The Hidden City. David Eddings

worth, men who delighted in irritating others just for the fun of it. ‘Let me,’ he murmured, laying one gently restraining hand on his Thalesian companion’s arm. Ulath’s bunched muscles clearly spoke of impending violence.

      ‘Nice net,’ Tynian noted casually, picking up one edge of it. Then he drew his dagger and began cutting the strings.

      ‘What are you doing?’ the pinch-faced fisherman screamed.

      ‘I’m showing you what,’ Tynian explained. ‘You said, “what if I don’t feel like telling you?” This is what. Think it over. My friend and I aren’t in any hurry, so take your time.’ He took a fistful of net and sawed through it with his knife.

      ‘Stop!’ the fellow shrieked in horror.

      ‘Ah – where was it you said we might find Sablis?’ Ulath asked innocently.

      ‘His corrals are on the eastern edge of town.’ The words came tumbling out. Then the scrawny fellow gathered up his net in both arms and held it to his chest, almost like a mother shielding a child from harm.

      ‘Have a pleasant day, neighbor,’ Tynian said, sheathing his dagger. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how much we’ve appreciated your help here. You’ve been absolutely splendid about the whole affair.’ And the two knights turned and walked along the wharf toward the shabby-looking village.

      * * *

      Their camp was neat and orderly with a place for everything and everything exactly where it belonged. Berit had noticed that Khalad always set up camp in exactly the same way. He seemed to have some concept of the ideal camp etched in his mind and, since it was perfect, he never altered it. Khalad was very rigid in some ways.

      ‘How far did we come today?’ Berit asked as they washed up their supper dishes.

      ‘Ten leagues,’ Khalad shrugged, ‘the same as always. Ten leagues is standard on level terrain.’

      ‘This is going to take forever,’ Berit complained.

      ‘No. It might seem like it, though.’ Khalad looked around and then lowered his voice until it was hardly more than a whisper. ‘We’re not really in any hurry, Berit,’ he said. ‘We might even want to slow down a bit.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Keep your voice down. Sparhawk and the others have a long way to go, and we want to be sure they’re in place before Krager – or whoever it is – makes contact with us. We don’t know when or where that’s going to happen, so the best way to delay it is to slow down.’ Khalad looked out into the darkness beyond the circle of firelight. ‘How good are you at magic?’

      ‘Not very,’ Berit admitted, scrubbing diligently. ‘I’ve still got a lot to learn. What did you want me to do?’

      ‘Could you make one of our horses limp – without actually hurting him?’

      Berit probed through his memory. Then he shook his head. I don’t think I know any spells that would do that.’

      ‘That’s too bad. A lame horse would give us a good reason to slow down.’

      It came without warning: a cold, prickling kind of sensation that seemed to be centered at the back of Berit’s neck. ‘That’s good enough,’ he said in a louder voice. ‘I’m not getting paid enough to scrub holes in tin plates,’ He rinsed off the dish he’d been washing, shook most of the water off it and stowed it back into the pack.

      ‘You felt it, too?’ Khalad’s whisper came out from between motionless lips. That startled Berit. How could Khalad have known?

      Berit buckled the straps on the pack and gave his friend a curt nod. ‘Let’s build up the fire a bit and then get some sleep.’ He said it loudly enough to be heard out beyond the circle of firelight. The two of them walked toward their pile of firewood. Berit was murmuring the spell and concealing the movements of his hands at the same time.

      ‘Who is it?’ Again, Khalad’s lips did not move.

      ‘I’m still working on that,’ Berit whispered back. He released the spell so slowly that it seemed almost to dribble out of the ends of his fingers.

      The sense of it came washing back to him. It was something on the order of recognizing an accent – except that it was done when nobody was talking. ‘It’s a Styric,’ he said quietly.

      ‘Zalasta?’

      ‘No, I don’t believe so. I think I’d recognize him. It’s somebody I’ve never been around before.’

      ‘Not too much wood, my Lord,’ Khalad said aloud. ‘This pile has to get us through breakfast too, you know.’

      ‘Good thinking,’ Berit approved. He reached out again, very cautiously. ‘He’s moving away,’ he muttered. ‘How did you know we were being watched?’

      ‘I could feel it,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘I always know when somebody’s watching me. How noisy is it when you get in touch with Aphrael?’

      ‘That’s one of the good spells. It doesn’t make a sound.’

      ‘You’d better tell her about this. Let her know that we are being watched and that it’s a Styric who’s doing the watching.’ Khalad knelt and began to carefully stack his armload of broken-off limbs on their campfire. ‘Your disguise seems to be working,’ he noted.

      ‘How did you arrive at that?’

      ‘They wouldn’t waste a Styric on us if they knew who you really are.’

      ‘Unless they don’t have anybody left except Styrics. Stragen’s celebration of the Harvest Festival might have been more effective than we thought.’

      ‘We could probably argue about that all night. Just tell Aphrael about our visitor out there. She’ll pass it on to the others, and we’ll let them get the headache from trying to sort it out with logic.’

      ‘Aren’t you curious about it?’

      ‘Not so curious that I’m going to lose any sleep over it. That’s one of the advantages of being a peasant, my Lord. We’re not required to come up with the answers to these earth-shaking questions. You aristocrats get the pleasure of doing that.’

      ‘Thanks,’ Berit said sourly.

      ‘No charge, my Lord,’ Khalad grinned.

      Sparhawk had never actually worked for a living before, and he discovered that he did not like it very much. He quickly grew to hate Captain Sorgi’s thick-necked bo’sun. The man was crude, stupid, and spitefully cruel. He fawned outrageously whenever Sorgi appeared on the quarterdeck, but when the captain returned below decks, the bo’sun’s natural character re-asserted itself. He seemed to take particular delight in tormenting the newest members of the crew, assigning them the most tedious, exhausting and demeaning tasks aboard ship. Sparhawk found himself quite suddenly in full agreement with Khalad’s class prejudices, and sometimes at night he found himself contemplating murder.

      ‘Every man hates his employer, Fron,’ Stragen told him, using Sparhawk’s assumed name. ‘It’s a very natural part of the scheme of things.’

      ‘I could stand him if he didn’t deliberately go out of his way to be offensive,’ Sparhawk growled, scrubbing at the deck with his block of pumice-stone.

      ‘He’s paid to be offensive, my friend. Angry men work harder. Part of your problem is that you always look him right in the eye. He wouldn’t single you out the way he does if you’d keep your eyes lowered. If you don’t, this is going to be a very long voyage for you.’

      ‘Or a short one for him,’ Sparhawk said darkly.

      He considered it that night as he tried, without much success, to sleep in his hammock. He fervently wished that he could get his hands on the idiot who had decided that humans could sleep in hammocks.