The Hidden City

happily and laid her snowy head in his lap. He stroked her arched white neck and looked around.
    The Child Goddess Aphrael, gowned in white and surrounded by a glowing nimbus, sat calmly on a branch of one of the nearby oaks. She lifted her many-chambered pipes and blew an almost mocking little trill.
    ‘What are you up to now, Aphrael?’ he called up to her, deliberately forcing away the flowery words that jumped to his lips.
    ‘I thought you might want to talk,’ she replied, lowering the pipes. ‘Did you want some more time for self-mortification? Would you like a whip so that you can flog yourself with it? Take as much time as you want, Father. This particular instant will last for as long as I want it to.’ She reached out with one grass-stained little foot, placed it on nothing at all and calmly walked down a non-existent stairway to the alabaster floor of her temple. She sank down on it, crossed her feet at the ankles and lifted her pipes again. ‘Will it disturb your sour musings if I play?’
    ‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.
    She shrugged. ‘You seem to have this obscure need for penance of some kind, and there’s no time for it. I wouldn’t be much of a Goddess if I couldn’t satisfy both needs at the same time, now would I?’ She raised her pipes. ‘Do you have any favorites you’d like to hear?’
    ‘You’re actually serious, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yes.’ She breathed another little trill into the pipes.
    He glared at her for a moment, and then he gave up. ‘Can we talk about this?’ he asked her.
    ‘You’ve come to your senses? Already? Amazing.’
    He looked around at the island. ‘Where is this place?’ he asked curiously.
    The Child Goddess shrugged. ‘Wherever I want it to be. I carry it with me everyplace I go. Were you serious about what you were just thinking, Sparhawk? Were you really going to snatch up Bhelliom, grab Khalad by the scruff of the neck, leap onto Faran’s back and try to ride off in three directions at the same time?’
    ‘All Vanion and the others are doing is talking, Aphrael, and the talk isn’t going anywhere.’
    ‘Did you speak with Bhelliom about this notion of yours?’
    ‘The decision is mine, Aphrael. Ehlana’s my wife.’
    ‘How brave you are, Sparhawk. You’re making a decision that involves the Bhelliom without even consulting it. Don’t be misled by its seeming politeness, Father. That’s just a reflection of its archaic speech. It won’t do something it knows is wrong, no matter how sorry you’re feeling for yourself, and if you grow too insistent, it might just decide to create a new sun—about six inches from your heart.’
    ‘I have the rings, Aphrael. I’m still the one giving the orders.’
    She laughed at him. ‘Do you really think the rings mean anything, Sparhawk? They have no control over Bhelliom at all. That was just a subterfuge that concealed the fact that it has an awareness—and a will and purpose of its own. It can ignore the rings any time it wants to.’
    ‘Then why did it need me?’
    ‘Because you’re a necessity, Sparhawk—like wind or tide or rain. You’re as necessary as Klael is—or Bhelliom—or me, for that matter. Someday we’ll have to come back here and have a long talk about necessity, but we’re a little pressed for time right now.’
    ‘And was that little virtuoso performance of yours yesterday another necessity as well? Would the world have come to an end if you hadn’t held that public conversation with yourself?’
    ‘What I did yesterday was useful, Father, not necessary. I am who I am, and I can’t change that. When I’m going through one of these transitions, there are usually people around who know both of the little girls, and they start noticing the similarities. I always make it a point to have the girls meet each other in public. It puts off tiresome questions and lays unwanted suspicions to rest.’
    ‘You terrified Mmrr, you know.’
    She nodded. ‘I’ll make it up to her. That’s always been a problem. Animals can see right through my disguises. They don’t look at us in the way that we look at each other.’
    He sighed. ‘What am I going to do, Aphrael?’
    ‘I was hoping that a visit here would bring you back to your senses. A stopover in reality usually has that effect.’
    He looked up at her private, rainbow-colored sky. ‘This is your notion of reality?’
    ‘Don’t you like my reality?’
    ‘It’s lovely,’ he told her,