‘Nobody,’ Norkan shrugged. ‘Tegans have learned to get along without a government. Everybody knows what has to be done anyway, so they scribble on enough official forms to keep the bureaucrats busy and then just ignore them. I hate to admit it, but the system seems to work quite well.’ He laughed. ‘There was a notorious murderer who was apprehended during the last century,’ he said. ‘They put him on trial, and he died of old age before the courts could decide whether he was guilty or not.’

‘How old was he when they caught him?’ Talen asked.

‘About thirty, I understand. You’d really better get started, my friends. That fellow at the head of this wharf has a sort of official expression on his face. You should probably be out of sight before he leafs through that pouch he’s carrying and finds the right set of forms for you to fill out.’

The Isle of Tega was tidy. It was not particularly scenic, nor did it have that picturesque desolation that sets the hearts of romantics all aflutter. The island produced no economically significant crops, and the small plots of ground under cultivation were devoted to what might be called expanded kitchen gardens. The stone walls that marked off the fields were straight and were all of a uniform height. The roads did not curve or bend, and the roadside barrows were all precisely of the same width and depth. Since the island’s major industry, the collecting of sea-shells, was conducted underwater, there was none of the clutter one customarily sees around workshops.

The tedious tidiness, however, was offset by a dreadful smell which seemed to hover over everything.

‘What is that awful stink?’ Talen said, trying to cover his nostrils with his sleeve.

‘Rotting shellfish,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘They must use it for fertilizer.’

‘How can they stand to live here with that smell?’

‘They’re probably so used to it that they don’t even notice it any more. They want the sea-shells because they can sell them to the Tamuls in Matherion, but people can’t live on a steady diet of oysters and clams, so they have to get rid of the excess somehow. It seems to make very good fertilizer. I’ve never seen cabbages that big before.’

Talen looked speculatively at his brother. ‘Pearls come from oysters, don’t they?’ he asked.

‘That’s what I’ve been told.’

‘I wonder if the Tegans do anything with them when they run across them?’

‘They’re not really very valuable, Talen,’ Flute told him. ‘There’s something in the water around the island that makes the pearls black. Who would pay anything for black pearls?’ She looked around at them. ‘Now then,’ she said to them, ‘we’ll have to sail about fifteen hundred leagues to reach the place where Bhelliom is.’

‘That far?’ Vanion said. ‘We won’t get back to Matherion until the dead of winter, then. At thirty leagues a day, it’s going to take us fifty days to get there and fifty days back.’

‘No,’ she disagreed, ‘actually it’s going to take us five days to get there and five days to get back.’

‘Impossible!’ Ulath said flatly. ‘No ship can move that fast.’

‘How much would you be willing to wager on that, Sir Ulath?’

He thought about that for a moment. ‘Not very much,’ he decided. ‘I wouldn’t insult you by suggesting that you’d cheat, but…’ He spread his hands suggestively.

‘You’re going to tamper with time again, I take it?’ Sparhawk said to her.

She shook her head. ‘There are some limitations to that, Sparhawk. We need something more dependable. The ship that’s waiting for us is just a bit unusual. I don’t think any of you should get too curious about what she’s made of and what makes her move. You won’t be able to talk with the crew, because they don’t speak your language. You probably wouldn’t want to talk with them anyway, because they aren’t really human.’

‘Witchcraft?’ Bevier asked suspiciously.

She patted his cheek. ‘I’ll answer that question just as soon as you come up with a definition of witchcraft that’s not personally insulting, dear Bevier.’

‘What are you going to do, Aphrael?’ Sephrenia asked suspiciously. ‘There are rules, you know.’

‘The other side’s been breaking rules right and left, dear sister,’ Aphrael replied airily. ‘Reaching into the past has been forbidden almost from the very start.’

‘Are you going to reach into the future?’ Khalad asked her. ‘People are coming up with new ideas in ship design all the time. Are you going to reach ahead and bring us back a ship that hasn’t been invented yet?’

‘That’s an interesting idea, Khalad, but I wouldn’t know where to look. The future hasn’t happened yet, so how would I know where – or when – to find that kind of a ship? I’ve gone someplace else, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean “someplace else”?’

‘There’s more than one world, Khalad,’ she said mysteriously. Then she made a little face. ‘You wouldn’t believe how complicated the negotiations were,’ she added.

Chapter 3

Ehlana and Sarabian had gone to the top of the central tower of the glowing castle, ostensibly to admire the sunset. Despite the fact that the castle was firmly in Elene hands, there were still enough Tamuls inside the walls to require a certain amount of care when the two wanted to speak privately.

‘It all comes down to the question of power, Sarabian,’ Ehlana told the Emperor in a pensive voice. ‘The fact that it’s there has to be the central fact of our lives. We can either take it into our own hands, or leave it lying around unused, but if we choose not to use it, we can be sure that someone else will.’ Her tone was subdued and her pale young face almost somber.

‘You’re in a melancholy humor today, Ehlana,’ Sarabian noted.

‘I don’t like being separated from Sparhawk. There were too many years of that after Aldreas exiled him. The point I was getting at is that you’re going to have to be very firm so that the people in your government will understand that things have changed. What you’ll really be doing here is seizing power. That’s an act of revolution, you know.’ She smiled faintly. ‘You’re almost too civilized to be a revolutionary, Sarabian. Are you really sure you want to overthrow the government?’

‘Good God, Ehlana, it’s my government, and the power was mine in the first place.’

‘But you didn’t use it. You were lazy and self-indulgent, and you let it slip away. Your ministers have filched your authority bit by bit. Now you’re going to have to wrest it back from them. People don’t willingly give up power, so you’ll probably have to kill some of your ministers in order to prove to the rest that you’re serious.’

‘Kill!’

‘That’s the ultimate expression of power, Sarabian, and your situation here requires a certain ruthlessness. You’re going to have to spill some blood in order to get your government’s attention.’

‘I don’t think I can do that,’ Sarabian said in a troubled tone. ‘Oh, I know I’ve blustered and made threats a few times, but I couldn’t actually order someone killed.’

‘That’s up to you, but you’ll lose if you don’t, and that means that they’ll kill you.’ She considered it. They’ll probably kill you anyway,’ she added, ‘but at least you’ll die for something important. Knowing that they’re going to kill you in the end might help you make some unpleasant decisions at the outset. Once you get past your first couple of killings, it grows easier. I speak from a certain amount of experience on the subject, since almost exactly the same thing happened to me. Primate Annias completely controlled my government when I came to the throne, and I had to try to take my power back from him.’

‘You’re the one who’s been talking so freely about killing, Ehlana. Why didn’t you kill Annias?’

She laughed a brittle, chilling little laugh. ‘It wasn’t because I didn’t want to, believe me, but I was too weak. Annias had very carefully stripped the crown of all its authority. I had some help from Lord Vanion and his Pandion Knights, but Annias had control of the army and the church soldiers. I killed a few of his underlings, but I couldn’t get to him. He knew I was trying, though, and that’s why he poisoned me. Annias was really a very good politician. He knew exactly when the time for killing had arrived.’

‘You sound almost as if you admired him.’

‘I hated him, but he was very good.’

‘Well, I haven’t killed anybody yet, so I can still step back from this.’

‘You’re wrong there. You’ve already drawn your dagger, so you’re going to have to use it. You crushed that uprising, and you’ve imprisoned the Minister of the Interior. That’s the same thing as a declaration of war, you know.’

‘You did those things,’ he accused her.

‘Yes, but I was acting on your behalf, so it’s the same thing – at least in the eyes of your enemies. You’re in a great deal of danger now, you know. You’ve let your government know that you’re going to seize back the power you let slip away. If you don’t start killing people – and very, very soon – you probably won’t live out the month. You’d be dead already if it weren’t for the fact that you’ve taken refuge in this castle.’

‘You’re starting to frighten me, Ehlana.’

‘God knows I’ve been trying. Like it or not, Sarabian, you’re committed now.’ She looked around. The sun was sinking into the cloud-bank building up over the mountains lying to the west, and its ruddy glow was reflecting from the mother-of-pearl domes of Matherion. ‘Look at your city, Sarabian,’ she told him, ‘and contemplate the reality of politics. Before you’re done, that red splashed all over the domes won’t just be the reflection of the sunset.’

‘That’s blunt enough,’ he said, his jaw taking on an unfamiliar set. ‘All right, how many people do I have to kill in order to ensure my own safety?’

‘You don’t have that many knives, my friend. Even if you butcher everybody in Matherion, you’ll still be in danger. You might as well accept the fact that you’re going to be in danger for the rest of your life.’ She smiled at him. ‘Actually, it’s kind of exciting – once you get used to it.’

‘Well, sir, yer Queenship,’ Caalador drawled, ‘it’s all purty much th’ way we wuz a-thankin’ it wuz. That thar Krager feller, he wuz a-tellin’ ol’ Sporhawk th’ ak-chool truth. Me’n Stragen, we bin a-twistin’ the arms an’ a-settin’ fahr t’ the feet o’ them fellers ez wuz picked up durin’ the koop…’ He stopped. ‘Would your Majesty be too disappointed if I spoke like a human being for a while? That dialect’s starting to dislocate my jaw.’

‘Not to mention the violence it’s doing to the mother tongue,’ Stragen murmured.

The three of them had gathered together in a small, blue-draped room adjoining the royal apartment later that same evening. Ehlana and Stragen were still dressed for dinner, she in crimson velvet and he in white satin. Caalador wore the sober brown of a businessman. The room had been carefully checked several times to be sure that no hidden listening posts lurked behind the walls, and Mirtai grimly stood watch outside the door.

‘With the exception of Interior Minister Kolata, we didn’t scoop up anybody of any significance,’ Caalador continued, ‘and none of our other prisoners really knows very much. I’m afraid we don’t have much choice, your Majesty. We’re going to have to go to work on Kolata if we want anything useful.’

Ehlana shook her head. ‘You won’t get anything out of him either, Caalador. He’ll be killed as soon as he opens his mouth.’

‘We don’t know that for certain, my Queen,’ Stragen disagreed. ‘It’s entirely possible that our subterfuge has worked, you know. I really don’t believe that the other side knows that he’s a prisoner here. His policemen are still getting their orders from him.’

‘He’s too valuable to risk,’ she said. ‘Once he’s been torn to pieces, he’ll be very hard to put back together again.’

‘If that’s the way you want it, your Majesty,’ Caalador shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s growing increasingly obvious that this uprising was a pure hoax. Its only purpose was to compel us to reveal our strength. What concerns me the most is the fact that Krager and his friends obviously knew that we were using the criminals of Matherion as our eyes and ears. I’m sorry, Stragen, but it’s the truth.’

‘It was such a good idea,’ Stragen sighed.

‘It was all right at first, but the trouble with it was that Krager’s seen it before. Talen told me that your friend Platime used to have whole crowds of beggars, whores and pick-pockets following Krager around. The best idea in the world wears a little thin if you over-use it.’

Stragen rose to his feet muttering curses, and began to pace up and down in the small room with his white satin doublet gleaming in the candlelight. ‘It looks as if I’ve failed you, my Queen,’ he admitted. ‘I let a good idea run away with me. You couldn’t really trust my judgement after a blunder like that, so I’ll make arrangements to go back to Emsat.’

‘Oh, don’t be an ass, Stragen,’ she told him. ‘And do sit down. I can’t think while you’re clumping around the room like that.’

‘She shore knows how t’ put a feller in his place, don’t she, Stragen?’ Caalador laughed.

Ehlana sat tapping one finger thoughtfully against her chin. ‘First of all, let’s keep this in the family. Sarabian’s already getting a bit wild-eyed. Politically, he’s an infant. I’m trying to raise him as quickly as I can, but I can only move him just so fast.’ She made a sour face. ‘I have to stop every so often to burp him.’

‘Now that’s a picture for you,’ Caalador grinned. ‘What’s he choking on, your Majesty?’

‘Murder, primarily,’ she shrugged. ‘He doesn’t seem to have the stomach for it.’

Caalador blinked. ‘Not many do.’

‘Politicians can’t afford that kind of delicacy. All right, if Krager and his friends know about our spy network, it won’t be long until they try something in the way of penetration, will it?’