He waited tensely, but nothing happened. He sighed. ‘Ghnomb!’ he said. ‘Go away now!’ He put the Sapphire Rose back into its pouch, knotted the strings and thrust the pouch back inside his surcoat. ‘Well,’ he said ruefully, ‘so much for that. You said He’d let me know if He couldn’t help. He just let me know, all right. It’s a little awkward to find out about it at this stage of the proceedings, though.’
‘Don’t give up just yet, Sparhawk,’ Sephrenia told him.
‘Nothing happened, little mother.’
‘Don’t be too sure.’
‘Well, let’s go on back. It seems we’re going to have to do this the hard way.’
The party rode out at a brisk trot, moving down the far side of the hill with the pale disc of the new-risen sun hanging behind the clouds on the eastern horizon. The farmland lying to the east of Paler was in the last stages of the harvest, and serfs were already in the fields, small figures in dun or blue looking like immobile toys far back from the road.
‘Serfdom doesn’t seem to encourage much enthusiasm for work,’ Kurik observed critically. ‘Those people out there don’t seem to be moving at all.’
‘If I were a serf, I don’t think I’d be very interested in exerting myself either,’ Kalten said.
They rode on at a canter, crossed a wide valley and climbed a low chain of hills. The clouds were a bit thinner here to the east, and the sun, just above the horizon, was more distinct. Kring sent out his patrols, and they rode on.
Something was wrong, but Sparhawk could not exactly put his finger on what it was. The air was very still, and the sound of the horses’ hooves seemed quite loud and unnaturally crisp in the soft dirt of the road. Sparhawk looked around and saw that his friends’ expressions seemed uneasy.
They were halfway across the next valley when Kurik reined in with a sudden oath. ‘That does it,’ he said.
‘What’s the matter?’ Sparhawk asked him.
‘How long would you say we’ve been on the road?’
‘An hour or so. Why?’
‘Look at the sun, Sparhawk.’
Sparhawk looked at the eastern horizon where the almost obscured disc of the sun hung just over a gently rounded line of hills. ‘It seems to be where it always is, Kurik,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s moved it.’
‘That’s just the point, Sparhawk. It’s not moving. It hasn’t moved an inch since we started. It came up, and then it stopped.’
They all stared towards the east.
‘It’s fairly common, Kurik,’ Tynian said. ‘We’ve been riding up and down hills. That always seems to put the sun in a different position. Where it seems to be depends on how high up – or down – the hill you are.’
‘I thought so myself, Sir Tynian – at first – but I’ll swear to you that the sun hasn’t moved since we left that hilltop to the east of Paler.’
‘Be serious, Kurik,’ Kalten scoffed. ‘The sun has to move.’
‘Not this morning apparently. What’s going on here?’
‘Sir Sparhawk!’ Berit’s voice was shrill, hovering just on the edge of hysteria. ‘Look!’
Sparhawk turned his head in the direction the apprentice knight was pointing a shaking hand.
It was a bird – a completely ordinary-looking bird, a lark of some kind, Sparhawk judged. Nothing at all was unusual about it – if one were to overlook the fact that it hung absolutely motionless in mid-air, looking for all the world as if it had been stuck there with a pin.
They all looked around, their eyes a little wild. Then Sephrenia began to laugh.
‘I don’t really see anything funny about this, Sephrenia,’ Kurik told her.
‘Everything’s fine, gentlemen,’ she told them.
‘Fine?’ Tynian said. ‘What’s happened to the sun? – and that idiotic bird?’
‘Sparhawk stopped the sun – and the bird.’
‘Stopped the sun!’ Bevier exclaimed. ‘That’s impossible!’
‘Apparently not. Sparhawk talked with one of the Troll-Gods last night,’ she told them. ‘He said that we were hunting and that our prey was far ahead of us. He asked the Troll-God Ghnomb to help us catch up, and Ghnomb seems to be doing just that.’
‘I don’t follow you,’ Kalten said. ‘What’s the sun got to do with hunting?’
‘It’s not all that complicated, Kalten,’ she said calmly. ‘Ghnomb stopped time, that’s all.’
‘That’s all? How do you stop time?’
‘I have no idea.’ She frowned. ‘Maybe “stopping time” isn’t quite accurate. What’s really happening is that we’re moving outside time. We’re in that winking of an eye between one second and the next.’
‘What’s keeping that bird up in the air, Lady Sephrenia?’ Berit demanded.
‘His last wing-beat, probably. The rest of the world is moving along quite normally. People out there aren’t even aware of the fact that we’re passing through. When the Gods do the things we ask them to do, they don’t always do them in the way we expect. When Sparhawk told Ghnomb that he wanted to catch up to Martel, he was thinking about time more than the miles, so Ghnomb is moving us through time, not distance. He’ll control time for as long as it takes us. Covering the distance is up to us.’
Then Stragen came forward at a gallop. ‘Sparhawk!’ he cried. ‘What in God’s name did you do?’
Sparhawk briefly explained. ‘Just go back and calm the Peloi. Tell them that it’s an enchantment. Explain that the world is frozen. Nothing will move until we get to where we want to go.’
‘Is that the truth?’
‘More or less, yes.’
‘Do you actually think they’ll believe me?’
‘Invite them to come up with their own explanations if they don’t like mine.’
‘You can unfreeze things later, can’t you?’
‘Of course – at least I hope so.’
‘Ah – Sephrenia?’ Talen said tentatively. ‘All the rest of the world is stopped dead, right?’
‘Well, that’s the way it appears to us. Nobody else perceives it that way, though.’
‘Other people can’t even see us then, right?’
‘They won’t even know we’re here.’
A slow, almost reverent smile came to the boy’s lips. ‘Well, now,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well.’