the nobility who feel that their honour has been somehow sullied. It is amazing to note that not even ruling monarchs are exempt from the necessity of answering these challenges. In order to avoid the inconvenience of responding to the impertinences of assorted hotheads, the monarchs of Eosia customarily designate some highly-skilled (and usually widely-feared) warrior as a surrogate. Sir Sparhawk’s nature and reputation is such that even the most quarrelsome nobles of the kingdom of Elenia find after careful consideration that they have not really been insulted. It is a credit to Sir Sparhawk’s skill and cool judgement that he has seldom even been obliged to kill anyone during these affairs, since, by ancient custom, a severely incapacitated combatant may save his life by surrendering and withdrawing his challenge.
After his father’s death, Sir Sparhawk presented himself to King Aldreas, the father of the present queen, to take up his duties. King Aldreas, however, was a weak monarch, and he was dominated by his sister, Arissa, and by Annias, the Primate of Cimmura, who was also Princess Arissa’s surreptitious lover and the father of her bastard son, Lycheas. The Primate of Cimmura, who was the de facto ruler of Elenia, had hopes of ascending the throne of the Archprelacy of the Elene Church in the Holy City of Chyrellos, and the presence of the stern and moralistic Church Knight at the court inconvenienced him, and so it was that he persuaded King Aldreas to send Sir Sparhawk into exile in the Kingdom of Rendor.
In time, King Aldreas also became inconvenient, and Primate Annias and the Princess poisoned him, thus elevating Princess Ehlana, Aldreas’ daughter, to the throne. Though she was young, Queen Ehlana had received some training from Sir Sparhawk as a child, and she was a far stronger monarch than her father had been. She soon became more than a mere inconvenience to the Primate. He poisoned her as well, but Sir Sparhawk’s fellow Pandions, aided by their tutor in the arcane arts, a Styric woman named Sephrenia, cast an enchantment which sealed the queen up in crystal and sustained her life.
Thus it stood when Sir Sparhawk returned from exile. Since the Militant Orders had no wish to see the Primate of Cimmura on the Archprelate’s throne, certain of the champions of the other three orders were sent to assist Sir Sparhawk in finding an antidote or a cure which could restore Queen Ehlana to health. Since the queen had denied Annias access to her treasury in the past, the Church Knights reasoned that should she be restored, she would once again deny Annias the funds he needed to pursue his candidacy.
Annias allied himself with a renegade Pandion named Martel, and this Martel person was, like all Pandions, skilled in the use of Styric magic. He cast obstacles, both physical and supernatural, in Sparhawk’s path, but Sir Sparhawk and his companions were ultimately successful in discovering that Queen Ehlana could only be restored by a magical object known as ‘The Bhelliom’.
Western Elenes are a peculiar people. They have a level of sophistication in worldly matters which sometimes surpasses our own, but at the same time, they have an almost childlike belief in the more lurid forms of magic. This ‘Bhelliom’ we are told, is a very large sapphire which was laboriously carved into the shape of a rose at some time in the distant past. The Elenes here insist that the artisan who carved it was a Troll. We will not dwell on that absurdity.
At any rate, Sir Sparhawk and his friends overcame many obstacles and were ultimately able to obtain the peculiar talisman, and (they claim) it was successful in restoring Queen Ehlana – although one strongly suspects that their tutor, Sephrenia, accomplished that task unaided, and that the apparent use of the Bhelliom was little more than a subterfuge she used to protect her from the virulent bigotry of western Elenes.
When the Archprelate Cluvonus died, the Hierocracy of the Elene Church journeyed to Chyrellos to participate in the ‘election’ of his successor. Election is a peculiar practice which involves the stating of preference. That candidate who receives the approval of a majority of his fellows is elevated to the office in question. This, of course, is an unnatural procedure, but since the Elene clergy is ostensibly celibate, there is no non-scandalous way the Archprelacy can be made hereditary. The Primate of Cimmura had bribed a goodly number of high churchmen to state a preference for him during the deliberations of the Hierocracy, but he still fell short of the needed majority. It was at this point that his underling, the aforementioned Martel, led an assault on the Holy City, hoping thereby to stampede the Hierocracy into electing Primate Annias. Sir Sparhawk and a limited number of Church Knights were able to keep Martel away from the Basilica where the Hierocracy was deliberating. Most of the city of Chyrellos, however, was severely damaged or destroyed during the fighting.
As the situation reached crisis proportions, help arrived for the beleaguered defenders in the form of the armies of the western Elene kingdoms. (Elene politics, one notes, are quite robust.) The connection between the Primate of Cimmura and the renegade Martel came to light as well as the fact that the pair had a subterranean arrangement with Otha of Zemoch. Outraged by the perfidy of the man, the Hierocracy rejected his candidacy and elected instead one Dolmant, the Patriarch of Demos. This Dolmant appears to be competent, though it may be too early to say for certain.
Queen Ehlana of the Kingdom of Elenia was scarcely more than a child, but she appeared to be a strong-willed and spirited young woman. She had long had a secret preference for Sir Sparhawk, though he was more than twenty years her senior; and upon her recovery it had been announced that the two were betrothed. Following the election of Dolmant to the Archprelacy, they were wed. Peculiarly enough, the queen retained her authority, although we must suspect that Sir Sparhawk exerts considerable influence upon her in state as well as domestic matters.
The involvement of the Emperor of Zemoch in the internal affairs of the Elene Church was, of course, a casus belli, and the armies of western Eosia, led by the Church Knights, marched eastward across Lamorkand to meet the Zemoch hordes poised on the border. The long-dreaded Second Zemoch War had begun.
Sir Sparhawk and his companions, however, rode north to avoid the turmoil of the battlefield, and they then turned eastward, crossed the mountains of northern Zemoch and surreptitiously made their way to Otha’s capital at the city of Zemoch, evidently in pursuit of Annias and Martel.
The best efforts of the empire’s agents in the west have failed to reveal precisely what took place at Zemoch. It is quite certain that Annias, Martel and Otha himself perished there, but they are of little note in the pageant of history. What is far more relevant is the incontrovertible fact that Azash, Elder God of Styricum and the driving force behind Otha and his Zemochs, also perished, and it is undeniably true that Sir Sparhawk was responsible. We must concede that the levels of magic unleashed at Zemoch were beyond our comprehension and that Sir Sparhawk has powers at his command such as no mortal has ever possessed. As evidence of the levels of violence unleashed in the confrontation, we need only point to the fact that the city of Zemoch was utterly destroyed during the discussions.
Clearly, Zalasta the Styric had been right. Sir Sparhawk, the prince consort of Queen Ehlana, was the one man in all the world capable of dealing with the crisis in Tamuli. Unfortunately, Sir Sparhawk was not a citizen of the Tamul Empire, and thus could not be summoned to the imperial capital at Matherion by the emperor. His Majesty’s government was in a quandary. The emperor had no authority over this Sparhawk, and to have been obliged to appeal to a man who was essentially a private citizen would have been an unthinkable humiliation.
The situation in the empire was daily worsening, and our need for the intervention of Sir Sparhawk was growing more and more urgent. Of equal urgency was the absolute necessity of maintaining the empire’s dignity. It was ultimately the Foreign Office’s most brilliant diplomat, First Secretary Oscagne, who devised a solution to the dilemma. We will discuss his Excellency’s brilliant diplomatic ploy at greater length in the following chapter.
