The Ruby Knight

them.’
    ‘Stealers! All stealers!’ the Troll howled. ‘Aphrael steal rings! Adian of Thalesia steal Bhelliom! Now Azash and Sparhawk from Elenia try to steal her from Ghwerig again! Talk to Ghwerig, Blue Rose! Ghwerig lonely!’
    ‘How did he find out about me?’ Sparhawk was startled by the breadth of the Troll-Dwarf’s knowledge.
    ‘The Troll-Gods are old and very wise,’ Sephrenia replied. ‘There’s very little that happens in the world that they don’t know, and they’ll pass it on to those who serve them – for a price.’
    ‘What sort of price would satisfy a God?’
    ‘Pray that you never have to know, dear one,’ she said with a shudder.
    ‘Take Ghwerig ten years to carve one petal here, Blue Rose. Ghwerig love Blue Rose. Why she not talk to Ghwerig?’ He mumbled inaudibly for a time. ‘Rings. Ghwerig make rings so Bhelliom speak again. Burn Azash in Bhelliom fire. Burn Sparhawk in Bhelliom fire. Burn Aphrael in Bhelliom fire. All burn. All burn. Then Ghwerig eat.’
    ‘I think it’s time for us to get to it,’ Sparhawk said grimly. ‘I definitely don’t want him getting into his workshop.’ He reached for his sword.
    ‘Use the spear,’ Flute told him. ‘He can grab your sword out of your hand, but the spear has enough power to hold him off. Please, my noble father, try to stay alive. I need you.’
    ‘I’m doing my very best,’ he told her.
    ‘Father?’ Kurik asked in a tone of surprise.
    ‘It’s a Styric form of address,’ Sephrenia said rather quickly, throwing a look at Flute. ‘It has to do with respect – and love.’
    At that point Sparhawk did something he had seldom done before. He set his palms together in front of his chest and bowed to this strange Styric child.
    Flute clasped her hands together in delight, then hurled herself into his arms and kissed him soundly with her little rose-bud mouth. ‘Father,’ she said. For some reason Sparhawk felt profoundly embarrassed. Flute’s kiss was not that of a little girl.
    ‘How hard is a Troll’s head?’ Kurik asked Flute gruffly, obviously as disturbed as Sparhawk by the little girl’s open display of affection that seemed far beyond her years. He was shaking out his brutal chain-mace.
    ‘Very very hard,’ she told him.
    ‘We’ve heard that he’s deformed,’ Kurik continued. ‘How good are his legs?’
    ‘Weak. It’s all he can do to stand.’
    ‘All right then, Sparhawk,’ Kurik said in a professional tone. ‘I’ll edge around to the side of him and whip him across the knees, hips and ankles with this.’ He swung his mace whistling through the air. ‘If I can put him down, shove the spear into his guts and then I’ll try to brain him.’
    ‘ Must you be so graphic, Kurik?’ Sephrenia protested in a sick voice.
    ‘This is business, little mother,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘We have to know exactly what we’re going to do, so don’t interfere. All right, Kurik, let’s go.’ Quite deliberately he walked to the mouth of the gallery and stepped out into the cavern, making no attempt to conceal himself.
    The cavern was a place of wonder. Its roof was lost in purple shadow, and the seething waterfall plunged in glowing, golden mist into an unimaginably deep chasm from which the hollow roar of falling water echoed up in endless babble. The walls, stretching out as far as the eye could reach, glittered with flecks and veins of gold, and gems more precious than the ransom of kings sparkled in the shifting, rainbow-hued light.
    The misshapen Troll-Dwarf, shaggy and grotesque, squatted at the edge of the chasm, and piled around him were lumps and chunks of pure gold and heaps of gems of every hue. In his right hand Ghwerig held the stained gold crown of King Sarak, and surmounting that crown was Bhelliom, the sapphire rose. The jewel seemed to glow as it caught and reflected the light that came tumbling down with the falling water. Sparhawk looked for the first time at the most precious object on earth, and for a moment a kind of wonder almost overcame him. Then he stepped forward, the ancient battle-spear held low in his left hand. He wasn’t sure if Sephrenia’s spell would make it possible for the grotesque Troll to understand him, but he felt a peculiar moral compunction to speak. To simply destroy this deformed monstrosity without a word was not in Sparhawk’s nature. He did not know if Ghwerig could understand him, but he had to speak. ‘I have come for the Bhelliom,’ he said. ‘I am