The Shining Ones. David Eddings

make fun of me, Tynian,’ she threatened. ‘If you do that, you might just wake up some morning with your feet on backward. Now give me a kiss.’

      ‘Yes, Aphrael.’

      She laughed and swarmed into his arms to collect her kisses.

      They disembarked and stood on the pier as the Tamul vessel made her way slowly out of the harbor.

      ‘They’re sailing at the right time of year anyway,’ Ulath said. ‘It’s a little early for the hurricanes.’

      ‘That’s encouraging,’ Kalten said. ‘Where to now, Flute?’

      ‘There’s a ship waiting for us on the far side of the island,’ she replied. ‘I’ll tell you about it after we get out of town.’

      Vanion handed Norkan the packet of letters Sparhawk had so laboriously written. ‘We can’t be sure how long we’ll be gone, your Excellency,’ he said, ‘so you might want to space these out.’

      Norkan nodded. ‘I can supplement them with reports of my own,’ he said, ‘and if the worst comes to the worst, I can always use the talents of the professional forger at the embassy here. He should be able to duplicate Prince Sparhawk’s handwriting after a day or so of practise – well enough to add personal postscripts to my reports, anyway.’

      For some reason Sparhawk found that very shocking.

      ‘May I ask a question?’ Norkan said to Flute.

      ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I won’t guarantee that I’ll answer, but you can ask.’

      ‘Are our Tamul Gods real?’

      ‘Yes.’

      Norkan sighed. ‘I was afraid of that. I haven’t led what you’d call an exemplary life.’

      ‘Don’t worry, Norkan. Your Gods don’t take themselves very seriously. They’re considered frivolous by the rest of us.’ She paused. ‘They’re fun at parties, though,’ she added. She suddenly giggled. ‘They really irritate the Elene God. He has absolutely no sense of humor, and your Tamul Gods are very fond of practical jokes.’

      Norkan shuddered. ‘I don’t think I really want to know any more about this sort of thing,’ he said. He looked around. ‘I’d strongly advise you to leave town rather quickly, my friends,’ he told them. ‘A republican form of government generates vast quantities of paper. There are questionnaires and forms and permits and licenses for almost everything, and there have to be ten copies of every single one. Nobody in the government wants to really make a decision about anything, so documents are just passed around from hand to hand until they either fall apart or get lost someplace.’

      ‘Who finally does make the decisions?’ Vanion asked.

      ‘Nobody,’ Norkan shrugged. ‘Tegans have learned to get along without a government. Everybody knows what has to be done anyway, so they scribble on enough official forms to keep the bureaucrats busy and then just ignore them. I hate to admit it, but the system seems to work quite well.’ He laughed. There was a notorious murderer who was apprehended during the last century,’ he said. ‘They put him on trial, and he died of old age before the courts could decide whether he was guilty or not.’

      ‘How old was he when they caught him?’ Talen asked.

      ‘About thirty, I understand. You’d really better get started, my friends. That fellow at the head of this wharf has a sort of official expression on his face. You should probably be out of sight before he leafs through that pouch he’s carrying and finds the right set of forms for you to fill out.’

      The Isle of Tega was tidy. It was not particularly scenic, nor did it have that picturesque desolation that sets the hearts of romantics all aflutter. The island produced no economically significant crops, and the small plots of ground under cultivation were devoted to what might be called expanded kitchen gardens. The stone walls that marked off the fields were straight and were all of a uniform height. The roads did not curve or bend, and the roadside barrows were all precisely of the same width and depth. Since the island’s major industry, the collecting of sea-shells, was conducted underwater, there was none of the clutter one customarily sees around workshops.

      The tedious tidiness, however, was offset by a dreadful smell which seemed to hover over everything.

      ‘What is that awful stink?’ Talen said, trying to cover his nostrils with his sleeve.

      ‘Rotting shellfish,’ Khalad shrugged. ‘They must use it for fertilizer.’

      ‘How can they stand to live here with that smell?’

      ‘They’re probably so used to it that they don’t even notice it any more. They want the sea-shells because they can sell them to the Tamuls in Matherion, but people can’t live on a steady diet of oysters and clams, so they have to get rid of the excess somehow. It seems to make very good fertilizer. I’ve never seen cabbages that big before.’

      Talen looked speculatively at his brother. ‘Pearls come from oysters, don’t they?’ he asked.

      ‘That’s what I’ve been told.’

      ‘I wonder if the Tegans do anything with them when they run across them?’

      ‘They’re not really very valuable, Talen,’ Flute told him. ‘There’s something in the water around the island that makes the pearls black. Who would pay anything for black pearls?’ She looked around at them. ‘Now then,’ she said to them, ‘we’ll have to sail about fifteen hundred leagues to reach the place where Bhelliom is.’

      ‘That far?’ Vanion said. ‘We won’t get back to Matherion until the dead of winter, then. At thirty leagues a day, it’s going to take us fifty days to get there and fifty days back.’

      ‘No,’ she disagreed, ‘actually it’s going to take us five days to get there and five days to get back.’

      ‘Impossible!’ Ulath said flatly. ‘No ship can move that fast.’

      ‘How much would you be willing to wager on that, Sir Ulath?’

      He thought about that for a moment. ‘Not very much,’ he decided. ‘I wouldn’t insult you by suggesting that you’d cheat, but …’ He spread his hands suggestively.

      ‘You’re going to tamper with time again, I take it?’ Sparhawk said to her.

      She shook her head. ‘There are some limitations to that, Sparhawk. We need something more dependable. The ship that’s waiting for us is just a bit unusual. I don’t think any of you should get too curious about what she’s made of and what makes her move. You won’t be able to talk with the crew, because they don’t speak your language. You probably wouldn’t want to talk with them anyway, because they aren’t really human.’

      ‘Witchcraft?’ Bevier asked suspiciously.

      She patted his cheek. ‘I’ll answer that question just as soon as you come up with a definition of witchcraft that’s not personally insulting, dear Bevier.’

      ‘What are you going to do, Aphrael?’ Sephrenia asked suspiciously. There are rules, you know.’

      ‘The other side’s been breaking rules right and left, dear sister,’ Aphrael replied airily. ‘Reaching into the past has been forbidden almost from the very start.’

      ‘Are you going to reach into the future?’ Khalad asked her. ‘People are coming up with new ideas in ship design all the time. Are you going to reach ahead and bring us back a ship that hasn’t been invented yet?’

      ‘That’s an interesting idea, Khalad, but I wouldn’t know where to look. The future hasn’t happened yet, so how would I know where – or when – to find that kind of a ship? I’ve gone someplace else, that’s all.’

      ‘What do you mean “someplace else”?’

      ‘There’s