‘Yes, revered teacher.’
What little question there had been about the outcome of the skirmish vanished once the knights were in their saddles. Things ended abruptly when the obnoxious captain, who had been shrieking, ‘You’re all under arrest!’ broke off suddenly as Sir Bevier coolly swung his lochaber axe and sent his head flying.
‘Throw down your weapons!’ Ulath roared at the few survivors. ‘Surrender or die!’
Two of the guards, however, had reached their horses. They scrambled up into their saddles and rode off to the east at a gallop. One stiffened and toppled from his saddle after about fifty yards, with Berit’s arrow protruding from between his shoulder-blades. The other rode on some distance, flogging desperately at his mount. Then he too lurched and fell to the musical twang of Khalad’s crossbow.
‘Good shot,’ Berit noted.
‘Fair,’ Khalad agreed modestly.
The rest of the Cynesgans were throwing their weapons away.
‘You run a good fight, Sparhawk,’ Vanion complimented his friend.
‘I had a good teacher. Kalten, tie them all up and then run off their horses.’
‘Why me?’
‘You’re handy, and there’s that other matter as well.’
‘I didn’t break my oath,’ Kalten protested.
‘No, but you were thinking about it.’
‘What’s this?’ Vanion asked.
‘There’s a lady involved, my Lord,’ Sparhawk replied loftily, ‘and no gentleman ever discusses things like that.’
‘What are you doing?’ Aphrael asked sharply. She had raised her head from Sephrenia’s shoulder and was looking suspiciously at Sparhawk.
‘Are you with us again?’ he asked her.
‘Obviously. What are you doing?’
‘There was some unpleasantness at the border, and we’re probably being followed – chased, actually.’
‘I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I, father?’
‘It was more or less unavoidable. Have you finished with whatever it was you were doing?’
‘For the time being.’
‘The town of Edek is just ahead, and we’ve probably got a brigade of Cynesgan soldiers right behind us. Do you suppose you could move us on ahead a ways?’
‘Why didn’t you do it yourself? You know how it’s done.’
‘Sephrenia wouldn’t let me.’
‘His attention wanders at critical moments,’ Sephrenia explained. ‘I didn’t want him to put us down on the moon.’
‘I see your point,’ the little girl agreed. ‘Why don’t we just move straight on to Cynestra, Sparhawk? There’s nothing between here and there but open desert, you know.’
‘They were expecting us at the border,’ he replied. ‘It seems that our friend out there has alerted everybody along the way that we’re coming. There’s certain to be a large garrison of troops at Cynestra, and I’d like to feel my way through the situation there before I blunder into something.’
‘I guess that makes sense – sort of.’
‘How’s your mother?’
‘She’s enjoying herself enormously. The political situation in Matherion’s very murky right now, and you know how much mother loves politics.’
‘I’m glad she’s happy. You’ll have to tell us about it, but let’s get past Edek and outrun that Cynesgan brigade first. I don’t like having people snapping at my heels.’
‘Tell the others to stop, and then get Vanion’s map. Let’s be sure we know where we’re going this time.’
‘I’m never going to get used to that,’ Kalten shuddered after they had covered fifty leagues of open desert in a single gray-blurred moment.
‘Your map’s not very precise, Vanion,’ Aphrael said critically. ‘We were trying for a spot on the other side of that peak.’ She pointed at a jagged spire rearing up out of the desert.
‘I didn’t draw the map,’ Vanion replied a bit defensively. ‘What difference does it make, though? We’re close enough, aren’t we? We came to within a few miles of where we wanted to go.’
‘You’d have found out how much difference it makes if we’d been moving around near a large body of water,’ she said tartly. ‘This is just too imprecise.’
Vanion looked back over his shoulder toward the west. ‘It’s almost sunset. Why don’t we get back away from this road and set up for the night? If we’ve got a problem with this, let’s find a quiet place where we can work it out.’
Sparhawk smiled. Despite all his protestations that he was no longer the Pandion Preceptor, Vanion automatically took charge unless he was consciously thinking about what he believed to be his changed status. Sparhawk didn’t really mind. He was used to taking orders from Vanion, and his friend’s assumption of authority relieved him of the nagging details of command.
They rode out into the desert a couple of miles and set up for the night in a dry wash behind an up-thrust jumble of weathered boulders. Unlike the Rendorish desert, which was mostly sand, the desert here in Cynesga was sun-baked gravel, rusty-brown and sterile. The moving sands of Rendor at least gave an illusion of life. Cynesga was dead. Stark, treeless peaks clawed harshly at the sky, and the vast emptiness of gravel and rock was broken only by flat, bleached white beds of alkali.
‘Ugly place,’ Ulath grunted, looking around. Ulath was used to trees and snow-capped peaks.
‘I’m sorry you feel that way,’ Kalten grinned. ‘I was thinking of selling it to you.’
‘You couldn’t give it to me.’
‘Look on the bright side. It almost never rains here.’
‘I think that’s part of the problem.’
‘There’s a lot of wild game, though.’
‘Really?’
‘Snakes, lizards, scorpions – that sort of thing.’
‘Have you developed a taste for baked scorpion?’
‘Ah – no, I don’t think so.’
‘I wouldn’t waste any arrows on them, then.’
‘Speaking of eating…’
‘Were we speaking of that?’
‘It’s a topic that comes up from time to time. Do you know of a way to set fire to rocks?’
‘Not right offhand, no.’
‘Then I’ll volunteer to fix supper. I haven’t seen a stick or a twig or even a dry leaf around here, so a fire’s sort of out of the question. Oh, well, cold food never hurt anybody.’
‘We can get by without fire,’ Vanion said, ‘but we’re going to have to have water for the horses.’
‘Aphrael and I can manage that, dear,’ Sephrenia assured him.
‘Good. I think we might be here for a day or so. Sparhawk and Aphrael are going to be working with Bhelliom on this little problem of precision.’ He looked inquiringly at the Child Goddess. ‘Is it likely to take very long?’ he asked her.
‘I’m not really positive, Vanion. When I do it, I still have the surrounding terrain to refer to, so I know where I am, no matter how fast I’m going. Bhelliom goes from one place to another instantaneously without any reference points. It’s an altogether different process. Either Sparhawk and I are going to have to learn how Bhelliom’s technique works, or we’re going to have to make Bhelliom understand exactly what we want.’
‘Which way would be easier?’ Kalten asked her.
‘I’m not sure. It’s possible that they’re about the same – both very, very difficult. We’ll find out tomorrow morning.’ She looked at Vanion. ‘Are we more or less safe where we are right now?’
Vanion scratched at his short, silvery beard. ‘Nobody really expects us to be here. Somebody might accidentally stumble across us, but there won’t be any kind of organized search. They don’t know where we are, and the rings are shielded, so our friend out there won’t be able to pick up the sense of their location and follow that to us. I’d say that we’re safe here.’
‘Good. We’ve got some time, then. Let’s use it to let Sparhawk and Bhelliom get to know each other. There’s nothing all that crucial go
ing on right now, so a few mistakes and false starts won’t hurt anything. They might be disastrous later on, though.’
Sephrenia did not tell them where the water came from the next morning, but it was icy-cold and tasted of snowmelt. It sparkled invitingly in its shaded little pool behind a rust-colored boulder, and by its very presence it alleviated a great deal of tension. Water is a source of major concern to people in a desert.
Flute took Sparhawk, Khalad and Talen some distance out onto a broad graveled plain to begin the instruction.
‘It’s going to get hot out here before long,’ Talen complained.
‘Probably, yes,’ the little girl agreed.
‘Why do Khalad and I have to come along?’
‘Vanion needs the knights with him here in case someone stumbles across our camp.’
‘You missed my point. Why do you two need anybody to come along?’
‘Sparhawk has to have people and horses to carry. He’s not going to be moving sacks of grain from place to place, you know.’ She looked at Vanion’s map. ‘Let’s see if Bhelliom can take us to this oasis up here, Sparhawk,’ she said, pointing at a symbol on the map.
‘What does it look like?’ he asked her.
‘How would I know? I’ve never been there either.’
‘All you’re giving me to work with is a name, Aphrael. Why don’t we do it the way we did when we moved from outside Jorsan up to Korvan? – and all those other places we went to when we were jumping around to confuse the other side? You tell Bhelliom where we want to go and then I’ll tell it to do it.’
‘We can’t be sure that I’ll always be available, Sparhawk. There are times when I have to be away. The whole idea here is to train you and Bhelliom to work together without my intervention.’
‘A name isn’t really very much to take hold of, you know.’
‘There’ll be trees, Sparhawk,’ Khalad told him. ‘An oasis is kind of a pond, and anywhere you’ve got water, you’re going to have trees.’
‘And probably houses,’ Talen added. ‘There’d almost have to be houses, since water’s so scarce here in Cynesga.’
‘Let’s see the map,’ Sparhawk said. He studied the chart carefully for quite some time. ‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Let’s try it and see what happens.’ He lifted the cap on his ring and touched the band to the lid of the golden box. ‘Open,’ he said. Then he put on the other ring and took out the Bhelliom. ‘It’s me again,’ he told the jewel.
‘Oh, that’s absurd, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael told him.
‘Formal introductions take too long,’ he replied. ‘There may come a time when I’ll be in a hurry.’ He carefully imagined a desert oasis – an artesian-fed pond with its surrounding palms and flat-roofed white houses. ‘Take us there, Blue Rose,’ he commanded.
The air blurred and faded into gray. Then the blur cleared, and the oasis was there, just as he had imagined it.
‘You see, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael said smugly. ‘That wasn’t hard at all, was it?’
Sparhawk even laughed out loud. ‘This might work out after all.’
‘Talen,’ Khalad said, ‘why don’t you ride on down to one of those houses and ask somebody the name of this place?’
‘It’s Zhubay, Khalad,’ Flute told him. ‘That’s where we wanted to go, so that’s where we are.’
‘You wouldn’t mind a bit of verification, would you?’ he asked her innocently.
She scowled at him.
Talen rode down to the cluster of houses and returned a few minutes later. ‘Let me see the map,’ he said to Khalad.
‘Why?’ Flute asked him. ‘We’re in Zhubay, up near the Atan border.’
‘No, Divine One,’ the boy disagreed, ‘actually we’re not.’ He studied the map for several minutes. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Here it is.’ He pointed. ‘This is where we’re at – Vigayo, down near the southern border where Cynesga adjoins Arjuna. You missed your mark by about three hundred leagues, Sparhawk. I think you’d better sharpen your aim just a bit.’
‘What were you thinking about?’ Aphrael demanded.
‘Pretty much what Khalad was talking about – trees, a pond, white houses – just exactly what there is in front of us.’
‘Now what?’ Talen asked. ‘Do we go back to where we started and try again?’
Aphrael shook her head. ‘Bhelliom and the rings are unshielded. We don’t want to put Vanion, Sephrenia and the others in danger by going back there too often. Let me down, Sparhawk. I want to think about this.’
He set her down on the ground, and she walked down to the edge of the oasis, where she stood throwing pebbles into the water for a while. Her expression was doubtful when she returned. Sparhawk lifted her again. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘Take us to Zhubay, Sparhawk,’ she said firmly.
‘Let me see the map again, Khalad.’
‘No,’ Aphrael said very firmly. ‘Never mind the map. Just tell Bhelliom to take us to Zhubay.’
‘Exactly!’ Khalad said, snapping his fingers. ‘Why didn’t we think of that before?’
‘Think of what?’ Sparhawk demanded.
‘Try it, my Lord,’ Khalad grinned. ‘I think you might be surprised.’
‘If we wind up on the moon, you two are in trouble,’ Sparhawk threatened.
‘Just try it, Sparhawk,’ Flute told him.
‘Blue Rose! Take us to Zhubay!’ He said it without much conviction.
The air blurred again, and when it cleared they were sitting on their horses beside another oasis. There were a number of significant differences between this one and the one they’d just left.
‘There probably isn’t any need,’ Khalad said to his brother, ‘but you might want to ask anyway, just to be sure.’
Talen rode on round the oasis and spoke with an old woman who had just come out of one of the houses. He was grinning when he came back. ‘Zhubay,’ he told them.
‘How could it find the place with only the name to work with?’ Sparhawk demanded. ‘It’s probably never even heard the name Zhubay before.’
‘But the people who live here have, my Lord,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘The name “Zhubay” was sort of floating around in their minds. That’s all Bhelliom really needed to find the place. Isn’t that more or less the way it works, Flute?’
‘That’s exactly how it works. All Sparhawk has to do is mention the name of the place he wants to visit. Bhelliom will find it and take us there.’
‘Are you sure?’ Talen sounded uncertain about the whole notion. ‘It seems awfully simple to me.’
‘There’s one way to find out. Take us to Ahkan, Sparhawk.’
‘Where is it? What kingdom, I mean?’
‘I don’t think you need to know that. Just take us there.’
Ahkan was a town in the mountains – some mountains, somewhere. It was surrounded by dark green fir trees, and the nearby peaks were snow-capped.
‘Better and better,’ Flute said happily.
‘Where are we?’ Talen asked, looking around. ‘This isn’t Cynesga, that’s for certain, so where is it?’
‘What difference does it make?’ Flute shrugged. ‘Torrelta, Sparhawk.’
It was snowing in Torrelta. The wind came howling in off a lead-gray sea driving a blizzard before it. The buildings around them were dim and indistinct in the swirling snow-storm, but they seemed to be constructed of rough-hewn logs.
‘There’s no limit!’ Flute exclaimed. ‘We can go anywhere!’
‘All right,’ Sparhawk said very firmly, ‘just which “anywhere” have we come to?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s go back to where we started from.’
‘Of course,’ he agreed pleasantly. ‘Just as soon as you tell us where we are.’
‘I’m getting cold, Sparhawk. I’m not dressed for a blizzard.’
‘It’s nice and warm back in Cynesga,’ he told her, ‘and we’ll go there – just as soon as you tell me where we are.’
She said a naughty word. ‘Torrelta�
��s on the north coast of Astel, Sparhawk. It’s almost winter here now.’
He looked around with feigned surprise. ‘Why, I believe you’re right. Isn’t that amazing?’ He visualized the flat gravel plain near the dry wash where they had set up camp the previous evening. He groped for a name for a moment, then remembered the blunder he had made when they had first set out. ‘Hold the box open, Khalad,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll put Bhelliom and Ehlana’s ring inside just as soon as we get back.’ He drew the picture in his mind again. ‘Take us there, Blue Rose!’ he commanded.
‘Where have you been?’ Sephrenia demanded. She and Vanion had ridden out onto the gravel plain to look for them.
‘Oh,’ Talen said evasively, brushing the snow off his shoulders, ‘here and there.’
‘I gather that one of the places was quite a ways off,’ Vanion surmised, looking at the snow still clinging to the travelers.
‘It’s really amazing, Sephrenia,’ Flute said happily, ‘and it’s all so simple.’
Khalad closed the box and handed it to Sparhawk. Sparhawk snapped the cap down over the ruby on his ring and then put the box back inside his tunic. ‘We made a couple of false starts right at first, though,’ he admitted.
‘How does it work?’ Vanion asked.
‘We just let Bhelliom take care of everything,’ Sparhawk shrugged. ‘We have to do it that way, actually. It’s when we try to help that things go wrong.’
‘Could you be just a bit more specific than that?’ Sephrenia asked Flute.
‘Sparhawk’s really very close. All he has to do is tell Bhelliom a name – any name – of any place at all. Bhelliom goes and finds it, and then it takes us there.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s it, dear sister. Not even Sparhawk can make any mistakes this way.’
Chapter 10
‘We have to pick up someone there, that’s why,’ Flute told them.
‘Who?’ Kalten asked.
‘I don’t know. All I know is that someone’s supposed to go with us, and we have to pick him up in Cynestra.’
‘Another one of those hunches of yours?’
The Shining Ones Page 16