He’d had as much boredom as he could stand. He’d been in this squalid pesthole for four or five hours, capping two days of useless talk and argument and mostly waiting around. Waiting for Thinal, or Darad. And now Andor. Or being a common porter — sometimes a man would do for a shipmate what he wouldn’t dream of doing for himself.
A large youth stuck his head round the door. “You! Your master wants you.”
Gathmor smiled and said softly, “Did I hear you correctly?” The camel driver brightened and glanced at the youth. For a moment the evening began to look interesting.
“Your friend?” the youth said, scowling.
“ ‘Employer’ would do,” Gathmor admitted, and heaved himself to his feet. “Lead on, Valiant.” Turning red faces redder was the best fun he’d found in Zark so far. It wasn’t much.
He swung his bundle up on his back and followed. Common porter!
When he reached the door, he saw that Andor was as good as dismasted. So the sailor took the proffered lantern in one hand and a firm grip on the imp’s arm with the other, and steered him out into the night before the cheerfully wine-scented farewells were finished. The door thumped shut behind them; bars and chains rattled behind it, and the night was hot.
It was also dark. He’d been rash, Gathmor realized, going outdoors before he’d got his night eyes back; he wasn’t used to these landlubber games. He pulled Andor back into the doorway again, raising the lantern high to peer at all the shadows. Andor hiccuped discreetly.
There were a lot of shadows, but most of them were too small to conceal anything. The walls were very high, but moonlight played its magic in places, and some windows still glowed here and there. A few households kept lamps burning above their doors.
“Uphill or downhill?” Gathmor said, when he was satisfied that there were no footpads close.
“Uphill, downhill, in my lady’s chamber …”
“Call Sagorn!”
Andor sniggered. “I think I’m too drunk to remember how. Gods, but that kid was a trader! I couldn’t get a thing out of him sober. Ooops, I think I’m going to call the gnomes.”
“Do it, then, or bring Sagorn now and do it next year.”
Andor reeled into a corner, but there were some things even Andor could not do elegantly. Gathmor studied the shadows and the narrow moonstruck sky roofing the canyon and tried not to listen. Serve the sleazy twister right!
He was getting very tired of the whole bunch of them. In the last two days he’d been working with all five — one at a time, of course — and Evil knew how confusing it was. He’d no sooner get one straightened out than he’d be dealing with another and having to start all over.
“Awright!” he said when silence returned. “Tell me what you found out, or else call Sagorn and let me have his ideas firsthand.”
“You boneheaded Nordland blackguard!” Andor gagged a few more times, but nothing more happened. “I still think we’re wasting our time. Why don’t we go back down —”
“Don’t try it!” Gathmor snarled. “It didn’t work the last time and it won’t now.”
Andor could probably still talk him into leaving Arakkaran and abandoning his shipmate. He’d done so two days ago, and they’d sailed on the dawn breeze. But only Jalon could work the pipes to summon real winds, and when Andor had called Jalon, Jalon had simply waited until Gathmor recovered his wits and stopped threatening. Then they’d come back to Arakkaran. Andor’s charm was irresistible, but it wore off. Jalon was a jotunn, and a real man inside, despite his puny exterior.
Andor started to speak, groaned briefly, and vanished.
Sagorn stood in his place, pale face and silver hair shining bright in the light of the lantern. He sighed approvingly. “Nicely done, sailor.”
“What did he learn?”
“Ah!” For a moment the old man stood in silence, pondering or perhaps merely rummaging through Andor’s memories. “Uphill,” he said, and began striding into the dark. Adjusting the bundle on his back, Gathmor moved to his side, and the shadows danced away at their approach, only to sneak in softly behind again.
“What did Andor find out?”
“I never thought I should be grateful to a gnome,” Sagorn remarked. “But Dragonward Ishist outshines any doctor I have ever heard of. He must be the equal of —”
“You’re going to need medical help again very shortly, you know.”
The scholar chuckled dryly and slowed his pace. He had begun to puff already. “We could use Ishist right now, couldn’t we? If what we heard about gangrene is true, then the faun hasn’t long to live. His healing powers must be failing.”
Gathmor shuddered. Before noon Thinal had gone over the palace wall again, so that Andor could interview a couple more guards. The trouble was that then he’d called Darad to ensure their silence, and all the others were becoming understandably alarmed by the sudden epidemic of anemia in their profession.
“And Darad saw Princess Kadolan on a balcony,” Sagorn remarked. “That’s important, although none of the others realized.”
The alley entered a tiny square, and Gathmor peered around nervously. “Last warning — don’t play games with me, Sagorn.”
The old man snorted. He was wheezing now, but obviously headed back to the palace. How long could their luck last?
“Is there a solution?” Gathmor demanded.
“Certainly.”
“There is?”
“Certainly. I have known it since Jalon called me yesterday. I just didn’t want to raise your hopes by mentioning it.”
Gathmor promised himself revenge on this scraggy old bookworm — someday, somehow. “Raise them now.”
“More magic! Rap is merely an adept. His powers have kept him alive this long, despite his injuries, but since he can no longer speak to talk his guards into —”
“I am only an ignorant sailor!” Gathmor shouted. “But I am not stupid. I know all this.” The old windbag always used too many words, but he seemed to be dragging this story out deliberately.
“Will you tell the world? Keep your voice down! Now, do you want to hear or not?”
“What is the answer?”
The two jotnar emerged onto a wide road, better lit by the moon. There was no wheeled traffic in these early-morning hours, but a band of men went by on the far side with lanterns and suspicious glances, guarding a fat merchant encased within them like a yolk.
Sagorn was laboring, puffing harder. “More power! If we can learn another word, then I will be an adept, also, and so will Andor, or Thinal, or Jalon, or even Darad. I admit that the thought of Darad as an adept is …” He sensed Gathmor’s fury and broke off. “That is the answer! Another word of power.”
What madness was this? “And where exactly do you propose finding one of those now, after failing for a hundred years?”
Sagorn chuckled dryly. “I know exactly where.”
“Where?”
“The girl has one.”
“Rap’s princess? She does? You’re serious?”
“Absolutely! One of Inisso’s words has been handed down in her family. Her father passed it to her on his deathbed. It was perhaps the reason the sorceress abducted her. But I couldn’t be sure … She does not seem to have had fair fortune, and even a single word normally brings good luck.”
“Now you’re sure?” Gathmor was certain he was overlooking something in this argument.
“Yes, I am. That was why we have been cultivating Master Skarash all afternoon. He was one of her companions in the desert.”
“One word? A genius? What’s her skill, then? What’s she good at?”
Sagorn sniffed disparagingly. “That seems to be still a mystery. At least the djinn boy told Andor he didn’t know. He may not have been informed, of course, but at one point in their adventures, she was definitely exercising some sort of power. It was how his grandfather was able to find her again.”
“Grandfather?”
“Elkarath himself. He’s a mage. But he isn�
�t here. He’s still in Ullacarn, working for Warlock Olybino now. Forget him. We must find Inos and persuade her to share her word of power with me. Or with one of my associates. Then we can save Rap!”
“How?”
Sagorn paused to rest, leaning against a high stone wall — the wall of the palace grounds, in fact. He took a moment to catch his breath and wipe his brow. “The faun is no fighter, but with two words he held off the whole palace guard. Imagine Darad with two words! Another word will bring many new skills, of course, but it must also strengthen the skills we’ve got now. Gods — Thinal will be able to walk out the door with the sultan’s throne under his arm.”
“Listen!” Gathmor swung around to stare toward the corner. There were gates to one of the palace yards just around there, and he could hear … Yes! Horses.
He doused the lantern, but the two of them were still far too conspicuous in the moon-washed street. “Come on!” After grabbing the old man’s wrist, he began to run across the road, feeling the straps of his bundle dig into his shoulders at every step. There was a dark alleyway on the far side, but farther uphill, closer to the approaching cavalry. The hoofbeats were very near now.
Djinns were insanely suspicious folk, even in daylight.
He had no sense of change, but suddenly the wrist he held was different. He let go, and Thinal hurtled out in front, heading for cover like a rabbit, with Andor’s overlarge garments flapping around him. No hero, Thinal. Ladened by his pack and the dead lantern, Gathmor couldn’t keep up with him. He watched the little thief vanish into the shadows, heard the hooves grow louder, and saw the leaders wheel around the corner just as he reached the alley also and plunged into the welcome darkness.
It was not an alley, merely an oversized alcove, and he was brought up short by a high, solid fence. Of Thinal there was no sign whatsoever.
Cursing fluently, Gathmor dropped the lantern, swung his pack down to the ground, and began fumbling with the ties — there was a sword inside. But he knew he’d been seen, and one man couldn’t hold off an army. He was a fist-and-boots man, anyhow — he’d never used a sword in his life. He stopped, gasping for breath, knowing it was useless. A prowler near the palace at this time of the morning, running away … he was a dead man! Sweat trickled icily down his ribs.
The horses never broke stride. A dozen cantered by his patch of darkness, then a coach, rumbling and bouncing, and a solitary giant of a man on a black stallion, and finally another twenty or so horsemen, riding on inky shadows in the moonlight.
And they were gone. Their clamor died away down the hill, and the silence of the night returned, broken only by his own hard breathing.
Gathmor jumped as another man dropped nimbly at his side, Thinal coming down from above, having scaled a sheer wall in his inimitable style.
“Funny time of day to be going for an outing,” the thief remarked in a puzzled tone.
Jalon scowled at him. Of all the five he knew Thinal least. The kid’d been busy, these last two days, but he did his work alone. Gathmor had caught glimpses of him, but they’d exchanged few words. Slight and foxy, the young imp was also nondescript and unmemorable.
“Come on, then,” he snapped. “I need my stuff.”
Common porter! Snarling, Gathmor set to work on the pack. Then he paused. “What’s the old man’s plan, exactly?”
“Kadolan,” Thinal said, stripping off Andor’s fancy robes. “Darad saw her on a balcony. He doesn’t think, of course.”
“So I gathered. Why her?”
“Hurry! Because no one can possibly get close enough to Inos to have a private chat, right? No man, anyway. You know how djinns guard their women.” Stripped bare now, he pushed Gathmor’s hands away and the bundle yielded swiftly to his thieving fingers. “But I may be able to get to her aunt — she won’t be so well guarded.”
“And then what?”
Thinal began emptying the pack, tipping out all the miscellaneous garments and equipment the team had collected for their nefarious exploits. He found the shorts he wanted and pulled them on, dancing round on one foot at a time, then he went hunting for his shoes. Burglars disliked floppy robes.
“Then Jalon.”
“Jalon?” Gathmor didn’t think he was usually so stupid. The occult gang was deliberately trying to confuse him. Sagorn was a schemer and Thinal a sharpie. He was only an honest sailor.
Thinal pulled the sword from the pack and hung it on his back. It was a fine dwarvish blade, but the hilt was so distinctive that it might as well have had Stolen from the Palace of Arakkaran written all over it. Once inside the grounds, he could call Darad to use it anytime there was need of violence. He peered up at Gathmor. “Then … then we’ll improvise. Got a better plan?”
“No,” the sailor admitted angrily. “But you have. Out with it!”
“Inos tells Jalon her word. As adepts, we rescue Rap … Don’t wait around. This may take all day, or even longer. Look for us …” He paused, thinking. “The North Star Saloon, dawn and dusk and noon? If none of us shows in two days we’re dead. All right?”
“Why Jalon? And shouldn’t you find a shadier stretch of wall to climb?”
“Not at this time of night. No one around.”
Gathmor opened his mouth to argue, but it was too late. Leaving the sailor standing in the scattered mess of clothing, the kid sprinted across the empty street and seemed to flow straight up the wall on the far side. In moments he had vanished over the top.
Gathmor waited for sounds of discovery, and there were none.
He sighed and bent to stuff all the clothes back in the sack.
Then he straightened.
Wait a minute!
Rap was dying — chained to the floor, all his bones broken, his tongue burned out, gangrene … Even if Darad or Thinal had become adepts, they wouldn’t be sorcerers. They might rescue Rap, but they couldn’t cure those awful injuries!
But did Inosolan know that Rap had been broken like that? If she thought he was just locked up in a cell, then she might very well believe the gang’s story and hand over her word of power — and it wouldn’t do Rap a damned bit of good!
The stillness of the night was shattered by an explosion of jotunn curses.
Of course they’d duped him!
They would dupe the girl!
And Rap would still die.
6
“Shandie! Shandie! Oh, my poor baby! Shandie!”
The voice came from a long way away, a very long way. It sounded much louder than it could possibly be, because that was Aunt Oro’s voice, and she had a very soft voice, always, and she never shouted.
He was lying facedown. Because.
He was asleep, really. The room was dark, the bed soft. Sleep.
“Shandie!”
He smiled. He was glad she had come, and hoped she would see his smile in the dark and know he was glad, but he was much too much asleep to say anything. The world was all very woozy, and if he tried to wake up then he would feel his sore butt, and he didn’t want that.
“Shandie! Speak to me!
He mumbled, tried to say he would see her tomorrow. Didn’t think it came out right, because his mouth was all woozy, too. Moms had given him the medicine. To take the pain away.
More than usual medicine, ’cos it had been a very big beating. He’d been a very bad boy. He couldn’t remember just how, but he had. Ythbane had been very, very disappointed in him.
Sleep …
“And what are you doing in my bedroom?”
That was Moms this time. She was shouting. Oh, dear, Moms was angry.
“I’m visiting my nephew! And what is a nine-year-old doing still sleeping in his mother’s bedroom, may I ask?”
That was Aunt Oro again, but it didn’t sound like Aunt Oro, who was sweet and cuddly and never, never shouted. ’Cept she was shouting now.
So was Moms. “He’s my son and I’ll decide where he sleeps. And I’ll thank you —”
“What’s the matter with him? Wha
t have you doped him with?”
“Just a mild sedat —”
“Mild? He’s dead to the world! Laudanum? It must be laudanum! You give your own son laudanum?”
“Mind your own business!”
“This is my business!”
He was starting to cry. He could feel tears. He didn’t like all this shouting, and he wanted to sit up and tell them to stop shouting over him, but he couldn’t even lift his head, ’cause it weighed ever so much and was so woozy. Dark. Woozy. Sleepy.
“It is not your business!”
“Yes it is! He’s my nephew, and heir to the throne. And who did this?”
Ouch!
“See?” Aunt Oro, shouting louder. “This sheet is stuck to him. Caked blood! No bandages, even?”
“Too swollen. Just compresses.”
“Who did it?”
“He was disciplined.”
“Disciplined? You call this discipline? I call it flogging.”
“He disgraced himself today.”
Yes. Now Shandie remembered. He hadn’t just fidgeted. He’d fallen down and interrupted the ceremony and shamed himself before the full court. Of course he’d had to be beaten for that.
“He fainted! I saw. Grown men faint when they have to stand too long. Shut up and listen to me, Uomaya! Hear me out. I saw. He fainted like a soldier on parade.”
“They get punished —”
“He’s only a child! He shouldn’t even have been there. Certainly not made to stand all that time! Of course he fainted!”
“And I will see my child reared as I choose. I repeat, it is none of your business …”
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