‘That’s the way it looked to me.’
She drew in a deep breath. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘there’s one way to find out, I suppose.’ Before Sparhawk could stop her, she rose and walked out from behind the deckhouse.
‘Sephrenia!’ he called after her, but she continued on across the deck as if she had not heard him. She reached the rail and stood there.
‘She’s right out in plain sight,’ Kurik said in a strangled tone.
‘I can see that.’
‘The soldiers are certain to have a description of her. Has she gone out of her mind?’
‘I doubt it. Look.’ Sparhawk pointed towards the soldiers on the wharf. Although Sephrenia was standing in plain view, they did not even appear to look at her.
Flute, however, saw her and made another of those imperious little gestures.
Sephrenia sighed and looked at Sparhawk. ‘Wait here,’ she said.
‘Wait where?’
‘Here on board ship.’ She turned, walked to the gangway and went on down to the wharf.
‘That rips it,’ Sparhawk said bleakly, rising to his feet and drawing his sword. Quickly he counted the soldiers on the wharf. ‘There aren’t that many of them,’ he said to Kurik. ‘If we can take them by surprise, there might be a chance.’
‘Not a very good one, Sparhawk. Let’s wait a moment and see what happens.’
Sephrenia walked up the wharf and stopped directly in front of the soldiers.
They ignored her.
She spoke to them. They paid no attention.
Then she turned back towards the ship. ‘It’s all right, Sparhawk,’ she called. ‘They can’t see us – or hear us. Bring the other horses and our things.’
‘Magic?’ Kurik asked in a stunned voice.
‘Not any kind that I ever heard about,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘I guess we’d better do what she says, then,’ Kurik advised, ‘and sort of immediately I’d hate to be right in the middle of those soldiers when the spell wears off.’
It was eerie to walk down the gangway in plain view of the church soldiers and to saunter casually up the wharf until they were face to face with them. The soldiers’ expressions were bored, and they gave no indication that anything at all was amiss. They routinely stopped every sailor and passenger leaving the wharf, but paid no attention whatsoever to Sparhawk, Kurik, and the horses. The soldiers stepped out of the way with no command from their corporal and immediately closed ranks again once Sparhawk and Kurik had led the horses off the wharf and onto the cobblestones of the street.
Without a word, Sparhawk lifted Flute down from Faran’s back and saddled the big roan. ‘All right,’ he said to Sephrenia when he had finished, ‘how did she do it?’
‘The usual way.’
‘But she can’t talk-or at least she doesn’t. How did she cast the spell?’
‘With her pipes, Sparhawk. I thought you knew that. She doesn’t speak the spell, she plays it on her pipes.’
‘Is it possible?’ His tone was incredulous.
‘You just saw her do it.’
‘Could you do it that way?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m just a bit tone deaf, Sparhawk,’ she confessed. ‘I can’t really tell one note from another, except in a general sort of way, and the melody has to be very precise. Shall we go, then?’
They rode up through the streets of Vardenais from the harbour.
‘Are we still invisible?’ Kurik asked.
‘We’re not actually invisible, Kurik,’ Sephrenia replied, wrapping her cloak about Flute, who still played the drowsy tune on her pipes. ‘If we were, we wouldn’t be able to see each other.’
‘I don’t understand at all.’
‘The soldiers knew we were there, Kurik. They stepped out of the way for us, remember? They just chose not to pay any attention to us.’
‘Chose?’
‘Perhaps that was the wrong word. Let’s say they were encouraged not to.’
They rode out through the north gate of Vardenais without being stopped by the guards posted there and were soon on the high road to Cimmura. The weather had changed since they had left Elenia many weeks before. The chill of winter had gone now, and the first budding leaves of spring tipped the branches of the trees at the sides of the road. Peasants plodded across their fields behind their ploughs, turning over the rich black loam. The rains had passed, and the sky was bright blue, dotted here and there with puffy white clouds. The breeze was fresh and warm, and the earth smelled of growth and renewal. They had discarded their Rendorish robes before leaving the ship, but Sparhawk still found his mail coat and padded tunic uncomfortably warm.
Kurik was looking out at the freshly ploughed fields they passed with an appraising eye. ‘I hope the boys have finished with the ploughing at home,’ he said. ‘I’d hate to have that chore in front of me when I get back.’
‘Aslade will see to it that they get it done,’ Sparhawk assured him.
‘You’re probably right.’ Kurik made a wry face. ‘When you get right down to it, she’s a better farmer than I am.’
‘Women always are,’ Sephrenia told him. ‘They’re more in tune with the moon and the seasons. In Styricum, women always manage the fields.’
‘What do the men do?’
‘As little as possible.’
It took them nearly five days to reach Cimmura, and they arrived on an early spring afternoon. Sparhawk reined in atop a hill a mile or so west of town. ‘Can she do it again?’ he asked Sephrenia.
‘Can who do what again?’
‘Flute Can she make people ignore us again?’
‘I don’t know Why don’t you ask her?’
‘Why don’t you ask her? I don’t think she likes me.’
‘Whatever gave you that idea? She adores you.’ Sephrenia leaned forward slightly and spoke in Styric to the little girl who rested against her
Flute nodded and made an obscure kind of circling gesture with one hand.
‘What did she say?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘Approximately that the chapterhouse is on the other side of Cimmura. She suggests that we circle the city rather than ride through the streets.’
‘Approximately?’
‘It loses a great deal in translation.’
‘All right. We’ll do it her way, then. I definitely don’t want Annias to find out that we’re back in Cimmura.’