The Ruby Knight

dear one?’
    ‘I can’t afford not to. I’ll avenge this child – against the Seeker or Azash or even against the gates of Hell itself.’
    ‘You’re angry, Sparhawk.’
    ‘Yes. You could say that.’ It was stupid and served no purpose, but Sparhawk suddenly tore his sword from its scabbard and destroyed an inoffending wall with it. It didn’t accomplish anything, but it made him feel a little better.
    The others came silently down into the village and to the open grave Kalten had grubbed out of the earth with his bare hands. Sephrenia came out of the house with the dry body of the child in her arms. Flute came forward with a light linen cloth, and the two carefully wrapped the dead child in it. Then they deposited it in the rude grave.
    ‘Bevier,’ Sephrenia said, ‘would you? This is an Elene child, and you are the most devout among these knights.’
    ‘I am unworthy.’ Bevier was weeping openly.
    ‘Who is worthy, dear one?’ she said. ‘Will you send this unknown child into the darkness alone?’
    Bevier stared at her and then fell to his knees beside the grave and began to recite the ancient prayer for the dead of the Elene church.
    Rather peculiarly, Flute came up beside the kneeling Arcian. Her fingers gently wove through his curly blue-black hair in a strangely comforting way. For some reason, Sparhawk began to feel that the strange little girl might be far, far older than any of them realized. Then she raised her pipes. The hymn was an ancient one, almost at the core of the Elene faith, but there was a minor Styric overtone to it. Briefly, in the sound of the little girl’s song, Sparhawk began to perceive some unbelievable possibilities.
    When the burial was complete, they mounted and rode on. They were all very quiet for the rest of that day, and they stopped for the night at the campsite beside the small lake where they had encountered the wandering minstrel. The man was gone.
    ‘I was afraid of that,’ Sparhawk said. ‘It was too much to hope for that he’d still be here.’
    ‘Maybe we’ll catch up with him farther south,’ Kalten suggested. ‘That horse of his wasn’t in very good shape.’
    ‘What can we do about him even if we do catch him?’ Tynian said. ‘You weren’t planning to kill him, were you?’
    ‘Only as a last resort,’ Kalten replied. ‘Now that Sephrenia knows how Bellina influenced him, she could probably cure him.’
    ‘Your confidence is very nice, Kalten,’ she said, ‘but it might be misplaced.’
    ‘Will the spell she put on him ever wear off?’ Bevier asked.
    ‘To some degree. He’ll grow less desperate as time goes on, but he’ll never be entirely free of it. It might even make him write better poetry, though. The important thing is that he’ll grow less and less infectious. Unless he meets a fair number of people in the next week or so, he won’t be much of a danger to the count, and neither will those servants.’
    ‘That’s something at least,’ the young Cyrinic said. He frowned slightly. ‘Since I was already infected, why did that creature come to me that night? Wasn’t that just a waste of her time?’ Bevier seemed still strongly shaken by the funeral service for the dead child.
    ‘It was for reinforcement, Bevier,’ she told him. ‘You were agitated, but you wouldn’t have gone as far as to attack your companions. She had to make sure you’d go to any lengths to free her from that tower.’
    As they were setting up their night’s camp, something occurred to Sparhawk. He went over to where Sephrenia sat by the fire with her teacup in her hands. ‘Sephrenia,’ he said, ‘what’s Azash up to? Why is He suddenly going out of His way to corrupt Elenes? He’s never done that before, has He?’
    ‘Do you remember what the ghost of King Aldreas said to you that night in the crypt?’ she said. ‘That the time had come for Bhelliom to re-emerge?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Azash knows that too, and He’s growing desperate. I’d guess that He’s found that His Zemochs aren’t reliable. They follow orders, but they’re not very bright. They’ve been digging up that battlefield for centuries now, and they just keep ploughing over the same ground. We’ve found out more about Bhelliom’s location in the past few weeks than they’ve found out in the past five hundred years.’
    ‘We were lucky.’
    ‘That’s not entirely true, Sparhawk. I know that I tease you sometimes about Elene logic, but that was precisely what’s