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‘Count Gerrich is raising a rebellion. He seems to think that the crown might fit him. He’s even going so far as to claim that Drychtnath’s returned. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’

Her eyes grew distant. ‘Is this shadow you’ve been seeing exactly the same as the one you and Ehlana saw before?’ she asked.

‘It feels different somehow.’

‘Do you get that same sense that it has more than one consciousness in it?’

‘That hasn’t changed. It’s a small group, but it’s a group all the same, and the cloud that tore the Earl of Belton to pieces was definitely the same. Did the Troll-Gods manage to escape from Bhelliom somehow?’

‘Let me think my way through it for a moment, Sparhawk,’ she replied. She considered it for a time. In a curious way she was impressing her own appearance on Danae’s face. ‘I think we may have a problem, dear one,’ she said finally.

‘I noticed that myself, little mother.’

‘Stop trying to be clever, Sparhawk. Do you remember the Dawn-men who came out of that cloud up in Pelosia?’

Sparhawk shuddered. ‘I’ve been making a special point of trying to forget that.’

‘Don’t discount the possibility that the wild stories about Drychtnath may have some basis in fact. The Troll-Gods can reach back in time and bring creatures and people forward to where we are now. Drychtnath may very well indeed have returned.’

Sparhawk groaned. ‘Then the Troll-Gods have managed to escape, haven’t they?’

‘I didn’t say that, Sparhawk. Just because the Troll-Gods did this once doesn’t mean that they’re the only ones who know how. For all I know, Aphrael could do it herself.’ She paused. ‘You could have asked her these questions, you know.’

‘Possibly, but I don’t think I could have asked her this one, because I don’t think she’d know the answer. She doesn’t seem to be able to grasp the concept of limitations for some reason.’

‘You’ve noticed,’ she said dryly.

‘Be nice. She’s my daughter, after all.’

‘She was my sister first, so I have a certain amount of seniority in the matter. What is it that she wouldn’t be able to answer?’

‘Could a Styric magician – or any other magician – be behind all this? Could we be dealing with a human?’

‘No, Sparhawk, I don’t think so. In forty thousand years there have only been two Styric magicians who were able to reach back into time, and they could only do it imperfectly. For all practical purposes what we’re talking about is beyond human capability.’

‘That’s what I wanted to find out for sure. We’re dealing with Gods then?’

‘I’m afraid so, Sparhawk, almost certainly.’

Chapter 4

Preceptor Sparhawk:

It is our hope that this finds you and your family in good health.

A matter of some delicacy has arisen, and we find that your presence is required here in Chyrellos. You are therefore commanded by the Church to proceed forthwith to the Basilica and to present yourself before our throne to receive our further instruction. We know that as true son of the Church you will not delay. We shall expect your attendance upon us within the week.

Dolmant, Archprelate.

Sparhawk lowered the letter and looked around at the others.

‘He gets right to the point, doesn’t he?’ Kalten observed. ‘Of course Dolmant never was one to beat around the bush.’

Queen Ehlana gave a howl of absolute fury and began beating her fists on the council table and stamping her feet on the floor.

‘You’ll hurt your hands,’ Sparhawk cautioned.

‘How dare he?’ she exploded. ‘How dare he?’

‘A bit abrupt, perhaps,’ Stragen noted cautiously.

‘You will ignore this churlish command, Sparhawk!’ Ehlana ordered.

‘I can’t do that.’

‘You are my husband and my subject! If Dolmant wants to see you, he’ll ask my permission! This is outrageous!’

‘The Archprelate does in fact have the authority to summon the preceptor of one of the Militant Orders to Chyrellos, your Majesty,’ the Earl of Lenda diffidently told the fuming queen.

‘You’re wearing too many hats, Sparhawk,’ Tynian told his friend. ‘You should resign from a few of these exalted positions you hold.’

‘It’s that devastating personality of his,’ Kalten said to Ulath, ‘and all those unspeakable gifts. People just wither and die in his absence.’

‘I forbid it!’ Ehlana said flatly.

‘I have to obey him, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk explained. ‘I’m a Church Knight.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Very well then,’ she decided, ‘since Dolmant’s feeling so authoritarian, we’ll all obey his stupid command. We’ll go to Chyrellos and set up shop in the Basilica. I’ll let him know that I expect him to provide me with adequate facilities and an administrative staff – at his expense. He and I are going to have this out once and for all.’

‘This promises to be one of the high points in the history of the Church,’ Stragen observed.

‘I’ll make that pompous ass wish he’d never been born,’ Ehlana declared ominously.

Nothing Sparhawk might say could in any way change his wife’s mind. If the truth were to be known, however, he did not really try all that hard, because he could see her point. Dolmant was being high-handed. He tended at times to run roughshod over the kings of Eosia and so the clash of wills between the Archprelate and the Queen of Elenia was probably inevitable. The unfortunate thing was that they were genuinely fond of each other, and neither of them was opposing the other out of any petty vanity or pride. Dolmant was asserting the authority of the Church, and Ehlana that of the Elenian throne. They had become institutions instead of people. It was Sparhawk’s misfortune to be caught in the middle.

He was absolutely certain that the arrogant tone of the Archprelate’s letter had not come from his friend but from some half-drowsing scribe absent-mindedly scribbling formula phrases. What Dolmant had most probably said was something on the order of, ‘Send a letter to Sparhawk and tell him I’d like to see him.’ That was not, however, what had arrived in Cimmura. What had arrived had set Ehlana’s teeth on edge, and she went out of her way to make the impending visit to Chyrellos as inconvenient for the Archprelate as she possibly could.

Her first step was to depopulate the palace. Everybody had to join her entourage. The queen needed ladies-in-waiting. The ladies-in-waiting needed maids. They all needed grooms and footmen. Lenda and Platime, who were to remain in Cimmura to maintain the government, were left almost unassisted.

‘Looks almost like an army mobilising, doesn’t it?’ Kalten said gaily as they came down the palace stairs on the morning of their departure.

‘Let’s hope the Archprelate doesn’t misunderstand,’ Ulath murmured. ‘He wouldn’t really believe your wife was planning to lay siege to the Basilica, would he, Sparhawk?’

Once they left Cimmura, the gaily-dressed Elenian Court stretched out for miles under a blue spring sky. Had it not been for the steely glint in the queen’s eyes, this might have been no more than one of those ‘outings’ so loved by idle courtiers. Ehlana had ‘suggested’ that Sparhawk, as acting preceptor of the Pandion Order, should also be suitably accompanied. They had haggled about the number of Pandions he should take with him to Chyrellos. He had held out at first for Kalten, Berit and perhaps one or two others, while the queen had been more in favour of bringing along the entire order. They had finally agreed upon a score of black-armoured knights.

It was impossible to make any kind of time with so large an entourage. They seemed almost to creep across the face of Elenia, plodding easterly to Lenda and then southeasterly toward Demos and Chyrellos. The peasantry took the occasion of their passing as an excuse for a holiday, and the road was usually lined with crowds of country people who had come out to gawk. ‘It’s a good thing we don’t do this very often,’ Sparhawk observed to his wife not long after they had passed the city of Lenda.

‘I rather enjoy getting out, Sparhawk.’ The queen and princess Danae were riding in an ornate carriage drawn by six white horses.

‘I’m sure you do, but this is the planting season. The peasants should be in the fields. Too many of these royal excursions could cause a famine.’

‘You really don’t approve of what I’m doing, do you, Sparhawk?’

‘I understand why you’re doing it, Ehlana, and you’re probably right. Dolmant needs to be reminded that his authority isn’t absolute, but I think this particular approach is just a little frivolous.’

‘Of course it’s frivolous, Sparhawk,’ she admitted quite calmly. ‘That’s the whole point. In spite of all the evidence he’s had to the contrary, Dolmant still thinks I’m a silly little girl. I’m going to rub his nose in “silly” for a while. Then, when he’s good and tired of it, I’ll take him aside and suggest that it would be much easier on him if he took me seriously. That should get his attention. Then we’ll be able to get down to business.’

‘Everything you do is politically motivated, isn’t it?’

‘Well not quite everything, Sparhawk.’

They stopped briefly in Demos, and Khalad and Talen took the royal couple, Kalten, Danae and Mirtai to visit their mothers. Aslade and Elys mothered everyone impartially. Sparhawk strongly suspected that this was one of the main reasons his wife quite often found excuses to travel to Demos. Her childhood had been bleak and motherless, and anytime she felt insecure or uncertain, some reason seemed to come up why her presence in Demos was absolutely necessary. Aslade’s kitchen was warm, and its walls were hung with burnished copper pots. It was a homey sort of place that seemed to answer some deep need in the Queen of Elenia. The smells alone were enough to banish most of the cares of all who entered it.

Elys, Talen’s mother, was a radiant blonde woman, and Aslade was a kind of monument to motherhood. They adored each other. Aslade had been Kurik’s wife, and Elys his mistress, but there appeared to be no jealousy between them. They were practical women, and they both realised that jealousy was a useless kind of thing that never made anyone feel good. Sparhawk and Kalten were immediately banished from the kitchen, Khalad and Talen were sent to mend a fence, and the Queen of Elenia and her Tamul slave continued their intermittent education in the art of cooking while Aslade and Elys mothered Danae.

‘I can’t remember the last time I saw a queen kneading bread-dough,’ Kalten grinned as he and Sparhawk strolled around the familiar dooryard.

‘I think she’s making pie-crusts,’ Sparhawk corrected him.

‘Dough is dough, Sparhawk.’

‘Remind me never to ask you to bake me a pie.’

‘No danger there,’ Kalten laughed. ‘Mirtai looks very natural, though. She’s had lots of practice cutting things – and people – up. I just wish she wouldn’t use her own daggers. You can never really be sure where they’ve been.’

‘She always cleans them after she stabs somebody.’

‘It’s the idea of it, Sparhawk,’ Kalten shuddered. ‘The thought of it makes my blood run cold.’

‘Don’t think about it then.’

‘You’re going to be late, you know,’ Kalten reminded his friend. ‘Dolmant only gave you a week to get to Chyrellos.’

‘It couldn’t be helped.’

‘Do you want me to ride on ahead and let him know you’re coming?’

‘And spoil the surprise my wife has planned for him? Don’t be silly.’

They were no more than a league southeast of Demos the next morning when the attack came. A hundred men, peculiarly dressed with strange weapons, burst over the top of a low knoll bellowing war-cries. They thundered forward on foot for the most part; the ones on horseback appeared to be their leaders.

The courtiers fled squealing in terror as Sparhawk barked commands to his Pandions. The twenty black-armoured knights formed up around the queen’s carriage and easily repelled the first assault. Men on foot are not really a match for mounted knights.

‘What’s that language?’ Kalten shouted.

‘Old Lamork, I think,’ Ulath replied. ‘It’s a lot like Old Thalesian.’

‘Sparhawk!’ Mirtai barked. ‘Don’t give them time to regroup!’ She pointed her blood-smeared sword at the attackers milling around at the top of the knoll.

‘She’s got a point,’ Tynian agreed.

Sparhawk quickly assessed the situation, deployed some of his knights to protect Ehlana and formed up the remainder of his force.

‘Charge!’ he roared.

It is the lance that makes the armoured knight so devastating against foot-troops. The man on foot has no defence against it, and he cannot even flee. A third of the attackers had fallen in the initial assault, and a score fell victim to the lances during Sparhawk’s charge. The knights then fell to work with swords and axes. Bevier’s lochaber axe was particularly devastating, and he left wide tracks of the dead and dying through the tightly packed ranks of the now-confused attackers.

It was Mirtai, however, who stunned them all with a shocking display of sheer ferocity. Her sword was lighter than the broadswords of the Church Knights, and she wielded it with almost the delicacy of Stragen’s rapier. She seldom thrust at an opponent’s body, but concentrated instead on his face and throat, and when necessary, his legs. Her thrusts were short and tightly controlled, and her slashes were aimed not at muscles, but rather at tendons. She crippled more than she killed, and the shrieks and groans of her victims raised a fearful din on that bloody field.

The standard tactic of armoured knights when deployed against foot-troops was to charge with their lances first and then to use the weight of their horses to crush their unmounted opponents together so tightly that they became tangled with their comrades. Once they had been rendered more or less helpless, slaughtering them was easy work.

‘Ulath!’ Sparhawk shouted. ‘Tell them to throw down their weapons!’

‘I’ll try,’ Ulath shouted back. Then he roared something incomprehensible at the milling foot-troops.

A mounted man wearing a grotesquely decorated helmet bellowed something in reply.

‘That one with the wings on his helmet is the leader, Sparhawk,’ Ulath said, pointing with his bloody axe.

‘What did he say?’ Kalten demanded.

‘He made some uncomplimentary remarks about my mother. Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen. I really ought to do something about that.’ He wheeled his horse and approached the man with the winged helmet, who was also armed with a war axe.

Sparhawk had never seen an axe-fight before, and he was somewhat surprised to note that there was far more finesse involved than he had imagined. Sheer strength accounted for much, of course, but sudden changes of the direction of swings implied a level of sophistication Sparhawk had not expected. Both men wore heavy round shields, and the defences they raised with them were more braced than might have been the case had they been attacking each other with swords.

Ulath stood up in his stirrups and raised his axe high over his head. The warrior in the winged helmet raised his shield to protect his head, but the huge Thalesian swung his arm back, rolled his shoulder and delivered an underhand blow instead, catching his opponent just under the ribs. The man who seemed to be the leader of the attackers doubled over sharply, clutching at his stomach, and then he fell from his saddle.

A vast groan rolled through the ranks of the attackers still on their feet, and then, like a mist caught by a sudden breeze, they wavered and vanished.

‘Where did they go?’ Berit shouted, looking around with alarm.

But no one could answer. Where there had been two score foot-troops before, there was now nothing, and a sudden silence fell over the field as the shrieking wounded also vanished. Only the dead remained, and even they were strangely altered. The bodies were peculiarly desiccated – dry, shrunken and withered. The blood which had covered their limbs was no longer bright red, but black, dry and crusty.

‘What kind of spell could do that Sparhawk?’ Tynian demanded.

‘I have no idea,’ Sparhawk replied in some bafflement. ‘Someone’s playing, and I don’t think I like the game.’

‘Bronze!’ Bevier exclaimed from nearby. The young Cyrinic Knight had dismounted and was examining the armour of one of the shrivelled dead. They’re wearing bronze armour, Sparhawk. Their weapons and helmets are steel, but this mail shirt’s made out of bronze.’

‘What’s going on here?’ Kalten demanded.

‘Berit,’ Sparhawk said, ‘ride back to the mother house at Demos. Gather up every brother who can still wear armour. I want them here before noon.’

‘Right,’ Berit replied crisply. He wheeled his horse and galloped back the way they had come.

Sparhawk looked around quickly. ‘Up there,’ he said, pointing at a steep hill on the other side of the road. ‘Let’s gather up this crowd and get them to the top of that hill. Put the courtiers and grooms and footmen to work. I want ditches up there, and I want to see a forest of sharpened stakes sprouting on the sides of that hill. I don’t know where those men in bronze armour went, but I want to be ready in case they come back.’

‘You can’t order me around like that!’ an overdressed courtier exclaimed to Khalad in an outraged tone of voice. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

‘Of course I do,’ Sparhawk’s young squire replied in an ominous tone of voice. ‘You’re the man who’s going to pick up that shovel and start digging. Or if you prefer, you can be the man who’s crawling around on his hands and knees picking up his teeth.’ Khalad showed the courtier his fist. The courtier could hardly miss seeing it, since it was about an inch in front of his nose.

‘It’s almost like old times, isn’t it?’ Kalten laughed. ‘Khalad sounds exactly like Kurik.’

Sparhawk sighed. ‘Yes,’ he agreed soberly, ‘I think he’s going to work out just fine. Get the others, Kalten. We need to talk.’

They gathered beside Ehlana’s carriage. The queen was a bit pale, and she was holding her daughter in her arms.

‘All right,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Who were they?’

‘Lamorks, evidently,’ Ulath said. ‘I doubt that anybody else would be able to speak Old Lamork.’

‘But why would they be speaking in that language?’ Tynian asked. ‘Nobody’s spoken in Old Lamork for a thousand years.’

‘And nobody’s worn bronze armour for even longer,’ Bevier added.

‘Somebody’s using a spell I’ve never even heard of before,’ Sparhawk said. ‘What are we dealing with here?’

‘Isn’t that obvious?’ Stragen said. ‘Somebody’s reaching back into the past – the same way the Troll-Gods did in Pelosia. We’ve got a powerful magician of some kind out there who’s playing games.’

‘It fits,’ Ulath grunted. ‘They were speaking an antique language; they had antique weapons and equipment; they weren’t familiar with modern tactics; and somebody obviously used magic to send them back to wherever they came from – except for the dead ones.’

‘There’s something else too,’ Bevier added thoughtfully. ‘They were Lamorks, and part of the upheaval in Lamorkand right now revolves around the stories that Drychtnath’s returned. This attack makes it appear that those stories aren’t just rumours and wild concoctions dreamed up late at night in some ale-house. Could Count Gerrich be getting some help from a Styric magician? If Drychtnath himself has actually been brought into the present, nothing’s going to pacify the Lamorks. They go up in flames at just the mention of his name.’

‘That’s all very interesting, gentlemen,’ Ehlana told them, ‘but this wasn’t just a random attack. We’re a goodly distance from Lamorkand, so these antiques of yours went to a great deal of trouble to attack us specifically. The real question here is why?’

‘We’ll work on finding an answer for you, your Majesty,’ Tynian promised her.

Berit returned shortly before noon with three hundred armoured Pandions, and the rest of the journey to Chyrellos had some of the air of a military expedition.

Their arrival in the Holy City and their stately march through the streets to the Basilica was very much like a parade, and it caused quite a stir. The Archprelate himself came out onto a second-floor balcony to watch their arrival in the square before the Basilica. Even from this distance, Sparhawk could clearly see that Dolmant’s nostrils were white and his jaw was clenched. Ehlana’s expression was regal and coolly defiant.

Sparhawk lifted his daughter down from the carriage. ‘Don’t wander off,’ he murmured into her small ear. ‘There’s something I need to talk with you about.’

‘Later,’ she whispered back to him. ‘I’ll have to make peace between Dolmant and mother first.’

‘That’ll be a neat trick.’

‘Watch, Sparhawk – and learn.’

The Archprelate’s greeting was chilly – just this side of frigid – and he made it abundantly clear that he was just dying to have a nice long chat with the Queen of Elenia. He sent for his first secretary, the Patriarch Emban, and rather airily dropped the problem of making arrangements for Ehlana’s entourage into the fat churchman’s lap. Emban scowled and waddled away muttering to himself.

Then Dolmant invited the queen and her prince consort into a private audience chamber. Mirtai stationed herself outside the door. ‘No hitting,’ she told Dolmant and Ehlana as they entered.

The small audience chamber was draped and carpeted in blue, and there were a table and chairs in the centre.

‘Strange woman that one,’ Dolmant murmured looking back over his shoulder at Mirtai. He took his seat and looked at Ehlana with a firm expression. ‘Let’s get down to business. Would you like to explain this, Queen Ehlana?’

‘Of course, Archprelate Dolmant.’ She pushed his letter across the table to him. ‘Just as soon as you explain this.’ There was steel in her voice.

He picked up the letter and glanced at it. ‘It seems fairly straightforward. Which part of it didn’t you understand?’

Things went downhill from there rather rapidly.

Ehlana and Dolmant were on the verge of severing all diplomatic ties when the Royal Princess Danae entered the room dragging the Royal Toy Rollo by one hind leg. She gravely crossed the room, climbed up into the Archprelate’s lap and kissed him. Sparhawk had received quite a few of the kind of kisses his daughter bestowed when she wanted something, and he was well-aware of just how devastatingly potent they were. Dolmant didn’t really have much of a chance after that. ‘I should have read through the letter before I had it dispatched, I suppose,’ he admitted grudgingly. ‘Scribes sometimes overstate things.’

‘Maybe I over-reacted,’ Ehlana conceded.

‘I had a great deal on my mind.’ Dolmant’s excuse had the tone of a peace-offering.

‘I was irritable on the day when your letter arrived,’ Ehlana countered.

Sparhawk leaned back. The tension in the room had noticeably relaxed. Dolmant had changed since his elevation to the Archprelacy. Always before, he had been a self-effacing man, so self-effacing in fact that his colleagues in the Hierocracy had not even considered him for the highest post in the Church until Ehlana had pointed out his many sterling qualities to them. The irony of that fact was not lost on Sparhawk. Now, however, Dolmant seemed to speak with two voices. The one was the familiar, almost colloquial voice of their old friend. The other was the voice of the Archprelate, authoritarian and severe. The institution of his office seemed to be gradually annexing their old friend. Sparhawk sighed. It was probably inevitable, but he regretted it all the same.

Ehlana and the Archprelate continued to apologise and offer excuses to each other. After a while they agreed to respect one another, and they concluded their conference by agreeing to pay closer attention to little courtesies in the future.

Princess Danae, still seated in the Archprelate’s lap, winked at Sparhawk. There were quite a number of political and theological implications in what she had just done, but Sparhawk didn’t really want to think about those.

The reason for the peremptory summons which had nearly led to a private war between Ehlana and Dolmant had been the arrival of a high-ranking emissary from the Tamul Empire on the Daresian continent, that vast land-mass lying to the east of Zemoch. Formal diplomatic relations between the Elene Kingdoms of Eosia and the Tamul Empire of Daresia did not exist. The Church, however, routinely dispatched emissaries with ambassadorial rank to the imperial capital at Matherion, in some measure because the three western-most kingdoms of the empire were occupied by Elenes, and their religion differed only slightly from that of the Eosian Church.

The emissary was a Tamul, a man of the same race as Mirtai, although she would have made at least two of him. His skin was the same golden bronze, his black hair touched with grey and his dark eyes were uptilted at the corners.

‘He’s very good,’ Dolmant quietly cautioned them as they sat in one of the audience chambers while Emban and the emissary exchanged pleasantries near the door. ‘In some ways he’s even better than Emban. Be just a little careful of what you say around him. Tamuls are quite sensitive to the nuances of language.’

Emban escorted the silk-robed emissary to the place where they all sat. ‘Your Majesty, I have the honour to present his Excellency, Ambassador Oscagne, representative of the imperial court at Matherion,’ the little fat man said, bowing to Ehlana.

‘I swoon in your Majesty’s divine presence,’ the ambassador proclaimed with a florid bow.

‘You don’t really, do you, your Excellency?’ she asked him with a little smile.

‘Well, not really, of course,’ he admitted with absolute aplomb. ‘I thought it might be polite to say it, though. Did it seem unduly extravagant? I am unversed in the usages of your culture.’

‘You’ll do just fine, your Excellency,’ she laughed.

‘I must say, however, with your Majesty’s permission, that you’re a devilishly attractive young lady. I’ve known a few queens in my time, and the customary compliments usually cost one a certain amount of wrestling with one’s conscience.’ Ambassador Oscagne spoke flawless Elenic.

‘May I present my husband, Prince Sparhawk?’ Ehlana suggested.

‘The legendary Sir Sparhawk? Most assuredly, dear lady. I’ve travelled half-round the world to make his acquaintance. Well met, Sir Sparhawk.’ Oscagne bowed.

‘Your Excellency,’ Sparhawk replied, also bowing.

Ehlana then introduced the others, and the ongoing exchange of diplomatic pleasantries continued for the better part of an hour. Oscagne and Mirtai spoke at some length in the Tamul tongue, a language which Sparhawk found quite musical.

‘Have we concluded all the necessary genuflections in courtesy’s direction?’ the ambassador asked at last. ‘Cultures vary, of course, but in Tamuli three-quarters of an hour is the customary amount of time one is expected to waste on polite trivialities.’

‘That seems about right to me too,’ Stragen grinned. ‘If we overdo our homage to courtesy, she becomes a bit conceited and expects more and more obeisance every time.’

‘Well said, Milord Stragen,’ Oscagne approved. ‘The reason for my visit is fairly simple, my friends. I’m in trouble.’ He looked around. ‘I pause for the customary gasps of surprise while you try to adjust your thinking to accept the notion that anyone could possibly find any fault in so witty and charming a fellow as I.’

‘I think I’m going to like him,’ Stragen murmured.

‘You would,’ Ulath grunted.

‘Pray tell, your Excellency,’ Ehlana said, ‘how on earth could anyone find reason to be dissatisfied with you?’ The ambassador’s flowery speech was contagious.

‘I exaggerated slightly for effect,’ Oscagne admitted. ‘I’m not really in all that much trouble. It’s just that his Imperial Majesty has sent me to Chyrellos to appeal for aid, and I’m supposed to couch the request in such a way that it won’t humiliate him.’

Emban’s eyes were very, very bright. He was in his natural element here. ‘I think the way we’ll want to proceed here is to just lay the problem out on the table for our friends in bold flat terms,’ he suggested, ‘and then they can concentrate on the real issue of avoiding embarrassment to the imperial government. They’re all unspeakably clever. I’m sure that if they put their heads together, they’ll be able to come up with something.’

Dolmant sighed. ‘Was there no one else you could have selected for my job, Ehlana?’ he asked plaintively.

Oscagne gave the two of them a questioning look.

‘It’s a long story, your Excellency.’ Emban told him. ‘I’ll tell you all about it someday when neither of us has anything better to do. Tell them what it is in Tamuli that’s so serious that his Imperial Majesty had to send you here to look for help.’

‘Promise not to laugh?’ Oscagne said to Ehlana.

‘I’ll do my best to stifle my guffaws,’ she promised.

‘We’ve got a bit of civil unrest in Tamuli,’ Oscagne told them.

They all waited.

‘That’s it.’ Oscagne confessed ruefully. ‘Of course I’m quoting the emperor verbatim – at his instruction. You’d almost have to know our emperor to understand. He’d sooner die than overstate anything. He once referred to a hurricane as a “little breeze” and the loss of half his fleet as a minor inconvenience.’

‘Very well, your Excellency,’ Ehlana said. ‘Now we know how your emperor would characterise the problem. What words would you use to describe it?’

‘Well,’ Oscagne said, ‘since your Majesty is so kind as to ask, “catastrophic” does sort of leap to mind. We might consider “insoluble”, “cataclysmic”, “overwhelming” – little things like that. I really think you should give some consideration to his Majesty’s request, my friends, because we have some fairly strong evidence that what’s happening on the Daresian continent may soon spread to Eosia as well, and if it does, it’s probably going to mean the end of civilisation as we know it. I’m not entirely positive how you Elenes feel about that sort of thing, but we Tamuls are more or less convinced that some effort ought to be made to fend it off. It sets such a bad precedent when you start letting the world come to an end every week or so. It seems to erode the confidence people have in their governments for some reason.’