The Hidden City (12 page)

The carriage had carried them from the waterfront to a large house on the outskirts of Anan. It had been there that Scarpa had spoken with a gaunt Styric with the lumpy features characteristic of the men of his race. The Styric's name was Keska, and his eyes had the look of one hopelessly damned.

‘I don't care about the discomfort!' Scarpa had half-shouted to the gaunt man at one point.
‘Time
is important, Keska, time! Just do it! As long as it doesn't kill us, we can endure it!'

The next morning the significance of that command had become all too obvious. Keska was evidently one of those outcast Styric magicians, but not a very good one. He could, with a great deal of clearly exhausting effort, compress the miles that lay between them and Scarpa's intended destination, but only a few miles each time, and the compression was accompanied by a horrid kind of wrenching agony. It seemed almost as if the clumsy magician were jerking them up and hurling them blindly forward with every ounce of his strength, and Ehlana could never be certain after each hideous, bruising jump that she was still intact. She felt torn and battered, but did what she could to conceal her pain from Alean. The gentle girl with the large eyes wept almost continuously now, overcome by her pain and fear and the misery of their circumstances.

Ehlana drew her mind into the present and looked about warily. It was approaching evening again. The overcast sky was gradually darkening, and the time of day Ehlana dreaded the most would soon be upon them.

Scarpa looked with some scorn at Keska, who slumped in his saddle like a wilted flower, obviously near exhaustion. ‘This is far enough,' he said. ‘Set up some kind of camp and get the women down off those
horses,' His brittle eyes grew bright as he looked Ehlana full in the face. ‘It's time for the bedraggled Queen of the Elenes to beg for her supper again. I
do
hope she'll be more convincing this time. It really distresses me to have to refuse her when her pleas aren't sufficiently sincere.'

‘Ehlana,' Krager whispered, touching her shoulder. The fire had died down to embers, and Ehlana could hear the sound of snores coming from the other side of their rude camp.

‘What?' she replied shortly.

‘Keep your voice down.' He was still wearing the black leather Peloi jerkin, his shaved head was sparsely stubbled, and his wine-reeking breath was nearly overpowering. ‘I'm doing you a favor. Don't put me in danger. I assume you realize by now that Scarpa's completely insane?'

‘Really?' she replied saidonically. ‘What an amazing thing.'

‘Please don't make this any more difficult. I seem to have made a small error in judgment here. If I'd fully realized how deranged that half-Styric bastard is, I'd have never agreed to take part in this ridiculous adventure.'

‘What
is
this strange fascination you have with lunatics, Krager?'

He shrugged. ‘Maybe it's a character defect. Scarpa actually believes that he can outwit his father – and even Cyrgon. He doesn't really believe that Sparhawk will surrender Bhelliom in exchange for your return, but he's managed to about half-convince the others. I'm sure you realize by now how he feels about women.'

‘He's demonstrated it often enough,' she said bitterly. ‘Does he share Baron Harparin's fondness for little boys instead?'

‘Scarpa isn't fond of anything except himself.
He
is his only passion. I've seen him spend hours trimming that beard of his. It gives him the opportunity to adore his reflection in the mirror. You haven't had the opportunity to see his delightful personality in full flower. The details of this trip are keeping what he chooses to call his mind occupied. Wait until we get to Natayos and you hear him start raving. He makes Martel and Annias seem like the very souls of sanity by comparison. I don't dare stay too long, so listen closely. Scarpa believes that Sparhawk will bring Bhelliom with him when he comes, right enough, but he
doesn't
believe he'll bring it to trade for you. Scarpa's absolutely certain that your husband's coming in order to have it out with Cyrgon,
and
he believes that they'll destroy each other in the course of the argument.'

‘Sparhawk has Bhelliom, you fool, and Bhelliom eats Gods for breakfast.'

‘I'm not here to argue about that. Maybe Sparhawk will win, and maybe he won't. That's really beside the point. What's important to us is what Scarpa believes. He's convinced himself that Sparhawk and Cyrgon will fight a war of mutual extinction. Then he thinks that Bhelliom will be left lying around free for the taking.'

‘What about Zalasta?'

‘I get the strong feeling that Scarpa doesn't expect Zalasta to be around when the fight's over. Scarpa's more than willing to kill anybody who gets in his way.'

‘He'd kill his own father?'

Krager shrugged. ‘Blood ties don't mean anything to Scarpa. When he was younger, he decided that his mother and his half-sisters knew things about him that he didn't want them to share with the authorities, so he killed them. He hated them anyway, so that may not mean all that much. If Sparhawk and Cyrgon
do
kill each other, and if Zalasta's broken out in a sudden rash of
mortality during the festivities, Scarpa
might
just be the only one left around to take possession of the Bhelliom. He's got an army in these jungles, and if he has the Bhelliom as well, he might be able to pull it off. He'll march on Matherion, take the city and slaughter the government. Then he'll crown himself emperor. I'm personally betting against it, though, so for God's sake keep your temper under control. You're not really important to
his
plans, but you're vital to Zalasta's – and mine. If you do anything at all to set Scarpa off, he'll kill you as quickly as he ordered Elron to kill your lady-in-waiting. Zalasta and I believe that Sparhawk
will
trade Bhelliom for you, but only if you're alive. Don't enrage that maniac. If he kills you, all our plans will collapse.'

‘Why are you telling me this, Krager? There's something else too, isn't there?'

‘Of course. If things go against us, I'd like to have you available to speak out in my behalf when the trials start.'

‘That wouldn't do any good, I'm afraid,' she told him sweetly. There won't be any trial for you, Krager. sparhawk's already given you to Khalad and Khalad's already made up his mind.'

‘Khalad?' Krager's voice sounded a little weak.

‘Kurik's oldest son. He seems to feel that you had some part in his father's death, and he feels obliged to do something about it. I suppose you could try to talk him out of it, but I'd advise you to talk fast if you do. Khalad's a very abrupt young man, and he'll probably have you hanging from a meat-hook before you get out three words.'

Krager didn't answer, but slipped away instead, his shaved scalp pale in the darkness. It wasn't much of a victory, Ehlana privately conceded, but in her situation victories of any kind were very hard to come by.

* * *

‘They actually do that?' Scarpa's harsh voice was hungry.

‘It's an old custom, Lord Scarpa,' Ehlana replied in a meek voice, keeping her eyes downcast as they plodded along the muddy path. ‘Emperor Sarabian is planning to discontinue the practice, however.'

‘It will be reinstituted immediately following my coronation.' Scarpa's eyes were very bright. ‘It is a proper form of respect.' Scarpa had an old purple velvet cloak, shiny with wear, that he had dramatically pulled over one shoulder in a grotesque imitation of an imperial mantle, and he struck absurd poses with each pronouncement.

‘As you say, Lord Scarpa.' It was tedious to go over the same things again and again, but it kept Scarpa's mind occupied, and when his attention was firmly fixed on the ceremonies and practices of the imperial court in Matherion he was not thinking of ways to make life unbearable for his captives.

‘Describe it again,' he commanded. ‘I'll need to know precisely how it's supposed to be done – so that I can punish those who fail to perform it properly.'

Ehlana sighed. ‘At the approach of the imperial person, the members of the court kneel –'

‘On both knees?'

‘Yes, Lord Scarpa.'

‘Excellent! Excellent!' His face was exalted. ‘Go on.'

‘Then, as the emperor passes, they lean forward, put the palms of their hands on the floor and touch their foreheads to the tiles.'

‘Capital!' He suddenly giggled, a high-pitched, almost girlish sound that startled her. She gave him a quick, sidelong glance. His face was grotesquely distorted into an expression of unholy exaltation. And then his eyes grew wide and his expression became one of near-religious ecstasy. ‘And the Tamuls who rule the world
shall be ruled by me',' He intoned in a resonant, declamatory voice. ‘All power shall be mine! The governance of the world shall be in
my
hands, and disobedience will be death!'

Ehlana shuddered as he raved on.

And he came to her again as humid night settled over their muddy forest encampment, drawn to her by a hunger, a greed, that was beyond his ability to control. It was revolting, but Ehlana realized that her knowledge of the particulars of traditional court ceremonies gave her an enormous power over him. His hunger was insatiable, and only she could satisfy it. She grasped that power firmly, drawing strength and confidence from it, actually relishing it even as Krager and the others withdrew with expressions of frightened revulsion.

‘Nine wives, you say!' Scarpa's voice was almost pleading. ‘Why not ninety? Why not nine hundred?'

‘It is the custom, Lord Scarpa. The reason for it should be obvious.'

‘Oh, of course, of course.' He brooded darkly over it. ‘I shall have nine thousand!' he proclaimed. ‘And each shall be more desirable than the last! And when I have finished with them, they shall be given to my loyal soldiers! Let no woman dare to believe that my favor in any way empowers her! All women are only whores! I shall
buy
them and throw them away when I tire of them!' His mad eyes bulged, and he stared into the campfire. The flickering flames reflected in those eyes seemed to seethe like the madness that lay behind them.

He leaned toward her, laying a confiding hand on her arm. I have seen that which others are too stupid to see,' he told her. ‘Others look, but they do not see – but,
I
see. Oh, yes, I see. I see very well. They are all in it together, you know – all of them. They watch me. They have always watched me. I can never get away from their eyes – watching, watching, watching – and
talking – talking behind their hands, breathing their cinnamon-scented breath into each other's faces. All foul and corrupt – scheming, plotting against me, trying to bring me down. Their eyes – all soft and hidden and veiled with the lashes that hide the daggers of their hatred, watching, watching, watching.' His voice sank lower and lower. ‘And talking, talking behind their hands so that I can't hear what they're saying. Whispering. I hear it always. I hear the hissing susurration of their endless whispering. Their eyes following me wherever I go – and their laughing and whispering. I hear the hiss, hiss of their whispering – endless whisper – always my name – Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, again and again, hissing in my ears. Flaunting their rounded limbs and rolling their soot-lined eyes. Plotting, scheming with the endless hissing whispers, always seeking ways to hurt me. Ssscar-pa, Ssscar-pa, trying to humiliate me.' His blue-tinged eyeballs were starting from his face, and his lips and beard were flecked with foam. ‘I was nothing. They made me nothing. They called me Selga's bastard and gave me pennies to lead them to the beds of my mother and my sisters and cuffed me and spat on me and laughed at me when I cried and they lusted after my mother and my sisters and all around me the hissing in my ears – and I smell the sound – that sweet cloying sound of rotten flesh and stale lust all purple and writhing with the liquid hiss of their whispers and –'

Then his mad eyes filled with terror, and he cringed back from her and fell, grovelling in the mud. ‘Please, Mother!' he wailed. I didn't do it! Silbie did it! Please-pleaseplease don't lock me in there again! Please not in the dark! Pleasepleaseplease not in the dark! Not in the dark!' And he scrambled to his feet and fled back into the forest with his ‘Pleasepleaseplease' echoing back in a long, dying fall.

Ehlana was suddenly overcome with a wrenching, unbearable pity, and she bowed her head and wept.

Zalasta was waiting for them in Natayos. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had seen a flowering of Arjuni civilization, a flowering financed largely by the burgeoning slave-trade. An ill-advised slave-raid into southern Atan, however, coupled with a number of gross policy blunders by the Tamul administrators of that region had unleashed an uncontrolled Atan punitive expedition. Natayos had been a virtual gem of a city with stately buildings and broad avenues. It was now a forgotten ruin buried in the jungle, its tumbled buildings snarled in ropelike vines, its stately halls now the home of chattering monkeys and brightly colored tropical birds, and its darker recesses inhabited by snakes and the scurrying rats which were their prey.

But now humans had returned to Natayos. Scarpa's army was quartered there, and Arjunis, Cynesgans, and rag-tag battalions of Elenes had cleared the quarter near the ancient city's northern gate of vines, trees, monkeys and reptiles in order to make it semi-habitable.

Zalasta stood leaning on his staff at the half-fallen gate, his silvery-bearded face drawn with fatigue and a look of hopeless pain in his eyes. His first reaction when his son arrived with the captives was one of rage. He snarled at Scarpa in Styric, a language that seemed eminently suited for reprimand and one which Ehlana did not understand. She took no small measure of satisfaction, however, in the look of sullen apprehension that crossed Scarpa's face. For all his blustering and airs of pre-eminent superiority, Scarpa still appeared to stand in a certain awe and fear of the ancient Styric who had incidentally sired him.