The Hidden City (23 page)

‘It might. I'll ask Aphrael the next time I talk with her.'

Engessa looked around. ‘I didn't see Kring-Domi when we met you, Vanion-Preceptor,' he noted.

‘Kring took his men and veered off toward Samar not long after you and her Majesty left us to come on ahead. He thought he'd be more useful there than he would here in Sarna – and you know how the western Peloi feel about mountains and forests. Have the Cynesgans made any forays across the border as yet?'

‘No, Vanion-Preceptor,' Engessa replied. ‘They're massing in staging areas and bringing up supplies.' He rose and went to the map. ‘A large force moved out of Cynestra a while back,' he said, pointing at the Cynesgan capital. ‘They're positioned near the border more or less opposite us here. Another force has taken up a similar position just across the line from Samar.'

Vanion nodded. ‘Cyrgon's more like a general than a God in most ways. He's not going to leave fortified positions to his rear. He'll have to neutralize Samar and Sarna before he can strike any deeper into Tamul Proper. I'd say that the force you're facing here has been ordered to take Sarna, seal the southern border of Atan and then swing northeast toward Tualas. I'm sure they'd rather not have the entire Atan nation come swarming down out of these mountains.'

‘There aren't enough Cynesgans living to keep my people hemmed in,' Betuana told him.

‘I'm sure of it, your Majesty, but there probably
are
enough to slow you down, and Cyrgon can recruit armies from the past to hinder you all the more.' He studied the map, his lips pursed. ‘I think I see where he's going,' he said. ‘Matherion's on a peninsula, and that narrow neck of land at Tosa is the key to that. If I had to wager anything on it, I'd say that the main battle's going to take place there. Scarpa will move north out of Natayos. Probably the southern Cynesgans are planning to capture Samar and then swing around the
north shore of the Sea of Arjun to join him somewhere in the vicinity of the Tamul Mountains. From there the combined army can march up the west shore of the Gulf of Micae to Tosa.' He smiled faintly. ‘Of course, there's a very nasty surprise waiting for them in the Tamul Mountains. I'd imagine that before this is over, Cyrgon will wish that he'd never
heard
of the Trolls.'

‘I will send an army out of northern Atan to Tosa, Vanion-Preceptor,' Betuana said, ‘but I'll leave enough of my people along the southern and eastern borders to tie up half of the Cynesgans.'

‘In the meantime I think we can disrupt their preparations,' Engessa added. ‘Raids in force across that border will delay their main attack.'

‘And that's all we really need,' Vanion chuckled. ‘If we can delay them long enough, Cyrgon's going to have a hundred thousand Church Knights swarming across his western frontier. I think he'll forget about Tosa at that point.'

‘Don't worry about him, Fron,' Stragen told Sparhawk. ‘He can take care of himself.'

‘I think we sometimes forget that he's only a boy, Vymer. He doesn't even shave regularly yet.'

‘Reldin stopped being a boy before his voice started to change.' Stragen leaned back on his bed reflectively. ‘Those of us in our particular line of work tend to lose our childhoods,' he said. ‘It might have been nice to roll hoops and catch polliwogs, but …' He shrugged.

‘What are you going to do when this is all over?' Sparhawk asked him. ‘Assuming that we survive?'

‘There's a certain lady of our acquaintance who proposed marriage to me a while back. It's part of a business arrangement that's very attractive. The notion of marriage never really appealed to me, but the business proposition's just too good to pass up.'

There's more, too, isn't there?'

‘Yes,' Stragen admitted. ‘After what she did back in Matherion that night, I'm not about to let her get away from me. She's one of the coolest and most courageous people I've ever met.'

‘Pretty, too.'

‘You noticed.' Stragen sighed. Im afraid I'm going to end up being at least semi-respectable, my friend.'

‘Shocking.'

‘Isn't it? First, though, there's this other little matter I want to deal with. I think I'll present my beloved with the head of a certain Astellian poet of our acquaintance. If I can find a good taxidermist, I may even have it stuffed and mounted for her.'

‘It's the kind of wedding present every girl dreams of.'

‘Maybe not
every
girl,' Stragen grinned, ‘but I'm in love with a very special lady.'

‘But there are so
many
of them, U-lat,' Bhlokw said plaintively. ‘They would not miss just one, would they?'

‘I am certain they would, Bhlokw,' Ulath told the huge, brown-furred Troll. ‘The man-things are not like the deer. They pay very close attention to the other members of the herd. If you eat one of them, they will know that we are here. Catch and eat one of their dogs instead.'

Is dog good-to-eat?'

‘I am not sure. Eat one and tell me if it is good.'

Bhlokw grumbled and squatted down on his haunches.

The process Ghnomb had called breaking the moments in two pieces' produced some rather strange effects. The brightness of noon was dimmed to twilight, for one thing, and the citizens of Sopal seemed to walk about their town with a fast, jerky kind of movement,
for another. The God of Eat had assured them that because they were present in only a small part of each instant, they had been rendered effectively invisible. Ulath could see a rather large logical flaw in the explanation, but the
belief
that the spell worked seemed to override logic.

Tynian came back up the street shaking his head. ‘It's impossible to understand them,' he reported. ‘I can pick up a word or two now and then, but the rest is pure gibberish.'

‘It is talking in bird-noises again,' Bhlokw complained.

‘You'd better speak in Trollish, Tynian,' Ulath said. ‘You're making Bhlokw nervous.'

‘I forgot,' Tynian admitted, reverting to the hideous language of the Trolls. I am –' he groped. ‘What is the word that means that you want it that you had not done something?' he asked their shaggy companion.

‘There is no such word, Tin-in,' Bhlokw replied.

‘Can you ask Ghnomb to make it so that we can understand what the man-things are saying?' Ulath asked.

‘Why? What does it matter?' Bhlokw's face was puzzled.

‘If we can know what they are saying, we will know which ones of the herd we should follow,' Tynian explained. ‘They will be the ones who will know about the wicked ones.'

‘They do not
all
know?' Bhlokw asked with some amazement.

‘No. Only some know.'

‘The man-things are very strange. I will talk with Ghnomb. He may understand this,' He rose to his feet, towering over them. I will do it as soon as I come back.'

‘Where are you going?' Tynian asked politely.

‘I am hungry. I will go eat a dog. Then I will come
back and talk with Ghnomb.' He paused. ‘I can bring a dog back for you as well, if you are also hungry.'

‘Ah – no, Bhlokw,' Tynian replied. ‘I do not think I am hungry right now. It was good of you to ask, though.'

‘We are pack-mates now,' Bhlokw shrugged. ‘It is right to do this.' And he shambled off down the street.

‘It's not really all that far,' Aphrael told her sister as the two of them rode with Xanetia up out of the valley of Delphaeus toward the town of Dirgis in southern Atan, ‘but Edaemus is still reluctant to help us, so I think I'd better mind my manners. He might be offended if I start “tampering” in the home of his children.'

‘You've never used that word to describe it before,' Sephrenia noted.

‘Sparhawk's influence, I guess,' the Child Goddess replied. ‘It's a useful sort of term. It glosses over things that we don't want to discuss in front of strangers. After we get to Dirgis, we'll be well clear of the home of the Delphae. Then I'll be able to tamper to my heart's content.'

‘How long dost thou think it will take us to reach Natayos, Goddess?' Xanetia asked. She had once again altered her coloration and suppressed her inner radiance to conceal her racial characteristics.

‘No more than a few hours – in real time,' Aphrael shrugged. ‘I can't
quite
jump us around the way Bhelliom does, but I can cover a lot of ground in a hurry when there's an emergency. If things were really desperate, I could fly us there.'

Sephrenia shuddered. ‘It's not
that
desperate, Aphrael.'

Xanetia gave her Styric sister a puzzled look.

‘It makes her queasy,' Aphrael explained.

‘No, Aphrael,' Sephrenia corrected, ‘not queasy – terrified. It's a horrible experience, Xanetia. She's done it
to me about five times in the past three hundred years. I'm an absolute wreck for weeks afterward.'

‘I keep telling you not to look down, Sephrenia,' Aphrael told her. ‘If you'd just look at the clouds instead of down at the ground, it wouldn't bother you so much.'

‘I can't help myself, Aphrael,' Sephrenia told her.

‘Is it truly so disturbing, sister mine?' Xanetia asked.

‘You couldn't even begin to imagine it, Xanetia. You skim along with nothing but about five thousand feet of empty air between you and the ground. It's
awful!'

‘We'll do it the other way,' Aphrael assured her.

‘I'll start composing a prayer of thanksgiving immediately.'

‘We'll stay the night in Dirgis,' Aphrael told them, ‘and then tomorrow morning we'll run down to Natayos. Sephrenia and I'll stay out in the woods, Xanetia, and you can go into town and have a look around. If Mother's really being held there, we should be able to bring this little crisis to an end in short order. Once Sparhawk knows exactly where she is, he'll fall on Scarpa and his father like a vengeful mountain. Natayos won't even be a ruin any more when he's done. It'll just be a big hole in the ground.'

‘He actually saw them,' Talen reported. ‘He described them too well to have been making it up.' The young thief had just returned from his foray into the seamier parts of Beresa.

‘What sort of fellow was he?' Sparhawk asked. ‘This is too important for us to be taken in by random gossip.'

‘He's a Dacite,' Talen replied, ‘a guttersnipe from Jura. His politics go about as far as his purse. His main reason for joining Scarpa's army in the first place was his enthusiasm for the idea of taking part in the looting of Matherion. We're not talking about a man with high ideals here. When he got to Natayos and found out that
there might be actual fighting involved, he started to lose interest. Anyway, I found him in one of the shabbiest taverns I've ever seen, and he was roaring drunk. Believe me, Fron, he was in no condition to lie to me. I told him that I was thinking of joining Scarpa's army, and he turned all fatherly on me – “Don' even
shink
about it, boy. It's tur'ble there” – that sort of thing. He said that Scarpa's a raving lunatic with delusions of invincibility who thinks he can just blow on the Atans and make them go away. He said he'd just about decided to desert anyway, and then Scarpa came back to Natayos – along with Krager, Elron and Baron Parok. They had the Queen and Alean with them, and Zalasta met them at the gate. The Dacite happened to be nearby, so he could hear what they were saying. Evidently, Zalasta's still got a
few
good manners, so he wasn't very happy about the way Scarpa had been treating his prisoners. The two of them had an argument about it, and Zalasta tied his son into a very complicated knot with magic. I guess Scarpa was squirming around like a worm on a hot rock for a while. Then Zalasta took the ladies to a large house that had been fixed up for them. From what my deserter said, the house comes fairly close to being luxurious – if you discount the bars on the windows.'

‘He could have been coached,' Sparhawk fretted. ‘Maybe he wasn't as drunk as he appeared to be.'

‘Believe me, Fron, he was drunk,' Talen assured him. I cut a purse on my way to that tavern – just to keep in practice – so I had plenty of money. I poured enough strong drink into him to stun a regiment.'

‘I think he's right, Fron,' Stragen said. ‘There are just too many details for this to be a contrived story.'

‘And if this deserter had been sent to spin cobwebs for
our
benefit, why would he waste time and effort entertaining a young pickpocket?' Talen added. ‘None
of us look the way we did the last time Zalasta saw us, and I doubt that even
he
could have guessed how Sephrenia and Xanetia put their heads together to modify us.'

‘I still think we should hold off,' Sparhawk said. ‘Aphrael's going to put Xanetia into Natayos in a day or so, and Xanetia can find out for sure if it's really Ehlana who's locked up in that house.'

‘We could at least get closer,' Stragen said.

‘Why? Distance doesn't mean anything to my blue friend here.' Sparhawk touched the bulge under the front of his tunic. ‘Just as soon as I know for certain that Ehlana's there, we'll go pay Zalasta and his bastard a call. I might even invite Khwaj to come along. He has some plans for them that sort of interest me.'

The light was suddenly very bright, and the citizens of Sopal abruptly ceased jerking around like marionettes on strings and started to walk like normal humans. It had taken a half a day to explain to Ghnomb why it was necessary for them to return to real time, and the God of Eat still had some serious reservations about the whole idea.

‘I'll wait in that tavern just up the street,' Tynian said to Ulath as the two of them stepped out of the narrow alley. ‘Do you remember the password?'