Ekatas choked back a retort, jerked the door open and led them out into the chilly hallway.
The stairs that descended from the top-most tower of the royal palace were narrow and steep, endless stairs winding down and down. Ehlana was trembling by the time they reached the courtyard below.
The winter sun was very bright in that broad courtyard, but there was not much heat to it.
They crossed the flagstoned courtyard to the pale temple, a building constructed not of marble but of chalky limestone. Unlike marble, the limestone had a dull, unreflective surface, and the temple looked somehow diseased, leprous.
They mounted the stairs to the portico and entered through a wide doorway. Ehlana had expected it to be dark inside this Holy of Holies, but it was not. She stared with a certain apprehensive astonishment at the source of the light even as Ekatas and Santheocles prostrated themselves, crying in unison, ‘Vanet, tyek Alcor1 Yala Cyrgon!’
And then it was that the Queen understood the significance of that ubiquitous emblem that marked virtually everything here in the Hidden City. The white square represented the blocky altar set in the precise center of the temple, but the flame that burned atop that altar was no stylized representation. It was instead an actual fire that twisted and flared, reaching hungrily upward.
Ehlana was suddenly afraid. The fire burning on the altar was not some votive offering, but a living flame, conscious, aware, and possessed of an unquenchable will. Bright as the sun, Cyrgon himself burned eternal on his pale altar.
* * *
No,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘We’d better not. Let’s just sit tight – at least until Xanetia has the chance to winnow through a few minds. We can always come back and deal with Scarpa and his friends later. Right now we need to know where Zalasta’s taking Ehlana and Alean.’
‘We already know,’ Kalten said. ‘They’re going to Cyrga.’
‘That’s the whole point,’ the now-visible Ulath told him. ‘We don’t know where Cyrga is.’
They had gone back into the vine-choked ruins and had gathered on the second floor of a semi-intact palace to consider options.
‘Aphrael has a general idea,’ Kalten said. ‘Can’t we just start out for central Cynesga and do some poking around when we get there?’
‘I don’t think that’d do much good,’ Bevier pointed out. ‘Cyrgon’s been concealing the place with illusions for the past ten eons. We could probably walk right through the streets of the city and not even see it.’
‘He’s not hiding it from everybody,’ Caalador mused. ‘There are messages going back and forth, so somebody here in Natayos has to know the way. Sparhawk’s right. Why don’t we let Xanetia do the poking around here, instead of the lot of us going off into the desert to dodge scorpions and snakes while we turn over pebbles and grains of sand?’
‘We stay here then?’ Tynian asked.
‘For the time being,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘Let’s not do anything to attract attention until we find out what Xanetia can discover. That’s our best option at the moment.’
‘We were so close!’ Kalten fumed. ‘If we’d just gotten here a day or two earlier.’
‘Well we didn’t,’ Sparhawk said flatly, forcing back his own disappointment and frustration. ‘So let’s make the best of it and salvage what we can.’
‘With Zalasta getting further and further away with every minute,’ Kalten added bitterly.
‘Don’t worry, Kalten,’ Sparhawk told him in a tone as cold as death. ‘Zalasta can’t run far enough or fast enough to get away from me when I decide to go after him.’
‘Are you busy, Sarabian?’ Empress Elysoun asked tentatively from the doorway of the blue-draped room.
‘Not really, Elysoun,’ he sighed. ‘Just brooding. I’ve had a great deal of bad news in the last day or so.’
‘I’ll come back some other time. You’re not much fun when you’ve got things on your mind.’
‘Is that all there is in the world, Elysoun?’ he asked her sadly. ‘Only fun?’
Her sunny expression tightened slightly, and she stepped into the room. ‘That’s what you married us for in the first place, wasn’t it, Sarabian?’ She spoke in crisp Tamul that was not at all like her usual relaxed Valesian dialect. ‘Our marriages to you were to cement political alliances, so we’re here as symbols, playthings, and ornaments. We’re certainly not a part of the government.’
He was rather startled by her perception and by the sudden change in her. It was easy to underestimate Elysoun. Her single-minded pursuit of pleasure and the aggressively revealing nature of her native dress proclaimed her to be an empty-headed sensualist, but this was a completely different Elysoun. He looked at her with new interest. ‘What have you been up to lately, my love?’ he asked her fondly.
‘The usual,’ she shrugged.
He averted his eyes. ‘Please don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Bounce that way. It’s very distracting.’
‘It’s supposed to be. You don’t think I dress this way because I’m too lazy to put on clothes, do you?’
‘Is that why you came by? For fun? Or was there something more tedious?’ They had never talked this way before, and her sudden frankness intrigued him.
‘Let’s talk about the tedious things first,’ she said. She looked at him critically. ‘You need to get more sleep,’ she chided.
‘I wish I could. I’ve got too much on my mind.’
‘I’ll have to see what I can do about that.’ She paused. There’s something going on in the Women’s Palace, Sarabian.’
‘Oh?’
‘A lot of strangers have been mingling with the assorted lap-dogs and toadies that litter the halls.’
He laughed. That’s a blunt way to describe courtiers.’
‘Aren’t they? There’s not a real man among them. They’re in the palace to help us with our schemes. You did know that we spend our days plotting against each other, didn’t you?’
He shrugged. ‘It gives you all something to do in your spare time.’
‘That’s the only kind of time we have, my husband. All of our time is spare time, Sarabian, that’s what’s wrong with us. Anyway, these strangers aren’t attached to any of the established courts.’
‘Are you sure?’