The Sapphire Rose

The Zemoch soldiers and the few remaining priests of Azash had fled the deserted city, and the slushy streets echoed with a kind of mournful emptiness. Something quite peculiar was happening to Otha’s capital. The nearly total destruction of the temple had been completely understandable, of course. The only slightly less severe damage to the adjoining palace was probably to be expected. It was what was happening to the rest of the city that was inexplicable. The inhabitants had not really left the city that long ago, but their houses were collapsing – not all at once as might have been expected, given the explosive nature of what had taken place in the temple, but singly or in groups of two or three. It was somehow as if the decay which overcomes any abandoned city were taking place in the space of hours instead of centuries. The houses sagged, creaked mournfully and then slowly fell in on themselves. The city walls crumbled, and even the paving stones of the streets heaved up and then settled back, broken and scattered.

Their desperate plan had succeeded, but the cost had been beyond what any of them had been prepared to pay. There was no sense of triumph in their success, none of that exultation warriors normally feel in a victory. It was not merely the sorrowful burden of the cart which dampened their mood, however, but something deeper.

Bevier was pale from loss of blood, but his face was profoundly troubled. ‘I still don’t understand,’ he confessed.

‘Sparhawk is Anakha,’ Sephrenia replied. ‘It’s a Styric word that means “without destiny”. All men are subject to destiny, to fate – all men except Sparhawk. Somehow he moves outside destiny. We’ve known that he would come, but we didn’t know when – or even who he would be. He’s like no other man who’s ever lived. He makes his own destiny, and his existence terrifies the Gods.’

They left the slowly collapsing city of Zemoch behind in the thickly swirling snow slanting in from the west, although they could hear the grinding rumble of falling buildings for quite some time as they rode southward along the road leading to the city of Korakach, some eighty leagues to the south. About mid-afternoon, as the snow was beginning to let up, they took shelter for the night in a deserted village. They were all very tired, and the thought of riding even one more mile was deeply repugnant to them. Ulath prepared their supper without even any attempt to resort to his usual subterfuge, and they sought their beds even before the light had begun to fade.

Sparhawk awoke suddenly, startled to find that he was in the saddle. They were riding along the brink of a wind-swept cliff with an angry sea ripping itself to tattered froth on the rocks far below. The sky overhead was threatening, and the wind coming in off the sea had a biting chill. Sephrenia rode in the lead, and she held Flute enfolded in her arms. The others trailed along behind Sparhawk, their cloaks drawn tightly around them and wooden-faced expressions of stoic endurance on their faces. They all seemed to be there, Kalten and Kurik, Tynian and Ulath, Berit and Talen and Bevier. Their horses plodded up the winding, weather-worn trail that followed the edge of the long, ascending cliff towards a jutting promontory that thrust a crooked, stony finger out into the sea. At the outermost tip of the rocky promontory stood a gnarled and twisted tree, its streaming branches flailing in the wind.

When she reached the tree, Sephrenia reined in her horse, and Kurik walked forward to lift Flute down. The squire’s face was set, and he did not speak to Sparhawk as he passed. It seemed to Sparhawk that something was wrong – terribly wrong – but he could not exactly put his finger on it.

‘Very well, then,’ the little girl said to them. ‘We’re here to finish this, and we don’t have all that much time.’

‘Exactly what do you mean by “finish it”?’ Bevier asked her.

‘My family has agreed that we must put Bhelliom beyond the reach of men or Gods. No one must ever be able to find it or use it again. The others have given me one hour – and all of their power – to accomplish this. You may see some things that are impossible – you may even have noticed them already. Don’t concern yourselves about them, and don’t pester me with questions. We don’t have that much time. We were ten when we set out, and we’re the same ten now. It has to be that way.’

‘We’re going to throw it into the sea then?’ Kalten asked her.

She nodded.

‘Hasn’t that been tried before?’ Ulath asked her. ‘The Earl of Heid threw King Sarak’s crown into Lake Venne, as I recall, and Bhelliom still re-emerged.’

‘The sea is much deeper than Lake Venne,’ she told him, ‘and the water out there is much deeper than it is anywhere else in the world, and no one knows where this particular shoreline is.’

‘We do,’ Ulath disagreed.

‘Oh? Where is it? On which particular coast of which particular continent?’ She pointed upward at the dense cloud racing overhead. ‘And where’s the sun? Which way is east and which is west? All you can really say for sure is that you’re on a seacoast somewhere. You can tell anyone you like, and then every man who will ever live can start wading in the sea tomorrow, and they’ll never find Bhelliom, because they’ll never know exactly where to look.’

‘Then you want me to throw it into the sea?’ Sparhawk asked her as he dismounted.

‘Not quite yet, Sparhawk,’ she replied. ‘There’s something we have to do first. Would you get that sack I asked you to keep for me, Kurik?’

Kurik nodded, went back to his gelding and opened one of his saddlebags. Once again Sparhawk had that strong sense that something was wrong.

Kurik came back carrying a small canvas sack. He opened it and took out a small steel box with a hinged lid and a stout hasp. He held it out to the little girl. She shook her head and held her hands behind her. ‘I don’t want to touch it,’ she said. ‘I just want to look at it to make sure it’s right.’ She bent forward and examined the box closely. When Kurik opened the lid, Sparhawk saw that the interior of the box was lined with gold. ‘My brothers did well,’ she approved. ‘It’s perfect.’

‘Steel will rust in time, you know,’ Tynian told her.

‘No, dear one,’ Sephrenia told him. ‘That particular box will never rust.’

‘What about the Troll-Gods, Sephrenia,’ Bevier asked. ‘They’ve shown us that they can reach out to the minds of men. Won’t they be able to call someone and direct him to the place where the box lies hidden? I don’t think they’ll be happy lying at the bottom of the sea for all eternity.’