Then the door to Sephrenia’s cabin opened, and the small Styric woman emerged with a smile that made her face look like the sun coming up, and with her little sister in her arms.
Flute, of course, was unchanged – and unchangeable. She appeared to be no more than six years old – precisely the same age as Danae. Sparhawk immediately rejected the possibility of coincidence. Where Aphrael was concerned, there were no coincidences. She wore the same short linen smock belted at the waist and the same plaited grass headband that she had been wearing when they had first met her. Her long hair was as black as night, and her large eyes nearly as dark. Her little bare feet were grass-stained. She held a simple many-chambered set of goatherd’s pipes to her bow-like lips, and her song was Styric, set in a complex minor key.
‘What a pretty child,’ Ambassador Norkan observed, ‘but is it really a good idea to take her along on this mysterious mission of yours, Prince Sparhawk? I gather there might be some danger involved.’
‘Not now there won’t be, your Excellency,’ Ulath grinned.
Sephrenia gravely set the Child Goddess on the cabin floor, and Flute began to dance to the clear, sweet music of her pipes.
Sephrenia looked at Emban and Norkan. ‘Watch the child closely, Emban, and you too, your Excellency. That should save us hours of explanation and argument.’
Flute pirouetted through the cabin, her grass-stained little feet flickering, her black hair flying and her pipes sounding joyously. This time Sparhawk actually saw the first step she placed quite firmly on insubstantial air. As one mounting an invisible stair, the Child Goddess danced upward, whirling as she climbed, bending and swaying, her tiny feet fluttering like birds’ wings as she danced on nothing at all. Then her song and her dance ended, and, smiling impishly and still standing in mid-air, she curtsied.
Emban’s eyes were bulging, and he had half fallen from his chair. Ambassador Norkan tried to maintain his urbane expression, but it was slipping badly, and his hands were shaking.
Talen grinned and began to applaud. The others laughed, and they all joined in.
‘Oh, thank you, my dear ones,’ Flute said sweetly, curtsying again.
‘For God’s sake, Sparhawk!’ Emban choked. ‘Make her come down from there! She’s destroying my sanity!’
Flute laughed and quite literally hurled herself into the fat little churchman’s arms, smothering his pale, cringing face with kisses. ‘I love to do that to people!’ she giggled delightedly.
Emban shrank back even further.
‘Oh, don’t be silly, Emban,’ she chided. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I sort of love you, actually.’ A look of sly mischief came into her eyes. ‘How would you like to come to work for me, your Grace?’ she suggested. ‘I’m not nearly as stuffy as your Elene God, and we could have a lot of fun together.’
‘Aphrael!’ Sephrenia said sharply. ‘Stop that! You know you’re not supposed to do that!’
‘I was only teasing him, Sephrenia. I wouldn’t really steal Emban. The Elene God needs him too much.’
‘Has your theology been sufficiently shaken, your Grace?’ Vanion asked the Patriarch of Ucera. ‘The little girl in your lap who’s blithely trying to lead you off down the flowery path to heresy is the Child Goddess Aphrael, one of the thousand Younger Gods of Styricum.’
‘How do I greet her?’ Emban asked in a squeaky, frightened kind of voice.
‘A few kisses might be nice,’ Flute suggested.
‘Stop that,’ Sephrenia chided her again.
‘And what are your feelings, your Excellency?’ the little girl asked Norkan.
‘Dubious, your – uh …’
‘Just Aphrael, Norkan,’ she told him.
‘That’s really not suitable,’ he replied. ‘I’m a diplomat, and the very soul of diplomatic speech is formal modes of address. I haven’t called anyone but colleagues by their first names since I was about ten years old.’
‘Her first name is a formal mode of address, your Excellency,’ Sephrenia said gently.
‘All right, then,’ Aphrael said, slipping down from Emban’s lap. ‘Tynian and Emban are going to Chyrellos to fetch the Church Knights. Norkan’s going to the Isle of Tega to help Sparhawk lie to my – uh – his wife, that is. The rest of us are going to go get the Bhelliom again. Sparhawk seems to think he might need it. I think he’s underestimating his own abilities, but I’ll go along with him on the issue – if only to keep him from nagging and complaining.’
‘I’ve really missed her,’ Kalten laughed. ‘What are you going to do, Flute? Saddle up a herd of whales for us to ride to that coastline where we threw Bhelliom into the sea?’
Her eyes brightened.
‘Never mind,’ Sparhawk told her quite firmly.
‘Spoilsport.’
‘I’m really disappointed in you, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘I’ve never ridden a whale before.’
‘Will you shut up about whales?’ Sparhawk snapped at him.
‘You don’t have to get so touchy about it. What have you got against whales?’
‘It’s a personal thing between Aphrael and me,’ Sparhawk replied in a grating tone. ‘I won’t win many arguments with her, but I am going to win the one about whales.’
The layover of their ship at Tega was necessarily brief. The tide had already turned, and the captain was quite concerned about the inexorably lowering water-level in the harbor.
Sparhawk and his friends conferred briefly in the ship’s main salon while Khalad directed the sailors in the unloading of their horses and supplies. ‘Do your very best to make Sarathi understand just how serious the situation here really is, Emban,’ Vanion said. ‘Sometimes he gets a little pig-headed.’
‘I’m sure he’ll enjoy knowing how you really feel about him, Vanion,’ the fat churchman grinned.
‘Say anything you want, your Grace. I’ll never be going back to Chyrellos anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Make a special point of letting him know that the name of Cyrgon’s been popping up. You might want to gloss over the fact that we’ve only got Krager’s word for Cyrgon’s involvement, though. We are sure about the Troll-Gods, however, and the notion that we’re facing heathen Gods again might help Sarathi tear his attention away from Rendor.’
‘Was there anything else I already know that you’d like to tell me, Vanion?’
Vanion laughed. ‘Nicely put. I was being a bit of a meddler, wasn’t I?’
‘The term is “busy-body”, Vanion. I’ll do everything I can, but you know Dolmant. He’ll make his own assessment and his own decision. He’ll weigh Daresia against Rendor and decide which of them he wants to save.’
Tell him that I’m here with Sparhawk, Emban,’ Flute instructed. ‘He knows who I am.’
‘He does?’
‘You don’t really have to step around Dolmant so carefully. He’s not the fanatic Ortzel is, so he can accept the fact that his theology doesn’t answer all the questions in the universe. The fact that I’m involved might help him to make the right decision. Give him my love. He’s an old stick sometimes, but I’m really fond of him.’
Emban’s eyes were a little wild. ‘I think I’ll retire when this is all over,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she smiled. ‘You