homeland and lay thee to rest in the royal sepulchre at
Emsat.'
Sarak regarded the braided Genidian with some
approval. 'Let it be so then, my kinsman, for in truth, my
sleep hath been unquiet in this rude place.'
'Sleep here for but a short while longer, My King, for as
soon as our task is completed, I will return here and take
thee home.' There were tears in Ulath's ice-blue eyes. 'Let
him rest, Tynian,' he said. 'His final journey will be long.'
Tynian nodded and let King Sarak sink back into the
earth.
'That's it then, isn't it?' Kalten said eagerly. 'We ride to
Lake Venne and go swimming.'
"It's easier than digging,' Kurik told him. 'All we have
to worry about is the Seeker and that Troll.' He frowned
slightly. 'Sir Ulath,' he said, 'if Ghwerig knows exactly
where Bhelliom is, why hasn't he retrieved it in all these
years?'
'The way I understand it, Ghwerig can't swim,' Ulath
replied. 'His body's too twisted. We'll probably still have
to fight him, though. As soon as we bring Bhelliom out of
the lake, he'll attack us.'
Sparhawk looked towards the west where the light
from the newly risen sun sparkled on the waters of the
lake. The tall, summer-green grass of the fields near the
mound moved in long waves in the fitful morning
breeze, and the fields were bounded near the lake by the
greyish sedge and marsh grass which covered the peat
bogs. 'We'll worry about Ghwerig when we see him,' he
said. 'Let's go and have a closer look at this lake.'
They all slid down the grassy side of the mound and
climbed into their saddles. 'Bhelliom shouldn't be too far
out from shore,' Ulath said as they rode towards the lake.
'Crowns are made of gold, and gold's heavy. A dying
man couldn't throw something like that very far.' He
scratched at his chin. 'I've looked for things under water
before,' he said. 'You have to be very methodical about it.
just floundering around doesn't accomplish very much.'
'When we get there, show us how it's done,' Sparhawk
replied.
'Right. Let's ride due west until we come to the lake. If
the Earl of Heid was dying, he wouldn't have taken any
side trips.' They rode on. Sparhawk's elation was overshadowed
by some anxiety. There was no way of knowing how long
it would be before the Seeker returned with a horde of
num~faced men at its back, and he knew that he and his
friends could not wear armour while they probed the
depths of the lake. They would be defenceless. Not only
that, as soon as the spirit of Azash saw them in the lake,
He would know exactly what they were doing, and for
that matter, so would Ghwerig.
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The light breeze was still blowing as they rode west,
and puffy white clouds marched at a stately pace across
the deep blue sky.
There's a grove of cedar trees up ahead,' Kurik said,
pointing to a low, dark green patch of vegetation a
quarter of a mile away. "we're going to need to build a
raft when we get to the lake. Come along, Berit. Let's
start chopping.' He led his string of pack-horses towards
the grove with the novice close behind him.
Sparhawk and his friends reached the lake about midmorning
and stood looking out over the water rippling in
the breeze. That's going to make looking for something
on the bottom very difficult,' Kalten said, pointing
towards the murky, peat-stained depths.
'Any notion of where the Earl of Heid might have come
out on the lake-shore?' Sparhawk asked Ulath.
'Count Ghasek's story said that some Alcione Knights
came along and buried him,' the Genidian replied. 'They
were in a hurry, so they probably wouldn't have moved
his body very far from where he fell. Let's look around for
a grave.'
'After five hundred years?' Kalten said sceptically.
There won't be much to mark it, Ulath.'
"I think you're wrong, Kalten,' Tynian disagreed.
'Deirans build cairns over graves when they bury somebody.
The earth might flatten out over a grave, but rocks
are a bit more permanent.'
'All right,' Sparhawk said, 'let's spread out and start
looking for a pile of rocks.'
It was Talen who found the grave, a low mound of
brown-stained stones, partially covered by muddy silt
which had accumulated over centuries of high water.
Tynian marked it by sinking the butt of his pennon-tipped
lance into the mud at the foot of the grave.
"Shall we get started?' Kalten asked.
'Let's wait for Kurik and Berit,' Sparhawk said. 'The
lake-bottom's a little too soupy for wading. We're going
to need that raft.' It was perhaps a half-hour later when the squire and
the novice joined them. The pack-horses were
laboriously pulling a dozen cedar logs behind them.
It was shortly after noon when they finished lashing
the logs together with ropes to form a crude raft. The
knights had discarded their armour and worked in loin
cloths, sweating in the hot sun.
'You're getting sunburned,' Kalten told the paleskinned
Ulath.
"I always do,' Ulath replied. 'Thalesians don't tan very
well.' He straightened as he finished tying the last knot in
the rope which held one end of the raft together. 'Well,
let's launch it and see if it floats,' he suggested.
They pushed the raft down the slippery mud beach
into the water. Ulath looked at it critically. "I wouldn't
want to make a sea voyage on that thing,' he said, 'but it's
good enough for our purposes here. Berit, go over to that
willow thicket and cut yourself a couple of saplings.'
The novice nodded and returned a few minutes later
with two long, springy wands.
Ulath went to the grave and picked up two stones
somewhat larger than his fist. He hefted them a couple of
times, one in each hand, then tossed one to Sparhawk.
'What do you think?' he asked. 'Does that feel to be about
the same weight as a gold crown?'
'How would I know?' Sparhawk asked. 'I've never
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worn a crown.'
'Guess, Sparhawk. The day's wearing on, and the
mosquitoes are going to come out before long.'
'All right, that's probably about the weight of a crown,
give or take a few pounds.'
That's what I thought. All right, Berit, take your
saplings and pole the raft out into the lake. We're going
to mark the area we want to search.'
Berit looked a little puzzled, but did as he was told.
Ulath hefted one of his rocks. That's far enough,
Berit,' he called. He gave the rock an underhand toss
towards the shaky raft. 'Mark that place!' he bellowed.
Berit wiped the water the rock had splashed on him
from his face. 'Yes, Sir Ulath,' he said, poling the raft
/> towards the widening circles on the surface of the lake.
Then he took one of his willow saplings and sank one end
of it down into the muddy bottom.
'Now pole the raft off to the left,' Ulath shouted. 'I'll
throw the next rock a ways beyond you.'
"your left or mine, SIr Ulath?' Berit asked politely.
Take your pick. I just don't want to brain you with
this.' Ulath was tossing his rock from one hand to the
other and squinting out at the brown-stained waters of
the lake.
Berit pushed the raft out of the way, and Ulath
launched his rock with a mighty heave.
'Lord!' Kalten said. 'No dying man could ever throw
anything that far.'
That was the idea,' Ulath said modestly. That's the
absolute outer limit of the area we search. Berit!' he
bellowed in a shattering voice, 'mark that spot and then
go down. I need to know how deep we're going and what
kind of bottom we've got to work with.'
Berit hesitated after he marked the place where the
second rock had struck the water. 'Would you please ask
Lady Sephrenia to turn her back?' he asked plaintively,
his face suddenly bright red.
'If anyone laughs, he'll spend the rest of his life as a
toad,' Sephrenia threatened, resolutely turning her back
on the lake and turning the curious little girl Flute around
at the same time.
Berit stripped and went over the edge of the raft like an
otter. He reimerged a minute later. Everyone on shore,
Sparhawk noticed, had held his breath while the agile
novice had been down. Berit exhaled explosively, spraying
water. "It's about eight feet deep, Sir Ulath,' he reported,
clinging to the end of the raft, "but the bottom's muddy two
feet of it at least-mucky and not very nice. The waters
dark brown. You can't see your hand in front of your face.'
"I was afraid of that,' Ulath muttered.
'How's the water?' Kalten called out to the young man
in the lake.
'Very, very cold,' Berit chattered.
"I was afraid of that, too,' Kalten said glumly.
'Well, gentlemen,' Ulath said, 'time to get wet.'
The rest of the afternoon was distinctly unpleasant. As
Berit had announced, the water was cold and murky, and
the soft bottom was thick with brown mud from the
nearby peat-bogs. 'Don't try to dig around in that with
your hands,' Ulath instructed. 'Probe with your feet.'
They found nothing. By the time the sun went down,
they were all exhausted and blue with the cold.
'We have a decision to make,' Sparhawk said soberly
after they had dried themselves and put on tunics and
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mail-shirts. 'How long is it going to be safe for us to stay
here? The Seeker knows almost exactly where we are,
and our scent will lead it right to us. As soon as it sees us
in the lake, Azash will know where Bhelliom is. That's
something we can't let Him find out.'
'You're right, Sparhawk,' Sephrenia agreed. "It will
take the Seeker a while to gather its forces, and a while
longer to lead them back here, but I think we'll need to set
a time limit on how long we stay in this place.'
'But we're so close,' Kalten objected.
"It's not going to do us any good to find Bhelliom just to
turn it over to Azash,' she pointed out. 'if we ride off,
we'll lead the Seeker away from this spot. We know
where Bhelliom is now. We can always come back later
when it's safe. '
'Noon tomorrow?' Sparhawk asked her.
"I don't think we should stay any longer.'
That's it then,' Sparhawk said. 'At noon we'll pack up
and go back to the city of Venne. I get the feeling that the
Seeker won't take its men into a town. They'd be very
conspicuous the way they shamble around.'
'A boat,' Ulath said, his face ruddy in the light of their
fire.
'Where?' Kalten asked, peering out at the nightshrouded
lake.
'No. What I mean is, why don't we ride to Venne and
hire a boat? The Seeker will follow our trail to Venne, but
it won't be able to sniff our tracks over water, will it? It'll
camp outside Venne waiting for us to come out, but we'll
be back here by then. We'll be free to search for Bhelliom
until we find it.'
"It's a good idea, Sparhawk,' Kalten said.
'is he right?' Sparhawk asked Sephrenia. 'Wil travelling
by water throw the Seeker off our trail?'
"I believe it will,' she replied.
'Good. We'll bry it then.'
They ate a meagre supper and went to their beds.
They rose at sunrise the following morning, took
quick breakfast and poled the raft back out to the markers
that indicated where they had left off the previous day.
They anchored the raft and once again went into the chill
waters to probe at the muddy bottom with their feet.
It was almost noon when Berit surfaced not far from
where Sparhawk was treading water and catching his
breath. "I think I've found something.' the novice said,
gasping for air. Then he up-ended himself and swam
down head-first. After a painfully long minute, he came
up again. It was not a crown he held in his hand, though,
but a brown-stained human skull. hee swam to the raft
and laid the skull up on the logs. Sparhawk squinted up
at the sun and swore. Then he followed Berit to the raft.
He hauled himself up on the logs. That's it,' he called to
Kalten, whose head had just popped up out of the water.
'We can't stay here any longer. Gather up the others, and
let's get back to shore.'
When they reached the shore, the sunburned Ulath
Curiously examined the skull. 'Seems awfully long and
narrow for some reason,' he said.
'That's because he was a Zemoch,' Sephrenia told him.
'Did he drown?' Berit asked.
Ulath scraped some of the mud off the skull and then
poked one finger into an aperture in the left temple. 'Not
with this hole in the side of his head, he didn't.' He went
down to the lake-shore and sloshed the skull around in
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the water to rinse centuries of accumulated mud out of it.
Then he brought it back and shook it. Something rattled
inside. The big Thalesian laid it on the mounded-up
stones of the grave of the Earl of Heid, took up a rock and
cracked the skull open as casually as a man might crack a
walnut. Then he picked something up out of the fragments. "
thought so,' he said. "Somebody put an arrow in
his brain-pan, probably from shore.' He handed the
rusty arrowhead to Tynian. 'Do you recognize it?'
"It's Deiran forging,' Tynian said after examining it.
Sparhawk thought back for a moment. 'Ghasecs
account said that Alcione Knights from Deira came along
and wiped out the Zemochs who'd been pursuing the
Earl of Heid. We can be fairly certain that the Zemochs
gone out after it, wouldn't they? - and in the exact spot
where it hit the water. Now we find this one with a
Deiran arrow in his head. It's not too hard to reconstruct
what happened. Berit, can you pinpoint the precise spot
where you found the skull?'
'To within a few feet, Sir Sparhawk. I was taking
bearings on things along the shore. It was straight out
from that dead snag over there and about sixty feet out
into the lake. '
'That's it, then,' Sparhawk said exultantly. 'The
Zemochs were diving after the crown, and the Alciones
came along and raked them with arrows from shore. That
skull was probably lying no more than a few yards from
Bhelliom.'
Sephrenia said, 'We'll come back for it later. we know where it is
but - ' we must leave immediately, Sparhawk, and it would
be far too dangerous to have Bhelliom in our possession
with the Seeker right behind us.'
Grudgingly, Sparhawk had to admit that she was
probably right. 'All right, then,' he said in a disappointed
tone, 'let's break down the camp and get out of here.
We'll wear mail instead of armour so we won't be so
conspicuous. Ulath, push that raft back out into the lake.
We'll wipe out any traces that we've been here and ride
on up to Venne.' It took them about half an hour, and then they moved
north. They rode north along the lake, moving at a gallop.
As usual, Berit rode to the rear, watching for signs of
persuit.
Sparhawk was melancholy. Somehow it seemed that
for weeks he had been trying to run in soft sand. No
matter how close he got to the one thing which would
save his queen, something always seemed to interfere, to
force him away from the goal. He began to have darkly
superstitious feelings. Sparhawk was an Elene and a
Church Knight. He was at least nominally committed to
the Elene faith and its rigid rejection of anything
remotely related to what the Church called 'heathenism'.
Sparhawk had been abroad in the world too long,
however, and seen far too many things to accept the
dictates of his Church at face value. He realized that in
many ways he hung suspended between absolute faith
and total scepticism. Something somewhere was
desperately trying to keep him away from Bhelliom, and
he was fairly certain he knew Who it was - but why
would Azash bear such emnity towards the young queen
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