The Diamond Throne (26 page)

She laughed mockingly ‘I see no reason to change, Dolmant. I have merely altered my circumstances.’

‘Our visit here is not social, Princess,’ he said. ‘A rumour has surfaced in Cimmura that prior to your being cloistered here, you were secretly married to Duke Osten of Vardenais. Would you care to confirm – or deny – that rumour?’

‘Osten?’ She laughed. ‘That dried-up old stick? Who in her right mind would marry a man like that? I like my men younger, more ardent.’

‘You deny the rumour, then?’

‘Of course I deny it. I’m like the Church, Dolmant. I offer my bounty to
all
men – as everyone in Cimmura knows.’

‘Would you sign a document declaring the rumour to be false?’

‘I’ll think about it.’ She looked at Sparhawk. ‘What are you doing back in Elenia, Sir Knight? I thought my brother exiled you.’

‘I was summoned back, Arissa.’

‘How very interesting.’

Sparhawk thought of something. ‘Did you receive a dispensation to attend your brother’s funeral, Princess?’ he asked her.

‘Why, yes, Sparhawk. The Church generously granted me three whole days of mourning. My poor, stupid brother looked very regal as he lay on his bier in his state robes.’ She critically examined her long, pointed fingernails. ‘Death improves some people,’ she added.

‘You hated him, didn’t you?’

‘I held him in contempt, Sparhawk. There’s a difference. I always used to bathe whenever I left him.’

Sparhawk held out his hand, showing her the blood-red ring on his finger ‘Did you happen to notice if he had the mate to this on his finger?’ he asked her

She frowned slightly ‘No,’ she said. ‘As a matter of fact he didn’t. Perhaps the brat stole it after he died.’

Sparhawk clenched his teeth.

‘Poor, poor Sparhawk,’ she said mockingly ‘You cannot bear to hear the truth about your precious Ehlana, can you? We used to laugh about your attachment to her when she was a child. Did you have hopes, great Champion? I saw her at my brother’s funeral. She’s not a child any more, Sparhawk. She has the hips and breasts of a woman now But she’s sealed up in a diamond, isn’t she, so you can’t even touch her? All that soft, warm skin, and you can’t even put so much as a finger on it.’

‘I don’t think we need to pursue this, Arissa.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Who is your son’s father?’ he asked her suddenly, hoping to startle the truth out of her.

She laughed. ‘How could I possibly know that?’ she
asked. ‘After my brother’s wedding, I amused myself in a certain establishment in Cimmura.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘It was both enjoyable and profitable. I made a very great deal of money Most of the girls there overpriced themselves, but I learned as a child that the secret of great wealth is to sell cheaply to many’ She looked maliciously at Dolmant. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘it’s a renewable resource.’

Dolmant’s face grew stiff, and Arissa laughed coarsely.

‘That’s enough, Princess,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘You would not care then to hazard a guess as to the identity of your bastard’s father?’ He said it quite deliberately, hoping to sting her into some inadvertent revelation.

Her eyes flashed with momentary anger, then she leaned back on the stone bench with a heavy-lidded look of voluptuous amusement. She put her hands to the front of her scarlet robe ‘I’m a bit out of practice, but I suppose I could improvise. Would you like to try me, Sparhawk?’

‘I don’t think so, Arissa.’ Sparhawk’s voice was flat.

‘Ah, the well-known prudery of your family. What a shame, Sparhawk. You interested me when you were a young knight. Now you’ve lost your Queen, and there’s not even that pair of rings to prove the connection between the two of you. Wouldn’t that mean that you’re no longer her Champion? Perhaps if she recovers – you might be able to establish a closer bond with her. She shares my blood, you know, and it might flow as hotly through her veins as it does through mine. If you were to try me, you could compare and find out.’

He turned away in disgust, and she laughed again.

‘Shall I send for parchment and ink, Princess,’ Dolmant asked, ‘so that we may compose your denial of the rumour concerning your marriage?’

‘No, Dolmant,’ she replied, ‘I don’t think so. This
request of yours hints at the interest of the Church in this matter. The Church has done me few favours of late, so why should I exert myself on her behalf? If the people in Cimmura want to amuse themselves with rumours about me, let them. They licked their lips over the truth, now let them enjoy a lie.’

‘That’s your final word then?’

‘I might change my mind. Sparhawk’s a Church Knight, your Grace, and you’re a patriarch. Why don’t you order him to see if he can persuade me? Sometimes I persuade easily – sometimes not. It all depends on the persuader.’

‘I think we’ve concluded our business here,’ Dolmant said. ‘Good day, Princess.’ He turned on his heel and started across the winter-brown lawn of the garden.

‘Come back sometime when you can leave your stuffy friend behind, Sparhawk,’ Arissa said. ‘We could amuse ourselves.’

He turned without answering and followed the patriarch out of the garden. ‘I think we’ve wasted our time,’ he muttered, his face dark and angry.

‘Ah, no, my boy,’ Dolmant said serenely. ‘In her haste to be offensive, the princess overlooked an important point in canon law. She has just made a free admission in the presence of two ecclesiastical witnesses – you and me. That has all the validity of a signed statement. All it takes is our oaths as to what she said.’

Sparhawk blinked. ‘Dolmant,’ he said, ‘you’re the most devious man I’ve ever known.’

‘I’m glad you approve, my son.’ The patriarch smiled.

They left Kurik’s farmstead early the following morning. Aslade and her four sons stood in the doorway waving as they rode out. Kurik remained behind for a few personal farewells, promising to catch up with them a bit later.

‘Are we going through the city?’ Kalten asked Sparhawk.

‘I don’t think so,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘We can take the road that goes around the north side. I’m fairly sure that we’ll be seen, but let’s not make it easy for them.’

‘Would you mind a personal observation?’

‘Probably not.’

‘You really ought to give some thought to letting Kurik retire, you know. He’s getting older and he should be spending more time with his family instead of trailing along behind you all over the world. Besides, so far as I know, you’re the only Church Knight who still has a squire. The rest of us have learned to get along without them. Give him a good pension and let him stay home.’

Sparhawk squinted at the sun which was just rising above the wooded hilltop lying to the east of Demos. ‘You’re probably right,’ he agreed, ‘but how would I go about telling him? My father placed Kurik in my service before I completed my novitiate. It has to do with being hereditary Champion of the royal house of Elenia.’ He smiled wryly. ‘It’s an archaic position that requires
archaic usages. Kurik’s a friend more than a squire, and I’m not going to hurt him by telling him that he’s too old to serve any more.’

‘It’s a problem, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Sparhawk said, ‘it is.’

Kurik came riding up behind them as they were passing the cloister where Princess Arissa was confined. His bearded face was a bit glum, but then he straightened his shoulders and assumed a businesslike expression.

Sparhawk looked gravely at his friend, trying to imagine life without him. Then he shook his head. It was totally impossible.

The road leading towards Chyrellos passed through an evergreen forest where the morning sun streamed down through the boughs to spatter the forest floor with gold. The air was crisp and bright, although there was no frost. After they had gone about a mile farther, Berit resumed his narrative. ‘The Knights of the Church were consolidating their position in Rendor,’ he told Talen, ‘when word reached Chyrellos that Emperor Otha of Zemoch had massed a huge army and was marching into Lamorkand.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Talen interrupted him. ‘When did all this happen?’

‘About five hundred years ago.’

‘It wasn’t the same Otha Kalten was talking about the other day then, was it?’

‘So far as we know, it was.’

‘That’s impossible, Berit.’

‘Otha is perhaps nineteen hundred years old,’ Sephrenia told the boy

‘I thought this was a history,’ Talen accused, ‘not a fairy tale.’

‘When Otha was a boy, he encountered the Elder God Azash,’ she explained. ‘The Elder Gods of Styricum have
great powers and are not controlled by any form of morality. One of the gifts they can bestow upon their followers is the gift of a greatly expanded lifetime. That is why some men are willing to follow them.’

‘Immortality?’ he asked her sceptically.

‘No,’ she corrected, ‘not that. No God can bestow that.’

‘The Elene God can,’ Dolmant said, ‘in a spiritual sense, anyway’

‘That’s an interesting theological point, your Grace.’ She smiled. ‘Someday we’ll have to discuss it. Anyway,’ she continued, ‘when Otha agreed to worship Azash, the God granted him enormous power, and Otha eventually became Emperor of Zemoch. The Styrics and the Elenes in Zemoch have intermarried, and so a Zemoch is not truly a member of either race.’

‘An abomination in the eyes of God,’ Dolmant added.

‘The Styric Gods feel much the same way,’ Sephrenia agreed. She looked at Talen again. ‘To understand Otha and Zemoch –one needs to understand Azash. He is the most totally evil force on earth. The rites of the worship of him are obscene. He delights in perversion and in blood and in the agonies of sacrificial victims. In their worship of him, the Zemochs have become much less than human, and their incursion into Lamorkand was accompanied by unspeakable horrors. Had the invading armies been only Zemochs, however, they might have been met and turned back by conventional forces. But Azash had reinforced them with creatures from the underworld.’

‘Goblins?’ Talen asked disbelievingly

‘Not exactly, but the word will serve, I suppose. It would take most of the morning for me to describe the twenty or so varieties of inhuman creatures Azash has at his command, and you wouldn’t like the descriptions.’

‘This story is getting less believable by the minute,’
Talen noted. ‘I like the battles and all, but when you start telling me about goblins and fairies, I begin to lose interest. I’m not a child any more, after all.’

‘In time you may come to understand – and to believe,’ she said. ‘Go on with the story, Berit.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said. ‘When the Church realized the nature of the forces that were invading Lamorkand, they summoned the Church Knights back from Rendor. They reinforced the ranks of the four orders with other knights and with common soldiers until the forces of the west were nearly as numerous as those of the Zemoch horde of Otha.’

‘Was there a battle then?’ Talen asked eagerly.

‘The greatest battle in the history of mankind,’ Berit replied. ‘The two armies met on the plains of Lamorkand near Lake Randera. The physical battle was gigantic, but the supernatural battle on that plain was even more stupendous. Waves of darkness and sheets of flame swept the field. Fire and lightning rained from the sky. Whole battalions were swallowed up by the earth or burned to ashes in sudden flame. The crash of thunder rolled perpetually from horizon to horizon, and the ground itself was torn by earthquakes and the eruption of searing liquid rock. The magic of the Zemoch priests was countered each time by the concerted magic of the Knights of the Church. For three days, the armies were locked in battle before the Zemochs were pushed back. Their retreat became more rapid, eventually turning into a rout. Otha’s horde finally broke and ran towards the safety of the border’

‘Terrific!’ Talen exclaimed excitedly. ‘And then did our army invade Zemoch?’

‘They were too exhausted,’ Berit told him. ‘They had won the battle, but not without great cost. Fully half of the Church Knights lay slain upon the battlefield, and the
armies of the Elene Kings numbered their dead by the scores of thousands.’

‘They could have done
something,
couldn’t they?’

Berit nodded sadly. ‘They cared for their wounded and buried their dead. Then they went home.’

‘That’s all?’ Talen asked incredulously ‘This isn’t much of a story if that’s all they did, Berit.’

‘They had no choice. They’d stripped the western kingdoms of every able-bodied man to fight the war and had left the crops untended. Winter was coming, and there was no food. They managed to eke their way through that winter, but so many men had been killed or maimed in the battle that when spring came, there weren’t enough people – in the west or in Zemoch – to plant new crops. The result was famine. For a century, the only concern in all of Eosia was food. The swords and lances were put aside, and the war horses were hitched to ploughs.’

‘They never talk about that sort of thing in other stories I’ve heard.’ Talen sniffed.

‘That’s because those are only stories,’ Berit told him. ‘This really happened. Anyway,’ he went on, ‘the war and the famine which followed caused great changes. The militant orders were forced to labour in the field beside the common people, and they gradually began to distance themselves from the Church. Pardon me, your Grace,’ he said to Dolmant, ‘but at that time, the Hierocracy was too far removed from the concerns of the commons fully to understand their suffering.’

‘There’s no need to apologize, Berit,’ Dolmant replied sadly. The Church has freely admitted her blunders during that era.’

Berit nodded. ‘The Church Knights became increasingly secularized. The original intent of the Hierocracy had been that the knights should be armed monks who
would live in their chapterhouses when they weren’t fighting. That concept began to fade. The dreadful casualties in their ranks made it necessary for them to seek a source for new recruits. The preceptors of the orders journeyed to Chyrellos and laid the problem before the Hierocracy in the strongest of terms. The main stumbling block to recruitment had always been the vow of celibacy. At the insistence of the preceptors, the Hierocracy relaxed that rule, and Church Knights were permitted to take wives and father children.’