The Hidden City

woke the following morning, a thick, heavy snow that swirled and danced in the driving wind coming down out of the Atan mountains lying to the north. Sparhawk gazed sourly out of the window of his room in the barracks, then pulled on his clothes and went looking for the others.
    He found Itagne sitting by the stove in the war-room with a sheaf of documents in his lap. ‘Something important?’ he asked as he entered.
    ‘Hardly,’ Itagne replied. He made a face and put the papers away. ‘I made a serious blunder last spring before Oscagne uprooted me and sent me to Cynestra. I was teaching a class in foreign relations at the University, and I slipped and said the fatal words, “write a paper”. Now I’ve got a bale of these things to plough through.’ He shuddered.
    ‘Bad?’
    ‘Unbelievably so. Undergraduates should never be allowed to touch a quill-pen. So far I’ve encountered fifteen different versions of my own lecture notes—all couched in graceless, semi-literate prose.’
    ‘Where’s Vanion?’
    ‘He’s checking on his wounded. Have you seen Aphrael yet this morning?’
    Sparhawk shook his head. ‘She could be anywhere.’
    ‘Did she actually fly you here from Dirgis?’
    ‘Oh, yes—and up from Beresa before that. It’s an unusual experience, and it always starts with the same argument.’
    Itagne gave him a questioning look.
    ‘She has to revert to her real form when she does it.’
    ‘Blazing light? Trailing clouds of glory, and all that?’
    ‘No, nothing like that. She always poses as a little girl. that’s a subterfuge. Actually, she’s a young woman.’
    ‘What do you argue with her about?’
    ‘Whether or not she’s going to wear clothes. The Gods evidently don’t need them, and they haven’t quite grasped the concept of modesty yet. She’s a bit distracting when she first appears.’
    ‘I can imagine.’
    The door opened, and Vanion came in, brushing the snow off the shoulders of his cloak.
    ‘How are the men?’ Sparhawk asked him.
    ‘Not good,’ the Preceptor replied. ‘I wish we’d known more about Klael’s soldiers before we closed with them. I lost a lot of very good knights needlessly during that skirmish. If I’d had my wits about me, I’d have suspected something when they didn’t pursue us after we broke off our attack.’
    ‘How long were you engaged?’
    ‘It seemed like hours, but it was probably no longer than ten minutes.’
    ‘When you get to Samar, you might want to talk with Kring and Tikume. We should try to get some idea of just how long those soldiers can function in our air before they start to collapse.’
    Vanion nodded.
    There was really nothing for them to do, and the morning dragged sluggishly by. It was shortly before noon when Betuana, clad in close-fitting otterskin clothing, came running effortlessly out of the swirling snow. Her almost inhuman stamina was somehow unnerving. She seemed hardly winded and not even flushed as she entered the room where they waited.
    ‘Invigorating,’ she noted absently as she peeled off her outer garment. She took one lock of her night-dark hair and stretched it out to look critically at its sodden length. ‘Does anyone have a comb?’ she asked.
    They all started at the sound of a blaring trumpet fanfare from the other end of the room. They spun around and saw the Child Goddess. She was surrounded by a nimbus of pure light, she floated sedately in mid-air, and she was smiling sweetly at Sparhawk.
    ‘Is that sort of what you had in mind?’ she asked him.
    He cast his eyes upward. ‘Why me?’ he groaned. Then he looked at her smiling little face. ‘I give up, Aphrael,’ he said. ‘You win.’
    ‘Of course. I always win.’ She gently settled to the floor, and her light dimmed. ‘Come here, Betuana. Let me comb that out for you.’ She held out her hands, and a comb appeared in one and a brush in the other. The Queen of the Atans went to her and sat in a chair.
    ‘What did he say?’ Aphrael asked as she began to slowly pull the comb through Betuana’s dripping hair.
    ‘He said “no” right at first,’ the Queen replied, ‘and “no”, the second and third times as well. He started to weaken about the twelfth time, as I remember it.’
    ‘I knew it would work.’ Aphrael smiled.
    ‘Are we missing something?’ Vanion asked her.
    ‘The Atans don’t call on their God very often, so he almost has to respond when they do. He was probably concentrating on something else, and each