A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  The boy removed his finger long enough to say, “ Ugish,” and giggle. He had more teeth than a pike. And sharper.

  “You’re a sorcerer, Ugish?”

  A bigger grin and a head shake. Gnomes were by preference nocturnal, but Rap had met them in Durthing. He had seen them in Finrain and on his trips to Milflor. Their eyes were very large, and round, showing almost no white. In daylight they showed almost no pupil either, only a shiny black iris. Ugish’s eyes were large, but different—the whites bright amid the dirt, and the irises bronze, with an intense luster. So perhaps there was more than one type of gnome.

  Not all the inhabitants of Krasnegar had been notable for their personal cleanliness and some were notoriously unpopular companions indoors, but no other race seemed to enjoy filth as gnomes did.

  Rap tried a smile. “Then who—ulp!”

  A woman had emerged from a doorway and was striding around the end of the trough, coming toward them. Rap quickly pulled up his knees and clasped his arms around his shins.

  She was no gnome—tall as he, and of a striking build. At first he could not even guess at her race. She wore a loose dress, dirty, sleeveless and short, and so tattered that it was indecent, but she moved with grace and poise. She was every bit as filthy as the boy, her skin color indeterminate and her long hair a disgusting slimy tangle halfway down her back. Then he saw the sweat-washed tufts in her armpits, and they were bright gold.

  And her eyes! They were very large, and oddly slanted, their irises gleaming with a wonder of rainbow fires, like opal or mother-of-pearl. So her skin would be golden also; she was an elf. He had glimpsed a few elves in Milflor and Finrain, but never close to. He could not tell her age, but he thought she might be very beautiful if she were clean.

  And now Rap understood Ugish’s eyes, although he had never heard of a gnome halfbreed before.

  Rap hugged his knees tighter as she stopped and bobbed a hint of a curtsy to him.

  “I am Athal’rian, of course.” She smiled rather vacantly, making faint cracks appear in the coating on her face. She scratched her scalp absentmindedly.

  “I’m Rap, ma’am. I … I haven’t any clothes.”

  She frowned. “Oh, but … Well, Ugish, give him yours for now.”

  Grinning, the boy untied the rag that was all he wore and held it out to Rap, who recoiled in disgust. It was not something he would willing touch with a long stick, but he did not want to offend his hosts. Gnomes were normally shy and inoffensive, but they must have feelings like anyone else, and elves certainly would.

  So he accepted the tattered relic and its passengers, and rose to his feet with all the dignity he could feign. Fortunately the cloth was not long enough to tie around his hips, so he just held it in front of him like a towel, not letting it touch him. It was even less adequate for him than it had been for Ugish.

  He could not stand without swaying.

  Athal’rian smiled again and offered a black-nailed hand. “You are welcome to Warth Redoubt, Sorcerer. It is long since we had company for dinner.”

  Rap gulped and ignored the hand, as both of his were occupied. “I am no sorcerer, ma’am. I am merely an adept—and a very new one, at that.”

  She looked puzzled. “But I thought Ishist said you were using mastery on a … Oh, dear!” She was staring down—at his feet, Rap was relieved to see. “Don’t those hurt? Ugish, run and tell your father to come.”

  The boy shrugged and sauntered away, taking his time and idly kicking at fungoid growths sprouting amid the ordure on the floor.

  “You must forgive us, Adept! My husband must have thought … Tut! Do, please sit down.” She waved at the edge of the trough.

  Rap perched himself on the crumbling stone and reluctantly spread the slimy rag over his lap. Then she again offered a hand to shake, and he had no choice but to accept. He hoped she hadn’t expected him to kiss it.

  Still standing, Athal’rian began to talk in a tuneless singsong. “It is wonderful to have visitors! I haven’t cooked a proper meal in ages. I mean, one gets used to gnomes’ tastes, but … well, it was nice to dig up some of Mother’s old recipes. Ishist made some really fresh things for me to use. Eating at table will be a good experience for the children. I thought he said three of you?”

  Even sitting, Rap was swaying with fatigue. He wondered whether he was mad or she was. Or both. “My friends have less power even than me, ma’am. They are out there somewhere.”

  “Tsk! Well, we must have them brought in at once. There are leopards and other bad things out there. This is wild country, I’m told.” She peered vaguely around the great empty chamber. “Do you dance, Adept Rap?”

  “Er, not very well, ma’am.”

  “Oh.”

  Rap’s eyelids began to droop, and at once a fire of agony consumed his feet. He jerked awake again. Keep talking …

  “Ma’am, what is this place?”

  “Place?” His hostess smiled, and for a moment said nothing more. Then her wits lurched into action again. “We call it the Mews, but of course we just use it for—” Rap had already seen what it was used for. “— but it was a mews, long ago.” She gestured apologetically at one of the walls, and Rap saw that there was an archway there, blocked up. But originally it would have been big enough for …

  “Dragon mews, ma’am?”

  Another pause. “Dragon stables? We don’t bring dragons in here.”

  “The castle is very old, though?”

  “Older than the Protocol, Ishist says.” She laughed.

  “And now?” Was it just a refuge taken over by gnome squatters, or was there some reason for Rap to have been dragged here?

  “Now?”

  “This castle, ma’am? Who owns it?”

  “Owns?” She smiled at his left ear for a moment. “Well, my husband—he’s the great sorcerer Ishist, you know—he’s dragonward. Has been for many years. So we live in Warth Redoubt. It’s a very important job, but somebody has to do it.”

  Rap tried to work that out and felt himself slide away down the slope to sleep again. Again a jolt of agony focused his attention and jerked him awake. He was surprised to note that three small children had appeared and were clustered around Athal’rian, clinging to her and regarding the stranger with deep suspicion. They were all naked, filthy, and stinking, all smaller than Ugish.

  And they all had the big, gorgeous eyes. Each set was different—blue, magenta, rose pink—but all had the same intense brilliance. Most crosses resembled one parent more than another, just as he himself looked mostly faunish, and the only features these little gnomes had inherited from their elvish mother were those lustrous bright eyes.

  “What exactly does a dragonward do, my lady?”

  “The dragonward. There’s only one! He keeps the dragons from straying beyond the Neck, of course. They keep nibbling away at the fence, and he has to keep putting it back. And he counts the hatchings and doles out metal and spells the fire chicks never to fly over water. It’s very important!” She stooped to hear what one of the children needed to whisper to her so urgently.

  What sort of a woman would marry a gnome? Live like a gnome? Let her children live like gnomes?

  And obviously the dragonward was a warden’s deputy, like the proconsul of Faerie. “So your husband works for the warlock of the south, ma’am?”

  Athal’rian glanced up, beaming, her opalescent eyes flashing amber and viridian. “That’s right, Warlock Lith’rian! Have you met Daddy?”

  2

  Ishist was me first tubby gnome Rap had ever seen. His bald scalp did not reach to Athal’rian’s breasts, but she stooped to hug and kiss him as if they had been apart for some days or weeks, and he rose on tiptoe to return the embrace with what seemed to be equal affection. He had arrived with an escort of six fire chicks, and they now swooped and soared around the lovers, shining wisps of yellow and orange light in the murky dimness. Five of the six were the sort of incorporeal flame-being that Rap had seen before, brilliant wisps o
f no settled shape or substance, and some were no bigger than hummingbirds. The sixth, though, was the size of a seagull and visibly solid, a sinuous silvery dragon body writhing within a nimbus of fire. Flying with much more purpose and confidence, this one came swooping over to inspect him.

  He froze nervously while it circled. He was sure he had not summoned it, and he hoped that the sorcerer would know that. Before he could decide whether he ought to send it away, it glided in and landed on his shoulder, heavier than he had expected, uncomfortably warm against his ear and neck, like a freshly baked loaf. Its claws were both sharp and very hot. He had to divert some of his pain-suppression efforts to the points where they were digging in, and his farsight saw beads of blood fizz and darken. It also kept shifting its grip. He did not care! The chick’s corona turned bright blue, and when it rubbed its warm, scaly neck against his, he felt a wash of pleasure that was astonishingly enjoyable. It was a romp with a puppy. It was a dog’s tongue and tail telling him he was the nicest guy in the world. It was almost as good as kissing a pretty girl. Now he understood Bright Water’s pleasure at having a baby dragon as a pet.

  He raised a hand to stroke the smooth, hot scales, and the fire chick purred in his mind, radiating love, blazing up in washes of blue flame brighter than all the five others together, even casting shadows where there had been none before. It felt so good Rap wanted to weep.

  There were now six young gnomes gathered around Athal’rian, ranging from Ugish down to a pocket-size baby. The baby was crawling off on business of its own, but the others all burst into shrill laughter at Rap’s conquest of the dragon.

  And Ishist had turned to stare, with his bulbous gnome eyes as round as black buttons. He was no cleaner than his wife, and much older. The fringe of hair around his scalp was probably gray—even Rap’s farsight could not be certain—but his face was certainly entrenched with wrinkles like ditches. His beard was the most nauseating thing Rap had ever seen near to a human face. He wore some sort of uniform, anonymous in a stiff coating of dirt, and the front of its tunic gaped over a pot belly. Barefoot, he squelched forward through the muck to peer at Rap more closely.

  The wall on which Rap was so uncomfortably sitting was no higher than a normal chair, and yet his head was higher than the gnome’s. Rap decided to remain seated, and tried not to show nervousness as he was scrutinized by the hard black eyes.

  Small though he was, the man’s stink was powerful enough to register over all the others. Could this disgusting little scavenger truly be a powerful sorcerer?

  “Lily seems to think she has met you before, Adept.”

  So that was it! “She may have … my lord—”

  “Just call me Ishist. I always detect overtones of irony when day men offer me titles. Your name is Rap. You say you are only an adept?”

  “Yes … Ishist.”

  There was shrewdness in those inkwell eyes, and sudden surprise. “You have indeed met Lily before!”

  “She was called Precious then.”

  The fire chick reacted to the name with a flash of blue-green flame that made Rap wonder when his hair would start smoking. His ear and neck were turning painfully red.

  “Bright Water?” the gnome muttered. “Well! I did not know that. My master did not take me into his confidence.” He grinned, showing innumerable little teeth, still white and needle sharp despite his age. “You wander around bearing strange secrets, Adept!”

  He chuckled at Rap’s horror. “Yes, I am poking around in your memories. Don’t worry—you have no more bizarre obscenities in there than most men do. Remarkably few, in fact.” He showed even more of the tiny teeth. “Some minds can disgust even a gnome, Master Rap, but I congratulate you. Now I must attend to your injuries; but I’m not going to try it with a fire chick on your shoulder. Come away, Lily.”

  The dragon turned a sulky green, and crouched low, while trickles of Rap’s blood oozed out around its tightening claws. The other fire chicks, meanwhile, were circling him in flickers of curious pink, gradually daring to approach more closely. He thought he would be scorched or shredded if they all tried to land on him.

  “I’m not doing this, sir! Ishist, I mean.”

  The sorcerer scratched thoughtfully at the old carrion caked around his mouth. “I know you’re not. It’s very unusual, and probably a very real compliment. But we can’t stay here all night. Be off with you all!”

  Lily shot up from Rap’s shoulder in a stream of purple fire, and the whole juvenile blaze of baby dragons went swirling high into the ghostly upper reaches of the chamber, to race around like six violet comets, while their squeaks of anger and fright echoed as discordant bell strokes inside Rap’s head.

  Ishist ignored them, frowning at Rap. “Now, Master Adept, it is safe to use a little power around you! Never entered my head that you might not be a full sorcerer. You terrified poor Primrose. Fools rush in where mages fear to tread …” While he was muttering, Rap’s wounds were closing and healing, from his mangled feet to the dragon scratches on his shoulder. “… so I overdid the summoning spell … at least we know you’re not holding back anything if you had to endure this … there. How does that feel?”

  The black-button eyes twinkled shrewdly, and Rap suddenly realized that even his fatigue had been lifted, or most of it, and he had lost his sense of smell also. That was the greatest blessing of all. He took a deep breath of relief.

  “That’s much better, Master Ishist. Thank you.”

  The gnome nodded with ironic amusement. “I was planning to throw you in a dungeon, but my wife is very anxious that you dine with us.”

  Athal’rian had been staying back, as if not wishing to interfere with business. Now she said, “ Oh, yes!” breathlessly, and came over to cuddle against her husband and place a hand on his shoulder. Ishist took it and kissed it; she stooped to place a kiss on his bald pate, although it was plastered with what seemed to be old bird droppings. The elderly gnome and the much-younger elf woman were behaving like two lovesick adolescents, yet she had apparently already borne him seven … no, there were eight children present now. What was that baby eating?

  “It will have to wait awhile, my love,” Ishist said. “I must go and find Master Rap’s two companions before the wildlife does.”

  Athal’rian wailed. “You won’t be long, though, darling?”

  “No, no! And it is still dark. I shall be as quick as I can, dearest.” He patted her lovingly on the rump, as if she were a horse.

  “But the food will spoil. And I did so want the children to see what a proper dinner party is like.”

  As a mother she seemed to have strange priorities. Ugish and the oldest girl were now fighting furiously, rolling around in the mire and biting each other, but Athal’rian was paying them no heed at all.

  “It won’t hurt them to stay up past dawn for once,” Ishist said firmly. “Now, magic is magic, but sleep has its own magic. I’m sure that our guest would appreciate a little rest. Where are you planning to put the visitors?”

  She hesitated, shuffling her toes in the dirt. “I thought … the northwest tower?” She waited anxiously for his opinion.

  “Very good choice, my dear. So you show Master Rap to his chamber. I promised Ugish he could come with me. Stop that, you two!” He separated the combatants with a couple of well-placed kicks. Then he accepted a very long, tight embrace from his tearful wife, before plodding off toward the door. Young Ugish trailed after him, angrily licking a bleeding arm with a very long black tongue.

  Still holding his wisp of dirty rag, Rap followed his hostess along innumerable corridors and up narrow, winding staircases. The walls were rough stonework, the floors soft with dirt as if they had not been cleaned since the founding of the Impire. Mummified carcasses and gnawed bones lay in drier corners, while wetter parts were ankle-deep in sewage and the doors had rotted away to rusty relics of hinges. In other places the ceilings had collapsed, requiring painful climbs over heaps of rubble.

  He could not assess
the full extent of the huge ruin, but he could easily believe that it was old enough to have known the Dragon Wars. Everywhere he detected ancient occult barriers, although once in a while he caught shadowy vistas running off for incredible distances between them. Sometimes then he glimpsed far-off groups of gnomes going about their business.

  Many parts were more or less illuminated by the sort of sorcerous mist he had seen in the Mews; others were pitch black. Athal’rian seemed to find her way through those mostly by memory and touch, but he followed her with farsight, trying to ignore the details: the rashes under the dirt, the close-packed insect bites, the elven grace of her slender hips. She glided like a moonbeam, confirming all the tales he had heard about elves and dancing.

  She sickened him—how could any human being exist in such condition? But in a gruesome fashion he found her fascinating. He kept trying to imagine her cleaned up and properly clad.

  If Ugish was thirteen or so, then his mother must be over thirty, surely, but she had a figure any adolescent could envy. Perhaps sorcery had helped there, and bearing tiny gnome babies might not be very taxing to a woman of a tall race. Also, he had a vague idea that elves were long-lived.

  Although he kept reproaching himself, he still felt very uncomfortable at the idea of an elf marrying a gnome. He was convinced that her obvious infatuation must be a product of sorcery, and yet Ishist himself seemed equally besotted. Could a sorcerer bespell himself? Would he ever want to? And who was Rap to question the follies of love when he had been crazy enough to fall in love with a queen?

  Finally, at the top of a breathlessly winding spiral staircase, Athal’rian brought him to a place that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Inisso’s chamber in Krasnegar and almost as large, the uppermost room of a circular tower. The floor creaked alarmingly under his feet. Starlight seeped in through gaps in the corbeled roof, but the four tiny casements were tightly sealed, opaque with grime. The only furniture was a giant four-poster bed whose draperies were mostly cobwebs.