‘If we can know what they are saying, we will know which ones of the herd we should follow,’ Tynian explained. ‘They will be the ones who will know about the wicked ones.’
‘They do not all know?’ Bhlokw asked with some amazement.
‘No. Only some know.’
‘The man-things are very strange. I will talk with Ghnomb. He may understand this.’ He rose to his feet, towering over them. ‘I will do it as soon as I come back.’
‘Where are you going?’ Tynian asked politely.
‘I am hungry. I will go eat a dog. Then I will come back and talk with Ghnomb.’ He paused. ‘I can bring a dog back for you as well, if you are also hungry.’
‘Ah—no, Bhlokw,’ Tynian replied. ‘I do not think I am hungry right now. It was good of you to ask, though.’
‘We are pack-mates now,’ Bhlokw shrugged. ‘It is right to do this.’ And he shambled off down the street.
‘It’s not really all that far,’ Aphrael told her sister as the two of them rode with Xanetia up out of the valley of Delphaeus toward the town of Dirgis in southern Atan, ‘but Edaemus is still reluctant to help us, so I think I’d better mind my manners. He might be offended if I start “tampering” in the home of his children.’
‘You’ve never used that word to describe it before,’ Sephrenia noted.
‘Sparhawk’s influence, I guess,’ the Child Goddess replied. ‘It’s a useful sort of term. It glosses over things that we don’t want to discuss in front of strangers. After we get to Dirgis, we’ll be well clear of the home of the Delphae. Then I’ll be able to tamper to my heart’s content.’
‘How long dost thou think it will take us to reach Natayos, Goddess?’ Xanetia asked. She had once again altered her coloration and suppressed her inner radiance to conceal her racial characteristics.
‘No more than a few hours—in real time,’ Aphrael shrugged. ‘I can’t quite jump us around the way Bhelliom does, but I can cover a lot of ground in a hurry when there’s an emergency. If things were really desperate, I could fly us there.’
Sephrenia shuddered. ‘It’s not that desperate, Aphrael.’
Xanetia gave her Styric sister a puzzled look.
‘It makes her queasy,’ Aphrael explained.
‘No, Aphrael,’ Sephrenia corrected, ‘not queasy—terrified . It’s a horrible experience, Xanetia. She’s done it to me about five times in the past three hundred years. I’m an absolute wreck for weeks afterward.’
‘I keep telling you not to look down, Sephrenia,’ Aphrael told her. ‘If you’d just look at the clouds instead of down at the ground, it wouldn’t bother you so much.’
‘I can’t help myself, Aphrael,’ Sephrenia told her.
‘Is it truly so disturbing, sister mine?’ Xanetia asked.
‘You couldn’t even begin to imagine it, Xanetia. You skim along with nothing but about five thousand feet of empty air between you and the ground. It’s awful!’
‘We’ll do it the other way,’ Aphrael assured her.
‘I’ll start composing a prayer of thanksgiving immediately.’
‘We’ll stay the night in Dirgis,’ Aphrael told them, ‘and then tomorrow morning we’ll run down to Natayos. Sephrenia and I’ll stay out in the woods, Xanetia, and you can go into town and have a look around. If Mother’s really being held there, we should be able to bring this little crisis to an end in short order. Once Sparhawk knows exactly where she is, he’ll fall on Scarpa and his father like a vengeful mountain. Natayos won’t even be a ruin any more when he’s done. it’ll just be a big hole in the ground.’
‘He actually saw them,’ Talen reported. ‘He described them too well to have been making it up.’ The young thief had just returned from his foray into the seamier parts of Beresa.
‘What sort of fellow was he?’ Sparhawk asked. ‘This is too important for us to be taken in by random gossip.’
‘He’s a Dacite,’ Talen replied, ‘a guttersnipe from Jura. His politics go about as far as his purse. His main reason for joining Scarpa’s army in the first place was his enthusiasm for the idea of taking part in the looting of Matherion. We’re not talking about a man with high ideals here. When he got to Natayos and found out that there might be actual fighting involved, he started to lose interest. Anyway, I found him in one of the shabbiest taverns I’ve ever seen, and he was roaring drunk. Believe me, From, he was in no condition to lie to me. I told him that I was thinking of joining Scarpa’s army, and he turned all fatherly on me—”Don’ even skink about it, boy. It’s tur’ble there”—that sort of thing. He said that Scarpa’s a raving lunatic with delusions of invincibility who thinks he can just blow on the Atans and make them go away. He said he’d just about decided to desert anyway, and then Scarpa came back to Natayos—along with Krager, Elron and Baron Parok. They had the Queen and Alcan with them, and Zalasta met them at the gate. The Dacite happened to be nearby, so he could hear what they were saying. Evidently, Zalasta’s still got a few good manners, so he wasn’t very happy about the way Scarpa had been treating his prisoners. The two of them had an argument about it, and Zalasta tied his son into a very complicated knot with magic. I guess Scarpa was squirming around like a wont on a hot rock for a while. Then Zalasta took the ladies to a large house that had been fixed up for them. From what my deserter said, the house comes fairly close to being luxurious—if you discount the bars on the windows.’
‘He could have been coached,’ Sparhawk fretted. ‘Maybe he wasn’t as drunk as he appeared to be.’
‘Believe me, From, he was drunk,’ Talen assured him. ‘I cut a purse on my way to that tavern—just to keep in practice—so I had plenty of money. I poured enough strong drink into him to stun a regiment.’
‘I think he’s right, From,’ Stragen said. ‘There are just too many details for this to be a contrived story.’
‘And if this deserter had been sent to spin cobwebs for our benefit, why would he waste time and effort entertaining a young pickpocket?’ Talen added. ‘None of us look the way we did the last time Zalasta saw us, and I doubt that even he could have guessed how Sephrenia and Xanetia put their heads together to modify us.’
‘I still think we should hold off,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Aphrael’s going to put Xanetia into Natayos in a day or so, and Xanetia can find out for sure if it’s really Ehlana who’s locked up in that house.’
‘We could at least get closer,’ Stragen said.
‘Why? Distance doesn’t mean anything to my blue friend here.’ Sparhawk touched the bulge under the front of his tunic. ‘Just as soon as I know for certain that Ehlana’s there, we’ll go pay Zalasta and his bastard a call. I might even invite Khwaj to come along. He has some plans for them that sort of interest me.’
The light was suddenly very bright, and the citizens of Sepal abruptly ceased jerking around like marionettes on strings and started to walk like normal humans. It had taken a half a day to explain to Ghnomb why it was necessary for them to return to real time, and the God of Eat still had some serious reservations about the whole idea.
‘I’ll wait in that tavern just up the street,’ Tynian said to Ulath as the two of them stepped out of the narrow alley. ‘Do you remember the password?’
Ulath grunted. ‘I shouldn’t be long,’ he said. He walked across the street toward the pair of travelers who had just come into town. ‘That’s an interesting looking saddlebow you’ve got there, neighbor,’ he said to one of them, a broken-nosed man on a roan horse. ‘What’s it made of? Ramshorn?’
Berit gave him a startled look, then glanced quickly around the narrow street near the east gate of Sepal. ‘I didn’t think to ask the saddle-maker, Sergeant,’ he replied, noticing the blond Elene’s tattered-looking uniform jacket. ‘Ah—maybe you could give my young friend and me some advice.’
‘Advice is free. Go ahead and ask.’