The Diamond Throne

secret, little mother, you shouldn’t chant them out loud, you know. You should know by now that I’ve got a very retentive memory.’
    She stared at him. ‘I’m shocked at you, Vanion,’ she declared. ‘You were not so unkind when you were young.’
    ‘Life is filled with these little disappointments, isn’t it?’ he said urbanely.
    ‘I can stop you,’ she cried, still wringing her hands. ‘You forget just how much stronger I am than you are.’ There was a shrill triumph in her voice.
    ‘Of course you are. That’s why I’d have to call in help. Could you deal with ten knights all chanting in unison? – or fifty? – or half a thousand?’
    ‘That’s unfair!’ she exclaimed. ‘I did not know that you would go this far, Vanion and I trusted you.’
    ‘And well you should, dear one,’ he said, assuming suddenly the superior role, ‘for I will not permit you to make this sacrifice. I’ll force you to submit to me, because you know I’m right. You’ll release the burden to me, because you know that what you have to do is more important than anything else right now, and you’ll sacrifice anything to do what we both know must be done.’
    ‘Dear one,’ she began in an agonized voice ‘My dearest one –’
    ‘As I said,’ he cut her off, ‘the discussion is ended.’
    There was a long and awkward silence as Sephrenia and Vanion stood with their eyes locked on each other’s face.
    ‘Did the physician in Dabour give you any hints about which objects might cure the Queen?’ Bevier asked Sparhawk a bit uneasily
    ‘He mentioned a spear in Daresia, several rings in Zemoch, a bracelet somewhere in Pelosia, and a jewel on the royal crown of Thalesia.’
    Ulath grunted. ‘The Bhelliom.’
    ‘That solves it, then,’ Kalten said. ‘We go to Thalesia, borrow Wargun’s crown, and come back here with it.’
    ‘Wargun doesn’t have it,’ Ulath told him.
    ‘What do you mean, Wargun doesn’t have it? He’s the King of Thalesia, isn’t he?’
    ‘That crown was lost five hundred years ago.’
    ‘Could we possibly find it?’
    ‘Almost anything is possible, I suppose,’ the big Thalesian replied, ‘but people have been looking for it for five hundred years without much success. Do we have that kind of time?’
    ‘What is this Bhelliom?’ Tynian asked him.
    ‘The legends say that it’s a very large sapphire carved in the shape of a rose It’s supposed to have the power of the Troll-Gods in it.’
    ‘Does it?’
    ‘I wouldn’t know I’ve never seen it. It’s lost, remember?’
    ‘There are bound to be other objects,’ Sephrenia declared. ‘We live in a world with magic all around us. In all of the aeons since the beginning of time, I’d imagine that the Gods have seen fit to create any number of things with the kind of power we’re looking for.’
    ‘Why not just make one?’ Kalten asked. ‘Get a group of people together and have them cast a spell on something, some jewel or stone or ring or whatever?’
    ‘Now I can see why you never became proficient in the secrets, Kalten.’ Sephrenia sighed. ‘You don’t even understand the basic principles. All magic comes from the Gods, not from us. They allow us to borrow if we ask them in the proper fashion – but they won’t let us make the kind of thing we’re looking for in this case. The power that’s instilled in these objects is a part of the power of the Gods themselves, and they don’t sacrifice that sort of thing lightly’
    ‘Oh,’ the blond man said. ‘I didn’t know that.’
    ‘You should have. I told you about it when you were fifteen.’
    ‘I must have forgotten.’
    ‘About all we can do is start looking,’ Vanion said. ‘I’ll send word to the other preceptors. We’ll have every Church Knight in all four orders working on it.’
    ‘And I’ll get word to the Styrics in the mountains,’ Sephrenia added. ‘There are many such things known only to Styricum.’
    ‘Did anything interesting happen in Madel?’ Sparhawk asked Kalten.
    ‘Not really,’ Kalten replied. ‘We caught a few glimpses of Krager, but always from a distance. By the time we got close to where he’d been, he’d given us the slip. He’s a tricky little weasel, isn’t he?’
    Sparhawk nodded. ‘That’s what made me finally realize that he was being used as bait. Could you get any idea of what he was doing?’
    ‘No. We could never get close enough. He was up to something, though. He was scurrying around Madel like a