was early spring, and the rain still had the lingering chill of winter. A soft, silvery drizzle sifted down out of the night sky and wreathed around the blocky watch-towers of Cimmura, hissing in the torches on each side of the broad gate and making the stones of the road leading up to the gate shiny and black. A lone rider approached the city. He was wrapped in a heavy traveller’s cloak and rode a tall, shaggy roan horse with a long nose and flat, vicious eyes. The traveller was a big man, a bigness of large, heavy bone and ropy tendon rather than of flesh. His hair was coarse and black, and at some time his nose had been broken. He rode easily but with the peculiar alertness of the trained warrior.
The big roan shuddered absently, shaking the rain out of his shaggy coat as they approached the east gate of the city and stopped in the ruddy circle of torchlight just outside the wall.
An unshaven gate guard in a rust-splotched breastplate and helmet and with a patched green cloak hanging negligently from one shoulder came out of the gate house to look inquiringly at the traveller. He was swaying slightly on his feet.
‘Just passing through, neighbour,’ the big man said in a quiet voice. He pushed back the hood of his cloak.
‘Oh,’ the guard said, ‘it’s you, Prince Sparhawk. I didn’t recognise you. Welcome home.’
‘Thank you,’ Sparhawk replied. He could smell the cheap wine on the man’s breath.
‘Would you like to have me send word to the palace that you’ve arrived, your Highness?’
‘No. Don’t bother them. I can unsaddle my own horse.’ Sparhawk privately disliked ceremonies – particularly late at night. He leaned over and handed the guard a small coin. ‘Go back inside, neighbour. You’ll catch cold if you stand out here in the rain.’ He nudged his horse and rode on through the gate.
The district near the city wall was poor, with shabby, run-down houses standing tightly packed beside each other, their second storeys projecting out over the wet littered streets. Sparhawk rode up a narrow, cobbled street with the slow clatter of the big roan’s steel-shod hooves echoing back from the buildings. The night breeze had come up, and the crude signs identifying this or that tightly-shuttered shop on the street-level floors swung creaking on rusty hooks.
A dog with nothing better to do came out of an alley to bark at them with brainless self-importance. Sparhawk’s horse turned his head slightly to give the wet cur a long, level stare that spoke eloquently of death. The empty-headed dog’s barking trailed off and he cringed back, his rat-like tail between his legs. The horse bore down on him purposefully. The dog whined, then yelped, turned and fled. Sparhawk’s horse snorted derisively.
‘That make you feel better, Faran?’ Sparhawk asked the roan.
Faran flicked his ears.
‘Shall we proceed then?’
A torch burned fitfully at an intersection, and a buxom young whore in a cheap dress stood, wet and bedraggled, in its ruddy, flaring light. Her dark hair was plastered to her head, the rouge on her cheeks was streaked and she had a resigned expression on her face.
‘What are you doing out here in the rain, Naween?’ Sparhawk asked her, reining in his horse.
‘I’ve been waiting for you, Sparhawk.’ Her tone was arch, and her dark eyes wicked.
‘Or for anyone else?’
‘Of course. I am a professional, Sparhawk, but I still owe you. Shouldn’t we settle up one of these days?’
He ignored that. ‘What are you doing working the streets?’
‘Shanda and I had a fight,’ she shrugged. ‘I decided to go into business for myself.’
‘You’re not vicious enough to be a street-girl, Naween.’ He dipped his fingers into the pouch at his side, fished out several coins and gave them to her. ‘Here,’ he instructed. ‘Get a room in an inn someplace and stay off the streets for a few days. I’ll talk with Platime, and we’ll see if we can make some arrangements for you.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t have to do that, Sparhawk. I can take care of myself.’
‘Of course you can. That’s why you’re standing out here in the rain. Just do it Naween. It’s too late and too wet for arguments.’
‘This is two I owe you, Sparhawk. Are you absolutely sure … ?’ She left it hanging.
‘Quite sure, little sister. I’m married now, remember?’
‘So?’
‘Never mind. Get in out of the weather.’ Sparhawk rode on, shaking his head. He liked Naween, but she was hopelessly incapable of taking care of herself.
He passed through a quiet square where all the shops and booths were shut down. There were few people abroad tonight, and few business opportunities. He let his mind drift back over the past month and a half. No one in Lamorkand had been willing to talk with him. Archprelate Dolmant was a wise man, learned in doctrine and Church politics, but he was woefully ignorant of the way the common people thought. Sparhawk had patiently tried to explain to him that sending a Church Knight out to gather information was a waste of time, but Dolmant had insisted, and Sparhawk’s oath obliged him to obey. And so it was that he had wasted six weeks in the ugly cities of southern Lamorkand where no one had been willing to talk with him about anything more serious than the weather. To make matters even worse, Dolmant had quite obviously blamed the knight for his own blunder.
In a dark side-street where the water dripped monotonously onto the cobblestones from the eaves of the houses, he felt Faran’s muscles tense. ‘Sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’ Someone was watching him, and he could clearly sense the animosity which had alerted his horse. Faran was a war-horse, and he could probably sense antagonism in his veins. Sparhawk muttered a quick spell in the Styric tongue, concealing the gestures which accompanied it beneath his cloak. He released the spell slowly to avoid alerting whoever was watching him.
The watcher was not an Elene. Sparhawk sensed that immediately. He probed further. Then he frowned. There were more than one, and they were not Styrics either. He pulled his thought back, passively waiting for some clue as to their identity.
The realisation came as a chilling shock. The watchers were not human. He shifted slightly in his saddle, sliding his hand toward his sword-hilt.
Then the sense of the watchers was gone, and Faran shuddered with relief. He turned his ugly face to give his master a suspicious look.
‘Don’t ask me, Faran,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘I don’t know either.’ But that was not entirely true. The touch of the minds in the darkness had been vaguely familiar, and that familiarity had raised questions in Sparhawk’s mind, questions he did not want to face.
He paused at the palace gate long enough to firmly instruct the soldiers not to wake the whole house, and then he dismounted in the courtyard.
A young man stepped out into the rain-swept yard from the stable. ‘Why didn’t you send word that you were coming, Sparhawk?’ he asked very quietly.
‘Because I don’t particularly like parades and wild celebrations in the middle of the night,’ Sparhawk told his squire, throwing back the hood of his cloak. ‘What are you doing up so late? I promised your mothers I’d
