A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  But she’d trapped him. He had said “Anything.”

  “It’s not fair to others, Inos,” he protested, knowing he was on his last excuse. “Those two words you know already … one was the one Zinixo told me. The other I got from my mother. I didn’t plan it that way, they were just the first that came to mind.” He cringed at the memory of that fiery ordeal in Emine’s Rotunda, and then cringed even more as he remembered who had saved him from it. “I don’t know if anyone else knows those words, too. But the words I haven’t shared — those belong to Kade, and Little Chicken, and Sagorn. I’ll weaken their powers if I tell those words to you.”

  Green eyes flashed again. “Leave Sagorn and his buddies out of this by all means! But I heard you warn Little Chicken not to use his occult strength … didn’t I? And Kade’s talent is chaperoning young ladies. She isn’t going to have any time for that from now on if she’s running Kinvale. It’s time she started taking things easy anyhow!”

  He glanced despairingly around the hall. The servants were still hard at their blathering. The officials and senior staff had vaguely noticed that the queen had a visitor and had chosen to cluster at one of the side tables instead of joining her. There was no one within earshot.

  “You’re quite sure?”

  She nodded. She wasn’t quite sure, but Inos had acquired a regal serenity, a confidence that came from more than the glamour he had cast on her. It was not all adepthood, either. Some of it was just Inos being a good queen.

  Almost before he realized, he had leaned close to whisper Kadolan’s word into her ear. Relief! The second one was even easier, and the third —

  He bit his own tongue and managed to stop it halfway through the third word. That was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life — it was pain, it was nausea, it was sorrow and fear; and self-contempt, and everything horrible. It tore at his mind and trampled his soul and racked his body with terrible spasms. It was death and destruction, and more than he could bear. He toppled from his chair, howling. He rolled and thrashed on the floor, hearing the Gods’ mocking laughter.

  But he’d stopped and his mouth was full of blood.

  Then he saw Inos before him in the ambience — transparent, frightened, her hands over her ears. But a sorceress, a glorious, beautiful, desirable sorceress. He couldn’t bear it.

  “Inos, I love you!” He reached for her.

  “No, Rap!” her specter cried, backing away from him in an aura of conflicting reds and pinks. He went after her, to grasp her and pull her close and force his mouth to her ears, or lips, or cheek, or anything.

  In the mundane Great Hall his hand caught the hem of her gown as she turned to flee. He hauled her back. She stumbled against her chair and then fell, struggling and screaming, and he clasped her in his arms.

  He was going to kiss her and tell her he loved her and then share the fifth word with her.

  In the mundane world, she magicked right out of his embrace, so that he sprawled hard against chair legs, clutching an empty gown. The mundanes had noticed the racket and were starting to turn, sluggish as old cabbages.

  In the ambience she fled, racing away across a polished plain, a naked girl running bright and sweet against a somber, discordant sky.

  He scanned and found her at the top of Inisso’s Tower, in her bedroom, wrenching open the door to the upper staircase. She was heading for the portal and escape to Kinvale.

  She mustn’t escape! He must take her, and tell her, and share everything with her, and release the awful, burning compulsion. Howling, he vanished from the Great Hall, and everything had happened so fast that the mundanes were still bringing their eyes around to locate all the disturbance. A final chair hit the floor, right by the queen’s discarded dress.

  Rap stumbled as he arrived in the narrow, curving stairwell, and that gave her an extra second or two. Then he hurtled up the stairs like a bat, without a boot touching the treads.

  In the ambience his fingers touched her arm.

  Just ahead of Rap’s mundane grasp, Inos reached the top of the stairs and vanished from ambience and farsight both. Rap, moving occultly, ricocheted off the shielding and sprawled on the steps, pounding his fists in torment. He forced down the pain, the anger, the maddening love, the unbearable compulsion.

  Somehow he brought himself under control, shaking and sweating and weeping like a stupid mundane. Maybe the agony was a little easier to suppress now, a little easier than before.

  But, Oh, Gods, girl, that had been a narrow escape!

  He gave himself no chance to change his mind. He moved instantly to the stable and saddled Firedragon in half a second. Fleabag, who had been dozing in an empty stall, rose at his master’s summons. A knot of gossiping hands barely noticed as dog and tack and horse all vanished from their places.

  Out in the bailey, one or two looked around in surprise at a mounted man they had not noticed earlier. He rode out through the shielding of the gate.

  Inos was visible in the ambience then, wide-eyed, hair streaming, staring at him in fright. He could reach out and touch her …

  Physically, she was standing in the chamber of puissance with her hand on the portal.

  “It’s all right, love,” he said, fighting down another surge of agony and longing. “I think I can handle it now. But stay out of my sight! Stay in the castle until I’m gone.”

  She nodded and ran across the chamber to the stair. He was still riding in the castle yard and he dare not wait on the tide. He moved man and dog and horse to the hills.

  The rock of Krasnegar was a mere speck, then, far away against the pale endless blue of the Winter Ocean. Its castle was barely visible at all.

  7

  In low, chill sunshine, he rode southward over the hills. The yellow grass was crisp with frost, crunching below Firedragon’s hooves, and the wind cut with a sinister edge. Now and then he would give the ambience a gentle nudge, moving himself across a valley to the far crest, gaining time. He wanted to put a great distance between himself and Inos as soon as possible, but from habit he preferred not to alert the wardens any more than he had to. They probably all kept votaries watching for him all the time anyway.

  Once he thought he felt Inos searching, and he blasted out a warning. “Go away!”

  “Rap?”

  “Yes, but I’m still too close!” He caught a faint image of her in the ambience, an echo, a scent. Prickles of sweat broke out all over him, and he trembled from sheer longing. Would he feel any different when he reached the far ends of the earth? She would be just as visible, just as close in the ambience. How could he ever escape?

  “I just wanted to say I love you!”

  “Likewise! Now, please, Inos! Go!”

  “All right.” There were tears in her eyes. “And now I know what you were doing, and why. Thank you, Rap!”

  His heart twisted. “You agree? This is what you want?”

  “Oh, yes!” She choked back a sob. “Good-bye, Rap!”

  Then she was gone, and he could relax again.

  Almost. He kept having visions of Inos plunging into the flames to rescue him — crazy, impulsive Inos. And then he would remember Rasha’s fearful solitary immolation, and her final despairing howl to Azak: Love!

  A sorcerer could marry, but only a mundane. A mage might love a genius, or an adept another adept. Four words was the limit. Only mortals with his freakish control over power would not be destroyed by five.

  But two people and five words of power plus love …

  He put the terrible recipe out of his mind and rode on.

  He decided to visit Death Bird on his way by. As he had foreseen, the goblin was chief of Raven Totem now. He’d challenged his father and won the hunters’ vote that resulted. Then he’d disappointed everyone by letting the old man live instead of making an entertainment of him. It had been the first step in his revolution, and in his way Little Chicken was doing as well as Inos.

  After that …

  Rap didn’t know what came afte
r that. Endless wandering? More little good deeds here and there — minuscule, futile attempts to make the cruel world a little kinder? He had kept his promise to return to Krasnegar. Now he could see how that promise had been a lantern in the dark all the past year. There was no light ahead now.

  Sharing more words with Inos had reduced his pain somewhat, but it was still there, and his craving for her was more intense than ever. How long before he went as mad as Kalkor or Bright Water?

  He was a fool. He’d been a fool to heal the imperor. He’d been a fool to spare Zinixo in the Rotunda. And he’d been a paramount fool to make Inos a sorceress, for now only a single word separated them, and she was in great danger. Anywhere, anytime — a moment’s distraction and he might find himself at her side, whispering.

  So where could he go, what could he do? Power? Even if his words had been weakened, with five of them he was still a supersorcerer. He could do anything he wanted. Riches? Women? He could have all the women in the world, in unlimited numbers, make Andor look like an ascetic. The only one he wanted was out of reach.

  He would never be in danger from any mundane peril, nor from sorcery, either, for the Four had obviously decided to leave him well alone. He had many empty centuries to look forward to, until he grew older than Bright Water.

  Before noon he was riding through a narrow valley, following a dry streambed, with sere brown slopes rising gently on either hand to the drab hills. Horse and dog were thirsty, and he was hungry. He decided to take a break, conjure up some water and a meal.

  Before he could act on that resolution, he felt an eerie awareness, an imminent sense of the numinous. He reined in Firedragon with a mental command and glanced around uneasily. Premonition burned hotter, the ambience began to writhe and shimmer, and finally blazed.

  A God stood athwart his path, brighter than the sun.

  Rap cursed silently. Stiff from riding, he slid from his saddle and sank to his knees before the towering figure. He bent his head in submission. He had already closed down his occult senses, for the power lashing the ambience was more than mortal mind could stand. Even his mundane eyes could not bear to look at that coruscating glory, although its light cast no shadows, nor brightened the hills.

  Firedragon wandered off to graze.

  “You must go back!” The voice was male, and thunderous.

  “I do not wish to go back,” Rap said, staring at the yellow grass.

  “You are defying the Gods?”

  Yes he was, so there was no point in saying anything.

  “You are a fool!”

  Yes again.

  “You love her!”

  “I do.”

  “And she loves you!”

  Undoubtedly. And undoubtedly this was the God Who had appeared to Inos once, long ago, on that eventful day that ended their childhood.

  “You are defying Us and spurning the destiny We chose for you both. Go back!”

  Rap said, “No.”

  Risking a tiny glimmer of farsight, he saw the God put Their fists on Their hips in an oddly trivial gesture. A wave of divine fury washed the valley. Strange that the very grass did not burst into flame!

  “You are a stubborn fool! You know the formula! You know why the casement could not prophesy for you? You know why the sorcerers could not foresee you?”

  “I do.” And he knew now what Bright Water had guessed from the inexplicable blocking.

  “So you know why a God is always described as ‘They’?”

  “I do.”

  “We have promised you this, and you are defying Us!”

  To be a sorcerer was bad enough. To be a God would be infinitely worse. Rap set his teeth and said nothing.

  Apparently They decided that blustering was not going to work, for suddenly the God became soft, and feminine. The sunlike glare became suffused with pearl, the strident call to duty yielded to the appeal of love. They moved closer, until Their toes were within Rap’s field of mundane vision. They made his eyes hurt, but he had never seen anything lovelier.

  “Oh, Rap, Rap!” the voice said, gentle now, and coaxing. They sounded like his mother, and he felt tears of sudden anger start. “Is this fair to Inos?”

  “She agreed. It is what she wants also.”

  “Maybe she agrees now, to humor you. How will she feel when she is old, when her beauty is gone and age begins to gnaw at her flesh? How will you feel when your manly strength fails you and your eyes water and your back aches? Will you both start patching yourselves with sorcery, like Bright Water, to load a few more years onto your brief span? Repent, Rap! Go back to Inos, Rap, so you can put on immortality together!”

  Rap said, “No.”

  “Five words, Rap! Five words destroy, but when two people who love each other are armed with the strength of five words shared — those make a God. Few are the mortals given this chance.”

  Again he said nothing. There was evil in every good, and good in every evil. Bright Water had guessed, and tried to help him in her muddled way; tried to bribe a future God so she would have a friend at her weighing.

  Suddenly there were more Gods, uncounted Gods, male and female both, blazing beauty all around, filling the dusty little valley with glory, so that the air rang with music and purity and love. The very sunlight seemed drab by contrast.

  “Join us, Rap!” They chorused. “Your coming was ordained at the birth of the world. For centuries we have waited on you. Now the time is ripe, the prophecy fulfilled — be one with Inos and join us in glory for eternity!”

  Rap said, “No!”

  A great wail filled the whole world. “You can be any of Us, Rap. God of Love, God of War, God of Healing. Any of Us will step aside for you. Or be a new God. God of Horses, Rap?”

  Rap said, “No.”

  Anger shook the hills, bringing maleness, stern and deadly, so that the company of Gods assumed a presence like a horde of armed warriors all around him, vast and mighty in Their wrath. Pearly glow became metallic glint, song became fanfare and beat of drum.

  “We all must seek to aid the Good, Rap! Think of how a God can aid the Good, and how much They can accomplish; set that beside the trivial powers of a sorcerer. If you and Inos dedicate your whole mortal lives to serving mankind, you can hope to achieve nothing compared to what a God can achieve throughout eternity. Repent, and come!”

  “What a God can achieve?” Rap yelled, wishing he could bear to look upon Them so he could pull faces. “Healing babies, relieving famines, stopping wars? Oh, very worthy! But who made the babies sick in the first place? Who blighted the crops and started the wars? When prayers are answered You expect thanks. When things go wrong anyway, that is because we mortals are wicked. You have the game stacked so You can score in both goals, can’t you? The nice things are Your blessings, and the bad things are our sins. What do You do the rest of the time, when You’re not answering prayers? You go around making trouble, and I don’t know whether it’s just for Your own amusement or to humble us so You can —”

  “silence!”

  He waited for the lightning, but instead he felt a great loneliness and weariness.

  “We love you, Rap. We have been waiting for you. Your troubles are over now. Join with Inos and come to us and never again will you —”

  Rap said, “No!”

  He felt terror …

  “Gods are not mocked, Rap! Fear what judgment will come upon you if you deny Us now!”

  Rap said, “No! I will not go back to Inos. Slay me if You choose, but I am not going back. I do not wish to be more than human. I shall live and die a mortal, and Inos also.”

  He felt fury — and then sudden despair.

  “No more time!” one of the Gods cried. “Look, Rap! Look at what Inosolan is doing!”

  Rap sought out Krasnegar with farsight. He saw the castle as a great shielded blank, except for the chamber of puissance at the very top. He saw the steep little town all spread out below it, with every corner visible to him. He saw the people like ants, sc
urrying up the streets and alleys, and then he heard the great bell booming, summoning them to the castle.

  Inos! What was she planning?

  “Hurry, Rap! Go back and stop her before it is too late!”

  She would kill herself! For a moment his resolution wavered, and he felt the rising surge of joy and triumph from the Gods assembled.

  No! “I won’t!” he said.

  For a moment he really thought They were going to slay him. He fell forward to the ground as Their rage roared and buzzed around him; but then it slowly sharpened to a howling dirge of farewell, fading away in echoes of eternal sorrow for his folly.

  So much for immortality.

  He was alone in the valley, lying on the grass. Firedragon was peaceably munching. Fleabag had lain down to lick his paws, and the Gods had gone.

  And Inos, crazy Inos! … She would kill herself. It was impossible!

  He staggered to his feet, and just for a moment he hesitated. He could move himself to the castle yard. He could run in through the gate; he could flash instantly to the Great Hall.

  He could stop her.

  No!

  It was her decision. This was why she had demanded two more words. She had guessed why a God was called “They.”

  Two people and five words, plus love … She felt as he did. But what she planned was humanly impossible! To tell a word of power to one person was an agonizing experience. To tell it to more than one was unbearable — he recalled how he had been unable to share a word with Rasha when Azak had been close enough to hear.

  Then why had the Gods been worried?

  No! He would not interfere.

  The world shimmered around him and seemed to darken. He cried out with a rending sense of loss. Inos!

  She was doing it! She would kill herself.

  Frantically he ran to his horse and scrambled into the saddle. He turned Firedragon’s head to the north and dug in his heels. And even as he did so, the world shimmered again, and shrank, and darkened about him. He groped for the ambience and it had gone.