by Dave Duncan
The town man vanished into another door and Rap set off again, his companions following the tap of his moccasins on the cobbles and steps. He had spent many hours planning this return, thinking while running, wondering whom he would seek out, reviewing all those childhood friends who had turned aside when he had demonstrated occult powers. His final choice had surprised him greatly.
He was approaching the castle. He could, if he wanted, run right in through the gates, for no guard was ever posted there, except in summer when there were strangers in town. Krasnegar had sheltered too long behind the diplomatic skill of its king, a skill buttressed by a word of power.
If Holindarn was still alive to tell Inos that word, would it serve her in the same way? Rap had not thought to wonder what change the word would produce in Inos. What was her great talent? Not diplomacy! Gaiety? Zest? Beauty?
Perhaps beauty. He would never forget her as he had seen her in the forest, unexpectedly sprung from the child he remembered to glorious woman, a slender wood nymph in a malachite cloak, with hints of golden hair inside the hood, green eyes shining in her winter-pale face. He wept himself to sleep with that memory.
Inos with her beauty augmented by magic would be a goddess. She was close enough now.
And so he thought again of Andor, baring his teeth. He had plans for Andor that he had never thought he could have for any man. Almost, Rap could think of turning him over to Little Chicken.
They stopped in an alleyway by a door and waited for their hearts to slow and breathing to calm. Nothing like a few months' running to put a man in shape, even for running up Krasnegar.
Rap scanned, sensing the small apartment of two rooms and a kitchen. There was a communal toilet on the other side of the alley, behind Rap. The owner was up and dressed, kneeling by his fireplace. His wife and children had died years ago, in the same pestilence that had killed Rap's mother, and he had lived alone ever since. Rap had never been invited into this tiny home; he knew no one who ever had.
He tapped.
Hostler Hononin looked around in surprise and then heaved himself to his feet. His feet were bare and his shirt hung down unfastened over his pantaloons and hose. His face was weather-beaten, lumpy, and wizened, and his stoop thrust his head forward aggressively. The tangle of gray curls around his bald spot was still rumpled by sleep; he appeared even more surly than usual as he padded over to the door.
“Who's there?” His voice was loud enough to make Rap jump.
Rap tapped again, reluctant even to whisper his name.
The little man scowled, then opened the door a crack—it had not been locked—and light jumped in Rap's face, dazzling him.
“Oh, great Gods, boy!” Hononin recoiled. “By the Powers! Rap!” He was stunned. Then he pulled the door wide. “Quick! Come in before anyone sees you! And who the hell is this?”
Then they were all inside and the door closed. Hononin choked and put a hand over his mouth.
“Sorry, sir. It's bear grease. It keeps the cold out.”
The old man looked him over, then the others. Fleabag sniffed suspiciously at him. Little Chicken was staring around the little room, his odd-shaped eyes stretched by alarm and claustrophobia.
“Did you tell her?” the hostler mumbled, through his fingers.
“She's coming. Tomorrow.”
As his eyes adjusted to the light, Rap glanced curiously around the room. He had been gone so long that furniture seemed very strange to him—the table and two wooden chairs in the middle, and a big, overstuffed chair near the fire, with its insides falling out. Crude sketches of horses hung on the bare plank walls. One candle in a bone candlestick threw a wavering light over a heap of old tack in one corner and a small bench with saddler tools. A threadbare rug . . . Cozy enough in its way, though.
The old man nodded. “Good.”
“He's still alive?”
“So they say.”
Rap breathed a deep sigh. That was what he had wanted most—that she be able to say good-bye.
Hononin retched again and backed away. “You stink like you've been bathing in the honey pit. I've got some soap somewhere I've been saving. Ever used soap?”
“Once or twice, sir.”
“Use it good. Need hot water. Get those rags off.” He headed for his kitchen and soon a loud clanking told that he was working the pump. Rap began unlacing and instantly Little Chicken had knocked his hands away and started doing it for him. Rap knew better than to resist; his last attempt had given him a sprained wrist.
Hononin returned with a bucket and stopped to stare at this valet service. “Who the hell is he?”
“He's a goblin, sir.”
“I can see that, idiot! And what are all those marks on your face? You gone goblin, too? Burn those rags—they'll help heat the water, and maybe get the stink out of here. His, too. You undress him now or does he do it himself? You've grown, lad. You leave any spare clothes behind in that room of yours? No, they wouldn't fit you now anyway. I'll go and see what I can find.”
“This is good of you, sir,” Rap said, naked now and bundling up his buckskins.
“Damn sure it is! You'll hang certain if Foronod finds you. So you stay here and get cleaned up. Here's the soap. Use it all. Filthy putrid pair, you are. And a lousy wolf. You didn't bring them back, did you?”
He meant the horses. Rap shook his head.
“Pity. Might'a let you off with a flogging.”
Hononin thrust feet into boots. He grabbed his doublet from a peg, banged the door, and was gone.
It was a long while before the old man returned, and faint gleams of daylight were leaking in around the curtains. People paraded up and down the alley, greeting one another in Rap's native tongue and making his heart ache with it.
A long while . . . but it took all that time to remove the grease, even with soap and sand and hot water. Little Chicken resisted and argued, complying only when Rap explained that the smell would be investigated, and then the townsfolk would find Rap and kill him.
For the first time since Winterfest, Rap found a mirror. His own face was a shock to him, the face of a stranger. He did not think it was a boy looking back at him as he wielded Hononin's razor against some quite impressive stubble; illogically, he was pleased by the stubble and yet disgusted to see how furry fauns' legs could be when they were not smeared with grease. They were not the legs he had departed on. These were hairier and much thicker, while his face was hairier and thinner.
Fleabag had discovered Hononin's breakfast and eaten all of it except the butter, which Little Chicken had rescued. He wanted to smear Rap with it.
Then the hostler thrust his gnarled face around the door to warn his guests that he had a lady with him; but the guests already knew that and had taken cover in the bedroom. So he tossed a bundle of clothes in at Rap and went back to the front room to wait until they appeared. That took time, also, as Little Chicken would neither let Rap dress himself nor listen to an explanation of how hose worked. Little Chicken was going to be a large liability in Krasnegar.
At last Rap was ready and could go in. He had already identified the visitor—Mother Unonini, the palace chaplain. Rap knew her, but they had never spoken. Under a trickle of morning daylight, she seemed as forbidding as midnight.
She was a tall, stern woman in her black gown, sitting as straight as was possible in the overstuffed chair by the fireplace, her hands folded in her lap. She returned a nod to Rap's clumsy bow and looked him over without revealing her conclusions.
“Eat first, talk later.” The hostler pointed to the table. Rap had already scented the hot loaves and his mouth was watering. Bread! He sat down and began to gorge. In a few minutes Little Chicken came in and scowled horribly at the sight of a woman with her head bared. Mother Unonini flinched at a man with his shirt open which was not the goblin's fault, for all the buttons had already popped off. Rap managed a two-dialect introduction with his mouth full.
Little Chicken did not approve of bread, but he wa
s hungry, also. He helped himself to a meal and sat on the floor to eat it. The hostler chuckled and took the third chair.
“Perhaps you can eat and listen, though.” The chaplain had a hard, masculine voice. “I shall bring you up to date first, Master Rap, and then . . .” She frowned. “I do not care for nicknames. What is that short for?”
“Just Rap,” said Rap.
That was not strictly true, for his real name was a great, long incomprehensible chant that he never used. He supposed it was a Sysanasso name. “Never tell your real name to anyone,” his mother had said when she had told it to him, “because a sorcerer may learn it and use it to do you harm.” He had believed her then, of course, because he had been only ten or so at the time, and ten-year-olds believe most of what their mothers tell them; but now he knew much more about sorcerers, and he could see that that had been only another of his mother's strange superstitions, like a south wind bringing rain. His friends would have laughed at such a name, though, so he had never told it to anyone, even Inos.
The chaplain pursed her lips disapprovingly. “Very well—Master Rap. The king is alive, but every day seems like to be his last, poor man. Even the cordials that Doctor Sagorn left will barely ease his pain now. We who are close to him pray for his release. It seems astonishing that he has survived so long.”
“He has a word,” Rap mumbled.
She raised her eyebrows and paused. “Perhaps! What do you know of . . . But, of course, you must have one, also. Foolish of me.” She fell silent, reconsidering. The old hostler grinned fiendishly —a rare and unpleasant sight—and helped himself to some of the bread before it all vanished.
Mother Unonini continued, seeming now to choose her words more carefully. At times Rap had trouble understanding her—like most Krasnegarians, he spoke a pidgin of impish and jotunnish. Inos could switch from that to pure impish and back again. So did the king and his senior officials, but they did not sound as prissy as the chaplain, who had a southerner's accent worse than Rap had ever heard, even from sailors.
“The city is badly divided—between imps and jotnar, of course. The imps believe that the princess went to Kinvale to marry her cousin the duke, who has a good claim to the throne. They expect him to return with her. But the imps themselves are divided; many would prefer that the city be annexed as a province of the Impire. The jotnar are unhappy at either prospect. They talk of Thane Kalkor of Nordland, who has a claim at least equal to the duke's.”
“Foronod is their leader,” Hononin interjected. “Some want to put him on the throne himself, but he seems to be supporting Kalkor. He's written to him, they say.”
The chaplain frowned, as if she were giving away too much.
“Rap ought to know,” the old man snarled. “Foronod was howling for his heart over the horses. If he hears that Rap summoned the princess back, then he will be even worse.”
She nodded. “Certainly we must smuggle Master Rap and his friend back out of the city tonight. As soon as possible.”
Rap stopped eating. After coming so far he was expected to leave?
Hononin cackled suddenly and they all looked at him. “I should warn you, Mother. When you see that jaw set like that, you might as well save breath. Obviously Master Rap is not leaving.”
“He must!”
Hononin shook his head. “Perhaps, but he won't. Even when he was this high, that jaw was the signal.”
Rap grinned suddenly. He had been right to come to the cantankerous old hostler, and it was good to find a friend at last.
“We shall see!” Mother Unonini set her own jaw.
“And you?” Rap glanced from her to the hostler and back. “Where are your loyalties?”
He was being presumptuous; the chaplain frowned again. “My objective must always be the greatest good. Civil war would be a great evil—life is precarious enough here without that.” She considered for a moment and added, “If I had the power to impose a settlement . . . Inosolan is not yet of age. A regency council would be a fair solution—Factor Foronod and Chancellor Yaltauri, perhaps.”
Lukewarm at best, Rap thought. He turned to the hostler.
“I'll try to keep your neck its present length, lad,” the old man said, “even if it was my horses you took. But I'm staying out of politics. Too dangerous at my age.”
Was no one loyal to Inos, then?
“Can you speak between gulps now, young man?” the chaplain inquired.
“I think so, Mother. It's a long story. You knew the man called Andor?”
She nodded. “A fine gentleman.”
“No! I thought so, also, and I trusted him when he suggested that the two of us go and tell Inos–”
“Stop right there! Only two of you went?”
Rap nodded, surprised. She glanced at the hostler.
“I told you there were only two bedrolls missing,” he said. “And the tent was too small for three.”
“Three?” Rap echoed.
“Doctor Sagorn,” Unonini said. “He left, also. It did not matter, for he had trained the nurses in the use of the cordial, but he went with you, we thought.”
Sagorn, also?
Of course!
And Darad.
Rap pushed the remains of his meal away and started to talk. He was interrupted no more. In the corner Little Chicken ate steadily, while watching the incomprehensible talk with suspicious eyes, but it was a long tale, and even the goblin's appetite was satisfied before Rap finished.
The hostler and the chaplain looked at each other.
Hononin nodded. “I believe him. He's a good lad—no, a good man. He always was.”
She nodded reluctantly and studied her fingers for a moment. Then she rose and started to pace back and forth across the little room with her hands clasped behind her. It was a strangely unfeminine action, and she had an awkward, jerky gait on her surprisingly short legs. She no longer seemed tall, as she had in the chair. At last she seemed to reach a conclusion, returning to her seat.
“Very well!” she said. “The hostler supports you, Master Rap, and that carries weight. But I have been thinking, also, of what the Gods want. It is common knowledge that a God appeared to Inosolan and myself. They gave her orders, and now I suspect that those referred to you.”
Rap tried to remember what Inos had told him of the God and Their words, but it was a long time ago and his memories were blurred. He was about to ask, but she gave him no chance.
“I shall accept your story,” she said pompously. “Obviously there is sorcery about, and you are probably right—someone is after the royal word of power. Inosolan will be in grave danger if she learns it. She may not, you know. The king is rarely conscious now. Yet you think that Andor and this Darad are the same man?”
“And Sagorn! And Jalon the minstrel, also!” He explained how Sagorn had appeared in the palace the previous summer without entering the gate—and Sagorn had returned in the fall at about the same time Andor had arrived, on the night of the blizzard, when Rap's farsight had become general knowledge.
Jalon had spoken of Darad. Andor had known Jalon, and Sagorn.
Yet it was incredible, even to Rap. He had met Sagorn once. He had shared a meal with the minstrel. Neither had been Andor, and certainly neither had been Darad. To think of the dreamy, amiable Jalon and the savage Darad was to link water and fire—they were incompatible. There was more than shape-changing involved here. If Jalon could turn himself into Darad at will, as Andor seemed to be able to, then why had he not done so when he was alone with Rap in the hills? Darad would surely not hesitate to use any means at hand to extract a word if he had the opportunity. For that matter, why had Andor not done the same when he had Rap alone in his attic those many long evenings?
Suddenly Hononin snapped his fingers. “The keys! You say that Andor got them from me? But I never saw him all that day.”
“What happened to them?” Rap asked.
The hostler scowled hideously at him and then at the chaplain. “I don't know. Fo
und them on the stable floor; thought I'd dropped them. I'd been sure they'd been on my belt as usual. It wasn't Andor, certain! Nor that Sagorn man.”
“So he may have other shapes?” Unonini said. “That is bad news. And yet he can't be a sorcerer. If he is, then he does things the hard way.”
“And what about this army?” Rap asked. “I don't know why Inos is bringing troops, but they must be stopped.”
The chaplain shook her head. “Inosolan may have no choice. And we don't, either. Sergeant Thosolin and his men can't fight two thousand.”
“Let them in?” Hononin looked disgusted.
“We must,” she said. “What alternative do we have? They could burn the town and starve out the castle. You and I cannot even warn anyone without saying how we know, for then Master Rap would be in jeopardy. Inosolan is with them. Why should they savage her realm?”
“Why savage the goblins?” Rap asked bitterly “They do no harm except to themselves.”
That remark raised eyebrows and produced an awkward silence.
Little Chicken let out an enormous belch and grinned.
Little Chicken—who would be Death Bird now, had Rap and Andor not blundered into the Ravens' territory—how much of this conversation was he managing to follow?
“I have a question, Mother,” Rap said reluctantly. “Tell me about the Four, please.”
The chaplain started. “What about the Four?”
“Who they are, what they do.”
Her eyes narrowed. She dropped her gaze to her fingers and kneaded them for a moment. “I really know no more about them than you do—than anyone else does. What were you taught in school about the Four?”
“Nothing. I haven't had much schooling, Mother.”
She nodded, disapproving. “I see. Well, back in ancient times, the Dark Times, Pandemia was a very violent land. There was magic about, and much evil in it. Sorcerers set themselves up as kings and waged war among themselves. There are legends of great massacres, of pillage and destruction, of men fighting dragons, monsters appearing and destroying whole armies, sheets of fire blasting hapless cities, and there are stories, too, of armies being released from binding spells and falling on their own leaders. It was a wicked time. You must have heard such tales!”