The Diamond Throne (55 page)

For a moment the life of the Primate of Cimmura hung in the balance as Sparhawk, for the first time in his life, contemplated the deliberate murder of an unarmed man. But then he seemed to hear a light, girlish voice and saw before him a wealth of pale blonde hair and a pair of unwavering grey eyes. Regretfully, he let the velvet drapes close again and went to serve his Queen, who, even in her slumber, had reached out with her gentle hand to save his soul.

‘Another time, Annias,’ he whispered under his breath. Then he went on down the corridor past the chancel towards the entrance to the crypt.

The crypt lay beneath the cathedral, and entry was gained by walking down a flight of stone stairs. A single tallow candle glittered at the top of the stairs, set in a grease-encrusted sconce Careful to make no noise, Sparhawk snapped the candle in two, re-lit the fragment remaining in the sconce and went on down, holding his half-candle aloft.

The door at the bottom of the stairs was of heavy bronze Sparhawk closed his fist about the latch and twisted very slowly until he felt the bolt grate open. Then, a fraction of an inch at a time, he opened the thick door The faint creaking of the hinges seemed very loud in the silence, but Sparhawk knew that the sound would not carry up to the main floor of the church, and Annias was too caught up in his personal agonizing to hear anyway

The inside of the crypt was a vast, low place, cold and musty-smelling. The circle of yellow light from Sparhawk’s bit of candle did not reach far, and beyond that circle, huge expanses lay lost in darkness. The arched
buttresses which supported the roof were draped with cobwebs, and dense shadows clotted the irregular corners. Sparhawk placed his back against the bronze door and very slowly closed it again. The sound of its closing echoed through the crypt like the hollow crack of doom.

The shadowed crypt extended back to unrelieved darkness far under the nave of the cathedral. Beneath the vaulted ceiling and the web-draped buttresses lay the former rulers of Elenia, rank upon silent rank of them, each enclosed in a leprous marble tomb with a dusty leaden effigy reposing on its top. Two thousand years of Elenian history lay mouldering slowly into dust in this dank cellar The wicked lay beside the virtuous. The stupid bedded down with the wise The universal leveller had brought them all to this same place The customary funerary sculpture decorated the stone walls and the corners of many of the sarcophagi, adding an even more mournful air to the silent tomb.

Sparhawk shuddered. The hot meeting of blood, bone, flesh, and bright, sharp steel were familiar to him, but not this cold, dusty silence He was not sure of exactly how to proceed, since the spectre of Sir Tanis had provided him with few details. He stood uncertainly near the bronze door, waiting. Although he knew it was foolish, he wrapped his hand about his sword hilt, more for comfort than out of any belief that the weapon at his side would be of any use in this dreadful place.

At first the sound seemed no more than a breath, a vagrant movement of the stale air inside the crypt. Then it came again, slightly louder this time ‘Sparhawk,’ it sighed in a hollow whisper

Sparhawk lifted his guttering candle, peering into the shadows.

‘Sparhawk,’ the whisper came again.

‘I’m here.’

‘Come closer.’

The whisper seemed to be coming from somewhere among the more recent burials. Sparhawk moved towards them, growing more certain as he did so. Finally, he stopped before the last sarcophagus, the one bearing the name of King Aldreas, father of Queen Ehlana. He stood before the lead effigy of the late king, a man he was sworn to serve but for whom he had had but little respect. The sculptor who had created the effigy had made some effort to make Aldreas’ features look regal, but the weakness was still there in the slightly harried expression and the uncertain chin.

‘Hail, Sparhawk.’ The whisper came not from the sculptured form atop the marble lid, but from within the tomb itself.

‘Hail, Aldreas,’ Sparhawk replied.

‘And dost thou still bear me enmity and hold me in contempt, my Champion?’

A hundred slights and insults leapt into Sparhawk’s mind, a half-score years of humiliation and denigration by the man whose sorrowing shade now spoke from the hollow confines of his marble sepulchre. But what would it prove to twist a knife in the heart of one already dead? Quietly, Sparhawk forgave his king. ‘I never did, Aldreas,’ he lied. ‘You were my king. That’s all I needed to know’

‘Thou art kind, Sparhawk,’ the hollow voice sighed, ‘and thy kindness rends mine insubstantial heart far more than any rebuke’

‘I’m sorry, Aldreas.’

‘I was not suited to wear the crown,’ the sepulchral voice admitted with a melancholy regret. ‘There were so many things happening that I didn’t understand, and people around me I thought were my friends, but were not.’

‘We knew, Aldreas, but there was no way we could protect you.’

‘I could not have known of the plots which surrounded me, could I, Sparhawk?’ The ghost seemed to have a desperate need to explain and justify the things Aldreas had done in life. ‘I was raised to revere the Church, and I trusted the Primate of Cimmura above all others. How could I have known that his intent was to deceive me?’

‘You could not have, Aldreas.’ It was not difficult to say it. Aldreas was no longer an enemy, and if a few words would comfort his guilt-ridden ghost, they cost no more than the breath it took to express them.

‘But I should not have turned my back on my only child,’ Aldreas said in a voice filled with pain. ‘It is that which I repent most sorely The primate turned me against her, but I should not have listened to his false counsel.’

‘Ehlana knew that, Aldreas,’ Sparhawk said. ‘She knew that it was Annias who was her enemy, not you.’

There was a long pause ‘And what has become of my dear, dear sister?’ The late king’s words came out as from between teeth tightly clenched with hate.

‘She’s still in the cloister at Demos, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk reported in as neutral a tone as he could manage ‘She will die there.’

‘Then entomb her there, my Champion,’ Aldreas commanded. ‘Do not defile my slumber by placing my murderess at my side in this place.’

‘Murderess?’ Sparhawk was stunned.

‘My life had become a burden to her. Her sycophant and paramour, Primate Annias, arranged to have her conveyed in secret here to me. She beguiled me with wildest abandon, wilder than I had ever known from her. In exhaustion, I took a cup from her hands and drank, and the drink was death. She taunted me with that,
standing over my nerveless body with her flagrant nudity and her face contorted with hatred and contempt as she reviled me. Avenge me, my Champion. Take vengeance upon my foul sister and her twisted consort, for they have brought me low and dispossessed my true heir, the daughter I ignored and despised throughout her childhood.’

‘As God gives me breath, it shall be as you say, Aldreas,’ Sparhawk swore.

‘And when my pale little daughter ascends to her rightful place upon my throne, tell her, I pray thee, that I did truly love her’

‘If that, please God, should come to pass, Aldreas, I will.’

‘It must, Sparhawk. It must else all that Elenia hath ever been shall be as naught. Only Ehlana is the true heir to the throne of Elenia. I charge thee, do not let my throne be usurped by the fruit of the unclean coupling of my sister and the Primate of Cimmura.’

‘My sword shall prevent it, my King,’ Sparhawk pledged fervently ‘All three will lie dead in their own blood before this week sees its end.’

‘And thy life as well shall be lost in thy rush to vengeance, Sparhawk, and how will thy sacrifice restore my daughter to her rightful place?’

Aldreas, Sparhawk concluded, was far wiser in death than he had been in life.

‘The time for vengeance will come in its own proper order, my Champion,’ the ghost told him. ‘First, however, I charge thee to restore my daughter Ehlana. And to that end I am permitted to reveal certain truths to thee. No nostrum nor talisman of lesser worth may heal my child, for only Bhelliom can make her whole again.’

Sparhawk’s heart sank.

‘Be not dismayed, Sparhawk, for the time hath come
for Bhelliom to emerge from the place where it hath lain hidden and once again to stir the earth with its power. It moves in its own time and with its own purpose, and this is that time, for events have moved mankind to the place where its purposes may now be accomplished. No force in all the world can prevent Bhelliom from coming forth into the sunlight again, and whole nations await its coming. Be
thou
the one who finds it, however, for only in
thy
hand can its full power be released to roll back the darkness which even now stalks the earth. Thou art no longer my Champion, Sparhawk, but the Champion of all this world. Shouldst thou fail, all will fail.’

‘And where should I seek, my King?’

‘That I am forbidden to reveal. I can, however, tell thee how to unleash its power once it lies in thy grasp. The blood-red ring which adorns thy hand and that which in life adorned mine are older far than we had imagined. He who fashioned Bhelliom fashioned the rings, also, and they are the keys which will unlock the power of the jewel.’

‘But your ring is lost, Aldreas. The Primate of Cimmura tore the palace apart again and again searching for it.’

A ghostly chuckle came from the sarcophagus. ‘I still have it, Sparhawk,’ Aldreas said. ‘After my dear sister had given me her last fatal kiss and departed I had moments of lucidity I concealed the ring to deny possession of it to my enemies. Despite all the desperate efforts of the Primate of Cimmura, it was buried with me. Think back, Sparhawk. Remember the old legends. At the time my family and thine were bonded together by these rings, thy ancestor gave to mine his own war spear in token of his allegiance. Thus I return it.’

A ghostly hand rose from the sarcophagus holding a short-handled, broad-bladed spear in its grasp. The weapon was very old, and its symbolic importance had
been forgotten over the centuries. Sparhawk reached out his hand and took it from the ghostly hand of Aldreas. ‘I will carry it with pride, my King,’ he said.

‘Pride is a hollow thing, Sparhawk. The significance of the spear goes far beyond that. Detach the blade from the shaft and look within the socket.’

Sparhawk set down his candle, put his hand to the blade and twisted the tough wood of the shaft. With a dry squeak, the two separated. He looked into the ancient steel socket of the blade. The blood-red glitter of a ruby winked back at him.

‘I have but one more instruction for thee, my Champion,’ the ghost continued. ‘Should it come to pass that thy quest reaches its conclusion only after my daughter joins me in the House of the Dead, it lies upon thee to destroy Bhelliom, though this shall surely cost thee thy life.’

‘But how may I destroy a thing of such power?’ Sparhawk protested.

‘Keep thou my ring in the place where I have concealed it. Should all go well, return it to my daughter when she sits again in splendour upon her throne; but should she die, continue thy quest for Bhelliom, though the search takes thee all the days of thy life. And when it comes to pass that thou findest it, seize the spear in the hand which bears thy ring and drive it into the heart of Bhelliom with all thy might. The jewel will be destroyed.

as will the rings – and in that act shalt thou lose thy life. Fail not in this, Sparhawk, for a dark power doth bestride the earth, and Bhelliom must never fall into its hands.’

Sparhawk bowed. ‘It shall be as you command, my King,’ he swore.

A sigh came from the sarcophagus. ‘It is done, then,’ Aldreas whispered. ‘I have done what I could to aid
thee, and this completes the task which I left unfinished. Do not fail me. Hail then, Sparhawk, and farewell.’

‘Hail and farewell, Aldreas.’

The crypt was still chill and empty, save for the ranks of the royal dead. The hollow whisper had fallen silent now Sparhawk rejoined the parts of the spear, then reached out his hand and laid it over the heart of the leaden effigy ‘Sleep well, Aldreas,’ he said softly Then with the ancient spear in his grasp, he turned and quietly left the tomb.

This concludes Book One:
The Diamond Throne
of T
HE
E
LENIUM
.

Book Two:
The Ruby Knight
will cover the desperate search for the long-lost Bhelliom through far lands and strange adventures.

David Eddings was born in Washington State in 1931 and grew up near Seattle. He graduated from the University of Washington and went on to serve in the US Army. Subsequently he worked as a buyer for the Boeing Company and taught college-level English. His first novel,
High Hunt,
was a contemporary adventure story, but he soon began a spectacular career as a fantasy writer with his bestselling series
The Belgariad.
He consolidated his immediate success with its sequel, the enormously popular series
The Malloreon,
and with
The Diamond Throne,
the first of the much-loved Sparhawk books that make up
The Elenium
and
The Tamuli.
His most recent work, the standalone fantasy
The Redemption of Althalus,
was a worldwide bestseller.

David Eddings was born in Washington State in 1931 and grew up near Seattle. He graduated from the University of Washington and went on to serve in the US Army. Subsequently he worked as a buyer for the Boeing Company and taught college-level English.
High Hunt,
his first novel, was a contemporary adventure story, but he soon began a spectacular career as a fantasy writer with his bestselling series
The Belgariad.
He consolidated his immediate success with another enormously popular series,
The Malloreon. The Elenium
and its sequel
The Tamuli
mark his most impressive achievement to date in the field of top-class fantasy fiction.

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