There was a brief, muted disturbance at one of the side doors. Vanion and Khalad were quite firmly preventing the Director of the Secret Police from leaving.
‘Did you have a pressing engagement somewhere, Teovin?’ Sarabian drawled.
Teovin’s eyes were wild, and he looked at his Emperor with open hatred.
‘If you’re discontented with me, Teovin, I’ll be more than happy to give you satisfaction,’ Sarabian told him, flourishing his rapier meaningfully. ‘Please return to your seat. My seconds will call upon you when we’ve concluded here.’
Vanion took the Director of the Secret Police by one arm, turned him round, and pointed at the empty seat. Then, with a none too gentle shove, he started him moving.
‘This windy preamble’s beginning to bore me, gentlemen,’ Sarabian announced, ‘so why don’t we get down to cases? The attempted coup here in Matherion was the direct response to Sir Sparhawk’s arrival. The assorted disturbances that have kept the Atans running from one end of the continent to the other for the past several years have had one source and only one. We have a single enemy, and he has formed a massive conspiracy designed to overthrow the government and to wrest my throne from me, and as I probably should have anticipated, given the nature of those who pretend to serve me, he had willing helpers in the government itself.’
Some of the dignitaries gasped; others looked guilty.
‘Pay very close attention, gentlemen,’ Sarabian told them. ‘This is where it begins to get interesting. Many of you have wondered at the long absence of Interior Minister Kolata. I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that Kolata’s going to be joining us now.’
He turned to Ulath. ‘Would you be so good as to invite the Minister of the Interior to come in, Sir Knight?’ he asked.
Ulath bowed, and Kalten rose from his seat to join him.
‘Minister Kolata, as the chief policeman in all the Empire, knows a great deal about criminal activities,’ Sarabian declared. ‘I’m absolutely sure that his analysis of the present situation will be enlightening.’
Kalten and Ulath returned with the ashen-faced Minister of the Interior between them. It was not the fact that Kolata was in obvious distress that raised the outcry from the other officials, however, but rather the fact that the chief policeman of the Empire was in chains.
Emperor Sarabian stood impassively as his council members shouted their protests. ‘How am I doing so far, Ehlana?’ he asked out of the corner of his mouth.
‘I’d have done it differently,’ she told him, ‘but that’s only a matter of style. I’ll give you a complete critique when it’s all over.’ She looked out at the officials who were all on their feet talking excitedly. ‘Don’t let that go on for too long. Remind them who’s in charge. Be very firm about it.’
‘Yes, mother,’ he smiled. Then he looked at his government and drew in a deep breath. ‘QUIET!’ he roared in a great voice.
They fell into a stunned silence.
‘There will be no further interruptions of these proceedings,’ Sarabian told them. ‘The rules have changed, gentlemen. We’re not going to pretend to be civilized any more. I’m going to tell you what to do, and you’re going to do it. I’d like to remind you that not only do you serve at my pleasure; you also continue to live only at my pleasure. The Minister of the Interior is guilty of high treason. You’ll note that there was no trial. Kolata is guilty because I say that he’s guilty.’ Sarabian paused as a new realization came to him. ‘My power in Tamuli is absolute. I am the government, and I am the law. We are going to question Kolata rather closely. Pay attention to his answers, gentlemen. Your positions in government – your very lives – may hinge on what he says. Foreign Minister Oscagne is going to question Kolata – not about his guilt, which has already been established – but about the involvement of others. We’re going to get to the bottom of this once and for all. You may proceed, Oscagne.’
‘Yes, your Majesty.’ Oscagne rose to his feet and stood a moment in deep thought as Sarabian sat again on his throne. Oscagne wore a black silk mantle. His choice of color had been quite deliberate. While black mantles were not common, they were not unheard of. Judges and Imperial Prosecutors, however, always wore black. The somber color heightened the Foreign Minister’s pallor, which in turn accentuated his grim expression.
Khalad came forward with a plain wooden stool and set it down in front of the dais. Kalten and Ulath brought the Minister of the Interior forward and plopped him unceremoniously down on the stool.
‘Do you understand your situation here, Kolata?’ Oscagne asked the prisoner.
‘You have no right to question me, Oscagne,’ Kolata replied quickly.
‘Break his fingers, Khalad,’ Sparhawk instructed from his position just behind Ehlana’s throne.
‘Yes, my Lord,’ Khalad replied. ‘How many?’
‘Start out with one or two. Every time he starts talking about Oscagne’s rights – or his own – break another one.’
‘Yes, my Lord.’ Khalad took the Interior Minister’s wrist.
‘Stop him!’ Kolata squealed in fright. ‘Somebody stop him!’
‘Kalten, Ulath,’ Sparhawk said, ‘kill the first man who moves.’
Kalten drew his sword, and Ulath raised his axe.
‘You see how it is, old boy,’ Oscagne said to the man on the stool. ‘You’re not universally loved to begin with, and Prince Sparhawk’s command has just evaporated any minuscule affection anyone here might have had for you. You will talk, Kolata. Sooner or later, you’ll talk. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the other way, but you are going to answer my questions.’ Oscagne’s expression had become implacable.
‘They’ll kill me, Oscagne!’ Kolata pleaded. ‘They’ll kill me if I talk.’
‘You’re in a difficult situation, then, Kolata, because we’ll kill you if you don’t. You’re taking orders from Cyrgon, aren’t you?’
‘Cyrgon? That’s absurd!’ Kolata blustered. ‘Cyrgon’s a myth.’
‘Oh, really?’ Oscagne looked at him with contempt. ‘Don’t play the fool with me, Kolata. I don’t have the patience for it. Your orders come from the Cynesgan Embassy, don’t they? – and most of the time, they’re delivered by a man named Krager.’
Kolata gaped at him.
‘Close your mouth, Kolata. You look like an idiot with it hanging open like that. We already know a great deal about your treason. All we really want from you are a few details. You were first contacted by someone you had reason to trust – and most probably someone you respected. That immediately rules out a Cynesgan. No Tamul has anything but contempt for Cynesgans. Given our characteristic sense of our own superiority, that would also rule out an Arjuni or an Elene from any of the western kingdoms. That would leave only another Tamul, or possibly an Atan, or…’ Oscagne’s eyes suddenly widened, and his expression grew thunderstruck. ‘Or a Styric!’
‘Absurd,’ Kolata scoffed weakly. His eyes, however, were wild, darting this way and that like those of a man looking for a place to hide.
Sparhawk looked appraisingly at Zalasta. The sorcerer’s face was deathly pale, but his eyes showed that he was still in control. It was going to take something more to push him over the edge. The big Pandion placed his left hand rather casually on his sword-hilt, giving Oscagne the pre-arranged signal.
‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere, old boy,’ Oscagne drawled, recovering from his surprise. ‘I think you need some encouragement.’ He turned and looked at Xanetia. ‘Would you be so kind, Anarae?’ he asked her. ‘Our esteemed Minister of the Interior doesn’t seem to want to share things with us. Do you suppose you could persuade him to change his mind?’
‘I can but try, Oscagne of Matherion,’ Xanetia replied, rising to her feet. She crossed the front of the room, choosing for some reason to approach the prisoner from the side where Sephrenia sat rather than the one from which she herself had been watching. ‘Thou art afeared, Kolata of Matherion,’ she said gravely, ‘and thy fear doth make thee brave, for it is in thy mind that though they who hold thy body captive may do thee great harm, he who hath thy soul in thrall may do thee worse. Now must thou contend with yet an even greater fear. Look upon me, Kolata of Matherion, and tremble, for I will visit upon thee the ultimate horror. Wilt thou speak, and speak freely?’
‘I can’t!’ Kolata wailed.
‘Then art thou lost. Behold me as I truly am, and consider well thy fate, for I am death, Kolata of Matherion, death beyond thy most dreadful imagining.’ The color drained from her slowly, and the glow within her was faint at first. She stood looking at him with her chin raised and an expression of deep sadness in her eyes as she glowed brighter and brighter.
Kolata screamed.
The other officials scrambled to their feet, their faces terrified, and their babbling suddenly shrill.
‘SIT DOWN!’ Sarabian bellowed at them. ‘AND BE SILENT!’
A few of them were cowed into obedience. Most, however, were too frightened. They continued to shrink back from Xanetia, crying out in shrill voices.
‘My Lord Vanion,’ Sarabian called over the tumult, ‘would you please restore order?’
‘At once, your Majesty.’ Vanion clapped down his visor, pulled his sword from its scabbard, and raised his shield. ‘Draw swords!’ He barked the command. There was a steely rasp as the Church Knights drew their swords. ‘Forward!’ Vanion ordered.
The knights posted along the walls marched clankingly forward, their swords at the ready, converging on the frightened officials. Vanion stretched forth his steel-clad arm, extending his sword and touching the tip to the throat of the Prime Minister. ‘I believe the Emperor told you to sit down, Pondia Subat,’ he said. ‘Do it! NOW!’
The Prime Minister sank back into his chair, suddenly more afraid of Vanion than he was of Xanetia.
A couple of the council members had to be chased down and forcibly returned to their seats, and one rather athletic one, the Minister of Public Works, Sparhawk thought, was persuaded to come down from the drape he’d been climbing only by the threat of Khalad’s crossbow. Order was restored. When the council had returned – or been returned – to their seats, however, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was discovered lying on the floor, vacant-eyed and with a large bubble of foam protruding from his gaping mouth. Vanion checked the body rather perfunctorily. ‘Poison,’ he said shortly. ‘He seems to have taken it himself.’
Ehlana shuddered.
‘Prithee, Anarae,’ Sarabian said to Xanetia, ‘continue thine inquiry.’
‘An it please your Majesty,’ she replied in that strange echoing voice. She turned her gaze on Kolata. ‘Wilt thou speak, and freely, Kolata of Matherion?’ she asked.
He shrank back in horror.
‘So be it, then.’ She put forth her hand and moved closer. ‘The curse of Edaemus is upon me,’ she warned, ‘and I bear its mark. I will share that curse with thee. Mayhap thou wilt regret thy silence when thy flesh doth decay and melt like wax from thy bones. The time hath come to choose, Kolata of Matherion. Speak or die. Who is it who hath stolen thy loyalty from thine appointed master?’ Her hand, more surely deadly than Vanion’s sword, was within inches of Kolata’s ashen face.
‘No!’ he shrieked. ‘No! I’ll tell you!’
The cloud appeared quite suddenly in the air above the gibbering minister, but Sparhawk was ready. Half hidden behind Ehlana’s throne, he had taken off his gauntlet and surreptitiously removed the Sapphire Rose from its confinement. ‘Blue Rose!’ he said sharply. ‘Destroy the cloud!’
The Bhelliom surged in his hand, and the dense, almost solid-appearing patch of intense darkness tattered, whipping like a pennon on a flag-staff in a hurricane, then it streamed away and was gone.
Zalasta was thrown back in his chair as his spell was broken. He half rose and fell back again, writhing and moaning as the jagged edges of his broken spell clawed at him. His chair overturned, and he convulsed on the floor like one caught in a seizure.
‘It was him!’ Kolata shrieked, pointing with a trembling hand. ‘It was Zalasta! He made me do it!’
Sephrenia’s gasp was clearly audible. Sparhawk looked sharply at her. She had fallen back, nearly as shaken as Zalasta himself. Her eyes were filled with disbelief and horror. Danae, Sparhawk noticed, was talking to her, speaking rapidly and holding her sister’s face quite firmly in her small hands.
‘Curse you, Sparhawk!’ The words came out in a kind of rasping croak as Zalasta, aided by his staff, dragged himself unsteadily to his feet. His face was shaken and twisted in frustration and rage. ‘You are mine, Sephrenia, mine!’ he howled. ‘I have longed for you for an eternity, watched as your thieving, guttersnipe Goddess stole you from me! But no more! Thus do I banish forever the Child Goddess and her hold on thee!’ His deadly staff whirled and leveled. ‘Die, Aphrael!’ he shrieked.
Sephrenia, without even thinking, clasped her arms around Sparhawk’s daughter and turned quickly in her seat, shielding the little girl with her own body, willingly offering her back to Zalasta’s fury.
Sparhawk’s heart froze as a ball of fire shot from the tip of the staff.
‘No!’ Vanion cried, trying to rush forward.
But Xanetia was already there. Her decision to approach Kolata from Sephrenia’s side of the room had clearly been influenced by her perception of what lay in Zalasta’s mind. She had consciously placed herself in a position to protect her enemy. Unafraid, she faced the raving Styric. The sizzling fireball streaked through the silent air of the throne-room, bearing with it all of Zalasta’s centuries-old hatred.
Xanetia held out her hand, and, like a tame bird returning to the hand that feeds it, the flaming orb settled into that hand. With only the faint hint of a smile touching her lips, the Delphaeic woman closed her fingers around Zalasta’s pent-up hatred. For an instant, incandescent flame spurted out from between her pale fingers, and then she absorbed the fiery messenger of death, the light within her consuming it utterly. ‘What now, Zalasta of Styricum?’ she asked the raging sorcerer. ‘What dost thou propose now? Wilt thou contend with me more at peril of thy life? Or wilt thou, like the whipped cur thou art, cringe and flee my wrath? For I do know thee. It hath been thy poisoned tongue which hath set my sister’s heart against me. Flee, master of lies. Abuse Sephrenia’s ears no longer with thy foul slanders. Go. I abjure thee. Go.’