a wrestling-match with swords,' Kalten observed to Ulath.

'Yes,' Ulath agreed. 'I wonder if a man could do that in an axe-fight. If you could kick somebody in the face the way she just did and then follow up with an axe-stroke, you could win a lot of fights in a hurry.'

'I knew she was going to do that to him,' Kalten chuckled as Engessa landed flat on his back in the dust. 'She did it to me once.'

Engessa, however, did not lie gasping on the ground as Kalten had. He rolled away from Mirtai instead and came to his feet with his sword still in his hand. He raised his blade in a kind of salute and then immediately attacked again.

The 'test' continued for several more minutes until a watching Atan sharply banged his fist on his breastplate to signal the end of the match. The man who had signailed was much older than his compatriots, or so it seemed. His hair was white. Nothing else about him seemed any different, however.

Mirtai and Engessa bowed formally to each other, and he returned her to her place where she once again drew on her robe and sank down onto a cushion. Vida no longer sneered.

'She is fit,' Engessa reported to Ehlana. He reached up under his breastplate and tenderly touched a sore-spot. 'More than fit,' he added. 'She is a skilled and dangerous opponent. I am proud to be the one she will call father. She will add l.u.s.ter to my name.'

'We rather like her, Atan Engessa,' Ehlana smiled. 'I'm so glad you agree with us.' She let the full impact of that devastating smile wash over the stern-faced Atan, and hesitantly, almost as if it were in spite of himself, he smiled back.

'I think he lost two fights today,' Talen whispered to Sparhawk.

'So it would seem,' Sparhawk replied.

'We can never catch up with them, friend Sparhawk,' Tik.u.me said that evening as they all relaxed on carpets near a flaring campfire. 'These steppes are open gra.s.slands with only a few groves of trees. There isn't really any place to hide, and you can't ride a horse through tall gra.s.s without leaving a trail a blind man could follow. They come out of nowhere, kill the herders and run off the cattle. I followed one of those groups of raiders myself. They'd stolen a hundred cattle, and they left a broad trail through the gra.s.s. After a few miles, the trail just ended. There was no sign that they'd dispersed. They just vanished. It was as if something had reached down and carried them off into the sky.'

'Have there been any other disturbances, Domi?' Tynian asked carefully. 'What I'm trying to say is, has there been unrest of any kind among your people? Wild stories? rumours? That sort of thing?'

'No, friend Tynian.' Tic.u.me smiled. 'We are an open-faced people. We do not conceal our emotions from each other. I'd know if there were something afoot. I've heard about what's been happening over around Darsas, so I know why you ask. Nothing like that is happening here. We don't worship our heroes the way they do, we just try to be like them. Someone's stealing our cattle and killing our herdsmen.' He looked a bit accusingly at Oscagne. 'I would not insult you for all the world, your Honour,' he said, 'but you might suggest to the emperor that he would be wise to have some of his Atans look into it. If we have to deal with it ourselves, our neighbours won't like it very much. We of the Peloi tend to be a bit indiscriminate when someone steals our cattle.'

'I'll bring the matter to his Imperial Majesty's attention,' Oscagne promised.

'Soon, friend Oscagne,' Tik.u.me recommended. 'Very soon.'

'She's a highly-skilled warrior, Sparhawk-Knight,' Engessa was saying the following morning as the two sat by a small fire.

'Granted,' Sparhawk replied, 'but by your own traditions, she's still a child.'

'That's why it's my place to negotiate for her,' Engessa pointed out. 'If she were adult, she would do it herself. Children sometimes do not know their own worth.'

'But a child cannot be as valuable as an adult.'

'That's not always entirely true, Sparhawk-Knight. The younger a woman, the greater her price.'

'Oh, this is absurd,' Ehlana broke in. The negotiations were of a delicate nature and would normally have taken place in private. 'Normally', however, did not always apply to Sparhawk's wife. 'Your offer's completely unacceptable, Sparhawk.'

'Whose side are you on, dear?' he asked her mildly.

'Mirtai's my friend. I won't permit you to insult her. Ten horses indeed. I could get that much for Talen.'

'Were you planning to sell him too?'

'I was just ill.u.s.trating a point.'

Sir Tynian had also stopped by. Of all of their group, he was closest to Kring, and he keenly felt the responsibilities of friendship. 'What sort of offer would your Majesty consider properly respectful?' he asked Ehlana.

'Not a horse less than sixty,' she declared adamantly. 'Sixty.' Tynian exclaimed. 'You'll impoverish him. What kind of a life will Mirtai have if you marry her off to a pauper?'

'Kring's hardly a pauper, Sir Knight,' she retorted. 'He still has all that gold King Saros paid him for those Zemoch ears.'

'But that's not his gold, your Majesty,' Tynian pointed out. 'It belongs to his people.'

Sparhawk smiled and motioned with his head to Engessa. Un.o.btrusively, the two stepped away from the fire. 'I'd guess that they'll settle on thirty, Atan Engessa,' he tentatively suggested.

'Most probably,' Engessa agreed.

'It seems like a fair number to me. Doesn't it to you?' It hovered sort of on the verge of an offer.

'It's more or less what I had in mind, Sparhawk-Knight.'

'Me too. Done then?'

'Done.' The two of them clasped hands. 'Should we tell them?' the Atan asked, the faintest hint of a smile touching his face.

'They're having a lot of fun,' Sparhawk grinned. 'Why don't we let them play it out? We can find out how close our guess was. Besides, these negotiations are very important to Kring and Mirtai. If we were to agree in just a few minutes, it might make them feel cheapened.'

'You have been much in the world, SparhawkKnight,' Engessa observed. 'You know well the hearts of men-and of women.'

'No man ever truly knows the heart of a woman, Engessa-Atan,' Sparhawk replied ruefuly.

The negotiations between Tynian and Ehlana had reached the tragic stage, each of them accusing the other of ripping out hearts and similar extravagances. Ehlana's performance was masterful. The Queen of Elenia had a strong flair for histrionics, and she was a highly skilled orator. She extemporised at length upon Sir Tynian's disgraceful n.i.g.g.ardliness, her voice rising and falling in majestic cadences. Tynian, on the other hand, was coolly rational, although he too became emotional at times.

Kring and Mirtai sat holding hands not far away, their eyes filled with concern as they hung breathlessly on every word. Tik.u.me's Peloi encircled the haggling pair, straining to hear. It went on for hours, and it was nearly sunset when Ehlana and Tynian finally reached a grudging agreement-thirty horses-and concluded the bargain by spitting in their hands and smacking their palms together. Sparhawk and Engessa formalised the agreement in the same fashion, and a tumultuous cheer went up from the rapt Peloi. It had been a highly entertaining day all round, and that evening's celebration was loud and long.

'I'm exhausted,' Ehlana confessed to her husband after they had retired to their tent for the night.

'Poor dear,' Sparhawk commiserated.

'I had to step in, though. You were just being too meek, Sparhawk. You'd have given her away. It's a good thing I was there. You'd never have managed to reach that kind of agreement.'

'I was on the other side, Ehlana, remember?'

'That's what I don't understand, Sparhawk. How could you treat poor Mirtai so disgracefully?'

'Rules of the game, love. I was representing Kring.'

'I'm still very disappointed in you, Sparhawk.'

'Well, fortunately, you and Tynian were there to get it all done properly. Engessa and I couldn't have done half so well.'

'It did turn out rather well, didn't it-even though it took us all day.'

'You were brilliant, my love, absolutely brilliant.'

'I've been in some very shabby places in my life, Sparhawk,' Stragen said the next morning, 'but Pela's the absolute worst. It's been abandoned several times, did you know that? Maybe abandoned isn't the right word. 'Moved' is probably closer to the truth. Pela exists wherever the Peloi establish their summer encampment.'

'I'd imagine that sends the map-makers into hysterics.'

'More than likely. It's a temporary town, but it absolutely reeks of money. It takes a great deal of ready cash to buy a cattle-herd.'

'Were you able to make contact with the local thieves?'

'They contacted us actually,' Talen grinned. 'A boy no more than eight lifted Stragen's purse. He's very good-except that he doesn't run very well. I caught him within fifty yards. After we'd explained who we were, he was very happy to take us to see the man in charge.'

'Has the thieves' council made any decision as yet?' Sparhawk asked Stragen.

'They're still mulling it over,' Stragen replied. 'They're a bit conservative here in Daresia. The notion of cooperating with the authorities strikes them as immoral for some reason. I sort of expect an answer when we get to Sarsos. The thieves of Sarsos carry a great deal of weight in the empire. Did anything meaningful happen while we were gone?'

'Kring and Mirtai got betrothed.'

'That was quick. I'll have to congratulate them.'

'Why don't you two get some sleep,' Sparhawk suggested. 'We'll be leaving for Sarsos tomorrow. Tik.u.me's going to ride along with us to the edge of the steppes. I think he'd like to go a bit farther, but the Styrics at Sarsos make him nervous.' He rose to his feet. 'Get some sleep,' he told them. 'I want to go have a talk with Oscagne.'

The Peloi encampment was quiet. It was early summer now, and the midday heat kept the nomads inside their tents. Sparhawk walked across the hard-packed earth toward the tent shared by Amba.s.sador Oscagne and Patriarch Emban. His chain-mail jingled as he walked. Since they were in a secure encampment, the knights had decided to forego the discomfort of their formal armour. He found them sitting beneath a canopy at the side of their tent eating a melon.

'Well-met, Sir Knight,' Oscagne said as the Pandion approached.

'That's an archaic form of greeting, Oscagne,' Emban told him.

'I'm an archaic sort of fellow, Emban.'

'I was curious about something,' Sparhawk said, joining them on the shaded carpet.

'It's a characteristic of the young, I suppose,' Oscagne smiled.

Sparhawk let that pa.s.s. 'This part of Astel seems quite different from what we ran into farther west,' he observed.

'Yes,' Oscagne agreed. 'Astel's the melting-pot that gave rise to all Elene cultures-both here in Daresia and in Eosia as well.'

'We might want to argue about that some day,' Emban murmured.

'Daresia's older, that's all,' Oscagne shrugged. 'That doesn't necessarily mean that it's better. Anyway, what you've seen of Astel so far is very much like what you'd encounter in the Elene Kingdom of Pelosia, wouldn't you say?'

'There are similarities, yes,' Sparhawk replied.

'The similarities will stop when we reach the edge of the steppes. The western two-thirds of Astel are Elene. From the edge of the steppes to the Atan border, Astel's Styric.'

'How did that happen?' Emban asked. 'The Styrics in Eosia are widely dispersed. They live in their own villages and follow their own laws and customs.'

'How cosmopolitan are you feeling today, Emban?'

'You're planning to insult my provincialism, I take it.'

'Not too much, I hope. Your prototypical Elene is a bigot.' Oscagne held up one hand. 'Let me finish before you explode. Bigotry's a form of egotism, and I think you'll have to concede that Elenes have a very high opinion of themselves. They seem to feel that G.o.d smiles particularly for them.'

'Doesn't He?' Emban feigned surprise.

'Stop that. For reasons only G.o.d can understand, the Styrics particularly irritate the Elenes.'

'I have no trouble understanding it,' Emban shrugged. 'It's their superior att.i.tude. They treat us as if we were children.'

'From their perspective, we are, your Grace,' Sparhawk told him. 'Styrics have been civilised for forty thousand years. We got started somewhat later.'

'For whatever the reason,' Oscagne continued, 'the initial impulse of the Elenes has been to drive the Styrics out-or to kill them. That's why the Styrics migrated to Eosia much earlier than you Elenes did. They were driven into the wilderness by Elene prejudice. Eosia was not the only wilderness, however. There's another that exists along the Atan border, and many Styrics fled there in antiquity. After the Empire was formed, we Tamuls asked the Elenes to stop molesting the Styrics living around Sarsos.'

'Asked?'

'We were quite firm, and we did have all those Atans with nothing else to do. We've agreed to let the Elene clergy deliver thunderous denunciations from the pulpit, but we garrison enough Atans around Sarsos to keep the two peoples separate. It's quieter that way, and we Tamuls are extraordinarily fond of quiet. I think you gentlemen are in for a surprise when we reach Sarsos. It's the only truly Styric city in the entire world. It's an astonishing place. G.o.d seems to smile in a very special way there.'

'You keep talking about G.o.d, Oscagne,' Emban noted. 'I thought a preoccupation with G.o.d was an Elene conceit.'

'You're more cosmopolitan than I thought, your Grace.'

'Just exactly what do you mean when you use the word G.o.d, your Excellency?'

'We use the term generically. Our Tamul religion isn't very profound. We tend to think that a man's relationship with his G.o.d-or G.o.ds-is his own affair.'

'That's heresy, you know. It would put the Church out of business.'

'That's all right, Emban,' Oscagne smiled. 'Heresy's encouraged in the Tamul Empire. It gives us something to talk about on long, rainy afternoons.'

They rode out with a huge Peloi escort the following morning. The party moving northeasterly looked not so much like an army on the march as it did a migration. Kring and Tik.u.me rode more or less by themselves for the next several days, renewing their blood-ties and discussing an exchange of breeding-stock. Sparhawk attempted an experiment during the ride from Pela to the edge of the steppes, but try though he might, he could not detect any traces of Aphrael's tampering with time and distance. The Child G.o.ddess was simply too skilled and her manipulations too seamless for him to detect them. Once, when she had joined him on Faran's back, he raised an issue that had been troubling him.

'I'm not trying to pry, but it seems that it's been about fifty days since we landed at Salesha. How long has it really been?'

'Quite a bit less than that, Sparhawk,' she replied. 'Half that long at most.'