The Sapphire Rose

by David Eddings

  ‘Wouldn’t Talen’s report of a meeting between Annias and Martel make the Hierocracy suspicious, Your Grace?’ Kalten asked.

  ‘Most of the Hierocracy have never heard of Martel, Sir Kalten,’ Emban replied, ‘and this boy’s not the most reliable of witnesses. Somebody in Chyrellos is bound to know that he’s a thief. We have to have a totally incorruptible and reliable witness. One whose neutrality and objectivity can never be questioned.’

  ‘The commander of the Archprelate’s personal guard, perhaps?’ Ortzel suggested.

  ‘The very man,’ Emban agreed, snapping his fingers. ‘If we can get him down into the cellar where he can hear Martel and Annias talking, it might give me something to place before the Hierocracy.’

  ‘Aren’t you overlooking the fact that when Martel comes through that aqueduct, he’s going to have a small army with him, Your Grace?’ Vanion asked. ‘He said something about wanting to get Annias to safety before the fighting starts. That sounds to me as if he plans to lead a surprise attack into the Basilica itself. Your witness won’t find a very attentive audience if all the Patriarchs are running for their lives.’

  ‘Don’t trouble me with these details, Vanion,’ Emban said airily. ‘Just post some men down there.’

  ‘Gladly, but where do I get the men?’

  ‘Take some of those fellows off the walls. They’re not doing anything useful anyway.’

  Vanion’s face turned very red, and a thick vein started to throb in his forehead.

  ‘You’d better let me tell him, Vanion,’ Komier suggested. ‘We don’t want you to come down with the apoplexy.’ He turned casually to the fat little Patriarch. ‘Your Grace,’ he said mildly, ‘when you’re planning a surprise attack, you usually want to divert your enemy’s attention. Doesn’t that sort of make sense?’

  ‘Well –’ Emban said a bit dubiously.

  ‘At least that’s the way I’d do it, and Martel’s had a great deal of training. I sort of suspect that what’s going to happen is that Martel’s going to wait until he gets those mangoes built –’

  ‘Mangonels,’ Preceptor Abriel corrected.

  ‘Whatever,’ Komier shrugged. ‘Then he’s going to start bashing down our walls. Then he’s going to attack the walls with every man he can muster. Believe me, Your Grace, the men on the walls – or what’s left of the walls – are going to be very, very busy. That’s when Martel’s going to come into the cellar, and we’re not going to have any men to spare to meet him.’

  ‘Why do you have to be so blasted clever, Komier?’ Emban snapped.

  ‘What do we do then?’ Dolmant asked them.

  ‘We don’t have any choice, Your Grace,’ Vanion replied, ‘We’re going to have to collapse that aqueduct so that Martel can’t get through.’

  ‘But if you do that, we won’t have any report of the meeting between Annias and Martel!’ Emban protested shrilly.

  ‘Try to look at the whole picture, Emban,’ Dolmant said patiently. ‘Do we really want Martel voting when we elect a new Archprelate?’

  Chapter 14

  ‘They’re ceremonial troops, Your Grace,’ Vanion objected. ‘This isn’t a parade or a formal changing of the guard.’ The four of them, Vanion, Dolmant, Sparhawk and Sephrenia were gathered in Sir Nashan’s study.

  ‘I’ve seen them training in the courtyard outside their barracks, Vanion,’ Dolmant said patiently. ‘I still remember enough of my own training to recognize professionals when I see them.’

  ‘How many of them are there, Your Grace?’ Sparhawk asked.

  ‘Three hundred,’ the Patriarch replied. ‘As the Archprelate’s personal guard, they’re wholly committed to the defence of the Basilica.’ Dolmant leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingertips together. ‘I don’t see that we have much choice, Vanion,’ he said. His lean, ascetic face seemed almost to glow in the candlelight. ‘Emban was right, you know. All our scrambling for votes has gone out of the window now. My brothers in the Hierocracy are very attached to their houses.’ He made a sour face. ‘It’s one of the few forms of vanity left for members of the higher clergy. We all wear plain cassocks, so we can’t show off our clothing; we don’t marry, so we can’t show off our wives; we’re committed to peace, so we can’t demonstrate our prowess on the battlefield. All that’s left for us are our palaces. We lost at least twenty votes when we pulled back to the walls of the inner city and abandoned the palaces of my brothers to Martel’s looters. We absolutely must have some evidence of the collusion between Annias and Martel. If we can do that, we turn it around. The burning of the palaces becomes Annias’s fault instead of ours.’ He looked at Sephrenia then. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to do something, little mother,’ he said.

  ‘Of course, Dolmant.’ She smiled at him fondly.

  ‘I can’t even ask you officially,’ he said with a rueful smile, ‘because it has to do with things I’m not supposed to believe in any more.’

  ‘Ask me as a former Pandion, dear one,’ she suggested. ‘That way we can both ignore the fact that you’ve fallen in with evil companions.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said dryly. ‘Is there some way you can collapse that aqueduct without actually being in the cellar?’

  ‘I can take care of that, your Grace,’ Sparhawk offered. ‘I can use Bhelliom.’

  ‘No, actually you can’t,’ Sephrenia reminded him. ‘You don’t have both rings.’ She looked back at Dolmant. ‘I can do what you ask,’ she told him, ‘but Sparhawk will have to be in the cellar. I can channel the spell through him.’

  ‘Better and better, actually,’ Dolmant said. ‘Vanion, see what you think of this. You and I talk with Colonel Delada, the commander of the Archprelate’s guard. We put his guardsmen in the cellar under the command of somebody reliable.’

  ‘Kurik?’ Sparhawk suggested.

  ‘The very man,’ Dolmant approved. ‘I suspect that I’d still obey automatically if Kurik barked an order at me.’ Dolmant paused. ‘Why didn’t you ever knight him, Vanion?’

  ‘Because of his class prejudices, Dolmant,’ Vanion laughed. ‘Kurik believes that knights are frivolous, empty-headed men. Sometimes I almost think he’s right.’

  ‘All right then,’ Dolmant continued. ‘We put Kurik and the guardsmen in the cellar to wait for Martel – well out of sight of course. What’s likely to be the first sign that Martel’s main assault on our walls is starting?’

  ‘Boulders dropping out of the sky, I’d say, wouldn’t you, Sparhawk? That’ll be the sign that his mangonels are in place. He won’t start his attack until he’s sure that they’re working properly.’

  ‘And that would be the most probable time for him to start through the aqueduct, wouldn’t it?’

  Vanion nodded. ‘There’d be too much chance of them being discovered if they crept into the cellar any sooner.’

  ‘This is fitting together even more tightly.’ Dolmant seemed pleased with himself on that score. ‘We make Sparhawk and Colonel Delada wait on the walls for the first boulders. When they start crashing down, the two of them go down to the cellar to eavesdrop on the conversation between Martel and Annias. If the Archprelate’s guard can’t hold the entrance to the aqueduct, Sephrenia will collapse the tunnel. We block the secret attack, get the evidence against Annias, and we may very well capture Annias and Martel themselves. What do you think, Vanion?’

  ‘It’s an excellent plan, Your Grace,’ Vanion said with a straight face. Sparhawk also saw a number of gaps. The years seem to have clouded Dolmant’s strategic sense in a few areas. ‘I can only see one drawback,’ Vanion added.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Once those engines batter down the walls, we’re likely to have hordes of mercenaries here in the inner city with us.’

  ‘That would be a bit inconvenient, wouldn’t it?’ Dolmant conceded with a slight frown. ‘Let’s talk with Colonel Delada anyway. I’m sure something will turn up.’

  Vanion sighed and followed the Patriarch of Demos from the room.

&n
bsp; ‘Was he always like that?’ Sparhawk asked Sephrenia.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dolmant. I think he’s pushing optimism about as far as it can be pushed.’

  ‘It’s your Elene theology, dear one,’ she smiled. ‘Dolmant’s professionally committed to the notion of Providence. Styrics look upon that as the worst form of fatalism. What’s troubling you, dear one?’

  ‘A perfectly good logical construction has fallen apart on me, Sephrenia. Now that we know about Perraine, I don’t have any way at all to connect that shadow with Azash.’

  ‘Why are you so obsessed with hard evidence, Sparhawk?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Just because you can’t logically prove a connection, you’re ready to discard the whole idea. Your reasoning was fairly tenuous to begin with anyway. About all you were really doing was trying to distort things to make your logic fit your feelings – a sort of a justification for a leap of faith. You felt – you believed – that the shadow came from Azash. That’s good enough for me. I’m more comfortable with the notion of trusting your feelings than your logic anyway.’

  ‘Be nice,’ he chided.

  She smiled. ‘I think it’s time to discard logic and start relying on those leaps of faith, Sparhawk. Sir Perraine’s confession erases any connection between that shadow you keep seeing and the attempts on your life, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he admitted, ‘and to make matters even worse, I haven’t even seen the shadow lately.’

  ‘Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not still there. Tell me exactly what you felt each time you saw it.’

  ‘There was a chill,’ he replied, ‘and an overpowering sense that whatever it was hated me. I’ve been hated before, Sephrenia, but not like that. It was inhuman. ’

  ‘All right, we can rely on that then. It’s something supernatural. Anything else?’

  ‘I was afraid of it.’ He admitted it flatly.

  ‘You? I didn’t think you knew what the word meant.’

  ‘I know, all right.’

  She thought about it, her tiny, perfect face creased with thought. ‘Your original theory was really quite shaky, Sparhawk,’ she told him. ‘Would it really make much sense for Azash to have some brigand kill you and then to have to chase down the brigand in order to retrieve Bhelliom from him?’

  ‘It’s a little cumbersome and roundabout, I suppose.’

  ‘Exactly, let’s look at the possibility of pure coincidence. ’

  ‘I’m not supposed to do that, little mother. Providence, you understand.’

  ‘Stop that.’

  ‘Yes ma’am.’

  ‘Suppose that Martel subverted Perraine on his own – without consulting with Annias – that’s assuming that it’s Annias who’s the one dealing with Otha and not Martel.’

  ‘I don’t really think Martel would go so far as to have personal dealings with Otha.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure, Sparhawk. But let’s assume that killing you was Martel’s idea and not Otha’s – or some involuted scheme Azash came up with. That would cover the hole in your logic. The shadow could still be related to Azash and have absolutely no connection whatsoever with the attempts on your life.’

  ‘What’s it doing then?’

  ‘Watching, most likely. Azash wants to know where you are, and He definitely wants to know where Bhelliom is. That might explain why you almost always see that shadow when you remove the jewel from the pouch.’

  ‘This is starting to make my head ache, little mother. But if everything goes the way Dolmant’s planned it, we’ll have both Martel and Annias in custody before long. We ought to be able to get a few answers out of them – enough to clear up my headache anyway.’

  Colonel Delada, commander of the Archprelate’s personal guard, was a stocky, solidly-built man with short-cut reddish hair and a lined face. Despite his largely ceremonial position, he carried himself like a warrior. He wore the burnished breastplate, round embossed shield and the traditional short sword of his unit. His knee-length cape was crimson, and his visorless helmet had a horse-hair crest. ‘Are they really that big, Sir Sparhawk?’ he asked as the two of them looked out at the smoking ruins from the flat roof of a house abutting the inner city wall.

  ‘I really don’t know, Colonel Delada,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I’ve never seen one either. Bevier has, though, and he tells me that they’re at least as big as a fair-sized house.’

  ‘And they can really throw rocks the size of oxen?’

  ‘That’s what they tell me.’

  ‘What’s the world coming to?’

  ‘They call it progress, my friend,’ Sparhawk said wryly.

  ‘The world would be a better place if we hanged all the scientists and engineers, Sir Sparhawk.’

  And the lawyers too.’

  ‘Oh yes, definitely the lawyers. Everybody wants to hang all the lawyers.’ Delada’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why are all of you being so secretive around me, Sparhawk?’ he demanded irritably. In Delada’s case all the cliches about red-haired people seemed to apply.

  ‘We have to protect your strict neutrality, Delada. You’re going to see something – and we hope hear something – that’s very important. Later on, you’re going to be called on to give testimony about it. There are going to be people who’ll try very hard to throw doubts on your testimony.’

  ‘They’d better not,’ the colonel said hotly.

  Sparhawk smiled. ‘Anyway, if you don’t know anything at all in advance about what you’re going to see and hear, nobody will be able to raise any question at all about your impartiality.’

  ‘I’m not stupid, Sparhawk, and I have got eyes. This has to do with the election hasn’t it?’

  ‘Just about everything in Chyrellos has to do with the election now, Delada – except maybe that siege out there.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t wager any significant amounts of money that the siege isn’t involved too.’

  ‘That’s one of those areas we aren’t supposed to talk about, Colonel.’

  ‘Ah-ha!’ Delada said triumphantly. ‘Just as I thought!’

  Sparhawk looked out over the wall. The important thing was to be able to prove beyond doubt the collusion between Martel and Annias. Sparhawk was a bit apprehensive about that. If the conversation between the Primate of Cimmura and the renegade Pandion did not reveal Martel’s identity, all Delada would be able to report to the Hierocracy would be a highly suspicious conversation between Annias and an unnamed stranger. Emban, Dolmant and Ortzel, however, had been adamant. Delada was absolutely not to be supplied with any information which could contaminate his testimony. Sparhawk was particularly disappointed in Patriarch Emban on that score. The fat Churchman was devious and deceitful on every other count. Why should he suddenly become ethical on this one crucial point?

  ‘It’s starting, Sparhawk,’ Kalten called from the torchlit wall. ‘The Rendors are coming out to clear away our obstructions.’

  The rooftop was slightly higher than the wall, and Sparhawk could clearly see over the fortification. The Rendors came rushing out, howling as before. Heedless of the poison smeared on the stakes of the hedgehogs, they rolled the obstructions out of the way. Many, caught up in a frenzied religious ecstasy, even went so far as to throw themselves needlessly on the poisoned stakes. Broad avenues were soon cleared away, and the assault towers began to trundle out of the still-smoking city, moving slowly towards the walls. The assault towers, Sparhawk saw, were constructed of thick planks covered by green cowhides which had been dipped in water so many times that rivulets actually ran from them. No crossbow bolt or javelin would be able to penetrate the planks, and burning pitch and naphtha would not be able to set fire to the dripping hides. One by one, Martel was countering all their defences.

  ‘Do you actually anticipate fighting in the Basilica, Sir Sparhawk?’ Delada asked.

  ‘We can hope not, Colonel,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘It’s best to be ready though. I really ap
preciate your deploying those guardsmen of yours down in that cellar – particularly since I can’t tell you why we need them there. We’d have had to pull men off the walls otherwise.’

  ‘I have to assume you know what you’re doing, Sparhawk,’ the colonel said ruefully. ‘Putting the whole detachment under the command of your squire sort of upset my second in command, though.’

  ‘It was a tactical decision, colonel. That cellar’s full of echoes. Your men won’t be able to understand shouted commands. Kurik and I have been together for a long time, and we’ve worked out ways to deal with situations like that one.’

  Delada looked out at the assault towers lumbering across the open space in front of the walls. ‘Big, aren’t they?’ he said. ‘How many men can you crowd into one of those things?’

  “That depends on how fond of the men you are,’ Sparhawk told him, moving his shield in front of his body to ward off the arrows which had already begun to drop onto the roof, ‘several hundred at least.’

  ‘I’m not familiar with siege tactics,’ Delada admitted. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘They roll up to the walls and try to charge the defenders. The defenders try to push the towers over. It’s very confusing and very noisy and a lot of people get hurt.’

  ‘When do those mangonels come into play?’

  ‘Probably when several of the towers are firmly in place against the walls.’

  ‘Won’t they be dropping boulders on their own men?’

  ‘The men in the towers aren’t very important. A lot of them are Rendors – like the ones out there who got killed clearing away the obstructions. The man who’s in charge of that army isn’t exactly what you’d call a humanitarian.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Very well.’

  ‘And you want to kill him, don’t you?’ Delada asked shrewdly.

  ‘The thought’s crossed my mind a few times.’

  One of the towers was now quite close to the wall, and the defenders, trying to dodge the hail of arrows and crossbow bolts, threw grappling hooks on long ropes over the roof of the lumbering structure. Then they began to pull on the ropes. The tower swayed, rocked back and forth and finally toppled with a resounding crash. The men inside began to scream, some in pain and some in terror. They knew what came next. The fall of the tower had broken the planks, and the tower lay open like a shattered egg. The cauldrons of pitch and naphtha poured down upon the wreckage and the struggling men, and the torches set the boiling liquid on fire.