by Dave Duncan
“Me next!” Little Chicken marched over to the casement, making the eerie firelight flicker again beyond the panes.
“No!” Rap stopped and swung around. He had a premonition of what was going to be revealed, but his protest was too late. The flaps swung open once more, and the chamber was filled with a sound of applause and acrid, eye-watering gusts of wood smoke.
As Rap had feared, he was looking into a crowded goblin lodge, seeing over spectators' heads. Fire blazed and crackled in the middle of the stone platform, throwing light on the audience gathered around the walls: near-nude men and boys, shrouded women and girls. They were all jabbering with excitement and laughing. The naked victim was staked out on the floor, and the tormentor standing over him holding a flaming brand was Little Chicken.
Rap swung away, burying his face in his hands and feeling his stomach heave with nausea and terror. Inos screamed. So did her aunt, and Sagorn muttered something guttural under his breath.
Then strong hands grabbed Rap. “It is you!” Little Chicken was wild with excitement. “Come! You see!” He began dragging Rap bodily back to the casement and resistance made no difference. “Hear applause! You do well for that! You making good show! And I doing good job! See your hands? See ribs?”
“No! No!” Rap howled, struggling to keep his face turned, his eyes closed. “Shut the window!”
“Good show!” Little Chicken insisted, squealing with joy. “It is Raven Totem! There my brothers! Watch what I do now!”
Rap forced his eyes open momentarily and then shut them tight again quickly. The victim did look like him, and not very much older than the face he had glimpsed in Hononin's kitchen mirror.
And yet, there had been something wrong! He sneaked another quick glance and again had to shut his eyes hastily to prevent a fit of nausea. It was his face, but somehow blurred—fuzzy? Little Chicken sniggered wildly at some new horror and the goblin spectators burst into applause again.
Then, mercifully, the light faded against Rap's eyelids, the excited babble of the crowd died away, and he felt the icy touch of the polar night and the cool caress of snow on his face. He relaxed and opened his eyes.
A thump on the back from Little Chicken almost laid him on the floor. “I told true!” he sniggered. “I kill you! We make good show.”
“Neither dragon nor Kalkor?” Sargon said acidly. “You are indeed a hard young man to kill. Perhaps that is all the message we are going to get—you will survive the imps, so why worry?”
“More likely it's telling us that I'm as good as dead already!” Rap cried, and was ashamed at the shrillness of his voice. “Or that the imps may give me a better death than anything else in my future.”
“In either case it would just show the imps killing you, I think,” the old man remarked calmly.
Inos put an arm around Rap and led him away from the window.
He might survive jotunn or dragon, Rap thought, but he would not want to survive goblin. The victim in that last scene had already been horribly mutilated.
“Was it me?” he whispered, trying to control his trembling. “I thought it looked strange—blurred, somehow.” Say it was not me! Small wonder that Inos' great-grandfather had gone mad.
Sagorn hesitated. “Yes,” he muttered. “I noticed that. I thought it was just the smoke stinging my eyes, but your friend here seemed sharp enough . . . So we have seen you three times. The first two glimpses were ambiguous and the third time was suspiciously unreal. I wish I knew more about these things! It is all so insubstantial! What we need is a sorcerer to explain them.”
Crash! The door shuddered. The imps had arrived. Only one bolt now lay between Rap and their vengeance.
Inos hugged him more tightly. “But you will be my champion,” she said.
That was a nice thought, but for the rest of his life he would know that his eventual fate was to return to Raven Totem and the loving care of Little Chicken—while not looking very much older than he did now.
He wondered what would happen if he killed Little Chicken first. He had put down the sword somewhere, but now he wished he had it handy. Would it be possible to make a liar out of the casement? Was that why Bright Water had warned him not to harm the goblin? Had she foreseen Little Chicken being hurt by Rap?
Again the ax crashed against the door. Not long now.
“We might as well let them in!” Rap said wearily. “I think I agree with the casement that a quick hanging might be all for the best.”
“No!” Inos shouted. “Doctor Sagorn, a sorcerer could beat a dragon, couldn't he? And Kalkor? That's what it means! That is the message—we must share our words of power with Rap! He can't share with us, but if we make him a sorcerer—a mage—then he will save you from the dragon one day, and beat Kalkor as my champion! Don't you see? That is the only way he can survive the dangers we have seen in store for him, and he must survive two of them—I mean at least two, Rap, of course. And that fuzziness you saw—he was using magic against the goblins, too!”
Rap groaned. Not a sorcerer! Farsight was bad enough. The imps would be better than that.
“Darad—” Sagorn said, and paused. “I am too old to risk weakening my power, child. My health . . . You must share yours with me, also.”
“Yes!” Inos said. “You and I share, and then share with Rap. We'll each have two, and he'll have three.”
Rap groaned.
“Why not?” She stamped her foot with rage and dug her fingernails into Rap's arm.
He was finding it very hard to think straight with Inos holding him like this. “Inos,” he said hoarsely, “I don't want to be a sorcerer, even a mage. Sagorn is saying you must tell him first. Then he becomes an adept, right? He might call Darad to kill you to become a stronger adept! I don't think you should trust him, not that much.”
The old man flushed angrily. Inos released Rap with a sob. “The God promised me a happy ending. Carried off captive by imps? Breeding sons for Kalkor? And you're going to be thrown in the dungeons at the least, you dummy! I think that stupid casement is too old! It wasn't working right!”
The door shuddered and splintered. It had lasted longer than the others, so perhaps it held some residual magic. Rap could farsee the burly imp wielding the ax, the heads and shoulders of others behind him, lower on the stairs, seeming cut off at floor level.
“Listen!” Inos said firmly. “I will tell Doctor Sagorn my word, and then he will tell both of them to Rap. You won't be in danger then, Doctor, will you? I will trust you, as Father said I should.”
The old man shrugged. “Your plan makes sense, Majesty. I can think of none better. We have indeed been instructed to share our words with Master Rap. You will just have to reconcile yourself to becoming a mage, young man! Obviously that is what the casement was telling us to do.”
Rap groaned again.
Crash! Splinters flew. That blow had come right through the planks.
Inos clasped his hand. “Rap? Please?”
Please? He was making his queen beg? What sort of loyalty was that, to refuse the very first command she gave him? Rap squared his shoulders.
“Of course, your Majesty!” Then he sensed the spasm of hurt that crossed her face. That wasn't right, either! “I'll be proud to be your court magician, Inos—if I can be master-of-horse sometimes?”
He tried to smile and discovered that he had forgotten how to.
Inos took his hand. “Thank you, Rap.”
“And you know that if I knew a word of power, I would tell it to you gladly?”
Sorcerer? Prying into people's minds as well as their clothes and houses? Manipulating people, like Andor? Killing them off when they got in the way, like Darad? Hateful! Hateful!
“Perhaps we should pray?” princess Kadolan said quietly. “When the God appeared to Inos—”
Inos started to say something, then glanced at the door as a whole plank shattered, hurling more splinters across the floor. Rap sensed the big imp outside lowering his ax, and the others surgi
ng up close behind him with swords drawn.
But he had seen the splinters, seen them with his eyes. The door was brightly lighted. So was the floor, with five shadows stretched out across it.
No! Six shadows!
Fleabag yawned and lay down. He had a shadow, also—seven!
Simultaneously they all swung around to see. Light was streaming in the still-open casement from a strange, many-colored mist that glowed outside. The extra shadow came from a woman standing before it, inside the chamber.
Disaster! Idiot! With his stupid pig-headed refusal to obey his monarch, Rap had delayed too long. He had been warned that sorcerers could sense occult power being used, and here was a sorceress come to investigate.
The magic casement had given the answer, the solution to all their problems, and he had mulishly thrown it all away.
Now anything could happen.
3
“Well, well, well!” said the newcomer. “What have we here?”
Rap grabbed Inos' hand and spun around, heading for the door—and his boots froze to the floor. He windmilled his free arm wildly to regain his balance. He tried to pull his feet out of his boots, but they would not come loose either—he was rooted. The others had all reacted in the same way and they were all similarly immobilized, cemented to their own shadows. Meanwhile, a brawny arm reached through the hole in the door and fumbled for the bolt.
Rap twisted around awkwardly to watch the woman plodding forward to inspect her captives. A sorceress! Dumpy and wide, she walked with a heavy-footed gait. She was swathed all over in some soft fabric of pure white, even more hidden than a goblin woman, for a veil concealed all of her face below her eyes. She was much too large to be Bright Water, witch of the north.
The rest of the Four were men, warlocks, so this was someone new, someone unexpected.
“A magic casement left open?” she said. “No bug screen? Someone has been very careless!” She was speaking impish, but with a strange, harsh accent.
Then she seemed to notice the legionary's hand, still struggling with the bolt at a difficult angle. She made a small gesture, and the imp froze. So did all those behind him, so far as Rap's farsight would reach—completely petrified. Struggling to comprehend the sheer size of this latest disaster, he registered vaguely that the newcomer had just used magic on Imperial troops. Was that good or bad for Inos? Would the warlocks now descend in fury on Krasnegar?
Yells of alarm came drifting up the stairwell as the soldiers farther down discovered what had happened to their leaders.
The woman stopped in front of Inos's aunt, hands on hips and feet spread, in a stance more like an angry fishwife than whatever Rap would have expected of a sorceress.
“Let's start with you, dearie,” she said. “Who're you?”
The princess's pearly gown was bedraggled and tea-stained, her white hair mussed, but she drew herself up as tall as she could—which wasn't very—and said haughtily, “I am Princess Kadolan of Krasnegar. And you?”
The sorceress's eyebrows vanished up into her headcloth, and Rap sensed amusement. “Well! I'm Rasha aq'Inim, Sultana of Arakkaran.”
“Oh!” The princess thawed at once and smiled, “How nice that you can join us, your Majesty!”
A sultana was a Majesty?
The self-styled queen laughed coarsely. “My pleasure entirely. Do excuse me just dropping in like this, without formal invitation and all.”
“I only wish we could offer you proper hospitality.”
“Oh, I quite understand! You'll excuse me a moment?”
She pulled off her head covering to reveal hair of a dark-red hue, its magnificent gleaming waves cunningly held by combs of silver and mother-of-pearl. Her gown was of much lighter, sheerer material than Rap had realized, and it sparkled with many jewels.
How had he failed to notice those earlier?
This astonishing sultana glanced coyly around the great circular chamber, dirty and cold and lighted only by an opalescent glow from the magic casement, and then she dropped her veil. She was much younger than Rap had realized, and of no race that he had ever met. Her skin, like her glorious hair, was a deep ruddy shade, her nose high-prowed and arrogant. She was not conventionally beautiful, perhaps, and past her first youth, but a magnificent, statuesque woman, with an air of power, and mystery, and, yes! —beauty! Certainly beauty—a stunning woman!
Princess Kadolan said, “Oh!” again, faintly, and then rallied. “I am sorry to say that you find us in rather a state of confusion, your Majesty.”
Sultana Rasha glanced at the petrified arm protruding through the door. “I noticed. The lower orders can be tiresome at times, can they not?”
“Indeed they can. May I present my niece, Pri—Queen Inosolan?”
The sorceress glanced across at Inos and seemed to disapprove. Rap, at her side, tried to maintain a stern, warning expression, as if he were truly a protector, but he was struggling against a craven yearning to smile at the beguiling young Rasha.
“We are honored, your Majesty,” Inos said frostily.
Queen Rasha's dark eyes narrowed. “So you should be. I do not recall a Queen Inosolan? Krasnegar? Goblin country?”
Princess Kadolan said, “My niece has just lost her father, King Holindarn. Today? I suppose it's tomorrow now—just yesterday.”
The sorceress sneered at Inos. “And you inherited a magic casement, so the first thing you wanted to do was to play with it?”
“I was desperate!” Inos shouted. “Imperial troops have seized my kingdom, the people are on the brink of civil war, and Kalkor is going to invade as soon as the ice goes!”
Sultana Rasha's exquisite eyebrows rose again. “Kalkor?”
“The Thane of Gark.”
“Oh, yes, I have heard of him.” Now she was certainly intrigued. “And what is the imperor's interest in a flyspeck fiefdom like Krasnegar? That doesn't sound like Emshandar. His new marshal, perhaps? He seeks to provoke the jotnar?”
“I don't think the imperor even knows his troops are here. The proconsul in Pondague made a deal—”
Inos stopped abruptly. Rap wondered why; he was having great trouble keeping his mind on the conversation. The sorceress was taking up far too much of his attention—the diamonds twinkling below her gorgeous earlobes, the smooth perfection of her arm. Funny how at first he'd mistakenly thought her arms were draped in sleeves! The effort of not using his farsight on her was making his head throb, and yet he hardly needed it, for her hot, ruddy-hued skin seemed to glow through the gauzy stuff of her draperies.
Rasha strolled toward him, but her attention was on Inos. “A deal? Don't lie to me, girl. I can read your mind if I wish, or cast a truth spell on you. I prefer not to—it takes all the fun out of things. What sort of deal?”
For a moment Inos and Rasha stood eye to eye in silent challenge. They were about the same height, the same age—but how had Rap ever believed that Inos was beautiful? How plain and dull she seemed, compared to the other girl's radiance! How weary and bedraggled! Her grip on Rap's hand grew very tight, then she dropped her gaze.
“I have a distant cousin—or great-great-aunt, or some such relation—the dowager duchess of Kinvale. She wants to marry me to her son. He has a claim to my throne, if a woman cannot inherit.”
“So!” The sultana beamed. “And can a woman inherit?”
“I think so!” Inos said angrily. “My father said so! By the laws of the Impire I could.”
“But Kalkor disagrees, so the imps want to block the jotnar? Well, well!” Young queen Rasha's smile was delectable, yet sinister enough to stir the hair on the back of Rap's neck. “Politics is a tiresome men's game, but sometimes we poor, feeble women are forced to play a hand or two, just to protect our interests.”
“You will help me?” Inos exclaimed.
“We'll see,” the sorceress said darkly.
“I shall need to know a little more. ” She glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on Sagorn, standing stiffly at the end of
the line. “Men can be so obnoxious at times . . .”
She frowned as if puzzled and sauntered over toward him. Rap had never seen a woman move with such grace. Even without his farsight he could detect the glory of her long legs moving within the filmy robe, and he caught glimpses of tiny silver sandals. Oh, those hips! Of course this was sorcery at work. No woman should be able to raise his heart pound like this just by walking across a floor. She had not looked like this when—but he couldn't recall what she had looked like when she first appeared. It was how she looked now that mattered. Oh, wonder of womanhood! Oh, vision of all man's desire! Sorcery curdling his brains—dangerous! He knew it, knew he was helpless against it. She was turning him into a helpless slave, a human jelly. All other thoughts had fled his mind.
Inos wrenched her hand loose from his sweaty grip and he barely noticed.
Sagorn straightened up and licked his lips. “Would you turn down the intensity a little, ma'am?” he mumbled. “It's very hard on the arteries at my age.”
“But what a wonderful way to die!” She laughed and reached up to stroke his cheek with a teasing finger. Rap felt fires of insane jealousy leap through him like lightning bolts.
Sagorn moaned—and was the much-too-handsome Andor.
Queen Rasha sprang back, raising a hand as if to strike. For a bewildering fraction of a second, Rap imagined a glimpse of a heavy, middle-aged woman in a shabby brown wrap, with unkempt gray hair and bare feet, with wrinkles and sagging cheeks. Then the delusion was gone, and the glorious Queen Rasha was there again, radiant in gossamer and pearl, studying Andor in languid amusement.
With hair in disarray, in a gown too large for him, Andor was clutching his left arm, whose sleeve was already darkening with blood, yet he contrived to bow gracefully nonetheless. “Oh, yes!” he said. “Exquisite! Majesty, how may I serve you?”
Queen Rasha nodded to acknowledge the bow, regarding him with some curiosity. “A sequential spell? Fascinating! And well done, too—a very sharp transition. Can it truly be a matched set? Let's see, the old one would have been the scholar—”