“I’m not sure.” The idea of going to Ilrane had certainly stirred something in Rap, something encouraging. He remembered he’d felt a twinge when Ishist had first suggested a visit to Lith’rian. He’d even felt traces of … whatever it was … when he arrived at Warth Redoubt. And whatever it was, it seemed to be getting stronger every time. Was that practice?
Ishist still wore a puzzled pout. “Adepts don’t usually … O’ course, geniuses don’t usually have farsight … New, is it?”
Rap nodded uneasily. “My mother was said to be a seer.”
The gnome shrugged. “Possible, then. Fauns have a reputation for trusting their own feelings, don’t they?” He chuckled to himself. “And I’m not doing it to you. You’ll find it rarely comes to order, but when it does you can trust it. Now, which is it to be? Hub or Ilrane?”
“How far?” Rap ashed.
The gnome closed his eyes for a moment, as if consulting a mental map; perhaps he was farseeing a real chart. “A bit over four hundred leagues in either case.”
“Water’s faster!” Gathmor said quickly, and even Darad nodded as he struggled to keep up with the conversation.
“Not if you catch a ride on a stage,” Ishist said.
Ilrane still felt right. Rap could walk ten leagues a day, maybe more on an Imperial highway. That was still more than a month to Hub, even if nothing went wrong. Water was faster and safer. “How do I get on a ship, though?”
“Steal a boat,” Gathmor said impatiently.
“Then its owner may starve, and his children, too.”
The jotunn grimaced at such sissy sentimentality.
“Thinal?” Darad said triumphantly.
I suppose so,” Rap said sadly. If Thinal was willing to help, then he could steal the price of a ticket in Noom as easily as he had done the same thing for Andor in Milflor. Come to think of it, Rap probably could do those sorts of things himself now. He would just have to hope that whoever was chosen to support the cause could afford the honor.
The gnome was watching, scratching things out of his beard, and leering.
“What do you advise, Ishist?” Rap asked, trying to feel trusting.
“Oh, sea! Your biggest problem isn’t getting there, wherever you go. You need to worry more about getting in to meet Lith’rian. An audience with the Imperor might be easier to arrange than a private chat with a warlock.”
“If I used my powers right outside his gates? He’d sense me just like you did when I sent the dragon away.”
“The guards will be votaries. They’ll turn you to stone before you can blink.”
Rap gulped.
“Besides,” Ishist added, “ Hub’s dangerous. Other wardens, and would-be wardens. You’ll be safest to stay in South’s sector.”
“Advise me, please,” Rap said, as he was expected to.
“There’s one sure way. Would only work for an elf, though.”
“Yes?” Rap said cautiously. He distrusted a sorcerer’s sense of humor on principle, and Ishist’s in particular.
“I’d have to make you look elvish. It would be a low-power sorcery. It won’t fool Lith’rian, of course, if you get to him; or any other full sorcerer. But otherwise you should pass.”
“And?”
“And you can get taken right to Lith’rian.” The old man chuckled. “Express.”
Rap watched his own cheeks redden under the challenge—his new reversible farsight could be a disconcerting ability. “That’s the fastest way?”
“Yes.”
“Then go ahead! Make me look elvish.”
The stubble that had collected on Rap’s face since he left Durthing fell off like cottontree fluff. His skin began to turn yellow—and not just on his face. His eyes … he watched in astonishment as they grew larger and somehow tilted, as the gray of his irises developed the opalescent sparkle of the purebred elf. The skin change had almost reached his toes. His hair was curling and taking on the metallic golden luster—even his body hair, he noticed uneasily. His legs were shedding as his chin had. And were Little Chicken here, he could no longer call him “Flat Nose.” His tattoos were gone.
Then it was done. In a vague way, Rap was still Rap, but he was an elvish Rap—about the same height as before, but slimmer, slighter. Better looking than before, of course, but an ugly elf.
His robe shimmered and faded away, revealing snug-fitting jerkin and long trousers, of the same delicate leather as his boots, and colored bright green and blue. He did not remember putting those on. A matching forester’s cap fell from nowhere and settled lightly on his shiny golden curls. He fingered an elvish ear thoughtfully.
He sniffed, and realized his sense of smell had returned—woodsy scents of wet loam and leaves, plus the powerful stink of the gnome beside him.
“Gods!” Gathmor said, horrified. “You look just like an elf! Even your eyes.”
“Yes, I know.” Rap’s voice was higher pitched, and somehow sweeter. “It may take some getting used to.”
Ishist chuckled, greatly pleased with himself. “You needn’t be so worried! Everything’s still there, it just looks different. The hair will grow back afterward. Don’t be tempted to try anything, sailor. He looks elf and feels elf, but he’s still got his strength. And he’s still an adept.”
Gathmor pouted. He must have felt tempted.
“I’ve put a year’s limit on it, lad,” the sorcerer said. “You’re going to Lith’rian of your own free will, understand? That’s still the case. But if no one takes the spell off, it’ll fade in a year. And you others—I think you’d better be dressed the same, at least.” Robes vanished, foresters’ leathers appeared on Gathmor in red and yellow, green and white on Darad. Caps and all.
The sight of the mighty-thewed Darad in such clothing was not one to be taken lightly, Rap thought, and realized how much he had already adapted to the ways of sorcery. Gathmor hadn’t—he swore under his breath, and squirmed.
Rap said, “ Explain how this gets me to the warlock, Ishist.”
The gnome’s black eyes twinkled. “There’ll be lots of elves in Noom. In the Impire they’re usually artists of one sort or another. They can’t compete in business with imps, and they profess to despise fighting. They sculpt and sing and so on. Pick a big one.”
“Big one?” Rap repeated warily.
“Important. A chief elf in a group of elves.”
With a strange sensation that this conversation was somehow familiar, Rap said, “ Then what do I do?”
The little old man cackled. “Then you punch him on the nose.”
3
Like the rest of the House of Elkarath, the cellars were a jumble of mismatched levels and shapes—innumerable separate constructions that had grown together over the ages like some gigantic family whose members could never agree on anything. Most of the vaults were stacked high with merchandise, and much of it could be identified by smell alone: brandy and vinegar and turpentine in kegs; hides and cedar planks in stacks. But the dimness also held mysterious bales and barrels and baskets; ingots, crates, and flagons; urns and ewers and hampers. And shadows! With one hand comfortingly gripped by Skarash, and the other holding her lantern high to watch for uneven footing and low beams, Inos told herself very sternly that queens were not frightened of shadows. Or dust. Or rats, if rats there be.
Or Skarash.
But she hoped he could not feel the tremor in her hand.
Once in a while she saw other lights flickering beyond arches or down tunnels; rarely she heard distant voices and footsteps. It was all very creepy.
She soon began to suspect that the curiously brash Skarash was leading her around in a circle, up and down, in and out, in a tour of the whole bewildering catacomb, but she was not going to allow yesterday’s experience with the pixies to turn her into a nerveless ninny frightened of anything that grew hair on its chin. Her behavior when the centurion blustered had been shameful, but she ought to be able to handle Master Starash no matter how friendly he became. If all h
e was trying to do was frighten her, then he could tunnel his way back to Arakkaran first. But their two lanterns did make the odd-shaped shadows shimmy in a sinister silent dance.
Something rustled … she jumped. Evil take it!
“Just rats, I think,” Skarash said, stooping low under a tangle of beams that seemed to have been added as an afterthought to hold up part of the roof. “Or gnomes, which are worse. Every year or two gnomes get in here, and they’re the Gods’ own pests to get rid of. Mind the cobwebs. This next door is especially tuneful, as I recall.”
He was right—it opened with a long, ear-rending scream of agony.
“I first came to Ullacarn when I was ten,” he said, leading the way down more stairs. “I thought the desert was the most wonderful place in the world—until I discovered these cellars.” High-vaulted and quite empty, the chamber gave his voice an eerie echo. The air was dank, the wall streaked with niter.
“And every year since, Grandsire has brought me along. We kids used to make up … Sh!” He stopped on the last tread and turned, staring up at the door they had just come through. “Hear anything?” he whispered.
“No.”
He stepped down to the floor, then turned again, looking up at her intently. “Sure?”
He was playing a game, she thought, but she cocked her head and harked. “No.”
Skarash frowned and laid down his lantern.
Above her, the door shrieked like a trampled cat, then slammed shut in a reverberating roll of thunder. She leaped, he reached up and caught her. She slammed her lantern against his knee, clawed at his eyes, instinctively banged a knee at his groin, and broke free.
Then she was cowering back against the wall, fighting down a crazy spinning panic, panting madly, with her heart beating inside her head and a vile taste in her throat, hefting the lantern to strike him if he came closer. Enrage them into a mating frenzy, Elkarath had said.
Her knee had missed the tender spot that had worked on the pixie, but Skarash had retreated several paces. He raised a hand to his cheek and then inspected the blood on his fingers.
“Gods, lady! I didn’t mean …” Even in the uncertain light of the lanterns, his shock was obviously genuine.
She had not screamed, though. She struggled to calm her frantic breathing. She glanced back up at the door. “Kids?”
“Always. The place swarms with them. But—”
He dabbed at his face again, staring at her. Worried.
No mating frenzy, just a cruel practical joke.
Kids! “What exactly did you have in mind?” Inos asked, furious now.
He was blushing, dark in the dim light. “I thought … It was only a joke, my lady. I meant no harm.”
She shouted. “Explain!”
He squirmed. “We used to do it to the girls. Make them jump into our arms. No harm, really. Just … I’ve never kissed a queen.”
A queen. She was not going to let yesterday’s escape scar her. She was not going to shy at shadows all her life. Pixies, centurions … now she had fallen for a stupid, juvenile, childish prank. Men!
She laid down her lantern with a clatter. “Then let’s try that again!”
“What?”
Inos stamped up the stairs to where she had been standing before. “I said let’s try that again!”
Wide-eyed, Skarash walked back to his former place also, and then just stared up at her.
“Well?” she demanded, ignoring the pounding of her heart and the wetness of her palms, wishing he would get on with it.
Skarash whispered, “ Bang?”
Unencumbered by a lantern, she jumped; he caught her and set her down. Then he took a deep breath and kissed her lips.
Apparently Skarash had not been planning much of a kiss, or else was now frightened to, but she clung tight, closed her eyes, and kept it going, turning it into a long, intimate thing. He wasn’t as experienced as Andor had been. He probably had no more experience than Rap had had, but he caught on quickly. And in the end it was she who broke it off.
“Gods!” he muttered. “Majesty! Gods!”
Skarash, she suddenly realized, might possibly be a valuable ally, if she could ever trust him at all. Centurions, pixies … she had not panicked. In fact she had withstood that better than he had—he looked much more scared than she felt. Nor had she roused him to a mating frenzy. Apart from a curious shaky feeling, she had come out of that quite well.
“I definitely do like you better as an imp.”
Skarash just murmured, “ Gods!” again, as if bewildered by impish ways.
“Well, then, let’s go.”
He nodded dumbly, and picked up the lanterns. Inos accepted hers, and followed him across the cellar floor with her heart still thumping.
She had exorcised the pixies! She had not used some unconscious magic to drive the man mad, but neither had she panicked when he touched her. She had almost enjoyed the kiss. Not quite, though.
And in spite of what Elkarath had said—and what Aunt Kade so obviously feared—she had not been thinking of Azak.
She had been thinking of Rap.
4
Another door groaning open, and another few steps down, and yet another door. Skarash paused. “This one’s never used for storage,” he said softly. “Except for people. We used to frighten the small fry to death in this one!”
Inos ducked through the doorway after him and then recoiled in disgust. Walls and floor gleamed wet in the lantern’s flicker, and drips fell steadily from the low roof. Azak was sitting on the bare stones, an arm raised to shield his eyes from the light. She was horrified—no bedding, no light; damp, foul air. The only furniture was a bucket; the kennel was barely big enough for him to stretch out, and a rusty metal chain connected his ankle to a staple set in the middle of the floor.
“Good morning, my love. Or is it evening?”
“Haven’t they fed you? No water? What kind of brutality is this?”
“Standard persuasion.” He uncovered his eyes cautiously and peered up at the other visitor, blinking.
“Skarash ak’Arthark ak’Elkarath, Sire.” Heedless of his expensive hose, Skarash knelt on the wet stone and bowed his head.
“Sire?” Azak filled a little word with infinite scorn.
Skarash looked up. “A true Arakkaranian, your Majesty! One of your loyal subjects!”
Where had he come from, this serious young man? The prankster had vanished, and the face in the lanterns’ glow was hard and intense. Even his voice was harsher, pure southern Zarkian.
Azak shrugged. He moved his feet and the chain rattled. “Then I suggest you demonstrate your devotion by getting me out of here.”
“I am honored, Sire!” Skarasb produced the rusty key and reached for the padlock.
“Stop!” Azak barked. “I am not giving my parole to any flea-ridden camel trader!”
“Sire—”
“No! If you came to tell me to behave and promise to be a good boy, then you’re wasting your—” Azak broke off in a fit of coughing. “And the same with you,” he told Inos hoarsely.
Stubborn ox! Mule! He wouldn’t last a week in this tomb. She could feel the damp burrowing into her bones already, and he had been down here all night. Pigheaded idiot!
“Please, Sire?” Skarash begged. “One word?”
“I can spare you a few minutes, I suppose.”
“Sire, there are Imperial legions in Ullacarn—”
“There are always … Go on!”
Words spurted from Skarash: “Far more troops than I have ever seen, Sire! This is the tenth time I have visited Ullacarn, and I have not seen this before. I arrived not long before you did, Sire, and I haven’t had time to investigate properly, but the entire XXth Legion came in last month, and now the van of the XXXIInd is arriving. It’s said the emir is under house arrest, and there is talk of rebellion in Garpoon and the Impire is behind it.”
“God of Torment!”
“And the IVth Fleet is in port.”
Azak looked to Inos, and then changed his mind and addressed the worried-looking Skarash. “You swear this?”
“Aye, Sire! May the Good spurn my soul!”
“Your grandfather put you up to it?”
“No, Sire. I doubt if he even knows. He hasn’t been out yet. I mean, I rode into town with the caravan. He … well, you know.”
Azak grunted and pulled his knees up, clattering rust flakes off his fetters. He leaned his arms on them, and then put his chin on his arms, saying nothing, staring at the lanterns.
“They’ll strike Garpoon first, won’t they?” Skarash whispered. “Then round the coast … one at a time … city by city?”
Azak shot a glance at him. “Merchants deal in strategy now?” But there was amusement in his voice.
“Ji-Gon’s last campaign—I learned it in school. And the Widow War began that way, didn’t it?”
“Yes, it did, Master Skarash. You can’t move an army across the desert, so they always come by the coast, one way or the other. Usually from the north, but they have tried the south, too, at times.”
“And we djinns never unite until it’s too late! Why wait for them to chew us up? Get back to Arakkaran, Sire, and raise the black banner yourself, while there is still time!”
“God of Slaughter!” Azak shook his head in wonder, staring at the lanterns. “It doesn’t make sense! They can’t move supplies over the Qoble Range in winter. They might come across Thume again … the elves’ll never let them through Ilrane. Maybe the Keriths? They may be going to try the Keriths again!”
“I don’t know, Sire! I’m only a trader.”
Azak grunted. “They might take Garpoon now, and make their big move in the spring …” He groaned. “What are his terms?”
“None, your Majesty!” Skarash began twisting the key, but the lock proved stubborn. “You are released. No parole.”
“What!” Azak looked up at Inos.
Her neck was growing stiff under the low ceiling. “It’s true. He says we’re going to Hub! He has bought passage for us. We sail in three days.”
Azak grunted with astonishment and stared at her, not heeding as the lock squealed and opened. Skarash unwrapped the chain from the sultan’s ankle.
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