The Sapphire Rose

Sparhawk’s heart sank. ‘It does indeed, Berit. Sephrenia!’ he called.

She rode back to join them.

‘It’s there again,’ Sparhawk told her, pointing.

‘So I see. You didn’t expect it to just go away, did you, Sparhawk?’

‘I was hoping. Can we do anything?’

‘No.’

He squared his shoulders. ‘We keep going then,’ he said.

The steep ravine wound up through the rock, and they followed it slowly as evening began to descend. Then they rounded a sharp bend in the ancient course and saw a rockslide, which was not a slide strictly speaking, but rather a collapsed wall – a place where the south face of the gap had broken free and fallen into the ravine to apparently block it entirely.

‘That’s fairly intimidating,’ Bevier observed. ‘I hope Kring gave you good directions, Sparhawk.’

‘We’re supposed to bear to the left here,’ Sparhawk told them. ‘We’ll find a clump of limbs and logs and brush on the downhill side of the rockfall right up against the north wall of the ravine. When we pull those out of the way, we’ll find a passageway leading under the slide. The Peloi use it when they ride back into Zemoch looking for ears.’

Kalten wiped his face. ‘Let’s go and look,’ he said.

The pile of broken-off trees and tangled brush looked quite natural in the rapidly fading light, and it appeared to be no more than one of those random accumulations of driftwood and debris which wash down every ravine during the spring run-off. Talen dismounted, climbed up a steeply slanted log and peered into a dark gap in the tangle. ‘Hello,’ he shouted into the opening. The sound of his voice returned as a hollow echo.

‘Let us know if someone answers,’ Tynian called to him.

‘This is it, Sparhawk,’ the boy said. ‘There’s a large open space behind this pile.’

‘We may as well get to work then,’ Ulath suggested. He looked up at the rainy, darkening sky. ‘We might want to give some thought to spending the night in there,’ he added. ‘It’s out of the weather, and it’s getting dark anyway.’

They fashioned yokes from pieces of driftwood and used the packhorses to pull aside the pile of logs and brush. The mouth of the passageway was triangular, since the outward side leaned against the north face of the ravine. The passage was narrow and smelled musty.

‘It’s dry,’ Ulath noted, ‘and it’s out of sight. We could go back in there a little way and build a fire. If we don’t dry our clothes off, these mail-shirts are going to be solid rust by morning.’

‘Let’s cover this opening first, though,’ Kurik said. He didn’t sound too hopeful about the notion of trying to hide behind a brush-pile from the shadowy cloud which had followed them since Thalesia, however.

After they had covered the opening, they took torches from one of the packs, lit them and followed the narrow passageway a hundred yards or so to a place where it widened out.

‘Good enough?’ Kurik asked.

‘At least it’s dry,’ Kalten said. He kicked at the sandy floor of the passage, turning up a chunk of bleached wood buried there. ‘We might even be able to find enough wood for a fire.’

They set up their camp in the somewhat confined space, and they soon had a small fire going.

Talen came back from the passageway on ahead. ‘It goes on for another few hundred yards,’ he reported. ‘The upper end’s blocked with brush the same way the lower one was. Kring’s very careful to keep this passage hidden.’

‘What’s the weather like on up ahead?’ Kurik asked.

‘There’s some snow mixed with the rain now, father.’

‘It looks as if I was right then. Oh, well, we’ve all been snowed on before, I guess.’

‘Whose turn is it to do the cooking?’ Kalten asked.

‘Yours,’ Ulath told him.

‘It can’t be mine again already.’

‘Sorry, but it is.’

Grumbling, Kalten went to the packs and began to rummage around.

The meal consisted of Peloi trail rations, smoked mutton, dark bread and a thick soup made from dried peas. It was nourishing, but the flavour was hardly spectacular. After they had finished eating, Kalten began to clean up. He was gathering their plates when he suddenly stopped. ‘Ulath?’ he said suspiciously.

‘Yes, Kalten?’

‘In all the time we’ve been travelling together, I haven’t seen you cook more than once or twice.’

‘No, you probably haven’t.’

‘When does your turn come?’

‘It doesn’t. My job is to keep track of whose turn it is. You wouldn’t really expect me to do that and cook too, would you? Fair is fair, after all.’

‘Who appointed you?’

‘I volunteered. Church Knights are supposed to do that when unpleasant tasks come up. That’s one of the reasons people respect us so much.’

They sat around after that, staring moodily into the fire. ‘It’s days like today that make me wonder why I took up knighting for a career,’ Tynian said. ‘I had a chance to go into law when I was younger. I thought it would be boring, so I chose this instead. I wonder why.’

There was a general murmur of agreement.

‘Gentlemen,’ Sephrenia said, ‘push this kind of thinking from your minds. I’ve told you before that if we grow melancholy or fall into despair, we’ll be falling right into the hands of our enemies. One dark cloud hanging over our heads is enough. Let’s not add clouds of our own making. When the light falters, the darkness wins.’

‘If you’re trying to cheer us up, you’re going at it in a strange way, Sephrenia,’ Talen told her.

She smiled faintly. ‘Perhaps that was a bit dramatic, wasn’t it? The point, my dear ones, is that we all have to be very alert. We must be wary of depression, dejection and above all, melancholy. Melancholy’s a form of madness, you know.’

‘What are we supposed to do?’ Kalten asked her.

‘It’s really quite simple, Kalten,’ Ulath said. ‘You watch Tynian very closely. As soon as he begins behaving like a butterfly, tell Sparhawk about it. I’ll watch you for signs of frogishness. Just as soon as you start trying to catch flies with your tongue, I’ll know that you’re starting to lose your grip on things.’

Chapter 24

There were snowflakes the size of half-crowns mixed with the drizzle that swirled down into the narrow pass. Sooty ravens hunched on tree-limbs, their feathers wet and their eyes angry. It was the kind of morning that cried out for stout walls, a sturdy roof and a cheery fire, but those amenities were not available, so Sparhawk and Kurik wormed their way deeper into the juniper thicket and waited.