Domes of Fire Part 2

She opened her grey eyes. 'Come over here,' she commanded, holding her arms out to him.

'I was ever your Majesty's most obedient servant.' He grinned at her, going to the side of the bed.

'Oh, really?' she replied, wrapping her arms about his neck and kissing him. He kissed her back, and that went on for quite some time.

'Do you suppose we could save the scolding until tomorrow morning, love?' he asked. 'I'm a little tired tonight. Why don't we do the kissing and making up now, and you can scold me later.'

'And lose my edge? Don't be silly. I've been saving up all sorts of things to say to you.'

'I can imagine. Dolmant sent me to Lamorkand to look into something. It took me a little longer than I expected.'

'That's not fair, Sparhawk,' she accused.

'I didn't follow that.'

'You weren't supposed to say that yet. You're supposed to wait until after I've demanded an explanation before you give me one. Now you've gone and spoiled it.'

'Can you ever forgive me?' He a.s.sumed an expression of exaggerated contrition and kissed her on the neck. His wife, he had discovered, loved these little games.

She laughed. 'I'll think about it.' She kissed him back. The women of his family were a very demonstrative little group, he decided. 'All right then,' she said. 'You've gone and spoiled it anyway, so you might as well tell me what you were doing, and why you didn't send word that you'd be delayed.'

'Politics, love. You know Dolmant. Lamorkand is right on the verge of exploding. Sarathi wanted a professional a.s.sessment, but he didn't want it generally known that I was going there at his instruction. He didn't want any messages explaining things floating around.'

'I think it's time for me to have a little talk with our revered Archprelate,' Ehlana said. 'He seems to have a little trouble remembering just who I am.'

'I don't recommend it, Ehlana.'

'I'm not going to start a fight with him, my love. I'm just going to point out to him that he's ignoring the customary courtesies. He's supposed to ask before he commandeers my husband. I'm getting just a little weary of his imperial Archprelacy, so I'm going to teach him some manners.'

'Can I watch? That might just be a very interesting conversation.'

'Sparhawk,' she said, giving him a smouldering look, "if you want to avoid an official reprimand, you're going to have to start taking some significant steps to soften my displeasure.'

'I was just getting to that,' he told her, enfolding her in a tighter embrace.

'What took you so long?' she breathed.

It was quite a bit later, and the displeasure of the Queen of Elenia seemed to be definitely softening. 'What did you find out in Lamorkand, Sparhawk?' she asked, stretching languorously. Politics were never really very far from the queen's mind.

'Western Lamorkand's in turmoil right now. There's a count up there-Gerrich, his name is. We ran across him when we were searching for Bh.e.l.liom. He was involved with Martel in one of those elaborate schemes devised to keep the Militant Orders out of Chyrellos during the election.'

'That speaks volumes about this count's character.'

'Perhaps, but Martel was very good at manipulating people. He stirred up a small war between Gerrich and Patriarch Ortzel's brother. Anyway, the campaign appears to have broadened the count's horizons a bit. He's begun to have some thoughts about the throne.'

'Poor Freddie,' Ehlana sighed. King Friedahl of Lamorkand was her distant cousin. 'You couldn't give me that throne of his. Why should the Church be concerned, though? Freddie's got a large enough army to deal with one ambitious count.'

'It's not quite so simple, love. Gerrich has been concluding alliances with other n.o.bles in western Lamorkand. He's ama.s.sed an army nearly as big as the king's, and he's been talking with the Pelosian barons around Lake Venue.'

'Those bandits,' she said with a certain contempt. 'Anybody can buy them.'

'You're well-versed in the politics of the region, Ehlana.'

'I almost have to be, Sparhawk. Pelosia fronts my northeastern border. Does this current disturbance threaten us in any way?'

'Not at the moment. Gerrich has his eyes turned eastward toward the capital.'

'Maybe I should offer Freddie an alliance,' she mused. 'If general war breaks out in the region, I could snip off a nice piece of southwestern Pelosia.'

'Are we developing territorial ambitions, your Majesty?'

'Not tonight, Sparhawk,' she replied. 'I've got other things on my mind tonight.' And she reached out to him again.

It was quite a bit later, almost dawn. Ehlana's regular breathing told Sparhawk that she was asleep. He slipped from the bed and went to the window. His years of military training made it automatic for him to take a look at the weather just before daybreak.

The rain had abated, but the wind had picked up. It was early spring now, and there was little hope for decent weather for weeks. He was glad that he had reached home when he had, since the approaching day looked unpromising. He stared out at the torches flaring and tossing in the windy courtyard.

As they always did when the weather was bad, Sparhawk's thoughts drifted back to the years he had spent in the sun-blasted city of Jiroch on the arid north coast of Render where the women, all veiled and robed in black, went to the well in the steely first light of day and where the woman named Lillias had consumed his nights with what she chose to call love. He did not, however, remember that night in Cippria when Martel's a.s.sa.s.sins had quite nearly spilled out his life. He had settled that score with Martel in the Temple of Azash in Zemoch, so there was no real purpose in remembering the stockyard of Cippria nor the sound of the monastery bells which had called to him out of the darkness.

That momentary sense of being watched, the sense that had come over him in the narrow street while he had been on his way to the palace still nagged at him. Something he did not understand was going on, and he fervently wished that he could talk with Sephrenia about it.

Chapter 2.

'Your Majesty,' the Earl of Lenda protested, 'you can't address this kind of language to the Archprelate.' Lenda was staring with chagrin at the piece of paper the queen had just handed him. 'You've done everything but accuse him of being a thief and a scoundrel.'

'Oh, did I leave those out?' she asked. 'How careless of me.' They were meeting in the blue-carpeted council chamber as they usually did at this time of the morning.

'Can't you do something with her, Sparhawk?' Lenda pleaded.

'Oh, Lenda,' Ehlana laughed, smiling at the frail old man, 'that's only a draft. I was a little irritated when I scribbled it down.'

'A little?'

'I know we can't send the letter in its present form, my Lord. I just wanted you to know how I really felt about the matter before we rephrase it and couch it in diplomatic language. My whole point is that Dolmant's beginning to overstep his bounds. He's the Archprelate, not the emperor. The Church has too much authority over temporal affairs already, and, if someone doesn't bring Dolmant up short, every monarch in Eosia will become little more than his va.s.sal. I'm sorry gentlemen. I'm a true daughter of the Church, but I won't kneel to Dolmant and receive my crown back from him in some contrived little ceremony that has no purpose other than my humiliation.'

Sparhawk was a bit surprised at his wife's political maturity. The power structure on the Eosian Continent had always depended on a rather delicate balance between the authority of the Church and the power of the various kings. When that balance was disturbed, things went awry.

'Her Majesty's point may be welltaken, Lenda,' he said thoughtfully. 'The Eosian monarchies haven't been very strong for the last generation or so. Aldreas was-' He groped for a word.

'Inept,' his wife coolly characterised her own father.

'I might not have gone quite that far,' he murmured. 'Wargun's erratic, Saros is a religious hysteric, Obler's old, and Friedahl reigns only at the sufferance of his barons. Dregos lets his relatives make all his decisions, King Brtsant of Cammorta is a voluptuary and I don't even know the name of the current King of Render.'

'Ogyrin,' Kalten supplied, 'not that it really matters.'

'Anyway,' Sparhawk continued, sinking lower in his chair and rubbing the side of his face thoughtfully, 'during this same period of time, we've had a number of very able churchmen in the Hierocracy. The incapacity of Cluvonus sort of encouraged the patriarchs to strike out on their own. If you had a vacant throne someplace, you could do a lot worse than put Emban on it-or Ortzel-or Bergsten, and even Annias had a very high degree of political skill. When kings grow weak, the Church grows strong-too strong sometimes.'

'Spit it out, Sparhawk,' Platime growled. 'Are you trying to say we should declare war on the Church?'

'Not today, Platime. We might want to keep the idea in reserve, though. Right now I think it's time to start sending some signals to Chyrellos, and our queen may be just the one to send them. After the way she stampeded the Hierocracy during Dolmant's election, I think they'll listen very carefully to just about anything she says. I don't know that I'd soften her letter all that much, Lenda. Let's see if we can get their attention.'

Lenda's eyes were very bright. 'This is the way the game's supposed to be played, my friends,.' he said enthusiastically.

'You do realise that it's altogether possible that Dolmant didn't realise that he was stepping over the line,' Kalten noted. 'Maybe he sent Sparhawk to Lamorkand as the interim preceptor of the Pandion Order and completely overlooked the fact that he's also the prince consort. Sarathi's got a lot on his mind just now.'

'If he's that absent-minded, he's got no business occupying the Archprelate's throne,' Ehlana a.s.serted. Her eyes narrowed, always a dangerous sign. 'Let's make it very clear to him that he's hurt my feelings. He'll go out of his way to smooth things over, and maybe I can take advantage of that to retrieve that Duchy just north of Vardenaise. Lenda, is there any way we can keep people from bequeathing their estates to the Church?'

'It's a long-standing custom, your Majesty.'

'I know, but the land originally comes from the crown. Shouldn't we have some say in who inherits it? You'd think that if a n.o.bleman dies without an heir, the estate would revert back to me, but every time there's a childless n.o.ble in Elenia, the churchmen flock around him like vultures trying to talk him into giving them the land.'

'Jerk some t.i.tles,' Platime suggested. 'Make it a law that if a man doesn't have an heir, he doesn't keep his estate.'

'The aristocracy would go up in flames,' Lenda gasped.

'That's what the army's for,' Platime shrugged, 'to put out fires. I'll tell you what, Ehlana, you pa.s.s the law, and I'll arrange a few very public and very messy accidents for the ones who scream the loudest. Aristocrats aren't very bright, but they'll get the point-eventually.'

'Do you think I could get away with that?' Ehlana asked the Earl of Lenda.

'Surely your Majesty's not seriously considering it?'

'I have to do something, Lenda. The Church is eating up my kingdom acre by acre, and once she takes possession of an estate, the land's removed from the tax rolls forever.' She paused. 'This could just be a way to do what Sparhawk suggested-get the Church's attention. Why don't we draw up a draft of some outrageously repressive law and just "accidentally" let a copy fall into the hands of some middle-level clergyman. It's probably safe to say that it'll be in Dolmant's hands before the ink's dry.'

'That's really unscrupulous, my Queen,' Lenda told her.

'I'm so glad you approve, my Lord.' She looked around. 'Have we got anything else this morning, gentlemen?'

'You've got some unauthorised bandits operating in the mountains near Cardos, Ehlana,' Platime rumbled.

The gross, black-bearded man sat with his feet upon the table. There was a wine flagon and goblet at his elbow. His doublet was wrinkled and food-spotted, and his s.h.a.ggy hair hung down over his forehead, almost covering his eyes. Platime was const.i.tutionally incapable of using formal t.i.tles, but the queen chose to overlook that.

'Unauthorised?' Kalten sounded amused.

'You know what I mean,' Platime growled. 'They don't have permission from the thieves' council to operate in that region, and they're breaking all the rules. I'm not positive, but I think they're some of the former henchmen of the Primate of Cimmura. You blundered there, Ehlana. You should have waited until you had them in custody before you declared them outlaws.'

'Oh well,' she shrugged. 'n.o.body's perfect.'

Ehlana's relations.h.i.+p with Platime was peculiar. She realised that he was unable to mouth the polite formulas of the n.o.bility, and so she accepted a bluntness from him that would have offended her had it come from anyone else. For all his faults, Platime was turning into a gifted, almost brilliant counsellor, and Ehlana valued his advice greatly.

'I'm not surprised to find out that Annias' old cronies have turned to highway robbery in their hour of need. They were all bandits to begin with anyway. There have always been outlaws in those mountains, though, so I doubt that another band will make all that much difference.'

'Ehlana,' he sighed, 'you're the same as my very own baby sister, but sometimes you're terribly ignorant. An authorised bandit knows the rules. He knows which travellers can be robbed or killed and which ones have to be left alone. n.o.body gets too excited if some overstuffed merchant gets his throat cut and his purse lifted, but if a government official or a high-ranking n.o.bleman turns up dead in those mountains, the authorities have to take steps to at least make it appear that they're doing their jobs. That sort of official attention is very bad for business. Perfectly innocent criminals get rounded up and hanged. Highway robbery's not an occupation for amateurs. And there's another problem as well. These bandits are telling all the local peasantry that they're not really robbers, but patriots rebelling against a cruel tyrant-that's you, little sister. There's always enough discontent among the peasants to make some of them sympathetic toward that sort of thing. You aristocrats haven't any business getting involved in crime. You always try to mix politics in with it.'

'But my dear Platime,' she said winsomely, "I thought you knew. Politics is a crime.'

The fat man roared with laughter. "I love this girl,' he told the others. 'Don't worry too much about it, Ehlana. I'll try to get some men inside their band, and when Stragen gets back, we'll put our heads together and work out some way to put those people out of business.'

'I knew I could count on you,' she said. She rose to her feet. 'If that's all we have, gentlemen, I have an appointment with my dressmaker.' She looked around. 'Coming, Sparhawk?'

'In a moment,' he replied. "I want to have a word with Platime.'

She nodded and moved toward the door.

'What's on your mind, Sparhawk?' Platime asked.

'I saw Naween last night when I rode into town. She's working the streets.'

'Naween? That's ridiculous! Half the time she even forgets to take the money.'

'That's what I told her. She and Shanda had a falling out, and she was standing on a street corner near the east gate. I sent her to an inn to get her out of the weather. Can we make some kind of arrangement for her?'

'I'll see what I can do,' Platime promised.

Ehlana had not yet left the room, and Sparhawk sometimes forgot how sharp her ears were. 'Who's this Naween?' she asked from the doorway with a slight edge to her voice.

'She's a wh.o.r.e,' Platime shrugged, 'a special friend of Sparhawk's. '

'Platime." Sparhawk gasPed.

'Isn't she?'

'Well, I suppose so, but when you say it that way-' Sparhawk groped for the right words.

'Oh. I didn't mean it that way, Ehlana. So far as I know, your husband's completely faithful to you. Naween's a wh.o.r.e. That's her occupation, but it doesn't have anything to do with her friends.h.i.+p-not that she didn't make Sparhawk some offers, but she makes those offers to everybody. She's a very generous girl.'

'Please, Platime," Sparhawk groaned, 'don't be on my side any more.'

'Naween's a good girl,' Platime continued to explain to Ehlana. 'She works hard, she takes good care of her customers and she pays her taxes.'

'Taxes?' Ehlana exclaimed. 'Are you telling me that my government encourages that sort of thing? Legitimises it by taxing it?'

'Have you been living on the moon, Ehlana? Of course she pays taxes. We all do. Lenda sees to that. Naween helped Sparhawk once while you were sick. He was looking for that Krager fellow, and she helped him. Like I said, she offered him other services as well, but he turned her down politely. She's always been a bit disappointed in him about that.'

'You and I are going to have a long talk about this, Sparhawk,' Ehlana said ominously.

'As your Majesty wishes,' he sighed as she swept coolly from the room.

'She doesn't know very much about the real world, does she, Sparhawk?'

'It's her sheltered upbringing.'

'I thought you were the one who brought her up.