Domes of Fire Part 28

'Am I being reprimanded or re-united with my Queen?' he asked, looking a bit confused.

'A little of each, my Lord,' she shrugged. 'I thought I'd save some time and take care of everything all at once. I'm really very, very glad to see you again, Vanion, but I was most unhappy when you crept away from Cimmura like a thief in the night.'

'We don't really do that, you know,' Stragen noted clinically. 'After you've stolen something, the idea is to look ordinary, and creeping attracts attention.'

'Stragen,' she said, 'hush.'

'I took him away from Cimmura for his health, Sephrenia told her. 'He was dying there. I had a certain personal interest in keeping him alive, so I took him to a place where I could nurse him back to health. I badgered Aphrael unmercifully for a couple of years, and she finally gave in. I can make a serious pest of myself when I want something, and I really wanted Vanion.' She made no attempt to conceal her feelings now. The years of unspoken love between her and the Pandion Preceptor were out in the open.

She also made no effort to conceal what was quite obviously in both the Styric and the Elene cultures a scandalous arrangement. She and Vanion were openly living in sin, and neither of them showed the slightest bit of remorse about it. 'How's the ankle, dear one?' she asked him.

'It's swelling up again.'

'Didn't I tell you to soak it in ice when it did that?'

'I didn't have any ice.'

'Make some, Vanion. You know the spell.'

'The ice I make doesn't seem as cold as yours, Sephrenia.' His voice was plaintive.

'Men!' she cried in seeming exasperation. 'They're all such babies!' She bustled away in search of a basin.

'You followed that, didn't you, Sparhawk?' Vanion said.

'Of course, my Lord. It was very smooth, if I may say so.'

'Thank you.'

'What was that all about?' Kalten asked.

'You'd never understand, Kalten,' Sparhawk replied.

'Not in a million years,' Vanion added.

'How did you sprain your ankle, Lord Vanion?' Berit asked.

'I was proving a point. I advised the Council of Styric.u.m that the young men of Sarsos were in extremely poor physical condition. I had to demonstrate by outrunning the whole b.l.o.o.d.y town. I was doing fairly well until I stepped in that rabbit-hole.'

'That's a real shame, Lord Vanion,' Kalten said. 'As far as I know, that's the first contest you ever lost.'

'Who said I lost? I was far enough ahead and close enough to the finish line that I was able to hobble on and win. The Council's going to at least think about some military training for the young men.'

He glanced at Sparhawk's squire. 'h.e.l.lo, Khalad,' he said. 'How are your mothers?'

'Quite well, my Lord. We stopped by to see them when we were taking the queen to Chyrellos so that she could turn the Archprelate over her knee and spank him.'

'Khalad,' Ehlana protested.

'Wasn't I supposed to say that, your Majesty? We all thought that's what you had in mind when we left Cimmura.'

'Well-sort of, I guess-but you're not supposed to come right out and say it like that.'

'Oh, I didn't know that. I thought it was sort of a good idea, myself. Our Holy Mother needs to have something to worry about now and then. It keeps her out of mischief.'

'Astonishing, Khalad,' Patriarch Emban murmured dryly. 'You've managed to insult both Church and State in under a minute.'

'What's been going on in Eosia since I left?' Vanion demanded.

'It was just a small misunderstanding between Sarathi and me, my Lord Vanion,' Ehlana replied. 'Khalad was exaggerating. He does that quite often-when he's not busy insulting the Church and State at the same time.'

'We may just have another Sparhawk coming up here,' Vanion grinned.

'G.o.d defend the Church,' Emban said.

'And the crown,' Ehlana added.

Princess Danae pushed her way through to Vanion. She was carrying Mmrr, her hand wrapped around the kitten's middle. Mmrr had a resigned expression on her hairy face, and her legs dangled ungracefully. 'h.e.l.lo, Vanion,' Danae said, climbing up into his lap and giving him an offhand sort of kiss.

'You've grown, Princess,' he smiled.

'Did you expect me to shrink?'

'Danae.' Ehlana scolded.

'Oh, mother, Vanion and I are old friends. He used to hold me when I was a baby.'

Sparhawk looked carefully at his friend, trying to decide whether or not Vanion knew about the little princess. Vanion's face, however, revealed nothing. 'I've missed you, Princess,' he said to her.

'I know. Everybody misses me when I'm not around. Have you met Mmrr yet? She's my cat. Talen gave her to me. Wasn't that nice of him?'

'Very nice, Danae.'

'I thought so myself. Father's going to put him in training when we get home. It's probably just as well to get that all done while I'm still a little girl.'

'Oh? Why's that, Princess?'

'Because I'm going to marry him when I grow up, and I'd like to have all that training nonsense out of the way. Would you like to hold my cat?'

Talen blushed and laughed a bit nervously, trying to pa.s.s off Danae's announcement as some sort of little-girl whim. His eyes looked a bit wild, however.

'You should never warn them like that, Princess,' Baroness Melidere advised. 'You're supposed to wait and tell them at the last possible minute.'

'Oh. Is that the way it's done?' Danae looked at Talen. 'Why don't you forget what I just said then?' she suggested. 'I'm not going to do anything about it for the next ten or twelve years anyway.' She paused. 'Or eight, maybe. There's no real point in wasting time, is there?'

Talen was staring at her with the first faint hints of terror in his eyes. 'She's only teasing you, Talen,' Kalten a.s.sured the boy. 'And even if she isn't, I'm sure she'll change her mind before she gets to the dangerous age.'

'Never happen, Kalten,' Danae told him in a voice like steel.

That evening, after arrangements had been made and the crowd had been mostly dispersed to nearby houses, Sparhawk sat in the cool garden at the centre of the house with Sephrenia and Vanion. Princess Danae sat on the ledge surrounding the fountain watching her kitten. Mmrr had discovered that there were goldfish swimming in the pool, and she sat with her tail twitching and her eyes wide with dreadful intent.

'I need to know something before I start,' Sparhawk said, looking directly at Sephrenia. 'How much does he know?' He pointed at Vanion.

'Just about everything, I'd say. I have no secrets from him.'

'That's not too specific, Sephrenia.' Sparhawk groped for a way to ask the question without revealing too much.

'Oh, do get to the point, Sparhawk,' Danae told him. 'Vanion knows who I am. He had a little trouble with it at first, but he's more or less reconciled to the idea now.'

'That's not entirely true,' Vanion disagreed. 'You're the one with the really serious problems though, Sparhawk. How are you managing the situation?'

'Badly,' Danae sniffed. 'He keeps asking questions, even though he knows he won't understand the answers.'

'Does Ehlana suspect?' Vanion asked seriously.

'Of course she doesn't,' the Child G.o.ddess replied. 'Sparhawk and I decided that right at the beginning. Tell them what's been happening, Sparhawk-and don't be all night about it. Mirtai's bound to come looking for me soon.'

'It must be pure h.e.l.l,' Vanion said sympathetically to his friend.

'Not entirely. I have to watch her, though. Once she had a swarm of fairies pollinating all the flowers in the palace garden.'

'The bees are too slow,' she shrugged.

'Maybe so, but people expect the bees to do it. If you turn the job over to the fairies, there's bound to be talk.' Sparhawk leaned back and looked at Vanion. 'Sephrenia's told you about the Lamorks and Drychtmath, hasn't she?'

Yes. It's not just wild stories, is it?'

Sparhawk shook his head. 'No. We encountered some bronze-age Lamorks outside of Demos. After Ulath brained their leader, they all vanished-except for the dead. Oscagne's convinced that it's a diversion of some kind-rather like the games Martel was playing to keep us out of Chyrellos during the election of the Archprelate. We've been catching glimpses of Krager, and that lends some weight to Oscagne's theory, but you always taught us that it's a mistake to try to fight the last war over again, so I'm not locking myself into the idea that what's happening in Lamorkand is purely diversionary. I can't really accept the notion that somebody would go to all that trouble to keep the Church Knights out of Tamuli-not with the Atans already here.'

Vanion nodded. 'You're going to need someone to help you when you get to Matherion, Sparhawk. Tamul culture's very subtle, and you could make some colossal blunders without even knowing it.'

'Thanks, Vanion.'

'You're not the only one, though. Your companions aren't the most diplomatic men in the world, and Ehlana tends to jump fences when she gets excited. Did she really go head to head with Dolmant?'

'Oh, yes,' Danae said. 'I had to kiss them both into submission before I could make peace between them.'

'Who'd be the best to send, Sephrenia?' Vanion asked.

'Me.'

'That's out of the question. I won't be separated from you again.'

'That's very sweet, dear one. Why don't you come along then?'

He seemed to hesitate. 'I-'

'Don't be such a goose, Vanion,' Danae told him. 'You won't die the minute you leave Sarsos-any more than you did when you left my island. You're completely cured now.'

'I wasn't worried about that,' he told her, 'but Sephrenia can't leave Sarsos anyway. She's a member of the Council of Styric.u.m.'

'I've been a member of the Council of Styric.u.m for several centuries, Vanion,' Sephrenia told him. 'I've left here before-for long periods of time on occasion. The other members of the Council understand. They've all had to do the same thing themselves now and then.'

'I'm a little vague on this ruling council,' Sparhawk admitted. 'I knew that Styrics kept in touch with each other, but I hadn't realised it was quite so well-knit.'

'We don't make an issue of it,' Sephrenia shrugged. 'if the Elenes knew about it, they'd try to make some huge conspiracy out of it.'

'Your membership on the council keeps coming up,' Sparhawk noted. 'Is this council really relevant, or is it just some sort of ceremonial body?'

'Oh, no, Sparhawk,' Vanion told him. 'The council's very important. Styric.u.m's a theocracy, and the council's composed of the high priests and priestesses of the Younger G.o.ds.'

'Being Aphrael's priestess isn't really a very taxing position,' Sephrenia smiled, looking fondly at the Child G.o.ddess. 'She's not particularly interested in a.s.serting herself, since she usually gets what she wants in other ways. I get certain advantages-like this house-but I have to sit in on the meetings of the Thousand, and that can be tedious sometimes.'

'The Thousand?'

'It's another name for the Council.'

'There are a thousand Younger G.o.ds?' Sparhawk was a bit surprised at that.

'Well, of course there are, Sparhawk,' Aphrael told him. 'Everybody knows that.'

'Why a thousand?'

'It's a nice number with a nice sound to it. In Styric it's Age'rBluon.'

'I'm not familiar with the word.'

'It means ten times ten times ten-sort of. We had quite an argument with one of my cousins about it. He had a pet crocodile, and it had bitten off one of his fingers. He always had trouble counting after that. He wanted us to be AgerBlican-nine times nine times nine, but we explained to him that there were already more of us than that, and that if we wanted to be AgerBlican, some of us would have to be obliterated. We asked him if he'd care to volunteer to be one of them, and he dropped the idea.'

'Why would anyone want to have a pet crocodile?'

'It's one of the things we do. We like to make pets of animals you humans can't control. Crocodiles aren't so bad. At least you don't have to feed them.'

'No, but you have to count the children every morning. Now I understand why the question of whales keeps coming up.'

'You're really very stubborn about that, Sparhawk. I could really impress my family if I had a whale.'

'I think we're getting a little far afield,' Vanion said. 'Sephrenia tells me you've got some fairly exotic suspicions.'

'I've been trying to explain something I can't completely see yet, Vanion. It's like trying to describe a horse when all you've to work with is his tail. I've got a lot of bits and pieces and not too much more. I'm positive that everything that we've seen so far-and probably a lot of things we haven't-are all hooked together, and that there's one intelligence guiding it all. I think it's a G.o.d, Vanion-or G.o.ds.'

'Are you sure your encounter with Azash didn't make you start seeing hostile divinities under beds and in dark closets?'

'I have it on the very best authority that only a G.o.d could raise an entire army out of the past. The authority who told me was quite smug about it.'

'Be nice, father,' Danae said primly. 'It's too complex, Vanion,' she explained. 'When you raise an army, you have to raise each individual soldier, and you have to know everything about him when you do that. It's the details that defeat human magicians when they try it.'

'Any ideas?' Vanion asked his friend.