Domes of Fire Part 34

'Even the heathen responds to that gentle inner voice, Milord Stragen.'

'I'm afraid I'm still missing the point, Sir Bevier.'

'Logic is what sets our G.o.d apart,' Bevier explained patiently. 'It's His special gift to the Elene people, and He reaches out with it to all others, freely offering its blessing to the unenlightened.'

'Is that really a part of Elene doctrine, your Grace?' Stragen asked the Patriarch of Ucera.

'Tentatively,' Emban replied. 'The view is more widely held in Arcium than elsewhere. The Arcian clergy has been trying to have it included in the articles of the faith for the last thousand years or so, but the Deirans have been resisting. The Hierocracy takes up the question when we have nothing else to do.'

'Do you think it will ever be resolved, your Grace?' Norkan asked him.

'Good G.o.d no, your Excellency. If we ever settled the issue, we wouldn't have anything to argue about.'

Oscagne approached from the far side of the square. He took Sparhawk and Vanion aside, his expression concerned. 'How well do you gentlemen know Zalasta?' he asked them.

'I only met him once before we reached Sarsos,' Sparhawk replied. 'Lord Vanion here knows him much better than I.'

'I'm starting to have some doubts about this legendary wisdom of his,' Oscagne said to them. 'The Styric enclave in eastern Astel abuts Atan, so he should know more about these people than he seems to. I just caught him suggesting a demonstration of prowess to the Peloi and some of the younger Church Knights.'

'It's not unusual, your Excellency,' Vanion shrugged. 'Young men like to show off.'

'That's exactly my point, Lord Vanion.' Oscagne's expression was worried. 'That's not done here in Atan. Demonstrations of that kind lead to bloodshed. The Atans look upon that sort of thing as a challenge. I got there just in time to avert a disaster. What was the man thinking of?'

'Styrics sometimes grow a bit vague,' Vanion explained. 'They can be profoundly absent-minded sometimes. I'll have Sephrenia speak with him and remind him to pay attention.'

'Oh, there's something else, gentlemen,' Oscagne smiled. 'Don't let Sir Berit wander around alone in the city. There are whole platoons of unmarried Atan girls l.u.s.ting after him.'

'Berit?' Vanion looked startled.

'It's happened before, Vanion,' Sparhawk told him. There's something about our young friend that drives young women wild. It has to do with his eyelashes, I think. Ehlana and Melidere tried to explain it to me in Darsas. I didn't understand what they were saying, but I took their word for it.'

'What an astonis.h.i.+ng thing,' Vanion said.

There were torches everywhere, and the faint, fragrant breeze tossed their sooty orange flames like a field of wheat. The Rite of Pa.s.sage took place in a broad meadow outside the city. An ancient stone altar adorned with wild-flowers stood between two broad oaks at the of the meadow, and two bronze, basin-like lamps flared, one on each end of the altar. A lone Atan with snowy hair stood atop the city wall, intently watching the light of the moon pa.s.sing through a narrow horizontal aperture in one of the battlements and down the face of a nearby wall, which was marked at regular intervals with deeply-scored lines. It was not the most precise way to determine the time, but if everyone agreed that the line of moonlight would reach a certain one of those scorings at midnight, precision was unimportant. As long as there was general agreement, it was midnight.

The night was silent except for the guttering of the torches and the sighing of the breeze in the dark forest surrounding the meadow. They waited as the silvery line of moonlight crept down the wall.

Then the ancient Atan gave a signal, and a dozen trumpeters raised brazen horns to greet the new day and to signal the beginning of the Rite which would end Mirtai's childhood.

The Atans sang. There were no words, for this rite was too sacred for words. Their song began with a single deep rumbling male voice, swelling and rising as other voices joined it in soaring and complex harmonies. King Androl and Queen Betuana moved with slow and stately pace along a broad, torchlit avenue toward the ageless trees and the flower-decked altar. Their bronze faces were serene, and their golden helmets gleamed in the torchlight. When they reached the altar, they turned, expectant. There was a pause while the torches flared and the organ-song of the Atans rose and swelled. Then the melody subsided into a tightly controlled hum, scarcely more than a whisper.

Engessa and Ehlana, both in deep blue robes, escorted Mirtai out of the shadows near the city wall. Mirtai was all in white, and her raven hair was unadorned. Her eyes were modestly down-cast as her parents led her toward the altar. The song swelled again with a different melody and a different counterpoint.

'The approach of the child,' Norkan murmured to Sparhawk and the others. The sophisticated, even cynical Tamul's voice was respectful, almost awed, and his world-weary eyes glistened. Sparhawk felt a small tug on his hand, and he lifted his daughter so that she might better see.

Mirtai and her family reached the altar and bowed to Androl and Betuana. The song sank to a whisper. Engessa spoke to the king and queen of the Atans. His voice was loud and forceful. The Tamul tongue flowed musically from his lips as he declared his daughter fit. Then he turned, opened his robe and drew his sword. He spoke again, and there was a note of challenge in his voice.

'What did he say?' Talen whispered to Oscagne.

'He offered to do violence to anyone who objected to his daughter's pa.s.sage.' Oscagne replied. His voice was also profoundly respectful, even slightly choked with emotion.

Then Ehlana spoke, also in Tamul. Her voice rang out like a silver trumpet as she also declared that her child was fit and ready to a.s.sume her place as an adult.

'She wasn't supposed to say that last bit,' Danae whispered in Sparhawk's ear. 'She's adding things.'

'You know your mother,' he smiled.

Then the Queen of Elenia turned to look at the a.s.sembled Atans, and her voice took on a flinty note of challenge as she also opened her robe and drew a silver-hilted sword. Sparhawk was startled by the professional way she held it.

Then Mirtai spoke to the king and queen. 'The child entreats pa.s.sage,' Norkan told them. King Androl spoke his reply, his voice loud and commanding, and his queen added her agreement. Then they too drew their swords and stepped forward to flank the child's parents, joining in their challenge. The song of the Atans soared, and the trumpets added a brazen fanfare. Then the sound diminished again.

Mirtai faced her people and drew her daggers. She spoke to them, and Sparhawk needed no translation. He knew that tone of voice. The song raised, triumphant, and the five at the altar turned to face the roughly-chiselled stone block. In the centre of the altar lay a black velvet cus.h.i.+on, and nestled on it there was a plain gold circlet. The song swelled, and it echoed back from nearby mountains. And then, out of the velvet black throat of night, a star fell. It was an incandescently brilliant white light streaking down across the sky. Down and down it arched, and then it exploded into a shower of brilliant sparks.

'Stop that!' Sparhawk hissed to his daughter.

'I didn't do it,' she protested. 'I might have, but I didn't think of it. How did they do that?' She sounded genuinely baffled.

Then, as the glowing shards of the star drifted slowly toward the earth, filling the night with glowing sparks, the golden circlet on the altar rose unaided, drifting up like a ring of smoke. It hesitated as the Atan song swelled with an aching kind of yearning, and then, like a gossamer cobweb, it settled on the head of the child, and when Mirtai turned with exultant face, she was a child no longer. The mountains rang back the joyous sound as the Atans greeted her.

Chapter 20.

'They know nothing of magic.' Zalasta said it quite emphatically.

'That circlet didn't rise up into the air all by itself, Zalasta,' Vanion disagreed, 'and the arrival of the falling star at just exactly the right moment stretches the possibility of coincidence further than I'm willing to go.'

'Chicanery of some kind perhaps?' Patriarch Emban suggested. 'There was a charlatan in Ucera when I was a boy who was very good at that sort of thing. I'd be inclined to look for hidden wires and burning arrows.'

They were gathered in the Peloi camp outside the city the following morning, puzzling over the spectacular conclusion of Mirtai's Rite of Pa.s.sage.

'Why would they do something like that, your Grace? Khalad asked him.

'To make an impression maybe. How would I know?'

'Who would they have been trying to impress?'

'Us, obviously.'

'It doesn't seem to fit the Atan character,' Tynian said, frowning. 'Would the Atans cheapen a holy rite with that kind of gratuitous trickery, Amba.s.sador Oscagne?'

The Tamul emissary shook his head. 'Totally out of the question, Sir Tynian. The rite is as central to their culture as a wedding or a funeral. They'd never demean it just to impress strangers-and it wasn't performed for our benefit. The ceremony was for Atana Mirtai.'

'Exactly,' Khalad agreed, 'and if there were hidden wires coming down from those tree-branches she'd have known they were there. They just wouldn't have done that to her. A cheap trick like that would have been an insult, and we all know how Atans respond to insults.'

'Norkan will be here in a little while,' Oscagne told them. 'He's been in Atan for quite some time. I'm sure he'll be able to explain it.'

'It cannot have been magic,' Zalasta insisted. It seemed very important to him for some reason. Sparhawk had the uneasy feeling that it had to do with the s.h.a.ggy-browed magician's racial ego. So long as Styrics were the only people who could perform magic or instruct others in its use, they were unique in the world. If any other race could do the same thing, their importance would be diminished.

'How long are we going to stay here?' Kalten asked. 'This is a nervous kind of place. Some young knight or one of the Peloi is bound to make a mistake sooner or later. If somebody blunders into a deadly insult, I think all this good feeling will evaporate. We don't want to have to fight our way out of town.'

'Norkan will be able to tell us,' Oscagne replied. 'We don't want to insult the Atans by leaving too early either.'

'How far is it from here to Matherion, Oscagne?' Emban asked.

'About five hundred leagues.'

Emban sighed. 'Almost two more months,' he lamented. 'I feel as if this journey's lasted for years.'

'You do look more fit, though, your Grace,' Bevier told him.

'I don't want to look fit, Bevier. I want to look fat, lazy and pampered. I want to be fat, lazy and pampered and I want a decent meal with lots of b.u.t.ter and gravy and delicacies and fine wines.'

'You did volunteer to come along, your Grace,' Sparhawk reminded him.

'I must have been out of my mind.'

Amba.s.sador Norkan came across the Peloi campground with an amused expression on his face.

'What's so funny?' Oscagne asked him.

'I've been observing an exquisite dance, old boy,' Norkan replied. 'I'd forgotten just how profoundly literal an Elene can be. Any number of Atan girls have approached young Sir Berit and expressed a burning interest in western weaponry. They were obviously hoping for private lessons in some secluded place where he could demonstrate how he uses his equipment.'

'Norkan,' Oscagne chided him.

'Did I say something wrong, old chap? I'm afraid my Elenic's a bit rusty. Anyway, Sir Berit's arranged a demonstration for the entire group. He's just outside the city wall giving the whole bunch of them archery lessons.'

'We're going to have to have a talk with that boy,' Kalten said to Sparhawk.

'I've been told not to,' Sparhawk said. 'My wife and the other ladies want to keep him innocent. It seems to satisfy some obscure need.'

He looked at Norkan. 'Maybe you can settle an argument for us, your Excellency. '

'I'm good at peace-making, Sir Sparhawk. It's not as much fun as starting wars, but the emperor prefers it.'

'What really happened last night, Amba.s.sador Norkan?' Vanion asked him.

'Atana Mirtai became an adult,' Norkan shrugged. 'You were there, Lord Vanion. You saw everything I did.'

'Yes, I did. Now I'd like to have it explained. Did a star really fall at the height of the ceremony? And did the gold circlet really rise from the altar and settle itself on Mirtai's head?'

'Yes. Was there a problem with that?'

'Impossible!' Zalasta exclaimed.

'You could do it, couldn't you, learned one?'

'Yes, I suppose so, but I am Styric.'

'And these are Atans?'

'That's exactly my point.'

'We were also disturbed when we first encountered the phenomenon,' Norkan told him. 'The Atans are our cousins. So, unfortunately, are the Arjuni and the Tegans. We Tamuls are a secular people, as you undoubtedly know. We have a pantheon of G.o.ds that we ignore except on holidays. The Atans only have one, and they won't even tell us what His name is. They can appeal to Him in the same way you Styrics appeal to your G.o.ds, and He responds in the same fas.h.i.+on.'

Zalasta's face suddenly went white. 'Impossible!' he said again in a choked voice. 'We'd have known. There are Atans at Sarsos. We'd have felt them using magic.'

'But they don't do it at Sarsos, Zalasta,' Norkan said patiently. 'They only use it here in Atan and only during their ceremonies.'

'That's absurd!'

'I wouldn't tell them you feel that way. They hold you Styrics in some contempt, you know. They find the notion of turning a G.o.d into a servant a bit impious. Atans have access to a G.o.d, and their G.o.d can do the same sort of things other G.o.ds do. They choose not to involve their G.o.d in everyday matters, so they only call on Him during their religious ceremonies-weddings, funerals, Rites of Pa.s.sage, and a few others. They can't understand your willingness to insult your G.o.ds by asking them to do things you really ought to do for yourselves.' He looked at Emban then with a sly sort of grin. 'It just occurred to me that your Elene G.o.d could probably do exactly the same thing. Have you ever thought of asking Him, your Grace?'

'Heresy!' Bevier gasped.

'Not really, Sir Knight. That word's used to describe someone who strays from the teachings of his own faith. I'm not a member of the Elene faith, so my speculations can't really be heretical, can they?'

'He's got you there, Bevier,' Ulath said. 'His logic's una.s.sailable.'

'It raises some very interesting questions,' Vanion mused. 'It's entirely possible that the Church blundered when she founded the Militant Orders. We may not have had to go outside our own faith for instruction in magic. If we'd asked Him the right way, our own G.o.d might have given us the help we needed.' He coughed a bit uncomfortably. 'I'll trust you gentlemen not to tell Sephrenia I came up with that. If I start suggesting that she's unnecessary, she might take it the wrong way.'

'Lord Vanion,' Emban said quite formally. 'As the representative of the Church, I forbid you to continue this speculation. This is dangerous ground, and I want a ruling from Dolmant before we pursue the matter any further-and for G.o.d's sake, don't start experimenting.'

'Ah-Patriarch Emban,' Vanion reminded him rather mildly, 'I think that you're forgetting the fact that as the Preceptor of the Pandion Order, my rank in the Church is the same as yours. Technically speaking, you can't forbid me to do anything.'

'Sparhawk's the Preceptor now.'

'Not until he's been confirmed by the Hierocracy, Emban. I'm not trying to demean your authority, old boy, but let's observe the proprieties, shall we? It's the little things that keep us civilised when we're far from home.'

'Aren't Elenes fun?' Oscagne said to Norkan.

'I was just about to make the same observation myself.'

They met with King Androl and Queen Betuana later that morning. Amba.s.sador Oscagne explained their mission in the flowing Tamul tongue.

'He's skirting around your rather unique capabilities, Sparhawk,' Sephrenia said quietly. A faint smile touched her lips. 'The emperor's officials seem a little unwilling to admit that they're powerless and that they had to appeal for outside help.'

Sparhawk nodded. 'We've been through it before,' he murmured. 'Oscagne was very concerned about that when he spoke to us in Chyrellos. It seems a little shortsighted in this situation, though. The Atans make up the Tamul army. It doesn't really make much sense to keep secrets from them.'

'Whatever made you think that politics made sense, Sparhawk?'

'I've missed you, little mother,' he laughed.

'I certainly hope so.'