Berit shook his head. ‘He may have already passed through. Or he could be watching from one of the hills outside of town. He might not want people to know that he’s here.’

It was an hour or so past sunset, and twilight was descending on the oasis when a Cynesgan in a loose-fitting striped robe approached their tent. ‘I’m supposed to ask if one of you might be named Sparhawk,’ he said in a slightly accented voice.

Berit rose to his feet. ‘I might be named Sparhawk, neighbor.’

‘Might be?’

‘That’s the way you phrased your question, friend. You’ve got a note for me. Why don’t you just hand it over and be on your way? We don’t really have anything else to talk about, do we?’

The messenger’s face hardened. He reached inside his robe, took out a folded and sealed parchment, and negligently tossed it at Berit’s feet. Then he turned and walked away.

‘You know, Berit,’ Khalad said mildly, ‘sometimes you’re even more abrasive than Sparhawk himself.’

Berit grinned. ‘I know. I’m trying to maintain his reputation.’ He bent, picked up the parchment, and broke the seal. He removed the identifying lock of hair and quickly read the brief message.

‘Well?’Khalad asked.

‘Nothing very specific. It says that there’s a caravan route running off to the northwest. We’re supposed to follow that. We’ll get further instructions along the way.’

‘Will it be safe to use the spell and talk with Aphrael once we get out of town?’

‘I think so. I’m sure she’d have told me if I wasn’t supposed to use it here in Cynesga.’

‘We don’t have much choice,’ Khalad said. ‘We can’t tell if Sparhawk’s already been here, if he’s here now, or if he’s still on the way, and we’ve got to let him know about these new instructions.’

‘Do you think we ought to start out tonight?’

‘No. Let’s not start floundering round in the dark. We might miss the trail, and there’s nothing out in that desert but empty.’

‘I won’t do anything to put Berit in any kind of danger,’ Elysoun insisted a few days later. ‘I’m very fond of him.’

‘They found out that he was posing as Sparhawk quite some time ago, Elysoun,’ Baroness Melidere told her. ‘You won’t be putting him in any more danger than he’s already in. Telling Chacole about his disguise will convince her that you’ve gone over to her side – and that you have access to important information.’

‘You might want to make them believe that your husband’s totally smitten with you, Empress Elysoun,’ Patriarch Emban added. ‘Let them think that he tells you everything.’

‘Are you smitten with me, Sarabian?’ Elysoun asked archly.

‘Oh, absolutely, my dear,’ he smiled. ‘I adore you.’

‘What a nice thing to say.’ She smiled warmly.

‘Later, children,’ Melidere told them absently, her forehead furrowed with concentration. ‘At the same time you tell Chacole about Berit’s disguise, drop a few hints about a fleet of Church ships in the Gulf of Daconia. Stragen’s been very carefully planting that particular lie, so let’s give them some confirmation. After you tell them about Berit, they’ll be inclined to believe your story about the fleet.’ She looked at the Emperor. ‘Is there anything else we can give them that won’t hurt us? Something they can verify?’

‘Does it have to be important?’

‘Not really, just something that’s true. We need another truth to get the mix right.’

‘The mix?’

‘It’s like a recipe, your Majesty,’ she smiled. ‘Two parts truth to one part lie; stir well and serve. If you get the mix right, they’ll swallow the whole thing.’

They had set out at first light, and the sun had not yet risen when they topped a low ridge and saw a vast, flat expanse of dead whiteness lying ahead. Time, like climate, had lost all meaning.

‘I’d hate to have to cross that in the summertime,’ Kalten said.

‘Truly,’ Sparhawk agreed.

‘The slavers’ trail swings north here,’ Bevier noted, ‘probably to go around those flats. If a Cynesgan patrol stumbles across us out there, we might have trouble convincing them that we’re attached to that caravan we’ve been following.’

‘We’ll just say that we got lost,’ Kalten said with a shrug. ‘Let me do the talking, Bevier. I get lost all the time anyway, so I can be fairly convincing. How far is it to the other side, Sparhawk?’

‘About twenty-five leagues, according to my map.’

‘Two days – even if we push,’ Kalten calculated.

‘And no cover,’ Bevier added. ‘You couldn’t hide a spider out –’ He broke off. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at an intensely bright spot of light on the mountainous western horizon.

Talen squinted at the light. ‘I think it might be the landmark we’ve been looking for,’ he said.

‘How did you arrive at that?’ Kalten asked skeptically.

‘It’s in the right direction, isn’t it? Ogerajin said that we were supposed to go northwest from Vigayo to the Plains of Salt. Then he said, “From the verge of the Plains of Salt wilt thou behold low on the horizon before thee the dark shapes of the Forbidden Mountains, and, if it please Cyrgon, his fiery white pillars will guide thee to his Hidden City.” There are mountains there, and if that light’s coming from right in the middle of them wouldn’t it almost have to be coming from the pillars?’

‘The man was crazy, Talen,’ Kalten objected.

‘Maybe,’ Sparhawk disagreed, ‘but everything he described is right where he said it would be. Let’s take a chance on it. It’s still the right direction.’

‘About the only thing that might cause us any trouble would be if we stumbled across a helpful Cynesgan patrol and they decided to escort us back to that caravan we’ve been following for the last few days,’ Mirtai observed.

‘Logically, our chances of coming across a patrol out there on the flats are very slim,’ Bevier suggested. ‘Cynesgans would normally avoid that waste in the first place, and the war’s probably pulled almost everybody off patrol duty in the second.’

‘And any patrols unlucky enough to cross us won’t be making any reports in the third,’ Mirtai added, suggestively putting her hand on her sword-hilt.