with no visible effect.
‘Faran!’ Sparhawk barked. ‘Run!’ It was something he seldom did. He called upon Faran’s loyalty instead of his training. The big horse shuddered slightly, then stretched himself out in a run that quickly outdistanced the others.
The attackers numbered perhaps ten men. They were recoiling visibly from the two shadowy Pandions blocking their path. Then one of them looked around and saw Sparhawk descending upon them with the others rushing along behind him, and he shouted a warning. After a moment of stunned paralysis, the shabby attackers bolted, fleeing across the meadow, fleeing in a kind of panic Sparhawk had seldom seen in professionals. He charged up the side of the outcrop with Faran’s steel-shod hooves striking sparks from the stones. Just below the crest, he reined in. ‘Is everybody all right?’ he called to Kurik.
‘We’re fine,’ Kurik replied, looking over the hasty breastwork of stone he and Berit had erected. ‘It was touch and go until those two knights got here, though.’ Kurik’s eyes looked a bit wild as he stared at the pair who had warded off the assailants. Sephrenia came up to the breastwork beside him, and her face was deathly pale.
Sparhawk turned to the two strange Pandions. ‘I think it’s time for introductions, brothers,’ he said, ‘and some explanations.’
The two made no reply. He looked at them a bit more closely. The horses upon which they sat now appeared even more skeletal, and Sparhawk shuddered as he saw that the animals had no eyes, but only vacant eye sockets, and that their bones protruded through their tattered coats. Then the two knights removed their helmets. Their faces seemed somehow filmy and indistinct, almost transparent, and they, too, were eyeless. One of them appeared very young, and he had butter-coloured hair. The other was old, and his hair was white. Sparhawk recoiled slightly. He knew both of them; he knew that they both were dead.
‘Sir Sparhawk,’ the ghost of Parasim said, his voice hollow and emotionless, ‘pursue thy quest with diligence. Time will not stay for thee.’
‘Why have you returned from the House of the Dead?’ Sephrenia asked the two in a profoundly formal tone. Her voice was trembling.
‘Our oath hath the power to bring us out of the shadows if need be, little mother,’ the form of Lakus replied, his voice also hollow and void of all emotion. ‘Others will also fall, and our company will increase ere the Queen returns to health.’ The hollow-eyed shade turned then to Sparhawk. ‘Guard well our beloved mother, Sparhawk, for she is in grave peril. Should she fall, our deaths are without purpose, and the Queen will die.’
‘I will, Lakus,’ Sparhawk promised.
‘Know also one last thing. In Ehlana’s death, thou shalt lose more than a queen. The darkness hovers at the gate, and Ehlana is our only hope of light.’ Then the two of them shimmered and vanished.
The four other knights came charging up the rocky slope and reined in. Kalten’s face was pallid and he was visibly trembling. ‘Who were they?’ he asked.
‘Parasim and Lakus,’ Sparhawk replied quietly.
‘Parasim? He’s dead.’
‘So’s Lakus.’
‘Ghosts?’
‘So it would seem.’
Tynian dismounted and pulled off his massive helmet. He was also pale and sweating. ‘I’ve dabbled at times in necromancy,’ he said, ‘though not usually by choice. Usually a spirit has to be summoned, but sometimes they’ll appear on their own – particularly if they left something important unfinished.’
‘This was important,’ Sparhawk said bleakly.
‘Was there something else you wanted to tell us, Sparhawk?’ Ulath asked then. ‘You seem to have left a few things out.’
Sparhawk looked at Sephrenia. Her face was still deathly pale, but she straightened and nodded to him.
Sparhawk took a deep breath. ‘The spell that sustains Ehlana and keeps her sealed in that crystal was the result of the combined efforts of Sephrenia and twelve Pandions,’ he explained.
‘I’d been sort of wondering how you did that,’ Tynian said.
‘There’s only one problem with it,’ Sparhawk continued. ‘The Knights will die one by one until only Sephrenia is left.’
‘And then?’ Bevier asked, his voice shaking.
‘Then I will also depart,’ Sephrenia replied simply.
A stifled sob escaped the young Cyrinic. ‘Not while I have breath,’ he said in a choked voice.
‘Someone, however, is trying to speed things up,’ Sparhawk went on. ‘This is the third attempt on Sephrenia’s life since we left Cimmura.’
‘But I have survived them,’ she said as if they were of no moment. ‘Were you able in any way to identify the people behind this attack?’
‘Martel and some Styric,’ Kalten told her. ‘The Styric had put a spell on the mercenaries to keep them from talking, but Ulath broke it somehow. He spoke with a prisoner in a language I didn’t understand. The man answered in the same tongue.’
She looked inquiringly at the Thalesian knight.
‘We spoke in the language of the Trolls,’ Ulath shrugged. ‘It’s a nonhuman tongue, so it circumvented the spell.’
She stared at him in horror. ‘You called upon the Troll-Gods?’ she gasped.
‘Sometimes it’s necessary, Lady,’ he replied. ‘It’s not too dangerous, if you’re careful.’
Bevier’s face was tear-streaked. ‘An it please you, my Lord Sparhawk,’ he said, ‘I shall personally undertake the protection of the Lady Sephrenia. I shall remain constantly at this valiant lady’s side, and should there be further encounters, I pledge you my life that she shall not be harmed.’
A brief expression of consternation crossed Sephrenia’s face, and she looked appealingly at Sparhawk.
‘Probably not a bad idea,’ he said, ignoring her unspoken objection. ‘All right then, Bevier. Stay with her.’
Sephrenia gave him a withering look.
‘Are we going to get the dead under the ground?’ Tynian asked.
Sparhawk shook his head. ‘We don’t have time to be gravediggers. My brothers are dying one by one, and Sephrenia’s at the end of the list. If we see some peasants, we’ll tell them where the bodies are. The loot they’ll get will more than pay for the digging. Let’s move along.’
Borrata was a university town that had grown up around the stately buildings of the oldest centre of higher learning in Eosia. On occasion in the past, the Church had strongly urged that the institution be moved to Chyrellos, but the faculty had always resisted that notion, obviously desiring to maintain their independence and the absence of Church supervision.
Sparhawk and his companions took rooms in one of the local inns late in the afternoon on the day they arrived. The inn was more comfortable and certainly cleaner than the roadside ones in which they had stayed in
