A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  He was very big. Not quite as big as Azak, but certainly big enough to intimidate. She had to bend her head back to see his beaming smile, and the stench of blood on him made her nauseous. Fists on hips, the infamous murderer and rapist surveyed her gloatingly.

  “So you have arrived, Inosolan! What a hideous mess you have made of your face. That excludes one option, anyway. And where is that raccoon-eyed faun of yours?” He glanced around, and his height let him scan the whole court party.

  The courtiers were at a loss. Ythbane was seething at being thus ignored. The rain grew steadily more persistent.

  Inos’s whirling wits grasped onto one solid thought — Epoxague’s guess had been correct. Kalkor knew of the prophecy. He even knew of Rap’s tattoos, and he had picked out Inos so easily that he must have been given a detailed description of her.

  He had also passed through the line of guards with no apparent effort.

  “Dead! Rap’s dead,” Inos said, tugging her cloak around her and fighting a need to shiver. Everyone but Azak was quietly backing away from the murderous madman.

  The sapphire eyes came back to hers in a flash. “Oh, that was very careless of you. You have spoiled my fun.” He flashed a smile, white teeth in gory mask. “Quite sure?”

  “Yes.”

  He accepted that without hesitation. His mood became petulant. Rain was thinning the blood on him, running in red trickles down his chest and face. “Very annoying. And who will be your champion now? Anyone worthwhile?”

  “Come here, Nordlander!” Ythbane roared from the throne.

  Kalkor ignored him, his glittering gaze rising to rest on Azak, who was marginally taller, but perhaps only because he was wearing boots.

  “This?” The jotunn laughed scornfully. “A camel-loving djinn?”

  “My wife withdraws her claim,” Azak said with astonishing calm. “Keep your rotten little kingdom.”

  Ythbane jumped off the throne and came striding over. Praetorians rushed to follow. His wife moaned and put a hand to her mouth, staring after him. The little prince just gaped as if he were halfwitted.

  Inos said, “Azak —”

  “Be silent, wife! You need not challenge, Thane. She acknowledges you as King of Krasnegar.”

  “No, Azak!” Inos shouted. “I said I withdraw my claim only if —”

  Azak roared, “Silence!” at Inos, just as the regent arrived beside her and Kalkor spat in her face. She cannoned back into Epoxague, shocked speechless.

  “Stop!” the regent snapped. “There will be no more of this!”

  Kalkor turned the ice-blue glare on him. “Hold your tongue, imp! I am a Nordland thane — violate your own safe conduct and I promise you the coasts of the Impire will burn for a generation.” His bare shoulder was higher than the regent’s fine plumed hat.

  Shakily Inos wiped her cheek with a linen kerchief. Before either Ythbane or Azak could speak again, Lady Eigaze uttered a loud shriek from the background.

  Kalkor’s scowl had just come back to Inos … suddenly it became a broad smile.

  Inos looked past him to where three people were arriving at the bottom of the slope beyond the line of legionaries: a hussar leading his horse and escorting a well-dressed elderly lady, and a …

  It was not the hussar she saw. Nor the lady. Only the youth at the back.

  Only he registered, a nondescript young man in the simple brown garb of an artisan. Bigger than an imp, smaller than a jotunn. Tangled hair already dripping wet. Stupid, stupid tattoos around his eyes.

  Inos screamed, “Rap! It’s Rap! He’s alive! Rap’s alive!” She jostled through between the regent and the thane and flew down the bank with her cloak streaming high behind her and her arms spread out in welcome and her feet barely touching the ground.

  4

  It had been late the previous evening when Rap had dropped in at the hostelry to check on Foggy and Smoky. He had spent the day in gathering news, which meant snooping, which meant applying occult charm to make people talk of what they didn’t necessarily want to discuss. What they did want to discuss — particularly some of the women — had often shocked him considerably.

  The task had left him feeling cheap and soiled, and the only relevant thing he had learned was that Kalkor was in Hub. Impossible, but confirmed by many.

  He had found the ponies well content, being tended by a young faun stableboy, who had mostly wanted to know how Rap had managed to grow so big. When that had been explained, he had passed on a dramatic new story about a battle scheduled for the following day.

  By the time Rap returned to the house, Andor had just arrived with much the same information, and everyone was talking at once, on a variety of topics.

  Gathmor, of course, was gloating. Kalkor was in town, and Gathmor had a wife and children to avenge.

  The princess was puzzled and fretting, because there was no word of Inosolan. If the Impire had recognized Angilki as King of Krasnegar, then where was Inos?

  Andor was adamant — tomorrow’s spectacle was no place for him, nor his friends, either. “The crowds will be immense!” he insisted. “People will get trampled and crushed. I am not going, and neither are any of you! It is madness.”

  Rap was feeling the cold fingers of premonition on his skin. He knew that he at least was going to be there. “What do you want, ma’am?” he asked the princess. There was no doubt what she wanted.

  But what she said was, “Advise me, please, Master Rap?”

  Foresight he dared not use. He had been two days in Hub now, and the fearful white horror must be very near now. But he thought about going and then about not going, and he compared his premonitions. He sensed danger, yes, and dark menace, but behind all that there was something new — a pure, high note of joy like the song of a flute. It could only be Inos, seeing Inos, and it squeezed his heart and hurt his eyelids.

  “I think we should go, ma’am,” he said.

  “We shall go, then,” she agreed happily.

  And Gathmor? No need to ask him.

  “Not me!” Andor said.

  “Darad. I think.”

  “And I will not call Darad! Not in Hub.”

  “Darad!” Rap insisted, and despised the mean satisfaction he gained from seeing Andor flinch.

  So it was decided.

  Gathmor was content with his footman’s livery, but finding clothes that would fit Darad was a problem, and Rap himself wanted some inconspicuous, noncommittal garments. Clothes produced by magic might attract occult attention. He took a lesson in sewing from the princess, and sat up most of the night, tailoring as if he had apprenticed to the trade for years.

  By morning Gathmor was in a rapturous state of mind that Rap distrusted. He tried halfheartedly to dissuade the sailor from coming, but without using power on him the effort was wasted. What bothered Rap most was the dagger concealed in Gathmor’s doublet, although an opportunity to strike at Kalkor seemed highly improbable and Rap could always magic the weapon away if it seemed likely to be used. Kalkor had occult powers of his own, and no mere mundane sailor was going to end his career.

  And Darad was no more trustworthy, for he also had a score to settle with the savage thane.

  They left at dawn, yet despite Rap’s peerless control the carriage became stalled in traffic and crowds a long way from the Campus Abnila. Reluctantly leaving the horses in the care of a couple of shifty-eyed youths, he set out on foot with his friends.

  Darad’s great bulk was a help, but more valuable still was the constant tremor of magic that seemed to infest the capital like a winter dog. It was even more in evidence than usual, so obviously Rap was not the only wielder of power striving to reach the arena. There might be occult cutpurses around also, working the crowd as Thinal would. Seers would be trying to lay bets.

  Rap used as little mastery as possible, but he gradually cleared a way for himself and the others. Large men moved aside without quite knowing why they did so, and step by step the princess and her escorts fought their way up t
he outside of the bank, and across the top, and then down the interior slope, until they had a prime location directly behind the arm-linked cordon of soldiers, close to one of the two little tents. The troll was in there, Rap knew.

  And that was as far as they could go. Now all that remained was to wait until the regent’s party arrived and the duel began.

  The royal enclosure was empty at first and then gradually filled. Suddenly Rap’s heart began to beat much faster …

  “Surely I am not mistaken,” Princess Kadolan said. “Is that not the sultan? And Inos!”

  Over the past few weeks, Rap had been gently curing her shortsightedness, but so subtly that she had not been aware of his meddling. Her back pains had gone, too, and she had not missed those, either.

  “Can’t be certain,” Gathmor grunted. Jotunn eyesight was legendary, a handy trait for sailors, but Rap’s farsight was now well beyond the limits of mundane perception.

  “Yes, it is,” he muttered. Tragedy! He could cure those awful scars, but to do so at such a distance would be difficult, and dangerous for him. He would do it, of course, but later, when he could get closer. He would do it for her sake — he didn’t care what she looked like, only what she was.

  Her misfortunes had not broken her spirit; her star burned brighter than ever.

  Inos! Oh, Inos!

  More than anything he wished he had been able to tell her, just once, how he loved her; how he always had. He couldn’t tell her now.

  Inos, married.

  Standing close to her big, handsome djinn.

  Being presented to the regent.

  Rap did not eavesdrop on what was said, although he could have done so. He just watched glumly.

  Then the antique trumpets brayed, and battle was joined. It was disgusting. Kalkor used magic. Rap felt the ambience shake as the ax whirled skyward and again during the thane’s murderous attack. He had known Kalkor was a seer, and had suspected even back on Blood Wave that the raider had more than one word of power. Obviously he knew at least three, to be able to control his weapon in the air like that and so easily penetrate the gladiator’s guard …

  Why not? Words of power were a form of wealth. They could be looted like anything else. The troll had never had a hope.

  Kalkor disabled him and then chopped him down like a tree and jeered at him as he bled to death. Then butchered him. Finally he went stalking toward the imperial enclosure, still bearing his ax. So this was the ritual savagery that he had once described to Rap as a sacred ritual?

  Gathmor and Darad had begun to twitch with bloodlust of their own, and Rap regretfully laid a trance on both of them, so that they just stood and smiled vaguely at nothing. That was safer for them, he told himself angrily. By the time it wore off, the thane would be long gone elsewhere.

  The weary fence of legionaries still struggled against the press of the crowd, because they had orders to do that. The fancy young men on horses were moving around again.

  “Ah!” the princess said. “That tall one on the gray, Master Rap! You see? He visited Kinvale last Winterfest — he knows me! Can you make him come this way?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rap said.

  It was time.

  Pilgrim soul:

  How many loved your moments of glad grace,

  And loved your beauty with love false or true,

  But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

  And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

  Yeats, When You Are Old

  SEVEN

  Whispered word

  1

  The legionaries had already opened a gap; Inos ran through it. She went by the hussar and his horse, she ignored the astonished Kade, leaving her with hands raised and smile wasted …

  She would probably have thrown her arms around Rap and very likely have kissed him, except that she seemed to stumble into an unseen feather bolster that brought her to an unexpected, gasping halt. His eyes were big and gray and unreadable.

  “Rap!”

  “Hello, Inos.”

  “Oh, Rap, Rap! I’m so glad to see you!”

  “Me, too. To see you.”

  “You’re well?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “Fine.”

  Why were they whispering?

  “Rap, I thought you were dead again … Oh, Gods!” She laughed. “I mean, again I thought you were dead.”

  Alive! Rap was alive!

  He was not smiling, not even that bashful little grin she remembered so well. He had not bowed to her, as he had at their other dramatic meetings. He was just regarding her with a wistful sad stare, as if trying to fix her in his memory.

  “No. Not dead. Not yet, anyway. How was your journey?”

  “Fine — no it wasn’t. Horrible! Yours?”

  “Not bad.”

  They were standing in the rain, staring, mouthing nonsense like morons. Or she was, anyway, and why was he so solemn?

  “How did you come?” she asked. “I mean, did you come by sorcery, or really travel, like ordinary folk?”

  Argh! She should not have said that.

  “I traveled. With your aunt. And Sagorn. And Gathmor, but you don’t know him.”

  No need to ask why he had come. The God had told her that. “Not the goblin? Sagorn and the others, of course. You all survived the imps, then … Oh, Rap! I do so want to hear it all.”

  “Inos, I think we’re keeping some important people waiting.”

  She backed away a step. He looked like Rap and sounded like Rap, and yet somehow he didn’t, either. “You are Rap? Really Rap? Not a wraith, or some horrid magic trick? Azak said you were dead. He said awful, terrible things and I believed him and oh, I’m so glad you’re all right and how did you escape from the jail?”

  “That’s a long story.”

  His face hardened. There was a strange, unfamiliar strength there, and no sparkle in the big gray eyes. He had changed. But so had she — they weren’t children anymore.

  “You are Rap, though?”

  “I’m Rap. And Azak … Well, never mind Azak.”

  “Rap, what’s wrong? There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” She could not see what could possibly be wrong now. Rap was alive, and she wasn’t ever going to believe him dead again unless she saw his head on a pike, and — “Oh, Gods! Of course! Kalkor’s here, Rap!”

  He nodded. “I know that.”

  “The casement … Did you meet a dragon, Rap?”

  “Yes, I did. Here’s your aunt, Inos.”

  Belatedly Inos spun around to Kade and embraced her. If she couldn’t hug Rap, then Kade was next best thing, maybe.

  But Rap had been right. Monarchs did not enjoy being kept waiting, and they could send armed men. Ythbane did so, and in a minute Inos found herself being firmly escorted back up the bank, and then standing between Azak and Kade under the awning, although the shower had almost ended. Kalkor was in the group, also, snow-white teeth shining within a pink-streaked face, studying her with a contented smile that struck her as completely insane.

  And Rap. They weren’t all lined up before the throne like errant children, but she felt as if they should be. Epoxague was in the group and even Eigaze, although she was hardly involved, and even the unfortunate hussar who had agreed to bring Kade over. He looked more frightened than any of them.

  Then Kade was formally presented by Eigaze, which explained why she was included. The court party was now clearly divided into those involved in the Krasnegar affair and the great majority who weren’t, and most of those outsiders were perforce standing outside the awning, openly scowling at this new symbol of status.

  The little prince was staring at his own shoe buckles, shivering and ignoring events all together.

  Ythbane nodded in approval of Kade. “Yes, the reports all mentioned that Inosolan was accompanied by her aunt. Obviously you have had some strange adventures, ma’am.”

  Kade simpered, which completely concealed whatever she might be thinking. “But none more
exciting than this moment, your Highness!”

  Formalities disposed of, she was waved back. The white-faced hussar was explained and excused, and he departed with very long strides. The regent fixed a bleak eye on Epoxague.

  “Well, your Eminence? Have you any further surprises left to brighten our day?”

  “No, your Highness,” Epoxague said. “I am being surprised myself now.”

  “You may be more surprised yet,” Ythbane retorted sourly. “This is hardly the place …” For a moment his attention went to the great crowd around the campus. It was obviously thinning out now. Some ominous clusters of activity hinted at casualties being attended, but there had been no disaster. Yet the roads would not become passable again for a while yet. He shrugged.

  “But we might as well get started. And who is this young man? A goblin supporter, obviously. A faun?” He glance around. “Jotnar and a djinn. A troll! We have a motley assortment of participants!”

  Kade spoke up quickly. “His name is Rap, your Highness, a retainer of my late brother’s. He has been accompanying me on my travels.”

  Oh, very neatly done! The regent nodded and lost interest in Rap. How fortunate that Inos had not embraced him!

  But why had Inos not embraced him? She had spread her arms and then been somehow distracted, or stopped. Had Rap done that? That called for sorcery, surely. And he had not said how he had escaped from Azak’s jail, although obviously Azak’s horrible story had been a basket of lies. This strange melancholy … was Rap oppressed by the thought of the duel with Kalkor? She knew she must not keep staring at him, but her eyes wouldn’t listen to her. Rap himself seemed to be studying the old imperor, who slept on in his carrying chair, a shriveled relic swathed in a tasseled wool rug, oblivious now to all events in the great realm he had ruled for so long.