Domes of Fire

‘Sephrenia wants to talk with you again.’

‘All right. I’m in the nave right now. Come down and meet me here. We’ll go up to the cupola again.’

‘I’ll meet you up there.’

‘There’s only one stairway leading up there, Aphrael. We have to climb it.’

‘You might have to, but I don’t. I don’t like going into the nave, Sparhawk. I always have to stop and talk with your God, and He’s so tedious most of the time.’

Sparhawk’s mind shuddered back from the implications of that.

The dried-out wooden stairs circling up to the top of the dome still shrieked their protest as Sparhawk mounted. It was a long climb, and he was winded when he reached the top.

‘What took you so long?’ Danae asked him. She wore a simple white smock. It was a little-girl sort of dress, so no one seemed to even notice that its cut was definitely Styric.

‘You enjoy saying things like that to me, don’t you?’ Sparhawk accused.

‘I’m only teasing, father,’ she laughed.

‘I hope no one saw you coming up here. I don’t think the world’s ready for a flying princess just yet.’

‘No one saw me, Sparhawk. I’ve done this before, you know. Trust me.’

‘Do I have any choice? Let’s get to work. I’ve still got a lot left to do today if we’re going to leave tomorrow morning.’

She nodded and sat cross-legged near one of the huge bells. She lifted her face again and raised that flute-like trill. Then her voice drifted off, and her face went blank.

‘Where have you been?’ Sephrenia asked, opening Danae’s eyes to stare at her pupil.

He sighed. ‘If you two don’t stop that, I’m going to go into another line of work.’

‘Has Aphrael been teasing you again?’ she asked.

‘Of course she has. Did you know that she can fly?’

‘I’ve never seen her do it, but I’d assumed she could.’

‘What did you want to see me about?’

‘I’ve been hearing disturbing rumours. The northern Atans have been seeing some very large, shaggy creatures in the forests near their north coast.’

‘So that’s where they went.’

‘Don’t be cryptic, dear one.’

‘Komier sent word to Ulath. It seems that the Trolls have all left Thalesia.’

‘The Trolls!’ she exclaimed. ‘They wouldn’t do that! Thalesia’s their ancestral home!’

‘Maybe you’d better go tell the Trolls about that. Komier swears that there’s not a single one of them left in Thalesia.’

‘Something very, very strange is going on here, Sparhawk.’

‘Ambassador Oscagne said more or less the same thing. Can the Styrics there at Sarsos make any sense out of it yet?’

‘No. Zalasta’s at his wits’ end.’

‘Have you come up with any idea at all of who’s behind it?’

‘Sparhawk, we don’t even know what’s behind it. We can’t even make a guess about the species of whatever it is.’

‘We sort of keep coming back to the idea that it’s the Troll-Gods again. Something had to have enough authority over the Trolls to command them to leave Thalesia, and that points directly at the Troll Gods. Are we absolutely sure that they haven’t managed to get loose?’

‘It’s not a good idea to discount any possibility when you’re dealing with Gods, Sparhawk. I don’t know the spell Ghwerig used when he put them inside the Bhelliom, so I don’t know if it can be broken.’

‘Then it is possible.’

‘That’s what I just said, dear one. Have you seen that shadow – or the cloud – lately?’

‘No.’

‘Has Aphrael ever seen it?’

‘No.’

‘She could tell you, but I’d rather not have her exposed to whatever it is. Perhaps we can come up with a way to lure it out when you get here so that I can take a look at it. When are you leaving?’

‘First thing tomorrow morning. Danae sort of told me that she can play with time the way she did when we were marching to Acie with Wargun’s army. That would get us there faster, but can she do it as undetectably now as she did when she was Flute?’

The bell behind the motionless form of his daughter gave a deep, soft-toned sound. ‘Why don’t you ask me, Sparhawk?’ Danae’s voice hummed in the bell-sound. ‘It’s not as if I weren’t here, you know.’

‘How was I supposed to know that?’ He waited. ‘Well?’ he asked the still-humming bell. ‘Can you?’

‘Well, of course I can, Sparhawk.’ The Child Goddess sounded irritated. ‘Don’t you know anything?’

‘That will do,’ Sephrenia chided.

‘He’s such a lump.’

‘Aphrael! I said that will do! You will not be disrespectful to your father.’ A faint smile touched the lips of the apparently somnolent little princess. ‘Even if he is a hopeless lump.’

‘If you two want to discuss my failings, I’ll go back downstairs so you can speak freely,’ Sparhawk told them.

‘No, that’s all right, Sparhawk,’ Aphrael said lightly. ‘We’re all friends, so we shouldn’t have any secrets from each other.’

They left Chyrellos the following morning and rode south on the Arcian side of the Sarin river in bright morning sunshine with one hundred Church Knights in full armour riding escort. The grass along the riverbank was very green, and the blue sky was dotted with fluffy white clouds. After some discussion, Sparhawk and Ehlana had decided that the attendants she would need for the sake of appearances could be drawn for the most part from the ranks of the Church Knights. ‘Stragen can coach them,’ Sparhawk had told his wife. ‘He’s had a certain amount of experience, so he can make honest knights look like useless butterflies.’

It had been necessary, however, to include one lady-in-waiting, Baroness Melidere, a young woman of Ehlana’s own age with honey-blonde hair, deep blue eyes and an apparently empty head. Ehlana also took along a personal maid, a doe-eyed girl named Alean. The two of them rode in the carriage with the Queen, Mirtai, Danae and Stragen, who, dressed in his elegant best, kept them amused with light banter. Sparhawk reasoned that between them, Stragen and Mirtai could provide his wife and daughter with a fairly significant defence if the occasion arose.