The Sapphire Rose

‘I’ll take care of this,’ Sparhawk said flatly.

‘Kurik?’ Ulath asked.

Sparhawk shook his head and began killing Zemochs again. He waded on, leaving the maimed behind him for his companions to dispatch.

‘Sparhawk!’ Ulath shouted. ‘Stop! They’re running!’

‘Hurry!’ Sparhawk yelled back. ‘We can still catch them!’

‘Let them go!’

‘No!’

‘You’re keeping Martel waiting, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said sharply. Kalten sometimes made a show of being stupid, but Sparhawk saw immediately just how smoothly his blond friend had brought him up short. Killing relatively innocent soldiers was no more than an idle pastime when compared to dealing once and for all with the white-haired renegade. He stopped. ‘All right,’ he panted, nearly exhausted from his exertions, ‘let’s go back. We’ve got to get past that sliding wall before the soldiers come back anyway.’

‘Are you feeling any better?’ Tynian asked as they started back towards the alcove.

‘Not really,’ Sparhawk said.

They passed Adus’s body. ‘Go on ahead,’ Kalten told them. ‘I’ll be right along.’

Berit and Bevier awaited them at the entrance to the alcove.

‘Did you chase them off?’ Bevier asked.

‘Sparhawk did,’ Ulath grunted. ‘He was very convincing.’

‘Aren’t they likely to gather reinforcements and come back?’

‘Not unless their officers have very large whips, they won’t.’

Sephrenia had arranged Kurik’s body in a posture of repose. His cloak covered the dreadful wound which had spilled out his life. His eyes were closed and his face calm. Once again Sparhawk felt an unbearable grief. ‘Is there any way –?’ he began, even though he already knew the answer.

Sephrenia shook her head. ‘No, dear one,’ she replied. ‘I’m sorry.’ She sat beside the body holding the weeping Talen in her arms.

Sparhawk sighed. ‘We’re going to have to leave,’ he told them. ‘We have to get back to those stairs before anybody decides to follow us.’ He looked back over his shoulder. Kalten was hurrying to join them, and he was carrying something wrapped in a Zemoch cloak.

‘I’ll do this,’ Ulath said. He bent and picked Kurik up as if the powerful squire were no more than a child, and they retraced their steps to the foot of the stairs leading up into the dusty darkness above.

‘Slide that wall back in place,’ Sparhawk said, ‘and see if you can find some way to wedge it shut.’

‘We can do that from up above,’ Ulath said. ‘We’ll block the track it slides on.’

Sparhawk grunted as he made some decisions. ‘Bevier,’ he said regretfully, ‘we’re going to have to leave you here, I’m afraid. You’re badly wounded, and I’ve already lost enough friends today.’

Bevier started to object, but then changed his mind.

‘Talen,’ Sparhawk went on, ‘you stay here with Bevier and your father.’ He smiled a sad smile. ‘We want to kill Azash; we don’t want to steal Him.’

Talen nodded.

‘And Berit –’

‘Please, Sparhawk,’ the young man said, his eyes filled with tears. ‘Please don’t make me stay behind. Sir Bevier and Talen are safe here, and I might be able to help when we get to the temple.’

Sparhawk glanced at Sephrenia. She nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. He wanted to warn Berit to be careful, but that would have demeaned the apprentice, so he let it pass.

‘Give me your war-axe and shield, Berit,’ Bevier said, his voice weak. ‘Take these instead.’ He handed Berit his lochaber and his burnished shield.

‘I won’t dishonour them, Sir Bevier,’ Berit swore.

Kalten had stepped towards the rear of the chamber. ‘There’s a space back here under the stairs, Bevier. It might be a good idea for you and Kurik and Talen to wait for us under there. If the soldiers manage to break through the wall, the three of you won’t be in plain sight.’

Bevier nodded as Ulath took up Kurik’s body to conceal it behind the stairs.

‘There’s not much left to say, Bevier,’ Sparhawk told the Cyrinic Knight, taking his hand. ‘We’ll try to come back as soon as we can.’

‘I’ll pray for you, Sparhawk,’ Bevier said, ‘for all of you.’

Sparhawk nodded, then knelt briefly at Kurik’s side and took his squire’s hand. ‘Sleep well, my friend,’ he murmured. Then he rose and started up the stairs without looking back.

The stairs at the far end of that broad, straight pathway that stretched across the mole-tunnel mounds of the labyrinth below were very wide and sheathed with marble. There was no sliding wall to conceal a chamber at the foot of those stairs, and no maze led away from the temple. No maze was needed.

‘Wait here,’ Sparhawk whispered to his friends, ‘and put out those torches.’ He crept forward, pulled off his helmet and lay down at the top of the stairs. ‘Ulath,’ he murmured, ‘hold my ankles. I want to see what we’re getting into.’ With the huge Thalesian keeping him from tumbling in a steely clatter down the stairs, Sparhawk inched his way headfirst down the stairs until he could see out into the room beyond.

The temple of Azash was a place of nightmare. It was, as the dome which roofed it implied, circular, and it was fully half a mile across. The curving, inwardly-sloping walls were of polished black onyx, as was the floor. It was much like looking into the very heart of night. The temple was not lighted by torches but by huge bonfires flaring and roaring in enormous iron basins set on girder-like legs. The vast chamber was encircled by tier upon tier of polished black terraces stepping down and down and down to a black floor far beneath.

At evenly-spaced intervals along the top terrace were twenty-foot marble statues of things which were for the most part not human. Then Sparhawk saw a Styric form among them and somewhat further along an Elene one. He realized that the statues were representations of the servants of Azash, and that humanity played a very small and insignificant part in that assemblage. The other servants dwelt in places at once very far away and at the same time very, very close.

Directly opposite the entrance through which he peered was the towering idol. Man’s efforts to visualize and to represent his Gods are never wholly satisfactory. A lion-headed God is really the image of a human body with the head of a lion tacked on for the sake of contrast. Mankind perceives the face as the seat of the soul; the body is largely irrelevant. The icon of a God is not meant to be representational, and the face of the icon is intended to suggest the spirit of the God rather than to be an accurate recreation of His real features. The face of the idol rearing high above the polished black temple contained the sum of human depravity. Lust was there certainly and greed and gluttony; but there were other attributes in that face as well, attributes for which there were no names in any human tongue. Azash, to judge from His face, craved – required – things beyond human comprehension. There was a haggard, unsatisfied look about that face. It was the face of a Being with overpowering desires which would not – could not – be satisfied. The lips were twisted, the eyes brooding and cruel.