‘You deliberately led us to believe that you were too simple to learn how to read.’

‘That was sort of necessary, dear one. Pandion novices aren’t really very sophisticated, and you had to have something to feel superior about.’

‘Be nice,’ Vanion murmured.

‘I had to try to train a dozen generations of those great, clumsy louts, Vanion,’ she said with a certain asperity, ‘and I had to put up with their insufferable condescension in the process. Yes, Sparhawk, I can read, and I can count, and I can argue philosophy and even theology if I have to, and I am fully trained in logic.’

‘I don’t know why you’re yelling at me,’ he protested mildly, kissing her palms. ‘I’ve always believed you were a fairly nice lady –’ he kissed her palms again, ‘for a Styric, that is.’

She jerked her hands out of his grasp and then saw the grin on his face. ‘You’re impossible,’ she said, also suddenly smiling.

‘We were talking about the Cyrgai, I believe,’ Stragen said smoothly. ‘Just exactly who are they?’

‘They’re extinct, fortunately,’ Zalasta replied. ‘They were of a race that appears to have been unrelated to the other races of Daresia – neither Tamul nor Elene, and certainly not Styric. Some have suggested that they might be distantly related to the Valesians.’

‘I couldn’t accept that, learned one,’ Oscagne disagreed. ‘The Valesians don’t even have a government, and they have no concept of war. They’re the happiest people in the world. They could not in any way be related to the Cyrgai.’

‘Temperament is sometimes based on climate, your Excellency,’ Zalasta pointed out. ‘Valesia’s a paradise, and central Cynesga’s not nearly so nice. Anyway, the Cyrgai worshipped a hideous God named Cyrgon – and, like most primitive people do, they took their name from him. All peoples are egotistical, I suppose. We’re all convinced that our God is better than all the rest and that our race is superior. The Cyrgai took that to extremes. We can’t really probe the beliefs of an extinct people, but it appears that they even went so far as to believe that they were somehow of a different species from other humans. They also believed that all truth had been revealed to them by Cyrgon, so they strongly resisted new ideas. They carried the idea of a warrior society to absurd lengths, and they were obsessed with the concept of racial purity and strove for physical perfection. Deformed babies were taken out into the desert and left to die. Soldiers who received crippling injuries in battle were killed by their friends. Women who had too many female children were strangled. They built a city-state beside the Oasis of Cyrga in Central Cynesga and rigidly isolated themselves from other peoples and their ideas. The Cyrgai were terribly afraid of ideas. Theirs was perhaps the only culture in human history that idealised stupidity. They looked upon superior intelligence as a defect, and overly bright children were killed.’

‘Nice group,’ Talen murmured.

‘They conquered and enslaved their neighbours, of course – mostly desert nomads of indeterminate race – and there was a certain amount of interbreeding, soldiers being what they are.’

‘But that was perfectly all right, wasn’t it?’ Baroness Melidere added tartly. ‘Rape is always permitted, isn’t it?’

‘In this case it wasn’t, Baroness,’ Zalasta replied. ‘Any Cyrgai caught “fraternising” was killed on the spot.’

‘What a refreshing idea,’ she murmured.

‘So was the woman, of course. Despite all their best efforts, however, the Cyrgai did produce a number of offspring of mixed race. In their eyes, that was an abomination, and the half-breeds were killed whenever possible. In time, however, Cyrgon apparently had a change of heart. He saw a use for these half-breeds. They were given some training and became a part of the army. They were called “Cynesgans”, and in time they came to comprise that part of the army that did all of the dirty work and most of the dying. Cyrgon had a goal, you see – the usual goal of the militaristically inclined.’

‘World domination?’ Vanion suggested.

‘Precisely. The Cynesgans were encouraged to breed, and the Cyrgai used them to expand their frontiers. They soon controlled all of the desert and began pushing at the frontiers of their neighbours. That’s where we encountered them. The Cyrgai weren’t really prepared to come up against Styrics.’

‘I can imagine,’ Tynian laughed.

Zalasta smiled briefly. It was an indulgent sort of smile, faintly tinged with a certain condescension. ‘The priests of Cyrgon had certain limited gifts,’ the Styric went on, ‘but they were certainly no match for what they encountered.’ He sat tapping his fingertips together. ‘Perhaps when we examine it more closely, that’s our real secret,’ he mused. ‘Other peoples have only one God – or at the most, a small group of Gods. We have a thousand, who more or less get along with each other and agree in a general sort of way about what ought to be done. Anyway, the incursion of the Cyrgai into the lands of the Styrics proved to be disastrous for them. They lost virtually all of their Cynesgans and a major portion of their full-blooded Cyrgai. They retreated in absolute disorder, and the Younger Gods decided that they ought to be encouraged to stay at home after that. No one knows to this day which of the Younger Gods developed the idea, but it was positively brilliant in both its simplicity and its efficacy. A large eagle flew completely around Cynesga in a single day, and his shadow left an unseen mark on the ground. The mark means absolutely nothing to the Cynesgans or the Atans or Tamuls or Styrics or Elenes or even the Arjuni. It was terribly important to the Cyrgai, however, because after that day any Cyrgai who stepped over that line died instantly.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Kalten objected. ‘We encountered Cyrgai just to the west of here. How did they get across the line?’

‘They were from the past, Sir Kalten,’ Zalasta explained, spreading his hands. ‘The line didn’t exist for them, because the eagle had not yet made his flight when they marched north.’

Kalten scratched his head and sat frowning. ‘I’m not really all that good at logic,’ he confessed, ‘but isn’t there a hole in that somewhere?’

Bevier was also struggling with it. ‘I think I see how it works,’ he said a little dubiously, ‘but I’ll have to go over it a few times to be sure.’