Magic Casement

by Dave Duncan

  Rap was still overwhelmed by his giddy sense of height. Combined with farsight, it was intoxicating, exhilarating, almost terrifying. Far, far below, a mother nursed her baby in a dark basement room, with the rest of her family asleep around her, bakers' apprentices were already stoking their masters' fires; a lover tiptoed past a bedroom door on his way home . . .

  Was this what it was like to be a sorcerer? Did warlocks perch like brooding eagles, high on their towers in Hub, watching all Pandemia laid out below them, naked and defenseless? The wardens, being the strongest sorcerers of all, must have a range enormously greater than Rap's—had Bright Water really sensed him all the way from Hub? Was she even now slumped naked on her ivory throne in her own chamber of puissance, scanning the north, waiting for those ripples she had mentioned, ready to strike down any evil use of magic? What would such power do to its owner? He shivered.

  The chaplain noticed. “I warned you that you would freeze up here!” Satisfied that her prediction had come true, she pulled her cloak tight with her free hand. But Rap was wearing a fur parka over his doublet and he was not cold at all; in fact it was the first time he had been comfortable all day.

  “It isn't that. Mother?”

  “Mmm?”

  “If the Four guard us all against misuse of magic—”

  “I do not wish to talk about the Four! Certainly not here.”

  Which is what Rap had been about to ask: Why had she been so reluctant to discuss the warlocks? Why was everyone, always? He had rarely heard them mentioned, ever.

  “Look there!” The chaplain raised her lantern a fraction and pointed to the southern casement. “It's different!”

  Little Chicken, having failed to see anything much to the north, now moved around to peer out eastward. He found glass puzzling, because it did not melt when he breathed on it.

  The southern casement was certainly larger than the others. The dormer was higher and wider than the other three and held not only the main arched window, but also two smaller lights flanking it. Rap tried to remember if he had ever noticed that lack of symmetry from below, and concluded he had never really looked properly. The pattern of lead between the panes was more complex and less regular, and that was another minor difference, but the panes showed just as black against the night outside.

  “I wonder why?” Puzzled, the chaplain walked over toward it.

  The window began to glow.

  She stopped with a hiss of surprise. The many tiny panes between the leads were of all shapes and all colors, decorated with pictures and symbols: stars and hands, eyes and flowers, and many others less comprehensible, all vaguely visible in a pale gleam as if the moon were out there. The colors were as faint and faded as a very old manuscript—sienna, malachite, ochre, and slate. Rap's eyes saw them, but farsight told him there was only a window there with nothing unusual about it. Yet when he tried to make sense of the visual images, he felt as if they were changing. Each one was constant while he stared at it and altered as soon as his attention strayed. An umber bird's head in the upper right corner was now much lower than it had been. A ram's horn inexplicably seemed to curl to both right and left at the same time, and an image of a tawny flame writhing, a rose-and-lilac wheel turning . . . He shivered again.

  Mother Unonini backed away and the moonlight died beyond the glass.

  Little Chicken grunted angrily. Abandoning the east casement, he began stalking round to the south, one hand on the dagger in his belt, his shoulders bent forward, looking very much like Fleabag investigating a porcupine.

  “Stop!” both Rap and the chaplain said at the same moment.

  But Little Chicken kept on, walking slowly on the balls of his feet. The casement began to glow again, and this time the light was different; it was warmer and restless—not the moon, but firelight? Firelight at the top of a tower, seven stories above a castle that itself stood a hundred spans or more above the sea?

  “Stop!” Rap said again, more urgently. He laid down his own burden—it held cups and food and useful things that might make a noise if dropped—and he hurried forward.

  The light changed again, dramatically. By the time he had reached Little Chicken and grabbed his shoulder, the window was a blazing, seething brilliance, too bright to look at—surges of ruby, emerald, and sapphire stabbing amid flashes of ice-white like the facets of a giant diamond. Now certainly the symbols were changing more rapidly, flickering in the corners of the eye. Even to study a single pane was impossible against that glare.

  Rap pulled and the goblin yielded. They backed away and the brilliance faded again until they were standing once more in the glimmer of the lantern. Rap's eyes hurt and the insides of his eyelids were stained with blurs of many hues.

  Stiffly the chaplain rose from her knees, where she had been praying. Her face was pale and drawn in the gloom. “Magic!” she declared unnecessarily. “A magic casement!”

  “What does it do?” Rap asked, still keeping a firm grip on Little Chicken.

  “I don't know! I'm a priestess, not a sorcerer. But I think you had better stay well away from it.”

  All Inisso's other secrets had gone, but that one was built into the walls and could not be removed. Was this why the mysterious Doctor Sagorn had come up here with the king, to a room Inos had never been told about?

  “Oh, I agree. Keep away!” Rap added in goblin.

  Little Chicken nodded. “Bad!” He turned his back on the offending window.

  “You still want to stay here?” Mother Unonini asked.

  Rap nodded. “It's the safest place. And I can use my farsight from here.” He would have to sit on the stairs to do so, below floor level, but she did not need to know that.

  “Yes, but what can you do?” She had asked that question a dozen times.

  He gave her the same answer as before. “I don't know. But somehow I must warn Inos that Andor is not what he seems.”

  She came close and lifted the lantern to study his face. “For her sake, or yours?”

  “Hers, of course!”

  She continued to stare. “If the people want a king instead of a queen, then they are not likely to accept a factor's clerk, you know.”

  Rap clenched his fists. “I was not suggesting that they would!”

  “Do you think you can overhear what he says to Inosolan?”

  Fury flared up in Rap, and evidently his expression was answer enough. She lowered her lantern. “No. I apologize, Master Rap. That was unworthy.” She pulled her cloak tighter. “I shall go, then. You had better come down and replace the dresser.”

  Rap nodded. “And we'll push the door closed behind it.”

  The chaplain nodded. “Of course—but remember that it creaks. I shall return tomorrow night, if I can, and bring some oil.” She shivered. “I must be crazy! I hope that I am interpreting the God's words correctly . . . and that They were a benevolent God, on the side of the Good. Kneel and I will give you a blessing; I wish I had someone to bless this night's work for me.”

  Casement high:

  A casement, high and triple-arch'd there was,

  All garlanded with carven imagaries

  Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,

  And diamonded with panes of quaint device,

  Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,

  As are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings . . .

  Keats, The Eve of Saint Agnes

  NINE

  Faithful found

  1

  The worst moment of that whole terrible day was Inos's first glimpse of her father, the sight of the poor withered relic that was all remaining of the exuberant, vital man she remembered. Compared to that, nothing before or after was as bad—none of the murder or horror or sorcery that followed, not even the news of his death, for that was a release.

  Of the morning she was to retain only confused images, a few fitful glimpses and recollections. She had left Krasnegar in summer drizzle, sitting in a landau with her father and Aunt Kade,
cheered more or less sincerely by amused but affectionate townsfolk. She returned on a blustery spring morn, in sunshine mingled with flurries of snow, riding with Andor on one side of her and the despicable Proconsul Yggingi on the other. Now the citizens huddled in their furs to watch, or peered around shutters, their faces reflecting shock and anger at an invading Imperial army desecrating their streets.

  The palace staff and the officers of the realm had been hurriedly assembled in the great hall that now seemed like a shoddy barracks to Inos. They, also, glared in impotent fury. Their greetings were curt, their welcomes insincere. Familiar faces bore unfamiliar expressions—old Chancellor Yaltauri and the much older Seneschal Kondoral, Mother Unonini and Bishop Havyili, and the tall, stark figure of Factor Foronod, his livid face almost as pale as the silver helmet of his hair.

  How small Krasnegar was, how bleak, how shabby after Kinvale! The palace was a barn. And when she was ushered politely up into the withdrawing room she looked around at the gilt and rosewood furniture that Aunt Kade had brought back—three years ago now—and it seemed pathetic, a bitter mockery of what comfort and elegance ought to be. Yet it had not changed and she hated herself because it was she who had changed.

  The way she spoke to them, the way she moved, the way she returned their looks—she had gone, but she had not returned. She never would return. The place was the same place. She was another person.

  Then the doctors, bowing and mumbling and making excuses. His Majesty was conscious and had been informed—

  It was at that moment that Inos issued her first command.

  “I shall see him alone!” she stated, and she silenced their protests with the best glare she could muster. Even Andor. Even the hated Yggingi. Even Aunt Kade.

  Astonishingly, it worked. They all agreed and no one was more surprised than Inos herself.

  She climbed the familiar curving stairs alone, noting with surprise that the treads were dished by centuries of footsteps, noting how narrow the way was, and how the very stonework of the walls was glazed by the caress of innumerable garments. Kinvale had all been so new. She came to the dressing room and remembered it as it had been in her childhood, with her own bed against the northwest wall, although now there was an ancient wardrobe standing there. Nurses and doctors came trooping out the far door and bobbed politely to her and hurried across the room and off down the stair behind. And when the last of them had gone, she pushed unwilling feet to the steps and began to climb once more.

  The drapes of the bed had been pulled back, the room was bright with transitory sunshine, and at first she thought there had been some terrible mistake, some macabre joke, for the bed looked empty. Then she came near and . . . and smiled.

  She sat by him for many hours, holding his hand, making conversation when he was capable of it, else just waiting until he awoke again or the spasm of pain had passed. His mind wandered much of the time. Often he mistook her for her mother.

  Aunt Kade came at intervals, tiptoeing and doleful. She spoke to him, and sometimes he knew her. Then she would ask if Inos wanted anything, and slip quietly away again. Poor Aunt Kade! Weeks on horseback . . . she had ridden all through the wastelands, bravely insisting that this was the greatest adventure of her life, not to be missed. It had not done a damned thing for her figure. She was just as dumpy as ever, and today she looked old.

  The lucid moments were at once the best and the worst.

  “Well, Princess?” he asked in his whisper. “Did you find that handsome man?”

  “I think so, Father. But we have made no promises.”

  “Be sure,” he said, and squeezed her hand. Then he began to mumble about repairs to the bandshell, which had been torn down before she was born.

  Her mother's portrait had been cleaned and moved to one side. Alongside it hung Jalon's pastel sketch. It made her look absurdly young, a mere child.

  Her father asked about Kinvale and seemed to understand some of what she said. He talked of people long dead and troubles long since solved. When pain struck and she offered to call the doctors, he refused. “No more of that,” he said.

  Much later, after a long quietness, he suddenly opened his eyes very wide. She thought it was another pain, but it seemed more as if he had remembered something. “Do you want it?” he demanded, staring at her.

  “Want what, Father?”

  “The kingdom,” he said. “Do you want to stay and be queen? Or would you rather live in a kinder land? Now you must choose. So soon!”

  “I think I have a duty,” she replied. “I should not be happy evading a duty.” He would approve of that, although she could not quite suppress her own resentment. Why must she be so bound, when ordinary people were not? She had never asked to be a princess.

  He gripped her hand tightly in pain. “You have grown up!”

  She nodded and said she thought so.

  “Then you will try?” he asked. “You can do it, I think.” His eyes roamed restlessly around the room. “Are we alone?”

  She assured him that they were alone.

  “Come close, then,” he said softly. She bent over him and he whispered some nonsensical thing in her ear. She jerked up in surprise, for she had thought he was clear-minded. He smiled up at her weakly, as if that had been an effort. “From Inisso.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Ask Sagorn,” he muttered. “You can trust Sagorn. Maybe Thinal, sometimes, but not the others. None of the others.”

  She thought that statement a harsh verdict on all the faithful servants and officials who had served Holindarn all their lives—if that was who he meant. And who was Thinal? He was rambling. But Sagorn? Andor had said that Sagorn had returned after she had left, but she had seen no sign of him.

  Her father winced suddenly, but then he said, “Call the council.”

  “Later,” she said. “Rest now.”

  He shook his head insistently on the pillow. “I must tell them.”

  Just then Aunt Kade made one of her visits, and Inos told her to call the council. Doubtfully she went off to do so. In a short while they all trooped in, the bishop and Yaltauri and half a dozen others. But by then the king was mumbling about grain ships and white horses; the council withdrew.

  After that, he seemed to sink rapidly. The silences grew longer, broken only by the hiss of the peat in the fireplace and a periodic cry of wind through the leaky west window. She recalled how that plaintive wail had frightened her when she was a child, and how that casement had always defied repair. Once or twice she thought she heard a faint creak from the ceiling, but she dismissed it as imagination. On Aunt Kade's next visit, Inos asked her to send a doctor, and thereafter she allowed the man to stay.

  You can do it, he had said. Sitting by the bed as the long day passed, as the moments of consciousness became shorter and rarer, she felt a strange determination emerging, like a rock uncovered by the ebbing tide.

  For him, she would try.

  She would show them! And that thought seemed to give her strength she had not suspected she had. She waited, she endured, and she shed no tears.

  The shadows moved. The day faded. Flames were set in the sconces. Finally, after the sun had set, when there had been a long time with no movement from her father beyond the shallow rise and fall of his chest, the doctor came and laid a hand on her shoulder, and she knew it was time to go. So she kissed the wizened yellow face and walked away. She went slowly downstairs, crossed the dressing room, down another flight, and paused in the door of the withdrawing room to look, and consider.

  2

  The council was gathered there, and some others, all waiting around in lamplight, for the windows were quite dark now. No one had yet noticed Inos in the doorway. Queens had no time for personal grief—she must look to her inheritance. She had discussed the problem often enough with Kade on the journey, and with Andor. Would Krasnegar accept a queen? A juvenile queen? The imps likely would, they had decided, but the jotnar were doubtful. Now her father had given her his rea
lm, but he had not told his council; that might not matter very much, anyway, for the next move would be made by the hateful Yggingi, whose army held the kingdom. What would his terms be? Would she be forced to swear allegiance to his Imperial Majesty Emshandar IV?

  So they were sitting or standing there, waiting as they must have waited all day, talking quietly; and the center of the group was Andor, slim and graceful in dark green, tall for an imp. He was the key to the kingdom, she thought. If she was to marry Andor, the council would accept him as her consort. He was young and handsome and personable and competent. Even Foronod seemed to be engrossed, smiling now with the others at some tale that would likely have made them all laugh aloud in a happier time. If Andor was the key, then Foronod was the lock, for he was a jotunn and probably the most influential. If the factor would accept Andor as king, then likely they all would. Except perhaps Yggingi.

  Andor would not have returned with her had he not cared.

  Then she was noticed. They turned to await her in sympathetic silence. Mother Unonini was there, black-robed and bleak-faced as always. Aunt Kade in silver and pink had been sitting at the bottom of the stairs like a watchdog. Bless her!

  She hugged Aunt Kade and was hugged by the chaplain, smelling of fish. She wondered how she could ever have been frightened by this dyspeptic little cleric with her resentful air of failure and bitter exile.

  One by one the men bowed, and she nodded solemnly in return: Foronod, grim, lank in a dark-blue gown, winter pale, with his white-gold jotunnish hair glowing against the outer dark of a window; old Chancellor Yaltauri, a typical imp, short and swarthy, normally a jovial but bookish man; the much older Seneschal Kondoral, openly weeping; the vague and ineffectual Bishop Havyili; the others.

  “It will not be long,” she told them.

  Mother Unonini turned and headed for the stairs.

  “You must eat now, dear.” Kade led her to a table that had been laid out with white linen and silver and fine china, like a small oasis of Kinvale in the barren arctic, but bearing cakes and pastries that looked cumbersome and lumpish. And there—wonder of wonders!—balanced on its warming flame, Aunt Kade's gigantic silver tea urn, like a forgotten ghost from Inos's childhood. The day she had met Sagorn and knocked over that urn—absurd, irrelevant, vulgar thing! —Father had joked about her burning down the castle . . . That insidious, unexpected, irrelevant fragment of memory made a quick dash around her defenses and grabbed her by the throat and almost defeated her, but she averted her eyes quickly from the wretched tea urn and started to say that no thank you she couldn't eat a thing. Except that her mouth was full of pastry. So she sat down and stuffed herself, drinking strong tea poured by Aunt Kade from that same monstrous urn, which was now only a very ugly utensil.