The Sapphire Rose

‘It doesn’t seem to have worked, Lady Sephrenia,’ Bevier said, looking around at his companions. ‘They all still look the same to me.’

‘I’m not trying to disguise them from you, Bevier,’ she smiled. She went to her saddlebag and took out a small hand-mirror. ‘This is how the Zemochs will see you.’ She handed him the mirror.

Bevier took one look and then made the sign to ward off evil. ‘Dear God!’ he gasped, ‘I look hideous!’ He handed the mirror quickly to Sparhawk, and Sparhawk examined his strangely altered face carefully. His hair was still horse-tail black, but his weathered skin had become pale, a racial characteristic of all Styrics. His brows and cheekbones had become prominent, almost rough-hewn. Sephrenia, he noted with a certain disappointment, had left his nose as it was. As much as he told himself that he really didn’t mind the broken nose all that much, he nonetheless found that he had been curious to find out just how he might appear with a straight one for a change.

‘I’ve made you resemble a pure Styric strain,’ she told them. ‘It’s common enough in Zemoch, and I’m more comfortable with it. The sight of a mixed Elene and Styric nauseates me, for some reason.’

Then she extended her right arm, spoke at some length in Styric and then gestured. A dark spiral band that looked much like a tattoo encircled her forearm and wrist and culminated in an amazingly life-like representation of a snake’s head on her palm.

‘There’s a reason for that, I suppose,’ Tynian said, looking curiously at the marking.

‘Of course. Shall we go then?’

The border between Pelosia and Zemoch was ill-defined, seeming to lie along a meandering line marked by the end of the tall grass. The soil to the east of that line was thin and rocky, and the vegetation stunted. The dark edge of a coniferous forest lay a mile or so up the steep slope. When they had covered perhaps half that distance, a dozen riders in dirty white smocks emerged from the trees and approached them.

‘I’ll handle this,’ Sephrenia said. ‘Just don’t say anything, any of you, and try to look menacing.’

The approaching Zemochs reined in. Some of them had those unfinished-looking Styric features; some could easily pass for Elenes, and some appeared to be an unwholesome mixture of the two.

‘All glory to the dread God of the Zemochs,’ their leader intoned in bastardized Styric. The tongue he spoke was a mixture of that tongue and Elene, combining the worst features of both languages.

‘You did not say his name, Kedjek,’ Sephrenia said coldly.

‘How did she know the fellow’s name?’ Kalten whispered to Sparhawk. Kalten obviously understood more Styric than he could pronounce.

‘“Kedjek” isn’t a name,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘It’s an insult.’

The Zemoch’s face went even more pale, and his black eyes narrowed with hate. ‘Women and slaves do not speak so to members of the imperial guard!’ he snapped.

‘Imperial guard,’ Sephrenia sneered. ‘Neither you nor any of your men would make a wart on any part of an imperial guardsman. Say the name of our God so that I may know that you are of the true faith. Say it, Kedjek, lest ye die.’

‘Azash,’ the now-uncertain man muttered.

‘His name is fouled by the tongue which speaks it,’ she told him, ‘but Azash sometimes enjoys defilement.’

The Zemoch straightened. ‘I am commanded to gather the people,’ he declared. ‘The day is at hand when Blessed Otha will stretch forth his fist to crush and enslave the unbelievers of the west.’

‘Obey then. Continue with your work. Be diligent, for Azash rewards lack of zeal with agonies.’

‘I need no woman to instruct me,’ he said coldly. ‘Prepare to take your servants to the place of war.’

‘Your authority does not extend to me.’ She raised her right hand, her palm towards him. The markings about her forearm and wrist seemed to writhe and surge, and the image of the snake’s head hissed, its forked tongue flickering. ‘You have my permission to greet me,’ she told him.

The Zemoch recoiled, his eyes wide with horror. Since the ritual Styric greeting involved the kissing of the palms, Sephrenia’s ‘permission’ was an open invitation to suicide. ‘Forgive me, High Priestess,’ he begged in a shaking voice.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said flatly. She looked at the other Zemochs, who were goggle-eyed with fright. ‘This piece of offal has offended me,’ she told them. ‘Do what is customary.’

The Zemochs leaped from their saddles, pulled their struggling leader from his horse and beheaded him on the spot. Sephrenia, who normally would have viewed such savagery with revulsion, looked on with no change of expression. ‘Adequate,’ she said flatly. ‘Display what remains of him in the usual fashion and go on with your task.’

‘Ah – um – Dread Priestess,’ one of them faltered, ‘we have no leader now.’

‘You have spoken. Therefore you will lead. If you do well, you will be rewarded. If you do not do well, the punishment will be on your head. Now take this carrion out of my path.’ She touched Ch’iel’s flanks with her heels, and the slender white mare moved forward, delicately avoiding the puddles of blood on the ground.

‘Leadership among the Zemochs appears to have certain hazards,’ Ulath observed to Tynian.

‘Truly,’ Tynian agreed.

‘Did you really have to do that to him, Lady Sephrenia?’ Bevier asked in a choked voice.

‘Yes. A Zemoch who offends the Priesthood is always punished, and in Zemoch, there is only one punishment.’

‘How did you make the picture of the snake move?’ Talen asked her, his eyes a little frightened.

‘I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘It only seemed to move.’

‘Then it wouldn’t really have bitten him, would it?’

‘He’d have thought it had, and the results would have been the same. How far did Kring tell you to go into this forest, Sparhawk?’

‘About a day’s ride,’ he told her. ‘We turn south at the eastern edge of the woods – just before we get to the mountains.’

‘Let’s ride on, then.’

They were all a bit awed by the apparent change in Sephrenia. The soulless arrogance she had displayed during the encounter with the Zemochs had been so radically different from her normal behaviour that she even frightened them to some degree. They rode on through the shadowy forest in a subdued silence, casting frequent looks in her direction. Finally, she reined in her palfrey. ‘Will you all stop that?’ she said tartly. ‘I haven’t grown another head, you know. I’m posing as a Zemoch priestess, and I’m behaving in exactly the way a priestess of Azash would. When you imitate a monster, you sometimes have to do monstrous things. Now, let’s ride on. Tell us a story, Tynian. Take our minds off the recent unpleasantness.’