Authors: David Eddings
‘Truly,’ Sparhawk agreed.
‘Please don’t keep gaping at me like that, Oscagne,’ Sarabian told the ambassador. ‘I didn’t tell you that I
was really awake when most of you thought I was sleeping because it wasn’t necessary for you to know before. Now it is. Snap out of it, man. The foreign minister has to be able to take these little surprises in his stride.’
‘It’s just taking me a little while to re-adjust my thinking, your Majesty.’
‘You thought I was an idiot, am I right?’
‘Well –’
‘You were
supposed
to think so, Oscagne – you and Subat and all the other ministers. It’s been one of my main defences – and amusements. Actually, old boy, I’m something of a genius.’ He smiled at Ehlana. ‘That sounds immodest, doesn’t it? But it’s true, nonetheless. I learned your language in three weeks, and Styric in four. I can find the logical fallacies in the most abstruse treaties on Elene theology, and I’ve probably read – and understood – just about everything that’s ever been written. My most brilliant achievement, however, has been to keep all that a secret. The people who call themselves my government – no offence intended, Oscagne – seem to be engaging in some vast conspiracy to keep me in the dark. They only tell me things they think I’ll want to hear. I have to look out of a window to get an accurate idea of the current weather. They have the noblest of motives, of course. They want to spare me any distress, but I really think that someone ought to tell me when the ship I’m riding in is sinking, don’t you?’
Sarabian was still talking very fast, spilling out ideas as quickly as they came to him. His eyes were bright, and he seemed almost on the verge of laughing out loud. He was obviously tremendously excited. ‘Now then,’ he rushed on, ‘we must devise a means of communicating without alerting everyone in the palace – down to and including the scullery boys in the kitchen – to what we’re doing. I desperately need to know
what’s
really
going on so that I can bring my towering intellect to bear on it.’ That last was delivered with self-deprecating irony. ‘Any ideas?’
‘What are your feelings about magic, your Majesty?’ Sparhawk asked him.
‘I haven’t formed an opinion yet, Sparhawk.’
‘It won’t work then,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘You have to believe that the spell’s going to work, or it’ll fail.’
‘I might be able to
make
myself believe,’ Sarabian said just a bit dubiously.
‘That probably wouldn’t do it, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘The spells would succeed or not depending on your mood. We need something a bit more certain. There are things we’ll need to tell you that will be so important that we won’t be able to just trust to luck.’
‘My feelings exactly, Sparhawk. That defines our problem then. We need an absolutely certain method of passing information back and forth that can’t be detected. My experience tells me that it has to be something so commonplace that nobody will pay any attention to it.’
‘Exchange gifts,’ Baroness Melidere suggested in an offhand way.
‘I’d be delighted to send you gifts, my dear Baroness,’ Sarabian smiled. ‘Your eyes quite stop my heart, but –’
She held up one hand. ‘Excuse me, your Majesty,’ she told him, ‘but nothing is more common than the exchange of gifts between ruling monarchs. I can carry little mementos from the queen to you, and the ambassador here can carry yours to her. After we’ve run back and forth a few times, nobody will pay any attention to us. We can conceal messages in those gifts, and no one will dare to search for them.’
‘Where did you find this wonderful girl, Ehlana?’ Sarabian demanded. ‘I’d marry her in a minute – if I didn’t
already have nine wives – oh, incidentally, Sparhawk, I need to talk with you about that – privately, perhaps.’ He looked around. ‘Can anyone see any flaws in the baroness’s plan?’
‘Just one,’ Mirtai said, ‘but I can take care of that.’
‘What is it, Atana?’ the excited emperor asked.
‘Someone may still have suspicions about this exchange of gifts – particularly if there’s a steady stream of them. He might try to intercept Melidere, but I’ll escort her back and forth. I’ll personally guarantee that no one will interfere.’
‘Excellent, Atana! Capital! We’d better get back, Oscagne. Subat misses me terribly when I’m not where he expects me to be. Oh, Sparhawk, please designate several of your knights to entertain my wife, Elysoun.’
‘I beg your Majesty’s pardon?’
‘Young, preferably handsome and with lots of stamina – you know the type.’
‘Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about, your Majesty?’
‘Of course we are. Elysoun enjoys exchanging gifts and favours too, and she’d be crushed if no one wanted to play with her. She’s terribly shrill when she’s unhappy. For the sake of my ears, please see to it, old boy.’
‘Ah – how many, your Majesty?’
‘A dozen or so should suffice, I expect. Coming, Oscagne?’ And the emperor of Tamuli rushed to the door.
‘It’s a characteristic of people with a certain level of intelligence, your Majesty,’ Zalasta advised Ehlana. ‘They talk very fast because their ideas are spilling over. Emperor Sarabian may not be
quite
as brilliant as he thinks he is, but his is a mind to be reckoned with. The amazing thing is that he’s managed to keep it a secret from everybody in his government. Those people are usually so erratic and excitable that they trip themselves up.’
They were all gathered in the royal apartment to discuss the previous night’s startling revelation. Ambassador Oscagne had arrived early, bringing with him a diagram of the hidden passageways and concealed listening posts inside the Elene castle which was their temporary home. A half-dozen spies had been rooted out and politely but firmly invited to leave. ‘There’s nothing really personal involved, your Majesty,’ Oscagne apologised to Ehlana. ‘It’s just a matter of policy.’
‘I understand completely, your Excellency,’ she replied graciously. Ehlana wore an emerald green gown this morning, and she looked particularly lovely.
‘Is your espionage system very well-developed, your Excellency?’ Stragen asked.
‘No, not really, Milord. Each bureau of the government has its spies, but they spend most of their time spying on each other. We’re far more nervous about our colleagues than we are about foreign visitors.’
‘There’s no centralised intelligence service, then?’
‘I’m afraid not, Milord.’
‘Are we sure we cleaned all the spies out?’ Emban asked, looking a bit nervously at the gleaming walls.
‘Trust me, your Grace,’ Sephrenia smiled.
‘I didn’t follow that, I’m afraid.’
‘She wiggled her fingers, Patriarch Emban,’ Talen said dryly. ‘She turned all the spies we didn’t catch into toads.’
‘Well, not exactly,’ she amended, ‘but if there
are
any spies left hiding behind the walls, they can’t hear anything.’
‘You’re a very useful person to have around, Sephrenia,’ the fat little churchman observed.
‘I’ve noticed that myself,’ Vanion agreed.
‘Let’s push on here,’ Ehlana suggested. ‘We don’t want to overuse our subterfuge, but we
will
want to exchange a few gifts with Sarabian just to make sure that no one’s going to intercept our messages and to get the courtiers in the hallways accustomed to seeing Melidere trotting back and forth with trinkets.’
‘I won’t really trot, your Majesty,’ Melidere objected. ‘I’ll swish – seductively. I’ve found that a man who’s busy watching your hips doesn’t pay too much attention to what the rest of you is doing.’
‘Really?’ Princess Danae said. ‘I’ll have to remember that. Can you show me how to swish, Baroness?’
‘You’re going to have to grow some hips first, Princess,’ Talen told her.
Danae’s eyes went suddenly dangerous.
‘Never mind,’ Sparhawk told her.
She ignored him. ‘I’ll get you for that, Talen,’ she threatened.
‘I doubt it, your Highness,’ he replied impudently. ‘I can still run faster than you can.’
‘We have another problem,’ Stragen told them. ‘The absolutely splendid plan I conceived some months ago fell all to pieces on me last night. The local thieves aren’t
going to be much help, I’m afraid. They’re even worse than Caalador led us to believe back in Lebas. Tamul society’s so rigid that my colleagues out there in the streets can’t think independently. There’s a certain way that thieves are supposed to behave here, and the ones we met last night are so hide-bound that they can’t get around the stereotypes. The Elenes in the local thieves’ community are creative enough, but the Tamuls are hopelessly inept.’
‘That’s certainly the truth,’ Talen agreed. ‘They don’t even try to run when they’re caught stealing. They just stand around waiting to be taken into custody. It’s the most immoral thing I’ve ever heard of.’
‘We might be able to salvage something out of it,’ Stragen continued. ‘I’ve sent for Caalador. Maybe he can talk some sense into them. What concerns me the most is their absolute lack of any kind of organisation. The thieves don’t talk to the murderers; the whores don’t talk to the beggars and nobody talks to the swindlers. I can’t for the life of me see how they survive.’
‘That’s bad news,’ Ulath noted. ‘We were counting on the thieves to serve as our spy-network.’
‘Let’s hope that Caalador can fix it,’ Stragen said. ‘The fact that there’s no central intelligence-gathering apparatus in the government makes those thieves crucial to our plans.’
‘Caalador will be able to talk some sense into them,’ Ehlana said. ‘I have every confidence in him.’
‘That’s probably because you like to hear him talk,’ Sparhawk told her.
‘Speaking of talking,’ Sephrenia said, ‘I think our efforts here are going to be limited by the fact that most of you don’t speak Tamul. We’re going to have to do something about that.’
Kalten groaned.
‘It won’t be nearly as painful this time, dear one,’ she
smiled. ‘We don’t really have the time for you to actually learn the language, so Zalasta and I are going to cheat.’
‘Could you clarify that a bit for me, Sephrenia?’ Emban said, looking puzzled.
‘We’ll cast a spell,’ she shrugged.
‘Are you trying to say that you can teach somebody a foreign language by magic?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Sparhawk assured him. ‘She taught me to speak Troll in about five seconds in Ghwerig’s cave, and I’d imagine that Troll’s a lot harder to learn than Tamul. At least Tamuls are human.’
‘We’ll have to be careful, though,’ the small Styric woman cautioned. ‘If you all appear to be linguistic geniuses, it’s going to look very curious. We’ll do it a bit at a time – a basic vocabulary and a rudimentary grammar right at first, and then we’ll expand on that.’
‘I could send you instructors, Lady Sephrenia,’ Oscagne offered.
‘Ah – no, thanks all the same, your Excellency. Your instructors would be startled – and suspicious – if they suddenly found a whole platoon of extraordinarily gifted students. We’ll do it ourselves in order to conceal what we’re up to. I’ll give our pupils here abominable accents right at first, and then we’ll smooth things out as we go along.’
‘Sephrenia?’ Kalten said in a slightly resentful tone.
‘Yes, dear one?’
‘You can teach people languages by magic?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why did you spend all those years trying to teach me Styric? When you saw that it wasn’t going to work, why didn’t you just wiggle your fingers at me?’
‘Kalten, dear,’ she said gently, ‘why was I trying to teach you Styric?’
‘So that I could perform magic tricks, I guess,’ he
shrugged. ‘That’s unless you just enjoy making people suffer.’
‘No, dear one. It was just as painful for me as it was for you.’ She shuddered. ‘More painful, probably. You
were
, in fact, trying to learn Styric so that you could work the spells, but in order to do that, you have to be able to
think
in Styric. You can’t just mouth the words and make them come off the way you want them to.’
‘Wait a minute,’ he objected. ‘Are you saying that people who speak other languages don’t think the same way we do?’
‘They may think the same way, but they don’t think in the same words.’
‘Do you mean to say that we actually think in words?’
‘Of course we do. What did you think thoughts were?’
‘I don’t know. But we’re all human. Wouldn’t we all think the same way and in the same language?’
She blinked. ‘And which language would that be, dear one?’
‘Elenic, naturally. That’s why foreigners aren’t as clever as we are. They have to stop and translate their thoughts from Elenic into that barbarian gabble they call language. They do it just to be stubborn, of course.’
She stared at him suspiciously. ‘You’re actually serious, aren’t you?’
‘Of course. I thought everybody knew that’s why Elenes are smarter than everybody else.’ His face shone with blinding sincerity.
‘Oh, dear,’ she sighed in near-despair.
Melidere put on a lavender gown and swished off to the emperor’s private apartments bearing a blue satin Elene doublet over one arm. Mirtai followed her. Mirtai did not swish. Melidere’s eyes were ingenuously wide. Her expression was vapid. Her lower lip was adorably caught between her teeth as if she were breathless with
excitement. Emperor Sarabian’s courtiers watched the swishing with great interest. Nobody paid the slightest attention to what she did with her hands.
She delivered the gift to the emperor with a breathy little speech, which Mirtai translated. The emperor responded quite formally. Melidere curtseyed and then swished back to the Elene castle. The courtiers still concentrated on the swishing – even though they had already had plenty of opportunity to observe the process.
‘It went off without a hitch,’ the Baroness reported smugly.
‘Did they enjoy the swishing?’ Stragen asked her.
‘I turned the entire court to stone, Milord Stragen,’ she laughed.
‘Did she really?’ he asked Mirtai.
‘Not entirely,’ the Atana replied. ‘A number of them followed her so that they could see more. Melidere’s a very good swisher. What was going on inside her gown looked much like two cats fighting inside a burlap sack.’
‘We should use the talents God gave us, wouldn’t you say, your Grace?’ the blonde girl asked Emban with mock piety.
‘Absolutely, my child,’ he agreed without so much as cracking a smile.
Ambassador Oscagne arrived about fifteen minutes later bearing an alabaster box on a blue velvet cushion. Ehlana took the emperor’s note out of the box and read aloud:
Ehlana,
Your message arrived safely. I get the impression that the members of my court will not merely refrain from interfering with the baroness as she moves through the halls but will passionately defend her right to do so. How
does
the girl manage to move so many things all at the same time?– Sarabian
‘Well,’ Stragen asked the honey-blonde girl, ‘how do you?’
‘It’s a gift, Milord Stragen.’
The visiting Elenes made some show of receiving instruction in the Tamul language for the next few weeks, and Oscagne helped their subterfuge along by casually advising various members of the government that he had been teaching the visitors the language during their long journey. Ehlana made a brief speech in Tamul at one of the banquets the prime minister had arranged for the guests in order to establish the fact that she and her party had already achieved a certain level of proficiency.
There were awkward moments, of course. On one occasion Kalten grossly offended a courtier when he smilingly delivered what he thought to be a well-turned compliment. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ the blond Pandion asked, looking puzzled as the courtier stalked away.
‘What were you trying to say to him?’ Mirtai asked, stifling a laugh.
‘I told him that I was pleased to see that he was smiling,’ Kalten replied.
‘That’s not what you said.’
‘Well, what
did
I say?’
‘You said, “May all of your teeth fall out.”’
‘I used the wrong word for “smiling”, right?’
‘I’d say so, yes.’
The pretence of learning a new language provided the queen and her entourage with a great deal of leisure time. The official functions and entertainments they were obliged to attend usually took place in the evening, and that left the days generally free. They passed those hours in idle conversation – conducted for the most part in Tamul. The spell Sephrenia and Zalasta had woven
gave them all a fairly complete understanding of vocabulary and syntax, but the smoothing out of pronunciation took somewhat longer.
As Oscagne had predicted he would, the prime minister threw obstacles in their paths at every turn. Insofar as he could, he filled their days with tedious and largely meaningless activities. They attended the openings of cattle-shows. They were awarded honorary degrees at the university. They visited model farms. He provided them with huge escorts whenever they left the imperial compound – escorts that usually took several hours to form up. Pondia Subat’s agents put that time to good use, clearing the streets of precisely the people the visitors wanted to see. Most troublesome, however, was the fact that he severely restricted their access to Emperor Sarabian. Subat made himself as inconvenient as he possibly could, but he was unprepared for Elene ingenuity and the fact that many in their party were not entirely what they seemed to be. Talen in particular seemed to completely baffle the prime minister’s agents. As Sparhawk had noticed long ago, it was quite nearly impossible to follow Talen in any city in the world. The young man had a great deal of fun and gathered a great deal of information.
On one drowsy afternoon, Ehlana and the ladies were in the royal apartments, and the queen’s maid, Alean, was speaking as Kalten and Sparhawk quietly entered.
‘It’s not uncommon,’ the doe-eyed girl was saying quietly. ‘It’s one of the inconveniences of being a servant.’ As usual, Alean wore a severe dress of muted grey.
‘Who was he?’ Ehlana’s eyes were like flint.
‘It’s not really important, your Majesty,’ Alean replied, looking slightly embarrassed.
‘Yes, Alean,’ Ehlana disagreed, ‘it is.’
‘It was Count Osril, your Majesty.’
‘I’ve heard of him.’ Ehlana’s tone was frosty.
‘So have I.’ Melidere’s tone was just as cold.
‘I gather that the Count’s reputation is unsavoury?’ Sephrenia asked.
‘He’s what’s referred to as a rake, Lady Sephrenia,’ Melidere replied. ‘He wallows in debauchery of the worst kind. He boasts that he’s saving God all the inconvenience of condemning him, since he was born to go to hell anyway.’
‘My parents were country people,’ Alean continued, ‘so they didn’t know about the count’s reputation. They thought that placing me in service to him would give me the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s the only real chance a peasant has for advancement. I was fourteen and very innocent. The count seemed friendly at first, and I considered myself lucky. Then he came home drunk one night, and I discovered why he’d been so nice to me. I hadn’t received the kind of training Mirtai had, so there was nothing I could do. I cried afterward, of course, but all he did was laugh at my tears. Fortunately, nothing came of it. Count Osril customarily turned pregnant maids out with nothing but the clothes on their backs. After a few times, he grew tired of the game. He paid me my salary and gave me a good recommendation. I was fortunate enough to find employment at the palace.’ She smiled a tight, hurt little smile. ‘Since there were no after-effects, I suppose it doesn’t really matter all that much.’