“I have a distant cousin—or great-great-aunt, or some such relation—the dowager duchess of Kinvale. She wants to marry me to her son. He has a claim to my throne, if a woman cannot inherit.”
“So!” The sultana beamed. “And can a woman inherit?”
“I think so!” Inos said angrily. “My father said so! By the laws of the Impire I could.”
“But Kalkor disagrees, so the imps want to block the jotnar? Well, well!” Young queen Rasha’s smile was delectable, yet sinister enough to stir the hair on the back of Rap’s neck. “Politics is a tiresome men’s game, but sometimes we poor, feeble women are forced to play a hand or two, just to protect our interests.”
“You will help me?” Inos exclaimed.
“We’ll see,” the sorceress said darkly.
“I shall need to know a little more. ” She glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on Sagorn, standing stiffly at the end of the line. “Men can be so obnoxious at times …”
She frowned as if puzzled and sauntered over toward him. Rap had never seen a woman move with such grace. Even without his farsight he could detect the glory of her long legs moving within the filmy robe, and he caught glimpses of tiny silver sandals. Oh, those hips! Of course this was sorcery at work. No woman should be able to raise his heart pound like this just by walking across a floor. She had not looked like this when—but he couldn’t recall what she had looked like when she first appeared. It was how she looked now that mattered. Oh, wonder of womanhood! Oh, vision of all man’s desire! Sorcery curdling his brains—dangerous! He knew it, knew he was helpless against it. She was turning him into a helpless slave, a human jelly. All other thoughts had fled his mind.
Inos wrenched her hand loose from his sweaty grip and he barely noticed.
Sagorn straightened up and licked his lips. “Would you turn down the intensity a little, ma’am?” he mumbled. “It’s very hard on the arteries at my age.”
“But what a wonderful way to die!” She laughed and reached up to stroke his cheek with a teasing finger. Rap felt fires of insane jealousy leap through him like lightning bolts.
Sagorn moaned—and was the much-too-handsome Andor.
Queen Rasha sprang back, raising a hand as if to strike. For a bewildering fraction of a second, Rap imagined a glimpse of a heavy, middle-aged woman in a shabby brown wrap, with unkempt gray hair and bare feet, with wrinkles and sagging cheeks. Then the delusion was gone, and the glorious Queen Rasha was there again, radiant in gossamer and pearl, studying Andor in languid amusement.
With hair in disarray, in a gown too large for him, Andor was clutching his left arm, whose sleeve was already darkening with blood, yet he contrived to bow gracefully nonetheless. “Oh, yes!” he said. “Exquisite! Majesty, how may I serve you?”
Queen Rasha nodded to acknowledge the bow, regarding him with some curiosity. “A sequential spell? Fascinating! And well done, too—a very sharp transition. Can it truly be a matched set? Let’s see, the old one would have been the scholar—”
“And I your devoted slave.”
“Of course a lover,” she said curtly, seemingly more to herself than to Andor. Before he could say more she cut him off with a snap of her fingers.
And he had gone. In his place was Darad, huge and ugly, his head still dribbling blood from Rap’s chair-work. He howled, clasping a hand to the eye that Little Chicken had injured. Andor’s blood—and now Darad’s own—had now soaked through the left sleeve of the robe, and his sudden move produced a ripping noise from an overstretched shoulder.
“The fighter!” The sorceress pulled a face and snapped her fingers again.
The gown seemed to fall inward, around the slight form of the flaxen-haired Jalon. His dreamy blue eyes widened at the sight of Rasha. “The artist, ma’am,” he said, bowing. “Your beauty shall evermore be on my lips and my song raised in your—”
“Some other day.” Sultana Rasha snapped fingers a third time, and the brown robe collapsed yet again. All that was visible of the latest occupant was a narrow, dark face peering out from under a tangle of lank black hair—a small and very ordinary impish youth, his mouth and eyes now stretched wide in terror. With a wail, he tried to fall on his knees before the sorceress, but his feet were as immovable as Rap’s, and he succeeded only in dropping to a squat. He raised clasped hands in supplication. The sound of chattering teeth filled the chamber.
“Well!” The sultana appeared to be less antagonistic than she had been toward his predecessors. “Scholar, lover, soldier, artist—and you must be the financier of the group?”
The youth wailed, big eyes peering up at her from a nest of heaped robe. “I mean no harm, your M-M-Majesty!”
“But you’re a bazaar fingersmith if I ever saw one!”
He whimpered. “Just crusts, lady—a few crusts, when I was hungry.”
This was the fifth member of the gang? Thinal, the thief whom Sagorn had called their leader, and Andor’s brother. A less memorable face Rap had never seen. It was pocked, moreover, with oozing acne pustules and marred by unsightly tufts of hair. No one would willingly look even once at Thinal; he would disappear instantly into any crowd in any city of the Impire. Yet the king had told Inos she could trust him!
The sorceress nodded approvingly. “Very fine work. Who did it?”
“Or-Or-Orarinsagu, may it please your Omnipotence.”
“A long time ago, then?”
“Over a c-c-century, Majesty.” For a moment the teeth chattered again, and then the little thief managed to blurt out a plea: “M-M-Majesty? We c-c-crave release …”
“I should not dream of breaking up such a masterpiece.”
The imp wailed and cowered down ever farther into the crumpled brown robe, so that only his hair was visible.
“Besides,” the sorceress said, “having a whole handful of men available when required, but only one at a time to put up with—that seems like an excellent arrangement.”
Leaving the lad apparently sobbing into his knees, she came strolling back along the line. She paused in front of Little Chicken and regarded him with dislike. “You must be a goblin. Your name?”
With his odd-shaped eyes stretched wider than Rap had ever seen them, Little Chicken merely moaned and reached out toward the sorceress. She drifted backward until he was leaning forward at an absurd angle, only the fixation spell on his feet preventing him from crashing to the floor. He continued to moan.
She studied him for a moment, then shrugged. “Not bad below the neck, but the face would have to go.”
She left him there, completely off balance, and wandered past Princess Kadolan without a word, to stop once more before Rap and Inos. “Extraordinary retainers you chose, child,” she muttered.
Why would she call Inos a child when she was no older herself? Her eyes were the same deep red-brown shade as her hair, and they were burning Rap’s soul to ashes. The curve of her breasts below the filmy gauze of her robe was driving him mad, and her nearness made the blood pound in his chest until he felt it was about to burst.
“And a faun? What’s your name, lad?”
He opened his mouth. “Raaaaa …” His name disappeared in a choking noise, as he felt himself strangle in sudden revelation. His name was not Rap. That was only a nickname, a short form of—of his word of power. He had never told anyone his real name, not even the king. It was a great long thing, Raparakagozi—and another twenty syllables-and he had not heard it since his mother had first told it to him, a few days before she became sick, warning him not to repeat it because if an evil sorcerer learned your name he could do you harm and of course she must have seen with her foresight that she was going to die and the fact that he could even remember such gibberish after all these years meant that it was his word of power and now he desperately wanted to tell it to this entrancing seductive beauty standing before him and yet some part of him was screaming at him not to—the words were hard to say, Sagorn had told him—and his tongue tripped between the two set of c
ommands and …
“What is a faun doing so far north?” Queen Rasha inquired before he had resolved his conflict and brought his mouth under control. She curled a lip that men would have died to kiss just once. “But he’s only a halfbreed, isn’t he? That’s a jotunn jaw, and he’s too tall. But those tattoos! Why do savages think that mutilation can possibly improve their appearance?”
“Huh?”
Tattoos?
“This is Master Rap, a stableboy!” Inos said, in a strangely sharp tone. Rap did not look at her.
Queen Rasha sighed. “I do hope his duties are not too complex for him.” She seemed to lose interest in Rap. His world crashed down into terrible black despair. It wasn’t his fault he was a mongrel, and he’d have managed to tell her his name if she’d just given him another minute or two. He so desperately wanted to please her, just to earn one tiny smile …
“Krasnegar,” the sorceress murmured, regarding Inos again. “Inisso? A word or two of power, perhaps?”
“I don’t know what you mean!” Inos shouted.
“Don’t be tiresome!” Rasha sighed. “Granted the words themselves are invisible, but I don’t need the occult to tell me when a slip of a girl is lying. And you do have an interesting problem.” She glanced thoughtfully at the door, still decorated with a burly arm. “I don’t think now is the time to solve it.”
“What do you mean?” Inos cried. Rap’s conscience stirred vaguely. Something must be bothering Inos, and he should not be staring so fixedly at Sultana Rasha.
“I mean,” the sorceress said, rather absently, as if lost in thought, “that when you opened that magic casement, it creaked so loud that I heard it down in Zark. A casement shouldn’t do that. What could have charged it up with power like that?”
No one spoke, and she shrugged. “Just a malfunction, I expect. Old—it obviously hasn’t been used in years, right? You were lucky that most of Pandemia was still asleep. Including the sorcerers. Including, more important, the wardens! But to linger longer would not be wise. Go now.”
She pointed to the window. Inos turned. She began to walk stiffly toward it, and then twisted around and held out her hand, even as her feet were still moving.
“Rap!” she cried. “Help!”
With a shuddering start, he turned to look. As soon as his gaze left Rasha, he broke free of his dreams. “I’m coming!” He tried to move, but his feet remained as solidly fastened as before. He could do nothing, and Inos continued to walk unwillingly to the casement.
Again she screamed. “Rap!”
“I’m coming!” he yelled, but he wasn’t. Off balance, he toppled backwards and crashed to the floor, his feet still immovable. Elbows and head smashed into the boards. Heavens full of stars blazed before him.
“What is the meaning of this?” her aunt shouted. “Release her at once!”
But already Inos, still moving in small jerks like a puppet, had reached the casement and started to clamber over the sill. Peering through eyes blurred with tears of pain, Rap saw that the many-colored haze beyond it was a drapery of sparkling beads, flickering in a gentle breeze. The sun must be shining behind it, although the other three windows showed only a predawn glow. The whole chamber, he realized, was full of warm air, scented with flowers.
Inos staggered on the far side of the wall, cried, “Rap!” once more, and then vanished through the shimmering rainbow drape.
Failure! He had failed Inos!
“Queen Rasha!” Princess Kadolan said hotly. “This is highly improper! Return my niece at once, or else permit me to accompany her.”
Rasha regarded her with some amusement. “You would not prefer to remain and lecture the imps on deportment? Very well—go.”
Kadolan’s roly-poly form hurried willingly across the chamber. She struggled for a moment with the climb, almost fell over the sill, stumbled through the drape in a tinkle of jewels, and was gone.
The sorceress glanced around the others. “Boys will be boys,” she said. “Time for ladies to retire and leave you all to your male fun. Tell them to be sure and clean up the blood afterward!” She uttered an astonishingly raucous laugh.
Still half stunned, Rap was also bewildered—the sultana’s draperies were not nearly as flimsy as he had thought, and her hair was covered again, and he could not recall her replacing her veil. She seemed much older than he had been thinking, and broad, not slender.
She took a couple of steps and paused to study the sleeping Fleabag, who leaped up and bounded over to her, his tail wagging vigorously. Again Rap felt the bite of jealousy.
“Splendid creature!” Queen Rasha said, with what sounded like real admiration. “You will make a fine pair with Claws.” She glanced down at the prostrate Rap. “Yours, faun?”
Rap nodded, unable to trust himself to speak.
Fleabag turned, lolloped across the chamber, and bounded over the sill of the casement after Inos. Rasha waddled across the room and paused again at the window to look back suspiciously.
“Why should a queen call for a stableboy?”
Rap’s mouth was suddenly very dry. Because he had a word of power, perhaps? He must not even think about words of power around a sorceress. That was what had been worrying Inos all along, he saw now, and he had been so bewitched by this—this old woman?
“Huh?”
Rasha shrugged. “No accounting for tastes, is there?” She moved again, seemed to float through the sill, and vanished. The misty brightness went, also, and a swirl of polar wind rushed into the chamber, bearing cold and snowflakes and dark.
Rap scrambled giddily to his feet, trying to rub head and elbows at the same time. Little Chicken roared in fury. King Holindarn’s brown robe seemed to rise up of its own accord, so inconspicuous was the impish youth inside it. The troops beyond the door came back to life with a loud howl.
4
For the moment, the legionaries were having an argument, and the threatening arm had been removed. Rap turned away in time to see Thinal, holding up his gown with both hands, heading for the still-open casement. With his head still pounding, Rap lurched over to block him.
“Where are you going?”
So high was the collar around Thinal’s ears that his nondescript, spotty face seemed to stare out of it, pale in the dawn gloom, as if the robe were swallowing him.
“I want to see if I could climb down, Rap.”
Sagorn had said that Thinal was a human fly. Rap and Little Chicken weren’t.
“Call Sagorn!” Rap shouted. “He got us into this mess. Maybe he can get us out yet!”
The young imp shook his head vigorously. “No. He’s too frail now. We can’t risk him.”
Rap grabbed the thief’s puny shoulders and shook him till his teeth rattled. “Call Sagorn!”
Thinal staggered back and almost tripped over his robe. “Don’t do that!” he screamed.
“Do what?”
“Don’t bully me! I frighten easy, Rap.”
“So?” Rap advanced on him again.
“I might call Darad!” Thinal wailed, sounding almost in tears. “It’s too easy! I might not be able to help myself!”
Rap took a deep breath. “Sorry,” he grunted. Then, “Oh, demons!”
He whirled around to the door. The imps had massed outside again; again the arm came through the jagged hole. But the bolt was too far from the hole to reach with just a hand, and the timbers were very thick. The big imp had stopped and thrust his whole arm in, right to the shoulder. Before Rap could say a word, Little Chicken went sprinting across the room, leaped, and struck that so-tempting, protruding elbow with both feet. He bounced off and landed on his feet like a cat, while the imp’s scream seemed to shake the whole tower.
Great! There went any hope of merciful treatment.
The legionaries helped their disabled comrade extract his shattered and mangled limb, all roaring furiously. Another giant grabbed up the ax, and the door shivered under his blows.
“Now what are we going to do?�
� Rap’s head ached. He had betrayed Inos, but it did not look as if he would have long to mourn his inadequacy. “We could still share words,” he suggested.
Thinal was edging toward the window again. “Not enough. Two only makes an adept. Maybe we could climb up on the roof and wait until they’ve gone?”
“They’ll shut the casement!”
“We might break a pane or two first.” Thinal shuffled a little farther—the human fly.
“We’ll be seen from below; it’s almost daylight.” Rap sighed, feeling weariness settle over his fears like thick snow. “I think this is the end! I shouldn’t have been so stubborn and argued so long. The magic told me to become a mage, and I wouldn’t.”
He had disobeyed his monarch’s first order; or at least talked back. If he had done his duty promptly, he would have become a mage and served her by driving away the imps, forcing the townsfolk to accept her—how much could a mage do, anyway? Well, it didn’t matter anyway, not now.
He forced a smile at the terror-stricken little thief. “Go on, then, if you think you can save yourself. Little Chicken and I will surrender to the soldiers, even if it means the last weighing.”
The goblin had been listening. “No!” he shouted.
The door shuddered, and a whole spar fell out.
“Yes!” Rap said. “Unless you’ve got any ideas?”
A gust of hot, muggy wind swirled into the chamber. Surf roared.
“Death Bird! Here!”
All three spun around. There was no one in sight to explain the voice, but the casement now looked out on strange frondy trees silhouetted against a grayish predawn sky. Rap smelled sea and damp vegetation. Another wave broke noisily, somewhere nearby.
Stunned and wary, all three hesitated.
“Who said?” Little Chicken growled.
“Palms!” Thinal screamed. “Those trees, Rap! They’re palms!”
A Man of His Word Page 38