The Hidden City

abruptly. ‘Bring the women.’
    ‘The servant girl is of no moment,’ Zalasta replied in a slightly challenging tone. ‘Let her sleep.’
    ‘I am not accustomed to having my commands questioned, Styric.’
    ‘Get accustomed, Cyrgai. The women are my prisoners. My arrangement is with Cyrgon, and you’re no more than an appendage to that arrangement. Your arrogance is beginning to annoy me. Leave the girl alone.’
    Their eyes locked, and a sudden tension filled the room. ‘Well, Ekatas?’ Zalasta said very quietly. ‘Has the time come? Have you finally worked up enough courage to challenge me? Any time, Ekatas. Any time at all.’
    Ehlana, now fully alert, saw the flicker of fear in the eyes of Cyrgon’s priest. ‘Bring the Queen then,’ he said sullenly. ‘It is she whom Cyrgon would behold.’
    ‘Wise decision, Ekatas,’ Zalasta said sardonically. ‘If you keep making the right choices, you might even live for a little while longer.’
    Ehlana took her cloak and gently covered Alcan with it. Then she turned to face the three men. ‘Let’s get on with this,’ she told them, mustering some remnant of her royal manner.
    Santheocles rose woodenly to his feet and put on his highcrested helmet, taking great pains to avoid mussing his carefully arranged hair. He spent several moments buckling on his large round shield, and then he drew his sword.
    ‘What an ass,’ Ehlana noted scornfully. ‘Are you really sure you should trust His Majesty with anything sharp, though? He might hurt himself with it, you know.’
    ‘It is customary, woman,’ Ekatas replied stiffly. ‘Prisoners are always kept under close guard.’
    ‘Ah,’ she murmured, ‘and we must obey the dictates of custom, mustn’t we, Ekatas? When custom rules, thought is unnecessary.’
    Zalasta smiled faintly. ‘I believe you wanted to take us to the temple, Ekatas. Let’s not keep Cyrgon waiting.’
    Ekatas choked back a retort, jerked the door open and led them out into the chilly hallway. The stairs that descended from the topmost tower of the royal palace were narrow and steep, endless stairs winding down and down. Ehlana was trembling by the time they reached the courtyard below.
    The winter sun was very bright in that broad courtyard, but there was not much heat to it. They crossed the flagstoned courtyard to the pale temple, a building constructed not of marble but of chalky limestone. Unlike marble, the limestone had a dull, unreflective surface, and the temple looked somehow diseased, leprous.
    They mounted the stairs to the portico and entered through a rude doorway. Ehlana had expected it to be dark inside this holy of Holies, but it was not. She stared with a certain apprehensive astonishment at the source of the light even as Ekatas and Santheocles prostrated themselves, crying in unison, ‘VBnet, Akor. Yala Cyrgon!’
    And then it was that the Queen understood the significance of that ubiquitous emblem that marked virtually everything here in the Hidden City. The white square represented the blocky altar set in the precise center of the temple, but the flame that burned atop that altar was no stylized representation. It was instead an actual fire that twisted and flared, reaching hungrily upward.
    Ehlana was suddenly afraid. The fire burning on the altar was not some votive offering, but a living flame, conscious, aware, and possessed of an unquenchable will. Bright as the sun, Cyrgon himself burned eternal on his pale altar.
    ‘No,’ Sparhawk decided. ‘We’d better not. Let’s just sit tight, at least until Xanetia has the chance to winnow through a few minds. We can always come back and deal with Scarpa and his friends later. Right now we need to know where Zalasta’s taking Ehlana and Alcan.’
    ‘We already know,’ Kalten said. ‘They’re going to Cyrga.’
    ‘That’s the whole point,’ the now-visible Ulath told him. ‘We don’t know where Cyrga is.’
    They had gone back into the vine-choked ruins and had gathered on the second floor of a semi-intact palace to consider options.
    ‘Aphrael has a general idea,’ Kalten said. ‘Can’t we just start out for central Cynesga and do some poking around when we get there?’
    ‘I don’t think that’d do much good,’ Bevier pointed out. ‘Cyrgon’s been concealing the place with illusions for the past ten eons. We could probably walk right through the streets of the city and not even see it.’
    ‘He’s not hiding it from everybody,’ Caalador