David Eddings: The Shining Ones

This writer is fully convinced that the Empire faces the gravest threat in her long and glorious history. The willing cooperation of the Atans in the massacre within the imperial compound is clear evidence that not even their loyalty can be depended upon. To whom can we turn for aid? Where in all this world can we find a force sufficient to repel the savage minions of Dolmant of Chyrellos? Must the Empire in all her glory fall before the onslaught of the Elene zealots? I weep, my brothers, for the glory that must die. Fire-domed Matherion, the city of light, the home of truth and beauty, the center of the world, is doomed. The darkness descends, and there is little hope that morning will ever come again.

The seasons were turning, and the long summer was winding down toward autumn. A tenuous mist hung in the streets of fire-domed Matherion. The moon had risen late, and its pale light starkly etched the opalescent towers and domes and imparted a soft glow to the fog lying in the streets. Matherion, all aglow, stood with her feet bathed in shining mist and her pale face lifted to the night sky.

Sparhawk was tired. The tensions of the past week and the climactic events which had resolved them had drained him, but he could not sleep. Wrapped in his black Pandion cloak, he stood on the parapet looking pensively out over the glowing city. He was tired, but his need to evaluate, to assess, to understand, was far too great to permit him to seek his bed and let his mind sink into the soft well of sleep until everything had been put into its proper place.

‘What are you doing up here, Sparhawk?’ Khalad spoke quietly, his voice so much like his father’s that Sparhawk turned his head sharply to be sure that Kurik himself had not returned from the House of the Dead to chide him. Khalad was a plain-faced young man with thick shoulders and an abrupt manner. His family had served Sparhawk’s for three generations now, and Khalad, like his father, customarily addressed his lord with a plain-spoken bluntness.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Sparhawk replied with a brief shrug.

‘Your wife’s got half the garrison out looking for you, you know.’

Sparhawk grimaced. ‘Why does she always have to do that?’

‘It’s your own fault. You know she’s going to send people out after you anytime you go off without telling her where you’ll be. you could save yourself—and us—a lot of time and trouble if you’d just tell her in the first place. It seems to me that I’ve suggested that several times already.’

‘Don’t bully me, Khalad. you’re as bad as your father was.’

‘Sometimes good traits breed true. Would you like to go down and tell your wife that you’re all right?—before she calls in the workmen to start tearing down the walls?’

Sparhawk sighed. ‘All right.’ He turned away from the parapet. ‘Oh, by the way, you probably ought to know that we’ll be making a trip before long.’

‘Oh? Where are we going?’

‘We have to go pick something up. Have a word with the farriers. Faran needs to be re-shod. He’s scuffed his right front shoe down until it’s as thin as paper.’

‘That’s your fault, Sparhawk. He wouldn’t do that if you’d sit up straight in your saddle.’

‘We start to get crooked as we grow older. That’s one of the things you have to look forward to.’

‘Thanks. When are we leaving on this trip?’

‘Just as soon as I can come up with a convincing enough lie to persuade my wife to let me go off without her.’

‘We’ve got plenty of time, then.’ Khalad looked out across moon-washed Matherion standing in pale fog with the moonlight awakening the rainbows of fire in her naked shoulders. ‘Pretty,’ he noted.

‘Is that the best you can do? You look at the most fabulous city in the world and shrug it off as “pretty”.’

‘I’m not an aristocrat, Sparhawk. I don’t have to invent flowery phrases to impress others—or myself. Let’s get you inside before the damp settles into your lungs. You crooked old people have delicate health sometimes.’

Queen Ehlana, pale and blonde and altogether lovely, was irritated more than angry; Sparhawk saw that immediately. He also saw that she had gone to some trouble to make herself as pretty as possible. Her dressing gown was dark blue satin, her cheeks had been carefully pinched to make them glow, and her hair was artfully arranged to give the impression of winsomely distracted dishevelment. She berated him about his lack of consideration in tones that might easily have made the trees cry and the very rocks shrink from her. Her cadences were measured, and her voice rose, then sank, as she told him exactly how she felt. Sparhawk concealed a smile. Ehlana was speaking to him on two levels at the same time as she stood in the center of the blue-draped royal apartment scolding him. Her words expressed extreme displeasure; her careful preparations, however, said something quite different.

He apologized.

She refused to accept his apology and stormed off to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

‘Spirited,’ Sephrenia murmured. The small woman sat out of harm’s way on the far side of the room, her white Styric robe glowing in the candlelight.

‘You noticed,’ Sparhawk smiled.

‘Does she do that often?’

‘Oh, yes. She enjoys it. What are you doing up so late, little mother?’

‘Aphrael wanted me to speak with you.’

‘Why didn’t she just come and talk with me herself? It’s not as if she were way over on the other side of town.’

‘It’s a formal sort of occasion, Sparhawk. I’m supposed to speak for her at times like this.’

‘Was that intended to make sense?’

‘It would if you were Styric. We’re going to have to make some substitutions when we go to retrieve Bhelliom. Khalad can fill in for his father without any particular problem, but Tynian’s decision to go back to Chyrellos with Emban really has Aphrael upset. Can you persuade him to change his mind?’

Sparhawk shook his head.

‘I wouldn’t even try, Sephrenia. I’m not going to cripple him for life just because Aphrael might miss him.’

‘Is his arm really that bad?’

‘It’s bad enough. That crossbow bolt went right through his shoulder joint. If he starts moving it around, it won’t set right, and that’s his sword arm.’

‘Aphrael could fix it, you know.’

‘Not without exposing her identity she couldn’t, and I won’t let her do that.’

‘Won’t let?’

‘Ask her if she wants to endanger her mother’s sanity just for the sake of symmetry. Substitute someone else. If Aphrael’s willing to accept Khalad in place of Kurik, she should be able to pick someone else to fill in for Tynian. Why is it so important to her in the first place?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Why don’t you try to explain it anyway? I might surprise you.’

‘You’re in an odd humor tonight.’

‘I’ve just been scolded. That always makes me odd. Why does Aphrael think it’s so important to always have the same group of people around her?’

‘It has to do with the feeling of it, Sparhawk. The presence of any given person is more than just the way he looks or the sound of his voice. It also involves the way he thinks—and probably more important, the way he feels about Aphrael. She surrounds herself with that. When you bring in different people, you change the way it feels, and that throws her off balance.’ She looked at him. ‘You didn’t understand a word of that, did you?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did. How about Vanion? He loves her as much as Tynian does, and she loves him too. He’s been more or less with us in spirit since all this started anyway, and he is a knight, after all.’