‘You’re an absolute treasure, Alcan!’ Ehlana exclaimed, impulsively embracing the girl.
‘Be careful, my Lady.’ Alcan cried in alarm. ‘The hot iron!’
Alcan was right. The window with the small defective pane was at the corner of the building, and Zalasta, Scarpa and the others were quartered in the attached structure. It appeared that whenever they wanted to discuss something out of the hearing of the soldiers, they habitually drifted to the walled-in cul-de-sac just outside the window. The small panes of cheap glass leaded late the window-frame were only semi-transparent at best, and so, with minimal caution, Alcan’s modification of the cracked pane permitted Ehlana to listen and even marginally observe without being seen.
On the day following her conversation with Zalasta, she saw the white-robed Styric approaching with a look of bleakest melancholy on his face and with Scarpa and Krager close behind him.
‘You’ve got to snap out of this, Father,’ Scarpa said urgently. ‘The soldiers are beginning to notice.’
‘Let them,’ Zalasta replied shortly.
‘No, Father,’ Scarpa said in his rich, theatrical voice, ‘we can’t do that. These men are animals. They function below the level of thought. If you walk around through these streets with the air of a little boy whose dog just died, they’re going to think that something’s wrong and they’ll start deserting by the regiment. I’ve spent too much time and effort gathering this army to have you drive them away by feeling sorry for yourself.’
‘You’d never understand, Scarpa,’ Zalasta retorted. ‘You can’t even begin to comprehend the meaning of love. You don’t love anything.”
‘Oh, yes I do, Zalasta,’ Scarpa snapped. ‘I love me. That’s the only kind of love that makes any sense.’
Ehlana just happened to be watching Krager. The drunkard’s eyes were narrowed, shrewd. He casually moved his ever-present tankard around behind him and poured most of the wine out. Then he raised the tankard and drank off the dregs. Then he belched. ‘Parn’me,’ he slurred, reaching out his hand to the wall to steady himself as he weaved back and forth on his feet.
Scarpa gave him a quick, irritated glance, obviously dismissing him. Ehlana, however, rather quickly re-assessed Krager. He was not always nearly as drunk as he appeared to be.
‘It’s all been for nothing, Scarpa,’ Zalasta groaned. ‘I’ve allied myself with the diseased, the degenerate and the insane for nothing. I had thought that once Aphrael was gone, Sephrenia might turn to me. But she won’t. She’d die before she’ll have anything to do with me.’
Scarpa’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let her die then,’ he said bluntly. ‘Can’t you get it through your head that one woman’s the same as any other? Women are a commodity—like bales of hay or barrels of wine. Look at Krager here. How much affection do you think he has for an empty wine barrel? It’s the new ones, the full ones, that he loves, right, Krager?’
Krager smirked at him owlishly and then belched again.
‘Parn’me,’ he said.
‘I can’t really see any reason for this obsession of yours anyway,’ Scarpa continued to grind on his father’s most sensitive spot. ‘Sephrenia’s only damaged goods now. Vanion’s had her dozens of times. Are you so poor-spirited that you’d take the leavings of an Elene?’
Zalasta suddenly smashed his fist against the stone wall with a snarl of frustration.
‘He’s probably so used to having her that he doesn’t even waste his time murmuring endearments to her any more,’ Scarpa went on. ‘He just takes what he wants from her, rolls over and starts to snore. You know how Elenes are when they’re in rut. And she’s probably no better. He’s made an Elene out of her, Father. She’s not a Styric any more. She’s become an Elene—or even worse, a mongrel. I’m really surprised to see you wasting all this pure emotion on a mongrel.’ He sneered. ‘She’s no better than my mother or my sisters, and you know what they were.’
Zalasta’s face twisted, and he threw back his head and actually howled. ‘I’d rather see her dead!’
Scarpa’s pale, bearded face grew sly. ‘Why don’t you kill her then, Father?’ he asked in an insinuating whisper. ‘Once a decent woman’s been bedded by an Elene, she can never be trusted again, you know. Even if you did persuade her to marry you, she’d never be faithful.’ He laid an insincere hand on his arm. ‘Kill her, Father,’ he advised. ‘At least your memory of her will be pure, she never will be.’
Zalasta howled again and clawed at his beard with his long nails. Then he turned quickly and ran off down the street.
Krager straightened, and his seeming drunkenness slid away. ‘You took an awful chance there, you know,’ he said in a cautious tone.
Scarpa looked sharply at him. ‘Very good, Krager,’ he murmmured. ‘You played the part of a drunkard almost to perfection.’
‘I’ve had lots of practice,’ Krager shrugged. ‘You’re lucky he didn’t obliterate you, Scarpa—or tie your guts in knots.”
‘He couldn’t,’ Scarpa smirked. ‘I’m a fair magician myself, you know, and I’m skilled enough to know that you have to have a clear head to work the spells. I kept him in a state of rage. He couldn’t have worked up enough magic to break a spider-web. Lets hope that he does kill Sephrenia. That should really scatter Sparhawk’s wits, not to mention the fact that as soon as the desire of his life is no more than a pile of dead meat, Zalasta’s very likely to conveniently cut his own throat.’
‘You really hate him, don’t you?’
‘Wouldn’t you, Krager? He could have taken me with him when I was a child, but he’d come to visit for a while, and he’d show me what it meant to be a Styric, and then he’d go off alone, leaving me behind to be tormented by whores. If he doesn’t have the stomach to cut his own throat, I’d be more than happy to lend him a hand.’ Scarpa’s eyes were very bright, and he was smiling broadly. ‘Where’s your wine barrel, Krager?’ he asked. ‘Right now I feel like getting drunk.’ And he began to laugh, a long insane laugh empty of any mirth or humanity.
‘It’s no use!’ Ehlana said, flinging the comb across the room. ‘Look at what they’ve done to my hair!’ She buried her face in her hands and wept.
‘It’s not hopeless, my Lady,’ Alcan said in her soft voice. ‘There’s a style they wear in Cammoria.’ She lifted the mass of blonde hair on the right side of Ehlana’s head and brought it over across the top. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘It covers all the bare parts, and it really looks quite chic.’
Ehlana looked hopefully into her mirror. ‘It doesn’t look too bad, does it?’ she conceded.
‘And if we set a flower just behind your right ear, it would really look very stunning.’
‘Alcan, you’re wonderful!’ the Queen exclaimed happily. ‘What would I ever do without you?’
It took them the better part of an hour, but at last the unsightly bare places were covered, and Ehlana felt that some measure of her dignity had been restored.
That evening, however, Krager came to call. He stood swaying in the doorway, his eyes bleary and a drunken smirk on his face. ‘Harvest-time again, Ehlana,’ he announced, drawing his dagger. ‘It seems that I’ll need just a bit more of your hair.’
6
The sky remained overcast, but as luck had it, it had not yet rained. The stiff wind coming in off the Gulf of Micae was raw, however, and they rode with their cloaks wrapped tightly about them. Despite Khalad’s belief that it was to their advantage to move slowly, Berit was consumed with impatience. He knew that what they were doing was only a small part of the overall strategy, but the confrontation they all knew was coming loomed ahead, and he desperately wanted to get on with it.