“She has power,” he said coldly, and there was no doubt to whom he referred, “ but remember what she is. And what you are, Cousin.”
I am nothing! "Of course, Cousin.”
He nodded and went back to outsneering the demonic faces on the door. Inos’s black mood darkened further.
He said he had not changed, but he had. He was sultan again, as he had been when she first met him. On the dock, back in the palace yard, he had spurned the fawning princess, made strong men leap to obedience with one cold glance. She had forgotten just how intimidating he was in his royal role.
And she had changed. She was a queen no longer. Royal status was much more important to Azak than it had ever been to her. Now she was an outcast, like one of the banished princes who sank to being family men in other palaces, or lionslayers serving tradesmen. Although he denied it, he despised them as failures. Rasha’s nudge had come before they had finished their talk—had he been about to offer Inos marriage, or escape to Hub, or steady employment as a breeder of sons? Which did she want?
Rasha’s curse still kept them apart.
“The two of you may enter, the third may not,” the carving stated.
“No!” Kade looked ready to argue with the door.
Inos kissed her cheek. “You go back and wait in the suite, Aunt. Don’t hang around here. We may be some time.”
“I think it is my duty—”
“Go!” Azak boomed, and Kade capitulated.
Inos watched sadly as her aunt wandered back along the long gloomy corridor, and she felt loneliness settle over her like hoar frost.
Then a squeal from a hinge made her jump. The double doors had swung open.
She entered at Azak’s side, and saw at once that the Kinvale influence had been discarded. Again the great circular bedchamber was overflowing with chests and tables in every possible style. The sumptuous floor was hidden again below a discordant mismatch of rugs, and the lewd wall hangings and erotic statuary that Kade had banished had now been replaced. Inos had been shocked by the first collection, and the replacements were even worse; she blushed to see them. The air reeked with syrupy scents.
Beyond the two big windows stood the white vertical blaze of noon. Light spilled also down the central well of the spiral staircase, and yet it was curiously muted … smoky? … less bright than Inos remembered or expected, so the big room seemed oddly dim, and cool.
The doors closed with a boom and a fading echo like a drum roll. The two visitors continued to advance, heading for the bottom step. Then Azak halted, and so did Inos. The enormous canopied bed still stood at the far side of the room, beyond the stair, and the sorceress was standing at one corner of it, leaning provocatively against the carved post as if embracing it.
Inos felt a shiver of apprehension and disgust as she saw that Rasha was in her seductress mode, more voluptuous than ever. Only a small space around her eyes was actually uncovered, but the mist of gauze and jewels that floated over the rest of her concealed nothing—not the long fall of russet hair, nor the hot glow of nipple and areola, nor the many ropes of pearls looped around her body and limbs, next the skin. Nor the skin either, the hot, ruddy skin of a nubile djinn maiden. Nothing above the bright enamel of her sandal straps was leaving any mysteries to tempt the imagination. She looked no older than Inos. Did men really appreciate such an obscenity? Did they not see the vulgarity, or the contempt?
“Come closer,” said the moist red lips.
Azak and Inos advanced more slowly, stopped. Inos waited for his cue, until she realized that he would not bow to a dockside trollop. She had set her own precedents long since, and to change them now would be a defiance, so she curtsied. Rasha acknowledged the move with a flick of one shapely eyebrow.
Then Azak fell to his knees and steadied himself with his hands. That fall had not been voluntary, and had probably hurt.
“You seem to have learned no lessons, Muscles,” said Rasha.
“Oh, but I have!” Azak’s ruddy-stubbled face parted in a joyful gleam of white teeth.
“Do tell.”
“I have learned that you are no match for Warlock Olybino!”
Rasha leaned even more seductively against the carved post of the bed, stroking it with her breast. “So what do you expect to happen now?”
He shrugged. “I suppose, when he gets around to it, the warlock will come for you, to claim your words of power. But I hardly expect that an aged, malformed, mutilated whore will be of use to him. He will torture the words out of you and have your throat cut like a pig’s!”
“You would like to be there to watch, of course.”
“I would enjoy few things more.”
“And volunteer to help?”
“Why not? You have caused me enough pain in the past.”
Now it was Rasha who shrugged, and the gesture seemed to involve her whole body. She turned her gaze of languid contempt on Inos. It felt like impudence from a girl so young.
“I offered my help and you spurned it. Now you have been disinherited. You are a homeless refugee.”
Woe! So it was true. Skarash might have been lying, but a sorceress had no need to lie.
“Your help seemed to involve marrying a goblin,” Inos said, keeping her words slow and level.
The sorceress slid around, so the post was behind her. “If you just keep your eyes closed, honey baby, they’re all much the same. Some are heavier than others, some hairier, some hurt more. That’s all.”
“I can hardly keep my eyes closed all the time.”
“You have never had them open! You are a fool.”
Inos felt no anger, only apprehension. “It would seem that my kingdom was disposed of without my presence being necessary. In that case, your help would have been no help. There never was any way you could put me on my throne—the Protocol forbade it.”
The sorceress’s eyes flashed in fury.
Inos did not wait for a comment. “I appreciate that you had good intentions, your Majesty. Now I humbly ask that you return my aunt and myself to Krasnegar, where you found us.”
Rasha laughed hard scorn, like hail. “I may keep the dog as payment for services rendered, though? How about compensation for the votary I have lost because of your stupidity? No, Inosolan, you forfeited any claim on me when you fled from my city.”
Her city? Azak growled wordlessly.
“You organized that whole affair!” Inos shouted, and at last she began to feel anger. “It was all your idea, and—”
“It was your idea, kitten. I did not put it in your head. And had my sorcery not prevented him, that slab of brawn on the floor there would have had you with child by now.”
Fury! How dare this slut speak such lies? Inos took a very deep breath—
“Be silent, or I shall make you silent. He cannot look at you without half choking on his lust.” Rasha chuckled softly, and shivers ran down Inos’s spine. “No, we shall keep you here. We shall teach the royal parasites how to be useful. Your aunt we shall put in the sculleries, scrubbing floors. And you—you I shall assign to one of the guards. I have one picked out already. He has unusual tastes in recreation.” She was watching Azak as she spoke.
Oh, Gods! She had found another way to torture him, by torturing the woman he loved. Inos felt her hands start to shake and clasped them behind her. She would suffer to make Azak suffer. Every humiliation inflicted upon her would be reported to him so that he would be humiliated also. He might even be forced to watch.
Silence. No one spoke.
Then the sorceress jeered at the man on his knees before her. “And you, Wonderstud? Let me give you some disappointing news.”
Azak’s eyes narrowed, but he still did not speak.
Rasha straightened up and laid hands on hips, thrusting her dainty chin forward in a curiously inappropriate gesture. “It is true that Elkarath’s allegiance has been turned, so Olybino broke my spell. Possibly he does have more power at his disposal than I do, for he has votaries to aid him. But I
did not put my full power into the spell—sorcerers almost never do, for this very reason. I still have power in reserve, and he can’t know how much. More important, I am in my stronghold.” She waved both hands high, triumphantly. “Why do you suppose sorcerers build towers? The whole palace is shielded, and it will take enormous power to defeat me here. If he sends in votaries, I may turn them. If they blast their way in, then the entire complex may be razed by the energies released. Think again, Pretty Man.”
Azak studied her for a moment and then said quietly, “ And did the warlock of the east spell me, also?”
Rasha hesitated, and Inos sensed that the tension had somehow changed.
“Not that I can see,” the sorceress remarked cautiously.
He sighed deeply. That news would be a great relief to him.
“Let me up, please.”
Please?
Rasha’s smoldering eyes widened a fraction. “Rise, then.”
Azak rose, rubbing a bruised knee. He drew himself up to his full height and crossed his arms. “On your promise to behave yourself, your Majesty … I invite you to my wedding, three days hence.”
Inos gasped. Rasha’s face blazed with fury at such defiance.
Before she could speak, Azak repeated softly, “ Your Majesty.”
It was the royal title she coveted. For a moment the silence seemed to grow unbearably, then Rasha said warily, “ And what of the curse? She will char in your arms.”
“I humbly request that you lift it, as your wedding present to us.”
Humbly? Rasha made an effort to recover her disdain. “Lift it for all women, or just for her?”
There was unholy bargaining going on, and Inos groped to catch all the floating threads of it.
“All would be preferable, of course, but just for Inosolan would be acceptable.”
Inos cried, “ Azak!” and stopped, stunned. From him, this was an unbelievable declaration of … of love?
And surrender.
He could have offered nothing more, not even the whole of his realm.
Rasha’s eyes glinted in a slow smile that chilled Inos’s blood. “Only three days?”
Azak was as taut as a bowstring, his face unreadable.
“Seven days might be more seemly,” he said hoarsely.
She stepped close and looked up at him in challenge. “And until then?”
“As you wish.”
Horrors crawled on Inos’s skin as she watched Rasha’s slow smile of triumph. With delicate fingers, the sorceress unhooked her yashmak and let it fall, then raised her face to be kissed. Her appearance might be soft and youthful, but the open lips were too eager for any pretense of maidenly innocence.
But Azak knew all about that. He took her in his arms and kissed her.
She can inflame any man to madness he had said once. When the long embrace ended, he was breathless, and his always-ruddy djinn complexion burned red as a furnace. He kept his eyes on the seductress’s, and did not look at Inos.
Then Rasha changed. The young beauty shrank and aged, reverting to the hideously battered, squat old woman whom Inos had glimpsed twice before. The jewels and filmy gauzes became a dirty brown wrap, her hair a gray tangle, the silken skin shriveled and wrinkled.
Having to bend farther this time, Azak kissed her again.
Inos looked away, until she discovered she was staring at the contorted bodies of obscene sculptures.
Elkarath had known: "If he would only compromise! Bow the knee just once. Say the words she wants to hear.”
And when the second kiss ended, Azak continued to clasp the sorceress in his arms. He lifted his lips from hers just far enough to speak—softly, but without hesitation. “Inosolan, you have seven days. Go and prepare our wedding.”
"Seek to find the Good,” They had said, "and above all … remember love! If you do not trust in love, then all will be lost. “
Without a word, Inos turned and fled from the chamber.
Rasha had won.
Female of the species:
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Kipling, The Female of the Species
THIRTEEN
Out of the West
1
“Nice little place they’ve got on the hill there,” Gathmor shouted.
Holding tight to the gunwale, Rap leaned sideways and peered under the sail at the great white and green city—rich and beautiful, seeming strangely cool in the blazing sunlight.
“Not bad,” he yelled, knowing that the wind might steal away his words before they reached back to the tiller. “Be a brute to heat in winter.”
The headlands slipped away on either hand as the Queen of Krasnegar raced into the harbor. There could be no doubt where this was, for the blot on the chart now lay directly on the name of Arakkaran. If Inos was living in that incredible palace, that shining wonder of domes and towers and spires, then she must be finding it very comfortable. Rap thought briefly of jungle and galley benches, of jotunn raiders and dragons and the nightmare journey now ending, and he felt an absurd twinge of envy.
Idiot! Where did stableboys live like queens? Nowhere. Never.
And he had seen her in a tent, anyway.
Now the voyage was over, the time for action was at hand. He turned to Jalon, who was spread limp on the gratings amidships, covered with a length of salt-caked canvas. That was the only place aboard where anyone could even hope to sleep, where the boat’s unending mad leapings would not shake a man’s teeth out and bounce him until he was black and blue all over. A true storm raised a great swell, but the occult local squall that powered the Queen had lacked enough fetch to change the existing waves much, so the sea had remained relatively calm. Shrouded in flying spume, the boat had skipped and bounded over the crests in a strange unholy motion, all the way from Vislawn.
“Belay the wind, pilot!” Rap shouted.
Red-eyed and haggard, Jalon fumbled for the pipes. He had worn them on a thong around his neck ever since Gathmor had asked what would happen if they fell overboard.
“I hope I remember the tune!”
“If you don’t, we’re going to wreck a lot of shipping!”
Queen and her rigging were seemingly indestructible, but other craft were not. All over the bay, frightened men were hauling in sail as the freak storm roared in from the Spring Sea, turning silver water to lead and blowing a fog of spray. No one would notice one small unfamiliar boat in this sudden turmoil.
The minstrel began piping the gentle strains of “Rest, My Beloved,” and the wind faltered, then began to subside. Jalon had played that song only once on the journey, after Rap’s nagging had led him to summon a typhoon so hectic that both crew and cargo had been in danger of being hurled overboard.
Rap ducked under the sail and knelt on the baggage in the bow, being tossed up and down and soaked by spray. He had not been dry in two weeks. He peered anxiously at the huge city ahead. His plans were vague in the extreme—find Inos, yes, but how? The palace alone was bigger than all of Krasnegar, or Durthing. Arakkaran was twice the size of Noom or Finrain, the only real cities he knew. He saw much shipping tied up along the waterfront, but less activity than he would have expected in the streets. The hour was too late for siesta and too early for serious drinking.
And this was not the Impire. The laws and those who made them might frown on visitors with no credentials and no patron. There would be jotnar aplenty in a port of this size, but a faun would be a rarity, and an oversized faun with goblin tattoos round his eyes was a conspicuous freak.
The boat settled lower in the water as the wind continued to drop. For the first time in two weeks the haze lifted, and the Queen sailed in clear sunlight. Rap crawled back below the sail, to find Jalon stripping off his clothes.
“Of course.”
“Darad?”
“Yes, I think so. And, Jalon—thanks worlds!” Rap thumped the slim minstrel on the shoulder and won a grin. Once again, as in Dragon Reach, Jalon had revealed surprising tenacity. He could have departed at any time, just by wishing, yet he had stayed to endure two weeks of vicious battering and sleeplessness, cold and wet and salt sores, danger and boredom. He might not be a pureblood jotunn, but even Gathmor now conceded he was made of the right stuff.
“My pleasure!” The minstrel smiled through his stubble, wincing at the salt cracks in his lips. “I’m planning a romantic ballad about you, Rap, for the elves. And a saga for imps. Maybe a battle song for jotnar?”
“I hope not!”
“Don’t be surprised! Go with the Good.” Jalon shook Rap’s hand, and the Queen of Krasnegar wallowed as Darad’s great bulk replaced him. A whiff of spray blew over the naked giant and he roared like a sea lion in springtime. “Might have dressed me first!” he complained, and spread his wolflike leer.
“Welcome aboard! Your clothes are in there.” Rap pointed at a bundle. He turned to the red-eyed, bristle-faced Gathmor. “See anything odd about this town, Cap’n?”
Gathmor narrowed his eyes and stared. “Like what?”
“Bunting? Streets quiet?”
“Public holiday?” Gathmor said, nodding. “Maybe. Celebration?”
Rap felt a twinge of premonition. He glanced at the bundle of swords.
“What we do now, sir?” Darad was busily hauling on pants vast enough to furnish the sails of a galleon. So far the boat’s cargo had supplied everything her crew had needed, down to the last needle. Obviously Lith’rian must have perfect foresight, and Rap worried constantly over what else the warlock might have foreseen—some event too close to call.
A Man of His Word Page 113