‘Are you completely out of your senses, Sparhawk?’ she demanded once they were out of earshot of the fuming Martel.

‘I don’t think so,’ he replied. ‘Of course crazy people never really know, do they?’

‘What were you doing in there? Do you realize how many times I had to step in to keep you out of trouble?’

‘I noticed that. I couldn’t have pulled it off without you.’

‘Will you stop smirking and tell me what was behind all that?’

‘Martel was getting too close to our real reason for being here,’ he explained. ‘I had to throw something else in his path to keep him from realizing that we’d unearthed a possible antidote for the poison. It all worked out rather well, even if I do say so myself.’

‘If you knew you were going to do that before you went into the tent, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘How could I have known, Sephrenia? I didn’t even know Martel was there until I saw him.’

‘You mean.’ Her eyes went suddenly very wide.

He nodded. ‘I sort of made it up as I went along,’ he confessed.

‘Oh, Sparhawk,’ she said disgusted, ‘you know better than that.’

He shrugged. ‘It was about the best I could do at short notice’

‘Why did you keep hitting Martel on the shoulder like that?’

‘He broke that shoulder when he was about fifteen. It’s always been very sensitive.’ ‘That was cruel,’ she accused.

‘So was what happened in that alley back in Cippria ten years ago. Let’s go get Kurik and Flute. I think we’ve done about all we can here in Dabour.’

Arasham’s boat was more like a barge than the scow which had carried them upriver, and it was perhaps four times as large Banks of oarsmen lined each side, and black-robed zealots with swords and javelins clustered in the torchlit bow and stern. Martel had preceded them to the rickety dock, and he stood alone there, some distance from the hot-eyed disciples on shore, as Sparhawk, Sephrenia, Kurik, and Flute embarked. The renegade’s white hair gleamed in the starlight, and his face was very nearly as pale

‘You’re not going to get away with this, Sparhawk,’ he said in a low voice

‘Oh?’ Sparhawk said. ‘I think you’d better look again, Martel. It seems to me that I already have. You can try to follow me, of course, but all those troops patrolling the river banks are probably going to get in your way. Besides, I think that once you get over your pique, you’ll realize that about the only thing you can do is stay here and try to wheedle that magic word out of Arasham. Everything you’ve set up here in Rendor will be at a standstill until you do.’

‘You’ll pay for this, Sparhawk,’ Martel promised darkly