Free Domes of Fire by David Eddings Page A

need to talk,’ Sparhawk told her, closing the door behind him as he entered.
    ‘What is it now, Sparhawk?’ she asked.
    ‘Tynian and Bevier just arrived.’
    ‘Yes. I know.’
    ‘Are you playing with things again? Are you deliberately gathering all our friends here?’
    ‘Of course I am, father.’
    ‘Would you mind telling me why?’
    ‘There’s something we’re going to need to do before long. I thought I’d save some time by getting everybody here in advance.’
    ‘You’d probably better tell me what it is that we have to do.’
    ‘I’m not supposed to do that.’
    ‘You never pay any attention to any of the other rules.’
    ‘This is different, father. We’re absolutely not supposed to talk about the future. If you think about it for a moment, I’m sure you’ll see why. Ouch!’ Mmrr had bitten her finger. Danae spoke sharply with the kitten – a series of little growls, a meow or two and concluding with a forgiving purr. The kitten managed to look slightly ashamed of itself and proceeded to lick the injured finger.
    ‘Please don’t talk in cat, Danae,’ Sparhawk said in a pained tone. ‘If some chambermaid hears you, it’ll take us both a month to explain.’
    ‘Nobody’s going to hear me, Sparhawk. You’ve got something else on your mind, haven’t you?’
    ‘I want to talk with Sephrenia. There are some things I don’t understand, and I need her help with them.’
    ‘I’ll help you, father.’
    He shook his head. ‘Your explanations of things always leave me with more questions than I had when we started. Can you get in touch with Sephrenia for me?’
    She looked around. ‘It probably wouldn’t be a good idea here in the palace, father,’ she told him. ‘It involves something that might be hard to explain if someone overheard us.’
    ‘You’re going to be in two places at the same time again?’
    ‘Well – sort of.’ She picked up her kitten. ‘Why don’t you find some excuse to take me out for a ride tomorrow morning? We’ll go out of the city and I can take care of things there. Tell mother that you want to give me a riding lesson.’
    ‘You don’t have a pony, Danae.’
    She gave him an angelic smile. ‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘that sort of means that you’re going to have to give me one, doesn’t it?’
    He gave her a long, steady look.
    ‘You were going to give me a pony eventually anyway, weren’t you, father?’ She gave it a moment’s thought. ‘A white one, Sparhawk,’ she added. ‘I definitely want a white one.’ Then she snuggled her kitten against her cheek, and they both started to purr.
    Sparhawk and his daughter rode out of Cimmura not long after breakfast the following morning. The weather was blustery, and Mirtai had objected rather vociferously until Princess Danae told her not to be so fussy. For some reason, the word ‘fussy’ absolutely enraged the Tamul giantess. She stormed away, swearing in her own language.
    It had taken Sparhawk hours to find a white pony for his daughter, and he was quite convinced after he had that it was the only white one in the whole town. WhenDanae greeted the stubby little creature like an old friend, he began to have a number of suspicions. Over the past couple of years, he and his daughter had painfully hammered out a list of the things she wasn’t supposed to do. The process had begun rather abruptly in the palace garden one summer afternoon when he had come around a box hedge to find a small swarm of fairies pollinating flowers under Danae’s supervision. Although she had probably been right when she had asserted that fairies were really much better at it than bees, he had firmly put his foot down. After a bit of thought this time, however, he decided not to make an issue of his daughter’s obvious connivance in obtaining a specific pony. He needed her help right now, and she might point out with a certain amount of justification that to forbid one form of what they had come to call ‘tampering’